Conrad in Quest of His Youth: An Extravagance of Temperament

by Leonard Merrick

CHAPTER XI

The rest of the afternoon promised nothing, so Conrad bought "Le Marquis de Priola" to kill time. It passed away so peacefully that he was surprised when he found it was dead.

After dinner he saw the two women on a lounge, and they moved their skirts for him, and commented on the visitors. There was the Earl of Armoury, wearing a stud as big as a brooch, and a Malmaison the size of a saucer. He made grimaces like Arthur Roberts, and when he sang "Pip, pip! the Lodger and the Twins," Society found him as funny as Harry Randall. As everybody knows, the Duke of Merstham married Flossie Coburg from the music halls; the heir had inherited his mother's gift. "The best of it," said Lady Bletchworth, "is that his mother herself has become too prim for words since she has been respectable. She asks bishops to dinner, and does her hair in plain bands. Heredity is her cross! Oh," she went on, "you'll meet all the world and his wife—Ostend-sibly. A man brought his wife to the hotel last week, and when he went upstairs to bed she wasn't there. After he had searched high and low for her he went to the bureau, and asked the clerk if he could tell him where she was. The clerk hadn't an idea, but said that a married lady came to him a little while ago in a fix—she didn't know the number of her room, and she had forgotten the name of her husband. Please don't smile, I was terribly shocked myself."

Conrad didn't say that the story was not original, and had been told about town six months before.

Then Lord Bletchworth drifted to them, and was tedious. Lord Bletchworth twaddled ponderously. He considered there was a lot of disgraceful bosh being printed about the Service, and the Country at large, in the papers just now. My dear sir, an Englishman who had the interests of England at heart would hold his tongue while she slid down hill, and silently watch her bump to the bottom. That wasn't how he put it, but it was the gist of what he said. He added that the battle of Waterloo had been won on the playing fields of Eton, and he seemed as satisfied with Waterloo as if it were situated in the Transvaal.

However, he had his uses—he walked with his wife when they went to the Kursaal, and left Conrad with Mrs. Adaile.

"How quiet you've become," she said.

"I am asking myself what to say to you."

"Do you find me so hard to talk to?"

"I find you so hard to convince."

"Why try to convince me?"

"Why did I come to Ostend?"

"Oh, that was a pretty tale," she said. "It wasn't true, really, was it?"

"You know it was true. I've looked forward to meeting you again for years. I can't tell you how fond I was of you. You're the only woman I've ever cared for."

"You were a child."

"And now I'm a man—doesn't that show, doesn't it prove? Is it nothing to think of a woman so long as I've thought of you? What other man could say to you what I can say?"

"But you mustn't say it," she smiled—it cannot be written that she "forbade."

"Is your life so full," he asked, "that you have no room for my love?"

"Mr. Warrener, but really——"

"You hurt me," he said. "What have I done since we parted, to become 'Mr. Warrener' to you?"

"Are we going to sit on the terrace," said Lord Bletchworth, looking back, "or are we going inside? Mr. Warrener, you play, perhaps?"

"No," said Conrad, "I haven't played here. I don't care much about it anyhow."

"Let's sit down outside," said Lady Bletchworth. "It's so hot in there."

On the terrace it was very agreeable. The orchestra did not sound too insistent, and they found chairs where they could watch the people promenade without being inconvenienced by them. Extremes meet, and Ostend is their meeting-place. Only a light railing divides the fashionable world, and the half world from the world that works. On one side plod a humble flock of wearied trippers, who have had tea "As nice as mother makes it," in a sweltering shop at the back of the town. Among the shell pin-cushions, the franc souvenirs, they have had tea. All the evening they pass and repass with flagging feet, wishing they had chosen Margate. On the other side, women who were born in the same class trail Paquin's gowns. On the necks of some there are flowers that have cost as much as a tripper's holiday; a diamond in an ear is worth more than the price of a tripper's home. And Maggie from Dalston, with three tired children clinging to her ten-and-sixpenny skirt, gazes across that slender rail, and thinks. And her thoughts might be unpleasant to hear.

A really extraordinary thing was that no one but Conrad seemed aware that the railing bisected two worlds and a half. As for Conrad his reflections engrossed him so much that he quite forgot to attend to Mrs. Adaile. Only when he chanced to notice she was looking pensive in the starlight did it occur to him that he was ignoring a situation by which he ought to be thrilled.

For here they were. The stars were twinkling, the waves were murmuring, the lady was waiting. It was true her sister and Bletchworth were in the way, but even allowing for their presence this should mean emotion. Where was it? On the terrace while he made small talk, and on the Plage when they strolled back, and as he smoked his last cigar that night in the garden, the question in Conrad's mind was insistently "Where is the emotion?"

Because she was still an attractive woman, and he perceived it. He was even making love to her—to her, to Mrs. Adaile!—and she was not adamant. What had happened to him? Where were his transports, the spiritual whirlwinds, where was everything that he had travelled to recover?

