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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 28. Salome |
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_ Lady Queenie arrived in haste, as though relentless time had pursued her up the stairs. "Why, you're in the dark here!" she exclaimed impatiently, and impatiently switched on several lights. "Sorry I'm late, G.J.," she said perfunctorily, without taking any trouble to put conviction into her voice. "How have you two been getting on?" She looked at Concepcion and G.J. in a peculiar way, inquisitorial and implicatory. Then, towards the door: "Come in, come in, Dialin." A young soldier with the stripe of a lance-corporal entered, slightly nervous and slightly defiant. "And you, Miss I-forget-your-name." A young woman entered; she had very red lips and very high heels, and was both more nervous and more defiant than the young soldier. "This is Mr. Dialin, you know, Con, second ballet-master at the Ottoman. I met him by sheer marvellous chance. He's only got ten minutes; he hasn't really got that; but he's going to see me do my Salome dance." Lady Queenie made no attempt to introduce Miss I-forget-your-name, who of her own accord took a chair with a curious, dashed effrontery. It appeared that she was attached to Mr. Dialin. Lady Queenie cast off rapidly gloves, hat and coat, and then, having rushed to the bell and rung it fiercely several times, came back to the chaise-longue and gazed at it and at the surrounding floor. "Would you mind, Con?" Concepcion rose. Lady Queenie, rushing off again, pushed several more switches, and from a thick cluster of bulbs in front of a large mirror at the end of the room there fell dazzling sheets of light. A footman presented himself. "Push the day-bed right away towards the window," she commanded. The footman inclined and obeyed, and the lance-corporal superiorly helped him. Then the footman was told to energise the gramophone, which in its specially designed case stood in a corner. The footman seemed to be on intimate terms with the gramophone. Meanwhile Lady Queenie, with a safety-pin, was fastening the back hem of her short skirt to the front between the knees. Still bending, she took her shoes off. Her scent impregnated the room. "You see, it will be barefoot," she explained to Mr. Dialin. The walls of London were already billed with an early announcement of the marvels of the Pageant of Terpsichore, which was to occur at the Albert Hall, under the superintendence of the greatest modern English painters, in aid of a fund for soldiers disabled by deafness. The performers were all ladies of the upper world, ladies bearing names for the most part as familiar as the names of streets--and not a stage-star among them. Amateurism was to be absolutely untainted by professionalism in the prodigious affair; therefore the prices of tickets ruled high, and queens had conferred their patronage. Lady Queenie removed several bracelets and a necklace, and, seizing a plate, deposited it on the carpet. "That piece of bread-and-butter," she said, "is the head of my beloved John." The clever footman started the gramophone, and Lady Queenie began to dance. The lance-corporal walked round her, surveying her at all angles, watching her like a tiger, imitating movements, suggesting movements, sketching emotions with his arm, raising himself at intervals on the toes of his thick boots. After a few moments Concepcion glanced at G.J., conveying to him a passionate, adoring admiration of Queen's talent. G.J., startled by her brightened eyes so suddenly full of temperament, nodded to please her. But the fact was that he saw naught to admire in the beautiful and brazen amateur's performance. He wondered that she could not have discovered something more original than to follow the footsteps of Maud Allan in a scene which years ago had become stale. He wondered that, at any rate, Concepcion should not perceive the poor, pretentious quality of the girlish exhibition. And as he looked at the mincing Dialin he pictured the lance-corporal helping to serve a gun. And as he looked at the youthful, lithe Queenie posturing in the shower-bath of rays amid the blazing chromatic fantasy of the room, and his nostrils twitched to her pungent perfume, he pictured the reverberating shell-factory on the Clyde where girls had their scalps torn off by unappeasable machinery, and the filling-factory where five thousand girls stripped themselves naked in order to lessen the danger of being blown to bits.... After a climax of capering Queen fell full length on her stomach upon the carpet, her soft chin accurately adjusted to the edge of the plate. The music ceased. The gramophone gnashed on the disc until the footman lifted its fang. Miss I-forget-your-name raised both her feet from the floor, stuck her legs out in a straight, slanting line, and condescendingly clapped. Then, seeing that Queen was worrying the piece of bread-and-butter with her teeth, she exclaimed in agitation: "Ow my!" Mr. Dialin assisted the breathless Queen to rise, and they went off into a corner and he talked to her in low tones. Soon he looked at his wrist-watch and caught the summoning eye of Miss I-forget-your-name. "But it's pretty all right, isn't it?" said Queen. