Book: The Pretty Lady

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THE PRETTY LADY

A Novel

by

ARNOLD BENNETT

1918






"_Virtue has never yet been adequately represented by any
who have had any claim to be considered virtuous. It is the
sub-vicious who best understand virtue. Let the virtuous
people stick to describing vice--which they can do well
enough_."

SAMUEL BUTLER





CONTENTS


Chapter


1. THE PROMENADE

2. THE POWER

3. THE FLAT

4. CONFIDENCE

5. OSTEND

6. THE ALBANY

7. FOR THE EMPIRE

8. BOOTS

9. THE CLUB

10. THE MISSION

11. THE TELEGRAM

12. RENDEZVOUS

13. IN COMMITTEE

14. QUEEN

15. EVENING OUT

16. THE VIRGIN

17. SUNDAY AFTERNOON

18. THE MYSTIC

19. THE VISIT

20. MASCOT

21. THE LEAVE-TRAIN

22. GETTING ON WITH THE WAR

23. THE CALL

24. THE SOLDIER

25. THE RING

26. THE RETURN

27. THE CLYDE

28. SALOME

29. THE STREETS

30. THE CHILD'S ARM

31. "ROMANCE"

32. MRS. BRAIDING

33. THE ROOF

34. IN THE BOUDOIR

35. QUEEN DEAD

36. COLLAPSE

37. THE INVISIBLE POWERS

38. THE VICTORY

39. IDYLL

40. THE WINDOW

41. THE ENVOY




Chapter I

THE PROMENADE


The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you
belonged to the intellectual despisers of the British theatre you
could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even
for such as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.

The stage scene flamed extravagantly with crude orange and viridian
light, a rectangle of bedazzling illumination; on the boards, in the
midst of great width, with great depth behind them and arching height
above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture
and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of
light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the
half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail.
In fullest publicity it was licensed to say that which in private
could not be said where men and women meet, and that which could
not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and
posters and illustrated weeklies all over the town; it disturbed the
silence of the most secret groves in the vast, undiscovered hearts of
men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from
the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and
of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion
exemplified the naive sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which,
occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium,
surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone
between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to the
stage--this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if
the magic protection of the impalpable screen had not been there.

Behind the audience came the restless Promenade, where was the reality
which the stage reflected. There it was, multitudinous, obtainable,
seizable, dumbly imploring to be carried off. The stage, very daring,
yet dared no more than hint at the existence of the bright and joyous
reality. But there it was, under the same roof.

Christine entered with Madame Larivaudiere. Between shoulders and
broad hats, as through a telescope, she glimpsed in the far distance
the illusive, glowing oblong of the stage; then the silhouetted
conductor and the tops of instruments; then the dark, curved
concentric rows of spectators. Lastly she took in the Promenade, in
which she stood. She surveyed the Promenade with a professional eye.
It instantly shocked her, not as it might have shocked one ignorant
of human nature and history, but by reason of its frigidity, its
constraint, its solemnity, its pretence. In one glance she embraced
all the figures, moving or stationary, against the hedge of shoulders
in front and against the mirrors behind--all of them: the programme
girls, the cigarette girls, the chocolate girls, the cloak-room girls,
the waiters, the overseers, as well as the vivid courtesans and their
clientele in black, tweed, or khaki. With scarcely an exception they
all had the same strange look, the same absence of gesture. They
were northern, blond, self-contained, terribly impassive. Christine
impulsively exclaimed--and the faint cry was dragged out of her, out
of the bottom of her heart, by what she saw:

"My god! How mournful it is!"

Lise Larivaudiere, a stout and benevolent Bruxelloise, agreed with
uncomprehending indulgence. The two chatted together for a few
moments, each ceremoniously addressing the other as "Madame,"
"Madame," and then they parted, insinuating themselves separately into
the slow, confused traffic of the Promenade.




Chapter 2

THE POWER


Christine knew Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Regent Street, a bit of
Oxford Street, the Green Park, Hyde Park, Victoria Station, Charing
Cross. Beyond these, London, measureless as the future and the past,
surrounded her with the unknown. But she had not been afraid, because
of her conviction that men were much the same everywhere, and that she
had power over them. She did not exercise this power consciously; she
had merely to exist and it exercised itself. For her this power was
the mystical central fact of the universe. Now, however, as she stood
in the Promenade, it seemed to her that something uncanny had happened
to the universe. Surely it had shifted from its pivot! Her basic
conviction trembled. Men were not the same everywhere, and her power
over them was a delusion. Englishmen were incomprehensible; they were
not human; they were apart. The memory of the hundreds of Englishmen
who had yielded to her power in Paris (for she had specialised in
travelling Englishmen) could not re-establish her conviction as to
the sameness of men. The presence of her professed rivals of various
nationalities in the Promenade could not restore it either. The
Promenade in its cold, prim languor was the very negation of
desire. She was afraid. She foresaw ruin for herself in this London,
inclement, misty and inscrutable.

