Man and Maid

E >> Elinor Glyn >> Man and Maid

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"And I am wild, is that it?"

"A savage--yes--One feels that you would break one's bones if you were
angry--and would mock most of the time,--but if you loved. _Mon
Dieu!_--it would be worth while!"

"You have had immense experience of love Coralie, haven't you?"

She shrugged her shoulders--.

"I am not sure that it has been love--."

"Neither am I."

"They say that you have given millions to the little _demi-mondaine_
Suzette la Blonde----and that you are crazy about her, Nicholas--Did I
see her on the stairs just now?"--

I frowned--. She saw in a moment it was not the right line--. "For that!
it is nothing, Nicholas--they are very attractive, those ladies--one
understands--but--your book and your secretary?--_hein?_--"

I lit a cigarette with supreme calm, and did not answer, so that she was
obliged to go on--.

"Her face is pretty in spite of those glasses, Nicholas--and one saw
that she walked well as she went on."

"May not a secretary have a decent appearance then?"

"When they have they do not remain secretaries long."

"You had better ask Miss Sharp if she means to stay when next you chance
upon her then--I don't exchange much conversation with her myself."

There is no exact English word which would describe Coralie's face--She
was longing to believe me--but felt she could not--quite--! She knew it
was foolish to bait me, and yet the female in her was too strong for
any common sense to win--Her personality had to express herself just as
strongly about her jealousy of my secretary, as mine had to express
itself about not telling Maurice, Alathea's name,--in both cases we cut
off our noses to spite our faces. I was aware of my folly, I do not know
if Coralie was aware of hers. Her exasperation so increased in a few
moments that she could not control herself--and she spoke right out--.

"When we have all been so kind to you, Nicholas, it is too bad for you
to waste your time upon that--!"

I became stern, then, as I had earlier become with Suzette, and made
Coralie understand that I would have no interference from anyone. I
frightened her--and presently she left me more attracted than she has
ever been--. As I said before, women are amazing creatures.

XII

On Wednesday morning I received a reply from Maurice at Deauville--he
hastened to answer he said--He had heard of Miss Sharp through a man in
the American Red Cross, where Miss Sharp had been employed. He knew
nothing more about her, he had seen her once when he was interviewing
her, and Miss whatever the other woman's name was, he had forgotten
now--and he had thought her suitable and plain and capable, that is all.

I had tried to word my letter not to give the impression of peculiar
interest, but no doubt Coralie, who had returned to the band on Monday,
had given him her view of the case, for he added that these people were
often designing although they looked simple--and in my loneliness he
felt sure I would be happier and better at the sea with my friends--!

I would have been angry, only there was something humorous in the way
everyone seems to think I am incapable of managing my own affairs!--What
is it they all want of me--? Not that I should be happy in my own way,
but that I should contribute to their happiness--they want to
participate in what my money is able to procure--and they do not want
interference from outside. Every one of my friends--and relations--would
be hostile if I were to announce that I was in love with Miss Sharp, and
wanted to marry her--Even though it was proved to them that she was
pretty--a perfect lady--intelligent--virtuous--clever! She is not of
their set and might, and probably would, be a stumbling block in their
path when they wished to make use of me!--so she would be taboo! None of
them would put it in that way of course, their opposition would be (and
they might even think they were sincere) because they were thinking of
_my_ happiness!

Burton is the only person whose sympathy I could count upon!

How about the Duchesse?--that is the deepest mystery of all--I must find
out from Burton what was the date about when she came to my
_appartement_ and found Alathea. Was it before that time when she asked
me if I were in love--and I saw that dear little figure in the
passage?--Could she have been thinking of her--?

By Thursday when there was no further news I began to feel so restless
that I determined to go back to Paris the following week. It was all
very well to be out in the _parc_ at Versailles with a mind at ease, but
it feels too far away when I am so troubled.

I sent Burton in on Friday to Auteuil--.

"Just walk about near the wine shop, Burton, and try to find out by
every clue your not unintelligent old pate can invent, where Miss Sharp
lives, and what is happening? Then go to the Hotel de Courville and chat
with the concierge--or whatever you think best--I simply can't stand
hearing nothing!"

Burton pulled in his lips.

"Very good, Sir Nicholas."

