They Call It Love

by Edgar Jepson

THEY CALL IT LOVE

By Edgar Jepson

GREY gazed out of the window with thoughtful eyes; he was not even frowning. In fact, his quiet face displayed nothing but a gentle weariness. But had she been truly alert and sympathetic, a little less engrossed in herself, Doris might have perceived that he was regarding the symmetrical front of the block of flats opposite with an earnestness the prospect did not deserve.

“I shall go,” she said, half challenging, half stubborn.

“I know you will,” he said quietly.

“And why shouldn’t I dine at the Mornington and go to the Palace with Grierson?” she cried. “Why shouldn’t I have a little amusement?”

“There is only one reason,” he said; and he turned and looked at her stubborn face. “It isn’t quite fair to me.”

“It is! It is! You go about with that other woman. Why shouldn’t I go about with Grierson?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve never been alone with her once since I told you I wouldn’t,” he said quietly.

“You saw her on Wednesday week!” she cried.

“In a crowded teashop—for an hour—what was it? I can’t be an utter brute—though you make me want to.”

“She made love to you.”

“No one can make love to me except you, dear angel. It can’t be done—really it can’t. With other women I’m just a block—a bored, insensate, pulseless block.”

As he spoke the set line of his face softened; his eyes softened; they rested on her face in a gaze of pure adoration.

She softened to it, quivering for a breath with the heady sense of power and possession. He did love her; and she loved him. Then she hardened again in the desire to exercise her power, to hurt him. She would hurt him; she must; she loved him so.

“And I’m not to go out with Grierson, when you go out with her?” she said coldly.

“It’s so different,” he said; and his face set slowly into its weariness. “It’s detestable—utterly. If his large hands weren’t covered with untanned alligator skin—”

“They aren’t! Most women would prefer him to you—much!” she said quickly, angrily.

“I have no use for most women,” he said contemptuously.

“Oh, your conceit—your boundless conceit!” she cried.

“His hands are absolutely formless—wrinkled, drabbish lumps. They should never touch you; they should never have touched you—never! The pictures they give me!” he said and shuddered ever so little.

She quivered to the emotion under his level tones; the pain in his eyes hurt her.

“But he isn’t going to touch me. Of course he isn’t,” she said gently. Then, in a fresh access of cruelty, she added: “He'll only kiss me once or twice in the taxi—perhaps.”

His lips twisted queerly.

A sudden vision of the bright restaurant, the women’s dresses, the music, the champagne rose before her mind.

“It’s absurd,” she said fretfully. “You know I haven’t been out in the evening for a fortnight. You haven’t taken me. You know how I love it.”

Her keen, almost greedy, discontent robbed her face of charm, made it common.

“I know,” he said; and there was just the faintest note of contempt in his tone.

Then he added softly: “This cursed money!”

The discontent in her face deepened.

“I’ve got it!” he said quickly in a tone of lively relief. “My ivory Kwanyin. Anstruther has always wanted her. He’ll give me thirty pounds for her like a shot. I shall be able to take you out every night for a week.”

His face had softened again to smiling adoration.

“No!” she cried. “I won’t have it! I won't hear of it! You're fonder of that figure than anything you’ve ever had. i won’t go out with you tonight—I won't.”

Warm with the unselfish resolve, her face was almost fine.

His face fell. There was nothing to be done.

“But you'll go out with Grierson?” he said.

She hesitated, looking at him earnestly. Then the desire to feel her power, to hurt him, came on her again, keen not to be withstood.

“Yes,” she said.

Possibly his face grew a little wearier; and he sighed so faintly that she only just heard it.

He stooped, took her hand, and kissed her fingers one by one, saying as he kissed each:

“My little finger—my third finger—my middle finger—my first finger—my thumb.”

He had often kissed them, with those very words, before. But this afternoon there was a difference in his kisses and his tone: he might have been kissing them and bidding them good-bye.

He stood upright, still holding her hand, and looking down at it with eyes so bright that there might have been tears in them, and said:

“The most beautiful fingers in the world.”

She thrilled as he had thrilled her again and again.

