The Parts Men Play

by Beverley Baxter

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FEMININE TOUCH.

I.

In a small South Kensington flat a young woman was seated before a mirror, adding to her beauty with those artifices which are supposed to lure the male to helpless capitulation. Two candles gave a shadowy, mysterious charm to the reflection—a quality somewhat lacking in the original—and it was impossible for its owner to look on the picture of pensive eyelashes, radiant eyes, and warm cheeks without a murmur of admiration. She smiled once to estimate the exact amount of teeth that should be shown; she leaned forward and looked yearningly, soulfully, into the brown eyes in the glass. With a sigh of satisfaction she lit a cigarette from one of the candles, and leaning back, watched the smoke passing across the face of the reflection.

'Hello, Elise!' said the beauty casually, as the door opened and Elise
Durwent entered, dressed in the uniform of an ambulance-driver.

'You'll find the room standing on its head, but chuck those things anywhere.'

'Going out again?' asked the new-comer, stepping over several feminine garments that had been thrown on the floor.

'Just a dance up the street—in Jimmy Goodall's studio. Listen, old thing; do put on some water. I'm croaking for a cup of tea.'

Without any comment, Elise went into the adjoining room, used as a kitchen, while the voluptuary dabbed clouds of powder over her neck and shoulders. With a tired listlessness, Elise returned and sank into a chair, from the back of which an underskirt was hanging disconsolately.

'You didn't do the breakfast-dishes, Marian.'

'Didn't I? Oh, well, they're not very dirty. Had a rotten day at the garage?'

'It was rather long.'

'You're a chump for doing it. Working for your country's all very well, but wait until after the war and see if the girl who's spoiled her hands has a chance with the men. Why don't you wangle leave like I do? You can pull old Huggin's leg any day in the week—and he likes it. All you have to do is to lean on his shoulder and say you won't give up—you simply won't. Aren't men a scream?'

'I suppose so,' said Elise after a pause. 'Who is your cavalier to-night?'

'Horry.'

'Horace Maynard?'

'Absolutely. You know him, don't you, Elise?'

'Yes. He was visiting at our place in the country when war broke out.
When is he going back to France?'

'Monday.'

'He's been dancing pretty constant attendance, hasn't he?'

'Ra-ther. He says if I don't write him every day after he buzzes back, he'll stick his head over the parapet and spoil a Hun bullet.'

'Those things come easily to Horace.'

'Oh, do they? I notice he doesn't go to you to say them.'

'No,' said Elise with a smile, 'that is so. Think of the thrills I miss.'

'Now don't get sarcastic. If Horry wants to make a fuss over me, that's his business.'

'What about your husband at the front?'

'My husband and I understand each other perfectly,' said the girl, glancing critically at the picture of two parted, carmined lips in the mirror. 'He wouldn't want me to be lonely. He knows I have my boy friends, and he's not such a fool as to be jealous. You want to wake up, Elise—things have changed. A woman who sticks at home and meets her darling hubby at night with half-a-dozen squalling kids and a pair of carpet slippers—no thanks! The war has shown that women are going to have just as much liberty as the men. We've taken it; and I tell you the men like us all the better for it.'

'You think that because every man you meet kisses you.'

'Elise!'

'Good heavens! Don't they?'

'Well, I never! Anyhow, what if they do? Is there any harm in it?'

Elise smiled and shook her head. 'None, my dear Marian,' she said. 'There is no possible harm in it. There's no harm in anything now. The old idea that a woman's purity and modesty—— But what's the use of saying that to you? Of course you're right. Who wants to stay at home with a lot of little brats, if you can have a dozen men a week standing you dinners, and mauling you like a bargee, and'——

'Elise!'

'There's the water getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married when they were on leave'——

'There you go again. For Heaven's sake, Elise, if you can't attract men yourself, don't nag a girl who does. You're positively sexless. The way you talk'——

'There's the water. When Horace comes I don't want to see him.'

