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The Pretty Lady: A Novel, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 40. The Window |
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_ G.J. sat on the oilcloth-covered seat of the large overhanging open bay-window. Below him was the river, tributary of the Severn; in front the Old Bridge, with an ancient street rising beyond, and above that the silhouette of the roofs of Wrikton surmounted by the spire of its vast church. To the left was the weir, and the cliffs were there also, and the last tints of the sunset. Somebody came into the coffee-room. G.J. looked round, hoping that it might, after all, be Concepcion. But it was Concepcion's maid, Emily, an imitative young woman who seemed to have caught from her former employer the quality of strange, sinister provocativeness. She paused a moment before speaking. Her thin figure was somewhat indistinct in the twilight. "Mrs. Smith wishes me to say that she will certainly be well enough to take you to the station in the morning, sir," said she in her specious tones. "But she hopes you will be able to stay till the afternoon train." "I shan't." He shook his head. "Very well, sir." And after another moment's pause Emily, apparently with a challenging reluctance, receded through the shadows of the room and vanished. G.J. was extremely depressed and somewhat indignant. He gazed down bitterly at the water, following with his eye the incredibly long branches of the tree that from the height of the buttresses drooped perpendicularly into the water. He had had an astounding week-end; and for having responded to Concepcion's telegram, for having taken the telegram seriously, he had deserved what he got. Thus he argued. She had met him on the hot Saturday afternoon in a Ford car. She did not look ill. She looked as if she had fairly recovered from her acute neurasthenia. She was smartly and carelessly dressed in a summer sporting costume, and had made a strong contrast to every other human being on the platform of the small provincial station. The car drove not to the famous principal hotel, but to a small hotel just beyond the bridge. She had given him tea in the coffee-room and taken him out again, on foot, showing him the town--the half-timbered houses, the immense castle, the market-hall, the spacious flat-fronted residences, the multiplicity of solicitors, banks and surveyors, the bursting provision shops with imposing fractions of animals and expensive pies, and the drapers with ladies' blouses at 2s. 4d. Then she had conducted him to an organ recital in the vast church where, amid faint gas-jets and beadles and stalls and stained glass and holiness and centuries of history and the high respectability of the town, she had whispered sibilantly, and other people had whispered, in the long intervals of the organ. She had removed him from the church before the collection for the Red Cross, and when they had eaten a sort of dinner she had borne him away to the Russian dancers in the Moot Hall. She said she had seen the Russian dancers once already, and that they were richly worth to him a six-hours' train journey. The posters of the Russian dancers were rather daring and seductive. The Russian dancers themselves were the most desolating stage spectacle that G.J. had ever witnessed. The troupe consisted of intensely English girls of various ages, and girl-children. The costumes had obviously been fabricated by the artistes. The artistes could neither dance, pose, group, make an entrance, make an exit, nor even smile. The ballets, obviously fabricated by the same persons as the costumes, had no plot, no beginning and no end. Crude amateurishness was the characteristic of these honest and hard-working professionals, who somehow contrived to be neither men nor women--and assuredly not epicene--but who travelled from country town to country town in a glamour of posters, exciting the towns, in spite of a perfect lack of sex, because they were the fabled Russian dancers. The Moot Hall was crammed with adults and their cackling offspring, who heartily applauded the show, which indeed was billed as a "return visit" due to "terrific success" on a previous occasion. "Is it not too marvellous," Concepcion had said. He had admitted that it was. But the boredom had been excruciating. In the street they had bought an evening paper of which he had never before heard the name, to learn news of the war. The war, however, seemed very far off; it had grown unreal. "We'll talk to-morrow," Concepcion had said, and gone abruptly to bed! Still, he had slept well in the soft climate, to the everlasting murmur of the weir. Then the Sunday. She was indisposed, could not come down to breakfast, but hoped to come down to lunch, could not come down to lunch, but hoped to come down to tea, could not come down to tea--and so on to nightfall. The Sunday had been like a thousand years to him. He had learnt the town, and the suburbs of it; the grass-grown streets, the main thoroughfares, and the slums; by the afternoon he was recognising familiar faces