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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 17. Sunday Afternoon |
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_ "What is Madame going to do?" whispered Marthe, still alarmed and shocked, when they had both stepped back out of the bedroom; and she added: "He has never been here before." Marthe was a woman of immense experience but little brains, and when phenomena passed beyond her experience she became rather like a foolish, raw girl. She had often dealt with drunken men; she had often--especially in her younger days--satisfactorily explained a situation to visitors who happened to call when her mistress for the time being was out. But only on the very rarest occasions had she known a client commit the awful solecism of calling before lunch; and that a newcomer, even intoxicated, should commit this solecism staggered her and left her trembling. "What am I going to do? Nothing!" answered Christine. "Let him sleep." Christine, too, was dismayed. But Marthe's weakness gave her strength, and she would not show her fright. Moreover, Christine had some force of character, though it did not often show itself as sudden firmness. She condescended to Marthe. She also condescended to the officer, because he was unconscious, because he had put himself in a false position, because sooner or later he would look extremely silly. She regarded the officer's intrusion as tiresome, but she did not gravely resent it. After all, he was drunk; and before the row in the Promenade he had asked her for her card, saying that he was engaged that night but would like to know where she lived. Of course she had protested--as what woman in her place would not?--against the theory that he was engaged that night, and she had been in a fair way to convince him that he was not really engaged that night--except morally to her, since he had accosted her--when the quarrel had supervened and it had dawned on her that he had been in the taciturn and cautious stage of acute inebriety. He had, it now seemed, probably been drinking through the night. There were men, as she knew, who simply had to have bouts, whose only method to peace was to drown the demon within them. She would never knowingly touch a drunken man, or even a partially intoxicated man, if she could help it. She was not a bit like the polite young lady above, who seemed to specialise in noisy tipplers. Her way with the top-heavy was to leave them to recover in tranquillity. No other way was safe. Nevertheless, in the present instance she did venture again into the bedroom. The plight of the lace coverlet troubled her and practically drove her into the bedroom. She got a little towel, gently lifted the sleeper's left foot, and tied the towel round his boot; then she did the same to his other foot. The man did not stir; but if, later, he should stir, neither his boots nor his spurs could do further harm to the lace coverlet. His cane and gloves were on the floor; she picked them up. His overcoat, apparently of excellent quality, was still on his back; and the cap had not quite departed from his head. Christine had learned enough about English military signs and symbols to enable her to perceive that he belonged to the artillery. "But how will madame change her dress?" Marthe demanded in the sitting-room. Madame always changed her dress immediately on returning from church, for that which is suitable for mass may not be proper to other ends. "I shall not change," said Christine. "It is well, madame." Christine was not deterred from changing by the fact that the bedroom was occupied. She retained her church dress because she foresaw the great advantage she would derive from it in the encounter which must ultimately occur with the visitor. She would not even take her hat off. The two women lunched, mainly on macaroni, with some cheese and an apple. Christine had coffee. Ah, she must always have her coffee. As for a cigarette, she never smoked when alone, because she did not really care for smoking. Marthe, however, enjoyed smoking, and Christine gave her a cigarette, which she lighted while clearing the table. One was mistress, the other servant, but the two women were constantly meeting on the plane of equality. Neither of them could avoid it, or consistently tried to avoid it. Although Marthe did not eat with Christine, if a meal was in progress she generally came into the sitting-room with her mouth more or less full of food. Their repasts were trifles, passovers, unceremonious and irregular peckings, begun and finished in a few moments. And if Marthe was always untidy in her person, Christine, up till three in the afternoon, was also untidy. They went about the flat in a wonderful state of unkempt and insecure slovenliness. And sometimes Marthe might be lolling in the sitting-room over the illustrations in _La Vie Parisienne_, which was part of the apparatus of the flat, while Christine was in the tiny kitchen washing gloves as she alone could wash