He was in London again now, and the Conscription Bill had been passed.
All men must go, except those who were medically unfit, indispensable in
their present occupations, or had religious or conscientious scruples
against the taking of life. These could appeal for exemption, and their
cases would be heard before tribunals set up for the purpose. It sounded
rational enough and humane enough that no man should be forced to fight
against his convictions; but already there were howls of protest and
indignation at this clause in the Military Service Act. It was offering
a loophole of escape to cowards and shirkers ... easy enough for a man
who was afraid to fight, to fake up scruples that would keep him safely
at home, while better men went out and shed their blood for him.... The
Government was too soft-hearted altogether ... scruples, indeed ...
pampering a lot of weaklings.... Thus the “Daily Mail” and others of its
kind. When it came to it, Dennis wondered, would the tribunals do
justice, and how?
He was walking up the Strand one Saturday afternoon to meet Barnaby at
Miss Mowbray’s tea-shop. The matinée crowd from the Vaudeville Theatre
was just pouring out on to the pavement when he came face to face with
Antoinette and Rosabel Fayne. For a second he and Antoinette stared at
each other, both blushing furiously, each doubtful as to whether the
other intended to stop or pass on.
Rosabel ended their indecision for them. “Oh, Mr. Blackwood, what a
surprise, meeting you ... isn’t it a surprise, Antoinette? Do come along
to tea with us, won’t you? It’s my tea-party—I mean it’s Antoinette’s
birthday, and we’ve been to the theatre—only the pit, of course, but
very dissipated in war-time, isn’t it? Shall we go to Fuller’s?”
Dennis, very embarrassed, glanced at Antoinette, but her eyes were
obstinately downcast, and she gave him no assistance whatever.
“Do come,” Rosabel rattled on, “it’ll make it so jolly. This is my
afternoon off, but I have to be back at the hospital by six.”
“Then I think you’d both better come and have tea with me,” said Dennis.
“I was on my way to meet a friend at Miss Mowbray’s.” He expected that
Antoinette would protest here, or make some excuse not to follow his
suggestion, but still she said nothing, and in silence walked along
beside the talkative Rosabel.
It was nearly six months since he had last seen her. In the interval,
after his first bitter resentment had died down, he had scarcely thought
of her, and he assumed that she had thought equally little of him.
Everything had been over between them when he had made his final cut,
long before that, really ... so it was quite ridiculous that he should
now feel so constrained in her presence. Why had she given her tacit
consent to this three-cornered party? What was her attitude? One of
curiosity, no doubt, he reflected sardonically, curiosity as to what his
own attitude might be. She wanted a fresh sensation; Antoinette was like
that.... He decided that at all events he would not gratify that desire.
They turned up a stone-flagged passage between the back of a theatre and
a row of small shops, entered a narrow doorway, and descended the steep
stairs into the tea-room. It was neither square nor oblong, neither
circular nor octagonal; but seemed to be made up of a variety of odd
corners of different shapes. A big fire burnt in the grate, and six or
seven little tables of dark stained wood were spread for tea.
Rosabel gave a cry of delight. “Oh, how lovely ... isn’t it too Bohemian
for words? Such a quaint shape ... and the dim light ... and that cosy
little table in the alcove ... have you ever been here before,
Antoinette?”
“Yes,” said Antoinette, speaking for the first time, “I’ve been here
once before.” Once.... The day after he had asked her to marry him. Did
he remember that, too, she wondered, as, much to Rosabel’s glee, they
ensconced themselves at the table in the alcove, where Barnaby was
already seated. She had met the crippled journalist several times
before, and talked to him rather hectically while Dennis vanished behind
the curtain which divided the tea-room from Miss Mowbray’s private
sanctum and the kitchen. He was rather a long time chatting to Miss
Mowbray and ordering the tea.... So much the better. When he came back
she would no longer be able to talk; the beating of her heart choked her
when she could actually look at him and hear his voice.
This accidental meeting had been anticipated and mentally dramatised a
thousand times over. One swift look between them, one touch: “It was all
a mistake, Antoinette, I had to come back—It’s all right now ...
dear....” Herein the imaginary meeting had invariably culminated;
meeting longed for, almost prayed for during six weary months.
