Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
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THREE WEEKS
BY
ELINOR GLYN
1907
INTRODUCTION TO
MY AMERICAN READERS
I feel now, when my "Three Weeks" is to be launched in a new land,
where I have many sympathetic friends, that, owing to the
misunderstanding and misrepresentation it received from nearly the
entire press and a section of the public in England, I would like to
state my view of its meaning. (As I wrote it, I suppose it could be
believed I know something about that!) For me "the Lady" was a deep
study, the analysis of a strange Slav nature, who, from circumstances
and education and her general view of life, was beyond the ordinary
laws of morality. If I were making the study of a Tiger, I would not
give it the attributes of a spaniel, because the public, and I myself,
might prefer a spaniel! I would still seek to portray accurately
every minute instinct of that Tiger, to make a living picture. Thus,
as you read, I want you to think of her as such a study. A great
splendid nature, full of the passionate realisation of primitive
instincts, immensely cultivated, polished, blasé. You must see her at
Lucerne, obsessed with the knowledge of her horrible life with her
brutal, vicious husband, to whom she had been sacrificed for political
reasons when almost a child. She suddenly sees this young Englishman,
who comes as an echo of something straight and true in manhood which,
in outward appearance at all events, she has met in her youth in the
person of his Uncle Hubert. She perceives in him at once the Soul
sleeping there; and it produces in her a strong emotion. Then I want
you to understand the effect of Love on them both. In her it rose from
caprice to intense devotion, until the day at the Farm when it reached
the highest point--a desire to reproduce his likeness. How, with the
most passionate physical emotion, her mental influence upon Paul was
ever to raise him to vast aims and noble desires for future
greatness. In him love opened the windows of his Soul, so that he saw
the fine in everything.
The immense rush of passion in Venice came from her knowledge that
they soon must part. Notice the effect of the two griefs on Paul. The
first, with its undefined hope, making him do well in all things--even
his prowess as a hunter--to raise himself to be more worthy in her
eyes; the second and paralysing one of death, turning him into adamant
until his soul awakens again with the returning spring of her spirit
in his heart, and the consolation of the living essence of their love
in the child.
The minds of some human beings are as moles, grubbing in the earth for
worms. They have no eyes to see God's sky with the stars in it. To
such "Three Weeks" will be but a sensual record of passion. But those
who do look up beyond the material will understand the deep pure love,
and the Soul in it all, and they will realise that to such a nature as
"the Lady's," passion would never have run riot until it was
sated--she would have daily grown nobler in her desire to make her
Loved One's son a splendid man.
And to all who read, I say--at least be just! and do not skip. No line
is written without its having a bearing upon the next, and in its
small scope helping to make the presentment of these two human beings
vivid and clear.
The verdict I must leave to the Public, but now, at all events, you
know, kind Reader, that _to me_, the "Imperatorskoye" appears a
noble woman, because she was absolutely faithful to the man she had
selected as her mate, through the one motive which makes a union moral
in ethics--Love.--ELINOR GLYN.
THREE WEEKS
CHAPTER I
Now this is an episode in a young man's life, and has no real
beginning or ending. And you who are old and have forgotten the
passions of youth may condemn it. But there are others who are
neither old nor young who, perhaps, will understand and find some
interest in the study of a strange woman who made the illumination of
a brief space.
Paul Verdayne was young and fresh and foolish when his episode
began. He believed in himself--he believed in his mother, and in a
number of other worthy things. Life was full of certainties for
him. He was certain he liked hunting better than anything else in the
world--for instance. He was certain he knew his own mind, and
therefore perfectly certain his passion for Isabella Waring would last
for ever! Ready to swear eternal devotion with that delightful
inconsequence of youth in its unreason, thinking to control an emotion
as Canute's flatterers would have had him do the waves.
And the Creator of waves--and emotions--no doubt smiled to Himself--if
He is not tired by now of smiling at the follies of the moles called
human beings, who for the most part inhabit His earth!
Paul was young, as I said, and fair and strong. He had been in the
eleven at Eton and left Oxford with a record for all that should turn
a beautiful Englishman into a perfect athlete. Books had not worried
him much! The fit of a hunting-coat, the pace of a horse, were things
of more importance, but he scraped through his "Smalls" and his
"Mods," and was considered by his friends to be anything but a
fool. As for his mother--the Lady Henrietta Verdayne--she thought him
a god among men!
