When I was done, he came and put his arms around me; and I ran my
fingers through his hair, and we did not talk, for a long long time.
Thereafter, we had some debate as to details . . . but no man of his
type is very eager to yield adventure even for a woman.
Noel was to have Asia. He suffered a good deal, I believe, at the
thought of losing me. He might suffer more, as Asia grew commonplace;
but, meanwhile, Asia was his other Great Desire.
We lived through a week in which we lived as if all things between us
had lasted since the beginning of Time, and were to last for ever. Then
I had a wire from Beatrice, who wanted to know what time on Thursday she
should arrive, to go clothes-buying among the fashionable wholesalers.
I arranged to take Thursday afternoon off . . . and since her sentence
to wearing a black patch was so nearly ended, we went without
embarrassment to various wholesale clothing places and bought tweeds,
and evening frocks, and sweaters-and-skirts, and jersey ensembles, and
hats to wear with them all. (Even a silver turban for dancing.)
We ended the afternoon at a shoe-shop, and I discovered with some
amusement that, though she was a taller woman, her shoes were a smaller
size than mine.
There was more enthusiasm in her voice than there had been the week
before. She told the shoe-clerk gaily that she was travelling to
Chicago, to see her mother whom she hadn’t visited in ten years.
(Noel was to join her in Chicago. He was leaving New York, a day or two
later than she.)
Helena could not see us before six-thirty. Beatrice asked me to go to
tea with her, to fill in the interval. I said: “Well, I was thinking of
going to a speakeasy. I know a nice one, on Fifty-Second Street, where
women without escorts are not conspicuous.”
Her voice was like the voice of a sub-debutante invited to an important
college prom. “Oh, _could_ we go to a speakeasy?” she said. “You know,
my accident was in 1919, before Prohibition, and I have never seen a
speakeasy.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “I have wasted my youth in so many of them.”
We went to Fifty-Second Street. Beatrice was stirred by the fact that
she could put her foot on a brass rail at the bar. She had read about
brass rails but never seen one. We had two Alexanders, and they did not
seem to disturb her, unduly.
I thought, simultaneously, that this girl was only a year or two older
than myself and that, except for one thing and another, she would have
been much prettier than I.
(And would have held Noel for ever, perhaps? . . . The chances that
determine people’s lives. Well, no sense considering them at any length.
One accepted them. It was easier.)
Helena had made six masks for Beatrice. They were lovely things—she
must have worked until dawn, several nights in succession, to finish
them. Across the width of her apartment they were amazingly life-like.
Even viewed closely there was nothing in the least grotesque about them,
because they were so decorative.
There were full-face masks for evening wear, and a full-face mask for
wear with sports’ clothes. There were half-masks, too. “And how do I
eat, wearing them?” Beatrice asked.
Helena explained that the half-masks were designed for that. . . . “They
are cut out, a little, around the mouth. The explanation of it is
intricate, but you eat a cookie, and see how simple it is.”
If a woman with half a face could glow, Beatrice glowed when she tried
them on. Her hands (which were well-shaped, graceful hands) looked
excited.
“They are wonderful,” she said. “So light, and so comfortable, and
_pretty_. How much should I pay you for them?”
Helena said: “Nothing. Patricia is an old friend of mine.”
Something—something vaguely familiar in the expression of the mouth and
chin on the full-face masks, disturbed me. I could not think why.
Lucia drifted in, to admire—and Beatrice tried each mask on, again, for
her. Then Beatrice showed all her new clothes (she had insisted on
bringing them along, in a cab) to Helena; and Lucia and I went into the
bathroom for a drink of Scotch.
Lucia said: “Do you feel all right?”
I said, “Yes. She is leaving in the middle of next week, you know, and
Noel is going at the end of it.”
I said, “Those masks _are_ extraordinary, aren’t they. They are not only
decorative—they have a definite individuality, even a definite charm.”
Lucia said: “Helena always liked you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Honestly, don’t you know, Pat? Was there nothing about the lower part
of the face, in the full masks, that you recognized?”
“Something, vaguely, but I don’t know what.”
Lucia smiled—her all-comprehending smile.
“Ever see your face, Pat, when you were looking tranquil, and well
pleased with life? . . . Helena has a sardonic humour. . . . She’s
copied that grave smile of yours, to follow Noel, all over Asia.”
* * * * *
On the way to Beatrice’s suburban train, she and I had a short
conversation. “Maybe you dislike me,” she said, “but I hope not . . . I
feel that I owe you a good deal, and I thought . . . if my child were a
girl I might name her for you.”
I lighted a cigarette. “God is an ironist,” I said, but that seemed
beyond Beatrice’s comprehension.
She said: “Anyway. I wanted to tell you . . . that I mean to be good to
Noel. I know that he will have to leave me by myself, much of the time,
in the Far East” (—the words conjured up pictures of the places Noel
and I might have seen, together . . . the sounds and colours of bazaars,
I would never know them, now. I drew a long breath) “but I shan’t
object” she said . . . “Now that he is going to be my husband, really
officially, I mean to give him as much liberty as can be managed. After
all, I shall have the baby.”
“That’s sensible, Beatrice,” I said. “And, if he should have a brief
romance with a Geisha girl, don’t curse him out for it. He’ll come back,
to see the baby, and to get himself a clean shirt. That’s marriage.”
“I’ll behave, Patricia,” she said. . . . Her train was leaving in three
minutes. She stopped by the train-gate. “Tell me you don’t hate me,” she
said.
“I don’t hate you. I hope you work it out, Beatrice.” After two minutes,
now, I would never see her again. For that at least, I could be
grateful.
“Beatrice—they say there are splendid British surgeons in the East, and
facial surgery has been elaborated, since the War. . . . Perhaps,
something may be managed for you, there.”
She smiled half a smile, and _she_ found a good exit line. (Peter, who
was almost forgotten now, had asked me to find one, once.) Beatrice
said: “Meanwhile there are the masks . . . you wear them, too, don’t
you?” She ran, not ungracefully, to catch her train.