Yvette was rather thrilled by the Eastwoods, as she called them. The
little Jewess had only to wait three months now, for the final decree.
She had boldly rented a small summer cottage, by the moors up at
Scoresby, not far from the hills. Now it was dead winter, and she and
the Major lived in comparative isolation, without any maid-servant. He
had already resigned his commission in the regular army, and called
himself Mr. Eastwood. In fact, they were already Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood,
to the common world.
The little Jewess was thirty-six, and her two children were both over
twelve years of age. The husband had agreed that she should have the
custody, as soon as she was married to Eastwood.
So there they were, this queer couple, the tiny, finely-formed little
Jewess with her big, resentful reproachful eyes, and her mop of
carefully-barbered black, curly hair, an elegant little thing in
her way; and the big, pale-eyed young man, powerful and wintry, the
remnant, surely of some old uncanny Danish stock: living together in a
small modern house near the moors and the hills, and doing their own
housework.
It was a funny household. The cottage was hired furnished, but the
little Jewess had brought along her dearest pieces of furniture. She
had an odd little taste for the rococo, strange curving cupboards
inlaid with mother of pearl, tortoiseshell, ebony, heaven knows what;
strange tall flamboyant chairs, from Italy, with sea-green brocade:
astonishing saints with wind-blown, richly-coloured carven garments
and pink faces: shelves of weird old Saxe and Capo di Monte figurines:
and finally, a strange assortment of astonishing pictures painted on
the back of glass, done probably in the early years of the nineteenth
century, or in the late eighteenth.
In this crowded and extraordinary interior she received Yvette, when
the latter made a stolen visit. A whole system of stoves had been
installed into the cottage, every corner was warm, almost hot. And
there was the tiny rococo figurine of the Jewess herself, in a perfect
little frock, and an apron, putting slices of ham on the dish, while
the great snow-bird of a major, in a white sweater and grey trousers,
cut bread, mixed mustard, prepared coffee, and did all the rest. He had
even made the dish of jugged hare which followed the cold meats and
caviare.
The silver and the china were really valuable, part of the bride’s
trousseau. The Major drank beer from a silver mug, the little Jewess
and Yvette had champagne in lovely glasses, the Major brought in
coffee. They talked away. The little Jewess had a burning indignation
against her first husband. She was intensely moral, so moral, that
she was a divorcée. The Major too, strange wintry bird, so powerful,
handsome, too, in his way, but pale round the eyes as if he had no
eyelashes, like a bird, he too had a curious indignation against life,
because of the false morality. That powerful, athletic chest hid a
strange, snowy sort of anger. And his tenderness for the little Jewess
was based on his sense of outraged justice, the abstract morality of
the north blowing him, like a strange wind, into isolation.
As the afternoon drew on, they went to the kitchen, the Major pushed
back his sleeves, showing his powerful athletic white arms, and
carefully, deftly washed the dishes, while the women wiped. It was not
for nothing his muscles were trained. Then he went round attending to
the stoves of the small house, which only needed a moment or two of
care each day. And after this, he brought out the small, closed car
and drove Yvette home, in the rain, depositing her at the back gate, a
little wicket among the larches, through which the earthen steps sloped
downwards to the house.
She was really amazed by this couple.
“Really, Lucille!” she said. “I do meet the most extraordinary people!”
And she gave a detailed description.
“I think they sound rather nice!” said Lucille. “I like the Major doing
the housework, and looking so frightfully Bond-streety with it all. I
should think, _when they’re married_, it would be rather fun knowing
them.”
“Yes!” said Yvette vaguely. “Yes! Yes, it would!”
The very strangeness of the connection between the tiny Jewess and
that pale-eyed, athletic young officer made her think again of her
gipsy, who had been utterly absent from her consciousness, but who now
returned with sudden painful force.
“What is it, Lucille,” she asked, “that brings people together? People
like the Eastwoods, for instance? and Daddy and Mamma, so frightfully
unsuitable?--and that gipsy woman who told my fortune, like a great
horse, and the gipsy man, so fine and delicately cut? What is it?”
“I suppose it’s sex, whatever that is,” said Lucille.
“Yes, what is it? It’s not really anything _common_, like common
sensuality, you know, Lucille. It really isn’t.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Lucille. “Anyhow I suppose it needn’t be.”
“Because, you see, the _common_ fellows, you know, who make a girl feel
_low_: nobody cares much about them. Nobody feels any connection with
them. Yet they’re supposed to be the sexual sort.”
“I suppose,” said Lucille, “there’s the low sort of sex, and there’s
the other sort, that isn’t low. It’s frightfully complicated, really! I
_loathe_ common fellows. And I never feel anything _sexual_--” she laid
a rather disgusted stress on the word--“for fellows who aren’t common.
Perhaps I haven’t got any sex.”
“That’s just it!” said Yvette. “Perhaps neither of us has. Perhaps we
haven’t really _got_ any sex, to connect us with men.”
