CHAPTER VIII

I

“I am writing to you, my dear Zoe, from the Café Romanico. But indeed the

talk all round me is so loud, I can hardly collect my thoughts. My finger

is better, but I have a pain in my neck. I do not know what it can be,

for as you know I do not squander money on doctor’s bills, which reminds

me, my dear Zoe, that it is quite impossible that you can already have

spent the ten pounds I gave you on leaving....”

Suddenly Pinto looked up. Across the babel of sound, a familiar name

struck his ear.... “Little Zoe Dene-Cresswell—si, si, I know her—I should

have known her better but she was occupied—Oh, very occupied ... all the

day and most of the——”

“For shame, Gian....”

Here the laughing voices became for the moment inaudible. Pinto knew the

first speaker by sight. It was a friend of his friend Marchetti, who had

arrived the day before from England to perform his military service. The

other man, a stranger, wore the R.F.C. badge. They were at a table behind

him, and doubtless had not recognized him. Without turning his head he

strained his ears to hear more. The English boy was reading aloud from a

letter.

“... ‘With the face of an orang-outang and the temper of a Patagonian

savage!’... How she can put up with him, I don’t know—and Cliffe says she

actually seems fond of the horrid coarse brute....”

Pinto had heard enough. He rose and stalked out of the café. He was

amazed, staggered by this proof of Zoe’s hypocrisy and infidelity. The

world swam in yellow and green before his bilious gaze. So Zoe could

write him every day those pretty little letters, sympathizing, yes,

daring to sympathize with the many discomforts of his enforced trip,

and all the while she was in the arms of another lover—a horrid coarse

brute with a face like an orang-outang and the temper of a Patagonian

savage.... Pinto thought he could have borne it better, had his rival

been a worthier man—in which supposition Pinto was entirely wrong.

In the first throes of his jealousy he decided never to see Zoe again,

never to write to her explaining his desertion. Let her wonder at it

as much as she pleased! He had been betrayed, he had been fooled, he

who had always been so good to her! Even now the thought of the ten

pounds rankled. How she must have rejoiced at the necessity for this

business-trip! How she must have laughed in her sleeve during their

farewells.... After all, she was a common little thing, this Zoe! He had

tried to educate her taste, but she was evidently glad to sink again to

the type of male with whom she was most at her ease. In time she would

learn the difference.... Pinto preened himself. He had done with Zoe.

But a month later, when his business-affairs were concluded, and it

was time to return to England, he decided that it was very dull,

cutting people off for ever without seeing the effect upon them of this

treatment; also he wanted his big row with Zoe; also he had discovered

that no French girls could cook macaroni like a certain English girl....

He did not see why he should deprive himself of the relief of telling

Zoe just exactly what he thought of her. His nerves were in a state of

suppressed irritation for lack of a victim. Yes, most decidedly he would

go to Zoe and have a grand scene with her, and then never see her again.

Perhaps he would throw something at her; perhaps even, he would challenge

his unknown rival. But this he resolved not to do, in case the challenge

should be taken up.

II

“Antonia dear, Miss Stella Marcus has just spoken to me on the telephone.

She asked for you. Perhaps I did wrong in not calling you, but she was

kind enough to say that I was not to trouble. She seems to be in deep

distress of mind, causelessly I should say, but of course I am in no

position to judge.”

“Why, mother?” Antonia and Cliffe were engrossed over a portfolio of

Cubist pictures by an aspirant for their candid criticism, when Mrs

Verity came to the door of the studio.

“Deb has eloped, with very commendable independence of spirit, I

thought, but I did not say so to Miss Marcus, who seemed in deep distress

of mind. Forgive me if I repeat myself, Antonia dear. Cliffe, do, I beg

you, forgive me if I repeat myself, but it is all so surprising.”

“Eloped! Deb! but she’s never said a word to me!” Antonia sprang to her

feet, scattering the drawings over the floor. “Whom has she eloped with?”

“Miss Marcus _said_ ... but I really and truly doubt if she can

be accurate, so perhaps I ought not to report her words—it is so

very, very difficult to know what is tactful and prudent under such

circumstances—but Miss Marcus said her niece had unfortunately eloped

this afternoon with Mr Cliffe Kennedy!”

Antonia raised quizzical eyebrows in Cliffe’s direction. “Present

appearances are in your favour, Cliffe—but still——”

Kennedy protested heatedly: “I have most emphatically _not_ eloped with

Deb! Do I look as though I’d eloped with anyone this afternoon? What

nasty people those Marcuses are, taking away a fellow’s character!”

“Perhaps they did not mean it uncharitably, Cliffe; I trust indeed that

if you or anyone were to elope with a daughter of mine, that I should

approve heartily—though certainly elope has an old-fashioned sound. The

Marcuses are slightly old-fashioned people; charming—I mean nothing to

their detriment, but laggards in emancipation. Young people do not elope

nowadays—they walk straight out of the dusty temple of convention on to

the open heath. But pray do not allow me to be a bore; I merely wanted to

assure you, Cliffe, that in repeating Miss Marcus’ comment, I in no way

attach any blame to your possible complicity.”

Cliffe bent and kissed her hand in its black silk mitten.

“I regret to state, dear lady, that I’ve frequently invited a daughter of

yours—I may say _the_ daughter of yours, to step with me on to the open

heath, but, deplorably archaic in her principles, she has always rigidly

insisted on the prior formality of a registrar’s office.”

Mrs Verity shuddered slightly. It was one of her troubles that the late

Mr Verity had succeeded in imposing upon her the legal right to bear his

name, before she knew enough of life, or the New Movement, to resent it.

“Mother, you’re being selfish. I want to know about Deb?”

“Oh, dear,” full of contrition. “And you have been so patient with me.

Now let me try and be accurate: I gathered from Miss Marcus that violent

argument had taken place this afternoon between little Deb and her

father, in which he censured her, most unwisely, if I may be permitted

to say so, for a too passionately independent spirit, and threatened

her with closer guardianship for the future. The brave child, refusing

to submit, has been seen leaving Montagu Hall at tea-time—no, a little

after, with a suit-case, but without a word of explanation. They are

anxious to discover her whereabouts. The object of the telephone call was

to enquire if Antonia knew anything.”

“But where do I come in?” demanded Kennedy in aggrieved innocence.

“Miss Marcus seemed to think it possible that you were involved in the

flight, but she did not give me her reasons for supposing so. I mentioned

indeed that you were here, but ... Cliffe, if you have an appointment

with Deb to-night,” Mrs Verity glanced at her neat wrist-watch—“it is

precisely a quarter to nine,” she said anxiously. “You ought not to be

late—if she has taken this step for your sake—I truly have no desire to

be meddlesome, but——”

Cliffe turned sulky, asserted that he knew nothing about Deb, that she

had probably gone for a walk, and that he and Antonia were due at Gillian

Sherwood’s at nine o’clock.

“People don’t go out for walks lugging a suit-case. Don’t be inhuman,

Cliffe. Deb’s such an impetuous little goose.... Oh, probably she has

gone to La llorraine—or to Zoe.... Yes, I remember Zoe offered her a

spare bed whenever she liked to drop in. I wish she had a ’phone.”

Antonia fidgetted irresolutely with an easel-peg, popping it in and out

of its hole.

“I’ll run round to Zoe,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Explain to Gillian for

me, will you, Cliffe? I shan’t rest till I find out—it puzzles me why Deb

doesn’t come here....”

After Antonia had quitted the studio, and Cliffe and Mrs Verity had

enjoyed a little desultory chatter on Reconstruction of Sexual Morality

in Conformity with the New Era of Womanhood, and what a pity it was that

darling Antonia was so intolerant, he departed for Bayswater, where he

found Winifred Potter lolloping in plump content on the horse-hair sofa,

with a penny novelette.

“Hullo, Winnie, where’s Gillian?”

“Hullo, Cliffe. I believe she’s out. Or she may be in her room. Just

look....” She was of the pretty unremarkable type of suburban girl,

who wears beads round a podgy white neck, and never moves save under

compulsion.

“Not in there, Cliffe,” as he opened the door of the bedroom adjoining;

“We’ve changed over, so that I needn’t do the stairs so much. Jill sleeps

on the third floor now. Wasn’t it sweet of her to change?”

Cliffe grunted and ran up to the third floor, then down again.

“Not a sign of her. At least—no—the whole bally floor is littered

with signs of her, but that’s all. Is she out? She expected me and

Antonia to-night to go to the Vermilion Club, but that’s nothing; no

inconvenience. Winnie, do wake up—you’ve grown fatter.”

“Theo says I’ve grown thinner,” said Winnie unperturbed.

“Theo was pulling your leg, my dear.”

“Was he? Yes, he often does. He _is_ a caution....”

“Where’s Gillian?” shouted Cliffe, whom, strangely, this placid young

woman could always irritate to a frenzy—(“If you _poke_ her mind you only

dimple the suet”—he complained to Antonia). “Where’s Gillian? She invited

Antonia and me to supper.”

“I expect she forgot,” lazily, “anyway, Antonia hasn’t come, so it

doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve come, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” Winnie sighed, and fingered her novelette.

“Well—I’m off again. Can’t waste a moment. Tell Gillian that we’re in a

terrible state; Antonia has had to run round to Zoe—Deb Marcus is missing

from home since yesterday—no; the day before—since days——” he paused, for

sensation.

“How perfectly awful. But I expect she’ll come back,” yawned Winnie.

It had become more essential to Cliffe than anything else in the whole

world, that Winifred Potter should be made to display some rending

emotion.

“No. She won’t come back. I ... happen to know she won’t come back, you

see.”

Winnie dangled her bare braceletted arm over the side of the sofa and

picked up a cushion which had slid to the ground.

“Why? Do you know where she is?”

“No. Only where she isn’t. Only where she isn’t, Winnie. And that’s on

earth.”

... After all, it was merely the question of the novelette. Now that

Cliffe had really produced a thrill which out-rivalled even “The Sin of

Lady Jacynth” by Coronal, Winnie immediately yielded him what he coveted

in the way of attention all agape. She was personally acquainted with

neither Deb nor Lady Jacynth, but Cliffe had proved himself a better

author than Coronal.

“—_Dead?_”

He nodded curtly, and stood for a moment with eyes fixed on the carpet

... then bent and cut off a loose strand absently with his penknife

... seemed on the verge of speaking ... thought better of it. Winifred

watched him; her light blue eyes were circles of horror and fascination.

“She’s not dead,” abruptly; “forget that I said it. I ought not—Ought

I?—I don’t know.... Upon my soul, I don’t know....” he began to stalk the

room, hair falling shaggily over his frowning forehead, as he jerked his

head in acute mental conflict.

Winifred was rapacious for detail: “Did anyone treat her badly?” she

whispered, with healthy gloating. “Any man, I mean?”

And one man stood stock-still as though he had been shot.

“What makes you ask _me_ that?”

“Was it you?” queried Winifred, very naturally.

And then he unburdened himself. He had by this time safely crossed that

precarious borderland stage in the Life of a Lie, by Cliffe Kennedy, when

that lie, from being artistically perceived, created and approved by his

own consciousness, is slowly and mysteriously merged, as far as he was

concerned, into genuine and independent existence, the self-supplied

ground-work entirely obliterated from his memory.

He was mostly worried, it seemed, as to whether he ought to tell Deb’s

people ... what he knew. Directly he heard that she was missing, her

threat of suicide had scorched like fire into his mind.... Why, that

night on the open common ... black blown space, and Deb’s wild hair swept

straight out like a drenched black banner by the wind; and Deb’s mood

black as night itself, and as passionate, declaring that she meant to

die—that she was tired of fighting God—“tired of fighting Him for you,

Cliffe.... And sometimes it’s easier to die than to live——” He had no very

clear notion of what the fuss was about, but he saw her face, a grey

blur, save where her eyes and mouth were wet and black ... and knew it

was best for him to turn and go; her ragged sobbing followed him through

the swish of the rain, black slanting stripes of rain....

So the man’s racing sense of what was fitly beautiful and tragic caught

the scene and flashed it into being; so his infallible ear caught the

sounds, ... and so he described it to Winnie Potter—till the complete

vision was broken all into bits—like the Cubist pictures which he had

last seen strewing the floor of Antonia’s studio.

... Mrs Verity’s recent remarks, a certain conversation with Otto Redbury

in the Tube, the actual Saturday to Sunday spent at Seaview, telepathic

oddments from Winifred’s conventional expectation, suggestion from the

cover-picture illustrating “The Sin of Lady Jacynth,” were all stirred

and flung pell-mell into the descending spiral vortex of Cliffe’s

prismatic imagination.

“Oh!” gasped Winifred at the end of the recital, “but I do think you

ought to tell them, Cliffe, even if you’re not sure—they might want to

drag the river, or something.... Anyway, they’ve got a right to know.”

“Granted that—have I the right to tell them? The Aunt mentioned me as

being mixed up in the whole horrible business, when she ’phoned Mrs

Verity. _Am I the person to tell them?_ ... when it may not even be true

... when I may be only the victim of my cursedly morbid imagination—And

yet—I wish to Heaven, Winnie, that someone would take the decision out of

my hands. I can’t stand it much longer—holding the secret alone—it gnaws

... like the fox—Spartan boy—you know!... I hold it tight, and it gnaws.

