CHAPTER VIII

THE PROUDEST MOTHER

I

In the year 1893 there was a new and strange man living at No. 4, St.

Luke's Square. Many people remarked on the phenomenon. Very few of his

like had ever been seen in Bursley before. One of the striking things

about him was the complex way in which he secured himself by means of

glittering chains. A chain stretched across his waistcoat, passing

through a special button-hole, without a button, in the middle. To this

cable were firmly linked a watch at one end and a pencil-case at the

other; the chain also served as a protection against a thief who might

attempt to snatch the fancy waistcoat entire. Then there were longer

chains, beneath the waistcoat, partly designed, no doubt, to deflect

bullets, but serving mainly to enable the owner to haul up penknives,

cigarette-cases, match-boxes, and key-rings from the profundities of

hip-pockets. An essential portion of the man's braces, visible

sometimes when he played at tennis, consisted of chain, and the upper

and nether halves of his cuff-links were connected by chains.

Occasionally he was to be seen chained to a dog.

A reversion, conceivably, to a mediaeval type! Yes, but also the

exemplar of the excessively modern! Externally he was a consequence of

the fact that, years previously, the leading tailor in Bursley had

permitted his son to be apprenticed in London. The father died; the son

had the wit to return and make a fortune while creating a new type in

the town, a type of which multiple chains were but one feature, and

that the least expensive if the most salient. For instance, up to the

historic year in which the young tailor created the type, any cap was a

cap in Bursley, and any collar was a collar. But thenceforward no cap

was a cap, and no collar was a collar, which did not exactly conform in

shape and material to certain sacred caps and collars guarded by the

young tailor in his back shop. None knew why these sacred caps and

collars were sacred, but they were; their sacredness endured for about

six months, and then suddenly--again none knew why--they fell from

their estate and became lower than offal for dogs, and were supplanted

on the altar. The type brought into existence by the young tailor was

to be recognized by its caps and collars, and in a similar manner by

every other article of attire, except its boots. Unfortunately the

tailor did not sell boots, and so imposed on his creatures no mystical

creed as to boots. This was a pity, for the boot-makers of the town

happened not to be inflamed by the type-creating passion as the tailor

was, and thus the new type finished abruptly at the edges of the

tailor's trousers.

The man at No. 4, St. Luke's Square had comparatively small and narrow

feet, which gave him an advantage; and as he was endowed with a certain

vague general physical distinction he managed, despite the eternal

untidiness of his hair, to be eminent among the type. Assuredly the

frequent sight of him in her house flattered the pride of Constance's

eye, which rested on him almost always with pleasure. He had come into

the house with startling abruptness soon after Cyril left school and

was indentured to the head-designer at "Peel's," that classic

earthenware manufactory. The presence of a man in her abode

disconcerted Constance at the beginning; but she soon grew accustomed

to it, perceiving that a man would behave as a man, and must be

expected to do so. This man, in truth, did what he liked in all things.

Cyril having always been regarded by both his parents as enormous, one

would have anticipated a giant in the new man; but, queerly, he was

slim, and little above the average height. Neither in enormity nor in

many other particulars did he resemble the Cyril whom he had

supplanted. His gestures were lighter and quicker; he had nothing of

Cyril's ungainliness; he had not Cyril's limitless taste for sweets,

nor Cyril's terrific hatred of gloves, barbers, and soap. He was much

more dreamy than Cyril, and much busier. In fact, Constance only saw

him at meal-times. He was at Peel's in the day and at the School of Art

every night. He would dream during a meal, even; and, without actually

saying so, he gave the impression that he was the busiest man in

Bursley, wrapped in occupations and preoccupations as in a blanket--a

blanket which Constance had difficulty in penetrating.

Constance wanted to please him; she lived for nothing but to please

him; he was, however, exceedingly difficult to please, not in the least

because he was hypercritical and exacting, but because he was

indifferent. Constance, in order to satisfy her desire of pleasing, had

to make fifty efforts, in the hope that he might chance to notice one.

He was a good man, amazingly industrious--when once Constance had got

him out of bed in the morning; with no vices; kind, save when Constance

mistakenly tried to thwart him; charming, with a curious strain of

humour that Constance only half understood. Constance was

unquestionably vain about him, and she could honestly find in him

little to blame. But whereas he was the whole of her universe, she was

merely a dim figure in the background of his. Every now and then, with

his gentle, elegant raillery, he would apparently rediscover her, as

though saying: "Ah! You're still there, are you?" Constance could not

meet him on the plane where his interests lay, and he never knew the

passionate intensity of her absorption in that minor part of his life

which moved on her plane. He never worried about her solitude, or

guessed that in throwing her a smile and a word at supper he was paying

her meagrely for three hours of lone rocking in a rocking-chair.

The worst of it was that she was quite incurable. No experience would

suffice to cure her trick of continually expecting him to notice things

which he never did notice. One day he said, in the midst of a silence:

"By the way, didn't father leave any boxes of cigars?" She had the

steps up into her bedroom and reached down from the dusty top of the

wardrobe the box which she had put there after Samuel's funeral. In

handing him the box she was doing a great deed. His age was nineteen

and she was ratifying his precocious habit of smoking by this solemn

gift. He entirely ignored the box for several days. She said timidly:

"Have you tried those cigars?" "Not yet," he replied. "I'll try 'em one

of these days." Ten days later, on a Sunday when he chanced not to have

gone out with his aristocratic friend Matthew Peel-Swynnerton, he did

at length open the box and take out a cigar. "Now," he observed

roguishly, cutting the cigar, "we shall see, Mrs. Plover!" He often

called her Mrs. Plover, for fun. Though she liked him to be

sufficiently interested in her to tease her, she did not like being

called Mrs. Plover, and she never failed to say: "I'm not Mrs. Plover."

He smoked the cigar slowly, in the rocking-chair, throwing his head

back and sending clouds to the ceiling. And afterwards he remarked:

"The old man's cigars weren't so bad." "Indeed!" she answered tartly,

as if maternally resenting this easy patronage. But in secret she was

delighted. There was something in her son's favourable verdict on her

husband's cigars that thrilled her.

And she looked at him. Impossible to see in him any resemblance to his

father! Oh! He was a far more brilliant, more advanced, more

complicated, more seductive being than his homely father! She wondered

where he had come from. And yet...! If his father had lived, what would

have occurred between them? Would the boy have been openly smoking

cigars in the house at nineteen?

She laboriously interested herself, so far as he would allow, in his

artistic studies and productions. A back attic on the second floor was

now transformed into a studio--a naked apartment which smelt of oil and

of damp clay. Often there were traces of clay on the stairs. For

working in clay he demanded of his mother a smock, and she made a

smock, on the model of a genuine smock which she obtained from a

country-woman who sold eggs and butter in the Covered Market. Into the

shoulders of the smock she put a week's fancy-stitching, taking the

pattern from an old book of embroidery. One day when he had seen her

stitching morn, noon, and afternoon, at the smock, he said, as she

rocked idly after supper: "I suppose you haven't forgotten all about

the smock I asked you for, have you, mater?" She knew that he was

teasing her; but, while perfectly realizing how foolish she was, she

nearly always acted as though his teasing was serious; she picked up

the smock again from the sofa. When the smock was finished he examined

it intently; then exclaimed with an air of surprise: "By Jove! That's

beautiful! Where did you get this pattern?" He continued to stare at

it, smiling in pleasure. He turned over the tattered leaves of the

embroidery-book with the same naive, charmed astonishment, and carried

the book away to the studio. "I must show that to Swynnerton," he said.

As for her, the epithet 'beautiful' seemed a strange epithet to apply

to a mere piece of honest stitchery done in a pattern, and a stitch

with which she had been familiar all her life. The fact was she

understood his 'art' less and less. The sole wall decoration of his

studio was a Japanese print, which struck her as being entirely

preposterous, considered as a picture. She much preferred his own early

drawings of moss-roses and picturesque castles--things that he now

mercilessly contemned. Later, he discovered her cutting out another

smock. "What's that for?" he inquired. "Well," she said, "you can't

manage with one smock. What shall you do when that one has to go to the

wash?" "Wash!" he repeated vaguely. "There's no need for it to go to

the wash." "Cyril," she replied, "don't try my patience! I was thinking

of making you half-a-dozen." He whistled. "With all that stitching?" he

questioned, amazed at the undertaking. "Why not?" she said. In her

young days, no seamstress ever made fewer than half-a-dozen of

anything, and it was usually a dozen; it was sometimes half-a-dozen

dozen. "Well," he murmured, "you have got a nerve! I'll say that."

Similar things happened whenever he showed that he was pleased. If he

said of a dish, in the local tongue: "I could do a bit of that!" or if

he simply smacked his lips over it, she would surfeit him with that

dish.

II

On a hot day in August, just before they were to leave Bursley for a

month in the Isle of Man, Cyril came home, pale and perspiring, and

dropped on to the sofa. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and, except his

hair, which in addition to being very untidy was damp with sweat, he

was a masterpiece of slim elegance, despite the heat. He blew out great

sighs, and rested his head on the antimacassared arm of the sofa.

"Well, mater," he said, in a voice of factitious calm, "I've got it."

He was looking up at the ceiling.

"Got what?"

"The National Scholarship. Swynnerton says it's a sheer fluke. But I've

got it. Great glory for the Bursley School of Art!"

"National Scholarship?" she said. "What's that? What is it?"

"Now, mother!" he admonished her, not without testiness. "Don't go and

say I've never breathed a word about it!"

He lit a cigarette, to cover his self-consciousness, for he perceived

that she was moved far beyond the ordinary.

Never, in fact, not even by the death of her husband, had she received

such a frightful blow as that which the dreamy Cyril had just dealt her.

It was not a complete surprise, but it was nearly a complete surprise.

A few months previously he certainly had mentioned, in his incidental

way, the subject of a National Scholarship. Apropos of a drinking-cup

which he had designed, he had said that the director of the School of

Art had suggested that it was good enough to compete for the National,

and that as he was otherwise qualified for the competition he might as

well send the cup to South Kensington. He had added that

Peel-Swynnerton had laughed at the notion as absurd. On that occasion

she had comprehended that a National Scholarship involved residence in

London. She ought to have begun to live in fear, for Cyril had a most

disturbing habit of making a mere momentary reference to matters which

he deemed very important and which occupied a large share of his

attention. He was secretive by nature, and the rigidity of his father's

rule had developed this trait in his character. But really he had

spoken of the competition with such an extreme casualness that with

little effort she had dismissed it from her anxieties as involving a

contingency so remote as to be negligible. She had, genuinely, almost

forgotten it. Only at rare intervals had it wakened in her a dull

transitory pain--like the herald of a fatal malady. And, as a woman in

the opening stage of disease, she had hastily reassured herself: "How

silly of me! This can't possibly be anything serious!"

And now she was condemned. She knew it. She knew there could be no

appeal. She knew that she might as usefully have besought mercy from a

tiger as from her good, industrious, dreamy son.

"It means a pound a week," said Cyril, his self-consciousness

intensified by her silence and by the dreadful look on her face. "And

of course free tuition."

"For how long?" she managed to say.

"Well," said he, "that depends. Nominally for a year. But if you behave

yourself it's always continued for three years." If he stayed for three

years he would never come back: that was a certainty.

How she rebelled, furious and despairing, against the fortuitous

cruelty of things! She was sure that he had not, till then, thought

seriously of going to London. But the fact that the Government would

admit him free to its classrooms and give him a pound a week besides,

somehow forced him to go to London. It was not the lack of means that

would have prevented him from going. Why, then, should the presence of

means induce him to go? There was no logical reason. The whole affair

was disastrously absurd. The art-master at the Wedgwood Institution had

chanced, merely chanced, to suggest that the drinking-cup should be

sent to South Kensington. And the result of this caprice was that she

was sentenced to solitude for life! It was too monstrously, too

incredibly wicked!