“How horrible it sounds: _connect us with men_!” cried Lucille, with
revulsion. “Wouldn’t you hate to be connected with men that way? Oh I
think it’s an awful pity there has to _be_ sex! It would be so much
better if we could still be men and women, without that sort of thing.”
Yvette pondered. Far in the background was the image of the gipsy as
he had looked round at her, when she had said: “The weather is so
treacherous.” She felt rather like Peter when the cock crew, as she
denied him. Or rather, she did not deny the gipsy; she didn’t care
about his part in the show, anyhow. It was some hidden part of herself
which she denied: that part which mysteriously and unconfessedly
responded to him. And it was a strange, lustrous black cock which crew
in mockery of her.
“Yes!” she said vaguely. “Yes! Sex is an awful bore, you know, Lucille.
When you haven’t got it, you feel you _ought_ to have it, somehow. And
when you’ve got it--or _if_ you have it--” she lifted her head and
wrinkled her nose disdainfully--“you hate it.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” cried Lucille. “I think I should _like_ to be
awfully in love with a man.”
“You think so!” said Yvette, again wrinkling her nose. “But if you were
you wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?” asked Lucille.
“Well, I don’t really,” said Yvette. “But I think so! Yes I think so!”
“Oh, it’s very likely!” said Lucille disgustedly. “And anyhow one would
be sure to get out of love again, and it would be merely disgusting.”
“Yes,” said Yvette. “It’s a problem.” She hummed a little tune.
“Oh hang it all, it’s not a problem for us two yet. We’re neither of
us really in love, and we probably never shall be, so the problem is
settled that way.”
“I’m not so sure!” said Yvette sagely. “I’m not so sure. I believe, one
day, I shall fall _awfully_ in love.”
“Probably you never will,” said Lucille brutally. “That’s what most old
maids are thinking all the time.”
Yvette looked at her sister from pensive but apparently insouciant eyes.
“Is it?” she said. “Do you really think so, Lucille? How perfectly
awful for them, poor things! Why ever do they _care_?”
“Why do they?” said Lucille. “Perhaps they don’t, really--Probably it’s
all because people say: _Poor old girl, she couldn’t catch a man._”
“I suppose it is!” said Yvette. “They get to mind the beastly things
people always do say about old maids. What a shame!”
“Anyhow we have a good time, and we do have lots of boys who make a
fuss of us,” said Lucille.
“Yes!” said Yvette. “Yes! But I couldn’t possibly marry any of them.”
“Neither could I,” said Lucille. “But why shouldn’t we? Why should we
bother about marrying, when we have a perfectly good time with the
boys, who are awfully good sorts, and you must say, Yvette, awfully
sporting and _decent_ to us.”
“Oh, they are!” said Yvette absently.
“I think it’s time to think of marrying somebody,” said Lucille, “when
you feel you’re _not_ having a good time any more. Then marry, and just
settle down.”
“Quite!” said Yvette.
But now, under all her bland, soft amiability, she was annoyed with
Lucille. Suddenly she wanted to turn her back on Lucille.
Besides, look at the shadows under poor Lucille’s eyes, and the
wistfulness in the beautiful eyes themselves. Oh, if some awfully nice,
kind, protective sort of man would but marry her! And if the sporting
Lucille would let him!
Yvette did not tell the rector, nor Granny about the Eastwoods.
It would only have started a lot of talk which she detested. The
rector wouldn’t have minded, for himself, privately. But he too knew
the necessity of keeping as clear as possible from that poisonous,
many-headed serpent, the tongue of the people.
“But I don’t _want_ you to come if your father doesn’t know,” cried the
little Jewess.
“I suppose I’ll have to tell him,” said Yvette. “I’m sure he doesn’t
mind, really. But if he knew, he’d have to, I suppose.”
The young officer looked at her with an odd amusement, bird-like and
unemotional, in his keen eyes. He too was by way of falling in love
with Yvette. It was her peculiar virgin tenderness, and her straying,
absent-minded detachment from things, which attracted him.
She was aware of what was happening, and she rather preened herself.
Eastwood piqued her fancy. Such a smart young officer, awfully good
class, so calm and amazing with a motor-car, and quite a champion
swimmer, it was intriguing to see him quietly, calmly washing dishes,
smoking his pipe, doing his job so alert and skilful. Or, with the
same interested care with which he made his investigation into the
mysterious inside of an automobile, concocting jugged hare in the
cottage kitchen. Then going out in the icy weather and cleaning his
car till it looked like a live thing, like a cat when she has licked
herself. Then coming in to talk so unassumingly and responsively,
if briefly, with the little Jewess. And apparently, never bored.
Sitting at the window with his pipe in bad weather, silent for hours,
abstracted, musing, yet with his athletic body alert in its stillness.
Yvette did not flirt with him. But she _did_ like him.
“But what about your future?” she asked him.
“What about it?” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth, the
unemotional point of a smile in his bird’s eyes.
“A career! Doesn’t every man have to carve out a career?--like some
huge goose with gravy?” She gazed with odd naïveté into his eyes.
