Chapter VIII

By what standards was she to measure Alan’s power...? Instinct answered: by the power that Hester had once had over herself. There would have been little enough hope for Dennis pitted against Hester, or any of those other women; little enough, if it had come to it, against—Pegeen. Antoinette was fully alive to Pegeen’s attraction, and realised that she might have had one of her swift burning passions for her, had she not been so entirely absorbed in Dennis, the greater love blotting out all possibility of a lesser. But if she had not cared for Dennis so much, he would have stood a poor chance against Pegeen; and according to that analogy, Antoinette stood a poor chance against Alan. She had not heard from Dennis; neither did she know the result of Alan’s appeal. Inaction was becoming intolerable. If matters were decided one way or another, at least she would be rid of the uncertainty, and could try and adapt herself to the altered conditions. He had told her to meet him at Miss Mowbray’s to discuss the position ... and it would be better, once she knew. This she told herself repeatedly, and it gave her a sort of spurious courage as she walked up the passage between the theatre and the tea-shop, and with fast-beating heart descended the stairs.

Her hope that she would find Dennis alone was immediately dashed. The usual group was complete, save for Conn and Pegeen, and to-day it included Mrs. Mansfield and Ernest Strickland, the religious objector. Antoinette slipped into the vacant place that Dennis had made for her between himself and Everard. She gave an exclamation of surprise on seeing that the latter was in khaki. “Why—what’s happened?”

“He’s ratted!” cried Alan, “that’s what’s happened. Couldn’t stand out, and took the easy way. The play has come off next door, and I suppose he fancies himself in the new part—‘A better and a worthier part, laddie, than the one you used to play’—can’t you hear ’em?”

Everard stroked the cuffs of his ill-fitting private’s uniform. “This is all so stupid ...” he remarked to the ceiling, leaving it doubtful as to whether he meant the war in general or Alan’s gibes in particular.

“I can’t say the costume suits you,” Benny taunted him, “you were fastidious enough about the fit of your stage-clothes, and look at you now!”

Everard, with magnificent dignity, feigned complete ignorance of his too short sleeves and coat that had a baggy look about the waist-line; and turning to Antoinette, wondered aloud in his beautiful mellow voice, what effect war would have upon his psychology.

“Speaking of costumes,” said Alan, “I hear there are dozens of C.O.s at the various camps arrayed only in blankets. When they’re handed over to the military and commanded to put on uniform they refuse to do so. Then their own clothes are taken away from them.... _Then_ they tear up the nice khaki that the good kind Government gives them and wrap themselves in the blankets off their beds.”

“As we’re in England, I suppose the authorities won’t remove the blankets?” murmured Benny.

“Oh, hardly.... But one really ought to practise beforehand how to wear one’s blanket in the most artistic and effective manner. You’ll look hideous in yours, Benny, you’re the wrong shape. By next week I shall no doubt be quite an authority on the latest fashions in bedclothes.”

“So you are passed for General Service?” said Strickland.

“Yes. I knew I hadn’t any chance of getting off entirely, and I wasn’t playing for Non-Com.... They actually asked me what I’d do if I saw my mother attacked by a German soldier.... I told ’em I was tired of that old chestnut and that I’d go to the defence of the soldier!”

There was a burst of laughter, but to Antoinette it sounded rather strained and hectic. She saw that Alan’s eyes were feverishly bright, his cheeks flushed; and that Dennis’s gaze rested upon him with an anxiety barely concealed by the laughter.

“Two policemen called at my rooms yesterday when I was out, waited three hours for me, and then got fed-up and said they’d call again to-morrow and wait till I _did_ appear, if they didn’t cop me during the day.”

“You can’t dodge them for long, though,” said Barnaby.

“I don’t intend to—’tisn’t dignified. But just for a while it is a most stimulating experience to be Wanted by the Police, and one which may never repeat itself in the future course of my blameless career.”

“Child ...” murmured Dennis under his breath, but Antoinette caught the murmur, and the rueful tenderness of it.

