IDYLL
Christine said to Marie, otherwise La Mère Gaston, the new servant
in the new flat, who was holding in her hand a telegram addressed to
"Hoape, Albany":
"Give it to me. I will put it in front of the clock on the
mantelpiece."
And she lodged it among the gilt cupids that supported the clock on
the fringed mantelpiece in the drawing-room. She did so with a little
gesture of childlike glee expressing her satisfaction in the flat as a
whole.
The flat was dark; she did not object, loving artificial light. The
rooms were all very small; she loved cosiness. There was a garage
close by, which might have disturbed her nights; but it did not. The
bathroom was open to the bedroom; no arrangement could be better. G.J.
in enumerating the disadvantages of the flat had said also that it
was too much and too heavily furnished. Not at all. She adored the
cumbrous and rich furniture; she did not want in her flat the empty
spaces of a ball-room; she wanted to feel that she was within an
interior--inside something. She gloried in the flat. She preferred it
even to her memory of G.J.'s flat in the Albany. Its golden ornateness
flattered her. The glittering cornices, and the big carved frames
of the pictures of impossible flowers and of ladies and gentlemen in
historic coiffures and costumes, appeared marvellous to her. She had
never seen, and certainly had never hoped to inhabit, anything like
it. But then Gilbert was always better than his word.
He had been quite frank, telling her that he knew of the existence of
the flat simply because it had been occupied for a brief time by the
Mrs. Carlos Smith of whom she had heard and read, and who had had to
leave it on account of health. (She did not remind him that once at
the beginning of the war when she had noticed the name and portrait of
Mrs. Carlos Smith in the paper, he, sitting by her side, had concealed
from her that he knew Mrs. Carlos Smith. Judiciously, she had never
made the slightest reference to that episode.) Though she detested
the unknown Mrs. Carlos Smith, she admired and envied her for a great
illustrious personage, and was secretly very proud of succeeding Mrs.
Carlos Smith in the tenancy. And when Gilbert told her that he had had
his eye on the flat for her before Mrs. Carlos Smith took it, and had
hesitated on account of its drawbacks, she was even more proud. And
reassured also. For this detail was a proof that Gilbert had really
had the intention to put her "among her own furniture" long before the
night of the supreme appeal to him.... Only he was always so cautious.
And Gilbert was the discoverer of la mère Gaston, too, and as frank
about her as about the flat. La mère Gaston was the widow of a French
soldier, domiciled in London previous to the war, who had died of
wounds in one of the Lechford hospitals; and it was through the
Lechford Committee that Gilbert had come across her. A few weeks
earlier than the beginning of the formal liaison Mrs. Braiding
had fallen ill for a space, and Madame Gaston had been summoned as
charwoman to aid Mrs. Braiding's young sister in the Albany flat. With
excellent judgment Gilbert had chosen her to succeed Marthe, whom he
himself had reproachfully dismissed from Cork Street.
He was amazingly clever, was Gilbert, for he had so arranged things
that Christine had been able to cut off her Cork Street career as with
a knife. She had departed from Cork Street with two trunks and a few
cardboard boxes--her stove was abandoned to the landlord--and vanished
into London and left no trace. Except Gilbert, nobody who knew her in
Cork Street was aware of her new address, and nobody who knew her
in Mayfair knew that she had come from Cork Street. Her ancient
acquaintances in Cork Street would ring the bell there in vain.
Madame Gaston was a neat, plump woman of perhaps forty, not looking
her years. She had a comprehending eye. After three words from Gilbert
she had mastered the situation, and as she perfectly realised where
her interest lay she could be relied upon for discretion. In all
delicate matters only her eye talked. She was a Protestant, and went
to the French church in Soho Square, which she called the "Temple".
Christine and she had had but one Sunday together--and Christine had
gone with her to the Temple! The fact was that Christine had decided
to be a Protestant. She needed a religion, and Catholicism had an
inconvenience--confession. She had regularised her position, so much
so that by comparison with the past she was now perfectly respectable.
Yet if she had been candid in the confessional the priest would still
have convicted her of mortal sin; which would have been very unfair;
and she could not, in view of her respectability, have remained a
Catholic without confessing, however infrequently. Madame Gaston,
as soon as she was sure of her convert, referred to Catholicism as
"idolatry".
"Put your apron on, Marie," said Christine. "Monsieur will be here
directly."
"Ah, yes, madame!"
"Have you opened the kitchen-window to take away the smell of
cooking?"
"Yes, madame."
"Am I all right, Marie?"
Madame Gaston surveyed her mistress, who turned round.
"Yes, madame. I think that monsieur will much like that _négligée_."
She departed to don the apron.
Between these two it was continually "monsieur," "monsieur". He
was seldom there, but he was always there, always being consulted,
placated, invoked, revered, propitiated, magnified. He was the giver
of all good, and there was no other Allah, and he had two prophets.
Christine sang, she twittered, she pirouetted, out of sheer youthful
joy. She had forgotten care and forgotten promiscuity; good fortune
had washed her pure. She looked at herself in the massive bevelled
mirror, and saw that she was fresh and young and lithe and graceful.
And she felt triumphant. Gilbert had expressed the fear that she might
get lonely and bored. He had even said that occasionally he might
bring along a man, and that perhaps the man would have a very nice
woman friend. She had not very heartily responded. She was markedly
sympathetic towards Englishmen, but towards English women--no! And
especially she did not want to know any English women in the same
situation as herself. Lonely? Impossible! Bored? Impossible! She
had an establishment. She had a civil list. Her days passed like an
Arabian dream. She never had an unfilled moment, and when each day was
over she always remembered little things which she had meant to do and
had not found time to do.