in the town. He had twice made the classic round--along the cliffs, over the New Bridge (which was an antique), up the hill to the castle, through the market-place, down the High Street to the Old Bridge. He had explored the brain of the landlord, who could not grapple with a time-table, and who spent most of the time during closed hours in patiently bolting the front door which G.J. was continually opening. He had talked to the old customer who, whenever the house was open, sat at a table in the garden over a mug of cider. He had played through all the musical comedies, dance albums and pianoforte albums that littered the piano. He had read the same Sunday papers that he read in the Albany. And he had learnt the life-history of the sole servant, a very young agreeable woman with a wedding-ring and a baby, which baby she carried about with her when serving at table. Her husband was in France. She said that as soon as she had received his permission to do so she should leave, as she really could not get through all the work of the hotel and mind and feed a baby. She said also that she played the piano herself. And she regretted that baby and pressure of work had deprived her of a sight of the Russian dancers, because she had heard so much about them, and was sure they were beautiful. This detail touched G.J.'s heart to a mysterious and sweet and almost intolerable melancholy. He had not made the acquaintance of fellow-guests--for there were none, save Concepcion and Emily. And in the evening as in the morning the weir placidly murmured, and the river slipped smoothly between the huge jutting buttresses of the Old Bridge; and the thought of the perpetuity of the river, in whose mirror the venerable town was a mushroom, obsessed him, mastered him, and made him as old as the river. He was wonder-struck and sorrow-struck by life, and by his own life, and by the incomprehensible and angering fantasy of Concepcion. His week-end took on the appearance of the monstrous. Then the door opened again, and Concepcion entered in a white gown, the antithesis of her sporting costume of the day before. She approached through the thickening shadows of the room, and the vague whiteness of her gown reminded him of the whiteness of the form climbing the chimney-ladder on the roof of Lechford House in the raid. Knowing her, he ought to have known that, having made him believe that she would not come down, she would certainly come down. He restrained himself, showed no untoward emotion, and said in a calm, genial voice: "Oh! I'm so glad you were well enough to come down." She sat opposite to him in the window-seat, rather sideways, so that her skirt was pulled close round her left thigh and flowed free over the right. He could see her still plainly in the dusk. "I've never yet apologised to you for my style of behaviour at the committee of yours," she began abruptly in a soft, kind, reasonable voice. "I know I let you down horribly. Yes, yes! I did. And I ought to apologise to you for to-day too. But I don't think I'll apologise to you for bringing you to Wrikton and this place. They're not real, you know. They're an illusion. There is no such place as Wrikton and this river and this window. There couldn't be, could there? Queen and I motored over here once from Paulle--it's not so very far--and we agreed that it didn't really exist. I never forgot it; I was determined to come here again some time, and that's why I chose this very spot when half Harley Street stood up and told me I must go away somewhere after my cure and be by myself, far from the pernicious influence of friends. I think I gave you a very fair idea of the town yesterday. But I didn't show you the funniest thing in it--the inside of a solicitor's office. You remember the large grey stone house in Mill Street--the grass street, you know--with 'Simpover and Simpover' on the brass plate, and the strip of green felt nailed all round the front door to keep the wind out in winter. Well, it's all in the same key inside. And I don't know which is the funniest, the Russian dancers, or the green felt round the front door, or Mr. Simpover, or the other Mr. Simpover. I'm sure neither of those men is real, though they both somehow have children. You remember the yellow cards that you see in so many of the windows: 'A MAN has gone from this house to fight for King and Country!'