THE FEMININE TOUCH.
I.
In a small South Kensington flat a young woman was seated before a
mirror, adding to her beauty with those artifices which are supposed to
lure the male to helpless capitulation. Two candles gave a shadowy,
mysterious charm to the reflection--a quality somewhat lacking in the
original--and it was impossible for its owner to look on the picture of
pensive eyelashes, radiant eyes, and warm cheeks without a murmur of
admiration. She smiled once to estimate the exact amount of teeth that
should be shown; she leaned forward and looked yearningly, soulfully,
into the brown eyes in the glass. With a sigh of satisfaction she lit a
cigarette from one of the candles, and leaning back, watched the smoke
passing across the face of the reflection.
'Hello, Elise!' said the beauty casually, as the door opened and Elise
Durwent entered, dressed in the uniform of an ambulance-driver.
'You'll find the room standing on its head, but chuck those things
anywhere.'
'Going out again?' asked the new-comer, stepping over several feminine
garments that had been thrown on the floor.
'Just a dance up the street--in Jimmy Goodall's studio. Listen, old
thing; do put on some water. I'm croaking for a cup of tea.'
Without any comment, Elise went into the adjoining room, used as a
kitchen, while the voluptuary dabbed clouds of powder over her neck and
shoulders. With a tired listlessness, Elise returned and sank into a
chair, from the back of which an underskirt was hanging disconsolately.
'You didn't do the breakfast-dishes, Marian.'
'Didn't I? Oh, well, they're not very dirty. Had a rotten day at the
garage?'
'It was rather long.'
'You're a chump for doing it. Working for your country's all very well,
but wait until after the war and see if the girl who's spoiled her hands
has a chance with the men. Why don't you wangle leave like I do? You
can pull old Huggin's leg any day in the week--and he likes it. All you
have to do is to lean on his shoulder and say you won't give up--you
simply _won't_. Aren't men a scream?'
'I suppose so,' said Elise after a pause. 'Who is your cavalier
to-night?'
'Horry.'
'Horace Maynard?'
'Absolutely. You know him, don't you, Elise?'
'Yes. He was visiting at our place in the country when war broke out.
When is he going back to France?'
'Monday.'
'He's been dancing pretty constant attendance, hasn't he?'
'Ra-_ther_. He says if I don't write him every day after he buzzes back,
he'll stick his head over the parapet and spoil a Hun bullet.'
'Those things come easily to Horace.'
'Oh, do they? I notice he doesn't go to you to say them.'
'No,' said Elise with a smile, 'that is so. Think of the thrills I miss.'
'Now don't get sarcastic. If Horry wants to make a fuss over me, that's
his business.'
'What about your husband at the front?'
'My husband and I understand each other perfectly,' said the girl,
glancing critically at the picture of two parted, carmined lips in the
mirror. 'He wouldn't want me to be lonely. He knows I have my boy
friends, and he's not such a fool as to be jealous. You want to wake up,
Elise--things have changed. A woman who sticks at home and meets her
darling hubby at night with half-a-dozen squalling kids and a pair of
carpet slippers--no thanks! The war has shown that women are going to
have just as much liberty as the men. We've taken it; and I tell you the
men like us all the better for it.'
'You think that because every man you meet kisses you.'
'Elise!'
'Good heavens! Don't they?'
'Well, I never! Anyhow, what if they do? Is there any harm in it?'
Elise smiled and shook her head. 'None, my dear Marian,' she said.
'There is no possible harm in it. There's no harm in anything now. The
old idea that a woman's purity and modesty---- But what's the use of
saying that to you? Of course you're right. Who wants to stay at home
with a lot of little brats, if you can have a dozen men a week standing
you dinners, and mauling you like a bargee, and'----
'Elise!'
'There's the water getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange
little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the
side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced
from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the
war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls
they married when they were on leave'----
'There you go again. For Heaven's sake, Elise, if you can't attract men
yourself, don't nag a girl who does. You're positively sexless. The way
you talk'----
'There's the water. When Horace comes I don't want to see him.'
'I guess he can live without it,' said the patriotic, leave-wangling
war-worker, with an angry glance at Elise as she disappeared into the
kitchen. Catching a glimpse of the frown in the mirror, she checked it,
and once more leaned towards the reflection as if she would kiss the
alluring lips that beckoned coaxingly in the glass.