He returned to their table, and still without seeking Antoinette’s eyes,
and without speaking to her directly, embarked upon a desultory
conversation with Barnaby. Through the small barred window near the
ceiling, that was on a level with the street, Antoinette watched the
legs and feet of the passers-by; legs and feet without bodies or heads,
continually passing and passing. She remembered that thus, with an odd
sort of fascination, she had watched them that first time, while Dennis
had stumblingly tried to assure her that it was all right—that he was so
glad. How much did he remember, she wondered again. And the footsteps of
those strange bodiless legs on the pavement outside, echoed: how
much—how much—how much?
“Oh, but you’re not seeing this place at its best,” Dennis was informing
Rosabel in answer to her enthusiastic praise of the tea-shop, “it’s
empty to-day, but as a rule it’s crammed full of actors, journalists,
artists and rebels of all descriptions.”
(Thus he had played up to Grand’mère, when he had lunched at Cadogan
Gardens, giving his audience what it wanted!)
“Oh, how _exquisite_,” cried Rosabel, feeling that here indeed she was
having her money’s worth, or rather Dennis’s; “I do so love rebels.
Sometimes I think I’m one myself ... but it’s rather naughty of you not
to be in khaki, isn’t it, Mr. Blackwood?”
“Oh, you mustn’t try to air any military views here, Miss Fayne,”
Barnaby twinkled at her from under his shaggy brows, “this is entirely a
haunt of pacifists.”
“What a sweet idea,” murmured Rosabel, who could always adapt her views
to the needs of the moment; with equal flexibility she had transferred
her one-time adoration for Marie Antoinette to the present Queen of the
Belgians as being just as unfortunate and more up-to-date. “And how
clever of you to have discovered this ‘haunt,’ as you call it, tucked
away behind the theatre like this.”
“I knew Kitty Mowbray before ever the tea-shop existed,” Barnaby
explained, “she was on the staff of the ‘Daily Standard’ at the same
time as I was; then the paper went bust, and she took up this instead.
She does a roaring trade now.”
Antoinette puffed nervously at her cigarette, and, through the haze of
smoke, cast occasional surreptitious glances at Dennis. Often enough,
during those six months, she had wondered if, when she saw him again,
she would discover, as she had once discovered with Hester, that he
meant nothing to her. He should by rights mean nothing to her. The love
that he had awakened one day, and had not even come to claim the next,
should indeed have been a short-lived emotion; short-lived as those few
fleeting hours in the punt ... memory upon which, in view of his letter,
she could only dwell with shame-flushed cheeks ... memory upon which,
nevertheless, she dwelt again and again, striving to draw from it a
little warmth with which to animate the dull, lifeless present. That
love had not died during dreary days and nights of self-reproach, and
longing for him to return, and conviction that he would not return, and
more self-reproach ... days and nights of hope that to-morrow, at last,
would bring the letter, the wire, the telephone-call that said that he
was coming back to her.
It was not dead now, but very acutely and painfully alive, as she sat
looking at him; tracing with a half-fearful joy the familiar outline of
his chin and jaw; listening to the familiar tones of his voice. She was
grateful to the others for talking; she felt incapable of taking part in
the conversation herself.
Miss Mowbray entered with the tea.
“Has O’Farrell been here to-day, Kitty?”
The ex-newspaper-reporter, a sunny little woman in a blue linen overall,
shook her head in reply to Barnaby’s question. “He’s broke again, poor
dear. He had his last lot of sausages and mashed on tick last Friday,
and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Well, if he turns up after I’m gone, tell him, with my love, that he’s
a confounded idiot, and that if he doesn’t deliver that cartoon of his
in time we shall never be able to get it into this week’s ‘Dove.’”
“I’ll tell him all right,” smiled Miss Mowbray.
“‘The Dove’ is the name of the pacifist paper Barnaby is editing,”
Dennis explained for Rosabel’s benefit.
Rosabel clasped her hands ecstatically. “‘The Dove’—Oh, what a _sweet_
name!”
Barnaby grunted. “Yes, that’s all that is sweet about it. It’s a very
vehement peace-dove, I assure you. We expect our office to be raided
every day. O’Farrell’s political cartoon will do the trick, I should
think, if he delivers it in time, instead of indulging in riotous orgies
of sausages and mashed. It’s Lord Derby and the Kaiser playing a game of
Oranges and Lemons while a stream of unfit recruits passes under their
outstretched arms to their death.”