And then she noticed a man looking at her, and she was herself again
and the universe was itself again. She had a sensation of warmth and
heavenly reassurance, just as though she had drunk an anisette or
a creme de menthe. Her features took on an innocent expression; the
characteristic puckering of the brows denoted not discontent, but a
gentle concern for the whole world and also virginal curiosity. The
man passed her. She did not stir. Presently he emerged afresh out of
the moving knots of promenaders and discreetly approached her. She
did not smile, but her eyes lighted with a faint amiable
benevolence--scarcely perceptible, doubtful, deniable even, but
enough. The man stopped. She at once gave a frank, kind smile, which
changed all her face. He raised his hat an inch or so. She liked men
to raise their hats. Clearly he was a gentleman of means, though in
morning dress. His cigar had a very fine aroma. She classed him in
half a second and was happy. He spoke to her in French, with a slight,
unmistakable English accent, but very good, easy, conversational
French--French French. She responded almost ecstatically:

"Ah, you speak French!"

She was too excited to play the usual comedy, so flattering to most
Englishmen, of pretending that she thought from his speech that he was
a Frenchman. The French so well spoken from a man's mouth in London
most marvellously enheartened her and encouraged her in the perilous
enterprise of her career. She was candidly grateful to him for
speaking French.

He said after a moment:

"You have not at all a fatigued air, but would it not be preferable to
sit down?"

A man of the world! He could phrase his politeness. Ah! There
were none like an Englishman of the world. Frenchmen, delightfully
courteous up to a point, were unsatisfactory past that point.
Frenchmen of the south were detestable, and she hated them.

"You have not been in London long?" said the man, leading her away to
the lounge.

She observed then that, despite his national phlegm, he was in a state
of rather intense excitation. Luck! Enormous luck! And also an augury
for the future! She was professing in London for the first time in her
life; she had not been in the Promenade for five minutes; and lo! the
ideal admirer. For he was not young. What a fine omen for her profound
mysticism and superstitiousness!




Chapter 3

THE FLAT


Her flat was in Cork Street. As soon as they entered it the man
remarked on its warmth and its cosiness, so agreeable after the
November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat--a
small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger
bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off
from the rest of the room, was installed as a _cabinet de toilette_,
but it had a divan. From the divan, behind which was a heavily
curtained window, you could see right through the flat to the
curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened by
paper shades of a peculiar hot tint between Indian red and carmine,
giving a rich, romantic effect to the gleaming pale enamelled
furniture, and to the voluptuous engravings after Sir Frederick
Leighton, and the sweet, sentimental engravings after Marcus Stone,
and to the assorted knicknacks. The flat had homogeneity, for
everything in it, except the stove, had been bought at one shop in
Tottenham Court Road by a landlord who knew his business. The stove,
which was large, stood in the bedroom fireplace, and thence radiated
celestial comfort and security throughout the home; the stove was
the divinity of the home and Christine the priestess; she had herself
bought the stove, and she understood its personality--it was one of
your finite gods.

"Will you take something?" she asked, the hostess.

Whisky and a siphon and glasses were on the sideboard.

"Oh no, thanks!"

"Not even a cigarette?" Holding out the box and looking up at him,
she appealed with a long, anxious glance that he should honour her
cigarettes.

"Thank you!" he said. "I should like a cigarette very much."

She lit a match for him.

"But you--do you not smoke?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

"Try one of mine--for a change."

He produced a long, thin gold cigarette-case, stuffed with cigarettes.

She lit a cigarette from his.

"Oh!" she cried after a few violent puffs. "I like enormously your
cigarettes. Where are they to be found?"

"Look!" said he. "I will put these few in your box." And he poured
twenty cigarettes into an empty compartment of the box, which was
divided into two.

"Not all!" she protested.

"Yes."

"But I say NO!" she insisted with a gesture suddenly firm, and put a
single cigarette back into his case and shut the case with a snap, and
herself returned it to his pocket. "One ought never to be without a
cigarette."