He laughed a gentle reckless laugh which ended on the weariest note, let fall her hand, and said:

“And now they’re all yours again, dear angel.”

He walked quietly out of the room without looking at her face.

II

She looked at the closed door with eyes full of a sudden disquiet, rose nervously, and took two steps towards it. She stopped and smiled, and with a little sob said:

“Oh, but I will make up for it to him!”

During the rest of the afternoon she was by turns triumphant and uneasy. At a quarter to eight came Grierson, eager, jubilant. She did not like him at all; neither his heavy figure pleased her, nor his complacent face, nor his greedy, proprietory eyes. She quivered with a new repulsion when his thick, rough hand clasped her bare arm. The hand was shapeless; and Grey’s suggestion about untanned alligator skin rose in her mind and clung to it. She loathed the hands and wondered why she had not always loathed them. He did not perceive that her lips were quite cold.

She came into the restaurant depressed, with none of the pleasure she had expected. The long room was not really bright; it was full of ugly, dull people; the band was playing an ugly tune. At table it was detestable to have Grierson’s fleshy, smiling, complacent face right before her eyes. He did not perceive the keen dislike in her eyes, or that she emptied her glass of champagne before she tasted her soup. He beamed at her and called her little woman.

Then the band began a waltz she hid often danced with the man she loved; and the thought of him suddenly came to her. It was more like a pang than a thought.

What was he doing? Sitting alone in his rooms probably, tearing at his heartstrings. For a moment the restaurant went dark; and she saw him sitting there as clearly as ever she had seen him when she had been with him—more clearly. The restaurant grew slowly light again; and she could have put her head down on her arms and cried her eyes out.

Then she really saw him. He was coming down the room with the other woman. Utterly still, she gazed at them, her lips parted, her face blank.

They came nearer and nearer. He saw her, smiled and bowed. They came to the very next table. He put the woman into the chair facing her and sat down with his back to her.

Even Grierson heard her long-drawn, gasping sigh and saw the strain in her face.

“Anything wrong, little woman? Room too hot?” he said affectionately.

She shook her head; and he resumed his discussion of the respective merits of her husband’s shoot and his own.

The whole of her was in her eyes. They devoured the other woman. She had never before seen her; and Grey had told her that she never should see her. But also he had said that if ever she did, she would never be able to accuse him of second-rate love. It was true: the woman was prettier, far prettier than herself; she had at least as good a figure; she was as well dressed. And her hands? If only she could see her hands. He had said that they were beautiful hands but not as beautiful as hers. She could only see that they were small.

She turned her eyes again to the woman’s face. It was thinner than it should have been and a little drawn; and her eyes were tired. Doris well knew why. She hated those tired eyes. They rested en her lover’s face so hungrily—when it was turned away.

The pair of them talked quietly; and the turmoil in Doris stilled a little. Grierson, warmed by the champagne, made love to her. He was not skilled; and she detested him. She was unresponsive; but that made no difference to him. He had complained before, and justly, that he always had to do all the work.

She lost no movement of Grey or the woman. He was drinking his champagne, her own favorite brand, quickly. She herself was drinking her champagne, Grierson’s favorite brand, quickly. She could no longer eat. Grierson was eating heartily. He affected to believe that she was banting and was heavily jocose.

Then came the change. Her lover had been sitting upright. Of a sudden he leaned forward; and she saw him catch and hold the other woman’s tired eyes. At first they gazed into his almost fearfully. Then, slowly, they grew no longer tired. They brightened slowly; they shone. They were beautiful eyes. The woman’s face was no longer thin or drawn, its contours rounded to their natural beauty. There was a delicate flush on it; her lips were parted. Once Doris saw her be wholly still in a hush of sheer delight; and her eyes closed. When she opened them they were brighter with tears. They shone like stars in a cold sky.

Doris knew what Grey was saying—well. She knew how he was saying it, every quiet word striking a note on the heartstrings—and with what eyes! A pain rose from her heart to her throat, rending, stifling. Her forehead glistened with little beads of cold sweat. She gasped; and for a breath her face was twisted.

Grierson, busy with his bird, was watching her with curious but happy eyes. He turned in his chair, looked carefully at the other woman, and turned round again, smiling.

