Chapter XI: Part III: I (3)

"And you give so much."

She eyed him seriously.

"I give what I 'ave to give."

"And take what you can get."

"Like you, _Monsieur le docteur_."

The absoluteness of his hatred made it possible for him to laugh with her.

"My fees are fairly reasonable at any rate. I've helped some people for nothing."

"Because you love them?"

"No."

"_C'est dommage aussi_. You should love someone. It is much 'ealthier. I love everyone. Per'aps I love too much. I make experiments. You make experiments--and sometimes leetle mistakes. _Comme nous autres_. 'Ze operation was a _grand succes_--but ze patient die.' I know. Some of mine die too."

"Prince Frederick, for instance?"

She lifted the long chain of pearls about her neck and considered them dispassionately.

"That _canard_! You think 'e give me these? _Ce pauvre_ Fredi! 'E couldn't 'ave given me a chain of pink coral. I could 'ave bought 'im and 'is funny little kingdom with my dress-money. 'E shoot 'imself. Well, that was 'is _affaire_. 'E 'ave no doubt explain 'imself to ze _bon Dieu_, who is particulaire about that sort of thing. As to ze old pearls--my agent 'e set that story going--_pour encourager les autres_."

"Cosgrave among them?" he suggested.

"Monsieur Cosgrave? We won't talk about 'im just now, if you please. 'E make me ver' cross. I 'ate to be cross. It is ver' difficult to 'ave a good time with English people. They are so damn thorough. When they want to go to ze devil they want to go ze whole way."

"Perhaps that's why I'm here," he said ironically.

"_Voyons--voyons, c'est ennuyeux_----" She broke off and gave a little husky, good-natured laugh. "I remember. You think me a bad woman. But I am not a bad woman at all. Ze leetle girls in ze chorus--they are sometimes bad because they want things they 'ave no right to 'ave. They are just leetle girls with nothing to give, and they want to live ze big life and they tumble into ze gutter. They are ze ginger-beer who pretend to be ze champagne. _Mais mot_--I am ze real champagne. I make things seem jolly that are not jolly at all--ze woman who sit next you at dinner--ze food--ze bills who wait for you at 'ome--life. If you take too much of me you 'ave ze 'eadache. _Enfin, ce n'est pas ma faute_. I 'ave so much to give. I 'ave so much life. One life--one country--one 'usband is not enough. But I am not bad. If there was any sense in things they would give me an order and a nice long title--_Grande Maitresse de la Vie_--_Princesse de Joie_." She lifted her eyebrows at him to see whether he appreciated the joke. "Ah well--no. I talk too much about myself. Tell me instead what you think of my leetle 'ome. _C'est joli, n'cest-ce-pas_?" She waved towards the Chinese embroideries and added, with a child's absolute content: "I like it."

"I suppose you do," he retorted. "It reminds me of a quaint old custom I read about somewhere. When our early ancestors were building a particularly important house they buried a few of the less important citizens alive under the foundations. It seemed to have a beneficial influence on the building process."

She offered him her cigarette-case. She seemed to be considering his remark carefully. Suddenly she laughed out with an unfeigned enjoyment.

"I see. My victims, _hein_? You can make leetle jokes too. But why so ver' serious? I'm not burying you, am I?"

"No. You couldn't. And you're not going to bury Cosgrave. Oh--I don't want to waste my time and yours making accusations or appealing to what doesn't exist. I only want to point out to your--your business instinct that Cosgrave isn't worth burying. He's poor and he's unlucky. He won't bring you luck or anything else. Much better to let him go."

"Let 'im go? But I want 'im to go! Yesterday I would not see 'im. I didn't want to see 'im."

"That was a good reason. It's all rather late in the day, though. Two months ago Cosgrave came to England with about 3000 pounds. I know, because he told me. And now that's gone. You know where."

"I make a guess, my friend."

"He bought you presents--outrageous for a man in his position."

"Someone 'ave to buy them," she explained good-humouredly. "I don't ask about positions. It's not polite."

"Now he's at the end of his tether. He's got to go back to his job. Last night he came to my rooms for the first time for weeks. He was--was almost mad. When he first came to England he was very ill. That does not concern you. But what may concern you is that he has become dangerous. He threatened to shoot you."

"Well, before 'e know me 'e threaten to shoot 'imself. Decidedly, 'e is getting better, that young man."

Her shameless, infectious laughter caught him by the throat. He wanted to laugh too, and then thrust her empty, laughing face down into the water of her comic fountain till she died. There were people who were better dead. He had said so and it was true, in spite of Francey Wilmot and her childish sentimentality. Suddenly the woman in the hospital and this riotous houri were definitely merged into one composite figure of a mindless greed and viciousness. He clenched his hands behind his back, hiding them.

"If you would only sit down we should talk so much 'appier," she said regretfully. "You seem so far off--so 'igh up. Please sit down."

"I don't want to."

"Because you're afraid we might get jolly together, _hein_? Well, you stand up there then, and tell me something. Tell me. You don't love nobody. You are a very big, 'ard young man, who 'ave made 'is way in ze world and know 'ow rotten everybody else is. You 'ave 'ad 'ard times and 'ard times is ver' bad for everyone, except per'aps Jesus Christ, for either they go under and are broken, un'appy people, or they come out on top, and then zey are 'arder than anyone else. Well, you are ze big, 'ard young man. But you run after this leetle Monsieur Rufus as though 'e was your baby brother. Well--'e is a nice leetle fellow--but 'e is just a leetle fellow--with a soft 'eart and a soft 'ead. Not your sort. And, you're not 'is sort. 'E's frightened of you. 'E want someone who pat 'is 'ead and let 'im cry on 'is shoulder. You can't 'elp 'im--and you fuss over 'im--you come 'ere and try to put 'is 'eart _affaires_ in order and it's no use at all. _C'est ridicule, enfin_."