I tried to correct my book in the afternoon. I really am trying to do
the things I feel she thinks would improve my character--But I am one
gnawing ache for news--Underneath is the fear that some complication may
occur which will prevent her returning to me. I find myself listening to
every footstep in the passage in case it might be a telegram, so of
course quite a number of messages and things were bound to come from
utterly uninteresting sources, to fill me with hope and then disappoint
me--It is always like that. I really was wild on Friday afternoon, and
if George Harcourt had not turned up--he is at the Trianon Palace now
with the Supreme War Council--I don't know what I should have done with
myself. Lots of those fellows would come and dine with me if I wanted
them--some are even old pals--but I am out of tune with my kind.

George was very amusing.

"My dear boy," he said, "Violetta is upsetting all my calculations--she
has refused everything I have offered her--But I fear she is beginning
to show me too much devotion!"

This seemed a great calamity to him.

"It is terribly dangerous that, Nicholas!--because you know, my dear
boy, when a woman shows absolute devotion, a man is irresistibly
impelled to offer her a back seat--it is when she appeals to his senses,
shows him caprice, and remains an insecure possession, that he will
offer her the place his mother held of highest honour."

"George, you impossible cynic!"

"Not at all--I am merely a student of human instincts and
characteristics--Half a cynic is a poor creature--A complete one has
almost reached the mercy and tolerance of Christ."

This was quite a new view of the subject--!

He went on--.

"You see, when men philosophize about women, they are generally unjust,
taking the subject from the standpoint that whatever frailties they
have, the male is at all events exempt from them. Now that is
nonsense--Neither sex is exempt--and neither sex as a rule will
contemplate or admit its failings.--For instance, the sense of abstract
truth in the noblest woman never prevents her lying _for_ her lover or
her child, yet she thinks herself quite honest--In the noblest man the
sense is so strong that it enables him to make only the one exception,
that of invariably lying _to_ the woman!"

I laughed--he puffed one of my pre-war cigars--.

"Women have no natural sense of truth--they only rise to it through
sublime effort,"--

"And men?"

"It is ingrained in them, they only sink from it to cover their natural
instincts of infidelity."

His voice was contemplative now--.

"How we lie to the little darlings, Nicholas! How we tell them we have
no time to write--when of course we have always time if we really want
to--we never are at a loss for the moments before the creatures are a
secure possession!"

"The whole thing gets back to the hunting instinct, my dear George--I
can't see that one can be blamed for it--."

"I am not blaming, I am merely analysing. Have you remarked that when a
man feels perfectly secure about the woman he will give his hours of
duty to his country, his hours of leisure to his friends who flatter
him, and the crumbs snatched from either to the poor lady of his heart!
But if she excites his senses, and remains problematic, he will skimp
his duty, neglect his friends, and snatch even hours from sleep to spend
them in her company!"

"You don't think then that there is something higher and beyond all this
in love, George?--something which you and I have never come across
perhaps?"

"If one met a woman who was all man in mind, all woman in body, and all
child in soul--it is possible--but where are these phoenixes to be
discovered, my son?--It is wiser not to dissatisfy oneself by thinking
of them--but just go on accepting that which is always accorded to the
very rich!--By the way, I saw Suzette la Blonde dining last night with
old Solly Jesse--_Monsieur le Comte Jesse!_--She had a new string of
pearls on and was stroking his fat hand, while her lips curled with
love--I thought--??"

I lay back in my chair and laughed and laughed--And I had imagined that
Suzette really felt for me, and would grieve for at least a week or
two--but I am replaced in four days--!

I do not think I even felt bitter--all those things seem so far away
now.

When George had gone, I said to myself--"All man in mind"--yes I am sure
she is--"All woman in body"--Certainly that--"All child in soul"--I want
to know about her soul--if we have souls, as Nina says--by the way, I
will send a messenger into the Ritz with a note to ask Nina to spend the
day with me to-morrow. We have got accustomed to the impossible
difficulty of telephoning to Paris, and waiting hours for telegrams--a
messenger is the quickest in the end.

How the war drags on--! Will it really finish this year after
all--people are very depressed these last days--I do not write of any of
this in my journal--others will chronicle every shade--When I let myself
think of it I grow too wild. I become feverish with longing to be up and
with the old regiment--When I read of their deeds--then I grow
rebellious.