II.
Marian had gone, radiant, and exulting in her radiance; and Elise sat by
the meagre fire trying to take interest in a novel. Although she had
found it easy to be confident and self-assertive when the other girl was
there, the solitariness of the flat and the silence of the street
undermined her courage. The dragging minutes, the meaningless
pages. . . . She wished that even Marian were there in all her
complacent vulgarity.
Although she had drawn many people to her, the passing of the years had
left Elise practically friendless. It was easy for her to attract with
her gift of intense personality; but the very quality that attracted was
the one that eventually repelled. The impossibility of forgetting
herself, of losing herself in the intimacies of friendship, made her own
personality a thing which was stifling her life. Since she was a child
she had craved for understanding and sympathy, but nature and her
upbringing had made it impossible for her to accept them when they were
offered. Lacking the power of self-expression, and consequently
self-forgetfulness, her own individuality oppressed her. It was like an
iron mask which she could not remove, and which no one could penetrate.
Going to London soon after the outbreak of war, she had been taken on the
strength of a motor-ambulance garage; and to be near her work she had
leased a small flat in Park Walk, sharing it by turn with various
companion drivers. Although her desire to be of service was the prime
reason of her action, it was with unconcealed joy that she had thrown off
the restraints of home. Freedom of action, a respite from the petty
gossip of her mother's set, had loomed up as the portals to a new life.
The thought of sharing the discomforts and the privileges of patriotic
work with young women who had broken the shackles of convention was a
prospect that thrilled her.
To her amazement, she discovered that the feminine nature alters little
with environment. It was true, her new companions had broken with all
the previous conceptions of decorum, but they had used their newly found
liberty to enslave themselves still further with the idea of
man-conquest. Officers--callow, heroic, squint-eyed, supercilious,
superb, of any and every Allied country--officers were the quarry, and
they the hunters. To love or not to love? Their talks, their thoughts,
their lives concerned little else. They fought for the attentions of men
like starving sparrows for crumbs.
In such an environment, where she had hoped to lose the burden of
persistent self, Elise found emancipation farther away than ever. The
_abandon_ of the others first created a reversion to prudery in her
breast, and then developed a cynical indifference. The others treated
her with friendly insouciance. Had she been ill, or had she met with an
accident, there was probably not one who wouldn't have proved herself a
'ministering angel.' As it was, they largely ignored her, indulging the
instinct of inhumanity which so often is woman's attitude towards woman.
So she sat alone, the Elise who had always been so resolute and
independent, feeling very small and pathetic, yearning for far-off
things--utterly lonesome, and a little inclined to cry.
The words of the book grew dim, and her thoughts drifted towards Austin
Selwyn. He had been contemptible! A pacifist! His idealism was a pose
to try to ennoble utter cowardice. At a time when men's blood ran high
he had prated of brotherhood, and peace, and suggested that the infamous
Hun had a soul! How she hated him! . . . And when she had finished with
that thought her heart's yearning returned more cruelly than before.
That evening by the trout-stream when she had seen Dick hiding in the
bush, Selwyn had caught her when she had almost swooned. He had gripped
her arms with his hands, and, quivering with emotion, had lent his
strength to her. At the memory the crimson of her cheeks deepened. They
had been so close to each other. His burning eyes, his lips trembling
with passion--what strange impulse in her heart had made her thrill with
a heavenly exhilaration? For that instant while his hands had gripped
her a glorious vista had appeared before her eyes--a world of dreams
where the tyranny of self could not enter. For that one instant her
whole soul had leaped in response to his strong tenderness.
She tried to dismiss the recollection as an admission of cowardice
engendered of the night's mood. But she could not do away with the
memories which lingered obstinately. Not since the days when Dick had
offered his blind loyalty had any one tried to understand her as Austin
Selwyn had done. She was grateful for that. She might even have valued
his friendship if he had not been so despicable that awful night. To
insult her with his talk of pacifism, and then, heedless of her
intensity, to propose to her! She could not forgive him for that. She
was glad her words had stung him!
