The Pretty Lady Part 23

"If you really want to know--nerves," she said earnestly and triumphantly.

"Nerves?"

"Overwork. No rest. No change. Everlasting punishment. The one incomprehensible thing to me is that the whole of Glasgow didn't go on strike and stay out for ever."

"There's just as much overwork in London as there is on the Clyde."

"There's a lot more talking--Parliament, Cabinet, Committees. You should hear what they say about it in Glasgow."

"Con," he said kindly, "you don't suspect it, but you're childish.

It's the job of one part of London to talk. If that part of London didn't talk your tribes on the Clyde couldn't work, because they wouldn't know what to do, nor how to do it. Talking has to come before working, and let me tell you it's more difficult, and it's more killing, because it's more responsible. Excuse this common sense made easy for beginners, but you brought it on yourself."

She frowned. "And what do you do? Do you talk or work?" She smiled.

"I'll tell you this!" said he, smiling candidly and benevolently. "It took me a d.i.c.kens of a time really to _put_ myself into anything that meant steady effort. I'd lost the habit. Natural enough, and I'm not going into sackcloth about it. However, I'm improving. I'm going to take on the secretarys.h.i.+p of the Lechford Committee. Some of 'em mayn't want me, but they'll have to have me. And when they've got me they'll have to look out. All of them, including Queen and her mother."

"Will it take the whole of your time?"

"Yes. I'm doing three days a week now."

"I suppose you think you've beaten me."

"Con, I do ask you not to be a child."

"But I am a child. Why don't you humour me? You know I've had a nervous breakdown. You used to humour me."

He shook his head.

"Humouring you won't do _your_ nervous breakdown any good. It might some women's--but not yours."

"You shall humour me!" she cried. "I haven't told you half my ruin.

Do you know I meant to love Carly all my life. I felt sure I should.

Well, I can't! It's gone, all that feeling--already! In less than two years! And now I'm only sorry for him and sorry for myself. Isn't it horrible? Isn't it horrible?"

"Try not to think," he murmured.

She sat up impetuously.

"Don't talk such d.a.m.ned nonsense! 'Try not to think'! Why, my frightful unhappiness is the one thing that keeps me alive."

"Yes," G.J. yielded. "It was nonsense."

She sank back. He saw moisture in her eyes and felt it in his own.

Chapter 28

SALOME

Lady Queenie arrived in haste, as though relentless time had pursued her up the stairs.

"Why, you're in the dark here!" she exclaimed impatiently, and impatiently switched on several lights. "Sorry I'm late, G.J.," she said perfunctorily, without taking any trouble to put conviction into her voice. "How have you two been getting on?"

She looked at Concepcion and G.J. in a peculiar way, inquisitorial and implicatory.

Then, towards the door:

"Come in, come in, Dialin."

A young soldier with the stripe of a lance-corporal entered, slightly nervous and slightly defiant.

"And you, Miss I-forget-your-name."

A young woman entered; she had very red lips and very high heels, and was both more nervous and more defiant than the young soldier.

"This is Mr. Dialin, you know, Con, second ballet-master at the Ottoman. I met him by sheer marvellous chance. He's only got ten minutes; he hasn't really got that; but he's going to see me do my Salome dance."

Lady Queenie made no attempt to introduce Miss I-forget-your-name, who of her own accord took a chair with a curious, dashed effrontery. It appeared that she was attached to Mr. Dialin. Lady Queenie cast off rapidly gloves, hat and coat, and then, having rushed to the bell and rung it fiercely several times, came back to the chaise-longue and gazed at it and at the surrounding floor.

"Would you mind, Con?"

Concepcion rose. Lady Queenie, rus.h.i.+ng off again, pushed several more switches, and from a thick cl.u.s.ter of bulbs in front of a large mirror at the end of the room there fell dazzling sheets of light. A footman presented himself.

"Push the day-bed right away towards the window," she commanded.

The footman inclined and obeyed, and the lance-corporal superiorly helped him. Then the footman was told to energise the gramophone, which in its specially designed case stood in a corner. The footman seemed to be on intimate terms with the gramophone. Meanwhile Lady Queenie, with a safety-pin, was fastening the back hem of her short skirt to the front between the knees. Still bending, she took her shoes off. Her scent impregnated the room.

"You see, it will be barefoot," she explained to Mr. Dialin.

The walls of London were already billed with an early announcement of the marvels of the Pageant of Terpsich.o.r.e, which was to occur at the Albert Hall, under the superintendence of the greatest modern English painters, in aid of a fund for soldiers disabled by deafness. The performers were all ladies of the upper world, ladies bearing names for the most part as familiar as the names of streets--and not a stage-star among them. Amateurism was to be absolutely untainted by professionalism in the prodigious affair; therefore the prices of tickets ruled high, and queens had conferred their patronage.

Lady Queenie removed several bracelets and a necklace, and, seizing a plate, deposited it on the carpet.

"That piece of bread-and-b.u.t.ter," she said, "is the head of my beloved John."

The clever footman started the gramophone, and Lady Queenie began to dance. The lance-corporal walked round her, surveying her at all angles, watching her like a tiger, imitating movements, suggesting movements, sketching emotions with his arm, raising himself at intervals on the toes of his thick boots. After a few moments Concepcion glanced at G.J., conveying to him a pa.s.sionate, adoring admiration of Queen's talent.

G.J., startled by her brightened eyes so suddenly full of temperament, nodded to please her. But the fact was that he saw naught to admire in the beautiful and brazen amateur's performance. He wondered that she could not have discovered something more original than to follow the footsteps of Maud Allan in a scene which years ago had become stale.

He wondered that, at any rate, Concepcion should not perceive the poor, pretentious quality of the girlish exhibition. And as he looked at the mincing Dialin he pictured the lance-corporal helping to serve a gun. And as he looked at the youthful, lithe Queenie posturing in the shower-bath of rays amid the blazing chromatic fantasy of the room, and his nostrils twitched to her pungent perfume, he pictured the reverberating sh.e.l.l-factory on the Clyde where girls had their scalps torn off by unappeasable machinery, and the filling-factory where five thousand girls stripped themselves naked in order to lessen the danger of being blown to bits.... After a climax of capering Queen fell full length on her stomach upon the carpet, her soft chin accurately adjusted to the edge of the plate. The music ceased. The gramophone gnashed on the disc until the footman lifted its fang.

Miss I-forget-your-name raised both her feet from the floor, stuck her legs out in a straight, slanting line, and condescendingly clapped.

Then, seeing that Queen was worrying the piece of bread-and-b.u.t.ter with her teeth, she exclaimed in agitation:

"Ow my!"

Mr. Dialin a.s.sisted the breathless Queen to rise, and they went off into a corner and he talked to her in low tones. Soon he looked at his wrist-watch and caught the summoning eye of Miss I-forget-your-name.