In the spring, Joan, at Mrs. Denton's request, undertook a mission. It
was to go to Paris. Mrs. Denton had meant to go herself, but was laid up
with sciatica; and the matter, she considered, would not brook of any
delay.
"It's rather a delicate business," she told Joan. She was lying on a
couch in her great library, and Joan was seated by her side. "I want
someone who can go into private houses and mix with educated people on
their own level; and especially I want you to see one or two women: they
count in France. You know French pretty well, don't you?"
"Oh, sufficiently," Joan answered. The one thing her mother had done for
her had been to talk French with her when she was a child; and at Girton
she had chummed on with a French girl, and made herself tolerably
perfect.
"You will not go as a journalist," continued Mrs. Denton; "but as a
personal friend of mine, whose discretion I shall vouch for. I want you
to find out what the people I am sending you among are thinking
themselves, and what they consider ought to be done. If we are not very
careful on both sides we shall have the newspapers whipping us into war."
The perpetual Egyptian trouble had cropped up again and the Carleton
papers, in particular, were already sounding the tocsin. Carleton's
argument was that we ought to fall upon France and crush her, before she
could develop her supposed submarine menace. His flaming posters were at
every corner. Every obscure French newspaper was being ransacked for
"Insults and Pinpricks."
"A section of the Paris Press is doing all it can to help him, of
course," explained Mrs. Denton. "It doesn't seem to matter to them that
Germany is only waiting her opportunity, and that, if Russia comes in, it
is bound to bring Austria. Europe will pay dearly one day for the luxury
of a free Press."
"But you're surely not suggesting any other kind of Press, at this period
of the world's history?" exclaimed Joan.
"Oh, but I am," answered the old lady with a grim tightening of the lips.
"Not even Carleton would be allowed to incite to murder or arson. I
would have him prosecuted for inciting a nation to war."
"Why is the Press always so eager for war?" mused Joan. "According to
their own account, war doesn't pay them."
"I don't suppose it does: not directly," answered Mrs. Denton. "But it
helps them to establish their position and get a tighter hold upon the
public. War does pay the newspaper in the long run. The daily newspaper
lives on commotion, crime, lawlessness in general. If people no longer
enjoyed reading about violence and bloodshed half their occupation, and
that the most profitable half would be gone. It is the interest of the
newspaper to keep alive the savage in human nature; and war affords the
readiest means of doing this. You can't do much to increase the number
of gruesome murders and loathsome assaults, beyond giving all possible
advertisement to them when they do occur. But you can preach war, and
cover yourself with glory, as a patriot, at the same time."
"I wonder how many of my ideals will be left to me," sighed Joan. "I
always used to regard the Press as the modern pulpit."
"The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power,"
answered Mrs. Denton. "It originated persecution and inflamed men's
passions against one another. It, too, preached war for its own ends,
taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime. The Press of to-
day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest. It aims at
establishing the worst kind of tyranny: the tyranny over men's minds.
They pretend to fight among themselves, but it's rapidly becoming a close
corporation. The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the
Union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be
squeezed out. Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and
English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press. It will one
day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan
cardinals."
Joan laughed. "I can see Carleton rather fancying himself in a tiara,"
she said. "I must tell Phillips what you say. He's out for a fight with
him. Government by Parliament or Government by Press is going to be his
war cry."
"Good man," said Mrs. Denton. "I'm quite serious. You tell him from me
that the next revolution has got to be against the Press. And it will be
the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had."
The old lady had tired herself. Joan undertook the mission. She thought
she would rather enjoy it, and Mrs. Denton promised to let her have full
instructions. She would write to her friends in Paris and prepare them
for Joan's coming.
Joan remembered Folk, the artist she had met at Flossie's party, who had
promised to walk with her on the terrace at St. Germain, and tell her
more about her mother. She looked up his address on her return home, and
wrote to him, giving him the name of the hotel in the Rue de Grenelle
where Mrs. Denton had arranged that she should stay. She found a note
from him awaiting her when she arrived there. He thought she would like
to be quiet after her journey. He would call round in the morning. He
had presumed on the privilege of age to send her some lilies. They had
been her mother's favourite flower. "Monsieur Folk, the great artist,"
had brought them himself, and placed them in her dressing-room, so Madame
informed her.
It was one of the half-dozen old hotels still left in Paris, and was
built round a garden famous for its mighty mulberry tree. She
breakfasted underneath it, and was reading there when Folk appeared
before her, smiling and with his hat in his hand. He excused himself for
intruding upon her so soon, thinking from what she had written him that
her first morning might be his only chance. He evidently considered her
remembrance of him a feather in his cap.