'I guess he can live without it,' said the patriotic, leave-wangling war-worker, with an angry glance at Elise as she disappeared into the kitchen. Catching a glimpse of the frown in the mirror, she checked it, and once more leaned towards the reflection as if she would kiss the alluring lips that beckoned coaxingly in the glass.

II.

Marian had gone, radiant, and exulting in her radiance; and Elise sat by the meagre fire trying to take interest in a novel. Although she had found it easy to be confident and self-assertive when the other girl was there, the solitariness of the flat and the silence of the street undermined her courage. The dragging minutes, the meaningless pages. . . . She wished that even Marian were there in all her complacent vulgarity.

Although she had drawn many people to her, the passing of the years had left Elise practically friendless. It was easy for her to attract with her gift of intense personality; but the very quality that attracted was the one that eventually repelled. The impossibility of forgetting herself, of losing herself in the intimacies of friendship, made her own personality a thing which was stifling her life. Since she was a child she had craved for understanding and sympathy, but nature and her upbringing had made it impossible for her to accept them when they were offered. Lacking the power of self-expression, and consequently self-forgetfulness, her own individuality oppressed her. It was like an iron mask which she could not remove, and which no one could penetrate.

Going to London soon after the outbreak of war, she had been taken on the strength of a motor-ambulance garage; and to be near her work she had leased a small flat in Park Walk, sharing it by turn with various companion drivers. Although her desire to be of service was the prime reason of her action, it was with unconcealed joy that she had thrown off the restraints of home. Freedom of action, a respite from the petty gossip of her mother's set, had loomed up as the portals to a new life. The thought of sharing the discomforts and the privileges of patriotic work with young women who had broken the shackles of convention was a prospect that thrilled her.

To her amazement, she discovered that the feminine nature alters little with environment. It was true, her new companions had broken with all the previous conceptions of decorum, but they had used their newly found liberty to enslave themselves still further with the idea of man-conquest. Officers—callow, heroic, squint-eyed, supercilious, superb, of any and every Allied country—officers were the quarry, and they the hunters. To love or not to love? Their talks, their thoughts, their lives concerned little else. They fought for the attentions of men like starving sparrows for crumbs.

In such an environment, where she had hoped to lose the burden of persistent self, Elise found emancipation farther away than ever. The abandon of the others first created a reversion to prudery in her breast, and then developed a cynical indifference. The others treated her with friendly insouciance. Had she been ill, or had she met with an accident, there was probably not one who wouldn't have proved herself a 'ministering angel.' As it was, they largely ignored her, indulging the instinct of inhumanity which so often is woman's attitude towards woman.

So she sat alone, the Elise who had always been so resolute and independent, feeling very small and pathetic, yearning for far-off things—utterly lonesome, and a little inclined to cry.

The words of the book grew dim, and her thoughts drifted towards Austin Selwyn. He had been contemptible! A pacifist! His idealism was a pose to try to ennoble utter cowardice. At a time when men's blood ran high he had prated of brotherhood, and peace, and suggested that the infamous Hun had a soul! How she hated him! . . . And when she had finished with that thought her heart's yearning returned more cruelly than before.

That evening by the trout-stream when she had seen Dick hiding in the bush, Selwyn had caught her when she had almost swooned. He had gripped her arms with his hands, and, quivering with emotion, had lent his strength to her. At the memory the crimson of her cheeks deepened. They had been so close to each other. His burning eyes, his lips trembling with passion—what strange impulse in her heart had made her thrill with a heavenly exhilaration? For that instant while his hands had gripped her a glorious vista had appeared before her eyes—a world of dreams where the tyranny of self could not enter. For that one instant her whole soul had leaped in response to his strong tenderness.

She tried to dismiss the recollection as an admission of cowardice engendered of the night's mood. But she could not do away with the memories which lingered obstinately. Not since the days when Dick had offered his blind loyalty had any one tried to understand her as Austin Selwyn had done. She was grateful for that. She might even have valued his friendship if he had not been so despicable that awful night. To insult her with his talk of pacifism, and then, heedless of her intensity, to propose to her! She could not forgive him for that. She was glad her words had stung him!

