supper," warned the laughing voice of von Herrnung speaking close to her
ear. "She has all the vices--the good Nou-Nou!"
"Including the vice of indiscriminate hospitality," Patrine laughed; but
a little uncontrollable shudder rippled over her as she withdrew her
eyes from the painted, crumpled visage, leering with half-extinguished
eyes from under the canary-coloured wig.
"That is so. Tell me--you and Lady Beauvayse seem great friends--quite
inseparable...." He leaned nearer, his bold eyes closely scrutinising
her face. "How comes it that she leaves you alone in a Paris
dance-garden: with me, whom you have met to-night--for the first time?"
"She knows I can take jolly good care of myself, wherever and with
whomsoever I may happen to be!" Her black brows frowned; it was evident
she resented his criticism. "And--what are you getting at? What's the
matter with poor old Paris? You know--perhaps it sounds odd!--but I've
never been in Paris before.... And I love it! Down to the ground--it
suits me! It's so gay and brightly-coloured and pagan. The public
buildings and parks are dreams; the shops--too entrancing for anything!
And this place, with its jabber and music and stagy illuminations,
trellises where real roses mix up with artificial ones--ornamental beds
of geraniums and calceolarias and thingumbobs bordered with smelly
little oil lamps, gilt band-stands, concerts, and lovely trees in
blossom.... Is it so luridly awful? To me, it's rather sweet! Of
course the dancing--everybody knows the dancing is pretty well the
limit. But one has seen such a lot of Tango in London--the bloom will
be pretty well rubbed off!"
"Yet some lingers. You have still something to learn from Herculano and
La Rivadavia! ..."
"Do I strike you as such a perfect daisy of inexperience?" Something in
his tone stung, for the full white cheeks coloured faintly. "You didn't
talk to me at dinner as though I were one!"
"How could I help that?" he asked, with the roughness that had
previously intrigued her. "Am I to blame that you look like Phryne or
Aspasia when you are only Mademoiselle de Maupin--before she set out
upon her travels? For you have only got as far as Paris with your friend
Lady Beauvayse. Why does she bring you? I am curious to know."
"Because I am her paid secretary and amanuensis." Patrine brought the
words out with a rush; it was clear that she thought the candour a
necessity, but hated it. "She can't get on without one, and her
husband, Lord Beauvayse--awful little bounder!--won't stand her having a
man. Don't great ladies have secretaries in Germany? Can't you see me
doing Lady Beau's correspondence in my fearful fist--enclosing cheques
to people who solicit donations for charities with a committee and Hon.
Treasurer--tearing up the begging letters full of howlers in the
spelling-line--smelling of bad tobacco and beer or gin? Then I have to
keep her posted in her engagements, go to shows, and functions, and
kettledrums with her when she hasn't a pal handy--that's where my share
of the fun comes in. Just as I'm visiting Paris, as I dare say I shall
visit other centres of lively iniquity--in the character of the
sheep-dog that doesn't bow-wow at the wrong man!"
"You should bow-wow at me." His teeth were hidden, but his eyes were
crinkled up with soundless laughter. "For I am a very wrong--a very
wicked man!"
"How sad!" Her brows were still frowning, but her wide red mouth was
beginning to curl up at the corners. "Couldn't you reform? Is it too
late?"
"I hope so!" he answered her. "For if I were good I should possess no
attraction for a woman of your type. And to charm you I would give my
soul--if I had a soul!"
"Great Scott! You're candid.... Modest too.... And complimentary!"
"I am candid, because I cannot help myself."
Three comedians had come upon the stage. She told him not to talk to
her. She wanted to see the turn; she liked music-hall stuff. He
obeyed, mentally congratulating himself on having ascertained her social
status, something better than a typist, hardly on the same level with
his sister Gusta's _dame de compagnie_.
While his bold eyes read the book of her provoking beauty, the
performance on the stage, backed by the deep green palmate foliage and
white or ruddy candelabra-like blossom-sprays of the chestnuts, framed
by a broad band of electric lamp-flowers, was culminating to its final
gag. A preposterously fat man attired in the historic low-crowned hat,
Union Jack waistcoat, brass-buttoned blue tail-coat, leathers and
hunting-tops of the traditional John Bull, another comedian in the
legendary costume of M. Jacques Prud'homme, and a truculent-looking
personage whose Teutonic French accent, spiked silver helmet with the
Prussian eagle, First Imperial Guards cuirass and tunic, breeches and
spurred jack-boots, in combination with a well-known moustache with
upright ends, a huge Iron Cross, and a great many other property
decorations, left no doubt as to the political bent of the scrap of
pantomime.
