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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pretty Lady , by Arnold E. Bennett
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Pretty Lady 
+
+Author: Arnold E. Bennett
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2004  [eBook #12673]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRETTY LADY ***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE PRETTY LADY
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+1918
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    "_Virtue has never yet been adequately represented by any
+    who have had any claim to be considered virtuous. It is the
+    sub-vicious who best understand virtue. Let the virtuous
+    people stick to describing vice--which they can do well
+    enough_."
+
+    SAMUEL BUTLER
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Chapter
+
+
+ 1. THE PROMENADE
+
+ 2. THE POWER
+
+ 3. THE FLAT
+
+ 4. CONFIDENCE
+
+ 5. OSTEND
+
+ 6. THE ALBANY
+
+ 7. FOR THE EMPIRE
+
+ 8. BOOTS
+
+ 9. THE CLUB
+
+10. THE MISSION
+
+11. THE TELEGRAM
+
+12. RENDEZVOUS
+
+13. IN COMMITTEE
+
+14. QUEEN
+
+15. EVENING OUT
+
+16. THE VIRGIN
+
+17. SUNDAY AFTERNOON
+
+18. THE MYSTIC
+
+19. THE VISIT
+
+20. MASCOT
+
+21. THE LEAVE-TRAIN
+
+22. GETTING ON WITH THE WAR
+
+23. THE CALL
+
+24. THE SOLDIER
+
+25. THE RING
+
+26. THE RETURN
+
+27. THE CLYDE
+
+28. SALOME
+
+29. THE STREETS
+
+30. THE CHILD'S ARM
+
+31. "ROMANCE"
+
+32. MRS. BRAIDING
+
+33. THE ROOF
+
+34. IN THE BOUDOIR
+
+35. QUEEN DEAD
+
+36. COLLAPSE
+
+37. THE INVISIBLE POWERS
+
+38. THE VICTORY
+
+39. IDYLL
+
+40. THE WINDOW
+
+41. THE ENVOY
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+THE PROMENADE
+
+
+The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you
+belonged to the intellectual despisers of the British theatre you
+could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even
+for such as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.
+
+The stage scene flamed extravagantly with crude orange and viridian
+light, a rectangle of bedazzling illumination; on the boards, in the
+midst of great width, with great depth behind them and arching height
+above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture
+and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of
+light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the
+half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail.
+In fullest publicity it was licensed to say that which in private
+could not be said where men and women meet, and that which could
+not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and
+posters and illustrated weeklies all over the town; it disturbed the
+silence of the most secret groves in the vast, undiscovered hearts of
+men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from
+the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and
+of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion
+exemplified the naive sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which,
+occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium,
+surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone
+between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to the
+stage--this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if
+the magic protection of the impalpable screen had not been there.
+
+Behind the audience came the restless Promenade, where was the reality
+which the stage reflected. There it was, multitudinous, obtainable,
+seizable, dumbly imploring to be carried off. The stage, very daring,
+yet dared no more than hint at the existence of the bright and joyous
+reality. But there it was, under the same roof.
+
+Christine entered with Madame Larivaudiere. Between shoulders and
+broad hats, as through a telescope, she glimpsed in the far distance
+the illusive, glowing oblong of the stage; then the silhouetted
+conductor and the tops of instruments; then the dark, curved
+concentric rows of spectators. Lastly she took in the Promenade, in
+which she stood. She surveyed the Promenade with a professional eye.
+It instantly shocked her, not as it might have shocked one ignorant
+of human nature and history, but by reason of its frigidity, its
+constraint, its solemnity, its pretence. In one glance she embraced
+all the figures, moving or stationary, against the hedge of shoulders
+in front and against the mirrors behind--all of them: the programme
+girls, the cigarette girls, the chocolate girls, the cloak-room girls,
+the waiters, the overseers, as well as the vivid courtesans and their
+clientele in black, tweed, or khaki. With scarcely an exception they
+all had the same strange look, the same absence of gesture. They
+were northern, blond, self-contained, terribly impassive. Christine
+impulsively exclaimed--and the faint cry was dragged out of her, out
+of the bottom of her heart, by what she saw:
+
+"My god! How mournful it is!"
+
+Lise Larivaudiere, a stout and benevolent Bruxelloise, agreed with
+uncomprehending indulgence. The two chatted together for a few
+moments, each ceremoniously addressing the other as "Madame,"
+"Madame," and then they parted, insinuating themselves separately into
+the slow, confused traffic of the Promenade.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+THE POWER
+
+
+Christine knew Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Regent Street, a bit of
+Oxford Street, the Green Park, Hyde Park, Victoria Station, Charing
+Cross. Beyond these, London, measureless as the future and the past,
+surrounded her with the unknown. But she had not been afraid, because
+of her conviction that men were much the same everywhere, and that she
+had power over them. She did not exercise this power consciously; she
+had merely to exist and it exercised itself. For her this power was
+the mystical central fact of the universe. Now, however, as she stood
+in the Promenade, it seemed to her that something uncanny had happened
+to the universe. Surely it had shifted from its pivot! Her basic
+conviction trembled. Men were not the same everywhere, and her power
+over them was a delusion. Englishmen were incomprehensible; they were
+not human; they were apart. The memory of the hundreds of Englishmen
+who had yielded to her power in Paris (for she had specialised in
+travelling Englishmen) could not re-establish her conviction as to
+the sameness of men. The presence of her professed rivals of various
+nationalities in the Promenade could not restore it either. The
+Promenade in its cold, prim languor was the very negation of
+desire. She was afraid. She foresaw ruin for herself in this London,
+inclement, misty and inscrutable.
+
+And then she noticed a man looking at her, and she was herself again
+and the universe was itself again. She had a sensation of warmth and
+heavenly reassurance, just as though she had drunk an anisette or
+a creme de menthe. Her features took on an innocent expression; the
+characteristic puckering of the brows denoted not discontent, but a
+gentle concern for the whole world and also virginal curiosity. The
+man passed her. She did not stir. Presently he emerged afresh out of
+the moving knots of promenaders and discreetly approached her. She
+did not smile, but her eyes lighted with a faint amiable
+benevolence--scarcely perceptible, doubtful, deniable even, but
+enough. The man stopped. She at once gave a frank, kind smile, which
+changed all her face. He raised his hat an inch or so. She liked men
+to raise their hats. Clearly he was a gentleman of means, though in
+morning dress. His cigar had a very fine aroma. She classed him in
+half a second and was happy. He spoke to her in French, with a slight,
+unmistakable English accent, but very good, easy, conversational
+French--French French. She responded almost ecstatically:
+
+"Ah, you speak French!"
+
+She was too excited to play the usual comedy, so flattering to most
+Englishmen, of pretending that she thought from his speech that he was
+a Frenchman. The French so well spoken from a man's mouth in London
+most marvellously enheartened her and encouraged her in the perilous
+enterprise of her career. She was candidly grateful to him for
+speaking French.
+
+He said after a moment:
+
+"You have not at all a fatigued air, but would it not be preferable to
+sit down?"
+
+A man of the world! He could phrase his politeness. Ah! There
+were none like an Englishman of the world. Frenchmen, delightfully
+courteous up to a point, were unsatisfactory past that point.
+Frenchmen of the south were detestable, and she hated them.
+
+"You have not been in London long?" said the man, leading her away to
+the lounge.
+
+She observed then that, despite his national phlegm, he was in a state
+of rather intense excitation. Luck! Enormous luck! And also an augury
+for the future! She was professing in London for the first time in her
+life; she had not been in the Promenade for five minutes; and lo! the
+ideal admirer. For he was not young. What a fine omen for her profound
+mysticism and superstitiousness!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+THE FLAT
+
+
+Her flat was in Cork Street. As soon as they entered it the man
+remarked on its warmth and its cosiness, so agreeable after the
+November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat--a
+small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger
+bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off
+from the rest of the room, was installed as a _cabinet de toilette_,
+but it had a divan. From the divan, behind which was a heavily
+curtained window, you could see right through the flat to the
+curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened by
+paper shades of a peculiar hot tint between Indian red and carmine,
+giving a rich, romantic effect to the gleaming pale enamelled
+furniture, and to the voluptuous engravings after Sir Frederick
+Leighton, and the sweet, sentimental engravings after Marcus Stone,
+and to the assorted knicknacks. The flat had homogeneity, for
+everything in it, except the stove, had been bought at one shop in
+Tottenham Court Road by a landlord who knew his business. The stove,
+which was large, stood in the bedroom fireplace, and thence radiated
+celestial comfort and security throughout the home; the stove was
+the divinity of the home and Christine the priestess; she had herself
+bought the stove, and she understood its personality--it was one of
+your finite gods.
+
+"Will you take something?" she asked, the hostess.
+
+Whisky and a siphon and glasses were on the sideboard.
+
+"Oh no, thanks!"
+
+"Not even a cigarette?" Holding out the box and looking up at him,
+she appealed with a long, anxious glance that he should honour her
+cigarettes.
+
+"Thank you!" he said. "I should like a cigarette very much."
+
+She lit a match for him.
+
+"But you--do you not smoke?"
+
+"Yes. Sometimes."
+
+"Try one of mine--for a change."
+
+He produced a long, thin gold cigarette-case, stuffed with cigarettes.
+
+She lit a cigarette from his.
+
+"Oh!" she cried after a few violent puffs. "I like enormously your
+cigarettes. Where are they to be found?"
+
+"Look!" said he. "I will put these few in your box." And he poured
+twenty cigarettes into an empty compartment of the box, which was
+divided into two.
+
+"Not all!" she protested.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I say NO!" she insisted with a gesture suddenly firm, and put a
+single cigarette back into his case and shut the case with a snap, and
+herself returned it to his pocket. "One ought never to be without a
+cigarette."
+
+He said:
+
+"You understand life.... How nice it is here!" He looked about and
+then sighed.
+
+"But why do you sigh?"
+
+"Sigh of content! I was just thinking this place would be something
+else if an English girl had it. It is curious, lamentable, that
+English girls understand nothing--certainly not love."
+
+"As for that, I've always heard so."
+
+"They understand nothing. Not even warmth. One is cold in their
+rooms."
+
+"As for that--I mean warmth--one may say that I understand it; I do."
+
+"You understand more than warmth. What is your name?"
+
+"Christine."
+
+She was the accidental daughter of a daughter of joy. The mother, as
+frequently happens in these cases, dreamed of perfect respectability
+for her child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris,
+meaning to provide a good dowry in due course. At forty-two she had
+not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she
+was ill. Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a
+vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster
+for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly
+educated--for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had
+not aimed high enough--indolent, but economical, affectionate, and
+with a very great deal of temperament. Actuated by deep maternal
+solicitude, she brought her daughter back to Paris, and had her
+inducted into the profession under the most decent auspices. At
+nineteen Christine's second education was complete. Most of it the
+mother had left to others, from a sense of propriety. But she herself
+had instructed Christine concerning the five great plagues of the
+profession. And also she had adjured her never to drink alcohol save
+professionally, never to invest in anything save bonds of the City of
+Paris, never to seek celebrity, which according to the mother meant
+ultimate ruin, never to mix intimately with other women. She had
+expounded the great theory that generosity towards men in small things
+is always repaid by generosity in big things--and if it is not the
+loss is so slight! And she taught her the fundamental differences
+between nationalities. With a Russian you had to eat, drink and
+listen. With a German you had to flatter, and yet adroitly insert, "Do
+not imagine that I am here for the fun of the thing." With an Italian
+you must begin with finance. With a Frenchman you must discuss finance
+before it is too late. With an Englishman you must talk, for he will
+not, but in no circumstances touch finance until he has mentioned
+it. In each case there was a risk, but the risk should be faced. The
+course of instruction finished, Christine's mother had died with a
+clear conscience and a mind consoled.
+
+Said Christine, conversational, putting the question that lips seemed
+then to articulate of themselves in obedience to its imperious demand
+for utterance:
+
+"How long do you think the war will last?"
+
+The man answered with serenity: "The war has not begun yet."
+
+"How English you are! But all the same, I ask myself whether you would
+say that if you had seen Belgium. I came here from Ostend last month."
+The man gazed at her with new vivacious interest.
+
+"So it is like that that you are here!"
+
+"But do not let us talk about it," she added quickly with a mournful
+smile.
+
+"No, no!" he agreed.... "I see you have a piano. I expect you are fond
+of music."
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed in a fresh, relieved tone. "Am I fond of it! I
+adore it, quite simply. Do play for me. Play a boston--a two-step."
+
+"I can't," he said.
+
+"But you play. I am sure of it."
+
+"And you?" he parried.
+
+She made a sad negative sign.
+
+"Well, I'll play something out of _The Rosenkavalier_."
+
+"Ah! But you are a _musician_!" She amiably scrutinised him. "And
+yet--no."
+
+Smiling, he, too, made a sad negative sign.
+
+"The waltz out of _The Rosenkavalier_, eh?"
+
+"Oh, yes! A waltz. I prefer waltzes to anything."
+
+As soon as he had played a few bars she passed demurely out of the
+sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the _cabinet
+de toilette_. She moved about in the _cabinet de toilette_ thinking
+that the waltz out of _The Rosenkavalier_ was divinely exciting. The
+delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him
+across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and
+then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of
+the shortening cigarette was in his eyes.
+
+She returned at length into the sitting-room, carrying a small silk
+bag about five inches by three. The waltz finished.
+
+"But you'll take cold!" he murmured.
+
+"No. At home I never take cold. Besides--"
+
+Smiling at him as he swung round on the music-stool, she undid the
+bag, and drew from it some folded stuff which she slowly shook
+out, rather in the manner of a conjurer, until it was revealed as a
+full-sized kimono. She laughed.
+
+"Is it not marvellous?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"That is what I wear. In the way of chiffons it is the only fantasy
+I have bought up to the present in London. Of course, clothes--I have
+been forced to buy clothes. It matches exquisitely the stockings, eh?"
+
+She slid her arms into the sleeves of the transparency. She was a
+pretty and highly developed girl of twenty-six, short, still lissom,
+but with the fear of corpulence in her heart. She had beautiful hair
+and beautiful eyes, and she had that pucker of the forehead denoting,
+according to circumstances, either some kindly, grave preoccupation or
+a benevolent perplexity about something or other.
+
+She went near him and clasped hands round his neck, and whispered:
+
+"Your waltz was adorable. You are an artist."
+
+And with her shoulders she seemed to sketch the movements of dancing.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+CONFIDENCE
+
+
+After putting on his thick overcoat and one glove he had suddenly
+darted to the dressing-table for his watch, which he was forgetting.
+Christine's face showed sympathetic satisfaction that he had
+remembered in time, simultaneously implying that even if he had not
+remembered, the watch would have been perfectly safe till he called
+for it. The hour was five minutes to midnight. He was just going.
+Christine had dropped a little batch of black and red Treasury
+notes on to the dressing-table with an indifferent if not perhaps
+an impatient air, as though she held these financial sequels to be
+a stain on the ideal, a tedious necessary, a nuisance, or simply
+negligible.
+
+She kissed him goodbye, and felt agreeably fragile and soft within
+the embrace of his huge, rough overcoat. And she breathed winningly,
+delicately, apologetically into his ear:
+
+"Thou wilt give something to the servant?" Her soft eyes seemed to
+say, "It is not for myself that I am asking, is it?"
+
+He made an easy philanthropic gesture to indicate that the servant
+would have no reason to regret his passage.
+
+He opened the door into the little hall, where the fat Italian maid
+was yawning in an atmosphere comparatively cold, and then, in a change
+of purpose, he shut the door again.
+
+"You do not know how I knew you could not have been in London very
+long," he said confidentially.
+
+"No."
+
+"Because I saw you in Paris one night in July--at the Marigny
+Theatre."
+
+"Not at the Marigny."
+
+"Yes. The Marigny."
+
+"It is true. I recall it. I wore white and a yellow stole."
+
+"Yes. You stood on the seat at the back of the Promenade to see a
+contortionist girl better, and then you jumped down. I thought you
+were delicious--quite delicious."
+
+"Thou flatterest me. Thou sayest that to flatter me."
+
+"No, no. I assure you I went to the Marigny every night for five
+nights afterwards in order to find you."
+
+"But the Marigny is not my regular music-hall. Olympia is my regular
+music-hall."
+
+"I went to Olympia and all the other halls, too, each night."
+
+"Ah, yes! Then I must have left Paris. But why, my poor friend, why
+didst thou not speak to me at the Marigny? I was alone."
+
+"I don't know. I hesitated. I suppose I was afraid."
+
+"Thou!"
+
+"So to-night I was terribly content to meet you. When I saw that it
+was really you I could not believe my eyes."
+
+She understood now his agitation on first accosting her in the
+Promenade. The affair very pleasantly grew more serious for her. She
+liked him. He had nice eyes. He was fairly tall and broadly built,
+but not a bit stout. Neither dark nor blond. Not handsome, and yet
+... beneath a certain superficial freedom, he was reserved. He had
+beautiful manners. He was refined, and he was refined in love; and yet
+he knew something. She very highly esteemed refinement in a man.
+She had never met a refined woman, and was convinced that few such
+existed. Of course he was rich. She could be quite sure, from his way
+of handling money, that he was accustomed to handling money. She would
+swear he was a bachelor merely on the evidence of his eyes.... Yes,
+the affair had lovely possibilities. Afraid to speak to her, and
+then ran round Paris after her for five nights! Had he, then, had the
+lightning-stroke from her? It appeared so. And why not? She was not
+like other girls, and this she had always known. She did precisely
+the same things as other girls did. True. But somehow, subtly,
+inexplicably, when she did them they were not the same things.
+The proof: he, so refined and distinguished himself, had felt the
+difference. She became very tender.
+
+"To think," she murmured, "that only on that one night in all my life
+did I go to the Marigny! And you saw me!"
+
+The coincidence frightened her--she might have missed this nice,
+dependable, admiring creature for ever. But the coincidence also
+delighted her, strengthening her superstition. The hand of destiny was
+obviously in this affair. Was it not astounding that on one night of
+all nights he should have been at the Marigny? Was it not still more
+astounding that on one night of all nights he should have been in the
+Promenade in Leicester Square?... The affair was ordained since before
+the beginning of time. Therefore it was serious.
+
+"Ah, my friend!" she said. "If only you had spoken to me that night at
+the Marigny, you might have saved me from troubles frightful--fantastic."
+
+"How?"
+
+He had confided in her--and at the right moment. With her human lore
+she could not have respected a man who had begun by admitting to a
+strange and unproved woman that for five days and nights he had gone
+mad about her. To do so would have been folly on his part. But having
+withheld his wild secret, he had charmingly showed, by the gesture of
+opening and then shutting the door, that at last it was too strong for
+his control. Such candour deserved candour in return. Despite his age,
+he looked just then attractively, sympathetically boyish. He was a
+benevolent creature. The responsive kindliness of his enquiring "How?"
+was beyond question genuine. Once more, in the warm and dark-glowing
+comfort of her home, the contrast between the masculine, thick rough
+overcoat and the feminine, diaphanous, useless kimono appealed to her
+soul. It seemed to justify, even to call for, confidence from her to
+him.
+
+The Italian woman behind the door coughed impatiently and was not
+heard.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+OSTEND
+
+
+In July she had gone to Ostend with an American. A gentleman, but mad.
+One of those men with a fixed idea that everything would always be
+all right and that nothing really and permanently uncomfortable
+could possibly happen. A very fair man, with red hair, and radiating
+wrinkles all round his eyes--phenomenon due to his humorous outlook on
+the world. He laughed at her because she travelled with all her bonds
+of the City of Paris on her person. He had met her one night, and
+the next morning suggested the Ostend excursion. Too sudden,
+too capricious, of course; but she had always desired to see the
+cosmopolitanism of Ostend. Trouville she did not like, as you had sand
+with every meal if you lived near the front. Hotel Astoria at Ostend.
+Complete flat in the hotel. Very chic. The red-haired one, the
+_rouquin_, had broad ideas, very broad ideas, of what was due to a
+woman. In fact, one might say that he carried generosity in details to
+excess. But naturally with Americans it was necessary to be surprised
+at nothing. The _rouquin_ said steadily that war would not break out.
+He said so until the day on which it broke out. He then became a Turk.
+Yes, a Turk. He assumed rights over her, the rights of protection, but
+very strange rights. He would not let her try to return to Paris. He
+said the Germans might get to Paris, but to Ostend, never--because
+of the English! Difficult to believe, but he had locked her up in the
+complete flat. The Ostend season had collapsed--pluff--like that. The
+hotel staff vanished almost entirely. One or two old fat Belgian
+women on the bedroom floors--that seemed to be all. The _rouquin_ was
+exquisitely polite, but very firm. In fine, he was a master. It was
+astonishing what he did. They were the sole remaining guests in the
+Astoria. And they remained because he refused to permit the management
+to turn him out. Weeks passed. Yes, weeks. English forces came to
+Ostend. Marvellous. Among nations there was none like the English. She
+did not see them herself. She was ill. The _rouquin_ had told her
+that she was ill when she was not ill, but lo! the next day she was
+ill--oh, a long time. The _rouquin_ told her the news--battle of the
+Marne and all species of glorious deeds. An old fat Belgian told her
+a different kind of news. The stories of the fall of Liege, Namur,
+Brussels, Antwerp. The massacres at Aerschot, at Louvain. Terrible
+stories that travelled from mouth to mouth among women. There was
+always rape and blood and filth mingled. Stories of a frightful
+fascination ... unrepeatable! Ah!
+
+The _rouquin_ had informed her one day that the Belgian Government had
+come to Ostend. Proof enough, according to him, that Ostend could not
+be captured by the Germans! After that he had said nothing about the
+Belgian Government for many days. And then one day he had informed
+her casually that the Belgian Government was about to leave Ostend
+by steamer. But days earlier the old fat woman had told her that the
+German staff had ordered seventy-five rooms at the Hotel des Postes at
+Ghent. Seventy-five rooms. And that in the space of a few hours Ghent
+had become a city of the dead.... Thousands of refugees in Ostend.
+Thousands of escaped virgins. Thousands of wounded soldiers.
+Often, the sound of guns all day and all night. And in the daytime
+occasionally, a sharp sound, very loud; that meant that a German
+aeroplane was over the town--killing ... Plenty to kill. Ostend was
+always full, behind the Digue, and yet people were always leaving--by
+steamer. Steamers taken by assault. At first there had been
+formalities, permits, passports. But when one steamer had been taken
+by assault--no more formalities! In trying to board the steamers
+people were drowned. They fell into the water and nobody troubled--so
+said the old woman. Christine was better; desired to rise. The
+_rouquin_ said No, not yet. He would believe naught. And now he
+believed one thing, and it filled his mind--that German submarines
+sank all refugee ships in the North Sea. Proof of the folly of leaving
+Ostend. Yet immediately afterwards he came and told her to get up.
+That is to say, she had been up for several days, but not outside. He
+told her to come away, come away. She had only summer clothes, and it
+was mid-October. What a climate, Ostend in October! The old woman said
+that thousands of parcels of clothes for refugees had been sent by
+generous England. She got a parcel; she had means of getting it. She
+opened it with pride in the bedroom of the flat. It contained eight
+corsets and a ball-dress. A droll race, all the same, the English.
+Had they no imagination? But, no doubt, society women were the same
+everywhere. It was notorious that in France....
+
+Christine went forth in her summer clothes. The _rouquin_ had got
+an old horse-carriage. He gave her much American money--or, rather,
+cheques--which, true enough, she had since cashed with no difficulty
+in London. They had to leave the carriage. The station square was full
+of guns and women and children and bundles. Yes, together with a
+few men. She spent the whole night in the station square with the
+_rouquin_, in her summer clothes and his overcoat. At six o'clock in
+the evening it was already dark. A night interminable. Babies crying.
+One heard that at the other end of the square a baby had been born.
+She, Christine, sat next to a young mother with a baby. Both mother
+and baby had the right arm bandaged. They had both been shot through
+the arm with the same bullet. It was near Aerschot. The young woman
+also told her.... No, she could not relate that to an Englishman.
+Happily it did not rain. But the wind and the cold! In the morning
+the _rouquin_ put her on to a fishing-vessel. She had nothing but her
+bonds of the City of Paris and her American cheques. The crush was
+frightful. The captain of the fishing-vessel, however, comprehended
+what discipline was. He made much money. The _rouquin_ would not come.
+He said he was an American citizen and had all his papers. For the
+rest, the captain would not let him come, though doubtless the captain
+could have been bribed. As they left the harbour, with other trawlers,
+they could see the quays all covered with the disappointed,
+waiting. Somebody in the boat said that the Germans had that morning
+reached--She forgot the name of the place, but it was the next
+village to Ostend on the Bruges road. Thus Christine parted from the
+_rouquin_. Mad! Always wrong, even about the German submarines. But
+_chic_. Truly _chic_.
+
+What a voyage! What adventures with the charitable people in England!
+People who resembled nothing else on earth! People who did not
+understand what life was.... No understanding of that which it
+is--life! In fine ...! However, she should stay in England. It was
+the only country in which one could have confidence. She was trying
+to sell the furniture of her flat in Paris. Complications! Under the
+emergency law she was not obliged to pay her rent to the landlord; but
+if she removed her furniture then she would have to pay the rent.
+What did it matter, though? Besides, she might not be able to sell her
+furniture after all. Remarkably few women in Paris at that moment were
+in a financial state to buy furniture. Ah no!
+
+"But I have not told you the tenth part!" said Christine.
+
+"Terrible! Terrible!" murmured the man.
+
+All the heavy sorrow of the world lay on her puckered brow, and
+floated in her dark glistening eyes. Then she smiled, sadly but with
+courage.
+
+"I will come to see you again," said the man comfortingly. "Are you
+here in the afternoons?"
+
+"Every afternoon, naturally."
+
+"Well, I will come--not to-morrow--the day after to-morrow."
+
+Already, long before, interrupting the buttoning of his collar, she
+had whispered softly, persuasively, clingingly, in the classic manner:
+
+"Thou art content, _cheri_? Thou wilt return?"
+
+And he had said: "That goes without saying."
+
+But not with quite the same conviction as he now used in speaking
+definitely of the afternoon of the day after to-morrow. The fact
+was, he was moved; she too. She had been right not to tell the story
+earlier, and equally right to tell it before he departed. Some men,
+most men, hated to hear any tale of real misfortune, at any moment,
+from a woman, because, of course, it diverted their thoughts.
+
+In thus departing at once the man showed characteristic tact. Her
+recital left nothing to be said. They kissed again, rather like
+comrades. Christine was still the vessel of the heavy sorrow of the
+world, but in the kiss and in their glances was an implication that
+the effective, triumphant antidote to sorrow might be found in a
+mutual trust. He opened the door. The Italian woman, yawning and with
+her hand open, was tenaciously waiting.
+
+Alone, carefully refolding the kimono in its original creases,
+Christine wondered what the man's name was. She felt that the
+mysterious future might soon disclose a germ of happiness.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+THE ALBANY
+
+
+G.J. Hoape--He was usually addressed as "G.J." by his friends, and
+always referred to as "G.J." by both friends and acquaintances--woke
+up finally in the bedroom of his flat with the thought:
+
+"To-day I shall see her."
+
+He inhabited one of the three flats at the extreme northern end of the
+Albany, Piccadilly, W.I. The flat was strangely planned. Its shape
+as a whole was that of a cube. Imagine the cube to be divided
+perpendicularly into two very unequal parts. The larger part,
+occupying nearly two-thirds of the entire cubic space, was the
+drawing-room, a noble chamber, large and lofty. The smaller part was
+cut horizontally into two storeys. The lower storey comprised a very
+small hall, a fair bathroom, the tiniest staircase in London, and
+G.J.'s very small bedroom. The upper storey comprised a very small
+dining-room, the kitchen, and servants' quarters.
+
+The door between the bedroom and the drawing room, left open in the
+night for ventilation, had been softly closed as usual during G.J.'s
+final sleep, and the bedroom was in absolute darkness save for a faint
+grey gleam over the valance of the window curtains. G.J. could think.
+He wondered whether he was in love. He hoped he was in love, and the
+fact that the woman who attracted him was a courtesan did not disturb
+him in the least.
+
+He was nearing fifty years of age. He had casually known hundreds of
+courtesans in sundry capitals, a few of them very agreeable; also a
+number of women calling themselves, sometimes correctly, actresses,
+all of whom, for various reasons which need not be given, had proved
+very unsatisfactory. But he had never loved--unless it might be,
+mildly, Concepcion, and Concepcion was now a war bride. He wanted to
+love. He had never felt about any woman, not even about Concepcion, as
+he felt about the woman seen for a few minutes at the Marigny Theatre
+and then for five successive nights vainly searched for in all the
+chief music-halls of Paris. (A nice name, Christine! It suited her.)
+He had given her up--never expected to catch sight of her again; but
+she had remained a steadfast memory, sad and charming. The encounter
+in the Promenade in Leicester Square was such a piece of heavenly and
+incredible luck that it had, at the moment, positively made him giddy.
+The first visit to Christine's flat had beatified and stimulated him.
+Would the second? Anyhow, she was the most alluring woman--and
+yet apparently of dependable character!--he had ever met. No other
+consideration counted with him.
+
+There was a soft knock; the door was pushed, and wavy reflections of
+the drawing-room fire played on the corner of the bedroom ceiling.
+Mrs. Braiding came in. G.J. had known it was she by the caressing
+quality of the knock. Mrs. Braiding was his cook and the wife of his
+"man". It was not her place to come in, but occasionally, because
+something had happened to Braiding, she did come in. She drew the
+curtains apart, and the day of Vigo Street, pale, dirty, morose,
+feebly and perfunctorily took possession of the bedroom. Mrs.
+Braiding, having drawn the curtains, returned to the door and from the
+doorway said:
+
+"Breakfast is practically ready, sir."
+
+G.J. perceived that this was one of her brave, resigned mornings.
+Since August she had borne the entire weight of the war on her back,
+and sometimes the burden would overpower her, but never quite. G.J.
+switched on the light, arose from his bed, assumed his dressing-gown,
+and, gazing with accustomed pleasure round the bedroom, saw that it
+was perfect.
+
+He had furnished his flat in the Regency style of the first decade
+of the nineteenth century, as matured by George Smith, "upholder
+extraordinary to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales". The Pavilion
+at Brighton had given the original idea to G.J., who saw in it the
+solution of the problem of combining the somewhat massive dignity
+suitable to a bachelor of middling age with the bright, unconquerable
+colours which the eternal twilight of London demands.
+
+His dome bed was yellow as to its upper works, with crimson valances
+above and yellow valances below. The yellow-lined crimson curtains (of
+course never closed) had green cords and tassels, and the counterpane
+was yellow. This bed was a modest sample of the careful and
+uncompromising reconstitution of a period which he had everywhere
+carried out in his abode.
+
+The drawing-room, with its moulded ceiling and huge recessed window,
+had presented an admirable field for connoisseurship. Here the clash
+of rich primary colours, the perpendiculars which began with bronze
+girls' heads and ended with bronze girls' feet or animals' claws,
+the vast flat surfaces of furniture, the stiff curves of wood and a
+drapery, the morbid rage for solidity which would employ a candelabrum
+weighing five hundredweight to hold a single wax candle, produced a
+real and imposing effect of style; it was a style debased, a style
+which was shedding the last graces of French Empire in order soon to
+appeal to a Victoria determined to be utterly English and good; but
+it was a style. And G.J. had scamped no detail. Even the pictures were
+hung with thick tasselled cords of the Regency. The drawing-room was a
+triumph.
+
+Do not conceive that G.J. had lost his head about furniture and that
+his notion of paradise was an endless series of second-hand shops.
+He had an admirable balance; and he held that a man might make a
+faultless interior for himself and yet not necessarily lose his
+balance. He resented being called a specialist in furniture. He
+regarded himself as an amateur of life, and, if a specialist in
+anything, as a specialist in friendships. Yet he was a solitary man
+(liking solitude without knowing that he liked it), and in the midst
+of the perfections which he had created he sometimes gloomily thought:
+"What in the name of God am I doing on this earth?"
+
+He went into the drawing-room, and there, by the fire and in front of
+a formidable blue chair whose arms developed into the grinning
+heads of bronze lions, stood the lacquered table consecrated to
+his breakfast tray; and his breakfast tray, with newspaper and
+correspondence, had been magically placed thereon as though by
+invisible hands. And on one arm of the easy-chair lay the rug which,
+because a dressing-gown does not button all the way down, he put over
+his knees while breakfasting in winter. Yes, he admitted with pleasure
+that he was "well served". Before eating he opened the piano--a modern
+instrument concealed in an ingeniously confected Regency case--and
+played with taste a Bach prelude and fugue.
+
+His was not the standardised and habituated kind of musical culture
+which takes a Bach prelude and fugue every morning before breakfast
+with or without a glass of Lithia water or fizzy saline. He did,
+however, customarily begin the day at the piano, and on this
+particular morning he happened to play a Bach prelude and fugue.
+
+And as he played he congratulated himself on not having gone to seek
+Christine in the Promenade on the previous night, as impatience
+had tempted him to do. Such a procedure would have been an error in
+worldliness and bad from every point of view. He had wisely rejected
+the temptation.
+
+In the deep blue arm-chair, with the rug over his knees and one hand
+on a lion's head, he glanced first at the opened _Times_, because
+of the war. Among the few letters was one with the heading of the
+Reveille Motor Horn Company Ltd.
+
+G.J. like his father, had been a solicitor. When he was twenty-five
+his father, a widower, had died and left him a respectable fortune
+and a very good practice. He sold half the practice to an incoming
+partner, and four years later he sold the other half of the practice
+to the same man. At thirty he was free, and this result had been
+attained through his frank negative answer to the question, "The law
+bores me--is there any reason why I should let it continue to bore
+me?" There was no reason. Instead of the law he took up life. Of
+business preoccupations naught remained but his investments. He
+possessed a gift for investing money. He had helped the man who had
+first put the Reveille Motor Horn on the market. He had had a mighty
+holding of shares in the Reveille Syndicate Limited, which had so
+successfully promoted the Reveille Motor Horn Company Limited. And in
+the latter, too, he held many shares. The Reveille Motor Horn Company
+had prospered and had gone into the manufacture of speedometers,
+illuminating outfits, and all manner of motor-car accessories.
+
+On the outbreak of war G.J. had given himself up for lost. "This
+is the end," he had said, as a member of the sore-shaken investing
+public. He had felt sick under the region of the heart. In particular
+he had feared for his Reveille shares. No one would want to buy
+expensive motor horns in the midst of the greatest war that the world,
+etc., etc.
+
+Still the Reveille Company, after sustaining the shock, had somehow
+continued to do a pretty good business. It had patriotically offered
+its plant and services to the War Office, and had been repulsed with
+contumely and ignominy. The War Office had most caustically intimated
+to the Reveille Company that it had no use and never under any
+conceivable circumstances could have any use whatever for the Reveille
+Company, and that the Reveille Company was a forward and tedious
+jackanapes, unworthy even of an articulate rebuff. Now the autograph
+letter with the Reveille note-heading was written by the managing
+director (who represented G.J.'s interests on the Board), and it
+stated that the War Office had been to the Reveille Company, and
+implored it to enlarge itself, and given it vast orders at grand
+prices for all sorts of things that it had never made before. The
+profits of 1915 would be doubled, if not trebled--perhaps quadrupled.
+G.J. was relieved, uplifted; and he sniggered at his terrible
+forebodings of August and September. Ruin? He was actually going to
+make money out of the greatest war that the world, etc. etc. And why
+not? Somebody had to make money, and somebody had to pay for the
+war in income tax. For the first time the incubus of the war seemed
+lighter upon G.J. And also he need feel no slightest concern about
+the financial aspect of any possible developments of the Christine
+adventure. He had a very clear and undeniable sensation of positive
+happiness.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+FOR THE EMPIRE
+
+
+Mrs. Braiding came into the drawing-room, and he wondered, paternally,
+why she was so fidgety and why her tranquillising mate had not
+appeared. To the careless observer she was a cheerful woman, but the
+temple of her brightness was reared over a dark and frightful crypt
+in which the demons of doubt, anxiety, and despair year after year
+dragged at their chains, intimidating hope. Slender, small, and neat,
+she passed her life in bravely fronting the shapes of disaster with an
+earnest, vivacious, upturned face. She was thirty-five, and her aspect
+recalled the pretty, respected lady's-maid which she had been before
+Braiding got her and knocked some nonsense out of her and turned her
+into a wife.
+
+G.J., still paternally, but firmly, took her up at once.
+
+"I say, Mrs. Braiding, what about this dish-cover?"
+
+He lifted the article, of which the copper was beginning to show
+through the Sheffield plating.
+
+"Yes sir. It does look rather impoverished, doesn't it?"
+
+"But I told Braiding to use the new toast-dish I bought last week but
+one."
+
+"Did you, sir? I was very happy about the new one as soon as I saw
+it, but Braiding never gave me your instructions in regard to it." She
+glanced at the cabinet in which the new toast-dish reposed with other
+antique metal-work. "Braiding's been rather upset this last few days,
+sir."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"This recruiting, sir. Of course, you are aware he's decided on it."
+
+"I'm not aware of anything of the sort," said G.J. rather roughly,
+perhaps to hide his sudden emotion, perhaps to express his irritation
+at Mrs. Braiding's strange habit of pretending that the most startling
+pieces of news were matters of common knowledge.
+
+"Well, sir, of course you were out most of yesterday, and you dined at
+the club. Braiding attended at a recruiting office yesterday, sir.
+He stood three hours in the crowd outside because there was no room
+inside, and then he stood over two hours in a passage inside before
+his turn came, and nothing to eat all day, or drink either. And when
+his turn came and they asked him his age, he said 'thirty-six,' and
+the person was very angry and said he hadn't any time to waste, and
+Braiding had better go outside again and consider whether he hadn't
+made a mistake about his age. So Braiding went outside and considered
+that his age was only thirty-three after all, but he couldn't get in
+again, not by any means, so he just came back here and I gave him a
+good tea, and he needed it, sir."
+
+"But he saw me last night, and he never said anything!"
+
+"Yes, sir," Mrs. Braiding admitted with pain. "I asked him if he had
+told you, and he said he hadn't and that I must."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He went off early, sir, so as to get a good place. I shouldn't be a
+bit surprised if he's in the army by this time. I know it's not the
+right way of going about things, and Braiding's only excuse is it's
+for the Empire. When it's a question of the Empire, sir...." At that
+instant the white man's burden was Mrs. Braiding's, and the glance of
+her serious face showed what the crushing strain of it was.
+
+"I think he might have told me."
+
+"Well, sir. I'm very sorry. Very sorry.... But you know what Braiding
+is."
+
+G.J. felt that that was just what he did not know, or at any rate had
+not hitherto known. He was hurt by Braiding's conduct. He had always
+treated Braiding as a friend. They had daily discussed the progress
+of the war. On the previous night Braiding, in all the customary
+sedateness of black coat and faintly striped trousers, had behaved
+just as usual! It was astounding. G.J. began to incline towards the
+views of certain of his friends about the utter incomprehensibility
+of the servile classes--views which he had often annoyed them by
+traversing. Yes; it was astounding. All this martial imperialism
+seething in the depths of Braiding, and G.J. never suspecting the
+ferment! Exceedingly difficult to conceive Braiding as a soldier! He
+was the Albany valet, and Albany valets were Albany valets and naught
+else.
+
+Mrs. Braiding continued:
+
+"It's very inconsiderate to you, sir. That's a point that is
+appreciated by both Braiding and I. But let us fervently hope it won't
+be for long, sir. The consensus of opinion seems to be we shall be
+in Berlin in the spring. And in the meantime, I think"--she smiled an
+appeal--"I can manage for you by myself, if you'll be so good as to
+let me."
+
+"Oh! It's not that," said G.J. carelessly. "I expect you can manage
+all right."
+
+"Oh!" cried she. "I know how you feel about it, sir, and I'm very
+sorry. And at best it's bound to be highly inconvenient for a
+gentleman like yourself, sir. I said to Braiding, 'You're taking
+advantage of Mr. Hoape's good nature,' that's what I said to Braiding,
+and he couldn't deny it. However, sir, if you'll be so good as to let
+me try what I can do by myself--"
+
+"I tell you that'll be all right," he stopped her.
+
+Braiding, his mainstay, was irrevocably gone. He realised that, and it
+was a severe blow. He must accept it. As for Mrs. Braiding managing,
+she would manage in a kind of way, but the risks to Regency furniture
+and china would be grave. She did not understand Regency furniture
+and china as Braiding did; no woman could. Braiding had been as much a
+"find" as the dome bed or the unique bookcase which bore the names of
+"Homer" and "Virgil" in bronze characters on its outer wings.
+Also, G.J. had a hundred little ways about neckties and about
+trouser-stretching which he, G.J., would have to teach Mrs. Braiding.
+Still the war ...
+
+When she was gone he stood up and brushed the crumbs from his
+dressing-gown, and emitted a short, harsh laugh. He was laughing at
+himself. Regency furniture and china! Neckties! Trouser-stretching! In
+the next room was a youngish woman whose minstrel boy to the war had
+gone--gone, though he might be only in the next street! And had she
+said a word about her feelings as a wife? Not a word! But dozens
+of words about the inconvenience to the god-like employer! She had
+apologised to him because Braiding had departed to save the Empire
+without first asking his permission. It was not merely astounding--it
+flabbergasted. He had always felt that there was something
+fundamentally wrong in the social fabric, and he had long had a
+preoccupation to the effect that it was his business, his, to take a
+share in finding out what was wrong and in discovering and applying a
+cure. This preoccupation had worried him, scarcely perceptibly, like
+the delicate oncoming of neuralgia. There must be something wrong when
+a member of one class would behave to a member of another class as
+Mrs. Braiding behaved to him--without protest from him.