With what futile and bitter execration she murmured in her heart the

word 'If.' If Cyril's childish predilections had not been encouraged!

If he had only been content to follow his father's trade! If she had

flatly refused to sign his indenture at Peel's and pay the premium! If

he had not turned from, colour to clay! If the art-master had not had

that fatal 'idea'! If the judges for the competition had decided

otherwise! If only she had brought Cyril up in habits of obedience,

sacrificing temporary peace to permanent security!

For after all he could not abandon her without her consent. He was not

of age. And he would want a lot more money, which he could obtain from

none but her. She could refuse....

No! She could not refuse. He was the master, the tyrant. For the sake

of daily pleasantness she had weakly yielded to him at the start! She

had behaved badly to herself and to him. He was spoiled. She had

spoiled him. And he was about to repay her with lifelong misery, and

nothing would deflect him from his course. The usual conduct of the

spoilt child! Had she not witnessed it, and moralized upon it, in other

families?

"You don't seem very chirpy over it, mater!" he said.

She went out of the room. His joy in the prospect of departure from the

Five Towns, from her, though he masked it, was more manifest than she

could bear.

The Signal, the next day, made a special item of the news. It appeared

that no National Scholarship had been won in the Five Towns for eleven

years. The citizens were exhorted to remember that Mr. Povey had gained

his success in open competition with the cleverest young students of

the entire kingdom--and in a branch of art which he had but recently

taken up; and further, that the Government offered only eight

scholarships each year. The name of Cyril Povey passed from lip to lip.

And nobody who met Constance, in street or shop, could refrain from

informing her that she ought to be a proud mother, to have such a son,

but that truly they were not surprised ... and how proud his poor

father would have been! A few sympathetically hinted that maternal

pride was one of those luxuries that may cost too dear.

III

The holiday in the Isle of Man was of course ruined for her. She could

scarcely walk because of the weight of a lump of lead that she carried

in her bosom. On the brightest days the lump of lead was always there.

Besides, she was so obese. In ordinary circumstances they might have

stayed beyond the month. An indentured pupil is not strapped to the

wheel like a common apprentice. Moreover, the indentures were to be

cancelled. But Constance did not care to stay. She had to prepare for

his departure to London. She had to lay the faggots for her own

martyrdom.

In this business of preparation she showed as much silliness, she

betrayed as perfect a lack of perspective, as the most superior son

could desire for a topic of affectionate irony. Her preoccupation with

petty things of no importance whatever was worthy of the finest

traditions of fond motherhood. However, Cyril's careless satire had no

effect on her, save that once she got angry, thereby startling him; he

quite correctly and sagely laid this unprecedented outburst to the

account of her wrought nerves, and forgave it. Happily for the

smoothness of Cyril's translation to London, young Peel-Swynnerton was

acquainted with the capital, had a brother in Chelsea, knew of

reputable lodgings, was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of the town, and

would himself spend a portion of the autumn there. Otherwise, the

preliminaries which his mother would have insisted on by means of tears

and hysteria might have proved fatiguing to Cyril.

The day came when on that day week Cyril would be gone. Constance

steadily fabricated cheerfulness against the prospect. She said:

"Suppose I come with you?"

He smiled in toleration of this joke as being a passable quality of

joke. And then she smiled in the same sense, hastening to agree with

him that as a joke it was not a bad joke.

In the last week he was very loyal to his tailor. Many a young man

would have commanded new clothes after, not before, his arrival in

London. But Cyril had faith in his creator.

On the day of departure the household, the very house itself, was in a

state of excitation. He was to leave early. He would not listen to the

project of her accompanying him as far as Knype, where the Loop Line

joined the main. She might go to Bursley Station and no further. When

she rebelled he disclosed the merest hint of his sullen-churlish side,

and she at once yielded. During breakfast she did not cry, but the

aspect of her face made him protest.

"Now, look here, mater! Just try to remember that I shall be back for

Christmas. It's barely three months." And he lit a cigarette.

She made no reply.

Amy lugged a Gladstone bag down the crooked stairs. A trunk was already

close to the door; it had wrinkled the carpet and deranged the mat.

"You didn't forget to put the hair-brush in, did you, Amy?" he asked.

"N--no, Mr. Cyril," she blubbered.

"Amy!" Constance sharply corrected her, as Cyril ran upstairs, "I

wonder you can't control yourself better than that."

Amy weakly apologized. Although treated almost as one of the family,

she ought not to have forgotten that she was a servant. What right had

she to weep over Cyril's luggage? This question was put to her in

Constance's tone.

The cab came. Cyril tumbled downstairs with exaggerated carelessness,

and with exaggerated carelessness he joked at the cabman.

"Now, mother!" he cried, when the luggage was stowed. "Do you want me

to miss this train?" But he knew that the margin of time was ample. It

was his fun!

"Nay, I can't be hurried!" she said, fixing her bonnet. "Amy, as soon

as we are gone you can clear this table."

She climbed heavily into the cab.

"That's it! Smash the springs!" Cyril teased her.

The horse got a stinging cut to recall him to the seriousness of life.

It was a fine, bracing autumn morning, and the driver felt the need of

communicating his abundant energy to some one or something. They drove

off, Amy staring after them from the door. Matters had been so

marvellously well arranged that they arrived at the station twenty

minutes before the train was due.

"Never mind!" Cyril mockingly comforted his mother. "You'd rather be

twenty minutes too soon than one minute too late, wouldn't you?"

His high spirits had to come out somehow.

Gradually the minutes passed, and the empty slate-tinted platform

became dotted with people to whom that train was nothing but a Loop

Line train, people who took that train every week-day of their lives

and knew all its eccentricities.

And they heard the train whistle as it started from Turnhill. And Cyril

had a final word with the porter who was in charge of the luggage. He

made a handsome figure, and he had twenty pounds in his pocket. When he

returned to Constance she was sniffing, and through her veil he could

see that her eyes were circled with red. But through her veil she could

see nothing. The train rolled in, rattling to a standstill. Constance

lifted her veil and kissed him; and kissed her life out. He smelt the

odour of her crape. He was, for an instant, close to her, close; and he

seemed to have an overwhelmingly intimate glimpse into her secrets; he

seemed to be choked in the sudden strong emotion of that crape. He felt

queer.

"Here you are, sir! Second smoker!" called the porter.

The daily frequenters of the train boarded it with their customary

disgust.

"I'll write as soon as ever I get there!" said Cyril, of his own

accord. It was the best he could muster.

With what grace he raised his hat!

A sliding-away; clouds of steam; and she shared the dead platform with

milk-cans, two porters, and Smith's noisy boy!

She walked home, very slowly and painfully. The lump of lead was

heavier than ever before. And the townspeople saw the proudest mother

in Bursley walking home.

"After all," she argued with her soul angrily, petulantly, "could you

expect the boy to do anything else? He is a serious student, he has had

a brilliant success, and is he to be tied to your apron-strings? The

idea is preposterous. It isn't as if he was an idler, or a bad son. No

mother could have a better son. A nice thing, that he should stay all

his life in Bursley simply because you don't like being left alone!"

Unfortunately one might as well argue with a mule as with one's soul.

Her soul only kept on saying monotonously: "I'm a lonely old woman now.

I've nothing to live for any more, and I'm no use to anybody. Once I

was young and proud. And this is what my life has come to! This is the

end!"

When she reached home, Amy had not touched the breakfast things; the

carpet was still wrinkled, and the mat still out of place. And, through

the desolating atmosphere of reaction after a terrific crisis, she

marched directly upstairs, entered his plundered room, and beheld the

disorder of the bed in which he had slept.

BOOK III

SOPHIA

CHAPTER I

THE ELOPEMENT

I

Her soberly rich dress had a countrified air, as she waited, ready for

the streets, in the bedroom of the London hotel on the afternoon of the

first of July, 1866; but there was nothing of the provincial in that

beautiful face, nor in that bearing at once shy and haughty; and her

eager heart soared beyond geographical boundaries.

It was the Hatfield Hotel, in Salisbury Street, between the Strand and

the river. Both street and hotel are now gone, lost in the vast

foundations of the Savoy and the Cecil; but the type of the Hatfield

lingers with ever-increasing shabbiness in Jermyn Street. In 1866, with

its dark passages and crooked stairs, its candles, its carpets and

stuffs which had outlived their patterns, its narrow dining-room where

a thousand busy flies ate together at one long table, its acrid

stagnant atmosphere, and its disturbing sensation of dirt everywhere

concealing itself, it stood forth in rectitude as a good average modern

hotel. The patched and senile drabness of the bedroom made an

environment that emphasized Sophia's flashing youth. She alone in it

was unsullied.

There was a knock at the door, apparently gay and jaunty. But she

thought, truly: "He's nearly as nervous as I am!" And in her sick

nervousness she coughed, and then tried to take full possession of

herself. The moment had at last come which would divide her life as a

battle divides the history of a nation. Her mind in an instant swept

backwards through an incredible three months.

The schemings to obtain and to hide Gerald's letters at the shop, and

to reply to them! The far more complex and dangerous duplicity

practised upon her majestic aunt at Axe! The visits to the Axe

post-office! The three divine meetings with Gerald at early morning by

the canal-feeder, when he had told her of his inheritance and of the

harshness of his uncle Boldero, and with a rush of words had spread

before her the prospect of eternal bliss! The nights of fear! The

sudden, dizzy acquiescence in his plan, and the feeling of universal

unreality which obsessed her! The audacious departure from her aunt's,

showering a cascade of appalling lies! Her dismay at Knype Station! Her

blush as she asked for a ticket to London! The ironic, sympathetic

glance of the porter, who took charge of her trunk! And then the

thunder of the incoming train! Her renewed dismay when she found that

it was very full, and her distracted plunge into a compartment with six

people already in it! And the abrupt reopening of the carriage-door and

that curt inquisition from an inspector: "Where for, please? Where for?

Where for?" Until her turn was reached: "Where for, miss?" and her weak

little reply: "Euston"! And more violent blushes! And then the long,

steady beating of the train over the rails, keeping time to the rhythm

of the unanswerable voice within her breast: "Why are you here? Why are

you here?" And then Rugby; and the awful ordeal of meeting Gerald, his

entry into the compartment, the rearrangement of seats, and their

excruciatingly painful attempts at commonplace conversation in the

publicity of the carriage! (She had felt that that part of the

enterprise had not been very well devised by Gerald.) And at last

London; the thousands of cabs, the fabulous streets, the general roar,

all dream-surpassing, intensifying to an extraordinary degree the

obsession of unreality, the illusion that she could not really have

done what she had done, that she was not really doing what she was

doing!

Supremely and finally, the delicious torture of the clutch of terror at

her heart as she moved by Gerald's side through the impossible

adventure! Who was this rash, mad Sophia? Surely not herself!

The knock at the door was impatiently repeated.

"Come in," she said timidly.

Gerald Scales came in. Yes, beneath that mien of a commercial traveller

who has been everywhere and through everything, he was very nervous. It

was her privacy that, with her consent, he had invaded. He had engaged

the bedroom only with the intention of using it as a retreat for Sophia

until the evening, when they were to resume their travels. It ought not

to have had any disturbing significance. But the mere disorder on the

washstand, a towel lying on one of the cane chairs, made him feel that

he was affronting decency, and so increased his jaunty nervousness. The

moment was painful; the moment was difficult beyond his skill to handle

it naturally.

Approaching her with factitious ease, he kissed her through her veil,

which she then lifted with an impulsive movement, and he kissed her

again, more ardently, perceiving that her ardour was exceeding his.

