§ 6
That was in the opening stage of the controversy between their careers. In those days they were both acutely in love with each other. Their friends thought the spectacle quite beautiful; they went together so well. Admirers, fluttered with the pride of participation, asked them for week-ends together; those theatrical week-ends that begin on Sunday morning and end on Monday afternoon. She confided widely.
And when at last there was something like a rupture it became the concern of a large circle of friends.
The particulars of the breach were differently stated. It would seem that looking ahead he had announced his intention of seeing the French army manœuvres just when it seemed probable that she would be out of an engagement.
“But I ought to see what they are doing,” he said. “They’re going to try those new dirigibles.”
Then should she come?
He wanted to whisk about. It wouldn’t be any fun for her. They might get landed at nightfall in any old hole. And besides people would talk— Especially as it was in France. One could do unconventional things in England one couldn’t in France. Atmosphere was different.
For a time after that halting explanation she maintained a silence. Then she spoke in a voice of deep feeling. She perceived, she said, that he wanted his freedom. She would be the last person to hold a reluctant lover to her side. He might go—to any manœuvres. He might go if he wished round the world. He might go away from her for ever. She would not detain him, cripple him, hamper a career she had once been assured she inspired....
The unfortunate man, torn between his love and his profession, protested that he hadn’t meant that.
Then what had he meant?
He realized he had meant something remarkably like it and he found great difficulty in expressing these fine distinctions....
She banished him from her presence for a month, said he might go to his manœuvres—with her blessing. As for herself, that was her own affair. Some day perhaps he might know more of the heart of a woman.... She choked back tears—very beautifully, and military science suddenly became a trivial matter. But she was firm. He wanted to go. He must go. For a month anyhow.
He went sadly....
Into this opening breach rushed friends. It was the inestimable triumph of Judy Bowles to get there first. To begin with, Madeleine confided in her, and then, availing herself of the privilege of a distant cousinship, she commanded Douglas to tea in her Knightsbridge flat and had a good straight talk with him. She liked good straight talks with honest young men about their love affairs; it was almost the only form of flirtation that the Professor, who was a fierce, tough, undiscriminating man upon the essentials of matrimony, permitted her. And there was something peculiarly gratifying about Douglas’s complexion. Under her guidance he was induced to declare that he could not live without Madeleine, that her love was the heart of his life, without it he was nothing and with it he could conquer the world.... Judy permitted herself great protestations on behalf of Madeleine, and Douglas was worked up to the pitch of kissing her intervening hand. He had little silvery hairs, she saw, all over his temples. And he was such a simple perplexed dear. It was a rich deep beautiful afternoon for Judy.
And then in a very obvious way Judy, who was already deeply in love with the idea of a caravan tour and the “wind on the heath” and the “Gipsy life” and the “open road” and all the rest of it, worked this charming little love difficulty into her scheme, utilized her reluctant husband to arrange for the coming of Douglas, confided in Mrs. Geedge....
And Douglas went off with his perplexities. He gave up all thought of France, week-ended at Shonts instead, to his own grave injury, returned to London unexpectedly by a Sunday train, packed for France and started. He reached Rheims on Monday afternoon. And then the image of Madeleine, which always became more beautiful and mysterious and commanding with every mile he put between them, would not let him go on. He made unconvincing excuses to the Daily Excess military expert with whom he was to have seen things. “There’s a woman in it, my boy, and you’re a fool to go,” said the Daily Excess man, “but of course you’ll go, and I for one don’t blame you—” He hurried back to London and was at Judy’s trysting-place even as Judy had anticipated.
And when he saw Madeleine standing in the sunlight, pleased and proud and glorious, with a smile in her eyes and trembling on her lips, with a strand or so of her beautiful hair and a streamer or so of delightful blue fluttering in the wind about her gracious form, it seemed to him for the moment that leaving the manœuvres and coming back to England was quite a right and almost a magnificent thing to do.