diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:12:37 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:12:37 -0700 |
| commit | b22b90cba16e55f7e19cf4787a21d4520836ce0b (patch) | |
| tree | 820b877e4dbf5c54bfc2be96ce9febf9ddcc8994 | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 39378-0.txt | 4753 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 39378-h/39378-h.htm | 4848 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/39378-8.txt | 5136 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/39378-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 98207 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/39378-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 100669 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/39378-h/39378-h.htm | 5248 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/39378.txt | 5136 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/39378.zip | bin | 0 -> 98112 bytes |
11 files changed, 25137 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/39378-0.txt b/39378-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7321bbc --- /dev/null +++ b/39378-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4753 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39378 *** + +MORTAL COILS + +By + +ALDOUS HUXLEY + +NEW YORK-GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + +1921 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE + +II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES + +III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET + +IV: GREEN TUNNELS + +V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON + + + + +MORTAL COILS + + + + +I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE + + + +I + + +"Miss Spence will be down directly, sir." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence's +parlourmaid was so ugly--ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, +malignantly, criminally ugly--that he could not bear to look at her +more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton +got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes +at the familiar objects it contained. + +Photographs of Greek statuary, photographs of the Roman Forum, coloured +prints of Italian masterpieces, all very safe and well known. Poor, dear +Janet, what a prig--what an intellectual snob! Her real taste was +illustrated in that water-colour by the pavement artist, the one she had +paid half a crown for (and thirty-five shillings for the frame). How +often his had heard her tell the story, how often expatiate on the +beauties of that skilful imitation of an oleograph! "A real Artist in +the streets," and you could hear the capital A in Artist as she spoke +the words. She made you feel that part of his glory had entered into +Janet Spence when she tendered him that half-crown for the copy of the +oleograph. She was implying a compliment to her own taste and +penetration. A genuine Old Master for half a crown. Poor, dear Janet! + +Mr. Hutton came to a pause in front of a small oblong mirror. Stooping a +little to get a full view of his face, he passed a white, well-manicured +finger over his moustache. It was as curly, as freshly auburn as it had +been twenty years ago. His hair still retained its colour, and there was +no sign of baldness yet--only a certain elevation of the brow. +"Shakespearean," thought Mr. Hutton, with a smile, as he surveyed the +smooth and polished expanse of his forehead. + +Others abide our question, thou art free.... Footsteps in the sea ... +Majesty ... Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. No, that +was Milton, wasn't it? Milton, the Lady of Christ's. There was no lady +about him. He was what the women, would call a manly man. That was why +they liked him--for the curly auburn moustache and the discreet +redolence of tobacco. Mr. Hutton smiled again; he enjoyed making fun of +himself. Lady of Christ's? No, no. He was the Christ of Ladies. Very +pretty, very pretty. The Christ of Ladies. Mr. Hutton wished there were +somebody he could tell the joke to. Poor, dear Janet wouldn't appreciate +it, alas? + +He straightened himself up, patted his hair, and resumed his +peregrination. Damn the Roman Forum; he hated those dreary photographs. + +Suddenly he became aware that Janet Spence was in the room, standing +near the door. Mr. Hutton started, as though he had been taken in some +felonious act. To make these silent and spectral appearances was one of +Janet Spence's peculiar talents. Perhaps she had been there all the +time, had seen him looking at himself in the mirror. Impossible! But, +still, it was disquieting. + +"Oh, you gave me such a surprise," said Mr. Hutton, recovering his smile +and advancing with outstretched hand to meet her. + +Miss Spence was smiling too: her Gioconda smile, he had once called it, +in a moment of half-ironical flattery. Miss Spence had taken the +compliment seriously, and had always tried to live up to the Leonardo +standard. She smiled on his silence while Mr. Hutton shook hands; that +was part of the Gioconda business. + +"I hope you're well," said Mr. Hutton. "You look it." + +What a queer face she had! That small mouth pursed forward by the +Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round hole in the middle +as though for whistling--it was like a penholder seen from the front. +Above the mouth a well-shaped nose, finely aquiline. Eyes large, +lustrous, and dark, with the largeness, lustre, and darkness that seems +to invite sties and an occasional blood-shot suffusion. They were fine +eyes, but unchangingly grave. The penholder might do its Gioconda trick, +but the eyes never altered in their earnestness. Above them, a pair of +boldly arched, heavily pencilled black eyebrows lent a surprising air of +power, as of a Roman matron, to the upper portion of the face. Her hair +was dark and equally Roman; Agrippina from the brows upward. + +"I thought I'd just look in on my way home," Mr. Hutton went on. "Ah, +it's good to be back here"--he indicated with a wave of his hand the +flowers in the vases, the sunshine and greenery beyond the windows +--"it's good to be back in the country after a stuffy day of business in +town." + +Miss Spence, who had sat down, pointed to a chair at her side. + +"No, really, I cant sit down," Mr. Hutton protested. "I must get back to +see how poor Emily is. She was rather seedy this morning." He sat down, +nevertheless. "It's these wretched liver chills. She's always getting +them. Women--" He broke off and coughed, so as to hide the fact that he +had uttered. He was about to say that women with weak digestions ought +not to marry; but the remark was too cruel, and he didn't really believe +it. Janet Spence, moreover, was a believer in eternal flames and +spiritual attachments. "She hopes to be well enough," he added, "to see +you at luncheon to-morrow. Can you come? Do!" He smiled persuasively. +"It's my invitation too, you know." + +She dropped her eyes, and Mr. Hutton almost thought that he detected a +certain reddening of the cheek. It was a tribute; he stroked his +moustache. + +"I should like to come if you think Emily's really well enough to have a +visitor." + +"Of course. You'll do her good. You'll do us both good. In married life +three is often better company than two." + +"Oh, you're cynical." + +Mr. Hutton always had a desire to say "Bow-wow-wow" whenever that last +word was spoken. It irritated him more than any other word in the +language. But instead of barking he made haste to protest. + +"No, no. I'm only speaking a melancholy truth. Reality doesn't always +come up to the ideal, you know. But that doesn't make me believe any the +less in the ideal. Indeed, I believe in it passionately the ideal of a +matrimony between two people in perfect accord. I think it's realisable. +I'm sure it is." + +He paused significantly and looked at her with an arch expression. A +virgin of thirty-six, but still unwithered; she had her charms. And +there was something really rather enigmatic about her. Miss Spence made +no reply but continued to smile. There were times when Mr. Hutton got +rather bored with the Gioconda. He stood up. + +"I must really be going now. Farewell, mysterious Gioconda." The smile +grew intenser, focused itself, as it were, in a narrower snout. Mr. +Hutton made a Cinquecento gesture, and kissed her extended hand. It was +the first time he had done such a thing; the action seemed not to be +resented. "I look forward to to-morrow." + +"Do you?" + +For answer Mr. Hutton once more kissed her hand, then turned to go. Miss +Spence accompanied him to the porch. + +"Where's your car?" she asked. + +"I left it at the gate of the drive." + +"I'll come and see you off." + +"No, no." Mr. Hutton was playful, but determined. "You must do no such +thing. I simply forbid you." + +"But I should like to come," Miss Spence protested, throwing a rapid +Gioconda at him. + +Mr. Hutton held up his hand. "No," he repeated, and then, with a gesture +that was almost the blowing of a kiss, he started to run down the drive, +lightly on his toes, with long, bounding strides like a boy's. He was +proud of that run; it was quite marvellously youthful. Still, he was +glad the drive was no longer. At the last bend, before passing out of +sight of the house, he halted and turned round. Miss Spence was still +standing on the steps, smiling her smile. He waved his hand, and this +time quite definitely and overtly wafted a kiss in her direction. Then, +breaking once more into his magnificent canter, he rounded the last dark +promontory of trees. Once out of sight of the house he let his high +paces decline to a trot, and finally to a walk. He took out his +handkerchief and began wiping his neck inside his collar. What fools, +what fools! Had there ever been such an ass as poor, dear Janet Spence? +Never, unless it was himself. Decidedly he was the more malignant fool, +since he, at least, was aware of his folly and still persisted in it. +Why did he persist? Ah, the problem that was himself, the problem that +was other people. + +He had reached the gate. A large, prosperous-looking motor was standing +at the side of the road. + +"Home, M'Nab." The chauffeur touched his cap. "And stop at the +cross-roads on the way, as usual," Mr. Hutton added, as he opened the +door of the car. "Well?" he said, speaking into the obscurity that +lurked within. + +"Oh, Teddy Bear, what an age you've been!" It was a fresh and childish +voice that spoke the words. There was the faintest hint of Cockney +impurity about the vowel sounds. + +Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility +of an animal regaining its burrow. + +"Have I?" he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move. "You +must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long." He sat back +in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him. + +"Teddy Bear...." and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head +declined on to Mr. Hutton's shoulder. Ravished, he looked down sideways +at the round, babyish face. + +"Do you know, Doris, you look like the pictures of Louise de +Kerouaille." He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair. + +"Who's Louise de Kera-whatever-it-is?" Doris spoke from remote +distances. + +"She was, alas! _Fuit_. We shall all be 'was' one of these days. +Meanwhile...." + +Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed smoothly +along. McNab's back, through the front window was stonily impassive, the +back of a statue. + +"Your hands," Doris whispered. "Oh, you mustn't touch me. They give me +electric shocks." + +Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late +in one's existence one makes the discovery of one's body! + +"The electricity isn't in me, it's in you." He kissed her again, +whispering her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific +appellation of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat, +she offered him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting +the sacrificial knife. The sea-mouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: +very peculiar. Or was Doris the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside +out in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, +just to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous, +unbelievably fantastic. + +"Oh, Teddy Bear!" (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His poor +little jokes!) "Teddy Bear, I'm so happy." + +"So am I," said Mr. Hutton. Was it true? + +"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or +wrong?" + +"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty +years." + +"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right +that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and +that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me." + +"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks +rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil." + +"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew +how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you +know, there is a hell, and all that. I don t know what to do. Sometimes +I think I ought to stop loving you." + +"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his +seduction and his moustache. + +"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could hide +from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to you." + +"Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace. + +"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care +if it is." + +Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this +little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, +they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it +hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges +towards it devouringly. + +"Good-bye, good-bye." + +The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris was +left standing by the sign-post at the cross-roads, still dizzy and weak +with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of those +gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up +deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk. +She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies. + +Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling +boredom. + + + + +II + + +Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In +spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the +hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of +digestion, slept before the blaze. + +"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the +room. + +"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on the +verge of tears. "I get so shivery." + +"I hope you're better this evening." + +"Not much, I'm afraid." + +The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against +the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and +with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed +its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy. +Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an _impasse_, she +altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on +playing. Her Patiences always came out. + +"Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer." + +"Well--go, my dear--go, most certainly." + +Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had +driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood, had left the car to wait +for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the +windless sunshine of the chalk down. + +"I'm to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have +massage and electric treatment, too." + +Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing +together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the +flickering of blue fire. The blue fire burst and scattered into whirling +sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting like a child. + +"I'm sure it will do you good, my dear." + +"I was wondering if you'd come with me, dear." + +"But you know I'm going to Scotland at the end of the month." + +Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. "It's the journey," she said. +"The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don't know if I can manage +it. And you know I can't sleep in hotels. And then there's the luggage +and all the worries. I can't go alone. + +"But you won't be alone. You'll have your maid with you." He spoke +impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one. +He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the +quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its +complaining occupant. + +"I don't think I shall be able to go." + +"But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a +change will do you good." + +"I don't think so." + +"But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he's talking about." + +"No, I can't face it. I'm too weak. I can't go alone." Mrs. Hutton +pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes. + +"Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort." + +"I had rather be left in peace to die here." She was crying in earnest +now. + +"O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please." Mrs. Hutton only +sobbed more violently. "Oh, what is one to do?" He shrugged his +shoulders and walked out of the room. + +Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but +he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that +not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, +and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he +spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled +with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed +the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion; and he had +been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was +temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had +been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then. +But now--was it his fault that she was like this? + +Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he +had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he +went up to his wife's room and offered to read to her. She was touched, +gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly +proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French. + +"French? I am so fond of French." Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of +Racine as though it were a dish of green peas. + +Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He +began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole +attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed +to improve the quality of the novel he was reading. + +At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked +up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while, +looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had +been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it, +had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt +before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched +tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like +nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The +lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasised with light and +shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by +Morales. + + _Le squelette était invisible_ + _Au temps heureux de l'art païen._ + +He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room. + +On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some +unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better +now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence listened +to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy, +lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity. +She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. +Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the +narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess +with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of +a literary or philosophic character--bombardments of Maeterlinck, of +Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. To-day the missiles were +medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of +harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. +Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun. + +Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in +him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that +every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness, +that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging over mysterious +gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than +what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different. +Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind +the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What +exactly was there? Mr. Hutton could never quite make out. + +"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence +was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off." + +"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day." + +Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that +prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by +reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. +Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart. + +"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said, +suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything with +skins and pips." + +"But I am so fond of them," Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well +to-day." + +"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at +his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her +good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it +affectionately two or three times. + +"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants. + +"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again." + +"Do I ever blame you, dear?" + +"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I am +the perfect husband." + +They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under +the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in +which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance. + +Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good +to be alive," he said. + +"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed +hand into the sunlight. + +A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were +set on a folding table near the group of chairs. + +"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara, +will you? The white bottle on the sideboard." + +"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any +case." + +He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an +instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting +up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence +was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the +cool obscurity of the house. + +"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired. + +"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to +take the taste away." + +Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her +eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky. + +Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the +coffee-cups. + +"I've given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste +away. And here comes the medicine." + +Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wineglass, half full of a pale +liquid. + +"It smells delicious," he said, as he handed it to his wife. + +"That's only the flavouring." She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and +made a grimace. "Ugh, it's so nasty. Give me my coffee." + +Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. "You've made it like +syrup. But it's very nice, after that atrocious medicine." + +At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well +as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have +said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph +of an "I told you so" was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic, +and gave her his arm to the house. + +"A rest will do you good," he said. "By the way, I shan't be back till +after dinner." + +"But why? Where are you going?" + +"I promised to go to Johnson's this evening. We have to discuss the war +memorial, you know." + +"Oh, I wish you weren't going." Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. "Can't +you stay? I don't like being alone in the house." + +"But, my dear, I promised weeks ago." It was a bother having to lie like +this. "And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence." + +He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss +Spence received him aimed and intense. + +"Your wife is dreadfully ill," she fired off at him. + +"I thought she cheered up so much when you came." + +"That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely. +With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked--yes, +wrecked--anything might happen." + +"Libbard doesn't take so gloomy a view of poor Emily's health." Mr. +Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss +Spence's car was standing by the front door. + +"Libbard is only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist." + +He could not refrain from laughing. "You have a macabre passion for +specialists." + +Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. "I am serious. I think poor +Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen at any moment." + +He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the +engine and climbed into his place, ready to drive off. + +"Shall I tell him to start?" He had no desire to continue the +conversation. + +Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction. +"Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon." + +Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved +forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone. + +A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was +waiting at the cross-roads. They dined together twenty miles from home, +at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are +only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr. +Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton +ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent +the evening in his library. + +When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely +affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past +the motionless form of M'Nab, they could see a bright and narrow +universe of forms and colours scooped out of the night by the electric +head-lamps. + +It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in +the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed +features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and +melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the +bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking +in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a +pleasing odour, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and +discreetly delicious. + +"Libbard?" said Mr. Hutton in surprise. "You here? Is my wife ill?" + +"We tried to fetch you earlier," the soft, melancholy voice replied. "It +was thought you were at Mr. Johnson's, but they had no news of you +there." + +"No, I was detained. I had a breakdown," Mr. Hutton answered irritably. +It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie. + +"Your wife wanted to see you urgently." + +"Well, I can go now." Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs. + +Dr. Libbard laid a hand on his arm. "I am afraid it's too late." + +"Too late?" He began fumbling with his watch; it wouldn't come out of +the pocket. + +"Mrs. Hutton passed away half an hour ago." + +The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did +not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local +cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable. + +Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence's words. At any +moment--at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right. + +"What happened?" he asked. "What was the cause?" + +Dr. Libbard explained. It was heart failure brought on by a violent +attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an +irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had +been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease: +something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not +have suffered much. + + + + +III + + +"It's a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow +match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his +top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face +with his handkerchief. + +Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire +to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to +hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great +mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did +nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their +dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. +Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the +bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he +couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match. + +Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were +drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and +motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background +of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and +unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people +would soon be dead, too. + +That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of +Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton; +it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after +midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the +French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The +night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the +holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless +flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape, +black and grey under the moon. + +He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the +stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and +night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between +the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and +himself--himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. +Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his +side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There +were only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, +the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself--always +himself.... + +Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of +it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound +of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he +had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I +will." There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the +past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar +resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, +into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a +more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would +live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he +would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would +be so. + +In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural +pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed +in the best modern way--silos and artificial manures and continuous +cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to +serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so +long--_The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation_. + +Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace +had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to +find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had +been transformed by a good night's rest into his customary cheerfulness. +It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life +that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death +seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were +not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could +see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the +farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague +at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern +Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good +anecdote in Skelton's jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would +have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil. + +On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his +correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar +handwriting which he knew to be Doris's. He opened it, and began to +read. She didn't know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife +dying like that, and so suddenly--it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton +sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on: + + "Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. + But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or + depressed, then I can't help remembering it is there so close, and + I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and + me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so + lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don't know what to do. I + can't get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless + without you. I didn't mean to write to you; I meant to wait till + you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was + so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn't + help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world + but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is + nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have + been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t + understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so + dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love + me a little, don't you, Teddy Bear?" + +Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, +worshipped for having seduced the girl--it was too much. It had just +been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no +other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very +little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably +been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to +be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of +reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known +pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew +beforehand--so well, so well--that there was no interest or pleasure to +be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch +came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old +stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife's maid, and Edith, the girl +on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and +others--there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and +boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet.... +Experience doesn't teach. + +Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he +wouldn't see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was +saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old +bailiff was more irritating than usual. + + * * * * * + +Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier +at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated +happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed +the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a +tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his +side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, +the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a +fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn +oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had +triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was +hopeless, hopeless. + +For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The +girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her +direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains +to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair +on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there +moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so +be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of +irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. +In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, +bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses. + +The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The +whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter. + +"Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?" The question came +faintly from distant worlds of love. + +"I think I know somebody who does," Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine +laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and +resound. + +"Who? Tell me. What do you mean?" The voice had come very close; charged +with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate +world. + +"A--ah!" + +"Who?" + +"You'll never guess." Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow +tedious, and then pronounced the name "Janet Spence." + +Doris was incredulous. "Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?" It +was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too. + +"But it's quite true," he said. "She adores me." Oh, the vast joke. He +would go and see her as soon as he returned--see and conquer. "I believe +she wants to marry me," he added. + +"But you wouldn't ... you don't intend...." + +The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. "I +intend to marry you," he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had +ever made in his life. + +When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was +agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the +autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. +Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers. + +The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss +Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda. + +"I was expecting you to come." + +"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Hutton gallantly replied. + +They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place--a little old +stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had +left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della +Robbia plaque. + +"I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn," said Mr. Hutton. He felt +like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous +excitement. + +"Italy...." Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. "I feel drawn +there too." + +"Why not let yourself be drawn?" + +"I don't know. One somehow hasn't the energy and initiative to set out +alone." + +"Alone...." Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing. "Yes, travelling +alone isn't much fun." + +Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still +closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself +for what seemed a very long time. + +Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly +started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they +looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the +farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A +huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of +thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first +drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton +sat on in the growing darkness. + +Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively. + +"I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don't +you?" + +"Most certainly." But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes +generalisations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. +Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid +existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had +always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he +wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy--happier than most men. And +now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the +secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when +Miss Spence went on speaking. + +"People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our +lives." + +"Me?" said Mr. Hutton surprised. + +"Poor Henry! Fate hasn't treated either of us very well." + +"Oh, well, it might have treated me worse." + +"You re being cheerful. That's brave of you. But don't think I can't see +behind the mask." + +Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more +heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked +on, shouting against the noise. + +"I have understood you so well and for so long." + +A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes +were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed +her. + +"You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathise +with you in your solitude. Your marriage ..." + +The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence's voice became audible +once more with the words: + +"... could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a +soul mate." + +A soul mate--he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. Georgette +Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck. He had seen that in +the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted +him in her imagination--a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of +goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he +was what?--Who knows? + +"My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too." Miss +Spence laid her hand on his knee. "You were so patient." Another flash. +She was still aimed, dangerously. "You never complained. But I could +guess--I could guess." + +"How wonderful of you!" So he was an _âme incomprise_. + +"Only a woman's intuition...." + +The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the +rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalised. +Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them. + +"Don't you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this +storm?" He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. +"Passion makes one the equal of the elements." + +What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said "Yes," and +ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took +fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was +serious--terribly serious. He was appalled. + +Passion? "No," he desperately answered. "I am without passion." + +But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on +with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapidly, however, and in such a +burningly intimate whisper that Mr. Hutton found it very difficult to +distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could +make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, +and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her +still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying +intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close +at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel +of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn't it rather--yes, +wasn't it rather George Robey? + +He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, +Pretending he had seen a burglar--Stop thief, stop thief!--and dash off +into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart +attack? or that he had seen, a ghost--Emily's ghost--in the garden? +Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to +Miss Spence's words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his +thoughts. + +"I honoured you for that, Henry," she was saying. + +Honoured him for what? + +"Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the +marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect +you and admire you, and--shall I dare say the word?--" + +Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late. + +"... yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we're free now, Henry." + +Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the +floor by his chair. + +"Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too." + +Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that +she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy. + +"You mustn't, Janet," he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. +"Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed." He patted her +shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her +still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been +sitting. + +Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, +he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door +noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was +shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a +noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr. Hutton +splashed along, not caring if he got wet. + +How heartrendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse +that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why +couldn't she have played the game that he was playing the heartless, +amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn't, she +couldn't play that game; he had known and persisted. + +What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly +stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black bosomed and charged +with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had +sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining +that his toy had drawn the lightning. + +She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying. + +But why hadn't he been able to keep up the game? Why had his +irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold +world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned +steady and luminous in his mind--the idea of flight. He must get away at +once. + + + + +IV + + +"What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?" + +"Nothing." + +There was a silence. Mr. Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the +parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over +Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of +the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one +looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the +bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of +Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in +the September sunshine. + +"Are you worried about anything?" + +"No, thank you." + +"Tell me, Teddy Bear." + +"But, my dear, there's nothing to tell." Mr. Hutton turned round, +smiled, and patted the girl's hand. "I think you'd better go in and have +your siesta. It's too hot for you here." + +"Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?" + +"When I've finished my cigar." + +"All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear." Slowly, +reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards +the house. + +Mr. Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be +alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless +solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving +hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These +last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always +with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good +to be alone. + +He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it; not without +reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something +unpleasant--nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his +sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it +was composed. The words "indecent haste," "social suicide," "scarcely +cold in her grave," "person of the lower classes," all occurred. They +were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and +right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid +letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the +third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It +was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he +had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! +Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr. Hutton found himself +trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling +names--he cursed the woman. + +Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion +that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they +only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to +be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid. + +A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below +the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A +Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen +of the classical type--a little debased. Her profile might have been +taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved +floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. +Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand +of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad +temper.... Under her hideous black clothes, Mr. Hutton divined a +powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a +vague interest and curiosity. To-day the curiosity defined and focused +itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, +alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. He called +to her. + +"Armida!" + +The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so +easy a virtue, that Mr. Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once +more--on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it +was too late. The girl continued to look up at him. + +"_Ha chiamito_?" she asked at last. + +Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility +every time. + +"_Scendo_" he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to +the terrace. Mr. Hutton counted them. Down, down, down, down.... He saw +a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the +next--from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud. + + + + +V + + +For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of +every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since +George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a +warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this +tale of a murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. +Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so notable +because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to +man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. +For months he had lived in sin and fancied security----only to be dashed +at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder +will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were +in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had +been vague, but persistent, rumours in the neighbourhood; the police had +taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the post-mortem +examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of +the coroner's jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had +done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The +newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food +of a whole season. + +Mr. Hutton's first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give +evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a +scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip +seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action for +malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the +Spence woman for slander. + +The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The +experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they +were of opinion that the late Mrs. Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning. + +Arsenic poisoning.... Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, +Mr. Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated +insecticide in his green-houses to poison an army. + +It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against +him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous +tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a +tangled forest. + +When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have +been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, +about lunch-time. Clara, the parlour-maid, was called. Mrs. Hutton, she +remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr. Hutton had +volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence--ah, the +memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all!--Miss +Spence confirmed Clara's statement, and added that Mr. Hutton had come +back with the medicine already poured out in a wineglass, not in the +bottle. + +Mr. Hutton's indignation evaporated. He was dismayed, frightened. It was +all too fantastic to be taken seriously, and yet this nightmare was a +fact it was actually happening. + +M'Nab had seen them kissing, often. He had taken them for a drive on the +day of Mrs. Hutton's death. He could see them reflected in the +wind-screen, sometimes out of the tail of his eye. + +The inquest was adjourned. That evening Doris went to bed with a +headache. When he went to her room after dinner, Mr. Hutton found her +crying. + +"What's the matter?" He sat down on the edge of her bed and began to +stroke her hair. For a long time she did not answer, and he went on +stroking her hair mechanically, almost unconsciously; sometimes, even he +bent down and kissed her bare shoulder. He had his own affairs, however, +to think about. What had happened? How was it that the stupid gossip had +actually come true? Emily had died of arsenic poisoning. It was absurd, +impossible. The order of things had been broken, and he was at the mercy +of an irresponsibility. What had happened, what was going to happen? He +was interrupted in the midst of his thoughts. + +"It's my fault--it's my fault!" Doris suddenly sobbed out. "I shouldn't +have loved you; I oughtn't to have let you love me. Why was I ever +born?" + +Mr. Hutton didn't say anything but looked down in silence at the abject +figure of misery lying on the bed. + +"If they do anything to you I shall kill myself." + +She sat up, held him for a moment at arm's length, and looked at him +with a kind of violence, as though she were never to see him again. + +"I love you, I love you, I love you." She drew him, inert and passive, +towards her, clasped him, pressed herself against him. "I didn't know +you loved me as much as that, Teddy Bear. But why did you do it--why did +you do it?" + +Mr. Hutton undid her clasping arms and got up. His face became very red. +"You seem to take it for granted that I murdered my wife," he said. +"It's really too grotesque. What do you all take me for? A cinema hero?" +He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and +bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against +her. "It's all such damned stupidity. Haven't you any conception of a +civilised man's mentality? Do I look the sort of man who'd go about +slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love +with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand +that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which +you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me +to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go +about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it." + +Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he +knew--odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn't. +He closed the door behind him. + +"Teddy Bear!" He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. Teddy +Bear! The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonised. +Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then +withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was half-way down +the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly--throw herself +out of the window or God knows what! He listened attentively; there was +no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, +lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night +air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace. +How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking +along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-storey window of the +Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should +he go back? He was damned if he would; he hated her. + +He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was +happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could +find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its +horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with +tears; he wanted so passionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily +had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still +so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer +delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as +seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the +Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to +the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet +southern wines--Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas--others would drink +them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes +between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty +perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering +unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He +would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt +that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he +had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as +wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God +existed after all. + +He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by +his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him +almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. "God +bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and +Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They +were all dead now all except Cissie. + +His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his +spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying +on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a +blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have +drunk about half of it. + +"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find +him bending over her. + +Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences. +"You mustn't do this again," he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the +room. + +"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly. + +Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to +prevent you," he said. "Only yourself and your baby. Isn't it rather bad +luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you +want to go out of it?" + +Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't." + +Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself +now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he +loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and +cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had +become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At six o'clock he +undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours' sleep. In the course of +the same afternoon the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful +Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial. + + + + +VI + + +Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in +the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something +that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from +nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She +talked to him a great deal--mostly about the Hutton case.... Her moral +indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that +one had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one +could have been for so long mistaken about the man's character? (But she +had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off +with--so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that +the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the posthumous child of a +condemned and executed criminal--revolted her; the thing was shocking an +obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed +bromide. + +One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. +"By the way," he said in his soft, melancholy voice, "I suppose it was +really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton." + +Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, +and then quietly said, "Yes." After that she started to cry. + +"In the coffee, I suppose." + +She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in +his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping +draught. + + + + +II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES + + + +A PLAY + + +_It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the +garden façade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage--a bare +white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten +feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the +lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through which a yellow +radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or +three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, +ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set. +At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of +the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous +June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down +to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are +made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender +towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing +of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost +deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest_, COUNT +ALBERTO TIRETTA, _is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic +despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully +sympathetic at his side_, ALBERTO _is a little man with large lustrous +eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the +pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ--almost as pretty +and sentimental as Murillo's little beggars._ + + + +ALBERTO (_making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left +covering his eyes_). Whereupon, Waiter (_he is reciting a tale of +woes_), she slammed the door in my face. (_He brings down his +gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table_.) + +WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible! + +ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a +little weary. (_The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under +his arm and fills Alberto's glass._) + +WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore. + +ALBERTO (_throwing down a note_). Keep the change. + +WAITER (_bowing_). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I +should beat her. (_He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of +illustration slaps its black polished flanks._) + +ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her. + +WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern +disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I assure you, Signore, a +pleasure. + +ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts. +My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity. +Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please. + +WAITER (_pouring out the brandy_). Delicacy, purity.... Ah, believe me, +Signore ... That will be one lira twenty-five. + +ALBERTO (_throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic +gesture_). Keep the change. + +WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, +purity.... You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, +beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the +Signore's sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen +years old, and what eyes, what forms! + +ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of +the young lady (_he points towards the glass doors_). Remember she is an +American. (_The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel_.) + + + +SIDNEY DOLPHIN _and_ MISS AMY TOOMIS + +_come out together on to the terrace._ MISS AMY _supports a well-shaped +head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from +Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses +sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten +Toomis millions_. SIDNEY DOLPHIN _has a romantic aristocratic +appearance. The tailoring of_ 1830 _would suit him. Balzac would have +described his face as_ plein de poésie. _In effect he does happen to be +a poet. His two volumes of verse, "Zeotrope and 'Trembling Ears," have +been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are +poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain. They may be +merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain. +Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at +one of the little iron tables_, ALBERTO _they do not see; the shadow of +the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in +savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There +is a long, uncomfortable silence_. DOLPHIN _assumes the Thinker's +mask--the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead_, AMY +_regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her +interest in him_, DOLPHIN _racks his brains to think of some way of +exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to +play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests_. AMY _makes a +social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones._ AMY. It's +been a wonderful day, hasn't it? + +DOLPHIN (_starting, as though roused from profoundest thought_). Yes, +yes, it has. + +AMY. You don't often get it as fine as this in England, I guess. + +DOLPHIN. Not often. + +AMY. Nor do we over at home. + +DOLPHIN. So I should suppose. (_Silence. A spasm of anguish crosses_ +DOLPHIN'S _face; then he reassumes the old Thinker's mask._ AMY _looks +at him for a little longer, then, unable to suppress her growing +curiosity, she says with a sudden burst of childish confidence:_) + +AMY. It must be wonderful to be able to think as hard as you do, Mr. +Dolphin. Or are you sad about something? + +DOLPHIN (_looks up, smiles, and blushes; a spell has been broken_). The +finger at the temple, Miss Toomis, is not the barrel of a revolver. + +AMY. That means you're not specially sad about anything. Just thinking. + +DOLPHIN. Just thinking. + +AMY. What about? + +DOLPHIN. Oh, just life, you know--life and letters. + +AMY. Letters? Do you mean love letters. + +DOLPHIN. No, no. Letters in the sense of literature; letters as opposed +to life. + +AMY. (_disappointed_). Oh, literature. They used to teach us literature +at school. But I could never understand Emerson. What do you think +about literature for? + +DOLPHIN. It interests me, you know. I read it; I even try to write it. + +AMY (_very much excited_). What, are you a writer, a poet, Mr. Dolphin? + +DOLPHIN. Alas, it is only too true; I am. + +AMY. But what do you write? + +DOLPHIN. Verse and prose, Miss Toomis. Just verse and prose. + +AMY (_with enthusiasm_). Isn't that interesting. I've never met a poet +before, you know. + +DOLPHIN. Fortunate being. Why, before I left England I attended a +luncheon of the Poetry Union at which no less than a hundred and +eighty-nine poets were present. The sight of them made me decide to go +to Italy. + +AMY. Will you show me your books? + +DOLPHIN. Certainly not, Miss Toomis. That would ruin our friendship. I +am insufferable in my writings. In them I give vent to all the horrible +thoughts and impulses which I am too timid to express or put into +practice in real life. Take me as you find me here, a decent specimen of +a man, shy but able to talk intelligently when the layers of ice are +broken, aimless, ineffective, but on the whole quite a good sort. + +AMY. But I know that man already, Mr. Dolphin. I want to know the poet. +Tell me what the poet is like. + +DOLPHIN. He is older, Miss Toomis, than the rocks on which he sits. He +is villainous. He is ... but there, I really must stop. It was you who +set me going, though. Did you do it on purpose. + +AMY. Do what on purpose? + +DOLPHIN. Make me talk about myself. If you want to get people to like +you, you must always lead the conversation on to the subject of their +characters. Nothing pleases them so much. They'll talk with enthusiasm +for hours and go away saying that you're the most charming, cleverest +person they've ever met. But of course you knew that already. You re +Machiavellian. + +AMY. Machiavellian? You're the first person that's ever said that. I +always thought I was very simple and straight-forward. People say about +me that.... Ah, now I'_m_ talking about myself. That was unscrupulous of +you. But you shouldn't have told me about the trick if you wanted it to +succeed. + +DOLPHIN. Yes. It was silly of me. If I hadn't, you'd have gone on +talking about yourself and thought me the nicest man in the world. + +AMY. I want to hear about your poetry. Are you writing any now? + +DOLPHIN. I have composed the first line of a magnificent epic. But I +can't get any further. + +AMY. How does it go? + +DOLPHIN. Like this (_he clears his throat_). "Casbeen has been, and +Moghreb is no more." Ah, the transience of all sublunary things! But +inspiration has stopped short there. + +AMY. What exactly does it mean? + +DOLPHIN. Ah, there you re asking too much, Miss Toomis. Waiter, some +coffee for two. + +WAITER (_who is standing in the door of the lounge_). Si, Signore. Will +the lady and gentleman take it here, or in the gardens, perhaps? + +DOLPHIN. A good suggestion. Why shouldn't the lady and gentleman take it +in the garden? + +AMY. Why not? + +DOLPHIN. By the fountain, then, Waiter. We can talk about ourselves +there to the tune of falling waters. + +AMY. And you shall recite your poetry, Mr. Dolphin. I just love poetry. +Do you know Mrs. Wilcox's _Poems of Passion_? (_They go out to the left. +A nightingale utters two or three phrases of song and from far down the +bells of the city jangle the three-quarters and die slowly away into the +silence out of which they rose and came together._) + +(LUCREZIA GRATTAROL _has come out of the hotel just in time to overhear +Miss Toomis's last remark, just in time to see her walk slowly away with +a hand on_ SIDNEY DOLPHIN's _arm_. LUCREZIA _has a fine thoroughbred +appearance, an aquiline nose, a finely curved sensual mouth, a superb +white brow, a quivering nostril. She is the last of a family whose name +is as illustrious in Venetian annals as that of Foscarini, Tiepolo, or +Tron. She stamps a preposterously high-heeled foot and tosses her +head._) + +LUCREZIA. Passion! Passion, indeed. An American! (_She starts to run +after the retreating couple, when_ ALBERTO, _who has been sitting with +his head between his hands, looks up and catches sight of the +newcomer_.) + +ALBERTO. Lucrezia! + +LUCREZIA (_starts, for in the shade beneath the trees she had not seen +him_). Oh! You gave me such a fright, Alberto. I'm in a hurry now. Later +on, if you.... + +ALBERTO (_in a desperate voice that breaks into a sob_). Lucrezia! You +must come and talk to me. You must. + +LUCREZIA. But I tell you I can't now, Alberto. Later on. + +ALBERTO (_the tears streaming down his cheeks_). Now, now, now! You must +come now. I am lost if you don't. + +LUCREZIA (_looking indecisively first at_ ALBERTO _and then along the +path down which_ AMY _and_ SIDNEY DOLPHIN _have disappeared_). But +supposing I am lost if I do come? + +ALBERTO. But you couldn't be as much lost as I am. Ah, you don't know +what it is to suffer. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss wass ich leide. +Oh, Lucrezia.... (_He sobs unrestrainedly_.) + +LUCREZIA (_goes over to where_ ALBERTO _is sitting. She pats his +shoulder and his bowed head of black curly hair_). There, there, my +little Bertino. Tell me what it is. You mustn't cry. There, there. + +ALBERTO (_drying his eyes and rubbing his head, like a cat, avid of +caresses, against her hand_). How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia? You +are like a mother to me. + +LUCREZIA. I know. That's just what's so dangerous. + +ALBERTO (_lets his head fall upon her bosom_). I come to you for +comfort, like a tired child, Lucrezia. + +LUCREZIA. Poor darling! (_She strokes his hair, twines its thick black +tendrils round her fingers_, ALBERTO _is abjectly pathetic_.) + +ALBERTO (_with closed eyes and a seraphic smile_). Ah, the suavity, the +beauty of this maternal instinct! + +LUCREZIA (_with a sudden access of energy and passion_). The +disgustingness of it, you mean. (_She pushes him from her. His head +wobbles once, as though it were inanimate, before he straightens into +life_.) The maternal instinct. Ugh. It's been the undoing of too many +women. You men come with your sentimental babyishness and exploit it for +your own lusts. Be a man, Bertino. Be a woman, I mean, if you can. + +ALBERTO (_looking up at her with eyes full of doglike, dumb reproach_). +Lucrezia! You, too? Is there nobody who cares for me? This is the +unkindest cut of all. I may as well die. (_He relapses into tears_.) + +LUCREZIA (_who has started to go, turns back, irresolute_). Now, don't +cry, Bertino. Can't you behave like a reasonable being? (_She makes as +though to go again_.) + +ALBERTO (_through his sobs_). You too, Lucrezia! Oh, I can't bear it, I +can't bear it. + +LUCREZIA (_turning back desperately_). But what do you want me to do? +Why should you expect _me_ to hold your hand? + +ALBERTO. I thought better of you, Lucrezia. Let me go. There is nothing +left for me now but death. (_He rises to his feet, takes a step or two, +and then collapses into another chair, unable to move_.) + +LUCREZIA (_torn between anger and remorse_). Now do behave yourself +sensibly, Bertino. There, there ... you mustn't cry. I'm sorry if I've +hurt you. (_Looking towards the left along the path taken by_ AMY _and_ +DOLPHIN.) Oh, damnation! (_She stamps her foot_.) Here, Bertino, do pull +yourself together. (_She raises him up_.) There, now you must stop +crying. (_But as soon as she lets go of him his head falls back on to +the iron table with an unpleasant, meaty bump. That bump is too much +for_ LUCREZIA. _She bends over him, strokes his head, even kisses the +lustrous curls_.) Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I have been a beast. But, +tell me first, what's the matter, Bertino? What is it, my poor darling? +Tell me. + +ALBERTO. Nobody loves me. + +LUCREZIA. But we're all devoted to you, Bertino mio. + +ALBERTO. She isn't. To-day she shut the door in my face. + +LUCREZIA. She? You mean the French-woman, the one you told me about? +Louise, wasn't she? + +ALBERTO. Yes, the one with the golden hair. + +LUCREZIA. And the white legs. I remember: you saw her bathing. + +ALBERTO (_lays his hand on his heart_). Ah, don't remind me of it. (_His +face twitches convulsively_.) + +LUCREZIA. And now she's gone and shut the door in your face. + +ALBERTO. In my face, Lucrezia. + +LUCREZIA. Poor darling! + +ALBERTO. For me there is nothing now but the outer darkness. + +LUCREZIA. Is the door shut forever, then? + +ALBERTO. Definitively, for ever. + +LUCREZIA. But have you tried knocking? Perhaps, after all, it might be +opened again, if only a crack. + +ALBERTO. What, bruise my hands against the granite of her heart? + +LUCREZIA. Don't be too poetical, Bertino mio. Why not try again, in any +case? + +ALBERTO. You give me courage. + +LUCREZIA. There's no harm in trying, you know. + +ALBERTO. Courage to live, to conquer. (_He beats his breast_.) I am a +man again, thanks to you, Lucrezia, my inspirer, my Muse, my Egeria. How +can I be sufficiently grateful. (_He kisses her_.) I am the child of +your spirit. (_He kisses her again_.) + +LUCREZIA. Enough, enough. I am not ambitious to be a mother, yet awhile. +Quickly now, Bertino, I know you will succeed. + +ALBERTO (_cramming his hat down on his head and knocking with his +walking-stick on the ground_). Succeed or die, Lucrezia. (_He goes out +with a loud martial stamp_.) + +LUCREZIA (_to the waiter who is passing across the stage with a +coffee-pot and cups on a tray_). Have you seen the Signorina Toomis, +Giuseppe? + +WAITER. The Signorina is down in the garden. So is the Signore Dolphin. +By the fountain, Signorina. This is the Signore's coffee. + +LUCREZIA. Have you a mother, Giuseppe? + +WAITER. Unfortunately, Signorina. + +LUCREZIA. Unfortunately? Does she treat you badly, then? + +WAITER. Like a dog, Signorina. + +LUCREZIA. Ah, I should like to see your mother. I should like to ask her +to give me some hints on how to bring up children. + +WAITER. But surely, Signorina, you are not expecting, you--ah.... + +LUCREZIA. Only figuratively, Giuseppe. My children are spiritual +children. + +WAITER. Precisely, precisely. My mother, alas! is not a spiritual +relation. Nor is my fiançée. + +LUCREZIA. I didn't know you were engaged. + +WAITER. To an angel of perdition. Believe me, Signorina, I go to my +destruction in that woman--go with open eyes. There is no escape. She is +what is called in the Holy Bible (_crosses himself_) a Fisher of Men. + +LUCREZIA. You have remarkable connections, Giuseppe. + +WAITER. I am honoured by your words, Signorina. But the coffee becomes +cold. (_He hurries out to the left_.) + +LUCREZIA. In the garden! By the fountain! And there's the nightingale +beginning to sing in earnest! Good heavens! what may not already have +happened? (_She runs out after the waiter_.) + +(_Two persons emerge from the hotel_, the VICOMTE DE BARBAZANGE _and the_ +BARONESS KOCH DE WORMS. PAUL DE BARBAZANGE _is a young man--twenty-six +perhaps of exquisite grace. Five foot ten, well built, dark hair, sleek +as marble, the most refined aristocratic features, and a monocle_, +SIMONE DE WORMS _is forty, a ripe Semitic beauty. Five years more and +the bursting point of overripeness will have been reached. But now, +thanks to massage, powerful corsets, skin foods, and powder, she is +still a beauty--a beauty of the type Italians admire, cushioned, +steatopygous._ PAUL, _who has a faultless taste in bric-à -brac and +women, and is by instinct and upbringing an ardent anti-Semite, finds +her infinitely repulsive. The Baronne enters with a loud shrill giggle. +She gives_ PAUL _a slap with her green feather fan_.) + + + +SIMONE. Oh, you naughty boy! Quelle histoire. Mon Dieu! How dare you +tell me such a story! + +PAUL. For you, Baronne, I would risk anything even your displeasure. + +SIMONE. Charming boy. But stories of that kind.... And you look so +innocent, too! Do you know any more like it? + +PAUL (_suddenly grave_). Not of that description. But I will tell you a +story of another kind, a true story, a tragic story. + +SIMONE. Did I ever tell you how I saw a woman run over by a train? Cut +to pieces, literally, to pieces. So disagreeable. I'll tell you later. +But now, what about your story? + +PAUL. Oh, it's nothing, nothing. + +SIMONE. But you promised to tell it me. + +PAUL. It's only a commonplace anecdote. A young man, poor but noble, +with a name and a position to keep up. A few youthful follies, a +mountain of debts, and no way out except the revolver. This is all dull +and obvious enough. But now follows the interesting part of the story. +He is about to take that way out, when he meets the woman of his dreams, +the goddess, the angel, the ideal. He loves, and he must die without a +word. (_He turns his face away from the Baronne, as though his emotion +were too much for him, which indeed it is_.) + +SIMONE. Vicomte--Paul--this young man is you? + +PAUL (_solemnly_). He is. + +SIMONE. And the woman? + +PAUL. Oh, I can't, I mayn't tell you. + +SIMONE. The woman! Tell me, Paul. + +PAUL (_turning towards her and falling on his knees_). The woman, +Simone, is you. Ah, but I had no right to say it. + +SIMONE (_quivering with emotion_). My Paul. (_She clasps his head to her +bosom. A grimace of disgust contorts Paul's classical features. He +endures Simone's caresses with a stoical patience_.) But what is this +about a revolver? That is only a joke, Paul, isn't it? Say it isn't +true. + +PAUL. Alas, Simone, too true. (_He taps his coat pocket_.) There it +lies. To-morrow I have a hundred and seventy thousand francs to pay, or +be dishonoured. I cannot pay the sum. A Barbazange does not survive +dishonour. My ancestors were Crusaders, preux chevaliers to a man. Their +code is mine. Dishonour for me is worse than death. + +SIMONE. Mon Dieu, Paul, how noble you are! (_She lays her hands on his +shoulder, leans back, and surveys him at arm's length, a look of pride +and anxious happiness on her face_.) + +PAUL (_dropping his eyes modestly_). Not at all. I was born noble, and +noblesse oblige, as we say in our family. Farewell, Simone, I love +you--and I must die. My last thought will be of you. (_He kisses her +hand, rises to his feet, and makes as though to go_.) + +SIMONE (_clutching him by the arm_). No, Paul, no. You must not, shall +not, do anything rash. A hundred and seventy thousand francs, did you +say? It is paltry. Is there no one who could lend or give you the money? + +PAUL. Not a soul. Farewell, Simone. + +SIMONE. Stay, Paul. I hardly dare to ask it of you--you with such lofty +ideas of honour--but would you ... from me? + +PAUL. Take money from a woman? Ah, Simone, tempt me no more. I might do +an ignoble act. + +SIMONE. But from me, Paul, from me. I am not in your eyes a woman like +any other woman, am I? + +PAUL. It is true that my ancestors, the Crusaders, the preux chevaliers, +might in all honour receive gifts from the ladies of their +choice--chargers, swords, armour, or tenderer mementoes, such as gloves +or garters. But money--no; who ever heard of their taking money? + +SIMONE. But what would be the use of my giving you swords and horses? +You could never use them. Consider, my knight, my noble Sir Paul, in +these days the contests of chivalry have assumed a different form; the +weapons and the armour have changed. Your sword must be of gold and +paper; your breastplate of hard cash; your charger of gilt-edged +securities. I offer you the shining panoply of the modern crusader. Will +you accept it? + +PAUL. You are eloquent, Simone. You could win over the devil himself +with that angelic voice of yours. But it cannot be. Money is always +money. The code is clear. I cannot accept your offer. Here is the way +out. (_He takes an automatic pistol out of his pocket_.) Thank you, +Simone, and good-bye. How wonderful is the love of a pure woman. + +SIMONE. Paul, Paul, give that to me! (_She snatches the pistol from his +hand_.) If anything were to happen to you, Paul, I should kill myself +with this. You must live, you must consent to accept the money. You +mustn't let your honour make a martyr of you. + +PAUL (_brushing a tear from his eyes_). No, I can't.... Give me that +pistol, I beg you. + +SIMONE. For my sake, Paul. + +PAUL. Oh, you make it impossible for me to act as the voices of dead +ancestors tell me I should.... For your sake, then, Simone, I consent +to live. For your sake I dare to accept the gift you offer. + +SIMONE (_kissing his hand in an outburst of gratitude_). Thank you, +thank you, Paul. How happy I am! + +PAUL. I, too, light of my life. + +SIMONE. My month's allowance arrived to-day. I have the cheque here. +(_She takes it out of her corsage_.) Two hundred thousand francs. It's +signed already. You can get it cashed as soon as the hanks open +to-morrow. + +PAUL (_moved by an outburst of genuine emotion kisses indiscriminately +the cheque, the Baronne, his own hands_). My angel, you have saved me. +How can I thank you? How can I love you enough? Ah, mon petit bouton de +rose. + +SIMONE. Oh, naughty, naughty! Not now, my Paul; you must wait till some +other time. + +PAUL. I burn with impatience. + +SIMONE. Quelle fougue! Listen, then. In an hour's time, Paul chéri, in +my boudoir; I shall be alone. + +PAUL. An hour? It is an eternity. + +SIMONE (_playfully_). An hour. I won't relent. Till then, my Paul. (_She +blows a kiss and runs out: the scenery trembles at her passage._) + +(PAUL _looks at the cheque, then pulls out a large silk handkerchief and +wipes his neck inside his collar_.) (DOLPHIN _drifts in from the left. +He is smoking a cigarette, but he does not seem to be enjoying it_.) + +PAUL. Alone? + +DOLPHIN. Alas! + +PAUL. Brooding on the universe as usual? I envy you your philosophic +detachment. Personally, I find that the world is very much too much with +us, and the devil too; (_he looks at the cheque in his hand_) and above +all the flesh. My god, the flesh.... (_He wipes his neck again_.) + +DOLPHIN. My philosophic detachment? But it's only a mask to hide the +ineffectual longings I have to achieve contact with the world. + +PAUL. But surely nothing is easier. One just makes a movement and +impinges on one's fellow-beings. + +DOLPHIN. Not with a temperament like mine. Imagine a shyness more +powerful than curiosity or desire, a paralysis of all the faculties. You +are a man of the world. You were born with a forehead of brass to +affront every social emergency. Ah, if you knew what a torture it is to +find yourself in the presence of someone a woman, perhaps--someone in +whom you take an interest that is not merely philosophic; to find +oneself in the presence of such a person and to be incapable, yes, +physically incapable, of saying a word to express your interest in her +or your desire to possess her intimacy. Ah, I notice I have slipped into +the feminine. Inevitably, for of course the person is always a she. + +PAUL. Of course, of course. That goes without saying. But what's the +trouble? Women are so simple to deal with. + +DOLPHIN. I know. Perfectly simply if one's in the right state of mind. I +have found that out myself, for moments come alas, how rarely!--when I +am filled with a spirit of confidence, possessed by some angel or devil +of power. Ah, then I feel myself to be superb. I carry all before me. In +those brief moments the whole secret of the world is revealed to me. I +perceive that the supreme quality in the human soul is effrontery. +Genius in the man of action is simply the apotheosis of charlatanism. +Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mr. Gladstone, Lloyd George--what are +they? Just ordinary human beings projected through the magic lantern of +a prodigious effrontery and so magnified to a thousand times larger than +life. Look at me. I am far more intelligent than any of these fabulous +figures; my sensibility is more refined than theirs, I am morally +superior to any of them. And yet, by my lack of charlatanism, I am made +less than nothing. My qualities are projected through the wrong end of a +telescope and the world perceives me far smaller than I really am. But +the world--who cares about the world? The only people who matter are the +women. + +PAUL. Very true, my dear Dolphin. The women.... (_He looks at the cheque +and mops himself once more with his mauve silk handkerchief_.) + +DOLPHIN. To-night was one of my moments of triumph. I felt myself +suddenly free of all my inhibitions. + +PAUL. I hope you profited by the auspicious occasion. + +DOLPHIN. I did. I was making headway. I had--but I don't know why I +should bore you with my confidences. Curious that one should be dumb +before intimates and open one's mind to an all but stranger. I must +apologise. + +PAUL. But I am all attention and sympathy, my dear Dolphin. And I take +it a little hardly that you should regard me as a stranger. (_He lays a +hand on Dolphin's shoulder._) + +DOLPHIN. Thank you, Barbazange, thank you. Well, if you consent to be +the receptacle of my woes, I shall go on pouring them out.... Miss +Toomis.... But tell me frankly what you think of her. + +PAUL. Well.... + +DOLPHIN. A little too ingenuous, a little silly even, eh? + +PAUL. Now you say so, she certainly isn't very intellectually +stimulating. + +DOLPHIN. Precisely. But ... oh, those china-blue eyes, that +ingenuousness, that pathetic and enchanting silliness! She touches lost +chords in one's heart. I love the Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, I am +transported by Beethoven's hundred-and-eleventh Sonata; but the fact +doesn't prevent my being moved to tears by the last luscious waltz +played by the hotel orchestra. In the best constructed brains there are +always spongy surfaces that are sensitive to picture postcards and +Little Nelly and the End of a Perfect Day. Miss Toomis has found out my +Achilles's heel. She is boring, ridiculous, absurd to a degree, but oh! +how moving, how adorable. + +PAUL. You're done for, my poor Dolphin, sunk--spurlos. + +DOLPHIN. And I was getting on so well, was revelling in my new-found +confidence, and, knowing its transience, was exploiting it for all I +was worth. I had covered an enormous amount of ground and then, hey +presto! at a blow all my labour was undone. Actuated by what malice I +don't know, la Lucrezia swoops down like a vulture, and without a +by-your-leave or excuse of any kind carries off Miss Toomis from under +my very eyes. What a woman! She terrifies me. I am always running away +from her. + +PAUL. Which means, I suppose, that she is always pursuing you. + +DOLPHIN. She has ruined my evening and, it may me, all my chances of +success. My precious hour of self-confidence will be wasted (though I +hope you'll not take offence at the word)--wasted on you. + +PAUL. It will return. + +DOLPHIN. But when--but when? Till it does I shall be impotent and in +agony. + +PAUL. I know the agony of waiting. I myself was engaged to a Rumanian +princess in 1916. But owing to the sad collapse in the Rumanian rate of +exchange I have had to postpone our union indefinitely. It is painful, +but, believe me, it can be borne. (_He looks at the cheque and then at +his watch_.) There are other things which are much worse. Believe me, +Dolphin, it can be borne. + +DOLPHIN. I suppose it can. For, when all is said, there are damned few +of us who really take things much to heart. Julie de Lespinasses are +happily not common. I am even subnormal. At twenty I believed myself +passionate: one does at that age. But now, when I come to consider +myself candidly, I find that I am really one of those who never deeply +felt nor strongly willed. Everything is profoundly indifferent to me. I +sometimes try to depress myself with the thought that the world is a +cess-pool, that men are pathetic degenerates from the ape whose +laboriously manufactured ideals are pure nonsense and find no rhyme in +reality, that the whole of life is a bad joke which takes a long time +coming to an end. But it really doesn't upset me. I don't care a curse. +It's deplorable; one ought to care. The best people do care. Still, I +must say I should like to get possession of Miss Toomis. Confound that +Grattarol woman. What on earth did she want to rush me like that for, do +you suppose? + + +PAUL. I expect we shall find out now. (PAUL _jerks his head towards the +left._ LUCREZIA _and_ AMY _are seen entering from the garden_, LUCREZIA +_holds her companion's arm and marches with a firm step towards the two +men_. AMY _suffers herself to be drugged along_.) + +LUCREZIA. Vicomte, Miss Toomis wants you to tell her all about +Correggio. + +AMY (_rather scared_). Oh, really--I.... + +LUCREZIA. And (_sternly_)--and Michelangelo. She is so much interested +in art. + +AMY. But please--don't trouble.... + +PAUL (_bowing gracefully_). I shall be delighted. And in return I hope +Miss Toomis will tell me all about Longfellow. + +AMY (_brightening_). Oh yes, don't you just love Evangeline? + +PAUL. I do; and with your help, Miss Toomis, I hope I shall learn to +love her better. + +LUCREZIA (_to_ DOLPHIN, _who has been looking from_ AMY _to the_ VICOMTE +_and back again at_ AMY _with eyes that betray a certain disquietude_). +You really must come and look at the moon rising over the hills, Mr. +Dolphin. One sees it best from the lower terrace. Shall we go? + +DOLPHIN (_starts and shrinks_). But it's rather cold, isn't it? I +mean--I think I ought to go and write a letter. + +LUCREZIA. Oh, you can do that to-morrow. + +DOLPHIN. But really. + +LUCREZIA. You've no idea how lovely the moon looks. + +DOLPHIN. But I must.... + +LUCREZIA (_lays her hand on his sleeve and tows hint after her, crying +as she goes_). The moon, the moon.... (PAUL _and_ AMY _regard their exit +in silence_.) + +PAUL. He doesn't look as though he much wanted to go and see the moon. + +AMY. Perhaps he guesses what's in store for him. + +PAUL (_surprised_). What, you don't mean to say you realised all the +time? + +AMY. Realised what? + +PAUL. About la belle Lucrezia. + +AMY. I don't know what you mean. All I know is that she means to give +Mr. Dolphin a good talking to. He's so mercenary. It made me quite +indignant when she told me about him. Such a schemer, too. You know in +America we have very definite ideas about honour. + +PAUL. Here too, Miss Toomis. + +AMY. Not Mr. Dolphin. Oh dear, it made me so sad; more sad than angry. I +can never be grateful enough to Signorina Grattarol. + +PAUL. But I'm still at a loss to know exactly what you're talking about. + +AMY. And I am quite bewildered myself. Would you have believed it of +him? I thought him such a nice man. + +PAUL. What has he done? + +AMY. It's all for my money, Miss Grattarol told me. She knows. He was +just asking me to marry him, and I believe I would have said Yes. But +she came in just in the nick of time. It seems he only wanted to marry +me because I'm so rich. He doesn't care for me at all. Miss Grattarol +knows what he's like. It's awful, isn't it? Oh dear, I wouldn't have +thought it of him. + +PAUL. But you must forgive him, Miss Toomis. Money is a great +temptation. Perhaps if you gave him another chance.... + +AMY. Impossible. + +PAUL. Poor Dolphin! He's such a nice young fellow. + +AMY. I thought so too. But he's false. + +PAUL. Don't be too hard on him. Money probably means too much to him. +It's the fault of his upbringing. No one who has not lived among the +traditions of our ancient aristocracy can be expected to have that +contempt, almost that hatred of wealth, which is the sign of true +nobility. If he had been brought up, as I was, in an old machicolated +castle on the Loire, surrounded by ancestral ghosts, imbued with the +spirit of the Crusaders and preux chevaliers who had inhabited the +place in the past, if he had learnt to know what noblesse oblige really +means, believe me, Miss Toomis, he could never have done such a thing. + +AMY. I should just think he couldn't, Monsieur de Barbazange. + +PAUL. You have no idea, Miss Toomis, how difficult it is for a man of +truly noble feelings to get over the fact of your great wealth. When I +heard that you were the possessor of a hundred million dollars.... + +AMY. Oh, I'm afraid it's more than that. It's two hundred million. + +PAUL. ... of two hundred million dollars, then ... it only makes it +worse; I was very melancholy, Miss Toomis. For those two hundred million +dollars were a barrier, which a descendant of Crusaders and preux +chevaliers could not overleap. Honour, Miss Toomis, honour forbade. Ah, +if only that accursed money had not stood in the way.... When I first +saw you oh, how I was moved by that vision of beauty and innocence--I +wanted nothing better than to stand gazing on you for ever. But then I +heard about those millions. Dolphin was lucky to have felt no +restraints. But enough, enough. (_He checks a rising tide of emotion_.) +Give poor Dolphin another chance, Miss Toomis. At bottom he is a good +fellow, and he may learn in time to esteem you for your own sake and to +forget the dazzling millions. + +AMY. Never. I can only marry a man who is entirely disinterested. + +PAUL. But, can't you see, no disinterested man could ever bring himself +to ask you? How could he prove his disinterestedness? No one would +believe the purity of his intentions. + +AMY (_much moved_). It is for me to judge. I know a disinterested man +when I see him. Even in America we can understand honour. + +PAUL (_with a sob in his voice_). Good-bye Miss Toomis. + +AMY. But no, I don't want it to be good-bye. + +PAUL. It must be. Never shall it be said of a Barbazange that he hunted +a woman for her money. + +AMY. But what does it matter what the world says, if I say the opposite? + +PAUL. You say the opposite? Thank you, thank you. But no, good-bye. + +AMY. Stop. Oh! you're forcing me to do a most unwomanly thing. You're +making me ask you to marry me. You're the only disinterested man I've +ever met or, to judge from what I've seen of the world, I'm ever likely +to meet. Haven't you kept away from me in spite of your feelings? +Haven't you even tried to make me listen to another man--a man not +worthy to black your boots? Oh, it's so wonderful, so noble! It's like +something in a picture play. Paul, I offer myself to you. Will you take +me in spite of my millions? + +PAUL (_falling on his knees and kissing the hem of_ AMY'S _skirt_). My +angel, you're right; what does it matter what the world says as long as +you believe in me? Amy, amie, bien-aimée.... Ah, it's too good too, too +good to be true! (_He rises to his feet and embraces her with an +unfeigned enthusiasm_.) + +AMY. Paul, Paul.... And so this is love. Isn't it wonderful? + +PAUL (_looking round anxiously_). You mustn't tell anyone about our +engagement, my Amy. They might say unpleasant things in the hotel, you +know. + +AMY. Of course I won't talk about it. We'll keep our happiness to +ourselves, won't we? + +PAUL. Entirely to ourselves; and to-morrow we'll go to Paris and arrange +about being married. + +AMY. Yes, yes; we'll take the eight o'clock train. + +PAUL. Not the eight o clock, my darling. I have to go to the bank +to-morrow to do a little business. We must wait till the twelve thirty. + +AMY. Very well, then. The twelve-thirty. Oh, how happy I am! + +PAUL. So am I, my sweetheart. More than I can tell you. (_The sound of a +window being opened is heard. They look up and see the_ BARONESS +_dressed in a peignoir of the tenderest blue, emerging on to the right +hand of the three balconies_.) + +AMY. Oh, my soul! I think I'd better go in. Good-night, my Paul. (_She +runs in_.) + +SIMONE. Has that horrid little American girl gone? (_She peers down, +then, reassured, she blows a kiss to_ PAUL.) My Romeo! + +PAUL. I come, Juliet. + +SIMONE. There's a kiss for you. + +PAUL (_throwing kisses with both hands_). And there's one for you. And +another, and another. Two hundred million kisses, my angel. + +SIMONE (_giggling_). What a lot! + +PAUL. It is; you re quite right. Two hundred million.... I come, my +Juliet. (_He darts into the hotel, pausing when just inside the door and +out of sight of the_ BARONESS, _to mop himself once again with his +enormous handkerchief. The operation over, he advances with a resolute +step, The_ BARONESS _stands for a moment on the balcony. Then, seeing_ +DOLPHIN _and_ LUCREZIA _coming in from the left, she retires, closing +the window and drawing the curtains behind her_. DOLPHIN _comes striding +in_; LUCREZIA _follows a little behind, looking anxiously up at him_.) + +LUCREZIA. Please, please.... + +DOLPHIN. NO, I won t listen to anything more. (_He walks with an +agitated step up and down the stage_. LUCREZIA _stands with one hand +resting on the back of a chair and the other pressed on her heart.)_ Do +you mean to say you deliberately went and told her that I was only after +her money? Oh, it's too bad, too bad. It's infamous. And I hadn't the +faintest notion that she had any money. Besides, I don't want money; I +have quite enough of my own. It's infamous, infamous! + +LUCREZIA. I know it was a horrible thing to do. But I couldn't help it. +How could I stand by and see you being carried off by that silly little +creature? + +DOLPHIN. But I cared for her. + +LUCREZIA. But not as I cared for you. I've got red blood in my veins; +she's got nothing but milk and water. You couldn't have been happy with +her. I can give you love of a kind she could never dream of. What does +she know of passion? + +DOLPHIN. Nothing, I am thankful to say. I don't want passion; can't you +understand that? I don't possess it myself and don't like it in others. +I am a man of sentimental affections, with a touch of quiet sensuality. +I don't want passion, I tell you. It's too violent; it frightens me. I +couldn't possibly live with you. You'd utterly shatter my peace of mind +in a day. Oh, how I wish you'd go away. + +LUCREZIA. But Sidney, Sidney, can't you understand what it is to be +madly in love with somebody? You can't be so cruel. + +DOLPHIN. You didn't think much of my well-being when you interfered +between Miss Toomis and me, did you? You've probably ruined my whole +life, that's all. I really don't see why you should expect me to have +any pity for you. + +LUCREZIA. Very well, then, I shall kill myself. (_She bursts into +tears_.) + +DOLPHIN. Oh, but I assure you, one doesn't kill oneself for things like +that. (_He approaches her and pats her on the shoulder_.) Come, come, +don't worry about it. + +LUCREZIA (_throws her arms round his neck_). Oh, Sidney, Sidney.... + +DOLPHIN (_freeing himself with surprising energy and promptitude from +her embrace_). No, no, none of that, I beg. Another moment and we shall +be losing our heads. Personally I think I shall go to bed now. I should +advise you to do the same, Miss Grattarol. You're overwrought. We might +all be better for a small dose of bromide. (_He goes in_.) + +LUCREZIA (_looking up and stretching forth her hands_). Sidney.... +(DOLPHIN _does not look round, and disappears through the glass door +into the hotel_, LUCREZIA _covers her face with her hands and sits for a +little sobbing silently. The nightingale sings on. Midnight sounds with +an infinite melancholy from all the twenty campaniles of the city in the +valley. From far away comes the spasmodic throbbing of a guitar and the +singing of an Italian voice, high-pitched, passionate, throaty. The +seconds pass_, LUCREZIA _rises to her feet and walks slowly into the +hotel. On the threshold she encounters the_ VICOMTE _coming out_.) + +PAUL. You, Signorina Lucrezia? I've escaped for a breath of fresh, cool +air. Mightn't we take a turn together? (LUCREZIA _shakes her head_.) Ah, +well, then, good-night. You'll be glad to hear that Miss Toomis knows +all about Correggio now. + +(_He inhales a deep breath of air. Then looking at his dinner-jacket he +begins brushing at it with his hand. A lamentable figure creeps in from +the left. It is_ ALBERTO. _If he had a tail, it would be trailing on the +ground between his legs_.) + +PAUL. Hullo, Alberto. What is it? Been losing at cards? + +ALBERTO. Worse than that. + +PAUL. Creditors foreclosing? + +ALBERTO. Much worse. + +PAUL. Father ruined by imprudent speculations? + +ALBERTO. No, no, no. It's nothing to do with money. + +PAUL. Oh, well, then. It can't be anything very serious. It's women, I +suppose. + +ALBERTO. My mistress refuses to see me. I have been beating on her door +for hours in vain. + +PAUL. I wish we all had your luck, Bertino. Mine opens her door only too +promptly. The difficulty is to get out again. Does yours use such an +awful lot of this evil-smelling powder? I'm simply covered with it. Ugh! +(_He brushes his coat again_.) + +ALBERTO. Can't you be serious, Paul? + +PAUL. Of course I can ... about a serious matter. But you can't expect +me to pull a long face about your mistress, can you, now? Do look at +things in their right proportions. + +ALBERTO. It's no use talking to you. You're heartless, soulless. + +PAUL. What you mean, my dear Alberto, is that I'm relatively speaking +bodiless. Physical passion never goes to my head. I'm always _compos +mentis_. You aren't, that's all. + +ALBERTO. Oh, you disgust me. I think I shall hang myself to-night. + +PAUL. Do. It will give us something to talk about at lunch to-morrow. + +ALBERTO. Monster! (_He goes into the hotel_, PAUL _strolls out towards +the garden, whistling an air from Mozart as he goes. The window on the +left opens and_ LUCREZIA _steps on to her balcony. Uncoiled, her red +hair falls almost to her waist. Her nightdress is always half slipping +off one shoulder or the other, like those loose-bodied Restoration gowns +that reveal the tight-blown charms of Kneller's Beauties. Her feet are +bare. She is a marvellously romantic figure, as she stands there, +leaning on the balustrade, and with eyes more sombre than night, gazing +into the darkness. The nightingales, the bells, the guitar, and +passionate voice strike up. Great stars palpitate in the sky. The moon +has swum imperceptibly to the height of heaven. In the garden below +flowers are yielding their souls into the air, censers invisible. It is +too much, too much.... Large tears roll down_ LUCREZIA's _cheeks and +fall with a splash to the ground. Suddenly, but with the noiselessness +of a cat,_ ALBERTO _appears, childish-looking in pink pajamas, on the +middle of the three balconies. He sees_ LUCREZIA, _but she is much too +deeply absorbed in thought to have noticed his coming_, ALBERTO _plants +his elbows on the rail of the balcony, covers his face, and begins to +sob, at first inaudibly, then in a gradual quickening crescendo. At the +seventh sob_ LUCREZIA _starts and becomes aware of his presence_.) + +LUCREZIA. Alberto. I didn't know.... Have you been there long? (ALBERTO +_makes no articulate reply, but his sobs keep on growing louder_.) +Alberto, are you unhappy? Answer me. + +ALBERTO (_with difficulty, after a pause_). Yes. + +LUCREZIA. Didn't she let you in? + +ALBERTO. No. (_His sobs become convulsive_.) + +LUCREZIA. Poor boy. + +ALBERTO (_lifting up a blubbered face to the moonlight_). I am so +unhappy. + +LUCREZIA. You can't be more unhappy than I am. + +ALBERTO. Oh yes, I am. It's impossible to be unhappier than me. + +LUCREZIA. But I _am_ more unhappy. + +ALBERTO. You re not. Oh, how can you be so cruel Lucrezia? (_He covers +his face once more_.) + +LUCREZIA. But I only said I was unhappy Alberto. + +ALBERTO. Yes, I know. That showed you weren't thinking of me. Nobody +loves me. I shall hang myself to-night with the cord of my +dressing-gown. + +LUCREZIA. NO, no, Alberto. You mustn't do anything rash. + +ALBERTO. I shall. Your cruelty has been the last straw. + +LUCREZIA. I'm sorry, Bertino mio. But if you only knew how miserable I +was feeling. I didn't mean to be unsympathetic. Poor boy. I'm so sorry. +There, don't cry, poor darling. + +ALBERTO. Oh, I knew you wouldn't desert me, Lucrezia. You've always been +a mother to me. (_He stretches out his hand and seizes hers, which has +gone half-way to meet him; but the balconies are too far apart to allow +him to kiss it. He makes an effort and fails. He is too short in the +body_,) Will you let me come onto your balcony, Lucrezia? I want to tell +you how grateful I am. + +LUCREZIA. But you can do that from your own balcony. + +ALBERTO. Please, please, Lucrezia. You mustn't be cruel to me again. I +can't bear it. + +LUCREZIA. Well, then.... Just for a moment, but for no more, (BERTINO +_climbs from one balcony to the other. One is a little reminded of the +trousered monkeys on the barrel organs. Arrived, he kneels down and +kisses_ LUCREZIA'S _hand_.) + +ALBERTO. You've saved me. You've given given me a fresh desire to live +and a fresh faith in life. How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia, +darling? + +LUCREZIA (_patting his head_). There, there. _We_ are just two unhappy +creatures. We must try and comfort one another. + +ALBERTO. What a brute I am! I never thought of your unhappiness. I am so +selfish. What is it, Lucrezia? + +LUCREZIA. I can't tell you, Bertino; but it's very painful. + +ALBERTO. Poor child, poor child. (_His kisses, which started at the +hand, have mounted, by this time, some way up the arm, changing +perceptibly in character as they rise. At the shoulder they have a +warmth which could not have been inferred from the respectful salutes +which barely touched the fingers_.) Poor darling! You've given me +consolation. Now you must let me comfort your unhappiness. + +LUCREZIA (_with an effort_). I think you ought to go back now, Bertino. + +ALBERTO. In a minute, my darling. There, there, poor Lucrezia. (_He puts +an arm round her, kisses her hair and neck._ LUCREZIA _leans her bowed +head against his chest. The sound of footsteps is heard. They both look +up with scared, wide-open eyes_.) + +LUCREZIA. We mustn't be seen here, Bertino. What would people think? + +ALBERTO. I'll go back. + +LUCREZIA. There's no time. You must come into my room. Quickly. + +(_They slip through the French window, but not quickly enough to have +escaped the notice of_ PAUL, _returning from his midnight stroll. The_ +VICOMTE _stands for a moment looking up at the empty balcony. He laughs +softly to himself, and, throwing his cigarette away, passes through the +glass door into the house. All is now silent, save for the nightingales +and the distant bells. The curtain comes down for a moment to indicate +the passage of several hours. It rises again with the sun_. LUCREZIA's +_window opens and she appears on the balcony. She stands a moment with +one foot over the threshold of the long window in a listening pose. Then +her eyes fall on the better half of a pair of pink pyjamas lying +crumpled on the floor, like a body bereft of its soul; with her bare +foot she turns it over. A little shudder plucks at her nerves, and she +shakes her head as though, by this symbolic act, to shake off something +clinging and contaminating. Then she steps out into the full glory of +the early sun, stretching out her arms to the radiance. She bows her +face into her hands, crying out loud to herself_.) LUCREZIA. Oh, why, +why, why? (_The last of these Why's is caught by the_ WAITER, _who has +crept forth in shirt-sleeves and list-slippers, duster in hand, to clean +the tables. He looks up at her admiringly, passes his tongue over his +lips. Then, with a sigh, turns to dust the tables_.) + + + +CURTAIN. + + + + +III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET + + + +I + + +Young Spode was not a snob; he was too intelligent for that, too +fundamentally decent. Not a snob; but all the same he could not help +feeling very well pleased at the thought that he was dining, alone and +intimately, with Lord Badgery. It was a definite event in his life, a +step forward, he felt, towards that final success, social, material, and +literary, which he had come to London with the fixed intention of +making. The conquest and capture of Badgery was an almost essential +strategical move in the campaign. + +Edmund, forty-seventh Baron Badgery, was a lineal descendant of that +Edmund, surnamed Le Blayreau, who landed on English soil in the train of +William the Conqueror. Ennobled by William Rufus, the Badgerys had been +one of the very few baronial families to survive the Wars of the Roses +and all the other changes and chances of English history. They were a +sensible and philoprogenitive race. No Badgery had ever fought in any +war, no Badgery had ever engaged in any kind of politics. They had been +content to live and quietly to propagate their species in a huge +machicolated Norman castle, surrounded by a triple moat, only sallying +forth to cultivate their property and to collect their rents. In the +eighteenth century, when life had become relatively secure, the Badgerys +began to venture forth into civilised society. From boorish squires they +blossomed into _grands seigneurs_, patrons of the arts, virtuosi. Their +property was large, they were rich; and with the growth of industrialism +their riches also grew. Villages on their estate turned into +manufacturing towns, unsuspected coal was discovered beneath the surface +of their barren moorlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century the +Badgerys were among the richest of English noble families. The +forty-seventh baron disposed of an income of at least two hundred +thousand pounds a year. Following the great Badgery tradition, he had +refused to have anything to do with politics or war. He occupied himself +by collecting pictures; he took an interest in theatrical productions; +he was the friend and patron of men of letters, of painters, and +musician. A personage, in a word, of considerable consequence in that +particular world in which young Spode had elected to make his success. + +Spode had only recently left the university. Simon Gollamy, the editor +of the _World's Review_ (the "Best of all possible Worlds"), had got to +know him--he was always on the look out for youthful talent--had seen +possibilities in the young man, and appointed him art critic of his +paper. Gollamy liked to have young and teachable people about him. The +possession of disciples flattered his vanity, and he found it easier, +moreover, to run his paper with docile collaborators than with men grown +obstinate and case-hardened with age. Spode had not done badly at his +new job. At any rate, his articles had been intelligent enough to arouse +the interest of Lord Badgery. It was, ultimately, to them that he owed +the honour of sitting to night in the dining-room of Badgery House. + +Fortified by several varieties of wine and a glass of aged brandy, Spode +felt more confident and at ease than he had done the whole evening. +Badgery was rather a disquieting host. He had an alarming habit of +changing the subject of any conversation that had lasted for more than +two minutes. Spode had found it, for example, horribly mortifying when +his host, cutting across what was, he prided himself, a particularly +subtle and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a +wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked +parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously towards him, fancying +that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white, +fleshy, Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There +was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely +want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his +irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about +parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story, when +his host began to talk about Beethoven. And so the game went on. Spode +cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of +ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto +Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish +architecture. Lord Badgery thought him the most charming young man, and +so intelligent. + +"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as +he spoke, "we'll go and look at the pictures." + +Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realised that he had drunk +just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk +deliberately, plant his feet consciously, one after the other. + +"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery +complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last +week; but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their +portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think? +Why couldn't they have chosen Gainsborough, or even Reynolds? I've had +all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It's such a comfort to +know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all +about the ancient Hittites?" + +"Well...." the young man replied, with befitting modesty. + +"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a +case near the dining-room door. "It's not Greek, or Egyptian, or +Persian, or anything else; so if it isn't ancient Hittite, I don't know +what it is. And that reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger, +the Circus King...." and, without giving Spode time to examine the +Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now +and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or +beauty. + +"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as +the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about +Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous +Sanger. "What a perfect man, isn't he? He used to...." + +"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of +a tall folding door. "I must apologise for it. It looks like a +roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches and there +was suddenly light--light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly +receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare +say you've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little +insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used +to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about +the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the +cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them: +mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now I'm rather proud of this +Poussin; he painted it for Scarron." + +"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though +he were modelling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of +those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they re caught up, as it +were, and stemmed by that single godlike form opposing them with his +contrary movement! And the draperies...." + +But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little +fifteenth-century Virgin of carved wood. + +"School of Rheims," he explained. + +They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest +to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would +have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in +front of some of these lovely things. But it was not permitted. + +The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At +the sight of what the lights revealed, Spode gasped. + +"It's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons +dorés où se déploie un luxe insolent. You know." + +"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of +its kind, I flatter myself, outside the State Apartments at Windsor." + +Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the +objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in leathers, in +embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most +fantastic shapes and colours, all the queer products of a decadent +tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the +walls--a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Ettys, a big +Haydon, a slight pretty water-colour of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil +of Blake and arsenic poisoner, a score of others. But the picture which +arrested Spode's attention was a medium sized canvas representing +Troilus riding into Troy among the flowers and plaudits of an admiring +crowd, and oblivious (you could see from his expression) of everything +but the eyes of Cressida, who looked down at him from a window, with +Pandarus smiling over her shoulder. + +"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed. + +"Ah, you've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased. + +"What bright harmonious colours! Like Etty's, only stronger, not so +obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of +Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in +taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly. + +"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered, "It's by +his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work. But +nobody seems to know anything about him. And he seems to have done so +little." + +This time it was the younger man who interrupted. + +"Tillotson, Tillotson...." He put his hand to his forehead. A frown +incongruously distorted his round, floridly curved face. No ... yes, I +have it. He looked up triumphantly with serene and childish brows. +"Tillotson, Walter Tillotson--the man's still alive." + +Badgery smiled. "This picture was painted in 1846, you know." + +"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his +masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it's 1913 now; that's to say +he's only ninety-three. Not as old as Titian yet." + +"But he's not been heard of since 1860," Lord Badgery protested. + +"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made +the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the +archives of the _World's Review_.