He said:

"You understand life.... How nice it is here!" He looked about and
then sighed.

"But why do you sigh?"

"Sigh of content! I was just thinking this place would be something
else if an English girl had it. It is curious, lamentable, that
English girls understand nothing--certainly not love."

"As for that, I've always heard so."

"They understand nothing. Not even warmth. One is cold in their
rooms."

"As for that--I mean warmth--one may say that I understand it; I do."

"You understand more than warmth. What is your name?"

"Christine."

She was the accidental daughter of a daughter of joy. The mother, as
frequently happens in these cases, dreamed of perfect respectability
for her child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris,
meaning to provide a good dowry in due course. At forty-two she had
not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she
was ill. Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a
vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster
for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly
educated--for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had
not aimed high enough--indolent, but economical, affectionate, and
with a very great deal of temperament. Actuated by deep maternal
solicitude, she brought her daughter back to Paris, and had her
inducted into the profession under the most decent auspices. At
nineteen Christine's second education was complete. Most of it the
mother had left to others, from a sense of propriety. But she herself
had instructed Christine concerning the five great plagues of the
profession. And also she had adjured her never to drink alcohol save
professionally, never to invest in anything save bonds of the City of
Paris, never to seek celebrity, which according to the mother meant
ultimate ruin, never to mix intimately with other women. She had
expounded the great theory that generosity towards men in small things
is always repaid by generosity in big things--and if it is not the
loss is so slight! And she taught her the fundamental differences
between nationalities. With a Russian you had to eat, drink and
listen. With a German you had to flatter, and yet adroitly insert, "Do
not imagine that I am here for the fun of the thing." With an Italian
you must begin with finance. With a Frenchman you must discuss finance
before it is too late. With an Englishman you must talk, for he will
not, but in no circumstances touch finance until he has mentioned
it. In each case there was a risk, but the risk should be faced. The
course of instruction finished, Christine's mother had died with a
clear conscience and a mind consoled.

Said Christine, conversational, putting the question that lips seemed
then to articulate of themselves in obedience to its imperious demand
for utterance:

"How long do you think the war will last?"

The man answered with serenity: "The war has not begun yet."

"How English you are! But all the same, I ask myself whether you would
say that if you had seen Belgium. I came here from Ostend last month."
The man gazed at her with new vivacious interest.

"So it is like that that you are here!"

"But do not let us talk about it," she added quickly with a mournful
smile.

"No, no!" he agreed.... "I see you have a piano. I expect you are fond
of music."

"Ah!" she exclaimed in a fresh, relieved tone. "Am I fond of it! I
adore it, quite simply. Do play for me. Play a boston--a two-step."

"I can't," he said.

"But you play. I am sure of it."

"And you?" he parried.

She made a sad negative sign.

"Well, I'll play something out of _The Rosenkavalier_."

"Ah! But you are a _musician_!" She amiably scrutinised him. "And
yet--no."

Smiling, he, too, made a sad negative sign.

"The waltz out of _The Rosenkavalier_, eh?"

"Oh, yes! A waltz. I prefer waltzes to anything."

As soon as he had played a few bars she passed demurely out of the
sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the _cabinet
de toilette_. She moved about in the _cabinet de toilette_ thinking
that the waltz out of _The Rosenkavalier_ was divinely exciting. The
delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him
across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and
then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of
the shortening cigarette was in his eyes.

She returned at length into the sitting-room, carrying a small silk
bag about five inches by three. The waltz finished.

"But you'll take cold!" he murmured.

"No. At home I never take cold. Besides--"

Smiling at him as he swung round on the music-stool, she undid the
bag, and drew from it some folded stuff which she slowly shook
out, rather in the manner of a conjurer, until it was revealed as a
full-sized kimono. She laughed.

"Is it not marvellous?"

"It is."

"That is what I wear. In the way of chiffons it is the only fantasy
I have bought up to the present in London. Of course, clothes--I have
been forced to buy clothes. It matches exquisitely the stockings, eh?"

She slid her arms into the sleeves of the transparency. She was a
pretty and highly developed girl of twenty-six, short, still lissom,
but with the fear of corpulence in her heart. She had beautiful hair
and beautiful eyes, and she had that pucker of the forehead denoting,
according to circumstances, either some kindly, grave preoccupation or
a benevolent perplexity about something or other.