--the elder Mr. Simpover thinks it would be rather boastful to put the card in the window, so he keeps it on the mantelpiece in his private office. It's for his son. And yet I assure you the father isn't real. He is like the town, he simply couldn't be real." "What have _you_ been up to in the private office?" G.J. asked lightly. "Making my will." "What for?" "Isn't it the proper thing to do? I've left everything to you." "You haven't, Con!" he protested. There was absolutely no tranquillity about this woman. With her, the disconcerting unexpected happened every five minutes. "Did you suppose I was going to send any of my possessions back to my tropical relatives in South America? I've left everything to you to do what you like with. Squander it if you like, but I expect you'll give it to war charities. Anyhow, I thought it would be safest in your hands." He retorted in a tone quietly and sardonically challenging: "But I was under the impression you were cured." "Of my neurasthenia?" "Yes." "I believe I am. I gained thirteen pounds in the nursing home, and slept like a greengrocer. In fact, the Weir-Mitchell treatment, with modern improvements of course, enjoyed a marvellous triumph in my case. But that's not the point. G.J., I know you think I behaved very childishly yesterday, and that I deserved to be ill to-day for what I did yesterday. And I admit you're a saint for not saying so. But I wasn't really childish, and I haven't really been ill to-day. I've only been in a devil of a dilemma. I wanted to tell you something. I telegraphed for you so that I could tell you. But as soon as I saw you I was afraid to tell you. Not afraid, but I couldn't make up my mind whether I ought to tell you or not. I've lain in bed all day trying to decide the point. To-night I decided I oughtn't, and then all of a sudden, just now, I became an automaton and put on some things, and here I am telling you." She paused. G.J. kept silence. Then she continued, in a voice in which persuasiveness was added to calm, engaging reasonableness: "Now you must get rid of all your conventional ideas, G.J. Because you're rather conventional. You must be completely straight--I mean intellectually--otherwise I can't treat you as an intellectual equal, and I want to. You must be a realist--if any man can be." She spoke almost with tenderness. He felt mysteriously shy, and with a brusque movement of the head shifted his glance from her to the river. "Well?" he questioned, his gaze fixed on the water that continually slipped in large, swirling, glinting sheets under the bridge. "I'm going to kill myself." At first the words made no impression on him. He replied: "You were right when you said this place was an illusion. It is." And then he began to be afraid. Did she mean it? She was capable of anything. And he was involved in her, inescapably. Yes, he was afraid. Nevertheless, as she kept silence he went on--with bravado: "And how do you intend to do it?" "That will be my affair. But I venture to say that my way of doing it will make Wrikton historic," she said, curiously gentle. "Trust you!" he exclaimed, suddenly looking at her. "Con, why _will_ you always be so theatrical?" She changed her posture for an easier one, half reclining. Her face and demeanour seemed to have the benign masculinity of a man's. "I'm sorry," she answered. "I oughtn't to have said that. At any rate, to you. I ought to have had more respect for your feelings." He said: "You aren't cured. That's evident. All this is physical." "Of course it's physical, G.J.," she agreed, with an intonation of astonishment that he should be guilty of an utterance so obvious and banal. "Did you ever know anything that wasn't? Did you ever even conceive anything that wasn't? If you can show me how to conceive spirit except in terms of matter, I'd like to listen to you." "It's against nature--to kill yourself." "Oh!" she murmured. "I'm quite used to that charge. You aren't by any means the first to accuse me of being against nature. But can you tell me where nature ends? That's another thing I'd like to know.... My dear friend, you're being conventional, and you aren't being realistic. You must know perfectly well in your heart that there's no reason why I shouldn't kill myself if I want to. You aren't going to talk to me about the Ten Commandments, I suppose, are you? There's a risk, of course, on the other side--shore--but perhaps it's worth taking. You aren't in a position to say it isn't worth taking. And at worst the other shore must be marvellous. It may possibly be terrible, if you arrive too soon and without being asked, but it must be marvellous.... Naturally, I believe in immortality. If I didn't, the thing wouldn't be worth doing. Oh! I should hate to be extinguished. But to change one existence for another, if the fancy takes you--that seems to me the greatest proof of real independence that anybody can give. It's tremendous. You're playing chess with fate and fate's winning, and you knock up the chess-board and fate has to begin all over again! Can't you see how tremendous it is--and how tempting it is? The temptation is terrific." "I can see all that," said G.J. He was surprised by a sudden sense of esteem for the mighty volition hidden behind those calm, worn, gracious features. But Concepcion's body was younger than her face. He perceived, as it were for the first time, that Concepcion was immeasurably younger than himself; and yet she had passed far beyond him in experience. "But what's the origin of all this? What do you want to do it for? What's happened?" "Then you believe I mean to do it?" "Yes," he replied sincerely, and as naturally as he could. "That's the tone I like to hear," said she, smiling. "I felt sure I could count on you not to indulge in too much nonsense. Well, I'm going to try the next