+
+"Mrs. Braiding!" he called out.
+
+"Yes, sir." She almost ran back into the drawing-room.
+
+"When shall you be seeing your husband?" At least he would remind her
+that she had a husband.
+
+"I haven't an idea, sir."
+
+"Well, when you do, tell him that I want to speak to him; and you can
+tell him I shall pay you half his wages in addition to your own."
+
+Her gratitude filled him with secret fury.
+
+He said to himself:
+
+"Futile--these grand gestures about wages."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+BOOTS
+
+
+In the very small hall G.J. gazed at himself in the mirror that was
+nearly as large as the bathroom door, to which it was attached, and
+which it ingeniously masked.
+
+Although Mrs. Braiding was present, holding his ebony stick, he
+carefully examined his face and appearance without the slightest
+self-consciousness. Nor did Mrs. Braiding's demeanour indicate that in
+her opinion G.J. was behaving in a manner eccentric or incorrect. He
+was dressed in mourning. Honestly he did not believe that he looked
+anywhere near fifty. His face was worn by the friction of the world,
+especially under the eyes, but his eyes were youthful, and his hair
+and moustache and short, fine beard scarcely tinged with grey. His
+features showed benevolence, with a certain firmness, and they had the
+refinement which comes of half a century's instinctive avoidance of
+excess. Still, he was beginning to feel his age. He moved more slowly;
+he sat down, instead of standing up, at the dressing-table. And he was
+beginning also to take a pride in mentioning these changes and in the
+fact that he would be fifty on his next birthday. And when talking to
+men under thirty, or even under forty, he would say in a tone mingling
+condescension and envy: "But, of course, you're young."
+
+He departed, remarking that he should not be in for lunch and might
+not be in for dinner, and he walked down the covered way to the
+Albany Courtyard, and was approved by the Albany porters as a resident
+handsomely conforming to the traditional high standard set by the
+Albany for its residents. He crossed Piccadilly, and as he did so he
+saw a couple of jolly fine girls, handsome, stylish, independent of
+carriage, swinging freely along and intimately talking with that mien
+of experience and broad-mindedness which some girls manage to wear in
+the streets. One of them in particular appealed to him. He thought how
+different they were from Christine. He had dreamt of just such girls
+as they were, and yet now Christine filled the whole of his mind.
+
+"You can't foresee," he thought.
+
+He dipped down into the extraordinary rectangle of St. James's, where
+he was utterly at home. A strange architecture, parsimoniously plain
+on the outside, indeed carrying the Oriental scorn for merely external
+effect to a point only reachable by a race at once hypocritical and
+madly proud. The shabby plainness of Wren's church well typified all
+the parochial parsimony. The despairing architect had been so pinched
+by his employers in the matter of ornament that on the whole of the
+northern facade there was only one of his favourite cherub's heads!
+What a parish!
+
+It was a parish of flat brick walls and brass door-knobs and brass
+plates. And the first commandment was to polish every brass door-knob
+and every brass plate every morning. What happened in the way of
+disfigurement by polishing paste to the surrounding brick or wood had
+no importance. The conventions of the parish had no eye save for brass
+door-knobs and brass plates, which were maintained daily in effulgence
+by a vast early-rising population. Recruiting offices, casualty lists,
+the rumour of peril and of glory, could do nothing to diminish the
+high urgency of the polishing of those brass door-knobs and those
+brass plates.
+
+The shops and offices seemed to show that the wants of customers were
+few and simple. Grouse moors, fisheries, yachts, valuations, hosiery,
+neckties, motor-cars, insurance, assurance, antique china, antique
+pictures, boots, riding-whips, and, above all, Eastern cigarettes!
+The master-passion was evidently Eastern cigarettes. The few provision
+shops were marmoreal and majestic, catering as they did chiefly for
+the multifarious palatial male clubs which dominated the parish and
+protected and justified the innumerable "bachelor" suites that hung
+forth signs in every street. The parish, in effect, was first an
+immense monastery, where the monks, determined to do themselves
+extremely well in dignified peace, had made a prodigious and not
+entirely unsuccessful effort to keep out the excitable sex. And,
+second, it was an excusable conspiracy on the part of intensely
+respectable tradesmen and stewards to force the non-bargaining sex to
+pay the highest possible price for the privilege of doing the correct
+thing.
+
+G.J. passed through the cardiac region of St. James's, the Square
+itself, where knights, baronets, barons, brewers, viscounts,
+marquesses, hereditary marshals and chief butlers, dukes, bishops,
+banks, librarians and Government departments gaze throughout the four
+seasons at the statue of a Dutchman; and then he found himself at his
+bootmaker's.
+
+Now, his bootmaker was one of the three first bootmakers in the West
+End, bearing a name famous from Peru to Hong Kong. An untidy interior,
+full of old boots and the hides of various animals! A dirty girl was
+writing in a dirty tome, and a young man was knotting together two
+pieces of string in order to tie up a parcel. Such was the "note" of
+the "house". The girl smiled, the young man bowed. In an instant the
+manager appeared, and G.J. was invested with the attributes of God. He
+informed the manager with pain, and the manager heard with deep
+pain, that the left boot of the new pair he then wore was not quite
+comfortable in the toes. The manager simply could not understand it,
+just as he simply could not have understood a failure in the working
+of the law of gravity. And if God had not told him he would not have
+believed it. He knelt and felt. He would send for the boots. He would
+make the boots comfortable or he would make a new pair. Expense was
+nothing. Trouble was nothing. Incidentally he remarked with a sigh
+that the enormous demand for military boots was rendering it more and
+more difficult for him to give to old patrons that prompt and plenary
+attention which he would desire to give. However, God in any case
+should not suffer. He noticed that the boots were not quite well
+polished, and he ventured to charge God with hints for God's personal
+attendant. Then he went swiftly across to a speaking-tube and snapped:
+
+"Polisher!"
+
+A trap-door opened in the floor of the shop and a horrible, pallid,
+weak, cringing man came up out of the earth of St. James's, and knelt
+before God far more submissively than even the manager had knelt. He
+had brushes and blacking, and he blacked and he brushed and breathed
+alternately, undoing continually with his breath or his filthy hand
+what he had done with his brush. He never looked up, never spoke. When
+he had made the boots like mirrors he gathered together his implements
+and vanished, silent and dutifully bent, through the trap-door back
+into the earth of St. James's. And because the trap-door had not
+shut properly the manager stamped on it and stamped down the pale man
+definitely into the darkness underneath. And then G.J. was wafted out
+of the shop with smiles and bows.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+THE CLUB
+
+
+The vast "morning-room" of the Monumental Club (pre-eminent among
+clubs for its architecture) was on the whole tonically chilly. But
+as one of the high windows stood open, and there were two fires
+fluttering beneath the lovely marble mantelpieces, between the fires
+and the window every gradation of temperature could be experienced by
+the curious. On each wall book-shelves rose to the carved and gilded
+ceiling. The furlongs of shelves were fitted with majestic volumes
+containing all the Statutes, all the Parliamentary Debates, and
+all the Reports of Royal Commissions ever printed to narcotise the
+conscience of a nation. These calf-bound works were not, in fact,
+read; but the magnificent pretence of their usefulness was completed
+by carpeted mahogany ladders which leaned here and there against the
+shelfing, in accord with the theory that some studious member some day
+might yearn and aspire to some upper shelf. On reading-stands and on
+huge mahogany tables were disposed the countless newspapers of Great
+Britain and Ireland, Europe and America, and also the files of such
+newspapers. The apparatus of information was complete.
+
+G.J. entered the splendid apartment like a discoverer. It was empty.
+Not a member; not a servant! It waited, content to be inhabited,
+equally content with its own solitude. This apartment had made an
+adjunct even of the war; the function of the war in this apartment
+was to render it more impressive, to increase, if possible, its
+importance, for nowhere else could the war be studied so minutely day
+by day.
+
+A strange thing! G.J.'s sense of duty to himself had been quickened
+by the defection of his valet. He felt that he had been failing to
+comprehend in detail the cause and the evolution of the war, and that
+even his general ideas as to it were inexcusably vague; and he had
+determined to go every morning to the club, at whatever inconvenience,
+for the especial purpose of studying and getting the true hang of the
+supreme topic. As he sat down he was aware of the solemnity of the
+great room, last fastness of the old strict decorum in the club. You
+might not smoke in it until after 10 p.m.
+
+Two other members came in immediately, one after the other. The first,
+a little, very old and very natty man, began to read _The Times_ at
+a stand. The second, old too, but of larger and firmer build, with a
+long, clean-shaven upper lip, such as is only developed at the Bar,
+on the Bench, and in provincial circles of Noncomformity, took an
+easy-chair and another copy of _The Times_. A few moments elapsed, and
+then the little old man glanced round, and, assuming surprise that
+he had not noticed G.J. earlier, nodded to him with a very bright and
+benevolent smile.
+
+G.J. said:
+
+"Well, Sir Francis, what's your opinion of this Ypres business. Seems
+pretty complicated, doesn't it?"
+
+Sir Francis answered in a tone whose mild and bland benevolence
+matched his smile:
+
+"I dare say the complications escape me. I see the affair quite
+simply. We are holding on, but we cannot continue to hold on. The
+Germans have more men, far more guns, and infinitely more ammunition.
+They certainly have not less genius for war. What can be the result?
+I am told by respectable people that the Germans lost the war at the
+Marne. I don't appreciate it. I am told that the Germans don't realise
+the Marne. I think they realise the Marne at least as well as we
+realise Tannenberg."
+
+The slightly trembling, slightly mincing voice of Sir Francis denoted
+such detachment, such politeness, such kindliness, that the opinion it
+emitted seemed to impose itself on G.J. with extraordinary authority.
+There was a brief pause, and Sir Francis ejaculated:
+
+"What's your view, Bob?"
+
+The other old man now consisted of a newspaper, two seamy hands and
+a pair of grey legs. His grim voice came from behind the newspaper,
+which did not move:
+
+"We've no adequate means of judging."
+
+"True," said Sir Francis. "Now, another thing I'm told is that the War
+Office was perfectly ready for the war on the scale agreed upon for
+ourselves with France and Russia. I don't appreciate that either. No
+War Office can be said to be perfectly ready for any war until it has
+organised its relations with the public which it serves. My belief
+is that the War Office had never thought for one moment about the
+military importance of public opinion and the Press. At any rate, it
+has most carefully left nothing undone to alienate both the public and
+the Press. My son-in-law has the misfortune to own seven newspapers,
+and the tales he tells about the antics of the Press Bureau--" Sir
+Francis smiled the rest of the sentence. "Let me see, they offered the
+Press Bureau to you, didn't they, Bob?"
+
+_The Times_ fell, disclosing Bob, whose long upper lip grew longer.
+
+"They did," he said. "I made a few inquiries, and found it was nothing
+but a shuttlecock of the departments. I should have had no real
+power, but unlimited quantities of responsibility. So I respectfully
+refused."
+
+Sir Francis remarked:
+
+"Your hearing's much better, Bob."
+
+"It is," answered Bob. "The fact is, I got hold of a marvellous feller
+at Birmingham." He laughed sardonically. "I hope to go down to history
+as the first judge that ever voluntarily retired because of deafness.
+And now, thanks to this feller at Birmingham, I can hear better than
+seventy-five per cent of the Bench. The Lord Chancellor gave me a hint
+I might care to return, and so save a pension to the nation. I told
+him I'd begin to think about that when he'd persuaded the Board of
+Works to ventilate my old Court." He laughed again. "And now I see
+the Press Bureau is enunciating the principle that it won't permit
+criticism that might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in
+the administration of affairs."
+
+Bob opened his mouth wide and kept it open.
+
+Sir Francis, with no diminution of the mild and bland benevolence of
+his detachment, said:
+
+"The voice is the Press Bureau's voice, but the hands are the hands
+of the War Office. Can we reasonably hope to win, or not to lose, with
+such a mentality at the head? I cannot admit that the War Office has
+changed in the slightest degree in a hundred years. From time to time
+a brainy civilian walks in, like Cardwell or Haldane, and saves it
+from becoming patently ridiculous. But it never really alters. When I
+was War Secretary in a transient government it was precisely the same
+as it had been in the reign of the Duke of Cambridge, and to-day it is
+still precisely the same. I am told that Haldane succeeded in teaching
+our generals the value of Staff work as distinguished from dashing
+cavalry charges. I don't appreciate that. The Staffs are still wide
+open to men with social influence and still closed to men without
+social influence. My grandson is full of great modern notions
+about tactics. He may have talent for all I know. He got a Staff
+appointment--because he came to me and I spoke ten words to an old
+friend of mine with oak leaves in the club next door but one. No
+questions asked. I mean no serious questions. It was done to oblige
+me--the very existence of the Empire being at stake, according to
+all accounts. So that I venture to doubt whether we're going to hold
+Ypres, or anything else."
+
+Bob, unimpressed by the speech, burst out:
+
+"You've got the perspective wrong. Obviously the centre of gravity
+is no longer in the West--it's in the East. In the West, roughly,
+equilibrium has been established. Hence Poland is the decisive field,
+and the measure of the Russian success or failure is the measure of
+the Allied success or failure."
+
+Sir Francis inquired with gentle joy:
+
+"Then we're all right? The Russians have admittedly recovered from
+Tannenberg. If there is any truth in a map they are doing excellently.
+They're more brilliant than Potsdam, and they can put two men into the
+field to the Germans' one--two and a half in fact."
+
+Bob fiercely rumbled:
+
+"I don't think we're all right. This habit of thinking in men is
+dangerous. What are men without munitions? And without a clean
+administration? Nothing but a rabble. It is notorious that the
+Russians are running short of munitions and that the administration
+from top to bottom consists of outrageous rascals. Moreover I see
+to-day a report that the Germans have won a big victory at Kutno. I've
+been expecting that. That's the beginning--mark me!"
+
+"Yes," Sir Francis cheerfully agreed. "Yes. We're spending one million
+a day, and now income tax is doubled! The country cannot stand it
+indefinitely, and since our only hope lies in our being able to stand
+it indefinitely, there is no hope--at any rate for unbiased minds.
+Facts are facts, I fear."
+
+Bob cried impatiently:
+
+"Unbiased be damned! I don't want to be unbiased. I won't be. I had
+enough of being unbiased when I was on the Bench, and I don't care
+what any of you unbiased people say--I believe we shall win."
+
+G.J. suddenly saw a boy in the old man, and suddenly he too became
+boyish, remembering what he had said to Christine about the war not
+having begun yet; and with fervour he concurred:
+
+"So do I."
+
+He rose, moved--relieved after a tension which he had not noticed
+until it was broken. It was time for him to go. The two old men were
+recalled to the fact of his presence. Bob raised the newspaper again.
+
+Sir Francis asked:
+
+"Are you going to the--er--affair in the City?"
+
+"Yes," said G.J. with careful unconcern.
+
+"I had thought of going. My granddaughter worried me till I consented
+to take her. I got two tickets; but no sooner had I arrayed myself
+this morning than she rang me up to say that her baby was teething
+and she couldn't leave it. In view of this important creature's
+indisposition I sent the tickets back to the Dean and changed my
+clothes. Great-grandfathers have to be philosophers. I say, Hoape,
+they tell me you play uncommonly good auction bridge."
+
+"I play," said G.J. modestly. "But no better than I ought."
+
+"You might care to make a fourth this afternoon, in the card-room."
+
+"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
+precaution, you know." She laughed.
+
+He saw that she was becoming hysterical: the special liability of
+the war-bride for whom the curtain has been lifted and falls
+exasperatingly, enragingly, too soon.
+
+"You think I'm a bit hysterical?" she questioned, half menacingly, and
+stood up.
+
+"I think you'd better sit down, to begin with," he said firmly.
+
+The parlour-maid, blushing slightly, left the room.
+
+"Oh, all right!" Concepcion agreed carelessly, and sat down. "But you
+may as well read that."
+
+She drew a telegram from the low neck of her gown and carefully
+unfolded it and placed it in front of him. It was a War Office
+telegram announcing that Carlos had been killed.
+
+"It came ten minutes before you," she said.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me at once?" he murmured, frightfully shocked. He
+was actually reproaching her!
+
+She stood up again. She lived; her breast rose and fell. Her gown had
+the same voluptuousness. Her temperament was still emanating the same
+aura. She was the same new Concepcion, strange and yet profoundly
+known to him. But ineffable tragedy had marked her down, and the sight
+of her parched the throat.
+
+She said:
+
+"Couldn't. Besides, I had to see if I could stand it. Because I've got
+to stand it, G.J.... And, moreover, in our set it's a sacred duty to
+be original."
+
+She snatched the telegram, tore it in two, and pushed the pieces back
+into her gown.
+
+"'Poor wounded name!'" she murmured, "'my bosom as a bed shall lodge
+thee.'"
+
+The next moment she fell to the floor, at full length on her back.
+G.J. sprang to her, kneeling on her rich, outspread gown, and tried to
+lift her.
+
+"No, no!" she protested faintly, dreamily, with a feeble frown on her
+pale forehead. "Let me lie. Equilibrium has been established on the
+Western Front."
+
+This was her greatest _mot_.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+RENDEZVOUS
+
+
+When the Italian woman, having recognised him with a discreet smile,
+introduced G.J. into the drawing-room of the Cork Street flat, he saw
+Christine lying on the sofa by the fire. She too was in a tea-gown.
+
+She said:
+
+"Do not be vexed. I have my migraine--am good for nothing. But I gave
+the order that thou shouldst be admitted."
+
+She lifted her arms, and the long sleeves fell away. G.J. bent down
+and kissed her. She joined her hands on the nape of his neck, and
+with this leverage raised her whole body for an instant, like a child,
+smiling; then dropped back with a fatigued sigh, also like a child.
+He found satisfaction in the fact that she was laid aside. It was
+providential. It set him right with himself. For, to put the thing
+crudely, he had left the tragic Concepcion to come to Christine, a
+woman picked up in a Promenade.
+
+True, Sara Trevise had agreed with him that he could accomplish no
+good by staying at Concepcion's; Concepcion had withdrawn from the
+vision of men. True, it could make no difference to Concepcion whether
+he retired to his flat for the rest of the day and saw no one, or
+whether, having changed his ceremonious clothes there, he went out
+again on his own affairs. True, he had promised Christine to see her
+that afternoon, and a promise was a promise, and Christine was a woman
+who had behaved well to him, and it would have been impossible for
+him to send her an excuse, since he did not know her surname. These
+apparently excellent arguments were specious and worthless. He would,
+anyhow, have gone to Christine. The call was imperious within him,
+and took no heed of grief, nor propriety, nor the secret decencies of
+sympathy. The primitive man in him would have gone to Christine.
+
+He sat down with a profound and exquisite relief. The entrance to the
+house was nearly opposite the entrance to a prim but fashionable
+and expensive hotel. To ring (and ring the right bell) and wait at
+Christine's door almost under the eyes of the hotel was an ordeal....
+The fat and untidy Italian had opened the door, and shut it
+again--quick! He was in another world, saved, safe! On the dark
+staircase the image of Concepcion with her temperament roused and
+condemned to everlasting hunger, the unconquerable Concepcion blasted
+in an instant of destiny--this image faded. She would re-marry....
+She ought to re-marry.... And now he was in Christine's warm room,
+and Christine, temporary invalid, reclined before his eyes. The lights
+were turned on, the blinds drawn, the stove replenished, the fire
+replenished. He was enclosed with Christine in a little world with no
+law and no conventions except its own, and no shames nor pretences. He
+was, as it were, in the East. And the immanence of a third person,
+the Italian, accepting naturally and completely the code of the little
+world, only added to the charm. The Italian was like a slave, from
+whom it is necessary to hide nothing and never to blush.
+
+A stuffy little world with a perceptible odour! Ordinarily he had the
+common insular appetite for ventilation, but now stuffiness appealed
+to him; he scented it almost voluptuously. The ugliness of the
+wallpaper, of the furniture, of everything in the room was naught.
+Christine's profession was naught. Who could positively say that her
+profession was on her face, in her gestures, in her talk? Admirable
+as was his knowledge of French, it was not enough to enable him to
+criticise her speech. Her gestures were delightful. Her face--her face
+was soft; her puckered brow was touching in its ingenuousness. She
+had a kind and a trustful eye; it was a lewd eye, indicative of her
+incomparable endowment; but had he not encountered the lewd eye in the
+very arcana of the respectability of the world outside? On the sofa,
+open and leaves downward, lay a book with a glistening coloured cover,
+entitled _Fantomas_. It was the seventh volume of an interminable
+romance which for years had had a tremendous vogue among the
+concierges, the workgirls, the clerks, and the _cocottes_ of Paris. An
+unreadable affair, not even indecent, which nevertheless had
+enchanted a whole generation. To be able to enjoy it was an absolute
+demonstration of lack of taste; but did not some of his best friends
+enjoy books no better? And could he not any day in any drawing-room
+see martyred books dropped open and leaves downwards in a manner to
+raise the gorge of a person of any bookish sensibility?
+
+"Thou wilt play for me?" she suggested.
+
+"But the headache?"
+
+"It will do me good. I adore music, such music as thou playest."
+
+He was flattered. The draped piano was close to him. Stretching out
+his hand he took a little pile of music from the top of it.
+
+"But you play, then!" he exclaimed, pleased.
+
+"No, no! I tap--only. And very little."
+
+He glanced through the pieces of music. They were all, without
+exception, waltzes, by the once popular waltz-kings of Paris and
+Vienna, including several by the king of kings, Berger. He seated
+himself at the piano and opened the first waltz that came.
+
+"Oh! I adore the waltzes of Berger," she murmured. "There is only he.
+You don't think so?"
+
+He said he had never heard any of this music. Then he played every
+piece for her. He tried to see what it was in this music that so
+pleased the simple; and he saw it, or he thought he saw it. He
+abandoned himself to the music, yielding to it, accepting its ideals,
+interpreting it as though it moved him, until in the end it did
+produce in him a sort of factitious emotion. After all, it was no
+worse than much of the music he was forced to hear in very refined
+circles.
+
+She said, ravished:
+
+"You decipher music like an angel."
+
+And hummed a fragment of the waltz from _The Rosenkavalier_ which he
+had played for her two evenings earlier. He glanced round sharply. Had
+she, then, real taste?
+
+"It is like that, isn't it?" she questioned, and hummed it again,
+flattered by the look on his face.
+
+While, at her invitation, he repeated the waltz on the piano, whose
+strings might have been made of zinc, he heard a ring at the outer
+door and then the muffled sound of a colloquy between a male voice and
+the voice of the Italian. "Of course," he admitted philosophically,
+"she has other clients already." Such a woman was bound to have other
+clients. He felt no jealousy, nor even discomfort, from the fact that
+she lent herself to any male with sufficient money and a respectable
+appearance. The colloquy expired.
+
+"Ring, please," she requested, after thanking him. He hoped that she
+was not going to interrogate the Italian in his presence. Surely
+she would be incapable of such clumsiness! Still, women without
+imagination--and the majority of women were without imagination--did
+do the most astounding things.
+
+There was no immediate answer to the bell; but in a few minutes the
+Italian entered with a tea-tray. Christine sat up.
+
+"I will pour the tea," said she, and to the Italian: "Marthe, where
+is the evening paper?" And when Marthe returned with a newspaper damp
+from the press, Christine said: "To Monsieur...."
+
+Not a word of curiosity as to the unknown visitor!
+
+G.J. was amply confirmed in his original opinion of Christine. She was
+one in a hundred. To provide the evening paper.... It was nothing, but
+it was enormous.
+
+"Sit by my side," she said. She made just a little space for him on
+the sofa--barely enough so that he had to squeeze in. The afternoon
+tea was correct, save for the extraordinary thickness of the
+bread-and-butter. But G.J. said to himself that the French did
+not understand bread-and-butter, and the Italians still less. To
+compensate for the defects of the bread-and-butter there was a box of
+fine chocolates.
+
+"I perfect my English," she said. Tea was finished; they were smoking,
+the _Evening News_ spread between them over the tea-things. She
+articulated with a strong French accent the words of some of the
+headings. "Mistair Carlos Smith keeled at the front," she read out.
+"Who is it, that woman there? She must be celebrated."
+
+There was a portrait of the illustrious Concepcion, together with some
+sympathetic remarks about her, remarks conceived very differently from
+the usual semi-ironic, semi-worshipping journalistic references to the
+stars of Concepcion's set. G.J. answered vaguely.
+
+"I do not like too much these society women. They are worse than us,
+and they cost you more. Ah! If the truth were known--" Christine
+spoke with a queer, restrained, surprising bitterness. Then she added,
+softly relenting: "However, it is sad for her.... Who was he, this
+monsieur?"
+
+G.J. replied that he was nobody in particular, so far as his knowledge
+went.
+
+"Ah! One of those who are husbands of their wives!" said Christine
+acidly.
+
+The disturbing intuition of women!
+
+A little later he said that he must depart.
+
+"But why? I feel better."
+
+"I have a committee."
+
+"A committee?"
+
+"It is a work of charity--for the French wounded."
+
+"Ah! In that case.... But, beloved!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She lowered her voice.
+
+"How dost thou call thyself?"
+
+"Gilbert."
+
+"Thou knowest--I have a fancy for thee."
+
+Her tone was delicious, its sincerity absolutely convincing.
+
+"Too amiable."
+
+"No, no. It is true. Say! Return. Return after thy committee. Take me
+out to dinner--some gentle little restaurant, discreet. There must be
+many of them in a city like London. It is a city so romantic. Oh! The
+little corners of London!"
+
+"But--of course. I should be enchanted--"
+
+"Well, then."
+
+He was standing. She raised her smiling, seductive face. She was
+young--younger than Concepcion; less battered by the world's contacts
+than Concepcion. She had the inexpressible virtue and power of youth.
+He was nearing fifty. And she, perhaps half his age, had confessed his
+charm.
+
+"And say! My Gilbert. Bring me a few flowers. I have not been able
+to go out to-day. Something very simple. I detest that one should
+squander money on flowers for me."
+
+"Seven-thirty, then!" said he. "And you will be ready?"
+
+"I shall be very exact. Thou wilt tell me all that concerns thy
+committee. That interests me. The English are extraordinary."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+IN COMMITTEE
+
+
+Within the hotel the glowing Gold Hall, whose Lincrusta Walton panels
+dated it, was nearly empty. Of the hundred small round tables only one
+was occupied; a bald head and a large green hat were almost meeting
+over the top of this table, but there was nothing on it except an
+ashtray. A waiter wandered about amid the thick plushy silence and the
+stagnant pools of electric light, meditating upon the curse which
+had befallen the world of hotels. The red lips beneath the green
+hat discernibly moved, but no faintest murmur therefrom reached the
+entrance. The hot, still place seemed to be enchanted.
+
+The sight of the hotel flower-stall recessed on the left reminded G.J.
+of Christine's desire. Forty thousand skilled women had been put out
+of work in England because luxury was scared by the sudden vista of
+war, but the black-garbed girl, entrenched in her mahogany bower, was
+still earning some sort of a livelihood. In a moment, wakened out of
+her terrible boredom into an alert smile, she had sold to G.J. a bunch
+of expensive chrysanthemums whose yellow petals were like long curly
+locks. Thoughtless, he had meant to have the flowers delivered at
+once to Christine's flat. It would not do; it would be indiscreet. And
+somehow, in the absence of Braiding, it would be equally indiscreet to
+have them delivered at his own flat.
+
+"I shall be leaving the hotel in about an hour; I'll take them away
+myself then," he said, and inquired for the headquarters of the
+Lechford French Hospitals Committee.
+
+"Committee?" repeated the girl vaguely. "I expect the Onyx Hall's what
+you want." She pointed up a corridor, and gave change.
+
+G.J. discovered the Onyx Hall, which had its own entrance from the
+street, and which in other days had been a cafe lounge. The precious
+pavement was now half hidden by wooden trestles, wooden cubicles,
+and cheap chairs. Temporary flexes brought down electric light from
+a stained glass dome to illuminate card-indexes and pigeon-holes and
+piles of letters. Notices in French and Flemish were suspended from
+the ornate onyx pilasters. Old countrywomen and children in rough
+foreign clothes, smart officers in strange uniforms, privates
+in shabby blue, gentlemen in morning coats and spats, and untidy
+Englishwomen with eyes romantic, hard, or wistful, were mixed together
+in the Onyx Hall, where there was no enchantment and little order,
+save that good French seemed to be regularly spoken on one side of
+the trestles and regularly assassinated on the other. G.J., mystified,
+caught the grey eye of a youngish woman with a tired and fretful
+expression.
+
+"And you?" she inquired perfunctorily.
+
+He demanded, with hesitation:
+
+"Is this the Lechford Committee?"
+
+"The what Committee?"
+
+"The Lechford Committee headquarters." He thought she might be rather
+an attractive little thing at, say, an evening party.
+
+She gave him a sardonic look and answered, not rudely, but with large
+tolerance:
+
+"Can't you read?"
+
+By means of gesture scarcely perceptible she directed his attention to
+an immense linen sign stretched across the back of the big room, and
+he saw that he was in the ant-heap of some Belgian Committee.
+
+"So sorry to have troubled you!" he apologised. "I suppose you don't
+happen to know where the Lechford Committee sits?"
+
+"Never heard of it," said she with cheerful disdain. Then she smiled
+and he smiled. "You know, the hotel simply hums with committees, but
+this is the biggest by a long way. They can't let their rooms, so it
+costs them nothing to lend them for patriotic purposes."
+
+He liked the chit.
+
+Presently, with a page-boy, he was ascending in a lift through
+storey after storey of silent carpeted desert. Light alternated with
+darkness, winking like a succession of days and nights as seen by
+a god. The infant showed him into a private parlour furnished
+and decorated in almost precisely the same taste as Christine's
+sitting-room, where a number of men and women sat close together at a
+long deal table, whose pale, classic simplicity clashed with the rest
+of the apartment. A thin, dark, middle-aged man of austere visage
+bowed to him from the head of the table. Somebody else indicated a
+chair, which, with a hideous, noisy scraping over the bare floor,
+he modestly insinuated between two occupied chairs. A third person
+offered a typewritten sheet containing the agenda of the meeting. A
+blonde girl was reading in earnest, timid tones the minutes of the
+previous meeting. The affair had just begun. As soon as the minutes
+had been passed the austere chairman turned and said evenly:
+
+"I am sure I am expressing the feelings of the committee in welcoming
+among us Mr. Hoape, who has so kindly consented to join us and give us
+the benefit of his help and advice in our labours."
+
+Sympathetic murmurs converged upon G.J. from the four sides of the
+table, and G.J. nervously murmured a few incomprehensible words,
+feeling both foolish and pleased. He had never sat on a committee;
+and as his war-conscience troubled him more and more daily, he was
+extremely anxious to start work which might placate it. Indeed, he
+had seized upon the request to join the committee as a swimmer in
+difficulties clasps the gunwale of a dinghy.
+
+A man who kept his gaze steadily on the table cleared his throat and
+said:
+
+"The matter is not in order, Mr. Chairman, but I am sure I am
+expressing the feelings of the committee in proposing a vote of
+condolence to yourself on the terrible loss which you have sustained
+in the death of your son at the Front."
+
+"I beg to second that," said a lady quickly.
+
+"Our chairman has given his only son--"
+
+Tears came into her eyes; she seemed to appeal for help. There were
+"Hear, hears," and more sympathetic murmurs.
+
+The proposer, with his gaze still steadily fixed on the table, said:
+
+"I beg to put the resolution to the meeting."
+
+"Yes," said the chairman with calm self-control in the course of his
+acknowledgment. "And if I had ten sons I would willingly give them
+all--for the cause." And his firm, hard glance appeared to challenge
+any member of the committee to assert that this profession of parental
+and patriotic generosity of heart was not utterly sincere. However,
+nobody had the air of doubting that if the chairman had had ten sons,
+or as many sons as Solomon, he would have sacrificed them all with the
+most admirable and eager heroism.
+
+The agenda was opened. G.J. had little but newspaper knowledge of the
+enterprises of the committee, and it would not have been proper to
+waste the time of so numerous a company in enlightening him. The
+common-sense custom evidently was that new members should "pick up the
+threads as they went along." G.J. honestly tried to do so. But he was
+preoccupied with the personalities of the committee. He soon saw that
+the whole body was effectively divided into two classes--the chairmen
+of the various sub-committees, and the rest. Few members were
+interested in any particular subject. Those who were not interested
+either stared at the walls or at the agenda paper, or laboriously drew
+intricate and meaningless designs on the agenda paper, or folded
+up the agenda paper into fantastic shapes until, when someone in
+authority brought out the formula, "I think the view of the committee
+will be--" a resolution was put and the issue settled by the
+mechanical raising of hands on the fulcrum of the elbow. And at each
+raising of hands everybody felt that something positive had indeed
+been accomplished.
+
+The new member was a little discouraged. He had the illusion that
+the two hospitals run in France for French soldiers by the Lechford
+Committee were an illusion, that they did not really exist, that the
+committee was discussing an abstraction. Nevertheless, each problem
+as it was presented--the drains (postponed), the repairs to the
+motor-ambulances, the ordering of a new X-ray apparatus, the
+dilatoriness of a French Minister in dealing with correspondence,
+the cost per day per patient, the relations with the French civil
+authorities and the French military authorities, the appointment of
+a new matron who could keep the peace with the senior doctor, and the
+great principle involved in deducting five francs fifty centimes for
+excess luggage from a nurse's account for travelling expenses--each
+problem helped to demonstrate that the hospitals did exist and that
+men and women were toiling therein, and that French soldiers in grave
+need were being magnificently cared for and even saved from death. And
+it was plain, too, that none of these excellent things could have come
+to pass or could continue to occur if the committee did not regularly
+sit round the table and at short intervals perform the rite of raising
+hands....
+
+G.J.'s attention wandered. He could not keep his mind off the thought
+that he should soon be seeing Christine again. Sitting at the
+table with a mien of intelligent interest, he had a waking dream of
+Christine. He saw her just as she was--ingenuous, and ignorant if you
+like--except that she was pure. Her purity, though, had not cooled her
+temperament, and thus she combined in herself the characteristics
+of at least two different women, both of whom were necessary to his
+happiness. And she was his wife, and they lived in a roomy house in
+Hyde Park Gardens, and the war was over. And she adored him and he
+was passionately fond of her. And she was always having children; she
+enjoyed having children; she demanded children; she had a child every
+year and there was never any trouble. And he never admired her more
+poignantly than at the periods just before his children were born,
+when she had the vast, exquisitely swelling figure of the French
+Renaissance Virgin in marble that stood on a console in his
+drawing-room at the Albany.... Such was G.J.'s dream as he assisted
+in the control of the Lechford Hospitals. Emerging from it he looked
+along the table. Quite half the members were dreaming too, and he
+wondered what thoughts were moving secretly within them. But the
+chairman was not dreaming. He never loosed his grasp of the matter in
+hand. Nor did the earnest young blonde by the chairman's side who took
+down in stenography the decisions of the committee.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+QUEEN
+
+
+Then Lady Queenie Paulle entered rather hurriedly, filling the room
+with a distinguished scent. All the men rose in haste, and there was a
+frightful scraping of chair-legs on the floor. Lady Queenie cheerfully
+apologised for being late, and, begging no one to disturb himself,
+took a modest place between the chairman and the secretary and a
+little behind them.
+
+Lady Queenie obviously had what is called "race". The renown of her
+family went back far, far beyond its special Victorian vogue, which
+had transformed an earldom into a marquisate and which, incidentally,
+was responsible for the new family Christian name that Queenie herself
+bore. She was young, tall, slim and pale, and dressed with the utmost
+smartness in black--her half-brother having gloriously lost his life
+in September. She nodded to the secretary, who blushed with pleasure,
+and she nodded to several members, including G.J. Being accustomed
+to publicity and to seeing herself nearly every week in either _The
+Tatler_ or _The Sketch_, she was perfectly at ease in the room, and
+the fact that nearly the whole company turned to her as plants to the
+sun did not in the least disturb her.
+
+The attention which she received was her due, for she had few rivals
+as a war-worker. She was connected with the Queen's Work for Women
+Fund, Queen Mary's Needlework Guild, the Three Arts Fund, the Women's
+Emergency Corps, and many minor organisations. She had joined a
+Women's Suffrage Society because such societies were being utilised by
+the Government. She had had ten lessons in First Aid in ten days, had
+donned the Red Cross, and gone to France with two motor-cars and a
+staff and a French maid in order to help in the great national work
+of nursing wounded heroes; and she might still have been in France had
+not an unsympathetic and audacious colonel of the R.A.M.C. insisted on
+her being shipped back to England. She had done practically everything
+that a patriotic girl could do for the war, except, perhaps, join a
+Voluntary Aid Detachment and wash dishes and scrub floors for fifteen
+hours a day and thirteen and a half days a fortnight. It was from
+her mother that she had inherited the passion for public service. The
+Marchioness of Lechford had been the cause of more philanthropic work
+in others than any woman in the whole history of philanthropy. Lady
+Lechford had said, "Let there be Lechford Hospitals in France,"
+and lo! there were Lechford Hospitals in France. When troublesome
+complications arose Lady Lechford had, with true self-effacement,
+surrendered the establishments to a thoroughly competent committee,
+and while retaining a seat on the committee for herself and another
+for Queenie, had curved tirelessly away to the inauguration of fresh
+and more exciting schemes.
+
+"Mamma was very sorry she couldn't come this afternoon," said Lady
+Queenie, addressing the chairman.
+
+The formula of those with authority in deciding now became:
+
+"I don't know exactly what Lady Lechford's view is, but I venture to
+think--"
+
+Then suddenly the demeanour of every member of the committee was
+quickened, everybody listened intently to everything that was said;
+a couple of members would speak together; pattern-designing and the
+manufacture of paper ships, chains, and flowers ceased; it was as
+though a tonic had been mysteriously administered to each individual
+in the enervating room. The cause of the change was a recommendation
+from the hospitals management sub-committee that it be an instruction
+to the new matron of the smaller hospital to forbid any nurse and
+any doctor to go out alone together in the evening. Scandal was
+insinuated; nothing really wrong, but a bad impression produced
+upon the civilians of the tiny town, who could not be expected to
+understand the holy innocence which underlies the superficial
+license of Anglo-Saxon manners. The personal characters and strange
+idiosyncrasies of every doctor and every nurse were discussed; broad
+principles of conduct were enunciated, together with the advantages
+and disadvantages of those opposite poles, discipline and freedom. The
+argument continually expanded, branching forth like the timber of
+a great oak-tree from the trunk, and the minds of the committee
+ran about the tree like monkeys. The interest was endless. A
+quiet delegate who had just returned from a visit to the tiny town
+completely blasted one part of the argument by asserting that the
+hospital bore a blameless reputation among the citizens; but new
+arguments were instantly constructed by the adherents of the idea of
+discipline. The committee had plainly split into two even parties.
+G.J. began to resent the harshness of the disciplinarians.
+
+"I think we should remember," he said in his modest voice, "I think we
+should remember that we are dealing with adult men and women."
+
+The libertarians at once took him for their own. The disciplinarians
+gave him to understand with their eyes that it might have been better
+if he, as a new member attending his first meeting, had kept silence.
+The discussion was inflamed. One or two people glanced surreptitiously
+at their watches. The hour had long passed six thirty. G.J. grew
+anxious about his rendezvous with Christine. He had enjoined
+exactitude upon Christine. But the main body of the excited and happy
+committee had no thought of the flight of time. The amusements of the
+tiny town came up for review. As a fact, there was only one amusement,
+the cinema. The whole town went to the cinema. Cinemas were
+always darkened; human nature was human nature.... G.J. had an
+extraordinarily realistic vision of the hospital staff slaving through
+its long and heavy day and its everlasting week and preparing in
+sections to amuse itself on certain evenings, and thinking with
+pleasant anticipation of the ecstasies of the cinema, and pathetically
+unsuspicious that its fate was being decided by a council of
+omnipotent deities in the heaven of a London hotel.
+
+"Mamma has never mentioned the subject to me," said Lady Queenie in
+response to a question, looking at her rich muff.
+
+"This is a question of principle," said somebody sharply, implying
+that at last individual consciences were involved and that the
+opinions of the Marchioness of Lechford had ceased to weigh.
+
+"I'm afraid it's getting late," said the impassive chairman. "We must
+come to some decision."
+
+In the voting Lady Queenie, after hesitation, raised her hand with the
+disciplinarians. By one vote the libertarians were defeated, and the
+dalliance of the hospital staff in leisure hours received a severe
+check.
+
+"She _would_--of course!" breathed a sharp-nosed little woman in the
+chair next but one to G.J., gazing inimically at the lax mouth and
+cynical eyes of Lady Queenie, who for four years had been the subject
+of universal whispering, and some shouting, and one or two ferocious
+battles in London.
+
+Chair-legs scraped. People rose here and there to go as they rise in
+a music hall after the Scottish comedian has retired, bowing, from
+his final encore. They protested urgent appointments elsewhere. The
+chairman remarked that other important decisions yet remained to be
+taken; but his voice had no insistence because he had already settled
+the decisions in his own mind. G.J. seized the occasion to depart.
+
+"Mr. Hoape," the chairman detained him a moment. "The committee hope
+you will allow yourself to be nominated to the accounts sub-committee.
+We understand that you are by way of being an expert. The
+sub-committee meets on Wednesday mornings at eleven--doesn't it, Sir
+Charles?"
+
+"Half-past," said Sir Charles.
+
+"Oh! Half-past."