She went near him and clasped hands round his neck, and whispered:

"Your waltz was adorable. You are an artist."

And with her shoulders she seemed to sketch the movements of dancing.




Chapter 4

CONFIDENCE


After putting on his thick overcoat and one glove he had suddenly
darted to the dressing-table for his watch, which he was forgetting.
Christine's face showed sympathetic satisfaction that he had
remembered in time, simultaneously implying that even if he had not
remembered, the watch would have been perfectly safe till he called
for it. The hour was five minutes to midnight. He was just going.
Christine had dropped a little batch of black and red Treasury
notes on to the dressing-table with an indifferent if not perhaps
an impatient air, as though she held these financial sequels to be
a stain on the ideal, a tedious necessary, a nuisance, or simply
negligible.

She kissed him goodbye, and felt agreeably fragile and soft within
the embrace of his huge, rough overcoat. And she breathed winningly,
delicately, apologetically into his ear:

"Thou wilt give something to the servant?" Her soft eyes seemed to
say, "It is not for myself that I am asking, is it?"

He made an easy philanthropic gesture to indicate that the servant
would have no reason to regret his passage.

He opened the door into the little hall, where the fat Italian maid
was yawning in an atmosphere comparatively cold, and then, in a change
of purpose, he shut the door again.

"You do not know how I knew you could not have been in London very
long," he said confidentially.

"No."

"Because I saw you in Paris one night in July--at the Marigny
Theatre."

"Not at the Marigny."

"Yes. The Marigny."

"It is true. I recall it. I wore white and a yellow stole."

"Yes. You stood on the seat at the back of the Promenade to see a
contortionist girl better, and then you jumped down. I thought you
were delicious--quite delicious."

"Thou flatterest me. Thou sayest that to flatter me."

"No, no. I assure you I went to the Marigny every night for five
nights afterwards in order to find you."

"But the Marigny is not my regular music-hall. Olympia is my regular
music-hall."

"I went to Olympia and all the other halls, too, each night."

"Ah, yes! Then I must have left Paris. But why, my poor friend, why
didst thou not speak to me at the Marigny? I was alone."

"I don't know. I hesitated. I suppose I was afraid."

"Thou!"

"So to-night I was terribly content to meet you. When I saw that it
was really you I could not believe my eyes."

She understood now his agitation on first accosting her in the
Promenade. The affair very pleasantly grew more serious for her. She
liked him. He had nice eyes. He was fairly tall and broadly built,
but not a bit stout. Neither dark nor blond. Not handsome, and yet
... beneath a certain superficial freedom, he was reserved. He had
beautiful manners. He was refined, and he was refined in love; and yet
he knew something. She very highly esteemed refinement in a man.
She had never met a refined woman, and was convinced that few such
existed. Of course he was rich. She could be quite sure, from his way
of handling money, that he was accustomed to handling money. She would
swear he was a bachelor merely on the evidence of his eyes.... Yes,
the affair had lovely possibilities. Afraid to speak to her, and
then ran round Paris after her for five nights! Had he, then, had the
lightning-stroke from her? It appeared so. And why not? She was not
like other girls, and this she had always known. She did precisely
the same things as other girls did. True. But somehow, subtly,
inexplicably, when she did them they were not the same things.
The proof: he, so refined and distinguished himself, had felt the
difference. She became very tender.

"To think," she murmured, "that only on that one night in all my life
did I go to the Marigny! And you saw me!"

The coincidence frightened her--she might have missed this nice,
dependable, admiring creature for ever. But the coincidence also
delighted her, strengthening her superstition. The hand of destiny was
obviously in this affair. Was it not astounding that on one night of
all nights he should have been at the Marigny? Was it not still more
astounding that on one night of all nights he should have been in the
Promenade in Leicester Square?... The affair was ordained since before
the beginning of time. Therefore it was serious.

"Ah, my friend!" she said. "If only you had spoken to me that night at
the Marigny, you might have saved me from troubles frightful--fantastic."

"How?"

He had confided in her--and at the right moment. With her human lore
she could not have respected a man who had begun by admitting to a
strange and unproved woman that for five days and nights he had gone
mad about her. To do so would have been folly on his part. But having
withheld his wild secret, he had charmingly showed, by the gesture of
opening and then shutting the door, that at last it was too strong for
his control. Such candour deserved candour in return. Despite his age,
he looked just then attractively, sympathetically boyish. He was a
benevolent creature. The responsive kindliness of his enquiring "How?"
was beyond question genuine. Once more, in the warm and dark-glowing
comfort of her home, the contrast between the masculine, thick rough
overcoat and the feminine, diaphanous, useless kimono appealed to her
soul. It seemed to justify, even to call for, confidence from her to
him.