avatar just to remind fate of my existence. I think fate's forgotten me, and I can stand anything but that. I've lost Carly, and I've lost Queen.... Oh, G.J.! Isn't it awful to think that when I offered you Queen she'd already gone, and it was only her dead body I was offering you? ... And I've lost my love. And I've failed, and I shall never be any more good here. I swore I would see a certain thing through, and I haven't seen it through, and I can't! But I've told you all this before.... What's left? Even my unhappiness is leaving me. Unless I kill myself I shall cease to exist. Don't you understand? Yes, you do." After a marked pause she added: "And I may overtake Queen." "There's one thing I don't understand," he said, "as we're being frank with each other. Why do you tell me? Has it occurred to you that you're really making me a party to this scheme of yours?" He spoke with a perfectly benevolent detachment deriving from hers. And as he spoke he thought of a man whom he had once known and who had committed suicide, and of all that he had read about suicides and what he had thought of them. Suicides had been incomprehensible to him, and either despicable or pitiable. And he said to himself: "Here is one of them! (Or is it an illusion?) But she has made all my notions of suicide seem ridiculous." She answered his spoken question with vivacity: "Why do I tell you? I don't know. That's the point I've been arguing to myself all night and all day. _I'm_ not telling you. Something _in_ me is forcing me to tell you. Perhaps it's much more important that you should comprehend me than that you should be spared the passing worry that I'm causing you by showing you the inside of my head. You're the only friend I have left. I knew you before I knew Carly. I practically committed suicide from my particular world at the beginning of the war. I was going back to my particular world--you remember, G.J., in that little furnished flat--I was going back to it, but you wouldn't let me. It was you who definitely cut me off from my past. I might have been gadding about safely with Sarah Churcher and her lot at this very hour, but you would have it otherwise, and so I finished up with neurasthenia. You commanded and I obeyed." "Well," he said, ignoring all her utterance except the last words, "obey me again." "What do you want me to do?" she demanded wistfully and yet defiantly. Her features were tending to disappear in the tide of night, but she happened to sit up and lean forward and bring them a little closer to him. "You've no right to stop me from doing what I want to do. What right have you to stop me? Besides, you can't stop me. Nothing can stop me. It is settled. Everything is arranged." He, too, sat up and leaned forward. In a voice rendered soft by the realisation of the fact that he had indeed known her before Carlos Smith knew her and had imagined himself once to be in love with her, and of the harshness of her destiny and the fading of her glory, he said simply and yet, in spite of himself, insinuatingly: "No! I don't claim any right to stop you. I understand better, perhaps, than you think. But let me come down again next week-end. Do let me," he insisted, still more softly. Even while he was speaking he expected her to say, "You're only suggesting that in order to gain time." But she said: "How can you be sure it wouldn't be my inquest and funeral I should be 'letting' you come down to?" He replied: "I could trust you." A delicate night-gust charged with the scent of some plant came in at the open window and deranged ever so slightly a glistening lock on her forehead. G.J., peering at her, saw the masculinity melt from her face. He saw the mysterious resurrection of the girl in her, and felt in himself the sudden exciting outflow from her of that temperamental fluid whose springs had been dried up since the day when she learnt of her widowhood. She flushed. He looked away into the dark water, as though he had profanely witnessed that which ought not to be witnessed. Earlier in the interview she had inspired him with shyness. He was now stirred, agitated, thrilled--overwhelmed by the effect on her of his own words and his own voice. He was afraid of his power, as a prophet might be afraid of his power. He had worked a miracle--a miracle infinitely more convincing than anything that had led up to it. The miracle had brought back the reign of reality. "Very well," she quivered. And there was a movement and she was gone. He glanced quickly behind him, but the room lay black.... A transient pallor on the blackness, and the door banged. He sat a long time, solemn, gazing at the serrated silhouette of the town against a sky that obstinately held the wraith of daylight, and listening to the everlasting murmur of the invisible weir. Not a sound came from the town, not the least sound. When at length he stumbled out, he saw the figure of the landlord smoking the pipe of philosophy, and waiting with a landlord's fatalism for the last guest to go to bed. And they talked of the weather. _ |
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