What do you suppose my nights are like?” turning with ferocity on to his

hearer, who replied simply: “What things you do say, Cliffe!”

“Ought I——” he hacked anew at indecision. The puzzle existed for him as

surely as though it were wrought in bits of metal, and sold in a box

for fourpence-halfpenny. Deb was missing; his name was mixed up in it;

ought the Marcuses to be told what he knew about that night—(hiatus)—at

Seaview? Was he the right person to tell them? These were all facts.

The hiatus was slurred over unperceived ... it was such a tiny hiatus.

Winifred Potter was responsible for it, by being fat, and yawning, and

talking in that slow flaccid way of hers.... But it was an absorbing

problem! And underneath a top layer of recently-manufactured tragedy,

Cliffe’s genuine nature was genuinely concerned about Deb, and the

circumstances which attended her flight from home, and his own possible

share in the matter. Was any course of action expected of him—not

officially by her family, but in the way of ordinary decency? An offer of

marriage? Surely not! but he ought to go and look for her——

In the river?

Who said she was in the river? truculently. Winifred Potter. She had

talked about dragging it ... nasty idea! Anyway, how did she know? She

was too fat to know anything—just a mischief-maker—And then again—ought

the Ledburys to be told?... Would it be worse for them to wait from hour

to hour and from week to week, hope slowly drained away—or be dealt the

sudden blow?

Not by him in any case. Not by the man who ought to have married Deb.

His entranced mind, pacing the hiatus like a bridge between fact and

fancy, took him out of the house and half-way down the street before he

even realized that he had left the room. And he had completely forgotten

to say good-bye to Winifred.

* * * * *

... Presently she picked irresolutely at the edges of “The Sin of Lady

Jacynth.” She wondered if it would be wrong to finish it; like—like

raising the blinds too soon after a funeral. But—it was not as if she had

known Deb any better than Jacynth. And the solution to that lady’s sin

was so handy ... one did not have to go out and drag for it, or even move

from the sofa....

Winifred did not move from the sofa, not when the front-door bell was

violently pealed—again—and several times again. She went on reading.

After about six minutes, the lodger on the third floor, who had

previously admitted Cliffe, came tramping wearily down the stairs again

to let in Gillian Sherwood.

“So you _are_ at home, you lazy young pug. And awake?”

“Have you lost your key again?” Winnie reprimanded her.

“Yes—no—here it is, in the ash-tray. I remembered suddenly that Cliffe

and Antonia were supposed to turn up to-night, and flew home.” Gillian,

yielding to natural tendencies, scattered widely her hat and gloves and

coat in various portions of the room. Then chased them and retrieved them

and draped them tidily on one chair, remembering that if she did not do

so, nobody would. It was on understanding of the performance of this

and like jobs that Winifred had been enlisted as her room-mate. Thus

Gillian would be left free to be a genius. Winnie was glad to leave her

own chaotic home of exacting parents and brothers. She ensconced herself

tranquilly and for good on the sofa of Gillian’s furnished apartments.

Having naturally a sweet disposition, she did not complain because it

was a horsehair sofa and very slippery. And Gillian, having naturally

a sweet disposition, enlivened by humour, continued to make brilliant

effective dashes at domesticity, in the between-whiles of her other work;

with the sole difference that now she cleared up for Winifred as well as

for herself. She had grown fond of the plump little parasite; and took

the same sort of freakish delight in her as Cliffe in Otto Redbury. And

Winifred was mulishly averse from returning home; she was happier with

Gillian; Gillian gave her more pocket-money than ever father did. And

Gillian was famous—a personage.... It was all very nice. She was never

going to leave Gillian.

Gillian began to hurl supper on to the table, smashing three plates and

a jam-jar, confidently indifferent as a conjuror who smashes a watch in

the knowledge that he can produce it whole again out of the top-hat of

the Gentleman in the Back Row. Winifred watched her listlessly for a few

moments, till it dawned upon her that knives and forks were being laid

for four.

“Cliffe and Antonia aren’t coming. Didn’t I tell you? Cliffe has been

here already, and he says that Deb Marcus has killed herself!”

“Then she probably has a cold in the head,” Gillian commented, with the

perfect serenity of one who has often sampled the output from the Kennedy

factory.

Winifred was indignant; and even roused herself to convince Gillian; who

presently admitted that there “might be something in the story!”

“—Anyhow, Cliffe oughtn’t to be allowed to walk about with such a dynamo

joggling loose in his pocket. Did you say he did or did not intend to

explode it on the Marcus family? Because if the girl is really missing,

it may frighten them.”

“He wasn’t sure. Never mind. We don’t know any of them.” And Winifred

rolled off the sofa and established herself comfortably at the table.

Gillian’s eyes twinkled at her—narrow green-grey eyes set askew in an

odd, thin, freckled face. Gillian’s body was also thin and small-boned

to a degree. And her hair, which, by all the rights of compensation

should have been a gloriously redeeming feature, was short and

mouse-coloured and ragged—short with the round pudding-basin effect. The

man who loved her could say that she had pretty wrists and ankles, and

enormous fascination. Then, lacking material, he must perforce cease from

hyperbole.

(“Go on, Theo—what next?” and he could never be quite sure if she were

wilfully plaguing him, or else blind to her own shortcomings. “Theo, do

you know a bit in Browning about ‘Mistresses with great smooth marbly

limbs’?... Jolly line, isn’t it?... Or d’you admire the slender type

more? I—I suppose you _would_ call me slender, wouldn’t you?... Not

exactly the right word?—Well, _svelte_ then? ... like ladies in the

corset advertisements. No? Theo, not—not scraggy—Oh, you wouldn’t call me

scraggy, _would_ you?...”

Then, after a pause, still persistent: “Theo—_would_ you call me scraggy?

Do tell!”

“You’re just the squeak of a mouse made concrete, Gillian.”

“That’s not such a good line as Browning’s,” she sighed. And he, being

a sensual epicure, sighed also, thinking of the great smooth marbly

limbs—and for the thousandth time racked his brains for what attracted

him so mightily and desperately in this exasperating bit of a creature

with—with——

“_Well_, Theo?” expectantly.

“With remarkably pretty wrists and ankles.”

And: “Go on, Theo,” in complacent appreciation of these. “What next?”)

“Where’s the blanc-mange?” enquired Winnie, whose favourite pudding it

was.

Gillian pushed her hands backwards through her hair, in an effort of

memory; “I believe I turned it out on the washstand in your room. You’ll

find it there when you want it.”

“Why, are you going out again?” as the other rose impetuously from supper.

“I’m not happy about that Deb Marcus kid.... Not my business, but Cliffe

is such an irresponsible lunatic—and if even Antonia doesn’t know what

he’s saying about it all——”

“Nobody knows but me and him,” said Winifred importantly. “It’s a secret.”

Gillian bestowed on her a quick mobile grin. “Mind you keep it, then. Did

you say Antonia had gone round to Zoe?”

Winnie nodded, her mouth full of salad.

“Right. ’Night, Winnie.—Lord, I’d nearly forgotten that key again. Why

didn’t you remind me? Think of the national calamity if I’d called you up

out of bed.”

Winifred assented, but reflected no doubt that there was always the

lodger on the third floor.... “You might give me the blanc-mange, Jill,

as you’re up.”

III

“I say, is my sister here?”

Zoe opened her eyes very wide: “Are you _Seul au Monde_?” she whispered

cautiously, bending from the threshold towards Richard till her rumple

of primrose curls fell forward over the shoulders of her frilly white

dressing-jacket.

He stepped back a pace.

“Because if you are”—with a gurgle of laughter—“then I’m _Petite

Sœur_—but you’re not half as French as I thought you, and why aren’t you

in your nice uniform? Never mind—are you hungry? Did you cross to-day? Do

you think you’re going to like me as much as you supposed?”

“Well, honestly, you’re awfully jolly and all that—but you see we’re a

bit bothered about Deb just at present. Is she here?”

“Deb—oh, then you’re _her_ brother. Mr Richard Marcus, isn’t it?”

Zoe immediately adapted herself to the change of notion, and all the

possibilities it in its turn entailed. “D’you know who I thought you

were? My unknown correspondent at the Front—I answered his Ad. in the

“Vie Parisienne”; there was no harm in it, was there? He wrote back such

a darling letter—and promised to come here on his next leave. So of

course I thought.... But it doesn’t matter one bit, so do come in. I’m

really rather glad you’ve come, between ourselves, because my landlord’s

called on me and he’s perfectly _awful_ when he starts.”

“What a beast!” rather hazy, nevertheless, as to what it was the landlord

started. Possibly the poor kid was behind-hand with the rent, and he was

trying to cart away her furniture. “I say, _is_ Deb here?”

“No, but I daresay if she told you to meet her here, she’ll turn up

presently, so you might as well wait. I’ve often wondered what you were

like ...” with a serious intimate scrutiny from under drawn brows,

which she always found “went” well with under seventeen and over sixty.

“Come into the sitting-room. You’ll excuse these clothes, but I was just

dressing for to-night when he came”—with a nod towards the room—“and

you won’t believe me, but I’ve had to be perfectly horrid to him ...to

counteract the effect of my hair down, you know. I suppose he has the

kind of wife who keeps hers always in iron curlers—shouldn’t you think

he has? So, poor man, one would expect a little agitation. But there are

limits, aren’t there? I mean from one’s landlord. So you really are a

godsend ...a sort of guardian angel. Isn’t it curious, but I’ve always,

even when I was a kiddie, wanted to see my Guardian Angel in the flesh—at

least in his clothes—you know what I mean? Because I was always quite

sure he was a man—it didn’t seem right that he shouldn’t be, somehow.”

“Bet you could have made a man of him, anyway,” said Richard in blind

admiration. And he was right; Zoe could be relied on to rouse the sex

element from any substance in her vicinity, even a guardian angel.

Delighted with his tribute, and still gabbling, she preceded him into the

sitting-room, and prettily introduced him to the landlord, a very low

man, but genial, and obviously with no evil intentions on the furniture.

The difficult point at issue seemed to be that he desired to pay for the

new carpet; and Zoe, wriggling coyly on the edge of temptation, would yet

not quite yield to it. “Though if spitting on a carpet makes it yours,

I’m sure I’ve no more claims at all, Mr Wright!” with a look of coquetry

that mellowed her unexpectedly frank rebuke.

Richard was enjoying it—enjoying _her_ immensely. There was no real cause

for alarm about Deb; only the family were fussing. And he was flattered

by Zoe’s skill in making him feel essential to her being, while dimly

recognizing that the flattery was somewhat impaired by its too even

distribution between himself and the landlord. Zoe was not in the least

Richard’s ideal. But Zoe was—well, rather a rag! And she bespoke applause

by the zest and candour with which she demanded it, retailed it, invented

it ...her existence might present a surface appearance of muddle, but

perhaps more than other girls she could hail herself as a success. Zoe

knew how to unwind unlimited quantities of what makes you happy, and how

to be made happy by a material of which unlimited quantities exist for

the unwinding.

“I’m going to be taken out this evening by a Cavalry giant who clanks and

jangles the whole way up the stairs, and calls me ‘You dear little thing!

fancy livin’ all alone with no one to look after you—it’s a shame!’—and

brings me presents. He’s about forty and thinks I’m not quite seventeen;

and when I perch winsomely on his knee and turn his pockets inside-out to

find what he’s got for me, he’s just as pleased as a little child. Really

he is! And then I spread out all my presents on the table to make them

look more, and dance round them and skip and clap my hands with glee.

Oh, he loves it when I clap my hands with glee. You shall both see me do

it if you wait long enough. Isn’t it funny what things please some men?

Sometimes I say ‘What have you brought me?’ and he says ‘nothing at all’

to tease me, and I pout—like this—look—look, Mr Marcus!—and he can’t bear

to see me so disappointed and pulls an enormous painted chocolate-box

from behind his back! That sort of treatment is wonderfully rejuvenating,

you wouldn’t believe it; tons better than massage. There he is, and I’m

not dressed yet!” She scuttled into her room as a door banged down on

the street level; then popped her head in again to say: “You’ll keep him

entertained, won’t you, till I’m ready? He’s quite easy!”

“Would he rather have me or Mr Wright to perch on his knee?” laughed

Richard.

“Ef it’s fur turnin’ aht ’is pawkits, it’ull be me!” the landlord

remarked with a facetious wink.

As the footsteps were heard, though without any of the perceptible clank

and jangle foretold, Zoe again appeared, with comb tugging at her curls.

“I wonder if the sight of you two would upset him.... I’ve told him that

I had no friends in the world except him and one old lady who’s kind to

the lonely little girl”—she eyed the landlord dubiously—“Oh, you could

pretend to be the broker,” with a quick spurt of inspiration. “Will you,

Mr Wright? It might make him feel generous, mightn’t it? And you”—even

in the extremity of haste and peril she checked herself from a tactless

decision that maybe Richard was too young to matter much—“You—behind

the curtain. No—your boots will show. Get into the cupboard—Quick!”

She banged the door on him, and banged her bedroom door, just as the

front-door of the flat, left open at Richard’s entrance, banged shakily

behind the entering newcomer.

“Like a bally old farce,” Richard reflected; he did not know that people

ever really hid in cupboards. Though in Zoe’s flat such behaviour seemed

not only free from eccentricity, but rhythmically correct.