“At any moment I may feel a heavy hand upon my shoulder—handcuffs on my wrists! I thought I was being shadowed by a plain-clothes detective this afternoon. I gave him a couple of hours’ healthy exercise, dodging him up and down the Strand, and finally shook him off when I reached sanctuary here.... Oh, I’d rather run with the hare than hunt with the hounds, any day. There’s something so smug and self-righteous about the hounds, and the hare has all the sport!”

“The hounds win in the end ...” said Dennis, and Everard quoted softly:

“_A la fin de l’envoi, je touche...._”

Alan threw his head back and laughed. “Well, never mind for the moment. Let’s have cakes in vast quantities, and regardless of expense, please, Miss Mowbray, since this may be my last meal in freedom.”

Miss Mowbray begged him not to talk like that, and expressed her willingness to hide him from the police among the jam-jars in her store-cupboard.

“Oh, this place of yours is bound to be raided sooner or later as it is, Kitty,” said Barnaby, “some outsider will stray in and, overhearing our conversation, will warn the authorities that it’s a hornet’s nest of nihilists, anarchists, socialists, and other dangerous and seditious elements!”

“I expect you’re right, Neil,” Miss Mowbray returned placidly, “but even if the worst comes to the worst, I shall be glad that all you boys have had some place where you could be together and air your views in peace.”

“And we can never be grateful enough to you for supporting the cause of freedom as you’ve done by letting us congregate here!” cried Alan warmly. “When this country is proclaimed a democratic republic, we’ll erect a statue to you on what was once the site of Buckingham Palace.”

Harry Hope plunged into the group, bursting with the news that he had got a part at last. “Round town, too, and no commission to pay!”

Benny Joseph offered him heartfelt congratulations. “You lucky beggar, being able to take work. I daren’t settle anything till my beastly appeal is over.... When do you open?”

Even Everard was roused to a languid display of professional interest, and sighed: “It is a beautiful thing to have a widowed mother to support. Her life should be very sacred to you.”

“It is. Oh, it is,” Harry assured him with husky eagerness. “I’m thankful to say the old lady’s keeping wonderfully well.” He joined a small group of actors seated at the table in the alcove, and proceeded to answer more questions concerning his new part.

Barnaby asked Mrs. Mansfield if she had news of her husband, and she replied that he had contrived to communicate with her. “It’s too terrible, the way they’re treated; worse than ordinary criminals. He was kept in irons for twelve hours; he drew a design of them—cruel-looking instruments that cut into the flesh.”

“Oh, yes, we’re a civilised and cultured race, we English,” cried Alan, “it’s only the Huns who are barbarians....”

Antoinette saw Dennis flush. Easy enough to guess that he was dreading that barbarous things might also befall Alan. Already he seemed to be quivering to the least shade of pain that Alan might have to undergo. But was it nothing to him, she wondered in a sudden surge of revolt, was it nothing to him that she should be thus compelled to watch him suffering for Alan and because of Alan? To watch him alternately brooding over the boy with absorbed gaze, and then averting his eyes, as if the sight of him there, laughing and vivid, were too poignant to be borne?

“They have to go to chapel every Sunday,” Mrs. Mansfield pursued; “that’s the only time when the prisoners who are in solitary confinement catch sight of each other. Maurice says there’s a perfectly hateful man who preaches to them—it’s a degradation to call it preaching! He was actually brute enough to say to those poor wretches: ‘God has turned His face away from a lot like you....’”

“It’s difficult to believe that a man of God could so profane the word of God to those dependent upon him for spiritual consolation,” said Strickland, “but he’s not the only one of his kind. So many of the clergy, who call themselves followers of the Prince of Peace, deny Him, by abuse of their power—by preaching war from the pulpit and joining hands with the misleaders of the people to exhort them to take part in bloodshed and strife.”

“Yes, it beats me how devout Christians can believe in war,” said Benny, “don’t they see it’s the negation of all that their Christ ever taught?”

“They don’t see now. It’s they who have turned their faces away from God. Christ wasn’t thinking of the Germans when He told us to turn the other cheek.... That’s a very favourite line of argument, I believe; it tends to make the Bible seem old-fashioned and out of date; a good excuse for going behind its teachings. If people had lived up a little more closely to these antiquated teachings, the world wouldn’t be plunged in darkness and misery now.”

