"Conception?"
"Yes. Why, dear heart?"
"My dear chap. You don"t know. Carlos Smith"s been killed. _She_ doesn"t know yet. I only heard by chance. News came through just as I left. n.o.body knows except a chap or two in Casualties. They won"t be sending out to-day"s wires until two or three o"clock."
G.J., terrified and at a loss, murmured:
"What am I to do, then?"
"You know her extremely well, don"t you? You ought to go and prepare her."
"But how can I prepare her?"
"I don"t know. How do people prepare people?... Poor thing!"
G.J. fought against the incredible fact of death.
"But he only went out six days ago! They haven"t been married three weeks."
The central hardness of the other disclosed itself as he said:
"What"s that got to do with it? What does it matter if he went out six days ago or six weeks ago? He"s killed."
"Well--"
"Of course you must go. Indicate a rumour. Tell her it"s probably false, but you thought you owed it to her to warn her. Only for G.o.d"s sake don"t mention me. We"re not supposed to say anything, you know."
G.J. seemed to see his mission, and it challenged him.
Chapter 11
THE TELEGRAM
As soon as G.J. had been let into the abode by Concepcion"s venerable parlour-maid, the voice of Concepcion came down to him from above:
"G.J., who is your oldest and dearest friend?"
He replied, marvellously schooling his voice to a similar tone of cheerful abruptness:
"Difficult to say, off-hand."
"Not at all. It"s your beard."
That was her greeting to him. He knew she was recalling an old declined suggestion of hers that he should part with his beard. The parlour-maid practised an admirable deafness, faithfully to confirm Concepcion, who always presumed deafness in all servants. G.J. looked up the narrow well of the staircase. He could vaguely see Concepcion on high, leaning over the banisters; he thought she was rather fluffilly dressed, for her.
Concepcion inhabited an upper part in a street largely devoted to the sale of grand pianos. Her front door was immediately at the top of a long, straight, narrow stairway; so that whoever opened the door stood one step higher than the person desiring entrance. Within the abode, which was fairly s.p.a.cious, more and more stairs went up and up. "My motto is," she would say, ""One room, one staircase."" The life of the abode was on the busy stairs. She called it also her Alpine Club. She had made upper-parts in that street popular among the select, and had therefore caused rents to rise. In the drawing-room she had hung a horrible enlarged photographic portrait of herself, with a chocolate-coloured mount, the whole framed in German gilt, and under it she had inscribed, "Presented to Miss Concepcion Iquist by the grateful landlords of the neighbourhood as a slight token of esteem and regard."
She was the only daughter of Iquist"s brother, who had had a business and a palace at Lima. At the age of eighteen, her last surviving parent being dead, she had come to London and started to keep house for the bachelor Iquist, who at that very moment, owing to a fortunate change in the Ministry, had humorously entered the Cabinet. These two had immediately become "the most talked-of pair in London," London in this phrase signifying the few thousand people who do talk about the doings of other people unknown to them and being neither kings, princes, statesmen, artistes, artists, jockeys, nor poisoners. The Iquists had led the semi-intelligent, conscious-of-its-audience set which had ousted the old, quite unintelligent stately-homes-of-England set from the first place in the curiosity of the everlasting public.
Concepcion had wit. It was stated that she furnished her uncle with the finest of his _mots_. When Iquist died, of course poor Concepcion had retired to the upper part, whence, though her position was naturally weakened, she still took a hand in leading the set.
G.J. had grown friendly and appreciative of her, for the simple reason that she had singled him out and always tried to please him, even when taking liberties with him. He liked her because she was different from her set. She had a masculine mind, whereas many even of the males of her set had a feminine mind. She was exceedingly well educated; she had ideas on everything; and she never failed in catching an allusion.
She would criticise her set very honestly; her att.i.tude to it and to herself seemed to be that of an impartial and yet indulgent philosopher; withal she could be intensely loyal to fools and worse who were friends. As for the public, she was apparently convinced of the sincerity of her scorn for it, while admitting that she enjoyed publicity, which had become indispensable to her as a drug may become indispensable. Moreover, there was her wit and her candid, queer respect for G.J.
Yes, he had greatly admired her for her qualities. He did not, however, greatly admire her physique. She was tall, with a head scarcely large enough for her body. She had a nice snub nose which in another woman might have been irresistible. She possessed very little physical charm, and showed very little taste in her neat, prim frocks.
