"You know, G.J., I shouldn"t be in the least surprised to hear that Carly was killed out there. I shouldn"t, really."
In amazement G.J. ceased to eat.
"You needn"t look at me like that," she said. "I"m quite serious. One may as well face the risks. _He_ does. Of course they"re all heroes.
There are millions of heroes. But I do honestly believe that my Carly would be braver than anyone. By the way, did I ever tell you he was considered the best shot in Cheshire?"
"No. But I knew," answered G.J. feebly. He would have expected her to be a little condescending towards Carlos, to whom in brains she was infinitely superior. But no! Carlos had mastered her, and she was grateful to him for mastering her. He had taught her in three weeks more than she had learnt on two continents in thirty years. She talked of him precisely as any wee wifie might have talked of the soldier-spouse. And she called him "Carly"!
Neither of them had touched the champagne. G.J. decided that he would postpone any attempt to tell her until her cousin arrived; her cousin might arrive at any moment now.
While the parlour-maid presented potatoes Concepcion deliberately ignored her and said dryly to G.J.:
"I can"t eat any more. I think I ought to run along to Debenham and Freebody"s at once. You might come too, and be sure to bring your good taste with you."
He was alarmed by her tone.
"Debenham and Freebody"s! What for?"
"To order mourning, of course. To have it ready, you know. A precaution, you know." She laughed.
He saw that she was becoming hysterical: the special liability of the war-bride for whom the curtain has been lifted and falls exasperatingly, enragingly, too soon.
"You think I"m a bit hysterical?" she questioned, half menacingly, and stood up.
"I think you"d better sit down, to begin with," he said firmly.
The parlour-maid, blushing slightly, left the room.
"Oh, all right!" Concepcion agreed carelessly, and sat down. "But you may as well read that."
She drew a telegram from the low neck of her gown and carefully unfolded it and placed it in front of him. It was a War Office telegram announcing that Carlos had been killed.
"It came ten minutes before you," she said.
"Why didn"t you tell me at once?" he murmured, frightfully shocked. He was actually reproaching her!
She stood up again. She lived; her breast rose and fell. Her gown had the same voluptuousness. Her temperament was still emanating the same aura. She was the same new Concepcion, strange and yet profoundly known to him. But ineffable tragedy had marked her down, and the sight of her parched the throat.
She said:
"Couldn"t. Besides, I had to see if I could stand it. Because I"ve got to stand it, G.J.... And, moreover, in our set it"s a sacred duty to be original."
She s.n.a.t.c.hed the telegram, tore it in two, and pushed the pieces back into her gown.
""Poor wounded name!"" she murmured, ""my bosom as a bed shall lodge thee.""
The next moment she fell to the floor, at full length on her back.
G.J. sprang to her, kneeling on her rich, outspread gown, and tried to lift her.
"No, no!" she protested faintly, dreamily, with a feeble frown on her pale forehead. "Let me lie. Equilibrium has been established on the Western Front."
This was her greatest _mot_.
Chapter 12
RENDEZVOUS
When the Italian woman, having recognised him with a discreet smile, introduced G.J. into the drawing-room of the Cork Street flat, he saw Christine lying on the sofa by the fire. She too was in a tea-gown.
She said:
"Do not be vexed. I have my migraine--am good for nothing. But I gave the order that thou shouldst be admitted."
She lifted her arms, and the long sleeves fell away. G.J. bent down and kissed her. She joined her hands on the nape of his neck, and with this leverage raised her whole body for an instant, like a child, smiling; then dropped back with a fatigued sigh, also like a child.
He found satisfaction in the fact that she was laid aside. It was providential. It set him right with himself. For, to put the thing crudely, he had left the tragic Concepcion to come to Christine, a woman picked up in a Promenade.
True, Sara Trevise had agreed with him that he could accomplish no good by staying at Concepcion"s; Concepcion had withdrawn from the vision of men. True, it could make no difference to Concepcion whether he retired to his flat for the rest of the day and saw no one, or whether, having changed his ceremonious clothes there, he went out again on his own affairs. True, he had promised Christine to see her that afternoon, and a promise was a promise, and Christine was a woman who had behaved well to him, and it would have been impossible for him to send her an excuse, since he did not know her surname. These apparently excellent arguments were specious and worthless. He would, anyhow, have gone to Christine. The call was imperious within him, and took no heed of grief, nor propriety, nor the secret decencies of sympathy. The primitive man in him would have gone to Christine.
He sat down with a profound and exquisite relief. The entrance to the house was nearly opposite the entrance to a prim but fashionable and expensive hotel. To ring (and ring the right bell) and wait at Christine"s door almost under the eyes of the hotel was an ordeal....
The fat and untidy Italian had opened the door, and shut it again--quick! He was in another world, saved, safe! On the dark staircase the image of Concepcion with her temperament roused and condemned to everlasting hunger, the unconquerable Concepcion blasted in an instant of destiny--this image faded. She would re-marry....
She ought to re-marry.... And now he was in Christine"s warm room, and Christine, temporary invalid, reclined before his eyes. The lights were turned on, the blinds drawn, the stove replenished, the fire replenished. He was enclosed with Christine in a little world with no law and no conventions except its own, and no shames nor pretences. He was, as it were, in the East. And the immanence of a third person, the Italian, accepting naturally and completely the code of the little world, only added to the charm. The Italian was like a slave, from whom it is necessary to hide nothing and never to blush.
A stuffy little world with a perceptible odour! Ordinarily he had the common insular appet.i.te for ventilation, but now stuffiness appealed to him; he scented it almost voluptuously. The ugliness of the wallpaper, of the furniture, of everything in the room was naught.
Christine"s profession was naught. Who could positively say that her profession was on her face, in her gestures, in her talk? Admirable as was his knowledge of French, it was not enough to enable him to criticise her speech. Her gestures were delightful. Her face--her face was soft; her puckered brow was touching in its ingenuousness. She had a kind and a trustful eye; it was a lewd eye, indicative of her incomparable endowment; but had he not encountered the lewd eye in the very arcana of the respectability of the world outside? On the sofa, open and leaves downward, lay a book with a glistening coloured cover, ent.i.tled _Fantomas_. It was the seventh volume of an interminable romance which for years had had a tremendous vogue among the concierges, the workgirls, the clerks, and the _cocottes_ of Paris. An unreadable affair, not even indecent, which nevertheless had enchanted a whole generation. To be able to enjoy it was an absolute demonstration of lack of taste; but did not some of his best friends enjoy books no better? And could he not any day in any drawing-room see martyred books dropped open and leaves downwards in a manner to raise the gorge of a person of any bookish sensibility?
"Thou wilt play for me?" she suggested.
"But the headache?"
"It will do me good. I adore music, such music as thou playest."
He was flattered. The draped piano was close to him. Stretching out his hand he took a little pile of music from the top of it.
"But you play, then!" he exclaimed, pleased.
"No, no! I tap--only. And very little."
He glanced through the pieces of music. They were all, without exception, waltzes, by the once popular waltz-kings of Paris and Vienna, including several by the king of kings, Berger. He seated himself at the piano and opened the first waltz that came.
"Oh! I adore the waltzes of Berger," she murmured. "There is only he.
You don"t think so?"
He said he had never heard any of this music. Then he played every piece for her. He tried to see what it was in this music that so pleased the simple; and he saw it, or he thought he saw it. He abandoned himself to the music, yielding to it, accepting its ideals, interpreting it as though it moved him, until in the end it did produce in him a sort of fact.i.tious emotion. After all, it was no worse than much of the music he was forced to hear in very refined circles.