That evening Yvonne was standing by the door of a concert-hall, as
her friend and fellow-artist Vandeleur adjusted a red wrap round her
shoulders. He was a burly, pudding-faced Irishman with twinkling dark
blue eyes and a persuasive manner. His fingers lingered about the wrap
longer than was necessary.
“Good-bye,” said Yvonne, “and thank you.” She was feeling a little
upset. Vandeleur, a popular favourite, had preceded her on the
programme, and his song had been met with rapturous applause.
“You have ‘queered’ me, Van,” she had said, in pure jest.
Whereupon, he had returned to the platform to give his enthusiastically
demanded encore, and, to the disappointment of the audience, had sung
the most villainous drawing-room ballad he could think of, without an
attempt at expression. The applause had been perfunctory, and Yvonne’s
appearance had created a quickening of interest. Vandeleur’s unnecessary
quixotism put Yvonne into a false position. So she thanked him shyly.
“Let me just have ten minutes of a cigarette at home with you,” he
pleaded.
Yvonne was tired. It was very hot; she had been running hither and
thither about London since the morning, and was longing in a feminine
way to free herself of hampering garments, and to lie down with a French
novel for an hour before going to bed. But when a man spoke to her with
that note of entreaty in his voice she did not know how to refuse. She
nodded assent. Vandeleur called a cab and they drove together to her
flat.
It was up many flights of stairs--the passage was very narrow, the
drawing-room very tiny. The big Irishman standing on the hearthrug
seemed to fill all the space left by the grand piano. How this article
of furniture was ever brought into the flat puzzled Yvonne’s friends
as much as the entrance of the apples into the dumplings puzzled George
III., until some one suggested the same solution of the problem--the
flat had been built round the piano. Everything else in the room
was small, like Yvonne herself, the armchairs, the couch, the three
occasional tables. A few water-colours hung around the walls. The
curtains and draperies were fresh and tasteful. All the room, with its
dainty furniture and pretty feminine knick-knacks, was impressed with
Yvonne’s graceful individuality--all except the immense grand piano,
which asserted itself loudly, a polished rosewood solecism. It seemed
such a very big instrument for so small a person as Yvonne.
She threw herself into an armchair by the fire, with a little sigh. She
had been unusually quiet during the drive home.
“And what’s making you miserable?” asked Vandeleur, in a tone of
concern.
“I wish you had n’t done that, Van,” she said, with a wistful puckering
of her forehead.
“Ah, there! now you’re vexed with me. There never was an animal like me
for treading on my dearest friends. I’m like the elephant you may have
heard of, that squashed the mother of a brood of chickens by mistake,
and, taking it to heart, just like me, gathered the little ones under
his wing, and, sitting down upon them, said: ‘Ah, be aisy now, I’ll be
a mother to you’; he did n’t hurt the chickens’ feelings exactly--but it
was mistaken kindness. Was it your feelings I trampled on?”
“Ah, no, Van,” said Yvonne, smiling. “But don’t you see, it was doing a
thing I can never pay you back for.”
“Faith, the sight of your sweet face is payment enough.”
“But you can have that for nothing--such as it is.”
“It’s the sweetest face that ever was made,” said the Irishman, flinging
a freshly-lighted cigarette into the grate behind him. “I’d cut off my
head any day to get a sight of it But are you wanting to pay me more
than that? By my soul, there’s just an easy way out of your difficulty,
Yvonne!”
He looked down at her, his face very red, and questioning in his
eyes. She caught his glance and sat upright, stretching out her hand
appealingly. Men had looked at her like that before,--craving for
something she had not in her to give. She had always, on such occasions,
felt what a shallow, poverty-stricken little soul she was. What was in
her that could bring the trouble into men’s eyes? Here was Van, the kind
friend and good comrade, going the way of the others. She was
frightened and distressed.
“Oh, Van, don’t!” she cried. “Not that. I can’t bear it!”
She covered her face with her hands, as he came quickly forward and
leaned over her chair. “Just a tiny bit of love, Yvonne. So small that
you would n’t miss it. I could do with it all, but I know I can’t get
that. I only ask for a sample. Come, Yvonne.”
But Yvonne shook her head.
“Don’t, Van,” she repeated, piteously; “you’re hurting me.”
Her tone was so pathetic that the big man drew himself up, thumped
his chest, and seized his hat. “I’m a great big brute to come and take
advantage of you like this. Of course you couldn’t care about a great
fat bounder like me. And you’re half dropping with weariness. It’s a
villain I am. I’ll leave you to your sleep, poor little woman. Good
night.”
He held out his hand, and she allowed hers to remain in it for a moment.
“I have n’t been ungrateful to you, have I?” she asked. “I did n’t mean
to be. But I thought you were different.”
“How, different?”
“That you would never make love to me. Don’t, Van, please. It would
spoil it all.”
“Well, perhaps it would,” replied Vandeleur, philosophically. “Only it
is so devilish hard not to make love to you when one’s got the chance.
And, begad! if you’d just give up looking like a little warm, brown
saint, it would be better for the peace of mind of the men.”
He stooped and touched her hand with his lips and strode buoyantly out
of the room. She heard him humming one of his songs along the passage,
then the slam of the front door; then there was silence, and Yvonne went
to bed with a grateful sense of escape from unknown dangers. Still,
she was sorry for Vandeleur, although she had a dim perception of the
superficiality of his passion. It would have been nice, had it been
possible, to make him happy. She had a queer, unreasonable little
feeling that she had been selfish. She sighed as she settled herself to
sleep. The ways of the world were very complicated.