Paul went to London like others of his time, and attended the
theatres, where perfectly virtuous young ladies display nightly their
innocent charms in hilarious choruses, arrayed in the latest
_modes_. He supped, too, with these houris--and felt himself a
man of the world.
He had stayed about in country houses for perhaps a year, and had
danced through the whole of a season with all the prettiest
_débutantes_. And one or two of the young married women of forty
had already marked him out for their prey.
By all this you can see just the kind of creature Paul was. There are
hundreds of others like him, and perhaps they, too, have the latent
qualities which he developed during his episode--only they remain as
he was in the beginning--sound asleep.
That fall out hunting in March, and being laid up with a sprained
ankle and a broken collar-bone, proved the commencement of the
Isabella Waring affair.
She was the parson's daughter--and is still for the matter of
that!--and often in those days between her games of golf and hockey,
or a good run on her feet with the hounds, she came up to Verdayne
Place to write Lady Henrietta's letters for her. Isabella was most
amiable and delighted to make herself useful.
And if her hands were big and red, she wrote clearly and well. The
Lady Henrietta, who herself was of the delicate Later Victorian
Dresden China type, could not imagine a state of things which
contained the fact that her god-like son might stoop to this daughter
of the earthy earth!
Yet so it fell about. Isabella read aloud the sporting papers to
him--Isabella played piquet with him in the dull late afternoons of
his convalescence--Isabella herself washed his dog Pike--that king of
rough terriers! And one terrible day Paul unfortunately kissed the
large pink lips of Isabella as his mother entered the room.
I will draw a veil over this part of his life.
The Lady Henrietta, being a great lady, chanced to behave as such on
the occasion referred to--but she was also a woman, and not a
particularly clever one. Thus Paul was soon irritated by opposition
into thinking himself seriously in love with this daughter of the
middle classes, so far beneath his noble station.
"Let the boy have his fling," said Sir Charles Verdayne, who was a
coarse person. "Damn it all! a man is not obliged to marry every woman
he kisses!"
"A gentlemen does not deliberately kiss an unmarried girl unless he
intends to make her his wife!" retorted Lady Henrietta. "I fear the
worst!"
Sir Charles snorted and chuckled, two unpleasant and annoying habits
his lady wife had never been able to break him of. So the affair grew
and grew! Until towards the middle of April Paul was advised to travel
for his health.
"Your father and I can sanction no engagement, Paul, before you
return," said Lady Henrietta. "If, in July, on your twenty-third
birthday, you still wish to break your mother's heart--I suppose you
must do so. But I ask of you the unfettered reflection of three months
first."
This seemed reasonable enough, and Paul consented to start upon a tour
round Europe--not having spoken the final fatal and binding words to
Isabella Waring. They made their adieux in the pouring rain under a
dripping oak in the lane by the Vicarage gate.
Paul was six foot two, and Isabella quite six foot, and broad in
proportion. They were dressed almost alike, and at a little distance,
but for the lady's scanty petticoat, it would have been difficult to
distinguish her sex.
"Good-bye, old chap," she said, "We have been real pals, and I'll not
forget you!"
But Paul, who was feeling sentimental, put it differently.
"Good-bye, darling," he whispered with a suspicion of tremble in his
charming voice. "I shall never love any woman but you--never, never in
my life."
Cuckoo! screamed the bird in the tree.
And now we are getting nearer the episode. Paris bored Paul--he did
not know its joys and was in no mood to learn them. He mooned about
and went to the races. His French was too indifferent to make theatres
a pleasure, and the attractive ladies who smiled at his blue eyes were
for him _défendues_. A man so recently parted from the only woman
he could ever love had no right to look at such things, he thought. How
young and chivalrous and honest he was--poor Paul!
So he took to visiting Versailles and Fontainebleau and Compiègne with
a guide-book, and came to the conclusion it was all "beastly rot."
So he turned his back upon France and fled to Switzerland.
Do you know Switzerland?--you who read. Do you know it at the
beginning of May? A feast of blue lakes, and snow-peaks, and the
divinest green of young beeches, and the sombre shadow of dark firs,
and the exhilaration of the air.
If you do, I need not tell you about it. Only in any case now, you
must see it through the eyes of Paul. That is if you intend to read
another page of this bad book.