+
+G.J., somewhat surprised to learn of his expertise in accountancy,
+consented to the suggestion, which renewed his resolution, impaired
+somewhat by the experience of the meeting, to be of service in the
+world.
+
+"You will receive the notice, of course," said the chairman.
+
+Down below, just as G.J. was getting away with Christine's
+chrysanthemums in their tissue paper, Lady Queenie darted out of the
+lift opposite. It was she who, at Concepcion's instigation, had had
+him put in the committee.
+
+"I say, Queen," he said with a casual air--on account of the flowers,
+"who's been telling 'em I know about accounts?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why?" she said maliciously. "Don't you keep an account of every penny
+you spend?" (It was true.)
+
+Here was a fair example of her sardonic and unscrupulous humour--a
+humour not of words but of acts. G.J. simply tossed his head, aware of
+the futility of expostulation.
+
+She went on in a different tone:
+
+"You were the first to see Connie?"
+
+"Yes," he said sadly.
+
+"She has lain in my arms all afternoon," Lady Queenie burst out, her
+voice liquid. "And now I'm going straight back to her." She looked
+at him with the strangest triumphant expression. Then her large,
+equivocal blue eyes fell from his face to the flowers, and their
+expression simultaneously altered to disdainful amusement full of
+mischievous implications. She ran off without another word. The glazed
+entrance doors revolved, and he saw her nip into an electric brougham,
+which, before he had time to button his overcoat, vanished like an
+apparition in the rainy mist.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+EVENING OUT
+
+
+He found Christine exactly as he had left her, in the same tea-gown
+and the same posture, and on the same sofa. But a small table had
+been put by the sofa; and on this table was a penny bottle of ink in
+a saucer, and a pen. She was studying some kind of official form. The
+pucker between the eyes was very marked.
+
+"Already!" she exclaimed, as if amazed. "But there is not a clock
+that goes, and I had not the least idea of the hour. Besides, I was
+splitting my head to fill up this form."
+
+Such was her notion of being exact! He had abandoned an important
+meeting of a committee which was doing untold mercies to her
+compatriots in order to keep his appointment with her; and she, whose
+professional business it was that evening to charm him and harmonise
+with him, had merely flouted the appointment. Nevertheless, her
+gestures and smile as she rose and came towards him were so utterly
+exquisite that immediately he also flouted the appointment. What,
+after all, could it matter whether they dined at eight, nine, or even
+ten o'clock?
+
+"Thou wilt pardon me, monster?" she murmured, kissing him.
+
+No woman had ever put her chin up to his as she did, nor with a glance
+expressed so unreserved a surrender to his masculinity.
+
+She went on, twining languishingly round him:
+
+"I do not know whether I ought to go out. I am yet far from--It is
+perhaps imprudent."
+
+"Absurd!" he protested--he could not bear the thought of her not
+dining with him. He knew too well the desolation of a solitary dinner.
+"Absurd! We go in a taxi. The restaurant is warm. We return in a
+taxi."
+
+"To please thee, then."
+
+"What is that form?"
+
+"It is for the telephone. Thou understandest how it is necessary that
+I have the telephone--me! But I comprehend nothing of this form."
+
+She passed him the form. She had written her name in the space
+allotted. "Christine Dubois." A fair calligraphy! But what a name!
+The French equivalent of "Smith". Nothing could be less distinguished.
+Suddenly it occurred to him that Concepcion's name also was Smith.
+
+"I will fill it up for you. It is quite simple."
+
+"It is possible that it is simple when one is English. But
+English--that is as if to say Chinese. Everything contrary. Here is a
+pen."
+
+"No. I have my fountain-pen." He hated a cheap pen, and still more a
+penny bottle of ink, but somehow this particular penny bottle of ink
+seemed touching in its simple ugliness. She was eminently teachable.
+He would teach her his own attitude towards penny bottles of ink....
+Of course she would need the telephone--that could not be denied.
+
+As Christine was signing the form Marthe entered with the
+chrysanthemums, which he had handed over to her; she had arranged them
+in a horrible blue glass vase cheaply gilded; and while Marthe was
+putting the vase on the small table there was a ring at the outer
+door. Marthe hurried off.
+
+Christine said, kissing him again tenderly:
+
+"Thou art a squanderer! Fine for me to tell thee not to buy costly
+flowers! Thou has spent at least ten shillings for these. With ten
+shillings--"
+
+"No, no!" he interrupted her. "Five." It was a fib. He had paid half a
+guinea for the few flowers, but he could not confess it.
+
+They could hear a powerful voice indistinctly booming at the top of
+the stairs. "Two callers on one afternoon!" G.J. reflected. And yet
+she had told him she went out for the first time only the day before
+yesterday! He scarcely liked it, but his reason rescued him from the
+puerility of a grievance against her on this account. "And why not?
+She is bound to be a marked success."
+
+Marthe returned to the drawing-room and shut the door.
+
+"Madame--" she began, slightly agitated.
+
+"Speak, then!" Christine urged, catching her agitation.
+
+"It is the police!"
+
+G.J. had a shock. He knew many of the policemen who lurked in the dark
+doorways of Piccadilly at night, had little friendly talks with them,
+held them for excellent fellows. But a policeman invading the flat of
+a courtesan, and himself in the flat, seemed a different being from
+the honest stalwarts who threw the beams of lanterns on the key-holes
+of jewellers' shops.
+
+Christine steeled herself to meet the crisis with self-reliance. She
+pointedly did not appeal to the male.
+
+"Well, what is it that he wants?"
+
+"He talks of the chimney. It appears this morning there was a chimney
+on fire. But since we burn only anthracite and gas--He knows madame's
+name."
+
+There was a pause. Christine asked sharply and mysteriously:
+
+"How much do you think?"
+
+"If madame gave five pounds--having regard to the _chic_ of the
+quarter."
+
+Christine rushed into the bedroom and came back with a five-pound
+note.
+
+"Here! Chuck that at him--politely. Tell him we are very sorry."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"But he'll never take it. You can't treat the London police like
+that!" G.J. could not help expostulating as soon as Marthe had gone.
+He feared some trouble.
+
+"My poor friend!" Christine replied patronisingly. "Thou art not up
+in these things. Marthe knows her affair--a woman very experienced in
+London. He will take it, thy policeman. And if I do not deceive myself
+no more chimneys will burn for about a year.... Ah! The police do not
+wipe their noses with broken bottles!" (She meant that the police knew
+their way about.) "I no more than they, I do not wipe my nose with
+broken bottles."
+
+She was moved, indignant, stoutly defensive. G.J. grew self-conscious.
+Moreover, her slang disturbed him. It was the first slang he had heard
+her use, and in using it her voice had roughened. But he remembered
+that Concepcion also used slang--and advanced slang--upon occasion.
+
+The booming ceased; a door closed. Marthe returned once more.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He is gone. He was very nice, madame. I told him about madame--that
+madame was very discreet." Marthe finished in a murmur.
+
+"So much the better. Now, help me to dress. Quick, quick! Monsieur
+will be impatient."
+
+G.J. was ashamed of the innocence he had displayed, and ashamed, too,
+of the whole Metropolitan Police Force, admirable though it was in
+stopping traffic for a perambulator to cross the road. Five pounds!
+These ladies were bled. Five pounds wanted earning.... It was a good
+sign, though, that she had not so far asked him to contribute. And he
+felt sure that she would not.
+
+"Come in, then, poltroon!" She cooed softly and encouragingly from the
+bedroom, where Marthe was busy with her.
+
+The door between the bedroom and the drawing-room was open. G.J.,
+humming, obeyed the invitation and sat down on the bed between two
+heaps of clothes. Christine was very gay; she was like a child. She
+had apparently quite forgotten her migraine and also the incident of
+the policeman. She snatched the cigarette from G.J.'s mouth, took a
+puff, and put it back again. Then she sat in front of the large mirror
+and did her hair while Marthe buttoned her boots. Her corset fitted
+beautifully, and as she raised her arms above her head under the
+shaded lamp G.J. could study the marvellous articulation of the
+arms at the bare shoulders. The close atmosphere was drenched with
+femininity. The two women, one so stylish and the other by contrast
+piquantly a heavy slattern, hid nothing whatever from him, bestowing
+on him with perfect tranquillity the right to be there and to watch
+at his ease every mysterious transaction.... The most convincing proof
+that Christine was authentically young! And G.J. had the illusion
+again that he was in the Orient, and it was extraordinarily agreeable.
+The recollection of the scene of the Lechford Committee amused him
+like a pantomime witnessed afar off through a gauze curtain. It had no
+more reality than that. But he thought better of the committee now. He
+perceived the wonderful goodness of it and of its work. It really was
+running those real hospitals; it had a real interest in them. He meant
+to do his very best in the accounts department. After all, he had been
+a lawyer and knew the routine of an office and the minutest phenomena
+of a ledger. He was eager to begin.
+
+"How findest thou me?"
+
+She stood for inspection.
+
+She was ready, except the gloves. The angle of her hat, the
+provocation of her veil--these things would have quickened the pulse
+of a Patagonian. Perfume pervaded the room.
+
+He gave the classic response that nothing could render trite:
+
+"_Tu es exquise_."
+
+She raised her veil just above her mouth....
+
+In the drawing-room she hesitated, and then settled down on the
+piano-stool like a bird alighting and played a few bars from the
+_Rosenkavalier_ waltz. He was thunderstruck, for she had got not only
+the air but some of the accompaniment right.
+
+"Go on! Go on!" he urged her, marvelling.
+
+She turned, smiling, and shook her head.
+
+"That is all that I can recall to myself."
+
+The obvious sincerity of his appreciation delighted her.
+
+"She is really musical!" he thought, and was convinced that while
+looking for a bit of coloured glass he had picked up an emerald.
+Marthe produced his overcoat, and when he was ready for the street
+Christine gazed at him and said:
+
+"For the true _chic_, there are only Englishmen!"
+
+In the taxi she proved to him by delicate effronteries the genuineness
+of her confessed "fancy" for him. And she poured out slang. He began
+to be afraid, for this excursion was an experiment such as he had
+never tried before in London; in Paris, of course, the code was
+otherwise. But as soon as the commissionaire of the restaurant at
+Victoria approached the door of the taxi her manner changed. She
+walked up the long interior with the demureness of a stockbroker's
+young wife out for the evening from Putney Hill. He thought, relieved,
+"She is the embodiment of common sense." At the end of the vista of
+white tables the restaurant opened out to the left. In a far corner
+they were comfortably secure from observation. They sat down. A waiter
+beamed his flatteries upon them. G.J. was serenely aware of his own
+skilled faculty for ordering a dinner. He looked over the menu card at
+Christine. Nobody could possibly tell that she was a professed enemy
+of society. "These French women are astounding!" he thought. He
+intensely admired her. He was mad about her. His bliss was extreme. He
+could not keep it within bounds meet for the great world-catastrophe.
+He was happy as for quite ten years he had never hoped to be. Yes, he
+grieved for Concepcion; but somehow grief could not mingle with nor
+impair the happiness he felt. And was not Concepcion lying in the
+affectionate arms of Queenie Paulle?
+
+Christine, glancing about her contentedly, reverted to one of her
+leading ideas:
+
+"Truly, it is very romantic, thy London!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+THE VIRGIN
+
+
+Christine went into the oratory of St. Philip at Brompton on a Sunday
+morning in the following January, dipped her finger into one of the
+Italian basins at the entrance, and signed herself with the holy
+water. She was dressed in black; she had the face of a pretty martyr;
+her brow was crumpled by the world's sorrow; she looked and actually
+was at the moment intensely religious. She had months earlier chosen
+the Brompton Oratory for her devotions, partly because of the name of
+Philip, which had been murmured in accents of affection by her
+dying mother, and partly because it lay on a direct, comprehensible
+bus-route from Piccadilly. You got into the motor-bus opposite the end
+of the Burlington Arcade, and in about six minutes it dropped you in
+front of the Oratory; and you could not possibly lose yourself in the
+topographical intricacies of the unknown city. Christine never took a
+taxi except when on business.
+
+The interior was gloomy with the winter forenoon; the broad
+Renaissance arches showed themselves only faintly above; on every side
+there were little archipelagos of light made by groups of candles in
+front of great pale images. The church was comparatively empty, and
+most of the people present were kneeling in the chapels; for Christine
+had purposely come, as she always did, at the slack hour between the
+seventh and last of the early morning Low Masses and the High Mass at
+eleven.
+
+She went up the right aisle and stopped before the Miraculous Infant
+Jesus of Prague, a charming and naive little figure about eighteen
+inches high in a stiff embroidered cloak and a huge symbol upon his
+curly head. She had put herself under the protection of the Miraculous
+Infant Jesus of Prague. She liked him; he was a change from the
+Virgin; and he stood in the darkest corner of the whole interior,
+behind the black statue of St. Peter with protruding toe, and within
+the deep shadow made by the organ-loft overhead. Also he had a motto
+in French: "Plus vous m'honorerez plus je vous favoriserai."
+
+Christine hesitated, and then left the Miraculous Infant Jesus of
+Prague without even a transient genuflexion. She was afraid to devote
+herself to him that morning.
+
+Of course she had been brought up strictly in the Roman Catholic
+faith. And in her own esteem she was still an honest Catholic. For
+years she had not confessed and therefore had not communicated. For
+years she had had a desire to cast herself down at a confessional-box,
+but she had not done so because of one of the questions in the _Petit
+Paroissien_ which she used: "Avez-vous peche, par pensee, parole,
+ou action, contre la purete ou la modestie?" And because also of
+the preliminary injunction: "Maintenant essayez de vous rappeler vos
+peches, _et combien de fois vous les avez commis_." She could not
+bring herself to do that. Once she had confessed a great deal to a
+priest at Sens, but he had treated her too lightly; his lightness
+with her had indeed been shameful. Since then she had never confessed.
+Further, she knew herself to be in a state of mortal sin by reason of
+her frequent wilful neglect of the holy offices; and occasionally, at
+the most inconvenient moments, the conviction that if she died she was
+damned would triumph over her complacency. But on the whole she had
+hopes for the future; though she had sinned, her sin was mysteriously
+not like other people's sin of exactly the same kind.
+
+And finally there was the Virgin Mary, the sweet and dependable
+goddess. She had been neglecting the very clement Virgin Mary in
+favour of the Miraculous Infant Jesus of Prague. A whim, a thoughtless
+caprice, which she had paid for! The Virgin Mary had withdrawn her
+defending shield. At least that was the interpretation which Christine
+was bound to put upon the terrible incident of the previous night in
+the Promenade. She had quite innocently been involved in a drunken
+row in the lounge. Two military officers, one of whom, unnoticed by
+Christine, was intoxicated, and two women--Madame Larivaudiere and
+Christine! The Belgian had been growing more and more jealous of
+Christine.... The row had flamed up in the tenth of a second like an
+explosion. The two officers--then the two women. The bright silvery
+sound of glass shattered on marble! High voices, deep voices! Half the
+Promenade had rushed vulgarly into the lounge, panting with a gross
+appetite to witness a vulgar scene. And as the Belgian was jealous of
+the French girl, so were the English girls horribly jealous of all the
+foreign girls, and scornful too. Nothing but the overwhelming desire
+of the management to maintain the perfect respectability of its
+Promenade had prevented a rough-and-tumble between the officers.
+As for Madame Larivaudiere, she had been ejected and told never to
+return. Christine had fled to the cloak-room, where she had remained
+for half an hour, and thence had vanished away, solitary, by the side
+entrance. It was precisely such an episode as Christine's mother would
+have deprecated in horror, and as Christine herself intensely loathed.
+And she could never assuage the moral wound of it by confiding the
+affair to Gilbert. She was mad about Gilbert; she thrilled to be his
+slave; she had what seemed an immeasurable confidence in him; and yet
+never, never could she mention another individual man to him, much
+less tell him of the public shame that had fallen upon her in the
+exercise of her profession. Why had fate been thus hard on her? The
+answer was surely to be found in the displeasure of the Virgin. And so
+she did not dare to stay with the Miraculous Infant Jesus of Prague,
+nor even to murmur the prayer beginning: "Adorable Jesus, divin modele
+de la perfection ..."
+
+She glanced round the great church, considering what were to her
+the major and minor gods and goddesses on their ornate thrones: St.
+Antony, St. Joseph, St. Sebastian, St. Philip, the Sacred Heart, St.
+Cecilia, St. Peter, St. Wilfrid, St. Mary Magdelene (Ah! Not at that
+altar could she be seen!), St. Patrick, St. Veronica, St. Francis,
+St. John Baptist, St. Teresa, Our Lady, Our Lady of Good Counsel. No!
+There was only one goddess possible for her--Our Lady of VII Dolours.
+She crossed the wide nave to the severe black and white marble chapel
+of the VII Dolours. The aspect of the shrine suited her. On one side
+she read the English words: "Of your charity pray for the soul of
+Flora Duchess of Norfolk who put up this altar to the Mother of
+Sorrows that they who mourn may be comforted." And the very words
+were romantic to her, and she thought of Flora Duchess of Norfolk as a
+figure inexpressibly more romantic than the illustrious female figures
+of French history. The Virgin of the VII Dolours was enigmatically
+gazing at her, waiting no doubt to be placated. The Virgin was
+painted, gigantic, in oil on canvas, but on her breast stood out
+a heart made in three dimensions of real silver and pierced by the
+swords of the seven dolours, three to the left and four to the right;
+and in front was a tiny gold figure of Jesus crucified on a gold
+cross.
+
+Christine cast herself down and prayed to the painted image and the
+hammered heart. She prayed to the goddess whom the Middle Ages had
+perfected and who in the minds of the simple and the savage has
+survived the Renaissance and still triumphantly flourishes; the Queen
+of heaven, the Tyrant of heaven, the Woman in heaven; who was so
+venerated that even her sweat is exhibited as a relic; who was softer
+than Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a
+goddess had increased her humanity; who put living roses for a sign
+into the mouths of fornicators when they died, if only they had been
+faithful to her; who told the amorous sacristan to kiss her face and
+not her feet; who questioned lovers about their mistresses: "Is she as
+pretty as I?"; who fell like a pestilence on the nuptial chambers of
+young men who, professing love for her, had taken another bride; who
+enjoyed being amused; who admitted a weakness for artists, tumblers,
+soldiers and the common herd; who had visibly led both opponents on
+every battlefield for centuries; who impersonated absent disreputable
+nuns and did their work for them until they returned, repentant, to
+be forgiven by her; who acted always on her instinct and never on her
+reason; who cared nothing for legal principles; who openly used her
+feminine influence with the Trinity; who filled heaven with riff-raff;
+and who had never on any pretext driven a soul out of heaven.
+Christine made peace with this jealous and divine creature. She felt
+unmistakably that she was forgiven for her infidelity due to the
+Infant in the darkness beyond the opposite aisle. The face of the
+Lady of VII Dolours miraculously smiled at her; the silver heart
+miraculously shed its tarnish and glittered beneficent lightnings.
+Doubtless she knew somewhere in her mind that no physical change had
+occurred in the picture or the heart; but her mind was a complex, and
+like nearly all minds could disbelieve and believe simultaneously.
+
+Just as High Mass was beginning she rose and in grave solace left the
+Oratory; she would not endanger her new peace with the Virgin Mary by
+any devotion to other gods. She was solemn but happy. The conductor
+who took her penny in the motor-bus never suspected that on the pane
+before her, where some Agency had caused to be printed in colour the
+words "Seek ye the _Lord_" she saw, in addition to the amazing oddness
+of the Anglo-Saxon race, a dangerous incitement to unfaith. She kept
+her thoughts passionately on the Virgin; and by the time the bus
+had reached Hyde Park Corner she was utterly sure that the horrible
+adventure of the Promenade was purged of its evil potentialities.
+
+In the house in Cork Street she took out her latch-key, placidly
+opened the door, and entered, smiling at the solitude. Marthe, who
+also had a soul in need of succour, would, in the ordinary course,
+have gone forth to a smaller church and a late mass. But on this
+particular morning fat Marthe, in deshabille, came running to her from
+the little kitchen.
+
+"Oh! Madame!... There is someone! He is drunk."
+
+Her voice was outraged. She pointed fearfully to the bedroom.
+Christine, courageous, walked straight in. An officer in khaki was
+lying on the bed; his muddy, spurred boots had soiled the white
+lace coverlet. He was asleep and snoring. She looked at him, and,
+recognising her acquaintance of the previous night, wondered what the
+very clement Virgin could be about.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+SUNDAY AFTERNOON
+
+
+"What is Madame going to do?" whispered Marthe, still alarmed and
+shocked, when they had both stepped back out of the bedroom; and she
+added: "He has never been here before."
+
+Marthe was a woman of immense experience but little brains, and
+when phenomena passed beyond her experience she became rather like
+a foolish, raw girl. She had often dealt with drunken men; she had
+often--especially in her younger days--satisfactorily explained a
+situation to visitors who happened to call when her mistress for the
+time being was out. But only on the very rarest occasions had she
+known a client commit the awful solecism of calling before lunch;
+and that a newcomer, even intoxicated, should commit this solecism
+staggered her and left her trembling.
+
+"What am I going to do? Nothing!" answered Christine. "Let him sleep."
+
+Christine, too, was dismayed. But Marthe's weakness gave her strength,
+and she would not show her fright. Moreover, Christine had some force
+of character, though it did not often show itself as sudden firmness.
+She condescended to Marthe. She also condescended to the officer,
+because he was unconscious, because he had put himself in a false
+position, because sooner or later he would look extremely silly. She
+regarded the officer's intrusion as tiresome, but she did not
+gravely resent it. After all, he was drunk; and before the row in the
+Promenade he had asked her for her card, saying that he was engaged
+that night but would like to know where she lived. Of course she had
+protested--as what woman in her place would not?--against the theory
+that he was engaged that night, and she had been in a fair way to
+convince him that he was not really engaged that night--except morally
+to her, since he had accosted her--when the quarrel had supervened
+and it had dawned on her that he had been in the taciturn and cautious
+stage of acute inebriety.
+
+He had, it now seemed, probably been drinking through the night. There
+were men, as she knew, who simply had to have bouts, whose only method
+to peace was to drown the demon within them. She would never knowingly
+touch a drunken man, or even a partially intoxicated man, if she
+could help it. She was not a bit like the polite young lady above, who
+seemed to specialise in noisy tipplers. Her way with the top-heavy
+was to leave them to recover in tranquillity. No other way was safe.
+Nevertheless, in the present instance she did venture again into the
+bedroom. The plight of the lace coverlet troubled her and practically
+drove her into the bedroom. She got a little towel, gently lifted the
+sleeper's left foot, and tied the towel round his boot; then she did
+the same to his other foot. The man did not stir; but if, later, he
+should stir, neither his boots nor his spurs could do further harm to
+the lace coverlet. His cane and gloves were on the floor; she picked
+them up. His overcoat, apparently of excellent quality, was still on
+his back; and the cap had not quite departed from his head. Christine
+had learned enough about English military signs and symbols to enable
+her to perceive that he belonged to the artillery.
+
+"But how will madame change her dress?" Marthe demanded in the
+sitting-room. Madame always changed her dress immediately on returning
+from church, for that which is suitable for mass may not be proper to
+other ends.
+
+"I shall not change," said Christine.
+
+"It is well, madame."
+
+Christine was not deterred from changing by the fact that the bedroom
+was occupied. She retained her church dress because she foresaw the
+great advantage she would derive from it in the encounter which must
+ultimately occur with the visitor. She would not even take her hat
+off.
+
+The two women lunched, mainly on macaroni, with some cheese and an
+apple. Christine had coffee. Ah, she must always have her coffee.
+As for a cigarette, she never smoked when alone, because she did
+not really care for smoking. Marthe, however, enjoyed smoking, and
+Christine gave her a cigarette, which she lighted while clearing the
+table. One was mistress, the other servant, but the two women were
+constantly meeting on the plane of equality. Neither of them could
+avoid it, or consistently tried to avoid it. Although Marthe did not
+eat with Christine, if a meal was in progress she generally came
+into the sitting-room with her mouth more or less full of food. Their
+repasts were trifles, passovers, unceremonious and irregular peckings,
+begun and finished in a few moments. And if Marthe was always untidy
+in her person, Christine, up till three in the afternoon, was also
+untidy. They went about the flat in a wonderful state of unkempt and
+insecure slovenliness. And sometimes Marthe might be lolling in the
+sitting-room over the illustrations in _La Vie Parisienne_, which was
+part of the apparatus of the flat, while Christine was in the tiny
+kitchen washing gloves as she alone could wash them.
+
+The flat lapsed into at any rate a superficial calm. Marthe, seeing
+that fate had deprived her of the usual consolations of religion,
+determined to reward herself by remaining a perfect slattern for the
+rest of the day. She would not change at all. She would not wash up
+either the breakfast things or the lunch things. Leaving a small ring
+of gas alight in the gas stove, she sat down all dirty on a hard
+chair in front of it and fell into a luxurious catalepsy. In the
+sitting-room Christine sat upright on the sofa and read lusciously a
+French translation of _East Lynne_. She was in no hurry for the man to
+waken; her sense of time was very imperfect; she was never pricked by
+the thought that life is short and that many urgent things demand to
+be done before the grave opens. Nor was she apprehensive of unpleasant
+complications. The man was in the flat, but it was her flat; her law
+ran in the flat; and the door was fast against invasion. Still, the
+gentle snore of the man, rising and falling, dominated the flat, and
+the fact of his presence preoccupied the one woman in the kitchen and
+the other in the sitting-room....
+
+Christine noticed that the thickness of the pages read had
+imperceptibly increased to three-quarters of an inch, while the
+thickness of the unread pages had diminished to a quarter of an inch.
+And she also noticed, on the open page, another phenomenon. It was the
+failing of the day--the faintest shadow on the page. With incredible
+transience another of those brief interruptions of darkness which in
+London in winter are called days was ending. She rose and went to the
+discreetly-curtained window, and, conscious of the extreme propriety
+of her appearance, boldly pulled aside the curtain and looked across,
+through naked glass, at the hotel nearly opposite. There was not a
+sound, not a movement, in Cork Street. Cork Street, the flat, the
+hotel, the city, the universe, lay entranced and stupefied beneath
+the grey vapours of the Sabbath. The sensation to Christine was
+melancholy, but it was exquisitely melancholy.
+
+The solid hotel dissolved, and in its place Christine saw the
+interesting, pathetic phantom of her own existence. A stern, serious
+existence, full of disappointments, and not free from dangerous
+episodes, an existence which entailed much solitude and loss of
+liberty; but the verdict upon it was that in the main it might easily
+have been more unsatisfactory than it was. With her indolence and
+her unappeasable temperament what other vocation indeed, save that
+of marriage, could she have taken up? And her temperament would have
+rendered any marriage an impossible prison for her. She was a modest
+success--her mother had always counselled her against ambition--but
+she was a success. Her magic power was at its height. She continued to
+save money and had become a fairly regular frequenter of the West
+End branch of the Credit Lyonnais. (Incidentally she had come to an
+arrangement with her Paris landlord.)
+
+But, more important than money, she was saving her health, and
+especially her complexion--the source of money. Her complexion could
+still survive the minutest examination. She achieved this supreme end
+by plenty of sleep and by keeping to the minimum of alcohol. Of course
+she had to drink professionally; clients insisted; some of them
+were exhilarated by the spectacle of a girl tipsy; but she was very
+ingenious in avoiding alcohol. When invited to supper she would
+respond with an air of restrained eagerness: "Oh, yes, with pleasure!"
+And then carelessly add: "Unless you would prefer to come quietly
+home with me. My maid is an excellent cook and one is very comfortable
+_chez-moi_." And often the prospect thus sketched would piquantly
+allure a client. Nevertheless at intervals she could savour a
+fashionable restaurant as well as any harum-scarum minx there. Her
+secret fear was still obesity. She was capable of imagining herself
+at fat as Marthe--and ruined; for, though a few peculiar amateurs
+appreciated solidity, the great majority of men did not. However, she
+was not getting stouter.
+
+She had a secret sincere respect for certain of her own qualities; and
+if women of the world condemned certain other qualities in her, well,
+she despised women of the world--selfish idlers who did nothing, who
+contributed nothing, to the sum of life, whereas she was a useful and
+indispensable member of society, despite her admitted indolence. In
+this summary way she comforted herself in her loss of caste.
+
+Without Gilbert, of course, her existence would have been fatally
+dull, and she might have been driven to terrible remedies against
+ennui and emptiness. The depth and violence of her feeling for Gilbert
+were indescribable--at any rate by her. She turned again from the
+darkening window to the sofa and sat down and tried to recall the
+figures of the dozens of men who had sat there, and she could recall
+at most six or eight, and Gilbert alone was real. What a paragon!...
+Her scorn for girls who succumbed to _souteneurs_ was measureless; as
+a fact she had met few who did.... She would have liked to beautify
+her flat for Gilbert, but in the first place she did not wish to spend
+money on it, in the second place she was too indolent to buckle to the
+enterprise, and in the third place if she beautified it she would be
+doing so not for Gilbert, but for the monotonous procession of her
+clients. Her flat was a public resort, and so she would do nothing to
+it. Besides, she did not care a fig about the look of furniture; the
+feel of furniture alone interested her; she wanted softness and warmth
+and no more.
+
+She moved across to the piano, remembering that she had not practised
+that day, and that she had promised Gilbert to practise every day.
+He was teaching her. At the beginning she had dreamt of acquiring
+brilliance such as his on the piano, but she had soon seen the
+futility of the dream and had moderated her hopes accordingly. Even
+with terrific efforts she could not make her hands do the things
+that his did quite easily at the first attempt. She had, for example,
+abandoned the _Rosenkavalier_ waltz, having never succeeded in
+struggling through more than about ten bars of it, and those the
+simplest. But her French dances she had notably improved in. She knew
+some of them by heart and could patter them off with a very tasteful
+vivacity. Instead of practising, she now played gently through a
+slow waltz from memory. If the snoring man was wakened, so much
+the worse--or so much the better! She went on playing, and evening
+continued to fall, until she could scarcely see the notes. Then she
+heard movements in the bedroom, a sigh, a bump, some English words
+that she did not comprehend. She still, by force of resolution, went
+on playing, to protect herself, to give herself countenance. At length
+she saw a dim male figure against the pale oblong of the doorway
+between the two rooms, and behind the figure a point of glowing red in
+the stove.
+
+"I say--what time is it?"
+
+She recognised the heavy, resonant, vibrating voice. She had stopped
+playing because she was making so many mistakes.
+
+"Late--late!" she murmured timidly.
+
+The next moment the figure was kneeling at her feet, and her left hand
+had been seized in a hot hand and kissed--respectfully.
+
+"Forgive me, you beautiful creature!" begged the deep, imploring
+voice. "I know I don't deserve it. But forgive me! I worship women,
+honestly."
+
+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 _role_ was a minor _role_ 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 protege 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 Sante. 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. He was useful to her and kind to her; he might
+be the fount of very important future advantages; but he was more than
+that, he was indispensable to her. She walked exploringly into the
+little glittering bedroom. Beneath the fantastic dome of the bed the
+sheets were turned down and a suit of pyjamas laid out. On a Chinese
+tray on a lacquered table by the bed was a spirit-lamp and kettle, and
+a box of matches in an embroidered case with one match sticking out
+ready to be seized and struck. She gazed, and left the bedroom, saying
+nothing, and wandered elsewhere. The stairs were so infinitesimal
+and dear and delicious that they drew from her a sharp exclamation of
+delight. She ran up them like a child. G.J. turned switches. In the
+little glittering dining-room a little cold repast was laid for two on
+an inlaid table covered with a sheet of glass. Christine gazed, saying
+nothing, and wandered again to the drawing-room floor, while G.J.
+hovered attendant. She went to the vast Regency desk, idly fingering
+papers, and laid hold of a document. It was his report on the
+accountacy of the Lechford Hospitals in France. She scrutinised it
+carefully, murmuring sentences from it aloud in her French accent. At
+length she dropped it; she did not put it down, she dropped it, and
+murmured:
+
+"All that--what good does it do to wounded men?... True, I comprehend
+nothing of it--I!"
+
+Then she sat to the piano, whose gorgeous and fantastic case might
+well have intimidated even a professional musician.
+
+"Dare I?" She took off her gloves.
+
+As she began to play her best waltz she looked round at G.J. and said:
+
+"I adore thy staircase."
+
+And that was all she did say about the flat. Still, her demeanour,
+mystifying as it might be, was benign, benevolent, with a remarkable
+appearance of genuine humility.
+
+G.J., while she played, discreetly picked up the telephone and got the
+Marlborough Club. He spoke low, so as not to disturb the waltz, which
+Christine in her nervousness was stumbling over.
+
+"I want to speak to Mr. Montague Ryper. Yes, yes; he is in the club.
+I spoke to him about an hour ago, and he is waiting for me to ring him
+up.... That you, Monty? Well, dear heart, I find I shan't be able to
+come to-night after all. I should like to awfully, but I've got these
+things I absolutely must finish.... You understand.... No, no.... Is
+she, by Jove? By-bye, old thing."
+
+When Christine had pettishly banged the last chord of the coda, he
+came close to her and said, with an appreciative smile, in English:
+
+"Charming, my little girl."
+
+She shook her head, gazing at the front of the piano.
+
+He murmured--it was almost a whisper:
+
+"Take your things off."
+
+She looked round and up at him, and the light diffused from a thousand
+lustres fell on her mysterious and absorbed face.
+
+"My little rabbit, I cannot stay with thee to-night."
+
+The words, though he did not by any means take them as final,
+seriously shocked him. For five days he had known that Mrs. Braiding,
+subject to his convenience, was going down to Bramshott to see the
+defender of the Empire. For four days he had hesitated whether or not
+he should tell her that she might stay away for the night. In the end
+he had told her to stay away; he had insisted that she should stay;
+he had protested that he was quite ready to look after himself for a
+night and a morning. She had gone, unwillingly, having first arranged
+a meal which he said he was to share with a friend--naturally, for
+Mrs. Braiding, a male friend. She had wanted him to dine at the club,
+but he had explained to Mrs. Braiding that he would be busy upon
+hospital work, and that another member of the committee would be
+coming to help him--the friend, of course. Even when he had contrived
+this elaborate and perfect plot he had still hesitated about the
+bold step of inviting Christine to the flat. The plan was extremely
+attractive, but it held dangers. Well, he had invited her. If she had
+not been at home, or if she had been unwilling to come, he would
+not have felt desolated; he would have accepted the fact as perhaps
+providential. But she was at home; she was willing; she had come.
+She was with him; she had put him into an ecstasy of satisfaction and
+anticipation. One evening alone with her in his own beautiful flat!
+What a frame for her and for love! And now she said that she would not
+stay. It was incredible; it could not be permitted.
+
+"But why not? We are happy together. I have just refused a dinner
+because of--this. Didn't you hear me on the 'phone?"
+
+"Thou wast wrong," she smiled. "I am not worth a dinner. It is
+essential that I should return home. I am tired--tired. It is Sunday
+night, and I have sworn to myself that I will pass this evening at
+home--alone."
+
+Exasperating, maddening creature! He thought: "I fancied I knew her,
+and I don't know her. I'm only just beginning to know her." He stared
+steadily at her soft, serious, worried, enchanting face, and tried
+to see through it into the arcana of her queer little brain. He could
+not. The sweet face foiled him.
+
+"Then why come?"
+
+"Because I wished to be nice to thee, to prove to thee how nice I am."
+
+She seized her gloves. He saw that she meant to go. His demeanour
+changed. He was aware of his power over her, and he would use it.
+She was being subtle; but he could be subtle too, far subtler than
+Christine. True, he had not penetrated her face. Nevertheless his
+instinct, and his male gift of ratiocination, informed him that
+beneath her gentle politeness she was vexed, hurt, because he had got
+rid of Mrs. Braiding before receiving her. She had her feelings, and
+despite her softness she could resent. Still, her feelings must not
+be over-indulged; they must not be permitted to make a fool of her. He
+said, rather teasingly, but firmly:
+
+"I know why she refuses to stay."
+
+She cried, plaintive:
+
+"It is not that I have another rendezvous. No! But naturally thou
+thinkest it is that."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Not at all. The little silly wants to go back home because she finds
+there is no servant here. She is insulted in her pride. I noticed it
+in her first words when she came in. And yet she ought to know--"
+
+Christine gave a loud laugh that really disconcerted him.
+
+"Au revoir, my old one. Embrace me." She dropped the veil.
+
+"No!"
+
+He could play a game of pretence longer than she could. She moved with
+dignity towards the door, but never would she depart like that.
+He knew that when it came to the point she was at the mercy of her
+passion for him. She had confessed the tyranny of her passion, as such
+victims foolishly will. Moreover he had perceived it for himself.
+He followed her to the door. At the door she would relent. And,
+sure enough, at the door she leapt at him and clasped his neck with
+fierceness and fiercely kissed him through her veil, and exclaimed
+bitterly:
+
+"Ah! Thou dost not love me, but I love thee!"
+
+But the next instant she had managed to open the door and she was
+gone.
+
+He sprang out to the landing. She was running down the stone stairs.
+
+"Christine!"
+
+She did not stop. G.J. might be marvellously subtle; but he could not
+be subtle enough to divine that on that night Christine happened to
+be the devotee of the most clement Virgin, and that her demeanour
+throughout the visit had been contrived, half unconsciously, to enable
+her to perform a deed of superb self-denial and renunciation in the
+service of the dread goddess. He ate most miserably alone, facing an
+empty chair; the desolate solitude of the evening was terrible; he
+lacked the force to go seeking succour in clubs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 20
+
+MASCOT
+
+
+A single light burned in Christine's bedroom. It stood low on the
+pedestal by the wide bed and was heavily shaded, so that only one half
+of the bed, Christine's half, was exempt from the general gloom of the
+chamber. The officer had thus ordained things. The white, plump arm of
+Christine was imprisoned under his neck. He had ordered that too. He
+was asleep. Christine watched him. On her return from the Albany she
+had found him apparently just as she had left him, except that he
+was much less talkative. Indeed, though unswervingly polite--even
+punctilious with her--he had grown quite taciturn and very obstinate
+and finicking in self-assertion. There was no detail as to which he
+did not formulate a definite wish. Yet not until by chance her eye
+fell on the whisky decanter did she perceive that in her absence
+he had been copiously drinking again. He was not, however, drunk.
+Remorseful at her defection, she constituted herself his slave; she
+covered him with acquiescences; she drank his tippler's breath. And he
+was not particularly responsive. He had all his own ideas. He ought,
+for example, to have been hungry, but his idea was that he was not
+hungry; therefore he had refused her dishes.
+
+She knew him better now. Save on one subject, discussed in the
+afternoon, he was a dull, narrow, direct man, especially in love. He
+had no fancy, no humour, no resilience. Possibly he worshipped women,
+as he had said, perhaps devoutly; but his worship of the individual
+girl tended more to ritualism than to ecstasy. The Parisian devotee
+was thrown away on him, and she felt it. But not with bitterness. On
+the contrary, she liked him to be as he was; she liked to be herself
+unappreciated, neglected, bored. She thought of the delights which she
+had renounced in the rich and voluptuous drawing-room of the Albany;
+she gazed under the reddish illumination at the tedious eternal
+market-place on which she exposed her wares, and which in Tottenham
+Court Road went by the name of bedstead; and she gathered nausea and
+painful longing to her breast as the Virgin gathered the swords of
+the Dolours at the Oratory, and was mystically happy in the ennui of
+serving the miraculous envoy of the Virgin. And when Marthe, uneasy,
+stole into the sitting-room, Christine, the door being ajar, most
+faintly transmitted to her a command in French to tranquillise herself
+and go away. And outside a boy broke the vast lull of the Sunday night
+with a shattering cry of victory in the North Sea.
+
+Possibly it was this cry that roused the officer out of his doze. He
+sat up, looked unseeing at Christine's bright smile and at the black
+gauze that revealed the reality of her youth, and then reached for his
+tunic which hung at the foot of the bed.
+
+"You asked about my mascot," he said, drawing from a pocket a small
+envelope of semi-transparent oilskin. "Here it is. Now that is a
+mascot!"
+
+He had wakened under the spell of his original theme, of his sole
+genuine subject. He spoke with assurance, as one inspired. His eyes,
+as they masterfully encountered Christine's eyes, had a strange,
+violent, religious expression. Christine's eyes yielded to his, and
+her smile vanished in seriousness. He undid the envelope and displayed
+an oval piece of red cloth with a picture of Christ, his bleeding
+heart surrounded by flames and thorns and a great cross in the
+background.
+
+"That," said the officer, "will bring anybody safe home again."
+Christine was too awed even to touch the red cloth. The vision of the
+dishevelled, inspired man in khaki shirt, collar and tie, holding
+the magic saviour in his thin, veined, aristocratic hand, powerfully
+impressed her, and she neither moved nor spoke.
+
+"Have you seen the 'Touchwood' mascot?" he asked. She signified
+a negative, and then nervously fingered her gauze. "No? It's a
+well-known mascot. Sort of tiny imp sort of thing, with a huge head,
+glittering eyes, a khaki cap of _oak_, and crossed legs in gold and
+silver. I hear that tens of thousands of them are sold. But there is
+nothing like my mascot."
+
+"Where have you got it?" Christine asked in her queer but improving
+English.
+
+"Where did I get it? Just after Mons, on the road, in a house."
+
+"Have you been in the retreat?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"And the angels? Have you seen them?"
+
+He paused, and then said with solemnity:
+
+"Was it an angel I saw?... I was lying doggo by myself in a hole,
+and bullets whizzing over me all the time. It was nearly dark, and a
+figure in white came and stood by the hole; he stood quite still
+and the German bullets went on just the same. Suddenly I saw he was
+wounded in the hand; it was bleeding. I said to him: 'You're hit in
+the hand.' 'No,' he said--he had a most beautiful voice--'that is an
+old wound. It has reopened lately. I have another wound in the other
+hand.' And he showed me the other hand, and that was bleeding too.