He looked away from her, so that she should not see that this time she had struck home. She had knocked the weapon out of his hand, and for the moment, in his astonishment and pain, he could not even hate her. It was true. He couldn't help Cosgrave any more. His strength and ability were, as she said, of no use. That was what Cosgrave had meant when he had laughed about the adenoids. He had failed Cosgrave from the moment that Cosgrave had demanded love for himself and human tenderness. He had no tenderness to give. He was a hard young man. He said slowly, and with a curious humility:

"I used to back him up when he was a kid. He trusted me too--and it's got to be a sort of habit. I want him to be happy."

"Because you are so un'appy yourself?"

"I'm all right," he said stubbornly. And then he added, still not looking at her. "Please give him up--so--so that he won't break his heart over it. I'm not a rich man either, but I'll make it worth your while."

She sprang up with a gesture of amused exasperation.

"'Ow _stupide_ you are, my clever friend. You are like ze old father in ze _Dame aux Camellias_. You make me quite cross. This Rufus--I can't give 'im up. 'E don't belong to me. I never ask for 'im. 'E come into my dressing-room and I like 'im for 'is cheek and I give 'im a good time. Now he is _ennuyeux_. 'E want to marry me and make an honest woman of me." She patted Stonehouse on the shoulder with so droll a grimace that he bit his lip to avoid a gust of ribald, incredible laughter. It was as though by some trick she changed the whole aspect of things so that they became simply comic--scenes in a jolly, improper French farce. "And now I 'ope you see 'ow funny that is. And please take Monsieur Cosgrave away and keep 'im away. I don't ask no better."

His anger revived against her. And it was a thing apart from Cosgrave altogether--a bitter personal anger.

"It can't be done like that. You can't take drugs away from a drug-fiend at one swoop. Let him down gently--treat him as a friend until he has to go--get him to see reason."

"No," she said. "You don't understand. You 'ave not 'ad my experience. If I let 'im 'ang on 'e get much worse. If I push 'im off--poof!--an explosion! Then 'e find a nice leetle girl who is not like me at all and marry--ver' respectable--and 'ave 'eaps of babies. That is what 'e want. But it is not my _affaire_--and I won't be bothered. I tell you 'e is too _ennuyeux_----"

He lashed out at her.

"--and too poor. My God, you're no better than a woman of the streets."

She assented with a certain gravity.

"_C'est bien vrai, ca--bien vrai_. I was born in ze gutter--I crawl out of ze gutter by myself. I keep out of ze gutter--always. And I don't cry and wring my 'ands when people try to kick me back again. I kick them. I look after myself. Monsieur Cosgrave--and all those others--they must look after themselves too. Do you think they bother about me if I become _ennuyeuse_--like them--and cry because they don't love me and like some leetle girl in ze chorus better? Not they. They want fun and life from me--and I give them that. When they want more they can--'ow you say?--get out?"

He stared at her in white-hot detestation.

"I see. I've just wasted my time. You're--you're as infamous as they say. You're taking everything he has, and now he can go and hang himself. You're worse than a woman of the streets because you're more clever."

She kissed her fingers at him in good-humoured farewell. "I like you ver' much--_quand meme_," she said. "Next time I come and call on you, per'aps!"

2

That same night Cosgrave, frustrated at the theatre, tried to force an entrance to the Kensington house, and the old woman, seconded by a Japanese man-servant, flung him out again and into the arms of a policeman who promptly arrested him. Stonehouse went bail for him, and there was a strange, frantic scene in his own rooms.

For this was not the gentle young man who had met Connie Edwards' infidelity with an apathetic resignation. He was violent and indignant. His sense of outrage was a sort of intoxication which gave an extraordinary forcefulness to his whole bearing. He stormed and threatened--the misery that stared out of his haggard blue eyes shrivelling in the heat of an almost animal fury. (And yet he stammered too--which was comically what the other Rufus Cosgrave would have done.)

"I--I love her. I've never loved anyone else. That Connie business--a b-boy and girl affair--a silly flirtation--this--the real thing. I--I'm a m-man now. N-no one's going to play fast and loose with me. No, by God! I'll see her--she's got to have it out with me. I've a right to an explanation at least--and by God I'll have one!"

"For what?" Stonehouse asked.

"She loved me," Cosgrave retorted.

"I don't believe it."

"You d-don't believe it? W-what do you know about it? Didn't she behave as though she did? Didn't she go about with me? Didn't she take things from me--no decent woman would have taken unless she loved me?"

"She doesn't happen to be a decent woman," Stonehouse observed. "To do her justice she doesn't pretend to be one."

Cosgrave advanced upon him as though he would have struck him across the face. But he stopped in time, not from remorse, but as though pulled up by a revelation of maddening absurdity.

"Oh, you--you! You don't understand. You aren't capable of understanding. You're a block--a machine--you don't feel--you g-go about--rolling over p-people and things like--like a damned steam-roller. You're not a man at all. You don't love anyone--not even yourself. What do you know about anything?"