Later on, a very bad-tempered Crispin joined the group, nodded curtly to
the two girls, and sat down between Dennis and Barnaby. “F-fools!” he
ejaculated, when at last he became articulate. “N-narrowminded idiots!”
“There, there, what’s the matter now?” Miss Mowbray, who had come to
take his order for tea, tried to soothe him.
Crispin spluttered: “A b-beauty. F-full-sized g-grand. P-perfect tone.”
Then, with a rush: “S-said they wouldn’t have it in the house any more.”
“Who wouldn’t have what in the house any more?” queried Rosabel, quite
bewildered, but very interested.
“My uncle and aunt. Their B-blüthner piano. Because it was a Hun m-make.
So I said they n-needn’t have me in their b-beastly house any more
either. And n-no more they shan’t!” concluded the irate musician. After
a deep draught of Dennis’s tea he found strength to add: “D-don’t
deserve to win the war—p-people like that.”
Antoinette smiled at the vision of Crispin and the Blüthner grand
homeless upon the pavement in Fitzjohn’s Avenue; but she began to wish
that the party would diminish in size, instead of increasing. The larger
the party, the easier for Dennis to avoid meeting her eyes. Perhaps if
she were alone with him—was it possible that he was really so impervious
to memory as he seemed, absorbed in some political discussion with
Barnaby, while Rosabel strove to assure Crispin that she, too, was a
rebel? ... assurance pathetically incongruous with her peaked little
face under the hideous flat felt hat that constituted part of her
nurse’s uniform. If only the others would go—the thought choked her. If
they went, would he throw off this pose of indifference? Was it only a
pose, though? What if it were genuine? Or what if it hid—not agitation
caused by this sudden meeting, but actual dislike of her presence? There
had been dislike between the lines of that last letter, perhaps
something even stronger than dislike. And while all his other letters,
his charming letters, seemed mere faded ghosts, that one letter had
never lost its power to sting. Did he still hate her? She must know. She
could not possibly make matters worse than they were already by knowing
the truth.
Eventually the others began to disperse. Barnaby hobbled up the stairs
on his crutches, and returned to his office in Fleet Street; Crispin
took his grievance into Miss Mowbray’s sanctum; Rosabel, suddenly aware
that it was long past six, scuttled off in the direction of her
hospital.
Dennis and Antoinette were left standing at the foot of the stairs.
“I must go, too,” she said, hoping that he would give some sign at last,
or make some attempt to detain her.
“Is Grand’mère waiting for you with an inquisition as to how and where
the afternoon has been spent, and isn’t there a lie ready to meet the
situation?”
So he remembered that much! She gave him one swift look to ascertain if
he were about to betray how much else he remembered. But his smile was
quite inscrutable. For very shame at having been mistaken in her
impression that he was on the point of behaving as he had always done in
the imaginary version of this meeting, she flushed scarlet as she
answered: “I have almost forgotten how to lie to Grand’mère.”
“A pity that a practice which you have really brought to a fine art
should be allowed to rust,” he commented cynically; and his cynicism
hurt her, as had his previous indifference and apparent lack of memory,
and one or two other things, absurd little things ... like seeing that
he had a new slouch hat and brushed his hair straight back, instead of
parting it at the side ... things that she would scarcely have noticed
in the days when she did not care for him. She felt as if she had been
mentally skinned; as if every nerve were exposed and quivering, and as
if there were nothing about him that had not some mysterious power to
hurt her.
She said in reply to his remark: “You see, there has been no need to
keep in practice.”
He raised his eyebrows in amused astonishment. “Do you mean to tell me
that you have altogether ceased to cast a veil of fiction over your
goings and comings?”
She was silent. She could not tell him that she had expended all her
store of unveracity on the invention of excuses that had to be plausible
enough to account for the cessation of letters, outings and
telephone-calls, and that yet had to be calculated not to put him in a
bad light, so that in case he ever came back—she had not wanted to make
the severance seem too abrupt, so for a while she let it be assumed that
they were still seeing each other occasionally, and the hardest lies of
all were those she had to tell when she went out with quite irrelevant
people, and allowed the family to take it for granted that she was with
Dennis.
