IN THE BOUDOIR
"We aren't so desperately safe even here," said G.J., firmly pursuing
the moral triumph which Concepcion's very surprising and comforting
descent from the roof had given him.
"Don't go to extremes," she answered.
"No, I won't." He thought of the valetry in the cellars, and the
impossible humiliation of joining them; and added: "I merely state."
Then, after a moment of silence: "By the way, was it only _her_ idea
that I should come along, or did the command come from both of you?"
The suspicion of some dark, feminine conspiracy revisited him.
"It was Queen's idea."
"Oh! Well, I don't quite understand the psychology of it."
"Surely that's plain."
"It isn't in the least plain."
Concepcion loosed and dropped her cloak, and, not even glancing at
G.J., went to the fire and teased it with the poker. Bending down,
with one hand on the graphic and didactic mantelpiece, and staring
into the fire, she said:
"Queen's in love with you, of course."
The words were a genuine shock to his sarcastic and rather embittered
and bullying mood. Was he to believe them? The vibrant, uttering voice
was convincing enough. Was he to show the conventional incredulity
proper to such an occasion? Or was he to be natural, brutally natural?
He was drawn first to one course and then to the other, and finally
spoke at random, by instinct:
"What have I been doing to deserve this?"
Concepcion replied, still looking into the fire: "As far as I can
gather it must be your masterful ways at the Hospital Committee that
have impressed her, and especially your unheard-of tyrannical methods
with her august mother."
"I see.... Thanks!"
It had not occurred to him that he had treated the Marchioness
tyrannically; he treated her like anybody else; he now perceived that
this was to treat her tyrannically. His imagination leapt forward as
he gazed round the weird and exciting room which Queen had brought
into existence for the illustration of herself, and as he pictured the
slim, pale figure outside clinging in the night to the vast chimney,
and as he listened to the faint intermittent thud of far-off guns.
He had a spasm of delicious temptation. He was tempted by Queen's
connections and her prospective wealth. If anybody was to possess
millions after the war, Queen would one day possess millions. Her
family and her innumerable powerful relatives would be compelled to
accept him without the slightest reserve, for Queen issued edicts;
and through all those big people he would acquire immense prestige
and influence, which he could use greatly. Ambition flared up in
him--ambition to impress himself on his era. And he reflected with
satisfaction on the strangeness of the fact that such an opportunity
should have come to him, the son of a lawyer, solely by virtue of his
own individuality. He thought of Christine, and poor little Christine
was shrunk to nothing at all; she was scarcely even an object of
compassion; she was a prostitute.
But far more than by Queen's connections and prospective wealth he was
tempted by her youth and beauty; he saw her beautiful and girlish, and
he was sexually tempted. Most of all he was tempted by the desire to
master her. He saw again the foolish, elegant, brilliant thing on the
chimney pretending to defy him and mock at him. And he heard himself
commanding sharply: "Come down. Come down and acknowledge your ruler.
Come down and be whipped." (For had he not been told that she would
like nothing better?) And he heard the West End of London and all the
country-houses saying, "She obeys _him_ like a slave." He conceived a
new and dazzling environment for himself; and it was undeniable that
he needed something of the kind, for he was growing lonely; before
the war he had lived intensely in his younger friends, but the war had
taken nearly all of them away from him, many of them for ever.
Then he said in a voice almost resentfully satiric, and wondered why
such a tone should come from his lips:
"Another of her caprices, no doubt."
"What do you mean--another of her caprices?" said Concepcion,
straightening herself and leaning against the mantelpiece.
He had noticed, only a moment earlier, on the mantelpiece, a large
photograph of the handsome Molder, with some writing under it.
"Well, what about that, for example?"
He pointed. Concepcion glanced at him for the first time, and her eyes
followed the direction of his finger.
"That! I don't know anything about it."
"Do you mean to say that while you were gossiping till five o'clock
this morning, you two, she didn't mention it?"
"She didn't."
G.J. went right on, murmuring:
"Wants to do something unusual. Wants to astonish the town."
"No! No!"
"Then you seriously tell me she's fallen in love with me, Con?"
"I haven't the slightest doubt of it."
"Did she say so?"
There was a sound outside the door. They both started like plotters in
danger, and tried to look as if they had been discussing the weather
or the war. But no interruption occurred.