+Then the firing ceased, and he pointed, and although I'd eaten
+nothing at all that day and was dead-beat, I got up and ran the way he
+pointed, and in five minutes I ran into what remained of my unit."
+
+The officer's sonorous tones ceased; he shut his lips tightly, as
+though clinching the testimony, and the life of the bedroom was
+suspended in absolute silence.
+
+"That's what _I_ saw.... And with the lack of food my brain was
+absolutely clear."
+
+Christine, on her back, trembled.
+
+The officer replaced his mascot. Then he said, waving the little bag:
+
+"Of course, there are fellows who don't need mascots. Fellows that if
+their name isn't written on a bullet or a piece of shrapnel it won't
+reach them any more than a letter not addressed to you would reach
+you. Now my Colonel, for instance--it was he who told me how good my
+mascot was--well, he can stop shells, turn 'em back. Yes. He's just
+got the D.S.O. And he said to me, 'Edgar,' he said, 'I don't deserve
+it. I got it by inspiration.' And so he did.... What time's that?"
+
+The gilded Swiss clock in the drawing-room was striking its tiny gong.
+
+"Nine o'clock."
+
+The officer looked dully at his wrist-watch which, not having been
+wound on the previous night, had inconsiderately stopped.
+
+"Then I can't catch my train at Victoria." He spoke in a changed
+voice, lifeless, and sank back on the bed.
+
+"Train? What train?"
+
+"Nothing. Only the leave train. My leave is up to-night. To-morrow I
+ought to have been back in the trenches."
+
+"But you have told me nothing of it! If you had told me--But not one
+word, my dear."
+
+"When one is with a woman--!"
+
+He seemed gloomily and hopelessly to reproach her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 21
+
+THE LEAVE-TRAIN
+
+
+"What o'clock--your train?"
+
+"Nine-thirty."
+
+"But you can catch it. You must catch it."
+
+He shook his head. "It's fate," he muttered, bitterly resigned. "What
+is written is written."
+
+Christine sprang to the floor, shuffled off the black gauze in almost
+a single movement, and seized some of her clothes.
+
+"Quick! You shall catch your train. The clock is wrong--the clock is
+too soon."
+
+She implored him with positive desperation. She shook him and dragged
+him, energised in an instant by the overwhelming idea that for him to
+miss his train would be fatal to him--and to her also. She could and
+did believe in the efficacy of mascots against bullets and shrapnel
+and bayonets. But the traditions of a country of conscripts were
+ingrained in her childhood and youth, and she had not the slightest
+faith in the efficacy of no matter what mascot to protect from the
+consequences of indiscipline. And already during her short career
+in London she had had good reason to learn the sacredness of the
+leave-train. Fantastic tales she had heard of capital executions for
+what seemed trifling laxities--tales whispered half proudly by the
+army in the rooms of horrified courtesans--tales in which the remote
+and ruthless imagined figure of the Grand Provost-Marshal rivalled
+that of God himself. And, moreover, if this man fell into misfortune
+through her, she would eternally lose the grace of the most clement
+Virgin who had confided him to her and who was capable of terrible
+revenges. She secretly called on the Virgin. Nay, she became the
+Virgin. She found a miraculous strength, and furiously pulled the poor
+sot out of bed. The fibres of his character had been soaked away,
+and she mystically replaced them with her own. Intimidated and, as
+it were, mesmerised, he began to dress. She rushed as she was to the
+door.
+
+"Marthe! Marthe!"
+
+"Madame?" replied the fat woman in alarm.
+
+"Run for a taxi."
+
+"But, madame, it is raining terribly."
+
+"_Je m'en fous_! Run for a taxi."
+
+Turning back into the room she repeated; "The clock is too soon." But
+she knew that it was not. Nearly nude, she put on a hat.
+
+"What are you doing?" he asked.
+
+"Do not worry. I come with you."
+
+She took a skirt and a jersey and then threw a cloak over everything.
+He was very slow; he could find nothing; he could button nothing. She
+helped him. But when he began to finger his leggings with the endless
+laces and the innumerable eyelets she snatched them from him.
+
+"Those--in the taxi," she said.
+
+"But there is no taxi."
+
+"There will be a taxi. I have sent the maid."
+
+At the last moment, as she was hurrying him on to the staircase, she
+grasped her handbag. They stumbled one after the other down the dark
+stairs. He had now caught the infection of her tremendous anxiety. She
+opened the front door. The glistening street was absolutely empty; the
+rain pelted on the pavements and the roadway, each drop falling like
+a missile and raising a separate splash, so that it seemed as if the
+flood on the earth was leaping up to meet the flood from the sky.
+
+"Come!" she said with hysterical impatience. "We cannot wait. There
+will be a taxi in Piccadilly, I know."
+
+Simultaneously a taxi swerved round the corner of Burlington Street.
+Marthe stood on the step next to the driver. As the taxi halted she
+jumped down. Her drenched white apron was over her head and she was
+wet to the skin.
+
+In the taxi, while the officer struck matches, Christine knelt and
+fastened his leggings; he could not have performed the nice operation
+for himself. And all the time she was doing something else--she
+was pushing forward the whole taxi, till her muscles ached with the
+effort. Then she sat back on the seat, smoothed her hair under the
+hat, unclasped the bag, and patted her features delicately with the
+powder-puff. Neither knew the exact time, and in vain they tried to
+discern the faces of clocks that flew past them in the heavy rain.
+Christine sighed and said:
+
+"These tempests. This rain. They say it is because of the big
+cannons--which break the clouds."
+
+The officer, who had the air of being in a dream, suddenly bent
+towards her and replied with a most strange solemnity:
+
+"It is to wash away the blood!"
+
+She had not thought of that. Of course it was! She sighed again.
+
+As they neared Victoria the officer said:
+
+"My kit-bag! It's at the hotel. Shall I have time to pay my bill and
+get it? The Grosvenor's next to the station, you know."
+
+She answered unhesitatingly: "You will go direct to the train. I will
+try the hotel."
+
+"Drive round to the Grosvenor entrance like hell," he instructed the
+driver when the taxi stopped in the station yard.
+
+In the hotel she would never have got the bag, owing to her
+difficulties in explaining the situation in English to a haughty
+reception-clerk, had not a French-Swiss waiter been standing by. She
+flung imploring French sentences at the waiter like a stream from a
+hydrant. The bill was produced in less than half a minute. She put
+down money of her own to pay for it, for she had refused to wait at
+the station while the officer fished in the obscurities of his purse.
+The bag, into which a menial had crammed a kit probably scattered
+about the bedroom, arrived unfastened. Once more at the station, she
+gave the cabman all the change which she had received at the hotel
+counter. By a miracle she made a porter understand what was needed and
+how urgently it was needed. He said the train was just going, and ran.
+She ran after him. The ticket-collector at the platform gate allowed
+the porter to pass, but raised an implacable arm to prevent her from
+following. She had no platform ticket, and she could not possibly be
+travelling by the train. Then she descried her officer standing at an
+open carriage door in conversation with another officer and tapping
+his leggings with his cane. How aristocratic and disdainful and
+self-absorbed the pair looked! They existed in a world utterly
+different from hers. They were the triumphant and negligent males.
+She endeavoured to direct the porter with her pointing hand, and then,
+hysterical again, she screamed out the one identifying word she knew:
+"Edgar!"
+
+It was lost in the resounding echoes of the immense vault. Edgar
+certainly did not hear it. But he caught the great black initials,
+"E.W." on the kit-bag as the porter staggered along, and stopped the
+aimless man, and the kit-bag was thrown into the apartment. Doors were
+now banging. Christine saw Edgar take out his purse and fumble at it.
+But Edgar's companion pushed Edgar into the train and himself gave a
+tip which caused the porter to salute extravagantly. The porter, at
+any rate, had been rewarded. Christine began to cry, not from chagrin,
+but with relief. Women on the platform waved absurd little white
+handkerchiefs. Heads and khaki shoulders stuck out of the carriage
+windows of the shut train. A small green flag waved; arms waved like
+semaphores. The train ought to have been gliding away, but something
+delayed it, and it was held as if spellbound under the high, dim
+semicircle of black glass, amid the noises of steam, the hissing of
+electric globes, the horrible rattle of luggage trucks, the patter of
+feet, and the vast, murmuring gloom. Christine saw Edgar leaning from
+a window and gazing anxiously about. The little handkerchiefs were
+still courageously waving, and she, too, waved a little wisp. But he
+did not see her; he was not looking in the right place for her.
+
+She thought: Why did he not stay near the gate for me? But she thought
+again: Because he feared to miss the train. It was necessary that he
+should be close to his compartment. He knows he is not quite sober.
+
+She wondered whether he had any relatives, or any relations with
+another woman. He seemed to be as solitary as she was.
+
+On the same side of the platform-gate as herself a very tall, slim,
+dandy of an officer was bending over a smartly-dressed girl, smiling
+at her and whispering. Suddenly the girl turned from him with a
+disdainful toss of the head and said in a loud, clear Cockney voice:
+
+"You can't tell the tale to me, young man. This is my second time on
+earth."
+
+Christine heard the words, but was completely puzzled. The train
+moved, at first almost imperceptibly. The handkerchiefs showed extreme
+agitation. Then a raucous song floated from the train:
+
+  "John Brown's baby's got a pimple on his--_shoooo_--
+  John Brown's baby's got a pimple on his--_shoooo_--
+  John Brown's baby's got a pimple on his--_shoooo_--
+  and we all went marching home.
+  Glory, glory, Alleluia!
+  Glory, glory ..."
+
+The rails showed empty where the train had been, and the sound of the
+song faded and died. Some of the women were crying. Christine felt
+that she was in a land of which she understood nothing but the tears.
+She also felt very cold in the legs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 22
+
+GETTING ON WITH THE WAR
+
+
+The floors of the Reynolds Galleries were covered with some hundreds
+of very well-dressed and very expensively-dressed women and some
+scores of men. The walls were covered with a loan collection of
+oil-paintings, water-colour drawings, and etchings--English and
+French, but chiefly English. A very large proportion of the pictures
+were portraits of women done by a select group of very expensive
+painters in the highest vogue. These portraits were the main
+attraction of the elegant crowd, which included many of the sitters;
+as for the latter, they failed to hide under an unconvincing mask of
+indifference their curiosity as to their own effectiveness in a frame.
+
+The portraits for the most part had every quality save that of
+sincerity. They were transcendantly adroit and they reeked of talent.
+They were luxurious, refined, sensual, titillating, exquisite, tender,
+compact, of striking poses and subtle new tones. And while the heads
+were well finished and instantly recognisable as likenesses, the
+impressionism of the hands and of the provocative draperies showed
+that the artists had fully realised the necessity of being modern. The
+mischief and the damnation were that the sitters liked them because
+they produced in the sitters the illusion that the sitters were really
+what the sitters wanted to be, and what indeed nearly every woman in
+the galleries wanted to be; and the ideal of the sitters was a low
+ideal. The portraits flattered; but only a few guessed that they
+flattered ignobly; scarcely any even of the artists guessed that.
+
+The portraits were a success; the exhibition was a success; and all
+the people at the private view justly felt that they were part of and
+contributing to the success. And though seemingly the aim of everybody
+was to prove to everybody else that no war, not the greatest war,
+could disturb the appearances of social life in London, yet many were
+properly serious and proud in their seriousness. It was the autumn of
+1915. British troops were triumphantly on the road to Kut, and British
+forces were approaching decisive victory in Gallipoli. The Russians
+had turned on their pursuers. The French had initiated in Champagne
+an offensive so dramatic that it was regarded as the beginning of the
+end. And the British on their left, in the taking of Loos and Hill 70,
+had achieved what might have been regarded as the greatest success on
+the Western Front, had it not been for the rumour, current among the
+informed personages at the Reynolds Galleries, that recent bulletins
+had been reticent to the point of deception and that, in fact, Hill
+70 had ceased to be ours a week earlier. Further, Zeppelins had raided
+London and killed and wounded numerous Londoners, and all present in
+the Reynolds Galleries were aware, from positive statements in the
+newspapers, that whereas German morale was crumbling, all Londoners,
+including themselves, had behaved with the most marvellous stoic calm
+in the ordeal of the Zeppelins.
+
+The assembly had a further and particular reason for serious pride.
+It was getting on with the war, and in a most novel way. Private views
+are customarily views gratis. But the entry to this private view cost
+a guinea, and there was absolutely no free list. The guineas were
+going to the support of the Lechford Hospitals in France. The happy
+idea was G.J.'s own, and Lady Queenie Paulle and her mother had taken
+the right influential measures to ensure its grandiose execution. A
+queen had visited the private view for half an hour. Thus all the very
+well-dressed and very expensively-dressed women, and all the men who
+admired and desired them as they moved, in voluptuous perfection, amid
+dazzling pictures with the soft illumination of screened skylights
+above and the reflections in polished parquet below--all of both sexes
+were comfortably conscious of virtue in the undoubted fact that they
+were helping to support two renowned hospitals where at that very
+moment dissevered legs and arms were being thrown into buckets.
+
+In a little room at the end of the galleries was a small but choice
+collection of the etchings of Felicien Rops: a collection for
+connoisseurs, as the critics were to point out in the newspapers the
+next morning. For Rops, though he had an undeniable partiality for
+subjects in which ugly and prurient women displayed themselves in
+nothing but the inessentials of costume, was a classic before whom it
+was necessary to bow the head in homage.
+
+G.J. was in this room in company with a young and handsome Staff
+officer, Lieutenant Molder, home on convalescent leave from Suvla Bay.
+Mr. Molder had left Oxford in order to join the army; he had behaved
+admirably, and well earned the red shoulder-ornaments which pure
+accident had given him. He was a youth of artistic and literary
+tastes, with genuine ambitions quite other than military, and after a
+year of horrible existence in which he had hungered for the arts
+more than for anything, he was solacing and renewing himself in the
+contemplation of all the masterpieces that London could show. He
+greatly esteemed G.J.'s connoisseurship, and G.J. had taken him in
+hand. At the close of a conscientious and highly critical round of
+the galleries they had at length reached the Rops room, and they
+were discussing every aspect of Rops except his lubricity, when Lady
+Queenie Paulle approached them from behind. Molder was the first to
+notice her and turn. He blushed.
+
+"Well, Queen," said G.J., who had already had several conversations
+with her in the galleries that day and on the previous days of
+preparation.
+
+She replied:
+
+"Well, I hope you're satisfied with the results of your beautiful
+idea."
+
+The young woman, slim and pale, had long since gone out of mourning.
+She was most brilliantly attired, and no detail lacked to the
+perfection of her modish outfit. Indeed, just as she was, she would
+have made a marvellous mannequin, except for the fact that mannequins
+are not usually allowed to perfume themselves in business hours. Her
+thin, rather high voice, which somehow matched her complexion and
+carriage, had its customary tone of amiable insolence, and her tired,
+drooping eyes their equivocal glance, as she faced the bearded and
+grave middle-aged bachelor and the handsome, muscular boy; even the
+boy was older than Queen, yet she seemed to condescend to them as if
+she were an immortal from everlasting to everlasting and could teach
+both of them all sorts of useful things about life. Nobody could have
+guessed from that serene demeanour that her self-satisfaction was
+marred by any untoward detail whatever. Yet it was. All her frocks
+were designed to conceal a serious defect which seriously disturbed
+her: she was low-breasted.
+
+G.J. said bluntly:
+
+"May I present Mr. Molder?--Lady Queenie Paulle."
+
+And he said to himself, secretly annoyed:
+
+"Dash the infernal chit. That's what she's come for. Now she's got
+it."
+
+She gave the slightest, dubious nod to Molder, who, having faced
+fighting Turks with an equanimity equal to Queenie's own, was yet
+considerably flurried by the presence and the gaze of this legendary
+girl. Queenie, enjoying his agitation, but affecting to ignore him,
+began to talk quickly in the vein of exclusive gossip; she mentioned
+in a few seconds the topics of the imminent entry of Bulgaria into
+the war, the maturing Salonika expedition, the confidential terrible
+utterances of K. on recruiting, and, of course, the misfortune (due to
+causes which Queenie had at her finger-ends) round about Loos. Then
+in regard to the last she suddenly added, quite unjustifiably implying
+that the two phenomena were connected: "You know, mother's hospitals
+are frightfully full just now.... But, of course, you do know. That's
+why I'm so specially glad to-day's such a success."
+
+Thus in a moment, and with no more than ten phrases, she had conveyed
+the suggestion that while mere soldiers, ageing men-about-town, and
+the ingenuous mass of the public might and did foolishly imagine the
+war to be a simple affair, she herself, by reason of her intelligence
+and her private sources of knowledge, had a full, unique apprehension
+of its extremely complex and various formidableness. G.J. resented the
+familiar attitude, and he resented Queenie's very appearance and the
+appearance of the entire opulent scene. In his head at that precise
+instant were not only the statistics of mortality and major operations
+at the Lechford Hospitals, but also the astounding desolating tales of
+the handsome boy about folly, ignorance, stupidity and martyrdoms at
+Suvla.
+
+He said, with the peculiar polite restraint that in him masked emotion
+and acrimony:
+
+"Yes, I'm glad it's a success. But the machinery of it is perhaps just
+slightly out of proportion to the results. If people had given to
+the hospitals what they have spent on clothes to come here and what
+they've paid painters so that they could see themselves on the walls,
+we should have made twenty times as much as we have made--a hundred
+times as much. Why, good god! Queen, the whole afternoon's takings
+wouldn't buy what you're wearing now, to say nothing of the five
+hundred other women here." His eye rested on the badge of her
+half-brother's regiment which she had had reproduced in diamonds.
+
+At this juncture he heard himself addressed in a hearty, heavy voice
+as "G.J., old soul." An officer with the solitary crown on his
+sleeve, bald, stoutish, but probably not more than forty-five, touched
+him--much gentler than he spoke--on the shoulder.
+
+"Craive, my son! You back! Well, it's startling to see you at a
+picture-show, anyhow."
+
+The Major, saluting Lady Queenie as a distant acquaintance, retorted:
+
+"Morally, you owe me a guinea, my dear G.J. I called at the flat, and
+the young woman there told me you'd surely be here."
+
+While they were talking G.J. could hear Queenie Paulle and Molder:
+
+"Where are you back from?"
+
+"Suvla, Lady Queenie."
+
+"You must be oozing with interest and actuality. Tell G.J. to bring
+you to tea one day, quite, quite soon, will you? _I_'ll tell him."
+And Molder murmured something fatuously conventional. G.J. showed
+decorously that he had caught his own name. Whereupon Lady Queenie,
+instead of naming a day for tea, addressed him almost bitterly:
+
+"G.J., what's come over you? What in the name of Pan do you suppose
+all you males are fighting each other for?" She paused effectively.
+"Good god! If I began to dress like a housemaid the Germans would
+be in London in a month. Our job as women is quite delicate
+enough without you making it worse by any damned sentimental
+superficiality.... I want you to bring Mr. Molder to tea _to-morrow_,
+and if you can't come he must come alone...."
+
+With a last strange look at Molder she retired into the glitter of the
+crowded larger room.
+
+"She been driving any fresh men to suicide lately?" Major Craive
+demanded acidly under his breath.
+
+G.J. raised his eyebrows.
+
+Then: "That's not _you_, Frankie!" said the Major with a start of
+recognition towards the Staff lieutenant.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Molder.
+
+They shook hands. At the previous Christmas they had lain out together
+on the cliffs of the east coast in wild weather, waiting to repel a
+phantom army of thirty thousand Germans.
+
+"It was the red hat put me off," the Major explained.
+
+"Not my fault, sir," Molder smiled.
+
+"Devilish glad to see you, my boy."
+
+G.J. murmured to Molder:
+
+"You don't want to go and have tea with her, do you?"
+
+And Molder answered, with the somewhat fatuous, self-conscious
+grin that no amount of intelligence can keep out of the face of a
+good-looking fellow who knows that he has made an impression:
+
+"Well, I don't know--"
+
+G.J. raised his eyebrows again, but with indulgence, and winked at
+Craive.
+
+The Major shut his lips tight, then stood with his mouth open for a
+second or two in the attitude of a man suddenly receiving the onset of
+a great and original idea.
+
+"She's right, hang it all!" he exclaimed. "She's right! Of course she
+is! Why, what's all this"--he waved an arm at the whole scene--"what's
+all this but sex? Look at 'em! And look at their portraits! You aren't
+going to tell me! What's the good of pretending? Hang it all, when my
+own aunt comes down to breakfast in a low-cut blouse that would have
+given her fits even in the evening ten years ago!... And jolly fine
+too. I'm all for it. The more of it the merrier--that's what I say.
+And don't any of you high-brows go trying to alter it. If you do I
+retire, and you can defend your own bally Front."
+
+"Craive," said G.J. affectionately, "until you and Queen came along
+Molder and I really thought we were at a picture exhibition, and we
+still think so, don't we, Molder?" The Lieutenant nodded. "Now, as
+you're here, just let me show you one or two things."
+
+"Oh!" breathed the Major, "have pity. It's not any canvas woman that
+I want--By Jove!" He caught sight of an invention of Felicien Rops, a
+pig on the end of a string, leading, or being driven by, a woman who
+wore nothing but stockings, boots and a hat. "What do you call that?"
+
+"My dear fellow, that's one of the most famous etchings in the world."
+
+"Is it?" the Major said. "Well, I'm not surprised. There's more in
+this business than I imagined." He set himself to examine all the
+exhibits by Rops, and when he had finished he turned to G.J.
+
+"Listen here, G.J. We're going to make a night of it. I've decided on
+that."
+
+"Sorry, dear heart," said G.J. "I'm engaged with Molder to-night. We
+shall have some private chamber-music at my rooms--just for ourselves.
+You ought to come. Much better for your health."
+
+"What time will the din be over?"
+
+"About eleven."
+
+"Now I say again--listen here. Let's talk business. I'll come to your
+chamber-music. I've been before, and survived, and I'll come again.
+But afterwards you'll come with me to the Guinea-Fowl."
+
+"But, my dear chap, I can't throw Molder out into Vigo Street at
+eleven o'clock," G.J. protested, startled by the blunt mention of the
+notorious night-club in the young man's presence.
+
+"Naturally you can't. He'll come along with us. Frankie and I have
+nearly fallen into the North Sea or German Ocean together, haven't we,
+Frankie? It'll be my show. And I'll turn up with the stuff--one, two
+or three pretty ladies according as your worship wishes."
+
+G.J. was now more than startled; he was shocked; he felt his cheeks
+reddening. It was the presence of Molder that confused him. Never had
+he talked to Molder on any subjects but the arts, and if they had once
+or twice lighted on the topic of women it was only in connection with
+the arts. He was really interested in and admired Molder's unusual
+aesthetic intelligence, and he had done what he could to foster it,
+and he immensely appreciated Molder's youthful esteem for himself.
+Moreover, he was easily old enough to be Molder's father. It seemed
+to him that though two generations might properly mingle in anything
+else, they ought not to mingle in licence. Craive's crudity was
+extraordinary.
+
+"See here!" Craive went on, serious and determined. "You know the sort
+of thing I've come from. I got four days unexpected. I had to run down
+to my uncle's. The old things would have died if I hadn't. To-morrow I
+go back. This is my last night. I haven't had a scratch up to now.
+But my turn's coming, you bet. Next week I may be in heaven or hell or
+anywhere, or blind for life or without my legs or any damn thing you
+please. But I'm going to have to-night, and you're going to join in."
+
+G.J. saw the look of simple, half-worshipful appeal that sometimes
+came into Craive's rather ingenuous face. He well knew that look, and
+it always touched him. He remembered certain descriptive letters
+which he had received from Craive at the Front,--they corresponded
+faithfully. He could not have explained the intimacy of his relations
+with Craive. They had begun at a club, over cards. The two had little
+in common--Craive was a stockbroker when world-wars did not happen
+to be in progress--but G.J. greatly liked him because, with all his
+crudity, he was such a decent, natural fellow, so kind-hearted,
+so fresh and unassuming. And Craive on his part had developed an
+admiration for G.J. which G.J. was quite at a loss to account for. The
+one clue to the origin of the mysterious attachment between them had
+been a naive phrase which he had once overheard Craive utter to a
+mutual acquaintance: "Old G.J.'s so subtle, isn't he?"
+
+G.J. said to himself, reconsidering the proposal:
+
+"And why on earth not?"
+
+And then aloud, soothingly, to Craive:
+
+"All right! All right!"
+
+The Major brightened and said to Molder:
+
+"You'll come, of course?"
+
+"Oh, rather!" answered Molder, quite simply.
+
+And G.J., again to himself, said:
+
+"I am a simpleton."
+
+The Major's pleading, and the spectacle of the two officers with their
+precarious hold on life, humiliated G.J. as well as touched him. And,
+if only in order to avoid the momentary humiliation, he would have
+been well content to be able to roll back his existence and to have
+had a military training and to be with them in the sacred and proud
+uniform.
+
+"Now listen here!" said the Major. "About the aforesaid pretty
+ladies--"
+
+There they stood together in the corner, hiding several of Rops's
+eccentricities, ostensibly discussing art, charity, world-politics,
+the strategy of war, the casualty lists.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 23
+
+THE CALL
+
+
+Christine found the night at the guinea-fowl rather dull. The
+supper-room, garish and tawdry in its decorations, was functioning as
+usual. The round tables and the square tables, the tables large and
+the tables small, were well occupied with mixed parties and couples.
+Each table had its own yellow illumination, and the upper portion
+of the room, with a certain empty space in the centre of it, was
+bafflingly shadowed. Between two high, straight falling curtains could
+be seen a section of the ball-room, very bright against the curtains,
+with the figures of dancers whose bodies seemed to be glued to each
+other, pale to black or pale to khaki, passing slowly and rhythmically
+across. The rag-time music, over a sort of ground-bass of syncopated
+tom-tom, surged through the curtains like a tide of the sea of
+Aphrodite, and bathed everyone at the supper-tables in a mysterious
+aphrodisiacal fluid. The waiters alone were insensible to its
+influence. They moved to and fro with the impassivity and disdain of
+eunuchs separated for ever from the world's temptations. Loud laughs
+or shrill little shrieks exploded at intervals from the sinister
+melancholy of the interior.
+
+On Christine's left, at a round table in a corner, sat G.J.; on her
+right, the handsome boy Molder. On Molder's right, Miss Aida Altown
+spread her amplitude, and on G.J.'s left was a young girl known to
+the company as Alice. Major Craive, the host, the splendid quality of
+whose hospitality was proved by the flowers, the fruit, the bottles,
+the cigar-boxes and the cigarette-boxes on the table, sat between
+Alice and Aida Altown.
+
+The three women on principle despised and scorned each other with
+false warm smiles and sudden outbursts of compliment. Christine knew
+that the other two detested her as being "one of those French girls"
+who, under the protection of Free Trade, came to London and, by their
+lack of scruple and decency, took the bread out of the mouths of the
+nice, modest, respectable, English girls. She on her side disdained
+both of them, not merely because they were courtesans (which
+somehow Christine considered she really was not), but also for their
+characteristic insipidity, lackadaisicalness and ignorance of the
+technique of the profession. They expected to be paid for doing
+nothing.
+
+Aida Altown she knew by sight as belonging to a great rival Promenade.
+Aida had reached the purgatory of obesity which Christine always
+feared. Despite the largeness of her mass, she was a very beautiful
+woman in the English manner, blonde, soft, idle, without a trace of
+temperament, and incomparably dull and stupid. But she was ageing;
+she had been favourably known in the West End continuously (save for
+a brief escapade in New York) for perhaps a quarter of a century. She
+was at the period when such as she realise with flaccid alarm that
+they have no future, and when they are ready to risk grave imprudences
+for youths who feel flattered by their extreme maturity. Christine
+gazed calmly at her, supercilious and secure in the immense advantage
+of at least fifteen years to the good.
+
+And if she shrugged her shoulders at Aida for being too old,
+Christine did the same at Alice for being too young. Alice was truly
+a girl--probably not more than seventeen. Her pert, pretty, infantile
+face was an outrage against the code. She was a mere amateur, with
+everything to learn, absurdly presuming upon the very quality which
+would vanish first. And she was a fool. She obviously had no sense,
+not even the beginnings of sense. She was wearing an impudently
+expensive frock which must have cost quite five times as much as
+Christine's own, though the latter in the opinion of the wearer was
+by far the more authentically _chic_. And she talked proudly at large
+about her losses on the turf and of the swindles practised upon her.
+Christine admitted that the girl could make plenty of money, and would
+continue to make money for a long, long time, bar accidents, but her
+final conclusion about Alice was: "She will end on straw."
+
+The supper was over. The conversation had never been vivacious, and
+now it was half-drowned in champagne. The girls had wanted to hear
+about the war, but the Major, who had arrived in a rather dogmatic
+mood, put an absolute ban on shop. Alice had then kept the talk, such
+as it was, upon her favourite topic--revues. She was an encyclopaedia
+of knowledge concerning revues past, present, and to come. She had
+once indeed figured for a few grand weeks in a revue chorus, thereby
+acquiring unique status in her world. The topic palled upon both Aida
+and Christine. And Christine had said to herself: "They are aware of
+nothing, those two," for Aida and Alice had proved to be equally and
+utterly ignorant of the superlative social event of the afternoon, the
+private view at the Reynolds Galleries--at which indeed Christine had
+not assisted, but of which she had learnt all the intimate details
+from G.J. What, Christine demanded, _could_ be done with such a pair
+of ninnies?
+
+She might have been excused for abandoning all attempt to behave as
+a woman of the world should at a supper party. Nevertheless, she
+continued good-naturedly and conscientiously in the performance of her
+duty to charm, to divert, and to enliven. After all, the ladies
+were there to captivate the males, and if Aida and Alice dishonestly
+flouted obligations, Christine would not. She would, at any rate, show
+them how to behave.
+
+She especially attended to G.J., who having drunk little, was taciturn
+and preoccupied in his amiabilities. She divined that something was
+the matter, but she could not divine that his thoughts were saddened
+by the recollection at the Guinea-Fowl of the lovely music which he
+had heard earlier in his drawing-room and by the memory of the Major's
+letters and of what the Major had said at the Reynolds Galleries
+about the past and the possibilities of the future. The Major was very
+benevolently intoxicated, and at short intervals he raised his glass
+to G.J., who did not once fail to respond with an affectionate smile
+which Christine had never before seen on G.J.'s face.
+
+Suddenly Alice, who had been lounging semi-somnolent with an extinct
+cigarette in her jewelled fingers, sat up and said in the uncertain
+voice of an inexperienced girl who has ceased to count the number of
+glasses emptied:
+
+"Shall I recite? I've been trained, you know."
+
+And, not waiting for an answer, she stood and recited, with a
+surprisingly correct and sure pronunciation of difficult words to show
+that she had, in fact, received some training:
+
+  Helen, thy beauty is to me
+  Like those Nicean barks of yore,
+  That gently o'er a perfumed sea
+  The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
+  To his own native shore.
+
+  On desperate seas long wont to roam,
+  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
+  Thy naiad airs have brought me home
+  To the glory that was Greece,
+  To the grandeur that was Rome.
+
+  Lo! In your brilliant window niche,
+  How statue-like I see thee stand,
+  The agate lamp within thy hand!
+  Ah, Psyche from the regions which
+  Are Holy Land!
+
+The uncomprehended marvellous poem, having startled the whole room,
+ceased, and the rag-time resumed its sway. A drunken "Bravo!"
+came from one table, a cheer from another. Young Alice nodded an
+acknowledgment and sank loosely into her chair, exhausted by her last
+effort against the spell of champagne and liqueurs. And the naive, big
+Major, bewitched by the child, subsided into soft contact with her,
+and they almost tearfully embraced. A waiter sedately replaced a glass
+which Alice's drooping, negligent hand had over-turned, and wiped the
+cloth. G.J. was silent. The whole table was silent.
+
+"_Est-ce de la grande poesie_?" asked Christine of G.J., who did not
+reply. Christine, though she condemned Alice as now disgusting, had
+been taken aback and, in spite of herself, much impressed by the
+surprising display of elocution.
+
+"_Oui_," said Molder, in his clipped, self-conscious Oxford French.
+
+Two couples from other tables were dancing in the middle of the room.
+
+Molder demanded, leaning towards her:
+
+"I say, do you dance?"
+
+"But certainly," said Christine. "I learnt at the convent." And she
+spoke of her convent education, a triumphant subject with her, though
+she had actually spent less than a year in the convent.
+
+After a few moments they both rose, and Christine, bending over G.J.,
+whispered lovingly in his ear:
+
+"Dear, thou wilt not be jealous if I dance one turn with thy young
+friend?"
+
+She was addressing the wrong person. Already throughout the supper
+Aida, ignoring the fact that the whole structure of civilised society
+is based on the rule that at a meal a man must talk first to the lady
+on his right and then to the lady on his left and so on infinitely,
+had secretly taken exception to the periodic intercourse--and
+particularly the intercourse in French--between Christine and Molder,
+who was officially "hers". That these two should go off and dance
+together was the supreme insult to her. By ill-chance she had not
+sufficient physical command of herself.
+
+Christine felt that Molder would have danced better two hours earlier;
+but still he danced beautifully. Their bodies fitted like two parts
+of a jigsaw puzzle that have discovered each other. She realised that
+G.J. was middle-aged, and regret tinctured the ecstasy of the dance.
+Then suddenly she heard a loud, imploring cry in her ear:
+
+"Christine!"
+
+She looked round, pale, still dancing, but only by inertia.
+
+Nobody was near her. The four people at the Major's table gave no sign
+of agitation or even of interest. The Major still had Alice more or
+less in his arms.
+
+"What was that?" she asked wildly.
+
+"What was what?" said Molder, at a loss to understand her
+extraordinary demeanour.
+
+And she heard the cry again, and then again:
+
+"Christine! Christine!"
+
+She recognised the voice. It was the voice of the officer whom she had
+taken to Victoria Station one Sunday night months and months ago.
+
+"Excuse me!" she said, slipping from Molder's hold, and she hurried
+out of the room to the ladies' cloak-room, got her wraps, and ran past
+the watchful guardian, through the dark, dubious portico of the club
+into the street. The thing was done in a moment, and why she did it
+she could not tell. She knew simply that she must do it, and that she
+was under the dominion of those unseen powers in whom she had always
+believed. She forgot the Guinea-Fowl as completely as though it had
+been a pre-natal phenomenon with her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 24
+
+THE SOLDIER
+
+
+But outside she lost faith. Half a dozen motor-cars were slumbering
+in a row near the door of the Guinea-Fowl, and they all stirred
+monstrously yet scarcely perceptibly at the sight of the woman's
+figure, solitary, fragile and pale in the darkness. They seemed for an
+instant to lust for her; and then, recognising that she was not their
+prey, to sink back into the torpor of their inexhaustible patience.
+The sight of them was prejudicial to the dominion of the unseen
+powers. Christine admitted to herself that she had drunk a lot, that
+she was demented, that her only proper course was to return dutifully
+to the supper-party. She wondered what, if she did not so return, she
+could possibly say to justify herself to G.J.
+
+Nevertheless she went on down the street, hurrying, automatic, and
+reached the main thoroughfare. It was dark with the new protective
+darkness. The central hooded lamps showed like poor candles, making a
+series of rings of feeble illumination on the vast invisible floor of
+the road. Nobody was afoot; not a soul. The last of the motor-buses
+that went about killing and maiming people in the new protective
+darkness had long since reached its yard. The seductive dim violet
+bulbs were all extinguished on the entrances of the theatres, and,
+save for a thread of light at some lofty window here and there, the
+curving facades of the street were as undecipherable as the heavens
+above or as the asphalte beneath.
+
+Then Christine's ear detected a faint roar. It grew louder; it became
+terrific; and a long succession of huge loaded army waggons with
+peering head-lamps thundered past at full speed, one close behind
+the next, shaking the very avenue. The slightest misjudgment by the
+leading waggon in the confusion of light and darkness--and the whole
+convoy would have pitched itself together in a mass of iron, flesh,
+blood and ordnance; but the convoy went ruthlessly and safely forward
+till its final red tail-lamp swung round a corner and vanished. The
+avenue ceased to shake. The thunder died away, and there was silence
+again. Whence and why the convoy came, and at whose dread omnipotent
+command? Whither it was bound? What it carried? No answer in the
+darkness to these enigmas!... And Christine was afraid of England. She
+remembered people in Ostend saying that England would never go to war.
+She, too, had said it, bitterly. And now she was in the midst of the
+unmeasured city which had darkened itself for war, and she was afraid
+of an unloosed might....
+
+What madness was she doing? She did not even know the man's name.
+She knew only that he was "Edgar W." She would have liked to be his
+_marraine_, according to the French custom, but he had never written
+to her. He was still in her debt for the hotel bill and the taxi fare.
+He had not even kissed her at the station. She tried to fancy that she
+heard his voice calling "Christine" with frantic supplication in her
+ears, but she could not. She turned into another side street, and saw
+a lighted doorway. Two soldiers were standing in the veiled radiance.
+She could just read the lower half of the painted notice: "All service
+men welcome. Beds. Meals. Writing and reading rooms. Always open." She
+passed on. One of the soldiers, a non-commissioned officer of mature
+years, solemnly winked at her, without moving an unnecessary muscle.
+She looked modestly down.
+
+Twenty yards further on she described near a lamp-post a tall soldier
+whose somewhat bent body seemed to be clustered over with pots, pans,
+tins, bags, valises, satchels and weapons, like the figure of some
+military Father Christmas on his surreptitious rounds. She knew that
+he must be a poor benighted fellow just back from the trenches. He was
+staring up at the place where the street-sign ought to have been. He
+glanced at her, and said, in a fatigued, gloomy, aristocratic voice:
+
+"Pardon me, Madam. Is this Denman Street? I want to find the Denman
+Hostel."
+
+Christine looked into his face. A sacred dew suffused her from head
+to foot. She trembled with an intimidated joy. She felt the mystic
+influences of all the unseen powers. She knew herself with holy dread
+to be the chosen of the very clement Virgin, and the channel of a
+miraculous intervention. It was the most marvellous, sweetest
+thing that had ever happened. It was humanly incredible, but it had
+happened.
+
+"Is it you?" she murmured in a soft, breaking voice.
+
+The man stooped and examined her face.
+
+She said, while he gazed at her: "Edgar!... See--the wrist watch,"
+and held up her arm, from which the wide sleeve of her mantle slipped
+away.
+
+And the man said: "Is it you?"
+
+She said: "Come with me. I will look after you."
+
+The man answered glumly:
+
+"I have no money--at least not enough for you. And I owe you a lot of
+money already. You are an angel. I'm ashamed."
+
+"What do you mean?" Christine protested. "Do you forget that you gave
+me a five-pound note? It was more than enough to pay the hotel.... As
+for the rest, let us not speak of it. Come with me."
+
+"Did I?" muttered the man.
+
+She could feel the very clement Virgin smiling approval of her fib;
+it was exactly such a fib as the Virgin herself would have told in a
+quandary of charity. And when a taxi came round the corner, she knew
+that the Virgin disguised as a taxi-driver was steering it, and she
+hailed it with a firm and yet loving gesture.
+
+The taxi stopped. She opened the door, and in her sombre mantle and
+bright trailing frock and glinting, pale shoes she got in, and the
+military Father Christmas with much difficulty and jingling and
+clinking insinuated himself after her into the vehicle, and banged to
+the door. And at the same moment one of the soldiers from the Hostel
+ran up:
+
+"Here, mate!... What do you want to take his money from him for, you
+damned w----?"
+
+But the taxi drove off. Christine had not understood. And had she
+understood, she would not have cared. She had a divine mission; she
+was in bliss.
+
+"You did not seem surprised to meet me," she said, taking Edgar's
+rough hand.
+
+"No."
+
+"Had you called out my name--'Christine'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps you were thinking of me? I was thinking of you."
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know. But I'm never surprised."
+
+"You must be very tired?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why are you like that? All these things? You are not an officer
+now."
+
+"No. I had to resign my commission--just after I saw you." He paused,
+and added drily: "Whisky." His deep rich voice filled the taxi with
+the resigned philosophy of fatalism.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Of course I joined up again at once," he said casually. "I soon got
+out to the Front. Now I'm on leave. That's mere luck."
+
+She burst into tears. She was so touched by his curt story, and by the
+grotesquerie of his appearance in the faint light from the exterior
+lamp which lit the dial of the taximeter, that she lost control of
+herself. And the man gave a sob, or possibly it was only a gulp to
+hide a sob. And she leaned against him in her thin garments. And he
+clinked and jingled, and his breath smelt of beer.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 25
+
+THE RING
+
+
+The flat was in darkness, except for the little lamp by the bedside.
+The soldier lay asleep in his flannel shirt in the wide bed, and
+Christine lay awake next him. His clothes were heaped on a chair.
+His eighty pounds' weight of kit were deposited in a corner of the
+drawing-room. On the table in the drawing-room were the remains of a
+meal. Christine was thinking, carelessly and without apprehension, of
+what she should say to G.J. She would tell him that she had suddenly
+felt unwell. No! That would be silly. She would tell him that he
+really had not the right to ask her to meet such women as Aida and
+Alice. Had he no respect for her? Or she would tell him that Aida
+had obviously meant to attack her, and that the dance with Lieutenant
+Molder was simply a device to enable her to get away quietly and avoid
+all scandal in a resort where scandal was intensely deprecated. She
+could tell him fifty things, and he would have to accept whatever she
+chose to tell him. She was mystically happy in the incomparable marvel
+of the miracle, and in her care of the dull, unresponding man. Her
+heart yearned thankfully, devotedly, passionately to the Virgin of the
+VII Dolours.
