The Pretty Lady, Arnold Bennett [popular ebook readers .txt] 📗

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