“Well, look what they do to those who strive against the darkness and misery,” said Barnaby. “How long has your husband got, Mrs. Mansfield?”

“Six months penal servitude. But still I’m glad he didn’t give in and take Non-Com. It’s an unworthy compromise, and the men in the N.C.C. are being treated in the most despicable way.”

“Yes, some of them, unarmed men, have actually been sent out to France,” said Alan. “I’ve little sympathy with the Non-Coms., but it’s a dirty trick all the same. It’s an easy way, of course, for the authorities to get rid of them altogether: simpler to shoot them for disobeying military orders out there than it is here.... Downright murder! Oh, it’s better by far to stick out your time in quod than to compromise, Mrs. Mansfield. It’s accepting no favours from a rotten, sneaking government that can’t keep its word.”

“Six months is a long time, and it may be longer ...” said Dennis. And Antoinette knew that he was thinking neither of Mansfield nor of himself. It would be a long time—for Alan. A long time for her, if Dennis.... And if the war went on and on.... Suddenly she hated the whole group, working upon each other’s nerves, exhorting each other to stand out at all costs. What did she care for pacifism if Dennis had to go to prison for it? She cared frankly only for her man, and it seemed appalling to her that he should thus subordinate his life to his convictions.

... And Dennis had no eyes and no thoughts for her now. It was not difficult to see wherein Alan’s attraction lay: he _was_ attractive, no doubt of it, with his feverish dark eyes and sensitive well-cut mouth. He gave her the impression of a very high-spirited race-horse. She could quite well imagine how he would appeal to Dennis ... this terrible boy against whom she was utterly powerless, for he seemed to possess all the fascination of her own sex as well as of his.

“There’s a good time ahead the day the C.O.s come out of prison!” cried Alan, “we’ll have a word to say then, in the name of freedom and democracy, and we’ll have earned the right to say it. We’ll eat and drink to the day! Let’s toss down one Welsh Rarebit after the other, in the true spirit of devil-may-care recklessness....”

How much of this burlesque was genuine, Antoinette wondered, and how much a disguise to hide real terror? With a shudder she realised that most of those who sat here, laughing, smoking, arguing, blaspheming, would sooner or later be in prison. Small wonder if terror lurked beneath these spasmodic bursts of laughter. If Alan were afraid—small blame to him. And if Dennis were afraid for Alan—small blame to him. And if she were afraid for Dennis....

She was studying Alan carefully; and came to the conclusion that no terror would ever be great enough to deflect him from his purpose. Alan would never “rat”.... Perhaps his present attitude betokened an inability to resist obeying the highly theatrical demands of the situation. She could appreciate and understand that ... funny to have discovered something in common with Alan. Very funny.... She must hang on tight to her sense of humour, and not allow herself to wonder if the world contained anything else for her to hang on to!

The men were deep in political conversation now; none of the sense of it penetrated her mind. She only knew that Alan, in his explosive, jerky sentences, was doing most of the talk, with occasional interruptions from Benny Joseph and Barnaby; that Strickland sat silent and thoughtful; and that Dennis’s troubled eyes rested ever on Alan.

No chance for her to have her talk with Dennis to-day. He had hardly spoken to her at all. And already it was time to go.

She rose from her chair. Dennis, as if suddenly becoming aware of her presence, said: “You’re off...? I’ll ring you up to-morrow morning.”

She nodded without looking at him, and Alan got up and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Miss de Courcy, and in case we never meet again, which is more than probable, don’t hate me too much, will you?”

“Why should I hate you?” she parried with ironic politeness. For a second their eyes met ... surely thus might a victorious rival smile down into the eyes of one whom she had beaten off the field!

“I couldn’t hate you if I tried,” said Antoinette very softly. She had passed through the stage of incredulity, and through the stage of growing uneasiness; and through that of raging jealousy and hatred. And having got beyond all these, there was nothing left; no jealousy or hatred big enough to express what she felt for this intruder with the insolent smile, who with his every look and gesture could thrill Dennis, as she had never been able to thrill him. Hatred was quite inadequate.