It was pouring with rain when he drove from the station to the
hotel. His temper was at its worst. Pilatus hid his head in mist, the
Bürgenstock was invisible--it was chilly, too, and the fire smoked in
the sitting-room when Paul had it lighted.
His heart yearned for his own snug room at Verdayne Place, and the
jolly voice of Isabella Waring counting point, quint and quatorze.
What nonsense to send him abroad. As if such treatment could be
effectual as a cure for a love like his. He almost laughed at his
mother's folly. How he longed to sit down and write to his
darling. Write and tell how he hated it all, and was only getting
through the time until he saw her six feet of buxom charms again--only
Paul did not put it like that--indeed, he never thought about her
charms at all--or want of them. He analysed nothing. He was sound
asleep, you see, to _nuances_ as yet; he was just a splendid
English young animal of the best class.
He had promised not to write to Isabella--or, if he _must_, at
least not to write a love-letter.
"Dear boy," the Lady Henrietta had said when giving him her fond
parting kiss, "if you are very unhappy and feel you greatly wish to
write to Miss Waring, I suppose you must do so, but let your letter be
about the scenery and the impressions of travel, in no way to be
interpreted into a declaration of affection or a promise of future
union--I have your word, Paul, for that?"
And Paul had given his word.
"All right, mother--I promise--for three months."
And now on this wet evening the "must" had come, so he pulled out some
hotel paper and began.
"MY DEAR ISABELLA:
"I say--you know--I hate beginning like this--I have arrived at this
beastly place, and I am awfully unhappy. I think it would have been
better if I had brought Pike with me, only those rotten laws about
getting the little chap back to England would have been hard. How is
Moonlighter? And have they really looked after that strain, do you
gather? Make Tremlett come down and report progress to you daily--I
told him to. My rooms look out on a beastly lake, and there are
mountains, I suppose, but I can't see them. There is hardly any one in
the hotel, because the Easter visitors have all gone back and the
summer ones haven't come, so I doubt even if I can have a game of
billiards. I am sick of guide-books, and I should like to take the
next train home again. I must dress for dinner now, and I'll finish
this to-night."
Paul dressed for dinner; his temper was vile, and his valet
trembled. Then he went down into the restaurant scowling, and was
ungracious to the polite and conciliating waiters, ordering his food
and a bottle of claret as if they had done him an injury.
"_Anglais_," they said to one another behind the serving-screen,
pointing their thumbs at him--"he pay but he damn."
Then Paul sent for the _New York Herald_ and propped it up in
front of him, prodding at some olives with his fork, one occasionally
reaching his mouth, while he read, and awaited his soup.
The table next to him in this quiet corner was laid for one, and had a
bunch of roses in the centre, just two or three exquisite blooms that
he was familiar with the appearance of in the Paris shops. Nearly all
the other tables were empty or emptying; he had dined very late. Who
could want roses eating alone? The _menu_, too, was written out
and ready, and an expression of expectancy lightened the face of the
head waiter--who himself brought a bottle of most carefully decanted
red wine, feeling the temperature through the fine glass with the air
of a great connoisseur.
"One of those over-fed foreign brutes of no sex, I suppose," Paul said
to himself, and turned to the sporting notes in front of him.
He did not look up again until he heard the rustle of a dress.
The woman had to pass him--even so close that the heavy silk touched
his foot. He fancied he smelt tuberoses, but it was not until she sat
down, and he again looked at her, that he perceived a knot of them
tucked into the front of her bodice.
A woman to order dinner for herself beforehand, and have special wine
and special roses--special attention, too! It was simply disgusting!
Paul frowned. He brought his brown eyebrows close together, and glared
at the creature with his blue young eyes.
An elderly, dignified servant in black livery stood behind her
chair. She herself was all in black, and her hat--an expensive,
distinguished-looking hat--cast a shadow over her eyes. He could just
see they were cast down on her plate. Her face was white, he saw that
plainly enough, startlingly white, like a magnolia bloom, and
contained no marked features. No features at all! he said to
himself. Yes--he was wrong, she had certainly a mouth worth looking at
again. It was so red. Not large and pink and laughingly open like
Isabella's, but straight and chiselled, and red, red, red.
Paul was young, but he knew paint when he saw it, and this red was
real, and vivid, and disconcerted him.