The Italian woman behind the door coughed impatiently and was not
heard.




Chapter 5

OSTEND


In July she had gone to Ostend with an American. A gentleman, but mad.
One of those men with a fixed idea that everything would always be
all right and that nothing really and permanently uncomfortable
could possibly happen. A very fair man, with red hair, and radiating
wrinkles all round his eyes--phenomenon due to his humorous outlook on
the world. He laughed at her because she travelled with all her bonds
of the City of Paris on her person. He had met her one night, and
the next morning suggested the Ostend excursion. Too sudden,
too capricious, of course; but she had always desired to see the
cosmopolitanism of Ostend. Trouville she did not like, as you had sand
with every meal if you lived near the front. Hotel Astoria at Ostend.
Complete flat in the hotel. Very chic. The red-haired one, the
_rouquin_, had broad ideas, very broad ideas, of what was due to a
woman. In fact, one might say that he carried generosity in details to
excess. But naturally with Americans it was necessary to be surprised
at nothing. The _rouquin_ said steadily that war would not break out.
He said so until the day on which it broke out. He then became a Turk.
Yes, a Turk. He assumed rights over her, the rights of protection, but
very strange rights. He would not let her try to return to Paris. He
said the Germans might get to Paris, but to Ostend, never--because
of the English! Difficult to believe, but he had locked her up in the
complete flat. The Ostend season had collapsed--pluff--like that. The
hotel staff vanished almost entirely. One or two old fat Belgian
women on the bedroom floors--that seemed to be all. The _rouquin_ was
exquisitely polite, but very firm. In fine, he was a master. It was
astonishing what he did. They were the sole remaining guests in the
Astoria. And they remained because he refused to permit the management
to turn him out. Weeks passed. Yes, weeks. English forces came to
Ostend. Marvellous. Among nations there was none like the English. She
did not see them herself. She was ill. The _rouquin_ had told her
that she was ill when she was not ill, but lo! the next day she was
ill--oh, a long time. The _rouquin_ told her the news--battle of the
Marne and all species of glorious deeds. An old fat Belgian told her
a different kind of news. The stories of the fall of Liege, Namur,
Brussels, Antwerp. The massacres at Aerschot, at Louvain. Terrible
stories that travelled from mouth to mouth among women. There was
always rape and blood and filth mingled. Stories of a frightful
fascination ... unrepeatable! Ah!

The _rouquin_ had informed her one day that the Belgian Government had
come to Ostend. Proof enough, according to him, that Ostend could not
be captured by the Germans! After that he had said nothing about the
Belgian Government for many days. And then one day he had informed
her casually that the Belgian Government was about to leave Ostend
by steamer. But days earlier the old fat woman had told her that the
German staff had ordered seventy-five rooms at the Hotel des Postes at
Ghent. Seventy-five rooms. And that in the space of a few hours Ghent
had become a city of the dead.... Thousands of refugees in Ostend.
Thousands of escaped virgins. Thousands of wounded soldiers.
Often, the sound of guns all day and all night. And in the daytime
occasionally, a sharp sound, very loud; that meant that a German
aeroplane was over the town--killing ... Plenty to kill. Ostend was
always full, behind the Digue, and yet people were always leaving--by
steamer. Steamers taken by assault. At first there had been
formalities, permits, passports. But when one steamer had been taken
by assault--no more formalities! In trying to board the steamers
people were drowned. They fell into the water and nobody troubled--so
said the old woman. Christine was better; desired to rise. The
_rouquin_ said No, not yet. He would believe naught. And now he
believed one thing, and it filled his mind--that German submarines
sank all refugee ships in the North Sea. Proof of the folly of leaving
Ostend. Yet immediately afterwards he came and told her to get up.
That is to say, she had been up for several days, but not outside. He
told her to come away, come away. She had only summer clothes, and it
was mid-October. What a climate, Ostend in October! The old woman said
that thousands of parcels of clothes for refugees had been sent by
generous England. She got a parcel; she had means of getting it. She
opened it with pride in the bedroom of the flat. It contained eight
corsets and a ball-dress. A droll race, all the same, the English.
Had they no imagination? But, no doubt, society women were the same
everywhere. It was notorious that in France....

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