He knew the flat quite well.... Richard’s imagination was not the

choked-up affair of a year ago. This was the flat where comic

misunderstandings took place, and false identities, where an

incriminating glove was left in the corner, and where screens fell down

at the wrong moment; it was the flat for runaway wives; the flat where

the husband is made to look a fool. It was jolly, now, actually to be in

such a flat, actually to be the Man in the Cupboard; Richard chuckled

silently ... then grew impatient, till, after seemingly endless waiting

in muffled darkness the fourth wall against which he pressed his weight

gave way, and he stumbled forward into a room full of people.... “Fancy,

I forgot you for the moment,” laughed Zoe, who had released him. “Why

didn’t you bang or shout? Here’s Antonia come to find Deb. I’m sure I

don’t know why all London is running here this evening to enquire after

that sister of yours. Isn’t it funny—she and Monsieur le Caporal met on

the stairs, and _he_ thought she was _Petite Sœur_, didn’t you?—just like

I took Mr Marcus for _Seul au Monde_!”

A young man in uniform, with round red cheeks and a tassel dangling from

his cap, stood adoring Zoe with an embarrassed smile, obviously not

understanding a word of her harangue. There are two types of Belgian

soldier—the stolid peasant who is shy, and the dapper townsman who is

bold. Zoe unfortunately had hooked one of the former species. Undaunted,

she turned her welcome into French with morsels of pidgin English

inserted for the benefit of Mr Sam Wright, that he might not feel left

out of the conversation; Richard over by the window, was explaining to

Antonia about Deb.

It was Mr Wright who discovered that the Belgian had had nothing to eat

for fourteen hours. “’Old on, Missy—the young chap’s guts is fair yawning

for a bit o’ something solid. This is my treat—see—and you go an’ cook

a steak for ’im. Veev la Belgium!” and the Corporal, understanding,

stood at attention—and then bowed gratefully to Mr Wright, to Antonia,

and Richard, and Zoe, in turn, while the tassel from his cap bobbed

absurdly....

Zoe, interrupted in a rapid _résumé_ of her own intimate history,

calculated to set the intruder at his ease, took up the threads again

while she ran in and out of the kitchen, laying the table and grilling

the steak.

“Isn’t it a good thing I’ve still got some wine in the house—this is the

last bottle, but I expect more to-morrow—it’s a present. Oh, not from

Captain Braithwaite—I wonder why he’s so late, by the way?—but there’s an

Italian wine-and-macaroni shop just round the corner, and the owner is

simply crazy about me ... an atrocious old man with black teeth, but he

does stock good wines, and so cheap.... His wife caught him out ogling

me over the counter one day, and now she won’t leave the shop, so the

old demon comes round here, and brings me Chianti on the sly, hoping to

melt me. There’s not the slightest chance that I shall be melted, but you

don’t think it’s wrong of me to accept the wine, do you? I mean he takes

the risk of losing all and gaining nothing, doesn’t he?... Of course I

daren’t let him into the flat, besides, I wouldn’t do such a thing! No,

I wouldn’t, because I don’t honestly think it’s right, if his wife feels

like that about me, do you, Mr Wright? So I half open the door and tell

him to leave the bottles outside and go away quietly for both our sakes!

He supposes I’ve got a jealous husband—the Italian bandit kind, with

ribbons and daggers all the way up their legs.... And just fancy, once

he had the cheek to come round without any wine at all, and said—well, I

didn’t know men were like that, did you, Antonia? But I sent him home to

fetch some pretty quick. Wouldn’t you have?” appealing to the Caporal,

who murmured “Mais oui, certainement!” and sat down to his steak as to

a serious business. He shovelled up the food strangely, and thought how

beautiful was Zoe, in her white frilly dressing-jacket, clouded with

yellow curls....

“Why not go round to La llorraine?—Deb might be there,” Antonia

suggested. And reluctantly Richard stood up. Deb was a nuisance—of

course she was all right. He disliked La llorraine and Manon; but Zoe

and her doors and her landlord and her Belgian and her spaniel and her

lovers and her stories, had a unique flavour of attraction. Any further

developments, comic or ridiculous, might occur at any moment, in this

atmosphere.... Sure enough, a door banged four flights of stairs away

... scuffle of many feet approaching—and:

“Why, it’s Captain Braithwaite,” cried Zoe, in a clear, childish treble

of astonishment. “And did you find little Becky and Mark and Joey on

the stairs? What’s the matter, Becky? broken your scooter? ... never

mind, let me give you a ginger-snap—two ginger-snaps are better than one

scooter, aren’t they? What a pretty drawing of a thermometer, Joey? Is it

for me? Now that is sweet of you.”

“Mother thayth I’m to athk you to ’ave a look at me thore throat, Mith!”

The children of the Second Jewish Tailor, whom the good-natured Cavalry

officer had gathered and brought in from the landing, were grouping

themselves round Zoe’s Barrie-like representation of the lonely little

mother to whom all the children bring their troubles, as spontaneously

and efficiently as though they had been rehearsed for weeks. Zoe really

had been very good to them in different ways at different times, and

their present adhesion round her knees, in full view of a beaming Captain

Braithwaite, was her reward.

Antonia, in an aside to Richard, anxiously questioned her own grotesque

fancy that yet another set of doors had just banged, and yet more

footsteps were scuffling and clattering up the stairs: “This flat is

haunted by a delusion of banging doors—listen!”

“Listen!” echoed Zoe, smashed into sudden silence—“It’s Pinto!” she

whispered, all her gay resourcefulness paralysed.

“She hears it too,” Antonia sighed with relief; “I don’t mind so much

if we’re all raving together!” And indeed it was obviously incredible

that the corpulent whiskered person who was projected squealing into the

sitting-room, by an image of bony yellow ferocity, could be otherwise

than chimera. The wine-bottles which the pursued swung in impotent

arabesques from either hand, erased the last touch of credibility.

“Face—like—an—orang-outang—temper—Patagonian savage ...” were the only

words distinguishable from the yapping, snapping medley of limbs and

bottles and vituperation.

There was a crash of splintered glass, and ruddy liquid poured into

pools on the carpet, and Zoe cried out to Captain Braithwaite, who flung

his big form on top of the belligerents and wrenched them apart. The

ensuing sequence of events was rather too nimble for disentanglement.

The Italian wine-and-macaroni merchant from round the corner collapsed

panting—then rallied his faculties and bolted for the door. Zoe darted

in his wake, and returned triumphant, a few seconds afterwards, carrying

the second and undamaged flask of Chianti. Meanwhile Pinto had vented his

spleen upon the Cavalry officer, the landlord, the round-eyed Belgian,

and Richard, on whom each in turn he fastened his saga of “face like

an orang-outang—tempaire of a P-P-Patagonian savage!”... The return of

Zoe he greeted by a violent and uncomprehensible outbreak of what was

certainly bad language and probably Portuguese; informed her that he knew

all about it, and was done with her for ever ... caught up a chair and

wrenched it into fragments ... glared viciously at the innocent amazement

of Monsieur le Caporal; jabbed an accusing finger at him—“You—yes, it is

you—you may have her—she is worth nothing, I tell you—stop eating and

take her—take her—take her!” lifting the remains of the steak from the

plate and flinging it across to the window, where it narrowly missed

Antonia—“Here—just you stop that!” Richard ejaculated, doubling his fists

truculently.

“Leave ’im alone, Sonny—’e dunno wot ’e’s doing!”

The finger travelled instantly round to the pacifist—“Whose is this

house, you——?”

“Mine!” the landlord retorted, putting up his boots on the sofa as a sign

of ownership. “Nah shut up, do—ladies present!”

“It is then you with the face and the temper?”

“Face and temper yourself!” from Mr Sam Wright, which retort, though

merely made in the way of casual repartee, was, had the assembled company

only known it, the full explanation of the scene so astounding them.

But Pinto’s suspicions made a last leap at Captain Raymond Braithwaite.

“Take her”—flourishing with both arms in Zoe’s direction. “She is

ungrateful, unloyal. True affection is not to be found in her nature. She

lies and thieves; she is untidy in her clothing; she has betrayed me and

will betray you. Take her—perhaps your temper like a Patagonian savage

will keep her in order. Take her and beat her if you please. Who am I

to have a claim?...” He recapitulated the entire list of Zoe’s crimes,

linked to the benefits his easy-going generosity had showered upon her;

shed tears at the recollection of his own innocent confiding trust and

little tender ways; surpassed himself in an ebullition of Portuguese

and English blended into one final expanding monstrous, wall-cracking,

hair-stiffening execration, anathema, and blight——

Antonia stepped forward, and laid her hand on his arm.

“You’re not behaving at all nicely, and we’re tired of you,” she said

gently but distinctly.

Pinto, checked in his onrush of epithet, rolled round at her a pair of

livid, yellow eyeballs; spluttered; made a few inarticulate sounds in his

throat—and departed.

No one could deny that his visit, though short, had been full of lively

colour.

“Ma foi!” said the Belgian poilu, still gaping stupidly after his steak.

Richard burst into a shout of laughter, and went on laughing boyishly,

irresistibly. It was infectious ... presently Sam Wright joined in, and

Captain Braithwaite, and Antonia, and even the Belgian. Zoe, on the verge

of tears, was the last to succumb.... “At least, we’ve got some wine

now,” she gurgled, divided between sobs and hysterical mirth. “And we’d

better drink it—it’s g-good wine and so cheap! I’m glad I remembered just

in time to nip it.” She darted away for glasses—“But honestly, I haven’t

the faintest idea what Pinto was so cross and unkind about, have any of

you?”

“He did seem a bit annoyed: what?” guffawed Captain Braithwaite. “Here’s

to his good recovery!” They all drank Pinto’s health in excellent

Chianti.... A bell tinkled from below.

“Oh dear! he must have jammed the downstairs front door in going out, and

now people can’t push it open. I do think he ought to control himself a

little bit better than that, don’t you? I mean, it’s so horrid when one

has visitors.” The bell tinkled again impatiently. “Will one of you go

down?”

IV

Deb dawdled along the street, painfully carrying a suit-case. La

llorraine had insisted on keeping her to supper, but the Countess was

occupying the only vacant room in the house ... anyway, you could always

rely on a bed at Zoe’s whenever you turned up—time enough to-morrow to

think things over....

Somebody was already on the doorstep pealing at the bell: “The door

usually stands open, but it must have got jammed.... Do you want tailor

Moses, tailor Jacob, or tailor Isaac?”

“I don’t want a tailor at all, thanks. Not to-night, anyhow. I want Zoe

Dene-Cresswell? I wonder if she’s in.”

Again Gillian tugged at the bell. “You look as if you ought to be Deb

Marcus.”

“I am.”

“I’m Gillian Sherwood. Put down your suit-case and shake hands. I’ll

carry it up for you, if ever they admit us.”

Gillian at last! Deb was first conscious of triumph—followed by a quick

pang of guilt. She had not sought out this meeting; it was purely

accidental—but what would Antonia say?

Antonia opened the door to them.

PART III

CHAPTER I

I

Deb was living with La llorraine. She indignantly refused to return

home on the understanding that she was to be partially forgiven for an

offence she had never committed; on the other hand, her affection for

Ferdie caused her a pang of acute misery when she saw how the belief in

her sins had stripped him of a certain chubby contentment which even the

war and its complications had hitherto left unimpaired. For of course

her swift dramatic rupture with her family toppled to an anti-climax.

Richard took home the tidings of her whereabouts; and a day after her

flight, Aunt Stella appeared at Zoe’s for a parley. The tolerance of the

period did not permit an erring daughter to be blasted with a parent’s

curse and left to suicide—or worse—in the dark cold streets of London.

The tolerance of the period sanctioned some natural anxiety over the said

daughter’s material welfare, tentative negotiations, and a return home

to a great deal of nagging and an atmosphere of reproachful discomfort.

Perhaps Deb foresaw the final inevitable item; perhaps also, her

passionate self-persuasion that she could not bear continual witnessing

of Ferdie’s sighs and worried forehead, was the outcome of a guilty

suspicion that it was more by haphazard than by virtue that she was able

to mount her pedestal and stand aggrieved upon it.

“It’s the fault of my very lax upbringing,” she argued with the guilty

suspicion.

“Yes, but——”

“It’s lucky that I have a certain fundamental standpoint of moral

decency,” with crushing pomposity.

“Yes, but——”

The yes-buts had it.

“I can’t live at home with Aunt Stella hating me like this,” weakly.

And here she was right. Even Ferdie recognized that his sister and

his daughter were henceforth not likely to dwell together in a state

of affectionate harmony. Stella had been queer about Deb ever since

discovery that Deb was—initiated. What was to be done? And then La

llorraine appeared at Montagu House, an emissary from Deb.

“My dee-urr—leave it to me.”

La llorraine was magnificent, she was Miladi, she was Josephine

Beauhamais, and Madame de Maintenon and Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of

Portsmouth, and every other _intriguante_ of foreign history, entrusted

with dispatches and a cardinal’s secret, a go-between from one royal

court to another. She wore filmy black, and a huge black hat cast a

mysterious shadow over her eyes; she wore all her sables, and Parma

violets; and fingered them meaningly with her long thin white hands

as though they were a symbol of a lost cause. She flattered, cajoled

and hinted, and laid down her cards and picked them up again; and her

speech was worldly and witty and wise, and her smile was maternal,

or suggestive, or discreet, and she overwhelmed Ferdie Marcus with

dupery and diplomacy, and left him quite dazed, but convinced that the

arrangement made was the only one possible in view of the subtleties

involved; and that moreover it had emanated straight from him.

