Chapter II

Of the astonishment which his sudden appearance caused her, Antoinette betrayed no sign when she received Dennis in the particularly hideous drawing-room of the house in Cadogan Gardens. The resentment which she had felt against him at the dance, had long ago died down, leaving only an insatiable curiosity with regard to the cause which could have engendered in him that queer dazed mood. The way he had seemed to clutch at her at Amberhurst—and then his letters—and then the sudden silence—the anti climax of the dance—and now his re-appearance after nearly six months—he was really rather an extraordinary person! Antoinette felt distinctly “intrigued,” and hoped that this time her anticipation of dramatic developments would be justified.

He began without preliminaries: “I’m not going to apologise for not having communicated with you before. There were reasons—I’ll explain some time, and I’m sure you’ll understand. But for the present, may I just pretend that I’m still talking to you on the bridge at Amberhurst and that there’s been nothing in between?”

“Certainly,” she smiled, suppressing her curiosity regarding the “in between,” and noticing that he also suppressed all mention of his letters to her. “Pretend anything you like, and keep the apologies for Grand’mère. She likes them—thrives on them, in fact.”

Dennis laughed. “Is she at home?”

“No, but she will be soon, don’t fret. You shall be introduced to her.”

“Won’t she be shocked at your receiving the visit of a gentleman not in khaki?”

“She’ll be shocked at my receiving the visit of a gentleman in anything at all,” sighed Antoinette, “so it really doesn’t make much difference.”

She had flung herself back upon the stiff and unresponsive sofa, one arm stretched along the side, in a posture that seemed literally to crave the yielding softness of cushioned divans. But there were no cushioned divans in the house of the de Courcys; and to Dennis it seemed that Antoinette with her short mass of hair and supple boyish figure, was absurdly incongruous with her surroundings.

“You can contradict as much as you please,” he said, “but you _are_ a square peg in a round hole.”

“Oh, I should just think so—here!” she assented quickly.

“Is it very bad?”

“Sometimes.”

“Spiked railings, and ‘Please don’t touch,’ and plenty of witches and dragons to see that the rules are enforced—poor little enchanted princess, I’m so sorry....”

She thought she caught a faint echo of something that had been in his letters, and that had been lacking that night at the dance. Eagerly she responded to it: “Sometimes the witches and dragons can be put to sleep with fairy-tales, and the enchanted princess comes and dances outside the spiked railings.”

“Will she dance with me, I wonder”—Dennis began, then burst out laughing. “Metaphorically, of course. I wouldn’t dream of really inflicting on you a sample of my terpsichorean art.”

“No, I remember you were kind enough to spare me at the fancy dress ball....” She could not resist getting in this little thrust, and wondered how he would parry it. He did not parry it; merely left it alone; and she went on: “How are they all down at Eastwold? Very full of good works?”

“Very! The Ryans, needless to say, have started a sewing-class—two sewing-classes, one for the matrons and one for the maidens of the neighbourhood. Mother and Doreen attend them, and Lily is at the local V.A.D. hospital. She hopes in time to appear in a khaki uniform, with initials on her shoulders, and a strap under her chin.... There was some talk of Millie Ryan’s taking up nursing too, but that project was knocked on the head, I believe, when her esteemed mother discovered that there were only Tommies at the hospital and not officers!”

Antoinette laughed, and then sighed. “Yes, it’s all very well, ... personally, I haven’t as much as knitted a muffler. It’s an awful confession to make, but I loathe the idea of nursing (even officers!), my sewing is beyond description, and I don’t feel drawn towards scrubbing floors in a hospital.”

“Go on,” said Dennis.

She leant forward, clasping her hands around her knee, and shook back her rebellious hair. “If I took up any of those things, it wouldn’t be because I believed it was my sacred duty to my country to do them: it would only be so that when people start with the inevitable: ‘And what sort of war-work are _you_ doing?’ I could fling them my mufflers or my dish-washing or my entirely superfluous secretaryship as a sop. And that’s not quite good enough, is it?”

“Not nearly good enough,” smiled Dennis. He was discovering, somewhat to his surprise, that he was really very glad to see Antoinette again. He must have forgotten her peculiar exuberant charm during the time that he had not seen her; but he was fully aware of it now—and glad that he was aware....

“So you’re a rebel too, Antoinette.”

She flashed out: “Yes, I won’t make buttonholes just because Mrs. So-and-so thinks I ought to! One must do war-work from genuine patriotism or not at all.”

“And you haven’t any genuine patriotism?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I believe I had—once; only I’ve seen and heard so much of the artificial kind, that it’s been spoilt for me.”

She fell silent, brows slightly contracted. He was more and more convinced that she fitted into her environment as little as he did into his, and that somewhere they would find a common meeting-ground, he and she....

He glanced from her to the photographs of the numerous aunts and cousins. “There’s not much family-likeness between you and these, Antoinette,” pointing to a group of three plain girls with arms stiffly twined about each other’s persons, in a manner indicative of sisterly devotion, and one dear to the heart of every conventional-minded photographer. “They may be very worthy, but they don’t appeal to me.”

