Of the astonishment which his sudden appearance caused her, Antoinette
betrayed no sign when she received Dennis in the particularly hideous
drawing-room of the house in Cadogan Gardens. The resentment which she
had felt against him at the dance, had long ago died down, leaving only
an insatiable curiosity with regard to the cause which could have
engendered in him that queer dazed mood. The way he had seemed to clutch
at her at Amberhurst—and then his letters—and then the sudden
silence—the anti climax of the dance—and now his re-appearance after
nearly six months—he was really rather an extraordinary person!
Antoinette felt distinctly “intrigued,” and hoped that this time her
anticipation of dramatic developments would be justified.
He began without preliminaries: “I’m not going to apologise for not
having communicated with you before. There were reasons—I’ll explain
some time, and I’m sure you’ll understand. But for the present, may I
just pretend that I’m still talking to you on the bridge at Amberhurst
and that there’s been nothing in between?”
“Certainly,” she smiled, suppressing her curiosity regarding the “in
between,” and noticing that he also suppressed all mention of his
letters to her. “Pretend anything you like, and keep the apologies for
Grand’mère. She likes them—thrives on them, in fact.”
Dennis laughed. “Is she at home?”
“No, but she will be soon, don’t fret. You shall be introduced to her.”
“Won’t she be shocked at your receiving the visit of a gentleman not in
khaki?”
“She’ll be shocked at my receiving the visit of a gentleman in anything
at all,” sighed Antoinette, “so it really doesn’t make much difference.”
She had flung herself back upon the stiff and unresponsive sofa, one arm
stretched along the side, in a posture that seemed literally to crave
the yielding softness of cushioned divans. But there were no cushioned
divans in the house of the de Courcys; and to Dennis it seemed that
Antoinette with her short mass of hair and supple boyish figure, was
absurdly incongruous with her surroundings.
“You can contradict as much as you please,” he said, “but you _are_ a
square peg in a round hole.”
“Oh, I should just think so—here!” she assented quickly.
“Is it very bad?”
“Sometimes.”
“Spiked railings, and ‘Please don’t touch,’ and plenty of witches and
dragons to see that the rules are enforced—poor little enchanted
princess, I’m so sorry....”
She thought she caught a faint echo of something that had been in his
letters, and that had been lacking that night at the dance. Eagerly she
responded to it: “Sometimes the witches and dragons can be put to sleep
with fairy-tales, and the enchanted princess comes and dances outside
the spiked railings.”
“Will she dance with me, I wonder”—Dennis began, then burst out
laughing. “Metaphorically, of course. I wouldn’t dream of really
inflicting on you a sample of my terpsichorean art.”
“No, I remember you were kind enough to spare me at the fancy dress
ball....” She could not resist getting in this little thrust, and
wondered how he would parry it. He did not parry it; merely left it
alone; and she went on: “How are they all down at Eastwold? Very full of
good works?”
“Very! The Ryans, needless to say, have started a sewing-class—two
sewing-classes, one for the matrons and one for the maidens of the
neighbourhood. Mother and Doreen attend them, and Lily is at the local
V.A.D. hospital. She hopes in time to appear in a khaki uniform, with
initials on her shoulders, and a strap under her chin.... There was some
talk of Millie Ryan’s taking up nursing too, but that project was
knocked on the head, I believe, when her esteemed mother discovered that
there were only Tommies at the hospital and not officers!”
Antoinette laughed, and then sighed. “Yes, it’s all very well, ...
personally, I haven’t as much as knitted a muffler. It’s an awful
confession to make, but I loathe the idea of nursing (even officers!),
my sewing is beyond description, and I don’t feel drawn towards
scrubbing floors in a hospital.”
“Go on,” said Dennis.
She leant forward, clasping her hands around her knee, and shook back
her rebellious hair. “If I took up any of those things, it wouldn’t be
because I believed it was my sacred duty to my country to do them: it
would only be so that when people start with the inevitable: ‘And what
sort of war-work are _you_ doing?’ I could fling them my mufflers or my
dish-washing or my entirely superfluous secretaryship as a sop. And
that’s not quite good enough, is it?”
“Not nearly good enough,” smiled Dennis. He was discovering, somewhat to
his surprise, that he was really very glad to see Antoinette again. He
must have forgotten her peculiar exuberant charm during the time that he
had not seen her; but he was fully aware of it now—and glad that he was
aware....
“So you’re a rebel too, Antoinette.”
She flashed out: “Yes, I won’t make buttonholes just because Mrs.
So-and-so thinks I ought to! One must do war-work from genuine
patriotism or not at all.”
“And you haven’t any genuine patriotism?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I believe I had—once; only I’ve seen and
heard so much of the artificial kind, that it’s been spoilt for me.”
She fell silent, brows slightly contracted. He was more and more
convinced that she fitted into her environment as little as he did into
his, and that somewhere they would find a common meeting-ground, he and
she....
He glanced from her to the photographs of the numerous aunts and
cousins. “There’s not much family-likeness between you and these,
Antoinette,” pointing to a group of three plain girls with arms stiffly
twined about each other’s persons, in a manner indicative of sisterly
devotion, and one dear to the heart of every conventional-minded
photographer. “They may be very worthy, but they don’t appeal to me.”