It was an ordinary bit of comic knockabout, to which the tragic
circumstances of the day lent a peculiar tang. One has seen it before,
played by the three comedians, in the green-baize aprons, brown duffel
knee-breeches, and shirt-sleeves sported by the waiters of low-class
Paris or Munich brasseries.
In the centre of the stage, instead of a bright-hooped beer-barrel on a
wooden cellar-stand, was a revolving globe representing the World. And
each of the three comedians, being armed with a tumbler, a spile-awl,
and a spigot-tap, proceeded, with appropriate patter, gesture, and
grimaces, to insert his spigot, draw, and drink. John Bull turned the
globe to the United Kingdom, and tapped the big black patch in East
Middlesex. Creamy-headed London porter filled his glass. He held it
up, nodded a "Here's to you!" and toped off. M. Prud'homme punctured
France in the rich vine-growing district of Epernay. Champagne crowned
the goblet, and he drank in dumb show to Gallia, the land of love,
laughter, and wine. It was then the turn of the Teuton. He bored, and
Brandenburg yielded a tall bock of foaming blonde lager. He sucked it
down with guttural _Achs_ of delight.
But this was not all. John Bull exploited the East Indies. A stream of
rubies and emeralds filled his glass. He bored deep in the Union of
South Africa--diamonds and gold-dust heaped the vessel. Fired by his
success, M. Prud'homme inserted his spigot into wealthy Bordeaux,
whipped it out, applied his lips, and drank deep. He corked the oozing
spot and tapped Algerian Africa. Coffee rewarded him, fragrant and
richly black. He next exploited Pondicherry, Chandernagore on the
Hooghly, French Equatorial Africa, and New Caledonia. Nothing came. He
tried Cochin China, and drew off a glass of yellow tea at boiling-point.
Encouraged to drink the strange beverage by the appreciative pantomime
of his British neighbour, he swallowed it, with results of a Rabelaisian
nature, at which everybody laughed heartily, including Patrine.
It was now the turn of the Teuton. He drew German beer from Togoland,
Cameroon; German South-West and South-East Africa yielded an indifferent
brand of the beverage. German New Guinea in the Pacific, the Solomon,
Caroline, and other islands, with Asian Kiao-Chao, merely wetted the
bottom of the glass with a pale fluid, German beer by courtesy.
"_Sapperlot_! _Der Teufel_! _Kreuzdonnerwetter_!" He tasted, spat,
stamped, and sputtered forth strange expletives, M. Prud'homme's terror
at these unearthly utterances being provocative of more humour of the
Rabelaisian kind. Then he decided to try again, excited to envy by the
spectacle of the stout Briton drawing gold from Australia, gold from
Canada, gold from New Zealand and the West Indies, and gold from Ceylon,
gold from the Crown Colonies in China, gold from the Gold Coast, gold
from Rhodesia and Nigeria, gold from everywhere; filling the capacious
pockets of his blue brass-buttoned coat, of his tight breeches, of his
nankeen waistcoat, until he bulked enormously, a Bull of Gargantuan
size.
Such wealth roused respect in Prud'homme, who esteems the yellow metal.
He embraced the Briton, heartily congratulating him. This roused the
Teuton's ire. He seized the spigot and once more plunged it into
Germany, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony--each of the States yielding beer,
beer, BEER. He went on, tapping, filling, and guzzling.... Twelve full
tumblers and he had begun to swell most horribly. Fifteen--and his
rotundity equalled that of John Bull. But one State remained untapped.
He swilled down the twenty-fourth bock, drawn out of Lubeck--plunged the
spigot into the Reichsland--once Alsace-Lorraine----
And the big glass crimsoned with a sudden spurt of blood.
It was over in an instant, the comedians had skipped nimbly from the
scene, the globe had developed a pair of very thin human legs and
followed them off at a proscenium-wing, before many of those who had
witnessed, clearly understood. Only the men and women of Gallic race
among the cosmopolitan, polyglot audience answered with a deep, inward
thrill to the ruby gush that told how the blood of France still ran red
in the throbbing arteries of the beloved, reft, alienated province, in
spite of her forty-five years of separation, in defiance of the loathed
laws, customs, language, service, all the gyves rivetted on her by the
Teuton, her conqueror. Now round after round of applause signified
their comprehension. But the comedians did not answer the call.