“My cousins Sidonie, Jeanne and Hélène from Grenoble,” Antoinette introduced them, “and Grand’mère would tell you that the lack of resemblance between us is much to be regretted.”

“But surely even grandmothers—even your grandmother, Antoinette—has eyes in her head?”

“I repeat that Grand’mère would beg you to remember that appearances are deceptive, and that embroidered cushion-covers are more maidenly than short hair, and would clinch the argument with the remark that Sidonie, at least, has found a husband!”

“However did she do that?” murmured Dennis, still intent upon the photograph.

“They had an awful time, doing it for her,” Antoinette’s eyes sparkled with mischief, “there was once a young man of blameless antecedents but of impecunious means, who was brought to the house, and proposed to her—or rather her ‘dot’—and was refused by her father. The young man wreaked a horrible and subtle vengeance by going across the road and paying court to Sidonie’s cousin, Adèle. Adèle is, if possible, even plainer than Sidonie—that’s her photograph over there, between Raoul and Jacques, wearing English Eton suits, seven sizes too big for them.”

“Thank you,” said Dennis, gazing transfixed at the likeness of a fat young thing with a yearnful expression, leaning over a stucco balustrade with a tennis racket in her hand.

Antoinette continued: “Adèle accepted the young man: her dowry being slightly larger than Sidonie’s, she could afford the luxury. But hereupon Sidonie’s parents began to realise what they had missed, and to scheme to get the young man back again. This was easily effected by clapping a few thousand more francs on to Sidonie’s dowry.... They’re the happiest couple in Grenoble now, I believe.”

“There is, of course, also Adèle’s point of view to be considered.”

“Well, she has at least the consolation of having started a family-feud so bloodthirsty that it will not end as long as there is a single one of them left to carry it on. And think how difficult it will be for my uncle and aunt to get their two remaining daughters married, with Nemesis—or rather Adèle’s parents—watching from the other side of the road!”

“Antoinette, I’m enjoying you most awfully....” Enjoying, also, a feeling of security in her presence—in this absurd, hideous room with the family-photographs. He had escaped from the danger that threatened. He was safe—with Antoinette.

The door opened to admit old Madame de Courcy and her daughter-in-law. Grand’mère’s pleasurable anticipation of interviewing her grand-daughter’s suitor—it was doubtless in this capacity that young Blackwood was making his visit—was tempered by the thought that this suitor was not one of her own selection. She was therefore prepared to regard Dennis with a critical, not to say a disparaging eye. There was also the little matter of his income: Madame de Courcy had cross-questioned Antoinette very closely on the subject, without obtaining any results whatever. Apparently Dennis had been reticent concerning his financial position, a point greatly in his disfavour. A young man in a _good_ financial position, had no need to be reticent about it. “_Il doit y avoir quelque chose de louche_,” as she had suspiciously remarked to Anatole, who agreed with her.

It therefore behoved Grand’mère first of all, to put the young man at his ease, and then with her usual tact and discretion, to make him admit the exact figure of his income.

With this end in view, she commenced by assuring Dennis how much Antoinette had enjoyed herself at Eastwold, and how kind it was of his mother to have invited her. Dennis replied with becoming courtesy, that his mother had been delighted to have her. Which ended the first round. The next was more directly personal.

“I see, Monsieur, that you are not in uniform.”

“No, Madame,” Dennis replied superfluously.

Henriette was gazing out of the window, a look of profound abstraction in her cavernous dark eyes. Suddenly the sound of her voice vibrated through the room. “When I think of martyred Belgium, my heart bleeds....” Her hand was clenched against her breast.

Dennis began to understand why Antoinette had said that genuine patriotism had been spoilt for her: small wonder, if she had to listen to much of this sort of thing! He glanced at her, as she sat beside her grandmother on the hard sofa, hands sedately folded in her lap, eyelids lowered, the picture of the typical “jeune fille” decorously awaiting the advances of her suitor. She was adorable, he thought with a warm glow of affection ... and again something within him consciously registered that glow, and was satisfied....

Madame de Courcy once more took up the thread of conversation. “My grand-daughters in Grenoble occupy themselves with cooking for the soldiers, and nursing them.”

“Not specifying if the latter is necessitated by the former,” murmured Antoinette, who was on the old lady’s deafer side.

Madame de Courcy, catching the murmur but not the drift of it, yet being convinced of its seditiousness, continued severely: “Antoinette does not occupy herself with anything....” To which Dennis, in the manner of the best French exercise, responded: “Er—no, but my sister knits socks.”

Henriette embarked upon a monologue directed seemingly to the atmosphere in general. “Would that I had a son to give to France.... Gladly would I have sent him forth to do his duty, though my maternal heart had been torn with anguish!”