“My cousins Sidonie, Jeanne and Hélène from Grenoble,” Antoinette
introduced them, “and Grand’mère would tell you that the lack of
resemblance between us is much to be regretted.”
“But surely even grandmothers—even your grandmother, Antoinette—has eyes
in her head?”
“I repeat that Grand’mère would beg you to remember that appearances are
deceptive, and that embroidered cushion-covers are more maidenly than
short hair, and would clinch the argument with the remark that Sidonie,
at least, has found a husband!”
“However did she do that?” murmured Dennis, still intent upon the
photograph.
“They had an awful time, doing it for her,” Antoinette’s eyes sparkled
with mischief, “there was once a young man of blameless antecedents but
of impecunious means, who was brought to the house, and proposed to
her—or rather her ‘dot’—and was refused by her father. The young man
wreaked a horrible and subtle vengeance by going across the road and
paying court to Sidonie’s cousin, Adèle. Adèle is, if possible, even
plainer than Sidonie—that’s her photograph over there, between Raoul and
Jacques, wearing English Eton suits, seven sizes too big for them.”
“Thank you,” said Dennis, gazing transfixed at the likeness of a fat
young thing with a yearnful expression, leaning over a stucco balustrade
with a tennis racket in her hand.
Antoinette continued: “Adèle accepted the young man: her dowry being
slightly larger than Sidonie’s, she could afford the luxury. But
hereupon Sidonie’s parents began to realise what they had missed, and to
scheme to get the young man back again. This was easily effected by
clapping a few thousand more francs on to Sidonie’s dowry.... They’re
the happiest couple in Grenoble now, I believe.”
“There is, of course, also Adèle’s point of view to be considered.”
“Well, she has at least the consolation of having started a family-feud
so bloodthirsty that it will not end as long as there is a single one of
them left to carry it on. And think how difficult it will be for my
uncle and aunt to get their two remaining daughters married, with
Nemesis—or rather Adèle’s parents—watching from the other side of the
road!”
“Antoinette, I’m enjoying you most awfully....” Enjoying, also, a
feeling of security in her presence—in this absurd, hideous room with
the family-photographs. He had escaped from the danger that threatened.
He was safe—with Antoinette.
The door opened to admit old Madame de Courcy and her daughter-in-law.
Grand’mère’s pleasurable anticipation of interviewing her
grand-daughter’s suitor—it was doubtless in this capacity that young
Blackwood was making his visit—was tempered by the thought that this
suitor was not one of her own selection. She was therefore prepared to
regard Dennis with a critical, not to say a disparaging eye. There was
also the little matter of his income: Madame de Courcy had
cross-questioned Antoinette very closely on the subject, without
obtaining any results whatever. Apparently Dennis had been reticent
concerning his financial position, a point greatly in his disfavour. A
young man in a _good_ financial position, had no need to be reticent
about it. “_Il doit y avoir quelque chose de louche_,” as she had
suspiciously remarked to Anatole, who agreed with her.
It therefore behoved Grand’mère first of all, to put the young man at
his ease, and then with her usual tact and discretion, to make him admit
the exact figure of his income.
With this end in view, she commenced by assuring Dennis how much
Antoinette had enjoyed herself at Eastwold, and how kind it was of his
mother to have invited her. Dennis replied with becoming courtesy, that
his mother had been delighted to have her. Which ended the first round.
The next was more directly personal.
“I see, Monsieur, that you are not in uniform.”
“No, Madame,” Dennis replied superfluously.
Henriette was gazing out of the window, a look of profound abstraction
in her cavernous dark eyes. Suddenly the sound of her voice vibrated
through the room. “When I think of martyred Belgium, my heart
bleeds....” Her hand was clenched against her breast.
Dennis began to understand why Antoinette had said that genuine
patriotism had been spoilt for her: small wonder, if she had to listen
to much of this sort of thing! He glanced at her, as she sat beside her
grandmother on the hard sofa, hands sedately folded in her lap, eyelids
lowered, the picture of the typical “jeune fille” decorously awaiting
the advances of her suitor. She was adorable, he thought with a warm
glow of affection ... and again something within him consciously
registered that glow, and was satisfied....
Madame de Courcy once more took up the thread of conversation. “My
grand-daughters in Grenoble occupy themselves with cooking for the
soldiers, and nursing them.”
“Not specifying if the latter is necessitated by the former,” murmured
Antoinette, who was on the old lady’s deafer side.
Madame de Courcy, catching the murmur but not the drift of it, yet being
convinced of its seditiousness, continued severely: “Antoinette does not
occupy herself with anything....” To which Dennis, in the manner of the
best French exercise, responded: “Er—no, but my sister knits socks.”
Henriette embarked upon a monologue directed seemingly to the atmosphere
in general. “Would that I had a son to give to France.... Gladly would I
have sent him forth to do his duty, though my maternal heart had been
torn with anguish!”