"We old fellows feel a little sadly, at times, how unimportant we are,"
he explained. "We are grateful when Youth throws us a smile."
"You told me my coming would take you back thirty-three years," Joan
reminded him. "It makes us about the same age. I shall treat you as
just a young man."
He laughed. "Don't be surprised," he said, "if I make a mistake
occasionally and call you Lena."
Joan had no appointment till the afternoon. They drove out to St.
Germain, and had _dejeuner_ at a small restaurant opposite the Chateau;
and afterwards they strolled on to the terrace.
"What was my mother doing in Paris?" asked Joan,
"She was studying for the stage," he answered. "Paris was the only
school in those days. I was at Julien's studio. We acted together for
some charity. I had always been fond of it. An American manager who was
present offered us both an engagement, and I thought it would be a change
and that I could combine the two arts."
"And it was here that you proposed to her," said Joan.
"Just by that tree that leans forward," he answered, pointing with his
cane a little way ahead. "I thought that in America I'd get another
chance. I might have if your father hadn't come along. I wonder if he
remembers me."
"Did you ever see her again, after her marriage?" asked Joan.
"No," he answered. "We used to write to one another until she gave it
up. She had got into the habit of looking upon me as a harmless sort of
thing to confide in and ask advice of--which she never took."
"Forgive me," he said. "You must remember that I am still her lover."
They had reached the tree that leant a little forward beyond its fellows,
and he had halted and turned so that he was facing her. "Did she and
your father get on together. Was she happy?"
"I don't think she was happy," answered Joan. "She was at first. As a
child, I can remember her singing and laughing about the house, and she
liked always to have people about her. Until her illness came. It
changed her very much. But my father was gentleness itself, to the end."
They had resumed their stroll. It seemed to her that he looked at her
once or twice a little oddly without speaking. "What caused your
mother's illness?" he asked, abruptly.
The question troubled her. It struck her with a pang of self-reproach
that she had always been indifferent to her mother's illness, regarding
it as more or less imaginary. "It was mental rather than physical, I
think," she answered. "I never knew what brought it about."
Again he looked at her with that odd, inquisitive expression. "She never
got over it?" he asked.
"Oh, there were times," answered Joan, "when she was more like her old
self again. But I don't think she ever quite got over it. Unless it was
towards the end," she added. "They told me she seemed much better for a
little while before she died. I was away at Cambridge at the time."
"Poor dear lady," he said, "all those years! And poor Jack Allway." He
seemed to be talking to himself. Suddenly he turned to her. "How is the
dear fellow?" he asked.
Again the question troubled her. She had not seen her father since that
week-end, nearly six months ago, when she had ran down to see him because
she wanted something from him. "He felt my mother's death very deeply,"
she answered. "But he's well enough in health."
"Remember me to him," he said. "And tell him I thank him for all those
years of love and gentleness. I don't think he will be offended."
He drove her back to Paris, and she promised to come and see him in his
studio and let him introduce her to his artist friends.
"I shall try to win you over, I warn you," he said. "Politics will never
reform the world. They appeal only to men's passions and hatreds. They
divide us. It is Art that is going to civilize mankind; broaden his
sympathies. Art speaks to him the common language of his loves, his
dreams, reveals to him the universal kinship."
Mrs. Denton's friends called upon her, and most of them invited her to
their houses. A few were politicians, senators or ministers. Others
were bankers, heads of business houses, literary men and women. There
were also a few quiet folk with names that were historical. They all
thought that war between France and England would be a world disaster,
but were not very hopeful of averting it. She learnt that Carleton was
in Berlin trying to secure possession of a well-known German daily that
happened at the moment to be in low water. He was working for an
alliance between Germany and England. In France, the Royalists had come
to an understanding with the Clericals, and both were evidently making
ready to throw in their lot with the war-mongers, hoping that out of the
troubled waters the fish would come their way. Of course everything
depended on the people. If the people only knew it! But they didn't.
They stood about in puzzled flocks, like sheep, wondering which way the
newspaper dog was going to hound them. They took her to the great music
halls. Every allusion to war was greeted with rapturous applause. The
Marseillaise was demanded and encored till the orchestra rebelled from
sheer exhaustion. Joan's patience was sorely tested. She had to listen
with impassive face to coarse jests and brutal gibes directed against
England and everything English; to sit unmoved while the vast audience
rocked with laughter at senseless caricatures of supposed English
soldiers whose knees always gave way at the sight of a French uniform.