He was grotesque in his scorn, and yet Stonehouse, leaning with an apparent negligence against the mantel-shelf, felt himself go dead white under the attack. He had lost Cosgrave. And he knew now that he needed him desperately--more now than even in his desolate childhood--that unconsciously he had hugged the knowledge of that boyish affection and dependence to him with a secret pride as a talisman against he hardly knew what--utter isolation, a terrifying hardness. He made up his mind to have done now with reserve, to show before it was too late at least some of that dwarfed and suffocated feeling. But he faltered over his first sentence. He had trained himself too long and too carefully to speak with that cold, ironic inflexion. He sounded in his own ears formal--unconvincing.

"You're wrong. I do care. I care for you. You're my friend. I do understand, in part, at any rate. I can prove it. When I saw how unhappy you were I went to her--I tried to reason with her."

He broke off altogether under the amazed stare that greeted this statement. The next instant Cosgrave had tossed his hands to heaven, shouting with a ribald laughter:

"Oh, my Heaven--you poor fish! You think you can cure everything. I can imagine what you said: 'I suggest, Mademoiselle, that you reduce the doses gradually.'"

It was so nearly what he had said that Stonehouse flinched, and suddenly Cosgrave seemed to feel an impatient compassion for him. "Oh, I'm a beast. It was jolly decent of you. You meant well. But you can't help."

And _that_ was what she had said. Stonehouse made no answer. He saw himself as ridiculous and futile. He was sick with disgust at his own pain. If he had lost Cosgrave he wanted to have done with the whole business now--quickly and once and for all.

There was a sense of finality in the shabby room. The invisible bond that had held them through eight years of separation and silence had given way. It was almost a physical thing. It checked and damped down Cosgrave's excitement so that he said almost calmly:

"Well, I shan't attempt to see her again. You'll have that satisfaction. I'll get out of here--back to my jolly old swamp, where there aren't any beastly women--decent or indecent--only mosquitoes."

He waited a moment, as though trying hard to finish on a warmer, more generous note. Perhaps some faint flicker of recollection revived in him. But it could only illuminate a horrifying indifference. He went out without so much as a "good-night."

The morning papers gave the Kensington House incident due prominence. It was one more feather in Mademoiselle Labelle's outrageous head-gear. The Olympic had not so much as standing room for weeks after.

Cosgrave kept his word. He did not see her again, and within a week he had sailed for West Africa--to die. But ten days later Stonehouse received a wireless, and a month later a letter and a photograph of a fair-haired, tender-eyed, slightly bovine-looking girl in evening dress. It appeared that she was a Good Woman and the daughter of wealthy and doting parents, and that in all probability West Africa would see Rufus Cosgrave no more.

So that was the end of their boyhood. Cosgrave had saved himself--or something outside Stonehouse's strength and wisdom had saved him. They would meet again and appear to be old friends. But the chapter of their real friendship, with all its inarticulate romance and tenderness, was closed finally.

Stonehouse kept the photograph on the table of his consulting-room. He believed that it amused him.

3

Still he could not work at night. He resumed his haunted prowlings through the streets. But he took care that he did not pass Francey Wilmot's house again. He knew now that he was afraid. He was ill, too, with a secret, causeless malady that baffled him. There were nights when he suffered the unspeakable torture of a man who feels that the absolute control over all his faculties, which he has taken for granted, is slipping from him, and that his whole personality stands on the verge of disintegration as on the edge of a bottomless pit.

For some weeks he hunted for Mr. Ricardo in vain. He tried all the favoured spots which a considerate country sets aside for its detractors and its lunatics so that they may express themselves freely, without success. Mr. Ricardo seemed to have taken fright and vanished. But one afternoon, returning from the hospital, Stonehouse met him by accident, and followed him. He made no attempt to speak. He meant, this time, to find out where the old man lived, and, if possible, to come to his assistance, and his experience taught him the danger and futility of a direct approach. He followed therefore at a cautious distance that it was not always possible to maintain. Although it was early in the afternoon a dense but drifting fog wrapped the city in its dank folds, and the figure in front of him sometimes loomed up like a distorted shadow and then in a moment plunged into a yellow pocket of obscurity, and was lost. Then Stonehouse could only listen for his footfalls, quick and irregular, echoing with an uncanny loudness in the low vault of the fog.

Mr. Ricardo had evidently been speaking, for he carried the soap-box slung over his shoulder, and he was in a great hurry. It was extraordinary how fast the lame, half-starved old man could walk.

They crossed the park and over to Grosvenor Place. There was no doubt that Mr. Ricardo knew where he was going, but it flashed upon Stonehouse that he was not going home. There was something pressed and sternly in earnest about the way he hurried, as though he had some important appointment to keep and knew that he was already late. Once Stonehouse had to run to keep him within hearing.

They went the whole length of Victoria Street. Stonehouse had been physically tired out when he had started. Now he was not aware of being tired at all. A gradually rising excitement carried him on, unconscious of himself. He had no idea what he expected, but he knew definitely that something deeply significant was about to happen to them both, that they were running into some crisis.

Outside the Abbey the fog became impenetrable. The traffic had stopped, and the lights, patches of opaque rayless crimson, added to the confusion. There were people moving, however, faceless ghosts with loud footfalls, feeling their way hesitatingly, and among them Mr. Ricardo vanished. Almost at once Stonehouse lost his own bearings. In the complete paralysis of all sense of direction which only fog can produce, he crossed the wide street twice without knowing it. Then he came up suddenly under the spread statue of Boadicea and into little knots of people. A policeman was trying to move them on without success. They hung about hopefully like children who cannot be convinced that a show is really over.

"It's no good messing round here. You aren't helping anyone. Better be getting home."

