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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 26. The Return |
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_ It was afternoon in April, 1916. G.J. rang the right bell at the entrance of the London home of the Lechfords. Lechford House, designed about 1840 by an Englishman of genius who in this rare instance had found a patron with the wit to let him alone, was one of the finest examples of domestic architecture in the West End. Inspired by the formidable palaces of Rome and Florence, the artist had conceived a building in the style of the Italian renaissance, but modified, softened, chastened, civilised, to express the bland and yet haughty sobriety of the English climate and the English peerage. People without an eye for the perfect would have correctly described it as a large plain house in grey stone, of three storeys, with a width of four windows on either side of its black front door, a jutting cornice, and rather elaborate chimneys. It was, however, a masterpiece for the connoisseur, and foreign architects sometimes came with cards of admission to pry into it professionally. The blinds of its principal windows were down--not because of the war; they were often down, for at least four other houses disputed with Lechford House the honour of sheltering the Marquis and his wife and their sole surviving child. Above the roof a wire platform for the catching of bombs had given the mansion a somewhat ridiculous appearance, but otherwise Lechford House managed to look as though it had never heard of the European War. One half of the black entrance swung open, and a middle-aged gentleman dressed like Lord Lechford's stockbroker, but who was in reality his butler, said in answer to G.J.'s enquiry: "Lady Queenie is not at home, sir." "But it is five o'clock," protested G.J., suddenly sick of Queen's impudent unreliability. "And I have an appointment with her at five." The butler's face relaxed ever so little from its occupational inhumanity of a suet pudding; the spirit of compassion seemed to inform it for an instant. "Her ladyship went out about a quarter of an hour ago, sir." "When d'you think she'll be back?" The suet pudding was restored. "That I could not say, sir." "Damn the girl!" said G.J. to himself; and aloud: "Please tell her ladyship that I've called." "Mr. Hoape, is it not, sir?" "It is." By the force of his raisin eyes the butler held G.J. as he turned to descend the steps. "There's nobody at home, sir, except Mrs. Carlos Smith. Mrs. Carlos Smith is in Lady Queenie's apartments." "Mrs. Carlos Smith!" exclaimed G.J., who had not seen Concepcion for some seventeen months; nor heard from her for nearly as long, nor heard of her since the previous year. "Yes, sir." "Ask her if she can see me, will you?" said G.J. impetuously, after a slight pause. He stepped on to the tessellated pavement of the outer hall. On the raised tessellated pavement of the inner hall stood two meditative youngish footmen, possibly musing upon the problems of the intensification of the Military Service Act which were then exciting journalists and statesmen. Beyond was the renowned staircase, which, rising with insubstantial grace, lost itself in silvery altitude like the way to heaven. Presently G.J. was mounting the staircase and passing statues by Canova and Thorwaldsen, and portraits of which the heads had been painted by Lawrence and the hands and draperies by Lawrence's hireling, and huger canvasses on which the heads and breasts had been painted by Rubens and everything else by Rubens's regiment of hirelings. The guiding footman preceded him through a great chamber which he recognised as the drawing-room in its winding sheet, and then up a small and insignificant staircase; and G.J. was on ground strange to him, for never till then had he been higher than the first-floor in Lechford House. Lady Queenie's apartments did violence to G.J.'s sensibilities as an upholder of traditionalism in all the arts, of the theory that every sound movement in any art must derive from its predecessor. Some months earlier he had met for a few minutes the creative leader of the newest development in internal decoration, and he vividly remembered a saying of the grey-haired, slouch-hatted man: "At the present day the only people in the world with really vital perceptions about decoration are African niggers, and the only inspiring productions are the coloured cotton stuffs designed for the African native market." The remark had amused and stimulated him, but he had never troubled to go in search of examples of the inspiring influence of African taste on London domesticity. He now saw perhaps the supreme instance lodged in Lechford House, like a new and truculent state within a great Empire. Lady Queenie had imposed terms on her family, and under threats of rupture, of separation, of scandal, Lady Queenie's exotic nest had come into existence in the very fortress of unchangeable British convention. The phenomenon was a war phenomenon due to the war, begotten by the war; for Lady Queenie had said that if she was to do war-work without disaster to her sanity she must have the right environment. Thus the putting together of Lady Queenie's nest had proceeded concurrently with the building of national projectile factories and of square miles of offices for the girl clerks of ministries and departments of government. The footman left G.J. alone in a room designated the boudoir. G.J. resented the boudoir, because it was like nothing that he had ever witnessed. The walls were irregularly covered with rhombuses, rhomboids, lozenges, diamonds, triangles, and parallelograms; the carpet was treated likewise, and also the upholstery and the cushions. The colourings of the scene in their excessive brightness, crudity and variety surpassed G.J.'s conception of the possible. He had learned the value of colour before Queen was born, and in the Albany had translated principle into practice. But the hues of the boudoir made the gaudiest effects of Regency furniture appear sombre. The place resembled a gigantic and glittering kaleidoscope deranged and arrested. G.J.'s glance ran round the room like a hunted animal seeking escape, and found no escape. He was as disturbed as he might have been disturbed by drinking a liqueur on the top of a cocktail. Nevertheless he had to admit that some of the contrasts of pure colour were rather beautiful, even impressive; and he hated to admit it. He was aware of a terrible apprehension that he would never be the same man again, and that henceforth his own abode would be eternally stricken for him with the curse of insipidity. Regaining somewhat his nerve, he looked for pictures. There were no pictures. But every piece of furniture was painted