This was the first time they had been alone together since her flight

from Axe. And yet, with his worldly experience, he was naive enough to

be surprised that he could not put all the heat of passion into his

embrace, and he wondered why he was not thrilled at the contact with

her! However, the powerful clinging of her lips somewhat startled his

senses, and also delighted him by its silent promise. He could smell

the stuff of her veil, the sarsenet of her bodice, and, as it were

wrapped in these odours as her body was wrapped in its clothes, the

faint fleshly perfume of her body itself. Her face, viewed so close

that he could see the almost imperceptible down on those fruit-like

cheeks, was astonishingly beautiful; the dark eyes were exquisitely

misted; and he could feel the secret loyalty of her soul ascending to

him. She was very slightly taller than her lover; but somehow she hung

from him, her body curved backwards, and her bosom pressed against his,

so that instead of looking up at her gaze he looked down at it. He

preferred that; perfectly proportioned though he was, his stature was a

delicate point with him. His spirits rose by the uplift of his senses.

His fears slipped away; he began to be very satisfied with himself. He

was the inheritor of twelve thousand pounds, and he had won this unique

creature. She was his capture; he held her close, permittedly scanning

the minutiae of her skin, permittedly crushing her flimsy silks.

Something in him had forced her to lay her modesty on the altar of his

desire. And the sun brightly shone. So he kissed her yet more ardently,

and with the slightest touch of a victor's condescension; and her

burning response more than restored the self-confidence which he had

been losing.

"I've got no one but you now," she murmured in a melting voice.

She fancied in her ignorance that the expression of this sentiment

would please him. She was not aware that a man is usually rather

chilled by it, because it proves to him that the other is thinking

about his responsibilities and not about his privileges. Certainly it

calmed Gerald, though without imparting to him her sense of his

responsibilities. He smiled vaguely. To Sophia his smile was a miracle

continually renewed; it mingled dashing gaiety with a hint of wistful

appeal in a manner that never failed to bewitch her. A less innocent

girl than Sophia might have divined from that adorable half-feminine

smile that she could do anything with Gerald except rely on him. But

Sophia had to learn.

"Are you ready?" he asked, placing his hands on her shoulders and

holding her away from him.

"Yes," she said, nerving herself. Their faces were still very near

together.

"Well, would you like to go and see the Dore pictures?"

A simple enough question! A proposal felicitous enough! Dore was

becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, assuredly, by his

illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac--but by his

shuddering Biblical conceits. In pious circles Dore was saving art from

the reproach of futility and frivolity. It was indubitably a tasteful

idea on Gerald's part to take his love of a summer's afternoon to gaze

at the originals of those prints which had so deeply impressed the Five

Towns. It was an idea that sanctified the profane adventure.

Yet Sophia showed signs of affliction. Her colour went and came; her

throat made the motion of swallowing; there was a muscular contraction

over her whole body. And she drew herself from him. Her glance,

however, did not leave him, and his eyes fell before hers.

"But what about the--wedding?" she breathed.

That sentence seemed to cost all her pride; but she was obliged to

utter it, and to pay for it.

"Oh," he said lightly and quickly, just as though she had reminded him

of a detail that might have been forgotten, "I was just going to tell

you. It can't be done here. There's been some change in the rules. I

only found out for certain late last night. But I've ascertained that

it'll be as simple as ABC before the English Consul at Paris; and as

I've got the tickets for us to go over to-night, as we arranged ..." He

stopped.

She sat down on the towel-covered chair, staggered. She believed what

he said. She did not suspect that he was using the classic device of

the seducer. It was his casualness that staggered her. Had it really

been his intention to set off on an excursion and remark as an

afterthought: "BY THE WAY, we can't be married as I told you at

half-past two to-day"? Despite her extreme ignorance and innocence,

Sophia held a high opinion of her own commonsense and capacity for

looking after herself, and she could scarcely believe that he was

expecting her to go to Paris, and at night, without being married. She

looked pitiably young, virgin, raw, unsophisticated; helpless in the

midst of dreadful dangers. Yet her head was full of a blank

astonishment at being mistaken for a simpleton! The sole explanation

could be that Gerald, in some matters, must himself be a confiding

simpleton. He had not reflected. He had not sufficiently realized the

immensity of her sacrifice in flying with him even to London. She felt

sorry for him. She had the woman's first glimpse of the necessity for

some adjustment of outlook as an essential preliminary to uninterrupted

happiness.

"It'll be all right!" Gerald persuasively continued.

He looked at her, as she was not looking at him. She was nineteen. But

she seemed to him utterly mature and mysterious. Her face baffled him;

her mind was a foreign land. Helpless in one sense she might be; yet

she, and not he, stood for destiny; the future lay in the secret and

capricious workings of that mind.

"Oh no!" she exclaimed curtly. "Oh no!"

"Oh no what?"

"We can't possibly go like that," she said.

"But don't I tell you it'll be all right?" he protested. "If we stay

here and they come after you...! Besides, I've got the tickets and all."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she demanded.

"But how could I?" he grumbled. "Have we had a single minute alone?"

This was nearly true. They could not have discussed the formalities of

marriage in the crowded train, nor during the hurried lunch with a

dozen cocked ears at the same table. He saw himself on sure ground here.

"Now, could we?" he pressed.

"And you talk about going to see pictures!" was her reply.

Undoubtedly this had been a grave error of tact. He recognized that it

was a stupidity. And so he resented it, as though she had committed it

and not he.

"My dear girl," he said, hurt, "I acted for the best. It isn't my fault

if rules are altered and officials silly."

"You ought to have told me before," she persisted sullenly.

"But how could I?"

He almost believed in that moment that he had really intended to marry

her, and that the ineptitudes of red-tape had prevented him from

achieving his honourable purpose. Whereas he had done nothing whatever

towards the marriage.

"Oh no! Oh no!" she repeated, with heavy lip and liquid eye. "Oh no!"

He gathered that she was flouting his suggestion of Paris.

Slowly and nervously he approached her. She did not stir nor look up.

Her glance was fixed on the washstand. He bent down and murmured:

"Come, now. It'll be all right. You'll travel in the ladies' saloon on

the steam-packet."

She did not stir. He bent lower and touched the back of her neck with

his lips. And she sprang up, sobbing and angry. Because she was mad for

him she hated him furiously. All tenderness had vanished.

"I'll thank you not to touch me!" she said fiercely. She had given him

her lips a moment ago, but now to graze her neck was an insult.

He smiled sheepishly. "But really you must be reasonable," he argued.

"What have I done?"

"It's what you haven't done, I think!" she cried. "Why didn't you tell

me while we were in the cab?"

"I didn't care to begin worrying you just then," he replied: which was

exactly true.

The fact was, he had of course shirked telling her that no marriage

would occur that day. Not being a professional seducer of young girls,

he lacked skill to do a difficult thing simply.

"Now come along, little girl," he went on, with just a trifle of

impatience. "Let's go out and enjoy ourselves. I assure you that

everything will be all right in Paris."

"That's what you said about coming to London," she retorted

sarcastically through her sobs. "And look at you!"

Did he imagine for a single instant that she would have come to London

with him save on the understanding that she was to be married

immediately upon arrival? This attitude of an indignant question was

not to be reconciled with her belief that his excuses for himself were

truthful. But she did not remark the discrepancy.

Her sarcasm wounded his vanity.

"Oh, very well!" he muttered. "If you don't choose to believe what I

say!" He shrugged his shoulders.

She said nothing; but the sobs swept at intervals through her frame,

shaking it.

Reading hesitation in her face, he tried again. "Come along, little

girl. And wipe your eyes." And he approached her. She stepped back.

"No, no!" she denied him, passionately. He had esteemed her too

cheaply. And she did not care to be called 'little girl.'

"Then what shall you do?" he inquired, in a tone which blended mockery

and bullying. She was making a fool of him.

"I can tell you what I shan't do," she said. "I shan't go to Paris."

Her sobs were less frequent.

"That's not my question," he said icily. "I want to know what you will

do."

There was now no pretence of affectionateness either on her part or on

his. They might, to judge from their attitudes, have been nourished

from infancy on mutual hatred.

"What's that got to do with you?" she demanded.

"It's got everything to do with me," he said.

"Well, you can go and find out!" she said.

It was girlish; it was childish; it was scarcely according to the

canons for conducting a final rupture; but it was not the less

tragically serious. Indeed, the spectacle of this young girl absurdly

behaving like one, in a serious crisis, increased the tragicalness of

the situation even if it did not heighten it. The idea that ran through

Gerald's brain was the ridiculous folly of having anything to do with

young girls. He was quite blind to her beauty.

"'Go'?" he repeated her word. "You mean that?"

"Of course I mean it," she answered promptly.

The coward in him urged him to take advantage of her ignorant, helpless

pride, and leave her at her word. He remembered the scene she had made

at the pit shaft, and he said to himself that her charm was not worth

her temper, and that he was a fool ever to have dreamed that it was,

and that he would be doubly a fool now not to seize the opportunity of

withdrawing from an insane enterprise.

"I am to go?" he asked, with a sneer.

She nodded.

"Of course if you order me to leave you, I must. Can I do anything for

you?"

She signified that he could not,

"Nothing? You're sure?"

She frowned.

"Well, then, good-bye." He turned towards the door.

"I suppose you'd leave me here without money or anything?" she said in

a cold, cutting voice. And her sneer was far more destructive than his.

It destroyed in him the last trace of compassion for her.

"Oh, I beg pardon!" he said, and swaggeringly counted out five

sovereigns on to a chest of drawers.

She rushed at them. "Do you think I'll take your odious money?" she

snarled, gathering the coins in her gloved hand.

Her first impulse was to throw them in his face; but she paused and

then flung them into a corner of the room.

"Pick them up!" she commanded him.

"No, thanks," he said briefly; and left, shutting the door.

Only a very little while, and they had been lovers, exuding tenderness

with every gesture, like a perfume! Only a very little while, and she

had been deciding to telegraph condescendingly to her mother that she

was 'all right'! And now the dream was utterly dissolved. And the voice

of that hard commonsense which spake to her in her wildest moods grew

loud in asserting that the enterprise could never have come to any

good, that it was from its inception an impossible enterprise,

unredeemed by the slightest justification. An enormous folly! Yes, an

elopement; but not like a real elopement; always unreal! She had always

known that it was only an imitation of an elopement, and must end in

some awful disappointment. She had never truly wanted to run away; but

something within her had pricked her forward in spite of her protests.

The strict notions of her elderly relatives were right after all. It

was she who had been wrong. And it was she who would have to pay.

"I've been a wicked girl," she said to herself grimly, in the midst of

her ruin.

She faced the fact. But she would not repent; at any rate she would

never sit on that stool. She would not exchange the remains of her

pride for the means of escape from the worst misery that life could

offer. On that point she knew herself. And she set to work to repair

and renew her pride.

Whatever happened she would not return to the Five Towns. She could

not, because she had stolen money from her Aunt Harriet. As much as she

had thrown back at Gerald, she had filched from her aunt, but in the

form of a note. A prudent, mysterious instinct had moved her to take

this precaution. And she was glad. She would never have been able to

dart that sneer at Gerald about money if she had really needed money.

So she rejoiced in her crime; though, since Aunt Harriet would

assuredly discover the loss at once, the crime eternally prevented her

from going back to her family. Never, never would she look at her

mother with the eyes of a thief!

(In truth Aunt Harriet did discover the loss, and very creditably said

naught about it to anybody. The knowledge of it would have twisted the

knife in the maternal heart.)

Sophia was also glad that she had refused to proceed to Paris. The

recollection of her firmness in refusing flattered her vanity as a girl

convinced that she could take care of herself. To go to Paris unmarried

would have been an inconceivable madness. The mere thought of the

enormity did outrage to her moral susceptibilities. No, Gerald had most

perfectly mistaken her for another sort of girl; as, for instance, a

shop-assistant or a barmaid!