“So, my dee-urr, you join us in our humble little appartement, and your

father will put you in possession of your own income. Have I done well?”

“—Turned out of home plus a cheque-book?—that’s what I call an _éviction

de luxe_,” laughed Antonia, when Deb told her of the new arrangement,

while re-packing her suit-case to quit Zoe’s flat five days after her

weary arrival. Zoe was out at rehearsal.

“What are you going to pay La llorraine per week for board and lodging?”

“My-dee-urr,” Deb imitated the grand manner and the large gesture by

which her future landlady had dismissed the question—“Zat—between us? it

shall arrange itself——”

Antonia looked enigmatic, and warned Deb that the first time she arrived

at the appartement, and found her breakfasting at eleven o’clock in a

dirty wrapper and curl-papers, in the Venetian drawing-room, on stale

mayonnaise, with La llorraine practising scales, and Manon being demure

with the fishmonger because the canaille wanted to be paid, she would

immediately haul her off to an environment less pictorial but more

hygienic.

“Fishmonger, indeed!” Deb turned Quelle Vie out of the suit-case, “when

we want fish, La llorraine, pale and haughty, kisses Manon on the brow

and goes out to pawn the Crown Jewels; then she brings home the fish and

chips in a piece of newspaper, and we sit down to enjoy it while she

tells us sniggering anecdotes of fifth-rate music halls.”

“Look here,” demanded Cliffe, striding into the room, “I’ve been

interviewing your brother, Deb, and he says that little bit of mange who

calls himself Otto Redbury is responsible for our good name dragged in

the mud. He says that verminous Dutchman called on your father full of

a ‘brivate peesiness’ just before the row. What I want to know is, _who

told him_? And a rumour has got about that you committed suicide last

Friday night. That’s not exactly funny, is it? We’ve got to track those

scandals to their sources. You don’t seem to realize how serious it is.

Our honour is at stake!”

“It’s so good of you to include mine,” Deb said meekly. “Sit down,

Cliffe, and don’t rave. I suppose I started them myself!” And she related

her dramatic confession to Samson Phillips. And Cliffe listened, frowning.

“But this is all hypothesis. You mentioned no names to Phillips. You

didn’t actually specify that night at Seaview. I’m not reproaching you

for the lie itself, Deb—that was merely silly; feminine boasting. But

Otto must have got his definite facts from someone else, and I’ve written

him an imperative letter on the subject. It begins: ‘Sir’”

“That’s not highly striking or original in itself, Cliffe. Why not

‘Honey?’”

Antonia laughed. “Tell us Otto’s answer when you get it, Cliffe. I

respect you for taking a strong line!” But Cliffe did not show them the

reply he received from Otto; he studied it in solitude and bewildered

indignation. What could the man mean by reminding him of a certain

conversation in the Tube? He recalled, with an effort, having once

travelled in Otto’s company, and having talked a great deal of fantastic

rubbish for Otto’s benefit, but he was quite sure that not the veriest

scavenger could have picked Deb’s name from among the rubbish-heap—“I’ve

always been very careful over names....”

II

Deb, taking her present emancipation as a vantage-point for a survey

of her past, as a whole and in segments and phases, arrived at a

conclusion that the general inadequacy on the amorous side was due to

foolish compromise. She made up her mind, therefore, to reform, and be

bad—thoroughly bad. In the episode with Samson she had proved to herself

that she was no longer fit for the conventional extreme of respectful

love and sheltered marriage. Her dilatory sense of daring must therefore

be flogged to that other far extreme—“I hate betwixts and betweens!”

A little balm of self-deception had to be applied. Hitherto she had

been more or less under home supervision; not stringent supervison,

certainly; but a background of loving trust was a hindrance in itself.

Now the trust had been withdrawn—and the background. Now she was on her

own—free—disillusioned—slightly embittered—(Deb prodded the embitterment

anxiously—yes, it was still there....) Now she was twenty-five and at the

cross-roads——

Deb did not realize the truism that even as every woman’s life holds

material for one novel, so that generic novel may generically and with

perfect application bear the title: “Cross-roads.”

She had been on the look out for the hero to her heroine, and he had

failed in the appointment. Now she was in search for the villain to her

adventuress, and it seemed at first as though he would prove equally

elusive. A series of minor experiments left her seriously convinced that

in choice of a villain, a young girl cannot be too careful.... “He must

make it worth while——” Perhaps after all she was still on the same old

quest translated into different terms.

Meanwhile, the winter passed; and early spring woke her slightly bilious

soul to fretfulness. Her habits had slackened to harmony with her

environment of cosmopolitan bohemianism; but whereas a bed erected in

the Venetian drawing-room and covered by day with a priceless piece of

embroidery, seemed to La llorraine all that was necessary in the way of a

tiring-room—“My dee-urr, you can use Manon’s mirror as your own—it goes

without saying——” yet Deb was not quite happy at the general sloppiness

of tea-gowns and mysterious foreigners and rich meals at all hours—or

at no hours—Carmen for breakfast, Tosca for supper, and out-of-season

dishes in between—music-hall managers strolling in to slap “my good

llorraine” familiarly between the shoulders, and look avariciously at

Manon, who, however, a child of mummers and motley, was interrogated with

a strictness which Deb, daughter of strictest Israel, would never for a

moment have suffered. But La llorraine knew more of her world and was

wiser in education than Ferdinand Marcus; La llorraine, who sometimes put

on enormous horn spectacles and sat knitting by the fire; and sometimes

rose up like a prophetess and tossed a pair of desperate arms to Heaven,

in denunciation of _that_ war which prevented return to a beloved

continent which knew something of good music; La llorraine was equally

genuine and lovable in either mood; and Deb grew to be sincerely fond

of her. But Manon was another matter; Manon, at eighteen, held to her

pose of exiled princess, a slender figure in the vast loneliness of the

drawing-room—a lonely little heart mysteriously unsoiled by contact with

aforesaid mummers and motley. She listened charmingly when Deb scattered

ethics of rebellion; she appeared slightly shocked when decorum demanded

that she should be shocked—and yet—and yet—for all the demureness of

reproving eyelash and “Oh, but, Deb——” in the pretty lisping accent, Deb

could not be rid of an impression that when it came to it, Manon would go

further and fare a great deal better than herself. Manon had hitched her

wagon to a fixed star, whereas it looked as though Deb had hitched hers

to a travelling circus.

“We’ve had enough of this,” exclaimed Antonia, an unexpected visitor

after a tour in the car which had lasted the whole of February—“Not

dressed yet? and it’s nearly twelve o’clock; sluggish appetite?—no

wonder, if you smoke scented cigarettes with your coffee and eggs. Even

as I prophesied!”

“Don’t be hard on me,” Deb pleaded; “I’m not entirely dead to better

things—really, Antonia. I feel the call of Spring urging me out and

out.... Let’s go to a cinema, shall we?”

“On the contrary, we shall gird up our loins and do war-work, my child,”

grimly. “We shall speak to our mothers and ask them what particular niche

is vacant for one willing but ignorant daughter of pleasure, and we

shall send word of the result by this evening latest. And meanwhile, we

will withdraw our plaits that writhe like blue-black serpents among the

exquisite but macabre foliage of last year’s tablecloth, and put away the

dregs of green chartreuse, and sit up and comb ourselves out, and try to

be a credit to a nation at war.”

Deb laughed and said she was quite willing to do war-work, and had meant

to enrol herself since some time, but had thought it too late....

“Oh, I think the war may be trusted to last another month or two.”

“I meant,” in fractious explanation, “that it always seems to me too late

to do something afterwards which one hasn’t done before.”

“Lazy little Oriental.... You will visit my mother at 6 p.m. precisely

this evening and receive your instructions,” with which Antonia departed.

“Blair Stevenson is said to be coming back to the Foreign Office” was the

sub-conscious wriggle of motive underlying her sincere belief that Deb

would be the better for a more strenuous existence.

For Blair Stevenson, in the Diplomatic Service, was Gillian’s friend;

Antonia liked him, appreciating to the full his supple wit and undeniably

perfect breeding; his pursuit of her was ardent enough for her to enjoy

keenly the sensation of flying ... he never drew near, and presently

the pursuit slackened; he was sent abroad—British Resident of some West

African province; and when he returned, fell easily into place as one

of her group—an excellent occasional. Antonia was aware that he was

still on good terms with Gillian ... and that if accidentally he met Deb

there—“What does it matter?” But the fierce desire persisted to keep the

child ... pure.

The eventful climax of the meeting between Gillian and Deb on Zoe’s

doorstep, Antonia accepted quietly and almost with relief. It had

happened, and there was no more to be done—by her at least. A week

afterwards she was forced to leave London—her Major-General was

perpetually touring and inspecting and dashing hither and thither. Deb in

her letters had spoken no further word of Gillian (Deb was afraid, as a

matter of fact, knowing Antonia’s probable state of mind), but Gillian,

in divine unconsciousness, dashed off a hasty postcard on which “dear

Deb,” struck out, was replaced by “dear Antonia.” It was probably the

only card Gillian could find amongst the frenzied litter on a desk which

Winifred ought to have kept tidy ... but it told Antonia all she wanted

to know—all that she did not want to know: Deb and Gillian were getting

on nicely....

And now Blair was returning. For all her liking of Blair’s society, she

infinitely preferred him in Greece, where he was at least safe from the

result of Cliffe’s parties or Gillian’s introductions.... Antonia could

not be for ever vigilant ... the Major-General was beckoning once more——

And then came that sunny letter from Cliffe Kennedy informing her of

a marvellous studio party he had arranged. “I borrowed your studio as

usual, and you can have Seaview in the summer whenever you want it. These

are little eddies of communal brotherhood that one day will unite to a

surging river that will sweep away, etc.——”

Antonia skipped a page or two till the names she sought, dreading to

find, sure to find, sprang at her from the page—“Blair Stevenson—Deb....”

... “I had a sort of presentiment that something was bound to happen if

I brought those two together.... And again, Antonia, my experimental

nerve had twitched to some purpose. Bet you a copy of the Omar Khayyam

(I’ve got seventy-two) that this fusion of personalities will have

Results—dramatic or beautiful or horrid.... Do come home and join the

audience—I’m so excited.”

III

Deb, entirely absorbed in her canteen work, had given up scanning the

horizon for the villain of the piece; so that it was with a shock that

she looked up and found him standing quite close to her, waiting for his

cue.... Almost she hoped that he would prove not worth while.... Those

nights under the gaunt station roof, watching the restless watchers for

the leave train, watching the grimy burdened soldiers tumble with dazed

eyes out of their compartments on to the platform ... till roused to

the necessity for rapid mechanical dole of coffee and sandwiches—wash

up—start afresh—hour after hour.... These nights had become more real

than the arrangement and re-arrangement of her own temperament.

But Blair was so definitely worth while that Deb dared not refuse him

as a prospective—what? The old dream was dead, of course ... dream of

the big thing—husband who knew of all her past idiocies, and called

her a goose and laughed at her, and understood; small sturdy boy in a

dark blue jersey and rumpled hair several shades too light for such a

brown skin.... “You are being not only sentimental, but also futile!”

she informed herself. “Next there will be pretty fancies all about a

dream-garden”—and straightway there was the garden, at the magical hour

of after-tea when the grass looks as though it had been freshly painted,

and the canterbury bells are adrip from recent watering....

Sternly Deb removed husband, child and garden by the dream-scruff of

their dream-necks,—she sought for some delicate means to enlighten Blair

Stevenson of her willingness to—to——

Self-communion slurred over the verbal expression of good—or bad—intent.

For it refused to present itself with more elegance than “to go the whole

hog”—and such blatant slang did not associate itself readily with Blair’s

personality.

“To fulfil my womanhood,”—but that sounded priggish. “To tread the

primrose path” was affectation. “To take a lover” was the final

selection—but still imperfect. She chose it for the sake of the word

“lover” which still hummed to her on that deep sonorous note of wind

along the wires ... “lover.”

Meanwhile, her watchfulness lay in ambush for that splendid flare

of passion which was to be her impetus and justification. She had a

passionate temperament.... How could it be otherwise, with those eyelids

and that mouth? Men and women alike had accused her of hot Eastern blood;

insisted upon it; warned her, laughing or in envy, of the penalties. She

accepted this established version of herself in an unquestioning spirit.

“Child, you’d lead a man to hell!” a victim had once foretold. Now she

waited for a man to lead her to hell. She could at least be assured

that Blair Stevenson would instinctively and unostentatiously choose

quite the least travelled and the most refined and expensive route

thither. He was that kind of man; with a reputation, but not a vulgar

one, for success with women. Deb, seeking to express crudely the sense

he aroused of having dipped to her class from that elusive class which

lies midway between the upper middle-class and the aristocracy, told

herself in confidence that he made her feel not unlike a housemaid

being took notice of by one of the quality. Hitherto, most of the men

with whom she had come in contact, could be tabulated as solid business

or professional—like Samson or her own father; or else urged by the

prevalent rebellion to type, into the artist or vagabond pose—like Cliffe

Kennedy.