with primitive sketches of human figures, or of flowers, or of vessels, or of animals. On the front of the mantelpiece were perversely but brilliantly depicted, with a high degree of finish, two nude, crouching women who gazed longingly at each other across the impassable semicircular abyss of the fireplace; and just above their heads, on a scroll, ran these words: "The ways of God are strange." He heard movements and a slight cough in the next room, the door leading to which was ajar. Concepcion's cough; he thought he recognised it. Five minutes ago he had had no notion of seeing her; now he was about to see her. And he felt excited and troubled, as much by the sudden violence of life as by the mere prospect of the meeting. After her husband's death Concepcion had soon withdrawn from London. A large engineering firm on the Clyde, one of the heads of which happened to be constitutionally a pioneer, was establishing a canteen for its workmen, and Concepcion, the tentacles of whose influence would stretch to any length, had decided that she ought to take up canteen work, and in particular the canteen work of just that firm. But first of all, to strengthen her prestige and acquire new prestige, she had gone to the United States, with a powerful introduction to Sears, Roebuck and Company of Chicago, in order to study industrial canteenism in its most advanced and intricate manifestations. Portraits of Concepcion in splendid furs on the deck of the steamer in the act of preparing to study industrial canteenism in its most advanced and intricate manifestations had appeared in the illustrated weeklies. The luxurious trip had cost several hundreds of pounds, but it was war expenditure, and, moreover, Concepcion had come into considerable sums of money through her deceased husband. Her return to Britain had never been published. Advertisements of Concepcion ceased. Only a few friends knew that she was in the most active retirement on the Clyde. G.J. had written to her twice but had obtained no replies. One fact he knew, that she had not had a child. Lady Queenie had not mentioned her; it was understood that the inseparables had quarrelled in the heroic manner and separated for ever. She entered the boudoir slowly. G.J. grew self-conscious, as it were because she was still the martyr of destiny and he was not. She wore a lavender-tinted gown of Queen's; he knew it was Queen's because he had seen precisely such a gown on Queen, and there could not possibly be another gown precisely like that very challenging gown. It suited Queen, but it did not suit Concepcion. She looked older; she was thirty-two, and might have been taken for thirty-five. She was very pale, with immense fatigued eyes; but her ridiculous nose had preserved all its originality. And she had the same slightly masculine air--perhaps somewhat intensified--with an added dignity. And G.J. thought: "She is as mysterious and unfathomable as I am myself." And he was impressed and perturbed. With a faint, sardonic smile, glancing at him as a physical equal from her unusual height (she was as tall as Lady Queenie), she said abruptly and casually: "Am I changed?" "No," he replied as abruptly and casually, clasping almost inimically her ringed hand--she was wearing Queenie's rings. "But you're tired. The journey, I suppose." "It's not that. We sat up till five o'clock this morning, talking." "Who?" "Queen and I." "What did you do that for?" "Well, you see, we'd had the devil's own row--" She stopped, leaving his imagination to complete the picture of the meeting and the night talk. He smiled awkwardly--tried to be paternal, and failed. "What about?" "She never wanted me to leave London. I came back last night with only a handbag just as she was going out to dinner. She didn't go out to dinner. Queen is a white woman. Nobody knows how white Queen is. I didn't know myself until last night." There was a pause. G.J. said: "I had an appointment here with the white woman, on business." "Yes, I know," said Concepcion negligently. "She'll be home soon." Something infinitesimally malicious in the voice and gaze sent the singular idea shooting through his mind that Queen had gone out on purpose so that Concepcion might have him alone for a while. And he was wary of both of them, as he might have been of two pagan goddesses whom he, a poor defiant mortal, suspected of having laid an eye on him for their own ends. "_You've_ changed, anyhow," said Concepcion. "Older?" "No. Harder." He was startled, not displeased. "How--harder?" "More sure of yourself," said Concepcion, with a trace of the old harsh egotism in her tone. "It appears you're a perfect tyrant on the Lechford Committee now you're vice-chairman, and all the more footling members dread the days when you're in the chair. It appears also that you've really overthrown two chairmen, and yet won't take the situation yourself." He was still more startled, but now positively flattered by the world's estimate of his activities and individuality. He saw himself in a new light. "This what you were talking about until five a.m.?" The butler entered. "Shall I serve tea, Madam?" Concepcion looked at the man scornfully: "Yes." One of the minor stalwarts entered and arranged a table, and the other followed with a glittering, steaming tray in his hands, while the butler hovered like a winged hippopotamus over the operation. Concepcion half sat down by the table, and then, altering her mind, dropped on to a vast chaise-longue, as wide as a bed, and covered with as many cushions as would have stocked a cushion shop, which occupied the principal place in front of the hearth. The hem of her rich gown just touched the floor. G.J. could see that she was wearing the transparent deep-purple stockings that Queen wore with the transparent lavender gown. Her right shoulder rose high from the mass of the body, and her head was sunk between two cushions. Her voice came smothered from the cushions: "Damn it! G.J. Don't look at me like that." He was standing near the mantelpiece. "Why?" he exclaimed. "What's the matter, Con?" There was no answer. He lit a cigarette. The ebullient kettle kept lifting its lid in growing impatience. But Concepcion seemed to have forgotten the tea. G.J. had a thought, distinct like a bubble on a sea of thoughts, that if the tea was already made, as no doubt it was, it would soon be stewed. Concepcion said: "The matter is that I'm a ruined woman, and Queen can't understand." And in the bewildering voluptuous brightness and luxury of the room G.J. had the sensation of being a poor, baffled ghost groping in the night of existence. Concepcion's left arm slipped over the edge of the day-bed and hung limp and pale, the curved fingers touching the carpet. _ |
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