With this the catalogue of her satisfactions ended. She had no idea at

all as to what she ought to do, or could do. The mere prospect of

venturing out of the room intimidated her. Had Gerald left her trunk in

the hall? Of course he had. What a question! But what would happen to

her? London ... London had merely dazed her. She could do nothing for

herself. She was as helpless as a rabbit in London. She drew aside the

window-curtain and had a glimpse of the river. It was inevitable that

she should think of suicide; for she could not suppose that any girl

had ever got herself into a plight more desperate than hers. "I could

slip out at night and drown myself," she thought seriously. "A nice

thing that would be for Gerald!"

Then loneliness, like a black midnight, overwhelmed her, swiftly

wasting her strength, disintegrating her pride in its horrid flood. She

glanced about for support, as a woman in the open street who feels she

is going to faint, and went blindly to the bed, falling on it with the

upper part of her body, in an attitude of abandonment. She wept, but

without sobbing.

II

Gerald Scales walked about the Strand, staring up at its high narrow

houses, crushed one against another as though they had been packed,

unsorted, by a packer who thought of nothing but economy of space.

Except by Somerset House, King's College, and one or two theatres and

banks, the monotony of mean shops, with several storeys unevenly

perched over them, was unbroken, Then Gerald encountered Exeter Hall,

and examined its prominent facade with a provincial's eye; for despite

his travels he was not very familiar with London. Exeter Hall naturally

took his mind back to his Uncle Boldero, that great and ardent

Nonconformist, and his own godly youth. It was laughable to muse upon

what his uncle would say and think, did the old man know that his

nephew had run away with a girl, meaning to seduce her in Paris. It was

enormously funny!

However, he had done with all that. He was well out of it. She had told

him to go, and he had gone. She had money to get home; she had nothing

to do but use the tongue in her head. The rest was her affair. He would

go to Paris alone, and find another amusement. It was absurd to have

supposed that Sophia would ever have suited him. Not in such a family

as the Baineses could one reasonably expect to discover an ideal

mistress. No! there had been a mistake. The whole business was wrong.

She had nearly made a fool of him. But he was not the man to be made a

fool of. He had kept his dignity intact.

So he said to himself. Yet all the time his dignity, and his pride

also, were bleeding, dropping invisible blood along the length of the

Strand pavements.

He was at Salisbury Street again. He pictured her in the bedroom. Damn

her! He wanted her. He wanted her with an excessive desire. He hated to

think that he had been baulked. He hated to think that she would remain

immaculate. And he continued to picture her in the exciting privacy of

that cursed bedroom.

Now he was walking down Salisbury Street. He did not wish to be walking

down Salisbury Street; but there he was!

"Oh, hell!" he murmured. "I suppose I must go through with it."

He felt desperate. He was ready to pay any price in order to be able to

say to himself that he had accomplished what he had set his heart on.

"My wife hasn't gone out, has she?" he asked of the hall-porter.

"I'm not sure, sir; I think not," said the hall-porter.

The fear that Sophia had already departed made him sick. When he

noticed her trunk still there, he took hope and ran upstairs.

He saw her, a dark crumpled, sinuous piece of humanity, half on and

half off the bed, silhouetted against the bluish-white counterpane; her

hat was on the floor, with the spotted veil trailing away from it. This

sight seemed to him to be the most touching that he had ever seen,

though her face was hidden. He forgot everything except the deep and

strange emotion which affected him. He approached the bed. She did not

stir.

Having heard the entry and knowing that it must be Gerald who had

entered, Sophia forced herself to remain still. A wild, splendid hope

shot up in her. Constrained by all the power of her will not to move,

she could not stifle a sob that had lain in ambush in her throat.

The sound of the sob fetched tears to the eyes of Gerald.

"Sophia!" he appealed to her.

But she did not stir. Another sob shook her.

"Very well, then," said Gerald. "We'll stay in London till we can be

married. I'll arrange it. I'll find a nice boarding-house for you, and

I'll tell the people you're my cousin. I shall stay on at this hotel,

and I'll come and see you every day."

A silence.

"Thank you!" she blubbered. "Thank you!"

He saw that her little gloved hand was stretching out towards him, like

a feeler; and he seized it, and knelt down and took her clumsily by the

waist. Somehow he dared not kiss her yet.

An immense relief surged very slowly through them both.

"I--I--really--" She began to say something, but the articulation was

lost in her sobs.

"What? What do you say, dearest?" he questioned eagerly.

And she made another effort. "I really couldn't have gone to Paris with

you without being married," she succeeded at last. "I really couldn't."

"No, no!" he soothed her. "Of course you couldn't. It was I who was

wrong. But you didn't know how I felt.... Sophia, it's all right now,

isn't it?"

She sat up and kissed him fairly.

It was so wonderful and startling that he burst openly into tears. She

saw in the facile intensity of his emotion a guarantee of their future

happiness. And as he had soothed her, so now she soothed him. They

clung together, equally surprised at the sweet, exquisite, blissful

melancholy which drenched them through and through. It was remorse for

having quarrelled, for having lacked faith in the supreme rightness of

the high adventure. Everything was right, and would be right; and they

had been criminally absurd. It was remorse; but it was pure bliss, and

worth the quarrel! Gerald resumed his perfection again in her eyes! He

was the soul of goodness and honour! And for him she was again the

ideal mistress, who would, however, be also a wife. As in his mind he

rapidly ran over the steps necessary to their marriage, he kept saying

to himself, far off in some remote cavern of the brain: "I shall have

her! I shall have her!" He did not reflect that this fragile slip of

the Baines stock, unconsciously drawing upon the accumulated strength

of generations of honest living, had put a defeat upon him.

After tea, Gerald, utterly content with the universe, redeemed his word

and found an irreproachable boarding-house for Sophia in Westminster,

near the Abbey. She was astonished at the glibness of his lies to the

landlady about her, and about their circumstances generally. He also

found a church and a parson, close by, and in half an hour the

formalities preliminary to a marriage were begun. He explained to her

that as she was now resident in London, it would be simpler to

recommence the business entirely. She sagaciously agreed. As she by no

means wished to wound him again, she made no inquiry about those other

formalities which, owing to red-tape, had so unexpectedly proved

abortive! She knew she was going to be married, and that sufficed. The

next day she carried out her filial idea of telegraphing to her mother.

CHAPTER II

SUPPER

I

They had been to Versailles and had dined there. A tram had sufficed to

take them out; but for the return, Gerald, who had been drinking

champagne, would not be content with less than a carriage. Further, he

insisted on entering Paris by way of the Bois and the Arc de Triomphe.

Thoroughly to appease his conceit, it would have been necessary to

swing open the gates of honour in the Arc and allow his fiacre to pass

through; to be forced to drive round the monument instead of under it

hurt the sense of fitness which champagne engenders. Gerald was in all

his pride that day. He had been displaying the wonders to Sophia, and

he could not escape the cicerone's secret feeling: that he himself was

somehow responsible for the wonders. Moreover, he was exceedingly

satisfied with the effect produced by Sophia.

Sophia, on arriving in Paris with the ring on her triumphant finger,

had timidly mentioned the subject of frocks. None would have guessed

from her tone that she was possessed by the desire for French clothes

as by a devil. She had been surprised and delighted by the eagerness of

Gerald's response. Gerald, too, was possessed by a devil. He thirsted

to see her in French clothes. He knew some of the shops and ateliers in

the Rue de la Paix, the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, and the Palais

Royal. He was much more skilled in the lore of frocks than she, for his

previous business in Paris had brought him into relations with the

great firms; and Sophia suffered a brief humiliation in the discovery

that his private opinion of her dresses was that they were not dresses

at all. She had been aware that they were not Parisian, nor even of

London; but she had thought them pretty good. It healed her wound,

however, to reflect that Gerald had so marvellously kept his own

counsel in order to spare her self-love. Gerald had taken her to an

establishment in the Chaussee d'Antin. It was not one of what Gerald

called les grandes maisons, but it was on the very fringe of them, and

the real haute couture was practised therein; and Gerald was remembered

there by name.

Sophia had gone in trembling and ashamed, yet in her heart courageously

determined to emerge uncompromisingly French. But the models frightened

her. They surpassed even the most fantastic things that she had seen in

the streets. She recoiled before them and seemed to hide for refuge in

Gerald, as it were appealing to him for moral protection, and answering

to him instead of to the saleswoman when the saleswoman offered remarks

in stiff English. The prices also frightened her. The simplest trifle

here cost sixteen pounds; and her mother's historic 'silk,' whose

elaborateness had cost twelve pounds, was supposed to have approached

the inexpressible! Gerald said that she was not to think about prices.

She was, however, forced by some instinct to think about prices--she

who at home had scorned the narrowness of life in the Square. In the

Square she was understood to be quite without commonsense, hopelessly

imprudent; yet here, a spring of sagacity seemed to be welling up in

her all the time, a continual antidote against the general madness in

which she found herself. With extraordinary rapidity she had formed a

habit of preaching moderation to Gerald. She hated to 'see money thrown

away,' and her notion of the boundary line between throwing money away

and judiciously spending it was still the notion of the Square.

Gerald would laugh. But she would say, piqued and blushing, but

self-sure: "You can laugh!" It was all deliciously agreeable.

On this evening she wore the first of the new costumes. She had worn it

all day. Characteristically she had chosen something which was not too

special for either afternoon or evening, for either warm or cold

weather. It was of pale blue taffetas striped in a darker blue, with

the corsage cut in basques, and the underskirt of a similar taffetas,

but unstriped. The effect of the ornate overskirt falling on the plain

underskirt with its small double volant was, she thought, and Gerald

too, adorable. The waist was higher than any she had had before, and

the crinoline expansive. Tied round her head with a large bow and

flying blue ribbons under the chin, was a fragile flat capote like a

baby's bonnet, which allowed her hair to escape in front and her great

chignon behind. A large spotted veil flew out from the capote over the

chignon. Her double skirts waved amply over Gerald's knees in the

carriage, and she leaned back against the hard cushions and put an

arrogant look into her face, and thought of nothing but the intense

throbbing joy of life, longing with painful ardour for more and more

pleasure, then and for ever.

As the carriage slipped downwards through the wide, empty gloom of the

Champs Elysees into the brilliant Paris that was waiting for them,

another carriage drawn by two white horses flashed upwards and was gone

in dust. Its only occupant, except the coachman and footman, was a

woman. Gerald stared after it.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "That's Hortense!"

It might have been Hortense, or it might not. But he instantly

convinced himself that it was. Not every evening did one meet Hortense

driving alone in the Champs Elysees, and in August too!

"Hortense?" Sophia asked simply.

"Yes. Hortense Schneider."

"Who is she?"

"You've never heard of Hortense Schneider?"

"No!"

"Well! Have you ever heard of Offenbach?"

"I--I don't know. I don't think so."

He had the mien of utter incredulity. "You don't mean to say you've

never heard of Bluebeard?"

"I've heard of Bluebeard, of course," said she. "Who hasn't?"

"I mean the opera--Offenbach's."

She shook her head, scarce knowing even what an opera was.

"Well, well! What next?"

He implied that such ignorance stood alone in his experience. Really he

was delighted at the cleanness of the slate on which he had to write.

And Sophia was not a bit alarmed. She relished instruction from his

lips. It was a pleasure to her to learn from that exhaustless store of

worldly knowledge. To the world she would do her best to assume

omniscience in its ways, but to him, in her present mood, she liked to

play the ignorant, uninitiated little thing.

"Why," he said, "the Schneider has been the rage since last year but

one. Absolutely the rage."

"I do wish I'd noticed her!" said Sophia.

"As soon as the Varietes reopens we'll go and see her," he replied, and

then gave his detailed version of the career of Hortense Schneider.