Stonehouse knew what had happened. It was extraordinary how sure he was. It was almost as though he had known all along. But he said mechanically to one slouching shadow:

"What is it?"

A face, dripping and livid in the fog, like the face of a dead man, gaped at him.

"Some old fellow gone over--no, he didn't tumble, I tell yer. You cawn't tumble over a four-foot parapet. Chucked 'isself, and I don't blame 'im. One of them police-launches 'as gone out to fish 'im out. But they won't get 'im. Not now, anyway. Can't see two feet in front of yer, and the tide running out fast."

Stonehouse felt his way to the parapet and peered over. Above the water the fog was pitch-black and moving. It looked a solid mass. He could almost hear it slapping softly against the pillars of the bridge as it flowed seawards. By now Mr. Ricardo had travelled with it a long way. His death did not seem to Stonehouse tragic, but only inevitable and ironical. It was as though someone had played a grave and significant, not unkindly, joke at Mr. Ricardo's expense. Nor did Stonehouse feel remorse, for he knew that he could have done nothing. As Mr. Ricardo had said, it was not material things that had mattered. He had not killed himself because he was starving, but because the long struggle of his spirit with the enigma of life had reached its crisis. He had gone out to meet it with a superb gesture of defiance, which had also been the signal of surrender and acknowledgment.

The crowd had moved on at last. In the muffled silence and darkness Stonehouse's thoughts became shadowy and fantastic. Though he did not grieve he knew that a stone had shifted under the foundations of his mental security. Death took on a new aspect. It seemed unlikely that it was so simply the end.

He found himself wondering how far Mr. Ricardo had travelled on his journey, and whether he had met his enemy, and, face to face with him, had become reconciled.

IV

1

He did not know why he had consented to receive her, unless it was because he knew that they would meet inevitably sooner or later. He felt very able to meet her--cool, and hard and clear-thinking. It was early yet. A wintry sunlight rested on his neatly ordered table, and he could smile at the idea that in a few hours he would begin to be afraid again.

She had made no appointment. Urged by some caprice or other she had driven up to his door and sent up her card with the pencilled inscription "_Me voici_!" Standing at his window he could just see the long graceful lines of her Rolls-Royce, painted an amazing blue--pale blue was notoriously her colour--and the pale-blue clad figure of her chauffeur. It occurred to him that she had chosen the uniform simply to make the man ridiculous--to show that there were no limits to her audacity and power. She was, he thought, stronger than the men who thought they were ruling the destinies of nations. For she could ride rough-shod over convention and prejudice and human dignity. She was perhaps the last representative of an autocratic egotism in a world in which the individual will had almost ceased to exist. She seemed to him the survival of an eternal evil.

And yet when he saw her he laughed. She was so magnificently impossible. It seemed that she had put on every jewel that she could carry. She was painted more profusely than usual, and her dress was one of those fantastic creations with which producers endeavour to bluff through a peculiarly idiotic revue. But she carried it all without self-consciousness. It was as natural to her as gay plumage to a bird-of-paradise.

She gave him her hand to kiss, and then laughed and shook hands instead with an exaggerated manliness.

"I forget," she said. "It is a bad 'abit. You see. I keep my promise. I make ze return call. And 'ow kind of you to see me."

"It didn't occur to you that I might refuse," he told her.

"No, that's true. I never thought about it. You 'ave a leetle time for me, _hein_?"

"About ten minutes," he said.

He assumed a very professional attitude on the other side of his table. He wanted to nonplus and disconcert her, if such a thing were possible. Now that his first involuntary amusement was over he felt a return of the old malignant dislike. She had cost him Cosgrave's friendship, and he wanted to hurt her--to get underneath that armour of soulless good-humour. "I knew that you'd turn up one day or other," he said.

She looked at him with a rather wistful surprise.

"'Ow clever of you! You knew? Don't I look well, _hein_? I feel well--quite all right. But I say to myself: '_Voyons_--'alf an hour with nothing to do. I pay that cross doctor a visit.' I would 'ave come before, but I 'ave been so busy. We re'earse 'Mademoiselle Pantalonne,' ze first night to-morrow. You come? I send you a ticket."

"Thanks. That form of entertainment wouldn't entertain me--except pathologically. And if I went to the theatre I'd rather leave my profession outside."

"Path--pathologically," she echoed. "That sounds 'orrid--rather rude. You don't like me still, _hein_, doctor?"

"Does that surprise you?"

"It surprise me ver' much," she admitted frankly. She picked up the photograph on the table and examined it with an unconscious impertinence. "You like 'er?" she asked. "That sort of woman?"

"I don't know," he said. "I've never met her."

"She is not your wife?"

"She is Cosgrave's wife."

It was evident that although the episode had been concluded less than three months before she had already almost forgotten it.

"Cosgrave? _Ah oui, le cher petit Rufus_? There now--did I not tell you? Didn't I 'ave reason? Tell me--'ow many babies 'ave 'e got?"

"They were married last month," Stonehouse observed.

"_Ah--la la_! But 'ow glad I am! I can see she is the right sort for 'im. A nice leetle girl. But first 'e 'ave to 'ave a good time--just to give 'im confidence. Now 'e be a ver' good boy--a leetle dull per'aps, but ver' good and 'appy. I would write and tell 'im 'ow glad I am--but per'aps better not, _hein_?"

She winked, and there was an irresistible drollery in the grimace that made his lips twitch. And yet she was shameless--abominable.

"The ten minutes are almost up," he said, "and I suppose you came here to consult me."