“_Eh bien, il était aimable, le jeune Blackwood?_”
And for pride’s sake: “_Oui, Grand’mère, très aimable_.” Easy enough to
fib about a good time that one had had; difficult beyond belief to fib
about a good time that one had not had. Antoinette had lost her taste
for fibbing since then. Besides, as she had told him, there had been
nothing and no one in her life to justify or necessitate it. And she was
too much of an artist to waste a good lie, when the truth would do as
well.
She repeated: “I must go now ...” and thought how grotesque it was that
they should be standing side by side, laboriously making conversation,
when a year ago in this same place, he had held her in his arms and
kissed her. Why couldn’t he kiss her now, while there was no one about?
Once, he would have been quick enough to seize the opportunity. And now,
not one of those unwanted kisses that she was not paying for with a
separate stab of longing.
“I’ll see you to your station,” he said, since he could not very well do
otherwise. “Charing Cross Metropolitan for Sloane Square, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She smiled in memory of the innumerable times that he had seen
her home by that route.
They walked down the Strand together. After a while, he broke the
silence with, “Does your mother’s heart still bleed for France? It was
France, wasn’t it, or was it Belgium?”
She laughed feverishly. “It doesn’t matter. Her heart is always bleeding
for something—symbolically. Actually, she’s never been as happy in her
life as now.”
“How’s that?”
“She recites patriotic poems—the ‘_Carillon_’ and ‘_Belgique meurtrie_’
at all the fashionable charity performances.”
Dennis laughed aloud. He could so well imagine Henriette de Courcy with
her deep voice and her dramatic gestures and her symbolically bleeding
heart, reciting with much relish to an audience composed chiefly of
foreign ambassadors and English ladies of title.
“Mother tried ever so hard to make me take it up, too,” said Antoinette,
“I suppose it would have made quite an effective picture, mother and
daughter, both with Parisian accents, both moaning for their lost
Belgium. But I really couldn’t bear it.”
“I should think not;” for the first time she detected a note of genuine
interest in his tone. “And have they tried to persuade you into other
sorts of war-work?”
“Oh, yes ... translating French into English (because you know both
languages so well, dear), or cutting bread and butter in a canteen, or
emptying slops in a hospital. I’ve not done anything.”
“From conviction?”
“Oh, no, not from conviction,” she said in a listless way, “more from
laziness.” She added wistfully, “I wish I had convictions—any sort of
convictions. Just to have them.” If one had convictions, one had at
least something in one’s life that would stand rock-firm; something by
which to steer; one was not helplessly buffeted about upon shoreless
seas of emotion.
Dennis smiled. “You seem to consider convictions a luxury: they have to
be paid for pretty dearly, I can tell you, if one stands by them.”
She had been so absorbed in the conflicting sensations of the moment
that she had not realised what might be in store for Dennis if he stood
by his convictions.
“What—what is going to happen to you?” she asked tentatively.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I wait till I’m called up; then I lodge my
appeal; then I appear before the tribunal; and then—heaven only knows!”
“I see,” she murmured, too shy, almost too afraid of him to say more, or
to express the hope that he would get his exemption.
Silence fell upon them again. They were nearly at the station now. And
there he would take his leave of her, with that new, half-cynical
politeness; and he would not ask if he could see her again, and she
would not see him again until chance flung them together once more,
perhaps in another six months, perhaps in a year, perhaps never. And
there would be one horrible moment when she would have to watch him
disappearing into the crowd, knowing that in this vast town, and amongst
these vast shoals of people, the odds were a million to one against
their meeting again. With every second the hope diminished that he would
still say something, do something that would spare her that one moment.
He took her ticket at the booking-office and presented it to her.
“Well—good-bye.”
She disregarded his extended hand, yielded to her fear and to her
frantic desire not merely to be dependent upon blind chance for her next
glimpse of him. “Please—Dennis....”
Something of her desperate anguish pierced at last through his
assumption that all she wanted of him was a fresh sensation. He looked
at her white face and quivering mouth. “Why, Antoinette, what is it?”
She shook her head, not daring to speak, lest the tears that scorched
her downcast eyelids should fall.
“What is it?” he repeated gently.
She tried to smile; made a great effort to gain self-control, but
nevertheless it sounded lame and piteous as she stammered: “C-can’t
we—just be friends?”
He knew then that it was not friendship that she asked of him; saw also
that he was face to face with some very real emotion. A certain amount
of curiosity, blended with a slight softening of his attitude towards
her, was responsible for his next sentence.
