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

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