Even in the eyes of her courteous hosts, Joan's quick glance would
occasionally detect a curious glint. The fools! Had they never heard of
Waterloo and Trafalgar? Even if their memories might be excused for
forgetting Crecy and Poictiers and the campaigns of Marlborough. One
evening--it had been a particularly trying one for Joan--there stepped
upon the stage a wooden-looking man in a kilt with bagpipes under his
arm. How he had got himself into the programme Joan could not
understand. Managerial watchfulness must have gone to sleep for once. He
played Scotch melodies, and the Parisians liked them, and when he had
finished they called him back. Joan and her friends occupied a box close
to the stage. The wooden-looking Scot glanced up at her, and their eyes
met. And as the applause died down there rose the first low warning
strains of the Pibroch. Joan sat up in her chair and her lips parted.
The savage music quickened. It shrilled and skrealed. The blood came
surging through her veins.
And suddenly something lying hidden there leaped to life within her
brain. A mad desire surged hold of her to rise and shout defiance at
those three thousand pairs of hostile eyes confronting her. She clutched
at the arms of her chair and so kept her seat. The pibroch ended with
its wild sad notes of wailing, and slowly the mist cleared from her eyes,
and the stage was empty. A strange hush had fallen on the house.
She was not aware that her hostess had been watching her. She was a
sweet-faced, white-haired lady. She touched Joan lightly on the hand.
"That's the trouble," she whispered. "It's in our blood."
Could we ever hope to eradicate it? Was not the survival of this
fighting instinct proof that war was still needful to us? In the
sculpture-room of an exhibition she came upon a painted statue of
Bellona. Its grotesqueness shocked her at first sight, the red streaming
hair, the wild eyes filled with fury, the wide open mouth--one could
almost hear it screaming--the white uplifted arms with outstretched
hands! Appalling! Terrible! And yet, as she gazed at it, gradually the
thing grew curiously real to her. She seemed to hear the gathering of
the chariots, the neighing of the horses, the hurrying of many feet, the
sound of an armouring multitude, the shouting, and the braying of the
trumpets.
These cold, thin-lipped calculators, arguing that "War doesn't pay";
those lank-haired cosmopolitans, preaching their "International," as if
the only business of mankind were wages! War still was the stern school
where men learnt virtue, duty, forgetfulness of self, faithfulness unto
death.
This particular war, of course, must be stopped: if it were not already
too late. It would be a war for markets; for spheres of commercial
influence; a sordid war that would degrade the people. War, the supreme
test of a nation's worth, must be reserved for great ideals. Besides,
she wanted to down Carleton.
One of the women on her list, and the one to whom Mrs. Denton appeared to
attach chief importance, a Madame de Barante, disappointed Joan. She
seemed to have so few opinions of her own. She had buried her young
husband during the Franco-Prussian war. He had been a soldier. And she
had remained unmarried. She was still beautiful.
"I do not think we women have the right to discuss war," she confided to
Joan in her gentle, high-bred voice. "I suppose you think that out of
date. I should have thought so myself forty years ago. We talk of
'giving' our sons and lovers, as if they were ours to give. It makes me
a little angry when I hear pampered women speak like that. It is the men
who have to suffer and die. It is for them to decide."
"But perhaps I can arrange a meeting for you with a friend," she added,
"who will be better able to help you, if he is in Paris. I will let you
know."
She told Joan what she remembered herself of 1870. She had turned her
country house into a hospital and had seen a good deal of the fighting.
"It would not do to tell the truth, or we should have our children
growing up to hate war," she concluded.
She was as good as her word, and sent Joan round a message the next
morning to come and see her in the afternoon. Joan was introduced to a
Monsieur de Chaumont. He was a soldierly-looking gentleman, with a grey
moustache, and a deep scar across his face.
"Hanged if I can see how we are going to get out of it," he answered Joan
cheerfully. "The moment there is any threat of war, it becomes a point
of honour with every nation to do nothing to avoid it. I remember my old
duelling days. The quarrel may have been about the silliest trifle
imaginable. A single word would have explained the whole thing away. But
to utter it would have stamped one as a coward. This Egyptian Tra-la-la!
It isn't worth the bones of a single grenadier, as our friends across the
Rhine would say. But I expect, before it's settled, there will be men's
bones sufficient, bleaching on the desert, to build another Pyramid. It's
so easily started: that's the devil of it. A mischievous boy can throw a
lighted match into a powder magazine, and then it becomes every patriot's
business to see that it isn't put out. I hate war. It accomplishes
nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before.