“I couldn’t hate you if I tried——” She had spoken the truth.

She felt mazed and bewildered by the traffic and the raucous shouts of the paper-boys, as she began to make her way to the Underground station. If at least he had accompanied her, she would have had him to herself for a few minutes. She would not have had to say good-bye to him before all the others, before ... Alan. Good-bye for always, in that futile, unsatisfactory fashion. She did not believe that he would ring her up, as he had said. It was already the end—such a miserable, dribbled-out ending. Once before he had given her this nauseating sense of anticlimax: only it had not really mattered then.... Perhaps he had not accompanied her to the station for fear that she should make a scene. Once before, at that very station——she shuddered back from pursuing that memory any further. She must inevitably come to dwell on that moment in the cab, when she had felt the touch of his lips again.... But this time he need not have feared that she would provoke a scene: she was too fully conscious of defeat; useless to fight for what was already lost.

She had not gone very far when she came face to face with Oswald Forsyth.

“Are they all down at the tea-shop, talking as usual?” He spoke wearily and there were great dark rings under his eyes.

Antoinette nodded. “Yes, much as usual.”

Oswald gave an impatient laugh. “Much good all their talking will do! It can’t prevent you from being caught between the two mill-stones.” He went on rapidly as he turned and walked along beside her: “It’s either the war or prison—you’re caught anyhow.”

Antoinette said: “I thought you had made up your mind...?”

“Made up my mind.... Oh, I’ve made it up and unmade it a thousand times ever since I met Barnaby and all his crew. Standing out with the C.O.s seemed to me the finest thing in the world, and—and it meant not going into the trenches.... You see, I’m a coward—the genuine article; not the magazine-type, who is really only a hero in disguise. I’m just an abject funk. The horror of pain—even when it’s more or less humane—the dentist boring down to the exposed nerve—and then to think of pain inflicted purposely in a hundred different hideous ways.... When you know of all that can happen while you’re still conscious of it happening, how _can_ you go out and face it? How can all those others...? It’s marvellous, and it’s beyond me, utterly. I can only think of what it feels like to have your inside torn open by a jagged bit of shrapnel, or to have a limb amputated without chloroform....”

“Oh, stop!” Antoinette implored him, but overwrought as he was, he continued: “I thought I was getting away from all that and helping all the others to get away by fighting for pacifism. I’ve sent in my appeal, but Heaven knows if I’ll be able to go through with it. It means—prison.... Doesn’t the very word convey a nightmare of being confined in a small space, with light and air shut out, and you beating yourself to death against stone walls...? You’ve heard them talk about prison down at Miss Mowbray’s, haven’t you?”

“They were talking about it to-day....”

“And all the other days, when I’ve sat there listening—and imagining.... I—I just can’t go to prison any more than I can go to the Front. It drives you mad, slowly, day by day, while you feel your reason slipping from you. I don’t know which I dread most! And there’s the one lot of people goading you to fight and the other lot goading you not to fight, and I’m dead sick of it all.”

“Then why don’t you take Non-Combatant Service?” The others might well say that she was being a traitor to the Cause, but Antoinette did not care. She understood too well this boy’s loathing of the extremes of pacifism and militarism alike, and a wave of thankfulness came over her for the happy accident of having been born a woman. But for this accident, and lacking all definite convictions, she like the rest would have been placed between those two equally dreaded alternatives.

“Why not take Non-Com.?” she urged again, but Oswald shook his head. “That’s no good. They’d probably send me out to France just the same—to pick up bits of the dead, perhaps.... There’s no real escape. You’re not meant to escape. There’s something rapacious and cruel and inevitable waiting to torture your mind and your body and twist them out of shape ... and whichever way you take, it’s bound to get you in the end! And I thought—I thought life was going to be so splendid.... Oh, I know I oughtn’t to be talking to you like this, but I’ve not slept for nights, and I’m half crazy.”

Antoinette cut him short. One did not need apologies from a human soul _in extremis_.

“Are you going back to the tea-shop?” she said, as they reached the station.