Blair Stevenson was of such excellent family that he never mentioned his

family; probably most of it was extinct, and the rest knew better than

to encircle him save at a distance. He had travelled extensively both in

cities and in the wilds, so that he combined cosmopolitan ease with the

British knack of being able to cope with emergencies. Although he was not

much more than thirty-five, the Foreign Office had already recognized

his perfect tact and suavity, combined with knowledge of languages,

to be extremely useful to them; so that he was accounted one of those

mysterious beings “in the know”; “behind the scenes”; one of the men who

“pulled strings.”... He had been entrusted with a rather tricky mission

to the Balkans, prior to his present leave. His natural appendages and

equipments one would assume to be a faithful valet in his town chambers,

a faithful _maître d’hotel_ in every capital, and a faithful mistress no

one knows where; because Stevenson, though ardent, was discreet where

women were concerned; but certainly the carriage of her head proclaimed

her exquisite breeding, and she cost him a great deal of money....

And all this about him, speculative and positive, did not quite convey

why Deb was not always sure (metaphorically) how to use her knives and

forks in his presence. Easy to make mistakes—tiny, silly mistakes of

conduct or subtlety—and read in his eyes a dawning recognition that she

was not quite “it” after all, or his amusement perhaps at her quaint

lapses from sophistication: “Am I an amateur compared with what he’s

accustomed to?” Then angrily: “Oh, he swanks, and I’m a snob!” which was

inaccurate. He took “form” for granted, and she was shaky about it. Blair

Stevenson could be relied on for good manners; not so much the surface

good manners connected with the graceful opening of doors for the lady’s

exit, but the more fundamental good manners which broke a heart as a

heart would most wish to be broken.

IV

“I’ve waited long enough,” said Deb.

It suddenly frightened her that again she was hesitating too long; that

decision was wearing thin and threadbare with the days.... Perhaps

Blair had not realized ... it must be puzzling for a man nowadays to

differentiate between the merely good; the frankly bad; the good trying

to be bad; and the bad resolved to be good.

“I suppose he needs what Aunt Trudchen used to call ‘a little

encouragement,’” Deb reflected.

Then by what sign could she convey to him that her intentions were

dishonourable? They had, of course, dispassionately talked of sex, which

is the weather-subject of to-day’s men and girls.... Deb was afraid,

standing on tiptoe to the clubman and the cosmopolitan, that she might

have given an excessive impression of sophistication; and that he was

inwardly astonished, now, that she delayed to pass him some customary

code-word or countersign necessary to his advancement. She had not the

faintest idea what was expected of her, so she essayed a semi-confidence

in La llorraine.

That royal veteran of a more clear-headed period, when courtesans were

expected to know their alphabet, could not fail to be good-humouredly

contemptuous at the spectacle of these children playing their variations

of an old game with such quaint and ponderous seriousness; and getting

so very little out of it in the way of genuine passion, genuine fun, and

ermine cloaks.

Out of the question, certainly, that Manon should join these games. But

Deb was six years older and had “made a muff from her chances,” as Manon

would never be permitted to do. Moreover, Deb was not La llorraine’s own

daughter.... So La llorraine shrugged her shoulders, and gave her the

necessary tip.

* * * * *

Deb was on her way to call upon Blair Stevenson unexpectedly at his

rooms in Jermyn Street. It was a quarter past ten in the evening, and

because she had just been relieved from duty at Victoria Station, she was

wearing a long disguising cloak over silk garments that slip on the skin

with a suggestion of suave fingers. Blair was at home—she had telephoned

during the day, and, preserving an incognito, had asked the valet what

would be the best time to telephone again? The valet said: “I believe

that ten o’clock to-night will be most likely to find Mr Stevenson.”...

Blair would realize the significance of her visit; and—and once lifted to

response, her fatal temperament could be relied upon to do the rest.

“I’ve waited long enough. Oh, suppose I waited till nobody wanted me any

more, and then I wanted it more than anything else....”

She leant against the door for a pause of short, quick breathing. The

neighbourhood, the steps and passages, the windows, were all discreet

good form, world of the clubman, the cosmopolitan, the man who knows ...

utterly alien world to the forlorn little virgin, who stands, suddenly

erect and stiff and pearly-white; thumb pressed firmly on the bell-button

of No. 141B.

* * * * *

“It’s _now_....”

Queer—never before had she realized the present so vividly; “it has been

a minute ago,” “it will be the day after to-morrow” ... but “It’s now,”

as Blair, with a smile and a subtle look, threw away his half-smoked

cigar, took the half-finished cup of coffee from her hands.

“Now—now——”

She was one pulse that beat for initiation. Her cheap artist fancy

had always decorated the temple of initiation so heavily with incense

and tiger-skins and divans and rose-leaves, all the crude stock and

properties of rapture, that the reality of this ordinary room, big

leather arm-chairs and a few prints on the plain dark walls, and a

bookcase, and several ash-trays scattered about, this so essentially

a man-room, left her disappointed. Had she relied too much upon the

trappings? ... but—Blair had taken her in his arms, _now_....

And still no response from that—that most damnably sluggish temperament.

Very precisely and dispassionately she noticed for the first time that

one of his lids lay over the eye with a heavier slouch than the other.

She was pleased with the behaviour of his face under stress of emotion

... it did not grow hot nor red nor damp; the veins did not bulge; his

breath was under control. She had been right in her selection of Blair

Stevenson—but—but——

The ungrateful temperament, which she had provided with the best

advantages, was failing her utterly....

She kissed his exacting lips with as much of faked ecstasy as she could

coax to her aid, and then wondered, supposing she laughed,—the word

ecstasy always made her want to laugh—if that indecorum could be passed

off as further ecstasy?

And all this time she did Stevenson the injustice of believing him

imperceptive.

“Deb ... my dear....”

He had from the beginning philosophically summed her up as incapable of

extremes. But it was not as though he were dependent.... He did not love

Deb; he was a little bit in love with her; and she was elfish, delicate,

captivating, freshly surprising at each encounter, like in June the

first strawberry whose unremembered flavour one has taken for granted

through the winter months. Yes, she was charming. And he was wrong in his

estimate of her. After all, she had come to him——

One tiny gesture of his—and Deb’s histrionics lay shattered like a wave

into foam....

“No ... no ... no—not _now_.... Oh, _please_!”

* * * * *

A moment later, and Blair said, from the other end of the room: “There

was no need for that ‘please,’ dear. The first ‘no’ would have been

enough.”

She lay angrily sobbing, hair not even disordered, her drapings of

pale ninon shamefully untumbled. The desperate encounter had yielded

her one scrap of self-knowledge—nothing else: That she was not in the

least passionate by nature, and that only love could raise her nature to

passion; that she had been misled all her life by a mere illusion deduced

by herself and others from her face and her way of moving, and her

recklessness of speech and her Jewish pliability.... To her mother who

was a Gentile, was due this slight chilliness, blown like a hoar-frost

over what might otherwise have been an exotic blossoming.

And the man by the window murmured: “‘To play at half a love with half

a lover,’ ... is that what you wanted, child, and couldn’t express? I

didn’t understand. Well——”

He crossed again to the couch and stood looking down upon her, hands

clasped behind his back, mouth bent to a whimsical smile—“Well—It’s not

too late, is it?”

For that explanation both solved the enigma of her visit, and

coincided with his former conception of her. The surprise had been her

acquiescence, not her rebuff.

She looked up at him pitifully, and shook her head.... His mouth grew

hard: if not mistress, nor demi-maid, then what did she expect he would

make of her? Surely she could not be hoping.... Blair Stevenson’s wife,

if ever materialized from wraithdom, would not be the sort of girl who

came to his rooms alone at 10.15 p.m. Nor would his mistress—she not

at all a wraith—plead to leave them again after a futile half-hour of

compromise. No, Deb (and he still thought her charming) was qualified not

for chastity nor for fierce desire.... What did she want of him?

Her intuition leapt to what was passing in his mind; and in stinging

agony that he should behold in her a huntress for a likely husband, she

said quickly—“I did—I _did_ want to play—only to play. But—you frightened

me....”

“Forget that. I’m getting old and dense. And all men try ... once, you

know. But it’s all right, Deb....”

It was all right—now; at the demi-price of her demi-virtue, she had saved

at least that tattered beggar-maid she still called her pride. “I believe

you thought I had come with a matrimonial lasso coiled up in my hand,”

she taunted him.

And Blair was deceived, for all his penetration. How was he to know,

indeed, that daringly as she had repudiated his suspicion, in a little

backwater of thought trembled still an eddy from old times and old

traditions: “It—would—have—been—rather nice ... to marry him....” But

you have just proved you are not in love with him. “Oh—that kind of

thing—wouldn’t matter. I believe it would grow of itself ... if he were

looking after me.” Her set smile curved into real merriment as it struck

her how Samson would approve of these sentiments. Perhaps she and Samson

were kindred souls, after all!

But Samson would most certainly not have approved of her present

abandonment to a demi-lover. She lay with an apathetic hand straying

over his hair and eyebrows, wondering a little at the hard cheek pressed

close to hers, wondering a little ... how soon she could say it was time

to go, whether there were any letters waiting for her at home, if that

pale young lance-corporal who had fainted as she put the coffee-cup into

his hands, had recovered yet; wondering a little, as Blair shifted

their positions, and drew her head down to where his shirt opened on

to his heart—Did Blair really enjoy this? ought she not to say she was

uncomfortable and had a crick in her neck? Whether she were now what

is called a sinner?—_pêcheresse_ in French ... or was it _pécheuse_?

one of them meant the “fisherman’s wife”—she remembered that from

school—yes, _pêcheuse_, surely—they were taught to tell the difference

by the resemblance of the circumflex to the roof of the fisherman’s

hut. The other has an accent aigü—but Deb had never been quite able to

disentangle a vague notion that a fisherman’s wife was also a sinner.

_Pêcheuse_—_pécheresse_....

She wondered anew if that monstrosity on the wall opposite were a

Hogarth? if her watch would be mended by to-morrow, as the man at the

shop had faithfully promised?...

“Are you happy, you small white Deb?”

She sighed “Yes....”

“You must come to me often now we understand each other....”

And again: “Yes ... often....”

CHAPTER II

I

Antonia stood in the empty room in Bayswater, reading a scrawl of

explanation which Gillian had left behind for her on the dusty

mantelpiece. The floor was littered with bits of straw and string, a

broken teacup, some torn-up MSS., an old stocking and a tin of Bluebell

polish ... her foot struck against the latter, and it rolled towards the

tin fender and stopped with a forlorn clank....

“My dear—I’ve decided to go and live with Theo—why not? You’ll find me

here if you come this afternoon, 54 Middle Inn Gardens. I’m leaving

behind a bottle of Elliman’s Embrocation, because I haven’t room for it.

Bring it along, and anything else you see lying about. Yours, Jill.”

“So she’s done it at last.” Slowly Antonia left the house, came back for

the Embrocation, could not find it, and went on to Middle Inn Square with

the Bluebell polish as a substitute. With an air more than ever slim and

defiant and passion-free, she swung into Gillian’s presence——

“Jill!”

“It was—this—or sharing him with fifty others,” the culprit explained

coolly. She did not look in the least like the famous bacteriologist, as

she sat astride a wooden packing-case, tugging with giant pincers at a

refractory nail; hair rakish from the frequent tumbling of her fingers;

eyes two greenish slits of roguery; cigarette tilted well upwards from

the corner of her mouth. She did not look like a heroine of passion

either.... Her blouse was open and her sleeves rolled up, and her short

navy-blue skirt was smeared with white where she had leant against some

wet paint.

“You can help me unpack while you disapprove. That lazy little cat Winnie

has gone off to spend the day with Camellia.”

“Winnie? She’s still with you?”

“My dear, what was I to do with her? I couldn’t send her home again just

because of a whim of mine. It wouldn’t be fair. She isn’t happy at home——”

Antonia sat down helplessly. “A year ago Deb gets turned out of home,

plus an income. Now you elope, plus Winifred Potter. You’re a pair to

make any friend of yours hysterical....”

“A little more, and I’d have despatched Winifred labelled right-side-up

as a farewell present to you,” Gillian retorted grimly. “But she’ll do

for Theo to flirt with in his lighter moments.”

“Theo’s are mostly lighter moments, aren’t they? Jill, I wouldn’t have

minded the sacrifice; I wouldn’t have said a single word ... if he’d been

worthy.” She was ice-white with the conviction of his unworthiness.

Gillian said nothing for a minute or two. She still sat bent over the

packing-case, one leg on either side of it, wrenching at the wood. Then:

“Much need for sacrifice with a man who’s worthy!”

“Then you admit he isn’t?” Antonia sprang up. “Oh, Gillian, if you _must_

try a theory——”

“Theory? Good Lord! Nothing of that sort. It’s just that Theo isn’t big

enough or good enough, if you like, to remain faithful and decent and

honourable to a woman who’s only his spiritual love. Why pretend?—we all

know what Theo is!” she shrugged her thin shoulders and flashed a wide

smile up at her friend—“He’s clever—with a sort of malicious destructive

cleverness. Otherwise just an amorous gutter-snipe, who can’t resist

anything of the other sex—a Zoe in male. His reputation is a joke—I’ve

heard scores of people chuckling over the latest Theo Pandos story.”