(One has to bring them up to date every +year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these t old birds +chooses to shuffle off suddenly.) Well, there, among them--I remember my +astonishment at the time--there I found Walter Tillotson's biography. +Pretty full to 1860, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the +early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the +East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious +conclusion: the old chap isn't dead yet. He's just been overlooked +somehow." + +"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him, +Spode--you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescoes round +this room. It's just what I've always vainly longed for a real +nineteenth-century artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must +find him at once--at once." + +Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement. + +"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. "We'd +clear away all these cases and have the whole of that wall filled by a +heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent', or +Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved' anything like that, +provided it's in the grand manner of the 'thirties and 'forties. And +here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else +something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast. +Then we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something +Mauro-Gothic. And on these walls I'll have mirrors, or no! let me +see...." + +He sank into meditative silence, from which he finally roused himself to +shout: + +"The old man, the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old +creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our +secret. Oh, it's too perfect, it's incredible! Think of the frescoes." + +Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a +single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour. + + + + +II + + +Three weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon +somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one. +"Found.--SPODE." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord +Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman +padded away on noiseless feet. + +Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a +room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The +frescoes, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling.... And a small, +shrivelled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick +like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away, +painting away.... Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or +why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt +of Clarence. ... Lord Badgery was asleep. + +Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by +six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber, +engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-à -brac. Spode found +him looking hot and out of breath. + +"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. You see me already preparing for +the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him. + +"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He's ninety-seven this +year. Born in 1816. Incredible, isn't it! There, I'm beginning at the +wrong end." + +"Begin where you like," said Badgery genially. + +"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You've no idea what a +job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story, +immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some +day. At any rate, I found him at last." + +"Where?" + +"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and +lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was +he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he +did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the 'sixties, to go to +Palestine to get local colour for his religious pictures--scapegoats and +things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount +Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor, +he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years." + +"But what did he do all that time?" + +"Oh, he painted, and started a mission, and converted three Turks, and +taught the local Pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, and +perspective, and God knows what else. Then, in about 1904, it seems to +have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away +from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England, +only to find that everyone he had known was dead, that the dealers had +never heard of him and wouldn't buy his pictures, that he was simply a +ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a +girl's school in Holloway, and there he's been ever since, growing older +and older, and feebler and feebler, and blinder and deafer, and +generally more gaga, until finally the school has given him the sack. He +had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind +of black hole in a basement full of beetles. When his ten pounds are +spent, I suppose he'll just quietly die there." + +Badgery held up a white hand. "No more, no more. I find literature quite +depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer. +Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?" + +"But he can't paint. He's too blind and palsied." + +"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what's the good of the +old creature?" + +"Well, if you put it like that...." Spode began. + +"I shall never have my frescoes. Ring the bell, will you?" + +Spode rang. + +"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on +Lord Badgery petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for +occupying a place in the sun." + +"He doesn't have much sun in his basement." + +The footman appeared at the door. + +"Get someone to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery +commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the +confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor, the +pictures unhooked. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more +comfortable there." + +He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs. + +"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode +sympathetically. + +"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me. + +"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got +ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you'd seen the +black-beetles in his basement!" + +"Enough enough. I'll do everything you think fitting." + +"I thought we might get up a subscription amongst lovers of the arts." + +"There aren't any," said Badgery. + +"No; but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobbism." + +"Not unless you give them something for their money." + +"That's true. I hadn't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment. +"We might have a dinner in his honour. The Great Tillotson Banquet. +Doyen of the British Art. A Link with the Past. Can't you see it in the +papers? I'd make a stunt of it in the _World's Review_. That ought to +bring in the snobs." + +"And we'll invite a lot of artists and critics--all the ones who can't +stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery +laughed. Then his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it'll +be a very poor second best to my frescoes. You'll stay to dinner, of +course." + +"Well, since you suggest it. Thanks very much." + + + + +III + + +The Tillotson Banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later. +Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent +organiser. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Café Bomba, and was +successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty +persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out +invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on +Tillotson in the _World's Review_--one of those charming, witty articles +couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt with which one +speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself. +He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's +endless stories about Asia Minor and the Great Exhibition of '51 and +Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another +age. + +Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of +South Holloway. A little grey light percolated through the area bars, +forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent +itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an inkpot, among the +inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the spur +smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to moulder secretly +at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a +washstand and chest of drawers, a table and one or two chairs, lurked in +the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open. +Hither Spode now came almost every day, bringing the old man news of the +progress of the banquet scheme. Every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting +in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny +puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore grey hairs," Spode +reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on +that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr. +Tillotson would turn in his chair, stare in the direction of the door +with blinking, uncertain eyes. He was always full of apologies for being +so slow in recognising who was there. + +"No discourtesy meant," he would say, after asking. "It's not as if I +had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark and my sight isn't what it +was." + +After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of +the window at the area railings, would say: + +"Ah, this is the plate for somebody with good sight. It's the place for +looking at ankles. It's the grand stand." + +It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual, and Mr. +Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode, +as punctually laughed. + +"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had +died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and +fashion. You'll find some changes." + +"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode +could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it, that he had +forgotten the black hole and the black-beetles and the almost exhausted +ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing +piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just +when you did. Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the +world. I shall have money, and in a little while--who knows?--I shall be +able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting +better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy." + +Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and nodded his +head in affirmation of his words. + +"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed +for shame at the cruelty of the words. + +But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their +significance. + +"Life to come," he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff +not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No +life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement of +course. You re very young Mr. Spode." + +"Well, I'm not so old as I was," Spode replied. "You know how +middle-aged one is as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Now I'm old enough +to know I'm young." + +Spode was about to develop this little paradox further, but he noticed +that Mr. Tillotson had not been listening. He made a note of the gambit +for use in companies that were more appreciative of the subtleties. + +"You were talking about the 'Origin of Species,'" he said. + +"Was I?" said Mr. Tillotson, waking from reverie. + +"About its effect on your faith, Mr. Tillotson." + +"To be sure, yes. It shattered my faith. But I remember a fine thing by +the Poet Laureate, something about there being more faith in honest +doubt, believe me, than in all the ... all the ...: I forget exactly +what; but you see the train of thought. Oh, it was a bad time for +religion. I am glad my master Haydon never lived to see it. He was a man +of fervour. I remember him pacing up and down his studio in Lisson +Grove, singing and shouting and praying all at once. It used almost to +frighten me. Oh, but he was a wonderful man, a great man. Take him for +all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. As usual, the Bard is +right. But it was all very long ago, before your time, Mr. Spode." + +"Well, I'm not as old as I was," said Spode, in the hope of having his +paradox appreciated this time. But Mr. Tillotson went on without +noticing the interruption. + +"It's a very, very long time. And yet, when I look back on it, it all +seems but a day or two ago. Strange that each day should seem so long +and that many days added together should be less than an hour. How +clearly I can see old Haydon pacing up and down! Much more clearly, +indeed, than I see you, Mr. Spode. The eyes of memory don t grow dim. +But my sight is improving, I assure you; it's improving daily. I shall +soon be able to see those ankles." He laughed like a cracked bell--one +of those little old bells, Spode fancied, that ring, with much rattling +of wires, in the far-off servants quarters of ancient houses. "And very +soon," Mr. Tillotson went on, "I shall be painting again. Ah, Mr. Spode, +my luck is extraordinary. I believe in it, I trust in it. And after all, +what is luck? Simply another name for Providence, in spite of the Origin +of Species and the rest of it. How right the Laureate was when he said +that there was more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the +... er, the ... er ... well, you know. I regard you, Mr. Spode, as the +emissary of Providence. Your coming marked a turning-point in my life, +and the beginning, for me, of happier days. Do you know, one of the +first things I shall do when my fortunes are restored will be to buy a +hedgehog." + +"A hedgehog, Mr. Tillotson?" + +"For the blackbeetles. There's nothing like a hedgehog for beetles. It +will eat blackbeetles till it's sick, till it dies of surfeit. That +reminds me of the time when I told my poor great master Haydon--in joke, +of course--that he ought to send in a cartoon of King John dying of a +surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament. As +I told him, it's a most notable event in the annals of British +liberty--the providential and exemplary removal of a tyrant." + +Mr. Tillotson laughed again--the little bell in the deserted house; a +ghostly hand pulling the cord in the drawing-room, and phantom footmen +responding to the thin, flawed note. + +"I remember he laughed, laughed like a bull in his old grand manner. But +oh, it was a terrible blow when they rejected his design, a terrible +blow. It was the first and fundamental cause of his suicide." + +Mr. Tillotson paused. There was a long silence. Spode felt strangely +moved, he hardly knew why, in the presence of this man, so frail, so +ancient, in body three parts dead, in the spirit so full of life and +hopeful patience. He felt ashamed. What was the use of his own youth and +cleverness? He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds +rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile +activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were +always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! widewinged and +beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only +visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. Those gracious +visitants he was for ever using all his energies to drive away. But this +old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of +it--his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and +going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged +creatures. He felt ashamed. But then, was it possible to alter one's +life? Wasn't it a little absurd to risk a conversion? Spode shrugged his +shoulders. + +"I'll get you a hedgehog at once," he said. "They're sure to have some +at Whiteley's." + +Before he left that evening Spode made an alarming discovery. Mr. +Tillotson did not possess a dress-suit. It was hopeless to think of +getting one made at this short notice, and, besides, what an unnecessary +expense! + +"We shall have to borrow a suit, Mr. Tillotson. I ought to have thought +of that before." + +"Dear me, dear me." Mr. Tillotson was a little chagrined by this unlucky +discovery. "Borrow a suit?" + +Spode hurried away for counsel to Badgery House. Lord Badgery +surprisingly rose to the occasion. "Ask Boreham to come and see me," he +told the footman, who answered his ring. + +Boreham was one of those immemorial butlers who linger on, generation +after generation, in the houses of the great. He was over eighty now, +bent, dried up, shrivelled with age. + +"All old men are about the same size," said Lord Badgery. It was a +comforting theory. "Ah, here he is. Have you got a spare suit of evening +clothes, Boreham?" + +"I have an old suit, my lord, that I stopped wearing in let me see was +it nineteen seven or eight?" + +"That's the very thing. I should be most grateful, Boreham, if you could +lend it to me for Mr. Spode here for a day." + +The old man went out, and soon reappeared carrying over his arm a very +old black suit. He held up the coat and trousers for inspection. In the +light of day they were deplorable. + +"You've no idea, sir," said Boreham deprecatingly to Spode you've no +idea how easy things get stained with grease and gravy and what not. +However careful you are, sir--however careful. + +"I should imagine so." Spode was sympathetic. + +"However careful, sir." + +"But in artificial light they'll look all right." + +"Perfectly all right," Lord Badgery repeated. "Thank you, Boreham; you +shall have them back on Thursday." + +"You re welcome, my lord, I'm sure." And the old man bowed and +disappeared. + +On the afternoon of the great day Spode carried up to Holloway a parcel +containing Boreham's retired evening-suit and all the necessary +appurtenances in the way of shirts and collars. Owing to the darkness +and his own feeble sight Mr. Tillotson was happily unaware of the +defects in the suit. He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. It +was with some difficulty that Spode could prevent him, although it was +only three o'clock, from starting his toilet on the spot. + +"Take it easy, Mr. Tillotson, take it easy. We needn't start till +half-past seven, you know." + +Spode left an hour later, and as soon as he was safely out of the room +Mr. Tillotson began to prepare himself for the banquet. He lighted the +gas and a couple of candles, and, blinking myopically at the image that +fronted him in the tiny looking-glass that stood on his chest of +drawers, he set to work, with all the ardour of a young girl preparing +for her first ball. At six o'clock, when the last touches had been +given, he was not unsatisfied. + +He marched up and down his cellar, humming to himself the gay song which +had been so popular in his middle years: + + "_Oh, oh, Anna, Maria Jones!_ + _Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones!_" + +Spode arrived an hour later in Lord Badgery's second Rolls-Royce. +Opening the door of the old man's dungeon, he stood for a moment, +wide-eyed with astonishment, on the threshold. Mr. Tillotson was +standing by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one +leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude. The +effect of the candlelight shining on his face was to deepen every line +and wrinkle with intense black shadow; he looked immeasurably old. It +was a noble and pathetic head. On the other hand, Boreham's out-worn +evening-suit was simply buffoonish. The coat was too long in the sleeves +and the tail; the trousers bagged in elephantine creases about his +ankles. Some of the grease-spots were visible even in candlelight. The +white tie, over which Mr. Tillotson had taken infinite pains and which +he believed in his purblindness to be perfect, was fantastically +lop-sided. He had buttoned up his waistcoat in such a fashion that one +button was widowed of its hole and one hole of its button. Across his +shirt front lay the broad green ribbon of some unknown Order. + +"Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones," Mr. Tillotson +concluded in a gnat-like voice before welcoming his visitor. + +"Well, Spode, here you are. I'm dressed already, you see. The suit, I +flatter myself, fits very well, almost as though it had been made for +me. I am all gratitude to the gentleman who was kind enough to lend it +to me; I shall take the greatest care of it. It's a dangerous thing to +lend clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. The Bard is +always right." + +"Just one thing," said Spode. "A touch to your waistcoat." He unbuttoned +the dissipated garment and did it up again more symmetrically. + +Mr. Tillotson was a little piqued at being found so absurdly in the +wrong. + +"Thanks, thanks," he said, protestingly, trying to edge away from his +valet. "It's all right, you know; I can do it myself. Foolish oversight. +I flatter myself the suit fits very well." + +"And perhaps the tie might...." Spode began tentatively. But the old +man would not hear of it. + +"No, no. The tie's all right. I can tie a tie, Mr. Spode. The tie's all +right. Leave it as it is, I beg." + +"I like your Order." + +Mr. Tillotson looked down complacently at his shirt front. "Ah, you've +noticed my Order. It's a long time since I wore that. It was given me by +the Grand Porte, you know, for services rendered in the Russo-Turkish +War. It's the Order of Chastity, the second class. They only give the +first class to crowned heads, you know--browned heads and ambassadors. +And only Pashas of the highest rank get the second. Mine's the second. +They only give the first class to crowned heads...." + +"Of course, of course," said Spode. + +"Do you think I look all right, Mr. Spode?" Mr. Tillotson asked, a +little anxiously. + +"Splendid, Mr. Tillotson--splendid. The Order's, magnificent." + +The old man's face brightened once more. "I flatter myself," he said, +"that this borrowed suit fits me very well. But I don't like borrowing +clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend, you know. And the +Bard is always right." + +"Ugh, there's one of those horrible beetles!" Spode exclaimed. + +Mr. Tillotson bent down and stared at the floor. "I see it," he said, +and stamped on a small piece of coal, which crunched to powder under his +foot. "I shall certainly buy a hedgehog." + +It was time for them to start. A crowd of little boys and girls had +collected round Lord Badgery's enormous car. The chauffeur, who felt +that honour and dignity were at stake, pretended not to notice the +children, but sat gazing, like a statue, into eternity. At the sight of +Spode and Mr. Tillotson emerging from the house a yell of mingled awe +and derision went up. It subsided to an astonished silence as they +climbed into the car. "Bomba's," Spode directed. The Rolls-Royce gave a +faintly stertorous sigh and began to move. The children yelled again, +and ran along beside the car, waving their arms in a frenzy of +excitement. It was then that Mr. Tillotson, with an incomparably noble +gesture, leaned forward and tossed among the seething crowd of urchins +his three last coppers. + + + + +IV + + +In Bomba's big room the company was assembling. The long gilt-edged +mirrors reflected a singular collection of people. Middle-aged +Academicians shot suspicious glances at youths whom they suspected, only +too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist +Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered +with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, +those indefatigable hunters of artistic big game, came on one another +all unawares in this well-stored menagerie, where each had expected to +hunt alone, and were filled with rage. Through this crowd of mutually +repellent vanities Lord Badgery moved with a suavity that seemed +unconscious of all the feuds and hatreds. He was enjoying himself +immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the +Hanoverian nose, the little lustreless pig's eyes, the pale thick lips, +there lurked a small devil of happy malice that rocked with laughter. + +"So nice of you to have come, Mrs. Mandragore, to do honour to England's +artistic past. And I'm so glad to see you've brought dear Mrs. Cayman. +And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it is! I hadn't noticed her before. How +delightful! I knew we could depend on your love of art." + +And he hurried away to seize the opportunity of introducing that eminent +sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young critic who had called +him, in the public prints, a monumental mason. + +A moment later the Maître d'Hôtel came to the door of the gilded saloon +and announced, loudly and impressively, "Mr. Walter Tillotson." Guided +from behind by young Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and +hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, +painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned moth, over his filmy eyes. +Once inside the door he halted and drew himself up with a conscious +assumption of dignity. Lord Badgery hurried forward and seized his hand. + +"Welcome, Mr. Tillotson--welcome in the name of English art!" + +Mr. Tillotson inclined his head in silence. He was too full of emotion +to be able to reply. + +"I should like to introduce you to a few of your younger colleagues, +who have assembled here to do you honour." + +Lord Badgery presented everyone in the room to the old painter, who +bowed, shook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found +himself unable to speak. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore +all said charming things. + +Dinner was served; the party took their places. Lord Badgery sat at the +head of the table, with Mr. Tillotson on his right hand and Sir Herbert +Herne on his left. Confronted with Bomba's succulent cooking and Bomba's +wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of +one who has lived on greens and potatoes for ten years among the +blackbeetles. After the second glass of wine he began to talk, suddenly +and in a flood, as though a sluice had been pulled up. + +"In Asia Minor," he began, "it is the custom when one goes to dinner, to +hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. _Eructavit cor meum_, as +the Psalmist has it; he was an Oriental himself." + +Spode had arranged to sit next to Mrs. Cayman; he had designs upon her. +She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wanted +to bamboozle her into buying some of his young friends' pictures. + +"In a cellar?" Mrs. Cayman was saying, "with, blackbeetles? Oh, how +dreadful! Poor old man! And he's ninety-seven, didn't you say? Isn't +that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of +course, one wishes one could have given more oneself. But then, you +know, one has so many expenses, and things are so difficult now." + +"I know, I know," said Spode, with feeling. + +"It's all because of Labour," Mrs. Cayman explained. "Of course, I +should simply love to have him in to dinner sometimes. But, then, I feel +he's really too old, too _farouche_ and _gâteux_; it would not be doing +a kindness to him, would it? And so you are working with Mr. Gollamy +now? What a charming man, so talented, such conversation...." + +"_Eructavit cor meum_," said Mr. Tillotson for the third time. Lord +Badgery tried to head him off the subject of Turkish etiquette, but in +vain. + +By half-past nine a kinder vinolent atmosphere had put to sleep the +hatreds and suspicions of before dinner. Sir Herbert Herne had +discovered that the young Cubist sitting next him was not insane and +actually knew a surprising amount about the Old Masters. For their part +these young men had realised that their elders were not at all +malignant; they were just very stupid and pathetic. It was only in the +bosoms of Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore that hatred still +reigned undiminished. Being ladies and old-fashioned, they had drunk +almost no wine. + +The moment for speech-making arrived. Lord Badgery rose to his feet, +said what was expected of him, and called upon Sir Herbert to propose +the toast of the evening. Sir Herbert coughed, smiled and began. In the +course of a speech that lasted twenty minutes he told anecdotes of Mr. +Gladstone, Lord Leighton, Sir Almo Tadema, and the late Bishop, of +Bombay; he made three puns, he quoted Shakespeare and Whittier, he was +playful, he was eloquent, he was grave.... At the end of his harangue +Sir Herbert handed to Mr. Tillotson a silk purse containing fifty-eight +pounds ten shillings, the total amount of the subscription. The old +man's health was drunk with acclamation. + +Mr. Tillotson rose with difficulty to his feet. The dry, snakelike skin +of his face was flushed; his tie was more crooked than ever; the green +ribbon of the Order of Chastity of the second class had somehow climbed +tip his crumpled and maculate shirt front. + +"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began in a choking voice, and then +broke down completely. It was a very painful and pathetic spectacle. A +feeling of intense discomfort afflicted the minds of all who looked upon +that trembling relic of a man, as he stood there weeping and stammering. +It was as though a breath of the wind of death had blown suddenly +through the room, lifting the vapours of wine and tobacco-smoke, +quenching the laughter and the candle flames. Eyes floated uneasily, not +knowing where to look. Lord Badgery, with great presence of mind, +offered the old man a glass of wine. Mr. Tillotson began to recover. The +guests heard him murmur a few disconnected words. + +"This great honour ... overwhelmed with kindness ... this magnificent +banquet ... not used to it ... in Asia Minor ... _eructuvit cor meum_." + +At this point Lord Badgery plucked sharply at one of his long coat +tails. Mr. Tillotson paused, took another sip of wine, and then went on +with a newly won coherence and energy. + +"The life of the artist is a hard one. His work is unlike other men's +work, which may be done mechanically, by rote and almost, as it were, +in sleep. It demands from him a constant expense of spirit. He gives +continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is +true much fame, it may be--but of material blessings, very few. It is +eighty years since first I devoted my life to the service of art; eighty +years, and almost every one of those years has brought me fresh and +painful proof of what I have been saying: the artist's life is a hard +one." + +This unexpected deviation into sense increased the general feeling of +discomfort. It became necessary to take the old man seriously, to regard +him as a human being. Up till then he had been no more than an object of +curiosity, a mummy in an absurd suit of evening-clothes with a green +ribbon across the shirt front. People could not help wishing that they +had subscribed a little more. Fifty-eight pounds ten it wasn't enormous. +But happily for the peace of mind of the company, Mr. Tillotson paused +again, took another sip of wine, and began to live up to his proper +character by talking absurdly. + +"When I consider the life of that great man, Benjamin Robert Haydon, one +of the greatest men England has ever produced...." The audience heaved a +sigh of relief; this was all as it should be. There was a burst of loud +bravoing and clapping. Mr. Tillotson turned his dim eyes round the room, +and smiled gratefully at the misty figures he beheld. "That great man, +Benjamin Robert Haydon," he continued, "whom I am proud to call my +master and who, it rejoices my heart to see, still lives in your memory +and esteem, that great man, one of the greatest that England has ever +produced, led a life so deplorable that I cannot think of it without a +tear." + +And with infinite repetitions and divagations, Mr. Tillotson related the +history of B.R. Haydon, his imprisonments for debt, his battle with the +Academy, his triumphs, his failures, his despair, his suicide. Half-past +ten struck. Mr. Tillotson was declaiming against the stupid and +prejudiced judges who had rejected Haydon's designs for the decoration +of the new Houses of Parliament in favour of the paltriest German +scribblings. + +"That great man, one of the greatest England has ever produced, that +great Benjamin Robert Haydon, whom I am proud to call my master and who, +it rejoices me to see, still lives on in your memory and esteem--at that +affront his great heart burst; it was the unkindest cut of all. He who +had worked all his life for the recognition, of the artist by the +State, he who had petitioned every Prime Minister, including the Duke of +Wellington, for thirty years, begging them to employ artists to decorate +public buildings, he to whom the scheme for decorating the Houses of +Parliament was undeniably due...." Mr. Tillotson lost a grip on his +syntax and began a new sentence. "It was the unkindest cut of all, it +was the last straw. The artist's life is a hard one." + +At eleven Mr. Tillotson was talking about the pre-Raphaelites. At a +quarter past he had begun to tell the story of B.R. Haydon all over +again. At twenty-five minutes to twelve he collapsed quite speechless +into his chair. Most of the guests had already gone away; the few who +remained made haste to depart. Lord Badgery led the old man to the door +and packed him into the second Rolls-Royce. The Tillotson Banquet was +over; it had been a pleasant evening, but a little too long. + +Spode walked back to his rooms in Bloomsbury, whistling as he went. The +arc lamps of Oxford Street reflected in the polished surface of the +road; canals of dark bronze. He would have to bring that into an article +some time. The Cayman woman had been very successfully nobbled. "Voi che +sapete," he whistled--somewhat out of tune, but he could not hear that. + +When Mr. Tillotson's landlady came in to call him on the following +morning, she found the old man lying fully dressed on his bed. He looked +very ill and very, very old; Boreham's dress-suit was in a terrible +state, and the green ribbon of the Order of Chastity was ruined. Mr. +Tillotson lay very still, but he was not asleep. Hearing the sound of +footsteps, he opened his eyes a little and faintly groaned. His landlady +looked down at him menacingly. + +"Disgusting!" she said, "disgusting, I call it. At your age." + +Mr. Tillotson groaned again. Making a great effort, he drew out of his +trouser pocket a large silk purse, opened it, and extracted a sovereign. + +"The artist's life is a hard one, Mrs. Green," he said, handing her the +coin. "Would you mind sending for the doctor? I don't feel very well. +And oh, what shall I do about these clothes? What shall I say to the +gentleman who was kind enough to lend them to me? Loan oft loseth both +itself and friend. The Bard is always right." + + + + +IV: GREEN TUNNELS + + +"In the Italian gardens of the thirteenth century...." Mr. Buzzacott +interrupted himself to take another helping of the risotto which was +being offered him. "Excellent risotto this," he observed. "Nobody who +was not born in Milan can make it properly. So they say." + +"So they say," Mr. Topes repeated in his sad, apologetic voice, and +helped himself in his turn. + +"Personally," said Mrs. Topes, with decision, "I find all Italian +cooking abominable. I don't like the oil--especially hot. No, thank +you." She recoiled from the proffered dish. + +After the first mouthful Mr. Buzzacott put down his fork. "In the +Italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he began again, making with +his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a +clutch at his beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of +green tunnels." + +"Green tunnels?" Barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence. +"Green tunnels?" + +"Yes, my dear," said her father. "Green tunnels. Arched alleys covered +with vines or other creeping plants. Their length was often very +considerable." + +But Barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. +Green tunnels--the word had floated down to her, through profound depths +of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the +sound of a strange-voiced bell. Green tunnels--what a wonderful idea. +She would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. +He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. +She pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and +scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured corals; endless dim green +corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. +Green-faced monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened +and shut. Green tunnels.... + +"I have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," +Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his pointed brown +beard--clutched and combed it with his long fingers. + +Mr. Topes looked up. The glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed +as he moved his head. "I know what you mean," he said. + +"I have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here." + +"It will take a long time to grow," said Mr. Topes. "In this sand, so +close to the sea, you will only be able to plant vines. And they come up +very slowly very slowly indeed." He shook his head and the points of +light danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his +grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. Then, suddenly, he +pulled himself up. A shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. He +wriggled uncomfortably. Then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he +gave vent to a quotation: + + _But at my back I always hear_ + _Time's winged chariot hurrying near_." + +He spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. He always found +it painfully difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; +and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were +always surging through his mind! + +"They don't grow so slowly as all that," said Mr. Buzzacott confidently. +He was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave +himself at least another forty years; indeed, he had not yet begun to +contemplate the possibility of ever concluding. + +"Miss Barbara will enjoy it, perhaps--your green tunnel." Mr. Topes +sighed and looked across the table at his host's daughter. + +Barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, +staring in front of her. The sound of her own name reached her faintly. +She turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself +confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of +the green tunnel--she stared at the shining circles--hung the eyes of a +goggling fish. They approached, floating, closer and closer, along the +dim submarine corridor. + +Confronted by this fixed regard, Mr. Topes looked away. What thoughtful +eyes! He couldn't remember ever to have seen eyes so full of thought. +There were certain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like hen +mild little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very +young. But he was old; it would be many years, in spite of Buzzacott, +before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. He took a sip of wine; +then, mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache. + +"Arthur!" + +At the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Topes started, raised his napkin to +his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. It was +only in moments of absent-mindedness that he ever offended, now. + +"The Marchese Prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said Mr. +Buzzacott suddenly. "I almost forgot to tell you." + +"One of these Italian marquises, I suppose," said Mrs. Topes, who was no +snob, except in England. She raised her chin with a little jerk. + +Mr. Buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "I +assure you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished +family. They are Genoese in origin. You remember their palace, Barbara? +Built by Alessi." + +Barbara looked up. "Oh yes," she said vaguely. "Alessi. I know." Alessi: +Aleppo--where a malignant and a turbaned Turk. _And_ a turbaned; that +had always seemed to her very funny. + +"Several of his ancestors," Mr. Buzzacott went on, "distinguished +themselves as vice-roys of Corsica. They did good work in the +suppression of rebellion. Strange, isn't it"--he turned parenthetically +to Mr. Topes--"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of +rebels? What a fuss people made of Corsica! That ridiculous book of +Gregorovius, for example. And the Irish, and the Poles, and all the rest +of them. It always seems to me very superfluous and absurd." + +"Isn't it, perhaps, a little natural?" Mr. Topes began timorously and +tentatively, but his host went on without listening. + +"The present marquis," he said, "is the head of the local Fascisti. They +have done no end of good work in this district in the way of preserving +law and order and keeping the lower classes in their place." + +"Ah, the Fascisti," Mrs. Topes repeated approvingly. "One would like to +see something of the kind in England. What with all these strikes...." + +"He has asked me for a subscription to the funds of the organisation. I +shall give him one, of course." + +"Of course." Mrs. Topes nodded. "My nephew, the one who was a major +during the war, volunteered in the last coal strike. He was sorry, I +know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'Aunt Annie,' he said to me, when +I saw him last, 'if there had been a fight we should have knocked them +out completely--completely.'" + +In Aleppo, the Fascisti, malignant _and_ turbaned, were fighting, under +the palm trees. Weren't they palm trees, those tufted green plumes? + +"What, no ice to-day? _Niente gelato?_" inquired Mr. Buzzacott as the +maid put down the compote of peaches on the table. + +Concetta apologised. The ice-making machine in the village had broken +down. There would be no ice till to-morrow. + +"Too bad," said Mr. Buzzacott. "_Troppo male, Concetta_." + +Under the palm trees, Barbara saw them: they pranced about, fighting. +They were mounted on big dogs, and in the trees were enormous +many-coloured birds. + +"Goodness me, the child's asleep." Mrs. Topes was proffering the dish of +peaches. "How much longer am I to hold this in front of your nose, +Barbara?" + +Barbara felt herself blushing. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, and took the +dish clumsily. + +"Day-dreaming. It's a bad habit." + +"It's one we all succumb to sometimes," put in Mr. Topes deprecatingly, +with a little nervous tremble of the head. + +"You may, my dear," said his wife. "I do not." + +Mr. Topes lowered his eyes to his plate and went on eating. + +"The marchese should be here at any moment now," said Mr. Buzzacott, +looking at his watch. "I hope he won't be late. I find I suffer so much +from any postponement of my siesta. This Italian heat," he added, with +growing plaintiveness, "one can't be too careful." + +"Ah, but when I was with my father in India," began Mrs. Topes in a tone +of superiority: "he was an Indian civilian, you know...." + +Aleppo, India--always the palm trees. Cavalcades of big dogs, and tigers +too. + +Concetta ushered in the marquis. Delighted. Pleased to meet. Speak +English? Yés, yéss. _Pocchino_. Mrs. Topes: and Mr. Topes, the +distinguished antiquarian. Ah, of course; know his name very well. My +daughter. Charmed. Often seen the signorina bathing. Admired the way she +dives. Beautiful--the hand made a long, caressing gesture. These +athletic English signorine. The teeth flashed astonishingly white in the +brown face, the dark eyes glittered. She felt herself blushing again, +looked away, smiled foolishly. The marquis had already turned back to +Mr. Buzzacott. + +"So you have decided to settle in our Carrarese." + +Well, not settled exactly; Mr. Buzzacott wouldn't go so far as to say +settled. A villine for the summer months. The winter in Rome. One was +forced to live abroad. Taxation in England.... Soon they were all +talking. Barbara looked at them. Beside the marquis they all seemed half +dead. His face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. +Her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; +and Mr. Topes was all dry and shrivelled; and Mrs. Topes looked more +than ever like something worked by clockwork. They were talking about +Socialism and Fascisti, and all that. Barbara did not listen to what +they were saying; but she looked at them, absorbed. + +Good-bye, good-bye. The animated face with its flash of a smile was +turned like a lamp from one to another. Now it was turned on her. +Perhaps one evening she would come, with her father, and the Signora +Topes. He and his sister gave little dances sometimes. Only the +gramophone, of course. But that was better than nothing, and the +signorina must dance divinely--another flash--he could see that. He +pressed her hand again. Good-bye. + +It was time for the siesta. + +"Don't forget to pull down the mosquito netting, my dear," Mr. Buzzacott +exhorted. "There is always a danger of anophylines." + +"All right, father." She moved towards the door without turning round to +answer him. He was always terribly tiresome about mosquito nets. Once +they had driven through the Campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed +in an improvised tent of netting. The monuments along the Appian Way had +loomed up mistily as through bridal veils. And how everyone had laughed. +But her father, of course, hadn't so much as noticed it. He never +noticed anything. + +"Is it at Berlin, that charming little Madonna of Montagna's?" Mr. Topes +abruptly asked. "The one with the Donor kneeling in the left-hand corner +as if about to kiss the foot of the Child." His spectacles flashed in +Mr. Buzzacott's direction. + +"Why do you ask?" + +"I don't know. I was just thinking of it." + +"I think you must mean the one in the Mond Collection." + +"Ah yes; very probably. In the Mond...." + +Barbara opened the door and walked into the twilight of her shuttered +room. It was hot even here; for another three hours it would hardly be +possible to stir. And that old idiot, Mrs. Topes, always made a fuss if +one came in to lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "In +India we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. +An Englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all +intents and purposes Italians _are_ natives." And so she always had to +put on shoes and stockings and a regular frock just at the hottest hour +of the day. What an old ass that woman was! She slipped off her clothes +as fast as she could. That was a little better. + +Standing in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe door she came to +the humiliating conclusion that she looked like a piece of badly toasted +bread. Brown face, brown neck and shoulders, brown arms, brown legs from +the knee downwards; but all the rest of her was white, silly, +effeminate, townish white. If only one could run about with no clothes +on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and +tumbled in the burning sand! Now she was just underdone, half-baked, and +wholly ridiculous. For a long time she looked at her pale image. She saw +herself running, bronzed all over, along the sand; or through a field of +flowers, narcissus and wild tulips; or in soft grass under grey olive +trees. She turned round with a sudden start. There, in the shadows +behind her.... No, of course there was nothing. + +It was that awful picture in a magazine she had looked at, so many years +ago, when she was a child. There was a lady sitting at her +dressing-table, doing her hair in front of the glass; and a huge, hairy +black monkey creeping up behind her. She always got the creeps when she +looked at herself in a mirror. It was very silly. But still. She turned +away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the +mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. The flies buzzed about her, +settled incessantly on her face. She shook her head, flapped at them +angrily with her hands. There would be peace if she let down the +netting. But she thought of the Appian Way seen mistily through the +bridal veil and preferred to suffer the flies. In the end she had to +surrender; the brutes were too much for her. But, at any rate, it wasn't +the fear of anophylines that made her lower the netting. + +Undisturbed now and motionless, she lay stretched stiffly out under the +transparent bell of gauze. A specimen under a glass case. The fancy +possessed her mind. She saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, +full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and mediæval spoons +and armour and Florentine jewellery and mummies and carved ivory and +illuminated manuscripts. But in one of the cases was a human being, +shut up there alive. + +All of a sudden she became horribly miserable. "Boring, boring, boring," +she whispered, formulating the words aloud. Would it never stop being +boring? The tears came into her eyes. How awful everything was! And +perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her life. Seventeen from +seventy was fifty three. Fifty three years of it. And if she lived to a +hundred there would be more than eighty. + +The thought depressed her all the evening. Even her bath after tea did +her no good. Swimming far out, far out, she lay there, floating on the +warm water. Sometimes she looked at the sky, sometimes she turned her +head towards the shore. Framed in their pinewoods, the villas looked as +small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. But behind +them, across the level plain, were the mountains. Sharp, bare peaks of +limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced +olive trees--they seemed marvellously close and clear in this evening +light. And beautiful, beautiful beyond words. But that, somehow, only +made things worse. And Shelley had lived a few miles farther up the +coast, there, behind the headland guarding the Gulf of Spezia. Shelley +had been drowned in this milk-warm sea. That made it worse too. + +The sun was getting very low and red over the sea. She swam slowly in. +On the beach Mrs. Topes waited, disapprovingly. She had known somebody, +a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. He sank +like a stone. Like a stone. The queer people Mrs. Topes had known! And +the funny things they did, the odd things that happened to them. + +Dinner that evening was duller than ever. Barbara went early to bed. All +night long the same old irritating cicada scraped and scraped among the +pine trees, monotonous and regular as clockwork. Zip zip, zip zip zip. +Boring, boring. Was the animal never bored by its own noise? It seemed +odd that it shouldn't be. But, when she came to think of it, nobody ever +did get bored with their own noise. Mrs. Topes, for example; she never +seemed to get bored. Zip zip, zip zip zip. The cicada went on without +pause. + +Concetta knocked at the door at half-past seven. The morning was as +bright and cloudless as all the mornings were. Barbara jumped up, looked +from one window at the mountains, from the other at the sea; all seemed +to be well with them. All was well with her, too, this morning. Seated +at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far +obscure corner of the room. A bathing dress and a bath-gown, sandals, a +handkerchief round her head, and she was ready. Sleep had left no +recollection of last night's mortal boredom. She ran downstairs. + +"Good morning, Mr. Topes." + +Mr. Topes was walking in the garden among the vines. He turned round, +took off his hat, smiled a greeting. + +"Good morning, Miss Barbara." He paused. Then, with an embarrassed +wriggle of introduction he went on; a queer little falter came into his +voice. "A real Chaucerian morning, Miss Barbara. A May-day morning--only +it happens to be September. Nature is fresh and bright, and there is at +least one specimen in this dream garden"--he wriggled more +uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round +spectacle lenses of the poet's 'yonge fresshe folkes.' He bowed in her +direction, smiled deprecatingly, and was silent. The remark, it seemed +to him, now that he had finished speaking, was somehow not as good as he +had thought it would be. + +Barbara laughed. "Chaucer! They used to make us read the _Canterbury +Tales_ at school. But they always bored me. Are you going to bathe?" + +"Not before breakfast." Mr. Topes shook his head. "One is getting a +little too old for that." + +"Is one?" Why did the silly old man always say 'one' when he meant 'I'? +She couldn't help laughing at him. "Well, I must hurry, or else I shall +be late for breakfast again, and you know how I catch it." + +She ran out, through the gate in the garden wall, across the beach, to +the striped red-and-white bathing cabin that stood before the house. +Fifty yards away she saw the Marchese Prampolini, still dripping from +the sea, running up towards his bathing hut. Catching sight of her, he +flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. Barbara waved +her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar--but at +this hour of the morning it was difficult not to have bad jolly +manners--and added the corrective of a stiff bow. After all, she had +only met him yesterday. Soon she was swimming out to sea, and, ugh! what +a lot of horrible huge jelly-fish there were. + +Mr. Topes had followed her slowly through the gate and across the sand. +He watched her running down from the cabin, slender as a boy, with +long, bounding strides. He watched her go jumping with great splashes +through the deepening water, then throw herself forward and begin to +swim. He watched her till she was no more than a small dark dot far out. + +Emerging from his cabin, the marquis met him walking slowly along the +beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as though he were +repeating something, a prayer or a poem, to himself. + +"Good morning, signore." The marquis shook him by the hand with a more +than English cordiality. + +"Good morning," replied Mr. Topes, allowing his hand to be shaken. He +resented this interruption of his thoughts. + +"She swims very well, Miss Buzzacott." + +"Very," assented Mr. Topes, and smiled to himself to think what +beautiful, poetical things he might have said, if he had chosen. + +"Well, so, so," said the marquis, too colloquial by half. He shook hands +again, and the two men went their respective ways. + +Barbara was still a hundred yards from the shore when she heard the +crescendo and dying boom of the gong floating out from the villa. Damn! +she'd be late again. She quickened her stroke and came splashing out +through the shallows, flushed and breathless. + +She'd be ten minutes late, she calculated; it would take her at least +that to do her hair and dress. Mrs. Topes would be on the war-path +again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as she +did, goodness only knew. She always succeeded in making herself horribly +offensive and unpleasant. + +The beach was quite deserted as she trotted, panting, across it, empty +to right and left as far as she could see. If only she had a horse to go +galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. Right away down to Bocca +d'Arno she'd go, swim the river--she saw herself crouching on the +horse's back, as he swam, with legs tucked up on the saddle, trying not +to get her feet wet--and gallop on again, goodness only knew where. + +In front of the cabin she suddenly halted. There in the ruffled sand she +had seen a writing. Big letters, faintly legible, sprawled across her +path. + +O CLARA D'ELLÉBEUSE. + +She pieced the dim letters together. They hadn't been there when she +started out to bathe. Who?... She looked round. The beach was quite +empty. And what was the meaning? "O Clara d'Ellébeuse." She took her +bath-gown from the cabin, slipped on her sandals, and ran back towards +the house as fast as she could. She felt most horribly frightened. + +It was a sultry, headachey sort of morning, with a hot sirocco that +stirred the bunting on the flagstaffs. By midday the thunderclouds had +covered half the sky. The sun still blazed on the sea, but over the +mountains all was black and indigo. The storm broke noisily overhead +just as they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee. + +"Arthur," said Mrs. Topes, painfully calm, "shut the shutters, please." + +She was not frightened, no. But she preferred not to see the lightning. +When the room was darkened, she began to talk, suavely and incessantly. + +Lying back in her deep arm-chair, Barbara was thinking of Clara +d'Ellébeuse. What did it mean and who was Clara d'Ellébeuse? And why had +he written it there for her to see? He--for there could be no doubt who +had written it. The flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she +knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. He had written it there while +she was swimming out. Written it and then run away. She rather liked +that--just an extraordinary word on the sand, like the footprint in +_Robinson Crusoe._ + +"Personally," Mrs. Topes was saying, "I prefer Harrod's." + +The thunder crashed and rattled. It was rather exhilarating, Barbara +thought; one felt, at any rate, that something was happening for a +change. She remembered the little room half-way up the stairs at Lady +Thingumy's house, with the bookshelves and the green curtains and the +orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug +who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. But that was +different--not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly +ugly. She saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert. Copper +coloured all over, with black hair. He was certainly very handsome. But +as for being in love, well ... what did that exactly mean? Perhaps when +she knew him better. Even now she fancied she detected something. O +Clara d'Ellébeuse. What an extraordinary thing it was. + +With his long fingers Mr. Buzzacott combed his beard. This winter, he +was thinking, he would put another thousand into Italian money when the +exchange was favourable. In the spring it always seemed to drop back +again. One could clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the +exchange went down to seventy. The income on three hundred was fifteen +pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. And +fifteen hundred lire, when you came to think of it, was really sixty +pounds. That was to say that one would make an addition of more than one +pound a week to one's income by this simple little speculation. He +became aware that Mrs. Topes had asked him a question. + +"Yes, yes, perfectly," he said. + +Mrs. Topes talked on; she was keeping up her morale. Was she right in +believing that the thunder sounded a little less alarmingly loud and +near? + +Mr. Topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. +Vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, +homeless, unhappy. He was thinking about beauty. There were certain +relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and +the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. But what about +them? Ah, that was the problem--that was the problem. And there was +youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were +so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to +get himself entangled among them. And he was after all so old and so +ineffective. He put on his spectacles again, and definition came into +the foggy world beyond his eyes. The shuttered room was very dark. He +could distinguish the Renaissance profile of Mr. Buzzacott, bearded and +delicately featured. In her deep arm-chair Barbara appeared, faintly +white, in an attitude relaxed and brooding. And Mrs. Topes was nothing +more than a voice in the darkness. She had got on to the marriage of the +Prince of Wales. Who would they eventually find for him? + +Clara d'Ellébeuse, Clara d'Ellébeuse. She saw herself so clearly as the +_marchesa_. They would have a house in Rome, a palace. She saw herself +in the Palazzo Spada--it had such a lovely vaulted passage leading from +the courtyard to the gardens at the back. "MARCHESA PRAMPOLINI, PALAZZO +SPADA, ROMA"--a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. And she +would go riding every day in the Pincio. "_Mi porta il mio cavallo_" she +would say to the footman, who answered the bell. _Porta_? Would that be +quite correct? Hardly. She'd have to take some proper Italian lessons to +talk to the servants. One must never be ridiculous before servants. +"_Voglio il mio cavallo._ Haughtily one would say it sitting at one's +writing-table in a riding-habit, without turning round. It would be a +green riding-habit, with a black tricorne hat, braided with silver. + +"_Prendero la mia collazzione al letto."_ Was that right for breakfast +in bed? Because she would have breakfast in bed, always. And when she +got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one +could see oneself sideface. She saw herself leaning forward, powdering +her nose, carefully, scientifically. With the monkey creeping up behind? +Ooh. Horrible! _Ho paura di questa scimmia, questo scimmione_. + +She would come back to lunch after her ride. Perhaps Prampolini would be +there; she had rather left him out of the picture so far. "_Dov' è il +Marchese?_" "_Nella sala di pranza, signora_." I began without you, I +was so hungry. _Pasta asciutta_. Where have you been, my love? Riding, +my dove. She supposed they'd get into the habit of saying that sort of +thing. Everyone seemed to. And you? I have been out with the Fascisti. + +Oh, these Fascisti! Would life be worth living when he was always going +out with pistols and bombs and things? They would bring him back one day +on a stretcher. She saw it. Pale, pale, with blood on him. _Il signore +è ferito. Nel petto. Gruvamente. E morto_. + +How could she bear it? It was too awful; too, too terrible. Her breath +came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she had been hurt. _E +morto, E morto_. The tears came into her eyes. + +She was roused suddenly by a dazzling light. The storm had receded far +enough into the distance to permit of Mrs. Topes's opening the shutters. + +"It's quite stopped raining." + +To be disturbed in one's intimate sorrow and self-abandonment at a +death-bed by a stranger's intrusion, an alien voice.... Barbara turned +her face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They +might see and ask her why she had been crying. She hated Mrs. Topes for +opening the shutters; at the inrush of the light something beautiful had +flown, an emotion had vanished, irrecoverably. It was a sacrilege. + +Mr. Buzzacott looked at his watch. "Too late, I fear, for a siesta now," +he said. "Suppose we ring for an early tea." + +"An endless succession of meals," said Mr. Topes, with a tremolo and a +sigh. "That's what life seems to be--real life." + +"I have been calculating"--Mr. Buzzacott turned his pale green eyes +towards his guest--"that I may be able to afford that pretty little +_cinque_ cassone, after all. It would be a bit of a squeeze." He played +with his beard. "But still...." + +After tea, Barbara and Mr. Topes went for a walk along the beach. She +didn't much want to go, but Mrs. Topes thought it would be good for her; +so she had to. The storm had passed and the sky over the sea was clear. +But the waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer +shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or +thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples +ordinarily expired. Smooth, shining expanses of water advanced and +receded like steel surfaces moved out and back by a huge machine. +Through the rain-washed air the mountains appeared with an incredible +clarity. Above them hung huge masses of cloud. + +"Clouds over Carrara," said Mr. Topes, deprecating his remark with a +little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. "I like to +fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among +these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the +clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. I imagine their ghosts"--his +voice trembled--"feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning +huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; +planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there's something +of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath +it." Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, "Yes, yes," though +she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "It's like Night on the +Medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. +And there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour--you see the +one I mean--there's a Bernini. All the passion's on the surface, +expressed; the gesture's caught at its most violent. And that sleek, +smug white fellow over there, that's a delicious absurd Canova." Mr. +Topes chuckled. + +"Why do you always talk about art?" said Barbara. "You bring these dead +people into everything. What do I know about Canova or whoever it is?" +They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a +lamp with life. He at least wasn't dead. She wondered whether the +letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. No, of course +not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out. + +Mr. Topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes +were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. +He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old +tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to +keep him from rotting away. They walked on for a long time in silence. + +"Here's the river," said Mr. Topes at last. + +A few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came +down slowly through the plain to the sea. Just inland from the beach it +was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, +and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the +storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more +intense than at ordinary times. And though all was so clear, there was a +mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. There was no sound +except the continuous breathing of the sea. They stood for a little +while, looking; then turned back. + +Far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. White +flannel trousers, a pink skirt. + +"Nature," Mr. Topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. "One always +comes back to nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like +these, one realises it. One lives now--more quietly, perhaps, but more +profoundly. Deep watery. Deep waters...." + +The figures drew closer. Wasn't it the marquis? And who was with him? +Barbara strained her eyes to see. + +"Most of one's life," Mr. Topes went on, "is one prolonged effort to +prevent oneself thinking. Your father and I, we collect pictures and +read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, +or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. Anything rather than +think calmly about the important things." + +Mr. Topes was silent. He looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, +at the great clouds, at his companion. A frail Montagna madonna, with +the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity +as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and +yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. He thought of death and +the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt +inclined to weep. + +The approaching couple were quite near now. + +"What a funny old walrus," said the lady. + +"Walrus? Your natural history is quite wrong." The marquis laughed. +"He's much too dry to be a walrus. I should suggest some sort of an old +cat." + +"Well, whatever he is, I'm sorry for that poor little girl. Think of +having nobody better to go about with!" + +"Pretty, isn't she?" + +"Yes, but too young, of course." + +"I like the innocence." + +"Innocence? Cher ami! These English girls. Oh, la la! They may look +innocent But, believe me...." + +"Sh, sh. They'll hear you." + +"Pooh, they don't understand Italian." + +The marquis raised his hand. "The old walrus...." he whispered; then +addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers. + +"Good evening, signorina. Good evening, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air +is always the purest, don't you find, eh?" + +Barbara nodded, leaving Mr. Topes to answer. It wasn't his sister. It +was the Russian woman, the one of whom Mrs. Topes used to say that it +was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had +turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked +at the line of her averted face. Mr. Topes was saying something about +the Pastoral Symphony. Purple face powder in the daylight; it looked +hideous. + +"Well, au revoir." + +The flash of the marquis's smile was directed at them. The Russian woman +turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy +white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous +ennui. + +"They jar a little," said Mr. Topes when they were out of earshot--"they +jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. They haven't the +innocence for this ... this...."--he wriggled and tremoloed out the +just, the all too precious word--"this prelapsarian landscape." + +He looked sideways at Barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully +frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What could he +adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? Tenderness.... + +"All this," he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the +sky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, +clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening +time." + +But that was not really what he wanted to say. + +"You see what I mean?" he asked dubiously. She made no reply. How could +she see? "This scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the +corresponding emotion. Those people were out of harmony. They weren't +clear and pure enough." He seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. +"It's an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could +feel it. Those people couldn't." He was feeling his way through +obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? "Certain poems express it. +You know Francis Jammes? I have thought so much of his work lately. Art +instead of life, as usual; but then I'm made that way. I can't help +thinking of Jammes. Those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about +Clara d'Ellébeuse." + +"Clara d'Ellébeuse?" She stopped and stared at him. + +"You know the lines?" Mr. Topes smiled delightedly. "This makes me +think, you make me think of them. '_F'aime dans les temps Clara +d'Ellébeuse_....' But, my dear Barbara, what is the matter?" + +She had started crying, for no reason whatever. + + + + +V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON + + +"What have I been doing since you saw me last?" Miss Penny repeated my +question in her loud, emphatic voice. "Well, when did you see me last?" + +"It must have been June," I computed. + +"Was that after I'd been proposed to by the Russian General? + +"Yes; I remember hearing about the Russian General." + +Miss Penny threw back her head and laughed. Her long ear-rings swung and +rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simile. And her +laughter was like brass, but that had been said before. + +"That was an uproarous incident. It's sad you should have heard of it. I +love my Russian General story. '_Vos yeux me rendent fou_.'" She laughed +again. + +_Vos yeux_--she had eyes like a hare's, flush with her head and very +bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness. What a +formidable woman. I felt sorry for the Russian General. + +"'_Sans coeur et sans entrallies_,'" she went on, quoting the poor +devil's words. "Such a delightful motto, don't you think? Like '_Sans +peur et sans reproche_.' But let me think; what have I been doing since +then?" Thoughtfully she bit into the crust of her bread with long, +sharp, white teeth. + +"Two mixed grills," I said parenthetically to the waiter. + +"But of course," exclaimed Miss Penny suddenly. "I haven't seen you +since my German trip. All sorts of adventures. My appendicitis; my nun." + +"Your nun?" + +"My marvellous nun. I must tell you all about her." + +"Do." Miss Penny's anecdotes were always curious. I looked forward to an +entertaining luncheon. + +"You knew I'd been in Germany this autumn?" + +"Well, I didn't, as a matter of fact. But still--" + +"I was just wandering round." Miss Penny described a circle in the air +with her gaudily jewelled hand. She always twinkled with massive and +improbable jewellery. + +"Wandering round, living on three pounds a week, partly amusing myself, +partly collecting material for a few little articles. 'What it Feels +Like to be a Conquered Nation'--sob-stuff for the Liberal press, you +know--and 'How the Hun is Trying to Wriggle out of the Indemnity,' for +the other fellows. One has to make the best of all possible worlds, +don't you find? But we mustn't talk shop. Well, I was wandering round, +and very pleasant I found it. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig. Then down to +Munich and all over the place. One fine day I got to Grauburg. You know +Grauburg? It's one of those picture-book German towns with a castle on a +hill, hanging beer-gardens, a Gothic church, an old university, a river, +a pretty bridge, and forests all round. Charming. But I hadn't much +opportunity to appreciate the beauties of the place. The day after I +arrived there--bang!--I went down with appendicitis--screaming, I may +add." + +"But how appalling!" + +"They whisked me off to hospital, and cut me open before you could say +knife. Excellent surgeon, highly efficient Sisters of Charity to nurse +me--I couldn't have been in better hands. But it was a bore being tied +there by the leg for four weeks--a great bore. Still, the thing had its +compensations. There was my nun, for example. Ah, here's the food, thank +Heaven!" + +The mixed grill proved to be excellent. Miss Penny's description of the +pun came to me in scraps and snatches. A round, pink, pretty face in a +winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether too +perfect--false, in fact; but the general effect extremely pleasing. A +youthful Teutonic twenty eight. + +"She wasn't my nurse," Miss Penny explained. "But I used to see her +quite often when she came in to have a look at the _tolle Engländerin_. +Her name was Sister Agatha. During the war, they told me, she had +converted any number of wounded soldiers to the true faith--which wasn't +surprising, considering how pretty she was." + +"Did she try and convert you?" I asked. + +"She wasn't such a fool." Miss Penny laughed, and rattled the miniature +gallows of her ears. + +I amused myself for a moment with the thought of Miss Penny's +conversion--Miss Penny confronting a vast assembly of Fathers of the +Church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, +laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate +Conception, meeting the stern look of the Grand Inquisitor with a flash +of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. What was the secret of the +woman's formidableness? + +But I was missing the story. What had happened? Ah yes, the gist of it +was that Sister Agatha had appeared one morning, after two or three days +absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital +charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven +head. + +"Dead," said Miss Penny; "she looked as though she were dead. A walking +corpse, that's what she was. It was a shocking sight. I shouldn't have +thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She +walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had +great burnt rings round her eyes and deep lines in her face. And the +general expression of unhappiness--that was something quite appalling." + +She leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and +caught the passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. The little +Italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into +terror on his face. + +"Half a pint of Guinness," ordered Miss Penny. "And, after this, bring +me some jam roll." + +"No jam roll to-day, madam." + +"Damn!" said Miss Penny. "Bring me what you like, then." + +She let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative. + +"Where was I? Yes, I remember. She came into my room, I was telling you, +with a bucket of water and a brush, dressed like a charwoman. Naturally +I was rather surprised. 'What on earth are you doing, Sister Agatha?' I +asked. No answer. She just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. +When she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me +again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse when she +next came in. 'Can't say.'--'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took +nearly a week to find out what really had happened. Nobody dared tell +me; it was _strengst verboten_, as they used to say in the good old +days. But I wormed it out in the long run. My nurse, the doctor, the +charwomen--I got something out of all of them. I always get what I want +in the end." Miss Penny laughed like a horse. + +"I'm sure you do," I said politely. + +"Much obliged," acknowledged Miss Penny. "But to proceed. My information +came to me in fragmentary whispers. 'Sister Agatha ran away with a +man.'--Dear me.--'One of the patients.'--You don't say so.--'A criminal +out of the jail.'--The plot thickens.--'He ran away from her.'--It +seems to grow thinner again.--'They brought her back here; she's been +disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel--coffin +and all. She had to be present at it--her own funeral. She isn't a nun +any more. She has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest in the +hospital. She's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to +speak to her. She's regarded as dead.'" Miss Penny paused to signal to +the harassed little Italian. "My small 'Guinness,'" she called out. + +"Coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "Guinness" down the lift, +and from below another voice echoed, "Guinness." + +"I filled in the details bit by bit. There was our hero, to begin with; +I had to bring him into the picture, which was rather difficult, as I +had never seen him. But I got a photograph of him. The police circulated +one when he got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny +opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always carry it about with +me; it's become a superstition. For years, I remember, I used to carry a +little bit of heather tied up with string. Beautiful, isn't it? There's +a sort of Renaissance look about it, don't you think? He was +half-Italian, you know." + +Italian. Ah, that explained it. I had been wondering how Bavaria could +have produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the +finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and +sensually curved. + +"He's certainly very superb," I said, handing back the picture. + +Miss Penny put it carefully away in her bag. "Isn't he?" she said. +"Quite marvellous. But his character and his mind were even better. I +see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are +simply unaware of the existence of right and wrong. And he had +genius--the real Italian genius for engineering, for dominating and +exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and +a brother of the electrical engineers. Only Kuno--that was his +name--didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how to harness +the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. The +commercial exploitation of love-power, that was his specialty. I +sometimes wonder," Miss Penny added in a different tone, "whether I +shall ever be exploited, when I get a little more middle-aged and +celibate, by one of these young engineers of the passions. It would be +humiliating, particularly as I've done so little exploiting from my +side." + +She frowned and was silent for a moment. No, decidedly, Miss Penny was +not beautiful; you could not even honestly say that she had charm or was +attractive. That high Scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the voice, +the terrifying laugh, and the size of her, the general formidableness of +the woman. No, no, no. + +"You said he had been in prison," I said. The silence, with all its +implications, was becoming embarrassing. + +Miss Penny sighed, looked up, and nodded. "He was fool enough," she +said, "to leave the straight and certain road of female exploitation for +the dangerous courses of burglary. We all have our occasional accesses +of folly. They gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting +pneumonia, I think it was, a week after entering jail. He was +transferred to the hospital. Sister Agatha, with her known talent for +saving souls, was given him as his particular attendant. But it was he, +I'm afraid, who did the converting." + +Miss Penny finished off the last mouthful of the ginger pudding which +the waiter had brought in lieu of jam roll. + +"I suppose you don't smoke cheroots," I said, as I opened my cigar-case. + +"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," Miss Penny replied. She looked +sharply round the restaurant. "I must just see if there are any of those +horrible little gossip paragraphers here to-day. One doesn't want to +figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'A fact +which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that Miss Penny, +the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon with a +six-inch Burma cheroot. I saw her yesterday in a restaurant--not a +hundred miles from Carmelite Street--smoking like a house on fire.' You +know the touch. But the coast seems to be clear, thank goodness." + +She took a cheroot from the case, lit it at my proffered match, and went +on talking. + +"Yes, it was young Kuno who did the converting. Sister Agatha was +converted back into the worldly Melpomene Fugger she had been before she +became the bride of holiness." + +"Melpomene Fugger?" + +"That was her name. I had her history from my old doctor. He had seen +all Grauburg, living and dying and propagating for generations. +Melpomene Fugger why, he had brought little Melpel into the world, +little Melpchen. Her father was Professor Fugger, the great Professor +Fugger, the _berümter Geolog_. Oh, yes, of course, I know the name. So +well.... He was the man who wrote the standard work on Lemuria--you +know, the hypothetical continent where the lemurs come from. I showed +due respect. Liberal-minded he was, a disciple of Herder, a +world-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. Anglophile, too, +and always ate porridge for breakfast--up till August 1914. Then, the +radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and +with tears in his eyes. The national food of a people who had betrayed +culture and civilisation--how could he go on eating it? It would stick +in his throat. In future he would have a lightly boiled egg. He sounded, +I thought, altogether charming. And his daughter, Melpomene--she sounded +charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tails when she was young! Her +mother was dead, and a sister of the great Professor's ruled the house +with an iron rod. Aunt Bertha was her name. Well, Melpomene grew up, +very plump and appetising. When she was seventeen, something very odious +and disagreeable happened to her. Even the doctor didn't know exactly +what it was; but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had had something +to do with the then Professor of Latin, an old friend of the family's, +who combined, it seems, great erudition with a horrid fondness for very +young ladies." + +Miss Penny knocked half an inch of cigar ash into her empty glass. + +"If I wrote short stories," she went on reflectively "(but it's too much +bother), I should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, +beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in +Melpomene's life. I see the scene so clearly. Poor little Melpel is +leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June +night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is +besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. +Professor Engelmann, her father's old friend, with the magnificent red +Assyrian beard.... Too awful--too awful! But then, as I was saying, +short stones are really too much bother; or perhaps I'm too stupid to +write them. I bequeath it to you. You know how to tick these things +off." + +"You're generous." + +"Not at all," said Miss Penny. "My terms are ten per cent commission on +the American sale. Incidentally there won't be an American sale. Poor +Melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of Those States. But let +me hear what you propose to do with Melpomene now you've got her on the +castle bastions." + +"That's simple," I said. "I know all about German university towns and +castles on hills. I shall make her look into the June night, as you +suggest; into the violet night with its points of golden flame. There +will be the black silhouette of the castle, with its sharp roofs and +hooded turrets, behind her. From the hanging beer-gardens in the town +below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, +will float up through the dark-blue spaces. '_Röslein, Röslein, Röslein +rot_' and '_Das Ringlein sprang in zwei_'--the heart-rendingly sweet old +songs will make her cry all the more. Her tears will patter like rain +among the leaves of the mulberry trees in the garden below. Does that +seem to you adequate?" + +"Very nice," said Miss Penny. "But how are you going to bring the sex +problem and all of its horrors into the landscape?" + +"Well, let me think." I called to memory those distant foreign summers +when I was completing my education. "I know. I shall suddenly bring a +swarm of moving candles and Chinese lanterns under the mulberry trees. +You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the +faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone +again. They are students and girls of the town come out to dance, this +windless, blue June night, under the mulberry trees. And now they begin, +thumping round and round in a ring, to the music of their own singing. + + "_Wir können spielen_ + _Vio-vio-vio-lin_ + _Wir können spielen_ + _Vi-o-lin_ + +"Now the rhythm changes, quickens. + + "_Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,_ + _Bumstarara, Bumstarara,_ + _Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,_ + _Bumstarara-rara._ + +"The dance becomes a rush, an elephantine prancing on the dry lawn under +the mulberry trees. And from the bastion Melpomene looks down and +perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is +sex, sex, sex. Men and women, male and female--always the same, and all, +in the light of the horror of the afternoon, disgusting. That's how I +should do it, Miss Penny." + +"And very nice, too. But I wish you could find a place to bring in my +conversation with the doctor. I shall never forget the way he cleared +his throat, and coughed before embarking on the delicate subject. 'You +may know, ahem, gracious Miss,' he began--'you may know that religious +phenomena are often, ahem, closely connected with sexual causes.' I +replied that I had heard rumours which might justify me in believing +this to be true among Roman Catholics, but that in the Church of England +--and I for one was a practitioner of Anglicanismus--it was very +different. 'That might be,' said the doctor; he had had no opportunity +in the course of his long medical career of personally studying +Anglicanismus. But he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, +here in Grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the +_Geschlechtsleben_. Melpomene was a case in point. After that hateful +afternoon she had become extremely religious; the Professor of Latin had +diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. She rebelled against +the placid Agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when +Aunt Bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden +books as _The Life of St. Theresa, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, +The Imitation of Christ_, and the horribly enthralling _Book of +Martyrs_. Aunt Bertha confiscated, these works whenever she came upon +them; she considered them more pernicious than the novels of Marcel +Prévost. The character of a good potential housewife might be completely +undermined by reading of this kind. It was rather a relief for Melpomene +when Aunt Bertha shuffled off, in the summer of 1911, this mortal coil. +She was one of those indispensables of whom one makes the discovery, +when they are gone, that one can get on quite as well without them. Poor +Aunt Bertha!" + +"One can imagine Melpomene trying to believe she was sorry, and horribly +ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." The +suggestion seemed to me ingenious, but Miss Penny accepted it as +obvious. + +"Precisely," she said; "and the emotion would only further confirm and +give new force to the tendencies which her aunt's death left her free to +indulge as much as she liked. Remorse, contrition--they would lead to +the idea of doing penance. And for one who was now wallowing in the +martyrology, penance was the mortification of the flesh. She used to +kneel for hours, at night, in the cold; she ate too little, and when her +teeth ached, which they often did,--for she had a set, the doctor told +me, which had given trouble from the very first,--she would not go and +see the dentist, but lay awake at night, savouring to the full her +excruciations, and feeling triumphantly that they must, in some strange +way, be pleasing to the Mysterious Powers. She went on like that for two +or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. In the end +she went down with gastric ulcer. It was three months before she came +out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and +with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. And in +mind, too, she was changed--for the better, I suppose. The nuns who +nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted +supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, +she had sinned. The only road to salvation, they told her, lay in +discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to +authority. Secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose +Agnosticismus was extremely dogmatic, for all its unobtrusiveness, +Melpomene became a Roman Catholic. She was twenty-two. Only a few months +later came the war and Professor Fugger's eternal renunciation of +porridge. He did not long survive the making of that patriotic gesture. +In the autumn of 1914 he caught a fatal influenza. Melpomene was alone +in the world. In the spring of 1915 there was a new and very +conscientious Sister of Charity at work among the wounded, in the +hospital of Grauburg. Here," explained Miss Penny, jabbing the air with +her forefinger, "you put a line of asterisks or dots to signify a six +years' gulf in the narrative. And you begin again right in the middle of +a dialogue between Sister Agatha and the newly convalescent Kuno." + +"What's their dialogue to be about?" I asked. + +"Oh, that's easy enough," said Miss Penny. "Almost anything would do. +What about this, for example? You explain that the fever has just +abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. He +feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world--a world so +bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of +it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being +extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have +suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural +history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet--ha, ha! What an +uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet--that's good, that's damned +good! You can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the +irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, +where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to +jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. Ha, ha! Laugh on, +unhappy boy. It is the quacking of the Fates, the Parcæ, the Norns!" + +Miss Penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. At +the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables +looked up, startled. + +"You can write pages about Destiny and its ironic quacking. It's +tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line." + +"You may be sure I shall." + +"Good! Then I can get on with my story. The days pass and the first +hilarity of convalescence fades away. The young man remembers and grows +sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. +His mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. As for the +consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha +perseveres--oh, with what anxious solicitude!--in the attempt to make +him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously +important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. +And now you see the _Geschlechtsleben_ working yeastily and obscurely, +and once again the quacking of the Norns is audible. By the way," said +Miss Penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the +table, "I wish you'd tell me something. Tell me, do you +really--honestly, I mean--do you seriously believe in literature?" + +"Believe in literature?" + +"I was thinking?" Miss Penny explained, "of Ironic Fate and the quacking +of the Norns and all that." + +"'M yes." + +"And then there's this psychology and introspection business; and +construction and good narrative and word pictures and _le mot juste_ and +verbal magic and striking metaphors." + +I remembered that I had compared Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings to +skeletons hanging in chains. + +"And then, finally, and to begin with--Alpha and Omega--there's +ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of +sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of +turning her misfortunes into cash. It's all very curious, isn't +it?--when one begins to think about it dispassionately." + +"Very curious," I agreed. "But, then, so is everything else if you look +at it like that." + +"No, no," said Miss Penny. "Nothing's so curious as our business. But I +shall never get to the end of my story if I get started on first +principles." + +Miss Penny continued her narrative. I was still thinking of literature. +Do you believe in it? Seriously? Ah! Luckily the question was quite +meaningless. The story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the +young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, +he would be well--well enough to go back to jail. No, no. The question +was meaningless. I would think about it no more. I concentrated my +attention again. + +"Sister Agatha," I heard Miss Penny saying, "prayed, exhorted, +indoctrinated. Whenever she had half a minute to spare from her other +duties she would come running into the young man's room. 'I wonder if +you fully realise the importance of prayer?' she would ask, and, before +he had time to answer, she would give him a breathless account of the +uses and virtues of regular and patient supplication. Or else, it was: +'May I tell you about St. Theresa?' or 'St. Stephen, the first +martyr--you know about him, don't you?' Kuno simply wouldn't listen at +first. It seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd +interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the +future. Prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with +her ridiculous fairy-tales. Then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, +he showed signs of contrition and conversion. Sister Agatha announced +her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost +sheep. Melpomene had never felt so happy in her life, and Kuno, looking +at her radiant face, must have wondered how he could have been such a +fool as not to see from the first what was now so obvious. The woman had +lost her head about him. And he had only four days now--four days in +which to tap the tumultuous love power, to canalise it, to set it +working for his escape. Why hadn't he started a week ago? He could have +made certain of it then. But now? There was no knowing. Four days was a +horribly short time." + +"How did he do it?" I asked, for Miss Penny had paused. + +"That's for you to say," she replied, and shook her ear-rings at me. "I +don't know. Nobody knows, I imagine, except the two parties concerned +and perhaps Sister Agatha's confessor. But one can reconstruct the +crime, as they say. How would you have done it? You're a man, you ought +to be familiar with the processes of amorous engineering." + +"You flatter me," I answered. "Do you seriously suppose--" I extended my +arms. Miss Penny laughed like a horse. "No. But, seriously, it's a +problem. The case is a very special one. The person, a nun, the place, a +hospital, the opportunities, few. There could be no favourable +circumstances--no moonlight, no distant music; and any form of direct +attack would be sure to fail. That audacious confidence which is your +amorist's best weapon would be useless here." + +"Obviously," said Miss Penny. "But there are surely other methods. There +is the approach through pity and the maternal instincts. And there's the +approach through Higher Things, through the soul. Kuno must have worked +on those lines, don't you think? One can imagine him letting himself be +converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her +sympathy and even threatening--with a great air of seriousness---to kill +himself rather than go back to jail. You can write that up easily and +convincingly enough. But it's the sort of thing that bores me so +frightfully to do. That's why I can never bring myself to write fiction. +What is the point of it all? And the way you literary men think +yourselves so important--particularly if you write tragedies. It's all +very queer, very queer indeed." + +I made no comment. Miss Penny changed her tone and went on with the +narrative. + +"Well," she said, "whatever the means employed, the engineering process +was perfectly successful. Love was made to find out a way. On the +afternoon before Kuno was to go back to prison, two Sisters of Charity +walked out of the hospital gates, crossed the square in front of it, +glided down the narrow streets towards the river, boarded a tram at the +bridge, and did not descend till the car had reached its terminus in the +farther suburbs. They began to walk briskly along the high road out into +the country. 'Look!' said one of them, when they were clear of the +houses; and with the gesture of a conjurer produced from nowhere a red +leather purse. 'Where did it come from?' asked the other, opening her +eyes. Memories of Elisha and the ravens, of the widow's cruse, of the +loaves and fishes, must have floated through the radiant fog in poor +Melpomene's mind. 'The old lady I was sitting next to in the tram left +her bag open. Nothing could have been simpler.' 'Kuno! You don't mean to +say you stole it?' Kuno swore horribly. He had opened the purse. 'Only +sixty marks. Who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in +silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. And I must have +a thousand at least to get away. It's easy to reconstruct the rest of +the conversation down to the inevitable, 'For God's sake, shut up,' with +which Kuno put an end to Melpomene's dismayed moralising. They trudge on +in silence. Kuno thinks desperately. Only sixty marks; he can do nothing +with that. If only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some +gold or silver anything, anything. He knows such a good place for +selling things. Is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? +Melpomene is also thinking. Evil must often be done that good may +follow. After all, had not she herself stolen Sister Mary of the +Purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? Had not she +run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she +was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphatically +approved; she felt sure of it. And now there was the red purse. But +what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul--and, after all, +what was she doing hut saving Kuno's soul?" Miss Penny, who had adapted +the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought +her hand with a slap on to the table. "Lord, what a bore this sort of +stuff is!" she exclaimed. "Let's get to the end of this dingy anecdote +as quickly as possible. By this time, you must imagine, the shades of +night were falling fast--the chill November twilight, and so on; but I +leave the natural descriptions to you. Kuno gets into the ditch at the +roadside and takes off his robes. One imagines that he would feel +himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a +crisis. They tramp on for miles. Late in the evening they leave the high +road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. At the fringe +of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds +sleep in the lambing season. + +"The real 'Maison du Berger.'" + +"Precisely," said Miss Penny, and she began to recite: + + "_Si ton coeur gémissant du poids de notre vie_ + _Se traine et se débat comme un aigle blessé...._ + +"How does it go on? I used to adore it all so much when I was a girl. + + _"Le seuil est perfumé, l'alcôve est large et sombre,_ + _Et là parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,_ + _Pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux._ + +"I could go on like this indefinitely." + +"Do," I said. + +"No, no. No, no. I'm determined to finish this wretched story. Kuno +broke the padlock of the door. They entered. What happened in that +little hut?" Miss Penny leaned forward at me. Her large hare's eyes +glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. "Imagine the +emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying +presence of desire. Imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young +man. Oh, there's pages to be made out of this--the absolutely +impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled +crying, the movements! And one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing +about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound +that shakes the air. Why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. In the +morning," Miss Penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their +way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached +the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there +should be need of it. Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress +lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. +'What's the matter?' A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of +tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'What's the +matter?'--'He's gone!' What a queer, indistinct utterance. The +woodcutters regard one another. What does she say? She's a foreigner, +perhaps. 'What's the matter?' they repeat once more. The woman bursts +out violently crying. 'Gone, gone! He's gone,' she sobs out in her +vague, inarticulate way. 'Oh, gone. That's what she says. Who's +gone?'--'He's left me.'--'What?'--'Left me....'--'What the devil...? +Speak a little more distinctly.'--'I can't,' she wails; 'he's taken my +teeth.'--'Your what?--'My teeth!'--and the shrill voice breaks into a +scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. The woodcutters look +significantly at one another. They nod. One of them applies a thick +yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead." + +Miss Penny looked at her watch. "Good heavens!" she said, "it's nearly +half-past three. I must fly. Don't forget about the funeral service," +she added, as she put on her coat. "The tapers, the black coffin, in the +middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy +chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all +caved in like an old woman's, wondering whether she wasn't really and in +fact dead--wondering whether she wasn't already in hell. Good-bye." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39378 *** diff --git a/39378-h/39378-h.htm b/39378-h/39378-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..70fdd84 --- /dev/null +++ b/39378-h/39378-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4848 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39378 ***</div> + +<h1>MORTAL COILS</h1> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>ALDOUS HUXLEY</h2> + +<h5>NEW YORK-GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</h5> + +<h5>1921</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="caption">CONTENTS</p> + + + +<p><a href="#I_THE_GIOCONDA_SMILE">I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE</a></p> + +<p><a href="#II_PERMUTATIONS_AMONG_THE_NIGHTINGALES">II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES</a></p> + +<p><a href="#III_THE_TILLOTSON_BANQUET">III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET</a></p> + +<p><a href="#IV_GREEN_TUNNELS">IV: GREEN TUNNELS</a></p> + +<p><a href="#V_NUNS_AT_LUNCHEON">V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I_THE_GIOCONDA_SMILE" id="I_THE_GIOCONDA_SMILE"></a>I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE</h2> + + + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>"Miss Spence will be down directly, sir."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence's +parlourmaid was so ugly—ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, +malignantly, criminally ugly—that he could not bear to look at her +more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton +got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes +at the familiar objects it contained.</p> + +<p>Photographs of Greek statuary, photographs of the Roman Forum, coloured +prints of Italian masterpieces, all very safe and well known. Poor, dear +Janet, what a prig—what an intellectual snob! Her real taste was +illustrated in that water-colour by the pavement artist, the one she had +paid half a crown for (and thirty-five shillings for the frame). How +often his had heard her tell the story, how often expatiate on the +beauties of that skilful imitation of an oleograph! "A real Artist in +the streets," and you could hear the capital A in Artist as she spoke +the words. She made you feel that part of his glory had entered into +Janet Spence when she tendered him that half-crown for the copy of the +oleograph. She was implying a compliment to her own taste and +penetration. A genuine Old Master for half a crown. Poor, dear Janet!</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton came to a pause in front of a small oblong mirror. Stooping a +little to get a full view of his face, he passed a white, well-manicured +finger over his moustache. It was as curly, as freshly auburn as it had +been twenty years ago. His hair still retained its colour, and there was +no sign of baldness yet—only a certain elevation of the brow. +"Shakespearean," thought Mr. Hutton, with a smile, as he surveyed the +smooth and polished expanse of his forehead.</p> + +<p>Others abide our question, thou art free.... Footsteps in the sea ... +Majesty ... Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. No, that +was Milton, wasn't it? Milton, the Lady of Christ's. There was no lady +about him. He was what the women, would call a manly man. That was why +they liked him—for the curly auburn moustache and the discreet +redolence of tobacco. Mr. Hutton smiled again; he enjoyed making fun of +himself. Lady of Christ's? No, no. He was the Christ of Ladies. Very +pretty, very pretty. The Christ of Ladies. Mr. Hutton wished there were +somebody he could tell the joke to. Poor, dear Janet wouldn't appreciate +it, alas?</p> + +<p>He straightened himself up, patted his hair, and resumed his +peregrination. Damn the Roman Forum; he hated those dreary photographs.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he became aware that Janet Spence was in the room, standing +near the door. Mr. Hutton started, as though he had been taken in some +felonious act. To make these silent and spectral appearances was one of +Janet Spence's peculiar talents. Perhaps she had been there all the +time, had seen him looking at himself in the mirror. Impossible! But, +still, it was disquieting.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you gave me such a surprise," said Mr. Hutton, recovering his smile +and advancing with outstretched hand to meet her.</p> + +<p>Miss Spence was smiling too: her Gioconda smile, he had once called it, +in a moment of half-ironical flattery. Miss Spence had taken the +compliment seriously, and had always tried to live up to the Leonardo +standard. She smiled on his silence while Mr. Hutton shook hands; that +was part of the Gioconda business.</p> + +<p>"I hope you're well," said Mr. Hutton. "You look it."</p> + +<p>What a queer face she had! That small mouth pursed forward by the +Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round hole in the middle +as though for whistling—it was like a penholder seen from the front. +Above the mouth a well-shaped nose, finely aquiline. Eyes large, +lustrous, and dark, with the largeness, lustre, and darkness that seems +to invite sties and an occasional blood-shot suffusion. They were fine +eyes, but unchangingly grave. The penholder might do its Gioconda trick, +but the eyes never altered in their earnestness. Above them, a pair of +boldly arched, heavily pencilled black eyebrows lent a surprising air of +power, as of a Roman matron, to the upper portion of the face. Her hair +was dark and equally Roman; Agrippina from the brows upward.</p> + +<p>"I thought I'd just look in on my way home," Mr. Hutton went on. "Ah, +it's good to be back here"—he indicated with a wave of his hand the +flowers in the vases, the sunshine and greenery beyond the windows +—"it's good to be back in the country after a stuffy day of business in +town."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence, who had sat down, pointed to a chair at her side.</p> + +<p>"No, really, I cant sit down," Mr. Hutton protested. "I must get back to +see how poor Emily is. She was rather seedy this morning." He sat down, +nevertheless. "It's these wretched liver chills. She's always getting +them. Women—" He broke off and coughed, so as to hide the fact that he +had uttered. He was about to say that women with weak digestions ought +not to marry; but the remark was too cruel, and he didn't really believe +it. Janet Spence, moreover, was a believer in eternal flames and +spiritual attachments. "She hopes to be well enough," he added, "to see +you at luncheon to-morrow. Can you come? Do!" He smiled persuasively. +"It's my invitation too, you know."</p> + +<p>She dropped her eyes, and Mr. Hutton almost thought that he detected a +certain reddening of the cheek. It was a tribute; he stroked his +moustache.</p> + +<p>"I should like to come if you think Emily's really well enough to have a +visitor."</p> + +<p>"Of course. You'll do her good. You'll do us both good. In married life +three is often better company than two."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're cynical."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton always had a desire to say "Bow-wow-wow" whenever that last +word was spoken. It irritated him more than any other word in the +language. But instead of barking he made haste to protest.