More joys for her in the near future! She had yet scarcely penetrated

the crust of her bliss. She exulted in the dazzling destiny which

comprised freedom, fortune, eternal gaiety, and the exquisite Gerald.

As they crossed the Place de la Concorde, she inquired, "Are we going

back to the hotel?"

"No," he said. "I thought we'd go and have supper somewhere, if it

isn't too early."

"After all that dinner?"

"All what dinner? You ate about five times as much as me, anyhow!"

"Oh, I'm ready!" she said.

She was. This day, because it was the first day of her French frock,

she regarded as her debut in the dizzy life of capitals. She existed in

a rapture of bliss, an ecstasy which could feel no fatigue, either of

body or spirit.

II

It was after midnight when they went into the Restaurant Sylvain;

Gerald, having decided not to go to the hotel, had changed his mind and

called there, and having called there, had remained a long time: this

of course! Sophia was already accustoming herself to the idea that,

with Gerald, it was impossible to predict accurately more than five

minutes of the future.

As the chasseur held open the door for them to enter, and Sophia passed

modestly into the glowing yellow interior of the restaurant, followed

by Gerald in his character of man-of-the-world, they drew the attention

of Sylvain's numerous and glittering guests. No face could have made a

more provocative contrast to the women's faces in those screened rooms

than the face of Sophia, so childlike between the baby's bonnet and the

huge bow of ribbon, so candid, so charmingly conscious of its own pure

beauty and of the fact that she was no longer a virgin, but the equal

in knowledge of any woman alive. She saw around her, clustered about

the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks,

cold, hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms.

What had impressed her more than anything else in Paris, more even than

the three-horsed omnibuses, was the extraordinary self-assurance of all

the women, their unashamed posing, their calm acceptance of the public

gaze. They seemed to say: "We are the renowned Parisiennes." They

frightened her: they appeared to her so corrupt and so proud in their

corruption. She had already seen a dozen women in various situations of

conspicuousness apply powder to their complexions with no more ado than

if they had been giving a pat to their hair. She could not understand

such boldness. As for them, they marvelled at the phenomena presented

in Sophia's person; they admired; they admitted the style of the gown;

but they envied neither her innocence nor her beauty; they envied

nothing but her youth and the fresh tint of her cheeks.

"Encore des Anglais!" said some of them, as if that explained all.

Gerald had a very curt way with waiters; and the more obsequious they

were, the haughtier he became; and a head-waiter was no more to him

than a scullion. He gave loud-voiced orders in French of which both he

and Sophia were proud, and a table was laid for them in a corner near

one of the large windows. Sophia settled herself on the bench of green

velvet, and began to ply the ivory fan which Gerald had given her. It

was very hot; all the windows were wide open, and the sounds of the

street mingled clearly with the tinkle of the supper-room. Outside,

against a sky of deepest purple, Sophia could discern the black

skeleton of a gigantic building; it was the new opera house.

"All sorts here!" said Gerald, contentedly, after he had ordered iced

soup and sparkling Moselle. Sophia did not know what Moselle was, but

she imagined that anything would be better than champagne.

Sylvain's was then typical of the Second Empire, and particularly

famous as a supper-room. Expensive and gay, it provided, with its

discreet decorations, a sumptuous scene where lorettes, actresses,

respectable women, and an occasional grisette in luck, could satisfy

their curiosity as to each other. In its catholicity it was highly

correct as a resort; not many other restaurants in the centre could

have successfully fought against the rival attractions of the Bois and

the dim groves of the Champs Elysees on a night in August. The

complicated richness of the dresses, the yards and yards of fine

stitchery, the endless ruching, the hints, more or less incautious, of

nether treasures of embroidered linen; and, leaping over all this to

the eye, the vivid colourings of silks and muslins, veils, plumes and

flowers, piled as it were pell-mell in heaps on the universal green

cushions to the furthest vista of the restaurant, and all multiplied in

gilt mirrors--the spectacle intoxicated Sophia. Her eyes gleamed. She

drank the soup with eagerness, and tasted the wine, though no desire on

her part to like wine could make her like it; and then, seeing

pineapples on a large table covered with fruits, she told Gerald that

she should like some pineapple, and Gerald ordered one.

She gathered her self-esteem and her wits together, and began to give

Gerald her views on the costumes. She could do so with impunity,

because her own was indubitably beyond criticism. Some she wholly

condemned, and there was not one which earned her unreserved approval.

All the absurd fastidiousness of her schoolgirlish provinciality

emerged in that eager, affected torrent of remarks. However, she was

clever enough to read, after a time, in Gerald's tone and features,

that she was making a tedious fool of herself. And she adroitly shifted

her criticism from the taste to the WORK--she put a strong accent on

the word--and pronounced that to be miraculous beyond description. She

reckoned that she knew what dressmaking and millinery were, and her

little fund of expert knowledge caused her to picture a whole necessary

cityful of girls stitching, stitching, and stitching day and night. She

had wondered, during the few odd days that they had spent in Paris,

between visits to Chantilly and other places, at the massed luxury of

the shops; she had wondered, starting with St. Luke's Square as a

standard, how they could all thrive. But now in her first real glimpse

of the banal and licentious profusion of one among a hundred

restaurants, she wondered that the shops were so few. She thought how

splendid was all this expensiveness for trade. Indeed, the notions

chasing each other within that lovely and foolish head were a

surprising medley.

"Well, what do you think of Sylvain's?" Gerald asked, impatient to be

assured that his Sylvain's had duly overwhelmed her.

"Oh, Gerald!" she murmured, indicating that speech was inadequate. And

she just furtively touched his hand with hers.

The ennui due to her critical disquisition on the shortcomings of

Parisian costume cleared away from Gerald's face.

"What do you suppose those people there are talking about?" he said

with a jerk of the head towards a chattering group of three gorgeous

lorettes and two middle-aged men at the next table but one.

"What are they talking about?"

"They're talking about the execution of the murderer Rivain that takes

place at Auxerre the day after to-morrow. They're arranging to make up

a party and go and see it."

"Oh, what a horrid idea!" said Sophia.

"Guillotine, you know!" said Gerald.

"But can people see it?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, I think it's horrible."

"Yes, that's why people like to go and see it. Besides, the man isn't

an ordinary sort of criminal at all. He's very young and good-looking,

and well connected. And he killed the celebrated Claudine...."

"Claudine?"

"Claudine Jacquinot. Of course you wouldn't know. She was a

tremendous--er--wrong 'un here in the forties. Made a lot of money, and

retired to her native town."

Sophia, in spite of her efforts to maintain the role of a woman who has

nothing to learn, blushed.

"Then she was older than he is."

"Thirty-five years older, if a day."

"What did he kill her for?"

"She wouldn't give him enough money. She was his mistress--or rather

one of 'em. He wanted money for a young lady friend, you see. He killed

her and took all the jewels she was wearing. Whenever he went to see

her she always wore all her best jewels--and you may bet a woman like

that had a few. It seems she had been afraid for a long time that he

meant to do for her."

"Then why did she see him? And why did she wear her jewels?"

"Because she liked being afraid, goose! Some women only enjoy

themselves when they're terrified. Queer, isn't it?"

Gerald insisted on meeting his wife's gaze as he finished these

revelations. He pretended that such stories were the commonest things

on earth, and that to be scandalized by them was infantile. Sophia,

thrust suddenly into a strange civilization perfectly frank in its

sensuality and its sensuousness, under the guidance of a young man to

whom her half-formed intelligence was a most diverting toy--Sophia felt

mysteriously uncomfortable, disturbed by sinister, flitting phantoms of

ideas which she only dimly apprehended. Her eyes fell. Gerald laughed

self-consciously. She would not eat any more pineapple.

Immediately afterwards there came into the restaurant an apparition

which momentarily stopped every conversation in the room. It was a tall

and mature woman who wore over a dress of purplish-black silk a vast

flowing sortie de bal of vermilion velvet, looped and tasselled with

gold. No other costume could live by the side of that garment, Arab in

shape, Russian in colour, and Parisian in style. It blazed. The woman's

heavy coiffure was bound with fillets of gold braid and crimson

rosettes. She was followed by a young Englishman in evening dress and

whiskers of the most exact correctness. The woman sailed, a little

breathlessly, to a table next to Gerald's, and took possession of it

with an air of use, almost of tedium. She sat down, threw the cloak

from her majestic bosom, and expanded her chest. Seeming to ignore the

Englishman, who superciliously assumed the seat opposite to her, she

let her large scornful eyes travel round the restaurant, slowly and

imperiously meeting the curiosity which she had evoked. Her beauty had

undoubtedly been dazzling, it was still effulgent; but the blossom was

about to fall. She was admirably rouged and powdered; her arms were

glorious; her lashes were long. There was little fault, save the

excessive ripeness of a blonde who fights in vain against obesity. And

her clothes combined audacity with the propriety of fashion. She

carelessly deposed costly trinkets on the table, and then, having

intimidated the whole company, she accepted the menu from the

head-waiter and began to study it.

"That's one of 'em!" Gerald whispered to Sophia.

"One of what?" Sophia whispered.

Gerald raised his eyebrows warningly, and winked. The Englishman had

overheard; and a look of frigid displeasure passed across his proud

face. Evidently he belonged to a rank much higher than Gerald's; and

Gerald, though he could always comfort himself by the thought that he

had been to a university with the best, felt his own inferiority and

could not hide that he felt it. Gerald was wealthy; he came of a

wealthy family; but he had not the habit of wealth. When he spent money

furiously, he did it with bravado, too conscious of grandeur and too

conscious of the difficulties of acquiring that which he threw away.

For Gerald had earned money. This whiskered Englishman had never earned

money, never known the value of it, never imagined himself without as

much of it as he might happen to want. He had the face of one

accustomed to give orders and to look down upon inferiors. He was

absolutely sure of himself. That his companion chiefly ignored him did

not appear to incommode him in the least. She spoke to him in French.

He replied in English, very briefly; and then, in English, he commanded

the supper. As soon as the champagne was served he began to drink; in

the intervals of drinking he gently stroked his whiskers. The woman

spoke no more.

Gerald talked more loudly. With that aristocratic Englishman observing

him, he could not remain at ease. And not only did he talk more loudly;

he brought into his conversation references to money, travels, and

worldly experiences. While seeking to impress the Englishman, he was

merely becoming ridiculous to the Englishman; and obscurely he was

aware of this. Sophia noticed and regretted it. Still, feeling very

unimportant herself, she was reconciled to the superiority of the

whiskered Englishman as to a natural fact. Gerald's behaviour slightly

lowered him in her esteem. Then she looked at him--at his well-shaped

neatness, his vivacious face, his excellent clothes, and decided that

he was much to be preferred to any heavy-jawed, long-nosed aristocrat

alive.

The woman whose vermilion cloak lay around her like a fortification

spoke to her escort. He did not understand. He tried to express himself

in French, and failed. Then the woman recommenced, talking at length.

When she had done he shook his head. His acquaintance with French was

limited to the vocabulary of food.

"Guillotine!" he murmured, the sole word of her discourse that he had

understood.

"Oui, oui! Guillotine. Enfin...!" cried the woman excitedly. Encouraged

by her success in conveying even one word of her remarks, she began a

third time.

"Excuse me," said Gerald. "Madame is talking about the execution at

Auxerre the day after to-morrow. N'est-ce-pas, madame, que vous parliez

de Rivain?"

The Englishman glared angrily at Gerald's officious interruption. But

the woman smiled benevolently on Gerald, and insisted on talking to her

friend through him. And the Englishman had to make the best of the

situation.

"There isn't a restaurant in Paris to-night where they aren't talking

about that execution," said Gerald on his own account.

"Indeed!" observed the Englishman.

Wine affected them in different ways.

