Man and Maid. Glyn Elinor
last in London a fortnight ago—"
"You will tell me about it when you have decided, won't you, Nina. You see I have become a brother, and am interested in the psychological aspects of things."
"Of course I will"—then she went on meditatively, her rather plaintive voice low.
"I think all our true feeling is used up, Nicholas—our souls—if we have souls—are blunted by the war agony. Only our senses still feel. When Jim looks at me with his attractive blue eyes, and I see the D.S.O. and the M.C., and his white nice teeth—and how his hair is brushed, and how well his uniform fits, I have a jolly all-overish sensation—and I don't much listen to what he is saying—he says lots of love—and I think I would really like him all the time. Then, when he has gone I think of other things, and I feel he would not understand a word about them, and because he isn't there I don't feel the delicious all-overish sensation, so I rather decide to marry Rochester—there would be such risk—because when you are married to a man, it is possible to get much fonder of him. Jim is a year younger than I am—It would be a strain, perhaps in a year or two—especially if I got fond."
"You had better take the richer," I told her—"Money stands by one, it is an attraction which even the effects of war never varies or lessens," and I could hear that there was bitterness in my voice.
"You are quite right," Nina said, taking no notice of it—"but I don't want money—I have enough for every possible need, and my boy has his own. I want something kind and affectionate to live with."
"You want a master—and a slave."
"Yes."
"Nina, when you loved me—what did you want?"
"Just you, Nicholas—just you."
"Well, I am here now, but an eye and a leg gone, and a crooked shoulder, changes me;—so it is true love—even the emotion of the soul, depends upon material things—"
Nina thought for a while.
"Perhaps not the emotion of the soul—if we have souls?—but what we know of love now certainly does. I suppose there are people who can love with the soul, I am not one of them."
"Well, you are honest, Nina."
She had her coffee and liqueur, she was graceful and composed and refined, either Jim or Rochester will have a very nice wife.
Burton coughed when she had left.
"Out with it, Burton!"
"Mrs. Ardilawn is a kind lady, Sir Nicholas."
"Charming."
"I believe you'd be better with some lady to look after you, Sir—."
"To hell with you. Telephone for Mr. Maurice—I don't want any woman—we can play piquet."
This is how my day ended—.
Maurice and piquet—then the widow and the divorcée for dinner—and now alone again! The sickening rot of it all.
Sunday—Nina came for tea—she feels that I am a great comfort to her in this moment of her life, so full of indecision—It seems that Jim has turned up too, at the Ritz, where Rochester still is, and that his physical charm has upset all her calculations again.
"I am really very worried Nicholas," she said, "and you, who are a dear family friend"—I am a family friend now!—"ought to be able to help me."
"What the devil do you want me to do, Nina?—outset them both, and ask you to marry me?"
"My dearest Nicholas!" it seemed to her that I had suggested that she should marry father Xmas! "How funny you are!"
Once it was the height of her desire—Nina is eight years older than I am—I can see now her burning eyes one night on the river in the June of 1914, when she insinuated, not all playfully, that it would be good to wed.
"I think you had better take Jim my dear, after all. You are evidently becoming in love with him and you have proved to me that the physical charm matters most—or if you are afraid of that, you had better do as another little friend of mine does when she is attracted—she takes a fortnight at the sea!"
"The sea would be awful in this weather! I should send for both in desperation!" and she laughed and began to take an interest in the furnishings of my flat. She looked over it, and Burton pointed out all its merits to her (My crutch hurts my shoulder so much to-day I did not want to move out of my chair). I could hear Burton's remarks, but they fell upon unheeding ears—Nina is not cut out for a nurse, my poor Burton, if you only knew—!
When she returned to my sitting room tea was in, and she poured it out for me, and then she remarked.
"We have grown so awfully selfish, haven't we, Nicholas, but we aren't such hypocrites as we were before the war. People still have lovers, but they don't turn up their eyes so much at other people having them, as they used. There is more tolerance—the only thing you cannot do is to act publicly so that your men friends cannot defend you—'You must not throw your bonnet over the windmills'—otherwise you can do as you please—."
"You had not thought of taking either Jim or Rochester for a lover to make certain which you prefer?"
Nina looked unspeakably shocked—.
"What a dreadful idea Nicholas!—I am thinking of both seriously, not only to pass the time of day remember."
"That is all lovers are for, then Nina?—I used to think—."
"Never mind what you thought, there is no reason to insult me."
"Nothing was farther from my desire."
Nina's face cleared, as it had darkened ominously.
"What will you do if, having married Rochester, you find yourself bored—Will you send for Jim again?"
"Certainly not, that would be disaster. I shan't plunge until I feel pretty certain I am going to find the water just deep enough, and not too deep—and if I do make a mistake, well I shall have to stick to it."
"By Jove what a philosopher," and I laughed—She poured out a second cup of tea, and then she looked steadily at me, as though studying a new phase of me.
"You are not a bit worse off than Tom Green, Nicholas, and he has not got your money, and Tom is as jolly as anything, and everybody loves him, though he is a hopeless cripple, and can't even look decent, as you will be able to in a year or two. There is no use in having this sentiment about war heroes that would make one put up with their tempers, and their cynicism! Everybody is in the same boat, women and men, we chance being maimed by bombs, and we are losing our looks with rough work—for goodness sake stop being so soured—."
I laughed outright—it was all so true.
Friday—Maurice brings people to play bridge every afternoon now. Nina has gone back to England—having decided to take Jim!
It came about in this way—She flew in to tell me the last evening before she left for Havre. She was breathless running up the stairs, as something had gone wrong with the lift.
"Jim and I are engaged!"
"A thousand congratulations."
"Rochester had a dinner for me on Wednesday night. All the jolliest people in Paris—some of those dear French who have been so nice to us all along, and some of the War Council and the Ryvens, and so on—and, do you know, Nicholas—I heard Rochester telling Madame de Clerté the same story about his bon mot when a shell broke at Avicourt—as I had already heard him tell Admiral Short, and Daisy Ryven!—that decided me—. There was an element of self-glorification in that modest story—and a man who would tell it three times, is not for me! In ten years I should grow into being the listener victim—I could not face it! So I said good-bye to him in the corridor, before up to my room—and I telephoned to Jim, who was in his room on