SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. LXII AUGUST, 1917 NO. 2 S DEFEAT BY JOHN GALSWORTHY ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD BIRCH HE had been standing there was exceptionally nerve-racking in war on the pavement a quarter time, going as she did by a false name, unof an hour or so after her registered. Indeed, in all England there shilling's worth of concert. could hardly be a greater pariah than Women of her profession was this German woman of the night. are not supposed to have redeeming points, especially when-like May Belinski, as she now preferred to dub herself they are German; but this woman certainly had music in her soul. She often gave herself these "music baths" when the Promenade Concerts were on, and had just spent half her total wealth in listening to some Mozart and a Beethoven symphony. She was feeling almost elated, full of divine sound, and of the wonderful summer moonlight that was filling the whole dark town. Women "of a certain type" have, at all events emotions -and what a comfort that is, even to themselves! To stand just there had become rather a habit of hers. One could seem to be waiting for somebody coming out of the concert, not yet overwhich, of course, was precisely what she was doing. One need not forever be stealthily glancing and perpetually moving on in that peculiar way, which, while it satisfied the police and Mrs. Grundy, must not quite deceive others as to her business in life. She had only "been at it" long enough to have acquired a nervous dread of almost everything-not long enough to have passed through that dread to callousness. Some women take so much longer than others. And even for a woman "of a certain type" her position She idled outside a book-shop humming a little, pretending to read the titles of the books by moonlight, taking off and putting on one of her stained yellow gloves. Now and again she would move up as far as the posters outside the Hall, scrutinizing them as if interested in the future, then stroll back again. In her worn and discreet dark dress, and her small hat, she had nothing about her to rouse suspicion, unless it were the trail of violet powder she left on the moonlight. For the moonlight this evening was almost solid, seeming with its cool still vibration to replace the very air; in it the war-time precautions against light seemed fantastic, like shading candles in a room still full of daylight. What lights there were had the effect of strokes and stipples of dim color laid by a painter's brush on a background of ghostly whitish blue. The dream-like quality of the town was perhaps enhanced for her eyes by the veil she was wearing-in daytime no longer white. As the music died out of her, elation also ebbed. Somebody had passed her, speaking German, and she was overwhelmed by a rush of nostalgia. On this moonlit night by the banks of the Rhine-whence she came the orchards would be heavy with apples; there would be murmurs, and sweet scents; the old castle would stand out clear, high over Copyright, 1917, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. the woods and the chalky-white river. There would be singing far away, and the churning of a distant steamer's screw; and perhaps on the water a log raft still drifting down in the blue light. There would be German voices talking. And suddenly tears oozed up in her eyes, and crept down through the powder on her cheeks. She raised her veil and dabbed at her face with a little, nottoo-clean handkerchief, screwed up in her yellow-gloved hand. But the more she dabbed, the more those treacherous tears ran. Then she became aware that a tall young man in khaki was also standing before the shop-window, not looking at the titles of the books, but eying her askance. His face was fresh and open, with a sort of kindly eagerness in his blue eyes; mechanically she drooped her wet lashes, raised them obliquely, drooped them again, and uttered a little sob... This young man, Captain in a certain regiment, and discharged from hospital at six o'clock that evening, had entered Queen's Hall at half past seven. Still rather brittle and sore from his wound, he had treated himself to a seat in the Grand Circle, and there had sat, very still, and dreamy, the whole concert through. It had been like eating after a long fast-something of the sensation Polar explorers must experience when they return to their first full meal. For he was of the New Army, and before the war had actually believed in music, art, and all that sort of thing. With a month's leave before him, he could afford to feel that life was extraordinarily joyful, his own experiences particularly wonderful; and, coming out into the moonlight, he had taken what can only be described as a great gulp of it, for he was a young man with a sense of beauty. When one has been long in the trenches, lain out wounded in a shell-hole twenty-four hours, and spent three months in hospital, beauty has such an edge of novelty, such a sharp sweetness, that it almost gives pain. And London at night is very beautiful. He strolled slowly toward the Circus, still drawing the moonlight deep into his lungs, his cap tilted up a little on his forehead in that moment