Now a fragile, short young Frenchman, with an extremely pale face

ending in a thin black imperial, appeared at the entrance. He looked

about, and, recognizing the woman of the scarlet cloak, very discreetly

saluted her. Then he saw Gerald, and his worn, fatigued features showed

a sudden, startled smile. He came rapidly forward, hat in hand, seized

Gerald's palm and greeted him effusively.

"My wife," said Gerald, with the solemn care of a man who is determined

to prove that he is entirely sober.

The young man became grave and excessively ceremonious. He bowed low

over Sophia's hand and kissed it. Her impulse was to laugh, but the

gravity of the young man's deference stopped her. She glanced at

Gerald, blushing, as if to say: "This comedy is not my fault." Gerald

said something, the young man turned to him and his face resumed its

welcoming smile.

"This is Monsieur Chirac," Gerald at length completed the introduction,

"a friend of mine when I lived in Paris."

He was proud to have met by accident an acquaintance in a restaurant.

It demonstrated that he was a Parisian, and improved his standing with

the whiskered Englishman and the vermilion cloak.

"It is the first time you come Paris, madame?" Chirac addressed himself

to Sophia, in limping, timorous English.

"Yes," she giggled. He bowed again.

Chirac, with his best compliments, felicitated Gerald upon his marriage.

"Don't mention it!" said the humorous Gerald in English, amused at his

own wit; and then: "What about this execution?"

"Ah!" replied Chirac, breathing out a long breath, and smiling at

Sophia. "Rivain! Rivain!" He made a large, important gesture with his

hand.

It was at once to be seen that Gerald had touched the topic which

secretly ravaged the supper-world as a subterranean fire ravages a mine.

"I go!" said Chirac, with pride, glancing at Sophia, who smiled

self-consciously.

Chirac entered upon a conversation with Gerald in French. Sophia

comprehended that Gerald was surprised and impressed by what Chirac

told him and that Chirac in turn was surprised. Then Gerald laboriously

found his pocket-book, and after some fumbling with it handed it to

Chirac so that the latter might write in it.

"Madame!" murmured Chirac, resuming his ceremonious stiffness in order

to take leave. "Alors, c'est entendu, mon cher ami!" he said to Gerald,

who nodded phlegmatically. And Chirac went away to the next table but

one, where were the three lorettes and the two middle-aged men. He was

received there with enthusiasm.

Sophia began to be teased by a little fear that Gerald was not quite

his usual self. She did not think of him as tipsy. The idea of his

being tipsy would have shocked her. She did not think clearly at all.

She was lost and dazed in the labyrinth of new and vivid impressions

into which Gerald had led her. But her prudence was awake.

"I think I'm tired," she said in a low voice.

"You don't want to go, do you?" he asked, hurt.

"Well--"

"Oh, wait a bit!"

The owner of the vermilion cloak spoke again to Gerald, who showed that

he was flattered. While talking to her he ordered a brandy-and-soda.

And then he could not refrain from displaying to her his familiarity

with Parisian life, and he related how he had met Hortense Schneider

behind a pair of white horses. The vermilion cloak grew even more

sociable at the mention of this resounding name, and chattered with the

most agreeable vivacity. Her friend stared inimically.

"Do you hear that?" Gerald explained to Sophia, who was sitting silent.

"About Hortense Schneider--you know, we met her to-night. It seems she

made a bet of a louis with some fellow, and when he lost he sent her

the louis set in diamonds worth a hundred thousand francs. That's how

they go on here."

"Oh!" cried Sophia, further than ever in the labyrinth.

"'Scuse me," the Englishman put in heavily. He had heard the words

'Hortense Schneider,' 'Hortense Schneider,' repeating themselves in the

conversation, and at last it had occurred to him that the conversation

was about Hortense Schneider. "'Scuse me," he began again. "Are you--do

you mean Hortense Schneider?"

"Yes," said Gerald. "We met her to-night."

"She's in Trouville," said the Englishman, flatly.

Gerald shook his head positively.

"I gave a supper to her in Trouville last night," said the Englishman.

"And she plays at the Casino Theatre to-night."

Gerald was repulsed but not defeated. "What is she playing in to-night?

Tell me that!" he sneered.

"I don't see why I sh'd tell you."

"Hm!" Gerald retorted. "If what you say is true, it's a very strange

thing I should have seen her in the Champs Elysees to-night, isn't it?"

The Englishman drank more wine. "If you want to insult me, sir--" he

began coldly.

"Gerald!" Sophia urged in a whisper.

"Be quiet!" Gerald snapped.

A fiddler in fancy costume plunged into the restaurant at that moment

and began to play wildly. The shock of his strange advent momentarily

silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of

the noisy music,--the common, tedious, tippler's quarrel. It rose

higher and higher. The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle.

Chirac cautiously observed it. Instead of attending to the music, the

festal company attended to the quarrel. Three waiters in a group

watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The English voices grew

more menacing.

Then suddenly the whiskered Englishman, jerking his head towards the

door, said more quietly:

"Hadn't we better settle thish outside?"

"At your service!" said Gerald, rising.

The owner of the vermilion cloak lifted her eyebrows to Chirac in

fatigued disgust, but she said nothing. Nor did Sophia say anything.

Sophia was overcome by terror.

The swain of the cloak, dragging his coat after him across the floor,

left the restaurant without offering any apology or explanation to his

lady.

"Wait here for me," said Gerald defiantly to Sophia. "I shall be back

in a minute."

"But, Gerald!" She put her hand on his sleeve.

He snatched his arm away. "Wait here for me, I tell you," he repeated.

The doorkeeper obsequiously opened the door to the two unsteady

carousers, for whom the fiddler drew back, still playing.

Thus Sophia was left side by side with the vermilion cloak. She was

quite helpless. All the pride of a married woman had abandoned her. She

stood transfixed by intense shame, staring painfully at a pillar, to

avoid the universal assault of eyes. She felt like an indiscreet little

girl, and she looked like one. No youthful radiant beauty of features,

no grace and style of a Parisian dress, no certificate of a ring, no

premature initiation into the mysteries, could save her from the

appearance of a raw fool whose foolishness had been her undoing. Her

face changed to its reddest, and remained at that, and all the

fundamental innocence of her nature, which had been overlaid by the

violent experiences of her brief companionship with Gerald, rose again

to the surface with that blush. Her situation drew pity from a few

hearts and a careless contempt from the rest. But since once more it

was a question of ces Anglais, nobody could be astonished.

Without moving her head, she twisted her eyes to the clock: half-past

two. The fiddler ceased his dance and made a collection in his

tasselled cap. The vermilion cloak threw a coin into the cap. Sophia

stared at it moveless, until the fiddler, tired of waiting, passed to

the next table and relieved her agony. She had no money at all. She set

herself to watch the clock; but its fingers would not stir.

With an exclamation the lady of the cloak got up and peered out of the

window, chatted with waiters, and then removed herself and her cloak to

the next table, where she was received with amiable sympathy by the

three lorettes, Chirac, and the other two men. The party

surreptitiously examined Sophia from time to time. Then Chirac went

outside with the head-waiter, returned, consulted with his friends, and

finally approached Sophia. It was twenty minutes past three.

He renewed his magnificent bow. "Madame," he said carefully, "will you

allow me to bring you to your hotel?"

He made no reference to Gerald, partly, doubtless, because his English

was treacherous on difficult ground.

Sophia had not sufficient presence of mind to thank her saviour.

"But the bill?" she stammered. "The bill isn't paid."

He did not instantly understand her. But one of the waiters had caught

the sound of a familiar word, and sprang forward with a slip of paper

on a plate.

"I have no money," said Sophia, with a feeble smile.

"Je vous arrangerai ca," he said. "What name of the hotel? Meurice, is

it not?"

"Hotel Meurice," said Sophia. "Yes."

He spoke to the head-waiter about the bill, which was carried away like

something obscene; and on his arm, which he punctiliously offered and

she could not refuse, Sophia left the scene of her ignominy. She was so

distraught that she could not manage her crinoline in the doorway. No

sign anywhere outside of Gerald or his foe!

He put her into an open carriage, and in five minutes they had

clattered down the brilliant silence of the Rue de la Paix, through the

Place Vendome into the Rue de Rivoli; and the night-porter of the hotel

was at the carriage-step.

"I tell them at the restaurant where you gone," said Chirac,

bare-headed under the long colonnade of the street. "If your husband is

there, I tell him. Till to-morrow...!"

His manners were more wonderful than any that Sophia had ever imagined.

He might have been in the dark Tuileries on the opposite side of the

street, saluting an empress, instead of taking leave of a raw little

girl, who was still too disturbed even to thank him.

She fled candle in hand up the wide, many-cornered stairs; Gerald might

be already in the bedroom, ... drunk! There was a chance. But the

gilt-fringed bedroom was empty. She sat down at the velvet-covered

table amid the shadows cast by the candle that wavered in the draught

from the open window. And she set her teeth and a cold fury possessed

her in the hot and languorous night. Gerald was an imbecile. That he

should have allowed himself to get tipsy was bad enough, but that he

should have exposed her to the horrible situation from which Chirac had

extricated her, was unspeakably disgraceful. He was an imbecile. He had

no common sense. With all his captivating charm, he could not be relied

upon not to make himself and her ridiculous, tragically ridiculous.

Compare him with Mr. Chirac! She leaned despairingly on the table. She

would not undress. She would not move. She had to realize her position;

she had to see it.

Folly! Folly! Fancy a commercial traveller throwing a compromising

piece of paper to the daughter of his customer in the shop itself: that

was the incredible folly with which their relations had begun! And his

mad gesture at the pit-shaft! And his scheme for bringing her to Paris

unmarried! And then to-night! Monstrous folly! Alone in the bedroom she

was a wise and a disillusioned woman, wiser than any of those dolls in

the restaurant.

And had she not gone to Gerald, as it were, over the dead body of her

father, through lies and lies and again lies? That was how she phrased

it to herself.... Over the dead body of her father! How could such a

venture succeed? How could she ever have hoped that it would succeed?

In that moment she saw her acts with the terrible vision of a Hebrew

prophet.

She thought of the Square and of her life there with her mother and

Constance. Never would her pride allow her to return to that life, not

even if the worst happened to her that could happen. She was one of

those who are prepared to pay without grumbling for what they have had.

There was a sound outside. She noticed that the dawn had begun. The

door opened and disclosed Gerald.

They exchanged a searching glance, and Gerald shut the door. Gerald

infected the air, but she perceived at once that he was sobered. His

lip was bleeding.

"Mr. Chirac brought me home," she said.

"So it seems," said Gerald, curtly. "I asked you to wait for me. Didn't

I say I should come back?"

He was adopting the injured magisterial tone of the man who is

ridiculously trying to conceal from himself and others that he has

recently behaved like an ass.

She resented the injustice. "I don't think you need talk like that,"

she said.

"Like what?" he bullied her, determined that she should be in the wrong.

And what a hard look on his pretty face!

Her prudence bade her accept the injustice. She was his. Rapt away from

her own world, she was utterly dependent on his good nature.

"I knocked my chin against the damned balustrade, coming upstairs,"

said Gerald, gloomily.

She knew that was a lie. "Did you?" she replied kindly. "Let me bathe

it."

CHAPTER III

AN AMBITION SATISFIED

I

She went to sleep in misery. All the glory of her new life had been

eclipsed. But when she woke up, a few hours later, in the large,

velvety stateliness of the bedroom for which Gerald was paying so

fantastic a price per day, she was in a brighter mood, and very willing

to reconsider her verdicts. Her pride induced her to put Gerald in the

right and herself in the wrong, for she was too proud to admit that she

had married a charming and irresponsible fool. And, indeed, ought she

not to put herself in the wrong? Gerald had told her to wait, and she

had not waited. He had said that he should return to the restaurant,

and he had returned. Why had she not waited? She had not waited because

she had behaved like a simpleton. She had been terrified about nothing.