* * * * *

_Monday:_

No news--yet--It is unbearable--Burton returned from Auteuil with no
clue whatsoever--except that the _concierge_ at the Hotel de Courville
had never heard of the name of Sharp! That proves to me that "Sharp" is
not Alathea's name at all. He was a newcomer--and there were so many
young ladies who came and went to see Madame la Duchesse that he could
not identify anyone in particular by description.

Nina turned up early on Saturday in time for lunch--She was looking
ravishing in entirely new clothes--like Suzette, she has found that the
"_geste_" is altering--Germans may be attacking Paris--Friends and
relations may be dying in heaps, but women must have new clothes and
fashion must have her say as to their shapes--And what a mercy it is so!
If there was nothing to relieve war and seriousness--all the nations
would be raving lunatics by now.

"Jim will be crazy about you, Nina, when he sees you in that hat!"

"Yes, won't he! I put it on to make you crazy now!"

"Of course I always am!"

"No, Nicholas--you were once--but you are altered, some quite new
influence has come into your life--you don't say half such horrid
things."

We lunched in the restaurant. Some of the Supreme War Council were about
at the different tables, and we exchanged a few words--Nina preferred it
to my sitting-room.

"Englishmen do look attractive in uniform, Nicholas, don't they," she
said--. "I wonder if I had seen Jim in ordinary things if I would have
been so drawn to him?"

"Who knows? Do you remember how sensible you were about him and
Rochester!--it is splendid that it has turned out so well."

" ... Where is happiness, Nicholas?" and her eyes became dreamy,--"I
have a well balanced nature, and am grateful for what has been given me
in Jim, but I can't pretend that I have found perfect content--because
some part of me is always hungry--. I believe really that you were the
only person who could have fulfilled all I wanted in a man!"

"Nina, you had not the least feeling for me when you first saw me after
I was wounded, do you remember you felt like a sister--a mother--and a
family friend!"

"Yes, was not that odd!--because of course the things which used to
attract me in you and which could again now, were there all the time."

"At that moment you were so occupied with 'Jim's blue eyes,' and his
'white nice teeth,' and 'how his hair was brushed,' and 'how well his
uniform fitted'--to say nothing of his D.S.O. and his M.C. that you
could not appreciate anything else."

"You have a V.C., your teeth are divine, and you too have blue eyes,
Nicholas--."

"Eye--please,--the singular or plural in this case makes all the
difference, but I shall have my new one in fairly soon now and then
illusion will help me!"

Nina sighed--.

"Illusion! I am just not going to think of what perhaps might have
happened if I had not been surrounded with illusion, last February--."

"Well, you can always have the satisfaction of knowing that as your
interest in Jim diminishes, so his will increase--George Harcourt and I
thrashed it all out the other day--and you yourself admitted it, when we
dined. To keep the hunting instinct alive is the thing--You will have
the fondest lover when you go back to Queen Street, Nina!"

"I--suppose so--. But would it not be wonderful if one had not to play
any game, but could just love and be so satisfied with each other that
there would not be any fear--."

Nina's eyes were sad--Did she remember my words at our last meeting?

"Yes that would be heaven!"

"Is that what you are dreaming about, Nicholas?"

"Perhaps."

"What a fortunate woman she will be!--And of yourself, what shall you
give her?"

"I shall give her passion--and tenderness, and protection, and
devotion--she shall share the thoughts of my mind and the aspirations of
my soul--."

"Nicholas!--you talking in this romantic way--she must be a miracle!"

"No--she is just a little girl."

"And it is she who has made you think about souls?"

"I expect so--."

"Well, I must not think of them, or of anything but what a good time we
shall all have when the war is over, and what nice things I've bought in
Paris--and of how good-looking Jim is--Let us talk of something else!"

So we spoke of every-day matters--and then we went into the _parc_--and
Nina stayed by my bath chair and amused me. But she does not know
anything about Versailles or its history--and she cannot make
psychological deductions--and all the time I was understanding with one
part of me that her hat was awfully becoming, and everything about her
perfect; and with another part I was seeing that her brain is
limited--and that if I had married her I should have been bored to
death!

And when the evening came and she left me, after our long day, I felt a
sense of relief--Oh! there can be no one in the world like my
Alathea--with her little red hands, and cheap cotton garments! I realize
now that life used to be made up of the physical--and that
something,--perhaps suffering, has taught me that the mental and the
spiritual matter more.