“We can’t very well leave things like this, can we? There’s a great deal
to be talked about.”
A sigh of relief escaped her. She was to be spared the moment she had so
dreaded; spared at least for a while. She had been reprieved, and memory
mocked her with a vivid picture of the last time she had experienced
that sensation: going up the stairs of the tea-shop, after Dennis had
unwillingly acceded to her plea for six months’ time in which to make
her decision.
“Come for a stroll now—it’s nearly your dinner-time, though, isn’t it?
Hadn’t you better telephone to say you’re not coming home?”
She laughed tremulously, and found her voice again. “Yes, if you can
think of a suitable lie for me to tell them. They mustn’t know I’m with
you.”
“Oh, you’ve met a friend of my mother’s, who insists on your dining and
going to the theatre with her. That’s the usual sort of tale, isn’t it?
And it’ll cover all emergencies in case we’re late.”
Antoinette nodded and disappeared into the telephone-box, where she
spent considerable time placating a resentful father at the other end.
Anatole declared that she ought to come home to dinner on her birthday,
as she had been out the whole afternoon.
“I had to say that your mother’s friend was sailing for America
to-morrow, and that this was my last chance of seeing her,” Antoinette
told Dennis when she rejoined him, “and when Father began to argue, I
rang off....” She did not know what was in store for her now, but at
least she had enjoyed those few uneasy minutes of lying to the irate
Anatole.
They left the station, and walked down towards the Embankment.
“Have I been a brute to you, Antoinette?”
“No—Oh, no ...” fervently she denied his self-accusation. “It wasn’t
your fault, not any of it. It was all my fault. I made you hate me.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “I did hate you. But it wasn’t entirely your fault
either. There were so many other difficulties and complications that
helped.”
She said: “Yes, I know....”
“Do you know—do you?” At the intense eagerness of his voice, some
instinct warned her to banish all trace of interest or curiosity from
her own. She replied in dead level tones: “Yes, of course I know ...”
and wondered what had prompted her to the lie.
“Are you sure?” he persisted, as if he very much wanted her to be sure.
And again she repeated: “Yes ...” and waited in breathless tension for
what he would say next. She had no idea as to the nature of the
difficulties and complications to which he alluded; had vainly sought an
explanation of them during the last six months. But she knew now why she
had lied: perhaps he would solve the mystery for her, if she pretended
that already she had solved it for herself.
“That makes things very much easier,” he said, “it was that which first
drew me to you at Amberhurst—thinking you’d understand, that you must
understand, because you had the same kink of abnormality as I had.”
“Just the same,” she murmured, still utterly ignorant of his meaning.
“You see I always knew I was hopelessly different from other men. Women
never appealed to me. All the attraction I ever felt was for——” He
stopped, still uncertain of her, but it was beginning to dawn on her at
last, and she helped him out again.
“Yes—I know.”
“Well: then you came along, and I spotted you at once. And seeing that
the taint was in you too, I thought it must make you as lonely and
miserable as it made me, and I imagined that the two of us could fight
the loneliness better together.”
He broke off to let some people pass between them; and she, confused and
bewildered, but also strangely excited by this revelation, wondered if
she could succeed in hiding from him the fact that she had never been
aware of any particular taint in herself!
“It might have been all right if you’d said ‘yes’ at once,” he resumed,
“only you hung back.”
“I’m sorry, Dennis.”
“Ah, don’t say that. You were only being true to yourself; I see that
now, but at the time, it made me furious. You wouldn’t go on and you
wouldn’t go back. You just kept me dangling.”
He set these accusations forth in a mournful, passionless way, as if
merely stating his case, and with no desire to wound her. But she felt
the wound nevertheless, and the pain of it gave her a queer thrill of
elation. Better a thousand times that he should hurt her like this, than
that there should be between them that dense impenetrable veil of
silences and evasions. Even now, whenever for a moment she lost the
sound of his voice amid the noise of wheels and the blaring of
motor-horns, she feared that he would say nothing more, and that the
veil would fall again before it had been properly lifted. And strung up
to an almost unbearable pitch of excitement, she waited to catch his
jerked-out sentences again.
“I always thought that one day I’d be able to tell you all about
myself——”
“Oh, if you had, if only you had.... I tried so often to make you tell
me, and you never would.”
