Part 37 (1/2)
”Absurd! I will find a flat. I know precisely where there is a flat.”
”But will they let it to me?”
”They will let it to _me_, I suppose,” said he, still casually.
A pause ensued.
She said, in a voice trembling:
”Thou art not going to say to me that thou wilt put me among my own furniture?”
”The flat is furnished. But it is the same thing.”
”Do not let such a hope s.h.i.+ne before me--me who saw before me only the pavement. Thou art not serious.”
”I never was more serious. For whom dost thou take me, little-foolish one?”
She cried:
”Oh, you Englis.h.!.+ You are _chic_. You make love as you go to war. Like _that_!... One word--it is decided! And there is nothing more to say!
Ah! You Englis.h.!.+”
She had almost screamed, shuddering under the shock of his decision, for which she had impossibly hoped, but whose reality overwhelmed her. He sat there in front of her, elegant, impeccably dressed, distinguished, aristocratic, rich, in the full wisdom of his years, and in the strength of his dominating will, and in the righteousness of his heart. One could absolutely trust such as him to do the right thing, and to do it generously, and to do it all the time. And she, _she_ had won him. He had recognised her qualities. She had denied any claim upon him, but by his decision he had admitted a claim--a claim that no money could satisfy. After all, for eighteen months she had been more to him than any other woman. He had talked freely to her.
He had concealed naught from her. He had spoken to her of his discouragements and his weaknesses. He had had no shame before her.
By her acquiescences, her skill, her warmth, her adaptability, her intense womanliness, she had created between them a bond stronger than anything that could keep them apart. The bond existed. It could not during the whole future be broken save by a disloyalty. A disloyalty, she divined, would irrevocably destroy it. But she had no fear on that score, for she knew her own nature. His decision did more than fill her with a dizzy sense of relief, a mad, intolerable happiness--it re-established her self-respect. No ordinary woman, handicapped as she was, could have captured this fastidious and shy paragon ... And the notion that her pa.s.sion for him had dwindled was utterly ridiculous, like the notion that he would tire of her. She was saved. She burst into wild tears.
”Ah! Pardon me!” she sobbed. ”I am quite calm, really. But since the air-raid, thou knowest, I have not been quite the same ... Thou! Thou art different. Nothing could disturb thy calm. Ah! If thou wert a general at the front! What sang-froid! What presence of mind! But I--”
He bent towards her, and she suddenly sprang up and seized him round the neck, and ate his lips, and while she strangled and consumed him she kept muttering to him:
”Hope not that I shall thank thee. I cannot. I cannot! The words with which I could thank thee do not exist. But I am thine, thine! All of me is thine. Humiliate me! Demand of me impossible things! I am thy slave, thy creature! Ah! Let me kiss thy beautiful grey hairs. I love thy hair. And thy ears ...”
The thought of her insatiable temperament flashed through her as she held him, and of his northern sobriety, and of the profound, unchangeable difference between these two. She would discipline her temperament; she would subjugate it. Women were capable of miracles--and women alone. And she was capable of miracles.
A strange, m.u.f.fled noise came to them across the darkness of the sitting-room, and G.J. raised his head slightly to listen.
”Repose! Repose thyself in the arms of thy little mother,” she breathed softly. ”It is nothing. It is but the wind blowing the blind against the curtains.”
And later, when she had distilled the magic of the hour and was tranquillised, she said:
”And where is it, this flat?”
Chapter 39
IDYLL
Christine said to Marie, otherwise La Mere Gaston, the new servant in the new flat, who was holding in her hand a telegram addressed to ”Hoape, Albany”:
”Give it to me. I will put it in front of the clock on the mantelpiece.”