"Well, she did. I know I shall be thought mischievous. If she had the
faintest notion I'd breathed the least hint to you, she'd quarrel with
me eternally--of course. I couldn't bear another quarrel. If it had
been anybody else but you I wouldn't have said a word. But you're
different from anybody else. And I couldn't help it. You don't know
what Queen is. Queen's a white woman."
"So you said this afternoon."
"And so she is. She has the most curious and interesting brain, and
she's as straight as a man."
"I've never noticed it."
"But I know. I know. And she's an exquisite companion."
"And so on and so on. And I expect the scheme is that I am to make
love to her and be worried out of my life, and then propose to her and
she'll accept me." The word "scheme" brought up again his suspicion
of a conspiracy. Evidently there was no conspiracy, but there was a
plot--of one.... A nervous breakdown? Was Concepcion merely under an
illusion that she had had a nervous breakdown, or had she in truth had
one, and was this singular interview a result of it?
Concepcion continued with surprising calm magnanimity:
"I know her mind is strange, but it's lovely. No one but me has ever
seen into it. She's following her instinct, unconsciously--as we all
do, you know. And her instinct's right, in spite of everything. Her
instinct's telling her just now that she needs a master. And that's
exactly what she does need. We must remember she's very young--"
"Yes," G.J. interrupted, bursting out with a kind of savagery that he
could not explain. "Yes. She's young, and she finds even my age spicy.
There'd be something quite amusingly piquant for her in marrying a man
nearly thirty years her senior."
Concepcion advanced towards him. There she stood in front of him,
quite close to his chair, gazing down at him in her tight black
jersey and short white skirt; she was wearing black stockings now. Her
serious face was perfectly unruffled. And in her worn face was all her
experience; all the nights and days on the Clyde were in her face; the
scalping of the young Glasgow girl was in her face, and the failure
to endure either in work or in love. There was complete silence within
and without--not the echo of an echo of a gun. G.J. felt as though he
were at bay.
She said:
"People like you and Queen don't want to bother about age. Neither
of you has any age. And I'm not imploring you to have her. I'm only
telling you that she's there for you if you want her. But doesn't
she attract you? Isn't she positively irresistible?" She added with
poignancy: "I know if I were a man I should find her irresistible."
"Just so."
A look of sacrifice came into Concepcion's eyes as she finished:
"I'd do anything, anything, to make Queen happy."
"Yes, you would," retorted G.J. icily, carried away by a ruthless
and inexorable impulse. "You'd do anything to make her happy even for
three months. Yes, to make her happy for three weeks you'd be ready
to ruin my whole life. I know you and Queen." And the mild image of
Christine formed in his mind, soothingly, infinitely desirable. What
balm, after the nerve-racking contact of these incalculable creatures!
Concepcion retired with a gesture of the arm and sat down by the fire.
"You're terrible, G.J.," she said wistfully. "Queen wouldn't be thrown
away on you, but you'd be thrown away on her. I admit it. I didn't
think you had it in you. I never saw a man develop as you have.
Marriage isn't for you. You ought to roam in the primeval forest, and
take and kill."
"Not a bit," said G.J., appeased once more. "Not a bit.... But the new
relations of the sexes aren't in my line."
"_New_? My poor boy, are you so ingenuous after all? There's nothing
very new in the relations of the sexes that I know of. They're much
what they were in the Garden of Eden."
"What do you know of the Garden of Eden?"
"I get my information from Milton," she replied cheerfully, as though
much relieved.
"Have you read _Paradise Lost_, then, Con?"
"I read it all through in my lodgings. And it's really rather good.
In fact, the remarks of Raphael to Adam in the eighth book--I think it
is--are still just about the last word on the relations of the sexes:
"Oft-times nothing profits more
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
Well-managed; of that skill the more thou
know'st,
The more she will acknowledge thee her head
_And to realities yield all her shows_."
G.J., marvelling, exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm:
"By Jove! You're an astounding woman, Con. You do me good!"
There was a fresh noise beyond the door, and the door opened and Robin
rushed in, blanched and hysterical, and with her seemed to rush in
terror.
"Oh! Madame!" she cried. "As there was no more firing I went on to the
roof, and her ladyship--" She covered her face and sobbed.
G.J. jumped up.
"Go and see," said Concepcion in a blank voice, not moving. "I
can't.... It's the message straight from Potsdam that's arrived."