them. The flat lapsed into at any rate a superficial calm. Marthe, seeing that fate had deprived her of the usual consolations of religion, determined to reward herself by remaining a perfect slattern for the rest of the day. She would not change at all. She would not wash up either the breakfast things or the lunch things. Leaving a small ring of gas alight in the gas stove, she sat down all dirty on a hard chair in front of it and fell into a luxurious catalepsy. In the sitting-room Christine sat upright on the sofa and read lusciously a French translation of _East Lynne_. She was in no hurry for the man to waken; her sense of time was very imperfect; she was never pricked by the thought that life is short and that many urgent things demand to be done before the grave opens. Nor was she apprehensive of unpleasant complications. The man was in the flat, but it was her flat; her law ran in the flat; and the door was fast against invasion. Still, the gentle snore of the man, rising and falling, dominated the flat, and the fact of his presence preoccupied the one woman in the kitchen and the other in the sitting-room.... Christine noticed that the thickness of the pages read had imperceptibly increased to three-quarters of an inch, while the thickness of the unread pages had diminished to a quarter of an inch. And she also noticed, on the open page, another phenomenon. It was the failing of the day--the faintest shadow on the page. With incredible transience another of those brief interruptions of darkness which in London in winter are called days was ending. She rose and went to the discreetly-curtained window, and, conscious of the extreme propriety of her appearance, boldly pulled aside the curtain and looked across, through naked glass, at the hotel nearly opposite. There was not a sound, not a movement, in Cork Street. Cork Street, the flat, the hotel, the city, the universe, lay entranced and stupefied beneath the grey vapours of the Sabbath. The sensation to Christine was melancholy, but it was exquisitely melancholy. The solid hotel dissolved, and in its place Christine saw the interesting, pathetic phantom of her own existence. A stern, serious existence, full of disappointments, and not free from dangerous episodes, an existence which entailed much solitude and loss of liberty; but the verdict upon it was that in the main it might easily have been more unsatisfactory than it was. With her indolence and her unappeasable temperament what other vocation indeed, save that of marriage, could she have taken up? And her temperament would have rendered any marriage an impossible prison for her. She was a modest success--her mother had always counselled her against ambition--but she was a success. Her magic power was at its height. She continued to save money and had become a fairly regular frequenter of the West End branch of the Credit Lyonnais. (Incidentally she had come to an arrangement with her Paris landlord.) But, more important than money, she was saving her health, and especially her complexion--the source of money. Her complexion could still survive the minutest examination. She achieved this supreme end by plenty of sleep and by keeping to the minimum of alcohol. Of course she had to drink professionally; clients insisted; some of them were exhilarated by the spectacle of a girl tipsy; but she was very ingenious in avoiding alcohol. When invited to supper she would respond with an air of restrained eagerness: "Oh, yes, with pleasure!" And then carelessly add: "Unless you would prefer to come quietly home with me. My maid is an excellent cook and one is very comfortable _chez-moi_." And often the prospect thus sketched would piquantly allure a client. Nevertheless at intervals she could savour a fashionable restaurant as well as any harum-scarum minx there. Her secret fear was still obesity. She was capable of imagining herself at fat as Marthe--and ruined; for, though a few peculiar amateurs appreciated solidity, the great majority of men did not. However, she was not getting stouter. She had a secret sincere respect for certain of her own qualities; and if women of the world condemned certain other qualities in her, well, she despised women of the world--selfish idlers who did nothing, who contributed nothing, to the sum of life, whereas she was a useful and indispensable member of society, despite her admitted indolence. In this summary way she comforted herself in her loss of caste. Without Gilbert, of course, her existence would have been fatally dull, and she might have been driven to terrible remedies against ennui and emptiness. The depth and violence of her feeling for Gilbert were indescribable--at any rate by her. She turned again from the darkening window to the sofa and sat down and tried to recall the figures of the dozens of men who had sat there, and she could recall at most six or eight, and Gilbert alone was 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. _ |
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