He knew that she had not. She had come because he was a tantalizing object, because she could not credit his invincibility, which was a challenge to her. She laughed, shrugging her shoulders.

"You are an 'orrible fellow! You think of nothing but diseases and wickedness. I wonder if you 'ave ever 'ad a good time yourself--ever laughed, like I do, from ze 'eart?"

He looked away from her. He felt for a moment oddly uneasy and distressed.

"No, I don't suppose I have."

"Ah, _c'est dommage, mon pauvre jeune homme_. But you don't like me. What can I do?"

"I don't expect you to do anything."

"Not my business, _hein_? No one 'ave any business 'ere who 'ave not got an illness. Ver' well. I will 'ave an illness--a ver' leetle one. No, not ze tummy-ache. _C'est vieux jeu ca_. But a leetle sore throat. You know about throats, _hein_?"

"My specialty," he said smiling back at her with hard eyes.

"Bien, I 'ave a leetle sore throat--_fatigue plutot_--'e come and 'e go. I smoke too much. But I 'ave to smoke. It's no good what you say."

"I'm sure of that," he said.

He made her sit down in the white iron chair behind the screen and, adjusting his speculum, switched on the light. He was bitterly angry because she had forced this farce upon him. He felt that she was laughing all over. The pretty pinkness of her open mouth nauseated him. He thought of all the men who had kissed her, and had been ruined by her as though by the touch of a deadly plague. He pressed her tongue down with a deliberate roughness.

"You 'urt," she muttered. But her eyes were still amused.

"A great many people get hurt here," he said contemptuously, "and don't whine about it."

2

Ten minutes later they sat opposite each other by his table. She was coughing and laughing and wiping her eyes.

"_C'est abominable_," she gasped, "_abominable_!"

He waited. He could afford to wait. He had the feeling of being carried on the breast of a deep, quiet sea. He could take his time. Her laughter and damnable light-heartedness no longer fretted and exasperated him. Rather it was a kind of bitter spice--a tense screwing up of his exquisite sense of calm power. She was like a tigress sprawling in the sunshine, not knowing that its heart is already covered by a rifle. He prolonged the moment deliberately, savouring it. In that deliberation the woman in the hospital, Francey Wilmot, Cosgrave, and a host of faceless men who had gone under this woman's chariot wheels played their devious, sinister parts. They goaded him on and justified him. He became in his own eyes the figure of the Law, pronouncing sentence, weightily, without heat or passion or pity.

"You do it on purpose," she said, "you make me cough."

He arranged his papers with precise hands.

"I'm sorry--I know you came here as a joke. It isn't--not for you. It's serious." He saw her smile, and though he went on speaking in the same quiet, methodical tone, he felt that he had suddenly lost control of himself. "Medical science isn't an exact science. Doctors are never sure of anything until it has happened. But speaking with that reservation I have to tell you that your case is hopeless--that you have three--at the most four months----"

She had interrupted with a laugh, but the laugh itself had broken in half. She had read his face. After a long interval she asked a question--one word--almost inaudibly--and he nodded.

"If you had come earlier one might have operated," he said. "But even so, it would have been doubtful."

Already many men and women had received their final sentence here in this room, and each had met it in his own way. The women were the quietest. Perhaps their lives had taught them to endure the hideous indignity of a well-ordered death-bed without that galling sense of physical humiliation which tormented men. For the most part they became immersed in practical issues--how the news was to be broken to others, who would look after the house and the children, and how the last scene might be acted with the least possible inconvenience and distress for those who would have to witness it. Some men had raved and stormed and pleaded, as though he had been a judge whose judgment might be revoked: "Not me--others--not me--not to-day--years hence." They had paced his private room for hours, trying to get a hold over themselves, devastated with shame and horror at the breakdown of their confident personalities. Some had risen to an impregnable dignity, finer than their lives. One or two had laughed.

And this woman?

He looked up at last. He thought with a thrill that was not of pity, of a bird hit in full flight and mortally hurt, panting out its life in the heather, its gay plumage limp and dishevelled. The jewels and outrageous dress had become a jest that had turned against her. A shadow of the empty, good-humoured smile still lingered on a painted mouth palsied with fear. She was swaying slightly, rhythmically, backwards and forwards, and rubbing the palms of her hands on the carved arms of her chair, and he could hear her breath, short and broken like the shallow breathing of a sick animal. And yet he became aware that she was thinking--thinking very rapidly--calling up unexpected reserves.

"_Trois--mois--trois mois_. Well, but I don't feel so ill--I don't feel ill at all--per'aps for a leetle month--just a leetle month."

He had no clue to her thought. She looked about her rather vaguely as though everything had suddenly become unreal. There were tears on her cheeks, but they were the tears of her recent laughter. She rubbed them off on the back of her hand with the unconscious gesture of a street child.

"I suffer much?"

"I'm afraid so. Though, of course, anyone who attends on you will do his best."

"Death so ugly--so sad."

"Not always," he said.

It was true. She had been a beast of prey all her life. Now it was her turn to be overtaken and torn down. Only sentimentalists like Francey Wilmot could see in her a cause for pity or regret.

They sat opposite each other through a long silence. He gave her time. He showed her consideration. He thought of the pale-blue chauffeur waiting in the biting cold of a winter's afternoon. Well, he would be alive after she had become a loathsome fragment of corruption. He was revenged--they were all revenged on her now.

She fumbled with her gold and jewelled bag.

"What do I owe, _Monsieur le docteur_?"

"Three guineas."

She put the money on the table.

"That is ver' little for so much. I think--when I can't go on any more--I come to your 'ospital. You take me in, _hein_? I 'ave a fancy."

