"You don"t want me to?"
Lilian shook her head slowly.
"All right, then. I won"t. Now I"ll tell you the whole business in a nutsh.e.l.l. My sister"s a great woman. She"s perfectly mad, but she"s a great woman. Only where I"m concerned she"s always most monstrously unscrupulous. I"m her religion--always was, but more than ever since I bought that amusing business. She was dying of boredom. It saved her.
When I got myself divorced she was absolutely delighted. She had me to herself again. Her jealousy where I"m concerned is ferocious. She can"t help it, but it"s ferocious. Tigresses aren"t in it with her. She was jealous of you, and she"d determined to clear you out. I"ve perceived that for a long time."
"But why should she be jealous of me? I"m sure I"ve never----"
"Well, she"s d.a.m.ned clever, Isabel is, and she"s seen that I"m in love with you. Gone--far gone!"
He spoke with strange detachment, as of another person.
The thud-thud of Lilian"s heart appalled her. She blushed down to her neck. Her hand shook. The restaurant and all its inhabitants vanished in a cloud and then slowly reappeared. Her confusion of mind was terrible. She was shocked, outraged, by the negligently brutal candour of the avowal; and at the same time she was thinking: "I"d no idea that any man was as marvellous as this man is, and I don"t think there can possibly be another man quite as marvellous anywhere. And his being in love with me is the most ravishing, lovely, tender--tender--tender thing that ever happened to any girl. And, of course, he is in love with me.
He"s not pretending. _He_ would never pretend...."
She wanted to be unconscious for a little while. She did not know it, but her beautiful face was transfigured by the interplay of shyness, modesty, soft resentment, grat.i.tude, ecstasy and determination. Her head was bowed and she could not raise it. Neither could she utter a single word. She looked divine, and thought she looked either silly or sulky.
Mr. Grig glanced aside. A glimpse of paradise had dazzled the eternal youth in him. The waiter bore away the soup-plates.
"Perhaps that"s enough about business for the present," said Mr. Grig at length. "Let"s talk about something else. But before we start I must just tell you you"re the most stylish creature in this restaurant. I was staggered when I came in and saw you. Staggered!"
She did raise her head.
"Why?" she asked with exquisite gentleness.
Mr. Grig, overwhelmed, offered no response.
As for her determination, it amounted to this: "I will be as marvellous as he is. I will be more marvellous. I will be queen, slave, everything. He doesn"t guess what is in store for him." She did not think about the difference in their ages, nor about marriage; nor did she even consider whether or not she was in love with him. Chiefly, she was grateful. And what she saw in front of her was a sublime vocation.
Her mood was ever so faintly tinged with regret because they were not both in evening dress.
VIII
Philosophy of the Grey-haired
The evening and all Lilian"s emotions seemed to start afresh. The look of the restaurant was changed. The tables had been cleared of the grosser apparatus of eating, and showed white cloths with only white plates, fruit, small gla.s.ses, small cups, ash-trays. Most of the waiters had vanished; the remainder stood aside, moveless, in.o.btrusive, watchful. The diners had abandoned themselves to intimacy or the sweet coma of digestion. Some talked rather loudly, others in a murmur.
Women leaned back, or put their elbows on the table, letting cigarette smoke float upwards across their eyes. A few tables were already deserted, and the purity of their emptiness seemed bafflingly to demonstrate that events may happen and leave behind absolutely no trace.
Without consulting Lilian Mr. Grig gave an order and two small gla.s.ses were slowly filled to the brim with a green liquid. Lilian recognized it for the very symbol of delicate licence. She was afraid to sip, lest she might be disillusioned concerning it, and also lest the drinking of it might malignly hasten the moment of departure of the last train for Brighton.
Mr. Grig was of those who murmured. His wrists lay one over the other on the table and his face was over the table; and it seemed strange, so low and even was his speech, that Lilian could catch every word, as she did. The people at the next table could have heard nothing. All the animation and variety were in his features, none in his tone. He had been telling her about Brighton. He saw the town of Brighton as a living, developing whole, discussing it as a single organism, showing how its evolution was still in active process, and making the small group of men who were exploiting it and directing it appear like creative giants and the ma.s.s of inhabitants like midgets utterly unconscious of their own manipulation. And in his account of the vast affair there was no right and no wrong; there were merely the dark aims and the resolution of the giants determined to wax in power and to imprint themselves on the munic.i.p.ality. Lilian had never heard such revealing talk; she could not follow all of it, but she was fascinated, wonderstruck; profoundly impressed by the quality of the brain opposite to her and the contemptibleness of her own ignorance of life; amazed and enraptured that this brain could be interested in herself. Mr. Grig related the story of the middle-aged proprietor of one of the chief hotels who had married a young wife.
"He had broken up his family, and the family is the real unit of society--and there was no need for it! No need at all! But then, you see, he"d never had time in his existence to understand that a middle-aged man who has already had experience of marriage and marries a girl young enough to be his daughter is either a coward or a fool or without taste. He would only do it because he"s mad for her, and that"s the very reason for not doing it. When romance comes in that way it wants the sauce of secrecy and plotting--the double life, and so on.
The feeling of naughtiness--naughtiness is simply a marvellous feeling; you must sometimes have guessed that, haven"t you?--perversity, doing society in the eye. It"s a continual excitement. Of course, it needs cleverness on both sides. You haven"t got to be clumsy over it. The woman runs risks, but nothing to the risks she"d run in marriage. And if the thing dies out in her, and they haven"t been clumsy, she"s free as air to start again. She"s got her experience gratis, and there"s a mysterious flavour about her that"s nearly the most enticing flavour on earth. Naturally people will talk. Let "em. No harm in rumour. In fact, the more rumour the better." He went on with no pause. "You"ve not looked at me for about five hours. Look at me now and tell me you"re disgusted. Tell me you"re frightened."
