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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 18. The Mystic |
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_ "Say you forgive me!" The officer insisted. "But there is nothing--" "Say you forgive me!" She had counted on a scene of triumph with him when he woke up, anticipating that he was bound to cut a ridiculous appearance. He knelt dimly there without a sign of self-consciousness or false shame. She forgave him. "Great baby!" Her hand was kissed again and loosed. She detected a faint, sad smile on his face. "Ah!" He rose, towering above her. "I know I'm a drunken sot," he said. "It was only because I knew I was drunk that I didn't want to come with you last night. And I called this morning to apologise. I did really. I'd no other thought in my poor old head. I wanted you to understand why I tried to hit that chap. The other woman had spoken to me earlier, and I suppose she was jealous, seeing me with you. She said something to him about you, and he laughed, and I had to hit him for laughing. I couldn't hit her. If I'd caught him an upper cut with my left he'd have gone down, and he wouldn't have got up by himself--_I_ warrant you--" "What did she say?" Christine interrupted, not comprehending the technical idiom and not interested in it. "I dunno; but he laughed--anyhow he smiled." Christine turned on the light, and then went quickly to the window to draw the curtains. "Take off your overcoat," she commanded him kindly. He obeyed, blinking. She sat down on the sofa and, raising her arms, drew the pins from her hat and put it on the table. She motioned him to sit down too, and left him a narrow space between herself and the arm of the sofa, so that they were very close together. Then, with puckered brow, she examined him. "I'd better tell you," he said. "It does me good to confess to you, you beautiful thing. I had a bottle of whisky upstairs in my room at the Grosvenor. Night before last, when I arrived there, I couldn't get to sleep in the bed. Hadn't been used to a bed for so long, you know. I had to turn out and roll myself up in a blanket on the floor. And last night I spent drinking by myself. Yes, by myself. Somehow, I don't mind telling _you_. This morning I must have been worse than I thought I was--" He stopped and put his hand on her shoulder. "There are tears in your eyes, little thing. Let me kiss your eyes.... No! I'll respect you. I worship you. You're the nicest little woman I ever saw, and I'm a brute. But let me kiss your eyes." She held her face seriously, even frowning somewhat. And he kissed her eyes gently, one after the other, and she smelt his contaminated breath. He was a spare man, with a rather thin, ingenuous, mysterious, romantic, appealing face. It was true that her eyes had moistened. She was touched by his look and his tone as he told her that he had been obliged to lie on the floor of his bedroom in order to sleep. There seemed to be an infinite pathos in that trifle. He was one of the fighters. He had fought. He was come from the horrors of the battle. A man of power. He had killed. And he was probably ten or a dozen years her senior. Nevertheless, she felt herself to be older than he was, wiser, more experienced. She almost wanted to nurse him. And for her he was, too, the protected of the very clement Virgin. Inquiries from Marthe showed that he must have entered the flat at the moment when she was kneeling at the altar and when the Lady of VII Dolours had miraculously granted to her pardon and peace. He was part of the miracle. She had a duty to him, and her duty was to brighten his destiny, to give him joy, not to let him go without a charming memory of her soft womanly acquiescences. At the same time her temperament was aroused by his personality; and she did not forget she had a living to earn; but still her chief concern was his satisfaction, not her own, and her overmastering sentiment one of dutiful, nay religious, surrender. French gratitude of the English fighter, and a mystic, fearful allegiance to the very clement Virgin--these things inspired her. "Ah!" he sighed. "My throat's like leather." And seeing that she did not follow, he added: "Thirsty." He stretched his arms. She went to the sideboard and half filled a tumbler with soda water from the siphon. "Drink!" she said, as if to a child. "Just a dash! The tiniest dash!" he pleaded in his rich voice, with a glance at the whisky. "You don't know how it'll pull me together. You don't know how I need it." But she did know, and she humoured him, shaking her head disapprovingly. He drank and smacked his lips. "Ah!" he breathed voluptuously, and then said in changed, playful accents: "Your French accent is exquisite. It makes English sound quite beautiful. And you're the daintiest little thing." "Daintiest? What is that? I have much to learn in English. But it is something nice--daintiest; it is a compliment." She somehow understood then that, despite appearances, he was not really a devotee of her sex, that he was really a solitary, that he would never die of love, and that her _role_ was a minor _role_ in his existence. And she accepted the fact with humility, with enthusiasm, with ardour, quite ready to please and to be forgotten. In playing the slave to him she had the fierce French illusion of killing Germans. Suddenly she noticed that he was wearing two wrist-watches, one close to the other, on his left arm, and she remarked on the strange fact. The officer's face changed. "Have you got a wrist-watch?" he demanded. "No." Silently he unfastened one of the watches and then said: "Hold out your beautiful arm." She did so. He fastened the watch on her arm. She was surprised to see that it was a lady's watch. The black strap was deeply scratched. She privately reconstructed the history of the watch, and decided that it must be a gift returned after a quarrel--and perhaps the scratches on the strap had something to do with the quarrel. "I beg you to accept it," he said. "I particularly wish you to accept it." "It's really a lovely watch," she exclaimed. "How kind you are!" She rewarded him with a warm kiss. "I have always wanted a wrist-watch. And now they are so _chic_. In fact, one must have one." Moving