“Yes, that was where I made my mistake. I let my first impression of
you, the correct one, become obscured....” Subtle fascination in the
knowledge that only by reason of his discovery of some taint or kink
which they had in common, could he at last reveal all that the veil had
hidden of dark turmoil, dark moods and impulses.
“We couldn’t go on as we were. I felt dishonourable and loathed myself
for not telling you, or breaking with you, but one seemed as difficult
and impossible as the other.”
“I wouldn’t let you break,” she said softly, “I remember.... And of
course you couldn’t tell me anything. And you must have hated me more
and more for making you hate yourself.”
“You understand well enough now,” he cried, “I was a fool ever to doubt
that you would.”
On and on they walked, and the rumble of traffic and the hurrying
footsteps made a strange accompaniment to words that were more strange
yet. On and on, dodging other pedestrians, plunging across roads. But
she was stimulated beyond all consciousness of fatigue.
“What was it,” hesitatingly she spoke, choosing her words with care, so
that he might not divine her ignorance, “what was it, that time at
Amberhurst, that showed you?”
“My child, the way you looked at that woman, was quite enough.”
Hester.... So that was it!
“You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
“Yes....”
“And there had been others, hadn’t there? Other women?”
“Yes—Oh, yes.” Rapidly she cast her mind over those school-girl passions
of her early youth—Miss Prescot—Natasha—passing flickers of emotion
aroused here and there by the beauty or attraction of women she had met
in hotels abroad—finally Hester.... This, then, was the taint of which
he spoke; the taint that they shared, he and she. Only whereas he had
always striven against these tendencies in himself, in herself she had
never regarded them as abnormal. It had seemed disappointing, but not in
the least unnatural, that all her passionate longings should have been
awakened by women, instead of by members of the opposite sex.
“And you were thinking of them, weren’t you, when you said you’d known
what the real thing was like?”
“Yes....” This, at all events, was the truth.
“You’ve never known it with a man, have you?”
“Never, Dennis....” Never until now.
“I’ve known it, once, with one of my own sex ... that was a long time
ago. It was terrible ... and rather wonderful, but it had to be beaten
down, and beaten down again, and the scar has never quite healed.”
She stole a glance at him, as he strode along at her side, a furrow
between his deep-set eyes. A wave of burning tenderness and longing came
over her. It was a shame that he should have to suffer so horribly from
the consciousness of his abnormality, while her own had never caused her
the slightest uneasiness. She understood now all the misery of his
schooldays, everything that he had half-told her in his letters. He had
put the key into her hands, hoping that she would be able to fit it into
the lock ... only she had never been able to do so. She had not even
tried—furiously she lashed herself with reproach—she had been far too
indifferent to him, far too much absorbed in her love for Hester, that
very love which proved her so closely akin to him. But he had always
suffered, as a boy, as a man ... and she had gone scot-free. If only she
could make up to him for all that he had been through, for the times
that he had in vain asked her for understanding, for the times that she
had thought of him without love, and kissed him without love. She had
been blind and insensible before, because she did not love him; but now
it seemed that every pang he had suffered, every tortured desire that
had been his, found its reflection and counterpart in her.
“I’ve never known what it was to love a woman. Not really. I didn’t love
you, Antoinette ... you know that. And you didn’t love me, either, did
you?”
“No ...” she added under her breath: “Not until it was too late.”
She saw him flush; caught his murmured: “Oh, my dear ...” but if he said
more, it was lost in the rumble of wheels. Heedless of the direction in
which they had been walking, they had almost worked their way back to
Trafalgar Square. Overhead the searchlights were flashing rapier-blades,
continually crossed and re-crossed upon the background of thick dark
blue. Whitehall was crowded. She had a moment’s panic, lest she should
lose sight of Dennis. In this bewildering sea of faces and figures that
pressed in upon her from all sides, she would never be able to find him
again. They would go different ways, each hunting for the other ... but
they would never find each other again in the sickly half-light of the
darkened streets. There were so many different ways that they might go.
The next minute she was reassured by the pressure of his arm against
hers. “Shall we go into Lyons’ for a meal? I saw you didn’t eat anything
at tea.”