Not merely had she a masculine mind, but she was somewhat hard, a self-confessed egoist. She swore like the set, using about one "d.a.m.n" or one "b.l.o.o.d.y" to every four cigarettes, of which she smoked, perhaps, fifty a day--including some in taxis. She discussed the s.e.xual vagaries of her friends and her enemies with a freedom and an apparent learning which were remarkable in a virgin.
In the end she had married Carlos Smith, and, characteristically, had received him into her own home instead of going to his; as a fact, he had none, having been a parent"s close-kept darling. London had only just recovered from the excitations of the wedding. G.J. had regarded the marriage with benevolence, perhaps with relief.
"Anybody else coming to lunch?" he discreetly inquired of his familiar, the parlour-maid.
She breathed a negative.
He had guessed it. Concepcion had meant to be alone with him. Having married for love, and her husband being rapt away by the war, she intended to resume her old, honest, quasi-sentimental relations with G.J. A reliable and experienced bachelor is always useful to a young gra.s.s-widow, and, moreover, the attendant hopeless adorer nourishes her hungry egotism as n.o.body else can. G.J. thought these thoughts, clearly and callously, in the same moment as, mounting the next flight of stairs, he absolutely trembled with sympathetic anguish for Concepcion. His errand was an impossible one; he feared, or rather he hoped, that the very look on his face might betray the dreadful news to that undeceivable intuition which women were supposed to possess.
He hesitated on the stairs; he recoiled from the top step--(she had coquettishly withdrawn herself into the room)--he hadn"t the slightest idea how to begin. Yes, the errand was an impossible one, and yet such errands had to be performed by somebody, were daily being performed by somebodies. Then he had the idea of telephoning privily to fetch her cousin Sara. He would open by remarking casually to Concepcion:
"I say, can I use your telephone a minute?" He found a strange Concepcion in the drawing-room. This was his first sight of Mrs.
Carlos Smith since the wedding. She wore a dress such as he had never seen on her: a tea-gown--and for lunch! It could be called neither neat nor prim, but it was voluptuous. Her complexion had bloomed; the curves of her face were softer, her gestures more abandoned, her gaze full of a bold and yet shamed self-consciousness, her dark hair looser. He stood close to her; he stood within the aura of her recently aroused temperament, and felt it. He thought, could not help thinking: "Perhaps she bears within her the legacy of new life." He could not help thinking of her name. He took her hot hand. She said nothing, but just looked at him. He then said jauntily:
"I say, can I use your telephone a minute?" Fortunately, the telephone was in the bedroom. He went farther upstairs and shut himself in the bedroom, and saw naught but the telephone surrounded by the mysterious influences of inanimate things in the gay, crowded room.
"Is that you, Mrs. Trevise? It"s G.J. speaking. G.J.... Hoape. Yes.
Listen. I"m at Concepcion"s for lunch, and I want you to come over as quickly as you can. I"ve got very bad news indeed--the worst possible.
Carlos has been killed at the Front. What? Yes, awful, isn"t it? She doesn"t know. I have the job of telling her."
Now that the words had been spoken in Concepcion"s abode the reality of Carlos Smith"s death seemed more horribly convincing than before.
And G.J., speaker of the words, felt almost as guilty as though he himself were responsible for the death. When he had rung off he stood motionless in the room until the opening of the door startled him.
Concepcion appeared.
"If you"ve done corrupting my innocent telephone ..." she said, "lunch is cooling."
He felt a murderer.
At the lunch-table she might have been a genuine South American.
n.o.body could be less like Christine than she was; and yet in those instants she incomprehensibly reminded him of Christine. Then she started to talk in her old manner of a professional and renowned talker. G.J. listened attentively. They ate. It was astounding that he could eat. And it was rather surprising that she did not cry out: "G.J. What the devil"s the matter with you to-day?" But she went on talking evenly, and she made him recount his doings. He related the conversation at the club, and especially what Bob, the retired judge, had said about equilibrium on the Western Front. She did not want to hear anything as to the funeral.
"We"ll have champagne," she said suddenly to the parlour-maid, who was about to offer some red wine. And while the parlour-maid was out of the room she said to G.J., "There isn"t a country in Europe where champagne is not a symbol, and we must conform."
"A symbol of what?"
"Ah! The unusual."
"And what is there unusual to-day?" he almost asked, but did not ask. It would, of course, have been utterly monstrous to put such a question, knowing what he knew. He thought: I"m not a bit nearer telling her than I was when I came.
After the parlour-maid had poured out the champagne Concepcion picked up her gla.s.s and absently glanced through it and said: