THE ENVOY
The next night G.J., having been hailed by an acquaintance, was
talking at the top of the steps beneath the portal of a club in
Piccadilly. It was after ten by the clocks, and nearly, but not quite,
dark. A warm, rather heavy, evening shower had ceased. This was the
beginning of the great macintosh epoch, by-product of the war,
when the paucity of the means of vehicular locomotion had rendered
macintoshes permissible, even for women with pretensions to smartness;
and at intervals stylish girls on their way home from unaccustomed
overtime, passed the doors in transparent macintoshes of pink, yellow
or green, as scornful as military officers of the effeminate umbrella,
whose use was being confined to clubmen and old dowdies.
The acquaintance sought advice from G.J. about the shutting up
of households for Belgian refugees. G.J. answered absently, not
concealing that he was in a hurry. He had, in fact, been held up
within three minutes of the scene of his secret idyll, and was anxious
to arrive there. He had promised himself this surprise visit to
Christine as some sort of recompense and narcotic for the immense
disturbance of spirit which he had suffered at Wrikton.
That morning Concepcion had been invisible, but at his early breakfast
he had received a note from her, a brief but masterly composition,
if ever so slightly theatrical. He was conscious of tenderness for
Concepcion, of sympathy with her, of a desire to help to restore
her to that which by misfortune she had lost. But the first of these
sentiments he resolutely put aside. He was determined to change his
mood towards her for the sake of his own tranquillity; and he had
convinced himself that his wise, calm, common sense was capable of
saving her from any tragic and fatal folly. He had her in the hollow
of his hand; but if she was expecting too much from him she would be
gradually disappointed. He must have peace; he could not allow a bomb
to be thrown into his habits; he was a bachelor of over fifty
whose habits had the value of inestimable jewels and whose perfect
independence was the most precious thing in the world. At his age he
could not marry a volcano, a revolution, a new radio-active element
exhibiting properties which were an enigma to social science.
Concepcion would turn his existence into an endless drama of which
she alone, with her deep-rooted, devilish talent for the sensational,
would always choose the setting, as she had chosen the window and the
weir. No; he must not mistake affectionate sympathy for tenderness,
nor tolerate the sexual exploitation of his pity.
As he listened and talked to the acquaintance his inner mind shifted
with relief to the vision of Christine, contented and simple and
compliant in her nest--Christine, at once restful and exciting,
Christine, the exquisite symbol of acquiescence and response. What a
contrast to Concepcion! It had been a bold and sudden stroke to lift
Christine to another plane, but a stroke well justified and entirely
successful, fulfilling his dream.
At this moment he noticed a figure pass the doorway in whose shadow he
was, and he exclaimed within himself incredulously:
"That is Christine!"
In the shortest possible delay he said "Good-night" to his
acquaintance, and jumped down the steps and followed eastwards the
figure. He followed warily, for already the strange and distressing
idea had occurred to him that he must not overtake her--if she it was.
It was she. He caught sight of her again in the thick obscurity by the
prison-wall of Devonshire House. He recognised the peculiar brim of
the new hat and the new "military" umbrella held on the wrist by a
thong.
What was she doing abroad? She could not be going to a theatre. She
had not a friend in London. He was her London. And la mère Gaston was
not with her. Theoretically, of course, she was free. He had laid
down no law. But it had been clearly understood between them that she
should never emerge at night alone. She herself had promulgated the
rule, for she had a sense of propriety and a strong sense of reality.
She had belonged to the class which respectable, broadminded women,
when they bantered G.J., always called "the pretty ladies," and as a
postulant for respectability she had for her own satisfaction to
mind her p's and q's. She could not afford not to keep herself above
suspicion.
She had been a courtesan. Did she look like one? As an individual
figure in repose, no! None could have said that she did. He had long
since learnt that to decide always correctly by appearance, and apart
from environment and gesture, whether an unknown woman was or was not
a wanton, presented a task beyond the powers of even the completest
experience. But Christine was walking in Piccadilly at night, and
he soon perceived that she was discreetly showing the demeanour of
a courtesan at her profession--she who had hated and feared the
pavement! He knew too well the signs--the waverings, the turns of the
head, the variations in speed, the scarcely perceptible hesitations,
the unmistakable air of wandering with no definite objective.
Near Dover Street he hastened through the thin, reflecting mire, amid
beams of light and illuminated numbers that advanced upon him in both
directions thundering or purring, and crossed Piccadilly, and hurried
ahead of her, to watch her in safety from the other side of the
thoroughfare. He could hardly see her; she was only a moving shadow;
but still he could see her; and in the long stretch of gloom beneath
the facade of the Royal Academy he saw the shadow pause in front of a
military figure, which by a flank movement avoided the shadow and went
resolutely forward. He lost her in front of the Piccadilly Hotel,
and found her again at the corner of Air Street. She swerved into Air
Street and crossed Regent Street; he was following. In Denman Street,
close to Shaftesbury Avenue, she stood still in front of another
military figure--a common soldier as it proved--who also rebuffed her.
The thing was flagrant. He halted, and deliberately let her go from
his sight. She vanished into the dark crowds of the Avenue.
In horrible humiliation, in atrocious disgust, he said to himself:
"Never will I set eyes on her again! Never! Never!"