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" he soothed her with an expert's casualness. "Naturally, you want to work it up. You fell beautifully. Now you go and see Crevelli--he's the man." "I shall get him to come here. What's his address?" "I don't know. He's just moved. But you'll see it in the April number of _The Dancing Times_." As the footman was about to escort Mr. Dialin and his urgent lady downstairs Queen ordered: "Bring me up a whisky-and-soda." "It's splendid, Queen," said Concepcion enthusiastically when the two were alone with G.J. "I'm so glad you think so, darling. How are you, darling?" She kissed the older woman affectionately, fondly, on the lips, and then gave G.J. a challenging glance. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and called out very loud: "Robin! I want you at once." The secretarial Miss Robinson, carrying a note-book, appeared like magic from the inner room. "Get me the April number of _The Dancing News_." "_Times_," G.J. corrected. "Well, _Times_. It's all the same. And write to Mr. Opson and say that we really must have proper dressing-room accommodation. It's most important." "Yes, your ladyship. Your ladyship has the sub-committee as to entrance arrangements for the public at half-past six." "I shan't go. Telephone to them. I've got quite enough to do without that. I'm utterly exhausted. Don't forget about _The Dancing Times_ and to write to Mr. Opson." "Yes, your ladyship." "G.J.," said Queen after Robin had gone, "you are a pig if you don't go on that sub-committee as to entrance arrangements. You know what the Albert Hall is. They'll make a horrible mess of it, and it's just the sort of thing you can do better than anybody." "Yes. But a pig I am," answered G.J. firmly. Then he added: "I'll tell you how you might have avoided all these complications." "How?" "By having no pageant and simply going round collecting subscriptions. Nobody would have refused you. And there'd have been no expenses to come off the total." Lady Queenie put her lips together. "Has he been behaving in this style to you, Con?" "A little--now and then," said Concepcion. Later, when the chaise-longue and Queen's shoes had been replaced, and the tea-things and the head of John the Baptist taken away, and all the lights extinguished save one over the mantelpiece, and Lady Queenie had nearly finished the whisky-and-soda, and nothing remained of the rehearsal except the safety-pin between Lady Queenie's knees, G.J. was still waiting for her to bethink herself of the Hospitals subject upon which he had called by special request and appointment to see her. He took oath not to mention it first. Shortly afterwards, stiff in his resolution, he departed. In three minutes he was in the smoking-room of his club, warming himself at a fine, old, huge, wasteful grate, in which burned such a coal fire as could not have been seen in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, nor anywhere on the continent of Europe. The war had as yet changed nothing in the impregnable club, unless it was that ordinary matches had recently been substituted for the giant matches on which the club had hitherto prided itself. The hour lay neglected midway between tea and dinner, and there were only two other members in the vast room--solitaries, each before his own grand fire. G.J. took up _The Times_, which his duties had prevented him from reading at large in the morning. He wandered with a sense of ease among its multifarious pages, and, in full leisure, brought his information up to date concerning the state of the war and of the country. Air-raids by Zeppelins were frequent, and some authorities talked magniloquently about the "defence of London." Hundreds of people had paid immense sums for pictures and objects of art at the Red Cross Sale at Christie's, one of the most successful social events of the year. The House of Commons was inquisitive about Mesopotamia as a whole, and one British Army was still trying to relieve another British Army besieged in Kut. German submarine successes were obviously disquieting. The supply of beer was reduced. There were to be forty principal aristocratic dancers in the Pageant of Terpsichore. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had budgeted for five hundred millions, and was very proud. The best people were at once proud and scared of the new income tax at 5s. in the L. They expressed the fear that such a tax would kill income or send it to America. The theatrical profession was quite sure that the amusements tax would involve utter ruin for the theatrical profession, and the match trade was quite sure that the match tax would put an end to matches, and some unnamed modest individuals had apparently decided that the travel tax must and forthwith would be dropped. The story of the evacuation of Gallipoli had grown old and tedious. Cranks were still vainly trying to prove to the blunt John Bullishness of the Prime Minister that the Daylight Saving Bill was not a piece of mere freak legislation. The whole of the West End and all the inhabitants of country houses in Britain had discovered a new deity in Australia and spent all their spare time and lungs in asserting that all other deities were false and futile; his earthly name was Hughes. Jan Smuts was fighting in the primeval forests of East Africa. The Germans were discussing their war aims; and on the Verdun front they had reached Mort Homme in the usual way, that was, according