Madame de Courcy took the occasion to remind her daughter-in-law that it was indeed regrettable that she had no son; and that she and Anatole had always said so; and that it must be entirely her—Henriette’s—fault, as all the other members of the house of de Courcy had been blessed with male offspring.

Antoinette hastily changed the subject by asking Dennis what had become of Crispin.

“Crispin—no, he’s not in the Army. He’s engaged upon a private and personal war against the people who are trying to bar Wagner and Bach from our concert programmes.”

Madame de Courcy broke in again: “I hear you are an artist, Monsieur, a sculptor, is it not?”

“No, a musician,” Antoinette corrected her, and the old lady nodded her head.

“Ah, he visits the museums? But that is indeed interesting.”

“He is a musician, I tell you!” shouted Antoinette.

“_Comment_—he gives piano-lessons?” cried Grand’mère in great consternation. Dennis, very gently, succeeded in making her understand that he “wrote pieces for the piano”; she looked relieved; asked him if he were well paid; and in a loud aside demanded of Henriette if musical conductors received pensions from the State in England....

Henriette languidly shrugged her shoulders. “Who thinks—who has the heart to think of music now? For me, if I were a man, there would be but one music thrilling my soul: the roar of cannons—” crescendo—“and the beat of drums....” She let the sound of her deep voice slowly die away on the word.

Dennis was sorrier than ever for Antoinette.

When he took his leave, Madame de Courcy pressed him to come again, and Antoinette gave him a most decorous “Good-bye, Mr. Blackwood,” with a blush and lowered lids, and then one second’s impish gleam from the grey eyes under their thick black lashes.

Dennis walked away with a light heart. “It’s all right,” he told himself, “quite all right....” He was struggling up out of the nightmare into which he had been sinking, as a person sinks into a dark, weed-clogged pool. The weeds still clung about him: there were several things from which he must avert his mental gaze—or, better still, he must pretend that they were not there. The picture of a boy’s lean body, lit by the glow of a forge, was one of them.... But he could pretend quite easily, and it would be all right, he repeated—if only Antoinette would give him a hand.

* * * * *

Antoinette felt stimulated by Dennis’s visit. She was liking him more than ever before. His whimsical sense of humour appealed to her, also his delight in the eccentricities of the de Courcy family, as recounted by herself. And there was still about him that air of mystery which offered food for the wildest speculations. Half idly, and yet not without a certain thrill, she began to wonder what sort of a lover he would make.

* * * * *

It was two nights later, and he had taken her to a theatre. They had laughed a great deal, and had had a very good evening, but now, as they drove in the taxi towards Cadogan Gardens, a silence fell upon them. Antoinette’s heart throbbed with excitement that was mingled with a remote inexplicable dread; but she did not know whether it was the dread of a repeated anticlimax, or dread of the climax for which she longed, and which she sensed near at hand. Yes, she decided, she _did_ want it—but still the oppression remained.

Abruptly he ended the strain; put his arms round her. “Antoinette, will you marry me? It will be quite all right, dear ... really it will.”

And now that it had come, that for which she had waited, she was conscious only of a feeling of withdrawal, that amounted almost to recoil.

“Will you, Antoinette...?”

She wished that after all, he had not come to the point so quickly; wished he had prolonged the rather charming uncertainty of their intercourse; wished that he were not already claiming a definite answer.... All this, while his arms were around her, his lips very gently straying over her cheeks, her eyelids. As one soothes a child, he murmured again: “You’ll see, it will be all right.”

Of what was he thus persistently reassuring her, she wondered with a touch of impatience; and freed herself from his arms. “I’m not sure, Dennis ... d’you know,” with a little burst of hysterical laughter, “I’ve an awful longing to say that this is so sudden.”

“But you must have always known that it was bound to come,” he pleaded.

“Y-yes, but—” She could not put into words the feeling of flat disappointment that was upon her. He had kissed her—asked her to marry him: climax stirring enough; and yet something in her that was not satisfied, protested: “This can’t be all! Is this really all...?”

“Well?” he smiled down at her, and she was irritated by his calm. Surely a man who cared deeply for her must have behaved differently in the face of her vague answer; must have sought by his passion to kindle a like passion in her.

“I don’t love you,” she said very low, knowing that she spoke the truth, and wondering what effect this statement would have upon him. He considered it in silence, as the cab drew up at the door. He helped her out and dismissed the driver. Antoinette, on the door-step, had one moment of fear lest Dennis should take his dismissal to be final. She had not meant to be quite so drastic as all that; she liked him too much to want to hurt him.

... To her relief he was beside her on the door-step now, and in the darkness, his arms were round her again. “Dear child, believe me—it will be all right....” Very lightly he kissed her lips, and as he ran down the steps: “I’ll write to you to-night.”

Antoinette, rather dazed, rather irritated, and more disappointed than ever, let herself into the house. She reflected, quite irrelevantly, that Dennis had omitted to lay stress on the fact that he loved her. Now she came to think of it, he had not even mentioned it.