+
+In the profound nocturnal silence broken only by the man's slow,
+regular breathing, she heard a sudden ring. It was the front-door bell
+ringing in the kitchen. The bell rang again and again obstinately.
+G.J.'s party was over, then, and he had arrived to make inquiries. She
+smiled, and did not move. After a few moments she could hear Marthe
+stirring. She sprang up, and then, cunningly considerate, slipped from
+under the bed-clothes as noiselessly and as smoothly as a snake, so
+that the man should not be disturbed. The two women met in the little
+hall, Christine in the immodesty of a lacy and diaphanous garment,
+and Marthe in a coarse cotton nightgown covered with a shawl. The bell
+rang once more, loudly, close to their ears.
+
+"Are you mad?" Christine whispered with fierceness. "Go back to bed.
+Let him ring."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 26
+
+THE RETURN
+
+
+It was afternoon in April, 1916. G.J. rang the right bell at the
+entrance of the London home of the Lechfords. Lechford House, designed
+about 1840 by an Englishman of genius who in this rare instance had
+found a patron with the wit to let him alone, was one of the finest
+examples of domestic architecture in the West End. Inspired by the
+formidable palaces of Rome and Florence, the artist had conceived
+a building in the style of the Italian renaissance, but modified,
+softened, chastened, civilised, to express the bland and yet haughty
+sobriety of the English climate and the English peerage. People
+without an eye for the perfect would have correctly described it as
+a large plain house in grey stone, of three storeys, with a width
+of four windows on either side of its black front door, a jutting
+cornice, and rather elaborate chimneys. It was, however, a masterpiece
+for the connoisseur, and foreign architects sometimes came with
+cards of admission to pry into it professionally. The blinds of its
+principal windows were down--not because of the war; they were often
+down, for at least four other houses disputed with Lechford House the
+honour of sheltering the Marquis and his wife and their sole surviving
+child. Above the roof a wire platform for the catching of bombs had
+given the mansion a somewhat ridiculous appearance, but otherwise
+Lechford House managed to look as though it had never heard of the
+European War.
+
+One half of the black entrance swung open, and a middle-aged gentleman
+dressed like Lord Lechford's stockbroker, but who was in reality his
+butler, said in answer to G.J.'s enquiry:
+
+"Lady Queenie is not at home, sir."
+
+"But it is five o'clock," protested G.J., suddenly sick of Queen's
+impudent unreliability. "And I have an appointment with her at five."
+
+The butler's face relaxed ever so little from its occupational
+inhumanity of a suet pudding; the spirit of compassion seemed to
+inform it for an instant.
+
+"Her ladyship went out about a quarter of an hour ago, sir."
+
+"When d'you think she'll be back?"
+
+The suet pudding was restored.
+
+"That I could not say, sir."
+
+"Damn the girl!" said G.J. to himself; and aloud: "Please tell her
+ladyship that I've called."
+
+"Mr. Hoape, is it not, sir?"
+
+"It is."
+
+By the force of his raisin eyes the butler held G.J. as he turned to
+descend the steps.
+
+"There's nobody at home, sir, except Mrs. Carlos Smith. Mrs. Carlos
+Smith is in Lady Queenie's apartments."
+
+"Mrs. Carlos Smith!" exclaimed G.J., who had not seen Concepcion for
+some seventeen months; nor heard from her for nearly as long, nor
+heard of her since the previous year.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Ask her if she can see me, will you?" said G.J. impetuously, after a
+slight pause.
+
+He stepped on to the tessellated pavement of the outer hall. On the
+raised tessellated pavement of the inner hall stood two meditative
+youngish footmen, possibly musing upon the problems of the
+intensification of the Military Service Act which were then exciting
+journalists and statesmen. Beyond was the renowned staircase, which,
+rising with insubstantial grace, lost itself in silvery altitude
+like the way to heaven. Presently G.J. was mounting the staircase and
+passing statues by Canova and Thorwaldsen, and portraits of which
+the heads had been painted by Lawrence and the hands and draperies
+by Lawrence's hireling, and huger canvasses on which the heads and
+breasts had been painted by Rubens and everything else by Rubens's
+regiment of hirelings. The guiding footman preceded him through a
+great chamber which he recognised as the drawing-room in its winding
+sheet, and then up a small and insignificant staircase; and G.J. was
+on ground strange to him, for never till then had he been higher than
+the first-floor in Lechford House.
+
+Lady Queenie's apartments did violence to G.J.'s sensibilities as an
+upholder of traditionalism in all the arts, of the theory that every
+sound movement in any art must derive from its predecessor. Some
+months earlier he had met for a few minutes the creative leader of the
+newest development in internal decoration, and he vividly remembered a
+saying of the grey-haired, slouch-hatted man: "At the present day
+the only people in the world with really vital perceptions about
+decoration are African niggers, and the only inspiring productions are
+the coloured cotton stuffs designed for the African native market."
+The remark had amused and stimulated him, but he had never troubled to
+go in search of examples of the inspiring influence of African taste
+on London domesticity. He now saw perhaps the supreme instance lodged
+in Lechford House, like a new and truculent state within a great
+Empire.
+
+Lady Queenie had imposed terms on her family, and under threats of
+rupture, of separation, of scandal, Lady Queenie's exotic nest had
+come into existence in the very fortress of unchangeable British
+convention. The phenomenon was a war phenomenon due to the war,
+begotten by the war; for Lady Queenie had said that if she was to
+do war-work without disaster to her sanity she must have the right
+environment. Thus the putting together of Lady Queenie's nest had
+proceeded concurrently with the building of national projectile
+factories and of square miles of offices for the girl clerks of
+ministries and departments of government.
+
+The footman left G.J. alone in a room designated the boudoir. G.J.
+resented the boudoir, because it was like nothing that he had
+ever witnessed. The walls were irregularly covered with rhombuses,
+rhomboids, lozenges, diamonds, triangles, and parallelograms; the
+carpet was treated likewise, and also the upholstery and the cushions.
+The colourings of the scene in their excessive brightness, crudity and
+variety surpassed G.J.'s conception of the possible. He had learned
+the value of colour before Queen was born, and in the Albany had
+translated principle into practice. But the hues of the boudoir made
+the gaudiest effects of Regency furniture appear sombre. The place
+resembled a gigantic and glittering kaleidoscope deranged and
+arrested.
+
+G.J.'s glance ran round the room like a hunted animal seeking escape,
+and found no escape. He was as disturbed as he might have been
+disturbed by drinking a liqueur on the top of a cocktail. Nevertheless
+he had to admit that some of the contrasts of pure colour were rather
+beautiful, even impressive; and he hated to admit it. He was aware of
+a terrible apprehension that he would never be the same man again, and
+that henceforth his own abode would be eternally stricken for him with
+the curse of insipidity. Regaining somewhat his nerve, he looked for
+pictures. There were no pictures. But every piece of furniture was
+painted with primitive sketches of human figures, or of flowers, or
+of vessels, or of animals. On the front of the mantelpiece were
+perversely but brilliantly depicted, with a high degree of finish,
+two nude, crouching women who gazed longingly at each other across the
+impassable semicircular abyss of the fireplace; and just above their
+heads, on a scroll, ran these words:
+
+"The ways of God are strange."
+
+He heard movements and a slight cough in the next room, the door
+leading to which was ajar. Concepcion's cough; he thought he
+recognised it. Five minutes ago he had had no notion of seeing her;
+now he was about to see her. And he felt excited and troubled, as much
+by the sudden violence of life as by the mere prospect of the meeting.
+After her husband's death Concepcion had soon withdrawn from London.
+A large engineering firm on the Clyde, one of the heads of which
+happened to be constitutionally a pioneer, was establishing a canteen
+for its workmen, and Concepcion, the tentacles of whose influence
+would stretch to any length, had decided that she ought to take up
+canteen work, and in particular the canteen work of just that firm.
+But first of all, to strengthen her prestige and acquire new prestige,
+she had gone to the United States, with a powerful introduction to
+Sears, Roebuck and Company of Chicago, in order to study industrial
+canteenism in its most advanced and intricate manifestations.
+Portraits of Concepcion in splendid furs on the deck of the steamer
+in the act of preparing to study industrial canteenism in its most
+advanced and intricate manifestations had appeared in the illustrated
+weeklies. The luxurious trip had cost several hundreds of pounds,
+but it was war expenditure, and, moreover, Concepcion had come into
+considerable sums of money through her deceased husband. Her return to
+Britain had never been published. Advertisements of Concepcion ceased.
+Only a few friends knew that she was in the most active retirement on
+the Clyde. G.J. had written to her twice but had obtained no replies.
+One fact he knew, that she had not had a child. Lady Queenie had not
+mentioned her; it was understood that the inseparables had quarrelled
+in the heroic manner and separated for ever.
+
+She entered the boudoir slowly. G.J. grew self-conscious, as it were
+because she was still the martyr of destiny and he was not. She wore a
+lavender-tinted gown of Queen's; he knew it was Queen's because he had
+seen precisely such a gown on Queen, and there could not possibly
+be another gown precisely like that very challenging gown. It suited
+Queen, but it did not suit Concepcion. She looked older; she was
+thirty-two, and might have been taken for thirty-five. She was
+very pale, with immense fatigued eyes; but her ridiculous nose had
+preserved all its originality. And she had the same slightly masculine
+air--perhaps somewhat intensified--with an added dignity. And G.J.
+thought: "She is as mysterious and unfathomable as I am myself." And
+he was impressed and perturbed.
+
+With a faint, sardonic smile, glancing at him as a physical equal
+from her unusual height (she was as tall as Lady Queenie), she said
+abruptly and casually:
+
+"Am I changed?"
+
+"No," he replied as abruptly and casually, clasping almost inimically
+her ringed hand--she was wearing Queenie's rings. "But you're tired.
+The journey, I suppose."
+
+"It's not that. We sat up till five o'clock this morning, talking."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Queen and I."
+
+"What did you do that for?"
+
+"Well, you see, we'd had the devil's own row--" She stopped, leaving
+his imagination to complete the picture of the meeting and the night
+talk.
+
+He smiled awkwardly--tried to be paternal, and failed.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"She never wanted me to leave London. I came back last night with only
+a handbag just as she was going out to dinner. She didn't go out to
+dinner. Queen is a white woman. Nobody knows how white Queen is. I
+didn't know myself until last night."
+
+There was a pause. G.J. said:
+
+"I had an appointment here with the white woman, on business."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Concepcion negligently. "She'll be home soon."
+
+Something infinitesimally malicious in the voice and gaze sent the
+singular idea shooting through his mind that Queen had gone out on
+purpose so that Concepcion might have him alone for a while. And he
+was wary of both of them, as he might have been of two pagan goddesses
+whom he, a poor defiant mortal, suspected of having laid an eye on him
+for their own ends.
+
+"_You've_ changed, anyhow," said Concepcion.
+
+"Older?"
+
+"No. Harder."
+
+He was startled, not displeased.
+
+"How--harder?"
+
+"More sure of yourself," said Concepcion, with a trace of the old
+harsh egotism in her tone. "It appears you're a perfect tyrant on the
+Lechford Committee now you're vice-chairman, and all the more footling
+members dread the days when you're in the chair. It appears also
+that you've really overthrown two chairmen, and yet won't take the
+situation yourself."
+
+He was still more startled, but now positively flattered by the
+world's estimate of his activities and individuality. He saw himself
+in a new light.
+
+"This what you were talking about until five a.m.?"
+
+The butler entered.
+
+"Shall I serve tea, Madam?"
+
+Concepcion looked at the man scornfully:
+
+"Yes."
+
+One of the minor stalwarts entered and arranged a table, and the other
+followed with a glittering, steaming tray in his hands, while
+the butler hovered like a winged hippopotamus over the operation.
+Concepcion half sat down by the table, and then, altering her mind,
+dropped on to a vast chaise-longue, as wide as a bed, and covered with
+as many cushions as would have stocked a cushion shop, which occupied
+the principal place in front of the hearth. The hem of her rich
+gown just touched the floor. G.J. could see that she was wearing the
+transparent deep-purple stockings that Queen wore with the transparent
+lavender gown. Her right shoulder rose high from the mass of the body,
+and her head was sunk between two cushions. Her voice came smothered
+from the cushions:
+
+"Damn it! G.J. Don't look at me like that."
+
+He was standing near the mantelpiece.
+
+"Why?" he exclaimed. "What's the matter, Con?"
+
+There was no answer. He lit a cigarette. The ebullient kettle kept
+lifting its lid in growing impatience. But Concepcion seemed to have
+forgotten the tea. G.J. had a thought, distinct like a bubble on a sea
+of thoughts, that if the tea was already made, as no doubt it was, it
+would soon be stewed. Concepcion said:
+
+"The matter is that I'm a ruined woman, and Queen can't understand."
+
+And in the bewildering voluptuous brightness and luxury of the room
+G.J. had the sensation of being a poor, baffled ghost groping in the
+night of existence. Concepcion's left arm slipped over the edge of
+the day-bed and hung limp and pale, the curved fingers touching the
+carpet.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 27
+
+THE CLYDE
+
+
+She was sitting up on the chaise-longue and had poured out the tea--he
+had pushed the tea-table towards the chaise-longue--and she was
+talking in an ordinary tone just as though she had not immodestly
+bared her spirit to him and as though she knew not that he realised
+she had done so. She was talking at length, as one who in the past had
+been well accustomed to giving monologues and to holding drawing-rooms
+in subjection while she chattered, and to making drawing-rooms feel
+glad that they had consented to subjection. She was saying:
+
+"You've no idea what the valley of the Clyde is now. You can't have.
+It's filled with girls, and they come into it every morning by train
+to huge stations specially built for them, and they make the most
+ghastly things for killing other girls' lovers all day, and they go
+back by train at night. Only some of them work all night. I had to
+leave my own works to organise the canteen of a new filling factory.
+Five thousand girls in that factory. It's frightfully dangerous. They
+have to wear special clothing. They have to take off every stitch from
+their bodies in one room, and run in their innocence and nothing else
+to another room where the special clothing is. That's the only way
+to prevent the whole place being blown up one beautiful day. But five
+thousand of them! You can't imagine it. You'd like to, G.J., but you
+can't. However, I didn't stay there very long. I wanted to go back to
+my own place. I was adored at my own place. Of course the men adored
+me. They used to fight about me sometimes. Terrific men. Nothing
+ever made me happier than that, or so happy. But the girls were more
+interesting. Two thousand of them there. You'd never guess it, because
+they were hidden in thickets of machinery. But see them rush out
+endlessly to the canteen for tea! All sorts. Lots of devils and cats.
+Some lovely creatures, heavenly creatures, as fine as a queen. They
+adored me too. They didn't at first, some of them. But they soon
+tumbled to it that I was the modern woman, and that they'd never
+seen me before, and it was a great discovery. Absurdly easy to
+raise yourself to be the idol of a crowd that fancies itself canny!
+Incredibly easy! I used to take their part against the works-manager
+as often as I could; he was a fiend; he hated me; but then I was a
+fiend, too, and I hated him more. I used often to come on at six in
+the morning, when they did, and 'sign on'. It isn't really signing on
+now at all; there's a clock dial and a whole machine for catching
+you out. They loved to see me doing that. And I worked the lathes
+sometimes, just for a bit, just to show that I wasn't ashamed to work.
+Etc.... All that sentimental twaddle. It pleased them. And if any
+really vigorous-minded girl had dared to say it was sentimental
+twaddle, there would have been a crucifixion or something of the sort
+in the cloak-rooms. The mob's always the same. But what pleased them
+far more than anything was me knowing them by their Christian names.
+Not all, of course; still, hundreds of them. Marvellous feats of
+memorising I did! I used to go about muttering under my breath:
+'Winnie, wart on left hand, Winnie, wart on left hand, wart on left
+hand, Winnie.' You see? And I've sworn at them--not often; it wouldn't
+do, naturally. But there was scarcely a woman there that I couldn't
+simply blast in two seconds if I felt like it. On the other hand, I
+assure you I could be very tender. I was surprised how tender I could
+be, now and then, in my little office. They'd tell me anything--sounds
+sentimental, but they would--and some of them had no more notion
+that there's such a thing on earth as propriety than a monkey has. I
+thought I knew everything before I went to the Clyde valley. Well,
+I didn't." Concepcion looked at G.J. "You know you're very innocent,
+G.J., compared to me."
+
+"I should hope so!" said G.J., impenetrably.
+
+"What do you think of it all?" she demanded in a fresh tone, leaning a
+little towards him.
+
+He replied: "I'm impressed."
+
+He was, in fact, very profoundly impressed; but he had to illustrate
+the hardness in himself which she had revealed to him. (He wondered
+whether the members of the Lechford Committee really did credit him
+with having dethroned a couple of chairmen. The idea was new to his
+modesty. Perhaps he had been underestimating his own weight on the
+committee. No doubt he had.) All constraint was now dissipated between
+Concepcion and himself. They were behaving to each other as though
+their intimacy had never been interrupted for a single week. She
+amazed him, sitting there in the purple stockings and the affronting
+gown, and he admired. Her material achievement alone was prodigious.
+He pictured her as she rose in the winter dark and in the summer dawn
+to go to the works and wrestle with so much incalculable human nature
+and so many complex questions of organisation, day after day, week
+after week, month after month, for nearly eighteen months. She had
+kept it up; that was the point. She had shown what she was made of,
+and what she was made of was unquestionably marvellous.
+
+He would have liked to know about various things to which she had made
+no reference. Did she live in a frowsy lodging-house near the great
+works? What kind of food did she get? What did she do with her
+evenings and her Sundays? Was she bored? Was she miserable or
+exultant? Had she acquaintances, external interests; or did she
+immerse herself completely, inclusively, in the huge, smoking,
+whirring, foul, perilous hell which she had described? The
+contemplation of the horror of the hell gave him--and her, too, he
+thought--a curious feeling which was not unpleasurable. It had
+savour. He would not, however, inquire from her concerning details.
+He preferred, on reflection, to keep the details mysterious, as
+mysterious as her individuality and as the impression of her worn
+eyes. The setting of mystery in his mind suited her.
+
+He said: "But of course your relations with those girls were
+artificial, after all."
+
+"No, they weren't. I tell you the girls were perfectly open; there
+wasn't the slightest artificiality."
+
+"Yes, but were you open, to them? Did you ever tell them anything
+about yourself, for instance?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Did they ever ask you to?"
+
+"No! They wouldn't have thought of doing so."
+
+"That's what I call artificiality. By the way, how have you been
+ruined? Who ruined you? Was it the hated works-manager?" There had
+been no change in his tone; he spoke with the utmost detachment.
+
+"I was coming to that," answered Concepcion, apparently with a
+detachment equal to his. "Last week but one in one of the shops there
+was a girl standing in front of a machine, with her back to it. About
+twenty-two--you must see her in your mind--about twenty-two, nice
+chestnut hair. Cap over it, of course--that's the rule. Khaki overalls
+and trousers. Rather high-heeled patent-leather boots--they fancy
+themselves, thank God!--and a bit of lace showing out of the khaki at
+the neck. Red cheeks; she was fairly new to the works. Do you see her?
+She meant to be one of the devils. Earning two pounds a week nearly,
+and eagerly spending it all. Fully awake to all the possibilities of
+her body. I was in the shop. I said something to her, and she didn't
+hear at first--the noise of some of the shops is shattering. I went
+close to her and repeated it. She laughed out of mere vivacity, and
+threw back her head as people do when they laugh. The machine behind
+her must have caught some hair that wasn't under her cap. All her hair
+was dragged from under the cap, and in no time all her hair was torn
+out and the whole of her scalp ripped clean off. In a second or two I
+got her on to a trolley--I did it--and threw an overall over her and
+ran her to the dressing-station, close to the main office entrance.
+There was a car there. One of the directors was just driving off.
+I stopped him. It wasn't a case for our dressing-station. In three
+minutes I had her at the hospital--three minutes. The car was soaked
+in blood. But she didn't lose consciousness, that child didn't. She's
+dead now. She's buried. Her body that she meant to use so profusely
+for her own delights is squeezed up in the little black box in the
+dark and the silence, down below where the spring can't get at it....
+I had no sleep for two nights. On the second day a doctor at the
+hospital said that I must take at least three months' holiday. He said
+I'd had a nervous breakdown. I didn't know I had, and I don't know
+now. I said I wouldn't take any holiday, and that nothing would induce
+me to."
+
+"Why, Con?"
+
+"Because I'd sworn, absolutely sworn to myself, to stick that job till
+the war was over. You understand, I'd sworn it. Well, they wouldn't
+let me on to the works. And yesterday one of the directors brought
+me up to town himself. He was very kind, in his Clyde way. Now you
+understand what I mean when I say I'm ruined. I'm ruined with myself,
+you see. I didn't stick it. I couldn't. But there were twenty or
+thirty girls who saw the accident. They're sticking it."
+
+"Yes," he said in a voice soft and moved, "I understand." And while
+he spoke thus aloud, though his emotion was genuine, and his desire to
+comfort and sustain her genuine, and his admiration for her genuine,
+he thought to himself: "How theatrically she told it! Every effect
+was studied, nearly every word. Well, she can't help it. But does she
+imagine I can't see that all the casualness was deliberately part of
+the effect?"
+
+She lit a cigarette and leaned her half-draped elbows on the
+tea-table, and curved her ringed fingers, which had withstood time and
+fatigue much better than her face; and then she reclined again on the
+chaise-longue, on her back, and sent up smoke perpendicularly, and
+through the smoke seemed to be trying to decipher the enigmas of the
+ceiling. G.J. rose and stood over her in silence. At last she went on:
+
+"The work those girls do is excruciating, hellish, and they don't
+realise it. That's the worst of it. They'll never be the same again.
+They're ruining their health, and, what's more important, their looks.
+You can see them changing under your eyes. Ours was the best factory
+on the Clyde, and the conditions were unspeakable, in spite of
+canteens, and rest-rooms, and libraries, and sanitation, and all this
+damned 'welfare'. Fancy a girl chained up for twelve hours every day
+to a thundering, whizzing, iron machine that never gets tired. The
+machine's just as fresh at six o'clock at night as it was at six
+o'clock in the morning, and just as anxious to maim her if she doesn't
+look out for herself--more anxious. The whole thing's still going on;
+they're at it now, this very minute. You're interested in a factory,
+aren't you, G.J.?"
+
+"Yes," he answered gently, but looked with seemingly callous firmness
+down at her.
+
+"The Reveille Company, or some such name."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Making tons of money, I hear."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're a profiteer, G.J."
+
+"I'm not. Long since I decided I must give away all my extra profits."
+
+"Ever go and look at your factory?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Any nice young girls working there?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"If there are, are they decently treated?"
+
+"Don't know that, either."
+
+"Why don't you go and see?"
+
+"It's no business of mine."
+
+"Yes, it is. Aren't you making yourself glorious as a philanthropist
+out of the thing?"
+
+"I tell you it's no business of mine," he insisted evenly. "I couldn't
+do anything if I went. I've no status."
+
+"Rotten system."
+
+"Possibly. But systems can't be altered like that. Systems alter
+themselves, and they aren't in a hurry about it. This system isn't
+new, though it's new to you."
+
+"You people in London don't know what work is."
+
+"And what about your Clyde strikes?" G.J. retorted.
+
+"Well, all that's settled now," said Concepcion rather uneasily, like
+a champion who foresees a fight but lacks confidence.
+
+"Yes, but--" G.J. suddenly altered his tone to the persuasive: "You
+must know all about those strikes. What was the real cause? We don't
+understand them here."
+
+"If you really want to know--nerves," she said earnestly and
+triumphantly.
+
+"Nerves?"
+
+"Overwork. No rest. No change. Everlasting punishment. The one
+incomprehensible thing to me is that the whole of Glasgow didn't go on
+strike and stay out for ever."
+
+"There's just as much overwork in London as there is on the Clyde."
+
+"There's a lot more talking--Parliament, Cabinet, Committees. You
+should hear what they say about it in Glasgow."
+
+"Con," he said kindly, "you don't suspect it, but you're childish.
+It's the job of one part of London to talk. If that part of London
+didn't talk your tribes on the Clyde couldn't work, because they
+wouldn't know what to do, nor how to do it. Talking has to come
+before working, and let me tell you it's more difficult, and it's more
+killing, because it's more responsible. Excuse this common sense made
+easy for beginners, but you brought it on yourself."
+
+She frowned. "And what do you do? Do you talk or work?" She smiled.
+
+"I'll tell you this!" said he, smiling candidly and benevolently. "It
+took me a dickens of a time really to _put_ myself into anything that
+meant steady effort. I'd lost the habit. Natural enough, and I'm not
+going into sackcloth about it. However, I'm improving. I'm going
+to take on the secretaryship of the Lechford Committee. Some of 'em
+mayn't want me, but they'll have to have me. And when they've got
+me they'll have to look out. All of them, including Queen and her
+mother."
+
+"Will it take the whole of your time?"
+
+"Yes. I'm doing three days a week now."
+
+"I suppose you think you've beaten me."
+
+"Con, I do ask you not to be a child."
+
+"But I am a child. Why don't you humour me? You know I've had a
+nervous breakdown. You used to humour me."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Humouring you won't do _your_ nervous breakdown any good. It might
+some women's--but not yours."
+
+"You shall humour me!" she cried. "I haven't told you half my ruin.
+Do you know I meant to love Carly all my life. I felt sure I should.
+Well, I can't! It's gone, all that feeling--already! In less than two
+years! And now I'm only sorry for him and sorry for myself. Isn't it
+horrible? Isn't it horrible?"
+
+"Try not to think," he murmured.
+
+She sat up impetuously.
+
+"Don't talk such damned nonsense! 'Try not to think'! Why, my
+frightful unhappiness is the one thing that keeps me alive."
+
+"Yes," G.J. yielded. "It was nonsense."
+
+She sank back. He saw moisture in her eyes and felt it in his own.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 28
+
+SALOME
+
+
+Lady Queenie arrived in haste, as though relentless time had pursued
+her up the stairs.
+
+"Why, you're in the dark here!" she exclaimed impatiently, and
+impatiently switched on several lights. "Sorry I'm late, G.J.," she
+said perfunctorily, without taking any trouble to put conviction into
+her voice. "How have you two been getting on?"
+
+She looked at Concepcion and G.J. in a peculiar way, inquisitorial and
+implicatory.
+
+Then, towards the door:
+
+"Come in, come in, Dialin."
+
+A young soldier with the stripe of a lance-corporal entered, slightly
+nervous and slightly defiant.
+
+"And you, Miss I-forget-your-name."
+
+A young woman entered; she had very red lips and very high heels, and
+was both more nervous and more defiant than the young soldier.
+
+"This is Mr. Dialin, you know, Con, second ballet-master at the
+Ottoman. I met him by sheer marvellous chance. He's only got ten
+minutes; he hasn't really got that; but he's going to see me do my
+Salome dance."
+
+Lady Queenie made no attempt to introduce Miss I-forget-your-name, who
+of her own accord took a chair with a curious, dashed effrontery. It
+appeared that she was attached to Mr. Dialin. Lady Queenie cast off
+rapidly gloves, hat and coat, and then, having rushed to the bell and
+rung it fiercely several times, came back to the chaise-longue and
+gazed at it and at the surrounding floor.
+
+"Would you mind, Con?"
+
+Concepcion rose. Lady Queenie, rushing off again, pushed several more
+switches, and from a thick cluster of bulbs in front of a large mirror
+at the end of the room there fell dazzling sheets of light. A footman
+presented himself.
+
+"Push the day-bed right away towards the window," she commanded.
+
+The footman inclined and obeyed, and the lance-corporal superiorly
+helped him. Then the footman was told to energise the gramophone,
+which in its specially designed case stood in a corner. The footman
+seemed to be on intimate terms with the gramophone. Meanwhile Lady
+Queenie, with a safety-pin, was fastening the back hem of her short
+skirt to the front between the knees. Still bending, she took her
+shoes off. Her scent impregnated the room.
+
+"You see, it will be barefoot," she explained to Mr. Dialin.
+
+The walls of London were already billed with an early announcement of
+the marvels of the Pageant of Terpsichore, which was to occur at the
+Albert Hall, under the superintendence of the greatest modern English
+painters, in aid of a fund for soldiers disabled by deafness. The
+performers were all ladies of the upper world, ladies bearing names
+for the most part as familiar as the names of streets--and not a
+stage-star among them. Amateurism was to be absolutely untainted by
+professionalism in the prodigious affair; therefore the prices of
+tickets ruled high, and queens had conferred their patronage.
+
+Lady Queenie removed several bracelets and a necklace, and, seizing a
+plate, deposited it on the carpet.
+
+"That piece of bread-and-butter," she said, "is the head of my beloved
+John."
+
+The clever footman started the gramophone, and Lady Queenie began
+to dance. The lance-corporal walked round her, surveying her at all
+angles, watching her like a tiger, imitating movements, suggesting
+movements, sketching emotions with his arm, raising himself at
+intervals on the toes of his thick boots. After a few moments
+Concepcion glanced at G.J., conveying to him a passionate, adoring
+admiration of Queen's talent.
+
+G.J., startled by her brightened eyes so suddenly full of temperament,
+nodded to please her. But the fact was that he saw naught to admire in
+the beautiful and brazen amateur's performance. He wondered that she
+could not have discovered something more original than to follow the
+footsteps of Maud Allan in a scene which years ago had become stale.
+He wondered that, at any rate, Concepcion should not perceive the
+poor, pretentious quality of the girlish exhibition. And as he looked
+at the mincing Dialin he pictured the lance-corporal helping to serve
+a gun. And as he looked at the youthful, lithe Queenie posturing in
+the shower-bath of rays amid the blazing chromatic fantasy of the
+room, and his nostrils twitched to her pungent perfume, he pictured
+the reverberating shell-factory on the Clyde where girls had their
+scalps torn off by unappeasable machinery, and the filling-factory
+where five thousand girls stripped themselves naked in order to lessen
+the danger of being blown to bits.... After a climax of capering
+Queen fell full length on her stomach upon the carpet, her soft chin
+accurately adjusted to the edge of the plate. The music ceased. The
+gramophone gnashed on the disc until the footman lifted its fang.
+
+Miss I-forget-your-name raised both her feet from the floor, stuck her
+legs out in a straight, slanting line, and condescendingly clapped.
+Then, seeing that Queen was worrying the piece of bread-and-butter
+with her teeth, she exclaimed in agitation:
+
+"Ow my!"
+
+Mr. Dialin assisted the breathless Queen to rise, and they went off
+into a corner and he talked to her in low tones. Soon he looked at his
+wrist-watch and caught the summoning eye of Miss I-forget-your-name.
+
+"But it's pretty all right, isn't it?" said Queen.
+
+"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" he soothed her with an expert's casualness.
+"Naturally, you want to work it up. You fell beautifully. Now you go
+and see Crevelli--he's the man."
+
+"I shall get him to come here. What's his address?"
+
+"I don't know. He's just moved. But you'll see it in the April number
+of _The Dancing Times_."
+
+As the footman was about to escort Mr. Dialin and his urgent lady
+downstairs Queen ordered:
+
+"Bring me up a whisky-and-soda."
+
+"It's splendid, Queen," said Concepcion enthusiastically when the two
+were alone with G.J.
+
+"I'm so glad you think so, darling. How are you, darling?" She kissed
+the older woman affectionately, fondly, on the lips, and then gave
+G.J. a challenging glance.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, and called out very loud: "Robin! I want you at
+once."
+
+The secretarial Miss Robinson, carrying a note-book, appeared like
+magic from the inner room.
+
+"Get me the April number of _The Dancing News_."
+
+"_Times_," G.J. corrected.
+
+"Well, _Times_. It's all the same. And write to Mr. Opson and say
+that we really must have proper dressing-room accommodation. It's most
+important."
+
+"Yes, your ladyship. Your ladyship has the sub-committee as to
+entrance arrangements for the public at half-past six."
+
+"I shan't go. Telephone to them. I've got quite enough to do without
+that. I'm utterly exhausted. Don't forget about _The Dancing Times_
+and to write to Mr. Opson."
+
+"Yes, your ladyship."
+
+"G.J.," said Queen after Robin had gone, "you are a pig if you don't
+go on that sub-committee as to entrance arrangements. You know what
+the Albert Hall is. They'll make a horrible mess of it, and it's just
+the sort of thing you can do better than anybody."
+
+"Yes. But a pig I am," answered G.J. firmly. Then he added: "I'll tell
+you how you might have avoided all these complications."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By having no pageant and simply going round collecting subscriptions.
+Nobody would have refused you. And there'd have been no expenses to
+come off the total."
+
+Lady Queenie put her lips together.
+
+"Has he been behaving in this style to you, Con?"
+
+"A little--now and then," said Concepcion.
+
+Later, when the chaise-longue and Queen's shoes had been replaced, and
+the tea-things and the head of John the Baptist taken away, and
+all the lights extinguished save one over the mantelpiece, and Lady
+Queenie had nearly finished the whisky-and-soda, and nothing remained
+of the rehearsal except the safety-pin between Lady Queenie's knees,
+G.J. was still waiting for her to bethink herself of the Hospitals
+subject upon which he had called by special request and appointment
+to see her. He took oath not to mention it first. Shortly afterwards,
+stiff in his resolution, he departed.
+
+In three minutes he was in the smoking-room of his club, warming
+himself at a fine, old, huge, wasteful grate, in which burned such
+a coal fire as could not have been seen in France, Italy, Germany,
+Austria, Russia, nor anywhere on the continent of Europe. The war had
+as yet changed nothing in the impregnable club, unless it was that
+ordinary matches had recently been substituted for the giant matches
+on which the club had hitherto prided itself. The hour lay neglected
+midway between tea and dinner, and there were only two other members
+in the vast room--solitaries, each before his own grand fire.
+
+G.J. took up _The Times_, which his duties had prevented him from
+reading at large in the morning. He wandered with a sense of ease
+among its multifarious pages, and, in full leisure, brought his
+information up to date concerning the state of the war and of the
+country. Air-raids by Zeppelins were frequent, and some authorities
+talked magniloquently about the "defence of London." Hundreds of
+people had paid immense sums for pictures and objects of art at the
+Red Cross Sale at Christie's, one of the most successful social events
+of the year. The House of Commons was inquisitive about Mesopotamia
+as a whole, and one British Army was still trying to relieve another
+British Army besieged in Kut. German submarine successes were
+obviously disquieting. The supply of beer was reduced. There were to
+be forty principal aristocratic dancers in the Pageant of Terpsichore.
+The Chancellor of the Exchequer had budgeted for five hundred
+millions, and was very proud. The best people were at once proud and
+scared of the new income tax at 5s. in the L. They expressed the
+fear that such a tax would kill income or send it to America. The
+theatrical profession was quite sure that the amusements tax would
+involve utter ruin for the theatrical profession, and the match trade
+was quite sure that the match tax would put an end to matches, and
+some unnamed modest individuals had apparently decided that the travel
+tax must and forthwith would be dropped. The story of the evacuation
+of Gallipoli had grown old and tedious. Cranks were still vainly
+trying to prove to the blunt John Bullishness of the Prime Minister
+that the Daylight Saving Bill was not a piece of mere freak
+legislation. The whole of the West End and all the inhabitants of
+country houses in Britain had discovered a new deity in Australia
+and spent all their spare time and lungs in asserting that all other
+deities were false and futile; his earthly name was Hughes. Jan Smuts
+was fighting in the primeval forests of East Africa. The Germans were
+discussing their war aims; and on the Verdun front they had reached
+Mort Homme in the usual way, that was, according to the London Press,
+by sacrificing more men than any place could possibly be worth; still,
+they had reached Mort Homme. And though our losses and the French
+losses were everywhere--one might assert, so to speak--negligible,
+nevertheless the steadfast band of thinkers and fact-facers who held
+a monopoly of true patriotism were extremely anxious to extend the
+Military Service Act, so as to rope into the Army every fit male in
+the island except themselves.
+
+The pages of _The Times_ grew semi-transparent, and G.J. descried
+Concepcion moving mysteriously in a mist behind them. Only then did he
+begin effectively to realise her experiences and her achievement and
+her ordeal on the distant, romantic Clyde. He said to himself: "I
+could never have stood what she has stood." She was a terrific
+woman; but because she was such a mixture of the mad-heroic and the
+silly-foolish, he rather condescended to her. She lacked what he was
+sure he possessed, and what he prized beyond everything--poise. And
+had she truly had a nervous breakdown, or was that fancy? Did she
+truly despair of herself as a ruined woman, doubly ruined, or was
+she acting a part, as much in order to impress herself as in order to
+impress others? He thought the country and particularly its Press,
+was somewhat like Concepcion as a complex. He condescended to Queenie
+also, not bitterly, but with sardonic pity. There she was, unalterable
+by any war, instinctively and ruthlessly working out her soul and her
+destiny. The country was somewhat like Queenie too. But, of course,
+comparison between Queenie and Concepcion was absurd. He had had to
+defend himself to Concepcion. And had he not defended himself?
+
+True, he had begun perhaps too slowly to work for the war; however,
+he had begun. What else could he have done beyond what he had done?
+Become a special constable? Grotesque. He simply could not see himself
+as a special constable, and if the country could not employ him more
+usefully than in standing on guard over an electricity works or a
+railway bridge in the middle of the night, the country deserved to
+lose his services. Become a volunteer? Even more grotesque. Was he, a
+man turned fifty, to dress up and fall flat on the ground at the
+word of some fantastic jackanapes, or stare into vacancy while some
+inspecting general examined his person as though it were a tailor's
+mannikin? He had tried several times to get into a Government
+department which would utilise his brains, but without success. And
+the club hummed with the unimaginable stories related by disappointed
+and dignified middle-aged men whose too eager patriotism had been
+rendered ridiculous by the vicious foolery of Government departments.
+No! He had some work to do and he was doing it. People were looking
+to him for decision, for sagacity, for initiative; he supplied these
+things. His work might grow even beyond his expectations; but if it
+did not he should not worry. He felt that, unfatigued, he could and
+would contribute to the mass of the national resolution in the latter
+and more racking half of the war.
+
+Morally, he was profiting by the war. Nay, more, in a deep sense he
+was enjoying it. The immensity of it, the terror of it, the idiocy
+of it, the splendour of it, its unique grandeur as an illustration of
+human nature, thrilled the spectator in him. He had little fear for
+the result. The nations had measured themselves; the factors of the
+equation were known. Britain conceivably might not win, but she could
+never lose. And he did not accept the singular theory that unless she
+won this war another war would necessarily follow. He had, in spite
+of all, a pretty good opinion of mankind, and would not exaggerate
+its capacity for lunatic madness. The worst was over when Paris was
+definitely saved. Suffering would sink and die like a fire. Privations
+were paid for day by day in the cash of fortitude. Taxes would always
+be met. A whole generation, including himself, would rapidly vanish
+and the next would stand in its place. And at worst, the path of
+evolution was unchangeably appointed. A harsh, callous philosophy.
+Perhaps.
+
+What impressed him, and possibly intimidated him beyond anything else
+whatever, was the onset of the next generation. He thought of Queenie,
+of Mr. Dialin, of Miss I-forget-your-name, of Lieutenant Molder. How
+unconsciously sure of themselves and arrogant in their years! How
+strong! How unapprehensive! (And yet he had just been taking credit
+for his own freedom from apprehensiveness!) They were young--and he
+was so no longer. Pooh! (A brave "pooh"!) He was wiser than they. He
+had acquired the supreme and subtly enjoyable faculty, which they had
+yet painfully to acquire, of nice, sure, discriminating, all-weighing
+judgment ... Concepcion had divested herself of youth. And Christine,
+since he knew her, had never had any youthfulness save the physical.
+There were only these two.
+
+Said a voice behind him:
+
+"You dining here to-night?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Shall we crack a bottle together?" (It was astonishing and deplorable
+how cliches survived in the best clubs!)
+
+"By all means."
+
+The voice spoke lower:
+
+"That Bollinger's all gone at last."
+
+"You were fearing the worst the last time I saw you," said G.J.
+
+"Auction afterwards?" the voice suggested.
+
+"Afraid I can't," said G.J. after a moment's hesitation. "I shall have
+to leave early."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 29
+
+THE STREETS
+
+
+After dinner G.J. walked a little eastwards from the club, and,
+entering Leicester Square from the south, crossed it, and then turned
+westwards again on the left side of the road leading to Piccadilly
+Circus. It was about the time when Christine usually went from her
+flat to her Promenade. Without admitting a definite resolve to see
+Christine that evening he had said to himself that he would rather
+like to see her, or that he wouldn't mind seeing her, and that he
+might, if the mood took him, call at Cork Street and catch her before
+she left. Having advanced thus far in the sketch of his intentions,
+he had decided that it would be a pity not to take precautions to
+encounter her in the street, assuming that she had already started but
+had not reached the theatre. The chance of meeting her on her way
+was exceedingly small; nevertheless he would not miss it. Hence his
+roundabout route; and hence his selection of the chaste as against
+the unchaste pavement of Coventry Street. He knew very little
+of Christine's professional arrangements, but he did know, from
+occasional remarks of hers, that owing to the need for economy and the
+difficulty of finding taxis she now always walked to the Promenade on
+dry nights, and that from a motive of self-respect she always took
+the south side of Piccadilly and the south side of Coventry Street in
+order to avoid the risk of ever being mistaken for something which she
+was not.
