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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 12. Rendezvous |
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_ 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 True, Sara Trevise had agreed with him that he could accomplish no good by staying at Concepcion's; Concepcion had withdrawn from the vision of men.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." _ |
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