The Woman with the Fan | Page 3

have your singing ruined than part for a moment with a scrap of your physical influence, of the influence that comes from your beauty, not your talent--your face, not your soul. Viola, you're just the same."
"Lady Holme," she said.
"P'sh! Why?"
"My little husband's fussy."
"And much you care if he is."
"Oh, yes, I do. He sprawls when he fusses and knocks things over, and then, when I've soothed him, he always goes and does Sandow exercises and gets bigger. And he's big enough as it is. I must keep him quiet."
"But you can't keep the other men quiet. With your face and your voice--"
"Oh, it isn't the voice," she said with contempt.
He looked at her rather sadly.
"Why will you put such an exaggerated value on your appearance? Why will you never allow that three-quarters at least of your attraction comes from something else?"
"What?"
"Your personality--your self."
"My soul!" she said, suddenly putting on a farcically rapt and yearning expression and speaking in a hollow, hungry voice. "Are we in the prehistoric Eighties?"
"We are in the unchanging world."
"Unchanging! My dear boy!"
"Yes, unchanging," he repeated obstinately.
He pressed his lips together and looked away. Miss Filberte was cackling and smiling on a settee, with a man whose figure presented a succession of curves, and who kept on softly patting his hands together and swaying gently backwards and forwards.
"Well, Mr. Pierce, what's the matter?"
"Mr. Pierce!" he said, almost savagely.
"Yes, of the English Embassy in Rome, rising young diplomat and full of early Eighty yearns--"
"How the deuce can you be as you are and yet sing as you do?" he exclaimed, turning on her. "You say you care for nothing but the outside of things--the husk, the shell, the surface. You think men care for nothing else. Yet when you sing you--you--"
"What do I do?"
"It's as if another woman than you were singing in you--a woman totally unlike you, a woman who believes in, and loves, the real beauty which you care nothing about."
"The real beauty that rules the world is lodged in the epidermis," she said, opening her fan and smiling slowly. "If this"--she touched her face--"were to be changed into--shall we say a Filberte countenance?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
"There! You see, directly I put the matter before you, you have to agree with me!"
"No one could sing like you and have a face like a silly sheep."
"Poor Miss Filberte! Well, then, suppose me disfigured and singing better than ever--what man would listen to me?"
"I should."
"For half a minute. Then you'd say, 'Poor wretch, she's lost her voice!' No, no, it's my face that sings to the world, my face the world loves to listen to, my face that makes me friends and--enemies."
She looked into his eyes with impertinent directness.
"It's my face that's made Mr. Robin Pierce deceive himself into the belief that he only worships women for their souls, their lovely natures, their--"
"Do you know that in a way you are a singularly modest woman?" he suddenly interrupted.
"Am I? How?"
"In thinking that you hold people only by your appearance, that your personality has nothing to say in the matter."
"I am modest, but not so modest as that."
"Well, then?"
"Personality is a crutch, a pretty good crutch; but so long as men are men they will put crutches second and--something else first. Yes, I know I'm a little bit vulgar, but everybody in London is."
"I wish you lived in Rome."
"I've seen people being vulgar there too. Besides, there may be reasons why it would not be good for me to live in Rome."
She glanced at him again less impertinently, and suddenly her whole body looked softer and kinder.
"You must put up with my face, Robin," she added. "It's no good wishing me to be ugly. It's no use. I can't be."
She laughed. Her ill-humour had entirely vanished.
"If you were--" he said. "If you were--!"
"What then?"
"Do you think no one would stick to you--stick to you for yourself?"
"Oh, yes."
"Who, then?"
"Quite several old ladies. It's very strange, but old ladies of a certain class--the almost obsolete class that wears caps and connects piety with black brocade--like me. They think me 'a bright young thing.' And so I am."
"I don't know what you are. Sometimes I seem to divine what you are, and then--then your face is like a cloud which obscures you--except when you are singing."
She laughed frankly.
"Poor Robin! It was always your great fault--trying to plumb shallows and to take high dives into water half a foot deep."
He was silent for a minute. At last he said:
"And your husband?"
"Fritz!"
His forehead contracted.
"Fritz--yes. What does he do? Try to walk in ocean depths?"
"You needn't sneer at Fritz," she said sharply.
"I beg your pardon."
"Fritz doesn't bother about shallows and depths. He loves me absurdly, and that's quite enough for him."
"And for you."
She nodded gravely.
"And what would Fritz do if you were to lose your beauty?