But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan
the conflagration. Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon.
Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war. Most of us do:
it's our opportunity. There's some excuse for us. But these
men--Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the
Menades of the Commune. They care nothing if the whole of Europe blazes.
They cannot personally get harmed whatever happens. It's fun to them."
"But the people who can get harmed," argued Joan. "The men who will be
dragged away from their work, from their business, used as 'cannon
fodder.'"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, they are always eager enough for it, at
first," he answered. "There is the excitement. The curiosity. You must
remember that life is a monotonous affair to the great mass of the
people. There's the natural craving to escape from it; to court
adventure. They are not so enthusiastic about it after they have tasted
it. Modern warfare, they soon find, is about as dull a business as
science ever invented."
There was only one hope that he could see: and that was to switch the
people's mind on to some other excitement. His advices from London told
him that a parliamentary crisis was pending. Could not Mrs. Denton and
her party do something to hasten it? He, on his side, would consult with
the Socialist leaders, who might have something to suggest.
He met Joan, radiant, a morning or two later. The English Government had
resigned and preparations for a general election were already on foot.
"And God has been good to us, also," he explained.
A well-known artist had been found murdered in his bed and grave
suspicion attached to his beautiful young wife.
"She deserves the Croix de Guerre, if it is proved that she did it," he
thought. "She will have saved many thousands of lives--for the present."
Folk had fixed up a party at his studio to meet her. She had been there
once or twice; but this was a final affair. She had finished her
business in Paris and would be leaving the next morning. To her
surprise, she found Phillips there. He had come over hurriedly to attend
a Socialist conference, and Leblanc, the editor of _Le Nouveau Monde_,
had brought him along.
"I took Smedley's place at the last moment," he whispered to her. "I've
never been abroad before. You don't mind, do you?"
It didn't strike her as at all odd that a leader of a political party
should ask her "if she minded" his being in Paris to attend a political
conference. He was wearing a light grey suit and a blue tie. There was
nothing about him, at that moment, suggesting that he was a leader of any
sort. He might have been just any man, but for his eyes.
"No," she whispered. "Of course not. I don't like your tie." It seemed
to depress him, that.
She felt elated at the thought that he would see her for the first time
amid surroundings where she would shine. Folk came forward to meet her
with that charming air of protective deference that he had adopted
towards her. He might have been some favoured minister of state kissing
the hand of a youthful Queen. She glanced down the long studio, ending
in its fine window overlooking the park. Some of the most distinguished
men in Paris were there, and the immediate stir of admiration that her
entrance had created was unmistakable. Even the women turned pleased
glances at her; as if willing to recognize in her their representative. A
sense of power came to her that made her feel kind to all the world.
There was no need for her to be clever: to make any effort to attract.
Her presence, her sympathy, her approval seemed to be all that was needed
of her. She had the consciousness that by the mere exercise of her will
she could sway the thoughts and actions of these men: that sovereignty
had been given to her. It reflected itself in her slightly heightened
colour, in the increased brilliance of her eyes, in the confident case of
all her movements. It added a compelling softness to her voice.
She never quite remembered what the talk was about. Men were brought up
and presented to her, and hung about her words, and sought to please her.
She had spoken her own thoughts, indifferent whether they expressed
agreement or not; and the argument had invariably taken another plane. It
seemed so important that she should be convinced. Some had succeeded,
and had been strengthened. Others had failed, and had departed
sorrowful, conscious of the necessity of "thinking it out again."
Guests with other engagements were taking their leave. A piquante little
woman, outrageously but effectively dressed--she looked like a drawing by
Beardsley--drew her aside. "I've always wished I were a man," she said.
"It seemed to me that they had all the power. From this afternoon, I
shall be proud of belonging to the governing sex."
She laughed and slipped away.
Phillips was waiting for her in the vestibule. She had forgotten him;
but now she felt glad of his humble request to be allowed to see her
home. It would have been such a big drop from her crowded hour of
triumph to the long lonely cab ride and the solitude of the hotel. She
resolved to be gracious, feeling a little sorry for her neglect of
him--but reflecting with satisfaction that he had probably been watching
her the whole time.
"What's the matter with my tie?" he asked. "Wrong colour?"
She laughed. "Yes," she answered. "It ought to be grey to match your
suit. And so ought your socks."
"I didn't know it was going to be such a swell affair, or I shouldn't
have come," he said.
