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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 4. Confidence |
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_ 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. _ |
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