Minutes passed. The fire would not answer to any attention, but sulkily
lived out its little hour. The evening seemed interminable.
It was shortly after ten o'clock when there was a knock at the door, and
Elise hurried to open it, thinking there might be a message from the
garage.
'It's only me, Elise,' said a familiar voice.
'Oh!--Horace,' she laughed. 'What's the trouble? Did Marian leave
anything behind?'
'No. I was just absolutely fed up; and when she told me you were here
alone, I thought I'd jolly well come down and talk to you.'
'Good! Come in. You mustn't stay long, though. Please don't notice
this horrible mess.'
In sheer pleasure at the breaking of the solitude, her vivacity made her
eyes sparkle with life. Her sentences were crisp and rapid, and as she
led the young officer to a seat by the fire it would have been difficult
for Elise herself to think that a few minutes before she had been
helplessly and lonesomely on the brink of tears.
'How is the dance going on up the street?' she asked, as Maynard inserted
a cigarette between his lips without lighting it.
'It's a poisonous affair.'
'Poor boy!'
'I'm fed up, Elise. I'm--I'm _gorged_. When I heard you were down here,
I said, "By George! I'll go and see her. I can talk to Elise. She's
got some sense."'
'What a thing to say about a woman!'
'Don't chaff me, Elise. I can't stand it. I'm frightfully
upset--really.'
'What has Marian been doing to you?''
'Nothing, except making a blithering ass of me. You know, I was
fearfully keen on her, and I've passed up all sorts of fluff so as to do
the decent; but when that brute Heckles-Jennings advised me to-night to
be sure and sit out a dance with Marian because she was such hot stuff,
he said . . . Of course, he's an outsider and all that, and I told him
to go to hell--but you don't blame me for feeling cut up, do you, Elise?'
'Didn't you know she was that kind?'
'What kind?'
'Oh--the--the universal kisser--the complete osculator--the'----
'I say'----
'But surely you don't think you are the only one she has made a fool of?
To begin with, there's her husband in France--a brother-officer, Horace.'
Maynard wriggled uneasily, sliding down the chair in the movement until
his knees were very near his chin.
'He's a rotter, Elise.'
'Do you know him?'
'N-no. But Marian says he absolutely neglects her. He's one of those
cold-blooded fish--doesn't understand her a bit. After all'--the extra
vehemence shifted him another few inches, so that he presented an
extraordinary figure, like the hump of a dromedary--'women must have
sympathy. They need it. They'----
'Oh, Horace!' Elise burst into a laugh. 'Are there really some of you
left? How refreshing! Why don't you put it on your card: "2nd Lt.
Horace Maynard, Grenadier Guards, soul-mate by appointment"?'
'I wish you wouldn't laugh like that.'
He was a picture of such utter dejection that, checking her mirth, Elise
laid her hand on his arm. 'Sorry, Horace. You know, if it hadn't been
for this war we might never have known how _nice_ our men are. I only
wonder how it is that the women have the heart to make such fools of you.'
The unhappy warrior pulled himself up to a fairly upright posture and
tapped his cigarette against the palm of his hand. 'I'm glad,' he said
with a slight blush, 'that you don't quite put me down as a rotter. I
don't know what's come over us all. Before the war, when you met a
chap's wife--well, hang it all!--she was his wife, and that was all there
was about it. But nowadays'----
'I know, Horace, it's a miserable business altogether--partly war
hysteria, and partly the fact that women can't stand independence, I
suppose. Marian's a splendid type of the female war-shirker. You know
she's married; yet, because she lets you maul her'----
'I say, Elise!'
'----and she murmurs pathetically that her husband in France neglects
her--at least, that's what she tells you. When she was dressing to-night
Marian said that she and her husband absolutely trusted each other.'
'By Jove! You don't mean that?'
'She also said that all men, including you, were a scream. Probably she
considers you a perfect shriek.'
Trembling with indignation, Maynard suddenly collapsed like a punctured
balloon and relapsed dejectedly into his recumbent attitude. 'What an
ass I have been!' he lamented sorrowfully. 'What a sublime ass! And
Marian--the little devil!'
'Rubbish!'
'Eh? I suppose you think I am an idiot for---- Well, perhaps you're
right.'