+
+It was a dry night, but very cloudy. Points of faint illumination,
+mysteriously travelling across the heavens and revealing the
+otherwise invisible cushioned surface of the clouds, alone showed that
+searchlights were at their work of watching over the heedless town.
+Entertainments had drawn in the people from the streets; motor-buses
+were half empty; implacable parcels-vans, with thin, exhausted boys
+scarcely descried on their rear perches, forced the more fragile
+traffic to yield place to them. Footfarers were few, except on the
+north side of Coventry Street, where officers, soldiers, civilians,
+police and courtesans marched eternally to and fro, peering at one
+another in the thick gloom that, except in the immediate region of
+a lamp, put all girls, the young and the ageing, the pretty and
+the ugly, the good-natured and the grasping, on a sinister enticing
+equality. And they were all, men and women and vehicles, phantoms
+flitting and murmuring and hooting in the darkness. And the violet
+glow-worms that hung in front of theatres and cinemas seemed to mark
+the entrances to unimaginable fastnesses, and the side streets seemed
+to lead to the precipitous edges of the universe where nothing was.
+
+G.J. recognised Christine just beyond the knot of loiterers at the
+Piccadilly Tube. The improbable had happened. She was walking at what
+was for her a rather quick pace, purposeful and preoccupied. For an
+instant the recognition was not mutual; he liked the uninviting stare
+that she gave him as he stopped.
+
+"It is thou?" she exclaimed, and her dimly-seen face softened suddenly
+into a delighted, adoring smile.
+
+He was moved by the passion which she still had for him. He felt
+vaguely and yet acutely an undischarged obligation in regard to
+her. It was the first time he had met her in such circumstances. A
+constraint fell between them. In five minutes she would have been in
+her Promenade engaged upon her highly technical business, displaying
+her attractions while appearing to protect herself within a virginal
+timidity (for this was her natural method). In any case, even had
+he not set forth on purpose to find her, he could scarcely have
+accompanied her to the doors of the theatre and there left her to the
+night's routine. They both hesitated, and then, without a word, he
+turned aside and she followed close, acquiescent by training and by
+instinct. Knowing his sure instinct for what was proper, she knew at
+once that hazard had saved her from the night's routine, and she was
+full of quiet triumph. He, of course, though absolutely loyal to her,
+had for dignity's sake to practise the duplicity of pretending to make
+up his mind what he should do.
+
+They went through the Tube station and were soon in one of the
+withdrawn streets between Coventry Street and Pall Mall East. The
+episode had somehow the air of an adventure. He looked at her; the
+hat was possibly rather large, but, in truth, she was the image of
+refinement, delicacy, virtue, virtuous surrender. He thought it was
+marvellous that there should exist such a woman as she. And he thought
+how marvellous was the protective vastness of the town, beneath whose
+shield he was free--free to live different lives simultaneously, to
+make his own laws, to maintain indefinitely exciting and delicious
+secrecies. Not half a mile off were Concepcion and Queen, and his
+amour was as safe from them as if he had hidden it in the depths of
+some hareemed Asiatic city.
+
+Christine said politely:
+
+"But I detain thee?"
+
+"As for that," he replied, "what does that matter, after all?"
+
+"Thou knowest," she said in a new tone, "I am all that is most
+worried. In this London they are never willing to leave you in peace."
+
+"What is it, my poor child?" he asked benevolently.
+
+"They talk of closing the Promenade," she answered.
+
+"Never!" he murmured easily, reassuringly.
+
+He remembered the night years earlier when, as a protest against some
+restrictive action of a County Council, the theatre of varieties whose
+Promenade rivalled throughout the whole world even the Promenade of
+the Folies-Bergere, shut its doors and darkened its blazing facade,
+and the entire West End seemed to go into a kind of shocked mourning.
+But the next night the theatre had reopened as usual and the Promenade
+had been packed. Close the Promenades! Absurd! Not the full bench
+of archbishops and bishops could close the Promenades! The thing was
+inconceivable, especially in war-time, when human nature was so human.
+
+"But it is quite serious!" she cried. "Everyone speaks of it.... What
+idiots! What frightful lack of imagination! And how unjust! What do
+they suppose we are going to do, we other women? Do they intend to put
+respectable women like me on to the pavement? It is a fantastic idea!
+Fantastic!... And the night-clubs closing too!"
+
+"There is always the other place."
+
+"The Ottoman? Do not speak to me of the Ottoman. Moreover, that also
+will be suppressed. They are all mad." She gave a great sigh. "Oh!
+What a fool I was to leave Paris! After all, in Paris, they know what
+it is, life! However, I weary thee. Let us say no more about it."
+
+She controlled her agitation. The subject was excessively delicate,
+and that she should have expressed herself so violently on it
+showed the powerful reality of the emotion it had aroused in her.
+Unquestionably the decency of her livelihood was at stake. She had
+convinced him of the peril. But what could he say? He could not say,
+"Do not despair. You are indispensable; therefore you will not be
+dispensed with. These crises have often arisen before, and they always
+end in the same manner. And are there not the big hotels, the chic
+cinemas, certain restaurants? Not to mention the clientele which you
+must have made for yourself?" Such remarks were impossible. But not
+more impossible than the very basis of his relations with her. He was
+aware again of the weight of an undischarged obligation to her. His
+behaviour towards her had always been perfection, and yet was she not
+his creditor? He had a conscience, and it was illogical and extremely
+inconvenient.
+
+At that moment a young man flew along the silent, shadowed street, and
+as he passed them shouted somewhat hysterically the one word:
+
+"Zepps!"
+
+Christine clutched his arm. They stood still.
+
+"Do not be frightened," said G.J. with perfect tranquillity.
+
+"But I hear guns," she protested.
+
+He, too, heard the distant sounds of guns, and it occurred to him that
+the sounds had begun earlier, while they were talking.
+
+"I expect it's only anti-aircraft practice," he replied. "I seem to
+remember seeing a warning in the paper about there being practice one
+of these nights."
+
+Christine, increasing the pressure on his arm and apparently trying to
+drag him away, complained:
+
+"They ought to give warning of raids. That is elementary. This country
+is so bizarre."
+
+"Oh!" said G.J., full of wisdom and standing his ground. "That would
+never do. Warnings would make panics, and they wouldn't help in the
+least. We are just as safe here as anywhere. Even supposing there
+is an air-raid, the chance of any particular spot being hit must be
+several million to one against. And I don't think for a moment there
+is an air-raid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, I don't," G.J. answered with calm superiority. The fact was
+that he did not know why he thought there was not an air-raid.
+To assume that there was not an air-raid, in the absence of proof
+positive of the existence of an air-raid, was with him constitutional:
+a state of mind precisely as illogical, biased and credulous as the
+alarmist mood which he disdained in others. Also he was lacking in
+candour, for after a few seconds the suspicion crept into his mind
+that there might indeed be an air-raid--and he would not utter it.
+
+"In any case," said Christine, "they always give warning in Paris."
+
+He thought:
+
+"I'd better get this woman home," and said aloud: "Come along."
+
+"But is it safe?" she asked anxiously.
+
+He saw that she was the primeval woman, exactly like Concepcion and
+Queen. First she wanted to run, and then when he was ready to run
+she asked: "Is it safe?" And he felt very indulgent and comfortably
+masculine. He admitted that it would be absurd to expect the conduct
+of a frightened Christine to be governed by the operations of reason.
+He was not annoyed, because personally he simply did not care a whit
+whether they moved or not. While they were hesitating a group of
+people came round the corner. These people were talking loudly, and
+as they approached G.J. discerned that one of them was pointing to the
+sky.
+
+"There she is! There she is!" shouted an eager voice. Seeing more
+human society in G.J. and Christine, the group stopped near them.
+
+G.J. gazed in the indicated direction, and lo! there was a point of
+light in the sky.
+
+And then guns suddenly began to sound much nearer.
+
+"What did I tell you?" said another voice. "I told you they'd cleared
+the corner at the bottom of St. James's Street for a gun. Now they've
+got her going. Good for us they're shooting southwards."
+
+Christine was shaking on G.J.'s arm.
+
+"It's all right! It's all right!" he murmured compassionately, and she
+tightened her clutch on him in thanks.
+
+He looked hard at the point of light, which might have been anything.
+The changing forms of thin clouds continually baffled the vision.
+
+"By god!" shouted the first voice. "She's hit. See her stagger? She's
+hit. She'll blaze up in a moment. One down last week. Another this.
+Look at her now. She's afire."
+
+The group gave a weak cheer.
+
+Then the clouds cleared for an instant and revealed a crescent. G.J.
+said:
+
+"That's the moon, you idiots. It's not a Zeppelin."
+
+Even as he spoke he wondered, and regretted, that he should be calling
+them idiots. They were complete strangers to him. The group vanished,
+crestfallen, round another corner. G.J. laughed to Christine. Then the
+noise of guns was multiplied. That he was with Christine in the midst
+of an authentic air-raid could no longer be doubted. He was conscious
+of the wine he had drunk at the club. He had the sensation of human
+beings, men like himself, who ate and drank and laced their boots,
+being actually at that moment up there in the sky with intent to
+kill him and Christine. It was a marvellous sensation, terrible but
+exquisite. And he had the sensation of other human beings beyond the
+sea, giving deliberate orders in German for murder, murdering for
+their lives; and they, too, were like himself, and ate and drank and
+either laced their boots or had them laced daily. And the staggering
+apprehension of the miraculous lunacy of war swept through his soul.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 30
+
+THE CHILD'S ARM
+
+
+"You see," he said to Christine, "it was not a Zeppelin.... We shall
+be quite safe here."
+
+But in that last phrase he had now confessed to her the existence
+of an air-raid. He knew that he was not behaving with the maximum
+of sagacity. There were, for example, hotels with subterranean
+grill-rooms close by, and there were similar refuges where danger
+would be less than in the street, though the street was narrow and
+might be compared to a trench. And yet he had said, "We shall be quite
+safe here." In others he would have condemned such an attitude.
+
+Now, however, he realised that he was very like others. An inactive
+fatalism had seized him. He was too proud, too idle, too negligent,
+too curious, to do the wise thing. He and Christine were in the
+air-raid, and in it they should remain. He had just the senseless,
+monkeyish curiosity of the staring crowd so lyrically praised by
+the London Press. He was afraid, but his curiosity and inertia were
+stronger than his fear. Then came a most tremendous explosion--the
+loudest sound, the most formidable physical phenomenon that G.J. had
+ever experienced in his life. The earth under their feet trembled.
+Christine gave a squeal and seemed to subside to the ground, but he
+pulled her up again, not in calm self-possession, but by the sheer
+automatism of instinct. A spasm of horrible fright shot through him.
+He thought, in awe and stupefaction:
+
+"A bomb!"
+
+He thought about death and maiming and blood. The relations between
+him and those everyday males aloft in the sky seemed to be appallingly
+close. After the explosion perfect silence--no screams, no noise of
+crumbling--perfect silence, and yet the explosion seemed still to
+dominate the air! Ears ached and sang. Something must be done. All
+theories of safety had been smashed to atoms in the explosion. G.J.
+dragged Christine along the street, he knew not why. The street was
+unharmed. Not the slightest trace in it, so far as G.J. could tell in
+the gloom, of destruction! But where the explosion had been, whether
+east, west, south or north, he could not guess. Except for the
+disturbance in his ears the explosion might have been a hallucination.
+
+Suddenly he saw at the end of the street a wide thoroughfare, and he
+could not be sure what thoroughfare it was. Two motor-buses passed
+the end of the street at mad speed; then two taxis; then a number of
+people, men and women, running hard. Useless and silly to risk the
+perils of that wide thoroughfare! He turned back with Christine. He
+got her to run. In the thick gloom he looked for an open door or a
+porch, but there was none. The houses were like the houses of the
+dead. He made more than one right angle turn. Christine gave a sign
+that she could go no farther. He ceased trying to drag her. He was
+recovering himself. Once more he heard the guns--childishly feeble
+after the explosion of the bomb. After all, one spot was as safe as
+another.
+
+The outline of a building seemed familiar. It was an abandoned chapel;
+he knew he was in St. Martin's Street. He was about to pull Christine
+into the shelter of the front of the chapel, when something happened
+for which he could not find a name. True, it was an explosion. But the
+previous event had been an explosion, and this one was a thousandfold
+more intimidating. The earth swayed up and down. The sound alone of
+the immeasurable cataclysm annihilated the universe. The sound and the
+concussion transcended what had been conceivable. Both the sound
+and the concussion seemed to last for a long time. Then, like an
+afterthought, succeeded the awful noise of falling masses and the
+innumerable crystal tinkling of shattered glass. This noise ceased and
+began again....
+
+G.J. was now in a strange condition of mild wonder. There was silence
+in the dark solitude of St. Martin's Street. Then the sound of guns
+supervened once more, but they were distant guns. G.J. discovered that
+he was not holding Christine, and also that, instead of being in the
+middle of the street, he was leaning against the door of a house.
+He called faintly, "Christine!" No reply. "In a moment," he said to
+himself, "I must go out and look for her. But I am not quite ready
+yet." He had a slight pain in his side; it was naught; it was naught,
+especially in comparison with the strange conviction of weakness and
+confusion.
+
+He thought:
+
+"We've not won this war yet," and he had qualms.
+
+One poor lamp burned in the street. He started to walk slowly and
+uncertainly towards it. Near by he saw a hat on the ground. It was his
+own. He put it on. Suddenly the street lamp went out. He walked on,
+and stepped ankle-deep into broken glass. Then the road was clear
+again. He halted. Not a sign of Christine! He decided that she must
+have run away, and that she would run blindly and, finding herself
+either in Leicester Square or Lower Regent Street, would by instinct
+run home. At any rate, she could not be blown to atoms, for they were
+together at the instant of the explosion. She must exist, and she must
+have had the power of motion. He remembered that he had had a stick;
+he had it no longer. He turned back and, taking from his pocket the
+electric torch which had lately come into fashion, he examined the
+road for his stick. The sole object of interest which the torch
+revealed was a child's severed arm, with a fragment of brown frock on
+it and a tinsel ring on one of the fingers of the dirty little hand.
+The blood from the other end had stained the ground. G.J. abruptly
+switched off the torch. Nausea overcame him, and then a feeling of
+the most intense pity and anger overcame the nausea. (A month elapsed
+before he could mention his discovery of the child's arm to anyone at
+all.) The arm lay there as if it had been thrown there. Whence had it
+come? No doubt it had come from over the housetops....
+
+He smelt gas, and then he felt cold water in his boots. Water was
+advancing in a flood along the street. "Broken mains, of course," he
+said to himself, and was rather pleased with the promptness of his
+explanation. At the elbow of St. Martin's Street, where a new dim
+vista opened up, he saw policemen, then firemen; then he heard the
+beat of a fire-engine, upon whose brass glinted the reflection of
+flames that were flickering in a gap between two buildings. A huge
+pile of debris encumbered the middle of the road. The vista was
+closed by a barricade, beyond which was a pressing crowd. "Stand clear
+there!" said a policeman to him roughly. "There's a wall going to
+fall there any minute." He walked off, hurrying with relief from the
+half-lit scene of busy, dim silhouettes. He could scarcely understand
+it; and he was incapable of replying to the policeman. He wanted to be
+alone and to ponder himself back into perfect composure. At the elbow
+again he halted afresh. And as he stood figures in couples, bearing
+stretchers, strode past him. The stretchers were covered with cloths
+that hung down. Not the faintest sound came from beneath the cloths.
+
+After a time he went on. The other exit of St. Martin's Street was
+being barricaded as he reached it. A large crowd had assembled,
+and there was a sound of talking like steady rain. He pushed grimly
+through the crowd. He was set apart from the idle crowd. He would tell
+the crowd nothing. In a minute he was going westwards on the left
+side of Coventry Street again. The other side was as populous with
+saunterers as ever. The violet glow-worms still burned in front of the
+theatres and cinemas. Motor-buses swept by; taxis swept by; parcels
+vans swept by, hooting. A newsman was selling papers at the corner.
+Was he in a dream now? Or had he been in a dream in St. Martin's
+Street? The vast capacity of the capital for digesting experience
+seemed to endanger his reason. Save for the fragments of eager
+conversation everywhere overheard, there was not a sign of disturbance
+of the town's habitual life. And he was within four hundred yards
+of the child's arm and of the spot where the procession of
+stretcher-bearers had passed. One thought gradually gained ascendancy
+in his mind: "I am saved!" It became exultant: "I might have been
+blown to bits, but I am saved!" Despite the world's anguish and the
+besetting imminence of danger, life and the city which he inhabited
+had never seemed so enchanting, so lovely, as they did then. He
+hurried towards Cork Street, hopeful.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 31
+
+"ROMANCE"
+
+
+At two periods of the day Marthe, with great effort and for
+professional purposes, achieved some degree of personal tidiness.
+The first period began at about four o'clock in the afternoon. By six
+o'clock or six-thirty she had slipped back into the sloven. The second
+period began at about ten o'clock at night. It was more brilliant
+while it lasted, but owing to the accentuation of Marthe's
+characteristics by fatigue it seldom lasted more than an hour. When
+Marthe opened the door to G.J. she was at her proudest, intensely
+conscious of being clean and neat, and unwilling to stand any nonsense
+from anybody. Of course she was polite to G.J. as the chief friend of
+the establishment and a giver of good tips, but she deprecated calls
+by gentlemen in the evening, for unless they were made by appointment
+the risk of complications at once arose.
+
+The mention of an air-raid rendered her definitely inimical. Formerly
+Marthe had been more than average nervous in air-raids, but she had
+grown used to them and now defied them. As she kept all windows closed
+on principle she heard less of raids than some people. G.J. did not
+explain the circumstances. He simply asked if Madame had returned. No,
+Madame had not returned. True, Marthe had not been unaware of guns and
+things, but there was no need to worry; Madame must have arrived at
+the theatre long before the guns started. Marthe really could not be
+bothered with these unnecessary apprehensions. She had her duties to
+attend to like other folks, and they were heavy, and she washed her
+hands of air-raids; she accepted no responsibility for them; for her,
+within the flat, they did not exist, and the whole German war-machine
+was thereby foiled. G.J. was on the point of a full explanation,
+but he checked himself. A recital of the circumstances would not
+immediately help, and it might hinder. Concealing his astonishment at
+the excesses of which unimaginative stolidity is capable, even in an
+Italian, he turned down the stairs again.
+
+He stopped in the middle of the stairs, because he did not know what
+he was going to do, and he seemed to lack force for decisions. No harm
+could have happened to Christine; she had run off, that was certain.
+And yet--had he not often heard of the impish tricks of explosions?
+Of one person being taken and another left? Was it not possible that
+Christine had been blown to the other end of the street, and was now
+lying there?... No! Either she was on her way home, or, automatically,
+she had scurried to the theatre, which was close to St. Martin's
+Street, and been too fearful to venture forth again. Perhaps she was
+looking somewhere for _him_. Yet she might be dead. In any case, what
+could he do? Ring up the police? It was too soon. He decided that he
+would wait in Cork Street for half an hour. This plan appealed to him
+for the mere reason that it was negative.
+
+As he opened the front door he saw a taxi standing outside. The
+taxi-man had taken one of the lamps from its bracket, and was looking
+into the interior of the cab, which was ornate with toy-curtains
+and artificial flowers to indicate to the world that he was an
+owner-driver and understood life. Hearing the noise of the door,
+he turned his head--he was wearing a bowler hat and a smart white
+muffler--and said to G.J., with self-respecting respect for a
+gentleman:
+
+"This is No. 170, isn't it, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The taxi-man jerked his head to draw G.J.'s attention to the interior
+of the vehicle. Christine was half on the seat and half on the floor,
+unconscious, with shut eyes.
+
+Instantly G.J. was conscious of making a complete recovery from all
+the effects, physical and moral, of the air-raid.
+
+"Just help me to get her out, will you?" he said in a casual tone,
+"and I'll carry her upstairs. Where did you pick the lady up?"
+
+"Strand, sir, nearly opposite Romano's."
+
+"The dickens you did!"
+
+"Shock from air-raid, I suppose, sir."
+
+"Probably."
+
+"She did seem a little upset when she hailed me, or I shouldn't have
+taken her. I was off home, and I only took her to oblige."
+
+The taxi-man ran quickly round to the other side of the cab and
+entered it by the off-door, behind Christine. Together the men lifted
+her up.
+
+"I can manage her," said G.J. calmly.
+
+"Excuse me, sir, you'll have to get hold lower down, so as her
+waist'll be nearly as high as your shoulder. My brother's a fireman."
+
+"Right," said G.J. "By the way, what's the fare?"
+
+Holding Christine across his shoulder with the right arm, he
+unbuttoned his overcoat with his left hand and took out change from
+his trouser pocket for the driver.
+
+"You might pull the door to after me," he said, in response to the
+driver's expression of thanks.
+
+"Certainly, sir."
+
+The door banged. He was alone with Christine on the long, dark,
+inclement stairs. He felt the contours of her body through her
+clothes. She was limp, helpless. She was a featherweight. She was
+nothing at all; inexpressibly girlish, pathetic, dear. Never had G.J.
+felt as he felt then. He mounted the stairs rather quickly, with firm,
+disdaining steps, and, despite his being a little out of breath,
+he had a tremendous triumph over the stolidity of Marthe when she
+answered his ring. Marthe screamed, and in the scream readjusted her
+views concerning air-raids.
+
+"It's queer this swoon lasting such a long time!" he reflected, when
+Christine had been deposited on the sofa in the sitting-room, and the
+common remedies and tricks tried without result, and Marthe had gone
+into the kitchen to make hot water hotter.
+
+He had established absolute empire over Marthe. He had insisted on
+Marthe not being silly; and yet, though he had already been
+silly himself in his absurd speculations as to the possibility of
+Christine's death, he was now in danger of being silly again. Did
+ordinary swoons ever continue as this one was continuing? Would
+Christine ever come out of it? He stood with his back to the
+fireplace, and her head and shoulders were right under him, so that he
+looked almost perpendicularly down upon them. Her face was as pale as
+ivory; every drop of blood seemed to have left it; the same with
+her neck and bosom; her limbs had dropped anyhow, in disarray; a fur
+jacket was untidily cast over her black muslin dress. But her waved
+hair, fresh from the weekly visit of the professional coiffeur,
+remained in the most perfect order.
+
+G.J. looked round the room. It was getting very shabby. Its pale
+enamelled shabbiness and the tawdry ugliness of nearly every object
+in it had never repelled and saddened him as they did then. The sole
+agreeable item was a large photograph of the mistress in a rich silver
+frame which he had given her. She would not let him buy knicknacks or
+draperies for her drawing-room; she preferred other presents. And now
+that she lay in the room, but with no power to animate it, he
+knew what the room really looked like; it looked like a dentist's
+waiting-room, except that no dentist would expose copies of _La Vie
+Parisienne_ to the view of clients. It had no more individuality than
+a dentist's waiting-room. Indeed it was a dentist's waiting-room.
+He remembered that he had had similar ideas about the room at the
+beginning of his acquaintance with Christine; but he had partially
+forgotten them, and moreover, they had not by any means been so clear
+and desolating as in that moment.
+
+He looked from the photograph to her face. The face was like the
+photograph, but in the swoon its wistfulness became unbearable. And
+it was so young. What was she? Twenty-seven? She could not be
+twenty-eight. No age! A girl! And talk about experience! She had had
+scarcely any experience, save one kind of experience. The monotony and
+narrowness of her life was terrifying to him. He had fifty interests,
+but she had only one. All her days were alike. She had no change
+and no holiday; no past and no future; no family; no intimate
+friends--unless Marthe was an intimate friend; no horizons, no
+prospects. She witnessed life in London through the distorting,
+mystifying veil of a foreign language imperfectly understood. She was
+the most solitary girl in London, or she would have been were there
+not a hundred thousand or so others in nearly the same case.... Stay!
+Once she had delicately allowed him to divine that she had been to
+Bournemouth with a gentleman for a week-end. He could recall
+nothing else. Nightly, or almost nightly, she listened to the same
+insufferably tedious jokes in the same insufferably tedious revue. But
+the authorities were soon going to deprive her of the opportunity of
+doing that. And then she would cease to receive even the education
+that revues can furnish, and in her mind no images would survive but
+images connected with the material arts of love. For, after all,
+what had they truly in common, he and she, but a periodical transient
+excitation?
+
+When next he looked at her, her eyes were wide open and a flush was
+coming, as imperceptibly as the dawn, into her cheeks. He took her
+hands again and rubbed them. Marthe returned, and Christine drank. She
+gazed, in weak silence, first at Marthe and then at G.J. After a few
+moments no one spoke. Marthe took off Christine's boots, and rubbed
+her stockinged feet, and then kissed them violently.
+
+"Madame should go to bed."
+
+"I am better."
+
+Marthe left the room, seeming resentful.
+
+"What has passed?" Christine murmured, without smiling.
+
+"A faint in the taxi, my poor child. That was all," said G.J. calmly.
+
+"But how is it that I find myself here?"
+
+"I carried thee upstairs in my arms."
+
+"Thou?"
+
+"Why not?" He spoke lightly, with careful negligence. "It appears that
+thou wast in the Strand."
+
+"Was I? I lost thee. Something tore thee from me. I ran. I ran till I
+could not run. I was sure that never more should I see thee alive. Oh!
+My Gilbert, what terrible moments! What a catastrophe! Never shall I
+forget those moments!"
+
+G.J. said, with bland supremacy:
+
+"But it is necessary that thou shouldst forget them. Master thyself.
+Thou knowst now what it is--an air-raid. It was an ordinary air-raid.
+There have been many like it. There will be many more. For once we
+were in the middle of a raid--by chance. But we are safe--that is
+enough."
+
+"But the deaths?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"But there must have been many deaths!"
+
+"I do not know. There will have been deaths. There usually are." He
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Christine sat up and gave a little screech.
+
+"Ah!" She burst out, her features suddenly transformed by enraged
+protest. "Why wilt thou act thy cold man?"
+
+He was amazed at the sudden nervous strength she showed.
+
+"But, my little one--"
+
+She cried:
+
+"Why wilt thou act thy cold man? I shall become mad in this sacred
+England. I shall become totally mad. You are all the same, all, all,
+men and women. You are marvels--let it be so!--but you are not human.
+Do you then wish to be taken for telegraph-poles? Always you are
+pretending something. Pretending that you have no sentiments. And you
+are soaked in sentimentality. But no! You will not show it! You will
+not applaud your soldiers in the streets. You will not salute your
+flag. You will not salute even a corpse. You have only one phrase: 'It
+is nothing'. If you win a battle, 'It is nothing' If you lose one, 'It
+is nothing'. If you are nearly killed in an air-raid, 'It is nothing'.
+And if you were killed outright and could yet speak, you would say,
+with your eternal sneer, 'It is nothing'. You other men, you make love
+with the air of turning on a tap. As for your women, god knows--! But
+I have a horror of Englishwomen. Prudes but wantons. Can I not guess?
+Always hypocrites. Always holding themselves in. My god, that pinched
+smile! And your women of the world especially. Have they a natural
+gesture? Yet does not everyone know that they are rotten with vice and
+perversity? And your actresses!... And they talk of us! Ah, well! For
+me, I can say that I earn my living honestly, every son of it. For all
+that I receive, I give. And they would throw me on to the pavement to
+starve, me whose function in society--"
+
+She collapsed in sobs, and with averted face held out her arms in
+appeal. G.J., at once admiring and stricken with compassion, bent
+and clasped her neck, and kissed her, and kept his mouth on hers.
+Her tears dropped freely on his cheeks. Her sobs shook both of them.
+Gradually the sobs decreased in violence and frequency. In an infant's
+broken voice she murmured into his mouth:
+
+"My wolf! Is it true--that thou didst carry me here in thy arms? I am
+so proud."
+
+He was not in the slightest degree irritated or grieved by her tirade.
+But the childlike changeableness and facility of her emotions touched
+him. He savoured her youth, and himself felt curiously young. It was
+the fact that within the last year he had grown younger.
+
+He thought of great intellectuals, artists, men of action, princes,
+kings--historical figures--in whom courtesans had inspired immortal
+passion. He thought of the illustrious courtesans who had made
+themselves heroic in legend, women whose loves were countless and
+often venal, and yet whose renown had come down to posterity as
+gloriously as that of supreme poets. He thought of lifelong passionate
+attachments, which to the world were inexplicable, and which the world
+never tired of leniently discussing. He overheard people saying: "Yes.
+Picked her up somewhere, in a Promenade. She worships him, and he
+adores her. Don't know where he hides her. You see them about together
+sometimes--at concerts, for instance. Mysterious-looking creature she
+is. Plays the part very well, too. Strange affair. But, of course,
+there's no accounting for these things."
+
+The role attracted him. And there could be no doubt that she did
+worship him utterly. He did not analyse his feeling for her--perhaps
+could not. She satisfied something in him that was profound. She
+never offended his sensibilities, nor wearied him. Her manners were
+excellent, her gestures full of grace and modesty, her temperament
+extreme. A unique combination! And if the tie between them was not
+real and secure, why should he have yearned for her company that night
+after the scenes with Concepcion and Queen. Those women challenged
+him, discomposed him, fretted him, fought him, left his nerves raw.
+She soothed. Why should he not, in the French phrase, "put her among
+her own furniture?" In a proper artistic environment, an environment
+created by himself, of taste and moderate luxury, she would be
+exquisite. She would blossom. And she would blossom for him alone.
+She would live for his footstep on her threshold; and when he was
+not there she would dream amid cushions like a cat. In the right
+environment she would become another being, that was to say, the same
+being, but orchidised. And when he was old, when he was sixty-five,
+she would still be young, still be under forty and seductive. And the
+publishing of his last will and testament, under which she inherited
+all, would render her famous throughout all the West End, and the word
+"romance" would spring to every lip. He searched in his mind for the
+location of suitable flats.
+
+"Is it true that thou didst carry me in thine arms?" repeated
+Christine.
+
+He murmured into her mouth:
+
+"Is it true? Can she doubt? The proof, then."
+
+And he picked her up as though she had been a doll, and carried her
+into the bedroom. As she lay on the bed, she raised her arm and looked
+at the broken wrist-watch and sighed.
+
+"My mascot. It is not a _blague_, my mascot."
+
+Shortly afterwards she began to cry again, at first gently; then sobs
+supervened.
+
+"She must sleep," he said firmly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I cannot. I have been too upset. It is impossible that I should
+sleep."
+
+"She must."
+
+"Go and buy me a drug."
+
+"If I go and buy her a drug, will she undress and get into bed while I
+am away?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+Calling Marthe, and taking the latch-key of the street-door, he went
+to his chemist's in Dover Street and bought some potassium bromide and
+sal volatile. When he came back Marthe whispered to him:
+
+"She sleeps. She has told me everything as I undressed her. The poor
+child!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 32
+
+MRS. BRAIDING
+
+
+G.J. went home at once, partly so that Christine should not be
+disturbed, partly because he desired solitude in order to examine and
+compose his mind. Mrs. Braiding had left an agreeable modest fire--fit
+for cold April--in the drawing-room. He had just sat down in front of
+it and was tranquillising himself in the familiar harmonious beauty
+of the apartment (which, however, did seem rather insipid after the
+decorative excesses of Queen's room), when he heard footsteps on
+the little stairway from the upper floor. Mrs. Braiding entered the
+drawing-room.
+
+This was a Mrs. Braiding very different from the Mrs. Braiding of
+1914, a shameless creature of more rounded contours than of old, and
+not quite so spick and span as of old. She was carrying in her arms
+that which before the war she could not have conceived herself as
+carrying. The being was invisible in wraps, but it was there; and she
+seemed to have no shame for it, seemed indeed to be proud of it and
+defiant about it.
+
+Braiding's military career had been full of surprises. He had expected
+within a few months of joining the colours to be dashing gloriously
+and homicidally at panic-stricken Germans across the plains of
+Flanders, to be, in fact, saving the Empire at the muzzle of rifle
+and the point of bayonet. In truth, he found that for interminable,
+innumerable weeks his job was to save the Empire by cleaning harness
+on the East Coast of England--for under advice he had transferred to
+the artillery. Later, when his true qualifications were discovered,
+he had to save the Empire by polishing the buttons and serving the
+morning tea and buying the cigarettes of a major who in 1914 had been
+a lawyer by profession and a soldier only for fun. The major talked
+too much, and to the wrong people. He became lyric concerning the
+talents of Braiding to a dandiacal Divisional General at Colchester,
+and soon, by the actuating of mysterious forces and the filling up of
+many Army forms, Braiding was removed to Colchester, and had to save
+the Empire by valeting the Divisonal General. Foiled in one direction,
+Braiding advanced in another. By tradition, when a valet marries a
+lady's maid, the effect on the birth-rate is naught. And it is certain
+that but for the war Braiding would not have permitted himself to act
+as he did. The Empire, however, needed citizens. The first rumour that
+Braiding had done what in him lay to meet the need spread through
+the kitchens of the Albany like a new gospel, incredible and
+stupefying--but which imposed itself. The Albany was never the same
+again.
+
+All the kitchens were agreed that Mr. Hoape would soon be stranded.
+The spectacle of Mrs. Braiding as she slipped out of a morning past
+the porter's lodge mesmerised beholders. At last, when things had
+reached the limit, Mrs. Braiding slipped out and did not come back.
+Meanwhile a much younger sister of hers had been introduced into the
+flat. But when Mrs. Braiding went the virgin went also. The flat was
+more or less closed, and Mr. Hoape had slept at his club for weeks.
+At length the flat was reopened, but whereas three had left it, four
+returned.
+
+That a bachelor of Mr. Hoape's fastidiousness should tolerate in his
+home a woman with a tiny baby was remarkable; it was as astounding
+perhaps as any phenomenon of the war, and a sublime proof that Mr.
+Hoape realised that the Empire was fighting for its life. It arose
+from the fact that both G.J. and Braiding were men of considerable
+sagacity. Braiding had issued an order, after seeing G.J., that his
+wife should not leave G.J.'s service. And Mrs. Braiding, too, had her
+sense of duty. She was very proud of G.J.'s war-work, and would
+have thought it disloyal to leave him in the lurch, and so possibly
+prejudice the war-work--especially as she was convinced that he would
+never get anybody else comparable to herself.
+
+At first she had been a little apologetic and diffident about her
+offspring. But soon the man-child had established an important
+position in the flat, and though he was generally invisible, his
+individuality pervaded the whole place. G.J. had easily got accustomed
+to the new inhabitant. He tolerated and then liked the babe. He had
+never nursed it--for such an act would have been excessive--but he had
+once stuck his finger in its mouth, and he had given it a perambulator
+that folded up. He did venture secretly to hope that Braiding would
+not imagine it to be his duty to provide further for the needs of the
+Empire.
+
+That Mrs. Braiding had grown rather shameless in motherhood was shown
+by her quite casual demeanour as she now came into the drawing-room
+with the baby, for this was the first time she had ever come into the
+drawing-room with the baby, knowing her august master to be there.
+
+"Mrs. Braiding," said G.J. "That child ought to be asleep."
+
+"He is asleep, sir," said the woman, glancing into the mysteries of
+the immortal package, "but Maria hasn't been able to get back yet
+because of the raid, and I didn't want to leave him upstairs alone
+with the cat. He slept all through the raid."
+
+"It seems some of you have made the cellar quite comfortable."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. Particularly now with the oilstove and the carpet.
+Perhaps one night you'll come down, sir."
+
+"I may have to. I shouldn't have been much surprised to find some
+damage here to-night. They've been very close, you know.... Near
+Leicester Square." He could not be troubled to say more than that.
+
+"Have they really, sir? It's just like them," said Mrs. Braiding. And
+she then continued in exactly the same tone: "Lady Queenie Paulle has
+just been telephoning from Lechford House, sir." She still--despite
+her marvellous experiences--impishly loved to make extraordinary
+announcements as if they were nothing at all. And she felt an uplifted
+satisfaction in having talked to Lady Queenie Paulle herself on the
+telephone.
+
+"What does _she_ want?" G.J. asked impatiently, and not at all in a
+voice proper for the mention of a Lady Queenie to a Mrs. Braiding.
+He was annoyed; he resented any disturbance of the repose which he so
+acutely needed.
+
+Mrs. Braiding showed that she was a little shocked. The old harassed
+look of bearing up against complex anxieties came into her face.
+
+"Her ladyship wished to speak to you, sir, on a matter of importance.
+I didn't know _where_ you were, sir."
+
+That last phrase was always used by Mrs. Braiding when she wished to
+imply that she could guess where G.J. had been. He did not suppose
+that she was acquainted with the circumstances of his amour, but he
+had a suspicion amounting to conviction that she had conjectured it,
+as men of science from certain derangements in their calculations will
+conjecture the existence of a star that no telescope has revealed.
+
+"Well, better leave Lady Queenie alone for to-night."
+
+"I promised her ladyship that I would ring her up again in any case in
+a quarter of an hour. That was approximately ten minutes ago."
+
+He could not say:
+
+"Be hanged to your promises!"
+
+Reluctantly he went to the telephone himself, and learnt from Lady
+Queenie, who always knew everything, that the raiders were expected to
+return in about half an hour, and that she and Concepcion desired his
+presence at Lechford House. He replied coldly that he was too tired to
+come, and was indeed practically in bed. "But you must come. Don't
+you understand we want you?" said Lady Queenie autocratically, adding:
+"And don't forget that business about the hospitals. We didn't attend
+to it this afternoon, you know." He said to himself: "And whose fault
+was that?" and went off angrily, wondering what mysterious power of
+convention it was that compelled him to respond to the whim of a girl
+whom he scarcely even respected.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 33
+
+THE ROOF
+
+
+The main door of LECHFORD HOUSE was ajar, and at the sound of G.J.'s
+footsteps on the marble of the porch it opened. Robin, the secretary,
+stood at the threshold. Evidently she had been set to wait for him.
+
+"The men-servants are all in the cellars," said she perkily.
+
+G.J. retorted with sardonic bitterness:
+
+"And quite right, too. I'm glad someone's got some sense left."
+
+Yet he did not really admire the men-servants for being in the
+cellars. Somehow it seemed mean of them not to be ready to take any
+risks, however unnecessary.
+
+Robin, hiding her surprise and confusion in a nervous snigger, banged
+the heavy door, and led him through the halls and up the staircases.
+As she went forward she turned on electric lamps here and there in
+advance, turning them off by the alternative switches after she had
+passed them, so that in the vast, shadowed, echoing interior the two
+appeared to be preceded by light and pursued by a tide of darkness.
+She was mincingly feminine, and very conscious of the fact that G.J.
+was a fine gentleman. In the afternoon, and again to-night--at first,
+he had taken her for a mere girl; but as she halted under a lamp to
+hold a door for him at the entrance to the upper stairs, he perceived
+that it must have been a long time since she was a girl. Often had he
+warned himself that the fashion of short skirts and revealed stockings
+gave a deceiving youthfulness to the middle-aged, and yet nearly every
+day he had to learn the lesson afresh.
+
+He was just expecting to be shown into the boudoir when Robin stopped
+at a very small door.
+
+"Her ladyship and Mrs. Carlos Smith are out on the roof. This is the
+ladder," she said, and illuminated the ladder.
+
+G.J. had no choice but to mount. Luckily he had kept his hat. He put
+it on. As he climbed he felt a slight recurrence of the pain in his
+side which he had noticed in St. Martin's Street. The roof was a very
+strange, tempestuous place, and insecure. He had an impression similar
+to that of being at sea, for the wind, which he had scarcely
+observed in the street, made melancholy noises in the new protective
+wire-netting that stretched over his head. This bomb-catching
+contrivance, fastened on thick iron stanchions, formed a sort of
+second roof, and was a very solid and elaborate affair which must
+have cost much money. The upstreaming light from the ladder-shaft was
+suddenly extinguished. He could see nobody, and the loneliness was
+uncomfortable.
+
+Somehow, when Robin had announced that the ladies were on the roof he
+had imagined the roof as a large, flat expanse. It was nothing of the
+kind. So far as he could distinguish in the deep gloom it had leaden
+pathways, but on either hand it sloped sharply up or sharply down. He
+might have fallen sheer into a chasm, or stumbled against the leaden
+side of a slant. He descried a lofty construction of carved masonry
+with an iron ladder clamped into it, far transcending the net. Not
+immediately did he comprehend that it was merely one of the famous
+Lechford chimney-stacks looming gigantic in the night. He walked
+cautiously onward and came to a precipice and drew back, startled, and
+took another pathway at right angles to the first one. Presently
+the protective netting stopped, and he was exposed to heaven; he had
+reached the roof of the servants' quarters towards the back of the
+house.
+
+He stood still and gazed, accustoming himself to the night. The moon
+was concealed, but there were patches of dim stars. He could make out,
+across the empty Green Park, the huge silhouette of Buckingham Palace,
+and beyond that the tower of Westminster Cathedral. To his left he
+could see part of a courtyard or small square, with a fore-shortened
+black figure, no doubt a policeman, carrying a flash-lamp. The
+tree-lined Mall seemed to be utterly deserted. But Piccadilly showed
+a line of faint stationary lights and still fainter moving lights.
+A mild hum and the sounds of motor-horns and cab-whistles came from
+Piccadilly, where people were abroad in ignorance that the raid was
+not really over. All the heavens were continually restless with long,
+shifting rays from the anti-aircraft stations, but the rays served
+only to prove the power of darkness.
+
+Then he heard quick, smooth footsteps. Two figures, one behind the
+other, approached him, almost running, eagerly, girlishly, with
+little cries. The first was Queen, who wore a white skirt and a very
+close-fitting black jersey. Concepcion also wore a white skirt and a
+very close-fitting black jersey, but with a long mantle hung loosely
+from the shoulders. Both were bareheaded.
