I really had not time to fling my line before he said, giving himself a soft shake, coming right out of the water after the bait, as it were: “Won’t you come and see me at my hotel? Come about five o’clock and we can have a talk before going out to dinner.”
“Enchanted!”
I was so deeply, deeply flattered that I had to leave him then and there to preen and preen myself before the cubist sofas. What a catch! An Englishman, reserved, serious, making a special study of French literature. . . .
That same night a copy of False Coins with a carefully cordial inscription was posted off, and a day or two later we did dine together and spent the evening talking.
Talking—but not only of literature. I discovered to my relief that it wasn’t necessary to keep to the tendency of the modern novel, the need of a new form, or the reason why our young men appeared to be just missing it. Now and again, as if by accident, I threw in a card that seemed to have nothing to do with the game, just to see how he’d take it. But each time he gathered it into his hands with his dreamy look and smile unchanged. Perhaps he murmured: “That’s very curious.” But not as if it were curious at all.
That calm acceptance went to my head at last. It fascinated me. It led me on and on till I threw every card that I possessed at him and sat back and watched him arrange them in his hand.
“Very curious and interesting. . . .”
By that time we were both fairly drunk, and he began to sing his song very soft, very low, about the man who walked up and down seeking his dinner.
But I was quite breathless at the thought of what I had done. I had shown somebody both sides of my life. Told him everything as sincerely and truthfully as I could. Taken immense pains to explain things about my submerged life that really were disgusting and never could possibly see the light of literary day. On the whole I had made myself out far worse than I was—more boastful, more cynical, more calculating.
And there sat the man I had confided in, singing to himself and smiling. . . . It moved me so that real tears came into my eyes. I saw them glittering on my long silky lashes—so charming.
After that I took Dick about with me everywhere, and he came to my flat, and sat in the arm-chair, very indolent, playing with the paper-knife. I cannot think why his indolence and dreaminess always gave me the impression he had been to sea. And all his leisurely slow ways seemed to be allowing for the movement of the ship. This impression was so strong that often when we were together and he got up and left a little woman just when she did not expect him to get up and leave her, but quite the contrary, I would explain: “He can’t help it, Baby. He has to go back to his ship.” And I believed it far more than she did.
All the while we were together Dick never went with a woman. I sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t completely innocent. Why didn’t I ask him? Because I never did ask him anything about himself. But late one night he took out his pocket-book and a photograph dropped out of it. I picked it up and glanced at it before I gave it to him. It was of a woman. Not quite young. Dark, handsome, wild-looking, but so full in every line of a kind of haggard pride that even if Dick had not stretched out so quickly I wouldn’t have looked longer.
“Out of my sight, you little perfumed fox-terrier of a Frenchman,” said she.
(In my very worst moments my nose reminds me of a fox-terrier’s.)
“That is my Mother,” said Dick, putting up the pocket-book.
But if he had not been Dick I should have been tempted to cross myself, just for fun.
This is how we parted. As we stood outside his hotel one night waiting for the concierge to release the catch of the outer door, he said, looking up at the sky: “I hope it will be fine to-morrow. I am leaving for England in the morning.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Perfectly. I have to get back. I’ve some work to do that I can’t manage here.”
“But—but have you made all your preparations?”
“Preparations?” He almost grinned. “I’ve none to make.”
“But—enfin, Dick, England is not the other side of the boulevard.”
“It isn’t much farther off,” said he. “Only a few hours, you know.” The door cracked open.
“Ah, I wish I’d known at the beginning of the evening!”
I felt hurt. I felt as a woman must feel when a man takes out his watch and remembers an appointment that cannot possibly concern her, except that its claim is the stronger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He put out his hand and stood, lightly swaying upon the step as though the whole hotel were his ship, and the anchor weighed.
“I forgot. Truly I did. But you’ll write, won’t you? Good night, old chap. I’ll be over again one of these days.”
And then I stood on the shore alone, more like a little fox-terrier than ever. . . .
“But after all it was you who whistled to me, you who asked me to come! What a spectacle I’ve cut wagging my tail and leaping round you, only to be left like this while the boat sails off in its slow, dreamy way. . . . Curse these English! No, this is too insolent altogether. Who do you imagine I am? A little paid guide to the night pleasures of Paris? . . . No, monsieur. I am a young writer, very serious, and extremely interested in modern English literature. And I have been insulted—insulted.”
Two days after came a long, charming letter from him, written in French that was a shade too French, but saying how he missed me and counted on our friendship, on keeping in touch.
I read it standing in front of the (unpaid for) wardrobe mirror. It was early morning. I wore a blue kimono embroidered with white birds and my hair was still wet; it lay on my forehead, wet and gleaming.
“Portrait of Madame Butterfly,” said I, “on hearing of the arrival of ce cher Pinkerton.”
According to the books I should have felt immensely relieved and delighted. “. . . Going over to the window he drew apart the curtains and looked out at the Paris trees, just breaking into buds and green. . . . Dick! Dick! My English friend!”
I didn’t. I merely felt a little sick. Having been up for my first ride in an aeroplane I didn’t want to go up again, just now.
That passed, and months after, in the winter, Dick wrote that he was coming back to Paris to stay indefinitely. Would I take rooms for him? He was bringing a woman friend with him.
Of course I would. Away the little fox-terrier flew. It happened most usefully, too; for I owed much money at the hotel where I took my meals, and two English people requiring rooms for an indefinite time was an excellent sum on account.
Perhaps I did rather wonder, as I stood in the larger of the two rooms with Madame, saying “Admirable,” what the woman friend would be like, but only vaguely. Either she would be very severe, flat back and front, or she would be tall, fair, dressed in mignonette green, name—Daisy, and smelling of rather sweetish lavender water.
You see, by this time, according to my rule of not looking back, I had almost forgotten Dick. I even got the tune of his