She lifted her eyes and gazed at him for a few seconds, not smiling.
Her skin tingled and crept. Then she sipped the creme de menthe and at first it tasted just like water.
"A woman wants making. Only a man can make a woman. She has to be formed. She can"t do it herself. A young man may be able to do it, but he"s like a teacher who swots up the night before what he has to teach the next day. And he"s a fearful bungler, besides being cruel--unconsciously. Whereas an older man, a much older man--he knows!
It"s a unique chance for both of them. She has so much to give, and she has so much to learn. It"s a fair bargain. Perhaps the woman has a little the best of it. Because after all she loses nothing that it isn"t her business to lose--and the man may--well, he may kill himself.
And the chance for a clever girl to be "made" without any clumsiness!
What a chance! ... Well, I won"t say _which_ of "em has the best of it.... I"m speaking impartially. If you live to be as old as Ninon de l"Enclos you"ll never meet a more honest man than I am."
Lilian felt intoxicated, but not with the Burgundy nor with the creme de menthe. Rather with sudden fresh air. She thought: "Be careful! Be careful! You aren"t yourself. Something queer"s come over you." She was not happy. She was alarmed. Once before she had been alarmed by herself, but this time she was really alarmed. She was glad that she had always despised boys of her own age. What did Mr. Grig mean by saying that a man might kill himself? She didn"t know.... Yes, she knew.... She saw clearly that a woman must be formed by a man, and that until she was formed she would not be worthy of herself. She longed ardently to be formed. As she stood she was futile. She could exercise no initiative, make use of no opportunities; and her best wisdom was to remain negative--in order to avoid mistakes. Something that looked like a woman but wasn"t one. She had the intelligence to realize how insipid she was. Ambition surged through her anew and with fresh power.
Mr. Grig drove her home, and the taxi was a little dark vibrating room in which they were alone together, and safe from all scrutiny. She was painfully constrained.
"Yes," said Mr. Grig, after an interminable silence. "My sister was quite right."
"What about?" Lilian asked in a child"s voice.
"I"m in love. What are you going to do about it?" He turned his head impulsively towards her, gazed at her in the dim twilight of the taxi, and then kissed her. In spite of herself she yearned to give, and the yearning thrilled her.
"Please! Please!" she murmured in modest, gentle, pa.s.sive protest.
Another pause.
"I shall write to you to-morrow," he said. "In the meantime, believe me, you"re entirely marvellous." He was looking straight in front of him at the driver"s s.h.a.ggy shoulders. That was all that occurred, except the handshake.
When she let herself into the house the servant was just going upstairs to bed, after her usual sixteen-hour day.
"So you"re back, miss."
"No!" thought Lilian. "It"s somebody else that"s come back. The girl you mean will never come back."
PART III
I
In the Hotel
Felix came quietly through the communicating door into Lilian"s shuttered and close room. Between the two bedrooms was a bathroom. All the bedrooms in the hotel seemed to be designed on the same plan--too high, too long, too narrow, with the head of the bed behind the door and directly facing the window; a wardrobe, a dressing-table, a washstand, a writing-table, an easy chair (under the window), two cane chairs, a night-table, and two electric lights so devilishly arranged that they could not be persuaded to burn simultaneously; a carpet overgrown with huge, gorgeous flowers, and the walls overgrown with huge, gorgeous flowers of another but equally mirific plant. Outside the bedroom a bell rang at short intervals--all the guests in the neighbourhood performed, according to their idiosyncrasies, on the same bell--and slippered feet of servants rushing to and fro in the corridor shook the planks of Lilian"s floor as they pa.s.sed.
Amid the obscurity of the room Lilian"s curved form, lying heaped on its side, and rather like a miniature mountain that sloped softly down towards the head and towards the feet, could be vaguely deciphered in the bed; and hillocks of attire, some pale, others coloured, some fragile and diaphanous, others resistant to the world"s peering, lay dimly about on chairs and even on the writing-table. The air, exhausted by the night, had a faint and delicate odour that excited, but did not offend, Felix"s nostrils.
"Is it time to get up?" Lilian murmured in the voice of a sleepy child.
"No."
Her brain slowly came to life. Flitting in and out of her happiness there were transient apprehensions--not about the morality, but about the security, of her situation. They disappeared, all except one, as soon as she looked firmly at them, because she had the most perfect confidence in Felix"s good faith. The unity of the pair had begun in London, under conditions provided by Felix, who, however, did not care for them, and who had decided that he would take her away for a holiday in order that they might both reflect upon and discuss at length the best method of organizing a definite secret existence.
It was during the preliminaries to the departure that she had been specially struck by his straightforwardness. He would have no w.a.n.gling with pa.s.sports. She must travel as herself. She could think of no acquaintance qualified to sign the application for her pa.s.sport. It was Felix"s suggestion that she should go to the Putney doctor who had attended her father and mother. The pair had travelled separately on the same _train de luxe_, for which, with Felix"s money, she bought her own ticket. The cost of the ticket and the general expensiveness of the purchases which Felix insisted on her making had somewhat frightened her. He rea.s.sured her by preaching the relativity of all things. "You must alter your scale--it needs only an effort of the imagination," he had said; and explained to her his financial status. She learned that he had an independent income, and his sister another though much smaller independent income, and that the typewriting business was a diversion, though a remunerative one; also that an important cash bonus just received from an insurance policy enabled him to be profuse without straining his ordinary resources.