For Andrew the days of leave sped quickly. Not a domestic cloud darkened his relations with Elodie. Through indolent and careless living she had grown gross and coarse, too unshapely and unseemly for her age. When the news of his speedy arrival in Paris reached her, she caught sight of herself in her mirror and with a sudden pang realized her lack of attraction. In a fever she corseted herself, creamed her face, set a coiffeur to work his will on her hair. But what retrieval of lost comeliness could be effected in a day or two? The utmost thing of practical value she could do was to buy a new, gay dressing-gown and a pair of high-heeled slippers. And Andrew, conscious of waning beauty, overlooked it in the light of her new and unsuspected coquetry. Where once the slattern lolled about the little salon, now moved an attractively garbed and tidy woman. Instead of the sloven, he found a housewife who made up in zeal for lack of experience. The patriotic soldier's mate replaced the indifferent and oft-times querulous partner of Les Petit Patou. It is true that, when, in answer to the question, "A battle--what is that like?" he tried to interest her in a scientific exposition, she would interrupt him, a love-bird on her finger and its beak at her lips, with: "Look, isn't he sweet?" thereby throwing him out of gear; it is true that she yawned and frankly confessed her boredom, as she had done for many years when the talk of Andrew and Bakkus went beyond her intellectual horizon; but--que voulez-vous?--even a great war cannot, in a few months, supply the deficiencies of thirty uneducated years. The heart, the generous instinct--these were the things that the war had awakened in Elodie--and these were the things that mattered and made him so gracious a homecoming. And she had grasped the inner truth of the war. She had accepted it in the grand manner, like a daughter of France.
So at least it seemed to Andrew. The depth of her feelings he did not try to gauge. Into the part in her demonstrativeness played by vanity or by momentary reaction from the dread of losing him, her means of support, it never entered his head to enquire. That she should sun herself in reflected splendour for the benefit of the quarter and of such friends as she had, and that she should punctiliously exact from them the respect due to his military rank, afforded him gentle amusement. He knew that, as soon as his back was turned, she would relapse into slipshod ways. But her efforts delighted him, proved her love and her loyalty. For the third time he parted from her to go off to the wars, more impressed than ever by the sense of his inappreciation of her virtues. He wrote her a long letter of self-upbraiding for the past, and the contrast between the slimy dug-out where he was writing by the light of one guttering candle, and the cosy salon he had just quitted being productive of nostalgia, he expressed himself, for once in his life, in the terms of an ardent lover.
Elodie, who found his handwriting difficult to read at the best of times, and undecipherable in hard pencil on thin paper, handed the letter over to the faithful Bakkus, who read it aloud with a running commentary of ironic humour. This Andrew did not know till long afterwards.
In a few weeks he got the command of his battalion.
Bakkus wrote:--
"How you'll be able to put up with us now I know not. Elodie can scarcely put up with herself. She gives orders in writing to tradesmen now and subscribes herself 'Madame La Colonelle Patou.' She has turned down a bird engagement offered by Moignon, as beneath her present dignity. You had better come home as soon as you can."
Andrew laughed and threw the letter away. He had far more serious things to attend to than Elodie's pretty foibles. And when you are commanding a crack regiment in a famous division in the line you no more think of leave than of running away from the enemy. Months passed--of fierce fighting and incessant strain, and he covered himself with glory and completed the rainbow row of ribbons on his breast, until Petit Patou and Elodie and Bakkus and the apartment in the Faubourg Saint-Denis became things of a far-off dream.
And before he saw Elodie again, he had met Lady Auriol Dayne.
Chapter XII
That was the devil of it. He had met Lady Auriol Dayne. He had found in that frank and capable young woman--or thought he had found, which comes to the same thing--the Princesse Lointaine of his dreams. If she differed from that nebulous and characterless paragon, were less ethereal, more human nature's daily food, so much the better. She possessed that which he had yearned for--quality. She had style--like the prose of Theophile Gautier, the Venus of Milo, the Petit Trainon. She suggested Diana, who more than all goddesses displayed this gift of distinction; yet was she not too Diana-ish to be unapproachable. On the contrary, she blew about him as free as the wind.... That, in a muddle-headed way, was his impression of her: a subtle mingling of nature and artistry. On every side of her he beheld perfection. Physically, she was as elemental as the primitive woman superbly developed by daily conditions of hardship and danger; spiritually, as elemental as the elves and fairies; and over her mind played the wisdom of the world.