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

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.