The Pretty Lady | Page 8

He hoped he was in love, and the
fact that the woman who attracted him was a courtesan did not disturb
him in the least.
He was nearing fifty years of age. He had casually known hundreds of
courtesans in sundry capitals, a few of them very agreeable; also a
number of women calling themselves, sometimes correctly, actresses,
all of whom, for various reasons which need not be given, had proved
very unsatisfactory. But he had never loved--unless it might be, mildly,
Concepcion, and Concepcion was now a war bride. He wanted to love.
He had never felt about any woman, not even about Concepcion, as he
felt about the woman seen for a few minutes at the Marigny Theatre
and then for five successive nights vainly searched for in all the chief
music-halls of Paris. (A nice name, Christine! It suited her.) He had
given her up--never expected to catch sight of her again; but she had
remained a steadfast memory, sad and charming. The encounter in the
Promenade in Leicester Square was such a piece of heavenly and
incredible luck that it had, at the moment, positively made him giddy.
The first visit to Christine's flat had beatified and stimulated him.
Would the second? Anyhow, she was the most alluring woman--and
yet apparently of dependable character!--he had ever met. No other
consideration counted with him.
There was a soft knock; the door was pushed, and wavy reflections of

the drawing-room fire played on the corner of the bedroom ceiling. Mrs.
Braiding came in. G.J. had known it was she by the caressing quality of
the knock. Mrs. Braiding was his cook and the wife of his "man". It
was not her place to come in, but occasionally, because something had
happened to Braiding, she did come in. She drew the curtains apart, and
the day of Vigo Street, pale, dirty, morose, feebly and perfunctorily
took possession of the bedroom. Mrs. Braiding, having drawn the
curtains, returned to the door and from the doorway said:
"Breakfast is practically ready, sir."
G.J. perceived that this was one of her brave, resigned mornings. Since
August she had borne the entire weight of the war on her back, and
sometimes the burden would overpower her, but never quite. G.J.
switched on the light, arose from his bed, assumed his dressing-gown,
and, gazing with accustomed pleasure round the bedroom, saw that it
was perfect.
He had furnished his flat in the Regency style of the first decade of the
nineteenth century, as matured by George Smith, "upholder
extraordinary to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales". The
Pavilion at Brighton had given the original idea to G.J., who saw in it
the solution of the problem of combining the somewhat massive dignity
suitable to a bachelor of middling age with the bright, unconquerable
colours which the eternal twilight of London demands.
His dome bed was yellow as to its upper works, with crimson valances
above and yellow valances below. The yellow-lined crimson curtains
(of course never closed) had green cords and tassels, and the
counterpane was yellow. This bed was a modest sample of the careful
and uncompromising reconstitution of a period which he had
everywhere carried out in his abode.
The drawing-room, with its moulded ceiling and huge recessed window,
had presented an admirable field for connoisseurship. Here the clash of
rich primary colours, the perpendiculars which began with bronze girls'
heads and ended with bronze girls' feet or animals' claws, the vast flat
surfaces of furniture, the stiff curves of wood and a drapery, the morbid

rage for solidity which would employ a candelabrum weighing five
hundredweight to hold a single wax candle, produced a real and
imposing effect of style; it was a style debased, a style which was
shedding the last graces of French Empire in order soon to appeal to a
Victoria determined to be utterly English and good; but it was a style.
And G.J. had scamped no detail. Even the pictures were hung with
thick tasselled cords of the Regency. The drawing-room was a triumph.
Do not conceive that G.J. had lost his head about furniture and that his
notion of paradise was an endless series of second-hand shops. He had
an admirable balance; and he held that a man might make a faultless
interior for himself and yet not necessarily lose his balance. He
resented being called a specialist in furniture. He regarded himself as
an amateur of life, and, if a specialist in anything, as a specialist in
friendships. Yet he was a solitary man (liking solitude without knowing
that he liked it), and in the midst of the perfections which he had
created he sometimes gloomily thought: "What in the name of God am
I doing on this earth?"
He went into the drawing-room, and