She touched his hand lightly.
"I want you to get used to it," she said. "It's part of your work. Put
your brain into it, and don't be afraid."
"I'll try," he said.
He was sitting on the front seat, facing her. "I'm glad I went," he said
with sudden vehemence. "I loved watching you, moving about among all
those people. I never knew before how beautiful you are."
Something in his eyes sent a slight thrill of fear through her. It was
not an unpleasant sensation--rather exhilarating. She watched the
passing street till she felt that his eyes were no longer devouring her.
"You're not offended?" he asked. "At my thinking you beautiful?" he
added, in case she hadn't understood.
She laughed. Her confidence had returned to her. "It doesn't generally
offend a woman," she answered.
He seemed relieved. "That's what's so wonderful about you," he said.
"I've met plenty of clever, brilliant women, but one could forget that
they were women. You're everything."
He pleaded, standing below her on the steps of the hotel, that she would
dine with him. But she shook her head. She had her packing to do. She
could have managed it; but something prudent and absurd had suddenly got
hold of her; and he went away with much the same look in his eyes that
comes to a dog when he finds that his master cannot be persuaded into an
excursion.
She went up to her room. There really was not much to do. She could
quite well finish her packing in the morning. She sat down at the desk
and set to work to arrange her papers. It was a warm spring evening, and
the window was open. A crowd of noisy sparrows seemed to be delighted
about something. From somewhere, unseen, a blackbird was singing. She
read over her report for Mrs. Denton. The blackbird seemed never to have
heard of war. He sang as if the whole world were a garden of languor and
love. Joan looked at her watch. The first gong would sound in a few
minutes. She pictured the dreary, silent dining-room with its few
scattered occupants, and her heart sank at the prospect. To her relief
came remembrance of a cheerful but entirely respectable restaurant near
to the Louvre to which she had been taken a few nights before. She had
noticed quite a number of women dining there alone. She closed her
dispatch case with a snap and gave a glance at herself in the great
mirror. The blackbird was still singing.
She walked up the Rue des Sts. Peres, enjoying the delicious air. Half
way across the bridge she overtook a man, strolling listlessly in front
of her. There was something familiar about him. He was wearing a grey
suit and had his hands in his pockets. Suddenly the truth flashed upon
her. She stopped. If he strolled on, she would be able to slip back.
Instead of which he abruptly turned to look down at a passing steamer,
and they were face to face.
It made her mad, the look of delight that came into his eyes. She could
have boxed his ears. Hadn't he anything else to do but hang about the
streets.
He explained that he had been listening to the band in the gardens,
returning by the Quai d'Orsay.
"Do let me come with you," he said. "I kept myself free this evening,
hoping. And I'm feeling so lonesome."
Poor fellow! She had come to understand that feeling. After all, it
wasn't altogether his fault that they had met. And she had been so cross
to him!
He was reading every expression on her face.
"It's such a lovely evening," he said. "Couldn't we go somewhere and
dine under a tree?"
It would be rather pleasant. There was a little place at Meudon, she
remembered. The plane trees would just be in full leaf.
A passing cab had drawn up close to them. The chauffeur was lighting his
pipe.
Even Mrs. Grundy herself couldn't object to a journalist dining with a
politician!
The stars came out before they had ended dinner. She had made him talk
about himself. It was marvellous what he had accomplished with his
opportunities. Ten hours a day in the mines had earned for him his
living, and the night had given him his leisure. An attic, lighted by a
tallow candle, with a shelf of books that left him hardly enough for
bread, had been his Alma Mater. History was his chief study. There was
hardly an authority Joan could think of with which he was not familiar.
_Julius Caesar_ was his favourite play. He seemed to know it by heart.
At twenty-three he had been elected a delegate, and had entered
Parliament at twenty-eight. It had been a life of hardship, of
privation, of constant strain; but she found herself unable to pity him.
It was a tale of strength, of struggle, of victory, that he told her.
Strength! The shaded lamplight fell upon his fearless kindly face with
its flashing eyes and its humorous mouth. He ought to have been drinking
out of a horn, not a wine glass that his well-shaped hand could have
crushed by a careless pressure. In a winged helmet and a coat of mail he
would have looked so much more fitly dressed than in that soft felt hat
and ridiculous blue tie.
She led him to talk on about the future. She loved to hear his clear,
confident voice with its touch of boyish boastfulness. What was there to
stop him? Why should he not climb from power to power till he had
reached the end!