Nor could she eat anything now. She was too tired and excited; but she
was touched by his concern for her, and followed him through the
swing-doors into the crowded and garishly-lighted Corner House. The
strains of a rag-time band fell upon their ears; the sound of mingled
voices and laughter, rattle of crockery, footsteps of waiters....
“Not quite the right _mise-en-scène_ for a psychological dissertation,”
Dennis smiled as they seated themselves at a small corner table.
“Oh, it’s good enough as a contrast,” she laughed, and reflected that
she was indeed having an uncommon birthday-party ... uncommon
birthday-presents, too. Meeting him had been the first; that moment at
the station when she had had her reprieve, had been the second; the way
he had suddenly taken her arm in the crowd, was another. Were there more
to come, she wondered? She dared not hope for more, but accepted with
gratitude each as it came.
“It’s a case of ‘like to like’ with us.” He had given his order for
dinner and they faced each other across the narrow table. “And because
there’s a certain amount of the masculine element in you, and of the
feminine element in me, we both have to suffer in the same way.”
She felt suddenly compelled to honesty. “I haven’t suffered—because I
didn’t quite realise ... about myself.”
“And I’ve made you realise...? Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she implored, “I should have had to know sooner or
later.” And she was glad that it was he who had made her realise ...
glad....
“Yes,” he assented, “of course you would. Not much peace of oblivion for
people like us. Not much happiness either, so far as I can see. Not when
one always has to fight and watch and take care, and pay the penalty for
having instincts that aren’t like other people’s.”
Yet she had been happy, blissfully happy during her brief passion for
Hester. She had not fought nor watched nor taken care, for she had never
realised the need of doing either. She felt as if she had not been
justified in being happy, as if it were unfair to him that she should
have escaped paying the penalty. But in future she would not escape.
Suffering must inevitably accompany realisation. Again she was glad: for
by suffering shared, she would earn the right to stand by him in his
loneliness.
Clatter of plates; the continual coming and going of people between the
tables; the rattle of money on the cashier’s desk; the cloying sweetness
of “Until,” played by the band. And Dennis’s low voice reaching her
across all the other conflicting sounds.
“We’re disinherited from the legitimate ways of happiness, you and I.
We’re Ishmaelites, outcast for ever from the world of normal men and
women. Yet it isn’t our fault that we were born with unusual natures any
more than it’s a cripple’s fault that he’s born with a deformed body.
But they turn from us as if we were lepers. What do they know of the
continual struggle to be decent, and to keep decent, with something
always tugging you the other way? They don’t know the ghastliness of
having to pretend to be as normal as they, and all the while to be
stifling and suppressing the most vital side of yourself—the love-side.
And they don’t know what it’s like to go in perpetual fear of discovery,
and fear of your own condemnation as well as theirs.... I’m twenty-six,
Antoinette, and I’ve known, or almost known ever since I was fifteen;
and in all those eleven years I’ve never told a soul.”
“I’m glad you’re telling me now....”
“My dear, whom should I tell, if not you?”
Swiftly she raised her eyes to his and dropped them again. “Thank you,
Dennis....”
... They stood outside the swing-doors and shivered in the night air.
The music and light and voices were cut off behind them, and they were
caught up in the dark swirl of traffic again. He piloted her across the
road and into a taxi; gave the address to the driver; slammed the door.
And then his arms were round her, his lips clinging to hers ... and the
shock of joy was so poignant, that she averted her face and buried it
against his coat-sleeve, so that he might not find her lips again, nor
kiss them again just yet—not just yet.... Let her hold this moment fast,
hold it and hold it against memory of all the days and nights of
fruitless yearning, against the dread of days and nights that might
perhaps still be to come.
She stirred a little in his arms, and he kissed her again.
“Dennis—I love you....”
Strange for him also, to hear this from a woman. “My dear....”
Her arm stole round his neck, drew his cheek down beside hers. And she
remembered how with just these gestures she had formerly counterfeited
passion.
“I love you, Dennis....” Words breathed scarcely above a whisper; words
that she had not spoken to him before; words that she derived a queer
sort of delight from repeating now, as if only by admitting and
re-admitting her love for him could she atone for her past insincerity.
After a while she said: “Will you tell me what it means, Dennis, that I
can care for you like this?” She really meant: “Doesn’t it prove me
perfectly normal after all?”