to the London Press, by sacrificing more men than any place could possibly be worth; still, they had reached Mort Homme. And though our losses and the French losses were everywhere--one might assert, so to speak--negligible, nevertheless the steadfast band of thinkers and fact-facers who held a monopoly of true patriotism were extremely anxious to extend the Military Service Act, so as to rope into the Army every fit male in the island except themselves. The pages of _The Times_ grew semi-transparent, and G.J. descried Concepcion moving mysteriously in a mist behind them. Only then did he begin effectively to realise her experiences and her achievement and her ordeal on the distant, romantic Clyde. He said to himself: "I could never have stood what she has stood." She was a terrific woman; but because she was such a mixture of the mad-heroic and the silly-foolish, he rather condescended to her. She lacked what he was sure he possessed, and what he prized beyond everything--poise. And had she truly had a nervous breakdown, or was that fancy? Did she truly despair of herself as a ruined woman, doubly ruined, or was she acting a part, as much in order to impress herself as in order to impress others? He thought the country and particularly its Press, was somewhat like Concepcion as a complex. He condescended to Queenie also, not bitterly, but with sardonic pity. There she was, unalterable by any war, instinctively and ruthlessly working out her soul and her destiny. The country was somewhat like Queenie too. But, of course, comparison between Queenie and Concepcion was absurd. He had had to defend himself to Concepcion. And had he not defended himself? True, he had begun perhaps too slowly to work for the war; however, he had begun. What else could he have done beyond what he had done? Become a special constable? Grotesque. He simply could not see himself as a special constable, and if the country could not employ him more usefully than in standing on guard over an electricity works or a railway bridge in the middle of the night, the country deserved to lose his services. Become a volunteer? Even more grotesque. Was he, a man turned fifty, to dress up and fall flat on the ground at the word of some fantastic jackanapes, or stare into vacancy while some inspecting general examined his person as though it were a tailor's mannikin? He had tried several times to get into a Government department which would utilise his brains, but without success. And the club hummed with the unimaginable stories related by disappointed and dignified middle-aged men whose too eager patriotism had been rendered ridiculous by the vicious foolery of Government departments. No! He had some work to do and he was doing it. People were looking to him for decision, for sagacity, for initiative; he supplied these things. His work might grow even beyond his expectations; but if it did not he should not worry. He felt that, unfatigued, he could and would contribute to the mass of the national resolution in the latter and more racking half of the war. Morally, he was profiting by the war. Nay, more, in a deep sense he was enjoying it. The immensity of it, the terror of it, the idiocy of it, the splendour of it, its unique grandeur as an illustration of human nature, thrilled the spectator in him. He had little fear for the result. The nations had measured themselves; the factors of the equation were known. Britain conceivably might not win, but she could never lose. And he did not accept the singular theory that unless she won this war another war would necessarily follow. He had, in spite of all, a pretty good opinion of mankind, and would not exaggerate its capacity for lunatic madness. The worst was over when Paris was definitely saved. Suffering would sink and die like a fire. Privations were paid for day by day in the cash of fortitude. Taxes would always be met. A whole generation, including himself, would rapidly vanish and the next would stand in its place. And at worst, the path of evolution was unchangeably appointed. A harsh, callous philosophy. Perhaps. What impressed him, and possibly intimidated him beyond anything else whatever, was the onset of the next generation. He thought of Queenie, of Mr. Dialin, of Miss I-forget-your-name, of Lieutenant Molder. How unconsciously sure of themselves and arrogant in their years! How strong! How unapprehensive! (And yet he had just been taking credit for his own freedom from apprehensiveness!) They were young--and he was so no longer. Pooh! (A brave "pooh"!) He was wiser than they. He had acquired the supreme and subtly enjoyable faculty, which they had yet painfully to acquire, of nice, sure, discriminating, all-weighing judgment ... Concepcion had divested herself of youth. And Christine, since he knew her, had never had any youthfulness save the physical. There were only these two. Said a voice behind him: "You dining here to-night?" "I am." "Shall we crack a bottle together?" (It was astonishing and deplorable how cliches survived in the best clubs!) "By all means." The voice spoke lower: "That Bollinger's all gone at last." "You were fearing the worst the last time I saw you," said G.J. "Auction afterwards?" the voice suggested. "Afraid I can't," said G.J. after a moment's hesitation. "I shall have to leave early." _ |
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