And as he talked and dreamed there grew up in her heart a fierce anger.
What would her own future be? She would marry probably some man of her
own class, settle down to the average woman's "life"; be allowed, like a
spoilt child, to still "take an interest" in public affairs: hold
"drawing-rooms" attended by cranks and political nonentities: be
President, perhaps, of the local Woman's Liberal League. The
alternative: to spend her days glued to a desk, penning exhortations to
the people that Carleton and his like might or might not allow them to
read; while youth and beauty slipped away from her, leaving her one of
the ten thousand other lonely, faded women, forcing themselves unwelcome
into men's jobs. There came to her a sense of having been robbed of what
was hers by primitive eternal law. Greyson had been right. She did love
power--power to serve and shape the world. She would have earned it and
used it well. She could have helped him, inspired him. They would have
worked together: he the force and she the guidance. She would have
supplied the things he lacked. It was to her he came for counsel, as it
was. But for her he would never have taken the first step. What right
had this poor brainless lump of painted flesh to share his wounds, his
triumphs? What help could she give him when the time should come that he
should need it?
Suddenly he broke off. "What a fool I'm making of myself," he said. "I
always was a dreamer."
She forced a laugh. "Why shouldn't it come true?" she asked.
They had the little garden to themselves. The million lights of Paris
shone below them.
"Because you won't be there," he answered, "and without you I can't do
it. You think I'm always like I am to-night, bragging, confident. So I
am when you are with me. You give me back my strength. The plans and
hopes and dreams that were slipping from me come crowding round me,
laughing and holding out their hands. They are like the children. They
need two to care for them. I want to talk about them to someone who
understands them and loves them, as I do. I want to feel they are dear
to someone else, as well as to myself: that I must work for them for her
sake, as well as for my own. I want someone to help me to bring them
up."
There were tears in his eyes. He brushed them angrily away. "Oh, I know
I ought to be ashamed of myself," he said. "It wasn't her fault. She
wasn't to know that a hot-blooded young chap of twenty hasn't all his
wits about him, any more than I was. If I had never met you, it wouldn't
have mattered. I'd have done my bit of good, and have stopped there,
content. With you beside me"--he looked away from her to where the
silent city peeped through its veil of night--"I might have left the
world better than I found it."
The blood had mounted to her face. She drew back into the shadow, beyond
the tiny sphere of light made by the little lamp.
"Men have accomplished great things without a woman's help," she said.
"Some men," he answered. "Artists and poets. They have the woman within
them. Men like myself--the mere fighter: we are incomplete in ourselves.
Male and female created He them. We are lost without our mate."
He was thinking only of himself. Had he no pity for her. So was she,
also, useless without her mate. Neither was she of those, here and
there, who can stand alone. Her task was that of the eternal woman: to
make a home: to cleanse the world of sin and sorrow, make it a kinder
dwelling-place for the children that should come. This man was her true
helpmeet. He would have been her weapon, her dear servant; and she could
have rewarded him as none other ever could. The lamplight fell upon his
ruddy face, his strong white hands resting on the flimsy table. He
belonged to an older order than her own. That suggestion about him of
something primitive, of something not yet altogether tamed. She felt
again that slight thrill of fear that so strangely excited her. A mist
seemed to be obscuring all things. He seemed to be coming towards her.
Only by keeping her eyes fixed on his moveless hands, still resting on
the table, could she convince herself that his arms were not closing
about her, that she was not being drawn nearer and nearer to him,
powerless to resist.
Suddenly, out of the mist, she heard voices. The waiter was standing
beside him with the bill. She reached out her hand and took it. The
usual few mistakes had occurred. She explained them, good temperedly,
and the waiter, with profuse apologies, went back to have it corrected.
He turned to her as the man went. "Try and forgive me," he said in a low
voice. "It all came tumbling out before I thought what I was saying."
The blood was flowing back into her veins. "Oh, it wasn't your fault,"
she answered. "We must make the best we can of it."
He bent forward so that he could see into her eyes.
"Tell me," he said. There was a note of fierce exultation in his voice.
"I'll promise never to speak of it again. If I had been a free man,
could I have won you?"
She had risen while he was speaking. She moved to him and laid her hands
upon his shoulders.
"Will you serve me and fight for me against all my enemies?" she asked.
"So long as I live," he answered.
She glanced round. There was no sign of the returning waiter. She bent
over him and kissed him.
"Don't come with me," she said. "There's a cab stand in the Avenue. I
shall walk to Sevres and take the train."
She did not look back.