To those who knew her it was often a subject for marvel that she was
not crushed in the fierce struggle of life. A creature so yielding, so
simple, so unaffected by experience or the obvious external lessons of
the world, and yet standing serenely in the midst of the turmoil, seemed
an incongruity--gave a sense of shock, a prompting to rescue, such
as would arise from the sight of a child in the middle of a roadway
clashing with traffic. She was made for protection, tenderness, all the
sheltering luxuries and amenities of life. It was a flaw in the eternal
fitness of things that she was alone, earning her livelihood, with
nothing but her sweetness and innocence to guard her from buffeting and
downfall.
Yet it was her very simplicity that saved her from outward strain;
and inward stress was as yet spared her, through her unawakened child's
nature. She laughed when folks pitied her. To earn her living was an
easy matter. Born in the profession, trained for it from her earliest
days, she had taken to it as a young swan to the water. Engagements came
like the winds, the visits of her friends, and other such natural and
commonplace phenomena. She sang, or gave her lessons, and the money was
paid in to the branch of the City Bank close by her flat, and when she
needed funds for her modest expenses she wrote a cheque and sent her
maid to cash it When her balance was getting low, she practised little
economies and postponed payment of bills; when it was high, she settled
her debts, bought new clothes, and had a dozen oysters now and then for
supper. It was very simple. She did not pity herself at all. Nor did she
feel the trouble of her past married life. It had gone by like a cloudy
day, forgotten in succeeding sunshine, and had left singularly little
trace upon her character. Even the period of unhappiness had not weighed
unduly. A more resistful nature might have been wrecked irretrievably;
but Yvonne had been cast upon the shoals only for a season.
When Amédée Bazouge, a Parisian tenor who had settled in London, first
met her, he was surfeited with various blonde beauties of the baser
sort, and in a sentimental mood, during which he frequently invoked the
memory of his mother, he chose to fall desperately in love with little
brown Yvonne, likening her to the Blessed Virgin and as many saints as
he recollected. Yvonne was very young; this sudden worship was new to
her; the pain in his heart that he so passionately dwelt upon seemed a
terrible thing for her to have caused. She married him because he said
that his life was at stake. She gave him herself as she would have
given sixpence to a poor man in the street. Why she was necessary to his
life’s happiness she could not guess. However, Amédée said so, and she
took it on faith.
For a while she was mildly content in his exuberant delight. He
whispered, in soft honeymoon hours, “_m’aimes-tu?_”--and she said “Yes,”
because she knew it would please him; but she was always happier at
other times, when she was not called upon for display or expression of
feeling. She liked him well enough. His somewhat common handsomeness
pleased her, his effervescent fancy and boulevard wit kept her lightly
amused, and his vehement passion provided her with an interest strangely
compounded of fright, wonder, and pity.
But Amédée Bazouge was not made either by nature or education for the
domestic virtues. His repentant mood passed away; he forgot the memory
of his mother, and found Yvonne’s innocence grow insipid. He hankered
after the strange goddesses with their full-flavoured personalities,
their cynicism, their passions, and their stimulating variety. Regret
came to him for having broken with the last, who always kept him in
a state of delicious uncertainty whether she would overwhelm him with
passionate kisses or break the looking-glass in a tempest of wrath.
So, gradually, he sought satisfaction for his reactionary yearnings and
drifted away from Yvonne. And then she grew unhappy. He did not treat
her unkindly. In all their dealings with each other a harsh word never
passed the lips of either. But she felt cold and neglected. Instead
of being met after a concert and accompanied to their little house at
Staines, she went the long journey alone. The quiet evenings of music
and singing together were things of the past. Often a week elapsed
without their meeting. To complete her trouble, her mother died
suddenly, and Yvonne felt very lonely. She would sit sometimes and cry
like a lost child.
At last they parted. Amédée returned to Paris, and Yvonne took her
little flat in the Marylebone Road. The clouds passed by and Yvonne was
happy again. She had retained professionally her maiden name of
Latour, and now she assumed it altogether, only changing the former
“Mademoiselle” into “Madame.” Her husband faded into a vague memory.
When she received news of him it was through a paragraph in the
“Figaro,” announcing his death in a Paris hospital. She wore a little
crape bonnet to notify to the world the fact of her widowhood, but she
had no tears to shed. When friends condoled with her over her sad lot,
she opened her round eyes in astonishment.
“But, my dear, I am as happy as I can possibly be,” she would say in
remonstrance. And it was true. She had come through the ordeal of an
unhappy marriage, pure and childlike, her heart unruffled by passion and
her soul unclouded by disillusion.
There are some women born to be loved by many men, yielding, trustful,
appealing irresistibly to the masculine instincts of protection and
possession. Sometimes they are carried off by one successful owner and
bear him children, and hear nothing of the hopeless loves that they
inspire. Sometimes, like Yvonne, they are at the mercy of every gust
of passion that stirs the hearts of the men around them. They are too
innocent of the meaning and scope of love to bide the time when love
shall take them in its grip; too weak, tender, and compassionate to
harden their hearts against the sufferings of men. If they fail, the
world is unsparing in condemnation. If happy circumstance shelters
them, they are canonised for virtues that stop short of their logical
conclusion. Wherefore we are tempted to say hard things of the world.
Fate, however, had dealt not unkindly with Yvonne. At times her path
had been sadly tangled and she had sighed, as she did this night after
Vandeleur’s unexpected declaration. But chance had always come to her
aid and cleared her way. She trusted to it now as she fell asleep.