He looked up at her with his big, weary eyes. “Yes, I suppose so—I don’t know”—and hovered indecisively in the entrance.

Antoinette asked with sudden irrelevance: “How old are you?”

There was a whimsical twist to his smile as he answered: “Eighteen—just eighteen—it’s waiting for you now, when you’re eighteen....”

She saw him wander off in the direction leading away from Miss Mowbray’s. And all the way to Cadogan Gardens, one of his phrases rang in her ears: “And I thought life was going to be so splendid....” She might have echoed it.

She arrived home only a few minutes before dinner-time and was met in the hall by a wrathful grandmother. Why had she chosen to be late just to-night? Had she, then, forgotten that Monsieur Lefèvre, from Grenoble, was coming to dinner? Antoinette had forgotten.... Would she as quickly as possible attire herself in the pink satin dress that Grand’mère had given her, and in which she looked a trifle less “_outrée_” than in some of the garments of her own choosing.

“Make yourself look nice, and above all, be amiable,” were Madame de Courcy’s final injunctions, as Antoinette vanished into her room, and reflected that she might have been spared the pink satin dress and Monsieur Lefèvre just to-night. She had never seen him before, but from Grand’mère’s attitude it was safe to infer that he was coming in the capacity of a possible suitor. It might have been fun—if it hadn’t been just to-night....

She appeared in the drawing-room as the gong rang, and was presented by Grand’mère to a stout and middle-aged personage with shiny black hair, a waxed moustache, and a pince-nez. This engaging creature bowed low over Antoinette’s hand and warmly congratulated Madame de Courcy on the possession of such a grand-daughter.

“She is our only one—our little treasure,” said Henriette, and laid an arm caressingly about Antoinette’s shoulders.

“Tableau—family-life ...” muttered Antoinette under her breath, and was almost grateful to her father for not taking part in the tableau, but grumbling in his usual irritable manner: “You are always late: will you never learn to be punctual?”

They went in to dinner.

“_Eh bien_, Monsieur Lefèvre, you bring us news of our family in Grenoble?”

Monsieur Lefèvre hastened to deliver the messages which seemed to consist mainly of: “_Saluts affectueux de la part de——_”

But he became more explicit when mentioning that in the near future an engagement was likely to be announced between Madame de Courcy’s grand-daughter Hélène, and the “lonely soldier,” to whom since months she had acted as “_marraine_.”

“Letters had passed between them. Then the young man arrived _en permission_. The young people appeared to please each other. It seems that he is of good family. _Mais c’est tout de même un jeu bizarre...._”

Grand’mère agreed that it was very bizarre, and announced her intention of sending a letter to her daughter and son-in-law in Grenoble, advising, or better, commanding the rupture of these highly irregular “_fiançailles_.”

... If only she could have caught Dennis’s eye now! How he had laughed over that story of Sidonie’s engagement.... How he would have relished this feat on the part of Sidonie’s youngest sister. Dennis—Dennis—would they never laugh together again...?

M. Lefèvre was seeking to make excuses for Hélène. One must not forget that it was war-time. The glamour of the uniform—doubtless every patriotic daughter of France felt the same about the glamour of the uniform. Doubtless Mademoiselle Antoinette also—“_Et il y en a de très chics, parmi les officiers anglais...._”

Grand’mère remarked curtly that Antoinette had no interest in English officers, and M. Lefèvre looked relieved. Since the outbreak of war, being over military age, he had regretted his civilian clothing; but to-day for the first time—with a beaming smile at Antoinette—he no longer found reason to deplore it.

... In the name of freedom and democracy—ready to stand out till the last—rights of the people—international federation—Broken phrases and words shot through her mind. She would have liked to throw M. Lefèvre into the tea-shop—a very timorous Daniel into the lions’ den—he was a war-profiteer, manufacturing leather goods for the French Government; they would make short work of him down at Miss Mowbray’s! She could hear Alan——

Alan.... They were together to-night, she supposed. Dennis would not leave him now till he was arrested. She found no difficulty in picturing what might pass between them ... Alan’s provocations ... Dennis’s battles against desire that might prove stronger than himself. Only a few days ago her imagination had halted, incredulous, uncomprehending. It was amazing now, the ease with which it swung forward and found its way about in these forbidden regions. Because the taint was in herself, too, it had needed but the slightest touch to awaken her sleeping imagination. The awakening had been complete. There was nothing unfamiliar now in the thought that her man should be passionately in love with another man.