He made an unwilling movement. It revolted him--this obtuseness that would not see that he hated her.

"I can't prevent your coming if you want to. You would be more in your element in your own home. Even in their private rooms they don't allow the kind of things you're accustomed to. There are regulations. Your friends won't like them."

She looked up at him with a startled intentness.

"_Mes pauvres amis_--I 'ave so many. They won't understand. They say: 'That's one of Gyp's leetle jokes.' They won't believe it--they won't dare."

She gave him her hand, and he touched it perfunctorily.

"It's as you like, of course. You have only to let me know."

"You are ver' kind."

He showed her to the door, and rang the bell for the servant. From his vantage point he saw the pale-blue chauffeur hold open the door of the pale-blue limousine. A few loiterers gaped. By an ironical chance a barrel-organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous, familiar gallop. It sounded far-off like a jeering echo:

"I'm Gyp Labelle;
If you dance with me
You dance to my tune. . ."

A danse macabre. He wondered if she had brains or heart enough to appreciate the full bitterness of that chance. He could see her, in his mind's eye, cowering back among the pale-blue cushions.

The next morning he received a note from her and a ticket for the first night of "Mademoiselle Pantalonne"--"with her regards and thanks."

3

He went. In the morning he had tossed the ticket aside, scornful and outraged by such a poor gesture of bravado. But the night brought the old restlessness. He was driven by curiosity that he believed was professional and impersonal. It was natural enough that he should want to see how a woman of her stuff acted under sentence of death. But once in the theatre h e became aware of a black and solitary pride because he alone of all these people could taste the full flavour of her performance. He had become omniscient. He saw behind the scenes. Whilst the orchestra played its jaunty overture he watched her. He saw her stare into her glass and dab on the paint, thicker and thicker, knowing now why she needed so much more, shrinking from the skull that was beginning to peer through the thin mask of flesh and blood. He foresaw the moment, probably before the footlights, when the naked horror of it all would leap out on her and tear her down. Even in that she would no doubt seek the consolation of notoriety. It would be in all the papers. If she had the nerve to carry on people would crowd to see her, as in the Roman days they had crowded to the circus (gloating and stroking themselves secretly, thinking: "It is not I who am dying"). Or she would seek dramatic refuge in her absurd palace and surround herself with tragic glamour, making use of her own death as she had used the death of that infatuated and unhappy prince.

And yet he was sick at heart. In flashes he saw his own attitude as something hideous and abnormal. Then again he justified it, as he had always justified it. He found himself arguing the whole matter out with Francey Wilmot--a cool and reasoned exposition such as he had been incapable of at the crisis of their relationship. ("This woman is a malignant growth. Nature destroys her. Do you pretend to feel regret or pity?") But though he imagined the whole scene--saw himself as authoritative and convincing--he could not re-create Francey Wilmot. She remained herself. Her eyes, fixed on him with that remembered look of candid and questioning tenderness, blazed up into an anger as unexpectedly fierce and uncompromising. And he was not so strong. He had overworked all his life. Starved too often. The ground slipped from under his feet.

It was a poor, vulgar show--a pantomime jerry-built to accommodate her particular talent. She walked through it--the dumb but irresistible model of a French atelier, who made fools of all her lovers, cheated them, sucked them dry and tossed them off with a merry cynicism. When the mood took her she danced and her victims danced behind her, a grotesque ballet, laughing and clapping their hands, as though their cruel sufferings were, after all, a good joke. Neither they nor the audience seemed to be aware that she could not dance at all, and that she was not even beautiful.

It was an old stunt, disguised with an insolent carelessness. The producers had surely grinned to themselves over it. "We know what the public likes. Rubbish, and the older the better. Give it 'em." She even made her familiar entry between the curtains at the back of the stage, standing in the favourite attitude of simple, triumphant expectation, and smiling with that rather foolish friendliness that until now had never shaken her audiences from their frigidity. To them she had always been a spectacle, a strange vital thing with a lurid past and a dubious future, shocking and stimulating. They would never have admitted that they liked her. But tonight they gave her a sort of ashamed welcome. Perhaps it was the dress she wore--the exaggerated peg-top trousers and bonnet of a conventional Quartier Latin which made her look frank and boyish. Perhaps it was something more subtle. Stonehouse himself felt it. But then, he knew. He saw her as God saw her. If there was a God He certainly had His amusing moments.

But he found himself clapping her with the rest, and that made him angry and afraid. It seemed that he could not control his actions any more than his thoughts. The whole business had got an unnatural hold over him. He half got up to go, and then realized that he was trying to escape.

It was jolly music too. That at any rate her producers had toiled at with some zeal. Incredibly stupid and artless and jolly. Anyone could have danced to it. And she was a gutter-urchin, flinging herself about in the sheer joy of life (with death capering at her heels). He watched her, leaning forward, waiting for some sign, the faltering gesture, a twitching grimace of realization. Or was it possible that she was too empty-hearted to feel even her own tragedy, too shallow to suffer, too stupid to foresee? At least he knew with certainty that in that heated, exhausted atmosphere pain had set in.

He became aware that the sweat of it was on his own face--that he himself was labouring under an intolerable physical burden. He knew too much. (If God had His amusing moments he had also to suffer, unless, as Mr. Ricardo had judged, he was a devil.) She was facing what every man and woman in that theatre would have to face sooner or later. How? She at any rate danced as though there were nothing in the world but life. With each act her gestures, her very dress became the clearer expression of an insatiable, uncurbed lust of living. At the end, the orchestra, as though it could not help itself, broke into the old doggerel tune that had helped to make her famous:

"I'm Gyp Labelle."