Von Herrnung, who had worn the same contemptuous smile for every phase
of the clumsy by-play, relaxed his stiff features. A stout tenor from
the Opera appeared and sang a Spring song by Tchaikovsky, following it
with the exquisite Serenade of Rimsky Korsakov, "Sleep, Sad Friend."
The tenor was recalled. Colette Colin succeeded him. She sang "_Notre
Petite Compagnon_" and "_La Buveuse d'Absinthe_" to the accompaniment of
a pale, lean, red-nosed man with a profile grotesque as ever adorned a
comic poster; who touched the piano-keys as though they were made of
butter; and had a way of sucking in his steep upper-lip and cocking his
eye at the star as he waited on her famous efforts, that made Patrine
shake with suppressed laughter on her green iron chair.
The last ironic line of Rollinat's ballad, marvellously uttered rather
than sung, died out upon a stillness. A storm of approval broke. Men
and women stood up applauding in their places, and the singer came back,
to sigh out the bitter-sweet lyric of Jammes, "_Le Parle de Dieu_."
Then, while her name still tossed on the surges of human emotion,
backwards and forwards under the electrics, Colette Colin, the pet of
Paris, the eclipser of the famous Theresa, was gone. Something of the
yearning anguish of Jammes, who sees Religion as a dusty collection of
ancient myths and folk-tales; to whom Faith is mere superstition, but
who would give his all to be able to pray once more as in childhood, had
given the girl lumps in the throat as she listened to Colette Colin.
Though, unlike the sad, Agnostic poet, Patrine had no tender,
sentimental memories in connection with a mother's knee.
Not from Mildred Saxham had she learned her first childish prayer, but
from a procession of nurses; beginning with "Now I Lay Me Down" and
"Gentle Jesus," instilled by Hannah, a Church of England woman,
continuing with the Lord's Prayer, insisted on by Susan, a Presbyterian;
culminating in the "Our Father" "learned the childer" by Norah the Irish
Catholic, a petition which--minus the final line--was just the same as
the Lord's Prayer. Also the Creed in English, and a surreptitious "Hail
Mary" which brought about the sudden exit of Norah from the domestic
scene.
For teaching Patrine and Irma about God and Heaven and all that, was
sufficiently interfering, said Mrs. Saxham, but when it came to Popery,
_rank Popery_, it was time the woman went. So Norah ceased to be, from
the point of view of the little Saxhams--and He who had risen above the
horizon of childish intelligence, a Being vaguely realised as
all-powerful and awful, great and beneficent, stern and tender, sank and
vanished at the same time.
But the Idea of Him remained to be merged in the personality of the
child Patrine's dada. Dada, so handsome and jolly, and nearly always
kind to his rough little romping Pat. The boy, Patrine's senior by
sixteen months, had died in infancy. Captain Saxham was always gloomy
on the deceased David's birthday. Mildred reserved a nervous headache
of the worst for the anniversary, the kind that is accompanied by temper
and tears.
She was indifferent to Patrine, who resembled the Saxhams. But she was
devoted to Irma, her own image bodily and mentally. Thus nothing
interfered with Patrine's adoration of her father. The handsome,
genial, ex-officer of cavalry was his daughter's god, until Mildred tore
away the veil of Deity, broke the shrine and cast down the idol, one day
when Patrine was fourteen years old.
The girl learned that Captain Saxham's noisy fun and alternating fits of
rage were due to over-indulgence in brandy-and-soda. That he gambled
away Mildred's income over cards and Turf speculations, as he had wasted
the sum of money for which his Commission had been sold. That he was
"not even faithful"--that he spent week-ends "at hotels with fast
women"; that he was not worthy the sacrifice Mildred had made for him.
Had she not for his sake jilted his younger brother, Owen! Even on the
verge of their marriage; the presents received; the house taken and
furnished; the trousseau ready, everything perfect to the last pin in
the wedding veil. Nobody could resist David when he chose to woo, but
why, why had Mildred yielded? So fierce a sense of shame awakened in
the daughter as she listened, that it seemed to her as though her face
and body scorched in the embrace of an actual, material flame.
"How could he? ... How could you? ... Betray Uncle Owen.... One of you
was as low-down as the other, to play a beastly, sneaking game like
that!"
"You insult your mother and father. Leave the room!" commanded Mildred.
And Patrine left it, vigorously slamming the door.