“You know this—and still——”

“I know it—and because. He won’t do without the others—but he can’t do

without me. Look here, you blooming Artemis, I justify myself to you

just this once and never again. Understand this. That little rotter is

my ... completion, if you like; the answer to my special quantity of X.

It’s a pity, I’m sure, that it didn’t happen to be someone grand and

distinguished and austere, who’d spend all day long renouncing me, and

all night long being nobly glad that he did so. Can you see Theo being

glad he’s renounced anyone, ever?” again the swift joyous grin....

Antonia could not help returning it.

“Theo’s got a wife, I believe?”

“Oh, curse her, yes. A Spanish Catholic who won’t divorce him. A dark

flashing thing who looks all passion and Carmen and castanets. She’s no

earthly use to him.”

“Gillian, you’re a thoroughly immoral creature!”

“I’m not going to be one of a crowd. ’Tisn’t good for the self-respect.

And it isn’t good for Theo—Oh, I’ve no illusions about my young man....

It amounts to this—I’m fed up with the type of woman who can’t sling sex

out of her mind. The mind isn’t the proper place for sex. I want my mind

for my work. Enforced virginity, not chosen, mind you, but enforced, is

unbalancing; it hangs about and takes up more room than it ought to....

My work has got to come to fruition sooner or later ... and all this has

got to be cleared out of the way, somehow, first. Theo is thoroughly

unsuitable, he’s younger than I am, he’s married, he’s fast and horrid

... granted!—but Theo is a factor that can’t be slung out. So he’s got to

stay—with as little fuss as possible. I thought about it all hard, and

when last night I’d decided, I packed, and I came. Poor old Theo ...” and

she chuckled softly as at some memory of the preceding evening—but her

brows were contracted with pain.

“Wasn’t he terrifically glad, at least?”

“Oh—glad enough. But just last night ... it was—awkward. I ought to have

’phoned him beforehand—See? Antonia, you’re shrinking like bad material

in the wash!”

“Bad material perhaps—but not in the wash ... at the present moment!”

“Cue for a wince from the fallen woman! Frankly, are my affairs as

unsavoury as all that?”

“Not you, Jill. Never you, but Theo. He’s your demon.”

“Not much demon about him when he hung from the left foot on to the right

at his front door last night, and I sat demurely on my trunk outside....

If the Bacteriological Society could have seen me—I’m lecturing there

next week! I’m what Theo had been waiting and longing for since three and

a half years, and coming just then—for once even he wasn’t able to carry

it off. Zoe would have chucked the incubus through a door, or into a

cupboard, or under the bed, and turned up smiling—Theo just stood staring

at me with the tears streaming down his face.... My beloved little

cad!... So I went home again, and returned this morning—Antonia, you’re

_not_ to look like that!” in a spasm of fury. “Didn’t I know he’d get rid

of her not ten minutes after I left....”

“Oh, I suppose he said he had,” scornfully.

Gillian raged more. “You’d have sheered off and never looked at him

again. ‘For better, for _worse_’ ... Without the marriage service

read over me, I can keep to it as well as any of you. It’s Theo as he

is—not Theo transformed by Maskelyne and Devant into a young bride’s

dream. We shall live together quite openly; of course, without any

blaze of trumpets—but concealment means a flurry again, and a furtive

askew-over-your-shoulder look that I don’t approve of. Thank goodness,

my private life, as I choose to hack it out, can’t interfere with my

especial career. If I’d been a doctor, as I intended——”

“Then you would have had to give up Theo.”

“I’ve just spent twenty minutes patiently explaining—I s’pose you weren’t

listening—that if I gave up Theo, he’d take up far too much of my time

and thought and vitality and saneness. To live with him is the only way

of getting rid of him—mentally.”

“It’s such a twisted, new-fashioned way of arguing.”

“New-fashioned? because I want _my_ man in _my_ home—” for an instant

Gillian was wrapped in swift strong beauty.

“And—my child, too?”

“No,” softly. “Not that. One is just decent enough, I hope, to consider

the possible preference of the child to remain unborn—Hullo, Theo!” as

that gentleman stood on the threshold of a room demoralized by Gillian’s

advent to an imitation of a charity bazaar after three days’ vending.

“We have all heard of the magic womanly touch which brings divine order

into a bachelor’s dreary untidy chambers,” he pattered impudently. “But

the reality is beyond all expectation. For pity’s sake, Gillian, let us

go to a hotel for the rest of our lives. What have you done with my poor

Silvester?”

“Your valet, adoring me with every breath he draws, has gone out to pick

some wild flowers for me to arrange on our dinner table.... You shall

have your Patmore angel-in-the-house all right! Going, Antonia?”

“Miss Verity is hating me too much for perfect comfort,” murmured Pandos

with humorous resignation.

She flashed him back look for look, and went out.

... Then the man crossed the room and knelt beside the packing-case

and thrust his head in Gillian’s lap ... his dark sloe eyes worshipped

her; his nerves, of matted vibrating wires, were lulled to perfect

rest—perfect content.... No strain between these two, of pretence or

concealment or fear—Gillian had taken him for what he was.

CHAPTER III

I

“If it gets any hotter, I shall be found melted down in one of my own

crucibles,” Gillian wailed, to the accidental party of Deb, Nell and

Antonia, who had flopped in to see her after a succession of stifling

days at the latter end of July.

Antonia was temporarily freed from service by an attack of malaria on the

part of her General. And Deb explained that since a couple of weeks Nell

was working as her fag at the station canteen whence they had just come.

“Winifred, I wish you’d try for all our sakes to get a little thinner;

the mere sight of you in weather like this is trying—especially since you

spell your name with such a lot of extra letters.”

“Why, what difference can that make?” from Winnie, quite happy on the

divan.

Gillian demanded sympathy from the company: “It’s that Camellia woman

puts morbid ideas into her head. She’s told her that Winifred is

a degeneration of a beautiful old Saxon name, and we’re gradually

Saxonizing it back again to its original condition. We spell it W y n n e

f r w d d e now.”

“It’s unrecognizable,” Deb laughed. “I’ll take to the divan on the

strength of it.... I’m exhausted—we had an awful hustle up at the

canteen.” She carelessly rolled the astonished Winifred on to the

floor, and took her place among Theo’s treasured purple and peacock

cushions—“Don’t you know, Winnie, that if we were in Germany, you, as an

unimportant spinster, would have no right at all to the sofa, which is

strictly reserved for the matron?”

“Well, but you’re not married either,” the victim of the evacuation

argued slowly. “We none of us are except Gillian, and she isn’t really.”

Gillian twinkled across at Deb: “Well, how would the Germans cope with

the problem of somebody who isn’t married really? Would they give me the

sofa?”

“They’d give you the boot; and me too. There are no fine semi-shades

abroad. A girl is good till she is slightly bad, and then she’s accepted

as completely bad and damned everlastingly. Here, a girl can be badder

and badder, if she doesn’t break the last rule of all—and then be

accepted as completely good again at any time she wants to—like Manon.

She’s engaged to Dolph Carew, you know. He’s been left pots of money by

his uncle....”

Antonia said contemptuously: “Manon is the epitome of the saying; ‘If

you can’t be good, be careful!’ She’s been careful and she’s got her

reward....”

“And she’s enjoyed her nineteen years into the bargain. But maidenhood

has a market value, and Manon has known that from the cradle. Not from La

llorraine; she’s no ready reckoner—much too generous.”

Gillian asked: “Carew has been married before, hasn’t he? What was his

first wife like?”

And Antonia and Deb exchanged a long glance. Then the latter spoke

softly. “Jenny was good—but not careful.... I’ve been thinking about her

rather a lot, lately....”

“She was too good by a thousand miles to be Manon’s predecessor,”

murmured Antonia.

Gillian, suddenly standing up, flung away her jersey, revealing only a

camisole beneath. Then she unfastened the safety-pin that clipped her

skirt together. “That’s better. I believe scraggy people feel the heat

more than fat ones—I do really. It seems to get so quickly at our bones

and grill them. Which is hotter, sizzled flesh or grilled bones? Winnie,

I appeal to you?”

“I was just wondering....” Winnie began, as usual ten minutes behind in

the conversation—“What Deb meant by——”

A violent peal at the bell stopped her.

“I can’t be bothered to dress all over again for that. Answer it, Deb!”

“Let me,” pleaded Nell. She had been lumped on the floor, somewhere near

Gillian’s feet, gazing steadily upwards at that young woman’s face. Now,

in an agony lest someone not herself should have this chance of doing a

service to her goddess, she scrambled up, threw a look of fierce dark

reproach in Deb’s direction, and rushed to the front door, colliding with

Silvester’s dignified progress through the hall.

“Oh——” they heard Nell’s affrighted gasp, “do forgive me—I—I—didn’t know!”

“Lord,” whispered Gillian—“I forgot we have a staff. I’m always

forgetting. Poor Nell, this is enough to put her out of gear for a

fortnight——”

“It doesn’t matter at all, Miss,” graciously from the valet.

“Not a bit—I mean thanks awfully,” Nell’s assent came in a gasping

torrent. Then she darted back into the room, back to her place on the

rug, and sat glowering. Nobody dared speak....

II

It had been several months before Nell would consent at all to meet the

illustrious Gillian Sherwood: “She won’t want to meet me—I’m too stupid—I

shall hate her—I hate people who ask me questions....”

“But why _should_ she ask you questions, for goodness sake?” Deb had

retorted, exasperated. “She’s not a County Council examiner.”

“She will, I know she will. She knows all sorts of brilliant people and

she discovers diseases for the papers, so she can’t want me so dreadfully

badly.”

“But people needn’t want each other dreadfully badly to just meet in the

ordinary way.”

“I hate meeting anyone in the ordinary way,” perversely. And Antonia,

who was present, had laughed, and told Deb to leave the shy baby alone.

So that it was a shock of astonishment to Antonia when Gillian, after a

recent accidental encounter, was straightway enthroned as Nell’s deity....

“She’s a sweet kid, but she wrings one dry,” was the deity’s confidential

version to Deb. “She writes to me every day, long unpunctuated letters

all about whether certain people make you feel certain feelings, and

other feelings make you see certain colours, and certain people make you

see red.... And then she comes to see me, and says ‘I didn’t want to come

really—You didn’t want me, did you?’ And I have to be hectic——”

“And she says: ‘Yes, but you don’t say that as if it was real,’” Deb

guessed.

“Oh, Deb, what shall I do with her? One can almost love the child and

one wouldn’t hurt her for worlds, but we sit in long heavy muffled

impenetrable silences like slow sinking into a feather bed ... and then

she shoots out at me ‘You’re different to-day somehow, aren’t you?’ And I

guiltily try to be the same, but I don’t know what to be the same as. And

I get a swift brown look and: ‘What are you thinking of?’—When ten to one

I’m not thinking of anything worth while—well, I mean nothing she’d like

me to be thinking of. So I say, ‘One can’t always tell one’s thoughts and

feelings, can one?’ ‘No—but one would like to, wouldn’t one? At least I

suppose mine aren’t up to much.... But I wonder——’”

“And you say ‘What?’ and she says ‘Nothing’—and then it begins all over

again. I’m sorry, Jill; I let you in for this.”

“Don’t blame yourself. She saps my strength rather, but I’m fond of young

Nell, and she’s lovely to look at—as Timothy Fawcett seems to have found

out.”

“They never get any forrarder though, do they?”

“Bless him—and bless them both. They can afford to waste three or four

years in being shy. Theo and I did.”

Deb laughed outright at the comparison of the two wooings.... “I wonder——”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

“You’re as bad as Nell!”

But Deb was wondering what effect Gillian’s pioneer boldness might have

on the psychology of her disciple.

III

Nell sat glowering ... and the other three girls were sympathetically

silent, listening the while to Zoe’s voice hailing Silvester as “Bob”

and eagerly enlightening him as to the adventures and whereabouts of a

certain “Guiseppi” who was evidently an intimate acquaintance of a mutual

past....

“She’s the Socialist in sex par excellence,” murmured Gillian, “a reproof

to all us snobs....” And then Zoe bubbled into the room.

“Gillian, isn’t it too funny for words, I used to know your man quite

well—at least I suppose he’s your husband’s man—at least I suppose he

isn’t your husband—but that isn’t what I came to tell you....”

“Anyway, I was aware of it already,” Gillian laughed.

“What—about Pinto? My dear, how _could_ you be—unless, of course, Cliffe

told Antonia, and she told you? You know, Antonia, I never like to

say anything and I’m very fond of Cliffe, but I do think he talks too

much.... You remember that evening when Pinto went mad in my flat last

year?”

“Will I ever forget it? and will your brother ever forget it, Deb?

and will Captain Braithwaite and Mr Sam Wright and the little Belgian

corporal ever forget it? Oh, and the macaroni merchant from round the

corner—he had most cause to remember it, hadn’t he? Did he ever get

damages, by the way?