He began his soup--hers came at the same time; she had only toyed with
some caviare by way of _hors d'oeuvre_, and it angered him to
notice the obsequiousness of the waiters, who passed each thing to the
dignified servant to be placed before the lady by his hand. Who was
she to be served with this respect and rapidity?
Only her red wine the _maître d'hôtel_ poured into her glass
himself. She lifted it up to the light to see the clear ruby, then she
sipped it and scented its bouquet, the _maître d'hôtel_ anxiously
awaiting her verdict the while. "_Bon_," was all she said, and
the weight of the world seemed to fall from the man's sloping
shoulders as he bowed and moved aside.
Paul's irritation grew. "She's well over thirty," he said to
himself. "I suppose she has nothing else to live for! I wonder what
the devil she'll eat next!"
She ate a delicate _truite bleu_, but she did not touch her wine
again the while. She had almost finished the fish before Paul's
_sole au vin blanc_ arrived upon the scene, and this angered him
the more. Why should he wait for his dinner while this woman feasted?
Why, indeed. What would her next course be? He found himself
unpleasantly interested to know. The tenderest _selle d'agneau au
lait_ and the youngest green peas made their appearance, and again
the _maître d'hôtel_ returned, having mixed the salad.
Paul noticed with all these things the lady ate but a small portion of
each. And it was not until a fat quail arrived later, while he himself
was trying to get through two mutton chops _à l'anglaise_, that
she again tasted her claret. Yes, it was claret, he felt sure, and
probably wonderful claret at that. Confound her! Paul turned to the
wine list. What could it be? Château Latour at fifteen francs? Château
Margaux, or Château Lafite at twenty?--or possibly it was not here at
all, and was special, too--like the roses and the attention. He called
his waiter and ordered some port--he felt he could not drink another
drop of his modest St. Estèphe!
All this time the lady had never once looked at him; indeed, except
that one occasion when she had lifted her head to examine the wine
with the light through it, he had not seen her raise her eyes, and
then the glass had been between himself and her. The white lids with
their heavy lashes began to irritate him. What colour could they be?
those eyes underneath. They were not very large, that was
certain--probably black, too, like her hair. Little black eyes! That
was ugly enough, surely! And he hated heavy black hair growing in
those unusual great waves. Women's hair should be light and fluffy
and fuzzy, and kept tidy in a net--like Isabella's. This looked so
thick--enough to strangle one, if she twisted it round one's
throat. What strange ideas were those coming into his head? Why should
she think of twisting her hair round a man's throat? It must be the
port mounting to his brain, he decided--he was not given to
speculating in this way about women.
What would she eat next? And why did it interest him what she ate or
did not eat? The _maître d'hôtel_ again appeared with a dish of
marvellous-looking nectarines. The waiter now handed the dignified
servant the finger-bowl, into which he poured rose-water. Paul could
just distinguish the scent of it, and then he noticed the lady's
hands. Yes, they at least were faultless; he could not cavil at
_them_; slender and white, with that transparent whiteness like
mother-of-pearl. And what pink nails! And how polished! Isabella's
hands--but he refused to think of them.
By this time he was conscious of an absorbing interest thrilling his
whole being--disapproving irritated interest.
The _maître d'hôtel_ now removed the claret, out of which the
lady had only drunk one glass.
(What waste! thought Paul.)
And then he returned with a strange-looking bottle, and this time the
dignified servant poured the brilliant golden fluid into a tiny
liqueur-glass. What could it be? Paul was familiar with most
liqueurs. Had he not dined at every restaurant in London, and supped
with houris who adored _crême de menthe_? But this was none he
knew. He had heard of Tokay--Imperial Tokay--could it be that? And
where did she get it? And who the devil was the woman, anyway?
She peeled the nectarine leisurely--she seemed to enjoy it more than
all the rest of her dinner. And what could that expression mean on
her face? Inscrutable--cynical was it? No--absorbed. As absolutely
unconscious of self and others as if she had been alone in the room.
What could she be thinking of never to worry to look about her?
He began now to notice her throat, it was rounded and intensely white,
through the transparent black stuff. She had no strings of pearls or
jewels on--unless--yes, that was a great sapphire gleaming from the
folds of gauze on her neck. Not surrounded by diamonds like ordinary
brooches, but just a big single stone so dark and splendid it seemed
almost black. There was another on her hand, and yet others in her
ears.