Captain Saxham, who had sold out of the Army when Patrine and Irma were
respectively seven and six years old, never knew what he had lost in the
esteem of his elder daughter. She loved him still, but he had ceased to
be her god. They lived at Croybourn and occupied three sittings at one
of its several Anglican Churches. The Vicar, a strenuous man, whipped
in Patrine and Irma for Confirmation classes. They studied the
Thirty-Nine Articles, the Athanasian Creed, and dipped once more into
the Protestant Church Catechism, first instilled at the certified High
School for the Daughters of Gentlemen--an establishment they attended as
day-pupils, and were to leave, without passing the Oxford Secondary, in
the following year when Captain Saxham died.
For David, that cheerful, easy-going Hedonist, dropped off the perch
quite suddenly, in the smoking-room of his London Club. In life he had
been of the easy-going type of Christian, who avoids open scandal, and
hopes to die at peace with the clergyman.
An attack of cerebral effusion had anticipated the clergyman. Mildred
and Irma wept bitterly, Patrine sat dry-eyed. Even in the face of the
new tombstone at Woking Cemetery, testifying to the many virtues of
David, as soldier, husband, and father, her stiff eyelids remained
unmoistened by a tear. At the base of the scrolled Cymric Cross ran a
text in leaded letters:
BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHO DIE IN THE LORD.
The undertaker had recommended the text to the widow because it
contained the right number of letters required to fit in at the bottom.
But did it fit in, Patrine had sometimes wondered, quite so
appropriately, at the close of her father's life?
She treasured his portrait, taken at the age of thirty, the tinted
presentment of a handsome, stupid young officer, resplendent in the gold
and blue and scarlet of a crack Dragoon regiment. It had fallen to her
keeping when her mother had re-married. But she cherished no illusions
regarding the original. How often, since her own eyes had been opened
to the fact of their existence, had she not screened David's vices from
strangers' eyes.
She had made him her ideal, and Mildred had revealed him to her as
vicious, unprincipled. She could not forgive her mother for telling her
those horrors, she, Mildred--seemed to forget whenever she was pleased.
But Patrine had never forgotten. She would wake at night even now with
the dry sobs shaking her.... To have been able to believe in that dead
father as noble, chivalrous, good, would have been so sweet; she had
shed big surreptitious tears in sympathy with the anguish of Jammes, who
would have so loved to believe in the existence of Almighty God, and the
dear little Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and the holy Angels, because
Faith is so restful, _si paisible_....
*CHAPTER XV*
*THE BITE IN THE KISS*
But von Herrnung was saying, as they moved with a straggling procession
of similar pleasure-seekers, over smooth sanded pathways between beds of
geranium and verbena and lobelia, ivy-leaved geranium and gaily coloured
foliage-plants, bordered with little twinkling lamps:
"Shall I tell you what I have just heard as those people passed us? The
tall man with the white moustache, and the chic little woman in the
Spanish _mantilla_. She told her friend that we make a handsome couple.
Perhaps that makes you a little angry? ... Shall I make you still more
angry? Well then, listen? ... If we were really a couple you would not
have that so-black hair...."
"Why not?" He had roused her curiosity. She put away the little damp,
laced handkerchief. "Would your cruel usage of me have turned it
white?"
"Not that, but you would have added the one touch that makes perfection.
You are too sombre--too much like a night in October with all that
cloudy blackness.... You would have bleached and dyed your hair--not
yellow, nor yet orange--nor even flame.... The colour of beech-leaves
in winter, as one sees them burning against a snow-bank. And--all the
women would be crazy with jealousy--and all the men would be dying at
your feet! For you would be Isis then--you would be the Sphinx-woman of
whom La Forgue wrote and Colette has sung to us. You would be
hellishly, divinely beautiful!"
"Hellish again." She gave her low, deep laugh, prolonging it a trifle
stagily. "What do you bet me I don't--do what you said?"
"Bleach and dye...?"
"That's it." She nodded. "To the colour of--what was it?
'Beech-leaves in winter.' ..."
"Against a snow-bank." He added: "The snow is your wonderful skin. And
I will bet you four hundred and twenty marks--that is twenty pounds
English. Is it agreed? ... Do you not say--Done? ..."
"Twenty pounds...." She shrugged her big white shoulders. "My dear
man, I haven't got twenty pounds in this blessed old world!"
He hesitated; finally said with reluctance:
"I will lend you twenty pounds--it will cost you twenty pounds to have
your hair done here in Paris.... But you will be _sehr schoen_--the
money will be well spent. No? ..."--for she had shaken her head,
frowning. "It is offered--why will you not accept?"