Minutes passed. The fire would not answer to any attention, but sulkily lived out its little hour. The evening seemed interminable.

It was shortly after ten o'clock when there was a knock at the door, and Elise hurried to open it, thinking there might be a message from the garage.

'It's only me, Elise,' said a familiar voice.

'Oh!—Horace,' she laughed. 'What's the trouble? Did Marian leave anything behind?'

'No. I was just absolutely fed up; and when she told me you were here alone, I thought I'd jolly well come down and talk to you.'

'Good! Come in. You mustn't stay long, though. Please don't notice this horrible mess.'

In sheer pleasure at the breaking of the solitude, her vivacity made her eyes sparkle with life. Her sentences were crisp and rapid, and as she led the young officer to a seat by the fire it would have been difficult for Elise herself to think that a few minutes before she had been helplessly and lonesomely on the brink of tears.

'How is the dance going on up the street?' she asked, as Maynard inserted a cigarette between his lips without lighting it.

'It's a poisonous affair.'

'Poor boy!'

'I'm fed up, Elise. I'm—I'm gorged. When I heard you were down here, I said, "By George! I'll go and see her. I can talk to Elise. She's got some sense."'

'What a thing to say about a woman!'

'Don't chaff me, Elise. I can't stand it. I'm frightfully upset—really.'

'What has Marian been doing to you?''

'Nothing, except making a blithering ass of me. You know, I was fearfully keen on her, and I've passed up all sorts of fluff so as to do the decent; but when that brute Heckles-Jennings advised me to-night to be sure and sit out a dance with Marian because she was such hot stuff, he said . . . Of course, he's an outsider and all that, and I told him to go to hell—but you don't blame me for feeling cut up, do you, Elise?'

'Didn't you know she was that kind?'

'What kind?'

'Oh—the—the universal kisser—the complete osculator—the'——

'I say'——

'But surely you don't think you are the only one she has made a fool of?
To begin with, there's her husband in France—a brother-officer, Horace.'

Maynard wriggled uneasily, sliding down the chair in the movement until his knees were very near his chin.

'He's a rotter, Elise.'

'Do you know him?'

'N-no. But Marian says he absolutely neglects her. He's one of those cold-blooded fish—doesn't understand her a bit. After all'—the extra vehemence shifted him another few inches, so that he presented an extraordinary figure, like the hump of a dromedary—'women must have sympathy. They need it. They'——

'Oh, Horace!' Elise burst into a laugh. 'Are there really some of you left? How refreshing! Why don't you put it on your card: "2nd Lt. Horace Maynard, Grenadier Guards, soul-mate by appointment"?'

'I wish you wouldn't laugh like that.'

He was a picture of such utter dejection that, checking her mirth, Elise laid her hand on his arm. 'Sorry, Horace. You know, if it hadn't been for this war we might never have known how nice our men are. I only wonder how it is that the women have the heart to make such fools of you.'

The unhappy warrior pulled himself up to a fairly upright posture and tapped his cigarette against the palm of his hand. 'I'm glad,' he said with a slight blush, 'that you don't quite put me down as a rotter. I don't know what's come over us all. Before the war, when you met a chap's wife—well, hang it all!—she was his wife, and that was all there was about it. But nowadays'——

'I know, Horace, it's a miserable business altogether—partly war hysteria, and partly the fact that women can't stand independence, I suppose. Marian's a splendid type of the female war-shirker. You know she's married; yet, because she lets you maul her'——

'I say, Elise!'

'——and she murmurs pathetically that her husband in France neglects her—at least, that's what she tells you. When she was dressing to-night Marian said that she and her husband absolutely trusted each other.'

'By Jove! You don't mean that?'

'She also said that all men, including you, were a scream. Probably she considers you a perfect shriek.'

Trembling with indignation, Maynard suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon and relapsed dejectedly into his recumbent attitude. 'What an ass I have been!' he lamented sorrowfully. 'What a sublime ass! And Marian—the little devil!'

'Rubbish!'

'Eh? I suppose you think I am an idiot for—— Well, perhaps you're right.'