“Well, you can say what you like, Antonia, but though I was very angry

with Pinto for the moment, I do honestly think he was perfectly right—in

his own way. And I must say, I do like a man to assert himself. I mean,

it’s a sort of test, isn’t it, Gillian, how much he really respects you,

if it annoys him to find your room full of other men? especially—but

that was what I was going to tell you.” She unpinned the veil from her

slanting sailor hat and adjusted the belt of her trim jacket ... pulled

forward a kiss-curl or two, dumped Quelle Vie into Nell’s lap, whipped

out some lurid red lip-salve and delicately outlined the curves of her

mouth, and spun a provocative glance downwards at her flaunted silk

ankles, as though they were another’s, and she coveted them.

“Never mind all that, Zoe—Theo won’t be in for ages. Tell us your news

first.”

Zoe opened her eyes. “Well, I must say, Jill, it’s _not_ like you to

be spiteful. No, it isn’t, and I’m disappointed. If Deb had made that

remark, I wouldn’t have been....”

“Thanks,” from a drowsy but grateful Deb on the divan. While Gillian, in

whose wide frankness had lurked not a germ of spite, gazed helplessly

at the ruffled little soubrette; and then, suddenly understanding,

apologized.

Zoe kissed her. “All right, dear. ‘The mind knoweth not its own

cattiness.’ Well, about Pinto——”

She described at length how a very contrite Pinto had yesterday turned up

at the flat, tendering his usual olive-branch—a jar of olives—with the

explanation of the occasion when he had overheard, in a café in Paris,

two subalterns discussing his fiancée by name, over a letter presumably

from Cliffe, containing the advice to think about her no more, for she

was being kept by a man with the face of an orang-outang and the temper

of a Patagonian savage....

“And I do think it’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard, don’t you,

Antonia?—that the poor darling never recognized himself, but thought I

was being untrue to him with another man while he was away. Yes, I really

do think it justifies his annoyance that time.... I _like_ a man to have

a spirit of his own, whatever you may say. And now he’s at last had it

out with Cliffe, and we’re engaged again, and I’ve promised him all sorts

of things, I forget what——”

“I’d try and remember, if I were you. One of them might be important.”

“Deb, you’ve got a perfectly horrid mind.... I’ve promised him, of

course, not to answer advertisements in the “Vie Parisienne,” nor to

accept wine—little things like that. And I think he’s right, in a way,

don’t you?—because one never knows what may happen—though I do think

Cliffe ought to think twice before he gossips about being ‘kept,’ because

it’s not a nice thing to say about one’s friends, is it? I wonder if I

shall ever meet those two subalterns—wouldn’t you say they must have

seen me somehow, and been rather smitten, for Cliffe to write like that

and warn them off? But it was a funny coincidence, wasn’t it, that Pinto

should just have been sitting at the same time in the same café, so near

their table? And I believe, though he didn’t say so, that one of them was

that perfectly dear lamb, Timothy Fawcett.”

Antonia, to spare Nell’s obvious confusion, asked: “Are you going to

marry Pinto at last?”

“Good heavens, no! Marry a man with a temper like that? Quelle vie!—no, I

wasn’t talking to you, love!” as the spaniel sat up and barked. “But I’m

used to being engaged to Pinto, and one misses it—besides, it’s a sort of

protection now I’m at the War Office. My dears, just listen....”

They listened for about twenty minutes. And then Gillian said she might

as well be suitably employed during the entertainment; and darted into

the adjoining bedroom, whence she returned with an enormous pile of snowy

but ragged underclothing and a cigar-box full of cottons.

And then even Zoe was silent and attentive before the spectacle of

Gillian sewing. She had no scissors and no thimble, so she jabbed the

needle on her knee to prick it through the more resisting portions of

material or lace, and left a length of thread hanging or else pulled at

it—and pulled out the previous ten minutes’ toil. She held her needle

poised over an exquisite bit of embroidery, like a spade over a potato

allotment—and then dug at it with grim energy. And she sighed and she

swore and she struggled, and assaulted the tatters of fine lawn and

crêpe-de-chine, till Antonia was moved to exclaim: “And these are the

fingers that are noted for the most delicate experimental work in the

entire Institute——”

Gillian spread out and ruefully surveyed the ten pricked and discoloured

victims of her combined career as a woman and a professor of scientific

research.

“One can’t always be getting fresh underwear. It’s such a fag. These were

very expensive when I bought them; it’s not so long ago—but I can never

feel I’m in harmony with this sort of work. It’s got to be done, though,”

and she thrust the eye of the needle anew towards the thread poised in

her other hand.

Nell had been taught by her mother to sew beautifully, and sat wishing

bashfully she had the courage to tender her gift at Gillian’s shrine.

She was, however, unable to articulate her ardent desire; and Winnie,

whose plain purport in the house was solely to spare Gillian the present

endurances, sat likewise passively watching the warfare in which the

animate seemed likely to be defeated by the inanimate; advising at last:

“Try holding them a different way, Jill. No, not the needle—_them_”

“Like this?” Gillian made an awkward bunch of the material in her fist.

“But it feels all wrong now.”

“Better give it up, Jill—throw it over to Winnie, she’ll do it for you.”

Winifred disregarded the hint. And Nell opened impulsive lips, made a

sound in her throat, and thickened again to silence.

“I won’t give up”—putting in stitches that were like a giant straddling

from one edge of the rent to the other. “It’s a nuisance, but I’ve got to

learn,” ferociously obstinate.

“Cleanliness is next to ungodliness,” Antonia discovered with her aloof

air of mingled amusement and disdain.

“Oh, cleanliness matters even in one’s godly days. And softness. But

when it comes to wheat-coloured or pale lilac ribbons drawn through, and

the cling of faint scent and embroidered butterflies put on over the

heart,—well, I do consider Theo’s extras take up rather a lot of time.”

And Gillian added with mournful honesty: “I never used to mind a hole or

two!”

Winnie put in: “It doesn’t matter in places that don’t show....”

“You never can be sure, though, can you, Winnie?” Deb teased her.

“Of course you can.”

“Winnie, are all your flirtations strictly spiritual?”

“Don’t be silly. One doesn’t flirt with men who can’t behave.”

“Even the best behaved of men are liable to be carried away by their

feelings.”

Deb was naughtily poking up that layer of suburban respectability which

was spread just underneath Winnie’s ordinary girlish tendency for what

she termed “larking about.”

“A nice girl can always keep them in order,” complacently. “I’m sure I’m

fond enough of a bit of fun, nobody can call me a prude, but I always

make a rule ‘so far and no further.’”

Deb and Zoe joyously hurled themselves on the phrase: “_How_ far is so

far?—that’s just it! define the limits of virtue, Winnie. _How_ far

before they mayn’t go any further?”

And in spite of Winifred’s indignant dodges and subterfuges, they

succeeded in pinning her down at last to a hesitant declaration of

principle. She affirmed that the parts which civilized raiment left

exposed were for caresses—no harm in that: the face, the V of the neck,

the arms below the elbow, hands and wrists....

“And anything beyond is violation of neutral territory?”

Winnie wriggled ambiguously. “Of course, as soon as a fellow starts

pulling you about, you know.”

“Know what?”

“What he’s after.”

“What is he after?” Deb’s voice was the perfection of innocent inquiry.

“Oh, I don’t know.... You do worry, Deb. I’ve got along all right till

now.” Winnie’s eyes were very round and puzzled. For the code of her

class was not for analysis; a jumble of puritanism and prejudice and

incurious sensuality. “But of course one has got to put a stop to it

somewhere; mother wanted me to have a good time, and never bothered me

much, but she did say that a chap, when he marries a girl, likes to feel

that he’s the first.... Mother’d be shocked at you, Deb, I really do

believe you’ve let a fellow”—her voice died away. And Deb said quickly,

with averted head: “You believe I’d let a fellow go so far—and further,

is that it?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘further’” Winifred retorted, pestered

into a desire to get some of her own back. “You’re so close about your

love-affairs.”

“Winnie, there was a time when I was a pure young girl, like you are now

... and then something happened ... in my life ... and I’ve never been

the same since, Winifred. I wonder if you’d understand if I told you.”

“Oh, do!” gasped Winnie, her prudery delightedly offering itself to be

shocked.

Zoe’s voice was heard in the distance shrilling a duet of deathless

memories with Silvester in the pantry.

“You couldn’t do it if she were in the room—she wouldn’t give you the

chance,” Gillian said, letting her lingerie fall from her lap in despair.

“But as it is, Deb, I officially invite you to tell Winnie the Unofficial

Story of your Life—it may widen her outlook.... We’ll keep quite still,

Antonia, Nell and I.”

Deb began, hands clasped behind her head, eyes contracted as in dreamy

contemplation of small figures specking a curly, dusty road:

“For the moment I can only remember John Thorpe and his mother’s

ear-trumpet. I was wildly infatuated with John Thorpe, so I used to

ingratiate myself with his mother through her ear-trumpet. Not many

people in the hotel would bother with that ear-trumpet, but I thought it

was a short cut to Paradise.... Once I heard him bellowing to her in the

strictest confidence that Ellaline had accepted him the night before. And

I had to go on ingratiating myself down the ear-trumpet, because he and

everybody would have noticed it if I’d suddenly left off. One has one’s

pride.... At the end of eleven days my throat was as sore as my soul ...

so I went to Germany on a visit and the war broke out....

“And that was for me the dawn of love....

“I can’t keep to any chronological order, of course.

“The next thing that stands out is three minutes—well, it can hardly have

been that. I’d gone to bed with a headache—not a very bad one; and when

I heard Phil’s voice in the hall—he’d motored over with a party—I wished

I hadn’t pretended it was too bad to stay up. I heard him say: ‘Where’s

my wife?’—he always called me his wife.... They answered laughing, ‘first

floor, second door on the right’—the thud of his feet on the stairs. Then

he was on the bed and had me and the quilt and the pillow all swept up

and smothered up together in his arms.... I was simply dazed with his

kisses—and with the hot tingling feel of his hands. He rushed downstairs

again and I heard him explaining lightly to the others that he’d popped

in his head at the door. He went abroad a little while after....

“And I sometimes think that was for me the dawn of love.”

“You let him come into your bedroom?” panted Winnie. “You let a strange

fellow sit—on—your—bed?”

Deb went on as though she had not heard.

“When Louis Halliwell—yes, the music-hall song-and-patter star—motored me

to the Kingston Empire that night of nights——”

“The _same_ night?” from Winnie, incredulously.

“Six years before—he promised me I should see life from behind the

scenes. He kept his promise. I spent the evening in his dressing-room,

watched him make up, heard him chaff with the other ‘turns’ who drifted

in and out. He drove me round to the digs of the Twin Acrobats, after the

show, and they filled up a tumbler with port, and he told me in a whisper

it was expected of bohemian palliness I should toss it off.... So I was

half asleep coming home in the car, but I just remember he put my arm at

the back of his waist and said it helped him drive if I kept it there.

So I kept it there. On the doorstep he put his hands on my shoulders and

said ringingly: “You’re one of us _now_, Deb!”—and kissed me, once, on

the middle of my mouth....

“That kiss was, for me, the dawn of love.”

Winifred was so congealed to a solid state of astonishment, that when she

said “Not again?” it sounded quite calm.

“For cherry jam I’d do anything. That must be my excuse. For when

Colville came back to me, married, and said I’d been his ideal on and

off for seven years, and perhaps his wife would die, although he had a

tendency to appendicitis, I thought I’d better discourage him. If he had

died in my arms, Gillian, and there’d been an inquest, she couldn’t have

divorced him any more, could she? But she might have got a Decree of the

High Courts to haul in the cherry jam supposing he’d made a will in my

favour. Colville said: ‘I paid 4s. 3d. a pound for it, Deb. I don’t mind

paying for what I want most....’ He looked meaning, and I looked far-away

and said: ‘There’s—somebody—else—now. There wouldn’t have been if you’d

come last Tuesday.” He groaned and asked me for a glove—as if one spoils

a pair these days! So I laid my cheek for a brief-fleeting-space-of-time

against the back of his hand, instead. It did just as well—but I do think

he might have sent me a pot of the jam. But he said he couldn’t get any

out of the cellar without her seeing, even in a shrimping-net. He said he

had thirty-seven pounds of it in the cellar.

“And that was, for me, the dawn of love....”

Deb sighed.

“Pass over Padraic, the Sorrowful Celt, who used to keen and croon and

lilt and lament rhythmically over the misery which would surely be my

lot, till I felt like my own corpse privileged to attend my own wake. He

would tell me long melancholy Irish stories about his long melancholy

Irish friends, and they all sounded to me the same friend,” Deb’s voice

rose and fell with the cadences of waves on the shore—“till at the very

last, did I not hear myself fading to unreality as a legend of Eire, long

and melancholy, re-told by him in the future to other friends, who would

also become legends, who would all become the same harrowing, hopeless

legend....

“‘But,’ he said—‘if I could only look up and look across the room,

Rosaleen——’”

“Who was Rosaleen?”

“Me,” briefly. “‘As I sit mourning o’ nights solitary at my window—if I

could only look up and see yourself in the doorway, grave as Mary among

the lilies—in your simple white shift, Rosaleen....’”

“What’s a shift?” Winnie was galvanized anew by curiosity.

“An animal only to be found in Ireland. The skin of the shift is used for

coats....”

“But why did he want you to come to his room in a white fur coat?”

completely mystified.