Madame de Courcy took the occasion to remind her daughter-in-law that it
was indeed regrettable that she had no son; and that she and Anatole had
always said so; and that it must be entirely her—Henriette’s—fault, as
all the other members of the house of de Courcy had been blessed with
male offspring.
Antoinette hastily changed the subject by asking Dennis what had become
of Crispin.
“Crispin—no, he’s not in the Army. He’s engaged upon a private and
personal war against the people who are trying to bar Wagner and Bach
from our concert programmes.”
Madame de Courcy broke in again: “I hear you are an artist, Monsieur, a
sculptor, is it not?”
“No, a musician,” Antoinette corrected her, and the old lady nodded her
head.
“Ah, he visits the museums? But that is indeed interesting.”
“He is a musician, I tell you!” shouted Antoinette.
“_Comment_—he gives piano-lessons?” cried Grand’mère in great
consternation. Dennis, very gently, succeeded in making her understand
that he “wrote pieces for the piano”; she looked relieved; asked him if
he were well paid; and in a loud aside demanded of Henriette if musical
conductors received pensions from the State in England....
Henriette languidly shrugged her shoulders. “Who thinks—who has the
heart to think of music now? For me, if I were a man, there would be but
one music thrilling my soul: the roar of cannons—” crescendo—“and the
beat of drums....” She let the sound of her deep voice slowly die away
on the word.
Dennis was sorrier than ever for Antoinette.
When he took his leave, Madame de Courcy pressed him to come again, and
Antoinette gave him a most decorous “Good-bye, Mr. Blackwood,” with a
blush and lowered lids, and then one second’s impish gleam from the grey
eyes under their thick black lashes.
Dennis walked away with a light heart. “It’s all right,” he told
himself, “quite all right....” He was struggling up out of the nightmare
into which he had been sinking, as a person sinks into a dark,
weed-clogged pool. The weeds still clung about him: there were several
things from which he must avert his mental gaze—or, better still, he
must pretend that they were not there. The picture of a boy’s lean body,
lit by the glow of a forge, was one of them.... But he could pretend
quite easily, and it would be all right, he repeated—if only Antoinette
would give him a hand.
* * * * *
Antoinette felt stimulated by Dennis’s visit. She was liking him more
than ever before. His whimsical sense of humour appealed to her, also
his delight in the eccentricities of the de Courcy family, as recounted
by herself. And there was still about him that air of mystery which
offered food for the wildest speculations. Half idly, and yet not
without a certain thrill, she began to wonder what sort of a lover he
would make.
* * * * *
It was two nights later, and he had taken her to a theatre. They had
laughed a great deal, and had had a very good evening, but now, as they
drove in the taxi towards Cadogan Gardens, a silence fell upon them.
Antoinette’s heart throbbed with excitement that was mingled with a
remote inexplicable dread; but she did not know whether it was the dread
of a repeated anticlimax, or dread of the climax for which she longed,
and which she sensed near at hand. Yes, she decided, she _did_ want
it—but still the oppression remained.
Abruptly he ended the strain; put his arms round her. “Antoinette, will
you marry me? It will be quite all right, dear ... really it will.”
And now that it had come, that for which she had waited, she was
conscious only of a feeling of withdrawal, that amounted almost to
recoil.
“Will you, Antoinette...?”
She wished that after all, he had not come to the point so quickly;
wished he had prolonged the rather charming uncertainty of their
intercourse; wished that he were not already claiming a definite
answer.... All this, while his arms were around her, his lips very
gently straying over her cheeks, her eyelids. As one soothes a child, he
murmured again: “You’ll see, it will be all right.”
Of what was he thus persistently reassuring her, she wondered with a
touch of impatience; and freed herself from his arms. “I’m not sure,
Dennis ... d’you know,” with a little burst of hysterical laughter,
“I’ve an awful longing to say that this is so sudden.”
“But you must have always known that it was bound to come,” he pleaded.
“Y-yes, but—” She could not put into words the feeling of flat
disappointment that was upon her. He had kissed her—asked her to marry
him: climax stirring enough; and yet something in her that was not
satisfied, protested: “This can’t be all! Is this really all...?”
“Well?” he smiled down at her, and she was irritated by his calm. Surely
a man who cared deeply for her must have behaved differently in the face
of her vague answer; must have sought by his passion to kindle a like
passion in her.
“I don’t love you,” she said very low, knowing that she spoke the truth,
and wondering what effect this statement would have upon him. He
considered it in silence, as the cab drew up at the door. He helped her
out and dismissed the driver. Antoinette, on the door-step, had one
moment of fear lest Dennis should take his dismissal to be final. She
had not meant to be quite so drastic as all that; she liked him too much
to want to hurt him.
... To her relief he was beside her on the door-step now, and in the
darkness, his arms were round her again. “Dear child, believe me—it will
be all right....” Very lightly he kissed her lips, and as he ran down
the steps: “I’ll write to you to-night.”
Antoinette, rather dazed, rather irritated, and more disappointed than
ever, let herself into the house. She reflected, quite irrelevantly,
that Dennis had omitted to lay stress on the fact that he loved her. Now
she came to think of it, he had not even mentioned it.