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good by staying at Concepcion's; Concepcion had withdrawn from the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 appetite 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,
entitled _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 factitious emotion. After all, it was no
worse than much of the music he was forced to hear in very refined
circles.
She said, ravished:
"You decipher music like an angel."
And hummed a fragment of the waltz from _The Rosenkavalier_ which he
had played for her two evenings earlier. He glanced round sharply. Had
she, then, real taste?
"It is like that, isn't it?" she questioned, and hummed it again,
flattered by the look on his face.
While, at her invitation, he repeated the waltz on the piano, whose
strings might have been made of zinc, he heard a ring at the outer
door and then the muffled sound of a colloquy between a male voice and
the voice of the Italian. "Of course," he admitted philosophically,
"she has other clients already." Such a woman was bound to have other
clients. He felt no jealousy, nor even discomfort, from the fact that
she lent herself to any male with sufficient money and a respectable
appearance. The colloquy expired.
"Ring, please," she requested, after thanking him. He hoped that she
was not going to interrogate the Italian in his presence. Surely
she would be incapable of such clumsiness! Still, women without
imagination--and the majority of women were without imagination--did
do the most astounding things.
There was no immediate answer to the bell; but in a few minutes the
Italian entered with a tea-tray. Christine sat up.
"I will pour the tea," said she, and to the Italian: "Marthe, where
is the evening paper?" And when Marthe returned with a newspaper damp
from the press, Christine said: "To Monsieur...."
Not a word of curiosity as to the unknown visitor!
G.J. was amply confirmed in his original opinion of Christine. She was
one in a hundred. To provide the evening paper.... It was nothing, but
it was enormous.
"Sit by my side," she said. She made just a little space for him on
the sofa--barely enough so that he had to squeeze in. The afternoon
tea was correct, save for the extraordinary thickness of the
bread-and-butter. But G.J. said to himself that the French did
not understand bread-and-butter, and the Italians still less. To
compensate for the defects of the bread-and-butter there was a box of
fine chocolates.
"I perfect my English," she said. Tea was finished; they were smoking,
the _Evening News_ spread between them over the tea-things. She
articulated with a strong French accent the words of some of the
headings. "Mistair Carlos Smith keeled at the front," she read out.
"Who is it, that woman there? She must be celebrated."
There was a portrait of the illustrious Concepcion, together with some
sympathetic remarks about her, remarks conceived very differently from
the usual semi-ironic, semi-worshipping journalistic references to the
stars of Concepcion's set. G.J. answered vaguely.
"I do not like too much these society women. They are worse than us,
and they cost you more. Ah! If the truth were known--" Christine
spoke with a queer, restrained, surprising bitterness. Then she added,
softly relenting: "However, it is sad for her.... Who was he, this
monsieur?"
G.J. replied that he was nobody in particular, so far as his knowledge
went.
"Ah! One of those who are husbands of their wives!" said Christine
acidly.
The disturbing intuition of women!
A little later he said that he must depart.
"But why? I feel better."
"I have a committee."
"A committee?"
"It is a work of charity--for the French wounded."
"Ah! In that case.... But, beloved!"
"Yes?"
She lowered her voice.
"How dost thou call thyself?"
"Gilbert."
"Thou knowest--I have a fancy for thee."
Her tone was delicious, its sincerity absolutely convincing.
"Too amiable."
"No, no. It is true. Say! Return. Return after thy committee. Take me
out to dinner--some gentle little restaurant, discreet. There must be
many of them in a city like London. It is a city so romantic. Oh! The
little corners of London!"
"But--of course. I should be enchanted--"
"Well, then."
He was standing. She raised her smiling, seductive face. She was
young--younger than Concepcion; less battered by the world's contacts
than Concepcion. She had the inexpressible virtue and power of youth.
He was nearing fifty. And she, perhaps half his age, had confessed his
charm.
"And say! My Gilbert. Bring me a few flowers. I have not been able
to go out to-day. Something very simple. I detest that one should
squander money on flowers for me."
"Seven-thirty, then!" said he. "And you will be ready?"
"I shall be very exact. Thou wilt tell me all that concerns thy
committee. That interests me. The English are extraordinary."