For a couple of minutes nothing was said, and the melancholy lover, with his chin resting on his chest, ruminated over his unhappy affair.

'Hang it all!' he said at last, hesitatingly, 'when a chap gets leave from the front he's—he's sort of woman-hungry. You don't know what it feels like, after getting away from all that mud and corruption, to hear a girl's voice—one of our own. It goes to the head like bubbly. It's a—a dream come true. There's just the two things in your life—eight or nine months in the trenches; then a fortnight with the company of women again. It's awfully soppy to talk like this'——

'No, it isn't, Horace. It's the biggest compliment ever paid our women. I only wish we could try to be what you boys picture us. That's what makes me feel like drowning Marian every few days. Horace, I'm proud of you.'

She patted his hand which was grasping the arm of the chair, and he blushed a hearty red.

'Elise!' He sat bolt-upright. 'By gad! I never knew it until this minute. You are the woman I ought to marry. You are far too good and clever and all that; but, by Jove! I could do something in the world if I had you to work for. Don't stop me, Elise. I am serious. I should have known all along'——

'Horace, Horace!' Hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry, Elise put her hand over his mouth and checked the amorous torrent. 'You're a perfect dear,' she said, 'and I'm ever so grateful'——

'But'——

'But you mustn't be silly. This is only the reaction from Marian.'

'It's nothing of the sort,' he blurted, putting aside her hand. 'I—I really do—I love you. You're different from any other girl I ever met.'

'My dear, you mustn't say such things. You know you don't love me as you will the right girl when you meet her.'

He got out of the chair by getting over its arm. 'I beg your pardon,
Elise,' he said, not without a certain shy dignity. 'I meant every word
I said—but I suppose there's some one else.'

'Only a dream-man, Horace.'

'What about that American?'

'What—American?' Her agitation was something she could hardly have explained.

'That author-fellow at Roselawn. He was frightfully keen on you. I remember half-a-dozen times when he would be talking to us, and if you came in he'd go as mum as an oyster, and just follow you with his eyes. Is he the chap, Elise?'

'Good gracious!'—she forced a laugh— 'why, I don't even know where he is.'

'Don't you? He's in London; I can tell you that much. Last month in France I ran across that Doosenberry-Jewdrop fellow—-you know—the futurist artist.'

'Do you mean Johnston Smyth?'

'That's the chap.'

'I didn't know he was in France.'

'Rather. I thought your brother would have told you.'

'My brother?' There was not a vestige of colour in her cheeks. 'What do you mean?'

Maynard scratched the back of his head. 'Smyth told me,' he said, wondering at the cause of her agitation, 'that Dick and he enlisted together some months ago. By Jove! I remember now. He told me that this American fellow put them up at his rooms in St. James's Square one night. Smyth didn't know who Dick was until they got to France. He was travelling under the name of Sherlock, or Shylock, or Sherwood'——

'I—I thought Dick was in China.' She wrung her hands nervously. 'You didn't see him?'

'No. That's all I know about him, except that he was transferred to some other battalion than Dinglederry Smyth's.'

She went over to a table and took a piece of notepaper from a drawer. 'Mr. Selwyn used to belong to the R.A.C.,' she said quickly. 'Would you do me a favour, Horace dear?'

He murmured his desire to be of service in any capacity. Hesitating a moment, she wrote hurriedly:

'4th March 1915, 2lA PARK WALK.

'DEAR MR. SELWYN,—Will you please come and see me as soon as you can? I am not on night-duty this week.—Yours sincerely, ELISE DURWENT.'

She sealed the envelope and handed it to Maynard. 'Please find out from the R.A.C. where he is, and ask them to send this note to him. I am ever so grateful, Horace.'

'I suppose,' he said, looking at the envelope, 'that this means the—the finish of my chances?'

She answered the question by wishing him good luck in France, but there was a strange tremulousness in the softly spoken words.

He put out his hand shyly. 'Good-night, old girl,' he said, smiling with a sort of rueful boyishness.