She was a superb sleeper, and arose at noon. Three o'clock usually
struck before her day had fairly begun--unless, of course, she
happened to be very busy, in which case she would be ready for contact
with the world at the lunch-hour. Her main occupation was to charm,
allure, and gratify a man; for that she lived. Her distractions were
music, the reading of novels, _Le Journal_, and _Les Grandes Modes_.
And for the war she knitted. In her new situation it was essential
that she should do something for the war. Therefore she knitted, being
a good knitter, and her knitting generally lay about.
She popped into the dining-room to see if the table was well set
for dinner. It was, but in order to show that Marie did not know
everything, she rearranged somewhat the flowers in the central bowl.
Then she returned to the drawing-room, and sat down at the piano and
waited. The instant of arrival approached. Gilbert's punctuality was
absolute, always had been; sometimes it alarmed her. She could not
have to wait more than a minute or two, according to the inexactitude
of her clock.... The bell rang, and simultaneously she began to play a
five-finger exercise. Often in the old life she had executed upon him
this innocent subterfuge, to make him think she practised the piano
to a greater extent than she actually did, that indeed she was always
practising. It never occurred to her that he was not deceived.
Hear Marie fly to the front door! See Christine's face, see her body,
as in her pale, bright gown she peeps round the half-open door of the
drawing-room! She lives, then. Her eyes sparkle for the giver of all
good, for the adored, and her brow is puckered for him, and the jewels
on her hand burn for him, and every pleat of her garments visible and
invisible is pleated for him. She is a child. She has snatched up a
chocolate, and put it between her teeth, and so she offers the half
of it to him, smiling, silent. She is a child, but she is also a woman
intensely skilled in her art....
"Monster!" she said. "Come this way." And she led him down the tunnel
to the bedroom. There, in a corner of the bathroom, stood an antique
closed toilet-stand, such as was used by men in the days before
splashing and sousing were invented. She had removed it from the
drawing-room.
"Open it," she commanded.
He obeyed. Its little compartments, which had been empty, were filled
with a man's toilet instruments--brushes, file, scissors, shaving-soap
(his own brand), a safety-razor, &c. The set was complete. She had
known exactly the requirements.
"It is a little present from thy woman," she said. "In future thou
wilt have no excuse--Sit down. Marie!"
"Madame?"
"Take off the boots of Monsieur."
Marie knelt.
Christine found the new slippers.
"And now this!" she said, after he had washed and used the new
brushes, producing a black house-jacket with velvet collar and cuffs.
"How tired thou must be after thy day!" she murmured, patting him with
tiny pats.
"Thou knowest, my little one," she said, pointing to the gas-stove
in the bedroom fireplace. "For the other rooms a gas-stove--I am
indifferent. But the bedroom is something else. The bedroom is sacred.
I could not tolerate a gas-stove in the bedroom. A coal fire is
necessary to me. You do not think so?"
"Yes," he said. "You are quite right. It shall be seen to."
"Can I give the order? Thou permittest me to give the order?"
"Certainly."
In the drawing-room she cushioned him well in the best easy-chair,
and, sitting down on a pouf near him, began to knit like an
industrious wife who understands the seriousness of war. Nothing
escaped the attention of that man. He espied the telegram.
"What's that?"
"Ah!" she cried, springing up and giving it to him. "Stupid that I am!
I forgot."
He looked at the address.
"How did this come here?" he asked mildly.
"Marie brought it--from the Albany."
"Oh!"
He opened the telegram and read it, having dropped the envelope into
the silk-lined, gilded waste-paper basket by the fender.
"It is nothing serious?" she questioned.
"No. Business."
He might have shown it to her--he had shown her telegrams before--but
he stuck it into his pocket. Then, without a word to Christine, he
rang the bell, and Marie appeared.
"Marie! The telegram--why did you bring it here?"
"Monsieur, it was like this. I went to monsieur's flat to fetch two
aprons that I had left there. The telegram was on the console in the
ante-chamber. Knowing that monsieur was to come direct here, I brought
it."
"Does Mrs. Braiding know you brought it?"
"Ah! As for Mrs. Braiding, monsieur--"
Marie stopped, disclaiming any responsibility for Mrs. Braiding, of
whom she was somewhat jealous. "I thought to do well."
"I am sure of it. But surely you can see you have been indiscreet.
Don't do it again."
"No, monsieur. I ask pardon of monsieur."
Immediately afterwards he said to Christine in a gay, careless tone:
"And this gas-stove here? Is it all right? Have we tried it? Let us
try it."
"The weather is warm, dearest."
"But just to try it. I always like to satisfy myself--in time."
"Fusser!" she exclaimed, and ignited the stove.
He gazed at it absently, then picked up a cigarette and, taking the
telegram from his pocket, folded it into a spill and with it lit the
cigarette.
"Yes," he said meditatively. "It seems not a bad stove." And he held
the spill till it had burnt to his finger-ends. Then he extinguished
the stove.
She said to herself:
"He has burned the telegram on purpose. But how cleverly he did it!
Ah! That man! There is none but him!"
She was disquieted about the telegram. She feared it. Her
superstitiousness was awakened. She thought of her apostasy from
Catholicism to Protestantism. She thought of a Holy Virgin angered.
And throughout the evening and throughout the night, amid her smiles
and teasings and coaxings and caresses and ecstasies and all her
accomplished, voluptuous girlishness, the image of a resentful Holy
Virgin flitted before her. Why should he burn a business telegram?
Also, was he not at intervals a little absent-minded?