Even if she does come back--how am I to break through the wall of ice
which she has surrounded herself with since the Suzette cheque
business?--I can't explain--she won't even know that I have parted with
her.

Of course she has heard the fluffies often in the next room when they
have come to play bridge in the afternoon. Perhaps she may even have
heard the idiotic things they talk about--yes--of course she must have
an awful impression of me--.

The contrast of her life and theirs--and mine! I shall go on with my
Plato--it bores me--it is difficult, and I am tired--but _I will_!.

XIII

Suspense is the hardest thing to bear--what a ridiculous truism! It has
been said a thousand times before and will be said a thousand times
again!--because it has come to everyone at some moment, and so its pain
is universally understood. To have attained serenity would mean that one
was strong enough not to allow suspense to cause one a moment's doubt or
distress. I am far from serenity, I fear--for I am filled with unrest--I
try to tell myself that Alathea Sharp does not matter in my life at
all--that this is the end--that I am not to be influenced by her
movements or her thoughts, or her comings and goings--I try not to think
of her even as "Alathea"--And then when I have succeeded in some measure
in all this, a hideous feeling of sinking comes over me--that physical
sensation of a lead weight below the heart. What on earth is the good of
living an ugly maimed life?

It was ten times easier to carry on under the most disgusting and
fearsome circumstances when I was fighting, than it is now when
everything is done for my comfort, and I have all that money can buy.

What money cannot buy is of the only real consequence though. I must
read Henley again, and try to feel the thrill of pride I used to feel
when I was a boy at the line "I am the master of my fate, I am the
captain of my soul."

----What if she does not come back, and I do not hear any more of her?

Stop! Nicholas Thormonde, this is contemptible weakness!

* * * * *

This evening it was wonderful on the terrace, the sun set in a blaze of
crimson and purple and gold, every window in the _Galerie des Glasses_
seemed to be on fire--strange ghosts of by-gone courtiers appeared to be
flitting past the mirrors.

What do they think of the turmoil they have left behind them, I wonder?
Each generation torn by the same anguish which the worries of love
bring?--And what is love for?--Just to surround the re-creative instinct
with glamour and render it aesthetic?

Did cave men love?--They were exempt from pain of the mind at all
events. Civilization has augmented the mental anguishes, and pleasures
of love, and when civilization is in excess it certainly distorts and
perverts the whole passion.

But what is love anyway? the thing itself I mean. It is a want, and an
ache and a craving--I know what I want. I want firstly Alathea for my
own, with everything which that term implies of possession. Then I want
to share her thoughts, and I want to feel all the great aspirations of
her soul--I want her companionship--I want her sympathy--I want her
understanding.

When I was in love with Nina--and five or six others--I never thought of
any of these things--I just wanted their bodies: Therefore it is only
when the spiritual enters into the damned thing, I suppose, that one
could call it love. By that reasoning I have loved only Alathea in all
my life. But I am stumped with this thought--If she had one eye and no
leg below the knee--should I be in love with her? and feel all these
exalted emotions about her? I cannot honestly be certain how I would
answer that question yet, so this shows that the physical plays the
chief role even in a love that seems spiritual.

Matho--in Flaubert's Salammbo was beaten to a jelly but his eyes still
flamed with love for his princess--But when she saw him as this
revolting mass, did her love flame for him? Or was she exalted only by
the incense to her vanity--and a pity for his sufferings? Heloise and
Abelard were pretty wonderful in their love, but his love became
transmuted much sooner than hers, because all physical emotions were
gone from him. Plato's idea that man gravitates towards beauty for some
subconscious soul desire to re-create himself through perfection, and so
attain immortality, is probably the truth. And that is why we shrink
from mutilated bodies--. Until I can be quite sure that I should love
Alathea just the same were she disfigured as I am--I cannot in justice
expect her to return my passion--.

Nina became re-attracted (if I can coin that word)--because I was out of
reach. The predatory instinct in woman had received a rebuff, and
demanded renewed advance.--She still keeps a picture in some part of
her mental vision of what I was too, therefore, I am not so revolting
to her--but Alathea has not this advantage, and has seen me only
wounded.