</p> + +<p>"No, no. I'm only speaking a melancholy truth. Reality doesn't always +come up to the ideal, you know. But that doesn't make me believe any the +less in the ideal. Indeed, I believe in it passionately the ideal of a +matrimony between two people in perfect accord. I think it's realisable. +I'm sure it is."</p> + +<p>He paused significantly and looked at her with an arch expression. A +virgin of thirty-six, but still unwithered; she had her charms. And +there was something really rather enigmatic about her. Miss Spence made +no reply but continued to smile. There were times when Mr. Hutton got +rather bored with the Gioconda. He stood up.</p> + +<p>"I must really be going now. Farewell, mysterious Gioconda." The smile +grew intenser, focused itself, as it were, in a narrower snout. Mr. +Hutton made a Cinquecento gesture, and kissed her extended hand. It was +the first time he had done such a thing; the action seemed not to be +resented. "I look forward to to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Do you?"</p> + +<p>For answer Mr. Hutton once more kissed her hand, then turned to go. Miss +Spence accompanied him to the porch.</p> + +<p>"Where's your car?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I left it at the gate of the drive."</p> + +<p>"I'll come and see you off."</p> + +<p>"No, no." Mr. Hutton was playful, but determined. "You must do no such +thing. I simply forbid you."</p> + +<p>"But I should like to come," Miss Spence protested, throwing a rapid +Gioconda at him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton held up his hand. "No," he repeated, and then, with a gesture +that was almost the blowing of a kiss, he started to run down the drive, +lightly on his toes, with long, bounding strides like a boy's. He was +proud of that run; it was quite marvellously youthful. Still, he was +glad the drive was no longer. At the last bend, before passing out of +sight of the house, he halted and turned round. Miss Spence was still +standing on the steps, smiling her smile. He waved his hand, and this +time quite definitely and overtly wafted a kiss in her direction. Then, +breaking once more into his magnificent canter, he rounded the last dark +promontory of trees. Once out of sight of the house he let his high +paces decline to a trot, and finally to a walk. He took out his +handkerchief and began wiping his neck inside his collar. What fools, +what fools! Had there ever been such an ass as poor, dear Janet Spence? +Never, unless it was himself. Decidedly he was the more malignant fool, +since he, at least, was aware of his folly and still persisted in it. +Why did he persist? Ah, the problem that was himself, the problem that +was other people.</p> + +<p>He had reached the gate. A large, prosperous-looking motor was standing +at the side of the road.</p> + +<p>"Home, M'Nab." The chauffeur touched his cap. "And stop at the +cross-roads on the way, as usual," Mr. Hutton added, as he opened the +door of the car. "Well?" he said, speaking into the obscurity that +lurked within.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Teddy Bear, what an age you've been!" It was a fresh and childish +voice that spoke the words. There was the faintest hint of Cockney +impurity about the vowel sounds.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility +of an animal regaining its burrow.</p> + +<p>"Have I?" he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move. "You +must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long." He sat back +in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him.</p> + +<p>"Teddy Bear...." and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head +declined on to Mr. Hutton's shoulder. Ravished, he looked down sideways +at the round, babyish face.</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Doris, you look like the pictures of Louise de +Kerouaille." He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair.</p> + +<p>"Who's Louise de Kera-whatever-it-is?" Doris spoke from remote +distances.</p> + +<p>"She was, alas! <i>Fuit</i>. We shall all be 'was' one of these days. +Meanwhile...."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed smoothly +along. McNab's back, through the front window was stonily impassive, the +back of a statue.</p> + +<p>"Your hands," Doris whispered. "Oh, you mustn't touch me. They give me +electric shocks."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late +in one's existence one makes the discovery of one's body!</p> + +<p>"The electricity isn't in me, it's in you." He kissed her again, +whispering her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific +appellation of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat, +she offered him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting +the sacrificial knife. The sea-mouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: +very peculiar. Or was Doris the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside +out in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, +just to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous, +unbelievably fantastic.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Teddy Bear!" (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His poor +little jokes!) "Teddy Bear, I'm so happy."</p> + +<p>"So am I," said Mr. Hutton. Was it true?</p> + +<p>"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or +wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty +years."</p> + +<p>"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right +that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and +that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me."</p> + +<p>"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks +rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew +how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you +know, there is a hell, and all that. I don t know what to do. Sometimes +I think I ought to stop loving you."</p> + +<p>"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his +seduction and his moustache.</p> + +<p>"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could hide +from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to you."</p> + +<p>"Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care +if it is."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this +little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, +they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it +hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges +towards it devouringly.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, good-bye."</p> + +<p>The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris was +left standing by the sign-post at the cross-roads, still dizzy and weak +with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of those +gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up +deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk. +She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies.</p> + +<p>Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling +boredom.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In +spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the +hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of +digestion, slept before the blaze.</p> + +<p>"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the +room.</p> + +<p>"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on the +verge of tears. "I get so shivery."</p> + +<p>"I hope you're better this evening."</p> + +<p>"Not much, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against +the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and +with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed +its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy. +Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an <i>impasse</i>, she +altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on +playing. Her Patiences always came out.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer."</p> + +<p>"Well—go, my dear—go, most certainly."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had +driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood, had left the car to wait +for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the +windless sunshine of the chalk down.</p> + +<p>"I'm to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have +massage and electric treatment, too."</p> + +<p>Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing +together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the +flickering of blue fire. The blue fire burst and scattered into whirling +sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting like a child.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure it will do you good, my dear."</p> + +<p>"I was wondering if you'd come with me, dear."</p> + +<p>"But you know I'm going to Scotland at the end of the month."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. "It's the journey," she said. +"The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don't know if I can manage +it. And you know I can't sleep in hotels. And then there's the luggage +and all the worries. I can't go alone.</p> + +<p>"But you won't be alone. You'll have your maid with you." He spoke +impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one. +He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the +quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its +complaining occupant.</p> + +<p>"I don't think I shall be able to go."</p> + +<p>"But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a +change will do you good."</p> + +<p>"I don't think so."</p> + +<p>"But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he's talking about."</p> + +<p>"No, I can't face it. I'm too weak. I can't go alone." Mrs. Hutton +pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort."</p> + +<p>"I had rather be left in peace to die here." She was crying in earnest +now.</p> + +<p>"O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please." Mrs. Hutton only +sobbed more violently. "Oh, what is one to do?" He shrugged his +shoulders and walked out of the room.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but +he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that +not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, +and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he +spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled +with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed +the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion; and he had +been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was +temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had +been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then. +But now—was it his fault that she was like this?</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he +had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he +went up to his wife's room and offered to read to her. She was touched, +gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly +proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French.</p> + +<p>"French? I am so fond of French." Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of +Racine as though it were a dish of green peas.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He +began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole +attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed +to improve the quality of the novel he was reading.</p> + +<p>At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked +up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while, +looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had +been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it, +had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt +before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched +tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like +nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The +lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasised with light and +shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by +Morales.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Le squelette était invisible</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Au temps heureux de l'art païen.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room.</p> + +<p>On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some +unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better +now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence listened +to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy, +lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity. +She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. +Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the +narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess +with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of +a literary or philosophic character—bombardments of Maeterlinck, of +Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. To-day the missiles were +medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of +harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. +Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in +him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that +every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness, +that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging over mysterious +gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than +what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different. +Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind +the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What +exactly was there? Mr. Hutton could never quite make out.</p> + +<p>"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence +was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off."</p> + +<p>"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that +prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by +reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. +Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart.</p> + +<p>"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said, +suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything with +skins and pips."</p> + +<p>"But I am so fond of them," Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well +to-day."</p> + +<p>"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at +his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her +good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it +affectionately two or three times.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants.</p> + +<p>"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again."</p> + +<p>"Do I ever blame you, dear?"</p> + +<p>"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I am +the perfect husband."</p> + +<p>They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under +the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in +which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good +to be alive," he said.</p> + +<p>"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed +hand into the sunlight.</p> + +<p>A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were +set on a folding table near the group of chairs.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara, +will you? The white bottle on the sideboard."</p> + +<p>"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any +case."</p> + +<p>He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an +instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting +up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence +was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the +cool obscurity of the house.</p> + +<p>"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired.</p> + +<p>"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to +take the taste away."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her +eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky.</p> + +<p>Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the +coffee-cups.</p> + +<p>"I've given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste +away. And here comes the medicine."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wineglass, half full of a pale +liquid.</p> + +<p>"It smells delicious," he said, as he handed it to his wife.</p> + +<p>"That's only the flavouring." She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and +made a grimace. "Ugh, it's so nasty. Give me my coffee."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. "You've made it like +syrup. But it's very nice, after that atrocious medicine."</p> + +<p>At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well +as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have +said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph +of an "I told you so" was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic, +and gave her his arm to the house.</p> + +<p>"A rest will do you good," he said. "By the way, I shan't be back till +after dinner."</p> + +<p>"But why? Where are you going?"</p> + +<p>"I promised to go to Johnson's this evening. We have to discuss the war +memorial, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wish you weren't going." Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. "Can't +you stay? I don't like being alone in the house."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear, I promised weeks ago." It was a bother having to lie like +this. "And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence."</p> + +<p>He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss +Spence received him aimed and intense.</p> + +<p>"Your wife is dreadfully ill," she fired off at him.</p> + +<p>"I thought she cheered up so much when you came."</p> + +<p>"That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely. +With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked—yes, +wrecked—anything might happen."</p> + +<p>"Libbard doesn't take so gloomy a view of poor Emily's health." Mr. +Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss +Spence's car was standing by the front door.</p> + +<p>"Libbard is only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist."</p> + +<p>He could not refrain from laughing. "You have a macabre passion for +specialists."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. "I am serious. I think poor +Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen at any moment."</p> + +<p>He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the +engine and climbed into his place, ready to drive off.</p> + +<p>"Shall I tell him to start?" He had no desire to continue the +conversation.</p> + +<p>Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction. +"Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon."</p> + +<p>Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved +forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone.</p> + +<p>A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was +waiting at the cross-roads. They dined together twenty miles from home, +at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are +only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr. +Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton +ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent +the evening in his library.</p> + +<p>When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely +affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past +the motionless form of M'Nab, they could see a bright and narrow +universe of forms and colours scooped out of the night by the electric +head-lamps.</p> + +<p>It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in +the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed +features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and +melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the +bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking +in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a +pleasing odour, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and +discreetly delicious.</p> + +<p>"Libbard?" said Mr. Hutton in surprise. "You here? Is my wife ill?"</p> + +<p>"We tried to fetch you earlier," the soft, melancholy voice replied. "It +was thought you were at Mr. Johnson's, but they had no news of you +there."</p> + +<p>"No, I was detained. I had a breakdown," Mr. Hutton answered irritably. +It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie.</p> + +<p>"Your wife wanted to see you urgently."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can go now." Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs.</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard laid a hand on his arm. "I am afraid it's too late."</p> + +<p>"Too late?" He began fumbling with his watch; it wouldn't come out of +the pocket.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Hutton passed away half an hour ago."</p> + +<p>The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did +not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local +cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence's words. At any +moment—at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right.</p> + +<p>"What happened?" he asked. "What was the cause?"</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard explained. It was heart failure brought on by a violent +attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an +irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had +been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease: +something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not +have suffered much.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>"It's a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow +match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his +top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face +with his handkerchief.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire +to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to +hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great +mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did +nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their +dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. +Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the +bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he +couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were +drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and +motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background +of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and +unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people +would soon be dead, too.</p> + +<p>That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of +Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton; +it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after +midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the +French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The +night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the +holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless +flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape, +black and grey under the moon.</p> + +<p>He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the +stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and +night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between +the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and +himself—himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. +Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his +side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There +were only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, +the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself—always +himself....</p> + +<p>Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of +it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound +of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he +had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I +will." There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the +past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar +resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, +into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a +more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would +live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he +would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would +be so.</p> + +<p>In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural +pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed +in the best modern way—silos and artificial manures and continuous +cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to +serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so +long—<i>The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace +had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to +find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had +been transformed by a good night's rest into his customary cheerfulness. +It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life +that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death +seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were +not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could +see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the +farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague +at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern +Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good +anecdote in Skelton's jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would +have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil.</p> + +<p>On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his +correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar +handwriting which he knew to be Doris's. He opened it, and began to +read. She didn't know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife +dying like that, and so suddenly—it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton +sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. +But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or +depressed, then I can't help remembering it is there so close, and +I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and +me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so +lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don't know what to do. I +can't get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless +without you. I didn't mean to write to you; I meant to wait till +you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was +so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn't +help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world +but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is +nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have +been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t +understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so +dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love +me a little, don't you, Teddy Bear?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, +worshipped for having seduced the girl—it was too much. It had just +been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no +other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very +little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably +been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to +be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of +reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known +pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew +beforehand—so well, so well—that there was no interest or pleasure to +be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch +came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old +stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife's maid, and Edith, the girl +on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and +others—there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and +boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet.... +Experience doesn't teach.</p> + +<p>Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he +wouldn't see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was +saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old +bailiff was more irritating than usual.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<p>Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier +at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated +happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed +the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a +tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his +side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, +the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a +fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn +oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had +triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was +hopeless, hopeless.</p> + +<p>For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The +girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her +direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains +to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair +on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there +moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so +be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of +irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. +In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, +bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses.</p> + +<p>The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The +whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter.</p> + +<p>"Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?" The question came +faintly from distant worlds of love.</p> + +<p>"I think I know somebody who does," Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine +laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and +resound.</p> + +<p>"Who? Tell me. What do you mean?" The voice had come very close; charged +with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate +world.</p> + +<p>"A—ah!"</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"You'll never guess." Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow +tedious, and then pronounced the name "Janet Spence."</p> + +<p>Doris was incredulous. "Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?" It +was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too.</p> + +<p>"But it's quite true," he said. "She adores me." Oh, the vast joke. He +would go and see her as soon as he returned—see and conquer. "I believe +she wants to marry me," he added.</p> + +<p>"But you wouldn't ... you don't intend...."</p> + +<p>The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. "I +intend to marry you," he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had +ever made in his life.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was +agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the +autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. +Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers.</p> + +<p>The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss +Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda.</p> + +<p>"I was expecting you to come."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Hutton gallantly replied.</p> + +<p>They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place—a little old +stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had +left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della +Robbia plaque.</p> + +<p>"I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn," said Mr. Hutton. He felt +like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous +excitement.</p> + +<p>"Italy...." Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. "I feel drawn +there too."</p> + +<p>"Why not let yourself be drawn?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. One somehow hasn't the energy and initiative to set out +alone."</p> + +<p>"Alone...." Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing. "Yes, travelling +alone isn't much fun."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still +closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself +for what seemed a very long time.</p> + +<p>Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly +started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they +looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the +farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A +huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of +thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first +drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton +sat on in the growing darkness.</p> + +<p>Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively.</p> + +<p>"I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don't +you?"</p> + +<p>"Most certainly." But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes +generalisations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. +Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid +existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had +always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he +wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy—happier than most men. And +now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the +secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when +Miss Spence went on speaking.</p> + +<p>"People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our +lives."</p> + +<p>"Me?" said Mr. Hutton surprised.</p> + +<p>"Poor Henry! Fate hasn't treated either of us very well."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, it might have treated me worse."</p> + +<p>"You re being cheerful. That's brave of you. But don't think I can't see +behind the mask."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more +heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked +on, shouting against the noise.</p> + +<p>"I have understood you so well and for so long."</p> + +<p>A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes +were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed +her.</p> + +<p>"You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathise +with you in your solitude. Your marriage ..."</p> + +<p>The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence's voice became audible +once more with the words:</p> + +<p>"... could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a +soul mate."</p> + +<p>A soul mate—he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. Georgette +Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck. He had seen that in +the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted +him in her imagination—a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of +goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he +was what?—Who knows?</p> + +<p>"My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too." Miss +Spence laid her hand on his knee. "You were so patient." Another flash. +She was still aimed, dangerously. "You never complained. But I could +guess—I could guess."</p> + +<p>"How wonderful of you!" So he was an <i>âme incomprise</i>.</p> + +<p>"Only a woman's intuition...."</p> + +<p>The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the +rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalised. +Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them.</p> + +<p>"Don't you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this +storm?" He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. +"Passion makes one the equal of the elements."</p> + +<p>What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said "Yes," and +ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took +fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was +serious—terribly serious. He was appalled.</p> + +<p>Passion? "No," he desperately answered. "I am without passion."</p> + +<p>But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on +with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapidly, however, and in such a +burningly intimate whisper that Mr. Hutton found it very difficult to +distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could +make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, +and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her +still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying +intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close +at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel +of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn't it rather—yes, +wasn't it rather George Robey?</p> + +<p>He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, +Pretending he had seen a burglar—Stop thief, stop thief!—and dash off +into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart +attack? or that he had seen, a ghost—Emily's ghost—in the garden? +Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to +Miss Spence's words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his +thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I honoured you for that, Henry," she was saying.</p> + +<p>Honoured him for what?</p> + +<p>"Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the +marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect +you and admire you, and—shall I dare say the word?—"</p> + +<p>Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late.</p> + +<p>"... yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we're free now, Henry."</p> + +<p>Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the +floor by his chair.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too."</p> + +<p>Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that +she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't, Janet," he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. +"Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed." He patted her +shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her +still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been +sitting.</p> + +<p>Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, +he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door +noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was +shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a +noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr. Hutton +splashed along, not caring if he got wet.</p> + +<p>How heartrendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse +that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why +couldn't she have played the game that he was playing the heartless, +amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn't, she +couldn't play that game; he had known and persisted.</p> + +<p>What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly +stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black bosomed and charged +with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had +sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining +that his toy had drawn the lightning.</p> + +<p>She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying.</p> + +<p>But why hadn't he been able to keep up the game? Why had his +irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold +world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned +steady and luminous in his mind—the idea of flight. He must get away at +once.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>IV</h3> + + +<p>"What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>There was a silence. Mr. Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the +parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over +Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of +the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one +looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the +bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of +Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in +the September sunshine.</p> + +<p>"Are you worried about anything?"</p> + +<p>"No, thank you."</p> + +<p>"Tell me, Teddy Bear."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear, there's nothing to tell." Mr. Hutton turned round, +smiled, and patted the girl's hand. "I think you'd better go in and have +your siesta. It's too hot for you here."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?"</p> + +<p>"When I've finished my cigar."</p> + +<p>"All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear." Slowly, +reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards +the house.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be +alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless +solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving +hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These +last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always +with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good +to be alone.</p> + +<p>He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it; not without +reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something +unpleasant—nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his +sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it +was composed. The words "indecent haste," "social suicide," "scarcely +cold in her grave," "person of the lower classes," all occurred. They +were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and +right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid +letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the +third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It +was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he +had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! +Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr. Hutton found himself +trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling +names—he cursed the woman.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion +that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they +only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to +be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid.</p> + +<p>A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below +the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A +Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen +of the classical type—a little debased. Her profile might have been +taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved +floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. +Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand +of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad +temper.... Under her hideous black clothes, Mr. Hutton divined a +powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a +vague interest and curiosity. To-day the curiosity defined and focused +itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, +alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. He called +to her.</p> + +<p>"Armida!"</p> + +<p>The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so +easy a virtue, that Mr. Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once +more—on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it +was too late. The girl continued to look up at him.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ha chiamito</i>?" she asked at last.</p> + +<p>Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility +every time.</p> + +<p>"<i>Scendo</i>" he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to +the terrace. Mr. Hutton counted them. Down, down, down, down.... He saw +a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the +next—from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>V</h3> + + +<p>For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of +every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since +George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a +warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this +tale of a murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. +Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so notable +because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to +man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. +For months he had lived in sin and fancied security——only to be dashed +at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder +will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were +in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had +been vague, but persistent, rumours in the neighbourhood; the police had +taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the post-mortem +examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of +the coroner's jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had +done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The +newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food +of a whole season.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton's first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give +evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a +scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip +seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action for +malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the +Spence woman for slander.</p> + +<p>The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The +experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they +were of opinion that the late Mrs. Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning.</p> + +<p>Arsenic poisoning.... Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, +Mr. Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated +insecticide in his green-houses to poison an army.</p> + +<p>It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against +him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous +tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a +tangled forest.</p> + +<p>When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have +been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, +about lunch-time. Clara, the parlour-maid, was called. Mrs. Hutton, she +remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr. Hutton had +volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence—ah, the +memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all!—Miss +Spence confirmed Clara's statement, and added that Mr. Hutton had come +back with the medicine already poured out in a wineglass, not in the +bottle.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton's indignation evaporated. He was dismayed, frightened. It was +all too fantastic to be taken seriously, and yet this nightmare was a +fact it was actually happening.</p> + +<p>M'Nab had seen them kissing, often. He had taken them for a drive on the +day of Mrs. Hutton's death. He could see them reflected in the +wind-screen, sometimes out of the tail of his eye.</p> + +<p>The inquest was adjourned. That evening Doris went to bed with a +headache. When he went to her room after dinner, Mr. Hutton found her +crying.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" He sat down on the edge of her bed and began to +stroke her hair. For a long time she did not answer, and he went on +stroking her hair mechanically, almost unconsciously; sometimes, even he +bent down and kissed her bare shoulder. He had his own affairs, however, +to think about. What had happened? How was it that the stupid gossip had +actually come true? Emily had died of arsenic poisoning. It was absurd, +impossible. The order of things had been broken, and he was at the mercy +of an irresponsibility. What had happened, what was going to happen? He +was interrupted in the midst of his thoughts.</p> + +<p>"It's my fault—it's my fault!" Doris suddenly sobbed out. "I shouldn't +have loved you; I oughtn't to have let you love me. Why was I ever +born?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton didn't say anything but looked down in silence at the abject +figure of misery lying on the bed.</p> + +<p>"If they do anything to you I shall kill myself."</p> + +<p>She sat up, held him for a moment at arm's length, and looked at him +with a kind of violence, as though she were never to see him again.</p> + +<p>"I love you, I love you, I love you." She drew him, inert and passive, +towards her, clasped him, pressed herself against him. "I didn't know +you loved me as much as that, Teddy Bear. But why did you do it—why did +you do it?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton undid her clasping arms and got up. His face became very red. +"You seem to take it for granted that I murdered my wife," he said. +"It's really too grotesque. What do you all take me for? A cinema hero?" +He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and +bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against +her. "It's all such damned stupidity. Haven't you any conception of a +civilised man's mentality? Do I look the sort of man who'd go about +slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love +with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand +that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which +you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me +to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go +about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he +knew—odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn't. +He closed the door behind him.</p> + +<p>"Teddy Bear!" He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. Teddy +Bear! The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonised. +Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then +withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was half-way down +the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly—throw herself +out of the window or God knows what! He listened attentively; there was +no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, +lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night +air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace. +How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking +along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-storey window of the +Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should +he go back? He was damned if he would; he hated her.</p> + +<p>He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was +happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could +find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its +horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with +tears; he wanted so passionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily +had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still +so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer +delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as +seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the +Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to +the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet +southern wines—Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas—others would drink +them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes +between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty +perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering +unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He +would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt +that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he +had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as +wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God +existed after all.</p> + +<p>He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by +his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him +almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. "God +bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and +Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They +were all dead now all except Cissie.</p> + +<p>His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his +spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying +on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a +blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have +drunk about half of it.</p> + +<p>"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find +him bending over her.</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences. +"You mustn't do this again," he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the +room.</p> + +<p>"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly.</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to +prevent you," he said. "Only yourself and your baby. Isn't it rather bad +luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you +want to go out of it?"</p> + +<p>Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself +now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he +loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and +cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had +become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At six o'clock he +undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours' sleep. In the course of +the same afternoon the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful +Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>VI</h3> + + +<p>Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in +the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something +that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from +nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She +talked to him a great deal—mostly about the Hutton case.... Her moral +indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that +one had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one +could have been for so long mistaken about the man's character? (But she +had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off +with—so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that +the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the posthumous child of a +condemned and executed criminal—revolted her; the thing was shocking an +obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed +bromide.</p> + +<p>One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. +"By the way," he said in his soft, melancholy voice, "I suppose it was +really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, +and then quietly said, "Yes." After that she started to cry.</p> + +<p>"In the coffee, I suppose."</p> + +<p>She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in +his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping +draught.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II_PERMUTATIONS_AMONG_THE_NIGHTINGALES" id="II_PERMUTATIONS_AMONG_THE_NIGHTINGALES"></a>II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES</h2> + + + +<h4>A PLAY</h4> + + +<p><i>It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the +garden façade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage—a bare +white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten +feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the +lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through which a yellow +radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or +three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, +ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set. +At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of +the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous +June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down +to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are +made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender +towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing +of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost +deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest</i>, COUNT +ALBERTO TIRETTA, <i>is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic +despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully +sympathetic at his side</i>, ALBERTO <i>is a little man with large lustrous +eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the +pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ—almost as pretty +and sentimental as Murillo's little beggars.</i></p> + + + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left +covering his eyes</i>). Whereupon, Waiter (<i>he is reciting a tale of +woes</i>), she slammed the door in my face. (<i>He brings down his +gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table</i>.)</p> + +<p>WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible!</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a +little weary. (<i>The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under +his arm and fills Alberto's glass.</i>)</p> + +<p>WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>throwing down a note</i>). Keep the change.</p> + +<p>WAITER (<i>bowing</i>). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I +should beat her. (<i>He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of +illustration slaps its black polished flanks.</i>)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her.</p> + +<p>WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern +disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I assure you, Signore, a +pleasure.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts. +My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity. +Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please.</p> + +<p>WAITER (<i>pouring out the brandy</i>). Delicacy, purity.... Ah, believe me, +Signore ... That will be one lira twenty-five.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic +gesture</i>). Keep the change.</p> + +<p>WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, +purity.... You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, +beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the +Signore's sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen +years old, and what eyes, what forms!</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of +the young lady (<i>he points towards the glass doors</i>). Remember she is an +American. (<i>The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel</i>.)</p> + + + +<p>SIDNEY DOLPHIN <i>and</i> MISS AMY TOOMIS</p> + +<p><i>come out together on to the terrace.</i> MISS AMY <i>supports a well-shaped +head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from +Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses +sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten +Toomis millions</i>. SIDNEY DOLPHIN <i>has a romantic aristocratic +appearance. The tailoring of</i> 1830 <i>would suit him. Balzac would have +described his face as</i> plein de poésie. <i>In effect he does happen to be +a poet. His two volumes of verse, "Zeotrope and 'Trembling Ears," have +been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are +poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain. They may be +merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain. +Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at +one of the little iron tables</i>, ALBERTO <i>they do not see; the shadow of +the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in +savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There +is a long, uncomfortable silence</i>. DOLPHIN <i>assumes the Thinker's +mask—the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead</i>, AMY +<i>regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her +interest in him</i>, DOLPHIN <i>racks his brains to think of some way of +exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to +play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests</i>. AMY <i>makes a +social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones.</i> AMY. It's +been a wonderful day, hasn't it?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>starting, as though roused from profoundest thought</i>). Yes, +yes, it has.</p> + +<p>AMY. You don't often get it as fine as this in England, I guess.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Not often.</p> + +<p>AMY. Nor do we over at home.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. So I should suppose. (<i>Silence. A spasm of anguish crosses</i> +DOLPHIN'S <i>face; then he reassumes the old Thinker's mask.</i> AMY <i>looks +at him for a little longer, then, unable to suppress her growing +curiosity, she says with a sudden burst of childish confidence:</i>)</p> + +<p>AMY. It must be wonderful to be able to think as hard as you do, Mr. +Dolphin. Or are you sad about something?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>looks up, smiles, and blushes; a spell has been broken</i>). The +finger at the temple, Miss Toomis, is not the barrel of a revolver.</p> + +<p>AMY. That means you're not specially sad about anything. Just thinking.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Just thinking.</p> + +<p>AMY. What about?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Oh, just life, you know—life and letters.</p> + +<p>AMY. Letters? Do you mean love letters.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. No, no. Letters in the sense of literature; letters as opposed +to life.</p> + +<p>AMY. (<i>disappointed</i>). Oh, literature. They used to teach us literature +at school. But I could never understand Emerson. What do you think +about literature for?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. It interests me, you know. I read it; I even try to write it.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>very much excited</i>). What, are you a writer, a poet, Mr. Dolphin?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Alas, it is only too true; I am.</p> + +<p>AMY. But what do you write?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Verse and prose, Miss Toomis. Just verse and prose.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>with enthusiasm</i>). Isn't that interesting. I've never met a poet +before, you know.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Fortunate being. Why, before I left England I attended a +luncheon of the Poetry Union at which no less than a hundred and +eighty-nine poets were present. The sight of them made me decide to go +to Italy.</p> + +<p>AMY. Will you show me your books?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Certainly not, Miss Toomis. That would ruin our friendship. I +am insufferable in my writings. In them I give vent to all the horrible +thoughts and impulses which I am too timid to express or put into +practice in real life. Take me as you find me here, a decent specimen of +a man, shy but able to talk intelligently when the layers of ice are +broken, aimless, ineffective, but on the whole quite a good sort.</p> + +<p>AMY. But I know that man already, Mr. Dolphin. I want to know the poet. +Tell me what the poet is like.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. He is older, Miss Toomis, than the rocks on which he sits. He +is villainous. He is ... but there, I really must stop. It was you who +set me going, though. Did you do it on purpose.</p> + +<p>AMY. Do what on purpose?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Make me talk about myself. If you want to get people to like +you, you must always lead the conversation on to the subject of their +characters. Nothing pleases them so much. They'll talk with enthusiasm +for hours and go away saying that you're the most charming, cleverest +person they've ever met. But of course you knew that already. You re +Machiavellian.</p> + +<p>AMY. Machiavellian? You're the first person that's ever said that. I +always thought I was very simple and straight-forward. People say about +me that.... Ah, now I'<i>m</i> talking about myself. That was unscrupulous of +you. But you shouldn't have told me about the trick if you wanted it to +succeed.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Yes. It was silly of me. If I hadn't, you'd have gone on +talking about yourself and thought me the nicest man in the world.</p> + +<p>AMY. I want to hear about your poetry. Are you writing any now?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I have composed the first line of a magnificent epic. But I +can't get any further.</p> + +<p>AMY. How does it go?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Like this (<i>he clears his throat</i>). "Casbeen has been, and +Moghreb is no more." Ah, the transience of all sublunary things! But +inspiration has stopped short there.</p> + +<p>AMY. What exactly does it mean?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Ah, there you re asking too much, Miss Toomis. Waiter, some +coffee for two.</p> + +<p>WAITER (<i>who is standing in the door of the lounge</i>). Si, Signore. Will +the lady and gentleman take it here, or in the gardens, perhaps?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. A good suggestion. Why shouldn't the lady and gentleman take it +in the garden?</p> + +<p>AMY. Why not?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. By the fountain, then, Waiter. We can talk about ourselves +there to the tune of falling waters.</p> + +<p>AMY. And you shall recite your poetry, Mr. Dolphin. I just love poetry. +Do you know Mrs. Wilcox's <i>Poems of Passion</i>? (<i>They go out to the left. +A nightingale utters two or three phrases of song and from far down the +bells of the city jangle the three-quarters and die slowly away into the +silence out of which they rose and came together.</i>)</p> + +<p>(LUCREZIA GRATTAROL <i>has come out of the hotel just in time to overhear +Miss Toomis's last remark, just in time to see her walk slowly away with +a hand on</i> SIDNEY DOLPHIN's <i>arm</i>. LUCREZIA <i>has a fine thoroughbred +appearance, an aquiline nose, a finely curved sensual mouth, a superb +white brow, a quivering nostril. She is the last of a family whose name +is as illustrious in Venetian annals as that of Foscarini, Tiepolo, or +Tron. She stamps a preposterously high-heeled foot and tosses her +head.</i>)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Passion! Passion, indeed. An American! (<i>She starts to run +after the retreating couple, when</i> ALBERTO, <i>who has been sitting with +his head between his hands, looks up and catches sight of the +newcomer</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Lucrezia!</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>starts, for in the shade beneath the trees she had not seen +him</i>). Oh! You gave me such a fright, Alberto. I'm in a hurry now. Later +on, if you....</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>in a desperate voice that breaks into a sob</i>). Lucrezia! You +must come and talk to me. You must.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But I tell you I can't now, Alberto. Later on.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>the tears streaming down his cheeks</i>). Now, now, now! You must +come now. I am lost if you don't.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>looking indecisively first at</i> ALBERTO <i>and then along the +path down which</i> AMY <i>and</i> SIDNEY DOLPHIN <i>have disappeared</i>). But +supposing I am lost if I do come?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. But you couldn't be as much lost as I am. Ah, you don't know +what it is to suffer. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss wass ich leide. +Oh, Lucrezia.... (<i>He sobs unrestrainedly</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>goes over to where</i> ALBERTO <i>is sitting. She pats his +shoulder and his bowed head of black curly hair</i>). There, there, my +little Bertino. Tell me what it is. You mustn't cry. There, there.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>drying his eyes and rubbing his head, like a cat, avid of +caresses, against her hand</i>). How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia? You +are like a mother to me.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I know. That's just what's so dangerous.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>lets his head fall upon her bosom</i>). I come to you for +comfort, like a tired child, Lucrezia.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Poor darling! (<i>She strokes his hair, twines its thick black +tendrils round her fingers</i>, ALBERTO <i>is abjectly pathetic</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>with closed eyes and a seraphic smile</i>). Ah, the suavity, the +beauty of this maternal instinct!</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>with a sudden access of energy and passion</i>). The +disgustingness of it, you mean. (<i>She pushes him from her. His head +wobbles once, as though it were inanimate, before he straightens into +life</i>.) The maternal instinct. Ugh. It's been the undoing of too many +women. You men come with your sentimental babyishness and exploit it for +your own lusts. Be a man, Bertino. Be a woman, I mean, if you can.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>looking up at her with eyes full of doglike, dumb reproach</i>). +Lucrezia! You, too? Is there nobody who cares for me? This is the +unkindest cut of all. I may as well die. (<i>He relapses into tears</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>who has started to go, turns back, irresolute</i>). Now, don't +cry, Bertino. Can't you behave like a reasonable being? (<i>She makes as +though to go again</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>through his sobs</i>). You too, Lucrezia! Oh, I can't bear it, I +can't bear it.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>turning back desperately</i>). But what do you want me to do? +Why should you expect <i>me</i> to hold your hand?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. I thought better of you, Lucrezia. Let me go. There is nothing +left for me now but death. (<i>He rises to his feet, takes a step or two, +and then collapses into another chair, unable to move</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>torn between anger and remorse</i>). Now do behave yourself +sensibly, Bertino. There, there ... you mustn't cry. I'm sorry if I've +hurt you. (<i>Looking towards the left along the path taken by</i> AMY <i>and</i> +DOLPHIN.) Oh, damnation! (<i>She stamps her foot</i>.) Here, Bertino, do pull +yourself together. (<i>She raises him up</i>.) There, now you must stop +crying. (<i>But as soon as she lets go of him his head falls back on to +the iron table with an unpleasant, meaty bump. That bump is too much +for</i> LUCREZIA. <i>She bends over him, strokes his head, even kisses the +lustrous curls</i>.) Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I have been a beast. But, +tell me first, what's the matter, Bertino? What is it, my poor darling? +Tell me.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Nobody loves me.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But we're all devoted to you, Bertino mio.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. She isn't. To-day she shut the door in my face.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. She? You mean the French-woman, the one you told me about? +Louise, wasn't she?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Yes, the one with the golden hair.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. And the white legs. I remember: you saw her bathing.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>lays his hand on his heart</i>). Ah, don't remind me of it. (<i>His +face twitches convulsively</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. And now she's gone and shut the door in your face.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. In my face, Lucrezia.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Poor darling!</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. For me there is nothing now but the outer darkness.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Is the door shut forever, then?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Definitively, for ever.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But have you tried knocking? Perhaps, after all, it might be +opened again, if only a crack.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. What, bruise my hands against the granite of her heart?</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Don't be too poetical, Bertino mio. Why not try again, in any +case?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. You give me courage.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. There's no harm in trying, you know.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Courage to live, to conquer. (<i>He beats his breast</i>.) I am a +man again, thanks to you, Lucrezia, my inspirer, my Muse, my Egeria. How +can I be sufficiently grateful. (<i>He kisses her</i>.) I am the child of +your spirit. (<i>He kisses her again</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Enough, enough. I am not ambitious to be a mother, yet awhile. +Quickly now, Bertino, I know you will succeed.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>cramming his hat down on his head and knocking with his +walking-stick on the ground</i>). Succeed or die, Lucrezia. (<i>He goes out +with a loud martial stamp</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>to the waiter who is passing across the stage with a +coffee-pot and cups on a tray</i>). Have you seen the Signorina Toomis, +Giuseppe?</p> + +<p>WAITER. The Signorina is down in the garden. So is the Signore Dolphin. +By the fountain, Signorina. This is the Signore's coffee.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Have you a mother, Giuseppe?</p> + +<p>WAITER. Unfortunately, Signorina.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Unfortunately? Does she treat you badly, then?</p> + +<p>WAITER. Like a dog, Signorina.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Ah, I should like to see your mother. I should like to ask her +to give me some hints on how to bring up children.</p> + +<p>WAITER. But surely, Signorina, you are not expecting, you—ah....</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Only figuratively, Giuseppe. My children are spiritual +children.</p> + +<p>WAITER. Precisely, precisely. My mother, alas! is not a spiritual +relation. Nor is my fiançée.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I didn't know you were engaged.</p> + +<p>WAITER. To an angel of perdition. Believe me, Signorina, I go to my +destruction in that woman—go with open eyes. There is no escape. She is +what is called in the Holy Bible (<i>crosses himself</i>) a Fisher of Men.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. You have remarkable connections, Giuseppe.</p> + +<p>WAITER. I am honoured by your words, Signorina. But the coffee becomes +cold. (<i>He hurries out to the left</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. In the garden! By the fountain! And there's the nightingale +beginning to sing in earnest! Good heavens! what may not already have +happened? (<i>She runs out after the waiter</i>.)</p> + +<p>(<i>Two persons emerge from the hotel</i>, the VICOMTE DE BARBAZANGE <i>and the</i> +BARONESS KOCH DE WORMS. PAUL DE BARBAZANGE <i>is a young man—twenty-six +perhaps of exquisite grace. Five foot ten, well built, dark hair, sleek +as marble, the most refined aristocratic features, and a monocle</i>, +SIMONE DE WORMS <i>is forty, a ripe Semitic beauty. Five years more and +the bursting point of overripeness will have been reached. But now, +thanks to massage, powerful corsets, skin foods, and powder, she is +still a beauty—a beauty of the type Italians admire, cushioned, +steatopygous.</i> PAUL, <i>who has a faultless taste in bric-à -brac and +women, and is by instinct and upbringing an ardent anti-Semite, finds +her infinitely repulsive. The Baronne enters with a loud shrill giggle. +She gives</i> PAUL <i>a slap with her green feather fan</i>.)</p> + + + +<p>SIMONE. Oh, you naughty boy! Quelle histoire. Mon Dieu! How dare you +tell me such a story!</p> + +<p>PAUL. For you, Baronne, I would risk anything even your displeasure.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Charming boy. But stories of that kind.... And you look so +innocent, too! Do you know any more like it?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>suddenly grave</i>). Not of that description. But I will tell you a +story of another kind, a true story, a tragic story.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Did I ever tell you how I saw a woman run over by a train? Cut +to pieces, literally, to pieces. So disagreeable. I'll tell you later. +But now, what about your story?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, it's nothing, nothing.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. But you promised to tell it me.</p> + +<p>PAUL. It's only a commonplace anecdote. A young man, poor but noble, +with a name and a position to keep up. A few youthful follies, a +mountain of debts, and no way out except the revolver. This is all dull +and obvious enough. But now follows the interesting part of the story. +He is about to take that way out, when he meets the woman of his dreams, +the goddess, the angel, the ideal. He loves, and he must die without a +word. (<i>He turns his face away from the Baronne, as though his emotion +were too much for him, which indeed it is</i>.)</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Vicomte—Paul—this young man is you?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>solemnly</i>). He is.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. And the woman?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, I can't, I mayn't tell you.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. The woman! Tell me, Paul.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>turning towards her and falling on his knees</i>). The woman, +Simone, is you. Ah, but I had no right to say it.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>quivering with emotion</i>). My Paul. (<i>She clasps his head to her +bosom. A grimace of disgust contorts Paul's classical features. He +endures Simone's caresses with a stoical patience</i>.) But what is this +about a revolver? That is only a joke, Paul, isn't it? Say it isn't +true.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Alas, Simone, too true. (<i>He taps his coat pocket</i>.) There it +lies. To-morrow I have a hundred and seventy thousand francs to pay, or +be dishonoured. I cannot pay the sum. A Barbazange does not survive +dishonour. My ancestors were Crusaders, preux chevaliers to a man. Their +code is mine. Dishonour for me is worse than death.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Mon Dieu, Paul, how noble you are! (<i>She lays her hands on his +shoulder, leans back, and surveys him at arm's length, a look of pride +and anxious happiness on her face</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>dropping his eyes modestly</i>). Not at all. I was born noble, and +noblesse oblige, as we say in our family. Farewell, Simone, I love +you—and I must die. My last thought will be of you. (<i>He kisses her +hand, rises to his feet, and makes as though to go</i>.)</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>clutching him by the arm</i>). No, Paul, no. You must not, shall +not, do anything rash. A hundred and seventy thousand francs, did you +say? It is paltry. Is there no one who could lend or give you the money?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Not a soul. Farewell, Simone.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Stay, Paul. I hardly dare to ask it of you—you with such lofty +ideas of honour—but would you ... from me?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Take money from a woman? Ah, Simone, tempt me no more. I might do +an ignoble act.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. But from me, Paul, from me. I am not in your eyes a woman like +any other woman, am I?</p> + +<p>PAUL. It is true that my ancestors, the Crusaders, the preux chevaliers, +might in all honour receive gifts from the ladies of their +choice—chargers, swords, armour, or tenderer mementoes, such as gloves +or garters. But money—no; who ever heard of their taking money?</p> + +<p>SIMONE. But what would be the use of my giving you swords and horses? +You could never use them. Consider, my knight, my noble Sir Paul, in +these days the contests of chivalry have assumed a different form; the +weapons and the armour have changed. Your sword must be of gold and +paper; your breastplate of hard cash; your charger of gilt-edged +securities. I offer you the shining panoply of the modern crusader. Will +you accept it?</p> + +<p>PAUL. You are eloquent, Simone. You could win over the devil himself +with that angelic voice of yours. But it cannot be. Money is always +money. The code is clear. I cannot accept your offer. Here is the way +out. (<i>He takes an automatic pistol out of his pocket</i>.) Thank you, +Simone, and good-bye. How wonderful is the love of a pure woman.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Paul, Paul, give that to me! (<i>She snatches the pistol from his +hand</i>.) If anything were to happen to you, Paul, I should kill myself +with this. You must live, you must consent to accept the money. You +mustn't let your honour make a martyr of you.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>brushing a tear from his eyes</i>). No, I can't.... Give me that +pistol, I beg you.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. For my sake, Paul.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, you make it impossible for me to act as the voices of dead +ancestors tell me I should.... For your sake, then, Simone, I consent +to live. For your sake I dare to accept the gift you offer.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>kissing his hand in an outburst of gratitude</i>). Thank you, +thank you, Paul. How happy I am!</p> + +<p>PAUL. I, too, light of my life.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. My month's allowance arrived to-day. I have the cheque here. +(<i>She takes it out of her corsage</i>.) Two hundred thousand francs. It's +signed already. You can get it cashed as soon as the hanks open +to-morrow.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>moved by an outburst of genuine emotion kisses indiscriminately +the cheque, the Baronne, his own hands</i>). My angel, you have saved me. +How can I thank you? How can I love you enough? Ah, mon petit bouton de +rose.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Oh, naughty, naughty! Not now, my Paul; you must wait till some +other time.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I burn with impatience.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Quelle fougue! Listen, then. In an hour's time, Paul chéri, in +my boudoir; I shall be alone.</p> + +<p>PAUL. An hour? It is an eternity.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>playfully</i>). An hour. I won't relent. Till then, my Paul. (<i>She +blows a kiss and runs out: the scenery trembles at her passage.</i>)</p> + +<p>(PAUL <i>looks at the cheque, then pulls out a large silk handkerchief and +wipes his neck inside his collar</i>.) (DOLPHIN <i>drifts in from the left. +He is smoking a cigarette, but he does not seem to be enjoying it</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. Alone?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Alas!</p> + +<p>PAUL. Brooding on the universe as usual? I envy you your philosophic +detachment. Personally, I find that the world is very much too much with +us, and the devil too; (<i>he looks at the cheque in his hand</i>) and above +all the flesh. My god, the flesh.... (<i>He wipes his neck again</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. My philosophic detachment? But it's only a mask to hide the +ineffectual longings I have to achieve contact with the world.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But surely nothing is easier. One just makes a movement and +impinges on one's fellow-beings.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Not with a temperament like mine. Imagine a shyness more +powerful than curiosity or desire, a paralysis of all the faculties. You +are a man of the world. You were born with a forehead of brass to +affront every social emergency. Ah, if you knew what a torture it is to +find yourself in the presence of someone a woman, perhaps—someone in +whom you take an interest that is not merely philosophic; to find +oneself in the presence of such a person and to be incapable, yes, +physically incapable, of saying a word to express your interest in her +or your desire to possess her intimacy. Ah, I notice I have slipped into +the feminine. Inevitably, for of course the person is always a she.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Of course, of course. That goes without saying. But what's the +trouble? Women are so simple to deal with.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I know. Perfectly simply if one's in the right state of mind. I +have found that out myself, for moments come alas, how rarely!—when I +am filled with a spirit of confidence, possessed by some angel or devil +of power. Ah, then I feel myself to be superb. I carry all before me. In +those brief moments the whole secret of the world is revealed to me. I +perceive that the supreme quality in the human soul is effrontery. +Genius in the man of action is simply the apotheosis of charlatanism. +Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mr. Gladstone, Lloyd George—what are +they? Just ordinary human beings projected through the magic lantern of +a prodigious effrontery and so magnified to a thousand times larger than +life. Look at me. I am far more intelligent than any of these fabulous +figures; my sensibility is more refined than theirs, I am morally +superior to any of them. And yet, by my lack of charlatanism, I am made +less than nothing. My qualities are projected through the wrong end of a +telescope and the world perceives me far smaller than I really am. But +the world—who cares about the world? The only people who matter are the +women.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Very true, my dear Dolphin. The women.... (<i>He looks at the cheque +and mops himself once more with his mauve silk handkerchief</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. To-night was one of my moments of triumph. I felt myself +suddenly free of all my inhibitions.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I hope you profited by the auspicious occasion.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I did. I was making headway. I had—but I don't know why I +should bore you with my confidences. Curious that one should be dumb +before intimates and open one's mind to an all but stranger. I must +apologise.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But I am all attention and sympathy, my dear Dolphin. And I take +it a little hardly that you should regard me as a stranger. (<i>He lays a +hand on Dolphin's shoulder</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Thank you, Barbazange, thank you. Well, if you consent to be +the receptacle of my woes, I shall go on pouring them out.... Miss +Toomis.... But tell me frankly what you think of her.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Well....</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. A little too ingenuous, a little silly even, eh?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Now you say so, she certainly isn't very intellectually +stimulating.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Precisely. But ... oh, those china-blue eyes, that +ingenuousness, that pathetic and enchanting silliness! She touches lost +chords in one's heart. I love the Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, I am +transported by Beethoven's hundred-and-eleventh Sonata; but the fact +doesn't prevent my being moved to tears by the last luscious waltz +played by the hotel orchestra. In the best constructed brains there are +always spongy surfaces that are sensitive to picture postcards and +Little Nelly and the End of a Perfect Day. Miss Toomis has found out my +Achilles's heel. She is boring, ridiculous, absurd to a degree, but oh! +how moving, how adorable.</p> + +<p>PAUL. You're done for, my poor Dolphin, sunk—spurlos.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. And I was getting on so well, was revelling in my new-found +confidence, and, knowing its transience, was exploiting it for all I +was worth. I had covered an enormous amount of ground and then, hey +presto! at a blow all my labour was undone. Actuated by what malice I +don't know, la Lucrezia swoops down like a vulture, and without a +by-your-leave or excuse of any kind carries off Miss Toomis from under +my very eyes. What a woman! She terrifies me. I am always running away +from her.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Which means, I suppose, that she is always pursuing you.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. She has ruined my evening and, it may me, all my chances of +success. My precious hour of self-confidence will be wasted (though I +hope you'll not take offence at the word)—wasted on you.</p> + +<p>PAUL. It will return.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But when—but when? Till it does I shall be impotent and in +agony.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I know the agony of waiting. I myself was engaged to a Rumanian +princess in 1916. But owing to the sad collapse in the Rumanian rate of +exchange I have had to postpone our union indefinitely. It is painful, +but, believe me, it can be borne. (<i>He looks at the cheque and then at +his watch</i>.) There are other things which are much worse. Believe me, +Dolphin, it can be borne.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I suppose it can. For, when all is said, there are damned few +of us who really take things much to heart. Julie de Lespinasses are +happily not common. I am even subnormal. At twenty I believed myself +passionate: one does at that age. But now, when I come to consider +myself candidly, I find that I am really one of those who never deeply +felt nor strongly willed. Everything is profoundly indifferent to me. I +sometimes try to depress myself with the thought that the world is a +cess-pool, that men are pathetic degenerates from the ape whose +laboriously manufactured ideals are pure nonsense and find no rhyme in +reality, that the whole of life is a bad joke which takes a long time +coming to an end. But it really doesn't upset me. I don't care a curse. +It's deplorable; one ought to care. The best people do care. Still, I +must say I should like to get possession of Miss Toomis. Confound that +Grattarol woman. What on earth did she want to rush me like that for, do +you suppose?</p> + + +<p>PAUL. I expect we shall find out now. (PAUL <i>jerks his head towards the +left.</i> LUCREZIA <i>and</i> AMY <i>are seen entering from the garden</i>, LUCREZIA +<i>holds her companion's arm and marches with a firm step towards the two +men</i>. AMY <i>suffers herself to be drugged along</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Vicomte, Miss Toomis wants you to tell her all about +Correggio.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>rather scared</i>). Oh, really—I....</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. And (<i>sternly</i>)—and Michelangelo. She is so much interested +in art.</p> + +<p>AMY. But please—don't trouble....</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>bowing gracefully</i>). I shall be delighted. And in return I hope +Miss Toomis will tell me all about Longfellow.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>brightening</i>). Oh yes, don't you just love Evangeline?</p> + +<p>PAUL. I do; and with your help, Miss Toomis, I hope I shall learn to +love her better.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>to</i> DOLPHIN, <i>who has been looking from</i> AMY <i>to the</i> VICOMTE +<i>and back again at</i> AMY <i>with eyes that betray a certain disquietude</i>). +You really must come and look at the moon rising over the hills, Mr. +Dolphin. One sees it best from the lower terrace. Shall we go?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>starts and shrinks</i>). But it's rather cold, isn't it? I +mean—I think I ought to go and write a letter.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Oh, you can do that to-morrow.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But really.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. You've no idea how lovely the moon looks.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But I must....</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>lays her hand on his sleeve and tows hint after her, crying +as she goes</i>). The moon, the moon.... (PAUL <i>and</i> AMY <i>regard their exit +in silence</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. He doesn't look as though he much wanted to go and see the moon.</p> + +<p>AMY. Perhaps he guesses what's in store for him.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>surprised</i>). What, you don't mean to say you realised all the +time?</p> + +<p>AMY. Realised what?</p> + +<p>PAUL. About la belle Lucrezia.</p> + +<p>AMY. I don't know what you mean. All I know is that she means to give +Mr. Dolphin a good talking to. He's so mercenary. It made me quite +indignant when she told me about him. Such a schemer, too. You know in +America we have very definite ideas about honour.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Here too, Miss Toomis.</p> + +<p>AMY. Not Mr. Dolphin. Oh dear, it made me so sad; more sad than angry. I +can never be grateful enough to Signorina Grattarol.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But I'm still at a loss to know exactly what you're talking about.</p> + +<p>AMY. And I am quite bewildered myself. Would you have believed it of +him? I thought him such a nice man.</p> + +<p>PAUL. What has he done?</p> + +<p>AMY. It's all for my money, Miss Grattarol told me. She knows. He was +just asking me to marry him, and I believe I would have said Yes. But +she came in just in the nick of time. It seems he only wanted to marry +me because I'm so rich. He doesn't care for me at all. Miss Grattarol +knows what he's like. It's awful, isn't it? Oh dear, I wouldn't have +thought it of him.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But you must forgive him, Miss Toomis. Money is a great +temptation. Perhaps if you gave him another chance....</p> + +<p>AMY. Impossible.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Poor Dolphin! He's such a nice young fellow.</p> + +<p>AMY. I thought so too. But he's false.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Don't be too hard on him. Money probably means too much to him. +It's the fault of his upbringing. No one who has not lived among the +traditions of our ancient aristocracy can be expected to have that +contempt, almost that hatred of wealth, which is the sign of true +nobility. If he had been brought up, as I was, in an old machicolated +castle on the Loire, surrounded by ancestral ghosts, imbued with the +spirit of the Crusaders and preux chevaliers who had inhabited the +place in the past, if he had learnt to know what noblesse oblige really +means, believe me, Miss Toomis, he could never have done such a thing.</p> + +<p>AMY. I should just think he couldn't, Monsieur de Barbazange.</p> + +<p>PAUL. You have no idea, Miss Toomis, how difficult it is for a man of +truly noble feelings to get over the fact of your great wealth. When I +heard that you were the possessor of a hundred million dollars....</p> + +<p>AMY. Oh, I'm afraid it's more than that. It's two hundred million.</p> + +<p>PAUL. ... of two hundred million dollars, then ... it only makes it +worse; I was very melancholy, Miss Toomis. For those two hundred million +dollars were a barrier, which a descendant of Crusaders and preux +chevaliers could not overleap. Honour, Miss Toomis, honour forbade. Ah, +if only that accursed money had not stood in the way.... When I first +saw you oh, how I was moved by that vision of beauty and innocence—I +wanted nothing better than to stand gazing on you for ever. But then I +heard about those millions. Dolphin was lucky to have felt no +restraints. But enough, enough. (<i>He checks a rising tide of emotion</i>.) +Give poor Dolphin another chance, Miss Toomis. At bottom he is a good +fellow, and he may learn in time to esteem you for your own sake and to +forget the dazzling millions.</p> + +<p>AMY. Never. I can only marry a man who is entirely disinterested.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But, can't you see, no disinterested man could ever bring himself +to ask you? How could he prove his disinterestedness? No one would +believe the purity of his intentions.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>much moved</i>). It is for me to judge. I know a disinterested man +when I see him. Even in America we can understand honour.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>with a sob in his voice</i>). Good-bye Miss Toomis.</p> + +<p>AMY. But no, I don't want it to be good-bye.</p> + +<p>PAUL. It must be. Never shall it be said of a Barbazange that he hunted +a woman for her money.</p> + +<p>AMY. But what does it matter what the world says, if I say the opposite?</p> + +<p>PAUL. You say the opposite? Thank you, thank you. But no, good-bye.</p> + +<p>AMY. Stop. Oh! you're forcing me to do a most unwomanly thing. You're +making me ask you to marry me. You're the only disinterested man I've +ever met or, to judge from what I've seen of the world, I'm ever likely +to meet. Haven't you kept away from me in spite of your feelings? +Haven't you even tried to make me listen to another man—a man not +worthy to black your boots? Oh, it's so wonderful, so noble! It's like +something in a picture play. Paul, I offer myself to you. Will you take +me in spite of my millions?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>falling on his knees and kissing the hem of</i> AMY'S <i>skirt</i>). My +angel, you're right; what does it matter what the world says as long as +you believe in me? Amy, amie, bien-aimée.... Ah, it's too good too, too +good to be true! (<i>He rises to his feet and embraces her with an +unfeigned enthusiasm</i>.)</p> + +<p>AMY. Paul, Paul.... And so this is love. Isn't it wonderful?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>looking round anxiously</i>). You mustn't tell anyone about our +engagement, my Amy. They might say unpleasant things in the hotel, you +know.</p> + +<p>AMY. Of course I won't talk about it. We'll keep our happiness to +ourselves, won't we?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Entirely to ourselves; and to-morrow we'll go to Paris and arrange +about being married.</p> + +<p>AMY. Yes, yes; we'll take the eight o'clock train.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Not the eight o clock, my darling. I have to go to the bank +to-morrow to do a little business. We must wait till the twelve thirty.</p> + +<p>AMY. Very well, then. The twelve-thirty. Oh, how happy I am!</p> + +<p>PAUL. So am I, my sweetheart. More than I can tell you. (<i>The sound of a +window being opened is heard. They look up and see the</i> BARONESS +<i>dressed in a peignoir of the tenderest blue, emerging on to the right +hand of the three balconies</i>.)</p> + +<p>AMY. Oh, my soul! I think I'd better go in. Good-night, my Paul. (<i>She +runs in</i>.)</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Has that horrid little American girl gone? (<i>She peers down, +then, reassured, she blows a kiss to</i> PAUL.) My Romeo!</p> + +<p>PAUL. I come, Juliet.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. There's a kiss for you.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>throwing kisses with both hands</i>). And there's one for you. And +another, and another. Two hundred million kisses, my angel.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>giggling</i>). What a lot!</p> + +<p>PAUL. It is; you re quite right. Two hundred million.... I come, my +Juliet. (<i>He darts into the hotel, pausing when just inside the door and +out of sight of the</i> BARONESS, <i>to mop himself once again with his +enormous handkerchief. The operation over, he advances with a resolute +step, The</i> BARONESS <i>stands for a moment on the balcony. Then, seeing</i> +DOLPHIN <i>and</i> LUCREZIA <i>coming in from the left, she retires, closing +the window and drawing the curtains behind her</i>. DOLPHIN <i>comes striding +in</i>; LUCREZIA <i>follows a little behind, looking anxiously up at him</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Please, please....</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. NO, I won t listen to anything more. (<i>He walks with an +agitated step up and down the stage</i>. LUCREZIA <i>stands with one hand +resting on the back of a chair and the other pressed on her heart.)</i> Do +you mean to say you deliberately went and told her that I was only after +her money? Oh, it's too bad, too bad. It's infamous. And I hadn't the +faintest notion that she had any money. Besides, I don't want money; I +have quite enough of my own. It's infamous, infamous!</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I know it was a horrible thing to do. But I couldn't help it. +How could I stand by and see you being carried off by that silly little +creature?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But I cared for her.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But not as I cared for you. I've got red blood in my veins; +she's got nothing but milk and water. You couldn't have been happy with +her. I can give you love of a kind she could never dream of. What does +she know of passion?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Nothing, I am thankful to say. I don't want passion; can't you +understand that? I don't possess it myself and don't like it in others. +I am a man of sentimental affections, with a touch of quiet sensuality. +I don't want passion, I tell you. It's too violent; it frightens me. I +couldn't possibly live with you. You'd utterly shatter my peace of mind +in a day. Oh, how I wish you'd go away.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But Sidney, Sidney, can't you understand what it is to be +madly in love with somebody? You can't be so cruel.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. You didn't think much of my well-being when you interfered +between Miss Toomis and me, did you? You've probably ruined my whole +life, that's all. I really don't see why you should expect me to have +any pity for you.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Very well, then, I shall kill myself. (<i>She bursts into +tears</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Oh, but I assure you, one doesn't kill oneself for things like +that. (<i>He approaches her and pats her on the shoulder</i>.) Come, come, +don't worry about it.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>throws her arms round his neck</i>). Oh, Sidney, Sidney....</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>freeing himself with surprising energy and promptitude from +her embrace</i>). No, no, none of that, I beg. Another moment and we shall +be losing our heads. Personally I think I shall go to bed now. I should +advise you to do the same, Miss Grattarol. You're overwrought. We might +all be better for a small dose of bromide. (<i>He goes in</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>looking up and stretching forth her hands</i>). Sidney.... +(DOLPHIN <i>does not look round, and disappears through the glass door +into the hotel</i>, LUCREZIA <i>covers her face with her hands and sits for a +little sobbing silently. The nightingale sings on. Midnight sounds with +an infinite melancholy from all the twenty campaniles of the city in the +valley. From far away comes the spasmodic throbbing of a guitar and the +singing of an Italian voice, high-pitched, passionate, throaty. The +seconds pass</i>, LUCREZIA <i>rises to her feet and walks slowly into the +hotel. On the threshold she encounters the</i> VICOMTE <i>coming out</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. You, Signorina Lucrezia? I've escaped for a breath of fresh, cool +air. Mightn't we take a turn together? (LUCREZIA <i>shakes her head</i>.) Ah, +well, then, good-night. You'll be glad to hear that Miss Toomis knows +all about Correggio now.</p> + +<p>(<i>He inhales a deep breath of air. Then looking at his dinner-jacket he +begins brushing at it with his hand. A lamentable figure creeps in from +the left. It is</i> ALBERTO. <i>If he had a tail, it would be trailing on the +ground between his legs</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. Hullo, Alberto. What is it? Been losing at cards?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Worse than that.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Creditors foreclosing?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Much worse.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Father ruined by imprudent speculations?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. No, no, no. It's nothing to do with money.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, well, then. It can't be anything very serious. It's women, I +suppose.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. My mistress refuses to see me. I have been beating on her door +for hours in vain.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I wish we all had your luck, Bertino. Mine opens her door only too +promptly. The difficulty is to get out again. Does yours use such an +awful lot of this evil-smelling powder? I'm simply covered with it. Ugh! +(<i>He brushes his coat again</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Can't you be serious, Paul?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Of course I can ... about a serious matter. But you can't expect +me to pull a long face about your mistress, can you, now? Do look at +things in their right proportions.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. It's no use talking to you. You're heartless, soulless.</p> + +<p>PAUL. What you mean, my dear Alberto, is that I'm relatively speaking +bodiless. Physical passion never goes to my head. I'm always <i>compos +mentis</i>. You aren't, that's all.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Oh, you disgust me. I think I shall hang myself to-night.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Do. It will give us something to talk about at lunch to-morrow.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Monster! (<i>He goes into the hotel</i>, PAUL <i>strolls out towards +the garden, whistling an air from Mozart as he goes. The window on the +left opens and</i> LUCREZIA <i>steps on to her balcony. Uncoiled, her red +hair falls almost to her waist. Her nightdress is always half slipping +off one shoulder or the other, like those loose-bodied Restoration gowns +that reveal the tight-blown charms of Kneller's Beauties. Her feet are +bare. She is a marvellously romantic figure, as she stands there, +leaning on the balustrade, and with eyes more sombre than night, gazing +into the darkness. The nightingales, the bells, the guitar, and +passionate voice strike up. Great stars palpitate in the sky. The moon +has swum imperceptibly to the height of heaven. In the garden below +flowers are yielding their souls into the air, censers invisible. It is +too much, too much.... Large tears roll down</i> LUCREZIA's <i>cheeks and +fall with a splash to the ground. Suddenly, but with the noiselessness +of a cat,</i> ALBERTO <i>appears, childish-looking in pink pajamas, on the +middle of the three balconies. He sees</i> LUCREZIA, <i>but she is much too +deeply absorbed in thought to have noticed his coming</i>, ALBERTO <i>plants +his elbows on the rail of the balcony, covers his face, and begins to +sob, at first inaudibly, then in a gradual quickening crescendo. At the +seventh sob</i> LUCREZIA <i>starts and becomes aware of his presence</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Alberto. I didn't know.... Have you been there long? (ALBERTO +<i>makes no articulate reply, but his sobs keep on growing louder</i>.) +Alberto, are you unhappy? Answer me.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>with difficulty, after a pause</i>). Yes.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Didn't she let you in?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. No. (<i>His sobs become convulsive</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Poor boy.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>lifting up a blubbered face to the moonlight</i>). I am so +unhappy.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. You can't be more unhappy than I am.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Oh yes, I am. It's impossible to be unhappier than me.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But I <i>am</i> more unhappy.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. You re not. Oh, how can you be so cruel Lucrezia? (<i>He covers +his face once more</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But I only said I was unhappy Alberto.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Yes, I know. That showed you weren't thinking of me. Nobody +loves me. I shall hang myself to-night with the cord of my +dressing-gown.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. NO, no, Alberto. You mustn't do anything rash.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. I shall. Your cruelty has been the last straw.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I'm sorry, Bertino mio. But if you only knew how miserable I +was feeling. I didn't mean to be unsympathetic. Poor boy. I'm so sorry. +There, don't cry, poor darling.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Oh, I knew you wouldn't desert me, Lucrezia. You've always been +a mother to me. (<i>He stretches out his hand and seizes hers, which has +gone half-way to meet him; but the balconies are too far apart to allow +him to kiss it. He makes an effort and fails. He is too short in the +body</i>,) Will you let me come onto your balcony, Lucrezia? I want to tell +you how grateful I am.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But you can do that from your own balcony.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Please, please, Lucrezia. You mustn't be cruel to me again. I +can't bear it.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Well, then.... Just for a moment, but for no more, (BERTINO +<i>climbs from one balcony to the other. One is a little reminded of the +trousered monkeys on the barrel organs. Arrived, he kneels down and +kisses</i> LUCREZIA'S <i>hand</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. You've saved me. You've given given me a fresh desire to live +and a fresh faith in life. How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia, +darling?</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>patting his head</i>). There, there. <i>We</i> are just two unhappy +creatures. We must try and comfort one another.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. What a brute I am! I never thought of your unhappiness. I am so +selfish. What is it, Lucrezia?</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I can't tell you, Bertino; but it's very painful.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Poor child, poor child. (<i>His kisses, which started at the +hand, have mounted, by this time, some way up the arm, changing +perceptibly in character as they rise. At the shoulder they have a +warmth which could not have been inferred from the respectful salutes +which barely touched the fingers</i>.) Poor darling! You've given me +consolation. Now you must let me comfort your unhappiness.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>with an effort</i>). I think you ought to go back now, Bertino.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. In a minute, my darling. There, there, poor Lucrezia. (<i>He puts +an arm round her, kisses her hair and neck.</i> LUCREZIA <i>leans her bowed +head against his chest. The sound of footsteps is heard. They both look +up with scared, wide-open eyes</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. We mustn't be seen here, Bertino. What would people think?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. I'll go back.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. There's no time. You must come into my room. Quickly.</p> + +<p>(<i>They slip through the French window, but not quickly enough to have +escaped the notice of</i> PAUL, <i>returning from his midnight stroll. The</i> +VICOMTE <i>stands for a moment looking up at the empty balcony. He laughs +softly to himself, and, throwing his cigarette away, passes through the +glass door into the house. All is now silent, save for the nightingales +and the distant bells. The curtain comes down for a moment to indicate +the passage of several hours. It rises again with the sun</i>. LUCREZIA's +<i>window opens and she appears on the balcony. She stands a moment with +one foot over the threshold of the long window in a listening pose. Then +her eyes fall on the better half of a pair of pink pyjamas lying +crumpled on the floor, like a body bereft of its soul; with her bare +foot she turns it over. A little shudder plucks at her nerves, and she +shakes her head as though, by this symbolic act, to shake off something +clinging and contaminating. Then she steps out into the full glory of +the early sun, stretching out her arms to the radiance. She bows her +face into her hands, crying out loud to herself</i>.) LUCREZIA. Oh, why, +why, why? (<i>The last of these Why's is caught by the</i> WAITER, <i>who has +crept forth in shirt-sleeves and list-slippers, duster in hand, to clean +the tables. He looks up at her admiringly, passes his tongue over his +lips. Then, with a sigh, turns to dust the tables</i>.)</p> + + + +<p>CURTAIN.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III_THE_TILLOTSON_BANQUET" id="III_THE_TILLOTSON_BANQUET"></a>III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET</h2> + + + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>Young Spode was not a snob; he was too intelligent for that, too +fundamentally decent. Not a snob; but all the same he could not help +feeling very well pleased at the thought that he was dining, alone and +intimately, with Lord Badgery. It was a definite event in his life, a +step forward, he felt, towards that final success, social, material, and +literary, which he had come to London with the fixed intention of +making. The conquest and capture of Badgery was an almost essential +strategical move in the campaign.</p> + +<p>Edmund, forty-seventh Baron Badgery, was a lineal descendant of that +Edmund, surnamed Le Blayreau, who landed on English soil in the train of +William the Conqueror. Ennobled by William Rufus, the Badgerys had been +one of the very few baronial families to survive the Wars of the Roses +and all the other changes and chances of English history. They were a +sensible and philoprogenitive race. No Badgery had ever fought in any +war, no Badgery had ever engaged in any kind of politics. They had been +content to live and quietly to propagate their species in a huge +machicolated Norman castle, surrounded by a triple moat, only sallying +forth to cultivate their property and to collect their rents. In the +eighteenth century, when life had become relatively secure, the Badgerys +began to venture forth into civilised society. From boorish squires they +blossomed into <i>grands seigneurs</i>, patrons of the arts, virtuosi. Their +property was large, they were rich; and with the growth of industrialism +their riches also grew. Villages on their estate turned into +manufacturing towns, unsuspected coal was discovered beneath the surface +of their barren moorlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century the +Badgerys were among the richest of English noble families. The +forty-seventh baron disposed of an income of at least two hundred +thousand pounds a year. Following the great Badgery tradition, he had +refused to have anything to do with politics or war. He occupied himself +by collecting pictures; he took an interest in theatrical productions; +he was the friend and patron of men of letters, of painters, and +musician. A personage, in a word, of considerable consequence in that +particular world in which young Spode had elected to make his success.