“Men do,” Deb explained lightly. “There was Monna Vanna, you know....”

“And you _went_? Well, you _are_! What did _he_ do?” her appetite was

growing by what Deb gave it to feed upon.

Scornful of her expectation, and without removing her eyes from that

visionary road specked by the little black figures of men, Deb answered

her: “He smiled mournfully, without moving from where he sat solitary at

his window, and murmured: ‘This does not make a man feel good, Rosaleen——’

“Perhaps those words were, for me, the dawn of love. Perhaps—who

knows....”

“But what happened?” goggled Winnie.

“The landlord came in with the watering-pot,” Deb snubbed her, brutally.

“And we all played French rounders together.”

“Memoirs of a Courtesan, by Lewis Carroll. Deb, I don’t think Winnie can

stand many more dawns.”

“Olaf was romantic. Olaf was fair and blue-eyed and white of skin, and

just twenty; and he came from the northern forests of Sweden. Nothing

was too stock sentimental for him.... When I set out to gather roses in

a basket from my garden before breakfast, he followed me about saying

how beautiful it was to see me gather roses in a basket from my garden

before breakfast.... He dreamt of a day when he should be standing in

the doorway of his hut among the snow, carelessly rubbing up his ski

and shielding his eyes from the Aurora Borealis, and I, a weary little

dark-haired princess dressed all in white——”

“That shift might come in useful again.”

“—Would come plodding towards him through the storm like—like a weary

little dark-haired princess. Then I told him what I really looked like in

really cold weather.... And so his dawn of love was shattered in the bud——”

Antonia groaned at the metaphor. And Deb, who was getting tired, even

of the expression in Winifred’s eyes, grew ever briefer and more

inconsequent in her memoirs.

“Tremayne said quickly: ‘You can trust me, Deb—You needn’t be afraid....’

And then looked like a sulky steamroller when I cried back, ‘I’m _not_

afraid ... I’m hurt!’—And I told him he ought to take a few lessons

in comparative anatomy—and then he sulked again. What is comparative

anatomy, Jill? Would it mean comparing one girl with another, in

his case? Anyhow he’s not as deft as that dear old coachman who was

sixty-four and wanted me to come out with him to Canada and make a fresh

start with him there. But he’d always driven the Brighton coaches, so I

was sure he’d feel the change and I wouldn’t be able to make up to him

for it.... He was just a year younger than Grandfather Mackenzie, whom

I’d always snuggled up to and curled my little hand confidingly in his

big shaggy paw. That was before I learnt that sixty-four was no age at

all, though his wife had looked at me queerly once or twice ... and when

I met Etienne Dalison at their garden-party, and grandfather said: ‘Is

he your fairy prince?’ I laughed saucily up at his whiskers: ‘Why not?’

‘_Because I want you all to myself_,’ and jumped at me—Lord! how I ran!

“Etienne Dalison was the velvet hand inside the iron glove—and he never

forgot it. ‘Certainly you may go,’ with a sort of deadly quiet. That was

in his house at midnight—or it might have been a quarter to eleven. ‘Is

it likely I would detain you?’ And courteously and quietly he helped

me on with my cloak the instant I requested it. That was his quiet

courtesy....

“And he opened the door for me, and quietly stood aside to let me pass,

saying quietly: ‘_You will telephone when you are ready._’ He knew I

would.

“And I didn’t.

“_He_ did, though. He rang up twice, just to make sure that I understood

his silence was a tense controlled silence, the silence of quiet strength

... it would have been too terrible for words if I had thought it just

ordinary silence!

“But he had an awfully voluptuous house; æsthetic and luxurious and

barbaric—you know the style—all mosaics and art treasures and rose-leaves

floating in the blood-red finger-bowls, and silken hangings and richly

crocheted antimacassars, and Moorish fretwork and poker-work ... oh, I

forget what else. An invisible flutist or a lutist during meals to whip

up your senses like cream ... and an inner apartment with Louis the

sixteenth’s own bed standing encanopied in gold on an ivory platform,

and an expensive little negligée thrown lightly for your use across the

towel-horse, in case love dawns——”

Gillian sprang up abruptly from her chair, kicked away the surrounding

billows of underwear, and walked firmly across to the couch; stood

looking down with an unusual air of sternness:

“Deborah, I don’t know if Winifred is shocked or not. The point is, _I

am_. Your revelations have ceased to be funny—they’re merely pitiful. I

take it, by the way, that they’re mostly true?”

“I’m not a novelist,” responded Deb, shifting rather uneasily under

Gillian Sherwood’s censure. “What’s up, Jill? Do you imagine I’ve sinned

with all these heroes in turn?”

“No, I don’t. That’s just it. All this dabbling—it isn’t worth while. You

know much too much—you know everything. You’ve got a rotten name—as bad

as mine. And nothing to show for it. You’re smothered with dust from the

arena—but you never ride. Deb, Deb, a little honest sin, for Heaven’s

sake! I’m not keen on this demi-game!”

“A little honest sin—or a little honest chastity——” Antonia took up her

stand by Gillian’s side, and put one arm about her shoulders....

“Two of you!” Deb raised herself on one elbow and prepared for battle;

“les extrèmes se touchent!”

“What does that mean?” laboriously from Winifred.

“Look next time there’s a fried whiting on your plate. Yes—two of us,

Deb—we’ve been meaning to pitch into you since some time, Antonia and I.

What are you doing with Blair Stevenson?”

“What’s Blair Stevenson doing with you?” Antonia amended.

Their victim protested. “I could tell you better if you wouldn’t both

hover over me in that menacing way. Do, please, go back to your seats.

Pair of bullies!”

They humoured her in that, but Deb saw there was no escape from their

quiet persistence of enquiry.

“Did I tell you about a man in the train——” she began.

“We were asking you about Blair Stevenson, Deb.”

“Yes, but the man in the train bears on the question—he does, honestly.

And I’m sure Winnie would like to hear about him—it raises an interesting

point of etiquette, ... Well, once upon a time,” in a great hurry, for

she saw that Antonia and Gillian would immediately blockade any gap

she exposed to them—“I was travelling, and there were lots of people

in the carriage, and one quite nice-looking man, and presently all the

other people got out, and we both had a sort of feeling of release ...

at least, I had, and I knew he had too. He asked if I minded whether he

smoked, and I said I didn’t a bit, so he offered me a cigarette, and I

took it and thanked him nicely. Well, it would have been so ridiculous to

have glared at him and been porcupiny all over, and to have sat there

consciously and conspicuously hugging my virtue as though I suspected

from the very first moment that he had designs upon it. I made some

remark about having to hurry with the cigarette as I got out at the next

station—‘Oh, then we haven’t got very much time, have we?’”

Deb broke off. Her hands were hotly clenched, and her eyes a sombre,

crepuscular blue....

“Jill—I fought for it like a—a—devil-cat, for what I had—God knows

why—but I _had_ guarded it by flight and by cunning and by instinct,

for years and years—since the very beginning.... And now this perfectly

casual stranger takes it for granted it was his for the asking. I was up

against it—and I fought—so that he was astonished—let me go. I walked to

the other end of the carriage and sat there, looking out. Presently he

said in a different way altogether—not ashamed of himself and perfectly

cool, but _different_: ‘You can come back to your seat opposite me.

It’s all right.’ It was all right, and I came back and said slowly:

‘Not exactly playing the game, was it?’ You see, he was sure to have

been a public-school boy, and if he had winced, I’d have gone on to say

something about how would he like it if his sister....”

“Deb—is nothing sacred to you?”

“That’s what _I_ was going to ask _him_. But he proved a fairly unusual

type. He speculated a moment, and then shook his head, smiling: ‘Yes—but

you shouldn’t have taken the cigarette. That’s an accepted cue, you

know—or if you didn’t know, you ought to have.’ It struck me for the very

first time that there is something in it when our mothers and aunts warn

us not to let unknown young men talk to us.”

“Yes, but they ought to tell us why and they never do,” in one long

breath from Nell, whom the other girls had forgotten was present.

“Our aunts and mothers, most of them, have Weldon’s-Paper-Pattern still

in their systems, however tolerant and lax they may appear on the

surface.”

“Then no wonder we get into messes, scrabbling about for wisdom. Our

aunts and mothers weren’t allowed to scrabble by their aunts and

mothers.... And our children won’t need to scrabble.”

“Our children,” murmured Jill, and her hand touched Nell’s hair

regretfully.... Nell was such a baby still!

“We’re at the transition period—do you remember that sketch I did of you,

Deb? And the transition period has to pay, always.”

“Then is there a male of the transition period—to match the girl? or are

we transitting alone?”

“Same old male—the one I met in the train. And experiment clashed with

habit. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell about.”

Winnie roused herself to make contribution to the chorus: “It was awful

of you to have gone on letting him talk to you after he had insulted you.”

“Why? I was curious what he had done it for. It can’t have been passion,

romance—not even the dawn of love, Winnie—for any stray girl in a railway

carriage. I had just wanted to be friendly. And I was frightened out

of being friendly, by ... well, the male habit. _I_’d had no desire to

spring upon him the moment we were alone. I told him so.”

“You didn’t! Deb, you _are_! What did he say?”

“Grinned and said: ‘You’re an odd kid. Here’s your station, isn’t it?

Good-bye and good luck.’ He helped me out, and I asked if I might finish

the cigarette or if under the circumstances it was etiquette to throw it

away?... Oh, the incident was nothing; the whole moral of it is, that it

wouldn’t have happened to Antonia, so it’s no good lecturing me according

to the Antonian standard. Or the Gillian standard either—great loves

don’t come to such as me.”

“Because you experiment in small loves,” Gillian lit a cigarette and

planted both feet on the mantelpiece, “small loves and small loaves and

half loaves——”

“Better than no bread.”

“Wrong again. You must have learnt by now that it’s either Heaven ... or

always the same.”

“Men always the same?—indeed they’re not!” Zoe had returned mentally

refreshed from pantry society. “_If_ they were always the same, we

needn’t bother so to keep on changing them, need we? It’s the different

ways of approach that are so perfectly fascinating; and the different

idea each one has of the same identical you; and how long each is going

to take, and what sort of places they choose, and their pasts, and their

way of holding you—I do like to be nicely held, don’t you, Antonia?—Oh

no, I forgot, you don’t! There are dozens and thousands of differences,

and each has to be managed differently; and what encourages one kind,

puts another right off ... even what they prefer to eat, and if they like

their kisses hard or soft—I say, doesn’t that sound like eggs? Oh, I do

think, I really do, that variety is most of the fun; and seeing how they

get to the point. They bore me when they’re within shouting distance....

Besides, I get so specially interested in what each new man is going to

give me. You would soon get to know that, if you always kept to the same.

Pinto, for instance ... he gives me olives, and I hate them. You don’t

think me greedy, do you? I’d hate to be greedy, but I _do_ like presents!”

“I believe you’re the demi-maid by temperament,” Gillian said, smiling at

her, while she reflected that as fast as that greedy right hand of Zoe

plundered, the generous left hand of Zoe gave. “Deb isn’t. And that’s

why Deb has to be spoken to seriously by her pals. We’re waiting to hear

about Blair.”

“What about Blair?” Deb seemed inclined to sulk. “Throw me a cig, Winnie.

And a match. _And_ the box to strike it on—thanks. What about Blair? He’s

the demi-man, if you like, as far as I’m concerned. I was wrong when I

said the male of the transition period didn’t exist. The Male who Pursues

has ceased to exist. Nowadays he implies, more or less delicately, that

he has no wish to make you his wife and you needn’t think it; but being

your own mistress—well, will you? And you imply equally delicately: ‘Yes,

but not yours, so _you_ needn’t think it!’ Then you both know where you

are. The rest is on debatable ground.”

Zoe cried, appalled at Deb’s elasticity of speech, “Well, I must say,

Deb, I think you’re horrid. I do, really. I’m not a prig, but I don’t

think you’re a bit nice. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. And I’m not at all

surprised at Winnie....” who, with a crimson face at the word “mistress,”

had marched out of the room.

“_That_ doesn’t matter,” Gillian defended Deb, with that odd incongruous

air of casual authority which was unconsciously based on her years of

vital work and clear thinking and swift unerring sense of values; on a

courageous judgment that hummed through the air like an arrow, and stuck

quivering in the gold; on the deference she received from her equals,

men with good brains and of good quality; men of genius, even, who had

deferred to her in her own line. “Winnie does quite a good deal of what

one might call ‘spooning’ ... ‘adventuring on debatable ground’ ...

‘half-a-loafing’ ... whatever you like. But it’s just that she can’t

bear—the labels. While one is vague about the name of a thing, it’s

all right, according to Winnie. She’s not a conscious humbug; belongs

to a type. And she enjoys the half-loaf—like Zoe. Well, call it her

quarter-loaf. The point is—do you enjoy yours, Deb? I don’t believe you

do. And if you don’t, it’s not worth it. In the case of Blair Stevenson,

for instance?”

Deb made a desperate attempt to shed all her psycho-entanglements, and be

honest—because it was Jill who asked. And this, even though she had long

ago discovered that the self one pretends to is much more convincing to

the hearer, than the self nearer to reality. A detached attitude helps

expression.

“It pleases him and it doesn’t hurt me,” she summed up slowly.