The Wonderful Year. William John Locke

that’s it,” said Corinna. “I’m done for. An old aunt died and left me a legacy of four hundred pounds. I thought I could best use it by coming to Paris to study art. I’ve been at it three years, and I’m as clever as when I began. I have about twenty pounds left. When it’s gone I shall have to go home to my smug and chuckling family. There are ten of us. I’m the eldest and the youngest is three months old. Pretty fit I should be after three years of Paris to go back. When I was at home last, if ever I referred to an essential fact of physiological or social existence, my good mother called me immodest and my sisters goggle-eyed and breathless besought me in corners to tell them all about it. When I tell them I know people who haven’t gone through the ceremony of marriage they think I’m giving them a peep into some awful hell of iniquity. It’s a fearful joy to them. Then mother says I’m corrupting their young and innocent minds and father mentions me at Family prayers. And the way they run after any young man that happens along is sickening. I’m a prudish old maid compared with them. Have you ever seen me running after men?”

      “You are a modern Penthesilea,” said Fortinbras.

      “Anyway, Wendlebury—that’s my home—would drive me mad. I’ll have to go away and fend for myself. Father can’t give me an allowance. It’s as much as he can do to pay his butcher’s bills. Besides, I’m not that sort. What I do, I must do on my own. But I can’t do anything to get a living. I can’t typewrite, I don’t know shorthand. I can scarcely sew a button on a camisole, I’m not quite sure of my multiplication table, I couldn’t add up a column of pounds, shillings and pence correctly to save my life, I play the devil with an egg if I put it into a saucepan and if I attempted to bath a baby I should drown it. I’m twenty-four years of age and a helpless, useless failure.”

      Fortinbras drank some of his raspberry syrup and water and lit another cigarette.

      “And you have still twenty pounds in your pocket?”

      “Yes,” said Corinna, “and I shan’t go home until I’ve spent the last penny. That’s why I’m in Paris, drinking its August dregs. I’ve already bought a third class ticket to London—available for six months—so I can get back any time without coming down on my people.”

      “That act of pusillanimous prudence,” remarked Fortinbras, “seems to me to be a flaw in an otherwise admirable scheme of immediate existence. If the ravens fed an impossibly unhumorous, and probably unprepossessing, disagreeable person like Elijah, surely there are doves who will minister to the sustenance of an attractive and keen-witted young woman like yourself. But that is a mere generalisation. I only wish you,” said he, bending forward and paternally and delicately touching her hand, “I only wish you to take heart of grace and not strangle yourself in your exhaustively drawn up category of incompetence.”

      The man’s manner was so sympathetic, his deep voice so persuasive, the smile in his eyes so understanding, the massive, lined face so illuminated by wise tenderness that his words fell like balm on her rebellious spirit before their significance, or want of significance, could be analysed by her intellect. The intensity of attitude and feature with which her confession had been attended relaxed into girlish ease.

      She laughed somewhat self-consciously and took a cigarette from the packet offered her by a silent and wondering Martin. She perked up her shapely head and once more the cock-pheasant’s plume on her cheap straw hat gave her a pleasant air of braggadocio. Martin noticed for the first time that she had a little mutinous nose and a defiant lift of the chin above a broad white throat. He found it difficult to harmonise her appearance of confident efficiency with her lamentable avowal of failure. Those blue eyes somewhat hard beneath the square brow ought to have commanded success. Those strong nervous hands were of just the kind to choke the great things out of life. He could not suddenly divest himself of preconceived ideas. To the dull, unaspiring drudge, Corinna Hastings leading the fabulous existence of the Paris studios had been invested with such mystery as surrounded the goddesses of the Gaiety Theatre and the Headmaster of Eton. …

      Martin also reflected that in her litany of woe she had omitted all reference to the medical student now in the arms of his ridiculous mother. He began to feel mildly jealous of this Camille Fargot, who assumed the shadow shape of a malignant influence. Yet she did not appear to be the young woman to tolerate aggressive folly on the part of a commonplace young man. Fortinbras himself had called her Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons. He was puzzled.

      “What you say is very comforting and exhilarating, Fortinbras,” remarked Corinna, “but can’t you let me have something practical?”

      “All in good time, my dear,” replied Fortinbras serenely. “I have no quack nostrums to hand over at a minute’s notice. Auguste——” he summoned the waiter and addressed him in fluent French, marred by a Britannic accent: “Give me another glass of this obscene though harmless beverage and satisfy the needs of Monsieur and Mademoiselle, and after that leave us in peace, and if any one seeks to penetrate into this salle à manger, say that it is engaged by a Lodge of Freemasons. Here is remuneration for your prospective zeal.”

      With impressive flourish he deposited fifteen centimes in the palm of Auguste, who bowed politely.

      “Merci, m’sieu,” said he. “Et monsieur, dame——?”

      He looked enquiringly at Martin and Martin looked enquiringly at Corinna.

      “I’m going to blow twenty pounds,” she replied. “I’ll have a kummel glacé.”

      “And I’ll have the same,” said Martin, “though I don’t in the least know what it is.”

      The waiter retired. Corinna leaned across the table.

      “You’re thirty years of age and you’ve lived ten years in London and have never seen kummel served with crushed ice and straws?”

      “No,” replied Martin simply. “What is kummel?”

      She regarded him in wonderment. “Have you ever heard of champagne?”

      “More often than I’ve tasted it,” said Martin.

      “This young man,” remarked Corinna, “has seen as much of life as a squirrel in a cage. That may not be very polite, Martin—but you know it’s true. Can you dance?”

      “No,” said Martin.

      “Have you ever fired off a gun?”

      “I was once in the Cambridge University Rifle Corps,” said Martin.

      “You used a rifle, not a gun,” cried Corinna. “Have you ever shot a bird?”

      “No,” said Martin.

      “Or caught a fish?”

      “No,” said Martin.

      “Can you play cricket, golf, ride——?”

      “A bicycle,” said Martin.

      “That’s something, anyhow. What do you use it for?”

      “To go backwards and forwards to my work,” said Martin.

      “What do you do in the way of amusement?”

      “Nothing,” said Martin, with a sigh.

      “My good Fortinbras,” said Corinna, “you have your work cut out for you.”

      The waiter brought the drinks, and after enquiring whether they needed all the electricity, turned out most of the lights.

      Martin always remembered the scene: the little low-ceilinged room with its grotesque decorations looming fantastic through the semi-darkness; the noises and warm smells rising from the narrow street; the eyes of the girl opposite raised somewhat mockingly to his, as straw in mouth she bent her head over the iced kummel; the burly figure and benevolent face of their queer companion who for five francs had offered to be the arbiter of his destiny, and leaned forward, elbow on table and chin in hand, serenely expectant to hear the inmost secrets of his life.