</p> + +<p>Spode had only recently left the university. Simon Gollamy, the editor +of the <i>World's Review</i> (the "Best of all possible Worlds"), had got to +know him—he was always on the look out for youthful talent—had seen +possibilities in the young man, and appointed him art critic of his +paper. Gollamy liked to have young and teachable people about him. The +possession of disciples flattered his vanity, and he found it easier, +moreover, to run his paper with docile collaborators than with men grown +obstinate and case-hardened with age. Spode had not done badly at his +new job. At any rate, his articles had been intelligent enough to arouse +the interest of Lord Badgery. It was, ultimately, to them that he owed +the honour of sitting to night in the dining-room of Badgery House.</p> + +<p>Fortified by several varieties of wine and a glass of aged brandy, Spode +felt more confident and at ease than he had done the whole evening. +Badgery was rather a disquieting host. He had an alarming habit of +changing the subject of any conversation that had lasted for more than +two minutes. Spode had found it, for example, horribly mortifying when +his host, cutting across what was, he prided himself, a particularly +subtle and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a +wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked +parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously towards him, fancying +that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white, +fleshy, Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There +was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely +want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his +irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about +parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story, when +his host began to talk about Beethoven. And so the game went on. Spode +cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of +ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto +Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish +architecture. Lord Badgery thought him the most charming young man, and +so intelligent.</p> + +<p>"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as +he spoke, "we'll go and look at the pictures."</p> + +<p>Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realised that he had drunk +just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk +deliberately, plant his feet consciously, one after the other.</p> + +<p>"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery +complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last +week; but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their +portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think? +Why couldn't they have chosen Gainsborough, or even Reynolds? I've had +all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It's such a comfort to +know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all +about the ancient Hittites?"</p> + +<p>"Well...." the young man replied, with befitting modesty.</p> + +<p>"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a +case near the dining-room door. "It's not Greek, or Egyptian, or +Persian, or anything else; so if it isn't ancient Hittite, I don't know +what it is. And that reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger, +the Circus King...." and, without giving Spode time to examine the +Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now +and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or +beauty.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as +the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about +Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous +Sanger. "What a perfect man, isn't he? He used to...."</p> + +<p>"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of +a tall folding door. "I must apologise for it. It looks like a +roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches and there +was suddenly light—light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly +receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare +say you've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little +insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used +to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about +the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the +cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them: +mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now I'm rather proud of this +Poussin; he painted it for Scarron."</p> + +<p>"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though +he were modelling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of +those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they re caught up, as it +were, and stemmed by that single godlike form opposing them with his +contrary movement! And the draperies...."</p> + +<p>But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little +fifteenth-century Virgin of carved wood.</p> + +<p>"School of Rheims," he explained.</p> + +<p>They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest +to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would +have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in +front of some of these lovely things. But it was not permitted.</p> + +<p>The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At +the sight of what the lights revealed, Spode gasped.</p> + +<p>"It's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons +dorés où se déploie un luxe insolent. You know."</p> + +<p>"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of +its kind, I flatter myself, outside the State Apartments at Windsor."</p> + +<p>Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the +objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in leathers, in +embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most +fantastic shapes and colours, all the queer products of a decadent +tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the +walls—a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Ettys, a big +Haydon, a slight pretty water-colour of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil +of Blake and arsenic poisoner, a score of others. But the picture which +arrested Spode's attention was a medium sized canvas representing +Troilus riding into Troy among the flowers and plaudits of an admiring +crowd, and oblivious (you could see from his expression) of everything +but the eyes of Cressida, who looked down at him from a window, with +Pandarus smiling over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Ah, you've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased.</p> + +<p>"What bright harmonious colours! Like Etty's, only stronger, not so +obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of +Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in +taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly.</p> + +<p>"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered, "It's by +his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work. But +nobody seems to know anything about him. And he seems to have done so +little."</p> + +<p>This time it was the younger man who interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Tillotson, Tillotson...." He put his hand to his forehead. A frown +incongruously distorted his round, floridly curved face. No ... yes, I +have it. He looked up triumphantly with serene and childish brows. +"Tillotson, Walter Tillotson—the man's still alive."</p> + +<p>Badgery smiled. "This picture was painted in 1846, you know."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his +masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it's 1913 now; that's to say +he's only ninety-three. Not as old as Titian yet."</p> + +<p>"But he's not been heard of since 1860," Lord Badgery protested.</p> + +<p>"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made +the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the +archives of the <i>World's Review</i>.(One has to bring them up to date every +year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these t old birds +chooses to shuffle off suddenly.) Well, there, among them—I remember my +astonishment at the time—there I found Walter Tillotson's biography. +Pretty full to 1860, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the +early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the +East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious +conclusion: the old chap isn't dead yet. He's just been overlooked +somehow."</p> + +<p>"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him, +Spode—you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescoes round +this room. It's just what I've always vainly longed for a real +nineteenth-century artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must +find him at once—at once."</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement.</p> + +<p>"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. "We'd +clear away all these cases and have the whole of that wall filled by a +heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent', or +Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved' anything like that, +provided it's in the grand manner of the 'thirties and 'forties. And +here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else +something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast. +Then we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something +Mauro-Gothic. And on these walls I'll have mirrors, or no! let me +see...."</p> + +<p>He sank into meditative silence, from which he finally roused himself to +shout:</p> + +<p>"The old man, the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old +creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our +secret. Oh, it's too perfect, it's incredible! Think of the frescoes."</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a +single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>Three weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon +somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one. +"Found.—SPODE." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord +Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman +padded away on noiseless feet.</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a +room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The +frescoes, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling.... And a small, +shrivelled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick +like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away, +painting away.... Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or +why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt +of Clarence. ... Lord Badgery was asleep.</p> + +<p>Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by +six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber, +engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-à -brac. Spode found +him looking hot and out of breath.</p> + +<p>"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. You see me already preparing for +the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him.</p> + +<p>"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He's ninety-seven this +year. Born in 1816. Incredible, isn't it! There, I'm beginning at the +wrong end."</p> + +<p>"Begin where you like," said Badgery genially.</p> + +<p>"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You've no idea what a +job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story, +immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some +day. At any rate, I found him at last."</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and +lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was +he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he +did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the 'sixties, to go to +Palestine to get local colour for his religious pictures—scapegoats and +things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount +Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor, +he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years."</p> + +<p>"But what did he do all that time?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he painted, and started a mission, and converted three Turks, and +taught the local Pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, and +perspective, and God knows what else. Then, in about 1904, it seems to +have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away +from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England, +only to find that everyone he had known was dead, that the dealers had +never heard of him and wouldn't buy his pictures, that he was simply a +ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a +girl's school in Holloway, and there he's been ever since, growing older +and older, and feebler and feebler, and blinder and deafer, and +generally more gaga, until finally the school has given him the sack. He +had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind +of black hole in a basement full of beetles. When his ten pounds are +spent, I suppose he'll just quietly die there."</p> + +<p>Badgery held up a white hand. "No more, no more. I find literature quite +depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer. +Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?"</p> + +<p>"But he can't paint. He's too blind and palsied."</p> + +<p>"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what's the good of the +old creature?"</p> + +<p>"Well, if you put it like that...." Spode began.</p> + +<p>"I shall never have my frescoes. Ring the bell, will you?"</p> + +<p>Spode rang.</p> + +<p>"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on +Lord Badgery petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for +occupying a place in the sun."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't have much sun in his basement."</p> + +<p>The footman appeared at the door.</p> + +<p>"Get someone to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery +commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the +confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor, the +pictures unhooked. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more +comfortable there."</p> + +<p>He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode +sympathetically.</p> + +<p>"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me.</p> + +<p>"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got +ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you'd seen the +black-beetles in his basement!"</p> + +<p>"Enough enough. I'll do everything you think fitting."</p> + +<p>"I thought we might get up a subscription amongst lovers of the arts."</p> + +<p>"There aren't any," said Badgery.</p> + +<p>"No; but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobbism."</p> + +<p>"Not unless you give them something for their money."</p> + +<p>"That's true. I hadn't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment. +"We might have a dinner in his honour. The Great Tillotson Banquet. +Doyen of the British Art. A Link with the Past. Can't you see it in the +papers? I'd make a stunt of it in the <i>World's Review</i>. That ought to +bring in the snobs."</p> + +<p>"And we'll invite a lot of artists and critics—all the ones who can't +stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery +laughed. Then his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it'll +be a very poor second best to my frescoes. You'll stay to dinner, of +course."</p> + +<p>"Well, since you suggest it. Thanks very much."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>The Tillotson Banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later. +Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent +organiser. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Café Bomba, and was +successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty +persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out +invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on +Tillotson in the <i>World's Review</i>—one of those charming, witty articles +couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt with which one +speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself. +He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's +endless stories about Asia Minor and the Great Exhibition of '51 and +Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another +age.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of +South Holloway. A little grey light percolated through the area bars, +forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent +itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an inkpot, among the +inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the spur +smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to moulder secretly +at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a +washstand and chest of drawers, a table and one or two chairs, lurked in +the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open. +Hither Spode now came almost every day, bringing the old man news of the +progress of the banquet scheme. Every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting +in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny +puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore grey hairs," Spode +reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on +that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr. +Tillotson would turn in his chair, stare in the direction of the door +with blinking, uncertain eyes. He was always full of apologies for being +so slow in recognising who was there.</p> + +<p>"No discourtesy meant," he would say, after asking. "It's not as if I +had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark and my sight isn't what it +was."</p> + +<p>After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of +the window at the area railings, would say:</p> + +<p>"Ah, this is the plate for somebody with good sight. It's the place for +looking at ankles. It's the grand stand."</p> + +<p>It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual, and Mr. +Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode, +as punctually laughed.</p> + +<p>"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had +died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and +fashion. You'll find some changes."</p> + +<p>"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode +could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it, that he had +forgotten the black hole and the black-beetles and the almost exhausted +ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing +piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just +when you did. Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the +world. I shall have money, and in a little while—who knows?—I shall be +able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting +better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and nodded his +head in affirmation of his words.</p> + +<p>"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed +for shame at the cruelty of the words.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their +significance.</p> + +<p>"Life to come," he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff +not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No +life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement of +course. You re very young Mr. Spode."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not so old as I was," Spode replied. "You know how +middle-aged one is as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Now I'm old enough +to know I'm young."</p> + +<p>Spode was about to develop this little paradox further, but he noticed +that Mr. Tillotson had not been listening. He made a note of the gambit +for use in companies that were more appreciative of the subtleties.</p> + +<p>"You were talking about the 'Origin of Species,'" he said.</p> + +<p>"Was I?" said Mr. Tillotson, waking from reverie.</p> + +<p>"About its effect on your faith, Mr. Tillotson."</p> + +<p>"To be sure, yes. It shattered my faith. But I remember a fine thing by +the Poet Laureate, something about there being more faith in honest +doubt, believe me, than in all the ... all the ...: I forget exactly +what; but you see the train of thought. Oh, it was a bad time for +religion. I am glad my master Haydon never lived to see it. He was a man +of fervour. I remember him pacing up and down his studio in Lisson +Grove, singing and shouting and praying all at once. It used almost to +frighten me. Oh, but he was a wonderful man, a great man. Take him for +all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. As usual, the Bard is +right. But it was all very long ago, before your time, Mr. Spode."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not as old as I was," said Spode, in the hope of having his +paradox appreciated this time. But Mr. Tillotson went on without +noticing the interruption.</p> + +<p>"It's a very, very long time. And yet, when I look back on it, it all +seems but a day or two ago. Strange that each day should seem so long +and that many days added together should be less than an hour. How +clearly I can see old Haydon pacing up and down! Much more clearly, +indeed, than I see you, Mr. Spode. The eyes of memory don t grow dim. +But my sight is improving, I assure you; it's improving daily. I shall +soon be able to see those ankles." He laughed like a cracked bell—one +of those little old bells, Spode fancied, that ring, with much rattling +of wires, in the far-off servants quarters of ancient houses. "And very +soon," Mr. Tillotson went on, "I shall be painting again. Ah, Mr. Spode, +my luck is extraordinary. I believe in it, I trust in it. And after all, +what is luck? Simply another name for Providence, in spite of the Origin +of Species and the rest of it. How right the Laureate was when he said +that there was more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the +... er, the ... er ... well, you know. I regard you, Mr. Spode, as the +emissary of Providence. Your coming marked a turning-point in my life, +and the beginning, for me, of happier days. Do you know, one of the +first things I shall do when my fortunes are restored will be to buy a +hedgehog."</p> + +<p>"A hedgehog, Mr. Tillotson?"</p> + +<p>"For the blackbeetles. There's nothing like a hedgehog for beetles. It +will eat blackbeetles till it's sick, till it dies of surfeit. That +reminds me of the time when I told my poor great master Haydon—in joke, +of course—that he ought to send in a cartoon of King John dying of a +surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament. As +I told him, it's a most notable event in the annals of British +liberty—the providential and exemplary removal of a tyrant."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson laughed again—the little bell in the deserted house; a +ghostly hand pulling the cord in the drawing-room, and phantom footmen +responding to the thin, flawed note.</p> + +<p>"I remember he laughed, laughed like a bull in his old grand manner. But +oh, it was a terrible blow when they rejected his design, a terrible +blow. It was the first and fundamental cause of his suicide."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson paused. There was a long silence. Spode felt strangely +moved, he hardly knew why, in the presence of this man, so frail, so +ancient, in body three parts dead, in the spirit so full of life and +hopeful patience. He felt ashamed. What was the use of his own youth and +cleverness? He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds +rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile +activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were +always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! widewinged and +beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only +visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. Those gracious +visitants he was for ever using all his energies to drive away. But this +old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of +it—his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and +going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged +creatures. He felt ashamed. But then, was it possible to alter one's +life? Wasn't it a little absurd to risk a conversion? Spode shrugged his +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I'll get you a hedgehog at once," he said. "They're sure to have some +at Whiteley's."</p> + +<p>Before he left that evening Spode made an alarming discovery. Mr. +Tillotson did not possess a dress-suit. It was hopeless to think of +getting one made at this short notice, and, besides, what an unnecessary +expense!</p> + +<p>"We shall have to borrow a suit, Mr. Tillotson. I ought to have thought +of that before."</p> + +<p>"Dear me, dear me." Mr. Tillotson was a little chagrined by this unlucky +discovery. "Borrow a suit?"</p> + +<p>Spode hurried away for counsel to Badgery House. Lord Badgery +surprisingly rose to the occasion. "Ask Boreham to come and see me," he +told the footman, who answered his ring.</p> + +<p>Boreham was one of those immemorial butlers who linger on, generation +after generation, in the houses of the great. He was over eighty now, +bent, dried up, shrivelled with age.</p> + +<p>"All old men are about the same size," said Lord Badgery. It was a +comforting theory. "Ah, here he is. Have you got a spare suit of evening +clothes, Boreham?"</p> + +<p>"I have an old suit, my lord, that I stopped wearing in let me see was +it nineteen seven or eight?"</p> + +<p>"That's the very thing. I should be most grateful, Boreham, if you could +lend it to me for Mr. Spode here for a day."</p> + +<p>The old man went out, and soon reappeared carrying over his arm a very +old black suit. He held up the coat and trousers for inspection. In the +light of day they were deplorable.</p> + +<p>"You've no idea, sir," said Boreham deprecatingly to Spode you've no +idea how easy things get stained with grease and gravy and what not. +However careful you are, sir—however careful.</p> + +<p>"I should imagine so." Spode was sympathetic.</p> + +<p>"However careful, sir."</p> + +<p>"But in artificial light they'll look all right."</p> + +<p>"Perfectly all right," Lord Badgery repeated. "Thank you, Boreham; you +shall have them back on Thursday."</p> + +<p>"You re welcome, my lord, I'm sure." And the old man bowed and +disappeared.</p> + +<p>On the afternoon of the great day Spode carried up to Holloway a parcel +containing Boreham's retired evening-suit and all the necessary +appurtenances in the way of shirts and collars. Owing to the darkness +and his own feeble sight Mr. Tillotson was happily unaware of the +defects in the suit. He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. It +was with some difficulty that Spode could prevent him, although it was +only three o'clock, from starting his toilet on the spot.</p> + +<p>"Take it easy, Mr. Tillotson, take it easy. We needn't start till +half-past seven, you know."</p> + +<p>Spode left an hour later, and as soon as he was safely out of the room +Mr. Tillotson began to prepare himself for the banquet. He lighted the +gas and a couple of candles, and, blinking myopically at the image that +fronted him in the tiny looking-glass that stood on his chest of +drawers, he set to work, with all the ardour of a young girl preparing +for her first ball. At six o'clock, when the last touches had been +given, he was not unsatisfied.</p> + +<p>He marched up and down his cellar, humming to himself the gay song which +had been so popular in his middle years:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Oh, oh, Anna, Maria Jones!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones!</i>"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Spode arrived an hour later in Lord Badgery's second Rolls-Royce. +Opening the door of the old man's dungeon, he stood for a moment, +wide-eyed with astonishment, on the threshold. Mr. Tillotson was +standing by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one +leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude. The +effect of the candlelight shining on his face was to deepen every line +and wrinkle with intense black shadow; he looked immeasurably old. It +was a noble and pathetic head. On the other hand, Boreham's out-worn +evening-suit was simply buffoonish. The coat was too long in the sleeves +and the tail; the trousers bagged in elephantine creases about his +ankles. Some of the grease-spots were visible even in candlelight. The +white tie, over which Mr. Tillotson had taken infinite pains and which +he believed in his purblindness to be perfect, was fantastically +lop-sided. He had buttoned up his waistcoat in such a fashion that one +button was widowed of its hole and one hole of its button. Across his +shirt front lay the broad green ribbon of some unknown Order.</p> + +<p>"Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones," Mr. Tillotson +concluded in a gnat-like voice before welcoming his visitor.</p> + +<p>"Well, Spode, here you are. I'm dressed already, you see. The suit, I +flatter myself, fits very well, almost as though it had been made for +me. I am all gratitude to the gentleman who was kind enough to lend it +to me; I shall take the greatest care of it. It's a dangerous thing to +lend clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. The Bard is +always right."</p> + +<p>"Just one thing," said Spode. "A touch to your waistcoat." He unbuttoned +the dissipated garment and did it up again more symmetrically.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson was a little piqued at being found so absurdly in the +wrong.</p> + +<p>"Thanks, thanks," he said, protestingly, trying to edge away from his +valet. "It's all right, you know; I can do it myself. Foolish oversight. +I flatter myself the suit fits very well."</p> + +<p>"And perhaps the tie might...." Spode began tentatively. But the old +man would not hear of it.</p> + +<p>"No, no. The tie's all right. I can tie a tie, Mr. Spode. The tie's all +right. Leave it as it is, I beg."</p> + +<p>"I like your Order."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson looked down complacently at his shirt front. "Ah, you've +noticed my Order. It's a long time since I wore that. It was given me by +the Grand Porte, you know, for services rendered in the Russo-Turkish +War. It's the Order of Chastity, the second class. They only give the +first class to crowned heads, you know—browned heads and ambassadors. +And only Pashas of the highest rank get the second. Mine's the second. +They only give the first class to crowned heads...."</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course," said Spode.</p> + +<p>"Do you think I look all right, Mr. Spode?" Mr. Tillotson asked, a +little anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Splendid, Mr. Tillotson—splendid. The Order's, magnificent."</p> + +<p>The old man's face brightened once more. "I flatter myself," he said, +"that this borrowed suit fits me very well. But I don't like borrowing +clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend, you know. And the +Bard is always right."</p> + +<p>"Ugh, there's one of those horrible beetles!" Spode exclaimed.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson bent down and stared at the floor. "I see it," he said, +and stamped on a small piece of coal, which crunched to powder under his +foot. "I shall certainly buy a hedgehog."</p> + +<p>It was time for them to start. A crowd of little boys and girls had +collected round Lord Badgery's enormous car. The chauffeur, who felt +that honour and dignity were at stake, pretended not to notice the +children, but sat gazing, like a statue, into eternity. At the sight of +Spode and Mr. Tillotson emerging from the house a yell of mingled awe +and derision went up. It subsided to an astonished silence as they +climbed into the car. "Bomba's," Spode directed. The Rolls-Royce gave a +faintly stertorous sigh and began to move. The children yelled again, +and ran along beside the car, waving their arms in a frenzy of +excitement. It was then that Mr. Tillotson, with an incomparably noble +gesture, leaned forward and tossed among the seething crowd of urchins +his three last coppers.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>IV</h3> + + +<p>In Bomba's big room the company was assembling. The long gilt-edged +mirrors reflected a singular collection of people. Middle-aged +Academicians shot suspicious glances at youths whom they suspected, only +too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist +Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered +with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, +those indefatigable hunters of artistic big game, came on one another +all unawares in this well-stored menagerie, where each had expected to +hunt alone, and were filled with rage. Through this crowd of mutually +repellent vanities Lord Badgery moved with a suavity that seemed +unconscious of all the feuds and hatreds. He was enjoying himself +immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the +Hanoverian nose, the little lustreless pig's eyes, the pale thick lips, +there lurked a small devil of happy malice that rocked with laughter.</p> + +<p>"So nice of you to have come, Mrs. Mandragore, to do honour to England's +artistic past. And I'm so glad to see you've brought dear Mrs. Cayman. +And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it is! I hadn't noticed her before. How +delightful! I knew we could depend on your love of art."</p> + +<p>And he hurried away to seize the opportunity of introducing that eminent +sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young critic who had called +him, in the public prints, a monumental mason.</p> + +<p>A moment later the Maître d'Hôtel came to the door of the gilded saloon +and announced, loudly and impressively, "Mr. Walter Tillotson." Guided +from behind by young Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and +hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, +painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned moth, over his filmy eyes. +Once inside the door he halted and drew himself up with a conscious +assumption of dignity. Lord Badgery hurried forward and seized his hand.</p> + +<p>"Welcome, Mr. Tillotson—welcome in the name of English art!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson inclined his head in silence. He was too full of emotion +to be able to reply.</p> + +<p>"I should like to introduce you to a few of your younger colleagues, +who have assembled here to do you honour."</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery presented everyone in the room to the old painter, who +bowed, shook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found +himself unable to speak. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore +all said charming things.</p> + +<p>Dinner was served; the party took their places. Lord Badgery sat at the +head of the table, with Mr. Tillotson on his right hand and Sir Herbert +Herne on his left. Confronted with Bomba's succulent cooking and Bomba's +wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of +one who has lived on greens and potatoes for ten years among the +blackbeetles. After the second glass of wine he began to talk, suddenly +and in a flood, as though a sluice had been pulled up.</p> + +<p>"In Asia Minor," he began, "it is the custom when one goes to dinner, to +hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. <i>Eructavit cor meum</i>, as +the Psalmist has it; he was an Oriental himself."</p> + +<p>Spode had arranged to sit next to Mrs. Cayman; he had designs upon her. +She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wanted +to bamboozle her into buying some of his young friends' pictures.</p> + +<p>"In a cellar?" Mrs. Cayman was saying, "with, blackbeetles? Oh, how +dreadful! Poor old man! And he's ninety-seven, didn't you say? Isn't +that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of +course, one wishes one could have given more oneself. But then, you +know, one has so many expenses, and things are so difficult now."</p> + +<p>"I know, I know," said Spode, with feeling.</p> + +<p>"It's all because of Labour," Mrs. Cayman explained. "Of course, I +should simply love to have him in to dinner sometimes. But, then, I feel +he's really too old, too <i>farouche</i> and <i>gâteux</i>; it would not be doing +a kindness to him, would it? And so you are working with Mr. Gollamy +now? What a charming man, so talented, such conversation...."</p> + +<p>"<i>Eructavit cor meum</i>," said Mr. Tillotson for the third time. Lord +Badgery tried to head him off the subject of Turkish etiquette, but in +vain.</p> + +<p>By half-past nine a kinder vinolent atmosphere had put to sleep the +hatreds and suspicions of before dinner. Sir Herbert Herne had +discovered that the young Cubist sitting next him was not insane and +actually knew a surprising amount about the Old Masters. For their part +these young men had realised that their elders were not at all +malignant; they were just very stupid and pathetic. It was only in the +bosoms of Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore that hatred still +reigned undiminished. Being ladies and old-fashioned, they had drunk +almost no wine.</p> + +<p>The moment for speech-making arrived. Lord Badgery rose to his feet, +said what was expected of him, and called upon Sir Herbert to propose +the toast of the evening. Sir Herbert coughed, smiled and began. In the +course of a speech that lasted twenty minutes he told anecdotes of Mr. +Gladstone, Lord Leighton, Sir Almo Tadema, and the late Bishop, of +Bombay; he made three puns, he quoted Shakespeare and Whittier, he was +playful, he was eloquent, he was grave.... At the end of his harangue +Sir Herbert handed to Mr. Tillotson a silk purse containing fifty-eight +pounds ten shillings, the total amount of the subscription. The old +man's health was drunk with acclamation.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson rose with difficulty to his feet. The dry, snakelike skin +of his face was flushed; his tie was more crooked than ever; the green +ribbon of the Order of Chastity of the second class had somehow climbed +tip his crumpled and maculate shirt front.</p> + +<p>"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began in a choking voice, and then +broke down completely. It was a very painful and pathetic spectacle. A +feeling of intense discomfort afflicted the minds of all who looked upon +that trembling relic of a man, as he stood there weeping and stammering. +It was as though a breath of the wind of death had blown suddenly +through the room, lifting the vapours of wine and tobacco-smoke, +quenching the laughter and the candle flames. Eyes floated uneasily, not +knowing where to look. Lord Badgery, with great presence of mind, +offered the old man a glass of wine. Mr. Tillotson began to recover. The +guests heard him murmur a few disconnected words.</p> + +<p>"This great honour ... overwhelmed with kindness ... this magnificent +banquet ... not used to it ... in Asia Minor ... <i>eructuvit cor meum</i>."</p> + +<p>At this point Lord Badgery plucked sharply at one of his long coat +tails. Mr. Tillotson paused, took another sip of wine, and then went on +with a newly won coherence and energy.</p> + +<p>"The life of the artist is a hard one. His work is unlike other men's +work, which may be done mechanically, by rote and almost, as it were, +in sleep. It demands from him a constant expense of spirit. He gives +continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is +true much fame, it may be—but of material blessings, very few. It is +eighty years since first I devoted my life to the service of art; eighty +years, and almost every one of those years has brought me fresh and +painful proof of what I have been saying: the artist's life is a hard +one."</p> + +<p>This unexpected deviation into sense increased the general feeling of +discomfort. It became necessary to take the old man seriously, to regard +him as a human being. Up till then he had been no more than an object of +curiosity, a mummy in an absurd suit of evening-clothes with a green +ribbon across the shirt front. People could not help wishing that they +had subscribed a little more. Fifty-eight pounds ten it wasn't enormous. +But happily for the peace of mind of the company, Mr. Tillotson paused +again, took another sip of wine, and began to live up to his proper +character by talking absurdly.</p> + +<p>"When I consider the life of that great man, Benjamin Robert Haydon, one +of the greatest men England has ever produced...." The audience heaved a +sigh of relief; this was all as it should be. There was a burst of loud +bravoing and clapping. Mr. Tillotson turned his dim eyes round the room, +and smiled gratefully at the misty figures he beheld. "That great man, +Benjamin Robert Haydon," he continued, "whom I am proud to call my +master and who, it rejoices my heart to see, still lives in your memory +and esteem, that great man, one of the greatest that England has ever +produced, led a life so deplorable that I cannot think of it without a +tear."</p> + +<p>And with infinite repetitions and divagations, Mr. Tillotson related the +history of B.R. Haydon, his imprisonments for debt, his battle with the +Academy, his triumphs, his failures, his despair, his suicide. Half-past +ten struck. Mr. Tillotson was declaiming against the stupid and +prejudiced judges who had rejected Haydon's designs for the decoration +of the new Houses of Parliament in favour of the paltriest German +scribblings.</p> + +<p>"That great man, one of the greatest England has ever produced, that +great Benjamin Robert Haydon, whom I am proud to call my master and who, +it rejoices me to see, still lives on in your memory and esteem—at that +affront his great heart burst; it was the unkindest cut of all. He who +had worked all his life for the recognition, of the artist by the +State, he who had petitioned every Prime Minister, including the Duke of +Wellington, for thirty years, begging them to employ artists to decorate +public buildings, he to whom the scheme for decorating the Houses of +Parliament was undeniably due...." Mr. Tillotson lost a grip on his +syntax and began a new sentence. "It was the unkindest cut of all, it +was the last straw. The artist's life is a hard one."</p> + +<p>At eleven Mr. Tillotson was talking about the pre-Raphaelites. At a +quarter past he had begun to tell the story of B.R. Haydon all over +again. At twenty-five minutes to twelve he collapsed quite speechless +into his chair. Most of the guests had already gone away; the few who +remained made haste to depart. Lord Badgery led the old man to the door +and packed him into the second Rolls-Royce. The Tillotson Banquet was +over; it had been a pleasant evening, but a little too long.</p> + +<p>Spode walked back to his rooms in Bloomsbury, whistling as he went. The +arc lamps of Oxford Street reflected in the polished surface of the +road; canals of dark bronze. He would have to bring that into an article +some time. The Cayman woman had been very successfully nobbled. "Voi che +sapete," he whistled—somewhat out of tune, but he could not hear that.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Tillotson's landlady came in to call him on the following +morning, she found the old man lying fully dressed on his bed. He looked +very ill and very, very old; Boreham's dress-suit was in a terrible +state, and the green ribbon of the Order of Chastity was ruined. Mr. +Tillotson lay very still, but he was not asleep. Hearing the sound of +footsteps, he opened his eyes a little and faintly groaned. His landlady +looked down at him menacingly.</p> + +<p>"Disgusting!" she said, "disgusting, I call it. At your age."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson groaned again. Making a great effort, he drew out of his +trouser pocket a large silk purse, opened it, and extracted a sovereign.</p> + +<p>"The artist's life is a hard one, Mrs. Green," he said, handing her the +coin. "Would you mind sending for the doctor? I don't feel very well. +And oh, what shall I do about these clothes? What shall I say to the +gentleman who was kind enough to lend them to me? Loan oft loseth both +itself and friend. The Bard is always right."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV_GREEN_TUNNELS" id="IV_GREEN_TUNNELS"></a>IV: GREEN TUNNELS</h2> + + +<p>"In the Italian gardens of the thirteenth century...." Mr. Buzzacott +interrupted himself to take another helping of the risotto which was +being offered him. "Excellent risotto this," he observed. "Nobody who +was not born in Milan can make it properly. So they say."</p> + +<p>"So they say," Mr. Topes repeated in his sad, apologetic voice, and +helped himself in his turn.</p> + +<p>"Personally," said Mrs. Topes, with decision, "I find all Italian +cooking abominable. I don't like the oil—especially hot. No, thank +you." She recoiled from the proffered dish.</p> + +<p>After the first mouthful Mr. Buzzacott put down his fork. "In the +Italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he began again, making with +his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a +clutch at his beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of +green tunnels."</p> + +<p>"Green tunnels?" Barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence. +"Green tunnels?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear," said her father. "Green tunnels. Arched alleys covered +with vines or other creeping plants. Their length was often very +considerable."</p> + +<p>But Barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. +Green tunnels—the word had floated down to her, through profound depths +of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the +sound of a strange-voiced bell. Green tunnels—what a wonderful idea. +She would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. +He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. +She pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and +scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured corals; endless dim green +corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. +Green-faced monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened +and shut. Green tunnels....</p> + +<p>"I have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," +Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his pointed brown +beard—clutched and combed it with his long fingers.</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes looked up. The glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed +as he moved his head. "I know what you mean," he said.</p> + +<p>"I have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here."</p> + +<p>"It will take a long time to grow," said Mr. Topes. "In this sand, so +close to the sea, you will only be able to plant vines. And they come up +very slowly very slowly indeed." He shook his head and the points of +light danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his +grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. Then, suddenly, he +pulled himself up. A shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. He +wriggled uncomfortably. Then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he +gave vent to a quotation:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>But at my back I always hear</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Time's winged chariot hurrying near</i>."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. He always found +it painfully difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; +and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were +always surging through his mind!</p> + +<p>"They don't grow so slowly as all that," said Mr. Buzzacott confidently. +He was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave +himself at least another forty years; indeed, he had not yet begun to +contemplate the possibility of ever concluding.</p> + +<p>"Miss Barbara will enjoy it, perhaps—your green tunnel." Mr. Topes +sighed and looked across the table at his host's daughter.</p> + +<p>Barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, +staring in front of her. The sound of her own name reached her faintly. +She turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself +confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of +the green tunnel—she stared at the shining circles—hung the eyes of a +goggling fish. They approached, floating, closer and closer, along the +dim submarine corridor.</p> + +<p>Confronted by this fixed regard, Mr. Topes looked away. What thoughtful +eyes! He couldn't remember ever to have seen eyes so full of thought. +There were certain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like hen +mild little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very +young. But he was old; it would be many years, in spite of Buzzacott, +before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. He took a sip of wine; +then, mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache.</p> + +<p>"Arthur!"</p> + +<p>At the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Topes started, raised his napkin to +his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. It was +only in moments of absent-mindedness that he ever offended, now.</p> + +<p>"The Marchese Prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said Mr. +Buzzacott suddenly. "I almost forgot to tell you."</p> + +<p>"One of these Italian marquises, I suppose," said Mrs. Topes, who was no +snob, except in England. She raised her chin with a little jerk.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "I +assure you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished +family. They are Genoese in origin. You remember their palace, Barbara? +Built by Alessi."</p> + +<p>Barbara looked up. "Oh yes," she said vaguely. "Alessi. I know." Alessi: +Aleppo—where a malignant and a turbaned Turk. <i>And</i> a turbaned; that +had always seemed to her very funny.</p> + +<p>"Several of his ancestors," Mr. Buzzacott went on, "distinguished +themselves as vice-roys of Corsica. They did good work in the +suppression of rebellion. Strange, isn't it"—he turned parenthetically +to Mr. Topes—"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of +rebels? What a fuss people made of Corsica! That ridiculous book of +Gregorovius, for example. And the Irish, and the Poles, and all the rest +of them. It always seems to me very superfluous and absurd."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it, perhaps, a little natural?" Mr. Topes began timorously and +tentatively, but his host went on without listening.</p> + +<p>"The present marquis," he said, "is the head of the local Fascisti. They +have done no end of good work in this district in the way of preserving +law and order and keeping the lower classes in their place."</p> + +<p>"Ah, the Fascisti," Mrs. Topes repeated approvingly. "One would like to +see something of the kind in England. What with all these strikes...."</p> + +<p>"He has asked me for a subscription to the funds of the organisation. I +shall give him one, of course."</p> + +<p>"Of course." Mrs. Topes nodded. "My nephew, the one who was a major +during the war, volunteered in the last coal strike. He was sorry, I +know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'Aunt Annie,' he said to me, when +I saw him last, 'if there had been a fight we should have knocked them +out completely—completely.'"</p> + +<p>In Aleppo, the Fascisti, malignant <i>and</i> turbaned, were fighting, under +the palm trees. Weren't they palm trees, those tufted green plumes?</p> + +<p>"What, no ice to-day? <i>Niente gelato?</i>" inquired Mr. Buzzacott as the +maid put down the compote of peaches on the table.</p> + +<p>Concetta apologised. The ice-making machine in the village had broken +down. There would be no ice till to-morrow.</p> + +<p>"Too bad," said Mr. Buzzacott. "<i>Troppo male, Concetta</i>."</p> + +<p>Under the palm trees, Barbara saw them: they pranced about, fighting. +They were mounted on big dogs, and in the trees were enormous +many-coloured birds.</p> + +<p>"Goodness me, the child's asleep." Mrs. Topes was proffering the dish of +peaches. "How much longer am I to hold this in front of your nose, +Barbara?"</p> + +<p>Barbara felt herself blushing. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, and took the +dish clumsily.</p> + +<p>"Day-dreaming. It's a bad habit."</p> + +<p>"It's one we all succumb to sometimes," put in Mr. Topes deprecatingly, +with a little nervous tremble of the head.</p> + +<p>"You may, my dear," said his wife. "I do not."</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes lowered his eyes to his plate and went on eating.</p> + +<p>"The marchese should be here at any moment now," said Mr. Buzzacott, +looking at his watch. "I hope he won't be late. I find I suffer so much +from any postponement of my siesta. This Italian heat," he added, with +growing plaintiveness, "one can't be too careful."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but when I was with my father in India," began Mrs. Topes in a tone +of superiority: "he was an Indian civilian, you know...."</p> + +<p>Aleppo, India—always the palm trees. Cavalcades of big dogs, and tigers +too.</p> + +<p>Concetta ushered in the marquis. Delighted. Pleased to meet. Speak +English? Yés, yéss. <i>Pocchino</i>. Mrs. Topes: and Mr. Topes, the +distinguished antiquarian. Ah, of course; know his name very well. My +daughter. Charmed. Often seen the signorina bathing. Admired the way she +dives. Beautiful—the hand made a long, caressing gesture. These +athletic English signorine. The teeth flashed astonishingly white in the +brown face, the dark eyes glittered. She felt herself blushing again, +looked away, smiled foolishly. The marquis had already turned back to +Mr. Buzzacott.</p> + +<p>"So you have decided to settle in our Carrarese."</p> + +<p>Well, not settled exactly; Mr. Buzzacott wouldn't go so far as to say +settled. A villine for the summer months. The winter in Rome. One was +forced to live abroad. Taxation in England.... Soon they were all +talking. Barbara looked at them. Beside the marquis they all seemed half +dead. His face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. +Her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; +and Mr. Topes was all dry and shrivelled; and Mrs. Topes looked more +than ever like something worked by clockwork. They were talking about +Socialism and Fascisti, and all that. Barbara did not listen to what +they were saying; but she looked at them, absorbed.</p> + +<p>Good-bye, good-bye. The animated face with its flash of a smile was +turned like a lamp from one to another. Now it was turned on her. +Perhaps one evening she would come, with her father, and the Signora +Topes. He and his sister gave little dances sometimes. Only the +gramophone, of course. But that was better than nothing, and the +signorina must dance divinely—another flash—he could see that. He +pressed her hand again. Good-bye.</p> + +<p>It was time for the siesta.</p> + +<p>"Don't forget to pull down the mosquito netting, my dear," Mr. Buzzacott +exhorted. "There is always a danger of anophylines."</p> + +<p>"All right, father." She moved towards the door without turning round to +answer him. He was always terribly tiresome about mosquito nets. Once +they had driven through the Campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed +in an improvised tent of netting. The monuments along the Appian Way had +loomed up mistily as through bridal veils. And how everyone had laughed. +But her father, of course, hadn't so much as noticed it. He never +noticed anything.</p> + +<p>"Is it at Berlin, that charming little Madonna of Montagna's?" Mr. Topes +abruptly asked. "The one with the Donor kneeling in the left-hand corner +as if about to kiss the foot of the Child." His spectacles flashed in +Mr. Buzzacott's direction.</p> + +<p>"Why do you ask?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I was just thinking of it."</p> + +<p>"I think you must mean the one in the Mond Collection."</p> + +<p>"Ah yes; very probably. In the Mond...."</p> + +<p>Barbara opened the door and walked into the twilight of her shuttered +room. It was hot even here; for another three hours it would hardly be +possible to stir. And that old idiot, Mrs. Topes, always made a fuss if +one came in to lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "In +India we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. +An Englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all +intents and purposes Italians <i>are</i> natives." And so she always had to +put on shoes and stockings and a regular frock just at the hottest hour +of the day. What an old ass that woman was! She slipped off her clothes +as fast as she could. That was a little better.</p> + +<p>Standing in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe door she came to +the humiliating conclusion that she looked like a piece of badly toasted +bread. Brown face, brown neck and shoulders, brown arms, brown legs from +the knee downwards; but all the rest of her was white, silly, +effeminate, townish white. If only one could run about with no clothes +on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and +tumbled in the burning sand! Now she was just underdone, half-baked, and +wholly ridiculous. For a long time she looked at her pale image. She saw +herself running, bronzed all over, along the sand; or through a field of +flowers, narcissus and wild tulips; or in soft grass under grey olive +trees. She turned round with a sudden start. There, in the shadows +behind her.... No, of course there was nothing.</p> + +<p>It was that awful picture in a magazine she had looked at, so many years +ago, when she was a child. There was a lady sitting at her +dressing-table, doing her hair in front of the glass; and a huge, hairy +black monkey creeping up behind her. She always got the creeps when she +looked at herself in a mirror. It was very silly. But still. She turned +away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the +mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. The flies buzzed about her, +settled incessantly on her face. She shook her head, flapped at them +angrily with her hands. There would be peace if she let down the +netting. But she thought of the Appian Way seen mistily through the +bridal veil and preferred to suffer the flies. In the end she had to +surrender; the brutes were too much for her. But, at any rate, it wasn't +the fear of anophylines that made her lower the netting.</p> + +<p>Undisturbed now and motionless, she lay stretched stiffly out under the +transparent bell of gauze. A specimen under a glass case. The fancy +possessed her mind. She saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, +full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and mediæval spoons +and armour and Florentine jewellery and mummies and carved ivory and +illuminated manuscripts. But in one of the cases was a human being, +shut up there alive.</p> + +<p>All of a sudden she became horribly miserable. "Boring, boring, boring," +she whispered, formulating the words aloud. Would it never stop being +boring? The tears came into her eyes. How awful everything was! And +perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her life. Seventeen from +seventy was fifty three. Fifty three years of it. And if she lived to a +hundred there would be more than eighty.</p> + +<p>The thought depressed her all the evening. Even her bath after tea did +her no good. Swimming far out, far out, she lay there, floating on the +warm water. Sometimes she looked at the sky, sometimes she turned her +head towards the shore. Framed in their pinewoods, the villas looked as +small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. But behind +them, across the level plain, were the mountains. Sharp, bare peaks of +limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced +olive trees—they seemed marvellously close and clear in this evening +light. And beautiful, beautiful beyond words. But that, somehow, only +made things worse. And Shelley had lived a few miles farther up the +coast, there, behind the headland guarding the Gulf of Spezia. Shelley +had been drowned in this milk-warm sea. That made it worse too.</p> + +<p>The sun was getting very low and red over the sea. She swam slowly in. +On the beach Mrs. Topes waited, disapprovingly. She had known somebody, +a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. He sank +like a stone. Like a stone. The queer people Mrs. Topes had known! And +the funny things they did, the odd things that happened to them.</p> + +<p>Dinner that evening was duller than ever. Barbara went early to bed. All +night long the same old irritating cicada scraped and scraped among the +pine trees, monotonous and regular as clockwork. Zip zip, zip zip zip. +Boring, boring. Was the animal never bored by its own noise? It seemed +odd that it shouldn't be. But, when she came to think of it, nobody ever +did get bored with their own noise. Mrs. Topes, for example; she never +seemed to get bored. Zip zip, zip zip zip. The cicada went on without +pause.</p> + +<p>Concetta knocked at the door at half-past seven. The morning was as +bright and cloudless as all the mornings were. Barbara jumped up, looked +from one window at the mountains, from the other at the sea; all seemed +to be well with them. All was well with her, too, this morning. Seated +at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far +obscure corner of the room. A bathing dress and a bath-gown, sandals, a +handkerchief round her head, and she was ready. Sleep had left no +recollection of last night's mortal boredom. She ran downstairs.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Mr. Topes."</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes was walking in the garden among the vines. He turned round, +took off his hat, smiled a greeting.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Miss Barbara." He paused. Then, with an embarrassed +wriggle of introduction he went on; a queer little falter came into his +voice. "A real Chaucerian morning, Miss Barbara. A May-day morning—only +it happens to be September. Nature is fresh and bright, and there is at +least one specimen in this dream garden"—he wriggled more +uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round +spectacle lenses of the poet's 'yonge fresshe folkes.' He bowed in her +direction, smiled deprecatingly, and was silent. The remark, it seemed +to him, now that he had finished speaking, was somehow not as good as he +had thought it would be.</p> + +<p>Barbara laughed. "Chaucer! They used to make us read the <i>Canterbury +Tales</i> at school. But they always bored me. Are you going to bathe?"</p> + +<p>"Not before breakfast." Mr. Topes shook his head. "One is getting a +little too old for that."</p> + +<p>"Is one?" Why did the silly old man always say 'one' when he meant 'I'? +She couldn't help laughing at him. "Well, I must hurry, or else I shall +be late for breakfast again, and you know how I catch it."</p> + +<p>She ran out, through the gate in the garden wall, across the beach, to +the striped red-and-white bathing cabin that stood before the house. +Fifty yards away she saw the Marchese Prampolini, still dripping from +the sea, running up towards his bathing hut. Catching sight of her, he +flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. Barbara waved +her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar—but at +this hour of the morning it was difficult not to have bad jolly +manners—and added the corrective of a stiff bow. After all, she had +only met him yesterday. Soon she was swimming out to sea, and, ugh! what +a lot of horrible huge jelly-fish there were.</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes had followed her slowly through the gate and across the sand. +He watched her running down from the cabin, slender as a boy, with +long, bounding strides. He watched her go jumping with great splashes +through the deepening water, then throw herself forward and begin to +swim. He watched her till she was no more than a small dark dot far out.</p> + +<p>Emerging from his cabin, the marquis met him walking slowly along the +beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as though he were +repeating something, a prayer or a poem, to himself.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, signore." The marquis shook him by the hand with a more +than English cordiality.</p> + +<p>"Good morning," replied Mr. Topes, allowing his hand to be shaken. He +resented this interruption of his thoughts.</p> + +<p>"She swims very well, Miss Buzzacott."</p> + +<p>"Very," assented Mr. Topes, and smiled to himself to think what +beautiful, poetical things he might have said, if he had chosen.</p> + +<p>"Well, so, so," said the marquis, too colloquial by half. He shook hands +again, and the two men went their respective ways.</p> + +<p>Barbara was still a hundred yards from the shore when she heard the +crescendo and dying boom of the gong floating out from the villa. Damn! +she'd be late again. She quickened her stroke and came splashing out +through the shallows, flushed and breathless.</p> + +<p>She'd be ten minutes late, she calculated; it would take her at least +that to do her hair and dress. Mrs. Topes would be on the war-path +again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as she +did, goodness only knew. She always succeeded in making herself horribly +offensive and unpleasant.</p> + +<p>The beach was quite deserted as she trotted, panting, across it, empty +to right and left as far as she could see. If only she had a horse to go +galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. Right away down to Bocca +d'Arno she'd go, swim the river—she saw herself crouching on the +horse's back, as he swam, with legs tucked up on the saddle, trying not +to get her feet wet—and gallop on again, goodness only knew where.</p> + +<p>In front of the cabin she suddenly halted. There in the ruffled sand she +had seen a writing. Big letters, faintly legible, sprawled across her +path.</p> + +<p> +O CLARA D'ELLÉBEUSE.<br /> +</p> + +<p>She pieced the dim letters together. They hadn't been there when she +started out to bathe. Who?... She looked round. The beach was quite +empty. And what was the meaning? "O Clara d'Ellébeuse." She took her +bath-gown from the cabin, slipped on her sandals, and ran back towards +the house as fast as she could. She felt most horribly frightened.</p> + +<p>It was a sultry, headachey sort of morning, with a hot sirocco that +stirred the bunting on the flagstaffs. By midday the thunderclouds had +covered half the sky. The sun still blazed on the sea, but over the +mountains all was black and indigo. The storm broke noisily overhead +just as they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee.</p> + +<p>"Arthur," said Mrs. Topes, painfully calm, "shut the shutters, please."</p> + +<p>She was not frightened, no. But she preferred not to see the lightning. +When the room was darkened, she began to talk, suavely and incessantly.</p> + +<p>Lying back in her deep arm-chair, Barbara was thinking of Clara +d'Ellébeuse. What did it mean and who was Clara d'Ellébeuse? And why had +he written it there for her to see? He—for there could be no doubt who +had written it. The flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she +knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. He had written it there while +she was swimming out. Written it and then run away. She rather liked +that—just an extraordinary word on the sand, like the footprint in +<i>Robinson Crusoe.</i></p> + +<p>"Personally," Mrs. Topes was saying, "I prefer Harrod's."</p> + +<p>The thunder crashed and rattled. It was rather exhilarating, Barbara +thought; one felt, at any rate, that something was happening for a +change. She remembered the little room half-way up the stairs at Lady +Thingumy's house, with the bookshelves and the green curtains and the +orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug +who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. But that was +different—not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly +ugly. She saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert. Copper +coloured all over, with black hair. He was certainly very handsome. But +as for being in love, well ... what did that exactly mean? Perhaps when +she knew him better. Even now she fancied she detected something. O +Clara d'Ellébeuse. What an extraordinary thing it was.</p> + +<p>With his long fingers Mr. Buzzacott combed his beard. This winter, he +was thinking, he would put another thousand into Italian money when the +exchange was favourable. In the spring it always seemed to drop back +again. One could clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the +exchange went down to seventy. The income on three hundred was fifteen +pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. And +fifteen hundred lire, when you came to think of it, was really sixty +pounds. That was to say that one would make an addition of more than one +pound a week to one's income by this simple little speculation. He +became aware that Mrs. Topes had asked him a question.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, perfectly," he said.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Topes talked on; she was keeping up her morale. Was she right in +believing that the thunder sounded a little less alarmingly loud and +near?</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. +Vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, +homeless, unhappy. He was thinking about beauty. There were certain +relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and +the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. But what about +them? Ah, that was the problem—that was the problem. And there was +youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were +so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to +get himself entangled among them. And he was after all so old and so +ineffective. He put on his spectacles again, and definition came into +the foggy world beyond his eyes. The shuttered room was very dark. He +could distinguish the Renaissance profile of Mr. Buzzacott, bearded and +delicately featured. In her deep arm-chair Barbara appeared, faintly +white, in an attitude relaxed and brooding. And Mrs. Topes was nothing +more than a voice in the darkness. She had got on to the marriage of the +Prince of Wales. Who would they eventually find for him?</p> + +<p>Clara d'Ellébeuse, Clara d'Ellébeuse. She saw herself so clearly as the +<i>marchesa</i>. They would have a house in Rome, a palace. She saw herself +in the Palazzo Spada—it had such a lovely vaulted passage leading from +the courtyard to the gardens at the back. "MARCHESA PRAMPOLINI, PALAZZO +SPADA, ROMA"—a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. And she +would go riding every day in the Pincio. "<i>Mi porta il mio cavallo</i>" she +would say to the footman, who answered the bell. <i>Porta</i>? Would that be +quite correct? Hardly. She'd have to take some proper Italian lessons to +talk to the servants. One must never be ridiculous before servants. +"<i>Voglio il mio cavallo.</i> Haughtily one would say it sitting at one's +writing-table in a riding-habit, without turning round. It would be a +green riding-habit, with a black tricorne hat, braided with silver.</p> + +<p>"<i>Prendero la mia collazzione al letto."</i> Was that right for breakfast +in bed? Because she would have breakfast in bed, always. And when she +got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one +could see oneself sideface. She saw herself leaning forward, powdering +her nose, carefully, scientifically. With the monkey creeping up behind? +Ooh. Horrible! <i>Ho paura di questa scimmia, questo scimmione</i>.</p> + +<p>She would come back to lunch after her ride. Perhaps Prampolini would be +there; she had rather left him out of the picture so far. "<i>Dov' è il +Marchese?</i>" "<i>Nella sala di pranza, signora</i>." I began without you, I +was so hungry. <i>Pasta asciutta</i>. Where have you been, my love? Riding, +my dove. She supposed they'd get into the habit of saying that sort of +thing. Everyone seemed to. And you? I have been out with the Fascisti.</p> + +<p>Oh, these Fascisti! Would life be worth living when he was always going +out with pistols and bombs and things? They would bring him back one day +on a stretcher. She saw it. Pale, pale, with blood on him. <i>Il signore +è ferito. Nel petto. Gruvamente. E morto</i>.</p> + +<p>How could she bear it? It was too awful; too, too terrible. Her breath +came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she had been hurt. <i>E +morto, E morto</i>. The tears came into her eyes.</p> + +<p>She was roused suddenly by a dazzling light. The storm had receded far +enough into the distance to permit of Mrs. Topes's opening the shutters.</p> + +<p>"It's quite stopped raining."</p> + +<p>To be disturbed in one's intimate sorrow and self-abandonment at a +death-bed by a stranger's intrusion, an alien voice.... Barbara turned +her face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They +might see and ask her why she had been crying. She hated Mrs. Topes for +opening the shutters; at the inrush of the light something beautiful had +flown, an emotion had vanished, irrecoverably. It was a sacrilege.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buzzacott looked at his watch. "Too late, I fear, for a siesta now," +he said. "Suppose we ring for an early tea."</p> + +<p>"An endless succession of meals," said Mr. Topes, with a tremolo and a +sigh. "That's what life seems to be—real life."</p> + +<p>"I have been calculating"—Mr. Buzzacott turned his pale green eyes +towards his guest—"that I may be able to afford that pretty little +<i>cinque</i> cassone, after all. It would be a bit of a squeeze." He played +with his beard. "But still...."</p> + +<p>After tea, Barbara and Mr. Topes went for a walk along the beach. She +didn't much want to go, but Mrs. Topes thought it would be good for her; +so she had to. The storm had passed and the sky over the sea was clear. +But the waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer +shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or +thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples +ordinarily expired. Smooth, shining expanses of water advanced and +receded like steel surfaces moved out and back by a huge machine. +Through the rain-washed air the mountains appeared with an incredible +clarity. Above them hung huge masses of cloud.</p> + +<p>"Clouds over Carrara," said Mr. Topes, deprecating his remark with a +little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. "I like to +fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among +these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the +clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. I imagine their ghosts"—his +voice trembled—"feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning +huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; +planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there's something +of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath +it." Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, "Yes, yes," though +she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "It's like Night on the +Medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. +And there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour—you see the +one I mean—there's a Bernini. All the passion's on the surface, +expressed; the gesture's caught at its most violent. And that sleek, +smug white fellow over there, that's a delicious absurd Canova." Mr. +Topes chuckled.</p> + +<p>"Why do you always talk about art?" said Barbara. "You bring these dead +people into everything. What do I know about Canova or whoever it is?" +They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a +lamp with life. He at least wasn't dead. She wondered whether the +letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. No, of course +not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out.</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes +were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. +He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old +tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to +keep him from rotting away. They walked on for a long time in silence.</p> + +<p>"Here's the river," said Mr. Topes at last.</p> + +<p>A few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came +down slowly through the plain to the sea. Just inland from the beach it +was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, +and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the +storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more +intense than at ordinary times. And though all was so clear, there was a +mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. There was no sound +except the continuous breathing of the sea. They stood for a little +while, looking; then turned back.</p> + +<p>Far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. White +flannel trousers, a pink skirt.</p> + +<p>"Nature," Mr. Topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. "One always +comes back to nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like +these, one realises it. One lives now—more quietly, perhaps, but more +profoundly. Deep watery. Deep waters...."</p> + +<p>The figures drew closer. Wasn't it the marquis? And who was with him? +Barbara strained her eyes to see.</p> + +<p>"Most of one's life," Mr. Topes went on, "is one prolonged effort to +prevent oneself thinking. Your father and I, we collect pictures and +read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, +or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. Anything rather than +think calmly about the important things."</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes was silent. He looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, +at the great clouds, at his companion. A frail Montagna madonna, with +the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity +as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and +yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. He thought of death and +the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt +inclined to weep.</p> + +<p>The approaching couple were quite near now.</p> + +<p>"What a funny old walrus," said the lady.</p> + +<p>"Walrus? Your natural history is quite wrong." The marquis laughed. +"He's much too dry to be a walrus. I should suggest some sort of an old +cat."</p> + +<p>"Well, whatever he is, I'm sorry for that poor little girl. Think of +having nobody better to go about with!"</p> + +<p>"Pretty, isn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but too young, of course."</p> + +<p>"I like the innocence."</p> + +<p>"Innocence? Cher ami! These English girls. Oh, la la! They may look +innocent But, believe me...."</p> + +<p>"Sh, sh. They'll hear you."</p> + +<p>"Pooh, they don't understand Italian."</p> + +<p>The marquis raised his hand. "The old walrus...." he whispered; then +addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers.</p> + +<p>"Good evening, signorina. Good evening, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air +is always the purest, don't you find, eh?"</p> + +<p>Barbara nodded, leaving Mr. Topes to answer. It wasn't his sister. It +was the Russian woman, the one of whom Mrs. Topes used to say that it +was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had +turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked +at the line of her averted face. Mr. Topes was saying something about +the Pastoral Symphony. Purple face powder in the daylight; it looked +hideous.</p> + +<p>"Well, au revoir."</p> + +<p>The flash of the marquis's smile was directed at them. The Russian woman +turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy +white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous +ennui.</p> + +<p>"They jar a little," said Mr. Topes when they were out of earshot—"they +jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. They haven't the +innocence for this ... this...."—he wriggled and tremoloed out the +just, the all too precious word—"this prelapsarian landscape."</p> + +<p>He looked sideways at Barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully +frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What could he +adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? Tenderness....</p> + +<p>"All this," he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the +sky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, +clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening +time."</p> + +<p>But that was not really what he wanted to say.</p> + +<p>"You see what I mean?" he asked dubiously. She made no reply. How could +she see? "This scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the +corresponding emotion. Those people were out of harmony. They weren't +clear and pure enough." He seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. +"It's an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could +feel it. Those people couldn't." He was feeling his way through +obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? "Certain poems express it. +You know Francis Jammes? I have thought so much of his work lately. Art +instead of life, as usual; but then I'm made that way. I can't help +thinking of Jammes. Those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about +Clara d'Ellébeuse."</p> + +<p>"Clara d'Ellébeuse?" She stopped and stared at him.</p> + +<p>"You know the lines?" Mr. Topes smiled delightedly. "This makes me +think, you make me think of them. '<i>F'aime dans les temps Clara +d'Ellébeuse</i>....' But, my dear Barbara, what is the matter?"</p> + +<p>She had started crying, for no reason whatever.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V_NUNS_AT_LUNCHEON" id="V_NUNS_AT_LUNCHEON"></a>V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON</h2> + + +<p>"What have I been doing since you saw me last?" Miss Penny repeated my +question in her loud, emphatic voice. "Well, when did you see me last?"</p> + +<p>"It must have been June," I computed.</p> + +<p>"Was that after I'd been proposed to by the Russian General?</p> + +<p>"Yes; I remember hearing about the Russian General."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny threw back her head and laughed. Her long ear-rings swung and +rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simile. And her +laughter was like brass, but that had been said before.</p> + +<p>"That was an uproarous incident. It's sad you should have heard of it. I +love my Russian General story. '<i>Vos yeux me rendent fou</i>.'" She laughed +again.</p> + +<p><i>Vos yeux</i>—she had eyes like a hare's, flush with her head and very +bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness. What a +formidable woman. I felt sorry for the Russian General.</p> + +<p>"'<i>Sans coeur et sans entrallies</i>,'" she went on, quoting the poor +devil's words. "Such a delightful motto, don't you think? Like '<i>Sans +peur et sans reproche</i>.' But let me think; what have I been doing since +then?" Thoughtfully she bit into the crust of her bread with long, +sharp, white teeth.</p> + +<p>"Two mixed grills," I said parenthetically to the waiter.</p> + +<p>"But of course," exclaimed Miss Penny suddenly. "I haven't seen you +since my German trip. All sorts of adventures. My appendicitis; my nun."</p> + +<p>"Your nun?"</p> + +<p>"My marvellous nun. I must tell you all about her."</p> + +<p>"Do." Miss Penny's anecdotes were always curious. I looked forward to an +entertaining luncheon.</p> + +<p>"You knew I'd been in Germany this autumn?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I didn't, as a matter of fact. But still—"</p> + +<p>"I was just wandering round." Miss Penny described a circle in the air +with her gaudily jewelled hand. She always twinkled with massive and +improbable jewellery.</p> + +<p>"Wandering round, living on three pounds a week, partly amusing myself, +partly collecting material for a few little articles. 'What it Feels +Like to be a Conquered Nation'—sob-stuff for the Liberal press, you +know—and 'How the Hun is Trying to Wriggle out of the Indemnity,' for +the other fellows. One has to make the best of all possible worlds, +don't you find? But we mustn't talk shop. Well, I was wandering round, +and very pleasant I found it. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig. Then down to +Munich and all over the place. One fine day I got to Grauburg. You know +Grauburg? It's one of those picture-book German towns with a castle on a +hill, hanging beer-gardens, a Gothic church, an old university, a river, +a pretty bridge, and forests all round. Charming. But I hadn't much +opportunity to appreciate the beauties of the place. The day after I +arrived there—bang!—I went down with appendicitis—screaming, I may +add."</p> + +<p>"But how appalling!"</p> + +<p>"They whisked me off to hospital, and cut me open before you could say +knife. Excellent surgeon, highly efficient Sisters of Charity to nurse +me—I couldn't have been in better hands. But it was a bore being tied +there by the leg for four weeks—a great bore. Still, the thing had its +compensations. There was my nun, for example. Ah, here's the food, thank +Heaven!"</p> + +<p>The mixed grill proved to be excellent. Miss Penny's description of the +pun came to me in scraps and snatches. A round, pink, pretty face in a +winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether too +perfect—false, in fact; but the general effect extremely pleasing. A +youthful Teutonic twenty eight.</p> + +<p>"She wasn't my nurse," Miss Penny explained. "But I used to see her +quite often when she came in to have a look at the <i>tolle Engländerin</i>. +Her name was Sister Agatha. During the war, they told me, she had +converted any number of wounded soldiers to the true faith—which wasn't +surprising, considering how pretty she was."</p> + +<p>"Did she try and convert you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"She wasn't such a fool." Miss Penny laughed, and rattled the miniature +gallows of her ears.</p> + +<p>I amused myself for a moment with the thought of Miss Penny's +conversion—Miss Penny confronting a vast assembly of Fathers of the +Church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, +laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate +Conception, meeting the stern look of the Grand Inquisitor with a flash +of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. What was the secret of the +woman's formidableness?</p> + +<p>But I was missing the story. What had happened? Ah yes, the gist of it +was that Sister Agatha had appeared one morning, after two or three days +absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital +charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven +head.</p> + +<p>"Dead," said Miss Penny; "she looked as though she were dead. A walking +corpse, that's what she was. It was a shocking sight. I shouldn't have +thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She +walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had +great burnt rings round her eyes and deep lines in her face. And the +general expression of unhappiness—that was something quite appalling."</p> + +<p>She leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and +caught the passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. The little +Italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into +terror on his face.</p> + +<p>"Half a pint of Guinness," ordered Miss Penny. "And, after this, bring +me some jam roll."</p> + +<p>"No jam roll to-day, madam."</p> + +<p>"Damn!" said Miss Penny. "Bring me what you like, then."</p> + +<p>She let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative.</p> + +<p>"Where was I? Yes, I remember. She came into my room, I was telling you, +with a bucket of water and a brush, dressed like a charwoman. Naturally +I was rather surprised. 'What on earth are you doing, Sister Agatha?' I +asked. No answer. She just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. +When she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me +again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse when she +next came in. 'Can't say.'—'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took +nearly a week to find out what really had happened. Nobody dared tell +me; it was <i>strengst verboten</i>, as they used to say in the good old +days. But I wormed it out in the long run. My nurse, the doctor, the +charwomen—I got something out of all of them. I always get what I want +in the end." Miss Penny laughed like a horse.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure you do," I said politely.</p> + +<p>"Much obliged," acknowledged Miss Penny. "But to proceed. My information +came to me in fragmentary whispers. 'Sister Agatha ran away with a +man.'—Dear me.—'One of the patients.'—You don't say so.—'A criminal +out of the jail.'—The plot thickens.—'He ran away from her.'—It +seems to grow thinner again.—'They brought her back here; she's been +disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel—coffin +and all. She had to be present at it—her own funeral. She isn't a nun +any more. She has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest in the +hospital. She's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to +speak to her. She's regarded as dead.'" Miss Penny paused to signal to +the harassed little Italian. "My small 'Guinness,'" she called out.</p> + +<p>"Coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "Guinness" down the lift, +and from below another voice echoed, "Guinness."</p> + +<p>"I filled in the details bit by bit. There was our hero, to begin with; +I had to bring him into the picture, which was rather difficult, as I +had never seen him. But I got a photograph of him. The police circulated +one when he got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny +opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always carry it about with +me; it's become a superstition. For years, I remember, I used to carry a +little bit of heather tied up with string. Beautiful, isn't it? There's +a sort of Renaissance look about it, don't you think? He was +half-Italian, you know."</p> + +<p>Italian. Ah, that explained it. I had been wondering how Bavaria could +have produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the +finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and +sensually curved.</p> + +<p>"He's certainly very superb," I said, handing back the picture.</p> + +<p>Miss Penny put it carefully away in her bag. "Isn't he?" she said. +"Quite marvellous. But his character and his mind were even better. I +see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are +simply unaware of the existence of right and wrong. And he had +genius—the real Italian genius for engineering, for dominating and +exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and +a brother of the electrical engineers. Only Kuno—that was his +name—didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how to harness +the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. The +commercial exploitation of love-power, that was his specialty. I +sometimes wonder," Miss Penny added in a different tone, "whether I +shall ever be exploited, when I get a little more middle-aged and +celibate, by one of these young engineers of the passions. It would be +humiliating, particularly as I've done so little exploiting from my +side."</p> + +<p>She frowned and was silent for a moment. No, decidedly, Miss Penny was +not beautiful; you could not even honestly say that she had charm or was +attractive. That high Scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the voice, +the terrifying laugh, and the size of her, the general formidableness of +the woman. No, no, no.</p> + +<p>"You said he had been in prison," I said. The silence, with all its +implications, was becoming embarrassing.</p> + +<p>Miss Penny sighed, looked up, and nodded. "He was fool enough," she +said, "to leave the straight and certain road of female exploitation for +the dangerous courses of burglary. We all have our occasional accesses +of folly. They gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting +pneumonia, I think it was, a week after entering jail. He was +transferred to the hospital. Sister Agatha, with her known talent for +saving souls, was given him as his particular attendant. But it was he, +I'm afraid, who did the converting."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny finished off the last mouthful of the ginger pudding which +the waiter had brought in lieu of jam roll.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you don't smoke cheroots," I said, as I opened my cigar-case.</p> + +<p>"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," Miss Penny replied. She looked +sharply round the restaurant. "I must just see if there are any of those +horrible little gossip paragraphers here to-day. One doesn't want to +figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'A fact +which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that Miss Penny, +the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon with a +six-inch Burma cheroot. I saw her yesterday in a restaurant—not a +hundred miles from Carmelite Street—smoking like a house on fire.' You +know the touch. But the coast seems to be clear, thank goodness."</p> + +<p>She took a cheroot from the case, lit it at my proffered match, and went +on talking.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was young Kuno who did the converting. Sister Agatha was +converted back into the worldly Melpomene Fugger she had been before she +became the bride of holiness."</p> + +<p>"Melpomene Fugger?"</p> + +<p>"That was her name. I had her history from my old doctor. He had seen +all Grauburg, living and dying and propagating for generations. +Melpomene Fugger why, he had brought little Melpel into the world, +little Melpchen. Her father was Professor Fugger, the great Professor +Fugger, the <i>berümter Geolog</i>. Oh, yes, of course, I know the name. So +well.... He was the man who wrote the standard work on Lemuria—you +know, the hypothetical continent where the lemurs come from. I showed +due respect. Liberal-minded he was, a disciple of Herder, a +world-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. Anglophile, too, +and always ate porridge for breakfast—up till August 1914. Then, the +radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and +with tears in his eyes. The national food of a people who had betrayed +culture and civilisation—how could he go on eating it? It would stick +in his throat. In future he would have a lightly boiled egg. He sounded, +I thought, altogether charming. And his daughter, Melpomene—she sounded +charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tails when she was young! Her +mother was dead, and a sister of the great Professor's ruled the house +with an iron rod. Aunt Bertha was her name. Well, Melpomene grew up, +very plump and appetising. When she was seventeen, something very odious +and disagreeable happened to her. Even the doctor didn't know exactly +what it was; but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had had something +to do with the then Professor of Latin, an old friend of the family's, +who combined, it seems, great erudition with a horrid fondness for very +young ladies."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny knocked half an inch of cigar ash into her empty glass.</p> + +<p>"If I wrote short stories," she went on reflectively "(but it's too much +bother), I should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, +beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in +Melpomene's life. I see the scene so clearly. Poor little Melpel is +leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June +night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is +besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. +Professor Engelmann, her father's old friend, with the magnificent red +Assyrian beard.... Too awful—too awful! But then, as I was saying, +short stones are really too much bother; or perhaps I'm too stupid to +write them. I bequeath it to you. You know how to tick these things +off."</p> + +<p>"You're generous."</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said Miss Penny. "My terms are ten per cent commission on +the American sale. Incidentally there won't be an American sale. Poor +Melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of Those States. But let +me hear what you propose to do with Melpomene now you've got her on the +castle bastions."</p> + +<p>"That's simple," I said. "I know all about German university towns and +castles on hills. I shall make her look into the June night, as you +suggest; into the violet night with its points of golden flame. There +will be the black silhouette of the castle, with its sharp roofs and +hooded turrets, behind her. From the hanging beer-gardens in the town +below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, +will float up through the dark-blue spaces. '<i>Röslein, Röslein, Röslein +rot</i>' and '<i>Das Ringlein sprang in zwei</i>'—the heart-rendingly sweet old +songs will make her cry all the more. Her tears will patter like rain +among the leaves of the mulberry trees in the garden below. Does that +seem to you adequate?"</p> + +<p>"Very nice," said Miss Penny. "But how are you going to bring the sex +problem and all of its horrors into the landscape?"</p> + +<p>"Well, let me think." I called to memory those distant foreign summers +when I was completing my education. "I know. I shall suddenly bring a +swarm of moving candles and Chinese lanterns under the mulberry trees. +You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the +faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone +again. They are students and girls of the town come out to dance, this +windless, blue June night, under the mulberry trees. And now they begin, +thumping round and round in a ring, to the music of their own singing.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Wir können spielen</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Vio-vio-vio-lin</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Wir können spielen</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Vi-o-lin</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"Now the rhythm changes, quickens.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Bumstarara, Bumstarara,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Bumstarara-rara.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"The dance becomes a rush, an elephantine prancing on the dry lawn under +the mulberry trees. And from the bastion Melpomene looks down and +perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is +sex, sex, sex. Men and women, male and female—always the same, and all, +in the light of the horror of the afternoon, disgusting. That's how I +should do it, Miss Penny."</p> + +<p>"And very nice, too. But I wish you could find a place to bring in my +conversation with the doctor. I shall never forget the way he cleared +his throat, and coughed before embarking on the delicate subject. 'You +may know, ahem, gracious Miss,' he began—'you may know that religious +phenomena are often, ahem, closely connected with sexual causes.' I +replied that I had heard rumours which might justify me in believing +this to be true among Roman Catholics, but that in the Church of England +—and I for one was a practitioner of Anglicanismus—it was very +different. 'That might be,' said the doctor; he had had no opportunity +in the course of his long medical career of personally studying +Anglicanismus. But he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, +here in Grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the +<i>Geschlechtsleben</i>. Melpomene was a case in point. After that hateful +afternoon she had become extremely religious; the Professor of Latin had +diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. She rebelled against +the placid Agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when +Aunt Bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden +books as <i>The Life of St. Theresa, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, +The Imitation of Christ</i>, and the horribly enthralling <i>Book of +Martyrs</i>. Aunt Bertha confiscated, these works whenever she came upon +them; she considered them more pernicious than the novels of Marcel +Prévost. The character of a good potential housewife might be completely +undermined by reading of this kind. It was rather a relief for Melpomene +when Aunt Bertha shuffled off, in the summer of 1911, this mortal coil. +She was one of those indispensables of whom one makes the discovery, +when they are gone, that one can get on quite as well without them. Poor +Aunt Bertha!"</p> + +<p>"One can imagine Melpomene trying to believe she was sorry, and horribly +ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." The +suggestion seemed to me ingenious, but Miss Penny accepted it as +obvious.</p> + +<p>"Precisely," she said; "and the emotion would only further confirm and +give new force to the tendencies which her aunt's death left her free to +indulge as much as she liked. Remorse, contrition—they would lead to +the idea of doing penance. And for one who was now wallowing in the +martyrology, penance was the mortification of the flesh. She used to +kneel for hours, at night, in the cold; she ate too little, and when her +teeth ached, which they often did,—for she had a set, the doctor told +me, which had given trouble from the very first,—she would not go and +see the dentist, but lay awake at night, savouring to the full her +excruciations, and feeling triumphantly that they must, in some strange +way, be pleasing to the Mysterious Powers. She went on like that for two +or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. In the end +she went down with gastric ulcer. It was three months before she came +out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and +with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. And in +mind, too, she was changed—for the better, I suppose. The nuns who +nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted +supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, +she had sinned. The only road to salvation, they told her, lay in +discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to +authority. Secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose +Agnosticismus was extremely dogmatic, for all its unobtrusiveness, +Melpomene became a Roman Catholic. She was twenty-two. Only a few months +later came the war and Professor Fugger's eternal renunciation of +porridge. He did not long survive the making of that patriotic gesture. +In the autumn of 1914 he caught a fatal influenza. Melpomene was alone +in the world. In the spring of 1915 there was a new and very +conscientious Sister of Charity at work among the wounded, in the +hospital of Grauburg. Here," explained Miss Penny, jabbing the air with +her forefinger, "you put a line of asterisks or dots to signify a six +years' gulf in the narrative. And you begin again right in the middle of +a dialogue between Sister Agatha and the newly convalescent Kuno."</p> + +<p>"What's their dialogue to be about?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's easy enough," said Miss Penny. "Almost anything would do. +What about this, for example? You explain that the fever has just +abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. He +feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world—a world so +bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of +it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being +extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have +suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural +history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet—ha, ha! What an +uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet—that's good, that's damned +good! You can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the +irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, +where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to +jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. Ha, ha! Laugh on, +unhappy boy. It is the quacking of the Fates, the Parcæ, the Norns!"</p> + +<p>Miss Penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. At +the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables +looked up, startled.</p> + +<p>"You can write pages about Destiny and its ironic quacking. It's +tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line."</p> + +<p>"You may be sure I shall."</p> + +<p>"Good! Then I can get on with my story. The days pass and the first +hilarity of convalescence fades away. The young man remembers and grows +sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. +His mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. As for the +consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha +perseveres—oh, with what anxious solicitude!—in the attempt to make +him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously +important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. +And now you see the <i>Geschlechtsleben</i> working yeastily and obscurely, +and once again the quacking of the Norns is audible. By the way," said +Miss Penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the +table, "I wish you'd tell me something. Tell me, do you +really—honestly, I mean—do you seriously believe in literature?"</p> + +<p>"Believe in literature?"</p> + +<p>"I was thinking?" Miss Penny explained, "of Ironic Fate and the quacking +of the Norns and all that."</p> + +<p>"'M yes."</p> + +<p>"And then there's this psychology and introspection business; and +construction and good narrative and word pictures and <i>le mot juste</i> and +verbal magic and striking metaphors."</p> + +<p>I remembered that I had compared Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings to +skeletons hanging in chains.</p> + +<p>"And then, finally, and to begin with—Alpha and Omega—there's +ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of +sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of +turning her misfortunes into cash. It's all very curious, isn't +it?—when one begins to think about it dispassionately."</p> + +<p>"Very curious," I agreed. "But, then, so is everything else if you look +at it like that."</p> + +<p>"No, no," said Miss Penny. "Nothing's so curious as our business. But I +shall never get to the end of my story if I get started on first +principles."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny continued her narrative. I was still thinking of literature. +Do you believe in it? Seriously? Ah! Luckily the question was quite +meaningless. The story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the +young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, +he would be well—well enough to go back to jail. No, no. The question +was meaningless. I would think about it no more. I concentrated my +attention again.</p> + +<p>"Sister Agatha," I heard Miss Penny saying, "prayed, exhorted, +indoctrinated. Whenever she had half a minute to spare from her other +duties she would come running into the young man's room. 'I wonder if +you fully realise the importance of prayer?' she would ask, and, before +he had time to answer, she would give him a breathless account of the +uses and virtues of regular and patient supplication. Or else, it was: +'May I tell you about St. Theresa?' or 'St. Stephen, the first +martyr—you know about him, don't you?' Kuno simply wouldn't listen at +first. It seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd +interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the +future. Prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with +her ridiculous fairy-tales. Then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, +he showed signs of contrition and conversion. Sister Agatha announced +her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost +sheep. Melpomene had never felt so happy in her life, and Kuno, looking +at her radiant face, must have wondered how he could have been such a +fool as not to see from the first what was now so obvious. The woman had +lost her head about him. And he had only four days now—four days in +which to tap the tumultuous love power, to canalise it, to set it +working for his escape. Why hadn't he started a week ago? He could have +made certain of it then. But now? There was no knowing. Four days was a +horribly short time."</p> + +<p>"How did he do it?" I asked, for Miss Penny had paused.</p> + +<p>"That's for you to say," she replied, and shook her ear-rings at me. "I +don't know. Nobody knows, I imagine, except the two parties concerned +and perhaps Sister Agatha's confessor. But one can reconstruct the +crime, as they say. How would you have done it? You're a man, you ought +to be familiar with the processes of amorous engineering."</p> + +<p>"You flatter me," I answered. "Do you seriously suppose—" I extended my +arms. Miss Penny laughed like a horse. "No. But, seriously, it's a +problem. The case is a very special one. The person, a nun, the place, a +hospital, the opportunities, few. There could be no favourable +circumstances—no moonlight, no distant music; and any form of direct +attack would be sure to fail. That audacious confidence which is your +amorist's best weapon would be useless here."</p> + +<p>"Obviously," said Miss Penny. "But there are surely other methods. There +is the approach through pity and the maternal instincts. And there's the +approach through Higher Things, through the soul. Kuno must have worked +on those lines, don't you think? One can imagine him letting himself be +converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her +sympathy and even threatening—with a great air of seriousness—-to kill +himself rather than go back to jail. You can write that up easily and +convincingly enough. But it's the sort of thing that bores me so +frightfully to do. That's why I can never bring myself to write fiction. +What is the point of it all? And the way you literary men think +yourselves so important—particularly if you write tragedies. It's all +very queer, very queer indeed."</p> + +<p>I made no comment. Miss Penny changed her tone and went on with the +narrative.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "whatever the means employed, the engineering process +was perfectly successful. Love was made to find out a way. On the +afternoon before Kuno was to go back to prison, two Sisters of Charity +walked out of the hospital gates, crossed the square in front of it, +glided down the narrow streets towards the river, boarded a tram at the +bridge, and did not descend till the car had reached its terminus in the +farther suburbs. They began to walk briskly along the high road out into +the country. 'Look!' said one of them, when they were clear of the +houses; and with the gesture of a conjurer produced from nowhere a red +leather purse. 'Where did it come from?' asked the other, opening her +eyes. Memories of Elisha and the ravens, of the widow's cruse, of the +loaves and fishes, must have floated through the radiant fog in poor +Melpomene's mind. 'The old lady I was sitting next to in the tram left +her bag open. Nothing could have been simpler.' 'Kuno! You don't mean to +say you stole it?' Kuno swore horribly. He had opened the purse. 'Only +sixty marks. Who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in +silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. And I must have +a thousand at least to get away. It's easy to reconstruct the rest of +the conversation down to the inevitable, 'For God's sake, shut up,' with +which Kuno put an end to Melpomene's dismayed moralising. They trudge on +in silence. Kuno thinks desperately. Only sixty marks; he can do nothing +with that. If only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some +gold or silver anything, anything. He knows such a good place for +selling things. Is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? +Melpomene is also thinking. Evil must often be done that good may +follow. After all, had not she herself stolen Sister Mary of the +Purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? Had not she +run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she +was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphatically +approved; she felt sure of it. And now there was the red purse. But +what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul—and, after all, +what was she doing hut saving Kuno's soul?" Miss Penny, who had adapted +the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought +her hand with a slap on to the table. "Lord, what a bore this sort of +stuff is!" she exclaimed. "Let's get to the end of this dingy anecdote +as quickly as possible. By this time, you must imagine, the shades of +night were falling fast—the chill November twilight, and so on; but I +leave the natural descriptions to you. Kuno gets into the ditch at the +roadside and takes off his robes. One imagines that he would feel +himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a +crisis. They tramp on for miles. Late in the evening they leave the high +road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. At the fringe +of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds +sleep in the lambing season.</p> + +<p>"The real 'Maison du Berger.'"</p> + +<p>"Precisely," said Miss Penny, and she began to recite:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Si ton coeur gémissant du poids de notre vie</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Se traine et se débat comme un aigle blessé....</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"How does it go on? I used to adore it all so much when I was a girl.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>"Le seuil est perfumé, l'alcôve est large et sombre,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et là parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"I could go on like this indefinitely."</p> + +<p>"Do," I said.</p> + +<p>"No, no. No, no. I'm determined to finish this wretched story. Kuno +broke the padlock of the door. They entered. What happened in that +little hut?" Miss Penny leaned forward at me. Her large hare's eyes +glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. "Imagine the +emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying +presence of desire. Imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young +man. Oh, there's pages to be made out of this—the absolutely +impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled +crying, the movements! And one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing +about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound +that shakes the air. Why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. In the +morning," Miss Penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their +way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached +the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there +should be need of it. Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress +lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. +'What's the matter?' A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of +tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'What's the +matter?'—'He's gone!' What a queer, indistinct utterance. The +woodcutters regard one another. What does she say? She's a foreigner, +perhaps. 'What's the matter?' they repeat once more. The woman bursts +out violently crying. 'Gone, gone! He's gone,' she sobs out in her +vague, inarticulate way. 'Oh, gone. That's what she says. Who's +gone?'—'He's left me.'—'What?'—'Left me....'—'What the devil...? +Speak a little more distinctly.'—'I can't,' she wails; 'he's taken my +teeth.'—'Your what?—'My teeth!'—and the shrill voice breaks into a +scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. The woodcutters look +significantly at one another. They nod. One of them applies a thick +yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny looked at her watch. "Good heavens!" she said, "it's nearly +half-past three. I must fly. Don't forget about the funeral service," +she added, as she put on her coat. "The tapers, the black coffin, in the +middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy +chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all +caved in like an old woman's, wondering whether she wasn't really and in +fact dead—wondering whether she wasn't already in hell. Good-bye."</p> + + + + + + + + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39378 ***</div> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab8fcc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #39378 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39378) diff --git a/old/39378-8.txt b/old/39378-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9026b3d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/39378-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5136 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mortal Coils + +Author: Aldous Huxley + +Release Date: April 5, 2012 [EBook #39378] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTAL COILS *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + + + + +MORTAL COILS + +By + +ALDOUS HUXLEY + +NEW YORK-GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + +1921 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE + +II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES + +III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET + +IV: GREEN TUNNELS + +V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON + + + + +MORTAL COILS + + + + +I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE + + + +I + + +"Miss Spence will be down directly, sir." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence's +parlourmaid was so ugly--ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, +malignantly, criminally ugly--that he could not bear to look at her +more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton +got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes +at the familiar objects it contained. + +Photographs of Greek statuary, photographs of the Roman Forum, coloured +prints of Italian masterpieces, all very safe and well known. Poor, dear +Janet, what a prig--what an intellectual snob! Her real taste was +illustrated in that water-colour by the pavement artist, the one she had +paid half a crown for (and thirty-five shillings for the frame). How +often his had heard her tell the story, how often expatiate on the +beauties of that skilful imitation of an oleograph! "A real Artist in +the streets," and you could hear the capital A in Artist as she spoke +the words. She made you feel that part of his glory had entered into +Janet Spence when she tendered him that half-crown for the copy of the +oleograph. She was implying a compliment to her own taste and +penetration. A genuine Old Master for half a crown. Poor, dear Janet! + +Mr. Hutton came to a pause in front of a small oblong mirror. Stooping a +little to get a full view of his face, he passed a white, well-manicured +finger over his moustache. It was as curly, as freshly auburn as it had +been twenty years ago. His hair still retained its colour, and there was +no sign of baldness yet--only a certain elevation of the brow. +"Shakespearean," thought Mr. Hutton, with a smile, as he surveyed the +smooth and polished expanse of his forehead. + +Others abide our question, thou art free.... Footsteps in the sea ... +Majesty ... Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. No, that +was Milton, wasn't it? Milton, the Lady of Christ's. There was no lady +about him. He was what the women, would call a manly man. That was why +they liked him--for the curly auburn moustache and the discreet +redolence of tobacco. Mr. Hutton smiled again; he enjoyed making fun of +himself. Lady of Christ's? No, no. He was the Christ of Ladies. Very +pretty, very pretty. The Christ of Ladies. Mr. Hutton wished there were +somebody he could tell the joke to. Poor, dear Janet wouldn't appreciate +it, alas? + +He straightened himself up, patted his hair, and resumed his +peregrination. Damn the Roman Forum; he hated those dreary photographs. + +Suddenly he became aware that Janet Spence was in the room, standing +near the door. Mr. Hutton started, as though he had been taken in some +felonious act. To make these silent and spectral appearances was one of +Janet Spence's peculiar talents. Perhaps she had been there all the +time, had seen him looking at himself in the mirror. Impossible! But, +still, it was disquieting. + +"Oh, you gave me such a surprise," said Mr. Hutton, recovering his smile +and advancing with outstretched hand to meet her. + +Miss Spence was smiling too: her Gioconda smile, he had once called it, +in a moment of half-ironical flattery. Miss Spence had taken the +compliment seriously, and had always tried to live up to the Leonardo +standard. She smiled on his silence while Mr. Hutton shook hands; that +was part of the Gioconda business. + +"I hope you're well," said Mr. Hutton. "You look it." + +What a queer face she had! That small mouth pursed forward by the +Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round hole in the middle +as though for whistling--it was like a penholder seen from the front. +Above the mouth a well-shaped nose, finely aquiline. Eyes large, +lustrous, and dark, with the largeness, lustre, and darkness that seems +to invite sties and an occasional blood-shot suffusion. They were fine +eyes, but unchangingly grave. The penholder might do its Gioconda trick, +but the eyes never altered in their earnestness. Above them, a pair of +boldly arched, heavily pencilled black eyebrows lent a surprising air of +power, as of a Roman matron, to the upper portion of the face. Her hair +was dark and equally Roman; Agrippina from the brows upward. + +"I thought I'd just look in on my way home," Mr. Hutton went on. "Ah, +it's good to be back here"--he indicated with a wave of his hand the +flowers in the vases, the sunshine and greenery beyond the windows +--"it's good to be back in the country after a stuffy day of business in +town." + +Miss Spence, who had sat down, pointed to a chair at her side. + +"No, really, I cant sit down," Mr. Hutton protested. "I must get back to +see how poor Emily is. She was rather seedy this morning." He sat down, +nevertheless. "It's these wretched liver chills. She's always getting +them. Women--" He broke off and coughed, so as to hide the fact that he +had uttered. He was about to say that women with weak digestions ought +not to marry; but the remark was too cruel, and he didn't really believe +it. Janet Spence, moreover, was a believer in eternal flames and +spiritual attachments. "She hopes to be well enough," he added, "to see +you at luncheon to-morrow. Can you come? Do!" He smiled persuasively. +"It's my invitation too, you know." + +She dropped her eyes, and Mr. Hutton almost thought that he detected a +certain reddening of the cheek. It was a tribute; he stroked his +moustache. + +"I should like to come if you think Emily's really well enough to have a +visitor." + +"Of course. You'll do her good. You'll do us both good. In married life +three is often better company than two." + +"Oh, you're cynical." + +Mr. Hutton always had a desire to say "Bow-wow-wow" whenever that last +word was spoken. It irritated him more than any other word in the +language. But instead of barking he made haste to protest. + +"No, no. I'm only speaking a melancholy truth. Reality doesn't always +come up to the ideal, you know. But that doesn't make me believe any the +less in the ideal. Indeed, I believe in it passionately the ideal of a +matrimony between two people in perfect accord. I think it's realisable. +I'm sure it is." + +He paused significantly and looked at her with an arch expression. A +virgin of thirty-six, but still unwithered; she had her charms. And +there was something really rather enigmatic about her. Miss Spence made +no reply but continued to smile. There were times when Mr. Hutton got +rather bored with the Gioconda. He stood up. + +"I must really be going now. Farewell, mysterious Gioconda." The smile +grew intenser, focused itself, as it were, in a narrower snout. Mr. +Hutton made a Cinquecento gesture, and kissed her extended hand. It was +the first time he had done such a thing; the action seemed not to be +resented. "I look forward to to-morrow." + +"Do you?" + +For answer Mr. Hutton once more kissed her hand, then turned to go. Miss +Spence accompanied him to the porch. + +"Where's your car?" she asked. + +"I left it at the gate of the drive." + +"I'll come and see you off." + +"No, no." Mr. Hutton was playful, but determined. "You must do no such +thing. I simply forbid you." + +"But I should like to come," Miss Spence protested, throwing a rapid +Gioconda at him. + +Mr. Hutton held up his hand. "No," he repeated, and then, with a gesture +that was almost the blowing of a kiss, he started to run down the drive, +lightly on his toes, with long, bounding strides like a boy's. He was +proud of that run; it was quite marvellously youthful. Still, he was +glad the drive was no longer. At the last bend, before passing out of +sight of the house, he halted and turned round. Miss Spence was still +standing on the steps, smiling her smile. He waved his hand, and this +time quite definitely and overtly wafted a kiss in her direction. Then, +breaking once more into his magnificent canter, he rounded the last dark +promontory of trees. Once out of sight of the house he let his high +paces decline to a trot, and finally to a walk. He took out his +handkerchief and began wiping his neck inside his collar. What fools, +what fools! Had there ever been such an ass as poor, dear Janet Spence? +Never, unless it was himself. Decidedly he was the more malignant fool, +since he, at least, was aware of his folly and still persisted in it. +Why did he persist? Ah, the problem that was himself, the problem that +was other people. + +He had reached the gate. A large, prosperous-looking motor was standing +at the side of the road. + +"Home, M'Nab." The chauffeur touched his cap. "And stop at the +cross-roads on the way, as usual," Mr. Hutton added, as he opened the +door of the car. "Well?" he said, speaking into the obscurity that +lurked within. + +"Oh, Teddy Bear, what an age you've been!" It was a fresh and childish +voice that spoke the words. There was the faintest hint of Cockney +impurity about the vowel sounds. + +Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility +of an animal regaining its burrow. + +"Have I?" he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move. "You +must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long." He sat back +in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him. + +"Teddy Bear...." and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head +declined on to Mr. Hutton's shoulder. Ravished, he looked down sideways +at the round, babyish face. + +"Do you know, Doris, you look like the pictures of Louise de +Kerouaille." He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair. + +"Who's Louise de Kera-whatever-it-is?" Doris spoke from remote +distances. + +"She was, alas! _Fuit_. We shall all be 'was' one of these days. +Meanwhile...." + +Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed smoothly +along. McNab's back, through the front window was stonily impassive, the +back of a statue. + +"Your hands," Doris whispered. "Oh, you mustn't touch me. They give me +electric shocks." + +Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late +in one's existence one makes the discovery of one's body! + +"The electricity isn't in me, it's in you." He kissed her again, +whispering her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific +appellation of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat, +she offered him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting +the sacrificial knife. The sea-mouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: +very peculiar. Or was Doris the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside +out in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, +just to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous, +unbelievably fantastic. + +"Oh, Teddy Bear!" (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His poor +little jokes!) "Teddy Bear, I'm so happy." + +"So am I," said Mr. Hutton. Was it true? + +"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or +wrong?" + +"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty +years." + +"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right +that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and +that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me." + +"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks +rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil." + +"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew +how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you +know, there is a hell, and all that. I don t know what to do. Sometimes +I think I ought to stop loving you." + +"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his +seduction and his moustache. + +"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could hide +from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to you." + +"Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace. + +"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care +if it is." + +Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this +little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, +they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it +hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges +towards it devouringly. + +"Good-bye, good-bye." + +The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris was +left standing by the sign-post at the cross-roads, still dizzy and weak +with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of those +gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up +deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk. +She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies. + +Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling +boredom. + + + + +II + + +Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In +spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the +hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of +digestion, slept before the blaze. + +"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the +room. + +"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on the +verge of tears. "I get so shivery." + +"I hope you're better this evening." + +"Not much, I'm afraid." + +The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against +the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and +with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed +its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy. +Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an _impasse_, she +altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on +playing. Her Patiences always came out. + +"Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer." + +"Well--go, my dear--go, most certainly." + +Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had +driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood, had left the car to wait +for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the +windless sunshine of the chalk down. + +"I'm to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have +massage and electric treatment, too." + +Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing +together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the +flickering of blue fire. The blue fire burst and scattered into whirling +sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting like a child. + +"I'm sure it will do you good, my dear." + +"I was wondering if you'd come with me, dear." + +"But you know I'm going to Scotland at the end of the month." + +Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. "It's the journey," she said. +"The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don't know if I can manage +it. And you know I can't sleep in hotels. And then there's the luggage +and all the worries. I can't go alone. + +"But you won't be alone. You'll have your maid with you." He spoke +impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one. +He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the +quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its +complaining occupant. + +"I don't think I shall be able to go." + +"But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a +change will do you good." + +"I don't think so." + +"But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he's talking about." + +"No, I can't face it. I'm too weak. I can't go alone." Mrs. Hutton +pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes. + +"Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort." + +"I had rather be left in peace to die here." She was crying in earnest +now. + +"O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please." Mrs. Hutton only +sobbed more violently. "Oh, what is one to do?" He shrugged his +shoulders and walked out of the room. + +Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but +he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that +not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, +and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he +spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled +with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed +the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion; and he had +been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was +temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had +been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then. +But now--was it his fault that she was like this? + +Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he +had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he +went up to his wife's room and offered to read to her. She was touched, +gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly +proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French. + +"French? I am so fond of French." Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of +Racine as though it were a dish of green peas. + +Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He +began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole +attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed +to improve the quality of the novel he was reading. + +At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked +up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while, +looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had +been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it, +had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt +before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched +tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like +nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The +lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasised with light and +shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by +Morales. + + _Le squelette était invisible_ + _Au temps heureux de l'art païen._ + +He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room. + +On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some +unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better +now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence listened +to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy, +lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity. +She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. +Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the +narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess +with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of +a literary or philosophic character--bombardments of Maeterlinck, of +Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. To-day the missiles were +medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of +harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. +Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun. + +Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in +him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that +every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness, +that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging over mysterious +gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than +what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different. +Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind +the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What +exactly was there? Mr. Hutton could never quite make out. + +"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence +was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off." + +"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day." + +Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that +prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by +reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. +Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart. + +"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said, +suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything with +skins and pips." + +"But I am so fond of them," Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well +to-day." + +"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at +his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her +good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it +affectionately two or three times. + +"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants. + +"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again." + +"Do I ever blame you, dear?" + +"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I am +the perfect husband." + +They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under +the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in +which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance. + +Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good +to be alive," he said. + +"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed +hand into the sunlight. + +A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were +set on a folding table near the group of chairs. + +"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara, +will you? The white bottle on the sideboard." + +"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any +case." + +He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an +instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting +up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence +was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the +cool obscurity of the house. + +"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired. + +"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to +take the taste away." + +Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her +eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky. + +Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the +coffee-cups. + +"I've given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste +away. And here comes the medicine." + +Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wineglass, half full of a pale +liquid. + +"It smells delicious," he said, as he handed it to his wife. + +"That's only the flavouring." She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and +made a grimace. "Ugh, it's so nasty. Give me my coffee." + +Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. "You've made it like +syrup. But it's very nice, after that atrocious medicine." + +At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well +as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have +said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph +of an "I told you so" was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic, +and gave her his arm to the house. + +"A rest will do you good," he said. "By the way, I shan't be back till +after dinner." + +"But why? Where are you going?" + +"I promised to go to Johnson's this evening. We have to discuss the war +memorial, you know." + +"Oh, I wish you weren't going." Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. "Can't +you stay? I don't like being alone in the house." + +"But, my dear, I promised weeks ago." It was a bother having to lie like +this. "And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence." + +He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss +Spence received him aimed and intense. + +"Your wife is dreadfully ill," she fired off at him. + +"I thought she cheered up so much when you came." + +"That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely. +With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked--yes, +wrecked--anything might happen." + +"Libbard doesn't take so gloomy a view of poor Emily's health." Mr. +Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss +Spence's car was standing by the front door. + +"Libbard is only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist." + +He could not refrain from laughing. "You have a macabre passion for +specialists." + +Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. "I am serious. I think poor +Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen at any moment." + +He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the +engine and climbed into his place, ready to drive off. + +"Shall I tell him to start?" He had no desire to continue the +conversation. + +Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction. +"Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon." + +Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved +forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone. + +A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was +waiting at the cross-roads. They dined together twenty miles from home, +at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are +only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr. +Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton +ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent +the evening in his library. + +When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely +affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past +the motionless form of M'Nab, they could see a bright and narrow +universe of forms and colours scooped out of the night by the electric +head-lamps. + +It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in +the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed +features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and +melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the +bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking +in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a +pleasing odour, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and +discreetly delicious. + +"Libbard?" said Mr. Hutton in surprise. "You here? Is my wife ill?" + +"We tried to fetch you earlier," the soft, melancholy voice replied. "It +was thought you were at Mr. Johnson's, but they had no news of you +there." + +"No, I was detained. I had a breakdown," Mr. Hutton answered irritably. +It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie. + +"Your wife wanted to see you urgently." + +"Well, I can go now." Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs. + +Dr. Libbard laid a hand on his arm. "I am afraid it's too late." + +"Too late?" He began fumbling with his watch; it wouldn't come out of +the pocket. + +"Mrs. Hutton passed away half an hour ago." + +The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did +not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local +cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable. + +Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence's words. At any +moment--at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right. + +"What happened?" he asked. "What was the cause?" + +Dr. Libbard explained. It was heart failure brought on by a violent +attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an +irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had +been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease: +something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not +have suffered much. + + + + +III + + +"It's a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow +match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his +top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face +with his handkerchief. + +Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire +to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to +hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great +mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did +nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their +dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. +Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the +bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he +couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match. + +Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were +drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and +motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background +of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and +unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people +would soon be dead, too. + +That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of +Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton; +it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after +midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the +French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The +night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the +holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless +flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape, +black and grey under the moon. + +He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the +stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and +night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between +the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and +himself--himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. +Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his +side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There +were only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, +the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself--always +himself.... + +Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of +it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound +of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he +had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I +will." There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the +past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar +resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, +into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a +more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would +live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he +would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would +be so. + +In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural +pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed +in the best modern way--silos and artificial manures and continuous +cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to +serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so +long--_The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation_. + +Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace +had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to +find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had +been transformed by a good night's rest into his customary cheerfulness. +It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life +that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death +seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were +not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could +see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the +farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague +at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern +Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good +anecdote in Skelton's jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would +have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil. + +On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his +correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar +handwriting which he knew to be Doris's. He opened it, and began to +read. She didn't know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife +dying like that, and so suddenly--it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton +sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on: + + "Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. + But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or + depressed, then I can't help remembering it is there so close, and + I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and + me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so + lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don't know what to do. I + can't get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless + without you. I didn't mean to write to you; I meant to wait till + you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was + so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn't + help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world + but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is + nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have + been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t + understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so + dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love + me a little, don't you, Teddy Bear?" + +Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, +worshipped for having seduced the girl--it was too much. It had just +been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no +other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very +little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably +been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to +be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of +reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known +pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew +beforehand--so well, so well--that there was no interest or pleasure to +be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch +came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old +stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife's maid, and Edith, the girl +on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and +others--there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and +boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet.... +Experience doesn't teach. + +Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he +wouldn't see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was +saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old +bailiff was more irritating than usual. + + * * * * * + +Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier +at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated +happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed +the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a +tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his +side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, +the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a +fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn +oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had +triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was +hopeless, hopeless. + +For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The +girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her +direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains +to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair +on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there +moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so +be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of +irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. +In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, +bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses. + +The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The +whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter. + +"Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?" The question came +faintly from distant worlds of love. + +"I think I know somebody who does," Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine +laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and +resound. + +"Who? Tell me. What do you mean?" The voice had come very close; charged +with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate +world. + +"A--ah!" + +"Who?" + +"You'll never guess." Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow +tedious, and then pronounced the name "Janet Spence." + +Doris was incredulous. "Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?" It +was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too. + +"But it's quite true," he said. "She adores me." Oh, the vast joke. He +would go and see her as soon as he returned--see and conquer. "I believe +she wants to marry me," he added. + +"But you wouldn't ... you don't intend...." + +The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. "I +intend to marry you," he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had +ever made in his life. + +When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was +agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the +autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. +Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers. + +The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss +Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda. + +"I was expecting you to come." + +"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Hutton gallantly replied. + +They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place--a little old +stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had +left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della +Robbia plaque. + +"I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn," said Mr. Hutton. He felt +like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous +excitement. + +"Italy...." Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. "I feel drawn +there too." + +"Why not let yourself be drawn?" + +"I don't know. One somehow hasn't the energy and initiative to set out +alone." + +"Alone...." Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing. "Yes, travelling +alone isn't much fun." + +Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still +closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself +for what seemed a very long time. + +Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly +started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they +looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the +farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A +huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of +thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first +drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton +sat on in the growing darkness. + +Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively. + +"I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don't +you?" + +"Most certainly." But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes +generalisations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. +Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid +existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had +always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he +wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy--happier than most men. And +now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the +secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when +Miss Spence went on speaking. + +"People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our +lives." + +"Me?" said Mr. Hutton surprised. + +"Poor Henry! Fate hasn't treated either of us very well." + +"Oh, well, it might have treated me worse." + +"You re being cheerful. That's brave of you. But don't think I can't see +behind the mask." + +Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more +heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked +on, shouting against the noise. + +"I have understood you so well and for so long." + +A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes +were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed +her. + +"You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathise +with you in your solitude. Your marriage ..." + +The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence's voice became audible +once more with the words: + +"... could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a +soul mate." + +A soul mate--he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. Georgette +Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck. He had seen that in +the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted +him in her imagination--a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of +goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he +was what?--Who knows? + +"My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too." Miss +Spence laid her hand on his knee. "You were so patient." Another flash. +She was still aimed, dangerously. "You never complained. But I could +guess--I could guess." + +"How wonderful of you!" So he was an _âme incomprise_. + +"Only a woman's intuition...." + +The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the +rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalised. +Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them. + +"Don't you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this +storm?" He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. +"Passion makes one the equal of the elements." + +What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said "Yes," and +ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took +fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was +serious--terribly serious. He was appalled. + +Passion? "No," he desperately answered. "I am without passion." + +But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on +with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapidly, however, and in such a +burningly intimate whisper that Mr. Hutton found it very difficult to +distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could +make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, +and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her +still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying +intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close +at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel +of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn't it rather--yes, +wasn't it rather George Robey? + +He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, +Pretending he had seen a burglar--Stop thief, stop thief!--and dash off +into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart +attack? or that he had seen, a ghost--Emily's ghost--in the garden? +Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to +Miss Spence's words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his +thoughts. + +"I honoured you for that, Henry," she was saying. + +Honoured him for what? + +"Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the +marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect +you and admire you, and--shall I dare say the word?--" + +Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late. + +"... yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we're free now, Henry." + +Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the +floor by his chair. + +"Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too." + +Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that +she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy. + +"You mustn't, Janet," he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. +"Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed." He patted her +shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her +still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been +sitting. + +Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, +he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door +noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was +shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a +noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr. Hutton +splashed along, not caring if he got wet. + +How heartrendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse +that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why +couldn't she have played the game that he was playing the heartless, +amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn't, she +couldn't play that game; he had known and persisted. + +What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly +stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black bosomed and charged +with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had +sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining +that his toy had drawn the lightning. + +She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying. + +But why hadn't he been able to keep up the game? Why had his +irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold +world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned +steady and luminous in his mind--the idea of flight. He must get away at +once. + + + + +IV + + +"What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?" + +"Nothing." + +There was a silence. Mr. Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the +parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over +Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of +the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one +looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the +bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of +Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in +the September sunshine. + +"Are you worried about anything?" + +"No, thank you." + +"Tell me, Teddy Bear." + +"But, my dear, there's nothing to tell." Mr. Hutton turned round, +smiled, and patted the girl's hand. "I think you'd better go in and have +your siesta. It's too hot for you here." + +"Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?" + +"When I've finished my cigar." + +"All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear." Slowly, +reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards +the house. + +Mr. Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be +alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless +solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving +hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These +last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always +with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good +to be alone. + +He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it; not without +reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something +unpleasant--nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his +sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it +was composed. The words "indecent haste," "social suicide," "scarcely +cold in her grave," "person of the lower classes," all occurred. They +were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and +right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid +letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the +third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It +was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he +had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! +Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr. Hutton found himself +trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling +names--he cursed the woman. + +Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion +that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they +only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to +be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid. + +A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below +the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A +Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen +of the classical type--a little debased. Her profile might have been +taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved +floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. +Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand +of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad +temper.... Under her hideous black clothes, Mr. Hutton divined a +powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a +vague interest and curiosity. To-day the curiosity defined and focused +itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, +alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. He called +to her. + +"Armida!" + +The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so +easy a virtue, that Mr. Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once +more--on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it +was too late. The girl continued to look up at him. + +"_Ha chiamito_?" she asked at last. + +Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility +every time. + +"_Scendo_" he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to +the terrace. Mr. Hutton counted them. Down, down, down, down.... He saw +a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the +next--from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud. + + + + +V + + +For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of +every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since +George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a +warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this +tale of a murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. +Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so notable +because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to +man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. +For months he had lived in sin and fancied security----only to be dashed +at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder +will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were +in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had +been vague, but persistent, rumours in the neighbourhood; the police had +taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the post-mortem +examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of +the coroner's jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had +done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The +newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food +of a whole season. + +Mr. Hutton's first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give +evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a +scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip +seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action for +malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the +Spence woman for slander. + +The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The +experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they +were of opinion that the late Mrs. Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning. + +Arsenic poisoning.... Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, +Mr. Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated +insecticide in his green-houses to poison an army. + +It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against +him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous +tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a +tangled forest. + +When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have +been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, +about lunch-time. Clara, the parlour-maid, was called. Mrs. Hutton, she +remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr. Hutton had +volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence--ah, the +memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all!--Miss +Spence confirmed Clara's statement, and added that Mr. Hutton had come +back with the medicine already poured out in a wineglass, not in the +bottle. + +Mr. Hutton's indignation evaporated. He was dismayed, frightened. It was +all too fantastic to be taken seriously, and yet this nightmare was a +fact it was actually happening. + +M'Nab had seen them kissing, often. He had taken them for a drive on the +day of Mrs. Hutton's death. He could see them reflected in the +wind-screen, sometimes out of the tail of his eye. + +The inquest was adjourned. That evening Doris went to bed with a +headache. When he went to her room after dinner, Mr. Hutton found her +crying. + +"What's the matter?" He sat down on the edge of her bed and began to +stroke her hair. For a long time she did not answer, and he went on +stroking her hair mechanically, almost unconsciously; sometimes, even he +bent down and kissed her bare shoulder. He had his own affairs, however, +to think about. What had happened? How was it that the stupid gossip had +actually come true? Emily had died of arsenic poisoning. It was absurd, +impossible. The order of things had been broken, and he was at the mercy +of an irresponsibility. What had happened, what was going to happen? He +was interrupted in the midst of his thoughts. + +"It's my fault--it's my fault!" Doris suddenly sobbed out. "I shouldn't +have loved you; I oughtn't to have let you love me. Why was I ever +born?" + +Mr. Hutton didn't say anything but looked down in silence at the abject +figure of misery lying on the bed. + +"If they do anything to you I shall kill myself." + +She sat up, held him for a moment at arm's length, and looked at him +with a kind of violence, as though she were never to see him again. + +"I love you, I love you, I love you." She drew him, inert and passive, +towards her, clasped him, pressed herself against him. "I didn't know +you loved me as much as that, Teddy Bear. But why did you do it--why did +you do it?" + +Mr. Hutton undid her clasping arms and got up. His face became very red. +"You seem to take it for granted that I murdered my wife," he said. +"It's really too grotesque. What do you all take me for? A cinema hero?" +He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and +bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against +her. "It's all such damned stupidity. Haven't you any conception of a +civilised man's mentality? Do I look the sort of man who'd go about +slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love +with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand +that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which +you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me +to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go +about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it." + +Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he +knew--odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn't. +He closed the door behind him. + +"Teddy Bear!" He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. Teddy +Bear! The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonised. +Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then +withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was half-way down +the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly--throw herself +out of the window or God knows what! He listened attentively; there was +no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, +lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night +air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace. +How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking +along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-storey window of the +Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should +he go back? He was damned if he would; he hated her. + +He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was +happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could +find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its +horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with +tears; he wanted so passionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily +had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still +so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer +delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as +seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the +Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to +the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet +southern wines--Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas--others would drink +them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes +between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty +perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering +unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He +would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt +that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he +had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as +wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God +existed after all. + +He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by +his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him +almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. "God +bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and +Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They +were all dead now all except Cissie. + +His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his +spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying +on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a +blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have +drunk about half of it. + +"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find +him bending over her. + +Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences. +"You mustn't do this again," he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the +room. + +"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly. + +Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to +prevent you," he said. "Only yourself and your baby. Isn't it rather bad +luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you +want to go out of it?" + +Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't." + +Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself +now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he +loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and +cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had +become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At six o'clock he +undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours' sleep. In the course of +the same afternoon the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful +Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial. + + + + +VI + + +Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in +the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something +that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from +nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She +talked to him a great deal--mostly about the Hutton case.... Her moral +indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that +one had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one +could have been for so long mistaken about the man's character? (But she +had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off +with--so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that +the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the posthumous child of a +condemned and executed criminal--revolted her; the thing was shocking an +obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed +bromide. + +One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. +"By the way," he said in his soft, melancholy voice, "I suppose it was +really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton." + +Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, +and then quietly said, "Yes." After that she started to cry. + +"In the coffee, I suppose." + +She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in +his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping +draught. + + + + +II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES + + + +A PLAY + + +_It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the +garden façade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage--a bare +white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten +feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the +lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through which a yellow +radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or +three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, +ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set. +At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of +the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous +June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down +to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are +made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender +towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing +of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost +deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest_, COUNT +ALBERTO TIRETTA, _is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic +despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully +sympathetic at his side_, ALBERTO _is a little man with large lustrous +eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the +pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ--almost as pretty +and sentimental as Murillo's little beggars._ + + + +ALBERTO (_making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left +covering his eyes_). Whereupon, Waiter (_he is reciting a tale of +woes_), she slammed the door in my face. (_He brings down his +gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table_.) + +WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible! + +ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a +little weary. (_The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under +his arm and fills Alberto's glass._) + +WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore. + +ALBERTO (_throwing down a note_). Keep the change. + +WAITER (_bowing_). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I +should beat her. (_He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of +illustration slaps its black polished flanks._) + +ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her. + +WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern +disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I assure you, Signore, a +pleasure. + +ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts. +My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity. +Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please. + +WAITER (_pouring out the brandy_). Delicacy, purity.... Ah, believe me, +Signore ... That will be one lira twenty-five. + +ALBERTO (_throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic +gesture_). Keep the change. + +WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, +purity.... You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, +beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the +Signore's sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen +years old, and what eyes, what forms! + +ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of +the young lady (_he points towards the glass doors_). Remember she is an +American. (_The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel_.) + + + +SIDNEY DOLPHIN _and_ MISS AMY TOOMIS + +_come out together on to the terrace._ MISS AMY _supports a well-shaped +head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from +Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses +sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten +Toomis millions_. SIDNEY DOLPHIN _has a romantic aristocratic +appearance. The tailoring of_ 1830 _would suit him. Balzac would have +described his face as_ plein de poésie. _In effect he does happen to be +a poet. His two volumes of verse, "Zeotrope and 'Trembling Ears," have +been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are +poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain. They may be +merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain. +Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at +one of the little iron tables_, ALBERTO _they do not see; the shadow of +the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in +savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There +is a long, uncomfortable silence_. DOLPHIN _assumes the Thinker's +mask--the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead_, AMY +_regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her +interest in him_, DOLPHIN _racks his brains to think of some way of +exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to +play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests_. AMY _makes a +social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones._ AMY. It's +been a wonderful day, hasn't it? + +DOLPHIN (_starting, as though roused from profoundest thought_). Yes, +yes, it has. + +AMY. You don't often get it as fine as this in England, I guess. + +DOLPHIN. Not often. + +AMY. Nor do we over at home. + +DOLPHIN. So I should suppose. (_Silence. A spasm of anguish crosses_ +DOLPHIN'S _face; then he reassumes the old Thinker's mask._ AMY _looks +at him for a little longer, then, unable to suppress her growing +curiosity, she says with a sudden burst of childish confidence:_) + +AMY. It must be wonderful to be able to think as hard as you do, Mr. +Dolphin. Or are you sad about something? + +DOLPHIN (_looks up, smiles, and blushes; a spell has been broken_). The +finger at the temple, Miss Toomis, is not the barrel of a revolver. + +AMY. That means you're not specially sad about anything. Just thinking. + +DOLPHIN. Just thinking. + +AMY. What about? + +DOLPHIN. Oh, just life, you know--life and letters. + +AMY. Letters? Do you mean love letters. + +DOLPHIN. No, no. Letters in the sense of literature; letters as opposed +to life. + +AMY. (_disappointed_). Oh, literature. They used to teach us literature +at school. But I could never understand Emerson. What do you think +about literature for? + +DOLPHIN. It interests me, you know. I read it; I even try to write it. + +AMY (_very much excited_). What, are you a writer, a poet, Mr. Dolphin? + +DOLPHIN. Alas, it is only too true; I am. + +AMY. But what do you write? + +DOLPHIN. Verse and prose, Miss Toomis. Just verse and prose. + +AMY (_with enthusiasm_). Isn't that interesting. I've never met a poet +before, you know. + +DOLPHIN. Fortunate being. Why, before I left England I attended a +luncheon of the Poetry Union at which no less than a hundred and +eighty-nine poets were present. The sight of them made me decide to go +to Italy. + +AMY. Will you show me your books? + +DOLPHIN. Certainly not, Miss Toomis. That would ruin our friendship. I +am insufferable in my writings. In them I give vent to all the horrible +thoughts and impulses which I am too timid to express or put into +practice in real life. Take me as you find me here, a decent specimen of +a man, shy but able to talk intelligently when the layers of ice are +broken, aimless, ineffective, but on the whole quite a good sort. + +AMY. But I know that man already, Mr. Dolphin. I want to know the poet. +Tell me what the poet is like. + +DOLPHIN. He is older, Miss Toomis, than the rocks on which he sits. He +is villainous. He is ... but there, I really must stop. It was you who +set me going, though. Did you do it on purpose. + +AMY. Do what on purpose? + +DOLPHIN. Make me talk about myself. If you want to get people to like +you, you must always lead the conversation on to the subject of their +characters. Nothing pleases them so much. They'll talk with enthusiasm +for hours and go away saying that you're the most charming, cleverest +person they've ever met. But of course you knew that already. You re +Machiavellian. + +AMY. Machiavellian? You're the first person that's ever said that. I +always thought I was very simple and straight-forward. People say about +me that.... Ah, now I'_m_ talking about myself. That was unscrupulous of +you. But you shouldn't have told me about the trick if you wanted it to +succeed. + +DOLPHIN. Yes. It was silly of me. If I hadn't, you'd have gone on +talking about yourself and thought me the nicest man in the world. + +AMY. I want to hear about your poetry. Are you writing any now? + +DOLPHIN. I have composed the first line of a magnificent epic. But I +can't get any further. + +AMY. How does it go? + +DOLPHIN. Like this (_he clears his throat_). "Casbeen has been, and +Moghreb is no more." Ah, the transience of all sublunary things! But +inspiration has stopped short there. + +AMY. What exactly does it mean? + +DOLPHIN. Ah, there you re asking too much, Miss Toomis. Waiter, some +coffee for two. + +WAITER (_who is standing in the door of the lounge_). Si, Signore. Will +the lady and gentleman take it here, or in the gardens, perhaps? + +DOLPHIN. A good suggestion. Why shouldn't the lady and gentleman take it +in the garden? + +AMY. Why not? + +DOLPHIN. By the fountain, then, Waiter. We can talk about ourselves +there to the tune of falling waters. + +AMY. And you shall recite your poetry, Mr. Dolphin. I just love poetry. +Do you know Mrs. Wilcox's _Poems of Passion_? (_They go out to the left. +A nightingale utters two or three phrases of song and from far down the +bells of the city jangle the three-quarters and die slowly away into the +silence out of which they rose and came together._) + +(LUCREZIA GRATTAROL _has come out of the hotel just in time to overhear +Miss Toomis's last remark, just in time to see her walk slowly away with +a hand on_ SIDNEY DOLPHIN's _arm_. LUCREZIA _has a fine thoroughbred +appearance, an aquiline nose, a finely curved sensual mouth, a superb +white brow, a quivering nostril. She is the last of a family whose name +is as illustrious in Venetian annals as that of Foscarini, Tiepolo, or +Tron. She stamps a preposterously high-heeled foot and tosses her +head._) + +LUCREZIA. Passion! Passion, indeed. An American! (_She starts to run +after the retreating couple, when_ ALBERTO, _who has been sitting with +his head between his hands, looks up and catches sight of the +newcomer_.) + +ALBERTO. Lucrezia! + +LUCREZIA (_starts, for in the shade beneath the trees she had not seen +him_). Oh! You gave me such a fright, Alberto. I'm in a hurry now. Later +on, if you.... + +ALBERTO (_in a desperate voice that breaks into a sob_). Lucrezia! You +must come and talk to me. You must. + +LUCREZIA. But I tell you I can't now, Alberto. Later on. + +ALBERTO (_the tears streaming down his cheeks_). Now, now, now! You must +come now. I am lost if you don't. + +LUCREZIA (_looking indecisively first at_ ALBERTO _and then along the +path down which_ AMY _and_ SIDNEY DOLPHIN _have disappeared_). But +supposing I am lost if I do come? + +ALBERTO. But you couldn't be as much lost as I am. Ah, you don't know +what it is to suffer. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss wass ich leide. +Oh, Lucrezia.... (_He sobs unrestrainedly_.) + +LUCREZIA (_goes over to where_ ALBERTO _is sitting. She pats his +shoulder and his bowed head of black curly hair_). There, there, my +little Bertino. Tell me what it is. You mustn't cry. There, there. + +ALBERTO (_drying his eyes and rubbing his head, like a cat, avid of +caresses, against her hand_). How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia? You +are like a mother to me. + +LUCREZIA. I know. That's just what's so dangerous. + +ALBERTO (_lets his head fall upon her bosom_). I come to you for +comfort, like a tired child, Lucrezia. + +LUCREZIA. Poor darling! (_She strokes his hair, twines its thick black +tendrils round her fingers_, ALBERTO _is abjectly pathetic_.) + +ALBERTO (_with closed eyes and a seraphic smile_). Ah, the suavity, the +beauty of this maternal instinct! + +LUCREZIA (_with a sudden access of energy and passion_). The +disgustingness of it, you mean. (_She pushes him from her. His head +wobbles once, as though it were inanimate, before he straightens into +life_.) The maternal instinct. Ugh. It's been the undoing of too many +women. You men come with your sentimental babyishness and exploit it for +your own lusts. Be a man, Bertino. Be a woman, I mean, if you can. + +ALBERTO (_looking up at her with eyes full of doglike, dumb reproach_). +Lucrezia! You, too? Is there nobody who cares for me? This is the +unkindest cut of all. I may as well die. (_He relapses into tears_.) + +LUCREZIA (_who has started to go, turns back, irresolute_). Now, don't +cry, Bertino. Can't you behave like a reasonable being? (_She makes as +though to go again_.) + +ALBERTO (_through his sobs_). You too, Lucrezia! Oh, I can't bear it, I +can't bear it. + +LUCREZIA (_turning back desperately_). But what do you want me to do? +Why should you expect _me_ to hold your hand? + +ALBERTO. I thought better of you, Lucrezia. Let me go. There is nothing +left for me now but death. (_He rises to his feet, takes a step or two, +and then collapses into another chair, unable to move_.) + +LUCREZIA (_torn between anger and remorse_). Now do behave yourself +sensibly, Bertino. There, there ... you mustn't cry. I'm sorry if I've +hurt you. (_Looking towards the left along the path taken by_ AMY _and_ +DOLPHIN.) Oh, damnation! (_She stamps her foot_.) Here, Bertino, do pull +yourself together. (_She raises him up_.) There, now you must stop +crying. (_But as soon as she lets go of him his head falls back on to +the iron table with an unpleasant, meaty bump. That bump is too much +for_ LUCREZIA. _She bends over him, strokes his head, even kisses the +lustrous curls_.) Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I have been a beast. But, +tell me first, what's the matter, Bertino? What is it, my poor darling? +Tell me. + +ALBERTO. Nobody loves me. + +LUCREZIA. But we're all devoted to you, Bertino mio. + +ALBERTO. She isn't. To-day she shut the door in my face. + +LUCREZIA. She? You mean the French-woman, the one you told me about? +Louise, wasn't she? + +ALBERTO. Yes, the one with the golden hair. + +LUCREZIA. And the white legs. I remember: you saw her bathing. + +ALBERTO (_lays his hand on his heart_). Ah, don't remind me of it. (_His +face twitches convulsively_.) + +LUCREZIA. And now she's gone and shut the door in your face. + +ALBERTO. In my face, Lucrezia. + +LUCREZIA. Poor darling! + +ALBERTO. For me there is nothing now but the outer darkness. + +LUCREZIA. Is the door shut forever, then? + +ALBERTO. Definitively, for ever. + +LUCREZIA. But have you tried knocking? Perhaps, after all, it might be +opened again, if only a crack. + +ALBERTO. What, bruise my hands against the granite of her heart? + +LUCREZIA. Don't be too poetical, Bertino mio. Why not try again, in any +case? + +ALBERTO. You give me courage. + +LUCREZIA. There's no harm in trying, you know. + +ALBERTO. Courage to live, to conquer. (_He beats his breast_.) I am a +man again, thanks to you, Lucrezia, my inspirer, my Muse, my Egeria. How +can I be sufficiently grateful. (_He kisses her_.) I am the child of +your spirit. (_He kisses her again_.) + +LUCREZIA. Enough, enough. I am not ambitious to be a mother, yet awhile. +Quickly now, Bertino, I know you will succeed. + +ALBERTO (_cramming his hat down on his head and knocking with his +walking-stick on the ground_). Succeed or die, Lucrezia. (_He goes out +with a loud martial stamp_.) + +LUCREZIA (_to the waiter who is passing across the stage with a +coffee-pot and cups on a tray_). Have you seen the Signorina Toomis, +Giuseppe? + +WAITER. The Signorina is down in the garden. So is the Signore Dolphin. +By the fountain, Signorina. This is the Signore's coffee. + +LUCREZIA. Have you a mother, Giuseppe? + +WAITER. Unfortunately, Signorina. + +LUCREZIA. Unfortunately? Does she treat you badly, then? + +WAITER. Like a dog, Signorina. + +LUCREZIA. Ah, I should like to see your mother. I should like to ask her +to give me some hints on how to bring up children. + +WAITER. But surely, Signorina, you are not expecting, you--ah.... + +LUCREZIA. Only figuratively, Giuseppe. My children are spiritual +children. + +WAITER. Precisely, precisely. My mother, alas! is not a spiritual +relation. Nor is my fiançée. + +LUCREZIA. I didn't know you were engaged. + +WAITER. To an angel of perdition. Believe me, Signorina, I go to my +destruction in that woman--go with open eyes. There is no escape. She is +what is called in the Holy Bible (_crosses himself_) a Fisher of Men. + +LUCREZIA. You have remarkable connections, Giuseppe. + +WAITER. I am honoured by your words, Signorina. But the coffee becomes +cold. (_He hurries out to the left_.) + +LUCREZIA. In the garden! By the fountain! And there's the nightingale +beginning to sing in earnest! Good heavens! what may not already have +happened? (_She runs out after the waiter_.) + +(_Two persons emerge from the hotel_, the VICOMTE DE BARBAZANGE _and the_ +BARONESS KOCH DE WORMS. PAUL DE BARBAZANGE _is a young man--twenty-six +perhaps of exquisite grace. Five foot ten, well built, dark hair, sleek +as marble, the most refined aristocratic features, and a monocle_, +SIMONE DE WORMS _is forty, a ripe Semitic beauty. Five years more and +the bursting point of overripeness will have been reached. But now, +thanks to massage, powerful corsets, skin foods, and powder, she is +still a beauty--a beauty of the type Italians admire, cushioned, +steatopygous._ PAUL, _who has a faultless taste in bric-à-brac and +women, and is by instinct and upbringing an ardent anti-Semite, finds +her infinitely repulsive. The Baronne enters with a loud shrill giggle. +She gives_ PAUL _a slap with her green feather fan_.) + + + +SIMONE. Oh, you naughty boy! Quelle histoire. Mon Dieu! How dare you +tell me such a story! + +PAUL. For you, Baronne, I would risk anything even your displeasure. + +SIMONE. Charming boy. But stories of that kind.... And you look so +innocent, too! Do you know any more like it? + +PAUL (_suddenly grave_). Not of that description. But I will tell you a +story of another kind, a true story, a tragic story. + +SIMONE. Did I ever tell you how I saw a woman run over by a train? Cut +to pieces, literally, to pieces. So disagreeable. I'll tell you later. +But now, what about your story? + +PAUL. Oh, it's nothing, nothing. + +SIMONE. But you promised to tell it me. + +PAUL. It's only a commonplace anecdote. A young man, poor but noble, +with a name and a position to keep up. A few youthful follies, a +mountain of debts, and no way out except the revolver. This is all dull +and obvious enough. But now follows the interesting part of the story. +He is about to take that way out, when he meets the woman of his dreams, +the goddess, the angel, the ideal. He loves, and he must die without a +word. (_He turns his face away from the Baronne, as though his emotion +were too much for him, which indeed it is_.) + +SIMONE. Vicomte--Paul--this young man is you? + +PAUL (_solemnly_). He is. + +SIMONE. And the woman? + +PAUL. Oh, I can't, I mayn't tell you. + +SIMONE. The woman! Tell me, Paul. + +PAUL (_turning towards her and falling on his knees_). The woman, +Simone, is you. Ah, but I had no right to say it. + +SIMONE (_quivering with emotion_). My Paul. (_She clasps his head to her +bosom. A grimace of disgust contorts Paul's classical features. He +endures Simone's caresses with a stoical patience_.) But what is this +about a revolver? That is only a joke, Paul, isn't it? Say it isn't +true. + +PAUL. Alas, Simone, too true. (_He taps his coat pocket_.) There it +lies. To-morrow I have a hundred and seventy thousand francs to pay, or +be dishonoured. I cannot pay the sum. A Barbazange does not survive +dishonour. My ancestors were Crusaders, preux chevaliers to a man. Their +code is mine. Dishonour for me is worse than death. + +SIMONE. Mon Dieu, Paul, how noble you are! (_She lays her hands on his +shoulder, leans back, and surveys him at arm's length, a look of pride +and anxious happiness on her face_.) + +PAUL (_dropping his eyes modestly_). Not at all. I was born noble, and +noblesse oblige, as we say in our family. Farewell, Simone, I love +you--and I must die. My last thought will be of you. (_He kisses her +hand, rises to his feet, and makes as though to go_.) + +SIMONE (_clutching him by the arm_). No, Paul, no. You must not, shall +not, do anything rash. A hundred and seventy thousand francs, did you +say? It is paltry. Is there no one who could lend or give you the money? + +PAUL. Not a soul. Farewell, Simone. + +SIMONE. Stay, Paul. I hardly dare to ask it of you--you with such lofty +ideas of honour--but would you ... from me? + +PAUL. Take money from a woman? Ah, Simone, tempt me no more. I might do +an ignoble act. + +SIMONE. But from me, Paul, from me. I am not in your eyes a woman like +any other woman, am I? + +PAUL. It is true that my ancestors, the Crusaders, the preux chevaliers, +might in all honour receive gifts from the ladies of their +choice--chargers, swords, armour, or tenderer mementoes, such as gloves +or garters. But money--no; who ever heard of their taking money? + +SIMONE. But what would be the use of my giving you swords and horses? +You could never use them. Consider, my knight, my noble Sir Paul, in +these days the contests of chivalry have assumed a different form; the +weapons and the armour have changed. Your sword must be of gold and +paper; your breastplate of hard cash; your charger of gilt-edged +securities. I offer you the shining panoply of the modern crusader. Will +you accept it? + +PAUL. You are eloquent, Simone. You could win over the devil himself +with that angelic voice of yours. But it cannot be. Money is always +money. The code is clear. I cannot accept your offer. Here is the way +out. (_He takes an automatic pistol out of his pocket_.) Thank you, +Simone, and good-bye. How wonderful is the love of a pure woman. + +SIMONE. Paul, Paul, give that to me! (_She snatches the pistol from his +hand_.) If anything were to happen to you, Paul, I should kill myself +with this. You must live, you must consent to accept the money. You +mustn't let your honour make a martyr of you. + +PAUL (_brushing a tear from his eyes_). No, I can't.... Give me that +pistol, I beg you. + +SIMONE. For my sake, Paul. + +PAUL. Oh, you make it impossible for me to act as the voices of dead +ancestors tell me I should.... For your sake, then, Simone, I consent +to live. For your sake I dare to accept the gift you offer. + +SIMONE (_kissing his hand in an outburst of gratitude_). Thank you, +thank you, Paul. How happy I am! + +PAUL. I, too, light of my life. + +SIMONE. My month's allowance arrived to-day. I have the cheque here. +(_She takes it out of her corsage_.) Two hundred thousand francs. It's +signed already. You can get it cashed as soon as the hanks open +to-morrow. + +PAUL (_moved by an outburst of genuine emotion kisses indiscriminately +the cheque, the Baronne, his own hands_). My angel, you have saved me. +How can I thank you? How can I love you enough? Ah, mon petit bouton de +rose. + +SIMONE. Oh, naughty, naughty! Not now, my Paul; you must wait till some +other time. + +PAUL. I burn with impatience. + +SIMONE. Quelle fougue! Listen, then. In an hour's time, Paul chéri, in +my boudoir; I shall be alone. + +PAUL. An hour? It is an eternity. + +SIMONE (_playfully_). An hour. I won't relent. Till then, my Paul. (_She +blows a kiss and runs out: the scenery trembles at her passage._) + +(PAUL _looks at the cheque, then pulls out a large silk handkerchief and +wipes his neck inside his collar_.) (DOLPHIN _drifts in from the left. +He is smoking a cigarette, but he does not seem to be enjoying it_.) + +PAUL. Alone? + +DOLPHIN. Alas! + +PAUL. Brooding on the universe as usual? I envy you your philosophic +detachment. Personally, I find that the world is very much too much with +us, and the devil too; (_he looks at the cheque in his hand_) and above +all the flesh. My god, the flesh.... (_He wipes his neck again_.) + +DOLPHIN. My philosophic detachment? But it's only a mask to hide the +ineffectual longings I have to achieve contact with the world. + +PAUL. But surely nothing is easier. One just makes a movement and +impinges on one's fellow-beings. + +DOLPHIN. Not with a temperament like mine. Imagine a shyness more +powerful than curiosity or desire, a paralysis of all the faculties. You +are a man of the world. You were born with a forehead of brass to +affront every social emergency. Ah, if you knew what a torture it is to +find yourself in the presence of someone a woman, perhaps--someone in +whom you take an interest that is not merely philosophic; to find +oneself in the presence of such a person and to be incapable, yes, +physically incapable, of saying a word to express your interest in her +or your desire to possess her intimacy. Ah, I notice I have slipped into +the feminine. Inevitably, for of course the person is always a she. + +PAUL. Of course, of course. That goes without saying. But what's the +trouble? Women are so simple to deal with. + +DOLPHIN. I know. Perfectly simply if one's in the right state of mind. I +have found that out myself, for moments come alas, how rarely!--when I +am filled with a spirit of confidence, possessed by some angel or devil +of power. Ah, then I feel myself to be superb. I carry all before me. In +those brief moments the whole secret of the world is revealed to me. I +perceive that the supreme quality in the human soul is effrontery. +Genius in the man of action is simply the apotheosis of charlatanism. +Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mr. Gladstone, Lloyd George--what are +they? Just ordinary human beings projected through the magic lantern of +a prodigious effrontery and so magnified to a thousand times larger than +life. Look at me. I am far more intelligent than any of these fabulous +figures; my sensibility is more refined than theirs, I am morally +superior to any of them. And yet, by my lack of charlatanism, I am made +less than nothing. My qualities are projected through the wrong end of a +telescope and the world perceives me far smaller than I really am. But +the world--who cares about the world? The only people who matter are the +women. + +PAUL. Very true, my dear Dolphin. The women.... (_He looks at the cheque +and mops himself once more with his mauve silk handkerchief_.) + +DOLPHIN. To-night was one of my moments of triumph. I felt myself +suddenly free of all my inhibitions. + +PAUL. I hope you profited by the auspicious occasion. + +DOLPHIN. I did. I was making headway. I had--but I don't know why I +should bore you with my confidences. Curious that one should be dumb +before intimates and open one's mind to an all but stranger. I must +apologise. + +PAUL. But I am all attention and sympathy, my dear Dolphin. And I take +it a little hardly that you should regard me as a stranger. (_He lays a +hand on Dolphin's shoulder._) + +DOLPHIN. Thank you, Barbazange, thank you. Well, if you consent to be +the receptacle of my woes, I shall go on pouring them out.... Miss +Toomis.... But tell me frankly what you think of her. + +PAUL. Well.... + +DOLPHIN. A little too ingenuous, a little silly even, eh? + +PAUL. Now you say so, she certainly isn't very intellectually +stimulating. + +DOLPHIN. Precisely. But ... oh, those china-blue eyes, that +ingenuousness, that pathetic and enchanting silliness! She touches lost +chords in one's heart. I love the Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, I am +transported by Beethoven's hundred-and-eleventh Sonata; but the fact +doesn't prevent my being moved to tears by the last luscious waltz +played by the hotel orchestra. In the best constructed brains there are +always spongy surfaces that are sensitive to picture postcards and +Little Nelly and the End of a Perfect Day. Miss Toomis has found out my +Achilles's heel. She is boring, ridiculous, absurd to a degree, but oh! +how moving, how adorable. + +PAUL. You're done for, my poor Dolphin, sunk--spurlos. + +DOLPHIN. And I was getting on so well, was revelling in my new-found +confidence, and, knowing its transience, was exploiting it for all I +was worth. I had covered an enormous amount of ground and then, hey +presto! at a blow all my labour was undone. Actuated by what malice I +don't know, la Lucrezia swoops down like a vulture, and without a +by-your-leave or excuse of any kind carries off Miss Toomis from under +my very eyes. What a woman! She terrifies me. I am always running away +from her. + +PAUL. Which means, I suppose, that she is always pursuing you. + +DOLPHIN. She has ruined my evening and, it may me, all my chances of +success. My precious hour of self-confidence will be wasted (though I +hope you'll not take offence at the word)--wasted on you. + +PAUL. It will return. + +DOLPHIN. But when--but when? Till it does I shall be impotent and in +agony. + +PAUL. I know the agony of waiting. I myself was engaged to a Rumanian +princess in 1916. But owing to the sad collapse in the Rumanian rate of +exchange I have had to postpone our union indefinitely. It is painful, +but, believe me, it can be borne. (_He looks at the cheque and then at +his watch_.) There are other things which are much worse. Believe me, +Dolphin, it can be borne. + +DOLPHIN. I suppose it can. For, when all is said, there are damned few +of us who really take things much to heart. Julie de Lespinasses are +happily not common. I am even subnormal. At twenty I believed myself +passionate: one does at that age. But now, when I come to consider +myself candidly, I find that I am really one of those who never deeply +felt nor strongly willed. Everything is profoundly indifferent to me. I +sometimes try to depress myself with the thought that the world is a +cess-pool, that men are pathetic degenerates from the ape whose +laboriously manufactured ideals are pure nonsense and find no rhyme in +reality, that the whole of life is a bad joke which takes a long time +coming to an end. But it really doesn't upset me. I don't care a curse. +It's deplorable; one ought to care. The best people do care. Still, I +must say I should like to get possession of Miss Toomis. Confound that +Grattarol woman. What on earth did she want to rush me like that for, do +you suppose? + + +PAUL. I expect we shall find out now. (PAUL _jerks his head towards the +left._ LUCREZIA _and_ AMY _are seen entering from the garden_, LUCREZIA +_holds her companion's arm and marches with a firm step towards the two +men_. AMY _suffers herself to be drugged along_.) + +LUCREZIA. Vicomte, Miss Toomis wants you to tell her all about +Correggio. + +AMY (_rather scared_). Oh, really--I.... + +LUCREZIA. And (_sternly_)--and Michelangelo. She is so much interested +in art. + +AMY. But please--don't trouble.... + +PAUL (_bowing gracefully_). I shall be delighted. And in return I hope +Miss Toomis will tell me all about Longfellow. + +AMY (_brightening_). Oh yes, don't you just love Evangeline? + +PAUL. I do; and with your help, Miss Toomis, I hope I shall learn to +love her better. + +LUCREZIA (_to_ DOLPHIN, _who has been looking from_ AMY _to the_ VICOMTE +_and back again at_ AMY _with eyes that betray a certain disquietude_). +You really must come and look at the moon rising over the hills, Mr. +Dolphin. One sees it best from the lower terrace. Shall we go? + +DOLPHIN (_starts and shrinks_). But it's rather cold, isn't it? I +mean--I think I ought to go and write a letter. + +LUCREZIA. Oh, you can do that to-morrow. + +DOLPHIN. But really. + +LUCREZIA. You've no idea how lovely the moon looks. + +DOLPHIN. But I must.... + +LUCREZIA (_lays her hand on his sleeve and tows hint after her, crying +as she goes_). The moon, the moon.... (PAUL _and_ AMY _regard their exit +in silence_.) + +PAUL. He doesn't look as though he much wanted to go and see the moon. + +AMY. Perhaps he guesses what's in store for him. + +PAUL (_surprised_). What, you don't mean to say you realised all the +time? + +AMY. Realised what? + +PAUL. About la belle Lucrezia. + +AMY. I don't know what you mean. All I know is that she means to give +Mr. Dolphin a good talking to. He's so mercenary. It made me quite +indignant when she told me about him. Such a schemer, too. You know in +America we have very definite ideas about honour. + +PAUL. Here too, Miss Toomis. + +AMY. Not Mr. Dolphin. Oh dear, it made me so sad; more sad than angry. I +can never be grateful enough to Signorina Grattarol. + +PAUL. But I'm still at a loss to know exactly what you're talking about. + +AMY. And I am quite bewildered myself. Would you have believed it of +him? I thought him such a nice man. + +PAUL. What has he done? + +AMY. It's all for my money, Miss Grattarol told me. She knows. He was +just asking me to marry him, and I believe I would have said Yes. But +she came in just in the nick of time. It seems he only wanted to marry +me because I'm so rich. He doesn't care for me at all. Miss Grattarol +knows what he's like. It's awful, isn't it? Oh dear, I wouldn't have +thought it of him. + +PAUL. But you must forgive him, Miss Toomis. Money is a great +temptation. Perhaps if you gave him another chance.... + +AMY. Impossible. + +PAUL. Poor Dolphin! He's such a nice young fellow. + +AMY. I thought so too. But he's false. + +PAUL. Don't be too hard on him. Money probably means too much to him. +It's the fault of his upbringing. No one who has not lived among the +traditions of our ancient aristocracy can be expected to have that +contempt, almost that hatred of wealth, which is the sign of true +nobility. If he had been brought up, as I was, in an old machicolated +castle on the Loire, surrounded by ancestral ghosts, imbued with the +spirit of the Crusaders and preux chevaliers who had inhabited the +place in the past, if he had learnt to know what noblesse oblige really +means, believe me, Miss Toomis, he could never have done such a thing. + +AMY. I should just think he couldn't, Monsieur de Barbazange. + +PAUL. You have no idea, Miss Toomis, how difficult it is for a man of +truly noble feelings to get over the fact of your great wealth. When I +heard that you were the possessor of a hundred million dollars.... + +AMY. Oh, I'm afraid it's more than that. It's two hundred million. + +PAUL. ... of two hundred million dollars, then ... it only makes it +worse; I was very melancholy, Miss Toomis. For those two hundred million +dollars were a barrier, which a descendant of Crusaders and preux +chevaliers could not overleap. Honour, Miss Toomis, honour forbade. Ah, +if only that accursed money had not stood in the way.... When I first +saw you oh, how I was moved by that vision of beauty and innocence--I +wanted nothing better than to stand gazing on you for ever. But then I +heard about those millions. Dolphin was lucky to have felt no +restraints. But enough, enough. (_He checks a rising tide of emotion_.) +Give poor Dolphin another chance, Miss Toomis. At bottom he is a good +fellow, and he may learn in time to esteem you for your own sake and to +forget the dazzling millions. + +AMY. Never. I can only marry a man who is entirely disinterested. + +PAUL. But, can't you see, no disinterested man could ever bring himself +to ask you? How could he prove his disinterestedness? No one would +believe the purity of his intentions. + +AMY (_much moved_). It is for me to judge. I know a disinterested man +when I see him. Even in America we can understand honour. + +PAUL (_with a sob in his voice_). Good-bye Miss Toomis. + +AMY. But no, I don't want it to be good-bye. + +PAUL. It must be. Never shall it be said of a Barbazange that he hunted +a woman for her money. + +AMY. But what does it matter what the world says, if I say the opposite? + +PAUL. You say the opposite? Thank you, thank you. But no, good-bye. + +AMY. Stop. Oh! you're forcing me to do a most unwomanly thing. You're +making me ask you to marry me. You're the only disinterested man I've +ever met or, to judge from what I've seen of the world, I'm ever likely +to meet. Haven't you kept away from me in spite of your feelings? +Haven't you even tried to make me listen to another man--a man not +worthy to black your boots? Oh, it's so wonderful, so noble! It's like +something in a picture play. Paul, I offer myself to you. Will you take +me in spite of my millions? + +PAUL (_falling on his knees and kissing the hem of_ AMY'S _skirt_). My +angel, you're right; what does it matter what the world says as long as +you believe in me? Amy, amie, bien-aimée.... Ah, it's too good too, too +good to be true! (_He rises to his feet and embraces her with an +unfeigned enthusiasm_.) + +AMY. Paul, Paul.... And so this is love. Isn't it wonderful? + +PAUL (_looking round anxiously_). You mustn't tell anyone about our +engagement, my Amy. They might say unpleasant things in the hotel, you +know. + +AMY. Of course I won't talk about it. We'll keep our happiness to +ourselves, won't we? + +PAUL. Entirely to ourselves; and to-morrow we'll go to Paris and arrange +about being married. + +AMY. Yes, yes; we'll take the eight o'clock train. + +PAUL. Not the eight o clock, my darling. I have to go to the bank +to-morrow to do a little business. We must wait till the twelve thirty. + +AMY. Very well, then. The twelve-thirty. Oh, how happy I am! + +PAUL. So am I, my sweetheart. More than I can tell you. (_The sound of a +window being opened is heard. They look up and see the_ BARONESS +_dressed in a peignoir of the tenderest blue, emerging on to the right +hand of the three balconies_.) + +AMY. Oh, my soul! I think I'd better go in. Good-night, my Paul. (_She +runs in_.) + +SIMONE. Has that horrid little American girl gone? (_She peers down, +then, reassured, she blows a kiss to_ PAUL.) My Romeo! + +PAUL. I come, Juliet. + +SIMONE. There's a kiss for you. + +PAUL (_throwing kisses with both hands_). And there's one for you. And +another, and another. Two hundred million kisses, my angel. + +SIMONE (_giggling_). What a lot! + +PAUL. It is; you re quite right. Two hundred million.... I come, my +Juliet. (_He darts into the hotel, pausing when just inside the door and +out of sight of the_ BARONESS, _to mop himself once again with his +enormous handkerchief. The operation over, he advances with a resolute +step, The_ BARONESS _stands for a moment on the balcony. Then, seeing_ +DOLPHIN _and_ LUCREZIA _coming in from the left, she retires, closing +the window and drawing the curtains behind her_. DOLPHIN _comes striding +in_; LUCREZIA _follows a little behind, looking anxiously up at him_.) + +LUCREZIA. Please, please.... + +DOLPHIN. NO, I won t listen to anything more. (_He walks with an +agitated step up and down the stage_. LUCREZIA _stands with one hand +resting on the back of a chair and the other pressed on her heart.)_ Do +you mean to say you deliberately went and told her that I was only after +her money? Oh, it's too bad, too bad. It's infamous. And I hadn't the +faintest notion that she had any money. Besides, I don't want money; I +have quite enough of my own. It's infamous, infamous! + +LUCREZIA. I know it was a horrible thing to do. But I couldn't help it. +How could I stand by and see you being carried off by that silly little +creature? + +DOLPHIN. But I cared for her. + +LUCREZIA. But not as I cared for you. I've got red blood in my veins; +she's got nothing but milk and water. You couldn't have been happy with +her. I can give you love of a kind she could never dream of. What does +she know of passion? + +DOLPHIN. Nothing, I am thankful to say. I don't want passion; can't you +understand that? I don't possess it myself and don't like it in others. +I am a man of sentimental affections, with a touch of quiet sensuality. +I don't want passion, I tell you. It's too violent; it frightens me. I +couldn't possibly live with you. You'd utterly shatter my peace of mind +in a day. Oh, how I wish you'd go away. + +LUCREZIA. But Sidney, Sidney, can't you understand what it is to be +madly in love with somebody? You can't be so cruel. + +DOLPHIN. You didn't think much of my well-being when you interfered +between Miss Toomis and me, did you? You've probably ruined my whole +life, that's all. I really don't see why you should expect me to have +any pity for you. + +LUCREZIA. Very well, then, I shall kill myself. (_She bursts into +tears_.) + +DOLPHIN. Oh, but I assure you, one doesn't kill oneself for things like +that. (_He approaches her and pats her on the shoulder_.) Come, come, +don't worry about it. + +LUCREZIA (_throws her arms round his neck_). Oh, Sidney, Sidney.... + +DOLPHIN (_freeing himself with surprising energy and promptitude from +her embrace_). No, no, none of that, I beg. Another moment and we shall +be losing our heads. Personally I think I shall go to bed now. I should +advise you to do the same, Miss Grattarol. You're overwrought. We might +all be better for a small dose of bromide. (_He goes in_.) + +LUCREZIA (_looking up and stretching forth her hands_). Sidney.... +(DOLPHIN _does not look round, and disappears through the glass door +into the hotel_, LUCREZIA _covers her face with her hands and sits for a +little sobbing silently. The nightingale sings on. Midnight sounds with +an infinite melancholy from all the twenty campaniles of the city in the +valley. From far away comes the spasmodic throbbing of a guitar and the +singing of an Italian voice, high-pitched, passionate, throaty. The +seconds pass_, LUCREZIA _rises to her feet and walks slowly into the +hotel. On the threshold she encounters the_ VICOMTE _coming out_.) + +PAUL. You, Signorina Lucrezia? I've escaped for a breath of fresh, cool +air. Mightn't we take a turn together? (LUCREZIA _shakes her head_.) Ah, +well, then, good-night. You'll be glad to hear that Miss Toomis knows +all about Correggio now. + +(_He inhales a deep breath of air. Then looking at his dinner-jacket he +begins brushing at it with his hand. A lamentable figure creeps in from +the left. It is_ ALBERTO. _If he had a tail, it would be trailing on the +ground between his legs_.) + +PAUL. Hullo, Alberto. What is it? Been losing at cards? + +ALBERTO. Worse than that. + +PAUL. Creditors foreclosing? + +ALBERTO. Much worse. + +PAUL. Father ruined by imprudent speculations? + +ALBERTO. No, no, no. It's nothing to do with money. + +PAUL. Oh, well, then. It can't be anything very serious. It's women, I +suppose. + +ALBERTO. My mistress refuses to see me. I have been beating on her door +for hours in vain. + +PAUL. I wish we all had your luck, Bertino. Mine opens her door only too +promptly. The difficulty is to get out again. Does yours use such an +awful lot of this evil-smelling powder? I'm simply covered with it. Ugh! +(_He brushes his coat again_.) + +ALBERTO. Can't you be serious, Paul? + +PAUL. Of course I can ... about a serious matter. But you can't expect +me to pull a long face about your mistress, can you, now? Do look at +things in their right proportions. + +ALBERTO. It's no use talking to you. You're heartless, soulless. + +PAUL. What you mean, my dear Alberto, is that I'm relatively speaking +bodiless. Physical passion never goes to my head. I'm always _compos +mentis_. You aren't, that's all. + +ALBERTO. Oh, you disgust me. I think I shall hang myself to-night. + +PAUL. Do. It will give us something to talk about at lunch to-morrow. + +ALBERTO. Monster! (_He goes into the hotel_, PAUL _strolls out towards +the garden, whistling an air from Mozart as he goes. The window on the +left opens and_ LUCREZIA _steps on to her balcony. Uncoiled, her red +hair falls almost to her waist. Her nightdress is always half slipping +off one shoulder or the other, like those loose-bodied Restoration gowns +that reveal the tight-blown charms of Kneller's Beauties. Her feet are +bare. She is a marvellously romantic figure, as she stands there, +leaning on the balustrade, and with eyes more sombre than night, gazing +into the darkness. The nightingales, the bells, the guitar, and +passionate voice strike up. Great stars palpitate in the sky. The moon +has swum imperceptibly to the height of heaven. In the garden below +flowers are yielding their souls into the air, censers invisible. It is +too much, too much.... Large tears roll down_ LUCREZIA's _cheeks and +fall with a splash to the ground. Suddenly, but with the noiselessness +of a cat,_ ALBERTO _appears, childish-looking in pink pajamas, on the +middle of the three balconies. He sees_ LUCREZIA, _but she is much too +deeply absorbed in thought to have noticed his coming_, ALBERTO _plants +his elbows on the rail of the balcony, covers his face, and begins to +sob, at first inaudibly, then in a gradual quickening crescendo. At the +seventh sob_ LUCREZIA _starts and becomes aware of his presence_.) + +LUCREZIA. Alberto. I didn't know.... Have you been there long? (ALBERTO +_makes no articulate reply, but his sobs keep on growing louder_.) +Alberto, are you unhappy? Answer me. + +ALBERTO (_with difficulty, after a pause_). Yes. + +LUCREZIA. Didn't she let you in? + +ALBERTO. No. (_His sobs become convulsive_.) + +LUCREZIA. Poor boy. + +ALBERTO (_lifting up a blubbered face to the moonlight_). I am so +unhappy. + +LUCREZIA. You can't be more unhappy than I am. + +ALBERTO. Oh yes, I am. It's impossible to be unhappier than me. + +LUCREZIA. But I _am_ more unhappy. + +ALBERTO. You re not. Oh, how can you be so cruel Lucrezia? (_He covers +his face once more_.) + +LUCREZIA. But I only said I was unhappy Alberto. + +ALBERTO. Yes, I know. That showed you weren't thinking of me. Nobody +loves me. I shall hang myself to-night with the cord of my +dressing-gown. + +LUCREZIA. NO, no, Alberto. You mustn't do anything rash. + +ALBERTO. I shall. Your cruelty has been the last straw. + +LUCREZIA. I'm sorry, Bertino mio. But if you only knew how miserable I +was feeling. I didn't mean to be unsympathetic. Poor boy. I'm so sorry. +There, don't cry, poor darling. + +ALBERTO. Oh, I knew you wouldn't desert me, Lucrezia. You've always been +a mother to me. (_He stretches out his hand and seizes hers, which has +gone half-way to meet him; but the balconies are too far apart to allow +him to kiss it. He makes an effort and fails. He is too short in the +body_,) Will you let me come onto your balcony, Lucrezia? I want to tell +you how grateful I am. + +LUCREZIA. But you can do that from your own balcony. + +ALBERTO. Please, please, Lucrezia. You mustn't be cruel to me again. I +can't bear it. + +LUCREZIA. Well, then.... Just for a moment, but for no more, (BERTINO +_climbs from one balcony to the other. One is a little reminded of the +trousered monkeys on the barrel organs. Arrived, he kneels down and +kisses_ LUCREZIA'S _hand_.) + +ALBERTO. You've saved me. You've given given me a fresh desire to live +and a fresh faith in life. How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia, +darling? + +LUCREZIA (_patting his head_). There, there. _We_ are just two unhappy +creatures. We must try and comfort one another. + +ALBERTO. What a brute I am! I never thought of your unhappiness. I am so +selfish. What is it, Lucrezia? + +LUCREZIA. I can't tell you, Bertino; but it's very painful. + +ALBERTO. Poor child, poor child. (_His kisses, which started at the +hand, have mounted, by this time, some way up the arm, changing +perceptibly in character as they rise. At the shoulder they have a +warmth which could not have been inferred from the respectful salutes +which barely touched the fingers_.) Poor darling! You've given me +consolation. Now you must let me comfort your unhappiness. + +LUCREZIA (_with an effort_). I think you ought to go back now, Bertino. + +ALBERTO. In a minute, my darling. There, there, poor Lucrezia. (_He puts +an arm round her, kisses her hair and neck._ LUCREZIA _leans her bowed +head against his chest. The sound of footsteps is heard. They both look +up with scared, wide-open eyes_.) + +LUCREZIA. We mustn't be seen here, Bertino. What would people think? + +ALBERTO. I'll go back. + +LUCREZIA. There's no time. You must come into my room. Quickly. + +(_They slip through the French window, but not quickly enough to have +escaped the notice of_ PAUL, _returning from his midnight stroll. The_ +VICOMTE _stands for a moment looking up at the empty balcony. He laughs +softly to himself, and, throwing his cigarette away, passes through the +glass door into the house. All is now silent, save for the nightingales +and the distant bells. The curtain comes down for a moment to indicate +the passage of several hours. It rises again with the sun_. LUCREZIA's +_window opens and she appears on the balcony. She stands a moment with +one foot over the threshold of the long window in a listening pose. Then +her eyes fall on the better half of a pair of pink pyjamas lying +crumpled on the floor, like a body bereft of its soul; with her bare +foot she turns it over. A little shudder plucks at her nerves, and she +shakes her head as though, by this symbolic act, to shake off something +clinging and contaminating. Then she steps out into the full glory of +the early sun, stretching out her arms to the radiance. She bows her +face into her hands, crying out loud to herself_.) LUCREZIA. Oh, why, +why, why? (_The last of these Why's is caught by the_ WAITER, _who has +crept forth in shirt-sleeves and list-slippers, duster in hand, to clean +the tables. He looks up at her admiringly, passes his tongue over his +lips. Then, with a sigh, turns to dust the tables_.) + + + +CURTAIN. + + + + +III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET + + + +I + + +Young Spode was not a snob; he was too intelligent for that, too +fundamentally decent. Not a snob; but all the same he could not help +feeling very well pleased at the thought that he was dining, alone and +intimately, with Lord Badgery. It was a definite event in his life, a +step forward, he felt, towards that final success, social, material, and +literary, which he had come to London with the fixed intention of +making. The conquest and capture of Badgery was an almost essential +strategical move in the campaign. + +Edmund, forty-seventh Baron Badgery, was a lineal descendant of that +Edmund, surnamed Le Blayreau, who landed on English soil in the train of +William the Conqueror. Ennobled by William Rufus, the Badgerys had been +one of the very few baronial families to survive the Wars of the Roses +and all the other changes and chances of English history. They were a +sensible and philoprogenitive race. No Badgery had ever fought in any +war, no Badgery had ever engaged in any kind of politics. They had been +content to live and quietly to propagate their species in a huge +machicolated Norman castle, surrounded by a triple moat, only sallying +forth to cultivate their property and to collect their rents. In the +eighteenth century, when life had become relatively secure, the Badgerys +began to venture forth into civilised society. From boorish squires they +blossomed into _grands seigneurs_, patrons of the arts, virtuosi. Their +property was large, they were rich; and with the growth of industrialism +their riches also grew. Villages on their estate turned into +manufacturing towns, unsuspected coal was discovered beneath the surface +of their barren moorlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century the +Badgerys were among the richest of English noble families. The +forty-seventh baron disposed of an income of at least two hundred +thousand pounds a year. Following the great Badgery tradition, he had +refused to have anything to do with politics or war. He occupied himself +by collecting pictures; he took an interest in theatrical productions; +he was the friend and patron of men of letters, of painters, and +musician. A personage, in a word, of considerable consequence in that +particular world in which young Spode had elected to make his success. + +Spode had only recently left the university. Simon Gollamy, the editor +of the _World's Review_ (the "Best of all possible Worlds"), had got to +know him--he was always on the look out for youthful talent--had seen +possibilities in the young man, and appointed him art critic of his +paper. Gollamy liked to have young and teachable people about him. The +possession of disciples flattered his vanity, and he found it easier, +moreover, to run his paper with docile collaborators than with men grown +obstinate and case-hardened with age. Spode had not done badly at his +new job. At any rate, his articles had been intelligent enough to arouse +the interest of Lord Badgery. It was, ultimately, to them that he owed +the honour of sitting to night in the dining-room of Badgery House. + +Fortified by several varieties of wine and a glass of aged brandy, Spode +felt more confident and at ease than he had done the whole evening. +Badgery was rather a disquieting host. He had an alarming habit of +changing the subject of any conversation that had lasted for more than +two minutes. Spode had found it, for example, horribly mortifying when +his host, cutting across what was, he prided himself, a particularly +subtle and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a +wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked +parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously towards him, fancying +that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white, +fleshy, Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There +was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely +want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his +irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about +parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story, when +his host began to talk about Beethoven. And so the game went on. Spode +cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of +ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto +Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish +architecture. Lord Badgery thought him the most charming young man, and +so intelligent. + +"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as +he spoke, "we'll go and look at the pictures." + +Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realised that he had drunk +just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk +deliberately, plant his feet consciously, one after the other. + +"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery +complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last +week; but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their +portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think? +Why couldn't they have chosen Gainsborough, or even Reynolds? I've had +all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It's such a comfort to +know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all +about the ancient Hittites?" + +"Well...." the young man replied, with befitting modesty. + +"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a +case near the dining-room door. "It's not Greek, or Egyptian, or +Persian, or anything else; so if it isn't ancient Hittite, I don't know +what it is. And that reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger, +the Circus King...." and, without giving Spode time to examine the +Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now +and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or +beauty. + +"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as +the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about +Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous +Sanger. "What a perfect man, isn't he? He used to...." + +"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of +a tall folding door. "I must apologise for it. It looks like a +roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches and there +was suddenly light--light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly +receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare +say you've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little +insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used +to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about +the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the +cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them: +mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now I'm rather proud of this +Poussin; he painted it for Scarron." + +"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though +he were modelling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of +those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they re caught up, as it +were, and stemmed by that single godlike form opposing them with his +contrary movement! And the draperies...." + +But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little +fifteenth-century Virgin of carved wood. + +"School of Rheims," he explained. + +They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest +to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would +have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in +front of some of these lovely things. But it was not permitted. + +The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At +the sight of what the lights revealed, Spode gasped. + +"It's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons +dorés où se déploie un luxe insolent. You know." + +"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of +its kind, I flatter myself, outside the State Apartments at Windsor." + +Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the +objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in leathers, in +embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most +fantastic shapes and colours, all the queer products of a decadent +tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the +walls--a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Ettys, a big +Haydon, a slight pretty water-colour of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil +of Blake and arsenic poisoner, a score of others. But the picture which +arrested Spode's attention was a medium sized canvas representing +Troilus riding into Troy among the flowers and plaudits of an admiring +crowd, and oblivious (you could see from his expression) of everything +but the eyes of Cressida, who looked down at him from a window, with +Pandarus smiling over her shoulder. + +"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed. + +"Ah, you've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased. + +"What bright harmonious colours! Like Etty's, only stronger, not so +obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of +Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in +taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly. + +"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered, "It's by +his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work. But +nobody seems to know anything about him. And he seems to have done so +little." + +This time it was the younger man who interrupted. + +"Tillotson, Tillotson...." He put his hand to his forehead. A frown +incongruously distorted his round, floridly curved face. No ... yes, I +have it. He looked up triumphantly with serene and childish brows. +"Tillotson, Walter Tillotson--the man's still alive." + +Badgery smiled. "This picture was painted in 1846, you know." + +"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his +masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it's 1913 now; that's to say +he's only ninety-three. Not as old as Titian yet." + +"But he's not been heard of since 1860," Lord Badgery protested. + +"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made +the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the +archives of the _World's Review_.