+
+"Isn't it splendid, G.J.?" Queen burst out enthusiastically. Again
+G.J. had the sensation of being at sea--perhaps on the deck of a
+yacht. He felt that rain ought to have been beating on the face of the
+excited and careless girl. Before answering, he turned up the collar
+of his overcoat. Then he said:
+
+"Won't you catch a chill?"
+
+"I'm never cold," said Queen. It was true. "I shall always come up
+here for raids in future."
+
+"You seem to be enjoying it."
+
+"I love it. I love it. I only thought of it to-night. It's the next
+best thing to being a man and being at the Front. It _is_ being at the
+Front."
+
+Her face was little more than a pale, featureless oval to him in the
+gloom, but he could divine from the vibrations of her voice that she
+was as ecstatic as a young maid at her first dance.
+
+"And what about that business interview that you've just asked for on
+the 'phone?" G.J. acidly demanded.
+
+"Oh, we'll come to that later. We wanted a man here--not to save us,
+only to save us from ourselves--and you were the best we could think
+of, wasn't he, Con? But you've not heard about my next bazaar, G.J.,
+have you?"
+
+"I thought it was a Pageant."
+
+"I mean after that. A bazaar. I don't know yet what it will be for,
+but I've got lots of the most topping ideas for it. For instance, I'm
+going to have a First-Aid Station."
+
+"What for? Air-raid casualties?"
+
+Queen scorned his obtuseness, pouring out a cataract of swift
+sentences.
+
+"No. First-Aid to lovely complexions. Help for Distressed Beauties.
+I shall get Roger Fry to design the Station and the costumes of my
+attendants. It will be marvellous, and I tell you there'll always be
+a queue waiting for admittance. I shall have all the latest dodges in
+the sublime and fatal art of make-up, and if any of the Bond Street
+gang refuse to help me I'll damn well ruin them. But they won't refuse
+because they know what I'll do. Gontran is coming in with his new
+steaming process for waving. Con, you must try that. It's a miracle.
+Waving's no good for my style of coiffure, but it would suit you. You
+always wouldn't wave, but you've got to now, my seraph. The electric
+heater works in sections. No danger. No inconvenience to the poor old
+scalp. The waves will last for six months or more. It has to be seen
+to be believed, and even then you can't believe it. Its only fault is
+that it's too natural to be natural. But who wants to be natural? This
+modern craze for naturalness seems to me to be rather unwholesome, not
+to say perverted. What?"
+
+She seized G.J.'s arm convulsively.
+
+Concepcion had said nothing. G.J. sought her eyes in the darkness, but
+did not find them.
+
+"So much for the bazaar!" he said.
+
+Queen suddenly cried aloud:
+
+"What is it, Robin? Has Captain Brickly telephoned?"
+
+"Yes, my lady," came a voice faintly across the gloom from the region
+of the ladder-shaft.
+
+"They're coming! They'll be here directly!" exclaimed Queen, loosing
+G.J. and clapping her hands.
+
+G.J. thought of Robin affixed to the telephone, and some
+scarlet-shouldered officer at the War Office quitting duty for the
+telephone, in order to keep the capricious girl informed of military
+movements simply because she had taken the trouble to be her father's
+daughter, and in so doing had acquired the right to treat the imperial
+machine as one of her nursery toys. And he became unreasonably
+annoyed.
+
+"I suppose you were cowering in your Club during the first Act?" she
+said, with vivacity.
+
+"Yes," G.J. briefly answered. Once more he was aware of a strong
+instinctive disinclination to relate what had happened to him. He was
+too proud to explain, and perhaps too tired.
+
+"You ought to have been up here. They dropped two bombs close to the
+National Gallery; pity they couldn't have destroyed a Landseer or two
+while they were so near! There were either seven or eight killed and
+eighteen wounded, so far as is known. But there were probably more.
+There was quite a fire, too, but that was soon got under. We saw it
+all except the explosion of the bombs. We weren't looking in the right
+place--no luck! However, we saw the Zepp. What a shame the moon's
+disappeared again! Listen! Listen!... Can't you hear the engines?"
+
+G.J. shrugged his shoulders. Nothing could be heard above the faint
+hum of Piccadilly. The wind seemed to have diminished to a chill,
+fitful zephyr.
+
+Concepcion had sat down on a coping.
+
+"Look!" she exclaimed in a startled whisper, and sprang erect.
+
+To the south, down among the trees, a red light flashed and was gone.
+The faint, irregular hum of Piccadilly persisted for a couple of
+seconds, and then was drowned in the loud report, which seemed to
+linger and wander in the great open spaces. G.J.'s flesh crept. He
+comprehended the mad ecstasy of Queen, and because he comprehended it
+his anger against her increased.
+
+"Can you see the Zepp?" murmured Queen, as it were ferociously. "It
+must be within range, or they wouldn't have fired. Look along the
+lines of the searchlights. One of them, at any rate, must have got on
+to it. We saw it before. Can't you see it? I can hear the engines, I
+think."
+
+Another flash was followed by another resounding report. More guns
+spoke in the distance. Then a glare arose on the southern horizon.
+
+"Incendiary bomb!" muttered Queen. She stood stock-still, with her
+mouth open, entranced.
+
+The Zeppelin or the Zeppelins remained invisible and inaudible.
+Yet they must be aloft there, somewhere amid the criss-cross of the
+unresting searchlights. G.J. waited, powerfully impressed, incapable
+of any direct action, gazing blankly now at the women and now at the
+huge undecipherable heaven and earth, and receiving the chill zephyr
+on his face. The nearmost gun had ceased to fire. Occasionally there
+was perfect silence--for no faintest hum came from Piccadilly, and
+nothing seemed to move there. The further guns recommenced, and then
+the group heard a new sound, rather like the sound of a worn-out taxi
+accelerating before changing gear. It grew gradually louder. It grew
+very loud. It seemed to be ripping the envelope of the air. It seemed
+as if it would last for ever--till it finished with a gigantic and
+intimidating _plop_ quite near the front of Lechford House. Queen
+said:
+
+"Shrapnel--and a big lump!"
+
+G.J. could see the quick heave of her bosom imprisoned in the black.
+She was breathing through her nostrils.
+
+"Come downstairs into the house," he said sharply--more than sharply,
+brutally. "Where in the name of God is the sense of stopping up here?
+Are you both mad?"
+
+Queen laughed lightly.
+
+"Oh, G.J.! How funny you are! I'm really surprised you haven't left
+London for good before now. By rights you ought to belong to the
+Hook-it Brigade. Do you know what they do? They take a ticket to any
+station north or west, and when they get out of the train they run to
+the nearest house and interview the tenant. Has he any accommodation
+to let? Will he take them in as boarders? Will he take them as paying
+guests? Will he let the house furnished? Will he let it unfurnished?
+Will he allow them to camp out in the stables? Will he sell the
+blooming house? So there isn't a house to be had on the North Western
+nearer than Leighton Buzzard."
+
+"Are you going? Because I am," said G.J.
+
+Concepcion murmured:
+
+"Don't go."
+
+"I shall go--and so will you, both of you."
+
+"G.J.," Queen mocked him, "you're in a funk."
+
+"I've got courage enough to go, anyhow," said he. "And that's more
+than you have."
+
+"You're losing your temper."
+
+As a fact he was. He grabbed at Queen, but she easily escaped him.
+He saw the whiteness of her skirt in the distance of the roof, dimly
+rising. She was climbing the ladder up the side of the chimney. She
+stood on the top of the chimney, and laughed again. A gun sounded.
+
+G.J. said no more. Using his flash-lamp he found his way to the
+ladder-shaft and descended. He was in the warm and sheltered interior
+of the house; he was in another and a saner world. Robin was at the
+foot of the ladder; she blinked under his lamp.
+
+"I've had enough of that," he said, and followed her to the
+illuminated boudoir, where after a certain hesitation she left him.
+Alone in the boudoir he felt himself to be a very shamed and futile
+person, and he was still extremely angry. The next moment Concepcion
+entered the boudoir.
+
+"Ah!" he murmured, curiously appeased.
+
+"You're quite right," said Concepcion simply.
+
+He said:
+
+"Can you give me any reason, Con, why we should make a present of
+ourselves to the Hun?"
+
+Concepcion repeated:
+
+"You're quite right."
+
+"Is she coming?"
+
+Concepcion made a negative sign. "She doesn't know what fear is, Queen
+doesn't."
+
+"She doesn't know what sense is. She ought to be whipped, and if I got
+hold of her I'd whip her."
+
+"She'd like nothing better," said Concepcion.
+
+G.J. removed his overcoat and sat down.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 34
+
+IN THE BOUDOIR
+
+
+"We aren't so desperately safe even here," said G.J., firmly pursuing
+the moral triumph which Concepcion's very surprising and comforting
+descent from the roof had given him.
+
+"Don't go to extremes," she answered.
+
+"No, I won't." He thought of the valetry in the cellars, and the
+impossible humiliation of joining them; and added: "I merely state."
+Then, after a moment of silence: "By the way, was it only _her_ idea
+that I should come along, or did the command come from both of you?"
+The suspicion of some dark, feminine conspiracy revisited him.
+
+"It was Queen's idea."
+
+"Oh! Well, I don't quite understand the psychology of it."
+
+"Surely that's plain."
+
+"It isn't in the least plain."
+
+Concepcion loosed and dropped her cloak, and, not even glancing at
+G.J., went to the fire and teased it with the poker. Bending down,
+with one hand on the graphic and didactic mantelpiece, and staring
+into the fire, she said:
+
+"Queen's in love with you, of course."
+
+The words were a genuine shock to his sarcastic and rather embittered
+and bullying mood. Was he to believe them? The vibrant, uttering voice
+was convincing enough. Was he to show the conventional incredulity
+proper to such an occasion? Or was he to be natural, brutally natural?
+He was drawn first to one course and then to the other, and finally
+spoke at random, by instinct:
+
+"What have I been doing to deserve this?"
+
+Concepcion replied, still looking into the fire: "As far as I can
+gather it must be your masterful ways at the Hospital Committee that
+have impressed her, and especially your unheard-of tyrannical methods
+with her august mother."
+
+"I see.... Thanks!"
+
+It had not occurred to him that he had treated the Marchioness
+tyrannically; he treated her like anybody else; he now perceived that
+this was to treat her tyrannically. His imagination leapt forward as
+he gazed round the weird and exciting room which Queen had brought
+into existence for the illustration of herself, and as he pictured the
+slim, pale figure outside clinging in the night to the vast chimney,
+and as he listened to the faint intermittent thud of far-off guns.
+He had a spasm of delicious temptation. He was tempted by Queen's
+connections and her prospective wealth. If anybody was to possess
+millions after the war, Queen would one day possess millions. Her
+family and her innumerable powerful relatives would be compelled to
+accept him without the slightest reserve, for Queen issued edicts;
+and through all those big people he would acquire immense prestige
+and influence, which he could use greatly. Ambition flared up in
+him--ambition to impress himself on his era. And he reflected with
+satisfaction on the strangeness of the fact that such an opportunity
+should have come to him, the son of a lawyer, solely by virtue of his
+own individuality. He thought of Christine, and poor little Christine
+was shrunk to nothing at all; she was scarcely even an object of
+compassion; she was a prostitute.
+
+But far more than by Queen's connections and prospective wealth he was
+tempted by her youth and beauty; he saw her beautiful and girlish, and
+he was sexually tempted. Most of all he was tempted by the desire to
+master her. He saw again the foolish, elegant, brilliant thing on the
+chimney pretending to defy him and mock at him. And he heard himself
+commanding sharply: "Come down. Come down and acknowledge your ruler.
+Come down and be whipped." (For had he not been told that she would
+like nothing better?) And he heard the West End of London and all the
+country-houses saying, "She obeys _him_ like a slave." He conceived a
+new and dazzling environment for himself; and it was undeniable that
+he needed something of the kind, for he was growing lonely; before
+the war he had lived intensely in his younger friends, but the war had
+taken nearly all of them away from him, many of them for ever.
+
+Then he said in a voice almost resentfully satiric, and wondered why
+such a tone should come from his lips:
+
+"Another of her caprices, no doubt."
+
+"What do you mean--another of her caprices?" said Concepcion,
+straightening herself and leaning against the mantelpiece.
+
+He had noticed, only a moment earlier, on the mantelpiece, a large
+photograph of the handsome Molder, with some writing under it.
+
+"Well, what about that, for example?"
+
+He pointed. Concepcion glanced at him for the first time, and her eyes
+followed the direction of his finger.
+
+"That! I don't know anything about it."
+
+"Do you mean to say that while you were gossiping till five o'clock
+this morning, you two, she didn't mention it?"
+
+"She didn't."
+
+G.J. went right on, murmuring:
+
+"Wants to do something unusual. Wants to astonish the town."
+
+"No! No!"
+
+"Then you seriously tell me she's fallen in love with me, Con?"
+
+"I haven't the slightest doubt of it."
+
+"Did she say so?"
+
+There was a sound outside the door. They both started like plotters in
+danger, and tried to look as if they had been discussing the weather
+or the war. But no interruption occurred.
+
+"Well, she did. I know I shall be thought mischievous. If she had the
+faintest notion I'd breathed the least hint to you, she'd quarrel with
+me eternally--of course. I couldn't bear another quarrel. If it had
+been anybody else but you I wouldn't have said a word. But you're
+different from anybody else. And I couldn't help it. You don't know
+what Queen is. Queen's a white woman."
+
+"So you said this afternoon."
+
+"And so she is. She has the most curious and interesting brain, and
+she's as straight as a man."
+
+"I've never noticed it."
+
+"But I know. I know. And she's an exquisite companion."
+
+"And so on and so on. And I expect the scheme is that I am to make
+love to her and be worried out of my life, and then propose to her and
+she'll accept me." The word "scheme" brought up again his suspicion
+of a conspiracy. Evidently there was no conspiracy, but there was a
+plot--of one.... A nervous breakdown? Was Concepcion merely under an
+illusion that she had had a nervous breakdown, or had she in truth had
+one, and was this singular interview a result of it?
+
+Concepcion continued with surprising calm magnanimity:
+
+"I know her mind is strange, but it's lovely. No one but me has ever
+seen into it. She's following her instinct, unconsciously--as we all
+do, you know. And her instinct's right, in spite of everything. Her
+instinct's telling her just now that she needs a master. And that's
+exactly what she does need. We must remember she's very young--"
+
+"Yes," G.J. interrupted, bursting out with a kind of savagery that he
+could not explain. "Yes. She's young, and she finds even my age spicy.
+There'd be something quite amusingly piquant for her in marrying a man
+nearly thirty years her senior."
+
+Concepcion advanced towards him. There she stood in front of him,
+quite close to his chair, gazing down at him in her tight black
+jersey and short white skirt; she was wearing black stockings now. Her
+serious face was perfectly unruffled. And in her worn face was all her
+experience; all the nights and days on the Clyde were in her face; the
+scalping of the young Glasgow girl was in her face, and the failure
+to endure either in work or in love. There was complete silence within
+and without--not the echo of an echo of a gun. G.J. felt as though he
+were at bay.
+
+She said:
+
+"People like you and Queen don't want to bother about age. Neither
+of you has any age. And I'm not imploring you to have her. I'm only
+telling you that she's there for you if you want her. But doesn't
+she attract you? Isn't she positively irresistible?" She added with
+poignancy: "I know if I were a man I should find her irresistible."
+
+"Just so."
+
+A look of sacrifice came into Concepcion's eyes as she finished:
+
+"I'd do anything, anything, to make Queen happy."
+
+"Yes, you would," retorted G.J. icily, carried away by a ruthless
+and inexorable impulse. "You'd do anything to make her happy even for
+three months. Yes, to make her happy for three weeks you'd be ready
+to ruin my whole life. I know you and Queen." And the mild image of
+Christine formed in his mind, soothingly, infinitely desirable. What
+balm, after the nerve-racking contact of these incalculable creatures!
+
+Concepcion retired with a gesture of the arm and sat down by the fire.
+
+"You're terrible, G.J.," she said wistfully. "Queen wouldn't be thrown
+away on you, but you'd be thrown away on her. I admit it. I didn't
+think you had it in you. I never saw a man develop as you have.
+Marriage isn't for you. You ought to roam in the primeval forest, and
+take and kill."
+
+"Not a bit," said G.J., appeased once more. "Not a bit.... But the new
+relations of the sexes aren't in my line."
+
+"_New_? My poor boy, are you so ingenuous after all? There's nothing
+very new in the relations of the sexes that I know of. They're much
+what they were in the Garden of Eden."
+
+"What do you know of the Garden of Eden?"
+
+"I get my information from Milton," she replied cheerfully, as though
+much relieved.
+
+"Have you read _Paradise Lost_, then, Con?"
+
+"I read it all through in my lodgings. And it's really rather good.
+In fact, the remarks of Raphael to Adam in the eighth book--I think it
+is--are still just about the last word on the relations of the sexes:
+
+  "Oft-times nothing profits more
+  Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
+  Well-managed; of that skill the more thou
+  know'st,
+  The more she will acknowledge thee her head
+  _And to realities yield all her shows_."
+
+G.J., marvelling, exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm:
+
+"By Jove! You're an astounding woman, Con. You do me good!"
+
+There was a fresh noise beyond the door, and the door opened and Robin
+rushed in, blanched and hysterical, and with her seemed to rush in
+terror.
+
+"Oh! Madame!" she cried. "As there was no more firing I went on to the
+roof, and her ladyship--" She covered her face and sobbed.
+
+G.J. jumped up.
+
+"Go and see," said Concepcion in a blank voice, not moving. "I
+can't.... It's the message straight from Potsdam that's arrived."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 35
+
+QUEEN DEAD
+
+
+G.J. emerged from the crowded and malodorous Coroner's Court with a
+deep sense of the rigour and the thoroughness of British justice, and
+especially of its stolidity.
+
+There had been four inquests, all upon the bodies of air-raid victims:
+a road-man, his wife, an orphan baby--all belonging to the thick
+central mass of the proletariat, for a West End slum had received a
+bomb full in the face--and Lady Queenie Paulle. The policemen were
+stolid; the reporters were stolid; the proletariat was stolid;
+the majority of the witnesses were stolid, and in particular the
+representatives of various philanthropic agencies who gave the most
+minute evidence about the habits and circumstances of the slum; and
+the jurymen were very stolid, and never more so than when, with stubby
+fingers holding ancient pens, they had to sign quantities of blue
+forms under the strict guidance of a bareheaded policeman.
+
+The world of Queenie's acquaintances made a strange, vivid contrast
+to this grey, grim, blockish world; and the two worlds regarded each
+other with the wonder and the suspicious resentment of foreigners.
+Queen's world came expecting to behave as at a cause celebre of, for
+example, divorce. Its representatives were quite ready to tolerate
+unpleasing contacts and long stretches of tedium in return for some
+glimpse of the squalid and the privilege of being able to say that
+they had been present at the inquest. But most of them had arrived
+rather late, and they had reckoned without the Coroner, and
+comparatively few obtained even admittance.
+
+The Coroner had arrived on the stroke of the hour, in a silk hat and
+frock coat, with a black bag, and had sat down at his desk and begun
+to rule the proceedings with an absolutism that no High Court Judge
+would have attempted. He was autocrat in a small, close, sordid room;
+but he was autocrat. He had already shown his quality in some indirect
+collisions with the Marquis of Lechford. The Marquis felt that he
+could not stomach the exposure of his daughter's corpse in a common
+mortuary with other corpses of he knew not whom. Long experience of
+the marquisate had taught him to believe that everything could be
+arranged. He found, however, that this matter could not be arranged.
+There was no appeal from the ukase of the Coroner. Then he wished
+to be excused from giving evidence, since his evidence could have no
+direct bearing on the death. But he was informed by a mere clerk, who
+had knowledge of the Coroner's ways, that if he did not attend the
+inquest would probably be adjourned for his attendance. The fact was,
+the Coroner had appreciated as well as anybody that heaven and the war
+had sent him a cause celebre of the first-class. He saw himself
+the supreme being of a unique assize. He saw his remarks reproduced
+verbatim in the papers, for, though localities might not be mentioned,
+there was no censor's ban upon the _obiter dicta_ of coroners. His
+idiosyncrasy was that he hid all his enjoyment in his own breast. Even
+had he had the use of a bench, instead of a mere chair, he would never
+have allowed titled ladies in mirific black hats to share it with him.
+He was an icy radical, sincere, competent, conscientious and vain. He
+would be no respecter of persons, but he was a disrespecter of persons
+above a certain social rank. He said, "Open that window." And that
+window was opened, regardless of the identity of the person who might
+be sitting under it. He said: "This court is unhealthily full. Admit
+no more." And no more could be admitted, though the entire peerage
+waited without.
+
+The Marquis had considered that the inquest on his daughter might be
+taken first. The other three cases were taken first, and, even taken
+concurrently, they occupied an immense period of time. All the bodies
+were, of course, "viewed" together, and the absence of the jury seemed
+to the Marquis interminable; he thought the despicable tradesmen were
+gloating unduly over the damaged face of his daughter. The Coroner had
+been marvellously courteous to the procession of humble witnesses. He
+could not have been more courteous to the exalted; and he was not. In
+the sight of the Coroner all men were equal.
+
+G.J. encountered him first. "I did my best to persuade her ladyship to
+come down," said G.J. very formally. "I am quite sure you did,"
+said the Coroner with the dryest politeness. "And you failed." The
+policeman had related events from the moment when G.J. had fetched
+him in from the street. The policeman could remember everything, what
+everybody had said, the positions of all objects, the characteristics
+and extent of the wire-netting, the exact posture of the deceased
+girl, the exact minute of his visit. He and the Coroner played to each
+other like well-rehearsed actors. Mrs. Carlos Smith's ordeal was very
+brief, and the Coroner dismissed her with an expression of sympathy
+that seemed to issue from his mouth like carved granite. With the
+doctor alone the Coroner had become human; the Coroner also was a
+doctor. The doctor had talked about a relatively slight extravasation
+of blood, and said that death had been instantaneous. Said the
+Coroner: "The body was found on the wire-netting; it had fallen from
+the chimney. In your opinion, was the fall a contributory cause of
+death?" The doctor said, No. "In your opinion death was due to an
+extremely small piece of shrapnel which struck the deceased's head
+slightly above the left ear, entering the brain?" The doctor said,
+Yes.
+
+The Marquis of Lechford had to answer questions as to his parental
+relations with his daughter. How long had he been away in the country?
+How long had the deceased been living in Lechford House practically
+alone? How old was his daughter? Had he given any order to the effect
+that nobody was to be on the roof of his house during an air-raid?
+Had he given any orders at all as to conduct during an air-raid? The
+Coroner sympathised deeply with his lordship's position, and felt
+sure that his lordship understood that; but his lordship would
+also understand that the policy of heads of households in regard to
+air-raids had more than a domestic interest--it had, one might say, a
+national interest; and the force of prominent example was one of the
+forces upon which the Government counted, and had the right to count,
+for help in the regulation of public conduct in these great crises of
+the most gigantic war that the world had ever seen. "Now, as to the
+wire-netting," had said the Coroner, leaving the subject of the force
+of example. He had a perfect plan of the wire-netting in his mind. He
+understood that the chimney-stack rose higher than the wire-netting,
+and that the wire-netting went round the chimney-stack at a distance
+of a foot or more, leaving room so that a person might climb up
+the perpendicular ladder. If a person fell from the top of the
+chimney-stack it was a chance whether that person fell on the
+wire-netting, or through the space between the wire-netting and the
+chimney on to the roof itself. The jury doubtless understood. (The
+jury, however, at that instant had been engaged in examining the
+bit of shrapnel which had been extracted from the brain of the only
+daughter of a Marquis.) The Coroner understood that the wire-netting
+did not extend over the whole of the house. "It extends over all the
+main part of the house," his lordship had replied. "But not over the
+back part of the house?" His lordship agreed. "The servants'
+quarters, probably?" His lordship nodded. The Coroner had said: "The
+wire-netting does not extend over the servants' quarters," in a very
+even voice. A faint hiss in court had been extinguished by the sharp
+glare of the Coroner's eyes. His lordship, a thin, antique figure, in
+a long cloak that none but himself would have ventured to wear, had
+stepped down, helpless.
+
+There had been much signing of depositions. The Coroner had spoken of
+The Hague Convention, mentioning one article by its number. The jury
+as to the first three cases--in which the victims had been killed by
+bombs--had returned a verdict of wilful murder against the Kaiser.
+The Coroner, suppressing the applause, had agreed heartily with the
+verdict. He told the jury that the fourth case was different, and
+the jury returned a verdict of death from shrapnel. They gave
+their sympathy to all the relatives, and added a rider about the
+inadvisability of running unnecessary risks, and the Coroner, once
+more agreeing heartily, had thereon made an effective little speech to
+a hushed, assenting audience.
+
+There were several motor-cars outside. G.J. signalled across the
+street to the taxi-man who telephoned every morning to him for orders.
+He had never owned a motor-car, and, because he had no ambition to
+drive himself, had never felt the desire to own one. The taxi-man
+experienced some delay in starting his engine. G.J. lit a cigarette.
+Concepcion came out, alone. He had expected her to be with the
+Marquis, with whom she had arrived. She was dressed in mourning. Only
+on that day, and once before--on the day of her husband's funeral--had
+he seen her in mourning. She looked now like the widow she was.
+
+Nevertheless, he had not quite accustomed himself to the sight of her
+in mourning.
+
+"I wonder whether I can get a taxi?" she asked.
+
+"You can have mine," said he. "Where do you want to go?"
+
+She named a disconcerting address near Shepherd's Market.
+
+At that moment a Pressman with a camera came boldly up and snapped
+her. The man had the brazen demeanour of a racecourse tout. But
+Concepcion seemed not to mind at all, and G.J. remembered that she was
+deeply inured to publicity. Her portrait had already appeared in the
+picture papers along with that of Queen, but the papers had deemed it
+necessary to remind a forgetful public that Mrs. Carlos Smith was
+the same lady as the super-celebrated Concepcion Iquist. The taxi-man
+hesitated for an instant on hearing the address, but only for an
+instant. He had earned the esteem and regular patronage of G.J. by a
+curious hazard. One night G.J. had hailed him, and the man had said in
+a flash, without waiting for the fare to speak, "The Albany, isn't it,
+sir? I drove you home about two months ago." Thenceforward he had been
+for G.J. the perfect taxi-man.
+
+In the taxi Concepcion said not a word, and G.J. did not disturb her.
+Beneath his superficial melancholy he was sustained by the mere joy
+of being alive. The common phenomena of the streets were beautiful
+to him. Concepcion's calm and grieved vitality seemed mysteriously
+exquisite. He had had similar sensations while walking along Coventry
+Street after his escape from the explosion of the bomb. Fatigue and
+annoyance and sorrow had extinguished them for a time, but now that
+the episode of Queen's tragedy was closed they were born anew. Queen,
+the pathetic victim of the indiscipline of her own impulses, was gone.
+But he had escaped. He lived. And life was an affair miraculous and
+lovely.
+
+"I think I've been here before," said he, when they got out of the
+taxi in a short, untidy, indeterminate street that was a cul-de-sac.
+The prospect ended in a garage, near which two women chauffeurs were
+discussing a topic that interested them. A hurdy-gurdy was playing
+close by, and a few ragged children stared at the hurdy-gurdy, on the
+end of which a baby was cradled. The fact that the street was midway
+between Curzon Street and Piccadilly, and almost within sight of the
+monumental new mansion of an American duchess, explained the existence
+of the building in front of which the taxi had stopped. The entrance
+to the flats was mean and soiled. It repelled, but Concepcion
+unapologetically led G.J. up a flight of four stone steps and round
+a curve into a little corridor. She halted at a door on the ground
+floor.
+
+"Yes," said G.J. with admirable calm, "I do believe you've got the
+very flat I once looked at with a friend of mine. If I remember
+it didn't fill the bill because the tenant wouldn't sub-let it
+unfurnished. When did you get hold of this?"
+
+"Yesterday afternoon," Concepcion answered. "Quick work. But these
+feats can be accomplished. I've only taken it for a month. Hotels seem
+to be all full. I couldn't open my own place at a moment's notice, and
+I didn't mean to stay on at Lechford House, even if they'd asked me
+to."
+
+G.J.'s notion of the vastness and safety of London had received a
+shock. He was now a very busy man, and would quite sincerely have told
+anybody who questioned him on the point that he hadn't a moment to
+call his own. Nevertheless, on the previous morning he had spent
+a considerable time in searching for a nest in which to hide his
+Christine and create romance; and he had come to this very flat.
+More, there had been two flats to let in the block. He had declined
+them--the better one because of the furniture, the worse because
+it was impossibly small, and both because of the propinquity of the
+garage. But supposing that he had taken one and Concepcion the other!
+He recoiled at the thought....
+
+Concepcion's new home, if not impossibly small, was small, and the
+immensity and abundance of the furniture made it seem smaller than it
+actually was. Each little room had the air of having been furnished
+out of a huge and expensive second-hand emporium. No single style
+prevailed. There were big carved and inlaid antique cabinets and
+chests, big hanging crystal candelabra, and big pictures (some of
+them apparently family portraits, the rest eighteenth-century
+flower-pieces) in big gilt frames, with a multiplicity of occasional
+tables and bric-a-brac. Gilt predominated. The ornate cornices were
+gilded. Human beings had to move about like dwarfs on the tiny free
+spaces of carpet between frowning cabinetry. The taste and the aim
+of the author of this home defied deduction. In the first room a
+charwoman was cleaning. Concepcion greeted her like a sister. In the
+next room, whose window gave on to a blank wall, tea was laid for one
+in front of a gas-fire. Concepcion reached down a cup and saucer from
+a glazed cupboard and put a match to the spirit-lamp under the kettle.
+
+"Let me see, the bedroom's up here, isn't it?" said G.J., pointing
+along a passage that was like a tunnel.
+
+Concepcion, yielding to his curiosity, turned on lights everywhere and
+preceded him. The passage, hung with massive canvases, had scarcely
+more than width enough for G.J.'s shoulders. The tiny bedroom
+was muslined in every conceivable manner. It had a colossal bed,
+surpassing even Christine's. A muslined maid was bending over some
+drapery-shop boxes on the floor and removing garments therefrom.
+Concepcion greeted her like a sister. "Don't let me disturb you,
+Emily," she said, and to G.J., "Emily was poor Queenie's maid, and she
+has come to me for a little while." G.J. amicably nodded. Tears came
+suddenly into the maid's eyes. G.J. looked away and saw the bathroom,
+which, also well muslined, was completely open to the bedroom.
+
+"Whose _is_ this marvellous home?" he added when they had gone back to
+the drawing-room.
+
+"I think the original tenant is the wife of somebody who's interned."
+
+"How simple the explanation is!" said G.J. "But I should never have
+guessed it."
+
+They started the tea in a strange silence. After a minute or two G.J.
+said:
+
+"I mustn't stay long."
+
+"Neither must I." Concepcion smiled.
+
+"Got to go out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was another silence. Then Concepcion said:
+
+"I'm going to Sarah Churcher's. And as I know she has her Pageant
+Committee at five-thirty, I'd better not arrive later than five, had
+I?"
+
+"What is there between you and Lady Churcher?"
+
+"Well, I'm going to offer to take Queen's place on the organising
+Committee."
+
+"Con!" he exclaimed impulsively, "you aren't?"
+
+In an instant the atmosphere of the little airless, electric-lit,
+gas-fumed apartment was charged with a fluid that no physical
+chemistry could have traced. Concepcion said mildly:
+
+"I am. I owe it to Queen's memory to take her place if I can. Of
+course I'm no dancer, but in other things I expect I can make myself
+useful."
+
+G.J. replied with equal mildness:
+
+"You aren't going to mix yourself up with that crowd again--after all
+you've been through! The Pageant business isn't good enough for you,
+Con, and you know it. You know it's odious."
+
+She murmured:
+
+"I feel it's my duty. I feel I owe it to Queen. It's a sort of
+religion with me, I expect. Each person has his own religion, and I
+doubt if one's more dogmatic than another."
+
+He was grieved; he had a sense almost of outrage. He hated to picture
+Concepcion subduing herself to the horrible environment of the Pageant
+enterprise. But he said nothing more. The silence resumed. They might
+have conversed, with care, about the inquest, or about the funeral,
+which was to take place at the Castle, in Cheshire. Silence, however,
+suited them best.
+
+"Also I thought you needed repose," said G.J. when Concepcion broke
+the melancholy enchantment by rising to look for cigarettes.
+
+"I must be allowed to work," she answered after a pause, putting a
+cigarette between her teeth. "I must have something to do--unless, of
+course, you want me to go to the bad altogether."
+
+It was a remarkable saying, but it seemed to admit that he was
+legitimately entitled to his critical interest in her.
+
+"If I'd known that," he said, suddenly inspired, "I should have asked
+you to take on something for _me_." He waited; she made no response,
+and he continued: "I'm secretary of my small affair since yesterday.
+The paid secretary, a nice enough little thing, has just run off
+to the Women's Auxiliary Corps in France and left me utterly in the
+lurch. Just like domestic servants, these earnest girl-clerks are,
+when it comes to the point! No imagination. Wanted to wear khaki, and
+no doubt thought she was doing a splendid thing. Never occurred to her
+the mess I should be in. I'd have asked you to step into the breach.
+You'd have been frightfully useful."
+
+"But I'm no girl-clerk," Concepcion gently and carelessly protested.
+
+"Well, she wasn't either. I shouldn't have wanted you to be a typist.
+We have a typist. As a matter of fact, her job needed a bit more
+brains than she'd got. However--"
+
+Another silence. G.J. rose to depart. Concepcion did not stir. She
+said softly:
+
+"I don't think anybody realises what Queen's death is to me. Not even
+you." On her face was the look of sacrifice which G.J. had seen there
+as they talked together in Queen's boudoir during the raid.
+
+He thought, amazed:
+
+"And they'd only had about twenty-four hours together, and part of
+that must have been spent in making up their quarrel!"
+
+Then aloud:
+
+"I quite agree. People can't realise what they haven't had to go
+through. I've understood that ever since I read in the paper the
+day before yesterday that 'two bombs fell close together and one
+immediately after the other' in a certain quarter of the West End.
+That was all the paper said about those two bombs."
+
+"Why! What do you mean?"
+
+"And I understood it when poor old Queen gave me some similar
+information on the roof."
+
+"What _do_ you mean?"
+
+"I was between those two bombs when they fell. One of 'em blew me
+against a house. I've been to look at the place since. And I'm dashed
+if I myself could realise then what I'd been through."
+
+She gave a little cry. Her face pleased him.
+
+"And you weren't hurt?"
+
+"I had a pain in my side, but it's gone," he said laconically.
+
+"And you never said anything to us! Why not?"
+
+"Well--there were so many other things...."
+
+"G.J., you're astounding!"
+
+"No, I'm not. I'm just myself."
+
+"And hasn't it upset your nerves?"
+
+"Not as far as I can judge. Of course one never knows, but I think
+not. What do you think?"
+
+She offered no response. At length she spoke with queer emotion:
+
+"You remember that night I said it was a message direct from Potsdam?
+Well, naturally it wasn't. But do you know the thought that tortures
+me? Supposing the shrapnel that killed Queen was out of a shell made
+at my place in Glasgow!... It might have been.... Supposing it was!"
+
+"Con," he said firmly, "I simply won't listen to that kind of talk.
+There's no excuse for it. Shall I tell you what, more than anything
+else, has made me respect you since Queen was killed? Ninety-nine
+women out of a hundred would have managed to remind me, quite
+illogically and quite inexcusably, that I was saying hard things about
+poor old Queen at the very moment when she was lying dead on the roof.
+You didn't. You knew I was very sorry about Queen, but you knew that
+my feelings as to her death had nothing whatever to do with what I
+happened to be saying when she was killed. You knew the difference
+between sentiment and sentimentality. For God's sake, don't start
+wondering where the shell was made."
+
+She looked up at him, saying nothing, and he savoured the intelligence
+of her weary, fine, alert, comprehending face. He did not pretend to
+himself to be able to fathom the enigmas of that long glance. He had
+again the feeling of the splendour of what it was to be alive, to have
+survived. Just as he was leaving she said casually:
+
+"Very well. I'll do what you want."
+
+"What I want?"
+
+"I won't go to Sarah Churcher's."
+
+"You mean you'll come as assistant secretary?"
+
+She nodded. "Only I don't need to be paid."
+
+And he, too, fell into a casual tone:
+
+"That's excellent."
+
+Thus, by this nonchalance, they conspired to hide from themselves
+the seriousness of that which had passed between them. The grotesque,
+pretentious little apartment was mysteriously humanised; it was no
+longer the reception-room of a furnished flat by chance hired for a
+month; they had lived in it.
+
+She finished, eagerly smiling:
+
+"I can practise my religion just as much with you as with Sarah
+Churcher, can't I? Queen was on your committee, too. Yes, I shan't be
+deserting her."
+
+The remark disquieted his triumph. That aspect of the matter had not
+occurred to him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 36
+
+COLLAPSE
+
+
+Late of that same afternoon G.J., in the absence of the chairman,
+presided as honorary secretary over a meeting of the executive
+committee of the Lechford hospitals. In the course of the war the
+committee had changed its habitation more than once. The hotel which
+had at first given it a home had long ago been commandeered by the
+Government for a new Government department, and its hundreds of
+chambers were now full of the clicking of typewriters and the
+dictation of officially phrased correspondence, and the
+conferences which precede decisions, and the untamed footsteps of
+messenger-flappers, and the making of tea, and chatter about cinemas,
+blouses and headaches. Afterwards the committee had been the guest of
+a bank and of a trust company, and had for a period even paid rent to
+a common landlord. But its object was always to escape the formality
+of rent-paying, and it was now lodged in an untenanted mansion
+belonging to a viscount in a great Belgravian square. Its sign was
+spread high across the facade; its posters were in the windows; and on
+the door was a notice such as in 1914 nobody had ever expected to see
+in that quadrangle of guarded sacred castles: "Turn the handle and
+walk in." The mansion, though much later in date, was built precisely
+on the lines of a typical Bloomsbury boarding-house. It had the same
+basement, the same general disposition of rooms, the same abundance
+of stairs and paucity of baths, the same chilly draughts and primeval
+devices for heating, and the same superb disregard for the convenience
+of servants. The patrons of domestic architecture had permitted
+architects to learn nothing in seventy years except that chimney-flues
+must be constructed so that they could be cleaned without exposing
+sooty infants to the danger of suffocation or incineration.
+
+The committee sat on the first floor in the back drawing-room,
+whose furniture consisted of a deal table, Windsor chairs, a row of
+hat-pegs, a wooden box containing coal, half a poker, two unshaded
+lights; the walls, from which all the paper had been torn off, were
+decorated with lists of sub-committees, posters, and rows of figures
+scrawled here and there in pencil. The room was divided from the main
+drawing-room by the usual folding-doors. The smaller apartment had
+been chosen in the winter because it was somewhat easier to keep warm
+than the other one. In the main drawing-room the honorary secretary
+camped himself at a desk near the fireplace.
+
+When the clock struck, G.J., one of whose monastic weaknesses was a
+ritualistic regard for punctuality, was in his place at the head of
+the table, and the table well filled with members, for the honorary
+secretary's harmless foible was known and admitted. The table and the
+chairs, the scraping of the chair-legs on the bare floor, the agenda
+papers and the ornamentation thereof by absent-minded pens, were the
+same as in the committee's youth. But the personnel of the committee
+had greatly changed, and it was enlarged--as its scope had been
+enlarged. The two Lechford hospitals behind the French lines were
+now only a part of the committee's responsibilities. It had a special
+hospital in Paris, two convalescent homes in England, and an important
+medical unit somewhere in Italy. Finance was becoming its chief
+anxiety, for the reason that, though soldiers had not abandoned
+in disgust the practice of being wounded, philanthropists were
+unquestionably showing signs of fatigue. It had collected money by
+postal appeals, by advertisements, by selling flags, by competing with
+drapers' shops, by intimidation, by ruse and guile, and by all the
+other recognised methods. Of late it had depended largely upon the
+very wealthy, and, to a less extent, upon G.J., who having gradually
+constituted the committee his hobby, had contributed some thousands
+of pounds from his share of the magic profits of the Reveille Company.
+Everybody was aware of the immense importance of G.J.'s help. G.J.
+never showed it in his demeanour, but the others continually showed
+it in theirs. He had acquired authority. He had also acquired the sure
+manner of one accustomed to preside.
+
+"Before we begin on the agenda," he said--and as he spoke a late
+member crept apologetically in and tiptoed to the heavily charged
+hat-pegs--"I would like to mention about Miss Trewas. Some of you know
+that through an admirable but somewhat disordered sense of patriotism
+she has left us at a moment's notice. I am glad to say that my friend
+Mrs. Carlos Smith, who, I may tell you, has had a very considerable
+experience of organisation, has very kindly agreed, subject of course
+to the approval of the committee, to step temporarily into the breach.
+She will be an honorary worker, like all of us here, and I am sure
+that the committee will feel as grateful to her as I do."
+
+As there had been smiles at the turn of his phrase about Miss Trewas,
+so now there were fervent, almost emotional, "Hear-hears."
+
+"Mrs. Smith, will you please read the minutes of the last meeting."
+
+Concepcion was sitting at his left hand. He kept thinking, "I'm one of
+those who get things done." Two hours ago, and the idea of enlisting
+her had not even occurred to him, and already he had taken her out
+of her burrow, brought her to the offices, coached her in the
+preliminaries of her allotted task, and introduced several important
+members of the committee to her! It was an achievement.