her arm about, she admired the watch at different angles. "It isn't going. And what's more, it won't go," he said. "Ah!" she politely murmured. "No! But do you know why I give you that watch?" "Why?" "Because it is a mascot." "True?" "Absolutely a mascot. It belonged to a friend of mine who is dead." "Ah! A lady--" "No! Not a lady. A man. He gave it me a few minutes before he died--and he was wearing it--and he told me to take it off his arm as soon as he was dead. I did so." Christine was somewhat alarmed. "But if he was wearing it when he died, how can it be a mascot?" "That was what made it a mascot. Believe me, I know about these things. I wouldn't deceive you, and I wouldn't tell you it was a mascot unless I was quite certain." He spoke with a quiet, initiated authority that reassured her entirely and gave her the most perfect confidence. "And why was your friend wearing a lady's watch?" "I cannot tell you." "You do not know?" "I do not know. But I know that watch is a mascot." "Was it at the Front--all this?" The man nodded. "He was wounded, killed, your friend?" "No, no, not wounded! He was in my Battery. We were galloping some guns to a new position. He came off his horse--the horse was shot under him--he himself fell in front of a gun. Of course, the drivers dared not stop, and there was no room to swerve. Hence they had to drive right over him ... Later, I came back to him. They had got him as far as the advanced dressing-station. He died in less than an hour...." Solemnity fell between Christine and her client. She said softly: "But if it is a mascot--do you not need it, you, at the Front? It is wrong for me to take it." "I have my own mascot. Nothing can touch me--except my great enemy, and he is not German." With an austere gesture he indicated the glass. His deep voice was sad, but very firm. Christine felt that she was in the presence of an adept of mysticism. The Virgin had sent this man to her, and the man had given her the watch. Clearly the heavenly power had her in its holy charge. "Ah, yes!" said the man in a new tone, as if realising the solemnity and its inappropriateness, and trying to dissipate it. "Ah, yes! Once we had the day of our lives together, he and I. We got a day off to go and see a new trench mortar, and we did have a time." "Trench mortar--what is that?" He explained. "But tell me how it works," she insisted, not because she had the slightest genuine interest in the technical details of war--for she had not--but because she desired to help him to change the mood of the scene. "Well, it's not so easy, you know. It was a four and a half pound shell, filled with gun-cotton slabs and shrapnel bullets packed in sawdust. The charge was black powder in a paper bag, and you stuck it at the bottom end of the pipe and put a bit of fuse into the touch-hole--but, of course, you must take care it penetrates the charge. The shell-fuse has a pinner with a detonator with the right length of fuse shoved into it; you wrap some clay round the end of the fuse to stop the flash of the charge from detonating the shell. Well, then you load the shell--" She comprehended simply nothing, and the man, professionally absorbed, seemed to have no perception that she was comprehending nothing. She scarcely even listened. Her face was set in a courteous, formal smile; but all the time she was thinking that the man, in spite of his qualities, must be lacking in character to give a watch away to a woman to whom he had not been talking for ten minutes. His lack of character was shown also in his unshamed confession concerning his real enemy. Some men would bare their souls to a _cocotte_ in a fashion that was flattering neither to themselves nor to the _cocotte_, and Christine never really respected such men. She did not really respect this man, but respected, and stood in awe of, his mysticism; and, further, her instinct to satisfy him, to make a spoiled boy of him, was not in the least weakened. Then, just as the man was in the middle of his description of the functioning of the trench mortar, the telephone-bell rang, and Christine excused herself. The telephone was in the bedroom, not by the bedside--for such a situation had its inconveniences--but in the farthest corner, between the window and the washstand. As she went to the telephone she was preoccupied by one of the major worries of her vocation, the worry of keeping clients out of each other's sight. She wondered who could be telephoning to her on Sunday evening. Not Gilbert, for Gilbert never telephoned on Sunday except in the morning. She insisted, of course, on his telephoning to her daily, or almost daily. She did this to several of her more reliable friends, for there was no surer way of convincing them of the genuineness of her regard for them than to vituperate them when they failed to keep her informed of their health, their spirits, and their doings. In the case of Gilbert, however, her insistence had entirely ceased to be a professional device; she adored him violently. The telephoner was Gilbert. He made an amazing suggestion; he asked her to come across to his flat, where she had never been and where he had never asked her to go. It had been tacitly and quite amiably understood between them that he was not one who invited young ladies to his own apartments. Christine cautiously answered that she was not sure whether she could come. "Are you alone?" he asked pleasantly. "Yes, quite." "Well, I will come and fetch you." She decided exactly what she would do. "No, no. I will come. I will come now. I shall be enchanted." Purposely she spoke without conviction, maintaining a mysterious reserve. She returned to the sitting-room and the other man. Fortunately the conversation on the telephone had been in French. "See!" she said, speaking and feeling as though they were intimates. "I have a lady friend who is ill. I am called to see her. I shall not be long. I swear to you I shall not be long. Wait. Will you wait?" "Yes," he replied, gazing at her. "Put yourself at your ease." She was relieved to find that she could so easily reconcile her desire to please Gilbert with her pleasurable duty towards the protege of the very clement Virgin. _ |
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