“Jealous, little woman?” he said, and laughed merrily.

She frowned.

By a greater effort she forced herself to drink some more champagne. It tasted very salt.

She took, or rather wrenched, her eyes from the other woman’s face. They fell on Grierson’s. They were so dull with pain that they did not show her hate. It was his fault—the stupid, common brute. How she loathed him! How could she ever—She forced herself to look at his large, shapeless hands—hands that had caressed her. Alligator skin—and the smell—loathsome!

She panted softly. How she was suffering! From her heart to her throat—how it hurt!

It was no use: she could not keep her eyes from the other woman’s face. It was transfigured—glorified. Grey was not leaning forward now; he was crouched forward, hunched together. She knew that tense attitude. He was a master playing on an instrument of love, his being absorbed in the effort to draw all its music from it.

He had forgotten her utterly—her hands, her eyes, her lips and the heart, on which, enchanted and thrilled, he had so often played. She hated him—hated him—more than she hated the woman—far more than she hated Grierson.

She could not drink her coffee; her throat was constricted.

The light in the other woman’s eyes was searing her soul.

Grierson called the waiter, paid the bill, and said cheerfully:

“Come along, little woman.”

She shook her head and with an effort said:

“Not yet.”

She could not tear herself away from her stake.

Grierson frowned and said:

“But we shall miss a lot of the show.”

She shook her head.

“Oh, but hang it all! What’s the use of taking tickets for the show and missing half of it?” said Grierson querulously.

She paid no heed to his plaint; she did not hear it. She saw the other woman’s lips move in three words. How many, many times had she herself said those words to her lover. The pang twisted her face; it twisted her body.

Grierson grew louder, persistent, badgering. He rose.

She rose, too. She had better go. She was at the very end of her endurance.

As Grierson put her cloak round her his rough fingers scraped her shoulder. She writhed.

She walked down the room, with her head straight, gazing straight in front of her. She burned to look at Grey’s face; but she dared not. If it were set in an expression she knew, she might scream.

She came out of the restaurant aching; she sat in the theatre aching still but dazed in a reaction from the keener pain.

She scarcely heard Grierson’s fat chuckles and his:

“That’s a bit thick, eh?”

She was beyond disgust and detestation.

Then, a full hour later, the other two came down the gangway. They had sat in the restaurant, talking, making love, for a whole hour longer. Their seats were on the other side of the gangway, three rows in front. She saw Grey’s profile as he drew the cloak from the other woman’s shoulders. He was smiling.

Then, many times, she saw a little of his profile. It told her nothing. But the woman’s face she could see nearly all the while, for she hardly looked at the stage, only at him. Oh, he had been thorough! He would be thorough. The woman was mad about him.

Now and again Doris writhed; and the pain rose and rose from her heart to her throat. At times for a whole minute a darkness fell on her eyes. That relief alone enabled her to endure.

When the last curtain fell she groaned in her relief that her torture was over.

Grierson was slow; and Grey and the other woman passed up the gangway in front of them. From the vestibule she saw him put her into a taxi and step into it himself.

That should have been the last pang; but the master torturer, Imagination, took up the fabric of pain where vision let it fall and wove on.

III

At a few minutes past ten the next morning she opened the door of Grey’s flat with the latchkey he had given her and walked unsteadily into his sitting-room. Her eyes were bright with hate; her face was drawn and hard.

He lay back in his easy chair, his face set in its mask of weariness, pale about the lips and temples, rings under his sleepless eyes. The furrow between his eyebrows was deeper.

She gazed at him and stammered in a hard, wncertain voice: “G-G-Grierson stayed—half an hour.”

She had come to say it.

He did not stir; his face stayed set in its weariness.

“I didn’t,” he said quietly and paused.

Then he added quietly: “And Kwanyin has gone, too.”

Her eyes rose quickly to the mantel-shelf, to the place where the beautiful figure had stood. In it lay some bank-notes under a handful of silver.

Her lips parted: her hard face collapsed—there is no other word; and she became the most pathetic figure in the world, a little child who has been cruelly beaten. Big, hopeless tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

He did not stir.