For a couple of minutes nothing was said, and the melancholy lover, with
his chin resting on his chest, ruminated over his unhappy affair.
'Hang it all!' he said at last, hesitatingly, 'when a chap gets leave
from the front he's--he's sort of woman-hungry. You don't know what it
feels like, after getting away from all that mud and corruption, to hear
a girl's voice--one of our own. It goes to the head like bubbly. It's
a--a dream come true. There's just the two things in your life--eight or
nine months in the trenches; then a fortnight with the company of women
again. It's awfully soppy to talk like this'----
'No, it isn't, Horace. It's the biggest compliment ever paid our women.
I only wish we could try to be what you boys picture us. That's what
makes me feel like drowning Marian every few days. Horace, I'm proud of
you.'
She patted his hand which was grasping the arm of the chair, and he
blushed a hearty red.
'Elise!' He sat bolt-upright. 'By gad! I never knew it until this
minute. _You_ are the woman I ought to marry. You are far too good and
clever and all that; but, by Jove! I could do something in the world if I
had you to work for. Don't stop me, Elise. I am serious. I should have
known all along'----
'Horace, Horace!' Hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry, Elise put
her hand over his mouth and checked the amorous torrent. 'You're a
perfect dear,' she said, 'and I'm ever so grateful'----
'But'----
'But you mustn't be silly. This is only the reaction from Marian.'
'It's nothing of the sort,' he blurted, putting aside her hand. 'I--I
really do--I love you. You're different from any other girl I ever met.'
'My dear, you mustn't say such things. You know you don't love me as you
will the right girl when you meet her.'
He got out of the chair by getting over its arm. 'I beg your pardon,
Elise,' he said, not without a certain shy dignity. 'I meant every word
I said--but I suppose there's some one else.'
'Only a dream-man, Horace.'
'What about that American?'
'What--American?' Her agitation was something she could hardly have
explained.
'That author-fellow at Roselawn. He was frightfully keen on you. I
remember half-a-dozen times when he would be talking to us, and if you
came in he'd go as mum as an oyster, and just follow you with his eyes.
Is _he_ the chap, Elise?'
'Good gracious!'--she forced a laugh-- 'why, I don't even know where he
is.'
'Don't you? He's in London; I can tell you that much. Last month in
France I ran across that Doosenberry-Jewdrop fellow---you know--the
futurist artist.'
'Do you mean Johnston Smyth?'
'That's the chap.'
'I didn't know he was in France.'
'Rather. I thought your brother would have told you.'
'_My brother?_' There was not a vestige of colour in her cheeks. 'What
do you mean?'
Maynard scratched the back of his head. 'Smyth told me,' he said,
wondering at the cause of her agitation, 'that Dick and he enlisted
together some months ago. By Jove! I remember now. He told me that
this American fellow put them up at his rooms in St. James's Square one
night. Smyth didn't know who Dick was until they got to France. He was
travelling under the name of Sherlock, or Shylock, or Sherwood'----
'I--I thought Dick was in China.' She wrung her hands nervously. 'You
didn't see him?'
'No. That's all I know about him, except that he was transferred to some
other battalion than Dinglederry Smyth's.'
She went over to a table and took a piece of notepaper from a drawer.
'Mr. Selwyn used to belong to the R.A.C.,' she said quickly. 'Would you
do me a favour, Horace dear?'
He murmured his desire to be of service in any capacity. Hesitating a
moment, she wrote hurriedly:
'_4th March 1915_, 2lA PARK WALK.
'DEAR MR. SELWYN,--Will you please come and see me as soon as you can? I
am not on night-duty this week.--Yours sincerely, ELISE DURWENT.'
She sealed the envelope and handed it to Maynard. 'Please find out from
the R.A.C. where he is, and ask them to send this note to him. I am
ever so grateful, Horace.'
'I suppose,' he said, looking at the envelope, 'that this means the--the
finish of my chances?'
She answered the question by wishing him good luck in France, but there
was a strange tremulousness in the softly spoken words.
He put out his hand shyly. 'Good-night, old girl,' he said, smiling with
a sort of rueful boyishness.
She took his proffered hand, and then, obeying an impulse, stooped and
pressed her burning cheek against it. 'Good-night, Horace,' she said
softly. 'I hope you'll come back safe to be a fine husband for some nice
girl.'
When he had gone, and his footsteps died away, she returned to the table.
Burying her face in her hands, she fought back the tears which surged to
the surface. Her love for Dick, her own loneliness, a mad joy in the
thought of seeing Selwyn again, a motherly pity for Maynard, a fury
towards Marian, an incomprehensible yearning--she felt that her heart was
bursting, but could not have said herself whether it was with grief or
with joy.
III.
From the time that Austin Selwyn received the note there was nothing else
in his mind--as in Elise's--but the coming meeting. As playwrights
planning a scene, each went through the encounter in prospect a dozen
times, reading into it the play of emotions which was almost certain to
dominate the affair. Although completely ignorant of her motive in
writing to him, Selwyn invented a hundred different reasons--only to
discard them all. Nor was Elise more able to satisfy herself as to the
outcome of the meeting. It was not his actions that were difficult to
forecast, but her own. Would her dislike of him be intensified? Would
she experience again the momentary rapture of that summer afternoon?
It was fortunate that another lover had appeared for Marian, so that the
desertion of Maynard did not leave her moping untidily about the place.
She was one of those women who are so singularly lacking in
self-sufficiency that, except when in the company of men, they are as
fiat as champagne from which the sparkle has departed.
It so happened, therefore, that Elise was again alone the following
evening, dreading Selwyn's arrival, yet impatient of delay.
A few minutes after eight she heard him knock, and going to the street
door, opened it for him. The night was a vapourish, miserable one,
blurring his figure into indistinctness, and when he spoke his voice was
hoarse, as though the damp tendrils of the mist had penetrated to his
throat.
Answering something to his greeting, she led him through the hall into
the sitting-room. He paused as he entered. Without looking back, she
crossed to the fireplace, and kneeling down, stirred the fire.
'May I help?'
'No, thanks. I prefer to do it.'
Her answer had followed so swiftly on his question that he stopped in the
act of stepping forward. She looked over her shoulder with a swift,
searching glance.
His face was a tired gray, and the silk scarf thrown about his neck
looked oddly vivid against the black evening-clothes and overcoat. But
if his face suggested weariness, his eyes were alive with dynamic force.
The intensity of the man's personality strangely moved Elise. She felt
the presence of a mind and a body vibrating with tremendous purpose--a
man who drew vitality from others, yet charged them in return with his
own greater store.
To her he seemed to have divorced himself from type--he had lost even the
usual characteristics of race. With the thought, she wondered how far
his solitary life had effected the transition, if his idealism had
brought him loneliness.
'Won't you sit down?' she said hesitatingly.
He acquiesced, and took a seat in the chair from which Maynard had run
the emotional gamut the previous evening.
'You look pale,' she said, drawing a chair near the fire. 'I hope you
have not been unwell.'
'No--no; it is merely that I have been so little out of doors. I could
not gather from your note what kind of work you were engaged in. I see
you are an ambulance-driver. I congratulate you.'
His voice conveyed nothing but polite interest in an obvious situation.
With over-sensitive apprehension she listened for any suggestion of
sarcasm that lay behind his words, but she could detect nothing beyond
mere impersonal courtesy--that, and a far-off weariness, as of one who
has passed the borders of fatigue.
'I wrote to your mother,' he said, 'when I heard of your elder brother's
death. It must have been a great grief to you all.'
She did not answer him. His manner was so cold that he might have been
deliberately disposing of a number of prepared comments rendered
imperative by the laws of polite intercourse.
'Why didn't you let us know you had seen Dick?' she said abruptly.
'Then--you have heard?' He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
'Only last night, by the merest accident. He might have been killed in
France, and we should never have known about it.' Her words were
resentful and swift. 'Will you please tell me about him?'
Omitting the incident of Archibald's tavern, Selwyn told of the chance
meeting with Dick, the encounter with Johnston Smyth, the night at the
rooms in St. James's Square, and the subsequent glimpse of them marching
through Whitehall.
'Your brother asked me to say nothing,' he said calmly. 'That is one of
the reasons why I did not let you know.'