She took his proffered hand, and then, obeying an impulse, stooped and pressed her burning cheek against it. 'Good-night, Horace,' she said softly. 'I hope you'll come back safe to be a fine husband for some nice girl.'

When he had gone, and his footsteps died away, she returned to the table. Burying her face in her hands, she fought back the tears which surged to the surface. Her love for Dick, her own loneliness, a mad joy in the thought of seeing Selwyn again, a motherly pity for Maynard, a fury towards Marian, an incomprehensible yearning—she felt that her heart was bursting, but could not have said herself whether it was with grief or with joy.

III.

From the time that Austin Selwyn received the note there was nothing else in his mind—as in Elise's—but the coming meeting. As playwrights planning a scene, each went through the encounter in prospect a dozen times, reading into it the play of emotions which was almost certain to dominate the affair. Although completely ignorant of her motive in writing to him, Selwyn invented a hundred different reasons—only to discard them all. Nor was Elise more able to satisfy herself as to the outcome of the meeting. It was not his actions that were difficult to forecast, but her own. Would her dislike of him be intensified? Would she experience again the momentary rapture of that summer afternoon?

It was fortunate that another lover had appeared for Marian, so that the desertion of Maynard did not leave her moping untidily about the place. She was one of those women who are so singularly lacking in self-sufficiency that, except when in the company of men, they are as fiat as champagne from which the sparkle has departed.

It so happened, therefore, that Elise was again alone the following evening, dreading Selwyn's arrival, yet impatient of delay.

A few minutes after eight she heard him knock, and going to the street door, opened it for him. The night was a vapourish, miserable one, blurring his figure into indistinctness, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, as though the damp tendrils of the mist had penetrated to his throat.

Answering something to his greeting, she led him through the hall into the sitting-room. He paused as he entered. Without looking back, she crossed to the fireplace, and kneeling down, stirred the fire.

'May I help?'

'No, thanks. I prefer to do it.'

Her answer had followed so swiftly on his question that he stopped in the act of stepping forward. She looked over her shoulder with a swift, searching glance.

His face was a tired gray, and the silk scarf thrown about his neck looked oddly vivid against the black evening-clothes and overcoat. But if his face suggested weariness, his eyes were alive with dynamic force. The intensity of the man's personality strangely moved Elise. She felt the presence of a mind and a body vibrating with tremendous purpose—a man who drew vitality from others, yet charged them in return with his own greater store.

To her he seemed to have divorced himself from type—he had lost even the usual characteristics of race. With the thought, she wondered how far his solitary life had effected the transition, if his idealism had brought him loneliness.

'Won't you sit down?' she said hesitatingly.

He acquiesced, and took a seat in the chair from which Maynard had run the emotional gamut the previous evening.

'You look pale,' she said, drawing a chair near the fire. 'I hope you have not been unwell.'

'No—no; it is merely that I have been so little out of doors. I could not gather from your note what kind of work you were engaged in. I see you are an ambulance-driver. I congratulate you.'

His voice conveyed nothing but polite interest in an obvious situation. With over-sensitive apprehension she listened for any suggestion of sarcasm that lay behind his words, but she could detect nothing beyond mere impersonal courtesy—that, and a far-off weariness, as of one who has passed the borders of fatigue.

'I wrote to your mother,' he said, 'when I heard of your elder brother's death. It must have been a great grief to you all.'

She did not answer him. His manner was so cold that he might have been deliberately disposing of a number of prepared comments rendered imperative by the laws of polite intercourse.

'Why didn't you let us know you had seen Dick?' she said abruptly.

'Then—you have heard?' He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

'Only last night, by the merest accident. He might have been killed in France, and we should never have known about it.' Her words were resentful and swift. 'Will you please tell me about him?'

Omitting the incident of Archibald's tavern, Selwyn told of the chance meeting with Dick, the encounter with Johnston Smyth, the night at the rooms in St. James's Square, and the subsequent glimpse of them marching through Whitehall.

'Your brother asked me to say nothing,' he said calmly. 'That is one of the reasons why I did not let you know.'