She waltzed and somersaulted round the stage, and as the curtain fell she stood before the footlights, panting, her thin arms raised triumphantly. He could see the tortured pulse leaping in her throat. He thought he read her lips as they moved in a voiceless exclamation:

"_Quand meme--quand meme_."

The audience melted away indifferently. They, at any rate, did not know what they had seen.

And the next day he had another little note from her, written in a great sprawling hand. She had made all her arrangements, and she thought she had better reserve rooms in his hospital in about six weeks' time for about a month. After that, no doubt, she would require less accommodation.

A silly, fatuous effort, in execrable taste.

V

1

Robert Stonehouse took a second leave that he could not afford and went back to the grey cottage on the moors, and tramped the hills in haunted solitude. The spring ran beside him, a crude, bitter, young spring, gazing into the future with an earnest, passionate face, full of arrogance and hope, and self-distrust. His own frustrated youth rose in him like a painful sap. He was much younger than the Robert Stonehouse who, proud in his mature strength, had dragged an exhausted, secretively smiling Cosgrave on his relentless pursuit--young and insecure, with odd nameless rushes of emotion and desire and grief that had had no part in his ordered life.

The hills had changed too. They had been the background to his exploits. They had become brooding, mysterious partners whose purpose with him he had not fathomed. The things that ran across his path, the quaint furry hares and scurrying pheasants had ceased to be objects on which he could vent his strength and cunning. They were live things, deeply, secretly related to him and to a dying, very infamous woman, and his levelled gun sank time after time under the pressure of an inexplicable pity. He had stood resolutely aloof from life, and now it was dragging him down into its warmth with invisible, resistless hands. Its values, which he had learnt to judge coldly and dispassionately, weighing one against another, were shifting like sand. He seemed to stand, naked and alone, in a changing, terrifying world.

In those days the papers in their frivolous columns, were full of Gyp Labelle. Her press-agent was working frenziedly. It seemed that she had quarrelled with her manager, torn her contract into shreds, and slapped his face. There were gay doings nightly at the Kensington house--orgies. One paper hinted at a certain South African millionaire.

A last fling--the reckless gesture of a worthless panic-stricken soul, without dignity.

Or perhaps she had found that his diagnosis had been a mistake. Or she would not believe the truth. Or she was drugging herself into forgetfulness. Perhaps she might even have the courage to make an end before the time came when forgetfulness would be impossible.

He returned to town, drawn by an obsession of uncertainty. He found that she had arrived at her rooms in the hospital with the shrivelled old woman and the macaw and a gramophone.

She had signed the register as Marie Dubois.

"It is my real name," she explained, "but you couldn't have a good time with a name like that--_voyons_! Only one 'usband and 'eaps of babies."

She was much nearer the end than he had supposed possible. The last month had to be paid for. She lay very still under the gorgeous quilt which she had brought with her, and her hand, which she had stretched out to him in friendly welcome, was like the claw of a bird. "Everyone 'ere promise not to tell," she said. "I'm just Marie Dubois. Even ze undertaker--'e must not know. You put on ze stone: 'Marie Dubois, ze beloved daughter of Georges and Marianne Dubois, rag-pickers of Paris.' That will be a last leetle joke, hein?"

"It's as you wish," he said coldly.

He forced back the natural questions that came to him. He had a disordered conviction that he was fighting her for his sanity, for the very ground on which he had built his life, and that he dared not yield by so much as a kindly word. He did what lay in his power for her with a heart shut and barred.

She brought a little of her world and her whole outlook with her. On the last day that she was able to be up she dressed herself in a gay mandarin's coat with a Chinese woman's trousers, and tried to do her dance for the benefit of a shocked and fascinated matron. Every morning she wore a new cap to set off the deepening shadow of dissolution.

By the open fire the old woman embroidered ceaselessly.

"She is making--'ow you call it?--my shroud. You see--with ze blue ribbons. Blue--that's my colour--my lucky colour. As soon as I could speak I ask for blue ribbons in my pinafore."

"I should have thought your mind might be better occupied now," he retorted with brutal commonplaceness.

She winked at him.

"Oh, but I 'ave 'ad my leetle talk with _Monsieur le Cure_. 'E and I are ze best of friends, though I never met 'im before. 'E understand about ze blue ribbons. But Monsieur Robert is too clever."

"It seems so," he said scornfully.

She questioned him from out of the thickening cloud of morphia. "You don't believe in God?" And then as he shook his head she smiled sleepily. "Well, it is still possible 'e exist, _Monsieur_--_Monsieur le docteur_."

She lay quiet so that he thought she had fallen asleep, but the next moment her eyes had opened, widening on him with a startling wakefulness. It was as though her whole personality had leapt to arms, and bursting through the narcotic, stood free with a gay and laughing gesture. "As to God--I don't know about 'im, but I exist--I go on. You bet your 'at on that, my friend. I don't know where I go--but I go somewhere. And I dance. And if St. Peter sit at ze golden gates, like they say in ze fairybook, I say to 'im: ''Ave you ever seen ze Gyp Galop?' And then I dance for 'im and ze angels play for me"--she nodded wickedly--"not 'ymn tunes."

She was serious. She meant it. If she survived she survived as what she was or not at all. And looking down on her wasted, tortured body, Stonehouse had a momentary but extraordinarily vivid conviction that what she had said was true. She would persist. Whatever else happened, Gyp Labelle would go on having a good time. She could not be extinguished. There was in her some virtue altogether apart from the body--a blazing vitality, an unquenchable, burning spirit.