And he understood and answered the unspoken part of her question. “It’s
only another proof of your abnormality, my poor child. No normal woman
could care for me, I’m sure. You only do, because you are what you are,
and I am what I am. It’s ‘like to like,’ as I said.”
“Then I’m glad I’m like that.” Glad of anything that enabled her to love
him so well.
“You mustn’t be glad; it’s a curse, a terrible curse. You’ll know some
day!”
Yes, some day she might know, but what matter now, while he held her
close, and between his warnings kissed her, and kissed her again, so
that her face and throat and hands alike burned with the touch of his
lips.... Exhausted, finally, she leant back against his shoulder.
“Tired, dear?”
She nodded; too tired even for speech now; dead tired with tramping up
and down the streets while they talked; and with the nervous tension and
excitement; dead tired, but happy, she told herself triumphantly, even
if she were never to be happy again.
He almost lifted her out of the cab. “You’ve had a strenuous day—your
birthday, too, isn’t it? Many happy returns.... Did your grandmother
give you a needle-case or a pair of embroidery-scissors? Good-night, my
dear....”
* * * * *
She asked no questions of the future; scarcely allowed herself to wonder
into what strange channels they were about to drift. Not for a moment
did she delude herself into belief that she could save him from the
shadowy danger which had always threatened him, nor into belief that he
loved her, or could ever love her. But at least all was clear between
them; it was to her that he had first spoken after his years of
self-imposed silence; he no longer hated her.... Therefore she was
happy, even though she knew that her hold on happiness was as precarious
as that of a person clinging to a very small raft in a very stormy sea.
* * * * *
“It’s wrong of me to do this, and wrong of you to let me,” he declared
at their next meeting, when without an instant’s hesitation, they found
their way into each other’s arms.
She laughed up at him. “Why is it wrong? I know, and you know, and we
each know that the other knows, so nobody is deceiving anybody.”
“You’re an immoral woman,” he teased her.
“I don’t care if I am!”
“Yes, but what’s going to become of us, Antoinette?”
With fast-beating heart, she yet managed to say lightly: “I’m sure I
don’t know, dear.”
As it was she who had been responsible for bringing about yesterday’s
situation, she must not let him imagine for an instant that she thought
she had any claim upon him, or that she expected him to marry her.
_Marry_ her—she had forgotten: marriage was not for such as she,
Antoinette reminded herself severely.... Only it was a pity that she
could not take the same serious view of her “taint” as he did of his. It
seemed so absolutely normal and right that she should love him. But she
must remember that she was an outcast and an Ishmaelite, and it was all
great fun, as long as they could be outcasts and Ishmaelites together!
She seemed to have recaptured some of the exuberant joyousness and
vitality of the Amberhurst days.
“And I’m sure I don’t know either,” he replied, “there’s all this
military business hanging over me, too; it’s impossible to decide
anything yet.”
“Quite impossible,” she agreed; and finally, to put him at his ease and
free him from all sense of responsibility towards her: “So don’t let’s
bother.”
“Idiot-child,” he laughed and kissed her.
She had to cloak her outings with him now under a most elaborate set of
falsehoods. Already Dennis was in the family’s bad books for having
taken no decisive steps towards proposing for her hand in marriage; and
since that explanation the other night, it was more necessary than ever
that he should be kept a “guilty secret” from the family. She revelled
in having this secret to keep. It heightened her enjoyment of the good
hours with him, as contrasted with the dull ones spent with her family.
If, as he had said, people like themselves were “disinherited from the
legitimate ways of happiness,” then it behoved her to snatch what
happiness she could, when and where she could.
They had had dinner at Lyons’ one night and were walking up Shaftesbury
Avenue towards the Coliseum. She always loved these evening expeditions;
loved the mingled excitement and security that she felt in knowing that
he was beside her in the shifting crowds.
They had to halt on the kerb at Charing Cross Road, while the stream of
traffic flowed past them; and suddenly, from the crowd on the opposite
side of the street, a figure detached itself for Antoinette; a man,
stalking hurriedly in the direction of Trafalgar Square. Something in
the walk, graceful and yet athletic, attracted her notice. She turned to
Dennis, and saw that his eyes were riveted to the same figure, now
rapidly vanishing from sight.
“Is that someone you know?” she asked.
He started, like a person awakened from heavy slumbers. “Someone
I—thought I knew....”
He said nothing more, but all that evening remained abstracted and
curiously restless.