'Had Dick changed at all?' she asked, trying to make her words as listless as his. 'I wish that you would tell me something that he said. You must know more about him than just'——

'I don't think he had changed,' said Selwyn; and for the first time his voice was tinged with compassion. 'He spoke of you with a kind of worship. I suppose you know how he idolises you.'

His dark eyes looked at her through partially closed eyelashes, but only the manner in which her fingers compressed the fold of her skirt betrayed the turmoil of her feelings.

'Is that all you can tell me?'

'That is all.' He made no attempt to elaborate the conversation or to introduce any new theme. The scene which had promised to be so dramatic was actually dragging with uncomfortable silences. She waited long enough for him to speak, but when he remained silent—it was a sardonic silence to her—she rose from the chair with the manner of one who has determined to bring an interview to a close.

'Thank you for coming so promptly,' she said. 'I am most grateful for your kindness to Dick—and I know enough of the law to realise that you were taking a risk in hiding him.'

'It was nothing at all,' he said. He looked at her for an indication that her questions were at an end.

'I hope you will be able to get a taxi,' she ventured helplessly.

For the first time he smiled, and she reddened with mortification. He had been so cool and unyielding, so bloodless, that he had forced her to a disadvantage. She knew he could not be ignorant of the strain of the affair on her, yet he had done nothing to ease it. If she could have projected her mind into his, she would have seen that his conduct was as inexplicable to himself as to her. He knew he was hurting her. Perhaps it was because her warm lips and crimson cheeks were creating a torment in his soul that he could not curb the impulse to wound her. It may have been the subconscious knowledge that where one can hurt one can conquer that dominated his actions. While she resented the invulnerability with which he guarded his own feelings, it is probable that any different attitude on his part would have brought forth a more active unkindness on hers. When men and women love, strange paradoxes are found.

They went to the door together, and in the brighter light of the hall Elise saw for the first time that he was considerably thinner, and that his brow was like marble. She felt a little stab of pity for him, forgetting his own lack of sympathy towards herself; she caught a faint realisation of what he must have endured for it to have marked him so indelibly.

'Don't you think,' she said, 'that you ought to go to the seaside for a while? You are not looking at all well.'

His lips grew firmer, but there was a curious look in his eyes as he turned towards her. 'I have work to do here,' he said crisply.

'I know—but surely'——

'In London,' he said—and there was a suggestion of the fanatic's ecstasy in his voice—'it is impossible to forget life. I don't want my mind soothed or lulled. You can always hear the challenge of the human destiny in London. It cries out to you everywhere. It'—— He had held his head erect, and had spoken louder than was his custom; but, checking himself, he made a queer, dramatic gesture with his hands.

The fire of his spirit swept over her. Once more she stood close to him, as she had done so many times in her thoughts. She did not know whether she loved or detested him. She was fascinated—trembling—longing for him to force her to surrender in his arms—knowing that she would hate him if he did. She gave a little cry as Selwyn, almost as if he read her conflicting thoughts, took her arms with his hands once more.

'If we had both been English,' he said, and his voice was so parched that it seemed to have been scorched by his spirit, 'or if we had met in other times than these, things might have been different. I know what you think of me for the work I am doing, but it would be as impossible for me to give it up as for you to think as I do. We come of two different worlds, you and I. . . . I am sorry we have met to-night. For me, at least, it has reopened old wounds. And it is all so useless.'

She made no reply; but as his eyes were lowered to her face, and he saw once more the trembling lips, her unsoiled womanliness, her whole vivid, lonely, gripping charm, a look of suffering crossed his face. He realised the hopelessness of it all, but the admission was like tearing out a thread which had been woven into the whole scheme of his being.

'We both have our work to do,' he said wearily, letting his arms drop to his side.

'Good-night.'

She answered, but did not give him her hand. With a repetition of the farewell he left her, and she walked musingly into the room again. She felt a flush of anger at his daring to say their friendship was impossible, when she had not even suggested that it could ever be resumed. His vanity knew no bounds. She was furious at having let him hold her as he did—even more furious with the knowledge that she would not have resisted if he had kissed her.