(One has to bring them up to date every +year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these t old birds +chooses to shuffle off suddenly.) Well, there, among them--I remember my +astonishment at the time--there I found Walter Tillotson's biography. +Pretty full to 1860, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the +early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the +East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious +conclusion: the old chap isn't dead yet. He's just been overlooked +somehow." + +"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him, +Spode--you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescoes round +this room. It's just what I've always vainly longed for a real +nineteenth-century artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must +find him at once--at once." + +Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement. + +"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. "We'd +clear away all these cases and have the whole of that wall filled by a +heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent', or +Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved' anything like that, +provided it's in the grand manner of the 'thirties and 'forties. And +here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else +something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast. +Then we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something +Mauro-Gothic. And on these walls I'll have mirrors, or no! let me +see...." + +He sank into meditative silence, from which he finally roused himself to +shout: + +"The old man, the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old +creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our +secret. Oh, it's too perfect, it's incredible! Think of the frescoes." + +Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a +single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour. + + + + +II + + +Three weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon +somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one. +"Found.--SPODE." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord +Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman +padded away on noiseless feet. + +Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a +room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The +frescoes, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling.... And a small, +shrivelled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick +like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away, +painting away.... Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or +why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt +of Clarence. ... Lord Badgery was asleep. + +Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by +six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber, +engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-à-brac. Spode found +him looking hot and out of breath. + +"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. You see me already preparing for +the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him. + +"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He's ninety-seven this +year. Born in 1816. Incredible, isn't it! There, I'm beginning at the +wrong end." + +"Begin where you like," said Badgery genially. + +"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You've no idea what a +job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story, +immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some +day. At any rate, I found him at last." + +"Where?" + +"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and +lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was +he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he +did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the 'sixties, to go to +Palestine to get local colour for his religious pictures--scapegoats and +things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount +Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor, +he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years." + +"But what did he do all that time?" + +"Oh, he painted, and started a mission, and converted three Turks, and +taught the local Pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, and +perspective, and God knows what else. Then, in about 1904, it seems to +have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away +from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England, +only to find that everyone he had known was dead, that the dealers had +never heard of him and wouldn't buy his pictures, that he was simply a +ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a +girl's school in Holloway, and there he's been ever since, growing older +and older, and feebler and feebler, and blinder and deafer, and +generally more gaga, until finally the school has given him the sack. He +had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind +of black hole in a basement full of beetles. When his ten pounds are +spent, I suppose he'll just quietly die there." + +Badgery held up a white hand. "No more, no more. I find literature quite +depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer. +Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?" + +"But he can't paint. He's too blind and palsied." + +"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what's the good of the +old creature?" + +"Well, if you put it like that...." Spode began. + +"I shall never have my frescoes. Ring the bell, will you?" + +Spode rang. + +"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on +Lord Badgery petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for +occupying a place in the sun." + +"He doesn't have much sun in his basement." + +The footman appeared at the door. + +"Get someone to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery +commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the +confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor, the +pictures unhooked. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more +comfortable there." + +He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs. + +"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode +sympathetically. + +"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me. + +"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got +ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you'd seen the +black-beetles in his basement!" + +"Enough enough. I'll do everything you think fitting." + +"I thought we might get up a subscription amongst lovers of the arts." + +"There aren't any," said Badgery. + +"No; but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobbism." + +"Not unless you give them something for their money." + +"That's true. I hadn't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment. +"We might have a dinner in his honour. The Great Tillotson Banquet. +Doyen of the British Art. A Link with the Past. Can't you see it in the +papers? I'd make a stunt of it in the _World's Review_. That ought to +bring in the snobs." + +"And we'll invite a lot of artists and critics--all the ones who can't +stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery +laughed. Then his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it'll +be a very poor second best to my frescoes. You'll stay to dinner, of +course." + +"Well, since you suggest it. Thanks very much." + + + + +III + + +The Tillotson Banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later. +Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent +organiser. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Café Bomba, and was +successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty +persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out +invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on +Tillotson in the _World's Review_--one of those charming, witty articles +couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt with which one +speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself. +He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's +endless stories about Asia Minor and the Great Exhibition of '51 and +Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another +age. + +Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of +South Holloway. A little grey light percolated through the area bars, +forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent +itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an inkpot, among the +inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the spur +smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to moulder secretly +at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a +washstand and chest of drawers, a table and one or two chairs, lurked in +the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open. +Hither Spode now came almost every day, bringing the old man news of the +progress of the banquet scheme. Every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting +in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny +puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore grey hairs," Spode +reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on +that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr. +Tillotson would turn in his chair, stare in the direction of the door +with blinking, uncertain eyes. He was always full of apologies for being +so slow in recognising who was there. + +"No discourtesy meant," he would say, after asking. "It's not as if I +had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark and my sight isn't what it +was." + +After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of +the window at the area railings, would say: + +"Ah, this is the plate for somebody with good sight. It's the place for +looking at ankles. It's the grand stand." + +It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual, and Mr. +Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode, +as punctually laughed. + +"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had +died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and +fashion. You'll find some changes." + +"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode +could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it, that he had +forgotten the black hole and the black-beetles and the almost exhausted +ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing +piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just +when you did. Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the +world. I shall have money, and in a little while--who knows?--I shall be +able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting +better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy." + +Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and nodded his +head in affirmation of his words. + +"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed +for shame at the cruelty of the words. + +But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their +significance. + +"Life to come," he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff +not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No +life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement of +course. You re very young Mr. Spode." + +"Well, I'm not so old as I was," Spode replied. "You know how +middle-aged one is as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Now I'm old enough +to know I'm young." + +Spode was about to develop this little paradox further, but he noticed +that Mr. Tillotson had not been listening. He made a note of the gambit +for use in companies that were more appreciative of the subtleties. + +"You were talking about the 'Origin of Species,'" he said. + +"Was I?" said Mr. Tillotson, waking from reverie. + +"About its effect on your faith, Mr. Tillotson." + +"To be sure, yes. It shattered my faith. But I remember a fine thing by +the Poet Laureate, something about there being more faith in honest +doubt, believe me, than in all the ... all the ...: I forget exactly +what; but you see the train of thought. Oh, it was a bad time for +religion. I am glad my master Haydon never lived to see it. He was a man +of fervour. I remember him pacing up and down his studio in Lisson +Grove, singing and shouting and praying all at once. It used almost to +frighten me. Oh, but he was a wonderful man, a great man. Take him for +all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. As usual, the Bard is +right. But it was all very long ago, before your time, Mr. Spode." + +"Well, I'm not as old as I was," said Spode, in the hope of having his +paradox appreciated this time. But Mr. Tillotson went on without +noticing the interruption. + +"It's a very, very long time. And yet, when I look back on it, it all +seems but a day or two ago. Strange that each day should seem so long +and that many days added together should be less than an hour. How +clearly I can see old Haydon pacing up and down! Much more clearly, +indeed, than I see you, Mr. Spode. The eyes of memory don t grow dim. +But my sight is improving, I assure you; it's improving daily. I shall +soon be able to see those ankles." He laughed like a cracked bell--one +of those little old bells, Spode fancied, that ring, with much rattling +of wires, in the far-off servants quarters of ancient houses. "And very +soon," Mr. Tillotson went on, "I shall be painting again. Ah, Mr. Spode, +my luck is extraordinary. I believe in it, I trust in it. And after all, +what is luck? Simply another name for Providence, in spite of the Origin +of Species and the rest of it. How right the Laureate was when he said +that there was more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the +... er, the ... er ... well, you know. I regard you, Mr. Spode, as the +emissary of Providence. Your coming marked a turning-point in my life, +and the beginning, for me, of happier days. Do you know, one of the +first things I shall do when my fortunes are restored will be to buy a +hedgehog." + +"A hedgehog, Mr. Tillotson?" + +"For the blackbeetles. There's nothing like a hedgehog for beetles. It +will eat blackbeetles till it's sick, till it dies of surfeit. That +reminds me of the time when I told my poor great master Haydon--in joke, +of course--that he ought to send in a cartoon of King John dying of a +surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament. As +I told him, it's a most notable event in the annals of British +liberty--the providential and exemplary removal of a tyrant." + +Mr. Tillotson laughed again--the little bell in the deserted house; a +ghostly hand pulling the cord in the drawing-room, and phantom footmen +responding to the thin, flawed note. + +"I remember he laughed, laughed like a bull in his old grand manner. But +oh, it was a terrible blow when they rejected his design, a terrible +blow. It was the first and fundamental cause of his suicide." + +Mr. Tillotson paused. There was a long silence. Spode felt strangely +moved, he hardly knew why, in the presence of this man, so frail, so +ancient, in body three parts dead, in the spirit so full of life and +hopeful patience. He felt ashamed. What was the use of his own youth and +cleverness? He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds +rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile +activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were +always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! widewinged and +beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only +visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. Those gracious +visitants he was for ever using all his energies to drive away. But this +old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of +it--his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and +going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged +creatures. He felt ashamed. But then, was it possible to alter one's +life? Wasn't it a little absurd to risk a conversion? Spode shrugged his +shoulders. + +"I'll get you a hedgehog at once," he said. "They're sure to have some +at Whiteley's." + +Before he left that evening Spode made an alarming discovery. Mr. +Tillotson did not possess a dress-suit. It was hopeless to think of +getting one made at this short notice, and, besides, what an unnecessary +expense! + +"We shall have to borrow a suit, Mr. Tillotson. I ought to have thought +of that before." + +"Dear me, dear me." Mr. Tillotson was a little chagrined by this unlucky +discovery. "Borrow a suit?" + +Spode hurried away for counsel to Badgery House. Lord Badgery +surprisingly rose to the occasion. "Ask Boreham to come and see me," he +told the footman, who answered his ring. + +Boreham was one of those immemorial butlers who linger on, generation +after generation, in the houses of the great. He was over eighty now, +bent, dried up, shrivelled with age. + +"All old men are about the same size," said Lord Badgery. It was a +comforting theory. "Ah, here he is. Have you got a spare suit of evening +clothes, Boreham?" + +"I have an old suit, my lord, that I stopped wearing in let me see was +it nineteen seven or eight?" + +"That's the very thing. I should be most grateful, Boreham, if you could +lend it to me for Mr. Spode here for a day." + +The old man went out, and soon reappeared carrying over his arm a very +old black suit. He held up the coat and trousers for inspection. In the +light of day they were deplorable. + +"You've no idea, sir," said Boreham deprecatingly to Spode you've no +idea how easy things get stained with grease and gravy and what not. +However careful you are, sir--however careful. + +"I should imagine so." Spode was sympathetic. + +"However careful, sir." + +"But in artificial light they'll look all right." + +"Perfectly all right," Lord Badgery repeated. "Thank you, Boreham; you +shall have them back on Thursday." + +"You re welcome, my lord, I'm sure." And the old man bowed and +disappeared. + +On the afternoon of the great day Spode carried up to Holloway a parcel +containing Boreham's retired evening-suit and all the necessary +appurtenances in the way of shirts and collars. Owing to the darkness +and his own feeble sight Mr. Tillotson was happily unaware of the +defects in the suit. He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. It +was with some difficulty that Spode could prevent him, although it was +only three o'clock, from starting his toilet on the spot. + +"Take it easy, Mr. Tillotson, take it easy. We needn't start till +half-past seven, you know." + +Spode left an hour later, and as soon as he was safely out of the room +Mr. Tillotson began to prepare himself for the banquet. He lighted the +gas and a couple of candles, and, blinking myopically at the image that +fronted him in the tiny looking-glass that stood on his chest of +drawers, he set to work, with all the ardour of a young girl preparing +for her first ball. At six o'clock, when the last touches had been +given, he was not unsatisfied. + +He marched up and down his cellar, humming to himself the gay song which +had been so popular in his middle years: + + "_Oh, oh, Anna, Maria Jones!_ + _Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones!_" + +Spode arrived an hour later in Lord Badgery's second Rolls-Royce. +Opening the door of the old man's dungeon, he stood for a moment, +wide-eyed with astonishment, on the threshold. Mr. Tillotson was +standing by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one +leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude. The +effect of the candlelight shining on his face was to deepen every line +and wrinkle with intense black shadow; he looked immeasurably old. It +was a noble and pathetic head. On the other hand, Boreham's out-worn +evening-suit was simply buffoonish. The coat was too long in the sleeves +and the tail; the trousers bagged in elephantine creases about his +ankles. Some of the grease-spots were visible even in candlelight. The +white tie, over which Mr. Tillotson had taken infinite pains and which +he believed in his purblindness to be perfect, was fantastically +lop-sided. He had buttoned up his waistcoat in such a fashion that one +button was widowed of its hole and one hole of its button. Across his +shirt front lay the broad green ribbon of some unknown Order. + +"Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones," Mr. Tillotson +concluded in a gnat-like voice before welcoming his visitor. + +"Well, Spode, here you are. I'm dressed already, you see. The suit, I +flatter myself, fits very well, almost as though it had been made for +me. I am all gratitude to the gentleman who was kind enough to lend it +to me; I shall take the greatest care of it. It's a dangerous thing to +lend clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. The Bard is +always right." + +"Just one thing," said Spode. "A touch to your waistcoat." He unbuttoned +the dissipated garment and did it up again more symmetrically. + +Mr. Tillotson was a little piqued at being found so absurdly in the +wrong. + +"Thanks, thanks," he said, protestingly, trying to edge away from his +valet. "It's all right, you know; I can do it myself. Foolish oversight. +I flatter myself the suit fits very well." + +"And perhaps the tie might...." Spode began tentatively. But the old +man would not hear of it. + +"No, no. The tie's all right. I can tie a tie, Mr. Spode. The tie's all +right. Leave it as it is, I beg." + +"I like your Order." + +Mr. Tillotson looked down complacently at his shirt front. "Ah, you've +noticed my Order. It's a long time since I wore that. It was given me by +the Grand Porte, you know, for services rendered in the Russo-Turkish +War. It's the Order of Chastity, the second class. They only give the +first class to crowned heads, you know--browned heads and ambassadors. +And only Pashas of the highest rank get the second. Mine's the second. +They only give the first class to crowned heads...." + +"Of course, of course," said Spode. + +"Do you think I look all right, Mr. Spode?" Mr. Tillotson asked, a +little anxiously. + +"Splendid, Mr. Tillotson--splendid. The Order's, magnificent." + +The old man's face brightened once more. "I flatter myself," he said, +"that this borrowed suit fits me very well. But I don't like borrowing +clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend, you know. And the +Bard is always right." + +"Ugh, there's one of those horrible beetles!" Spode exclaimed. + +Mr. Tillotson bent down and stared at the floor. "I see it," he said, +and stamped on a small piece of coal, which crunched to powder under his +foot. "I shall certainly buy a hedgehog." + +It was time for them to start. A crowd of little boys and girls had +collected round Lord Badgery's enormous car. The chauffeur, who felt +that honour and dignity were at stake, pretended not to notice the +children, but sat gazing, like a statue, into eternity. At the sight of +Spode and Mr. Tillotson emerging from the house a yell of mingled awe +and derision went up. It subsided to an astonished silence as they +climbed into the car. "Bomba's," Spode directed. The Rolls-Royce gave a +faintly stertorous sigh and began to move. The children yelled again, +and ran along beside the car, waving their arms in a frenzy of +excitement. It was then that Mr. Tillotson, with an incomparably noble +gesture, leaned forward and tossed among the seething crowd of urchins +his three last coppers. + + + + +IV + + +In Bomba's big room the company was assembling. The long gilt-edged +mirrors reflected a singular collection of people. Middle-aged +Academicians shot suspicious glances at youths whom they suspected, only +too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist +Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered +with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, +those indefatigable hunters of artistic big game, came on one another +all unawares in this well-stored menagerie, where each had expected to +hunt alone, and were filled with rage. Through this crowd of mutually +repellent vanities Lord Badgery moved with a suavity that seemed +unconscious of all the feuds and hatreds. He was enjoying himself +immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the +Hanoverian nose, the little lustreless pig's eyes, the pale thick lips, +there lurked a small devil of happy malice that rocked with laughter. + +"So nice of you to have come, Mrs. Mandragore, to do honour to England's +artistic past. And I'm so glad to see you've brought dear Mrs. Cayman. +And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it is! I hadn't noticed her before. How +delightful! I knew we could depend on your love of art." + +And he hurried away to seize the opportunity of introducing that eminent +sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young critic who had called +him, in the public prints, a monumental mason. + +A moment later the Maître d'Hôtel came to the door of the gilded saloon +and announced, loudly and impressively, "Mr. Walter Tillotson." Guided +from behind by young Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and +hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, +painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned moth, over his filmy eyes. +Once inside the door he halted and drew himself up with a conscious +assumption of dignity. Lord Badgery hurried forward and seized his hand. + +"Welcome, Mr. Tillotson--welcome in the name of English art!" + +Mr. Tillotson inclined his head in silence. He was too full of emotion +to be able to reply. + +"I should like to introduce you to a few of your younger colleagues, +who have assembled here to do you honour." + +Lord Badgery presented everyone in the room to the old painter, who +bowed, shook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found +himself unable to speak. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore +all said charming things. + +Dinner was served; the party took their places. Lord Badgery sat at the +head of the table, with Mr. Tillotson on his right hand and Sir Herbert +Herne on his left. Confronted with Bomba's succulent cooking and Bomba's +wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of +one who has lived on greens and potatoes for ten years among the +blackbeetles. After the second glass of wine he began to talk, suddenly +and in a flood, as though a sluice had been pulled up. + +"In Asia Minor," he began, "it is the custom when one goes to dinner, to +hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. _Eructavit cor meum_, as +the Psalmist has it; he was an Oriental himself." + +Spode had arranged to sit next to Mrs. Cayman; he had designs upon her. +She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wanted +to bamboozle her into buying some of his young friends' pictures. + +"In a cellar?" Mrs. Cayman was saying, "with, blackbeetles? Oh, how +dreadful! Poor old man! And he's ninety-seven, didn't you say? Isn't +that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of +course, one wishes one could have given more oneself. But then, you +know, one has so many expenses, and things are so difficult now." + +"I know, I know," said Spode, with feeling. + +"It's all because of Labour," Mrs. Cayman explained. "Of course, I +should simply love to have him in to dinner sometimes. But, then, I feel +he's really too old, too _farouche_ and _gâteux_; it would not be doing +a kindness to him, would it? And so you are working with Mr. Gollamy +now? What a charming man, so talented, such conversation...." + +"_Eructavit cor meum_," said Mr. Tillotson for the third time. Lord +Badgery tried to head him off the subject of Turkish etiquette, but in +vain. + +By half-past nine a kinder vinolent atmosphere had put to sleep the +hatreds and suspicions of before dinner. Sir Herbert Herne had +discovered that the young Cubist sitting next him was not insane and +actually knew a surprising amount about the Old Masters. For their part +these young men had realised that their elders were not at all +malignant; they were just very stupid and pathetic. It was only in the +bosoms of Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore that hatred still +reigned undiminished. Being ladies and old-fashioned, they had drunk +almost no wine. + +The moment for speech-making arrived. Lord Badgery rose to his feet, +said what was expected of him, and called upon Sir Herbert to propose +the toast of the evening. Sir Herbert coughed, smiled and began. In the +course of a speech that lasted twenty minutes he told anecdotes of Mr. +Gladstone, Lord Leighton, Sir Almo Tadema, and the late Bishop, of +Bombay; he made three puns, he quoted Shakespeare and Whittier, he was +playful, he was eloquent, he was grave.... At the end of his harangue +Sir Herbert handed to Mr. Tillotson a silk purse containing fifty-eight +pounds ten shillings, the total amount of the subscription. The old +man's health was drunk with acclamation. + +Mr. Tillotson rose with difficulty to his feet. The dry, snakelike skin +of his face was flushed; his tie was more crooked than ever; the green +ribbon of the Order of Chastity of the second class had somehow climbed +tip his crumpled and maculate shirt front. + +"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began in a choking voice, and then +broke down completely. It was a very painful and pathetic spectacle. A +feeling of intense discomfort afflicted the minds of all who looked upon +that trembling relic of a man, as he stood there weeping and stammering. +It was as though a breath of the wind of death had blown suddenly +through the room, lifting the vapours of wine and tobacco-smoke, +quenching the laughter and the candle flames. Eyes floated uneasily, not +knowing where to look. Lord Badgery, with great presence of mind, +offered the old man a glass of wine. Mr. Tillotson began to recover. The +guests heard him murmur a few disconnected words. + +"This great honour ... overwhelmed with kindness ... this magnificent +banquet ... not used to it ... in Asia Minor ... _eructuvit cor meum_." + +At this point Lord Badgery plucked sharply at one of his long coat +tails. Mr. Tillotson paused, took another sip of wine, and then went on +with a newly won coherence and energy. + +"The life of the artist is a hard one. His work is unlike other men's +work, which may be done mechanically, by rote and almost, as it were, +in sleep. It demands from him a constant expense of spirit. He gives +continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is +true much fame, it may be--but of material blessings, very few. It is +eighty years since first I devoted my life to the service of art; eighty +years, and almost every one of those years has brought me fresh and +painful proof of what I have been saying: the artist's life is a hard +one." + +This unexpected deviation into sense increased the general feeling of +discomfort. It became necessary to take the old man seriously, to regard +him as a human being. Up till then he had been no more than an object of +curiosity, a mummy in an absurd suit of evening-clothes with a green +ribbon across the shirt front. People could not help wishing that they +had subscribed a little more. Fifty-eight pounds ten it wasn't enormous. +But happily for the peace of mind of the company, Mr. Tillotson paused +again, took another sip of wine, and began to live up to his proper +character by talking absurdly. + +"When I consider the life of that great man, Benjamin Robert Haydon, one +of the greatest men England has ever produced...." The audience heaved a +sigh of relief; this was all as it should be. There was a burst of loud +bravoing and clapping. Mr. Tillotson turned his dim eyes round the room, +and smiled gratefully at the misty figures he beheld. "That great man, +Benjamin Robert Haydon," he continued, "whom I am proud to call my +master and who, it rejoices my heart to see, still lives in your memory +and esteem, that great man, one of the greatest that England has ever +produced, led a life so deplorable that I cannot think of it without a +tear." + +And with infinite repetitions and divagations, Mr. Tillotson related the +history of B.R. Haydon, his imprisonments for debt, his battle with the +Academy, his triumphs, his failures, his despair, his suicide. Half-past +ten struck. Mr. Tillotson was declaiming against the stupid and +prejudiced judges who had rejected Haydon's designs for the decoration +of the new Houses of Parliament in favour of the paltriest German +scribblings. + +"That great man, one of the greatest England has ever produced, that +great Benjamin Robert Haydon, whom I am proud to call my master and who, +it rejoices me to see, still lives on in your memory and esteem--at that +affront his great heart burst; it was the unkindest cut of all. He who +had worked all his life for the recognition, of the artist by the +State, he who had petitioned every Prime Minister, including the Duke of +Wellington, for thirty years, begging them to employ artists to decorate +public buildings, he to whom the scheme for decorating the Houses of +Parliament was undeniably due...." Mr. Tillotson lost a grip on his +syntax and began a new sentence. "It was the unkindest cut of all, it +was the last straw. The artist's life is a hard one." + +At eleven Mr. Tillotson was talking about the pre-Raphaelites. At a +quarter past he had begun to tell the story of B.R. Haydon all over +again. At twenty-five minutes to twelve he collapsed quite speechless +into his chair. Most of the guests had already gone away; the few who +remained made haste to depart. Lord Badgery led the old man to the door +and packed him into the second Rolls-Royce. The Tillotson Banquet was +over; it had been a pleasant evening, but a little too long. + +Spode walked back to his rooms in Bloomsbury, whistling as he went. The +arc lamps of Oxford Street reflected in the polished surface of the +road; canals of dark bronze. He would have to bring that into an article +some time. The Cayman woman had been very successfully nobbled. "Voi che +sapete," he whistled--somewhat out of tune, but he could not hear that. + +When Mr. Tillotson's landlady came in to call him on the following +morning, she found the old man lying fully dressed on his bed. He looked +very ill and very, very old; Boreham's dress-suit was in a terrible +state, and the green ribbon of the Order of Chastity was ruined. Mr. +Tillotson lay very still, but he was not asleep. Hearing the sound of +footsteps, he opened his eyes a little and faintly groaned. His landlady +looked down at him menacingly. + +"Disgusting!" she said, "disgusting, I call it. At your age." + +Mr. Tillotson groaned again. Making a great effort, he drew out of his +trouser pocket a large silk purse, opened it, and extracted a sovereign. + +"The artist's life is a hard one, Mrs. Green," he said, handing her the +coin. "Would you mind sending for the doctor? I don't feel very well. +And oh, what shall I do about these clothes? What shall I say to the +gentleman who was kind enough to lend them to me? Loan oft loseth both +itself and friend. The Bard is always right." + + + + +IV: GREEN TUNNELS + + +"In the Italian gardens of the thirteenth century...." Mr. Buzzacott +interrupted himself to take another helping of the risotto which was +being offered him. "Excellent risotto this," he observed. "Nobody who +was not born in Milan can make it properly. So they say." + +"So they say," Mr. Topes repeated in his sad, apologetic voice, and +helped himself in his turn. + +"Personally," said Mrs. Topes, with decision, "I find all Italian +cooking abominable. I don't like the oil--especially hot. No, thank +you." She recoiled from the proffered dish. + +After the first mouthful Mr. Buzzacott put down his fork. "In the +Italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he began again, making with +his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a +clutch at his beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of +green tunnels." + +"Green tunnels?" Barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence. +"Green tunnels?" + +"Yes, my dear," said her father. "Green tunnels. Arched alleys covered +with vines or other creeping plants. Their length was often very +considerable." + +But Barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. +Green tunnels--the word had floated down to her, through profound depths +of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the +sound of a strange-voiced bell. Green tunnels--what a wonderful idea. +She would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. +He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. +She pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and +scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured corals; endless dim green +corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. +Green-faced monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened +and shut. Green tunnels.... + +"I have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," +Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his pointed brown +beard--clutched and combed it with his long fingers. + +Mr. Topes looked up. The glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed +as he moved his head. "I know what you mean," he said. + +"I have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here." + +"It will take a long time to grow," said Mr. Topes. "In this sand, so +close to the sea, you will only be able to plant vines. And they come up +very slowly very slowly indeed." He shook his head and the points of +light danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his +grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. Then, suddenly, he +pulled himself up. A shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. He +wriggled uncomfortably. Then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he +gave vent to a quotation: + + _But at my back I always hear_ + _Time's winged chariot hurrying near_." + +He spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. He always found +it painfully difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; +and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were +always surging through his mind! + +"They don't grow so slowly as all that," said Mr. Buzzacott confidently. +He was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave +himself at least another forty years; indeed, he had not yet begun to +contemplate the possibility of ever concluding. + +"Miss Barbara will enjoy it, perhaps--your green tunnel." Mr. Topes +sighed and looked across the table at his host's daughter. + +Barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, +staring in front of her. The sound of her own name reached her faintly. +She turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself +confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of +the green tunnel--she stared at the shining circles--hung the eyes of a +goggling fish. They approached, floating, closer and closer, along the +dim submarine corridor. + +Confronted by this fixed regard, Mr. Topes looked away. What thoughtful +eyes! He couldn't remember ever to have seen eyes so full of thought. +There were certain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like hen +mild little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very +young. But he was old; it would be many years, in spite of Buzzacott, +before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. He took a sip of wine; +then, mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache. + +"Arthur!" + +At the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Topes started, raised his napkin to +his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. It was +only in moments of absent-mindedness that he ever offended, now. + +"The Marchese Prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said Mr. +Buzzacott suddenly. "I almost forgot to tell you." + +"One of these Italian marquises, I suppose," said Mrs. Topes, who was no +snob, except in England. She raised her chin with a little jerk. + +Mr. Buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "I +assure you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished +family. They are Genoese in origin. You remember their palace, Barbara? +Built by Alessi." + +Barbara looked up. "Oh yes," she said vaguely. "Alessi. I know." Alessi: +Aleppo--where a malignant and a turbaned Turk. _And_ a turbaned; that +had always seemed to her very funny. + +"Several of his ancestors," Mr. Buzzacott went on, "distinguished +themselves as vice-roys of Corsica. They did good work in the +suppression of rebellion. Strange, isn't it"--he turned parenthetically +to Mr. Topes--"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of +rebels? What a fuss people made of Corsica! That ridiculous book of +Gregorovius, for example. And the Irish, and the Poles, and all the rest +of them. It always seems to me very superfluous and absurd." + +"Isn't it, perhaps, a little natural?" Mr. Topes began timorously and +tentatively, but his host went on without listening. + +"The present marquis," he said, "is the head of the local Fascisti. They +have done no end of good work in this district in the way of preserving +law and order and keeping the lower classes in their place." + +"Ah, the Fascisti," Mrs. Topes repeated approvingly. "One would like to +see something of the kind in England. What with all these strikes...." + +"He has asked me for a subscription to the funds of the organisation. I +shall give him one, of course." + +"Of course." Mrs. Topes nodded. "My nephew, the one who was a major +during the war, volunteered in the last coal strike. He was sorry, I +know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'Aunt Annie,' he said to me, when +I saw him last, 'if there had been a fight we should have knocked them +out completely--completely.'" + +In Aleppo, the Fascisti, malignant _and_ turbaned, were fighting, under +the palm trees. Weren't they palm trees, those tufted green plumes? + +"What, no ice to-day? _Niente gelato?_" inquired Mr. Buzzacott as the +maid put down the compote of peaches on the table. + +Concetta apologised. The ice-making machine in the village had broken +down. There would be no ice till to-morrow. + +"Too bad," said Mr. Buzzacott. "_Troppo male, Concetta_." + +Under the palm trees, Barbara saw them: they pranced about, fighting. +They were mounted on big dogs, and in the trees were enormous +many-coloured birds. + +"Goodness me, the child's asleep." Mrs. Topes was proffering the dish of +peaches. "How much longer am I to hold this in front of your nose, +Barbara?" + +Barbara felt herself blushing. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, and took the +dish clumsily. + +"Day-dreaming. It's a bad habit." + +"It's one we all succumb to sometimes," put in Mr. Topes deprecatingly, +with a little nervous tremble of the head. + +"You may, my dear," said his wife. "I do not." + +Mr. Topes lowered his eyes to his plate and went on eating. + +"The marchese should be here at any moment now," said Mr. Buzzacott, +looking at his watch. "I hope he won't be late. I find I suffer so much +from any postponement of my siesta. This Italian heat," he added, with +growing plaintiveness, "one can't be too careful." + +"Ah, but when I was with my father in India," began Mrs. Topes in a tone +of superiority: "he was an Indian civilian, you know...." + +Aleppo, India--always the palm trees. Cavalcades of big dogs, and tigers +too. + +Concetta ushered in the marquis. Delighted. Pleased to meet. Speak +English? Yés, yéss. _Pocchino_. Mrs. Topes: and Mr. Topes, the +distinguished antiquarian. Ah, of course; know his name very well. My +daughter. Charmed. Often seen the signorina bathing. Admired the way she +dives. Beautiful--the hand made a long, caressing gesture. These +athletic English signorine. The teeth flashed astonishingly white in the +brown face, the dark eyes glittered. She felt herself blushing again, +looked away, smiled foolishly. The marquis had already turned back to +Mr. Buzzacott. + +"So you have decided to settle in our Carrarese." + +Well, not settled exactly; Mr. Buzzacott wouldn't go so far as to say +settled. A villine for the summer months. The winter in Rome. One was +forced to live abroad. Taxation in England.... Soon they were all +talking. Barbara looked at them. Beside the marquis they all seemed half +dead. His face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. +Her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; +and Mr. Topes was all dry and shrivelled; and Mrs. Topes looked more +than ever like something worked by clockwork. They were talking about +Socialism and Fascisti, and all that. Barbara did not listen to what +they were saying; but she looked at them, absorbed. + +Good-bye, good-bye. The animated face with its flash of a smile was +turned like a lamp from one to another. Now it was turned on her. +Perhaps one evening she would come, with her father, and the Signora +Topes. He and his sister gave little dances sometimes. Only the +gramophone, of course. But that was better than nothing, and the +signorina must dance divinely--another flash--he could see that. He +pressed her hand again. Good-bye. + +It was time for the siesta. + +"Don't forget to pull down the mosquito netting, my dear," Mr. Buzzacott +exhorted. "There is always a danger of anophylines." + +"All right, father." She moved towards the door without turning round to +answer him. He was always terribly tiresome about mosquito nets. Once +they had driven through the Campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed +in an improvised tent of netting. The monuments along the Appian Way had +loomed up mistily as through bridal veils. And how everyone had laughed. +But her father, of course, hadn't so much as noticed it. He never +noticed anything. + +"Is it at Berlin, that charming little Madonna of Montagna's?" Mr. Topes +abruptly asked. "The one with the Donor kneeling in the left-hand corner +as if about to kiss the foot of the Child." His spectacles flashed in +Mr. Buzzacott's direction. + +"Why do you ask?" + +"I don't know. I was just thinking of it." + +"I think you must mean the one in the Mond Collection." + +"Ah yes; very probably. In the Mond...." + +Barbara opened the door and walked into the twilight of her shuttered +room. It was hot even here; for another three hours it would hardly be +possible to stir. And that old idiot, Mrs. Topes, always made a fuss if +one came in to lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "In +India we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. +An Englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all +intents and purposes Italians _are_ natives." And so she always had to +put on shoes and stockings and a regular frock just at the hottest hour +of the day. What an old ass that woman was! She slipped off her clothes +as fast as she could. That was a little better. + +Standing in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe door she came to +the humiliating conclusion that she looked like a piece of badly toasted +bread. Brown face, brown neck and shoulders, brown arms, brown legs from +the knee downwards; but all the rest of her was white, silly, +effeminate, townish white. If only one could run about with no clothes +on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and +tumbled in the burning sand! Now she was just underdone, half-baked, and +wholly ridiculous. For a long time she looked at her pale image. She saw +herself running, bronzed all over, along the sand; or through a field of +flowers, narcissus and wild tulips; or in soft grass under grey olive +trees. She turned round with a sudden start. There, in the shadows +behind her.... No, of course there was nothing. + +It was that awful picture in a magazine she had looked at, so many years +ago, when she was a child. There was a lady sitting at her +dressing-table, doing her hair in front of the glass; and a huge, hairy +black monkey creeping up behind her. She always got the creeps when she +looked at herself in a mirror. It was very silly. But still. She turned +away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the +mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. The flies buzzed about her, +settled incessantly on her face. She shook her head, flapped at them +angrily with her hands. There would be peace if she let down the +netting. But she thought of the Appian Way seen mistily through the +bridal veil and preferred to suffer the flies. In the end she had to +surrender; the brutes were too much for her. But, at any rate, it wasn't +the fear of anophylines that made her lower the netting. + +Undisturbed now and motionless, she lay stretched stiffly out under the +transparent bell of gauze. A specimen under a glass case. The fancy +possessed her mind. She saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, +full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and mediæval spoons +and armour and Florentine jewellery and mummies and carved ivory and +illuminated manuscripts. But in one of the cases was a human being, +shut up there alive. + +All of a sudden she became horribly miserable. "Boring, boring, boring," +she whispered, formulating the words aloud. Would it never stop being +boring? The tears came into her eyes. How awful everything was! And +perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her life. Seventeen from +seventy was fifty three. Fifty three years of it. And if she lived to a +hundred there would be more than eighty. + +The thought depressed her all the evening. Even her bath after tea did +her no good. Swimming far out, far out, she lay there, floating on the +warm water. Sometimes she looked at the sky, sometimes she turned her +head towards the shore. Framed in their pinewoods, the villas looked as +small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. But behind +them, across the level plain, were the mountains. Sharp, bare peaks of +limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced +olive trees--they seemed marvellously close and clear in this evening +light. And beautiful, beautiful beyond words. But that, somehow, only +made things worse. And Shelley had lived a few miles farther up the +coast, there, behind the headland guarding the Gulf of Spezia. Shelley +had been drowned in this milk-warm sea. That made it worse too. + +The sun was getting very low and red over the sea. She swam slowly in. +On the beach Mrs. Topes waited, disapprovingly. She had known somebody, +a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. He sank +like a stone. Like a stone. The queer people Mrs. Topes had known! And +the funny things they did, the odd things that happened to them. + +Dinner that evening was duller than ever. Barbara went early to bed. All +night long the same old irritating cicada scraped and scraped among the +pine trees, monotonous and regular as clockwork. Zip zip, zip zip zip. +Boring, boring. Was the animal never bored by its own noise? It seemed +odd that it shouldn't be. But, when she came to think of it, nobody ever +did get bored with their own noise. Mrs. Topes, for example; she never +seemed to get bored. Zip zip, zip zip zip. The cicada went on without +pause. + +Concetta knocked at the door at half-past seven. The morning was as +bright and cloudless as all the mornings were. Barbara jumped up, looked +from one window at the mountains, from the other at the sea; all seemed +to be well with them. All was well with her, too, this morning. Seated +at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far +obscure corner of the room. A bathing dress and a bath-gown, sandals, a +handkerchief round her head, and she was ready. Sleep had left no +recollection of last night's mortal boredom. She ran downstairs. + +"Good morning, Mr. Topes." + +Mr. Topes was walking in the garden among the vines. He turned round, +took off his hat, smiled a greeting. + +"Good morning, Miss Barbara." He paused. Then, with an embarrassed +wriggle of introduction he went on; a queer little falter came into his +voice. "A real Chaucerian morning, Miss Barbara. A May-day morning--only +it happens to be September. Nature is fresh and bright, and there is at +least one specimen in this dream garden"--he wriggled more +uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round +spectacle lenses of the poet's 'yonge fresshe folkes.' He bowed in her +direction, smiled deprecatingly, and was silent. The remark, it seemed +to him, now that he had finished speaking, was somehow not as good as he +had thought it would be. + +Barbara laughed. "Chaucer! They used to make us read the _Canterbury +Tales_ at school. But they always bored me. Are you going to bathe?" + +"Not before breakfast." Mr. Topes shook his head. "One is getting a +little too old for that." + +"Is one?" Why did the silly old man always say 'one' when he meant 'I'? +She couldn't help laughing at him. "Well, I must hurry, or else I shall +be late for breakfast again, and you know how I catch it." + +She ran out, through the gate in the garden wall, across the beach, to +the striped red-and-white bathing cabin that stood before the house. +Fifty yards away she saw the Marchese Prampolini, still dripping from +the sea, running up towards his bathing hut. Catching sight of her, he +flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. Barbara waved +her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar--but at +this hour of the morning it was difficult not to have bad jolly +manners--and added the corrective of a stiff bow. After all, she had +only met him yesterday. Soon she was swimming out to sea, and, ugh! what +a lot of horrible huge jelly-fish there were. + +Mr. Topes had followed her slowly through the gate and across the sand. +He watched her running down from the cabin, slender as a boy, with +long, bounding strides. He watched her go jumping with great splashes +through the deepening water, then throw herself forward and begin to +swim. He watched her till she was no more than a small dark dot far out. + +Emerging from his cabin, the marquis met him walking slowly along the +beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as though he were +repeating something, a prayer or a poem, to himself. + +"Good morning, signore." The marquis shook him by the hand with a more +than English cordiality. + +"Good morning," replied Mr. Topes, allowing his hand to be shaken. He +resented this interruption of his thoughts. + +"She swims very well, Miss Buzzacott." + +"Very," assented Mr. Topes, and smiled to himself to think what +beautiful, poetical things he might have said, if he had chosen. + +"Well, so, so," said the marquis, too colloquial by half. He shook hands +again, and the two men went their respective ways. + +Barbara was still a hundred yards from the shore when she heard the +crescendo and dying boom of the gong floating out from the villa. Damn! +she'd be late again. She quickened her stroke and came splashing out +through the shallows, flushed and breathless. + +She'd be ten minutes late, she calculated; it would take her at least +that to do her hair and dress. Mrs. Topes would be on the war-path +again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as she +did, goodness only knew. She always succeeded in making herself horribly +offensive and unpleasant. + +The beach was quite deserted as she trotted, panting, across it, empty +to right and left as far as she could see. If only she had a horse to go +galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. Right away down to Bocca +d'Arno she'd go, swim the river--she saw herself crouching on the +horse's back, as he swam, with legs tucked up on the saddle, trying not +to get her feet wet--and gallop on again, goodness only knew where. + +In front of the cabin she suddenly halted. There in the ruffled sand she +had seen a writing. Big letters, faintly legible, sprawled across her +path. + +O CLARA D'ELLÉBEUSE. + +She pieced the dim letters together. They hadn't been there when she +started out to bathe. Who?... She looked round. The beach was quite +empty. And what was the meaning? "O Clara d'Ellébeuse." She took her +bath-gown from the cabin, slipped on her sandals, and ran back towards +the house as fast as she could. She felt most horribly frightened. + +It was a sultry, headachey sort of morning, with a hot sirocco that +stirred the bunting on the flagstaffs. By midday the thunderclouds had +covered half the sky. The sun still blazed on the sea, but over the +mountains all was black and indigo. The storm broke noisily overhead +just as they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee. + +"Arthur," said Mrs. Topes, painfully calm, "shut the shutters, please." + +She was not frightened, no. But she preferred not to see the lightning. +When the room was darkened, she began to talk, suavely and incessantly. + +Lying back in her deep arm-chair, Barbara was thinking of Clara +d'Ellébeuse. What did it mean and who was Clara d'Ellébeuse? And why had +he written it there for her to see? He--for there could be no doubt who +had written it. The flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she +knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. He had written it there while +she was swimming out. Written it and then run away. She rather liked +that--just an extraordinary word on the sand, like the footprint in +_Robinson Crusoe._ + +"Personally," Mrs. Topes was saying, "I prefer Harrod's." + +The thunder crashed and rattled. It was rather exhilarating, Barbara +thought; one felt, at any rate, that something was happening for a +change. She remembered the little room half-way up the stairs at Lady +Thingumy's house, with the bookshelves and the green curtains and the +orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug +who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. But that was +different--not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly +ugly. She saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert. Copper +coloured all over, with black hair. He was certainly very handsome. But +as for being in love, well ... what did that exactly mean? Perhaps when +she knew him better. Even now she fancied she detected something. O +Clara d'Ellébeuse. What an extraordinary thing it was. + +With his long fingers Mr. Buzzacott combed his beard. This winter, he +was thinking, he would put another thousand into Italian money when the +exchange was favourable. In the spring it always seemed to drop back +again. One could clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the +exchange went down to seventy. The income on three hundred was fifteen +pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. And +fifteen hundred lire, when you came to think of it, was really sixty +pounds. That was to say that one would make an addition of more than one +pound a week to one's income by this simple little speculation. He +became aware that Mrs. Topes had asked him a question. + +"Yes, yes, perfectly," he said. + +Mrs. Topes talked on; she was keeping up her morale. Was she right in +believing that the thunder sounded a little less alarmingly loud and +near? + +Mr. Topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. +Vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, +homeless, unhappy. He was thinking about beauty. There were certain +relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and +the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. But what about +them? Ah, that was the problem--that was the problem. And there was +youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were +so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to +get himself entangled among them. And he was after all so old and so +ineffective. He put on his spectacles again, and definition came into +the foggy world beyond his eyes. The shuttered room was very dark. He +could distinguish the Renaissance profile of Mr. Buzzacott, bearded and +delicately featured. In her deep arm-chair Barbara appeared, faintly +white, in an attitude relaxed and brooding. And Mrs. Topes was nothing +more than a voice in the darkness. She had got on to the marriage of the +Prince of Wales. Who would they eventually find for him? + +Clara d'Ellébeuse, Clara d'Ellébeuse. She saw herself so clearly as the +_marchesa_. They would have a house in Rome, a palace. She saw herself +in the Palazzo Spada--it had such a lovely vaulted passage leading from +the courtyard to the gardens at the back. "MARCHESA PRAMPOLINI, PALAZZO +SPADA, ROMA"--a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. And she +would go riding every day in the Pincio. "_Mi porta il mio cavallo_" she +would say to the footman, who answered the bell. _Porta_? Would that be +quite correct? Hardly. She'd have to take some proper Italian lessons to +talk to the servants. One must never be ridiculous before servants. +"_Voglio il mio cavallo._ Haughtily one would say it sitting at one's +writing-table in a riding-habit, without turning round. It would be a +green riding-habit, with a black tricorne hat, braided with silver. + +"_Prendero la mia collazzione al letto."_ Was that right for breakfast +in bed? Because she would have breakfast in bed, always. And when she +got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one +could see oneself sideface. She saw herself leaning forward, powdering +her nose, carefully, scientifically. With the monkey creeping up behind? +Ooh. Horrible! _Ho paura di questa scimmia, questo scimmione_. + +She would come back to lunch after her ride. Perhaps Prampolini would be +there; she had rather left him out of the picture so far. "_Dov' è il +Marchese?_" "_Nella sala di pranza, signora_." I began without you, I +was so hungry. _Pasta asciutta_. Where have you been, my love? Riding, +my dove. She supposed they'd get into the habit of saying that sort of +thing. Everyone seemed to. And you? I have been out with the Fascisti. + +Oh, these Fascisti! Would life be worth living when he was always going +out with pistols and bombs and things? They would bring him back one day +on a stretcher. She saw it. Pale, pale, with blood on him. _Il signore +è ferito. Nel petto. Gruvamente. E morto_. + +How could she bear it? It was too awful; too, too terrible. Her breath +came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she had been hurt. _E +morto, E morto_. The tears came into her eyes. + +She was roused suddenly by a dazzling light. The storm had receded far +enough into the distance to permit of Mrs. Topes's opening the shutters. + +"It's quite stopped raining." + +To be disturbed in one's intimate sorrow and self-abandonment at a +death-bed by a stranger's intrusion, an alien voice.... Barbara turned +her face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They +might see and ask her why she had been crying. She hated Mrs. Topes for +opening the shutters; at the inrush of the light something beautiful had +flown, an emotion had vanished, irrecoverably. It was a sacrilege. + +Mr. Buzzacott looked at his watch. "Too late, I fear, for a siesta now," +he said. "Suppose we ring for an early tea." + +"An endless succession of meals," said Mr. Topes, with a tremolo and a +sigh. "That's what life seems to be--real life." + +"I have been calculating"--Mr. Buzzacott turned his pale green eyes +towards his guest--"that I may be able to afford that pretty little +_cinque_ cassone, after all. It would be a bit of a squeeze." He played +with his beard. "But still...." + +After tea, Barbara and Mr. Topes went for a walk along the beach. She +didn't much want to go, but Mrs. Topes thought it would be good for her; +so she had to. The storm had passed and the sky over the sea was clear. +But the waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer +shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or +thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples +ordinarily expired. Smooth, shining expanses of water advanced and +receded like steel surfaces moved out and back by a huge machine. +Through the rain-washed air the mountains appeared with an incredible +clarity. Above them hung huge masses of cloud. + +"Clouds over Carrara," said Mr. Topes, deprecating his remark with a +little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. "I like to +fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among +these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the +clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. I imagine their ghosts"--his +voice trembled--"feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning +huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; +planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there's something +of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath +it." Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, "Yes, yes," though +she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "It's like Night on the +Medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. +And there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour--you see the +one I mean--there's a Bernini. All the passion's on the surface, +expressed; the gesture's caught at its most violent. And that sleek, +smug white fellow over there, that's a delicious absurd Canova." Mr. +Topes chuckled. + +"Why do you always talk about art?" said Barbara. "You bring these dead +people into everything. What do I know about Canova or whoever it is?" +They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a +lamp with life. He at least wasn't dead. She wondered whether the +letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. No, of course +not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out. + +Mr. Topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes +were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. +He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old +tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to +keep him from rotting away. They walked on for a long time in silence. + +"Here's the river," said Mr. Topes at last. + +A few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came +down slowly through the plain to the sea. Just inland from the beach it +was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, +and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the +storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more +intense than at ordinary times. And though all was so clear, there was a +mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. There was no sound +except the continuous breathing of the sea. They stood for a little +while, looking; then turned back. + +Far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. White +flannel trousers, a pink skirt. + +"Nature," Mr. Topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. "One always +comes back to nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like +these, one realises it. One lives now--more quietly, perhaps, but more +profoundly. Deep watery. Deep waters...." + +The figures drew closer. Wasn't it the marquis? And who was with him? +Barbara strained her eyes to see. + +"Most of one's life," Mr. Topes went on, "is one prolonged effort to +prevent oneself thinking. Your father and I, we collect pictures and +read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, +or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. Anything rather than +think calmly about the important things." + +Mr. Topes was silent. He looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, +at the great clouds, at his companion. A frail Montagna madonna, with +the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity +as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and +yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. He thought of death and +the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt +inclined to weep. + +The approaching couple were quite near now. + +"What a funny old walrus," said the lady. + +"Walrus? Your natural history is quite wrong." The marquis laughed. +"He's much too dry to be a walrus. I should suggest some sort of an old +cat." + +"Well, whatever he is, I'm sorry for that poor little girl. Think of +having nobody better to go about with!" + +"Pretty, isn't she?" + +"Yes, but too young, of course." + +"I like the innocence." + +"Innocence? Cher ami! These English girls. Oh, la la! They may look +innocent But, believe me...." + +"Sh, sh. They'll hear you." + +"Pooh, they don't understand Italian." + +The marquis raised his hand. "The old walrus...." he whispered; then +addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers. + +"Good evening, signorina. Good evening, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air +is always the purest, don't you find, eh?" + +Barbara nodded, leaving Mr. Topes to answer. It wasn't his sister. It +was the Russian woman, the one of whom Mrs. Topes used to say that it +was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had +turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked +at the line of her averted face. Mr. Topes was saying something about +the Pastoral Symphony. Purple face powder in the daylight; it looked +hideous. + +"Well, au revoir." + +The flash of the marquis's smile was directed at them. The Russian woman +turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy +white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous +ennui. + +"They jar a little," said Mr. Topes when they were out of earshot--"they +jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. They haven't the +innocence for this ... this...."--he wriggled and tremoloed out the +just, the all too precious word--"this prelapsarian landscape." + +He looked sideways at Barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully +frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What could he +adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? Tenderness.... + +"All this," he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the +sky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, +clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening +time." + +But that was not really what he wanted to say. + +"You see what I mean?" he asked dubiously. She made no reply. How could +she see? "This scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the +corresponding emotion. Those people were out of harmony. They weren't +clear and pure enough." He seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. +"It's an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could +feel it. Those people couldn't." He was feeling his way through +obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? "Certain poems express it. +You know Francis Jammes? I have thought so much of his work lately. Art +instead of life, as usual; but then I'm made that way. I can't help +thinking of Jammes. Those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about +Clara d'Ellébeuse." + +"Clara d'Ellébeuse?" She stopped and stared at him. + +"You know the lines?" Mr. Topes smiled delightedly. "This makes me +think, you make me think of them. '_F'aime dans les temps Clara +d'Ellébeuse_....' But, my dear Barbara, what is the matter?" + +She had started crying, for no reason whatever. + + + + +V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON + + +"What have I been doing since you saw me last?" Miss Penny repeated my +question in her loud, emphatic voice. "Well, when did you see me last?" + +"It must have been June," I computed. + +"Was that after I'd been proposed to by the Russian General? + +"Yes; I remember hearing about the Russian General." + +Miss Penny threw back her head and laughed. Her long ear-rings swung and +rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simile. And her +laughter was like brass, but that had been said before. + +"That was an uproarous incident. It's sad you should have heard of it. I +love my Russian General story. '_Vos yeux me rendent fou_.'" She laughed +again. + +_Vos yeux_--she had eyes like a hare's, flush with her head and very +bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness. What a +formidable woman. I felt sorry for the Russian General. + +"'_Sans coeur et sans entrallies_,'" she went on, quoting the poor +devil's words. "Such a delightful motto, don't you think? Like '_Sans +peur et sans reproche_.' But let me think; what have I been doing since +then?" Thoughtfully she bit into the crust of her bread with long, +sharp, white teeth. + +"Two mixed grills," I said parenthetically to the waiter. + +"But of course," exclaimed Miss Penny suddenly. "I haven't seen you +since my German trip. All sorts of adventures. My appendicitis; my nun." + +"Your nun?" + +"My marvellous nun. I must tell you all about her." + +"Do." Miss Penny's anecdotes were always curious. I looked forward to an +entertaining luncheon. + +"You knew I'd been in Germany this autumn?" + +"Well, I didn't, as a matter of fact. But still--" + +"I was just wandering round." Miss Penny described a circle in the air +with her gaudily jewelled hand. She always twinkled with massive and +improbable jewellery. + +"Wandering round, living on three pounds a week, partly amusing myself, +partly collecting material for a few little articles. 'What it Feels +Like to be a Conquered Nation'--sob-stuff for the Liberal press, you +know--and 'How the Hun is Trying to Wriggle out of the Indemnity,' for +the other fellows. One has to make the best of all possible worlds, +don't you find? But we mustn't talk shop. Well, I was wandering round, +and very pleasant I found it. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig. Then down to +Munich and all over the place. One fine day I got to Grauburg. You know +Grauburg? It's one of those picture-book German towns with a castle on a +hill, hanging beer-gardens, a Gothic church, an old university, a river, +a pretty bridge, and forests all round. Charming. But I hadn't much +opportunity to appreciate the beauties of the place. The day after I +arrived there--bang!--I went down with appendicitis--screaming, I may +add." + +"But how appalling!" + +"They whisked me off to hospital, and cut me open before you could say +knife. Excellent surgeon, highly efficient Sisters of Charity to nurse +me--I couldn't have been in better hands. But it was a bore being tied +there by the leg for four weeks--a great bore. Still, the thing had its +compensations. There was my nun, for example. Ah, here's the food, thank +Heaven!" + +The mixed grill proved to be excellent. Miss Penny's description of the +pun came to me in scraps and snatches. A round, pink, pretty face in a +winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether too +perfect--false, in fact; but the general effect extremely pleasing. A +youthful Teutonic twenty eight. + +"She wasn't my nurse," Miss Penny explained. "But I used to see her +quite often when she came in to have a look at the _tolle Engländerin_. +Her name was Sister Agatha. During the war, they told me, she had +converted any number of wounded soldiers to the true faith--which wasn't +surprising, considering how pretty she was." + +"Did she try and convert you?" I asked. + +"She wasn't such a fool." Miss Penny laughed, and rattled the miniature +gallows of her ears. + +I amused myself for a moment with the thought of Miss Penny's +conversion--Miss Penny confronting a vast assembly of Fathers of the +Church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, +laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate +Conception, meeting the stern look of the Grand Inquisitor with a flash +of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. What was the secret of the +woman's formidableness? + +But I was missing the story. What had happened? Ah yes, the gist of it +was that Sister Agatha had appeared one morning, after two or three days +absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital +charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven +head. + +"Dead," said Miss Penny; "she looked as though she were dead. A walking +corpse, that's what she was. It was a shocking sight. I shouldn't have +thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She +walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had +great burnt rings round her eyes and deep lines in her face. And the +general expression of unhappiness--that was something quite appalling." + +She leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and +caught the passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. The little +Italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into +terror on his face. + +"Half a pint of Guinness," ordered Miss Penny. "And, after this, bring +me some jam roll." + +"No jam roll to-day, madam." + +"Damn!" said Miss Penny. "Bring me what you like, then." + +She let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative. + +"Where was I? Yes, I remember. She came into my room, I was telling you, +with a bucket of water and a brush, dressed like a charwoman. Naturally +I was rather surprised. 'What on earth are you doing, Sister Agatha?' I +asked. No answer. She just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. +When she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me +again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse when she +next came in. 'Can't say.'--'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took +nearly a week to find out what really had happened. Nobody dared tell +me; it was _strengst verboten_, as they used to say in the good old +days. But I wormed it out in the long run. My nurse, the doctor, the +charwomen--I got something out of all of them. I always get what I want +in the end." Miss Penny laughed like a horse. + +"I'm sure you do," I said politely. + +"Much obliged," acknowledged Miss Penny. "But to proceed. My information +came to me in fragmentary whispers. 'Sister Agatha ran away with a +man.'--Dear me.--'One of the patients.'--You don't say so.--'A criminal +out of the jail.'--The plot thickens.--'He ran away from her.'--It +seems to grow thinner again.--'They brought her back here; she's been +disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel--coffin +and all. She had to be present at it--her own funeral. She isn't a nun +any more. She has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest in the +hospital. She's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to +speak to her. She's regarded as dead.'" Miss Penny paused to signal to +the harassed little Italian. "My small 'Guinness,'" she called out. + +"Coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "Guinness" down the lift, +and from below another voice echoed, "Guinness." + +"I filled in the details bit by bit. There was our hero, to begin with; +I had to bring him into the picture, which was rather difficult, as I +had never seen him. But I got a photograph of him. The police circulated +one when he got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny +opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always carry it about with +me; it's become a superstition. For years, I remember, I used to carry a +little bit of heather tied up with string. Beautiful, isn't it? There's +a sort of Renaissance look about it, don't you think? He was +half-Italian, you know." + +Italian. Ah, that explained it. I had been wondering how Bavaria could +have produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the +finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and +sensually curved. + +"He's certainly very superb," I said, handing back the picture. + +Miss Penny put it carefully away in her bag. "Isn't he?" she said. +"Quite marvellous. But his character and his mind were even better. I +see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are +simply unaware of the existence of right and wrong. And he had +genius--the real Italian genius for engineering, for dominating and +exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and +a brother of the electrical engineers. Only Kuno--that was his +name--didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how to harness +the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. The +commercial exploitation of love-power, that was his specialty. I +sometimes wonder," Miss Penny added in a different tone, "whether I +shall ever be exploited, when I get a little more middle-aged and +celibate, by one of these young engineers of the passions. It would be +humiliating, particularly as I've done so little exploiting from my +side." + +She frowned and was silent for a moment. No, decidedly, Miss Penny was +not beautiful; you could not even honestly say that she had charm or was +attractive. That high Scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the voice, +the terrifying laugh, and the size of her, the general formidableness of +the woman. No, no, no. + +"You said he had been in prison," I said. The silence, with all its +implications, was becoming embarrassing. + +Miss Penny sighed, looked up, and nodded. "He was fool enough," she +said, "to leave the straight and certain road of female exploitation for +the dangerous courses of burglary. We all have our occasional accesses +of folly. They gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting +pneumonia, I think it was, a week after entering jail. He was +transferred to the hospital. Sister Agatha, with her known talent for +saving souls, was given him as his particular attendant. But it was he, +I'm afraid, who did the converting." + +Miss Penny finished off the last mouthful of the ginger pudding which +the waiter had brought in lieu of jam roll. + +"I suppose you don't smoke cheroots," I said, as I opened my cigar-case. + +"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," Miss Penny replied. She looked +sharply round the restaurant. "I must just see if there are any of those +horrible little gossip paragraphers here to-day. One doesn't want to +figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'A fact +which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that Miss Penny, +the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon with a +six-inch Burma cheroot. I saw her yesterday in a restaurant--not a +hundred miles from Carmelite Street--smoking like a house on fire.' You +know the touch. But the coast seems to be clear, thank goodness." + +She took a cheroot from the case, lit it at my proffered match, and went +on talking. + +"Yes, it was young Kuno who did the converting. Sister Agatha was +converted back into the worldly Melpomene Fugger she had been before she +became the bride of holiness." + +"Melpomene Fugger?" + +"That was her name. I had her history from my old doctor. He had seen +all Grauburg, living and dying and propagating for generations. +Melpomene Fugger why, he had brought little Melpel into the world, +little Melpchen. Her father was Professor Fugger, the great Professor +Fugger, the _berümter Geolog_. Oh, yes, of course, I know the name. So +well.... He was the man who wrote the standard work on Lemuria--you +know, the hypothetical continent where the lemurs come from. I showed +due respect. Liberal-minded he was, a disciple of Herder, a +world-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. Anglophile, too, +and always ate porridge for breakfast--up till August 1914. Then, the +radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and +with tears in his eyes. The national food of a people who had betrayed +culture and civilisation--how could he go on eating it? It would stick +in his throat. In future he would have a lightly boiled egg. He sounded, +I thought, altogether charming. And his daughter, Melpomene--she sounded +charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tails when she was young! Her +mother was dead, and a sister of the great Professor's ruled the house +with an iron rod. Aunt Bertha was her name. Well, Melpomene grew up, +very plump and appetising. When she was seventeen, something very odious +and disagreeable happened to her. Even the doctor didn't know exactly +what it was; but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had had something +to do with the then Professor of Latin, an old friend of the family's, +who combined, it seems, great erudition with a horrid fondness for very +young ladies." + +Miss Penny knocked half an inch of cigar ash into her empty glass. + +"If I wrote short stories," she went on reflectively "(but it's too much +bother), I should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, +beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in +Melpomene's life. I see the scene so clearly. Poor little Melpel is +leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June +night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is +besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. +Professor Engelmann, her father's old friend, with the magnificent red +Assyrian beard.... Too awful--too awful! But then, as I was saying, +short stones are really too much bother; or perhaps I'm too stupid to +write them. I bequeath it to you. You know how to tick these things +off." + +"You're generous." + +"Not at all," said Miss Penny. "My terms are ten per cent commission on +the American sale. Incidentally there won't be an American sale. Poor +Melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of Those States. But let +me hear what you propose to do with Melpomene now you've got her on the +castle bastions." + +"That's simple," I said. "I know all about German university towns and +castles on hills. I shall make her look into the June night, as you +suggest; into the violet night with its points of golden flame. There +will be the black silhouette of the castle, with its sharp roofs and +hooded turrets, behind her. From the hanging beer-gardens in the town +below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, +will float up through the dark-blue spaces. '_Röslein, Röslein, Röslein +rot_' and '_Das Ringlein sprang in zwei_'--the heart-rendingly sweet old +songs will make her cry all the more. Her tears will patter like rain +among the leaves of the mulberry trees in the garden below. Does that +seem to you adequate?" + +"Very nice," said Miss Penny. "But how are you going to bring the sex +problem and all of its horrors into the landscape?" + +"Well, let me think." I called to memory those distant foreign summers +when I was completing my education. "I know. I shall suddenly bring a +swarm of moving candles and Chinese lanterns under the mulberry trees. +You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the +faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone +again. They are students and girls of the town come out to dance, this +windless, blue June night, under the mulberry trees. And now they begin, +thumping round and round in a ring, to the music of their own singing. + + "_Wir können spielen_ + _Vio-vio-vio-lin_ + _Wir können spielen_ + _Vi-o-lin_ + +"Now the rhythm changes, quickens. + + "_Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,_ + _Bumstarara, Bumstarara,_ + _Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,_ + _Bumstarara-rara._ + +"The dance becomes a rush, an elephantine prancing on the dry lawn under +the mulberry trees. And from the bastion Melpomene looks down and +perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is +sex, sex, sex. Men and women, male and female--always the same, and all, +in the light of the horror of the afternoon, disgusting. That's how I +should do it, Miss Penny." + +"And very nice, too. But I wish you could find a place to bring in my +conversation with the doctor. I shall never forget the way he cleared +his throat, and coughed before embarking on the delicate subject. 'You +may know, ahem, gracious Miss,' he began--'you may know that religious +phenomena are often, ahem, closely connected with sexual causes.' I +replied that I had heard rumours which might justify me in believing +this to be true among Roman Catholics, but that in the Church of England +--and I for one was a practitioner of Anglicanismus--it was very +different. 'That might be,' said the doctor; he had had no opportunity +in the course of his long medical career of personally studying +Anglicanismus. But he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, +here in Grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the +_Geschlechtsleben_. Melpomene was a case in point. After that hateful +afternoon she had become extremely religious; the Professor of Latin had +diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. She rebelled against +the placid Agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when +Aunt Bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden +books as _The Life of St. Theresa, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, +The Imitation of Christ_, and the horribly enthralling _Book of +Martyrs_. Aunt Bertha confiscated, these works whenever she came upon +them; she considered them more pernicious than the novels of Marcel +Prévost. The character of a good potential housewife might be completely +undermined by reading of this kind. It was rather a relief for Melpomene +when Aunt Bertha shuffled off, in the summer of 1911, this mortal coil. +She was one of those indispensables of whom one makes the discovery, +when they are gone, that one can get on quite as well without them. Poor +Aunt Bertha!" + +"One can imagine Melpomene trying to believe she was sorry, and horribly +ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." The +suggestion seemed to me ingenious, but Miss Penny accepted it as +obvious. + +"Precisely," she said; "and the emotion would only further confirm and +give new force to the tendencies which her aunt's death left her free to +indulge as much as she liked. Remorse, contrition--they would lead to +the idea of doing penance. And for one who was now wallowing in the +martyrology, penance was the mortification of the flesh. She used to +kneel for hours, at night, in the cold; she ate too little, and when her +teeth ached, which they often did,--for she had a set, the doctor told +me, which had given trouble from the very first,--she would not go and +see the dentist, but lay awake at night, savouring to the full her +excruciations, and feeling triumphantly that they must, in some strange +way, be pleasing to the Mysterious Powers. She went on like that for two +or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. In the end +she went down with gastric ulcer. It was three months before she came +out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and +with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. And in +mind, too, she was changed--for the better, I suppose. The nuns who +nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted +supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, +she had sinned. The only road to salvation, they told her, lay in +discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to +authority. Secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose +Agnosticismus was extremely dogmatic, for all its unobtrusiveness, +Melpomene became a Roman Catholic. She was twenty-two. Only a few months +later came the war and Professor Fugger's eternal renunciation of +porridge. He did not long survive the making of that patriotic gesture. +In the autumn of 1914 he caught a fatal influenza. Melpomene was alone +in the world. In the spring of 1915 there was a new and very +conscientious Sister of Charity at work among the wounded, in the +hospital of Grauburg. Here," explained Miss Penny, jabbing the air with +her forefinger, "you put a line of asterisks or dots to signify a six +years' gulf in the narrative. And you begin again right in the middle of +a dialogue between Sister Agatha and the newly convalescent Kuno." + +"What's their dialogue to be about?" I asked. + +"Oh, that's easy enough," said Miss Penny. "Almost anything would do. +What about this, for example? You explain that the fever has just +abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. He +feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world--a world so +bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of +it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being +extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have +suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural +history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet--ha, ha! What an +uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet--that's good, that's damned +good! You can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the +irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, +where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to +jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. Ha, ha! Laugh on, +unhappy boy. It is the quacking of the Fates, the Parcæ, the Norns!" + +Miss Penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. At +the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables +looked up, startled. + +"You can write pages about Destiny and its ironic quacking. It's +tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line." + +"You may be sure I shall." + +"Good! Then I can get on with my story. The days pass and the first +hilarity of convalescence fades away. The young man remembers and grows +sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. +His mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. As for the +consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha +perseveres--oh, with what anxious solicitude!--in the attempt to make +him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously +important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. +And now you see the _Geschlechtsleben_ working yeastily and obscurely, +and once again the quacking of the Norns is audible. By the way," said +Miss Penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the +table, "I wish you'd tell me something. Tell me, do you +really--honestly, I mean--do you seriously believe in literature?" + +"Believe in literature?" + +"I was thinking?" Miss Penny explained, "of Ironic Fate and the quacking +of the Norns and all that." + +"'M yes." + +"And then there's this psychology and introspection business; and +construction and good narrative and word pictures and _le mot juste_ and +verbal magic and striking metaphors." + +I remembered that I had compared Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings to +skeletons hanging in chains. + +"And then, finally, and to begin with--Alpha and Omega--there's +ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of +sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of +turning her misfortunes into cash. It's all very curious, isn't +it?--when one begins to think about it dispassionately." + +"Very curious," I agreed. "But, then, so is everything else if you look +at it like that." + +"No, no," said Miss Penny. "Nothing's so curious as our business. But I +shall never get to the end of my story if I get started on first +principles." + +Miss Penny continued her narrative. I was still thinking of literature. +Do you believe in it? Seriously? Ah! Luckily the question was quite +meaningless. The story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the +young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, +he would be well--well enough to go back to jail. No, no. The question +was meaningless. I would think about it no more. I concentrated my +attention again. + +"Sister Agatha," I heard Miss Penny saying, "prayed, exhorted, +indoctrinated. Whenever she had half a minute to spare from her other +duties she would come running into the young man's room. 'I wonder if +you fully realise the importance of prayer?' she would ask, and, before +he had time to answer, she would give him a breathless account of the +uses and virtues of regular and patient supplication. Or else, it was: +'May I tell you about St. Theresa?' or 'St. Stephen, the first +martyr--you know about him, don't you?' Kuno simply wouldn't listen at +first. It seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd +interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the +future. Prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with +her ridiculous fairy-tales. Then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, +he showed signs of contrition and conversion. Sister Agatha announced +her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost +sheep. Melpomene had never felt so happy in her life, and Kuno, looking +at her radiant face, must have wondered how he could have been such a +fool as not to see from the first what was now so obvious. The woman had +lost her head about him. And he had only four days now--four days in +which to tap the tumultuous love power, to canalise it, to set it +working for his escape. Why hadn't he started a week ago? He could have +made certain of it then. But now? There was no knowing. Four days was a +horribly short time." + +"How did he do it?" I asked, for Miss Penny had paused. + +"That's for you to say," she replied, and shook her ear-rings at me. "I +don't know. Nobody knows, I imagine, except the two parties concerned +and perhaps Sister Agatha's confessor. But one can reconstruct the +crime, as they say. How would you have done it? You're a man, you ought +to be familiar with the processes of amorous engineering." + +"You flatter me," I answered. "Do you seriously suppose--" I extended my +arms. Miss Penny laughed like a horse. "No. But, seriously, it's a +problem. The case is a very special one. The person, a nun, the place, a +hospital, the opportunities, few. There could be no favourable +circumstances--no moonlight, no distant music; and any form of direct +attack would be sure to fail. That audacious confidence which is your +amorist's best weapon would be useless here." + +"Obviously," said Miss Penny. "But there are surely other methods. There +is the approach through pity and the maternal instincts. And there's the +approach through Higher Things, through the soul. Kuno must have worked +on those lines, don't you think? One can imagine him letting himself be +converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her +sympathy and even threatening--with a great air of seriousness---to kill +himself rather than go back to jail. You can write that up easily and +convincingly enough. But it's the sort of thing that bores me so +frightfully to do. That's why I can never bring myself to write fiction. +What is the point of it all? And the way you literary men think +yourselves so important--particularly if you write tragedies. It's all +very queer, very queer indeed." + +I made no comment. Miss Penny changed her tone and went on with the +narrative. + +"Well," she said, "whatever the means employed, the engineering process +was perfectly successful. Love was made to find out a way. On the +afternoon before Kuno was to go back to prison, two Sisters of Charity +walked out of the hospital gates, crossed the square in front of it, +glided down the narrow streets towards the river, boarded a tram at the +bridge, and did not descend till the car had reached its terminus in the +farther suburbs. They began to walk briskly along the high road out into +the country. 'Look!' said one of them, when they were clear of the +houses; and with the gesture of a conjurer produced from nowhere a red +leather purse. 'Where did it come from?' asked the other, opening her +eyes. Memories of Elisha and the ravens, of the widow's cruse, of the +loaves and fishes, must have floated through the radiant fog in poor +Melpomene's mind. 'The old lady I was sitting next to in the tram left +her bag open. Nothing could have been simpler.' 'Kuno! You don't mean to +say you stole it?' Kuno swore horribly. He had opened the purse. 'Only +sixty marks. Who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in +silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. And I must have +a thousand at least to get away. It's easy to reconstruct the rest of +the conversation down to the inevitable, 'For God's sake, shut up,' with +which Kuno put an end to Melpomene's dismayed moralising. They trudge on +in silence. Kuno thinks desperately. Only sixty marks; he can do nothing +with that. If only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some +gold or silver anything, anything. He knows such a good place for +selling things. Is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? +Melpomene is also thinking. Evil must often be done that good may +follow. After all, had not she herself stolen Sister Mary of the +Purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? Had not she +run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she +was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphatically +approved; she felt sure of it. And now there was the red purse. But +what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul--and, after all, +what was she doing hut saving Kuno's soul?" Miss Penny, who had adapted +the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought +her hand with a slap on to the table. "Lord, what a bore this sort of +stuff is!" she exclaimed. "Let's get to the end of this dingy anecdote +as quickly as possible. By this time, you must imagine, the shades of +night were falling fast--the chill November twilight, and so on; but I +leave the natural descriptions to you. Kuno gets into the ditch at the +roadside and takes off his robes. One imagines that he would feel +himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a +crisis. They tramp on for miles. Late in the evening they leave the high +road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. At the fringe +of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds +sleep in the lambing season. + +"The real 'Maison du Berger.'" + +"Precisely," said Miss Penny, and she began to recite: + + "_Si ton coeur gémissant du poids de notre vie_ + _Se traine et se débat comme un aigle blessé...._ + +"How does it go on? I used to adore it all so much when I was a girl. + + _"Le seuil est perfumé, l'alcôve est large et sombre,_ + _Et là parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,_ + _Pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux._ + +"I could go on like this indefinitely." + +"Do," I said. + +"No, no. No, no. I'm determined to finish this wretched story. Kuno +broke the padlock of the door. They entered. What happened in that +little hut?" Miss Penny leaned forward at me. Her large hare's eyes +glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. "Imagine the +emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying +presence of desire. Imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young +man. Oh, there's pages to be made out of this--the absolutely +impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled +crying, the movements! And one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing +about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound +that shakes the air. Why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. In the +morning," Miss Penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their +way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached +the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there +should be need of it. Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress +lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. +'What's the matter?' A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of +tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'What's the +matter?'--'He's gone!' What a queer, indistinct utterance. The +woodcutters regard one another. What does she say? She's a foreigner, +perhaps. 'What's the matter?' they repeat once more. The woman bursts +out violently crying. 'Gone, gone! He's gone,' she sobs out in her +vague, inarticulate way. 'Oh, gone. That's what she says. Who's +gone?'--'He's left me.'--'What?'--'Left me....'--'What the devil...? +Speak a little more distinctly.'--'I can't,' she wails; 'he's taken my +teeth.'--'Your what?--'My teeth!'--and the shrill voice breaks into a +scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. The woodcutters look +significantly at one another. They nod. One of them applies a thick +yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead." + +Miss Penny looked at her watch. "Good heavens!" she said, "it's nearly +half-past three. I must fly. Don't forget about the funeral service," +she added, as she put on her coat. "The tapers, the black coffin, in the +middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy +chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all +caved in like an old woman's, wondering whether she wasn't really and in +fact dead--wondering whether she wasn't already in hell. Good-bye." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTAL COILS *** + +***** This file should be named 39378-8.txt or 39378-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/3/7/39378/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/39378-8.zip b/old/39378-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c39137 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/39378-8.zip diff --git a/old/39378-h.zip b/old/39378-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..14a3530 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/39378-h.zip diff --git a/old/39378-h/39378-h.htm b/old/39378-h/39378-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e740509 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/39378-h/39378-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5248 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mortal Coils + +Author: Aldous Huxley + +Release Date: April 5, 2012 [EBook #39378] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTAL COILS *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>MORTAL COILS</h1> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>ALDOUS HUXLEY</h2> + +<h5>NEW YORK-GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</h5> + +<h5>1921</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="caption">CONTENTS</p> + + + +<p><a href="#I_THE_GIOCONDA_SMILE">I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE</a></p> + +<p><a href="#II_PERMUTATIONS_AMONG_THE_NIGHTINGALES">II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES</a></p> + +<p><a href="#III_THE_TILLOTSON_BANQUET">III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET</a></p> + +<p><a href="#IV_GREEN_TUNNELS">IV: GREEN TUNNELS</a></p> + +<p><a href="#V_NUNS_AT_LUNCHEON">V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I_THE_GIOCONDA_SMILE" id="I_THE_GIOCONDA_SMILE"></a>I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE</h2> + + + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>"Miss Spence will be down directly, sir."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence's +parlourmaid was so ugly—ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, +malignantly, criminally ugly—that he could not bear to look at her +more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton +got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes +at the familiar objects it contained.</p> + +<p>Photographs of Greek statuary, photographs of the Roman Forum, coloured +prints of Italian masterpieces, all very safe and well known. Poor, dear +Janet, what a prig—what an intellectual snob! Her real taste was +illustrated in that water-colour by the pavement artist, the one she had +paid half a crown for (and thirty-five shillings for the frame). How +often his had heard her tell the story, how often expatiate on the +beauties of that skilful imitation of an oleograph! "A real Artist in +the streets," and you could hear the capital A in Artist as she spoke +the words. She made you feel that part of his glory had entered into +Janet Spence when she tendered him that half-crown for the copy of the +oleograph. She was implying a compliment to her own taste and +penetration. A genuine Old Master for half a crown. Poor, dear Janet!</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton came to a pause in front of a small oblong mirror. Stooping a +little to get a full view of his face, he passed a white, well-manicured +finger over his moustache. It was as curly, as freshly auburn as it had +been twenty years ago. His hair still retained its colour, and there was +no sign of baldness yet—only a certain elevation of the brow. +"Shakespearean," thought Mr. Hutton, with a smile, as he surveyed the +smooth and polished expanse of his forehead.</p> + +<p>Others abide our question, thou art free.... Footsteps in the sea ... +Majesty ... Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. No, that +was Milton, wasn't it? Milton, the Lady of Christ's. There was no lady +about him. He was what the women, would call a manly man. That was why +they liked him—for the curly auburn moustache and the discreet +redolence of tobacco. Mr. Hutton smiled again; he enjoyed making fun of +himself. Lady of Christ's? No, no. He was the Christ of Ladies. Very +pretty, very pretty. The Christ of Ladies. Mr. Hutton wished there were +somebody he could tell the joke to. Poor, dear Janet wouldn't appreciate +it, alas?</p> + +<p>He straightened himself up, patted his hair, and resumed his +peregrination. Damn the Roman Forum; he hated those dreary photographs.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he became aware that Janet Spence was in the room, standing +near the door. Mr. Hutton started, as though he had been taken in some +felonious act. To make these silent and spectral appearances was one of +Janet Spence's peculiar talents. Perhaps she had been there all the +time, had seen him looking at himself in the mirror. Impossible! But, +still, it was disquieting.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you gave me such a surprise," said Mr. Hutton, recovering his smile +and advancing with outstretched hand to meet her.</p> + +<p>Miss Spence was smiling too: her Gioconda smile, he had once called it, +in a moment of half-ironical flattery. Miss Spence had taken the +compliment seriously, and had always tried to live up to the Leonardo +standard. She smiled on his silence while Mr. Hutton shook hands; that +was part of the Gioconda business.</p> + +<p>"I hope you're well," said Mr. Hutton. "You look it."</p> + +<p>What a queer face she had! That small mouth pursed forward by the +Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round hole in the middle +as though for whistling—it was like a penholder seen from the front. +Above the mouth a well-shaped nose, finely aquiline. Eyes large, +lustrous, and dark, with the largeness, lustre, and darkness that seems +to invite sties and an occasional blood-shot suffusion. They were fine +eyes, but unchangingly grave. The penholder might do its Gioconda trick, +but the eyes never altered in their earnestness. Above them, a pair of +boldly arched, heavily pencilled black eyebrows lent a surprising air of +power, as of a Roman matron, to the upper portion of the face. Her hair +was dark and equally Roman; Agrippina from the brows upward.