+
+Never had the minutes been listened to with such attention as they
+obtained that day. Concepcion was apparently not in the least nervous,
+and she read very well--far better than the deserter Miss Trewas, who
+could not open her mouth without bridling. Concepcion held the room.
+Those who had not seen before the celebrated Concepcion Iquist now saw
+her and sated their eyes upon her. She had been less a woman than a
+legend. The romance of South America enveloped her, and the romance of
+her famous and notorious uncle, of her triumph over the West End, her
+startling marriage and swift widowing, her journey to America and her
+complete disappearance, her attachment to Lady Queenie, and now her
+dramatic reappearance.
+
+And the sharp condiment to all this was the general knowledge of the
+bachelor G.J.'s long intimacy with her, and of their having both
+been at Lechford House on the night of the raid, and both been at
+the inquest on the body of Lady Queenie Paulle on that very day.
+But nobody could have guessed from their placid and self-possessed
+demeanour that either of them had just emerged from a series of
+ordeals. They won a deep and full respect. Still, some people ventured
+to have their own ideas; and an ingenuous few were surprised to find
+that the legend was only a woman after all, and a rather worn
+woman, not indeed very recognisable from her innumerable portraits.
+Nevertheless the respect for the pair was even increased when G.J.
+broached the first item on the agenda--a resolution of respectful
+sympathy with the Marquis and Marchioness of Lechford in their
+bereavement, of profound appreciation of the services of Lady Queenie
+on the committee, and of an intention to send by the chairman to the
+funeral a wreath to be subscribed for by the members. G.J. proposed
+the resolution himself, and it was seconded by a lady and supported
+by a gentleman whose speeches gave no hint that Lady Queenie had again
+and again by her caprices nearly driven the entire committee into a
+lunatic asylum and had caused several individual resignations. G.J.
+put the resolution without a tremor; it was impressively carried; and
+Concepcion wrote down the terms of it quite calmly in her secretarial
+notes. The performance of the pair was marvellous, and worthy of the
+English race.
+
+Then arrived Sir Stephen Bradern. Sir Stephen was chairman of the
+French Hospitals Management Sub-committee.
+
+G.J. said:
+
+"Sir Stephen, you are just too late for the resolution as to Lady
+Queenie Paulle."
+
+"I deeply apologise, Mr. Chairman," replied the aged but active Sir
+Stephen, nervously stroking his rather long beard. "I hope, however,
+that I may be allowed to associate myself very closely with the
+resolution." After a suitable pause and general silence he went on:
+"I've been detained by that Nurse Smaith that my sub-committee's been
+having trouble with. You'll find, when you come to them, that she's on
+my sub-committee's minutes. I've just had an interview with her, and
+she says she wants to see the executive. I don't know what you think,
+Mr. Chairman--" He stopped.
+
+G.J. smiled.
+
+"I should have her brought in," said the lady who had previously
+spoken. "If I might suggest," she added.
+
+A boy scout, who seemed to have long ago grown out of his uniform,
+entered with a note for somebody. He was told to bring in Nurse
+Smaith.
+
+She proved to be a rather short and rather podgy woman, with a
+reddish, not rosy, complexion, and red hair. The ugly red-bordered
+cape of the British Red Cross did not suit her better than it suited
+any other wearer. She was in full, strict, starched uniform, and
+prominently wore medals on her plenteous breast. She looked as though,
+if she had a sister, that sister might be employed in a large draper's
+shop at Brixton or Islington. In saying "Gid ahfternoon" she revealed
+the purity of a cockney accent undefiled by Continental experiences.
+She sat down in a manner sternly defensive. She was nervous and
+abashed, but evidently dangerous. She belonged to the type which
+is courageous in spite of fear. She had resolved to interview the
+committee, and though the ordeal frightened her, she desperately and
+triumphantly welcomed it.
+
+"Now, Nurse Smaith," said G.J. diplomatically. "We are always very
+glad to see our nurses, even when our time is limited. Will you kindly
+tell the committee as briefly as possible just what your claim is?"
+
+And the nurse replied, with medals shaking:
+
+"I'm claiming, as I've said before, two weeks' salary in loo of
+notice, and my fare home from France; twenty-five francs salary and
+ninety-five francs expenses. And I sy nothing of excess luggage."
+
+"But you didn't _come_ home."
+
+"I have come home, though."
+
+One of those members whose destiny it is always to put a committee in
+the wrong remarked:
+
+"But surely, Nurse, you left our employ nearly a year ago. Why didn't
+you claim before?"
+
+"I've been at you for two months at least, and I was ill for six
+months in Turin; they had to put me off the train there," said Nurse
+Smaith, getting self-confidence.
+
+"As I understand," said G.J. "You left us in order to join a
+Serbian unit of another society, and you only returned to England in
+February."
+
+"I didn't leave you, sir. That is, I mean, I left you, but I was told
+to go."
+
+"Who told you to go?"
+
+"Matron."
+
+Sir Stephen benevolently put in:
+
+"But the matron had always informed us that it was you who said you
+wouldn't stay another minute. We have it in the correspondence."
+
+"That's what _she_ says. But I say different. And I can prove it."
+
+Said G.J.:
+
+"There must be some misunderstanding. We have every confidence in the
+matron, and she's still with us."
+
+"Then I'm sorry for you."
+
+He turned warily to another aspect of the subject.
+
+"Do I gather that you went straight from Paris to Serbia?"
+
+"Yes. The unit was passing through, and I joined it."
+
+"But how did you obtain your passport? You had no certificate from
+us?"
+
+Nurse Smaith tossed her perilous red hair.
+
+"Oh! No difficulty about that. I am not _without_ friends, as you may
+say." Some of the committee looked up suspiciously, aware that the
+matron had in her report hinted at mysterious relations between Nurse
+Smaith and certain authorities. "The doctor in charge of the Serbian
+unit was only too glad to have me. Of course, if you're going to
+believe everything matron says--" Her tone was becoming coarser,
+but the committee could neither turn her out nor cure her natural
+coarseness, nor indicate to her that she was not using the demeanour
+of committee-rooms. She was firmly lodged among them, and she went
+from bad to worse. "Of course, if you're going to swallow everything
+matron says--! It isn't as if I was the only one."
+
+"May I ask if you are at present employed?"
+
+"I don't _quite_ see what that's got to do with it," said Nurse
+Smaith, still gaining ground.
+
+"Certainly not. Nothing. Nothing at all. I was only hoping that these
+visits here are not inconvenient to you."
+
+"Well, as it seems so important, I _my_ sy I'm going out to Salonika
+next week, and that's why I want this business settled." She stopped,
+and as the committee remained diffidently and apprehensively silent,
+she went on: "It isn't as if I was the only one. Why! When we were in
+the retreat of the Serbian Army owver the mahntains I came across
+by chance, if you call it chance, another nurse that knew all about
+_her_--been under her in Bristol for a year."
+
+A young member, pricking up, asked:
+
+"Were you in the Serbian retreat, Nurse?"
+
+"If I hadn't been I shouldn't be here now," said Nurse Smaith,
+entirely recovered from her stage-fright and entirely pleased to be
+there then. "I lost all I had at Ypek. All I took was my medals, and
+them I did take. There were fifty of us, British, French and Russians.
+We had nearly three weeks in the mahntains. We slept rough all
+together in one room, when there was a room, and when there wasn't we
+slept in stables. We had nothing but black bread, and that froze in
+the haversacks, and if we took our boots off we had to thaw them
+the next morning before we could put them on. If we hadn't had three
+saucepans we should have died. When we went dahn the hills two of
+us had to hold every horse by his head and tail to keep them from
+falling. However, nearly all the horses died, and then we took the
+packs off them and tried to drag the packs along by hand; but we soon
+stopped that. All the bridle-paths were littered with dead horses and
+oxen. And when we came up with the Serbian Army we saw soldiers just
+drop down and die in the snow. I read in the paper there were no
+children in the retreat, but I saw lots of children, strapped to their
+mother's backs. Yes; and they fell down together and froze to death.
+Then we got to Scutari, and glad I was."
+
+She glanced round defiantly, but not otherwise moved, at the
+committee, the hitherto invisible gods of hospitals and medical units.
+The nipping wind of reality had blown into the back drawing-room. The
+committee was daunted. But some of its members, less daunted than the
+rest, had the presence of mind to wonder why it seemed strange and
+strangely chilling that a rather coarse, stout woman with a cockney
+accent and little social refinement should have passed through, and
+emerged so successfully from, the unimaginable retreat. If Nurse
+Smaith had been beautiful and slim and of elegant manners they could
+not have controlled their chivalrous enthusiasm.
+
+"Very interesting," said someone.
+
+Glancing at G.J., Nurse Smaith proceeded:
+
+"You sy I didn't come home. But the money for my journey was due to
+me. That's what I sy. Twenty-five francs for two weeks' wages and
+ninety-five francs journey money."
+
+"As regards the journey money," observed Sir Stephen blandly, "we've
+never paid so much, if my recollection serves me. And of course we
+have to remember that we're dealing with public funds."
+
+Nurse Smaith sprang up, looking fixedly at Concepcion. Concepcion had
+thrown herself back in her chair, and her face was so drawn that it
+was no more the same face.
+
+"Even if it is public funds," Concepcion shrieked, "can't you give
+ninety-five francs in memory of those three saucepans?" Then she
+relapsed on to the table, her head in her hands, and sobbed violently,
+very violently. The sobs rose and fell in the scale, and the whole
+body quaked.
+
+G.J. jumped to his feet. Half the shocked and alarmed committee was on
+its feet. Nurse Smaith had run round to Concepcion and had seized her
+with a persuasive, soothing gesture. Concepcion quite submissively
+allowed herself to be led out of the room by Nurse Smaith and Sir
+Stephen. Her sobs weakened, and when the door was closed could no
+longer be heard. A lady member had followed the three. The committee
+was positively staggered by the unprecedented affair. G.J., very pale,
+said:
+
+"Mrs. Smith is in competent hands. We can't do anything. I think we
+had better sit down." He was obeyed.
+
+A second doctor on the committee remarked with a curious slight smile:
+
+"I said to myself when I first saw her this afternoon that Mrs. Smith
+had some of the symptoms of a nervous breakdown."
+
+"Yes," G.J. concurred. "I very much regret that I allowed Mrs. Smith
+to come. But she was determined to work, and she seemed perfectly calm
+and collected. I very much regret it."
+
+Then, to hide his constraint, he pulled towards him the sheet of paper
+on which Concepcion had been making notes, and, remembering that a
+list of members present had always to be kept, he began to write down
+names. He was extremely angry with himself. He had tried Concepcion
+too high. He ought to have known that all women were the same. He
+had behaved like an impulsive fool. He had been ridiculous before
+the committee. What should have been a triumph was a disaster. The
+committee would bind their two names together. And at the conclusion
+of the meeting news of the affairs would radiate from the committee's
+offices in every direction throughout London. And he had been unfair
+to Concepcion. Their relations would be endlessly complicated by the
+episode. He foresaw trying scenes, in which she would make all the
+excuses, between her and himself.
+
+"Perhaps it would be simpler if we decided to admit Nurse Smaith's
+claim," said a timid voice from the other end of the table.
+
+G.J. murmured coldly, gazing at the agenda paper and yet dominating
+his committee:
+
+"The question will come up on the minutes of the Hospitals Management
+Sub-committee. We had better deal with it then. The next business on
+the agenda is the letter from the Paris Service de Sante."
+
+He was thinking: "How is she now? Ought I to go out and see?" And the
+majority of the committee was vaguely thinking, not without a certain
+pleasurable malice: "These Society women! They're all queer!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 37
+
+THE INVISIBLE POWERS
+
+
+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 portieres 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 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 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 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 conventional _bourgeoise_
+Christine 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 no _femme de chambre_ to 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 of _La Vie
+Parisienne_ and the cracked bric-a-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 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
+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 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.
+
+"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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 38
+
+THE VICTORY
+
+
+"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.
+
+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. 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 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 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 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 then _pouf_! 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 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."
+
+"But will they let it to me?"
+
+"They will let it to _me_, 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 are _chic_. You make love as you go to war. Like
+_that_!... 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,
+_she_ had 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 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! 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?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 39
+
+IDYLL
+
+
+Christine said to Marie, otherwise La Mere 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 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 mere Gaston, too, and as frank
+about her as about the flat. La mere 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 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 that _negligee_."
+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 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_, and _Les 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 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 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 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 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?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 40
+
+THE WINDOW
+
+
+G.J. sat on the oilcloth-covered seat of the large overhanging open
+bay-window. Below him was the river, tributary of the Severn; in front
+the Old Bridge, with an ancient street rising beyond, and above that
+the silhouette of the roofs of Wrikton surmounted by the spire of its
+vast church. To the left was the weir, and the cliffs were there also,
+and the last tints of the sunset.
+
+Somebody came into the coffee-room. G.J. looked round, hoping that it
+might, after all, be Concepcion. But it was Concepcion's maid, Emily,
+an imitative young woman who seemed to have caught from her former
+employer the quality of strange, sinister provocativeness.
+
+She paused a moment before speaking. Her thin figure was somewhat
+indistinct in the twilight.
+
+"Mrs. Smith wishes me to say that she will certainly be well enough to
+take you to the station in the morning, sir," said she in her specious
+tones. "But she hopes you will be able to stay till the afternoon
+train."
+
+"I shan't." He shook his head.
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+And after another moment's pause Emily, apparently with a challenging
+reluctance, receded through the shadows of the room and vanished.
+
+G.J. was extremely depressed and somewhat indignant. He gazed down
+bitterly at the water, following with his eye the incredibly long
+branches of the tree that from the height of the buttresses drooped
+perpendicularly into the water. He had had an astounding week-end; and
+for having responded to Concepcion's telegram, for having taken the
+telegram seriously, he had deserved what he got. Thus he argued.
+
+She had met him on the hot Saturday afternoon in a Ford car. She did
+not look ill. She looked as if she had fairly recovered from her
+acute neurasthenia. She was smartly and carelessly dressed in a summer
+sporting costume, and had made a strong contrast to every other human
+being on the platform of the small provincial station. The car drove
+not to the famous principal hotel, but to a small hotel just beyond
+the bridge. She had given him tea in the coffee-room and taken him out
+again, on foot, showing him the town--the half-timbered houses, the
+immense castle, the market-hall, the spacious flat-fronted residences,
+the multiplicity of solicitors, banks and surveyors, the bursting
+provision shops with imposing fractions of animals and expensive pies,
+and the drapers with ladies' blouses at 2s. 4d. Then she had conducted
+him to an organ recital in the vast church where, amid faint gas-jets
+and beadles and stalls and stained glass and holiness and centuries
+of history and the high respectability of the town, she had whispered
+sibilantly, and other people had whispered, in the long intervals of
+the organ. She had removed him from the church before the collection
+for the Red Cross, and when they had eaten a sort of dinner she had
+borne him away to the Russian dancers in the Moot Hall.
+
+She said she had seen the Russian dancers once already, and that they
+were richly worth to him a six-hours' train journey. The posters of
+the Russian dancers were rather daring and seductive. The Russian
+dancers themselves were the most desolating stage spectacle that G.J.
+had ever witnessed. The troupe consisted of intensely English girls
+of various ages, and girl-children. The costumes had obviously been
+fabricated by the artistes. The artistes could neither dance, pose,
+group, make an entrance, make an exit, nor even smile. The ballets,
+obviously fabricated by the same persons as the costumes, had no plot,
+no beginning and no end. Crude amateurishness was the characteristic
+of these honest and hard-working professionals, who somehow contrived
+to be neither men nor women--and assuredly not epicene--but who
+travelled from country town to country town in a glamour of posters,
+exciting the towns, in spite of a perfect lack of sex, because they
+were the fabled Russian dancers. The Moot Hall was crammed with adults
+and their cackling offspring, who heartily applauded the show, which
+indeed was billed as a "return visit" due to "terrific success" on a
+previous occasion. "Is it not too marvellous," Concepcion had said.
+He had admitted that it was. But the boredom had been excruciating.
+In the street they had bought an evening paper of which he had never
+before heard the name, to learn news of the war. The war, however,
+seemed very far off; it had grown unreal. "We'll talk to-morrow,"
+Concepcion had said, and gone abruptly to bed! Still, he had slept
+well in the soft climate, to the everlasting murmur of the weir.
+
+Then the Sunday. She was indisposed, could not come down to breakfast,
+but hoped to come down to lunch, could not come down to lunch, but
+hoped to come down to tea, could not come down to tea--and so on to
+nightfall. The Sunday had been like a thousand years to him. He had
+learnt the town, and the suburbs of it; the grass-grown streets, the
+main thoroughfares, and the slums; by the afternoon he was recognising
+familiar faces in the town. He had twice made the classic round--along
+the cliffs, over the New Bridge (which was an antique), up the hill to
+the castle, through the market-place, down the High Street to the
+Old Bridge. He had explored the brain of the landlord, who could
+not grapple with a time-table, and who spent most of the time during
+closed hours in patiently bolting the front door which G.J. was
+continually opening. He had talked to the old customer who, whenever
+the house was open, sat at a table in the garden over a mug of cider.
+He had played through all the musical comedies, dance albums and
+pianoforte albums that littered the piano. He had read the same Sunday
+papers that he read in the Albany. And he had learnt the life-history
+of the sole servant, a very young agreeable woman with a wedding-ring
+and a baby, which baby she carried about with her when serving at
+table. Her husband was in France. She said that as soon as she had
+received his permission to do so she should leave, as she really could
+not get through all the work of the hotel and mind and feed a baby.
+She said also that she played the piano herself. And she regretted
+that baby and pressure of work had deprived her of a sight of the
+Russian dancers, because she had heard so much about them, and was
+sure they were beautiful. This detail touched G.J.'s heart to a
+mysterious and sweet and almost intolerable melancholy. He had not
+made the acquaintance of fellow-guests--for there were none, save
+Concepcion and Emily.
+
+And in the evening as in the morning the weir placidly murmured, and
+the river slipped smoothly between the huge jutting buttresses of the
+Old Bridge; and the thought of the perpetuity of the river, in whose
+mirror the venerable town was a mushroom, obsessed him, mastered
+him, and made him as old as the river. He was wonder-struck
+and sorrow-struck by life, and by his own life, and by the
+incomprehensible and angering fantasy of Concepcion. His week-end took
+on the appearance of the monstrous. Then the door opened again, and
+Concepcion entered in a white gown, the antithesis of her sporting
+costume of the day before. She approached through the thickening
+shadows of the room, and the vague whiteness of her gown reminded him
+of the whiteness of the form climbing the chimney-ladder on the roof
+of Lechford House in the raid. Knowing her, he ought to have known
+that, having made him believe that she would not come down, she
+would certainly come down. He restrained himself, showed no untoward
+emotion, and said in a calm, genial voice: "Oh! I'm so glad you were
+well enough to come down."
+
+She sat opposite to him in the window-seat, rather sideways, so that
+her skirt was pulled close round her left thigh and flowed free over
+the right. He could see her still plainly in the dusk.
+
+"I've never yet apologised to you for my style of behaviour at the
+committee of yours," she began abruptly in a soft, kind, reasonable
+voice. "I know I let you down horribly. Yes, yes! I did. And I ought
+to apologise to you for to-day too. But I don't think I'll apologise
+to you for bringing you to Wrikton and this place. They're not real,
+you know. They're an illusion. There is no such place as Wrikton and
+this river and this window. There couldn't be, could there? Queen and
+I motored over here once from Paulle--it's not so very far--and
+we agreed that it didn't really exist. I never forgot it; I was
+determined to come here again some time, and that's why I chose this
+very spot when half Harley Street stood up and told me I must go away
+somewhere after my cure and be by myself, far from the pernicious
+influence of friends. I think I gave you a very fair idea of the town
+yesterday. But I didn't show you the funniest thing in it--the inside
+of a solicitor's office. You remember the large grey stone house in
+Mill Street--the grass street, you know--with 'Simpover and Simpover'
+on the brass plate, and the strip of green felt nailed all round the
+front door to keep the wind out in winter. Well, it's all in the
+same key inside. And I don't know which is the funniest, the Russian
+dancers, or the green felt round the front door, or Mr. Simpover, or
+the other Mr. Simpover. I'm sure neither of those men is real, though
+they both somehow have children. You remember the yellow cards that
+you see in so many of the windows: 'A MAN has gone from this house to
+fight for King and Country!'--the elder Mr. Simpover thinks it would
+be rather boastful to put the card in the window, so he keeps it on
+the mantelpiece in his private office. It's for his son. And yet
+I assure you the father isn't real. He is like the town, he simply
+couldn't be real."
+
+"What have _you_ been up to in the private office?" G.J. asked
+lightly.
+
+"Making my will."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Isn't it the proper thing to do? I've left everything to you."
+
+"You haven't, Con!" he protested. There was absolutely no tranquillity
+about this woman. With her, the disconcerting unexpected happened
+every five minutes.
+
+"Did you suppose I was going to send any of my possessions back to my
+tropical relatives in South America? I've left everything to you to do
+what you like with. Squander it if you like, but I expect you'll give
+it to war charities. Anyhow, I thought it would be safest in your
+hands."
+
+He retorted in a tone quietly and sardonically challenging:
+
+"But I was under the impression you were cured."
+
+"Of my neurasthenia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I believe I am. I gained thirteen pounds in the nursing home, and
+slept like a greengrocer. In fact, the Weir-Mitchell treatment, with
+modern improvements of course, enjoyed a marvellous triumph in my
+case. But that's not the point. G.J., I know you think I behaved very
+childishly yesterday, and that I deserved to be ill to-day for what
+I did yesterday. And I admit you're a saint for not saying so. But
+I wasn't really childish, and I haven't really been ill to-day. I've
+only been in a devil of a dilemma. I wanted to tell you something. I
+telegraphed for you so that I could tell you. But as soon as I saw you
+I was afraid to tell you. Not afraid, but I couldn't make up my mind
+whether I ought to tell you or not. I've lain in bed all day trying
+to decide the point. To-night I decided I oughtn't, and then all of
+a sudden, just now, I became an automaton and put on some things, and
+here I am telling you."
+
+She paused. G.J. kept silence. Then she continued, in a voice in which
+persuasiveness was added to calm, engaging reasonableness:
+
+"Now you must get rid of all your conventional ideas, G.J. Because
+you're rather conventional. You must be completely straight--I mean
+intellectually--otherwise I can't treat you as an intellectual equal,
+and I want to. You must be a realist--if any man can be." She spoke
+almost with tenderness.
+
+He felt mysteriously shy, and with a brusque movement of the head
+shifted his glance from her to the river.
+
+"Well?" he questioned, his gaze fixed on the water that continually
+slipped in large, swirling, glinting sheets under the bridge.
+
+"I'm going to kill myself."
+
+At first the words made no impression on him. He replied:
+
+"You were right when you said this place was an illusion. It is."
+
+And then he began to be afraid. Did she mean it? She was capable of
+anything. And he was involved in her, inescapably. Yes, he was afraid.
+Nevertheless, as she kept silence he went on--with bravado:
+
+"And how do you intend to do it?"
+
+"That will be my affair. But I venture to say that my way of doing it
+will make Wrikton historic," she said, curiously gentle.
+
+"Trust you!" he exclaimed, suddenly looking at her. "Con, why _will_
+you always be so theatrical?"
+
+She changed her posture for an easier one, half reclining. Her face
+and demeanour seemed to have the benign masculinity of a man's.
+
+"I'm sorry," she answered. "I oughtn't to have said that. At any rate,
+to you. I ought to have had more respect for your feelings."
+
+He said:
+
+"You aren't cured. That's evident. All this is physical."
+
+"Of course it's physical, G.J.," she agreed, with an intonation of
+astonishment that he should be guilty of an utterance so obvious and
+banal. "Did you ever know anything that wasn't? Did you ever even
+conceive anything that wasn't? If you can show me how to conceive
+spirit except in terms of matter, I'd like to listen to you."
+
+"It's against nature--to kill yourself."
+
+"Oh!" she murmured. "I'm quite used to that charge. You aren't by any
+means the first to accuse me of being against nature. But can you tell
+me where nature ends? That's another thing I'd like to know....
+My dear friend, you're being conventional, and you aren't being
+realistic. You must know perfectly well in your heart that there's no
+reason why I shouldn't kill myself if I want to. You aren't going to
+talk to me about the Ten Commandments, I suppose, are you? There's
+a risk, of course, on the other side--shore--but perhaps it's worth
+taking. You aren't in a position to say it isn't worth taking. And at
+worst the other shore must be marvellous. It may possibly be terrible,
+if you arrive too soon and without being asked, but it must be
+marvellous.... Naturally, I believe in immortality. If I didn't, the
+thing wouldn't be worth doing. Oh! I should hate to be extinguished.
+But to change one existence for another, if the fancy takes you--that
+seems to me the greatest proof of real independence that anybody
+can give. It's tremendous. You're playing chess with fate and fate's
+winning, and you knock up the chess-board and fate has to begin all
+over again! Can't you see how tremendous it is--and how tempting it
+is? The temptation is terrific."
+
+"I can see all that," said G.J. He was surprised by a sudden sense
+of esteem for the mighty volition hidden behind those calm, worn,
+gracious features. But Concepcion's body was younger than her face.
+He perceived, as it were for the first time, that Concepcion was
+immeasurably younger than himself; and yet she had passed far beyond
+him in experience. "But what's the origin of all this? What do you
+want to do it for? What's happened?"
+
+"Then you believe I mean to do it?"
+
+"Yes," he replied sincerely, and as naturally as he could.
+
+"That's the tone I like to hear," said she, smiling. "I felt sure
+I could count on you not to indulge in too much nonsense. Well, I'm
+going to try the next avatar just to remind fate of my existence. I
+think fate's forgotten me, and I can stand anything but that. I've
+lost Carly, and I've lost Queen.... Oh, G.J.! Isn't it awful to think
+that when I offered you Queen she'd already gone, and it was only
+her dead body I was offering you? ... And I've lost my love. And I've
+failed, and I shall never be any more good here. I swore I would see a
+certain thing through, and I haven't seen it through, and I can't! But
+I've told you all this before.... What's left? Even my unhappiness
+is leaving me. Unless I kill myself I shall cease to exist. Don't you
+understand? Yes, you do."
+
+After a marked pause she added:
+
+"And I may overtake Queen."
+
+"There's one thing I don't understand," he said, "as we're being
+frank with each other. Why do you tell me? Has it occurred to you that
+you're really making me a party to this scheme of yours?"
+
+He spoke with a perfectly benevolent detachment deriving from hers.
+And as he spoke he thought of a man whom he had once known and who had
+committed suicide, and of all that he had read about suicides and what
+he had thought of them. Suicides had been incomprehensible to him, and
+either despicable or pitiable. And he said to himself: "Here is one
+of them! (Or is it an illusion?) But she has made all my notions of
+suicide seem ridiculous."
+
+She answered his spoken question with vivacity: "Why do I tell you? I
+don't know. That's the point I've been arguing to myself all night
+and all day. _I'm_ not telling you. Something _in_ me is forcing me to
+tell you. Perhaps it's much more important that you should comprehend
+me than that you should be spared the passing worry that I'm causing
+you by showing you the inside of my head. You're the only friend I
+have left. I knew you before I knew Carly. I practically committed
+suicide from my particular world at the beginning of the war. I was
+going back to my particular world--you remember, G.J., in that little
+furnished flat--I was going back to it, but you wouldn't let me. It
+was you who definitely cut me off from my past. I might have been
+gadding about safely with Sarah Churcher and her lot at this very
+hour, but you would have it otherwise, and so I finished up with
+neurasthenia. You commanded and I obeyed."
+
+"Well," he said, ignoring all her utterance except the last words,
+"obey me again."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" she demanded wistfully and yet defiantly.
+Her features were tending to disappear in the tide of night, but she
+happened to sit up and lean forward and bring them a little closer to
+him. "You've no right to stop me from doing what I want to do. What
+right have you to stop me? Besides, you can't stop me. Nothing can
+stop me. It is settled. Everything is arranged."
+
+He, too, sat up and leaned forward. In a voice rendered soft by the
+realisation of the fact that he had indeed known her before Carlos
+Smith knew her and had imagined himself once to be in love with her,
+and of the harshness of her destiny and the fading of her glory, he
+said simply and yet, in spite of himself, insinuatingly:
+
+"No! I don't claim any right to stop you. I understand better,
+perhaps, than you think. But let me come down again next week-end. Do
+let me," he insisted, still more softly.
+
+Even while he was speaking he expected her to say, "You're only
+suggesting that in order to gain time."
+
+But she said:
+
+"How can you be sure it wouldn't be my inquest and funeral I should be
+'letting' you come down to?"
+
+He replied:
+
+"I could trust you."
+
+A delicate night-gust charged with the scent of some plant came in at
+the open window and deranged ever so slightly a glistening lock on
+her forehead. G.J., peering at her, saw the masculinity melt from her
+face. He saw the mysterious resurrection of the girl in her, and felt
+in himself the sudden exciting outflow from her of that temperamental
+fluid whose springs had been dried up since the day when she learnt
+of her widowhood. She flushed. He looked away into the dark water,
+as though he had profanely witnessed that which ought not to be
+witnessed. Earlier in the interview she had inspired him with shyness.
+He was now stirred, agitated, thrilled--overwhelmed by the effect on
+her of his own words and his own voice. He was afraid of his power,
+as a prophet might be afraid of his power. He had worked a miracle--a
+miracle infinitely more convincing than anything that had led up to
+it. The miracle had brought back the reign of reality.
+
+"Very well," she quivered.
+
+And there was a movement and she was gone. He glanced quickly behind
+him, but the room lay black.... A transient pallor on the blackness,
+and the door banged. He sat a long time, solemn, gazing at the
+serrated silhouette of the town against a sky that obstinately held
+the wraith of daylight, and listening to the everlasting murmur of the
+invisible weir. Not a sound came from the town, not the least sound.
+When at length he stumbled out, he saw the figure of the landlord
+smoking the pipe of philosophy, and waiting with a landlord's fatalism
+for the last guest to go to bed. And they talked of the weather.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 41
+
+THE ENVOY
+
+
+The next night G.J., having been hailed by an acquaintance, was
+talking at the top of the steps beneath the portal of a club in
+Piccadilly. It was after ten by the clocks, and nearly, but not quite,
+dark. A warm, rather heavy, evening shower had ceased. This was the
+beginning of the great macintosh epoch, by-product of the war,
+when the paucity of the means of vehicular locomotion had rendered
+macintoshes permissible, even for women with pretensions to smartness;
+and at intervals stylish girls on their way home from unaccustomed
+overtime, passed the doors in transparent macintoshes of pink, yellow
+or green, as scornful as military officers of the effeminate umbrella,
+whose use was being confined to clubmen and old dowdies.
+
+The acquaintance sought advice from G.J. about the shutting up
+of households for Belgian refugees. G.J. answered absently, not
+concealing that he was in a hurry. He had, in fact, been held up
+within three minutes of the scene of his secret idyll, and was anxious
+to arrive there. He had promised himself this surprise visit to
+Christine as some sort of recompense and narcotic for the immense
+disturbance of spirit which he had suffered at Wrikton.
+
+That morning Concepcion had been invisible, but at his early breakfast
+he had received a note from her, a brief but masterly composition,
+if ever so slightly theatrical. He was conscious of tenderness for
+Concepcion, of sympathy with her, of a desire to help to restore
+her to that which by misfortune she had lost. But the first of these
+sentiments he resolutely put aside. He was determined to change his
+mood towards her for the sake of his own tranquillity; and he had
+convinced himself that his wise, calm, common sense was capable of
+saving her from any tragic and fatal folly. He had her in the hollow
+of his hand; but if she was expecting too much from him she would be
+gradually disappointed. He must have peace; he could not allow a bomb
+to be thrown into his habits; he was a bachelor of over fifty
+whose habits had the value of inestimable jewels and whose perfect
+independence was the most precious thing in the world. At his age he
+could not marry a volcano, a revolution, a new radio-active element
+exhibiting properties which were an enigma to social science.
+Concepcion would turn his existence into an endless drama of which
+she alone, with her deep-rooted, devilish talent for the sensational,
+would always choose the setting, as she had chosen the window and the
+weir. No; he must not mistake affectionate sympathy for tenderness,
+nor tolerate the sexual exploitation of his pity.
+
+As he listened and talked to the acquaintance his inner mind shifted
+with relief to the vision of Christine, contented and simple and
+compliant in her nest--Christine, at once restful and exciting,
+Christine, the exquisite symbol of acquiescence and response. What a
+contrast to Concepcion! It had been a bold and sudden stroke to lift
+Christine to another plane, but a stroke well justified and entirely
+successful, fulfilling his dream.
+
+At this moment he noticed a figure pass the doorway in whose shadow he
+was, and he exclaimed within himself incredulously:
+
+"That is Christine!"
+
+In the shortest possible delay he said "Good-night" to his
+acquaintance, and jumped down the steps and followed eastwards the
+figure. He followed warily, for already the strange and distressing
+idea had occurred to him that he must not overtake her--if she it was.
+It was she. He caught sight of her again in the thick obscurity by the
+prison-wall of Devonshire House. He recognised the peculiar brim of
+the new hat and the new "military" umbrella held on the wrist by a
+thong.
+
+What was she doing abroad? She could not be going to a theatre. She
+had not a friend in London. He was her London. And la mere Gaston was
+not with her. Theoretically, of course, she was free. He had laid
+down no law. But it had been clearly understood between them that she
+should never emerge at night alone. She herself had promulgated the
+rule, for she had a sense of propriety and a strong sense of reality.
+She had belonged to the class which respectable, broadminded women,
+when they bantered G.J., always called "the pretty ladies," and as a
+postulant for respectability she had for her own satisfaction to
+mind her p's and q's. She could not afford not to keep herself above
+suspicion.
+
+She had been a courtesan. Did she look like one? As an individual
+figure in repose, no! None could have said that she did. He had long
+since learnt that to decide always correctly by appearance, and apart
+from environment and gesture, whether an unknown woman was or was not
+a wanton, presented a task beyond the powers of even the completest
+experience. But Christine was walking in Piccadilly at night, and
+he soon perceived that she was discreetly showing the demeanour of
+a courtesan at her profession--she who had hated and feared the
+pavement! He knew too well the signs--the waverings, the turns of the
+head, the variations in speed, the scarcely perceptible hesitations,
+the unmistakable air of wandering with no definite objective.
+
+Near Dover Street he hastened through the thin, reflecting mire, amid
+beams of light and illuminated numbers that advanced upon him in both
+directions thundering or purring, and crossed Piccadilly, and hurried
+ahead of her, to watch her in safety from the other side of the
+thoroughfare. He could hardly see her; she was only a moving shadow;
+but still he could see her; and in the long stretch of gloom beneath
+the facade of the Royal Academy he saw the shadow pause in front of a
+military figure, which by a flank movement avoided the shadow and went
+resolutely forward. He lost her in front of the Piccadilly Hotel,
+and found her again at the corner of Air Street. She swerved into Air
+Street and crossed Regent Street; he was following. In Denman Street,
+close to Shaftesbury Avenue, she stood still in front of another
+military figure--a common soldier as it proved--who also rebuffed her.
+The thing was flagrant. He halted, and deliberately let her go from
+his sight. She vanished into the dark crowds of the Avenue.
+
+In horrible humiliation, in atrocious disgust, he said to himself:
+
+"Never will I set eyes on her again! Never! Never!"
+
+Why was she doing it? Not for money. She could only be doing it
+from the nostalgia of adventurous debauch. She was the slave of her
+temperament, as the drunkard is the slave of his thirst. He had
+told her that he would be out of town for the week end, on committee
+business. He had distinctly told her that she must on no account
+expect him on the Monday night. And her temperament had roused itself
+from the obscene groves of her subconsciousness like a tiger and
+come up and driven her forth. How easy for her to escape from la mere
+Gaston if she chose! And yet--would she dare, even at the bidding
+of the tiger, to introduce a stranger into the flat? Unnecessary,
+he reflected. There were a hundred accommodating dubious interiors
+between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square. He understood; he
+neither accused nor pardoned; but he was utterly revolted, and wounded
+not merely in his soul but in the most sensitive part of his
+soul--his pride. He called himself by the worst epithet of opprobrium:
+Simpleton! The bold and sudden stroke had now become the fatuous
+caprice of a damned fool. Had he, at his age, been capable of
+overlooking the elementary axiom: once a wrong 'un, always a wrong
+'un? Had he believed in reclamation? He laughed out his disgust ...
+
+No! He did not blame her. To blame her would have been ridiculous. She
+was only what she was, and not worth blame. She was nothing at all.
+How right, how cursedly right, were the respectable dames in the
+accent of amused indifference which they employed for their precious
+phrase, "the pretty ladies"! Well, he would treat her generously--but
+through his lawyer.
+
+And in the desolation, the dismay, the disillusion, the nausea which
+ravaged him he was unwillingly conscious of fragments of thoughts that
+flickered like transient flames far below in the deep mines of his
+being.... "You are an astounding woman, Con." ... "Do you want me
+to go to the bad altogether?" ... In offering him Queen had not
+Concepcion made the supreme double sacrifice of attempting to bring
+together, at the price of her own separation from both of them,
+the two beings to whom she was most profoundly attached? It was a
+marvellous deed.... Worry, volcanoes, revolutions--was he afraid
+of them?... Were they not the very essence of life?... A figure of
+nobility!... Sitting there now by the window over the river, listening
+to the weir.... "I shall never be any more good." ... But she never
+had a gesture that was not superb.... Was he really encrusted in
+habits? Really like men whom he knew and despised at his club?... She
+loved him.... And what rich, flattering love was her love compared
+to--!... She was young.... Tenderness.... Such were the flames of dim
+promise that nickered immeasurably beneath the dark devastation of his
+mind. He ignored them, but he could not ignore them. He extinguished
+them, but they were continually relighted.... A wedding?... What sort
+of a wedding?... Poor Carlos, pathetically buried under the ruthless
+happiness of others! What a shame!... Poor Carlos!
+
+(Nice enough little cocotte, nothing else! But, of course,
+incurable!... He remembered all her crimes now. How she had been late
+in dressing for their first dinner. Her inexplicable vanishing from
+the supper-party, never explained, but easily explicable now, perhaps.
+And so on and so on.... Simpleton! Ass!)
+
+He had walked heedless of direction. He was near Lechford House.
+Many of its windows were lit. The great front doors were open. A
+commissionaire stood on guard in front of them. To the railings was
+affixed a newly-painted notice: "No person will be allowed to enter
+these premises without a pass. To this rule there is no exception."
+Lechford House had been "taken over" in its entirety by a Government
+department that believed in the virtue of mystery and of long hours.
+He looked up at the higher windows. He could not distinguish the
+chimney amid the newly-revealed stars. He thought of Queen, the white
+woman. Evidently he had never understood Queen, for if Concepcion
+admired her she was worth admiration. Concepcion never made a mistake
+in assessing fundamental character.
+
+The complete silent absorption of Lechford House into the war-machine
+rather dismayed him. He had seen not a word as to the affair in the
+newspapers--and Lechford House was one of the final strongholds of
+privilege! He strolled on into the quietness of the Park--of which
+one of the gate-keepers said to him that it would be shutting in a few
+minutes.
+
+He was in solitude, and surrounded by London. He stood still, and the
+vast sea of war seemed to be closing over him. The war was growing, or
+the sense of its measureless scope was growing. It had sprung, not
+out of this crime or that, but out of the secret invisible roots of
+humanity, and it was widening to the limits of evolution itself.
+It transcended judgment. It defied conclusions and rendered equally
+impossible both hope and despair. His pride in his country was
+intensified as months passed; his faith in his country was not
+lessened. And yet, wherein was the efficacy of grim words about
+British tenacity? The great new Somme offensive was not succeeding in
+the North. Was victory possible? Was victory deserved? In his daily
+labour he was brought into contact with too many instances of official
+selfishness, folly, ignorance, stupidity, and sloth, French as well as
+British, not to marvel at times that the conflict had not come to an
+ignominious end long ago through simple lack of imagination. He knew
+that he himself had often failed in devotion, in rectitude, in sheer
+grit.
+
+The supreme lesson of the war was its revelation of what human nature
+actually was. And the solace of the lesson, the hope for triumph,
+lay in the fact that human nature must be substantially the same
+throughout the world. If we were humanly imperfect, so at least was
+the enemy.
+
+Perhaps the frame of society was about to collapse. Perhaps Queen,
+deliberately courting destruction, and being destroyed, was the symbol
+of society. What matter? Perhaps civilisation, by its nobility and its
+elements of reason, and by the favour of destiny, would be saved from
+disaster after frightful danger, and Concepcion was its symbol....
+
+All he knew was that he had a heavy day's work before him on the
+morrow, and in relief from pain and insoluble problems he turned to
+face that work, thankful; thankful that (owing originally to Queen!)
+he had discovered in the war a task which suited his powers, which was
+genuinely useful, and which would only finish with the war; thankful
+for the prospect of meeting Concepcion at the week-end and exploring
+with her the marvellous provocative potentialities that now drew them
+together; thankful, too, that he had a balanced and sagacious mind,
+and could judge justly. (Yes, he was already forgetting his bitter
+condemnation of himself as a simpleton!)
+
+How in his human self-sufficiency could he be expected to know that
+he had judged the negligible Christine unjustly? Was he divine that
+he could see in the figure of the wanton who peered at soldiers in the
+street a self-convinced mystic envoy of the most clement Virgin, an
+envoy passionately repentant after apostasy, bound at all costs to
+respond to an imagined voice long unheard, and seeking--though in vain
+this second time--the protege of the Virgin so that she might once
+more succour and assuage his affliction?
+
+
+
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