“I have n’t been ungrateful to you, have I?” she asked. “I did n’t mean to be. But I thought you were different.”
“How, different?”
“That you would never make love to me. Don’t, Van, please. It would spoil it all.”
“Well, perhaps it would,” replied Vandeleur, philosophically. “Only it is so devilish hard not to make love to you when one’s got the chance. And, begad! if you’d just give up looking like a little warm, brown saint, it would be better for the peace of mind of the men.”
He stooped and touched her hand with his lips and strode buoyantly out of the room. She heard him humming one of his songs along the passage, then the slam of the front door; then there was silence, and Yvonne went to bed with a grateful sense of escape from unknown dangers. Still, she was sorry for Vandeleur, although she had a dim perception of the superficiality of his passion. It would have been nice, had it been possible, to make him happy. She had a queer, unreasonable little feeling that she had been selfish. She sighed as she settled herself to sleep. The ways of the world were very complicated.
To those who knew her it was often a subject for marvel that she was not crushed in the fierce struggle of life. A creature so yielding, so simple, so unaffected by experience or the obvious external lessons of the world, and yet standing serenely in the midst of the turmoil, seemed an incongruity—gave a sense of shock, a prompting to rescue, such as would arise from the sight of a child in the middle of a roadway clashing with traffic. She was made for protection, tenderness, all the sheltering luxuries and amenities of life. It was a flaw in the eternal fitness of things that she was alone, earning her livelihood, with nothing but her sweetness and innocence to guard her from buffeting and downfall.
Yet it was her very simplicity that saved her from outward strain; and inward stress was as yet spared her, through her unawakened child's nature. She laughed when folks pitied her. To earn her living was an easy matter. Born in the profession, trained for it from her earliest days, she had taken to it as a young swan to the water. Engagements came like the winds, the visits of her friends, and other such natural and commonplace phenomena. She sang, or gave her lessons, and the money was paid in to the branch of the City Bank close by her flat, and when she needed funds for her modest expenses she wrote a cheque and sent her maid to cash it When her balance was getting low, she practised little economies and postponed payment of bills; when it was high, she settled her debts, bought new clothes, and had a dozen oysters now and then for supper. It was very simple. She did not pity herself at all. Nor did she feel the trouble of her past married life. It had gone by like a cloudy day, forgotten in succeeding sunshine, and had left singularly little trace upon her character. Even the period of unhappiness had not weighed unduly. A more resistful nature might have been wrecked irretrievably; but Yvonne had been cast upon the shoals only for a season.
When Amédée Bazouge, a Parisian tenor who had settled in London, first met her, he was surfeited with various blonde beauties of the baser sort, and in a sentimental mood, during which he frequently invoked the memory of his mother, he chose to fall desperately in love with little brown Yvonne, likening her to the Blessed Virgin and as many saints as he recollected. Yvonne was very young; this sudden worship was new to her; the pain in his heart that he so passionately dwelt upon seemed a terrible thing for her to have caused. She married him because he said that his life was at stake. She gave him herself as she would have given sixpence to a poor man in the street. Why she was necessary to his life’s happiness she could not guess. However, Amédée said so, and she took it on faith.
For a while she was mildly content in his exuberant delight. He whispered, in soft honeymoon hours, “m’aimes-tu?”—and she said “Yes,” because she knew it would please him; but she was always happier at other times, when she was not called upon for display or expression of feeling. She liked him well enough. His somewhat common handsomeness pleased her, his effervescent fancy and boulevard wit kept her lightly amused, and his vehement passion provided her with an interest strangely compounded of fright, wonder, and pity.
But Amédée Bazouge was not made either by nature or education for the domestic virtues. His repentant mood passed away; he forgot the memory of his mother, and found Yvonne’s innocence grow insipid. He hankered after the strange goddesses with their full-flavoured personalities, their cynicism, their passions, and their stimulating variety. Regret came to him for having broken with the last, who always kept him in a state of delicious uncertainty whether she would overwhelm him with passionate kisses or break the looking-glass in a tempest of wrath. So, gradually, he sought satisfaction for his reactionary yearnings and drifted away from Yvonne. And then she grew unhappy. He did not treat her unkindly. In all their dealings with each other a harsh word never passed the lips of either. But she felt cold and neglected. Instead of being met after a concert and accompanied to their little house at Staines, she went the long journey alone. The quiet evenings of music and singing together were things of the past. Often a week elapsed without their meeting. To complete her trouble, her mother died suddenly, and Yvonne felt very lonely. She would sit sometimes and cry like a lost child.