Had she not been frequenting restaurants now for a month past? Ought

not a married woman to be capable of waiting an hour in a restaurant

for her lawful husband without looking a ninny? And as for Gerald's

behaviour, how could he have acted differently? The other Englishman

was obviously a brute and had sought a quarrel. His contradiction of

Gerald's statements was extremely offensive. On being invited by the

brute to go outside, what could Gerald do but comply? Not to have

complied might have meant a fight in the restaurant, as the brute was

certainly drunk. Compared to the brute, Gerald was not at all drunk,

merely a little gay and talkative. Then Gerald's fib about his chin was

natural; he simply wished to minimize the fuss and to spare her

feelings. It was, in fact, just like Gerald to keep perfect silence as

to what had passed between himself and the brute. However, she was

convinced that Gerald, so lithe and quick, had given that great brute

with his supercilious ways as good as he received, if not better.

And if she were a man and had asked her wife to wait in a restaurant,

and the wife had gone home under the escort of another man, she would

most assuredly be much more angry than Gerald had been. She was very

glad that she had controlled herself and exercised a meek diplomacy. A

quarrel had thus been avoided. Yes, the finish of the evening could not

be called a quarrel; after her nursing of his chin, nothing but a

slight coolness on his part had persisted.

She arose silently and began to dress, full of a determination to treat

Gerald as a good wife ought to treat a husband. Gerald did not stir; he

was an excellent sleeper: one of those organisms that never want to go

to bed and never want to get up. When her toilet was complete save for

her bodice, there was a knock at the door. She started.

"Gerald!" She approached the bed, and leaned her nude bosom over her

husband, and put her arms round his neck. This method of being brought

back to consciousness did not displease him.

The knock was repeated. He gave a grunt.

"Some one's knocking at the door," she whispered.

"Then why don't you open it?" he asked dreamily.

"I'm not dressed, darling."

He looked at her. "Stick something on your shoulders, girl!" said he.

"What does it matter?"

There she was, being a simpleton again, despite her resolution!

She obeyed, and cautiously opened the door, standing behind it.

A middle-aged whiskered servant, in a long white apron, announced

matters in French which passed her understanding. But Gerald had heard

from the bed, and he replied.

"Bien, monsieur!" The servant departed, with a bow, down the obscure

corridor.

"It's Chirac," Gerald explained when she had shut the door. "I was

forgetting I asked him to come and have lunch with us, early. He's

waiting in the drawing-room. Just put your bodice on, and go and talk

to him till I come."

He jumped out of bed, and then, standing in his night-garb, stretched

himself and terrifically yawned.

"Me?" Sophia questioned.

"Who else?" said Gerald, with that curious satiric dryness which he

would sometimes import into his tone.

"But I can't speak French!" she protested.

"I didn't suppose you could," said Gerald, with an increase of dryness;

"but you know as well as I do that he can speak English."

"Oh, very well, then!" she murmured with agreeable alacrity.

Evidently Gerald had not yet quite recovered from his legitimate

displeasure of the night. He minutely examined his mouth in the glass

of the Louis Philippe wardrobe. It showed scarcely a trace of battle.

"I say!" he stopped her, as, nervous at the prospect before her, she

was leaving the room. "I was thinking of going to Auxerre to-day."

"Auxerre?" she repeated, wondering under what circumstances she had

recently heard that name. Then she remembered: it was the place of

execution of the murderer Rivain.

"Yes," he said. "Chirac has to go. He's on a newspaper now. He was an

architect when I knew him. He's got to go and he thinks himself jolly

lucky. So I thought I'd go with him."

The truth was that he had definitely arranged to go.

"Not to see the execution?" she stammered.

"Why not? I've always wanted to see an execution, especially with the

guillotine. And executions are public in France. It's quite the proper

thing to go to them."

"But why do you want to see an execution?"

"It just happens that I do want to see an execution. It's a fancy of

mine, that's all. I don't know that any reason is necessary," he said,

pouring out water into the diminutive ewer.

She was aghast. "And shall you leave me here alone?"

"Well," said he, "I don't see why my being married should prevent me

from doing something that I've always wanted to do. Do you?"

"Oh NO!" she eagerly concurred.

"That's all right," he said. "You can do exactly as you like. Either

stay here, or come with me. If you go to Auxerre there's no need at all

for you to see the execution. It's an interesting old town--cathedral

and so on. But of course if you can't bear to be in the same town as a

guillotine, I'll go alone. I shall come back to-morrow."

It was plain where his wish lay. She stopped the phrases that came to

her lips, and did her best to dismiss the thoughts which prompted them.

"Of course I'll go," she said quietly. She hesitated, and then went up

to the washstand and kissed a part of his cheek that was not soapy.

That kiss, which comforted and somehow reassured her, was the

expression of a surrender whose monstrousness she would not admit to

herself.

In the rich and dusty drawing-room, Chirac and Chirac's exquisite

formalities awaited her. Nobody else was there.

"My husband ..." she began, smiling and blushing. She liked Chirac.

It was the first time she had had the opportunity of using that word to

other than a servant. It soothed her and gave her confidence. She

perceived after a few moments that Chirac did genuinely admire her;

more, that she inspired him with something that resembled awe. Speaking

very slowly and distinctly she said that she should travel with her

husband to Auxerre; as he saw no objection to that course; implying

that if he saw no objection she was perfectly satisfied. Chirac was

concurrence itself. In five minutes it seemed to be the most natural

and proper thing in the world that, on her honeymoon, she should be

going with her husband to a particular town because a notorious

murderer was about to be decapitated there in public.

"My husband has always wanted to see an execution," she said, later.

"It would be a pity to ..."

"As psychological experience," replied Chirac, pronouncing the p of the

adjective, "it will be very interessant.... To observe one's self, in

such circumstances ..." He smiled enthusiastically.

She thought how strange even nice Frenchmen were. Imagine going to an

execution in order to observe yourself!

II

What continually impressed Sophia as strange, in the behaviour not only

of Gerald but of Chirac and other people with whom she came into

contact, was its quality of casualness. She had all her life been

accustomed to see enterprises, even minor ones, well pondered and then

carefully schemed beforehand. In St. Luke's Square there was always, in

every head, a sort of time-table of existence prepared at least one

week in advance. But in Gerald's world nothing was prearranged.

Elaborate affairs were decided in a moment and undertaken with

extraordinary lightness. Thus the excursion to Auxerre! During lunch

scarcely a word was said as to it; the conversation, in English for

Sophia's advantage, turning, as usual under such circumstances, upon

the difficulty of languages and the differences between countries.

Nobody would have guessed that any member of the party had any

preoccupation whatever for the rest of the day. The meal was delightful

to Sophia; not merely did she find Chirac comfortingly kind and

sincere, but Gerald was restored to the perfection of his charm and his

good humour. Then suddenly, in the midst of coffee, the question of

trains loomed up like a swift crisis. In five minutes Chirac had

departed--whether to his office or his home Sophia did not understand,

and within a quarter of an hour she and Gerald were driving rapidly to

the Gare de Lyon, Gerald stuffing into his pocket a large envelope full

of papers which he had received by registered post. They caught the

train by about a minute, and Chirac by a few seconds. Yet neither he

nor Gerald seemed to envisage the risk of inconvenience and annoyance

which they had incurred and escaped. Chirac chattered through the

window with another journalist in the next compartment. When she had

leisure to examine him, Sophia saw that he must have called at his home

to put on old clothes. Everybody except herself and Gerald seemed to

travel in his oldest clothes.

The train was hot, noisy, and dusty. But, one after another, all three

of them fell asleep and slept heavily, calmly, like healthy and

exhausted young animals. Nothing could disturb them for more than a

moment. To Sophia it appeared to be by simple chance that Chirac

aroused himself and them at Laroche and sleepily seized her valise and

got them all out on the platform, where they yawned and smiled, full of

the deep, half-realized satisfaction of repose. They drank nectar from

a wheeled buffet, drank it eagerly, in thirsty gulps, and sighed with

pleasure and relief, and Gerald threw down a coin, refusing change with

a lord's gesture. The local train to Auxerre was full, and with a

varied and sinister cargo. At length they were in the zone of the

waiting guillotine. The rumour ran that the executioner was on the

train. No one had seen him; no one was sure of recognizing him, but

everyone hugged the belief that he was on the train. Although the sun

was sinking the heat seemed not to abate. Attitudes grew more limp,

more abandoned. Soot and prickly dust flew in unceasingly at the open

windows. The train stopped at Bonnard, Chemilly, and Moneteau, each

time before a waiting crowd that invaded it. And at last, in the great

station at Auxerre, it poured out an incredible mass of befouled

humanity that spread over everything like an inundation. Sophia was

frightened. Gerald left the initiative to Chirac, and Chirac took her

arm and led her forward, looking behind him to see that Gerald followed

with the valise. Frenzy seemed to reign in Auxerre.

The driver of a cab demanded ten francs for transporting them to the

Hotel de l'Epee.

"Bah!" scornfully exclaimed Chirac, in his quality of experienced

Parisian who is not to be exploited by heavy-witted provincials.

But the driver of the next cab demanded twelve francs.

"Jump in," said Gerald to Sophia. Chirac lifted his eyebrows.

At the same moment a tall, stout man with the hard face of a

flourishing scoundrel, and a young, pallid girl on his arm, pushed

aside both Gerald and Chirac and got into the cab with his companion.

Chirac protested, telling him that the cab was already engaged.

The usurper scowled and swore, and the young girl laughed boldly.

Sophia, shrinking, expected her escort to execute justice heroic and

final; but she was disappointed.

"Brute!" murmured Chirac, and shrugged his shoulders, as the carriage

drove off, leaving them foolish on the kerb.

By this time all the other cabs had been seized. They walked to the

Hotel de l'Epee, jostled by the crowd, Sophia and Chirac in front, and

Gerald following with the valise, whose weight caused him to lean over

to the right and his left arm to rise. The avenue was long, straight,

and misty with a floating dust. Sophia had a vivid sense of the

romantic. They saw towers and spires, and Chirac talked to her slowly

and carefully of the cathedral and the famous churches. He said that

the stained glass was marvellous, and with much care he catalogued for

her all the things she must visit. They crossed a river. She felt as

though she was stepping into the middle age. At intervals Gerald

changed the valise from hand to hand; obstinately, he would not let

Chirac touch it. They struggled upwards, through narrow curving streets.

"Voila!" said Chirac.

They were in front of the Hotel de l'Epee. Across the street was a cafe

crammed with people. Several carriages stood in front. The Hotel de

l'Epee had a reassuring air of mellow respectability, such as Chirac

had claimed for it. He had suggested this hotel for Madame Scales

because it was not near the place of execution. Gerald had said, "Of

course! Of course!" Chirac, who did not mean to go to bed, required no

room for himself.

The Hotel de l'Epee had one room to offer, at the price of twenty-five

francs.

Gerald revolted at the attempted imposition. "A nice thing!" he

grumbled, "that ordinary travellers can't get a decent room at a decent

price just because some one's going to be guillotined to-morrow! We'll

try elsewhere!"

His features expressed disgust, but Sophia fancied that he was secretly

pleased.

They swaggered out of the busy stir of the hotel, as those must who,

having declined to be swindled, wish to preserve their importance in

the face of the world. In the street a cabman solicited them, and

filled them with hope by saying that he knew of a hotel that might suit

them and would drive them there for five francs. He furiously lashed

his horse. The mere fact of being in a swiftly moving carriage which

wayfarers had to avoid nimbly, maintained their spirits. They had a

near glimpse of the cathedral. The cab halted with a bump, in a small

square, in front of a repellent building which bore the sign, 'Hotel de

Vezelay.' The horse was bleeding. Gerald instructed Sophia to remain

where she was, and he and Chirac went up four stone steps into the

hotel. Sophia, stared at by loose crowds that were promenading, gazed

about her, and saw that all the windows of the square were open and

most of them occupied by people who laughed and chattered. Then there

was a shout: Gerald's voice. He had appeared at a window on the second

floor of the hotel with Chirac and a very fat woman. Chirac saluted,

and Gerald laughed carelessly, and nodded.