“I’m perfectly all right today, and I shall be all right tomorrow,” he
said, with a cold, decided look. “Why shouldn’t my future be continuous
todays and tomorrows?”
He looked at her with unmoved searching.
“Quite!” she said. “I hate jobs, and all that side of life.” But she
was thinking of the Jewess’s money.
To which he did not answer. His anger was of the soft, snowy sort,
which comfortably muffles the soul.
They had come to the point of talking philosophically together. The
little Jewess looked a bit wan. She was curiously naïve, and not
possessive in her attitude to the man. Nor was she at all catty with
Yvette. Only rather wan, and dumb.
Yvette, on a sudden impulse, thought she had better clear herself.
“I think life’s _awfully_ difficult,” she said.
“Life is!” cried the Jewess.
“What’s so beastly, is that one is supposed to _fall in love_, and get
married!” said Yvette, curling up her nose.
“Don’t you _want_ to fall in love and get married?” cried the Jewess,
with great glaring eyes of astounded reproach.
“No, not particularly!” said Yvette. “Especially as one feels there’s
nothing else to do. It’s an awful chicken-coop one has to run into.”
“But you don’t know what love is?” cried the Jewess.
“No!” said Yvette. “Do you?”
“I!” bawled the tiny Jewess. “I! My goodness, don’t I!” She looked with
reflective gloom at Eastwood, who was smoking his pipe, the dimples of
his disconnected amusement showing on his smooth, scrupulous face.
He had a very fine, smooth skin, which yet did not suffer from the
weather, so that his face looked naked as a baby’s. But it was not
a round face: it was characteristic enough, and took queer ironical
dimples, like a mask which is comic but frozen.
“Do you mean to say you don’t know what love is?” insisted the Jewess.
“No!” said Yvette, with insouciant candour. “I don’t believe I do! Is
it awful of me, at my age?”
“Is there never any man that makes you feel quite, quite different?”
said the Jewess, with another big-eyed look at Eastwood. He smoked,
utterly unimplicated.
“I don’t think there is,” said Yvette. “Unless--yes!--unless it is that
gipsy”--she had put her head pensively sideways.
“Which gipsy?” bawled the little Jewess.
“The one who was a Tommy and looked after horses in Major Eastwood’s
regiment in the war,” said Yvette coolly.
The little Jewess gazed at Yvette with great eyes of stupor.
“You’re not in love with that _gipsy_!” she said.
“Well!” said Yvette. “I don’t know. He’s the only one that makes me
feel--different! He really is!”
“But how? How? Has he ever _said_ anything to you?”
“No! No!”
“Then how? What has he done?”
“Oh, just looked at me!”
“How?”
“Well you see, I don’t know. But different! Yes, different! Different,
quite different from the way any man ever looked at me.”
“But _how_ did he look at you?” insisted the Jewess.
“Why--as if he really, but _really_, _desired_ me,” said Yvette, her
meditative face looking like the bud of a flower.
“What a vile fellow! What _right_ had he to look at you like that?”
cried the indignant Jewess.
“A cat may look at a king,” calmly interposed the Major, and now his
face had the smiles of a cat’s face.
“You think he oughtn’t to?” asked Yvette, turning to him.
“Certainly not! A gipsy fellow, with half a dozen dirty women trailing
after him! Certainly not!” cried the tiny Jewess.
“I wondered!” said Yvette. “Because it _was_ rather wonderful, really!
And it _was_ something quite different in my life.”
“I think,” said the Major, taking his pipe from his mouth, “that desire
is the most wonderful thing in life. Anybody who can really feel it, is
a king, and I envy nobody else!” He put back his pipe.
The Jewess looked at him stupefied.
“But Charles!” she cried. “Every common low man in Halifax feels
nothing else!”
He again took his pipe from his mouth.
“That’s merely appetite,” he said.
And he put back his pipe.
“You think the gipsy is the real thing?” Yvette asked him.
He lifted his shoulders.
“It’s not for me to say,” he replied. “If I were you, I should know, I
shouldn’t be asking other people.”
“Yes--but----” Yvette trailed out.
“Charles! You’re wrong! How _could_ it be a real thing! As if she could
possibly marry him and go round in a caravan!”
“I didn’t say marry him,” said Charles.
“Or a love affair! Why it’s monstrous! What would she think of
herself!--That’s not love! That’s--that’s prostitution!”
Charles smoked for some moments.
“That gipsy was the best man we had, with horses. Nearly died of
pneumonia. I thought he _was_ dead. He’s a resurrected man to me. I’m
a resurrected man myself, as far as that goes.” He looked at Yvette.
“I was buried for twenty hours under snow,” he said. “And not much the
worse for it, when they dug me out.”
There was a frozen pause in the conversation.
“Life’s awful!” said Yvette.
“They dug me out by accident,” he said.
“Oh!----” Yvette trailed slowly. “It might be destiny, you know.”
To which he did not answer.