"Thou art a lovely girl and so very nice I dream till death upon your face."
To the wretch"s ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome thing and cast it into the waste-paper basket.
"Prison," said I, "would be a luxurious reward for him. In a properly civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged."
"Yes, he is dam bad," said Carlotta, serenely.
"Good heavens!" I cried, "the ruffian has even taught you to swear. If you dare to say that wicked word again, I"ll punish you severely. What is his horrid name?"
"Pasquale," said Carlotta.
"Pasquale?"
"Yes, he likes to hear me say "dam." Oh, the other? Oh, no, he is too stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I only play with him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself; I won"t care."
"Never mind about Timkins," said I, "I want to hear about Pasquale. When did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?"
I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red slipper.
"I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by my side. Was that wicked?"
"What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?"
Woman-like she evaded my question.
"I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?"
"I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall have to send you back to him."
She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite close to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up into her face.
She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of her pretty, caressing ways.
"I will be good--very good," she said.
"You will have to," said I, leaning back my head.
She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what happened I feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her other arm flew under my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a prisoner in my chair, she bent down and kissed me. She also laid her cheek against mine.
I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure, although she has gone to bed hours ago.
I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her hair brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.
I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless coquetry and her profane language. Worse than that she has discovered how to obtain it in future. The witch has found her witchcraft, and having once triumphantly exerted her powers, will take the earliest opportunity of doing so again. I am fallen, both in my own eyes and hers, from my high estate. Henceforward she will regard me only with good-humoured tolerance; I shall be to her but a non-felonious Timkins.
I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.
I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a formal call on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their sunless house in Kensington.
I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper hand than usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me tete-a-tete with her mother, who conversed frigidly about the warm weather. The very tea, if possible, was colder.
I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked with her homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.
"My dear man," she observed--I dislike this apostrophe, which Judith always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark--"My dear man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon"s--minus the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your devout relatives are very properly shocked."
I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought the calumny upon myself.
"But what can I do?" I asked.
"Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done from the first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it highly improper for you to have her alone with you in the house."
"My dear," said I, "there is Antoinette."
"Tush"--or something like it--said Judith.
"And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the irreproachable propriety of his master."
"I really have no patience with you," said Judith.
It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no more.
We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational topics.
She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning she spends among blue books and other waste matter at the British Museum, and she devotes the evening to sorting her information. Willoughby commends her highly.
"And there is something I know you"ll be very pleased to hear," she continued. "Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs. Willoughby.
Her husband wants me to spend August and September at a place they have taken in North Wales, and help him with his new book--as a private secretary, you know. I said that I never went into society. I must tell you this was the first time I had seen her. She put her hand on my arm in the sweetest way in the world and said: "I know all about it, my dear, and that is why I thought I"d come myself as Harold"s amba.s.sador."
Wasn"t it beautiful of her?"
She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.
"Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?"
"My dearest," I answered, very deeply touched, "you are the best woman in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs. Willoughby has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of your friendship."
"Ah!" said Judith, "a man cannot tell what it means."
Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs.
Willoughby"s invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their s.e.x is actuated by a mysterious nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference of s.e.x is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish some little secret bit of her nature, to which _he_, on account of his masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist--a self-mystery-maker--like a woman. But an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand Judith--that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her ego consists--but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific a.n.a.lysis would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any lady of my acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear considerable affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows that when she has pa.s.sed through certain well defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense, therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with regard to Mrs. Willoughby"s invitation.
I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her lips.
"My dear Marcus," she said, "there is no man, however humble-minded, who has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate, has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you, my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up as a feminine psychologist."
"And pray, why not?" I asked, somewhat nettled.
"Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus Ordeyne."