"It's all right," said Gerald, having descended.

"How much do they ask?" Sophia inquired indiscreetly.

Gerald hesitated, and looked self-conscious. "Thirty-five francs," he

said. "But I've had enough of driving about. It seems we're lucky to

get it even at that."

And Chirac shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate that the situation

and the price ought to be accepted philosophically. Gerald gave the

driver five francs. He examined the piece and demanded a pourboire.

"Oh! Damn!" said Gerald, and, because he had no smaller change, parted

with another two francs.

"Is any one coming out for this damned valise?" Gerald demanded, like a

tyrant whose wrath would presently fall if the populace did not

instantly set about minding their p's and q's.

But nobody emerged, and he was compelled to carry the bag himself.

The hotel was dark and malodorous, and every room seemed to be crowded

with giggling groups of drinkers.

"We can't both sleep in this bed, surely," said Sophia when, Chirac

having remained downstairs, she faced Gerald in a small, mean bedroom.

"You don't suppose I shall go to bed, do you?" said Gerald, rather

brusquely. "It's for you. We're going to eat now. Look sharp."

III

It was night. She lay in the narrow, crimson-draped bed. The heavy

crimson curtains had been drawn across the dirty lace curtains of the

window, but the lights of the little square faintly penetrated through

chinks into the room. The sounds of the square also penetrated,

extraordinarily loud and clear, for the unabated heat had compelled her

to leave the window open. She could not sleep. Exhausted though she

was, there was no hope of her being able to sleep.

Once again she was profoundly depressed. She remembered the dinner with

horror. The long, crowded table, with semi-circular ends, in the

oppressive and reeking dining-room lighted by oil-lamps! There must

have been at least forty people at that table. Most of them ate

disgustingly, as noisily as pigs, with the ends of the large coarse

napkins tucked in at their necks. All the service was done by the fat

woman whom she had seen at the window with Gerald, and a young girl

whose demeanour was candidly brazen. Both these creatures were

slatterns. Everything was dirty. But the food was good. Chirac and

Gerald were agreed that the food was good, as well as the wine.

"Remarquable!" Chirac had said, of the wine. Sophia, however, could

neither eat nor drink with relish. She was afraid. The company shocked

her by its gestures alone. It was very heterogeneous in appearance,

some of the diners being well dressed, approaching elegance, and others

shabby. But all the faces, to the youngest, were brutalized, corrupt,

and shameless. The juxtaposition of old men and young women was odious

to her, especially when those pairs kissed, as they did frequently

towards the end of the meal. Happily she was placed between Chirac and

Gerald. That situation seemed to shelter her even from the

conversation. She would have comprehended nothing of the conversation,

had it not been for the presence of a middle-aged Englishman who sat at

the opposite end of the table with a youngish, stylish Frenchwoman whom

she had seen at Sylvain's on the previous night. The Englishman was

evidently under a promise to teach English to the Frenchwoman. He kept

translating for her into English, slowly and distinctly, and she would

repeat the phrases after him, with strange contortions of the mouth.

Thus Sophia gathered that the talk was exclusively about

assassinations, executions, criminals, and executioners. Some of the

people there made a practice of attending every execution. They were

fountains of interesting gossip, and the lions of the meal. There was a

woman who could recall the dying words of all the victims of justice

for twenty years past. The table roared with hysteric laughter at one

of this woman's anecdotes. Sophia learned that she had related how a

criminal had said to the priest who was good-naturedly trying to screen

the sight of the guillotine from him with his body: "Stand away now,

parson. Haven't I paid to see it?" Such was the Englishman's rendering.

The wages of the executioners and their assistants were discussed, and

differences of opinions led to ferocious arguments. A young and

dandiacal fellow told, as a fact which he was ready to vouch for with a

pistol, how Cora Pearl, the renowned English courtesan, had through her

influence over a prefect of police succeeded in visiting a criminal

alone in his cell during the night preceding his execution, and had

only quitted him an hour before the final summons. The tale won the

honours of the dinner. It was regarded as truly impressive, and

inevitably it led to the general inquiry: what could the highest

personages in the empire see to admire in that red-haired Englishwoman?

And of course Rivain himself, the handsome homicide, the centre and

hero of the fete, was never long out of the conversation. Several of

the diners had seen him; one or two knew him and could give amazing

details of his prowess as a man of pleasure. Despite his crime, he

seemed to be the object of sincere idolatry. It was said positively

that a niece of his victim had been promised a front place at the

execution.

Apropos of this, Sophia gathered, to her intense astonishment and

alarm, that the prison was close by and that the execution would take

place at the corner of the square itself in which the hotel was

situated. Gerald must have known; he had hidden it from her. She

regarded him sideways, with distrust. As the dinner finished, Gerald's

pose of a calm, disinterested, scientific observer of humanity

gradually broke down. He could not maintain it in front of the

increasing license of the scene round the table. He was at length

somewhat ashamed of having exposed his wife to the view of such an

orgy; his restless glance carefully avoided both Sophia and Chirac. The

latter, whose unaffected simplicity of interest in the affair had more

than anything helped to keep Sophia in countenance, observed the change

in Gerald and Sophia's excessive discomfort, and suggested that they

should leave the table without waiting for the coffee. Gerald agreed

quickly. Thus had Sophia been released from the horror of the dinner.

She did not understand how a man so thoughtful and kindly as Chirac--he

had bidden her good night with the most distinguished courtesy--could

tolerate, much less pleasurably savour, the gluttonous, drunken, and

salacious debauchery of the Hotel de Vezelay; but his theory was, so

far as she could judge from his imperfect English, that whatever

existed might be admitted and examined by serious persons interested in

the study of human nature. His face seemed to say: "Why not?" His face

seemed to say to Gerald and to herself: "If this incommodes you, what

did you come for?"

Gerald had left her at the bedroom door with a self-conscious nod. She

had partly undressed and lain down, and instantly the hotel had

transformed itself into a kind of sounding-box. It was as if, beneath

and within all the noises of the square, every movement in the hotel

reached her ears through cardboard walls: distant shoutings and

laughter below; rattlings of crockery below; stampings up and down

stairs; stealthy creepings up and down stairs; brusque calls; fragments

of song, whisperings; long sighs suddenly stifled; mysterious groans as

of torture, broken by a giggle; quarrels and bickering,--she was spared

nothing in the strangely resonant darkness.

Then there came out of the little square a great uproar and commotion,

with shrieks, and under the shrieks a confused din. In vain she pressed

her face into the pillow and listened to the irregular, prodigious

noise of her eyelashes as they scraped the rough linen. The thought had

somehow introduced itself into her head that she must arise and go to

the window and see all that was to be seen. She resisted. She said to

herself that the idea was absurd, that she did not wish to go to the

window. Nevertheless, while arguing with herself, she well knew that

resistance to the thought was useless and that ultimately her legs

would obey its command.

When ultimately she yielded to the fascination and went to the window

and pulled aside one of the curtains, she had a feeling of relief. The

cool, grey beginnings of dawn were in the sky, and every detail of the

square was visible. Without exception all the windows were wide open

and filled with sightseers. In the background of many windows were

burning candles or lamps that the far distant approach of the sun was

already killing. In front of these, on the frontier of two mingling

lights, the attentive figures of the watchers were curiously

silhouetted. On the red-tiled roofs, too, was a squatted population.

Below, a troop of gendarmes, mounted on caracoling horses stretched in

line across the square, was gradually sweeping the entire square of a

packed, gesticulating, cursing crowd. The operation of this immense

besom was very slow. As the spaces of the square were cleared they

began to be dotted by privileged persons, journalists or law officers

or their friends, who walked to and fro in conscious pride; among them

Sophia descried Gerald and Chirac, strolling arm-in-arm and talking to

two elaborately clad girls, who were also arm-in-arm.

Then she saw a red reflection coming from one of the side streets of

which she had a vista; it was the swinging lantern of a waggon drawn by

a gaunt grey horse. The vehicle stopped at the end of the square from

which the besom had started, and it was immediately surrounded by the

privileged, who, however, were soon persuaded to stand away. The crowd

amassed now at the principal inlets of the square, gave a formidable

cry and burst into the refrain--

"Le voila! Nicolas! Ah! Ah! Ah!"

The clamour became furious as a group of workmen in blue blouses drew

piece by piece all the components of the guillotine from the waggon and

laid them carefully on the ground, under the superintendence of a man

in a black frock-coat and a silk hat with broad flat brims; a little

fussy man of nervous gestures. And presently the red columns had risen

upright from the ground and were joined at the top by an acrobatic

climber. As each part was bolted and screwed to the growing machine the

man in the high hat carefully tested it. In a short time that seemed

very long, the guillotine was finished save for the triangular steel

blade which lay shining on the ground, a cynosure. The executioner

pointed to it, and two men picked it up and slipped it into its groove,

and hoisted it to the summit of the machine. The executioner peered at

it interminably amid a universal silence. Then he actuated the

mechanism, and the mass of metal fell with a muffled, reverberating

thud. There were a few faint shrieks, blended together, and then an

overpowering racket of cheers, shouts, hootings, and fragments of song.

The blade was again lifted, instantly reproducing silence, and again it

fell, liberating a new bedlam. The executioner made a movement of

satisfaction. Many women at the windows clapped enthusiastically, and

the gendarmes had to fight brutally against the fierce pressure of the

crowd. The workmen doffed their blouses and put on coats, and Sophia

was disturbed to see them coming in single file towards the hotel,

followed by the executioner in the silk hat.

IV

There was a tremendous opening of doors in the Hotel de Vezelay, and

much whispering on thresholds, as the executioner and his band entered

solemnly. Sophia heard them tramp upstairs; they seemed to hesitate,

and then apparently went into a room on the same landing as hers. A

door banged. But Sophia could hear the regular sound of new voices

talking, and then the rattling of glasses on a tray. The conversation

which came to her from the windows of the hotel now showed a great

increase of excitement. She could not see the people at these

neighbouring windows without showing her own head, and this she would

not do. The boom of a heavy bell striking the hour vibrated over the

roofs of the square; she supposed that it might be the cathedral clock.

In a corner of the square she saw Gerald talking vivaciously alone with

one of the two girls who had been together. She wondered vaguely how

such a girl had been brought up, and what her parents thought--or knew!

And she was conscious of an intense pride in herself, of a measureless

haughty feeling of superiority.

Her eye caught the guillotine again, and was held by it. Guarded by

gendarmes, that tall and simple object did most menacingly dominate the

square with its crude red columns. Tools and a large open box lay on

the ground beside it. The enfeebled horse in the waggon had an air of

dozing on his twisted legs. Then the first rays of the sun shot

lengthwise across the square at the level of the chimneys; and Sophia

noticed that nearly all the lamps and candles had been extinguished.

Many people at the windows were yawning; they laughed foolishly after

they had yawned. Some were eating and drinking. Some were shouting

conversations from one house to another. The mounted gendarmes were

still pressing back the feverish crowds that growled at all the inlets

to the square. She saw Chirac walking to and fro alone. But she could

not find Gerald. He could not have left the square. Perhaps he had

returned to the hotel and would come up to see if she was comfortable

or if she needed anything. Guiltily she sprang back into bed. When last

she had surveyed the room it had been dark; now it was bright and every

detail stood clear. Yet she had the sensation of having been at the

window only a few minutes.