The Pretty Lady

The Pretty Lady , by Arnold E.
Bennett

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pretty Lady , by Arnold E. Bennett
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Pretty Lady
Author: Arnold E. Bennett
Release Date: June 21, 2004 [eBook #12673]
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
PRETTY LADY ***
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

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 naïve
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 Larivaudière. 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 clientèle 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