8
The hotels and shops made a circle round the great Place; and to and fro all day went the people to their baths and douches and sprays. Bilious obese old Jews and puffy, pallid Americans thronged and perspired; and ancient invalids came in bathchairs with their glum attendants. There was one, a woman long past age and change, with a skin of dusky orange parchment, black all round the staring eyeholes, tight over the cheeks and drawing back the dark lips in a grin. She was alive: her orange claws twitched on the rug. Perched high upon her skull, above the dead and rotten hair, she wore a large black sailor hat trimmed with a wild profusion of black feathers. Every morning, seated idly in front of the hotel, Judith watched for that most macabre figure of all in the fantastical show.
The sun poured down without cloud or breeze, and the buildings and pavements seemed to vibrate in the air. It was too hot to stay in the valley. She joined parties and motored up through the vineyards into the hills—racing along in search of a draught on her face, eating succulent lunches at wayside inns, coming back in the evening to play tennis and bathe; to change and dine and dance; to hear a concert at the Casino; to sit in the open air and drink coffee and eat ices.
The hours of every day were bubbles lightly gone.
She was Miss Earle, travelling with her elegant and charming mother, staying at the smartest hotel and prominent in the ephemeral summer society of the health-resort. Her odd education sank into disreputable insignificance: best not to refer to it. She was adequately equipped in other ways. She had a string of pearls, and slim straight black frocks for the morning, and delicious white and yellow and green and pink ones for the afternoon; and white jumpers with pleated skirts and little white hats for tennis; and, for the evening, straight exquisitely-cut sleeveless frocks to dance in. She had them all. Mamma had ordered them in Paris with bored munificence and perfect taste, and an unenthusiastic ear for the modiste’s rapturous approval of her daughter.
‘If you were a little more stupid,’ said Mamma, ‘you might make a success of a London season even at this late date. You’ve got the looks. You are stupid—stupid enough, I should think, to ruin all your own chances—but you’re not stupid all through. You’re like your father: he was a brilliant imbecile. I never intended to put you into the marriage-market—but I’ll do so if you like. If you haven’t already decided to marry one of those young Fyfes.... They’re quite a good family, I suppose.’
She appeared to expect no answer and received none.
Judith laughed at Mamma’s epigrammatic dictums and was a social success. She motored, chattered, danced and played tennis, at first with effort—with Roddy rising up now and again to make all dark and crumbling; then gradually with a kind of enjoyment, snapping her fingers at the past, plunging full into the comedy, forgetting to stand aside and watch: silly all through—stupid even: stupider every day.
Demurely she passed through the lounges: they all knew her and looked her up and down as she went, discussed her frocks in whispers, with smiling or stony faces. In the streets they stared, and she liked it; she admired her own reflection in the shop windows. An elderly French count, with two rolls of fat in the back of his neck, entreated Mamma for her daughter’s hand in marriage. It was a very good joke.
Then, one evening after dinner, while she sat in the lounge with Mamma and discussed the clothes of her fellow-visitors, she saw Julian walk in. He wore an old white sweater with a rolled collar, and his long hair was wild upon his pale chiselled forehead. His face, hands and clothes were grey with dust, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright with extreme weariness. He stood alone by the door, unself-conscious and deliberate, his gaze roving round to find her among the staring, whispering company. Even before she recognized him, her heart had leapt a little at sight of him; for his fine-drawn blonde length and grace were of startling beauty after a fortnight of small dapper men with black moustaches and fat necks.
‘It’s Julian!’
She ran across the room and took his hand in both her own, joyfully greeting him. A friend from England! He was a friend from England. How much that meant after all! He had, romantically, kept his promise and come to find her, this distinguished young man at whom they were all staring. He and she, standing there hand in hand, were the centre of excited comment and surmise: that was flattering. She was pleased with him for contriving so dramatic an entry.
He had motored from Paris, he said, going all day over execrable roads in stupefying heat. He had found her hotel at the first guess.
He booked a room and went off to have a bath and to change. Judith went back to explain to Mamma, who asked for no explanations. It was, she remarked, pleasant to see a new face; and those Fyfes had always looked well-bred. She was glad Judith would now have a congenial companion while she finished her cure. If to her cat-deep self she said: “So that’s the one!” her diamond-like eyes did not betray her.
He came down half an hour later, elegant in his dinner-jacket, sat down beside Mamma and started at once to entertain her with the easy, civilized, gossiping conversation she enjoyed.
Then, when the band started to pluck voluptuously at the heart-strings with Einmal kommt der Tag, he turned for the first time to Judith, crying:
‘We’ll dance to it, Judith.’ He jumped up. ‘What a tune! We’ll express our sentimentality.’
Mamma’s rasping little laugh of amusement sounded in her ears as she rose and followed him.
He put an arm closely round her and murmured:
‘Come on now. Perform! Perform!’—and they went gliding, pausing and turning round the empty floor, while everyone stared and the band smilingly played up to them. The rhythm of their bodies responded together, without an error, to the music’s broken emotionalism.
‘Once, Julian, you refused to dance with me.’
‘Ah, you were a little girl then. It would have been no use. Et maintenant, n’est-ce-pas, la petite est devenue femme? We shall get on very well.
After a silence he said:
‘You wear beautiful clothes. You carry yourself to perfection. You have an air.... There is nobody in this room to touch you. What are you going to do with it all?’
‘Oh, exploit it, exploit it!’
He held her away from him a moment to look down into her face.
‘Tiens! Tiens! Is gentle Judith going to start being a devil?... It would be amusing to see her try.’
‘Oh, I will! I’d be most successful. You shall see.’
He laughed, watching her.
‘May I help you? Shall we tread the primrose path together?’
She nodded.
‘Well, start by looking a little more as if you were going to enjoy it. Have you ever been happy? No. Whenever you come near to being, you start thinking: ‘Now I am happy. How interesting.... Am I really happy?’ You must learn a little continental abandon—I’ll teach you.’
‘You!’
‘—— and scornful as well! Oh, Judith, you’re getting on. I like to see your mouth trying to be hard. It has such pretty points.’
The music stopped, and she disengaged herself. A few people clapped, and she nodded and smiled to the band ... performing, performing; conspicuously self-possessed....
‘Good!’ said Julian. ‘Oh, good!’
She turned to him and said:
‘Thank you, Julian. That was exhilarating.’
‘Yes, you look as if you’d found it so.’
His eyes, brilliant with nervous fatigue, pierced her with a glance too penetrating.
‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘you’re so unhappy.’
‘If it were so,’ she said, starting to walk back towards her chair, ‘it would be a pity.... Or perhaps that would be exhilarating too.’
‘Oh, don’t be enigmatical with your old friend,’ he said plaintively.
She laughed and gave him her hand.
‘Good night, Julian. You go to bed. You’re so tired you can hardly stand upright. To-morrow we’ll start enjoying ourselves frightfully. You’ll stay a bit, won’t you?’
‘Oh, I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘I think the moment is auspicious for me.... Didn’t I always say I could wait my turn?’
‘Yes, you said so. You have a flair undoubtedly. You are full of finesse.... Good night.’
She waved a hand and left him.
Something was afoot.... He had come casting shadows before and behind him. Old things were stirring: the old illness of remembering was going to start again. And ahead was not a glimmer.