She had a whim to do fancy work in the salon next day during the hour when the women changed their déjeuner dresses for the five-o'clock-to-seven costumes. He had met her as she was passing his door—their rooms were in the same passage—and they had gone downstairs together.

"You've told me nothing of your life since we used to know each other," he said, playing with a thimble.

"What would you like me to tell you?"

"You used to tell me a good deal—if I am privileged to remember it."

"I'm afraid I did. How I must have bored you! It was rather a shame. But I was in my egotistical stage, and you listened with such big eyes—Con."

"Thank you," said Conrad. "But I wasn't bored. And you weren't an egotist—you were the sweetest woman I've ever met. I was awfully sorry for you—so sorry! Only a cub's sympathy, but you've had none truer from anyone."

"You were a nice boy—I've thought about you sometimes. Are the scissors there? Do look."

"If a woman knows when she is really loved, you should have thought about me very often," he answered, giving them to her. "Are you happier than you were?"

"Let us say I don't worry so much about being unhappy. I suppose it amounts to the same thing." She sighed—and smiled. "Would you do this leaf green, or yellow?"

"I shouldn't do it at all," he said. "Put it down and talk to me. I remember once when you were telling me your troubles, you cried. It was one afternoon on the terrace; you had on a pale blue frock, and a big floppy hat. I'd have given my life to kiss you at that moment."

"You mustn't say these things to me," she faltered. She said it more gravely than on the Plage; she was not smiling now, and she lowered her eyes—he knew that he might seize her hands.

"I've waited for you so long," he exclaimed. "Joan, be kind to me!"

But his heart did not thud in her silence. He held her hands fast; the doyley she was making had fallen to the couch.

At last she murmured, still looking down, "How can you care for me? We've only just met."

"I've cared for you ever since. If you knew how I worshipped you—if you knew what I suffered when you were vexed with me! That night you sat talking to those men, and the next morning when you were offended—I remember what I felt as if it were a month ago. I remember what you said as you turned away, and how I sat watching, praying that you'd come back. And then I waited at the door, and begged your pardon, and you wouldn't forgive me. I've relived it all so often. I did love you, darling, I did, I did! ... It sounds idiotic: there was a song of yours, 'To-day, to-day our dream is over—To-day the waking cold and grey'; I learnt to strum the refrain there to—to make me feel nearer to you when I had gone. Since I've been a man I've strummed that refrain a hundred times, and longed for you—I was strumming it years after you had forgotten you ever sang it. I've thought about you sometimes till my boyhood has been alive in me, trembling. If Faust's chance could have come to me in any year since we parted, I'd have said 'Let me be seventeen again in Rouen.'"

"The past is always beautiful. I made you very wretched, though."

"But you liked me a little. Heaven knows why I—I was a fool. Still you did."

"Perhaps it was because you were a 'fool' that I was foolish. That's all over." She drew her hands from his clasp.

"It isn't over," he said. "You sha'n't say it's over. The present may be as beautiful as the past."

She shook her head; "Can we work miracles? Can I make myself a girl again, or you a boy?"

"Yes, if you've not forgotten what you felt for me. If the memories are not all mine, you can even do that. You see I'm a fool still; I—I half hoped that you'd remember.... Joan, 'you were not once so wise!'"

"Ah!" she said. "If I were younger now—or if you had been older then—who knows?"

"Could you sing that song still?" he asked. "Listen." He opened the piano, and played a few bars. "Can you?"

"Oh!" She forced a laugh. "It was too long ago. And what a song besides!"

"Try," he pleaded. "Try it!"

"I can't remember the words," she murmured

"The words?—

'You tell me, Love, that I'll forget you—
I own it, in our last "good-bye,"'

I'd be so grateful. Please!"

"How does it go on?"

"It goes on—

'Our dream has been too sweet to let you
Remember that I spoke a lie.'"

"Oh yes," she said, coming forward. She hummed. "Let me see!—

'I know the years will crowd above you,
I know despair must fade away;
But here and now I know I love you,
I love you—and we part—to-day.'

Is that it?"

"That's it; and then there's what I was playing—

'To-day, to-day our dream is over,
To-day the waking, cold and grey.'"

She nodded; "Yes, yes—

'What care I Time will—'

something, what is it?—

'The throes that rend my heart to-day?'

Well, I'll try, but I'm sure I sha'n't be able to. I haven't heard it for years."

Then she sat down, and began it; and he shut his eyes and tried to think he was seventeen and she was twenty.

The music stopped short. "I knew it would be a failure! It's gone. It was too long ago," she repeated.

"It was yesterday!" he cried, and caught her in his arms as she got up.

For a second she held him back from her, regarding him curiously. Regret, tenderness, irony were mingled in the gaze she bent on him. Like him she mourned for what had perished; like him she sought to delude herself that it bloomed anew.... "It's absurd," she said, and drooped to him with a kiss.

As they moved apart, both were disappointed. The man thought, "I have spoilt my memory of her kiss to me in Rouen."

"I adore you," he said mechanically.

The woman's smile was enigmatic as she left him.