</p> + +<p>"I thought I'd just look in on my way home," Mr. Hutton went on. "Ah, +it's good to be back here"—he indicated with a wave of his hand the +flowers in the vases, the sunshine and greenery beyond the windows +—"it's good to be back in the country after a stuffy day of business in +town."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence, who had sat down, pointed to a chair at her side.</p> + +<p>"No, really, I cant sit down," Mr. Hutton protested. "I must get back to +see how poor Emily is. She was rather seedy this morning." He sat down, +nevertheless. "It's these wretched liver chills. She's always getting +them. Women—" He broke off and coughed, so as to hide the fact that he +had uttered. He was about to say that women with weak digestions ought +not to marry; but the remark was too cruel, and he didn't really believe +it. Janet Spence, moreover, was a believer in eternal flames and +spiritual attachments. "She hopes to be well enough," he added, "to see +you at luncheon to-morrow. Can you come? Do!" He smiled persuasively. +"It's my invitation too, you know."</p> + +<p>She dropped her eyes, and Mr. Hutton almost thought that he detected a +certain reddening of the cheek. It was a tribute; he stroked his +moustache.</p> + +<p>"I should like to come if you think Emily's really well enough to have a +visitor."</p> + +<p>"Of course. You'll do her good. You'll do us both good. In married life +three is often better company than two."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're cynical."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton always had a desire to say "Bow-wow-wow" whenever that last +word was spoken. It irritated him more than any other word in the +language. But instead of barking he made haste to protest.</p> + +<p>"No, no. I'm only speaking a melancholy truth. Reality doesn't always +come up to the ideal, you know. But that doesn't make me believe any the +less in the ideal. Indeed, I believe in it passionately the ideal of a +matrimony between two people in perfect accord. I think it's realisable. +I'm sure it is."</p> + +<p>He paused significantly and looked at her with an arch expression. A +virgin of thirty-six, but still unwithered; she had her charms. And +there was something really rather enigmatic about her. Miss Spence made +no reply but continued to smile. There were times when Mr. Hutton got +rather bored with the Gioconda. He stood up.</p> + +<p>"I must really be going now. Farewell, mysterious Gioconda." The smile +grew intenser, focused itself, as it were, in a narrower snout. Mr. +Hutton made a Cinquecento gesture, and kissed her extended hand. It was +the first time he had done such a thing; the action seemed not to be +resented. "I look forward to to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Do you?"</p> + +<p>For answer Mr. Hutton once more kissed her hand, then turned to go. Miss +Spence accompanied him to the porch.</p> + +<p>"Where's your car?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I left it at the gate of the drive."</p> + +<p>"I'll come and see you off."</p> + +<p>"No, no." Mr. Hutton was playful, but determined. "You must do no such +thing. I simply forbid you."</p> + +<p>"But I should like to come," Miss Spence protested, throwing a rapid +Gioconda at him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton held up his hand. "No," he repeated, and then, with a gesture +that was almost the blowing of a kiss, he started to run down the drive, +lightly on his toes, with long, bounding strides like a boy's. He was +proud of that run; it was quite marvellously youthful. Still, he was +glad the drive was no longer. At the last bend, before passing out of +sight of the house, he halted and turned round. Miss Spence was still +standing on the steps, smiling her smile. He waved his hand, and this +time quite definitely and overtly wafted a kiss in her direction. Then, +breaking once more into his magnificent canter, he rounded the last dark +promontory of trees. Once out of sight of the house he let his high +paces decline to a trot, and finally to a walk. He took out his +handkerchief and began wiping his neck inside his collar. What fools, +what fools! Had there ever been such an ass as poor, dear Janet Spence? +Never, unless it was himself. Decidedly he was the more malignant fool, +since he, at least, was aware of his folly and still persisted in it. +Why did he persist? Ah, the problem that was himself, the problem that +was other people.</p> + +<p>He had reached the gate. A large, prosperous-looking motor was standing +at the side of the road.</p> + +<p>"Home, M'Nab." The chauffeur touched his cap. "And stop at the +cross-roads on the way, as usual," Mr. Hutton added, as he opened the +door of the car. "Well?" he said, speaking into the obscurity that +lurked within.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Teddy Bear, what an age you've been!" It was a fresh and childish +voice that spoke the words. There was the faintest hint of Cockney +impurity about the vowel sounds.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility +of an animal regaining its burrow.</p> + +<p>"Have I?" he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move. "You +must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long." He sat back +in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him.</p> + +<p>"Teddy Bear...." and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head +declined on to Mr. Hutton's shoulder. Ravished, he looked down sideways +at the round, babyish face.</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Doris, you look like the pictures of Louise de +Kerouaille." He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair.</p> + +<p>"Who's Louise de Kera-whatever-it-is?" Doris spoke from remote +distances.</p> + +<p>"She was, alas! <i>Fuit</i>. We shall all be 'was' one of these days. +Meanwhile...."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed smoothly +along. McNab's back, through the front window was stonily impassive, the +back of a statue.</p> + +<p>"Your hands," Doris whispered. "Oh, you mustn't touch me. They give me +electric shocks."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late +in one's existence one makes the discovery of one's body!</p> + +<p>"The electricity isn't in me, it's in you." He kissed her again, +whispering her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific +appellation of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat, +she offered him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting +the sacrificial knife. The sea-mouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: +very peculiar. Or was Doris the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside +out in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, +just to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous, +unbelievably fantastic.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Teddy Bear!" (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His poor +little jokes!) "Teddy Bear, I'm so happy."</p> + +<p>"So am I," said Mr. Hutton. Was it true?</p> + +<p>"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or +wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty +years."</p> + +<p>"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right +that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and +that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me."</p> + +<p>"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks +rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew +how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you +know, there is a hell, and all that. I don t know what to do. Sometimes +I think I ought to stop loving you."</p> + +<p>"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his +seduction and his moustache.</p> + +<p>"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could hide +from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to you."</p> + +<p>"Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care +if it is."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this +little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, +they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it +hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges +towards it devouringly.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, good-bye."</p> + +<p>The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris was +left standing by the sign-post at the cross-roads, still dizzy and weak +with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of those +gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up +deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk. +She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies.</p> + +<p>Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling +boredom.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In +spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the +hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of +digestion, slept before the blaze.</p> + +<p>"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the +room.</p> + +<p>"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on the +verge of tears. "I get so shivery."</p> + +<p>"I hope you're better this evening."</p> + +<p>"Not much, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against +the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and +with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed +its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy. +Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an <i>impasse</i>, she +altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on +playing. Her Patiences always came out.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer."</p> + +<p>"Well—go, my dear—go, most certainly."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had +driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood, had left the car to wait +for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the +windless sunshine of the chalk down.</p> + +<p>"I'm to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have +massage and electric treatment, too."</p> + +<p>Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing +together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the +flickering of blue fire. The blue fire burst and scattered into whirling +sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting like a child.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure it will do you good, my dear."</p> + +<p>"I was wondering if you'd come with me, dear."</p> + +<p>"But you know I'm going to Scotland at the end of the month."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. "It's the journey," she said. +"The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don't know if I can manage +it. And you know I can't sleep in hotels. And then there's the luggage +and all the worries. I can't go alone.</p> + +<p>"But you won't be alone. You'll have your maid with you." He spoke +impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one. +He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the +quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its +complaining occupant.</p> + +<p>"I don't think I shall be able to go."</p> + +<p>"But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a +change will do you good."</p> + +<p>"I don't think so."</p> + +<p>"But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he's talking about."</p> + +<p>"No, I can't face it. I'm too weak. I can't go alone." Mrs. Hutton +pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort."</p> + +<p>"I had rather be left in peace to die here." She was crying in earnest +now.</p> + +<p>"O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please." Mrs. Hutton only +sobbed more violently. "Oh, what is one to do?" He shrugged his +shoulders and walked out of the room.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but +he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that +not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, +and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he +spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled +with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed +the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion; and he had +been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was +temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had +been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then. +But now—was it his fault that she was like this?</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he +had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he +went up to his wife's room and offered to read to her. She was touched, +gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly +proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French.</p> + +<p>"French? I am so fond of French." Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of +Racine as though it were a dish of green peas.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He +began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole +attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed +to improve the quality of the novel he was reading.</p> + +<p>At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked +up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while, +looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had +been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it, +had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt +before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched +tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like +nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The +lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasised with light and +shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by +Morales.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Le squelette était invisible</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Au temps heureux de l'art païen.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room.</p> + +<p>On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some +unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better +now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence listened +to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy, +lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity. +She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. +Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the +narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess +with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of +a literary or philosophic character—bombardments of Maeterlinck, of +Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. To-day the missiles were +medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of +harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. +Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in +him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that +every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness, +that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging over mysterious +gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than +what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different. +Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind +the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What +exactly was there? Mr. Hutton could never quite make out.</p> + +<p>"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence +was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off."</p> + +<p>"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that +prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by +reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. +Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart.</p> + +<p>"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said, +suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything with +skins and pips."</p> + +<p>"But I am so fond of them," Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well +to-day."</p> + +<p>"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at +his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her +good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it +affectionately two or three times.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants.</p> + +<p>"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again."</p> + +<p>"Do I ever blame you, dear?"</p> + +<p>"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I am +the perfect husband."</p> + +<p>They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under +the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in +which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good +to be alive," he said.</p> + +<p>"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed +hand into the sunlight.</p> + +<p>A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were +set on a folding table near the group of chairs.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara, +will you? The white bottle on the sideboard."</p> + +<p>"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any +case."</p> + +<p>He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an +instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting +up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence +was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the +cool obscurity of the house.</p> + +<p>"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired.</p> + +<p>"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to +take the taste away."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her +eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky.</p> + +<p>Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the +coffee-cups.</p> + +<p>"I've given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste +away. And here comes the medicine."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wineglass, half full of a pale +liquid.</p> + +<p>"It smells delicious," he said, as he handed it to his wife.</p> + +<p>"That's only the flavouring." She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and +made a grimace. "Ugh, it's so nasty. Give me my coffee."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. "You've made it like +syrup. But it's very nice, after that atrocious medicine."</p> + +<p>At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well +as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have +said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph +of an "I told you so" was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic, +and gave her his arm to the house.</p> + +<p>"A rest will do you good," he said. "By the way, I shan't be back till +after dinner."</p> + +<p>"But why? Where are you going?"</p> + +<p>"I promised to go to Johnson's this evening. We have to discuss the war +memorial, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wish you weren't going." Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. "Can't +you stay? I don't like being alone in the house."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear, I promised weeks ago." It was a bother having to lie like +this. "And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence."</p> + +<p>He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss +Spence received him aimed and intense.</p> + +<p>"Your wife is dreadfully ill," she fired off at him.</p> + +<p>"I thought she cheered up so much when you came."</p> + +<p>"That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely. +With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked—yes, +wrecked—anything might happen."</p> + +<p>"Libbard doesn't take so gloomy a view of poor Emily's health." Mr. +Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss +Spence's car was standing by the front door.</p> + +<p>"Libbard is only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist."</p> + +<p>He could not refrain from laughing. "You have a macabre passion for +specialists."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. "I am serious. I think poor +Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen at any moment."</p> + +<p>He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the +engine and climbed into his place, ready to drive off.</p> + +<p>"Shall I tell him to start?" He had no desire to continue the +conversation.</p> + +<p>Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction. +"Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon."</p> + +<p>Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved +forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone.</p> + +<p>A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was +waiting at the cross-roads. They dined together twenty miles from home, +at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are +only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr. +Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton +ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent +the evening in his library.</p> + +<p>When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely +affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past +the motionless form of M'Nab, they could see a bright and narrow +universe of forms and colours scooped out of the night by the electric +head-lamps.</p> + +<p>It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in +the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed +features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and +melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the +bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking +in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a +pleasing odour, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and +discreetly delicious.</p> + +<p>"Libbard?" said Mr. Hutton in surprise. "You here? Is my wife ill?"</p> + +<p>"We tried to fetch you earlier," the soft, melancholy voice replied. "It +was thought you were at Mr. Johnson's, but they had no news of you +there."</p> + +<p>"No, I was detained. I had a breakdown," Mr. Hutton answered irritably. +It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie.</p> + +<p>"Your wife wanted to see you urgently."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can go now." Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs.</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard laid a hand on his arm. "I am afraid it's too late."</p> + +<p>"Too late?" He began fumbling with his watch; it wouldn't come out of +the pocket.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Hutton passed away half an hour ago."</p> + +<p>The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did +not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local +cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence's words. At any +moment—at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right.</p> + +<p>"What happened?" he asked. "What was the cause?"</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard explained. It was heart failure brought on by a violent +attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an +irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had +been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease: +something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not +have suffered much.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>"It's a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow +match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his +top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face +with his handkerchief.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire +to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to +hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great +mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did +nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their +dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. +Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the +bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he +couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were +drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and +motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background +of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and +unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people +would soon be dead, too.</p> + +<p>That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of +Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton; +it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after +midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the +French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The +night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the +holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless +flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape, +black and grey under the moon.</p> + +<p>He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the +stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and +night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between +the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and +himself—himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. +Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his +side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There +were only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, +the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself—always +himself....</p> + +<p>Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of +it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound +of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he +had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I +will." There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the +past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar +resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, +into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a +more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would +live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he +would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would +be so.</p> + +<p>In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural +pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed +in the best modern way—silos and artificial manures and continuous +cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to +serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so +long—<i>The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace +had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to +find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had +been transformed by a good night's rest into his customary cheerfulness. +It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life +that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death +seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were +not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could +see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the +farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague +at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern +Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good +anecdote in Skelton's jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would +have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil.</p> + +<p>On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his +correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar +handwriting which he knew to be Doris's. He opened it, and began to +read. She didn't know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife +dying like that, and so suddenly—it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton +sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. +But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or +depressed, then I can't help remembering it is there so close, and +I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and +me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so +lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don't know what to do. I +can't get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless +without you. I didn't mean to write to you; I meant to wait till +you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was +so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn't +help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world +but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is +nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have +been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t +understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so +dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love +me a little, don't you, Teddy Bear?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, +worshipped for having seduced the girl—it was too much. It had just +been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no +other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very +little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably +been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to +be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of +reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known +pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew +beforehand—so well, so well—that there was no interest or pleasure to +be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch +came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old +stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife's maid, and Edith, the girl +on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and +others—there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and +boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet.... +Experience doesn't teach.</p> + +<p>Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he +wouldn't see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was +saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old +bailiff was more irritating than usual.</p> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> + +<p>Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier +at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated +happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed +the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a +tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his +side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, +the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a +fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn +oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had +triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was +hopeless, hopeless.</p> + +<p>For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The +girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her +direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains +to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair +on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there +moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so +be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of +irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. +In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, +bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses.</p> + +<p>The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The +whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter.</p> + +<p>"Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?" The question came +faintly from distant worlds of love.</p> + +<p>"I think I know somebody who does," Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine +laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and +resound.</p> + +<p>"Who? Tell me. What do you mean?" The voice had come very close; charged +with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate +world.</p> + +<p>"A—ah!"</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"You'll never guess." Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow +tedious, and then pronounced the name "Janet Spence."</p> + +<p>Doris was incredulous. "Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?" It +was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too.</p> + +<p>"But it's quite true," he said. "She adores me." Oh, the vast joke. He +would go and see her as soon as he returned—see and conquer. "I believe +she wants to marry me," he added.</p> + +<p>"But you wouldn't ... you don't intend...."</p> + +<p>The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. "I +intend to marry you," he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had +ever made in his life.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was +agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the +autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. +Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers.</p> + +<p>The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss +Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda.</p> + +<p>"I was expecting you to come."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Hutton gallantly replied.</p> + +<p>They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place—a little old +stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had +left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della +Robbia plaque.</p> + +<p>"I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn," said Mr. Hutton. He felt +like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous +excitement.</p> + +<p>"Italy...." Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. "I feel drawn +there too."</p> + +<p>"Why not let yourself be drawn?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. One somehow hasn't the energy and initiative to set out +alone."</p> + +<p>"Alone...." Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing. "Yes, travelling +alone isn't much fun."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still +closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself +for what seemed a very long time.</p> + +<p>Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly +started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they +looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the +farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A +huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of +thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first +drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton +sat on in the growing darkness.</p> + +<p>Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively.</p> + +<p>"I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don't +you?"</p> + +<p>"Most certainly." But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes +generalisations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. +Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid +existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had +always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he +wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy—happier than most men. And +now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the +secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when +Miss Spence went on speaking.</p> + +<p>"People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our +lives."</p> + +<p>"Me?" said Mr. Hutton surprised.</p> + +<p>"Poor Henry! Fate hasn't treated either of us very well."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, it might have treated me worse."</p> + +<p>"You re being cheerful. That's brave of you. But don't think I can't see +behind the mask."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more +heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked +on, shouting against the noise.</p> + +<p>"I have understood you so well and for so long."</p> + +<p>A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes +were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed +her.</p> + +<p>"You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathise +with you in your solitude. Your marriage ..."</p> + +<p>The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence's voice became audible +once more with the words:</p> + +<p>"... could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a +soul mate."</p> + +<p>A soul mate—he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. Georgette +Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck. He had seen that in +the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted +him in her imagination—a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of +goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he +was what?—Who knows?</p> + +<p>"My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too." Miss +Spence laid her hand on his knee. "You were so patient." Another flash. +She was still aimed, dangerously. "You never complained. But I could +guess—I could guess."</p> + +<p>"How wonderful of you!" So he was an <i>âme incomprise</i>.</p> + +<p>"Only a woman's intuition...."</p> + +<p>The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the +rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalised. +Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them.</p> + +<p>"Don't you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this +storm?" He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. +"Passion makes one the equal of the elements."</p> + +<p>What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said "Yes," and +ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took +fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was +serious—terribly serious. He was appalled.</p> + +<p>Passion? "No," he desperately answered. "I am without passion."</p> + +<p>But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on +with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapidly, however, and in such a +burningly intimate whisper that Mr. Hutton found it very difficult to +distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could +make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, +and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her +still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying +intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close +at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel +of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn't it rather—yes, +wasn't it rather George Robey?</p> + +<p>He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, +Pretending he had seen a burglar—Stop thief, stop thief!—and dash off +into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart +attack? or that he had seen, a ghost—Emily's ghost—in the garden? +Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to +Miss Spence's words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his +thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I honoured you for that, Henry," she was saying.</p> + +<p>Honoured him for what?</p> + +<p>"Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the +marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect +you and admire you, and—shall I dare say the word?—"</p> + +<p>Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late.</p> + +<p>"... yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we're free now, Henry."</p> + +<p>Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the +floor by his chair.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too."</p> + +<p>Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that +she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't, Janet," he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. +"Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed." He patted her +shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her +still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been +sitting.</p> + +<p>Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, +he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door +noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was +shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a +noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr. Hutton +splashed along, not caring if he got wet.</p> + +<p>How heartrendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse +that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why +couldn't she have played the game that he was playing the heartless, +amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn't, she +couldn't play that game; he had known and persisted.</p> + +<p>What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly +stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black bosomed and charged +with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had +sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining +that his toy had drawn the lightning.</p> + +<p>She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying.</p> + +<p>But why hadn't he been able to keep up the game? Why had his +irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold +world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned +steady and luminous in his mind—the idea of flight. He must get away at +once.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>IV</h3> + + +<p>"What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>There was a silence. Mr. Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the +parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over +Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of +the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one +looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the +bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of +Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in +the September sunshine.</p> + +<p>"Are you worried about anything?"</p> + +<p>"No, thank you."</p> + +<p>"Tell me, Teddy Bear."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear, there's nothing to tell." Mr. Hutton turned round, +smiled, and patted the girl's hand. "I think you'd better go in and have +your siesta. It's too hot for you here."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?"</p> + +<p>"When I've finished my cigar."</p> + +<p>"All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear." Slowly, +reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards +the house.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be +alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless +solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving +hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These +last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always +with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good +to be alone.</p> + +<p>He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it; not without +reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something +unpleasant—nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his +sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it +was composed. The words "indecent haste," "social suicide," "scarcely +cold in her grave," "person of the lower classes," all occurred. They +were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and +right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid +letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the +third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It +was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he +had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! +Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr. Hutton found himself +trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling +names—he cursed the woman.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion +that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they +only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to +be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid.</p> + +<p>A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below +the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A +Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen +of the classical type—a little debased. Her profile might have been +taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved +floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. +Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand +of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad +temper.... Under her hideous black clothes, Mr. Hutton divined a +powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a +vague interest and curiosity. To-day the curiosity defined and focused +itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, +alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. He called +to her.</p> + +<p>"Armida!"</p> + +<p>The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so +easy a virtue, that Mr. Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once +more—on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it +was too late. The girl continued to look up at him.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ha chiamito</i>?" she asked at last.</p> + +<p>Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility +every time.</p> + +<p>"<i>Scendo</i>" he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to +the terrace. Mr. Hutton counted them. Down, down, down, down.... He saw +a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the +next—from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>V</h3> + + +<p>For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of +every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since +George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a +warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this +tale of a murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. +Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so notable +because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to +man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. +For months he had lived in sin and fancied security——only to be dashed +at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder +will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were +in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had +been vague, but persistent, rumours in the neighbourhood; the police had +taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the post-mortem +examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of +the coroner's jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had +done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The +newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food +of a whole season.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton's first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give +evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a +scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip +seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action for +malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the +Spence woman for slander.</p> + +<p>The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The +experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they +were of opinion that the late Mrs. Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning.</p> + +<p>Arsenic poisoning.... Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, +Mr. Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated +insecticide in his green-houses to poison an army.</p> + +<p>It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against +him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous +tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a +tangled forest.</p> + +<p>When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have +been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, +about lunch-time. Clara, the parlour-maid, was called. Mrs. Hutton, she +remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr. Hutton had +volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence—ah, the +memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all!—Miss +Spence confirmed Clara's statement, and added that Mr. Hutton had come +back with the medicine already poured out in a wineglass, not in the +bottle.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton's indignation evaporated. He was dismayed, frightened. It was +all too fantastic to be taken seriously, and yet this nightmare was a +fact it was actually happening.</p> + +<p>M'Nab had seen them kissing, often. He had taken them for a drive on the +day of Mrs. Hutton's death. He could see them reflected in the +wind-screen, sometimes out of the tail of his eye.</p> + +<p>The inquest was adjourned. That evening Doris went to bed with a +headache. When he went to her room after dinner, Mr. Hutton found her +crying.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" He sat down on the edge of her bed and began to +stroke her hair. For a long time she did not answer, and he went on +stroking her hair mechanically, almost unconsciously; sometimes, even he +bent down and kissed her bare shoulder. He had his own affairs, however, +to think about. What had happened? How was it that the stupid gossip had +actually come true? Emily had died of arsenic poisoning. It was absurd, +impossible. The order of things had been broken, and he was at the mercy +of an irresponsibility. What had happened, what was going to happen? He +was interrupted in the midst of his thoughts.</p> + +<p>"It's my fault—it's my fault!" Doris suddenly sobbed out. "I shouldn't +have loved you; I oughtn't to have let you love me. Why was I ever +born?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton didn't say anything but looked down in silence at the abject +figure of misery lying on the bed.</p> + +<p>"If they do anything to you I shall kill myself."</p> + +<p>She sat up, held him for a moment at arm's length, and looked at him +with a kind of violence, as though she were never to see him again.</p> + +<p>"I love you, I love you, I love you." She drew him, inert and passive, +towards her, clasped him, pressed herself against him. "I didn't know +you loved me as much as that, Teddy Bear. But why did you do it—why did +you do it?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton undid her clasping arms and got up. His face became very red. +"You seem to take it for granted that I murdered my wife," he said. +"It's really too grotesque. What do you all take me for? A cinema hero?" +He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and +bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against +her. "It's all such damned stupidity. Haven't you any conception of a +civilised man's mentality? Do I look the sort of man who'd go about +slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love +with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand +that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which +you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me +to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go +about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he +knew—odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn't. +He closed the door behind him.</p> + +<p>"Teddy Bear!" He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. Teddy +Bear! The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonised. +Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then +withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was half-way down +the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly—throw herself +out of the window or God knows what! He listened attentively; there was +no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, +lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night +air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace. +How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking +along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-storey window of the +Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should +he go back? He was damned if he would; he hated her.</p> + +<p>He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was +happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could +find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its +horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with +tears; he wanted so passionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily +had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still +so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer +delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as +seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the +Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to +the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet +southern wines—Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas—others would drink +them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes +between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty +perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering +unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He +would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt +that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he +had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as +wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God +existed after all.</p> + +<p>He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by +his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him +almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. "God +bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and +Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They +were all dead now all except Cissie.</p> + +<p>His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his +spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying +on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a +blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have +drunk about half of it.</p> + +<p>"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find +him bending over her.</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences. +"You mustn't do this again," he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the +room.</p> + +<p>"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly.</p> + +<p>Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to +prevent you," he said. "Only yourself and your baby. Isn't it rather bad +luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you +want to go out of it?"</p> + +<p>Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't."</p> + +<p>Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself +now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he +loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and +cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had +become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At six o'clock he +undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours' sleep. In the course of +the same afternoon the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful +Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>VI</h3> + + +<p>Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in +the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something +that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from +nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She +talked to him a great deal—mostly about the Hutton case.... Her moral +indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that +one had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one +could have been for so long mistaken about the man's character? (But she +had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off +with—so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that +the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the posthumous child of a +condemned and executed criminal—revolted her; the thing was shocking an +obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed +bromide.</p> + +<p>One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. +"By the way," he said in his soft, melancholy voice, "I suppose it was +really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton."</p> + +<p>Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, +and then quietly said, "Yes." After that she started to cry.</p> + +<p>"In the coffee, I suppose."</p> + +<p>She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in +his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping +draught.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II_PERMUTATIONS_AMONG_THE_NIGHTINGALES" id="II_PERMUTATIONS_AMONG_THE_NIGHTINGALES"></a>II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES</h2> + + + +<h4>A PLAY</h4> + + +<p><i>It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the +garden façade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage—a bare +white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten +feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the +lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through which a yellow +radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or +three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, +ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set. +At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of +the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous +June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down +to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are +made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender +towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing +of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost +deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest</i>, COUNT +ALBERTO TIRETTA, <i>is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic +despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully +sympathetic at his side</i>, ALBERTO <i>is a little man with large lustrous +eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the +pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ—almost as pretty +and sentimental as Murillo's little beggars.</i></p> + + + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left +covering his eyes</i>). Whereupon, Waiter (<i>he is reciting a tale of +woes</i>), she slammed the door in my face. (<i>He brings down his +gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table</i>.)</p> + +<p>WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible!</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a +little weary. (<i>The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under +his arm and fills Alberto's glass.</i>)</p> + +<p>WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>throwing down a note</i>). Keep the change.</p> + +<p>WAITER (<i>bowing</i>). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I +should beat her. (<i>He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of +illustration slaps its black polished flanks.</i>)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her.</p> + +<p>WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern +disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I assure you, Signore, a +pleasure.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts. +My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity. +Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please.</p> + +<p>WAITER (<i>pouring out the brandy</i>). Delicacy, purity.... Ah, believe me, +Signore ... That will be one lira twenty-five.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic +gesture</i>). Keep the change.</p> + +<p>WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, +purity.... You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, +beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the +Signore's sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen +years old, and what eyes, what forms!</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of +the young lady (<i>he points towards the glass doors</i>). Remember she is an +American. (<i>The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel</i>.)</p> + + + +<p>SIDNEY DOLPHIN <i>and</i> MISS AMY TOOMIS</p> + +<p><i>come out together on to the terrace.</i> MISS AMY <i>supports a well-shaped +head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from +Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses +sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten +Toomis millions</i>. SIDNEY DOLPHIN <i>has a romantic aristocratic +appearance. The tailoring of</i> 1830 <i>would suit him. Balzac would have +described his face as</i> plein de poésie. <i>In effect he does happen to be +a poet. His two volumes of verse, "Zeotrope and 'Trembling Ears," have +been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are +poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain. They may be +merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain. +Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at +one of the little iron tables</i>, ALBERTO <i>they do not see; the shadow of +the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in +savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There +is a long, uncomfortable silence</i>. DOLPHIN <i>assumes the Thinker's +mask—the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead</i>, AMY +<i>regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her +interest in him</i>, DOLPHIN <i>racks his brains to think of some way of +exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to +play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests</i>. AMY <i>makes a +social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones.</i> AMY. It's +been a wonderful day, hasn't it?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>starting, as though roused from profoundest thought</i>). Yes, +yes, it has.</p> + +<p>AMY. You don't often get it as fine as this in England, I guess.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Not often.</p> + +<p>AMY. Nor do we over at home.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. So I should suppose. (<i>Silence. A spasm of anguish crosses</i> +DOLPHIN'S <i>face; then he reassumes the old Thinker's mask.</i> AMY <i>looks +at him for a little longer, then, unable to suppress her growing +curiosity, she says with a sudden burst of childish confidence:</i>)</p> + +<p>AMY. It must be wonderful to be able to think as hard as you do, Mr. +Dolphin. Or are you sad about something?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>looks up, smiles, and blushes; a spell has been broken</i>). The +finger at the temple, Miss Toomis, is not the barrel of a revolver.</p> + +<p>AMY. That means you're not specially sad about anything. Just thinking.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Just thinking.</p> + +<p>AMY. What about?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Oh, just life, you know—life and letters.</p> + +<p>AMY. Letters? Do you mean love letters.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. No, no. Letters in the sense of literature; letters as opposed +to life.</p> + +<p>AMY. (<i>disappointed</i>). Oh, literature. They used to teach us literature +at school. But I could never understand Emerson. What do you think +about literature for?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. It interests me, you know. I read it; I even try to write it.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>very much excited</i>). What, are you a writer, a poet, Mr. Dolphin?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Alas, it is only too true; I am.</p> + +<p>AMY. But what do you write?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Verse and prose, Miss Toomis. Just verse and prose.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>with enthusiasm</i>). Isn't that interesting. I've never met a poet +before, you know.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Fortunate being. Why, before I left England I attended a +luncheon of the Poetry Union at which no less than a hundred and +eighty-nine poets were present. The sight of them made me decide to go +to Italy.</p> + +<p>AMY. Will you show me your books?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Certainly not, Miss Toomis. That would ruin our friendship. I +am insufferable in my writings. In them I give vent to all the horrible +thoughts and impulses which I am too timid to express or put into +practice in real life. Take me as you find me here, a decent specimen of +a man, shy but able to talk intelligently when the layers of ice are +broken, aimless, ineffective, but on the whole quite a good sort.</p> + +<p>AMY. But I know that man already, Mr. Dolphin. I want to know the poet. +Tell me what the poet is like.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. He is older, Miss Toomis, than the rocks on which he sits. He +is villainous. He is ... but there, I really must stop. It was you who +set me going, though. Did you do it on purpose.</p> + +<p>AMY. Do what on purpose?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Make me talk about myself. If you want to get people to like +you, you must always lead the conversation on to the subject of their +characters. Nothing pleases them so much. They'll talk with enthusiasm +for hours and go away saying that you're the most charming, cleverest +person they've ever met. But of course you knew that already. You re +Machiavellian.</p> + +<p>AMY. Machiavellian? You're the first person that's ever said that. I +always thought I was very simple and straight-forward. People say about +me that.... Ah, now I'<i>m</i> talking about myself. That was unscrupulous of +you. But you shouldn't have told me about the trick if you wanted it to +succeed.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Yes. It was silly of me. If I hadn't, you'd have gone on +talking about yourself and thought me the nicest man in the world.</p> + +<p>AMY. I want to hear about your poetry. Are you writing any now?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I have composed the first line of a magnificent epic. But I +can't get any further.</p> + +<p>AMY. How does it go?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Like this (<i>he clears his throat</i>). "Casbeen has been, and +Moghreb is no more." Ah, the transience of all sublunary things! But +inspiration has stopped short there.</p> + +<p>AMY. What exactly does it mean?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Ah, there you re asking too much, Miss Toomis. Waiter, some +coffee for two.</p> + +<p>WAITER (<i>who is standing in the door of the lounge</i>). Si, Signore. Will +the lady and gentleman take it here, or in the gardens, perhaps?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. A good suggestion. Why shouldn't the lady and gentleman take it +in the garden?</p> + +<p>AMY. Why not?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. By the fountain, then, Waiter. We can talk about ourselves +there to the tune of falling waters.</p> + +<p>AMY. And you shall recite your poetry, Mr. Dolphin. I just love poetry. +Do you know Mrs. Wilcox's <i>Poems of Passion</i>? (<i>They go out to the left. +A nightingale utters two or three phrases of song and from far down the +bells of the city jangle the three-quarters and die slowly away into the +silence out of which they rose and came together.</i>)</p> + +<p>(LUCREZIA GRATTAROL <i>has come out of the hotel just in time to overhear +Miss Toomis's last remark, just in time to see her walk slowly away with +a hand on</i> SIDNEY DOLPHIN's <i>arm</i>. LUCREZIA <i>has a fine thoroughbred +appearance, an aquiline nose, a finely curved sensual mouth, a superb +white brow, a quivering nostril. She is the last of a family whose name +is as illustrious in Venetian annals as that of Foscarini, Tiepolo, or +Tron. She stamps a preposterously high-heeled foot and tosses her +head.</i>)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Passion! Passion, indeed. An American! (<i>She starts to run +after the retreating couple, when</i> ALBERTO, <i>who has been sitting with +his head between his hands, looks up and catches sight of the +newcomer</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Lucrezia!</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>starts, for in the shade beneath the trees she had not seen +him</i>). Oh! You gave me such a fright, Alberto. I'm in a hurry now. Later +on, if you....</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>in a desperate voice that breaks into a sob</i>). Lucrezia! You +must come and talk to me. You must.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But I tell you I can't now, Alberto. Later on.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>the tears streaming down his cheeks</i>). Now, now, now! You must +come now. I am lost if you don't.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>looking indecisively first at</i> ALBERTO <i>and then along the +path down which</i> AMY <i>and</i> SIDNEY DOLPHIN <i>have disappeared</i>). But +supposing I am lost if I do come?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. But you couldn't be as much lost as I am. Ah, you don't know +what it is to suffer. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss wass ich leide. +Oh, Lucrezia.... (<i>He sobs unrestrainedly</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>goes over to where</i> ALBERTO <i>is sitting. She pats his +shoulder and his bowed head of black curly hair</i>). There, there, my +little Bertino. Tell me what it is. You mustn't cry. There, there.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>drying his eyes and rubbing his head, like a cat, avid of +caresses, against her hand</i>). How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia? You +are like a mother to me.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I know. That's just what's so dangerous.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>lets his head fall upon her bosom</i>). I come to you for +comfort, like a tired child, Lucrezia.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Poor darling! (<i>She strokes his hair, twines its thick black +tendrils round her fingers</i>, ALBERTO <i>is abjectly pathetic</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>with closed eyes and a seraphic smile</i>). Ah, the suavity, the +beauty of this maternal instinct!</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>with a sudden access of energy and passion</i>). The +disgustingness of it, you mean. (<i>She pushes him from her. His head +wobbles once, as though it were inanimate, before he straightens into +life</i>.) The maternal instinct. Ugh. It's been the undoing of too many +women. You men come with your sentimental babyishness and exploit it for +your own lusts. Be a man, Bertino. Be a woman, I mean, if you can.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>looking up at her with eyes full of doglike, dumb reproach</i>). +Lucrezia! You, too? Is there nobody who cares for me? This is the +unkindest cut of all. I may as well die. (<i>He relapses into tears</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>who has started to go, turns back, irresolute</i>). Now, don't +cry, Bertino. Can't you behave like a reasonable being? (<i>She makes as +though to go again</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>through his sobs</i>). You too, Lucrezia! Oh, I can't bear it, I +can't bear it.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>turning back desperately</i>). But what do you want me to do? +Why should you expect <i>me</i> to hold your hand?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. I thought better of you, Lucrezia. Let me go. There is nothing +left for me now but death. (<i>He rises to his feet, takes a step or two, +and then collapses into another chair, unable to move</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>torn between anger and remorse</i>). Now do behave yourself +sensibly, Bertino. There, there ... you mustn't cry. I'm sorry if I've +hurt you. (<i>Looking towards the left along the path taken by</i> AMY <i>and</i> +DOLPHIN.) Oh, damnation! (<i>She stamps her foot</i>.) Here, Bertino, do pull +yourself together. (<i>She raises him up</i>.) There, now you must stop +crying. (<i>But as soon as she lets go of him his head falls back on to +the iron table with an unpleasant, meaty bump. That bump is too much +for</i> LUCREZIA. <i>She bends over him, strokes his head, even kisses the +lustrous curls</i>.) Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I have been a beast. But, +tell me first, what's the matter, Bertino? What is it, my poor darling? +Tell me.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Nobody loves me.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But we're all devoted to you, Bertino mio.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. She isn't. To-day she shut the door in my face.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. She? You mean the French-woman, the one you told me about? +Louise, wasn't she?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Yes, the one with the golden hair.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. And the white legs. I remember: you saw her bathing.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>lays his hand on his heart</i>). Ah, don't remind me of it. (<i>His +face twitches convulsively</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. And now she's gone and shut the door in your face.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. In my face, Lucrezia.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Poor darling!</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. For me there is nothing now but the outer darkness.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Is the door shut forever, then?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Definitively, for ever.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But have you tried knocking? Perhaps, after all, it might be +opened again, if only a crack.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. What, bruise my hands against the granite of her heart?</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Don't be too poetical, Bertino mio. Why not try again, in any +case?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. You give me courage.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. There's no harm in trying, you know.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Courage to live, to conquer. (<i>He beats his breast</i>.) I am a +man again, thanks to you, Lucrezia, my inspirer, my Muse, my Egeria. How +can I be sufficiently grateful. (<i>He kisses her</i>.) I am the child of +your spirit. (<i>He kisses her again</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Enough, enough. I am not ambitious to be a mother, yet awhile. +Quickly now, Bertino, I know you will succeed.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>cramming his hat down on his head and knocking with his +walking-stick on the ground</i>). Succeed or die, Lucrezia. (<i>He goes out +with a loud martial stamp</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>to the waiter who is passing across the stage with a +coffee-pot and cups on a tray</i>). Have you seen the Signorina Toomis, +Giuseppe?</p> + +<p>WAITER. The Signorina is down in the garden. So is the Signore Dolphin. +By the fountain, Signorina. This is the Signore's coffee.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Have you a mother, Giuseppe?</p> + +<p>WAITER. Unfortunately, Signorina.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Unfortunately? Does she treat you badly, then?</p> + +<p>WAITER. Like a dog, Signorina.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Ah, I should like to see your mother. I should like to ask her +to give me some hints on how to bring up children.</p> + +<p>WAITER. But surely, Signorina, you are not expecting, you—ah....</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Only figuratively, Giuseppe. My children are spiritual +children.</p> + +<p>WAITER. Precisely, precisely. My mother, alas! is not a spiritual +relation. Nor is my fiançée.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I didn't know you were engaged.</p> + +<p>WAITER. To an angel of perdition. Believe me, Signorina, I go to my +destruction in that woman—go with open eyes. There is no escape. She is +what is called in the Holy Bible (<i>crosses himself</i>) a Fisher of Men.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. You have remarkable connections, Giuseppe.</p> + +<p>WAITER. I am honoured by your words, Signorina. But the coffee becomes +cold. (<i>He hurries out to the left</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. In the garden! By the fountain! And there's the nightingale +beginning to sing in earnest! Good heavens! what may not already have +happened? (<i>She runs out after the waiter</i>.)</p> + +<p>(<i>Two persons emerge from the hotel</i>, the VICOMTE DE BARBAZANGE <i>and the</i> +BARONESS KOCH DE WORMS. PAUL DE BARBAZANGE <i>is a young man—twenty-six +perhaps of exquisite grace. Five foot ten, well built, dark hair, sleek +as marble, the most refined aristocratic features, and a monocle</i>, +SIMONE DE WORMS <i>is forty, a ripe Semitic beauty. Five years more and +the bursting point of overripeness will have been reached. But now, +thanks to massage, powerful corsets, skin foods, and powder, she is +still a beauty—a beauty of the type Italians admire, cushioned, +steatopygous.</i> PAUL, <i>who has a faultless taste in bric-à-brac and +women, and is by instinct and upbringing an ardent anti-Semite, finds +her infinitely repulsive. The Baronne enters with a loud shrill giggle. +She gives</i> PAUL <i>a slap with her green feather fan</i>.)</p> + + + +<p>SIMONE. Oh, you naughty boy! Quelle histoire. Mon Dieu! How dare you +tell me such a story!</p> + +<p>PAUL. For you, Baronne, I would risk anything even your displeasure.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Charming boy. But stories of that kind.... And you look so +innocent, too! Do you know any more like it?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>suddenly grave</i>). Not of that description. But I will tell you a +story of another kind, a true story, a tragic story.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Did I ever tell you how I saw a woman run over by a train? Cut +to pieces, literally, to pieces. So disagreeable. I'll tell you later. +But now, what about your story?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, it's nothing, nothing.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. But you promised to tell it me.</p> + +<p>PAUL. It's only a commonplace anecdote. A young man, poor but noble, +with a name and a position to keep up. A few youthful follies, a +mountain of debts, and no way out except the revolver. This is all dull +and obvious enough. But now follows the interesting part of the story. +He is about to take that way out, when he meets the woman of his dreams, +the goddess, the angel, the ideal. He loves, and he must die without a +word. (<i>He turns his face away from the Baronne, as though his emotion +were too much for him, which indeed it is</i>.)</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Vicomte—Paul—this young man is you?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>solemnly</i>). He is.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. And the woman?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, I can't, I mayn't tell you.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. The woman! Tell me, Paul.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>turning towards her and falling on his knees</i>). The woman, +Simone, is you. Ah, but I had no right to say it.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>quivering with emotion</i>). My Paul. (<i>She clasps his head to her +bosom. A grimace of disgust contorts Paul's classical features. He +endures Simone's caresses with a stoical patience</i>.) But what is this +about a revolver? That is only a joke, Paul, isn't it? Say it isn't +true.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Alas, Simone, too true. (<i>He taps his coat pocket</i>.) There it +lies. To-morrow I have a hundred and seventy thousand francs to pay, or +be dishonoured. I cannot pay the sum. A Barbazange does not survive +dishonour. My ancestors were Crusaders, preux chevaliers to a man. Their +code is mine. Dishonour for me is worse than death.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Mon Dieu, Paul, how noble you are! (<i>She lays her hands on his +shoulder, leans back, and surveys him at arm's length, a look of pride +and anxious happiness on her face</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>dropping his eyes modestly</i>). Not at all. I was born noble, and +noblesse oblige, as we say in our family. Farewell, Simone, I love +you—and I must die. My last thought will be of you. (<i>He kisses her +hand, rises to his feet, and makes as though to go</i>.)</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>clutching him by the arm</i>). No, Paul, no. You must not, shall +not, do anything rash. A hundred and seventy thousand francs, did you +say? It is paltry. Is there no one who could lend or give you the money?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Not a soul. Farewell, Simone.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Stay, Paul. I hardly dare to ask it of you—you with such lofty +ideas of honour—but would you ... from me?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Take money from a woman? Ah, Simone, tempt me no more. I might do +an ignoble act.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. But from me, Paul, from me. I am not in your eyes a woman like +any other woman, am I?</p> + +<p>PAUL. It is true that my ancestors, the Crusaders, the preux chevaliers, +might in all honour receive gifts from the ladies of their +choice—chargers, swords, armour, or tenderer mementoes, such as gloves +or garters. But money—no; who ever heard of their taking money?</p> + +<p>SIMONE. But what would be the use of my giving you swords and horses? +You could never use them. Consider, my knight, my noble Sir Paul, in +these days the contests of chivalry have assumed a different form; the +weapons and the armour have changed. Your sword must be of gold and +paper; your breastplate of hard cash; your charger of gilt-edged +securities. I offer you the shining panoply of the modern crusader. Will +you accept it?</p> + +<p>PAUL. You are eloquent, Simone. You could win over the devil himself +with that angelic voice of yours. But it cannot be. Money is always +money. The code is clear. I cannot accept your offer. Here is the way +out. (<i>He takes an automatic pistol out of his pocket</i>.) Thank you, +Simone, and good-bye. How wonderful is the love of a pure woman.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Paul, Paul, give that to me! (<i>She snatches the pistol from his +hand</i>.) If anything were to happen to you, Paul, I should kill myself +with this. You must live, you must consent to accept the money. You +mustn't let your honour make a martyr of you.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>brushing a tear from his eyes</i>). No, I can't.... Give me that +pistol, I beg you.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. For my sake, Paul.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, you make it impossible for me to act as the voices of dead +ancestors tell me I should.... For your sake, then, Simone, I consent +to live. For your sake I dare to accept the gift you offer.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>kissing his hand in an outburst of gratitude</i>). Thank you, +thank you, Paul. How happy I am!</p> + +<p>PAUL. I, too, light of my life.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. My month's allowance arrived to-day. I have the cheque here. +(<i>She takes it out of her corsage</i>.) Two hundred thousand francs. It's +signed already. You can get it cashed as soon as the hanks open +to-morrow.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>moved by an outburst of genuine emotion kisses indiscriminately +the cheque, the Baronne, his own hands</i>). My angel, you have saved me. +How can I thank you? How can I love you enough? Ah, mon petit bouton de +rose.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Oh, naughty, naughty! Not now, my Paul; you must wait till some +other time.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I burn with impatience.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Quelle fougue! Listen, then. In an hour's time, Paul chéri, in +my boudoir; I shall be alone.</p> + +<p>PAUL. An hour? It is an eternity.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>playfully</i>). An hour. I won't relent. Till then, my Paul. (<i>She +blows a kiss and runs out: the scenery trembles at her passage.</i>)</p> + +<p>(PAUL <i>looks at the cheque, then pulls out a large silk handkerchief and +wipes his neck inside his collar</i>.) (DOLPHIN <i>drifts in from the left. +He is smoking a cigarette, but he does not seem to be enjoying it</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. Alone?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Alas!</p> + +<p>PAUL. Brooding on the universe as usual? I envy you your philosophic +detachment. Personally, I find that the world is very much too much with +us, and the devil too; (<i>he looks at the cheque in his hand</i>) and above +all the flesh. My god, the flesh.... (<i>He wipes his neck again</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. My philosophic detachment? But it's only a mask to hide the +ineffectual longings I have to achieve contact with the world.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But surely nothing is easier. One just makes a movement and +impinges on one's fellow-beings.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Not with a temperament like mine. Imagine a shyness more +powerful than curiosity or desire, a paralysis of all the faculties. You +are a man of the world. You were born with a forehead of brass to +affront every social emergency. Ah, if you knew what a torture it is to +find yourself in the presence of someone a woman, perhaps—someone in +whom you take an interest that is not merely philosophic; to find +oneself in the presence of such a person and to be incapable, yes, +physically incapable, of saying a word to express your interest in her +or your desire to possess her intimacy. Ah, I notice I have slipped into +the feminine. Inevitably, for of course the person is always a she.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Of course, of course. That goes without saying. But what's the +trouble? Women are so simple to deal with.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I know. Perfectly simply if one's in the right state of mind. I +have found that out myself, for moments come alas, how rarely!—when I +am filled with a spirit of confidence, possessed by some angel or devil +of power. Ah, then I feel myself to be superb. I carry all before me. In +those brief moments the whole secret of the world is revealed to me. I +perceive that the supreme quality in the human soul is effrontery. +Genius in the man of action is simply the apotheosis of charlatanism. +Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mr. Gladstone, Lloyd George—what are +they? Just ordinary human beings projected through the magic lantern of +a prodigious effrontery and so magnified to a thousand times larger than +life. Look at me. I am far more intelligent than any of these fabulous +figures; my sensibility is more refined than theirs, I am morally +superior to any of them. And yet, by my lack of charlatanism, I am made +less than nothing. My qualities are projected through the wrong end of a +telescope and the world perceives me far smaller than I really am. But +the world—who cares about the world? The only people who matter are the +women.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Very true, my dear Dolphin. The women.... (<i>He looks at the cheque +and mops himself once more with his mauve silk handkerchief</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. To-night was one of my moments of triumph. I felt myself +suddenly free of all my inhibitions.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I hope you profited by the auspicious occasion.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I did. I was making headway. I had—but I don't know why I +should bore you with my confidences. Curious that one should be dumb +before intimates and open one's mind to an all but stranger. I must +apologise.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But I am all attention and sympathy, my dear Dolphin. And I take +it a little hardly that you should regard me as a stranger. (<i>He lays a +hand on Dolphin's shoulder</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Thank you, Barbazange, thank you. Well, if you consent to be +the receptacle of my woes, I shall go on pouring them out.... Miss +Toomis.... But tell me frankly what you think of her.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Well....</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. A little too ingenuous, a little silly even, eh?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Now you say so, she certainly isn't very intellectually +stimulating.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Precisely. But ... oh, those china-blue eyes, that +ingenuousness, that pathetic and enchanting silliness! She touches lost +chords in one's heart. I love the Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, I am +transported by Beethoven's hundred-and-eleventh Sonata; but the fact +doesn't prevent my being moved to tears by the last luscious waltz +played by the hotel orchestra. In the best constructed brains there are +always spongy surfaces that are sensitive to picture postcards and +Little Nelly and the End of a Perfect Day. Miss Toomis has found out my +Achilles's heel. She is boring, ridiculous, absurd to a degree, but oh! +how moving, how adorable.</p> + +<p>PAUL. You're done for, my poor Dolphin, sunk—spurlos.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. And I was getting on so well, was revelling in my new-found +confidence, and, knowing its transience, was exploiting it for all I +was worth. I had covered an enormous amount of ground and then, hey +presto! at a blow all my labour was undone. Actuated by what malice I +don't know, la Lucrezia swoops down like a vulture, and without a +by-your-leave or excuse of any kind carries off Miss Toomis from under +my very eyes. What a woman! She terrifies me. I am always running away +from her.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Which means, I suppose, that she is always pursuing you.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. She has ruined my evening and, it may me, all my chances of +success. My precious hour of self-confidence will be wasted (though I +hope you'll not take offence at the word)—wasted on you.</p> + +<p>PAUL. It will return.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But when—but when? Till it does I shall be impotent and in +agony.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I know the agony of waiting. I myself was engaged to a Rumanian +princess in 1916. But owing to the sad collapse in the Rumanian rate of +exchange I have had to postpone our union indefinitely. It is painful, +but, believe me, it can be borne. (<i>He looks at the cheque and then at +his watch</i>.) There are other things which are much worse. Believe me, +Dolphin, it can be borne.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. I suppose it can. For, when all is said, there are damned few +of us who really take things much to heart. Julie de Lespinasses are +happily not common. I am even subnormal. At twenty I believed myself +passionate: one does at that age. But now, when I come to consider +myself candidly, I find that I am really one of those who never deeply +felt nor strongly willed. Everything is profoundly indifferent to me. I +sometimes try to depress myself with the thought that the world is a +cess-pool, that men are pathetic degenerates from the ape whose +laboriously manufactured ideals are pure nonsense and find no rhyme in +reality, that the whole of life is a bad joke which takes a long time +coming to an end. But it really doesn't upset me. I don't care a curse. +It's deplorable; one ought to care. The best people do care. Still, I +must say I should like to get possession of Miss Toomis. Confound that +Grattarol woman. What on earth did she want to rush me like that for, do +you suppose?</p> + + +<p>PAUL. I expect we shall find out now. (PAUL <i>jerks his head towards the +left.</i> LUCREZIA <i>and</i> AMY <i>are seen entering from the garden</i>, LUCREZIA +<i>holds her companion's arm and marches with a firm step towards the two +men</i>. AMY <i>suffers herself to be drugged along</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Vicomte, Miss Toomis wants you to tell her all about +Correggio.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>rather scared</i>). Oh, really—I....</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. And (<i>sternly</i>)—and Michelangelo. She is so much interested +in art.</p> + +<p>AMY. But please—don't trouble....</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>bowing gracefully</i>). I shall be delighted. And in return I hope +Miss Toomis will tell me all about Longfellow.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>brightening</i>). Oh yes, don't you just love Evangeline?</p> + +<p>PAUL. I do; and with your help, Miss Toomis, I hope I shall learn to +love her better.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>to</i> DOLPHIN, <i>who has been looking from</i> AMY <i>to the</i> VICOMTE +<i>and back again at</i> AMY <i>with eyes that betray a certain disquietude</i>). +You really must come and look at the moon rising over the hills, Mr. +Dolphin. One sees it best from the lower terrace. Shall we go?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>starts and shrinks</i>). But it's rather cold, isn't it? I +mean—I think I ought to go and write a letter.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Oh, you can do that to-morrow.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But really.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. You've no idea how lovely the moon looks.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But I must....</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>lays her hand on his sleeve and tows hint after her, crying +as she goes</i>). The moon, the moon.... (PAUL <i>and</i> AMY <i>regard their exit +in silence</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. He doesn't look as though he much wanted to go and see the moon.</p> + +<p>AMY. Perhaps he guesses what's in store for him.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>surprised</i>). What, you don't mean to say you realised all the +time?</p> + +<p>AMY. Realised what?</p> + +<p>PAUL. About la belle Lucrezia.</p> + +<p>AMY. I don't know what you mean. All I know is that she means to give +Mr. Dolphin a good talking to. He's so mercenary. It made me quite +indignant when she told me about him. Such a schemer, too. You know in +America we have very definite ideas about honour.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Here too, Miss Toomis.</p> + +<p>AMY. Not Mr. Dolphin. Oh dear, it made me so sad; more sad than angry. I +can never be grateful enough to Signorina Grattarol.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But I'm still at a loss to know exactly what you're talking about.</p> + +<p>AMY. And I am quite bewildered myself. Would you have believed it of +him? I thought him such a nice man.</p> + +<p>PAUL. What has he done?</p> + +<p>AMY. It's all for my money, Miss Grattarol told me. She knows. He was +just asking me to marry him, and I believe I would have said Yes. But +she came in just in the nick of time. It seems he only wanted to marry +me because I'm so rich. He doesn't care for me at all. Miss Grattarol +knows what he's like. It's awful, isn't it? Oh dear, I wouldn't have +thought it of him.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But you must forgive him, Miss Toomis. Money is a great +temptation. Perhaps if you gave him another chance....</p> + +<p>AMY. Impossible.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Poor Dolphin! He's such a nice young fellow.</p> + +<p>AMY. I thought so too. But he's false.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Don't be too hard on him. Money probably means too much to him. +It's the fault of his upbringing. No one who has not lived among the +traditions of our ancient aristocracy can be expected to have that +contempt, almost that hatred of wealth, which is the sign of true +nobility. If he had been brought up, as I was, in an old machicolated +castle on the Loire, surrounded by ancestral ghosts, imbued with the +spirit of the Crusaders and preux chevaliers who had inhabited the +place in the past, if he had learnt to know what noblesse oblige really +means, believe me, Miss Toomis, he could never have done such a thing.</p> + +<p>AMY. I should just think he couldn't, Monsieur de Barbazange.</p> + +<p>PAUL. You have no idea, Miss Toomis, how difficult it is for a man of +truly noble feelings to get over the fact of your great wealth. When I +heard that you were the possessor of a hundred million dollars....</p> + +<p>AMY. Oh, I'm afraid it's more than that. It's two hundred million.</p> + +<p>PAUL. ... of two hundred million dollars, then ... it only makes it +worse; I was very melancholy, Miss Toomis. For those two hundred million +dollars were a barrier, which a descendant of Crusaders and preux +chevaliers could not overleap. Honour, Miss Toomis, honour forbade. Ah, +if only that accursed money had not stood in the way.... When I first +saw you oh, how I was moved by that vision of beauty and innocence—I +wanted nothing better than to stand gazing on you for ever. But then I +heard about those millions. Dolphin was lucky to have felt no +restraints. But enough, enough. (<i>He checks a rising tide of emotion</i>.) +Give poor Dolphin another chance, Miss Toomis. At bottom he is a good +fellow, and he may learn in time to esteem you for your own sake and to +forget the dazzling millions.</p> + +<p>AMY. Never. I can only marry a man who is entirely disinterested.</p> + +<p>PAUL. But, can't you see, no disinterested man could ever bring himself +to ask you? How could he prove his disinterestedness? No one would +believe the purity of his intentions.</p> + +<p>AMY (<i>much moved</i>). It is for me to judge. I know a disinterested man +when I see him. Even in America we can understand honour.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>with a sob in his voice</i>). Good-bye Miss Toomis.</p> + +<p>AMY. But no, I don't want it to be good-bye.</p> + +<p>PAUL. It must be. Never shall it be said of a Barbazange that he hunted +a woman for her money.</p> + +<p>AMY. But what does it matter what the world says, if I say the opposite?</p> + +<p>PAUL. You say the opposite? Thank you, thank you. But no, good-bye.</p> + +<p>AMY. Stop. Oh! you're forcing me to do a most unwomanly thing. You're +making me ask you to marry me. You're the only disinterested man I've +ever met or, to judge from what I've seen of the world, I'm ever likely +to meet. Haven't you kept away from me in spite of your feelings? +Haven't you even tried to make me listen to another man—a man not +worthy to black your boots? Oh, it's so wonderful, so noble! It's like +something in a picture play. Paul, I offer myself to you. Will you take +me in spite of my millions?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>falling on his knees and kissing the hem of</i> AMY'S <i>skirt</i>). My +angel, you're right; what does it matter what the world says as long as +you believe in me? Amy, amie, bien-aimée.... Ah, it's too good too, too +good to be true! (<i>He rises to his feet and embraces her with an +unfeigned enthusiasm</i>.)</p> + +<p>AMY. Paul, Paul.... And so this is love. Isn't it wonderful?</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>looking round anxiously</i>). You mustn't tell anyone about our +engagement, my Amy. They might say unpleasant things in the hotel, you +know.</p> + +<p>AMY. Of course I won't talk about it. We'll keep our happiness to +ourselves, won't we?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Entirely to ourselves; and to-morrow we'll go to Paris and arrange +about being married.</p> + +<p>AMY. Yes, yes; we'll take the eight o'clock train.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Not the eight o clock, my darling. I have to go to the bank +to-morrow to do a little business. We must wait till the twelve thirty.</p> + +<p>AMY. Very well, then. The twelve-thirty. Oh, how happy I am!</p> + +<p>PAUL. So am I, my sweetheart. More than I can tell you. (<i>The sound of a +window being opened is heard. They look up and see the</i> BARONESS +<i>dressed in a peignoir of the tenderest blue, emerging on to the right +hand of the three balconies</i>.)</p> + +<p>AMY. Oh, my soul! I think I'd better go in. Good-night, my Paul. (<i>She +runs in</i>.)</p> + +<p>SIMONE. Has that horrid little American girl gone? (<i>She peers down, +then, reassured, she blows a kiss to</i> PAUL.) My Romeo!</p> + +<p>PAUL. I come, Juliet.</p> + +<p>SIMONE. There's a kiss for you.</p> + +<p>PAUL (<i>throwing kisses with both hands</i>). And there's one for you. And +another, and another. Two hundred million kisses, my angel.</p> + +<p>SIMONE (<i>giggling</i>). What a lot!</p> + +<p>PAUL. It is; you re quite right. Two hundred million.... I come, my +Juliet. (<i>He darts into the hotel, pausing when just inside the door and +out of sight of the</i> BARONESS, <i>to mop himself once again with his +enormous handkerchief. The operation over, he advances with a resolute +step, The</i> BARONESS <i>stands for a moment on the balcony. Then, seeing</i> +DOLPHIN <i>and</i> LUCREZIA <i>coming in from the left, she retires, closing +the window and drawing the curtains behind her</i>. DOLPHIN <i>comes striding +in</i>; LUCREZIA <i>follows a little behind, looking anxiously up at him</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Please, please....</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. NO, I won t listen to anything more. (<i>He walks with an +agitated step up and down the stage</i>. LUCREZIA <i>stands with one hand +resting on the back of a chair and the other pressed on her heart.)</i> Do +you mean to say you deliberately went and told her that I was only after +her money? Oh, it's too bad, too bad. It's infamous. And I hadn't the +faintest notion that she had any money. Besides, I don't want money; I +have quite enough of my own. It's infamous, infamous!</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I know it was a horrible thing to do. But I couldn't help it. +How could I stand by and see you being carried off by that silly little +creature?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. But I cared for her.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But not as I cared for you. I've got red blood in my veins; +she's got nothing but milk and water. You couldn't have been happy with +her. I can give you love of a kind she could never dream of. What does +she know of passion?</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Nothing, I am thankful to say. I don't want passion; can't you +understand that? I don't possess it myself and don't like it in others. +I am a man of sentimental affections, with a touch of quiet sensuality. +I don't want passion, I tell you. It's too violent; it frightens me. I +couldn't possibly live with you. You'd utterly shatter my peace of mind +in a day. Oh, how I wish you'd go away.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But Sidney, Sidney, can't you understand what it is to be +madly in love with somebody? You can't be so cruel.</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. You didn't think much of my well-being when you interfered +between Miss Toomis and me, did you? You've probably ruined my whole +life, that's all. I really don't see why you should expect me to have +any pity for you.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Very well, then, I shall kill myself. (<i>She bursts into +tears</i>.)</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN. Oh, but I assure you, one doesn't kill oneself for things like +that. (<i>He approaches her and pats her on the shoulder</i>.) Come, come, +don't worry about it.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>throws her arms round his neck</i>). Oh, Sidney, Sidney....</p> + +<p>DOLPHIN (<i>freeing himself with surprising energy and promptitude from +her embrace</i>). No, no, none of that, I beg. Another moment and we shall +be losing our heads. Personally I think I shall go to bed now. I should +advise you to do the same, Miss Grattarol. You're overwrought. We might +all be better for a small dose of bromide. (<i>He goes in</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>looking up and stretching forth her hands</i>). Sidney.... +(DOLPHIN <i>does not look round, and disappears through the glass door +into the hotel</i>, LUCREZIA <i>covers her face with her hands and sits for a +little sobbing silently. The nightingale sings on. Midnight sounds with +an infinite melancholy from all the twenty campaniles of the city in the +valley. From far away comes the spasmodic throbbing of a guitar and the +singing of an Italian voice, high-pitched, passionate, throaty. The +seconds pass</i>, LUCREZIA <i>rises to her feet and walks slowly into the +hotel. On the threshold she encounters the</i> VICOMTE <i>coming out</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. You, Signorina Lucrezia? I've escaped for a breath of fresh, cool +air. Mightn't we take a turn together? (LUCREZIA <i>shakes her head</i>.) Ah, +well, then, good-night. You'll be glad to hear that Miss Toomis knows +all about Correggio now.</p> + +<p>(<i>He inhales a deep breath of air. Then looking at his dinner-jacket he +begins brushing at it with his hand. A lamentable figure creeps in from +the left. It is</i> ALBERTO. <i>If he had a tail, it would be trailing on the +ground between his legs</i>.)</p> + +<p>PAUL. Hullo, Alberto. What is it? Been losing at cards?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Worse than that.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Creditors foreclosing?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Much worse.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Father ruined by imprudent speculations?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. No, no, no. It's nothing to do with money.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Oh, well, then. It can't be anything very serious. It's women, I +suppose.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. My mistress refuses to see me. I have been beating on her door +for hours in vain.</p> + +<p>PAUL. I wish we all had your luck, Bertino. Mine opens her door only too +promptly. The difficulty is to get out again. Does yours use such an +awful lot of this evil-smelling powder? I'm simply covered with it. Ugh! +(<i>He brushes his coat again</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Can't you be serious, Paul?</p> + +<p>PAUL. Of course I can ... about a serious matter. But you can't expect +me to pull a long face about your mistress, can you, now? Do look at +things in their right proportions.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. It's no use talking to you. You're heartless, soulless.</p> + +<p>PAUL. What you mean, my dear Alberto, is that I'm relatively speaking +bodiless. Physical passion never goes to my head. I'm always <i>compos +mentis</i>. You aren't, that's all.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Oh, you disgust me. I think I shall hang myself to-night.</p> + +<p>PAUL. Do. It will give us something to talk about at lunch to-morrow.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Monster! (<i>He goes into the hotel</i>, PAUL <i>strolls out towards +the garden, whistling an air from Mozart as he goes. The window on the +left opens and</i> LUCREZIA <i>steps on to her balcony. Uncoiled, her red +hair falls almost to her waist. Her nightdress is always half slipping +off one shoulder or the other, like those loose-bodied Restoration gowns +that reveal the tight-blown charms of Kneller's Beauties. Her feet are +bare. She is a marvellously romantic figure, as she stands there, +leaning on the balustrade, and with eyes more sombre than night, gazing +into the darkness. The nightingales, the bells, the guitar, and +passionate voice strike up. Great stars palpitate in the sky. The moon +has swum imperceptibly to the height of heaven. In the garden below +flowers are yielding their souls into the air, censers invisible. It is +too much, too much.... Large tears roll down</i> LUCREZIA's <i>cheeks and +fall with a splash to the ground. Suddenly, but with the noiselessness +of a cat,</i> ALBERTO <i>appears, childish-looking in pink pajamas, on the +middle of the three balconies. He sees</i> LUCREZIA, <i>but she is much too +deeply absorbed in thought to have noticed his coming</i>, ALBERTO <i>plants +his elbows on the rail of the balcony, covers his face, and begins to +sob, at first inaudibly, then in a gradual quickening crescendo. At the +seventh sob</i> LUCREZIA <i>starts and becomes aware of his presence</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Alberto. I didn't know.... Have you been there long? (ALBERTO +<i>makes no articulate reply, but his sobs keep on growing louder</i>.) +Alberto, are you unhappy? Answer me.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>with difficulty, after a pause</i>). Yes.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Didn't she let you in?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. No. (<i>His sobs become convulsive</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Poor boy.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO (<i>lifting up a blubbered face to the moonlight</i>). I am so +unhappy.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. You can't be more unhappy than I am.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Oh yes, I am. It's impossible to be unhappier than me.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But I <i>am</i> more unhappy.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. You re not. Oh, how can you be so cruel Lucrezia? (<i>He covers +his face once more</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But I only said I was unhappy Alberto.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Yes, I know. That showed you weren't thinking of me. Nobody +loves me. I shall hang myself to-night with the cord of my +dressing-gown.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. NO, no, Alberto. You mustn't do anything rash.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. I shall. Your cruelty has been the last straw.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I'm sorry, Bertino mio. But if you only knew how miserable I +was feeling. I didn't mean to be unsympathetic. Poor boy. I'm so sorry. +There, don't cry, poor darling.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Oh, I knew you wouldn't desert me, Lucrezia. You've always been +a mother to me. (<i>He stretches out his hand and seizes hers, which has +gone half-way to meet him; but the balconies are too far apart to allow +him to kiss it. He makes an effort and fails. He is too short in the +body</i>,) Will you let me come onto your balcony, Lucrezia? I want to tell +you how grateful I am.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. But you can do that from your own balcony.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Please, please, Lucrezia. You mustn't be cruel to me again. I +can't bear it.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. Well, then.... Just for a moment, but for no more, (BERTINO +<i>climbs from one balcony to the other. One is a little reminded of the +trousered monkeys on the barrel organs. Arrived, he kneels down and +kisses</i> LUCREZIA'S <i>hand</i>.)</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. You've saved me. You've given given me a fresh desire to live +and a fresh faith in life. How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia, +darling?</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>patting his head</i>). There, there. <i>We</i> are just two unhappy +creatures. We must try and comfort one another.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. What a brute I am! I never thought of your unhappiness. I am so +selfish. What is it, Lucrezia?</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. I can't tell you, Bertino; but it's very painful.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. Poor child, poor child. (<i>His kisses, which started at the +hand, have mounted, by this time, some way up the arm, changing +perceptibly in character as they rise. At the shoulder they have a +warmth which could not have been inferred from the respectful salutes +which barely touched the fingers</i>.) Poor darling! You've given me +consolation. Now you must let me comfort your unhappiness.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA (<i>with an effort</i>). I think you ought to go back now, Bertino.</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. In a minute, my darling. There, there, poor Lucrezia. (<i>He puts +an arm round her, kisses her hair and neck.</i> LUCREZIA <i>leans her bowed +head against his chest. The sound of footsteps is heard. They both look +up with scared, wide-open eyes</i>.)</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. We mustn't be seen here, Bertino. What would people think?</p> + +<p>ALBERTO. I'll go back.</p> + +<p>LUCREZIA. There's no time. You must come into my room. Quickly.</p> + +<p>(<i>They slip through the French window, but not quickly enough to have +escaped the notice of</i> PAUL, <i>returning from his midnight stroll. The</i> +VICOMTE <i>stands for a moment looking up at the empty balcony. He laughs +softly to himself, and, throwing his cigarette away, passes through the +glass door into the house. All is now silent, save for the nightingales +and the distant bells. The curtain comes down for a moment to indicate +the passage of several hours. It rises again with the sun</i>. LUCREZIA's +<i>window opens and she appears on the balcony. She stands a moment with +one foot over the threshold of the long window in a listening pose. Then +her eyes fall on the better half of a pair of pink pyjamas lying +crumpled on the floor, like a body bereft of its soul; with her bare +foot she turns it over. A little shudder plucks at her nerves, and she +shakes her head as though, by this symbolic act, to shake off something +clinging and contaminating. Then she steps out into the full glory of +the early sun, stretching out her arms to the radiance. She bows her +face into her hands, crying out loud to herself</i>.) LUCREZIA. Oh, why, +why, why? (<i>The last of these Why's is caught by the</i> WAITER, <i>who has +crept forth in shirt-sleeves and list-slippers, duster in hand, to clean +the tables. He looks up at her admiringly, passes his tongue over his +lips. Then, with a sigh, turns to dust the tables</i>.)</p> + + + +<p>CURTAIN.