of unmilitary abandonment; and whether he stopped before the book-shop window because the girl's figure was in some sort a part of beauty, or because he saw that she was crying, he could not have made clear to any one. Then something-perhaps the scent of powder, perhaps the yellow glove, or the oblique flutter of the eyelids-told him that he made what he would have called "a blooming error," unless he wished for company, which had not been in his thoughts. But her sob affected him, and he said: "What's the matter?" Again her eyelids fluttered sideways, and she stammered: "Noting. The beautiful evening-that's why!" That a woman of what he now clearly saw to be "a certain type" should perceive what he himself had just been perceiving, struck him forcibly; and he said: "Cheer up." She looked up again swiftly: "Cheer up! You are not lonelee like me." For one of that sort, she looked somehow honest; her tear-streaked face was rather pretty, and he murmured: "Well, let's walk a bit, and talk it over." They turned the corner, and walked east, along streets empty, and beautiful, with their dulled orange-glowing lamps, and here and there the glint of some blue or violet light. He found it queer and rather exciting—for an adventure of just this kind he had never had. And he said doubtfully: "How did you get into this? Isn't it an awfully hopeless sort of life?" "Ye-es, it ees— -" her voice had a queer soft emphasis. "You are limping-haf you been wounded?" "Just out of hospital to-day." "The horrible war-all the misery is because of the war. When will it end?" He looked at her attentively, and said: "I say what nationality are you?" "Rooshian." "Really! I never met a Russian girl." He was conscious that she looked at him, then very quickly down. And he said suddenly: "Is it as bad as they make out?" She slipped her yellow-gloved hand through his arm. You see in them what you haf in yourself, I think." "Oh! Not a bit-you're quite out. I assure you when we made the attack where I got wounded, there wasn't a single man in my regiment who wasn't an absolute hero. The way they went innever thinking of themselves-it was simply superb!" the curtains were drawn, and the gas turned very low. Opposite the window were other curtains dividing off the rest of the apartment. As soon as the door was shut, she put up her face and kissed him— evidently formula. What a room! Its green and beet-root coloring and the prevalence of cheap plush disagreeably affected him. Everything in it had that callous look of rooms which seem to be saying to their occupants: "You're here to-day, and you'll be gone to-morrow." Everything except one little plant, in a How common pot, of maidenhair fern, fresh and green, looking as if it had been watered within the hour; in this room it had just the same unexpected touchingness that peeped out of the girl's matter-offact cynicism. Her teeth came down on her lower lip, and she answered in a queer voice: "It is the same too perhaps with the enemy." "Oh yes, I know that." "Ah! You are not a mean man. I hate mean men!" "Oh! They're not mean really-they simply don't understand." "Oh! You are a baby-a good baby, aren't you?" He did not quite like being called a baby, and frowned; but was at once touched by the disconcertion in her powdered face. How quickly she was scared! "I, too-I love music." "I suppose all Russians do." She looked up at his face again, and seemed to struggle to keep silent; then she said quietly: "I go there always when I haf the money." "What! Are you so on the rocks?" "Well, I haf just one shilling now." And she laughed. The sound of that little laugh upset him-she had a way of making him feel sorry for her every time she spoke. They had come by now to a narrow square, east of Gower Street. "This is where I lif," she said: “Come in!" He had one long moment of violent hesitation, then yielded to the soft tugging of her hand, and followed. The passage-hall was dimly lighted, and they went up-stairs into a front room, where Taking off her hat, she went toward the gas, but he said quickly: "No, don't turn it up; let's have the window open, and the moonlight in." He had a sudden dread of seeing anything plainly it was stuffy, too, and pulling the curtains apart, he threw up the window. The girl had come obediently from the hearth, and sat down opposite him, leaning her arm on the window-sill and her chin on her hand. The moonlight. caught her cheek where she had just renewed the powder, and her fair crinkly hair; it caught the plush of the furniture, and his own khaki, giving them all a touch of unreality. "What's your name?" he said. "May. Well, I call myself that. It's no good askin' yours." "You're a distrustful little soul, aren't you?" "I haf reason to be, don't you think?" "Yes, I suppose you're bound to think us all brutes?" "Well, I haf a lot of reasons to be afraid all my time. I am dreadfully nervous now; I am not trusting anybody. I suppose you haf been killing lots of Germans?" He laughed. "We never know, unless it happens to be hand to hand; I haven't come in for that yet." "But you would be very glad if you had killed some?" "Glad? I don't think so. We're all in the same boat, so far as that's concerned. |