I have done nothing to earn her respect--She has apprehended my useless
life in these last months--She has heard the chattering of my
companions, whom I have been free to choose--the obvious deduction being
that these are what I desire--And finally, she knows that I have had a
mistress.--In heaven's name _why_ should she be anything but what she is
in her manner to me!--Of course she despises me. So that the only thing
I could possibly allure her by would be that intangible something which
Nina and Suzette and even Coralie--have inferred that I
possess--"It"!!--. And how would that translate itself to a mind like
Alathea's?--It might mean nothing to her--It probably would not. The
only times I have ever seen any feeling at all in her for me were when
she thought she had destroyed a wounded man's interest in a harmless
hobby--and felt remorse--And the freezing reserve which showed when she
handed me the cheque-book--and the perturbation and contempt when I was
rude about the child.--At other times she has shown a blank
indifference--or a momentary consciousness that there was admiration in
my eye for her.

Now what do I get out of the iciness over Suzette's cheque?

Two possibilities--.

One--that she is more prudish than one of her literary cultivation, and
worldly knowledge is likely to be, so that she strongly disapproves of
a man having a "_petite amie_"--or--

Two--that she has sensed that I love her and was affronted at the
discovery that at the same time I had a--friend?--

The second possibility gives me hope, and so I fear to entertain a
belief in it--but taken coldly it seems the most likely.--Now if she had
_not_ been affronted at this stage, would she have gone on believing I
loved her, and so eventually have shown some reciprocity?

It is just possible--.

And as it is, will that same instinct which is in the subconscious mind
of all women--and men too for the matter of that--which makes them want
to fight to retain or retake what was theirs, influence her now
unconsciously to feel some, even contemptuous, interest in me? This also
is possible--.

If only fate brings her to me again--. That is where one is done--when
absence cuts threads.

To-morrow it will be Monday--a whole week since I received her telegram.

I shall go up to Paris in the morning if I hear nothing and go myself to
the Hotel de Courville to try and obtain a trace of her--if that is
impossible I will write to the Duchesse.--

* * * * *

_Reservoirs--Night:_

As I wrote the last words--a note was brought to me by Burton--someone
had left at the Hotel.

"Dear Sir Nicholas--(it ran)

I am very sorry I have been unable to come out to
do my work--but my brother died last Tuesday, and
I have been extremely occupied--I will be at Versailles
at eleven on Thursday as usual.

Yours truly,
A. Sharp."

* * * * *

Her firm writing, more like a man's than a woman's looked a little shaky
at the end--Was she crying perhaps when she wrote the letter--the poor
little girl--What will the death mean to her eventually? Will the
necessity to work be lessened?

But even the gravity of the news did not prevent a feeling of joy and
relief in me--I would see her again--Only four days to wait!

But what a strange note!--not any exhibition of feeling! she would not
share even that natural emotion of grief with me. Her work is business,
and a well bred person ought not to mix anything personal into it.--How
will she be--? Colder than ever? or will it have softened her--.

She will probably be more unbending to Burton than to me.

The weather has changed suddenly, the wind is sighing, and I know that
the summer is over--I shall have the sitting-room fire lighted and
everything as comfortable as I can when she does turn up, and I shall
have to stay here until then since I cannot communicate with her in any
way. This ridiculous obscurity as to her address must be cleared away.
I must try to ask her casually, so as not to offend her.

* * * * *

A week has passed--.

Alathea came on Thursday--I was sickeningly nervous on Thursday morning.
I resented it extremely. As yet the only advance I have made is that I
can control most of the outward demonstrations of my perturbations, but
not the sensations themselves. I was sitting in my chair quite still
when the door opened, and in she came--Just the scrap of a creature in
dead black. Although there was no crepe, one could see that the garments
were French trappings of woe, that is, she had a veil hanging from her
simple small hat. I felt that she had had to buy these things for the
funeral, and probably could not afford a second set of more dowdy ones
for her working clothes, so that there was that indescribable air of
elegance about her appearance which had shown in the _Bois_ that Sunday.
The black was supremely becoming to her transparent white skin, and
seemed to set off the bright bronze brown of her hair--the rebellious
little curls had slipped out beside her ears, but the yellow horn
spectacles were as uncompromising as ever--I could not see whether her
eyes were sad or no--her mouth was firm as usual.

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