“Mademoiselle is interested in music?”

“But yes, Monsieur....”

Questions and answers ... and she knew that M. Lefèvre’s eyes rested appraisingly on her. Perhaps he was wondering if she would make a good wife and mother to his children.... What a pity he could not have read her thoughts of two minutes ago! She had a great longing to speak them aloud, to watch the effect, the stunned consternation, incredulity and disgust spreading upon his bland, fat face. That _she_, a _jeune fille_ of good family.... And very likely her own mother would not understand what she was talking about; and Grand’mère would scream and rave, whether she understood or not; and her father would turn her out of the house. It was a pity that she could not allow herself the luxury of giving a dramatic climax, a super-climax, to the dinner-party....

“Yes ...” said Henriette, “there were two hundred persons present, I think. It was too much. The whole audience was so _ému_ by my first recitation that their feelings reacted upon me. _J’étais toute bouleversée...._”

“Madame is so sensitive.”

“_Hélas_, yes.”

“And so generous, to give so much of her time and of her talent.”

Henriette endorsed this. “But I give them gladly in the great cause. Would that I could give more, and that with impassioned rhetoric I could fire the blood of every coward who lags behind and does not avail himself of the glorious privilege of dying for his country!” (... And a terrified boy had said only that afternoon: “It’s waiting for you now, when you’re eighteen!”)

“‘_En avant, Belgique, pays martyrisée mais toujours glorieuse_’—when I said those words my voice was strangled with sobs; and there were many ladies in the front row who also sobbed. I noticed especially the wife of the Spanish Secretary of State....”

M. Lefèvre made sympathetic sounds in his throat. “A well-merited tribute to your powers, Madame. And has Mademoiselle inherited her mother’s great gift?”

Mademoiselle replied: “Unhappily not, Monsieur.”

Henriette looked at her daughter through her lorgnon. “She lacks the temperament.”

... Yes, but whence or from whom had she inherited the particular temperament that was hers? The idea that it might have been the bequest of either of her parents or her grandmother, filled her with the hysterical desire to laugh. She was an anomaly and a freak in her family, just as Dennis was an anomaly and a freak in his.

Grand’mère was enquiring after the welfare of her grand-daughter Sidonie; and M. Lefèvre, by dint of arch smiles and hesitations, managed to convey the interesting news that Sidonie was once again in a delicate state of health. Antoinette smiled. Out of consideration for her youth and virginity, M. Lefèvre could not mention in a natural manner, one of the natural facts of life ... but he would probably regale her father with stories of the usual dubious French type once they were alone in the smoking-room. Dennis had not been so careful of her sheltered, girlish innocence and ignorance, but suddenly M. Lefèvre, normal, typical man that he was, struck her as being much more perverse than Dennis! Again she longed to say so aloud. And to have Dennis here to watch M. Lefèvre’s face.... How was she to go on living in a world turned upside down, world in which what was usually accepted as natural seemed to her inverted, and only the unnatural seemed natural? Certainly, she had exulted in being led by Dennis into this inverted world—she saw it as a kind of maze—but she had not anticipated being left alone in it. And she would never be able to find her way out again. Perhaps there was no way out for people like her.

And her mother would continue to calculate the dramatic effect of strangled sobs at fashionable charity concerts; and her father would continue to be fretful and irritable; and her grandmother would continue to attempt periodically to get her married to suitable people, until she was too old, and they gave her up as a hopeless case.

“Mademoiselle looks a trifle pale. Perhaps the air of London does not agree with her.”

“Oh, I’m quite well, thank you ...” with a false sprightliness of manner.

“She does not eat enough,” grumbled Anatole.

“She runs about too much,” supplemented her grandmother.

“The air of Grenoble is said to be famed for giving appetite. May I express the hope that soon Mademoiselle will prove it for herself?”