The Pretty Lady

THE PRETTY LADY

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ARNOLD BENNETT

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The Pretty Lady
First published in 1918
ISBN 978-1-62013-678-2
Duke Classics
© 2014 Duke Classics and its licensors. All rights reserved.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in this edition, Duke Classics does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. Duke Classics does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book.

Contents

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The Pretty Lady
Chapter 1 - The Promenade
Chapter 2 - The Power
Chapter 3 - The Flat
Chapter 4 - Confidence
Chapter 5 - Ostend
Chapter 6 - The Albany
Chapter 7 - For the Empire
Chapter 8 - Boots
Chapter 9 - The Club
Chapter 10 - The Mission
Chapter 11 - The Telegram
Chapter 12 - Rendezvous
Chapter 13 - In Committee
Chapter 14 - Queen
Chapter 15 - Evening Out
Chapter 16 - The Virgin
Chapter 17 - Sunday Afternoon
Chapter 18 - The Mystic
Chapter 19 - The Visit
Chapter 20 - Mascot
Chapter 21 - The Leave-Train
Chapter 22 - Getting on with the War
Chapter 23 - The Call
Chapter 24 - The Soldier
Chapter 25 - The Ring
Chapter 26 - The Return
Chapter 27 - The Clyde
Chapter 28 - Salome
Chapter 29 - The Streets
Chapter 30 - The Child's Arm
Chapter 31 - "Romance"
Chapter 32 - Mrs. Braiding
Chapter 33 - The Roof
Chapter 34 - In the Boudoir
Chapter 35 - Queen Dead
Chapter 36 - Collapse
Chapter 37 - The Invisible Powers
Chapter 38 - The Victory
Chapter 39 - Idyll
Chapter 40 - The Window
Chapter 41 - The Envoy

The Pretty Lady

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"Virtue has never yet been adequately represented by any who have had any claim to be considered virtuous. It is the sub-vicious who best understand virtue. Let the virtuous people stick to describing vice—which they can do well enough."

SAMUEL BUTLER

Chapter 1 - The Promenade

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The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you belonged to the intellectual despisers of the British theatre you could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even for such as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.

The stage scene flamed extravagantly with crude orange and viridian light, a rectangle of bedazzling illumination; on the boards, in the midst of great width, with great depth behind them and arching height above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail. In fullest publicity it was licensed to say that which in private could not be said where men and women meet, and that which could not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and posters and illustrated weeklies all over the town; it disturbed the silence of the most secret groves in the vast, undiscovered hearts of men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion exemplified the naïve sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which, occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium, surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to the stage—this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if the magic protection of the impalpable screen had not been there.