Why was she doing it? Not for money. She could only be doing it
from the nostalgia of adventurous debauch. She was the slave of her
temperament, as the drunkard is the slave of his thirst. He had
told her that he would be out of town for the week end, on committee
business. He had distinctly told her that she must on no account
expect him on the Monday night. And her temperament had roused itself
from the obscene groves of her subconsciousness like a tiger and
come up and driven her forth. How easy for her to escape from la mère
Gaston if she chose! And yet--would she dare, even at the bidding
of the tiger, to introduce a stranger into the flat? Unnecessary,
he reflected. There were a hundred accommodating dubious interiors
between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square. He understood; he
neither accused nor pardoned; but he was utterly revolted, and wounded
not merely in his soul but in the most sensitive part of his
soul--his pride. He called himself by the worst epithet of opprobrium:
Simpleton! The bold and sudden stroke had now become the fatuous
caprice of a damned fool. Had he, at his age, been capable of
overlooking the elementary axiom: once a wrong 'un, always a wrong
'un? Had he believed in reclamation? He laughed out his disgust ...
No! He did not blame her. To blame her would have been ridiculous. She
was only what she was, and not worth blame. She was nothing at all.
How right, how cursedly right, were the respectable dames in the
accent of amused indifference which they employed for their precious
phrase, "the pretty ladies"! Well, he would treat her generously--but
through his lawyer.
And in the desolation, the dismay, the disillusion, the nausea which
ravaged him he was unwillingly conscious of fragments of thoughts that
flickered like transient flames far below in the deep mines of his
being.... "You are an astounding woman, Con." ... "Do you want me
to go to the bad altogether?" ... In offering him Queen had not
Concepcion made the supreme double sacrifice of attempting to bring
together, at the price of her own separation from both of them,
the two beings to whom she was most profoundly attached? It was a
marvellous deed.... Worry, volcanoes, revolutions--was he afraid
of them?... Were they not the very essence of life?... A figure of
nobility!... Sitting there now by the window over the river, listening
to the weir.... "I shall never be any more good." ... But she never
had a gesture that was not superb.... Was he really encrusted in
habits? Really like men whom he knew and despised at his club?... She
loved him.... And what rich, flattering love was her love compared
to--!... She was young.... Tenderness.... Such were the flames of dim
promise that nickered immeasurably beneath the dark devastation of his
mind. He ignored them, but he could not ignore them. He extinguished
them, but they were continually relighted.... A wedding?... What sort
of a wedding?... Poor Carlos, pathetically buried under the ruthless
happiness of others! What a shame!... Poor Carlos!
(Nice enough little cocotte, nothing else! But, of course,
incurable!... He remembered all her crimes now. How she had been late
in dressing for their first dinner. Her inexplicable vanishing from
the supper-party, never explained, but easily explicable now, perhaps.
And so on and so on.... Simpleton! Ass!)
He had walked heedless of direction. He was near Lechford House.
Many of its windows were lit. The great front doors were open. A
commissionaire stood on guard in front of them. To the railings was
affixed a newly-painted notice: "No person will be allowed to enter
these premises without a pass. To this rule there is no exception."
Lechford House had been "taken over" in its entirety by a Government
department that believed in the virtue of mystery and of long hours.
He looked up at the higher windows. He could not distinguish the
chimney amid the newly-revealed stars. He thought of Queen, the white
woman. Evidently he had never understood Queen, for if Concepcion
admired her she was worth admiration. Concepcion never made a mistake
in assessing fundamental character.
The complete silent absorption of Lechford House into the war-machine
rather dismayed him. He had seen not a word as to the affair in the
newspapers--and Lechford House was one of the final strongholds of
privilege! He strolled on into the quietness of the Park--of which
one of the gate-keepers said to him that it would be shutting in a few
minutes.
He was in solitude, and surrounded by London. He stood still, and the
vast sea of war seemed to be closing over him. The war was growing, or
the sense of its measureless scope was growing. It had sprung, not
out of this crime or that, but out of the secret invisible roots of
humanity, and it was widening to the limits of evolution itself.
It transcended judgment. It defied conclusions and rendered equally
impossible both hope and despair. His pride in his country was
intensified as months passed; his faith in his country was not
lessened. And yet, wherein was the efficacy of grim words about
British tenacity? The great new Somme offensive was not succeeding in
the North. Was victory possible? Was victory deserved? In his daily
labour he was brought into contact with too many instances of official
selfishness, folly, ignorance, stupidity, and sloth, French as well as
British, not to marvel at times that the conflict had not come to an
ignominious end long ago through simple lack of imagination. He knew
that he himself had often failed in devotion, in rectitude, in sheer
grit.
The supreme lesson of the war was its revelation of what human nature
actually was. And the solace of the lesson, the hope for triumph,
lay in the fact that human nature must be substantially the same
throughout the world. If we were humanly imperfect, so at least was
the enemy.
Perhaps the frame of society was about to collapse. Perhaps Queen,
deliberately courting destruction, and being destroyed, was the symbol
of society. What matter? Perhaps civilisation, by its nobility and its
elements of reason, and by the favour of destiny, would be saved from
disaster after frightful danger, and Concepcion was its symbol....
All he knew was that he had a heavy day's work before him on the
morrow, and in relief from pain and insoluble problems he turned to
face that work, thankful; thankful that (owing originally to Queen!)
he had discovered in the war a task which suited his powers, which was
genuinely useful, and which would only finish with the war; thankful
for the prospect of meeting Concepcion at the week-end and exploring
with her the marvellous provocative potentialities that now drew them
together; thankful, too, that he had a balanced and sagacious mind,
and could judge justly. (Yes, he was already forgetting his bitter
condemnation of himself as a simpleton!)
How in his human self-sufficiency could he be expected to know that
he had judged the negligible Christine unjustly? Was he divine that
he could see in the figure of the wanton who peered at soldiers in the
street a self-convinced mystic envoy of the most clement Virgin, an
envoy passionately repentant after apostasy, bound at all costs to
respond to an imagined voice long unheard, and seeking--though in vain
this second time--the protégé of the Virgin so that she might once
more succour and assuage his affliction?