"Because I won't.... There are some things I draw the line at.
Borrowing money's one of them."
"Then I will bet you my magpie pearl--you may have seen it"--he
displayed the ornamented little finger--"against that not-very-good
diamond you wear on your left hand."
She burst out laughing and repeated through her laughter: "'Not very
good.' I call that insulting.... When it cost me fifteen francs in the
Palais Royal. Well, done with you!"
"It is done! But you have not done with me." Von Herrnung's tone had a
new note of triumph. He urged: "You go back to London--when? ... The
day after to-morrow.... _Gut!_ ... I have myself to visit London upon
business--I shall see Isis with her beautiful new hair. One thing more.
An address where I may call and see it. Be quick! We turn down here!
..."
Patrine protested, peering with narrowed eyes through the dusk-blue
twinkling semi-darkness. "But no! ... That big marquee-thing at the end
of this avenue--with all the festoons of lights and the ring of
promenade about it--surely that's the _Pavilion de la Danse_?"
"_Halt den Mund!_" His hand closed peremptorily on her arm: he hurried
her down the trellised vine walk that invited on the left of them, as
light measured footsteps padded on the gravel, and a man ran past
calling, as it seemed, to somebody ahead:
"Miss Saxham ahoy! ... Lady Beauvayse----"
"He's calling me. It's Captain Courtley...." Patrine persisted.
"Let him call! Are you not with me?" Von Herrnung's tone was
masterful. "You shall go to him when you have given me that London
address!"
She was amused and yet annoyed by his persistency.
"Oh, all right! 'The Ladies' Social Club, Short Street, Piccadilly,
West.' That's where I'm generally to be found when I'm in town."
"_Sehr gut_! Tell me once again, then I shall not forget, no!"
"Write it on your cuff!"
"It is written in a safer place," he told her. "We Prussian officers
are trained to remember without writing things down. A face, an
address, a conversation, the outlines of a country. Though for
_reconnaissance_ there is nothing like _die Photographie_." He added:
"When we meet in London I shall be able to tell you everything you wore
to-night."
"Really! ... How flattering! ... You've made a mental inventory?"
They were retracing their steps to the avenue recently quitted. He
walked with noiseless strides behind the tall, supple figure as it moved
between the trellised vines and roses, gowned with its flaunting diadem,
robed in the insincere splendours of the opera-mantle already described.
"As you say. I shall be able to tell you that the back of your _mantel_
was cut in a V-shape nearly reaching to your waist-line. Shall I tell
you why?"
"If you're keen to...." She felt a scorching breath between her
shoulders and quickened her pace, making for the avenue. But he moved
with her, his voice came thickly: "Because your back is so superbly
beautiful you cannot bear to hide it from men!"
"_Ah-h!_"
She whirled about, glaring like an angry leopardess, her strong white
arm upraised to strike. Face, throat, and bosom glowed with painful
crimson. Between her violated, insulted shoulders, his furious kiss
still burned and stung.
"How dare you touch me!" she gasped. But he had shot past her even as
she turned. He was running towards the avenue, calling gaily:
"Were you looking for us, Lady Beauvayse? Here we are!"
"Cad, cad!" she stammered. "Insufferable! beastly!" Then, because a
scene was quite out of the question, she went forward with head held
high, and resentment heaving her broad bosom, to meet Lady Beauvayse.
"Pat! You needle in a haystack," cried her friend, "where did you get
to?"
"Nowhere. We missed you at the Cafe Concert," Patrine began.
"And then," von Herrnung explained, "we happened to take the wrong turn.
But we have not gone far before we are recalled."
"--To the path of probity," suggested Lady Beauvayse, adding: "And in
this instance the path of probity leads to the _Pavilion de Chahut_."
She explained to Patrine: "_Chahut_ is the modern version of the
_can-can_--famous in the days of the Second Empire; when the great
cocodettes of the Court of the Tuileries--rivals of Cora Pearl and
Skittles and other naughty persons--did high-kicking under the rose
here, and they called the place Mabille."
It was not easy to get near the Pavilion, so dense and variegated a
crowd had congregated before its illuminated entrance. But the entrance
fee was doubled. Gold must be paid to see the famous Sao Paulo dance.
Thus many would-be pleasure-seekers of the less affluent kind turned
back disappointed from the row of gilt turnstiles under the blazing
archway, compelled to content themselves with the outer promenade.