Her ears were not anything so very wonderful! Not so _very!_
Isabella's were quite as good--and this thought comforted him a
little. As far as he could see beyond the roses and the table she was
a slender woman, and he had not noticed on her entrance if she were
tall or short. He could not say why he felt she must be well over
thirty--there was not a line or wrinkle on her face--not even the
slight nip in under the chin, or the tell-tale strain beside the ears.
She was certainly not pretty, _certainly_ not. Well
shaped--yes--and graceful as far as he could judge; but pretty--a
thousand times No!
Then the speculation as to her nationality began. French? assuredly
not. English? ridiculous! Equally so German. Italian? perhaps.
Russian? possibly. Hungarian? probably.
Paul had drunk his third glass of port and was beginning his
fourth. This was far more than his usual limit. Paul was, as a rule,
an abstemious young man. Why he should have deliberately sat and drank
that night he never knew. His dinner had been moderate--distinctly
moderate--and he had watched a refined feast of Lucullus partaken of
by a woman who only _tasted_ each _plat!_
"I wonder what she will have to pay for it all?" he thought to
himself. "She will probably sign the bill, though, and I shan't see."
But when the lady had finished her nectarine and dipped her slender
fingers in the rose-water she got up--she had not smoked, she could
not be Russian then. Got up and walked towards the door, signing no
bill, and paying no gold.
Paul stared as she passed him--rudely stared--he knew it afterwards
and felt ashamed. However, the lady never so much as noticed him, nor
did she raise her eyes, so that when she had finally disappeared he
was still unaware of their colour or expression.
But what a figure she had! Sinuous, supple, rounded, and yet very
slight.
"She must have the smallest possible bones," Paul said to himself,
"because it looks all curvy and soft, and yet she is as slender as a
gazelle."
She was tall, too, though not six feet--like Isabella!
The waiters and _maître d'hôtel_ all bowed and stood aside as she
left, followed by her elderly, stately, silver-haired servant.
Of course it would have been an easy matter to Paul to find out her
name, and all about her. He would only have had to summon Monsieur
Jacques, and ask any question he pleased. But for some unexplained
reason he would not do this. Instead of which he scowled in front of
him, and finished his fourth glass of port. Then his head swam a
little, and he went outside into the night. The rain had stopped and
the sky was full of stars scattered in its intense blue. It was warm,
too, there, under the clipped trees, Paul hoped he wasn't drunk--such
a beastly thing to do! And not even good port either.
He sat on a bench and smoked a cigar. A strange sense of loneliness
came over him. It seemed as if he were far, far away from any one in
the world he had ever known. A vague feeling of oppression and coming
calamity passed through him, only he was really as yet too material
and thoroughly, solidly English to entertain it, or any other subtle
mental emotion for more than a minute. But he undoubtedly felt strange
to-night; different from what he had ever done before. He would have
said "weird" if he could have thought of the word. The woman and her
sinuous, sensuous black shape filled the space of his mental
vision. Black hair, black hat, black dress--and of course black
eyes. Ah! if he could only know their colour really!
The damp bench where he sat was just under the ivy hanging from the
balustrade of the small terrace belonging to the ground-floor suite at
the end.
There was a silence, very few people passed, frightened no doubt by
the recent rain. He seemed alone in the world.
The wine now began to fire his senses. Why should he remain alone? He
was young and rich and--surely even in Lucerne there must be--. And
then he felt a beast, and looked out on to the lake.
Suddenly his heart seemed to swell with some emotion, a faint scent of
tuberoses filled the air--and from exactly above his head there came a
gentle, tender sigh.
He started violently, and brusquely turned and looked up. Almost
indistinguishable in the deep shadow he saw the woman's face. It
seemed to emerge from a mist of black gauze. And looking down into his
were a pair of eyes--a pair of eyes. For a moment Paul's heart felt as
if it had stopped beating, so wonderful was their effect upon
him. They seemed to draw him--draw something out of him--intoxicate
him--paralyse him. And as he gazed up motionless the woman moved
noiselessly back on to the terrace, and he saw nothing but the night
sky studded with stars.
Had he been dreaming? Had she really bent over the ivy? Was he mad?
Yes--or drunk, because now he had seen the eyes, and yet he did not
know their colour! Were they black, or blue, or grey, or green? He did
not know, he could not think--only they were eyes--eyes--eyes.
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