'Had Dick changed at all?' she asked, trying to make her words as
listless as his. 'I wish that you would tell me something that he said.
You must know more about him than just'----
'I don't think he had changed,' said Selwyn; and for the first time his
voice was tinged with compassion. 'He spoke of you with a kind of
worship. I suppose you know how he idolises you.'
His dark eyes looked at her through partially closed eyelashes, but only
the manner in which her fingers compressed the fold of her skirt betrayed
the turmoil of her feelings.
'Is that all you can tell me?'
'That is all.' He made no attempt to elaborate the conversation or to
introduce any new theme. The scene which had promised to be so dramatic
was actually dragging with uncomfortable silences. She waited long
enough for him to speak, but when he remained silent--it was a sardonic
silence to her--she rose from the chair with the manner of one who has
determined to bring an interview to a close.
'Thank you for coming so promptly,' she said. 'I am most grateful for
your kindness to Dick--and I know enough of the law to realise that you
were taking a risk in hiding him.'
'It was nothing at all,' he said. He looked at her for an indication
that her questions were at an end.
'I hope you will be able to get a taxi,' she ventured helplessly.
For the first time he smiled, and she reddened with mortification. He
had been so cool and unyielding, so bloodless, that he had forced her to
a disadvantage. She knew he could not be ignorant of the strain of the
affair on her, yet he had done nothing to ease it. If she could have
projected her mind into his, she would have seen that his conduct was as
inexplicable to himself as to her. He knew he was hurting her. Perhaps
it was because her warm lips and crimson cheeks were creating a torment
in his soul that he could not curb the impulse to wound her. It may have
been the subconscious knowledge that where one can hurt one can conquer
that dominated his actions. While she resented the invulnerability with
which he guarded his own feelings, it is probable that any different
attitude on his part would have brought forth a more active unkindness on
hers. When men and women love, strange paradoxes are found.
They went to the door together, and in the brighter light of the hall
Elise saw for the first time that he was considerably thinner, and that
his brow was like marble. She felt a little stab of pity for him,
forgetting his own lack of sympathy towards herself; she caught a faint
realisation of what he must have endured for it to have marked him so
indelibly.
'Don't you think,' she said, 'that you ought to go to the seaside for a
while? You are not looking at all well.'
His lips grew firmer, but there was a curious look in his eyes as he
turned towards her. 'I have work to do here,' he said crisply.
'I know--but surely'----
'In London,' he said--and there was a suggestion of the fanatic's ecstasy
in his voice--'it is impossible to forget life. I don't want my mind
soothed or lulled. You can always hear the challenge of the human
destiny in London. It cries out to you everywhere. It'---- He had held
his head erect, and had spoken louder than was his custom; but, checking
himself, he made a queer, dramatic gesture with his hands.
The fire of his spirit swept over her. Once more she stood close to him,
as she had done so many times in her thoughts. She did not know whether
she loved or detested him. She was fascinated--trembling--longing for
him to force her to surrender in his arms--knowing that she would hate
him if he did. She gave a little cry as Selwyn, almost as if he read her
conflicting thoughts, took her arms with his hands once more.
'If we had both been English,' he said, and his voice was so parched that
it seemed to have been scorched by his spirit, 'or if we had met in other
times than these, things might have been different. I know what you
think of me for the work I am doing, but it would be as impossible for me
to give it up as for you to think as I do. We come of two different
worlds, you and I. . . . I am sorry we have met to-night. For me, at
least, it has reopened old wounds. And it is all so useless.'
She made no reply; but as his eyes were lowered to her face, and he saw
once more the trembling lips, her unsoiled womanliness, her whole vivid,
lonely, gripping charm, a look of suffering crossed his face. He
realised the hopelessness of it all, but the admission was like tearing
out a thread which had been woven into the whole scheme of his being.
'We both have our work to do,' he said wearily, letting his arms drop to
his side.
'Good-night.'
She answered, but did not give him her hand. With a repetition of the
farewell he left her, and she walked musingly into the room again. She
felt a flush of anger at his daring to say their friendship was
impossible, when she had not even suggested that it could ever be
resumed. His vanity knew no bounds. She was furious at having let him
hold her as he did--even more furious with the knowledge that she would
not have resisted if he had kissed her.