He felt his hatred of her wither before it.

"And 'e say: 'You dance ver' bad, Gyp, but you make me laugh. You go on and dance to ze others.' For 'e know who I am. My poor parents they make ze mistake. They think: ''Ere is such a ver' nice, good little _bebe_, and so they call me after my _Maman_, who is ver' nice and good too, and who love me ver' much--Marie--Marie Dubois."

She turned her head towards the old woman bending lower and lower over her fine work, and, smiling at her, fell asleep.

He returned, one night, to the hospital in the hope of being able to work in the laboratory, and instead, coming to her room, he went in. The action was so unpremeditated and unmotivated that he had closed the door before he knew what he had done. But the excuse he framed in his confusion was never uttered, for he had the right to appear dumbfounded. She sat, propped up like a painted wraith against a pile of gorgeous cushions, and all about her was scattered a barbarous loot of rings and bracelets, of strings of pearls, of unset stones, diamonds and emeralds, heaped carelessly on the table at her side, and twinkling like little malevolent eyes out of the creases of her coverlet.

The old woman wrote toilingly on a slip of paper. "Sh! This is ver' solemn. I could not sleep, and so I make my testament." She put her finger to her lips as though her whisper were only a part of a playful mystery and beckoned him, and he went towards her, reluctant, yet unresisting like a man hypnotized. He had a childish longing to touch all that colour, to take up great handfuls of it and feel its warmth and let it drip through his fingers. The death that stared out of her painted face, the silence and grim austerity of her surroundings made that display of magnificence a fantastic parable. The stones were the life that was going from her. She picked up each one in turn and caressed it, and held it to the light, remembering who knew what escapade, what splendid, reckless days, what tragedy. And yet there was no regret and surely no remorse in her farewell of them.

"_Ma Vieille_--she make a list of all. They will be sold--for ze children of Paris--ze _gamins_--as I was--for a good time." She held out her hand: "_C'est joli, n'est ce pas_?"

He looked unwillingly. It was a black opal, and as she moved it it seemed to come to life, and a distant resentful fire gleamed out of its sullen depths.

"Yes. But you oughtn't to have all--all this stuff about. No one could be held responsible----"

"What does it matter? If someone take it--someone 'ave it. It won't worry me. 'Ere, I tell you something--a story, _hein_, to amuse you? You remember our leetle dinner and 'ow I would not tell about ze Grand Duke and ze black opal? Well, I tell you now. It don't matter any more."

"No. You're doing yourself harm. You ought to sleep."

"I don't want to--I can't. It is 'orrible to lie awake in ze dark and---- And you, too, Monsieur Robert, you don't feel you sleep much to-night, _hein_?"

"No."

"_Alors_--'ere we are--two poor fellows shipwrecked--we make a leetle feast together--a feast of good stories. You say you don't like me ver' much. But that is _ridicule_ now. One only 'ates when one is afraid, and you aren't afraid any more of poor Gyp."

"Was I ever?" he demanded.

"A leetle--per'aps? You think to yourself: 'If I love 'er----!' Bah, that is all finished. Come, I tell you my funny story."

He had laughed. He was incredulous of himself. He sat on the edge of her bed listening to her whisper, a tortured whisper which she made supremely funny--a mock-conspirator's whisper which drew them close to one another in an outrageous intimacy.

"At any rate you had made a good enemy that time," he said.

She panted.

"Ah no--no. 'E 'ave a fine sense of humour, Monsieur ze Grand Duke. 'E laugh too. 'E say--'Gyp--you are ze ver' devil 'erself!' 'Ere, but this ruby--I don't care much for rubies--but this one 'ave a real fine story."

And so one by one the stones were taken up and held a moment, some to be discarded with a name or a forgetful shrug, and some to linger a while longer whilst she recalled their little ribald histories. And it seemed to Robert Stonehouse that gradually the room filled with invisible personages who, as the jewels dropped from her waxen fingers into the gaping box, bowed to her and took their leave. And at last they were all gone but one. He seemed to hear them, their footsteps receding faintly along the corridors.

She held an unset pearl in her hand.

"This one 'ave a ver' nice leetle story. A brigand give it me when 'e 'old up ze train between Mexico City and ze coast. A fine fellow--with a sombrero and a manner!" (She looked past Stonehouse, smiling, as though she too saw the shadow twirling its black moustache and staring back at her with gallant admiration.) "And brave too, _nombre de Dios_! And 'e bow and say: 'One does not take ransom from Mademoiselle Labelle. One pays tribute.' And 'e give me this to remember 'im by--as I give it you, Monsieur Robert."

He stood up sharply.

"No--I--I don't care for that kind of thing."

"For your wife, then!"

"I am not married."

"But one day per'aps? You love someone, _hein_?" (Had she wilfully forgotten? She studied his face with a wicked curiosity. He could not answer her.) "Give it 'er then--Monsieur Robert--_pour me faire plaisir_."

"There is no one to give it to."

"But there was----"

He tried desperately to regain the old sarcastic inflection.

"No doubt it seems inevitable to you."

"Tell me about 'er. _Voyons_, if you can't keep me alive, _Monsieur mon docteur_, you might at least amuse me."

"There is nothing to tell. I will give you something that will make you sleep."

"I do not want to sleep. That is bad, ugly sleep that you give me. So you quarrel. What you quarrel about, Monsieur Robert? Another woman?"