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III_THE_TILLOTSON_BANQUET" id="III_THE_TILLOTSON_BANQUET"></a>III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET</h2> + + + +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>Young Spode was not a snob; he was too intelligent for that, too +fundamentally decent. Not a snob; but all the same he could not help +feeling very well pleased at the thought that he was dining, alone and +intimately, with Lord Badgery. It was a definite event in his life, a +step forward, he felt, towards that final success, social, material, and +literary, which he had come to London with the fixed intention of +making. The conquest and capture of Badgery was an almost essential +strategical move in the campaign.</p> + +<p>Edmund, forty-seventh Baron Badgery, was a lineal descendant of that +Edmund, surnamed Le Blayreau, who landed on English soil in the train of +William the Conqueror. Ennobled by William Rufus, the Badgerys had been +one of the very few baronial families to survive the Wars of the Roses +and all the other changes and chances of English history. They were a +sensible and philoprogenitive race. No Badgery had ever fought in any +war, no Badgery had ever engaged in any kind of politics. They had been +content to live and quietly to propagate their species in a huge +machicolated Norman castle, surrounded by a triple moat, only sallying +forth to cultivate their property and to collect their rents. In the +eighteenth century, when life had become relatively secure, the Badgerys +began to venture forth into civilised society. From boorish squires they +blossomed into <i>grands seigneurs</i>, patrons of the arts, virtuosi. Their +property was large, they were rich; and with the growth of industrialism +their riches also grew. Villages on their estate turned into +manufacturing towns, unsuspected coal was discovered beneath the surface +of their barren moorlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century the +Badgerys were among the richest of English noble families. The +forty-seventh baron disposed of an income of at least two hundred +thousand pounds a year. Following the great Badgery tradition, he had +refused to have anything to do with politics or war. He occupied himself +by collecting pictures; he took an interest in theatrical productions; +he was the friend and patron of men of letters, of painters, and +musician. A personage, in a word, of considerable consequence in that +particular world in which young Spode had elected to make his success.</p> + +<p>Spode had only recently left the university. Simon Gollamy, the editor +of the <i>World's Review</i> (the "Best of all possible Worlds"), had got to +know him—he was always on the look out for youthful talent—had seen +possibilities in the young man, and appointed him art critic of his +paper. Gollamy liked to have young and teachable people about him. The +possession of disciples flattered his vanity, and he found it easier, +moreover, to run his paper with docile collaborators than with men grown +obstinate and case-hardened with age. Spode had not done badly at his +new job. At any rate, his articles had been intelligent enough to arouse +the interest of Lord Badgery. It was, ultimately, to them that he owed +the honour of sitting to night in the dining-room of Badgery House.</p> + +<p>Fortified by several varieties of wine and a glass of aged brandy, Spode +felt more confident and at ease than he had done the whole evening. +Badgery was rather a disquieting host. He had an alarming habit of +changing the subject of any conversation that had lasted for more than +two minutes. Spode had found it, for example, horribly mortifying when +his host, cutting across what was, he prided himself, a particularly +subtle and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a +wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked +parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously towards him, fancying +that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white, +fleshy, Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There +was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely +want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his +irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about +parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story, when +his host began to talk about Beethoven. And so the game went on. Spode +cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of +ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto +Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish +architecture. Lord Badgery thought him the most charming young man, and +so intelligent.</p> + +<p>"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as +he spoke, "we'll go and look at the pictures."</p> + +<p>Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realised that he had drunk +just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk +deliberately, plant his feet consciously, one after the other.</p> + +<p>"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery +complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last +week; but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their +portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think? +Why couldn't they have chosen Gainsborough, or even Reynolds? I've had +all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It's such a comfort to +know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all +about the ancient Hittites?"</p> + +<p>"Well...." the young man replied, with befitting modesty.</p> + +<p>"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a +case near the dining-room door. "It's not Greek, or Egyptian, or +Persian, or anything else; so if it isn't ancient Hittite, I don't know +what it is. And that reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger, +the Circus King...." and, without giving Spode time to examine the +Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now +and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or +beauty.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as +the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about +Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous +Sanger. "What a perfect man, isn't he? He used to...."</p> + +<p>"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of +a tall folding door. "I must apologise for it. It looks like a +roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches and there +was suddenly light—light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly +receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare +say you've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little +insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used +to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about +the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the +cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them: +mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now I'm rather proud of this +Poussin; he painted it for Scarron."</p> + +<p>"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though +he were modelling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of +those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they re caught up, as it +were, and stemmed by that single godlike form opposing them with his +contrary movement! And the draperies...."</p> + +<p>But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little +fifteenth-century Virgin of carved wood.</p> + +<p>"School of Rheims," he explained.</p> + +<p>They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest +to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would +have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in +front of some of these lovely things. But it was not permitted.</p> + +<p>The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At +the sight of what the lights revealed, Spode gasped.</p> + +<p>"It's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons +dorés où se déploie un luxe insolent. You know."</p> + +<p>"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of +its kind, I flatter myself, outside the State Apartments at Windsor."</p> + +<p>Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the +objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in leathers, in +embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most +fantastic shapes and colours, all the queer products of a decadent +tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the +walls—a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Ettys, a big +Haydon, a slight pretty water-colour of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil +of Blake and arsenic poisoner, a score of others. But the picture which +arrested Spode's attention was a medium sized canvas representing +Troilus riding into Troy among the flowers and plaudits of an admiring +crowd, and oblivious (you could see from his expression) of everything +but the eyes of Cressida, who looked down at him from a window, with +Pandarus smiling over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Ah, you've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased.</p> + +<p>"What bright harmonious colours! Like Etty's, only stronger, not so +obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of +Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in +taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly.</p> + +<p>"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered, "It's by +his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work. But +nobody seems to know anything about him. And he seems to have done so +little."</p> + +<p>This time it was the younger man who interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Tillotson, Tillotson...." He put his hand to his forehead. A frown +incongruously distorted his round, floridly curved face. No ... yes, I +have it. He looked up triumphantly with serene and childish brows. +"Tillotson, Walter Tillotson—the man's still alive."</p> + +<p>Badgery smiled. "This picture was painted in 1846, you know."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his +masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it's 1913 now; that's to say +he's only ninety-three. Not as old as Titian yet."</p> + +<p>"But he's not been heard of since 1860," Lord Badgery protested.</p> + +<p>"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made +the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the +archives of the <i>World's Review</i>.(One has to bring them up to date every +year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these t old birds +chooses to shuffle off suddenly.) Well, there, among them—I remember my +astonishment at the time—there I found Walter Tillotson's biography. +Pretty full to 1860, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the +early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the +East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious +conclusion: the old chap isn't dead yet. He's just been overlooked +somehow."</p> + +<p>"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him, +Spode—you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescoes round +this room. It's just what I've always vainly longed for a real +nineteenth-century artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must +find him at once—at once."</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement.</p> + +<p>"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. "We'd +clear away all these cases and have the whole of that wall filled by a +heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent', or +Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved' anything like that, +provided it's in the grand manner of the 'thirties and 'forties. And +here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else +something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast. +Then we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something +Mauro-Gothic. And on these walls I'll have mirrors, or no! let me +see...."</p> + +<p>He sank into meditative silence, from which he finally roused himself to +shout:</p> + +<p>"The old man, the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old +creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our +secret. Oh, it's too perfect, it's incredible! Think of the frescoes."</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a +single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>Three weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon +somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one. +"Found.—SPODE." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord +Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman +padded away on noiseless feet.</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a +room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The +frescoes, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling.... And a small, +shrivelled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick +like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away, +painting away.... Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or +why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt +of Clarence. ... Lord Badgery was asleep.</p> + +<p>Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by +six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber, +engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-à-brac. Spode found +him looking hot and out of breath.</p> + +<p>"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. You see me already preparing for +the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him.</p> + +<p>"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He's ninety-seven this +year. Born in 1816. Incredible, isn't it! There, I'm beginning at the +wrong end."</p> + +<p>"Begin where you like," said Badgery genially.</p> + +<p>"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You've no idea what a +job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story, +immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some +day. At any rate, I found him at last."</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and +lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was +he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he +did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the 'sixties, to go to +Palestine to get local colour for his religious pictures—scapegoats and +things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount +Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor, +he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years."</p> + +<p>"But what did he do all that time?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he painted, and started a mission, and converted three Turks, and +taught the local Pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, and +perspective, and God knows what else. Then, in about 1904, it seems to +have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away +from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England, +only to find that everyone he had known was dead, that the dealers had +never heard of him and wouldn't buy his pictures, that he was simply a +ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a +girl's school in Holloway, and there he's been ever since, growing older +and older, and feebler and feebler, and blinder and deafer, and +generally more gaga, until finally the school has given him the sack. He +had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind +of black hole in a basement full of beetles. When his ten pounds are +spent, I suppose he'll just quietly die there."</p> + +<p>Badgery held up a white hand. "No more, no more. I find literature quite +depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer. +Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?"</p> + +<p>"But he can't paint. He's too blind and palsied."</p> + +<p>"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what's the good of the +old creature?"</p> + +<p>"Well, if you put it like that...." Spode began.</p> + +<p>"I shall never have my frescoes. Ring the bell, will you?"</p> + +<p>Spode rang.</p> + +<p>"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on +Lord Badgery petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for +occupying a place in the sun."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't have much sun in his basement."</p> + +<p>The footman appeared at the door.</p> + +<p>"Get someone to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery +commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the +confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor, the +pictures unhooked. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more +comfortable there."</p> + +<p>He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode +sympathetically.</p> + +<p>"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me.</p> + +<p>"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got +ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you'd seen the +black-beetles in his basement!"</p> + +<p>"Enough enough. I'll do everything you think fitting."</p> + +<p>"I thought we might get up a subscription amongst lovers of the arts."</p> + +<p>"There aren't any," said Badgery.</p> + +<p>"No; but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobbism."</p> + +<p>"Not unless you give them something for their money."</p> + +<p>"That's true. I hadn't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment. +"We might have a dinner in his honour. The Great Tillotson Banquet. +Doyen of the British Art. A Link with the Past. Can't you see it in the +papers? I'd make a stunt of it in the <i>World's Review</i>. That ought to +bring in the snobs."</p> + +<p>"And we'll invite a lot of artists and critics—all the ones who can't +stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery +laughed. Then his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it'll +be a very poor second best to my frescoes. You'll stay to dinner, of +course."</p> + +<p>"Well, since you suggest it. Thanks very much."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>The Tillotson Banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later. +Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent +organiser. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Café Bomba, and was +successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty +persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out +invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on +Tillotson in the <i>World's Review</i>—one of those charming, witty articles +couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt with which one +speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself. +He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's +endless stories about Asia Minor and the Great Exhibition of '51 and +Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another +age.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of +South Holloway. A little grey light percolated through the area bars, +forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent +itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an inkpot, among the +inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the spur +smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to moulder secretly +at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a +washstand and chest of drawers, a table and one or two chairs, lurked in +the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open. +Hither Spode now came almost every day, bringing the old man news of the +progress of the banquet scheme. Every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting +in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny +puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore grey hairs," Spode +reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on +that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr. +Tillotson would turn in his chair, stare in the direction of the door +with blinking, uncertain eyes. He was always full of apologies for being +so slow in recognising who was there.</p> + +<p>"No discourtesy meant," he would say, after asking. "It's not as if I +had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark and my sight isn't what it +was."</p> + +<p>After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of +the window at the area railings, would say:</p> + +<p>"Ah, this is the plate for somebody with good sight. It's the place for +looking at ankles. It's the grand stand."</p> + +<p>It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual, and Mr. +Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode, +as punctually laughed.</p> + +<p>"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had +died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and +fashion. You'll find some changes."</p> + +<p>"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode +could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it, that he had +forgotten the black hole and the black-beetles and the almost exhausted +ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing +piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just +when you did. Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the +world. I shall have money, and in a little while—who knows?—I shall be +able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting +better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and nodded his +head in affirmation of his words.</p> + +<p>"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed +for shame at the cruelty of the words.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their +significance.</p> + +<p>"Life to come," he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff +not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No +life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement of +course. You re very young Mr. Spode."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not so old as I was," Spode replied. "You know how +middle-aged one is as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Now I'm old enough +to know I'm young."</p> + +<p>Spode was about to develop this little paradox further, but he noticed +that Mr. Tillotson had not been listening. He made a note of the gambit +for use in companies that were more appreciative of the subtleties.</p> + +<p>"You were talking about the 'Origin of Species,'" he said.</p> + +<p>"Was I?" said Mr. Tillotson, waking from reverie.</p> + +<p>"About its effect on your faith, Mr. Tillotson."</p> + +<p>"To be sure, yes. It shattered my faith. But I remember a fine thing by +the Poet Laureate, something about there being more faith in honest +doubt, believe me, than in all the ... all the ...: I forget exactly +what; but you see the train of thought. Oh, it was a bad time for +religion. I am glad my master Haydon never lived to see it. He was a man +of fervour. I remember him pacing up and down his studio in Lisson +Grove, singing and shouting and praying all at once. It used almost to +frighten me. Oh, but he was a wonderful man, a great man. Take him for +all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. As usual, the Bard is +right. But it was all very long ago, before your time, Mr. Spode."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not as old as I was," said Spode, in the hope of having his +paradox appreciated this time. But Mr. Tillotson went on without +noticing the interruption.</p> + +<p>"It's a very, very long time. And yet, when I look back on it, it all +seems but a day or two ago. Strange that each day should seem so long +and that many days added together should be less than an hour. How +clearly I can see old Haydon pacing up and down! Much more clearly, +indeed, than I see you, Mr. Spode. The eyes of memory don t grow dim. +But my sight is improving, I assure you; it's improving daily. I shall +soon be able to see those ankles." He laughed like a cracked bell—one +of those little old bells, Spode fancied, that ring, with much rattling +of wires, in the far-off servants quarters of ancient houses. "And very +soon," Mr. Tillotson went on, "I shall be painting again. Ah, Mr. Spode, +my luck is extraordinary. I believe in it, I trust in it. And after all, +what is luck? Simply another name for Providence, in spite of the Origin +of Species and the rest of it. How right the Laureate was when he said +that there was more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the +... er, the ... er ... well, you know. I regard you, Mr. Spode, as the +emissary of Providence. Your coming marked a turning-point in my life, +and the beginning, for me, of happier days. Do you know, one of the +first things I shall do when my fortunes are restored will be to buy a +hedgehog."</p> + +<p>"A hedgehog, Mr. Tillotson?"</p> + +<p>"For the blackbeetles. There's nothing like a hedgehog for beetles. It +will eat blackbeetles till it's sick, till it dies of surfeit. That +reminds me of the time when I told my poor great master Haydon—in joke, +of course—that he ought to send in a cartoon of King John dying of a +surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament. As +I told him, it's a most notable event in the annals of British +liberty—the providential and exemplary removal of a tyrant."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson laughed again—the little bell in the deserted house; a +ghostly hand pulling the cord in the drawing-room, and phantom footmen +responding to the thin, flawed note.</p> + +<p>"I remember he laughed, laughed like a bull in his old grand manner. But +oh, it was a terrible blow when they rejected his design, a terrible +blow. It was the first and fundamental cause of his suicide."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson paused. There was a long silence. Spode felt strangely +moved, he hardly knew why, in the presence of this man, so frail, so +ancient, in body three parts dead, in the spirit so full of life and +hopeful patience. He felt ashamed. What was the use of his own youth and +cleverness? He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds +rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile +activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were +always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! widewinged and +beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only +visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. Those gracious +visitants he was for ever using all his energies to drive away. But this +old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of +it—his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and +going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged +creatures. He felt ashamed. But then, was it possible to alter one's +life? Wasn't it a little absurd to risk a conversion? Spode shrugged his +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I'll get you a hedgehog at once," he said. "They're sure to have some +at Whiteley's."</p> + +<p>Before he left that evening Spode made an alarming discovery. Mr. +Tillotson did not possess a dress-suit. It was hopeless to think of +getting one made at this short notice, and, besides, what an unnecessary +expense!</p> + +<p>"We shall have to borrow a suit, Mr. Tillotson. I ought to have thought +of that before."</p> + +<p>"Dear me, dear me." Mr. Tillotson was a little chagrined by this unlucky +discovery. "Borrow a suit?"</p> + +<p>Spode hurried away for counsel to Badgery House. Lord Badgery +surprisingly rose to the occasion. "Ask Boreham to come and see me," he +told the footman, who answered his ring.</p> + +<p>Boreham was one of those immemorial butlers who linger on, generation +after generation, in the houses of the great. He was over eighty now, +bent, dried up, shrivelled with age.</p> + +<p>"All old men are about the same size," said Lord Badgery. It was a +comforting theory. "Ah, here he is. Have you got a spare suit of evening +clothes, Boreham?"</p> + +<p>"I have an old suit, my lord, that I stopped wearing in let me see was +it nineteen seven or eight?"</p> + +<p>"That's the very thing. I should be most grateful, Boreham, if you could +lend it to me for Mr. Spode here for a day."</p> + +<p>The old man went out, and soon reappeared carrying over his arm a very +old black suit. He held up the coat and trousers for inspection. In the +light of day they were deplorable.</p> + +<p>"You've no idea, sir," said Boreham deprecatingly to Spode you've no +idea how easy things get stained with grease and gravy and what not. +However careful you are, sir—however careful.</p> + +<p>"I should imagine so." Spode was sympathetic.</p> + +<p>"However careful, sir."</p> + +<p>"But in artificial light they'll look all right."</p> + +<p>"Perfectly all right," Lord Badgery repeated. "Thank you, Boreham; you +shall have them back on Thursday."</p> + +<p>"You re welcome, my lord, I'm sure." And the old man bowed and +disappeared.</p> + +<p>On the afternoon of the great day Spode carried up to Holloway a parcel +containing Boreham's retired evening-suit and all the necessary +appurtenances in the way of shirts and collars. Owing to the darkness +and his own feeble sight Mr. Tillotson was happily unaware of the +defects in the suit. He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. It +was with some difficulty that Spode could prevent him, although it was +only three o'clock, from starting his toilet on the spot.</p> + +<p>"Take it easy, Mr. Tillotson, take it easy. We needn't start till +half-past seven, you know."</p> + +<p>Spode left an hour later, and as soon as he was safely out of the room +Mr. Tillotson began to prepare himself for the banquet. He lighted the +gas and a couple of candles, and, blinking myopically at the image that +fronted him in the tiny looking-glass that stood on his chest of +drawers, he set to work, with all the ardour of a young girl preparing +for her first ball. At six o'clock, when the last touches had been +given, he was not unsatisfied.</p> + +<p>He marched up and down his cellar, humming to himself the gay song which +had been so popular in his middle years:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Oh, oh, Anna, Maria Jones!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones!</i>"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Spode arrived an hour later in Lord Badgery's second Rolls-Royce. +Opening the door of the old man's dungeon, he stood for a moment, +wide-eyed with astonishment, on the threshold. Mr. Tillotson was +standing by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one +leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude. The +effect of the candlelight shining on his face was to deepen every line +and wrinkle with intense black shadow; he looked immeasurably old. It +was a noble and pathetic head. On the other hand, Boreham's out-worn +evening-suit was simply buffoonish. The coat was too long in the sleeves +and the tail; the trousers bagged in elephantine creases about his +ankles. Some of the grease-spots were visible even in candlelight. The +white tie, over which Mr. Tillotson had taken infinite pains and which +he believed in his purblindness to be perfect, was fantastically +lop-sided. He had buttoned up his waistcoat in such a fashion that one +button was widowed of its hole and one hole of its button. Across his +shirt front lay the broad green ribbon of some unknown Order.</p> + +<p>"Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones," Mr. Tillotson +concluded in a gnat-like voice before welcoming his visitor.</p> + +<p>"Well, Spode, here you are. I'm dressed already, you see. The suit, I +flatter myself, fits very well, almost as though it had been made for +me. I am all gratitude to the gentleman who was kind enough to lend it +to me; I shall take the greatest care of it. It's a dangerous thing to +lend clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. The Bard is +always right."</p> + +<p>"Just one thing," said Spode. "A touch to your waistcoat." He unbuttoned +the dissipated garment and did it up again more symmetrically.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson was a little piqued at being found so absurdly in the +wrong.</p> + +<p>"Thanks, thanks," he said, protestingly, trying to edge away from his +valet. "It's all right, you know; I can do it myself. Foolish oversight. +I flatter myself the suit fits very well."</p> + +<p>"And perhaps the tie might...." Spode began tentatively. But the old +man would not hear of it.</p> + +<p>"No, no. The tie's all right. I can tie a tie, Mr. Spode. The tie's all +right. Leave it as it is, I beg."</p> + +<p>"I like your Order."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson looked down complacently at his shirt front. "Ah, you've +noticed my Order. It's a long time since I wore that. It was given me by +the Grand Porte, you know, for services rendered in the Russo-Turkish +War. It's the Order of Chastity, the second class. They only give the +first class to crowned heads, you know—browned heads and ambassadors. +And only Pashas of the highest rank get the second. Mine's the second. +They only give the first class to crowned heads...."</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course," said Spode.</p> + +<p>"Do you think I look all right, Mr. Spode?" Mr. Tillotson asked, a +little anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Splendid, Mr. Tillotson—splendid. The Order's, magnificent."</p> + +<p>The old man's face brightened once more. "I flatter myself," he said, +"that this borrowed suit fits me very well. But I don't like borrowing +clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend, you know. And the +Bard is always right."</p> + +<p>"Ugh, there's one of those horrible beetles!" Spode exclaimed.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson bent down and stared at the floor. "I see it," he said, +and stamped on a small piece of coal, which crunched to powder under his +foot. "I shall certainly buy a hedgehog."</p> + +<p>It was time for them to start. A crowd of little boys and girls had +collected round Lord Badgery's enormous car. The chauffeur, who felt +that honour and dignity were at stake, pretended not to notice the +children, but sat gazing, like a statue, into eternity. At the sight of +Spode and Mr. Tillotson emerging from the house a yell of mingled awe +and derision went up. It subsided to an astonished silence as they +climbed into the car. "Bomba's," Spode directed. The Rolls-Royce gave a +faintly stertorous sigh and began to move. The children yelled again, +and ran along beside the car, waving their arms in a frenzy of +excitement. It was then that Mr. Tillotson, with an incomparably noble +gesture, leaned forward and tossed among the seething crowd of urchins +his three last coppers.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>IV</h3> + + +<p>In Bomba's big room the company was assembling. The long gilt-edged +mirrors reflected a singular collection of people. Middle-aged +Academicians shot suspicious glances at youths whom they suspected, only +too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist +Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered +with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, +those indefatigable hunters of artistic big game, came on one another +all unawares in this well-stored menagerie, where each had expected to +hunt alone, and were filled with rage. Through this crowd of mutually +repellent vanities Lord Badgery moved with a suavity that seemed +unconscious of all the feuds and hatreds. He was enjoying himself +immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the +Hanoverian nose, the little lustreless pig's eyes, the pale thick lips, +there lurked a small devil of happy malice that rocked with laughter.</p> + +<p>"So nice of you to have come, Mrs. Mandragore, to do honour to England's +artistic past. And I'm so glad to see you've brought dear Mrs. Cayman. +And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it is! I hadn't noticed her before. How +delightful! I knew we could depend on your love of art."</p> + +<p>And he hurried away to seize the opportunity of introducing that eminent +sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young critic who had called +him, in the public prints, a monumental mason.</p> + +<p>A moment later the Maître d'Hôtel came to the door of the gilded saloon +and announced, loudly and impressively, "Mr. Walter Tillotson." Guided +from behind by young Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and +hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, +painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned moth, over his filmy eyes. +Once inside the door he halted and drew himself up with a conscious +assumption of dignity. Lord Badgery hurried forward and seized his hand.</p> + +<p>"Welcome, Mr. Tillotson—welcome in the name of English art!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson inclined his head in silence. He was too full of emotion +to be able to reply.</p> + +<p>"I should like to introduce you to a few of your younger colleagues, +who have assembled here to do you honour."</p> + +<p>Lord Badgery presented everyone in the room to the old painter, who +bowed, shook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found +himself unable to speak. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore +all said charming things.</p> + +<p>Dinner was served; the party took their places. Lord Badgery sat at the +head of the table, with Mr. Tillotson on his right hand and Sir Herbert +Herne on his left. Confronted with Bomba's succulent cooking and Bomba's +wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of +one who has lived on greens and potatoes for ten years among the +blackbeetles. After the second glass of wine he began to talk, suddenly +and in a flood, as though a sluice had been pulled up.</p> + +<p>"In Asia Minor," he began, "it is the custom when one goes to dinner, to +hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. <i>Eructavit cor meum</i>, as +the Psalmist has it; he was an Oriental himself."</p> + +<p>Spode had arranged to sit next to Mrs. Cayman; he had designs upon her. +She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wanted +to bamboozle her into buying some of his young friends' pictures.</p> + +<p>"In a cellar?" Mrs. Cayman was saying, "with, blackbeetles? Oh, how +dreadful! Poor old man! And he's ninety-seven, didn't you say? Isn't +that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of +course, one wishes one could have given more oneself. But then, you +know, one has so many expenses, and things are so difficult now."</p> + +<p>"I know, I know," said Spode, with feeling.</p> + +<p>"It's all because of Labour," Mrs. Cayman explained. "Of course, I +should simply love to have him in to dinner sometimes. But, then, I feel +he's really too old, too <i>farouche</i> and <i>gâteux</i>; it would not be doing +a kindness to him, would it? And so you are working with Mr. Gollamy +now? What a charming man, so talented, such conversation...."</p> + +<p>"<i>Eructavit cor meum</i>," said Mr. Tillotson for the third time. Lord +Badgery tried to head him off the subject of Turkish etiquette, but in +vain.</p> + +<p>By half-past nine a kinder vinolent atmosphere had put to sleep the +hatreds and suspicions of before dinner. Sir Herbert Herne had +discovered that the young Cubist sitting next him was not insane and +actually knew a surprising amount about the Old Masters. For their part +these young men had realised that their elders were not at all +malignant; they were just very stupid and pathetic. It was only in the +bosoms of Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore that hatred still +reigned undiminished. Being ladies and old-fashioned, they had drunk +almost no wine.</p> + +<p>The moment for speech-making arrived. Lord Badgery rose to his feet, +said what was expected of him, and called upon Sir Herbert to propose +the toast of the evening. Sir Herbert coughed, smiled and began. In the +course of a speech that lasted twenty minutes he told anecdotes of Mr. +Gladstone, Lord Leighton, Sir Almo Tadema, and the late Bishop, of +Bombay; he made three puns, he quoted Shakespeare and Whittier, he was +playful, he was eloquent, he was grave.... At the end of his harangue +Sir Herbert handed to Mr. Tillotson a silk purse containing fifty-eight +pounds ten shillings, the total amount of the subscription. The old +man's health was drunk with acclamation.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson rose with difficulty to his feet. The dry, snakelike skin +of his face was flushed; his tie was more crooked than ever; the green +ribbon of the Order of Chastity of the second class had somehow climbed +tip his crumpled and maculate shirt front.</p> + +<p>"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began in a choking voice, and then +broke down completely. It was a very painful and pathetic spectacle. A +feeling of intense discomfort afflicted the minds of all who looked upon +that trembling relic of a man, as he stood there weeping and stammering. +It was as though a breath of the wind of death had blown suddenly +through the room, lifting the vapours of wine and tobacco-smoke, +quenching the laughter and the candle flames. Eyes floated uneasily, not +knowing where to look. Lord Badgery, with great presence of mind, +offered the old man a glass of wine. Mr. Tillotson began to recover. The +guests heard him murmur a few disconnected words.</p> + +<p>"This great honour ... overwhelmed with kindness ... this magnificent +banquet ... not used to it ... in Asia Minor ... <i>eructuvit cor meum</i>."</p> + +<p>At this point Lord Badgery plucked sharply at one of his long coat +tails. Mr. Tillotson paused, took another sip of wine, and then went on +with a newly won coherence and energy.</p> + +<p>"The life of the artist is a hard one. His work is unlike other men's +work, which may be done mechanically, by rote and almost, as it were, +in sleep. It demands from him a constant expense of spirit. He gives +continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is +true much fame, it may be—but of material blessings, very few. It is +eighty years since first I devoted my life to the service of art; eighty +years, and almost every one of those years has brought me fresh and +painful proof of what I have been saying: the artist's life is a hard +one."</p> + +<p>This unexpected deviation into sense increased the general feeling of +discomfort. It became necessary to take the old man seriously, to regard +him as a human being. Up till then he had been no more than an object of +curiosity, a mummy in an absurd suit of evening-clothes with a green +ribbon across the shirt front. People could not help wishing that they +had subscribed a little more. Fifty-eight pounds ten it wasn't enormous. +But happily for the peace of mind of the company, Mr. Tillotson paused +again, took another sip of wine, and began to live up to his proper +character by talking absurdly.</p> + +<p>"When I consider the life of that great man, Benjamin Robert Haydon, one +of the greatest men England has ever produced...." The audience heaved a +sigh of relief; this was all as it should be. There was a burst of loud +bravoing and clapping. Mr. Tillotson turned his dim eyes round the room, +and smiled gratefully at the misty figures he beheld. "That great man, +Benjamin Robert Haydon," he continued, "whom I am proud to call my +master and who, it rejoices my heart to see, still lives in your memory +and esteem, that great man, one of the greatest that England has ever +produced, led a life so deplorable that I cannot think of it without a +tear."</p> + +<p>And with infinite repetitions and divagations, Mr. Tillotson related the +history of B.R. Haydon, his imprisonments for debt, his battle with the +Academy, his triumphs, his failures, his despair, his suicide. Half-past +ten struck. Mr. Tillotson was declaiming against the stupid and +prejudiced judges who had rejected Haydon's designs for the decoration +of the new Houses of Parliament in favour of the paltriest German +scribblings.</p> + +<p>"That great man, one of the greatest England has ever produced, that +great Benjamin Robert Haydon, whom I am proud to call my master and who, +it rejoices me to see, still lives on in your memory and esteem—at that +affront his great heart burst; it was the unkindest cut of all. He who +had worked all his life for the recognition, of the artist by the +State, he who had petitioned every Prime Minister, including the Duke of +Wellington, for thirty years, begging them to employ artists to decorate +public buildings, he to whom the scheme for decorating the Houses of +Parliament was undeniably due...." Mr. Tillotson lost a grip on his +syntax and began a new sentence. "It was the unkindest cut of all, it +was the last straw. The artist's life is a hard one."</p> + +<p>At eleven Mr. Tillotson was talking about the pre-Raphaelites. At a +quarter past he had begun to tell the story of B.R. Haydon all over +again. At twenty-five minutes to twelve he collapsed quite speechless +into his chair. Most of the guests had already gone away; the few who +remained made haste to depart. Lord Badgery led the old man to the door +and packed him into the second Rolls-Royce. The Tillotson Banquet was +over; it had been a pleasant evening, but a little too long.</p> + +<p>Spode walked back to his rooms in Bloomsbury, whistling as he went. The +arc lamps of Oxford Street reflected in the polished surface of the +road; canals of dark bronze. He would have to bring that into an article +some time. The Cayman woman had been very successfully nobbled. "Voi che +sapete," he whistled—somewhat out of tune, but he could not hear that.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Tillotson's landlady came in to call him on the following +morning, she found the old man lying fully dressed on his bed. He looked +very ill and very, very old; Boreham's dress-suit was in a terrible +state, and the green ribbon of the Order of Chastity was ruined. Mr. +Tillotson lay very still, but he was not asleep. Hearing the sound of +footsteps, he opened his eyes a little and faintly groaned. His landlady +looked down at him menacingly.</p> + +<p>"Disgusting!" she said, "disgusting, I call it. At your age."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tillotson groaned again. Making a great effort, he drew out of his +trouser pocket a large silk purse, opened it, and extracted a sovereign.</p> + +<p>"The artist's life is a hard one, Mrs. Green," he said, handing her the +coin. "Would you mind sending for the doctor? I don't feel very well. +And oh, what shall I do about these clothes? What shall I say to the +gentleman who was kind enough to lend them to me? Loan oft loseth both +itself and friend. The Bard is always right."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV_GREEN_TUNNELS" id="IV_GREEN_TUNNELS"></a>IV: GREEN TUNNELS</h2> + + +<p>"In the Italian gardens of the thirteenth century...." Mr. Buzzacott +interrupted himself to take another helping of the risotto which was +being offered him. "Excellent risotto this," he observed. "Nobody who +was not born in Milan can make it properly. So they say."</p> + +<p>"So they say," Mr. Topes repeated in his sad, apologetic voice, and +helped himself in his turn.</p> + +<p>"Personally," said Mrs. Topes, with decision, "I find all Italian +cooking abominable. I don't like the oil—especially hot. No, thank +you." She recoiled from the proffered dish.</p> + +<p>After the first mouthful Mr. Buzzacott put down his fork. "In the +Italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he began again, making with +his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a +clutch at his beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of +green tunnels."</p> + +<p>"Green tunnels?" Barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence. +"Green tunnels?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear," said her father. "Green tunnels. Arched alleys covered +with vines or other creeping plants. Their length was often very +considerable."</p> + +<p>But Barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. +Green tunnels—the word had floated down to her, through profound depths +of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the +sound of a strange-voiced bell. Green tunnels—what a wonderful idea. +She would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. +He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. +She pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and +scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured corals; endless dim green +corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. +Green-faced monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened +and shut. Green tunnels....</p> + +<p>"I have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," +Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his pointed brown +beard—clutched and combed it with his long fingers.</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes looked up. The glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed +as he moved his head. "I know what you mean," he said.</p> + +<p>"I have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here."</p> + +<p>"It will take a long time to grow," said Mr. Topes. "In this sand, so +close to the sea, you will only be able to plant vines. And they come up +very slowly very slowly indeed." He shook his head and the points of +light danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his +grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. Then, suddenly, he +pulled himself up. A shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. He +wriggled uncomfortably. Then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he +gave vent to a quotation:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>But at my back I always hear</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Time's winged chariot hurrying near</i>."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. He always found +it painfully difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; +and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were +always surging through his mind!</p> + +<p>"They don't grow so slowly as all that," said Mr. Buzzacott confidently. +He was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave +himself at least another forty years; indeed, he had not yet begun to +contemplate the possibility of ever concluding.</p> + +<p>"Miss Barbara will enjoy it, perhaps—your green tunnel." Mr. Topes +sighed and looked across the table at his host's daughter.</p> + +<p>Barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, +staring in front of her. The sound of her own name reached her faintly. +She turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself +confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of +the green tunnel—she stared at the shining circles—hung the eyes of a +goggling fish. They approached, floating, closer and closer, along the +dim submarine corridor.</p> + +<p>Confronted by this fixed regard, Mr. Topes looked away. What thoughtful +eyes! He couldn't remember ever to have seen eyes so full of thought. +There were certain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like hen +mild little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very +young. But he was old; it would be many years, in spite of Buzzacott, +before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. He took a sip of wine; +then, mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache.</p> + +<p>"Arthur!"</p> + +<p>At the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Topes started, raised his napkin to +his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. It was +only in moments of absent-mindedness that he ever offended, now.</p> + +<p>"The Marchese Prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said Mr. +Buzzacott suddenly. "I almost forgot to tell you."</p> + +<p>"One of these Italian marquises, I suppose," said Mrs. Topes, who was no +snob, except in England. She raised her chin with a little jerk.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "I +assure you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished +family. They are Genoese in origin. You remember their palace, Barbara? +Built by Alessi."</p> + +<p>Barbara looked up. "Oh yes," she said vaguely. "Alessi. I know." Alessi: +Aleppo—where a malignant and a turbaned Turk. <i>And</i> a turbaned; that +had always seemed to her very funny.</p> + +<p>"Several of his ancestors," Mr. Buzzacott went on, "distinguished +themselves as vice-roys of Corsica. They did good work in the +suppression of rebellion. Strange, isn't it"—he turned parenthetically +to Mr. Topes—"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of +rebels? What a fuss people made of Corsica! That ridiculous book of +Gregorovius, for example. And the Irish, and the Poles, and all the rest +of them. It always seems to me very superfluous and absurd."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it, perhaps, a little natural?" Mr. Topes began timorously and +tentatively, but his host went on without listening.</p> + +<p>"The present marquis," he said, "is the head of the local Fascisti. They +have done no end of good work in this district in the way of preserving +law and order and keeping the lower classes in their place."</p> + +<p>"Ah, the Fascisti," Mrs. Topes repeated approvingly. "One would like to +see something of the kind in England. What with all these strikes...."</p> + +<p>"He has asked me for a subscription to the funds of the organisation. I +shall give him one, of course."</p> + +<p>"Of course." Mrs. Topes nodded. "My nephew, the one who was a major +during the war, volunteered in the last coal strike. He was sorry, I +know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'Aunt Annie,' he said to me, when +I saw him last, 'if there had been a fight we should have knocked them +out completely—completely.'"</p> + +<p>In Aleppo, the Fascisti, malignant <i>and</i> turbaned, were fighting, under +the palm trees. Weren't they palm trees, those tufted green plumes?</p> + +<p>"What, no ice to-day? <i>Niente gelato?</i>" inquired Mr. Buzzacott as the +maid put down the compote of peaches on the table.</p> + +<p>Concetta apologised. The ice-making machine in the village had broken +down. There would be no ice till to-morrow.</p> + +<p>"Too bad," said Mr. Buzzacott. "<i>Troppo male, Concetta</i>."</p> + +<p>Under the palm trees, Barbara saw them: they pranced about, fighting. +They were mounted on big dogs, and in the trees were enormous +many-coloured birds.</p> + +<p>"Goodness me, the child's asleep." Mrs. Topes was proffering the dish of +peaches. "How much longer am I to hold this in front of your nose, +Barbara?"</p> + +<p>Barbara felt herself blushing. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, and took the +dish clumsily.</p> + +<p>"Day-dreaming. It's a bad habit."</p> + +<p>"It's one we all succumb to sometimes," put in Mr. Topes deprecatingly, +with a little nervous tremble of the head.</p> + +<p>"You may, my dear," said his wife. "I do not."</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes lowered his eyes to his plate and went on eating.</p> + +<p>"The marchese should be here at any moment now," said Mr. Buzzacott, +looking at his watch. "I hope he won't be late. I find I suffer so much +from any postponement of my siesta. This Italian heat," he added, with +growing plaintiveness, "one can't be too careful."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but when I was with my father in India," began Mrs. Topes in a tone +of superiority: "he was an Indian civilian, you know...."</p> + +<p>Aleppo, India—always the palm trees. Cavalcades of big dogs, and tigers +too.</p> + +<p>Concetta ushered in the marquis. Delighted. Pleased to meet. Speak +English? Yés, yéss. <i>Pocchino</i>. Mrs. Topes: and Mr. Topes, the +distinguished antiquarian. Ah, of course; know his name very well. My +daughter. Charmed. Often seen the signorina bathing. Admired the way she +dives. Beautiful—the hand made a long, caressing gesture. These +athletic English signorine. The teeth flashed astonishingly white in the +brown face, the dark eyes glittered. She felt herself blushing again, +looked away, smiled foolishly. The marquis had already turned back to +Mr. Buzzacott.</p> + +<p>"So you have decided to settle in our Carrarese."</p> + +<p>Well, not settled exactly; Mr. Buzzacott wouldn't go so far as to say +settled. A villine for the summer months. The winter in Rome. One was +forced to live abroad. Taxation in England.... Soon they were all +talking. Barbara looked at them. Beside the marquis they all seemed half +dead. His face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. +Her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; +and Mr. Topes was all dry and shrivelled; and Mrs. Topes looked more +than ever like something worked by clockwork. They were talking about +Socialism and Fascisti, and all that. Barbara did not listen to what +they were saying; but she looked at them, absorbed.</p> + +<p>Good-bye, good-bye. The animated face with its flash of a smile was +turned like a lamp from one to another. Now it was turned on her. +Perhaps one evening she would come, with her father, and the Signora +Topes. He and his sister gave little dances sometimes. Only the +gramophone, of course. But that was better than nothing, and the +signorina must dance divinely—another flash—he could see that. He +pressed her hand again. Good-bye.</p> + +<p>It was time for the siesta.</p> + +<p>"Don't forget to pull down the mosquito netting, my dear," Mr. Buzzacott +exhorted. "There is always a danger of anophylines."</p> + +<p>"All right, father." She moved towards the door without turning round to +answer him. He was always terribly tiresome about mosquito nets. Once +they had driven through the Campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed +in an improvised tent of netting. The monuments along the Appian Way had +loomed up mistily as through bridal veils. And how everyone had laughed. +But her father, of course, hadn't so much as noticed it. He never +noticed anything.</p> + +<p>"Is it at Berlin, that charming little Madonna of Montagna's?" Mr. Topes +abruptly asked. "The one with the Donor kneeling in the left-hand corner +as if about to kiss the foot of the Child." His spectacles flashed in +Mr. Buzzacott's direction.</p> + +<p>"Why do you ask?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I was just thinking of it."</p> + +<p>"I think you must mean the one in the Mond Collection."</p> + +<p>"Ah yes; very probably. In the Mond...."</p> + +<p>Barbara opened the door and walked into the twilight of her shuttered +room. It was hot even here; for another three hours it would hardly be +possible to stir. And that old idiot, Mrs. Topes, always made a fuss if +one came in to lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "In +India we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. +An Englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all +intents and purposes Italians <i>are</i> natives." And so she always had to +put on shoes and stockings and a regular frock just at the hottest hour +of the day. What an old ass that woman was! She slipped off her clothes +as fast as she could. That was a little better.</p> + +<p>Standing in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe door she came to +the humiliating conclusion that she looked like a piece of badly toasted +bread. Brown face, brown neck and shoulders, brown arms, brown legs from +the knee downwards; but all the rest of her was white, silly, +effeminate, townish white. If only one could run about with no clothes +on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and +tumbled in the burning sand! Now she was just underdone, half-baked, and +wholly ridiculous. For a long time she looked at her pale image. She saw +herself running, bronzed all over, along the sand; or through a field of +flowers, narcissus and wild tulips; or in soft grass under grey olive +trees. She turned round with a sudden start. There, in the shadows +behind her.... No, of course there was nothing.</p> + +<p>It was that awful picture in a magazine she had looked at, so many years +ago, when she was a child. There was a lady sitting at her +dressing-table, doing her hair in front of the glass; and a huge, hairy +black monkey creeping up behind her. She always got the creeps when she +looked at herself in a mirror. It was very silly. But still. She turned +away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the +mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. The flies buzzed about her, +settled incessantly on her face. She shook her head, flapped at them +angrily with her hands. There would be peace if she let down the +netting. But she thought of the Appian Way seen mistily through the +bridal veil and preferred to suffer the flies. In the end she had to +surrender; the brutes were too much for her. But, at any rate, it wasn't +the fear of anophylines that made her lower the netting.</p> + +<p>Undisturbed now and motionless, she lay stretched stiffly out under the +transparent bell of gauze. A specimen under a glass case. The fancy +possessed her mind. She saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, +full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and mediæval spoons +and armour and Florentine jewellery and mummies and carved ivory and +illuminated manuscripts. But in one of the cases was a human being, +shut up there alive.</p> + +<p>All of a sudden she became horribly miserable. "Boring, boring, boring," +she whispered, formulating the words aloud. Would it never stop being +boring? The tears came into her eyes. How awful everything was! And +perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her life. Seventeen from +seventy was fifty three. Fifty three years of it. And if she lived to a +hundred there would be more than eighty.</p> + +<p>The thought depressed her all the evening. Even her bath after tea did +her no good. Swimming far out, far out, she lay there, floating on the +warm water. Sometimes she looked at the sky, sometimes she turned her +head towards the shore. Framed in their pinewoods, the villas looked as +small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. But behind +them, across the level plain, were the mountains. Sharp, bare peaks of +limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced +olive trees—they seemed marvellously close and clear in this evening +light. And beautiful, beautiful beyond words. But that, somehow, only +made things worse. And Shelley had lived a few miles farther up the +coast, there, behind the headland guarding the Gulf of Spezia. Shelley +had been drowned in this milk-warm sea. That made it worse too.</p> + +<p>The sun was getting very low and red over the sea. She swam slowly in. +On the beach Mrs. Topes waited, disapprovingly. She had known somebody, +a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. He sank +like a stone. Like a stone. The queer people Mrs. Topes had known! And +the funny things they did, the odd things that happened to them.</p> + +<p>Dinner that evening was duller than ever. Barbara went early to bed. All +night long the same old irritating cicada scraped and scraped among the +pine trees, monotonous and regular as clockwork. Zip zip, zip zip zip. +Boring, boring. Was the animal never bored by its own noise? It seemed +odd that it shouldn't be. But, when she came to think of it, nobody ever +did get bored with their own noise. Mrs. Topes, for example; she never +seemed to get bored. Zip zip, zip zip zip. The cicada went on without +pause.</p> + +<p>Concetta knocked at the door at half-past seven. The morning was as +bright and cloudless as all the mornings were. Barbara jumped up, looked +from one window at the mountains, from the other at the sea; all seemed +to be well with them. All was well with her, too, this morning. Seated +at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far +obscure corner of the room. A bathing dress and a bath-gown, sandals, a +handkerchief round her head, and she was ready. Sleep had left no +recollection of last night's mortal boredom. She ran downstairs.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Mr. Topes."</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes was walking in the garden among the vines. He turned round, +took off his hat, smiled a greeting.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, Miss Barbara." He paused. Then, with an embarrassed +wriggle of introduction he went on; a queer little falter came into his +voice. "A real Chaucerian morning, Miss Barbara. A May-day morning—only +it happens to be September. Nature is fresh and bright, and there is at +least one specimen in this dream garden"—he wriggled more +uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round +spectacle lenses of the poet's 'yonge fresshe folkes.' He bowed in her +direction, smiled deprecatingly, and was silent. The remark, it seemed +to him, now that he had finished speaking, was somehow not as good as he +had thought it would be.</p> + +<p>Barbara laughed. "Chaucer! They used to make us read the <i>Canterbury +Tales</i> at school. But they always bored me. Are you going to bathe?"</p> + +<p>"Not before breakfast." Mr. Topes shook his head. "One is getting a +little too old for that."</p> + +<p>"Is one?" Why did the silly old man always say 'one' when he meant 'I'? +She couldn't help laughing at him. "Well, I must hurry, or else I shall +be late for breakfast again, and you know how I catch it."</p> + +<p>She ran out, through the gate in the garden wall, across the beach, to +the striped red-and-white bathing cabin that stood before the house. +Fifty yards away she saw the Marchese Prampolini, still dripping from +the sea, running up towards his bathing hut. Catching sight of her, he +flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. Barbara waved +her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar—but at +this hour of the morning it was difficult not to have bad jolly +manners—and added the corrective of a stiff bow. After all, she had +only met him yesterday. Soon she was swimming out to sea, and, ugh! what +a lot of horrible huge jelly-fish there were.</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes had followed her slowly through the gate and across the sand. +He watched her running down from the cabin, slender as a boy, with +long, bounding strides. He watched her go jumping with great splashes +through the deepening water, then throw herself forward and begin to +swim. He watched her till she was no more than a small dark dot far out.</p> + +<p>Emerging from his cabin, the marquis met him walking slowly along the +beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as though he were +repeating something, a prayer or a poem, to himself.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, signore." The marquis shook him by the hand with a more +than English cordiality.</p> + +<p>"Good morning," replied Mr. Topes, allowing his hand to be shaken. He +resented this interruption of his thoughts.</p> + +<p>"She swims very well, Miss Buzzacott."</p> + +<p>"Very," assented Mr. Topes, and smiled to himself to think what +beautiful, poetical things he might have said, if he had chosen.</p> + +<p>"Well, so, so," said the marquis, too colloquial by half. He shook hands +again, and the two men went their respective ways.</p> + +<p>Barbara was still a hundred yards from the shore when she heard the +crescendo and dying boom of the gong floating out from the villa. Damn! +she'd be late again. She quickened her stroke and came splashing out +through the shallows, flushed and breathless.</p> + +<p>She'd be ten minutes late, she calculated; it would take her at least +that to do her hair and dress. Mrs. Topes would be on the war-path +again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as she +did, goodness only knew. She always succeeded in making herself horribly +offensive and unpleasant.</p> + +<p>The beach was quite deserted as she trotted, panting, across it, empty +to right and left as far as she could see. If only she had a horse to go +galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. Right away down to Bocca +d'Arno she'd go, swim the river—she saw herself crouching on the +horse's back, as he swam, with legs tucked up on the saddle, trying not +to get her feet wet—and gallop on again, goodness only knew where.</p> + +<p>In front of the cabin she suddenly halted. There in the ruffled sand she +had seen a writing. Big letters, faintly legible, sprawled across her +path.</p> + +<p> +O CLARA D'ELLÉBEUSE.<br /> +</p> + +<p>She pieced the dim letters together. They hadn't been there when she +started out to bathe. Who?... She looked round. The beach was quite +empty. And what was the meaning? "O Clara d'Ellébeuse." She took her +bath-gown from the cabin, slipped on her sandals, and ran back towards +the house as fast as she could. She felt most horribly frightened.</p> + +<p>It was a sultry, headachey sort of morning, with a hot sirocco that +stirred the bunting on the flagstaffs. By midday the thunderclouds had +covered half the sky. The sun still blazed on the sea, but over the +mountains all was black and indigo. The storm broke noisily overhead +just as they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee.</p> + +<p>"Arthur," said Mrs. Topes, painfully calm, "shut the shutters, please."</p> + +<p>She was not frightened, no. But she preferred not to see the lightning. +When the room was darkened, she began to talk, suavely and incessantly.</p> + +<p>Lying back in her deep arm-chair, Barbara was thinking of Clara +d'Ellébeuse. What did it mean and who was Clara d'Ellébeuse? And why had +he written it there for her to see? He—for there could be no doubt who +had written it. The flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she +knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. He had written it there while +she was swimming out. Written it and then run away. She rather liked +that—just an extraordinary word on the sand, like the footprint in +<i>Robinson Crusoe.</i></p> + +<p>"Personally," Mrs. Topes was saying, "I prefer Harrod's."</p> + +<p>The thunder crashed and rattled. It was rather exhilarating, Barbara +thought; one felt, at any rate, that something was happening for a +change. She remembered the little room half-way up the stairs at Lady +Thingumy's house, with the bookshelves and the green curtains and the +orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug +who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. But that was +different—not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly +ugly. She saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert. Copper +coloured all over, with black hair. He was certainly very handsome. But +as for being in love, well ... what did that exactly mean? Perhaps when +she knew him better. Even now she fancied she detected something. O +Clara d'Ellébeuse. What an extraordinary thing it was.</p> + +<p>With his long fingers Mr. Buzzacott combed his beard. This winter, he +was thinking, he would put another thousand into Italian money when the +exchange was favourable. In the spring it always seemed to drop back +again. One could clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the +exchange went down to seventy. The income on three hundred was fifteen +pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. And +fifteen hundred lire, when you came to think of it, was really sixty +pounds. That was to say that one would make an addition of more than one +pound a week to one's income by this simple little speculation. He +became aware that Mrs. Topes had asked him a question.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, perfectly," he said.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Topes talked on; she was keeping up her morale. Was she right in +believing that the thunder sounded a little less alarmingly loud and +near?</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. +Vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, +homeless, unhappy. He was thinking about beauty. There were certain +relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and +the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. But what about +them? Ah, that was the problem—that was the problem. And there was +youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were +so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to +get himself entangled among them. And he was after all so old and so +ineffective. He put on his spectacles again, and definition came into +the foggy world beyond his eyes. The shuttered room was very dark. He +could distinguish the Renaissance profile of Mr. Buzzacott, bearded and +delicately featured. In her deep arm-chair Barbara appeared, faintly +white, in an attitude relaxed and brooding. And Mrs. Topes was nothing +more than a voice in the darkness. She had got on to the marriage of the +Prince of Wales. Who would they eventually find for him?</p> + +<p>Clara d'Ellébeuse, Clara d'Ellébeuse. She saw herself so clearly as the +<i>marchesa</i>. They would have a house in Rome, a palace. She saw herself +in the Palazzo Spada—it had such a lovely vaulted passage leading from +the courtyard to the gardens at the back. "MARCHESA PRAMPOLINI, PALAZZO +SPADA, ROMA"—a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. And she +would go riding every day in the Pincio. "<i>Mi porta il mio cavallo</i>" she +would say to the footman, who answered the bell. <i>Porta</i>? Would that be +quite correct? Hardly. She'd have to take some proper Italian lessons to +talk to the servants. One must never be ridiculous before servants. +"<i>Voglio il mio cavallo.</i> Haughtily one would say it sitting at one's +writing-table in a riding-habit, without turning round. It would be a +green riding-habit, with a black tricorne hat, braided with silver.</p> + +<p>"<i>Prendero la mia collazzione al letto."</i> Was that right for breakfast +in bed? Because she would have breakfast in bed, always. And when she +got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one +could see oneself sideface. She saw herself leaning forward, powdering +her nose, carefully, scientifically. With the monkey creeping up behind? +Ooh. Horrible! <i>Ho paura di questa scimmia, questo scimmione</i>.</p> + +<p>She would come back to lunch after her ride. Perhaps Prampolini would be +there; she had rather left him out of the picture so far. "<i>Dov' è il +Marchese?</i>" "<i>Nella sala di pranza, signora</i>." I began without you, I +was so hungry. <i>Pasta asciutta</i>. Where have you been, my love? Riding, +my dove. She supposed they'd get into the habit of saying that sort of +thing. Everyone seemed to. And you? I have been out with the Fascisti.</p> + +<p>Oh, these Fascisti! Would life be worth living when he was always going +out with pistols and bombs and things? They would bring him back one day +on a stretcher. She saw it. Pale, pale, with blood on him. <i>Il signore +è ferito. Nel petto. Gruvamente. E morto</i>.</p> + +<p>How could she bear it? It was too awful; too, too terrible. Her breath +came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she had been hurt. <i>E +morto, E morto</i>. The tears came into her eyes.</p> + +<p>She was roused suddenly by a dazzling light. The storm had receded far +enough into the distance to permit of Mrs. Topes's opening the shutters.</p> + +<p>"It's quite stopped raining."</p> + +<p>To be disturbed in one's intimate sorrow and self-abandonment at a +death-bed by a stranger's intrusion, an alien voice.... Barbara turned +her face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They +might see and ask her why she had been crying. She hated Mrs. Topes for +opening the shutters; at the inrush of the light something beautiful had +flown, an emotion had vanished, irrecoverably. It was a sacrilege.</p> + +<p>Mr. Buzzacott looked at his watch. "Too late, I fear, for a siesta now," +he said. "Suppose we ring for an early tea."</p> + +<p>"An endless succession of meals," said Mr. Topes, with a tremolo and a +sigh. "That's what life seems to be—real life."</p> + +<p>"I have been calculating"—Mr. Buzzacott turned his pale green eyes +towards his guest—"that I may be able to afford that pretty little +<i>cinque</i> cassone, after all. It would be a bit of a squeeze." He played +with his beard. "But still...."</p> + +<p>After tea, Barbara and Mr. Topes went for a walk along the beach. She +didn't much want to go, but Mrs. Topes thought it would be good for her; +so she had to. The storm had passed and the sky over the sea was clear. +But the waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer +shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or +thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples +ordinarily expired. Smooth, shining expanses of water advanced and +receded like steel surfaces moved out and back by a huge machine. +Through the rain-washed air the mountains appeared with an incredible +clarity. Above them hung huge masses of cloud.</p> + +<p>"Clouds over Carrara," said Mr. Topes, deprecating his remark with a +little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. "I like to +fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among +these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the +clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. I imagine their ghosts"—his +voice trembled—"feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning +huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; +planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there's something +of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath +it." Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, "Yes, yes," though +she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "It's like Night on the +Medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. +And there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour—you see the +one I mean—there's a Bernini. All the passion's on the surface, +expressed; the gesture's caught at its most violent. And that sleek, +smug white fellow over there, that's a delicious absurd Canova." Mr. +Topes chuckled.</p> + +<p>"Why do you always talk about art?" said Barbara. "You bring these dead +people into everything. What do I know about Canova or whoever it is?" +They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a +lamp with life. He at least wasn't dead. She wondered whether the +letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. No, of course +not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out.</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes +were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. +He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old +tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to +keep him from rotting away. They walked on for a long time in silence.</p> + +<p>"Here's the river," said Mr. Topes at last.</p> + +<p>A few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came +down slowly through the plain to the sea. Just inland from the beach it +was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, +and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the +storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more +intense than at ordinary times. And though all was so clear, there was a +mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. There was no sound +except the continuous breathing of the sea. They stood for a little +while, looking; then turned back.</p> + +<p>Far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. White +flannel trousers, a pink skirt.</p> + +<p>"Nature," Mr. Topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. "One always +comes back to nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like +these, one realises it. One lives now—more quietly, perhaps, but more +profoundly. Deep watery. Deep waters...."</p> + +<p>The figures drew closer. Wasn't it the marquis? And who was with him? +Barbara strained her eyes to see.</p> + +<p>"Most of one's life," Mr. Topes went on, "is one prolonged effort to +prevent oneself thinking. Your father and I, we collect pictures and +read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, +or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. Anything rather than +think calmly about the important things."</p> + +<p>Mr. Topes was silent. He looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, +at the great clouds, at his companion. A frail Montagna madonna, with +the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity +as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and +yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. He thought of death and +the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt +inclined to weep.</p> + +<p>The approaching couple were quite near now.</p> + +<p>"What a funny old walrus," said the lady.</p> + +<p>"Walrus? Your natural history is quite wrong." The marquis laughed. +"He's much too dry to be a walrus. I should suggest some sort of an old +cat."</p> + +<p>"Well, whatever he is, I'm sorry for that poor little girl. Think of +having nobody better to go about with!"</p> + +<p>"Pretty, isn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but too young, of course."</p> + +<p>"I like the innocence."</p> + +<p>"Innocence? Cher ami! These English girls. Oh, la la! They may look +innocent But, believe me...."</p> + +<p>"Sh, sh. They'll hear you."</p> + +<p>"Pooh, they don't understand Italian."</p> + +<p>The marquis raised his hand. "The old walrus...." he whispered; then +addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers.</p> + +<p>"Good evening, signorina. Good evening, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air +is always the purest, don't you find, eh?"</p> + +<p>Barbara nodded, leaving Mr. Topes to answer. It wasn't his sister. It +was the Russian woman, the one of whom Mrs. Topes used to say that it +was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had +turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked +at the line of her averted face. Mr. Topes was saying something about +the Pastoral Symphony. Purple face powder in the daylight; it looked +hideous.</p> + +<p>"Well, au revoir."</p> + +<p>The flash of the marquis's smile was directed at them. The Russian woman +turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy +white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous +ennui.</p> + +<p>"They jar a little," said Mr. Topes when they were out of earshot—"they +jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. They haven't the +innocence for this ... this...."—he wriggled and tremoloed out the +just, the all too precious word—"this prelapsarian landscape."</p> + +<p>He looked sideways at Barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully +frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What could he +adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? Tenderness....</p> + +<p>"All this," he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the +sky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, +clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening +time."</p> + +<p>But that was not really what he wanted to say.</p> + +<p>"You see what I mean?" he asked dubiously. She made no reply. How could +she see? "This scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the +corresponding emotion. Those people were out of harmony. They weren't +clear and pure enough." He seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. +"It's an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could +feel it. Those people couldn't." He was feeling his way through +obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? "Certain poems express it. +You know Francis Jammes? I have thought so much of his work lately. Art +instead of life, as usual; but then I'm made that way. I can't help +thinking of Jammes. Those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about +Clara d'Ellébeuse."</p> + +<p>"Clara d'Ellébeuse?" She stopped and stared at him.</p> + +<p>"You know the lines?" Mr. Topes smiled delightedly. "This makes me +think, you make me think of them. '<i>F'aime dans les temps Clara +d'Ellébeuse</i>....' But, my dear Barbara, what is the matter?"</p> + +<p>She had started crying, for no reason whatever.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V_NUNS_AT_LUNCHEON" id="V_NUNS_AT_LUNCHEON"></a>V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON</h2> + + +<p>"What have I been doing since you saw me last?" Miss Penny repeated my +question in her loud, emphatic voice. "Well, when did you see me last?"</p> + +<p>"It must have been June," I computed.</p> + +<p>"Was that after I'd been proposed to by the Russian General?</p> + +<p>"Yes; I remember hearing about the Russian General."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny threw back her head and laughed. Her long ear-rings swung and +rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simile. And her +laughter was like brass, but that had been said before.</p> + +<p>"That was an uproarous incident. It's sad you should have heard of it. I +love my Russian General story. '<i>Vos yeux me rendent fou</i>.'" She laughed +again.</p> + +<p><i>Vos yeux</i>—she had eyes like a hare's, flush with her head and very +bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness. What a +formidable woman. I felt sorry for the Russian General.</p> + +<p>"'<i>Sans coeur et sans entrallies</i>,'" she went on, quoting the poor +devil's words. "Such a delightful motto, don't you think? Like '<i>Sans +peur et sans reproche</i>.' But let me think; what have I been doing since +then?" Thoughtfully she bit into the crust of her bread with long, +sharp, white teeth.</p> + +<p>"Two mixed grills," I said parenthetically to the waiter.</p> + +<p>"But of course," exclaimed Miss Penny suddenly. "I haven't seen you +since my German trip. All sorts of adventures. My appendicitis; my nun."</p> + +<p>"Your nun?"</p> + +<p>"My marvellous nun. I must tell you all about her."</p> + +<p>"Do." Miss Penny's anecdotes were always curious. I looked forward to an +entertaining luncheon.</p> + +<p>"You knew I'd been in Germany this autumn?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I didn't, as a matter of fact. But still—"</p> + +<p>"I was just wandering round." Miss Penny described a circle in the air +with her gaudily jewelled hand. She always twinkled with massive and +improbable jewellery.</p> + +<p>"Wandering round, living on three pounds a week, partly amusing myself, +partly collecting material for a few little articles. 'What it Feels +Like to be a Conquered Nation'—sob-stuff for the Liberal press, you +know—and 'How the Hun is Trying to Wriggle out of the Indemnity,' for +the other fellows. One has to make the best of all possible worlds, +don't you find? But we mustn't talk shop. Well, I was wandering round, +and very pleasant I found it. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig. Then down to +Munich and all over the place. One fine day I got to Grauburg. You know +Grauburg? It's one of those picture-book German towns with a castle on a +hill, hanging beer-gardens, a Gothic church, an old university, a river, +a pretty bridge, and forests all round. Charming. But I hadn't much +opportunity to appreciate the beauties of the place. The day after I +arrived there—bang!—I went down with appendicitis—screaming, I may +add."</p> + +<p>"But how appalling!"</p> + +<p>"They whisked me off to hospital, and cut me open before you could say +knife. Excellent surgeon, highly efficient Sisters of Charity to nurse +me—I couldn't have been in better hands. But it was a bore being tied +there by the leg for four weeks—a great bore. Still, the thing had its +compensations. There was my nun, for example. Ah, here's the food, thank +Heaven!"</p> + +<p>The mixed grill proved to be excellent. Miss Penny's description of the +pun came to me in scraps and snatches. A round, pink, pretty face in a +winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether too +perfect—false, in fact; but the general effect extremely pleasing. A +youthful Teutonic twenty eight.</p> + +<p>"She wasn't my nurse," Miss Penny explained. "But I used to see her +quite often when she came in to have a look at the <i>tolle Engländerin</i>. +Her name was Sister Agatha. During the war, they told me, she had +converted any number of wounded soldiers to the true faith—which wasn't +surprising, considering how pretty she was."</p> + +<p>"Did she try and convert you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"She wasn't such a fool." Miss Penny laughed, and rattled the miniature +gallows of her ears.</p> + +<p>I amused myself for a moment with the thought of Miss Penny's +conversion—Miss Penny confronting a vast assembly of Fathers of the +Church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, +laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate +Conception, meeting the stern look of the Grand Inquisitor with a flash +of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. What was the secret of the +woman's formidableness?</p> + +<p>But I was missing the story. What had happened? Ah yes, the gist of it +was that Sister Agatha had appeared one morning, after two or three days +absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital +charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven +head.</p> + +<p>"Dead," said Miss Penny; "she looked as though she were dead. A walking +corpse, that's what she was. It was a shocking sight. I shouldn't have +thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She +walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had +great burnt rings round her eyes and deep lines in her face. And the +general expression of unhappiness—that was something quite appalling."</p> + +<p>She leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and +caught the passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. The little +Italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into +terror on his face.</p> + +<p>"Half a pint of Guinness," ordered Miss Penny. "And, after this, bring +me some jam roll."</p> + +<p>"No jam roll to-day, madam."</p> + +<p>"Damn!" said Miss Penny. "Bring me what you like, then."</p> + +<p>She let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative.</p> + +<p>"Where was I? Yes, I remember. She came into my room, I was telling you, +with a bucket of water and a brush, dressed like a charwoman. Naturally +I was rather surprised. 'What on earth are you doing, Sister Agatha?' I +asked. No answer. She just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. +When she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me +again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse when she +next came in. 'Can't say.'—'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took +nearly a week to find out what really had happened. Nobody dared tell +me; it was <i>strengst verboten</i>, as they used to say in the good old +days. But I wormed it out in the long run. My nurse, the doctor, the +charwomen—I got something out of all of them. I always get what I want +in the end." Miss Penny laughed like a horse.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure you do," I said politely.</p> + +<p>"Much obliged," acknowledged Miss Penny. "But to proceed. My information +came to me in fragmentary whispers. 'Sister Agatha ran away with a +man.'—Dear me.—'One of the patients.'—You don't say so.—'A criminal +out of the jail.'—The plot thickens.—'He ran away from her.'—It +seems to grow thinner again.—'They brought her back here; she's been +disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel—coffin +and all. She had to be present at it—her own funeral. She isn't a nun +any more. She has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest in the +hospital. She's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to +speak to her. She's regarded as dead.'" Miss Penny paused to signal to +the harassed little Italian. "My small 'Guinness,'" she called out.</p> + +<p>"Coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "Guinness" down the lift, +and from below another voice echoed, "Guinness."</p> + +<p>"I filled in the details bit by bit. There was our hero, to begin with; +I had to bring him into the picture, which was rather difficult, as I +had never seen him. But I got a photograph of him. The police circulated +one when he got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny +opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always carry it about with +me; it's become a superstition. For years, I remember, I used to carry a +little bit of heather tied up with string. Beautiful, isn't it? There's +a sort of Renaissance look about it, don't you think? He was +half-Italian, you know."</p> + +<p>Italian. Ah, that explained it. I had been wondering how Bavaria could +have produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the +finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and +sensually curved.</p> + +<p>"He's certainly very superb," I said, handing back the picture.</p> + +<p>Miss Penny put it carefully away in her bag. "Isn't he?" she said. +"Quite marvellous. But his character and his mind were even better. I +see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are +simply unaware of the existence of right and wrong. And he had +genius—the real Italian genius for engineering, for dominating and +exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and +a brother of the electrical engineers. Only Kuno—that was his +name—didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how to harness +the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. The +commercial exploitation of love-power, that was his specialty. I +sometimes wonder," Miss Penny added in a different tone, "whether I +shall ever be exploited, when I get a little more middle-aged and +celibate, by one of these young engineers of the passions. It would be +humiliating, particularly as I've done so little exploiting from my +side."</p> + +<p>She frowned and was silent for a moment. No, decidedly, Miss Penny was +not beautiful; you could not even honestly say that she had charm or was +attractive. That high Scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the voice, +the terrifying laugh, and the size of her, the general formidableness of +the woman. No, no, no.</p> + +<p>"You said he had been in prison," I said. The silence, with all its +implications, was becoming embarrassing.</p> + +<p>Miss Penny sighed, looked up, and nodded. "He was fool enough," she +said, "to leave the straight and certain road of female exploitation for +the dangerous courses of burglary. We all have our occasional accesses +of folly. They gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting +pneumonia, I think it was, a week after entering jail. He was +transferred to the hospital. Sister Agatha, with her known talent for +saving souls, was given him as his particular attendant. But it was he, +I'm afraid, who did the converting."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny finished off the last mouthful of the ginger pudding which +the waiter had brought in lieu of jam roll.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you don't smoke cheroots," I said, as I opened my cigar-case.</p> + +<p>"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," Miss Penny replied. She looked +sharply round the restaurant. "I must just see if there are any of those +horrible little gossip paragraphers here to-day. One doesn't want to +figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'A fact +which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that Miss Penny, +the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon with a +six-inch Burma cheroot. I saw her yesterday in a restaurant—not a +hundred miles from Carmelite Street—smoking like a house on fire.' You +know the touch. But the coast seems to be clear, thank goodness."</p> + +<p>She took a cheroot from the case, lit it at my proffered match, and went +on talking.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was young Kuno who did the converting. Sister Agatha was +converted back into the worldly Melpomene Fugger she had been before she +became the bride of holiness."</p> + +<p>"Melpomene Fugger?"</p> + +<p>"That was her name. I had her history from my old doctor. He had seen +all Grauburg, living and dying and propagating for generations. +Melpomene Fugger why, he had brought little Melpel into the world, +little Melpchen. Her father was Professor Fugger, the great Professor +Fugger, the <i>berümter Geolog</i>. Oh, yes, of course, I know the name. So +well.... He was the man who wrote the standard work on Lemuria—you +know, the hypothetical continent where the lemurs come from. I showed +due respect. Liberal-minded he was, a disciple of Herder, a +world-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. Anglophile, too, +and always ate porridge for breakfast—up till August 1914. Then, the +radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and +with tears in his eyes. The national food of a people who had betrayed +culture and civilisation—how could he go on eating it? It would stick +in his throat. In future he would have a lightly boiled egg. He sounded, +I thought, altogether charming. And his daughter, Melpomene—she sounded +charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tails when she was young! Her +mother was dead, and a sister of the great Professor's ruled the house +with an iron rod. Aunt Bertha was her name. Well, Melpomene grew up, +very plump and appetising. When she was seventeen, something very odious +and disagreeable happened to her. Even the doctor didn't know exactly +what it was; but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had had something +to do with the then Professor of Latin, an old friend of the family's, +who combined, it seems, great erudition with a horrid fondness for very +young ladies."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny knocked half an inch of cigar ash into her empty glass.</p> + +<p>"If I wrote short stories," she went on reflectively "(but it's too much +bother), I should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, +beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in +Melpomene's life. I see the scene so clearly. Poor little Melpel is +leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June +night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is +besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. +Professor Engelmann, her father's old friend, with the magnificent red +Assyrian beard.... Too awful—too awful! But then, as I was saying, +short stones are really too much bother; or perhaps I'm too stupid to +write them. I bequeath it to you. You know how to tick these things +off."</p> + +<p>"You're generous."</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said Miss Penny. "My terms are ten per cent commission on +the American sale. Incidentally there won't be an American sale. Poor +Melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of Those States. But let +me hear what you propose to do with Melpomene now you've got her on the +castle bastions."</p> + +<p>"That's simple," I said. "I know all about German university towns and +castles on hills. I shall make her look into the June night, as you +suggest; into the violet night with its points of golden flame. There +will be the black silhouette of the castle, with its sharp roofs and +hooded turrets, behind her. From the hanging beer-gardens in the town +below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, +will float up through the dark-blue spaces. '<i>Röslein, Röslein, Röslein +rot</i>' and '<i>Das Ringlein sprang in zwei</i>'—the heart-rendingly sweet old +songs will make her cry all the more. Her tears will patter like rain +among the leaves of the mulberry trees in the garden below. Does that +seem to you adequate?"</p> + +<p>"Very nice," said Miss Penny. "But how are you going to bring the sex +problem and all of its horrors into the landscape?"</p> + +<p>"Well, let me think." I called to memory those distant foreign summers +when I was completing my education. "I know. I shall suddenly bring a +swarm of moving candles and Chinese lanterns under the mulberry trees. +You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the +faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone +again. They are students and girls of the town come out to dance, this +windless, blue June night, under the mulberry trees. And now they begin, +thumping round and round in a ring, to the music of their own singing.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Wir können spielen</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Vio-vio-vio-lin</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Wir können spielen</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Vi-o-lin</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"Now the rhythm changes, quickens.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Bumstarara, Bumstarara,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Und wir können tanzen Bumstarara,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Bumstarara-rara.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"The dance becomes a rush, an elephantine prancing on the dry lawn under +the mulberry trees. And from the bastion Melpomene looks down and +perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is +sex, sex, sex. Men and women, male and female—always the same, and all, +in the light of the horror of the afternoon, disgusting. That's how I +should do it, Miss Penny."</p> + +<p>"And very nice, too. But I wish you could find a place to bring in my +conversation with the doctor. I shall never forget the way he cleared +his throat, and coughed before embarking on the delicate subject. 'You +may know, ahem, gracious Miss,' he began—'you may know that religious +phenomena are often, ahem, closely connected with sexual causes.' I +replied that I had heard rumours which might justify me in believing +this to be true among Roman Catholics, but that in the Church of England +—and I for one was a practitioner of Anglicanismus—it was very +different. 'That might be,' said the doctor; he had had no opportunity +in the course of his long medical career of personally studying +Anglicanismus. But he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, +here in Grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the +<i>Geschlechtsleben</i>. Melpomene was a case in point. After that hateful +afternoon she had become extremely religious; the Professor of Latin had +diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. She rebelled against +the placid Agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when +Aunt Bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden +books as <i>The Life of St. Theresa, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, +The Imitation of Christ</i>, and the horribly enthralling <i>Book of +Martyrs</i>. Aunt Bertha confiscated, these works whenever she came upon +them; she considered them more pernicious than the novels of Marcel +Prévost. The character of a good potential housewife might be completely +undermined by reading of this kind. It was rather a relief for Melpomene +when Aunt Bertha shuffled off, in the summer of 1911, this mortal coil. +She was one of those indispensables of whom one makes the discovery, +when they are gone, that one can get on quite as well without them. Poor +Aunt Bertha!"</p> + +<p>"One can imagine Melpomene trying to believe she was sorry, and horribly +ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." The +suggestion seemed to me ingenious, but Miss Penny accepted it as +obvious.</p> + +<p>"Precisely," she said; "and the emotion would only further confirm and +give new force to the tendencies which her aunt's death left her free to +indulge as much as she liked. Remorse, contrition—they would lead to +the idea of doing penance. And for one who was now wallowing in the +martyrology, penance was the mortification of the flesh. She used to +kneel for hours, at night, in the cold; she ate too little, and when her +teeth ached, which they often did,—for she had a set, the doctor told +me, which had given trouble from the very first,—she would not go and +see the dentist, but lay awake at night, savouring to the full her +excruciations, and feeling triumphantly that they must, in some strange +way, be pleasing to the Mysterious Powers. She went on like that for two +or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. In the end +she went down with gastric ulcer. It was three months before she came +out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and +with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. And in +mind, too, she was changed—for the better, I suppose. The nuns who +nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted +supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, +she had sinned. The only road to salvation, they told her, lay in +discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to +authority. Secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose +Agnosticismus was extremely dogmatic, for all its unobtrusiveness, +Melpomene became a Roman Catholic. She was twenty-two. Only a few months +later came the war and Professor Fugger's eternal renunciation of +porridge. He did not long survive the making of that patriotic gesture. +In the autumn of 1914 he caught a fatal influenza. Melpomene was alone +in the world. In the spring of 1915 there was a new and very +conscientious Sister of Charity at work among the wounded, in the +hospital of Grauburg. Here," explained Miss Penny, jabbing the air with +her forefinger, "you put a line of asterisks or dots to signify a six +years' gulf in the narrative. And you begin again right in the middle of +a dialogue between Sister Agatha and the newly convalescent Kuno."</p> + +<p>"What's their dialogue to be about?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's easy enough," said Miss Penny. "Almost anything would do. +What about this, for example? You explain that the fever has just +abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. He +feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world—a world so +bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of +it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being +extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have +suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural +history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet—ha, ha! What an +uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet—that's good, that's damned +good! You can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the +irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, +where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to +jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. Ha, ha! Laugh on, +unhappy boy. It is the quacking of the Fates, the Parcæ, the Norns!"</p> + +<p>Miss Penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. At +the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables +looked up, startled.</p> + +<p>"You can write pages about Destiny and its ironic quacking. It's +tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line."</p> + +<p>"You may be sure I shall."</p> + +<p>"Good! Then I can get on with my story. The days pass and the first +hilarity of convalescence fades away. The young man remembers and grows +sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. +His mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. As for the +consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha +perseveres—oh, with what anxious solicitude!—in the attempt to make +him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously +important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. +And now you see the <i>Geschlechtsleben</i> working yeastily and obscurely, +and once again the quacking of the Norns is audible. By the way," said +Miss Penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the +table, "I wish you'd tell me something. Tell me, do you +really—honestly, I mean—do you seriously believe in literature?"</p> + +<p>"Believe in literature?"</p> + +<p>"I was thinking?" Miss Penny explained, "of Ironic Fate and the quacking +of the Norns and all that."</p> + +<p>"'M yes."</p> + +<p>"And then there's this psychology and introspection business; and +construction and good narrative and word pictures and <i>le mot juste</i> and +verbal magic and striking metaphors."</p> + +<p>I remembered that I had compared Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings to +skeletons hanging in chains.</p> + +<p>"And then, finally, and to begin with—Alpha and Omega—there's +ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of +sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of +turning her misfortunes into cash. It's all very curious, isn't +it?—when one begins to think about it dispassionately."</p> + +<p>"Very curious," I agreed. "But, then, so is everything else if you look +at it like that."</p> + +<p>"No, no," said Miss Penny. "Nothing's so curious as our business. But I +shall never get to the end of my story if I get started on first +principles."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny continued her narrative. I was still thinking of literature. +Do you believe in it? Seriously? Ah! Luckily the question was quite +meaningless. The story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the +young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, +he would be well—well enough to go back to jail. No, no. The question +was meaningless. I would think about it no more. I concentrated my +attention again.</p> + +<p>"Sister Agatha," I heard Miss Penny saying, "prayed, exhorted, +indoctrinated. Whenever she had half a minute to spare from her other +duties she would come running into the young man's room. 'I wonder if +you fully realise the importance of prayer?' she would ask, and, before +he had time to answer, she would give him a breathless account of the +uses and virtues of regular and patient supplication. Or else, it was: +'May I tell you about St. Theresa?' or 'St. Stephen, the first +martyr—you know about him, don't you?' Kuno simply wouldn't listen at +first. It seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd +interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the +future. Prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with +her ridiculous fairy-tales. Then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, +he showed signs of contrition and conversion. Sister Agatha announced +her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost +sheep. Melpomene had never felt so happy in her life, and Kuno, looking +at her radiant face, must have wondered how he could have been such a +fool as not to see from the first what was now so obvious. The woman had +lost her head about him. And he had only four days now—four days in +which to tap the tumultuous love power, to canalise it, to set it +working for his escape. Why hadn't he started a week ago? He could have +made certain of it then. But now? There was no knowing. Four days was a +horribly short time."</p> + +<p>"How did he do it?" I asked, for Miss Penny had paused.</p> + +<p>"That's for you to say," she replied, and shook her ear-rings at me. "I +don't know. Nobody knows, I imagine, except the two parties concerned +and perhaps Sister Agatha's confessor. But one can reconstruct the +crime, as they say. How would you have done it? You're a man, you ought +to be familiar with the processes of amorous engineering."</p> + +<p>"You flatter me," I answered. "Do you seriously suppose—" I extended my +arms. Miss Penny laughed like a horse. "No. But, seriously, it's a +problem. The case is a very special one. The person, a nun, the place, a +hospital, the opportunities, few. There could be no favourable +circumstances—no moonlight, no distant music; and any form of direct +attack would be sure to fail. That audacious confidence which is your +amorist's best weapon would be useless here."</p> + +<p>"Obviously," said Miss Penny. "But there are surely other methods. There +is the approach through pity and the maternal instincts. And there's the +approach through Higher Things, through the soul. Kuno must have worked +on those lines, don't you think? One can imagine him letting himself be +converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her +sympathy and even threatening—with a great air of seriousness—-to kill +himself rather than go back to jail. You can write that up easily and +convincingly enough. But it's the sort of thing that bores me so +frightfully to do. That's why I can never bring myself to write fiction. +What is the point of it all? And the way you literary men think +yourselves so important—particularly if you write tragedies. It's all +very queer, very queer indeed."</p> + +<p>I made no comment. Miss Penny changed her tone and went on with the +narrative.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "whatever the means employed, the engineering process +was perfectly successful. Love was made to find out a way. On the +afternoon before Kuno was to go back to prison, two Sisters of Charity +walked out of the hospital gates, crossed the square in front of it, +glided down the narrow streets towards the river, boarded a tram at the +bridge, and did not descend till the car had reached its terminus in the +farther suburbs. They began to walk briskly along the high road out into +the country. 'Look!' said one of them, when they were clear of the +houses; and with the gesture of a conjurer produced from nowhere a red +leather purse. 'Where did it come from?' asked the other, opening her +eyes. Memories of Elisha and the ravens, of the widow's cruse, of the +loaves and fishes, must have floated through the radiant fog in poor +Melpomene's mind. 'The old lady I was sitting next to in the tram left +her bag open. Nothing could have been simpler.' 'Kuno! You don't mean to +say you stole it?' Kuno swore horribly. He had opened the purse. 'Only +sixty marks. Who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in +silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. And I must have +a thousand at least to get away. It's easy to reconstruct the rest of +the conversation down to the inevitable, 'For God's sake, shut up,' with +which Kuno put an end to Melpomene's dismayed moralising. They trudge on +in silence. Kuno thinks desperately. Only sixty marks; he can do nothing +with that. If only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some +gold or silver anything, anything. He knows such a good place for +selling things. Is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? +Melpomene is also thinking. Evil must often be done that good may +follow. After all, had not she herself stolen Sister Mary of the +Purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? Had not she +run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she +was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphatically +approved; she felt sure of it. And now there was the red purse. But +what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul—and, after all, +what was she doing hut saving Kuno's soul?" Miss Penny, who had adapted +the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought +her hand with a slap on to the table. "Lord, what a bore this sort of +stuff is!" she exclaimed. "Let's get to the end of this dingy anecdote +as quickly as possible. By this time, you must imagine, the shades of +night were falling fast—the chill November twilight, and so on; but I +leave the natural descriptions to you. Kuno gets into the ditch at the +roadside and takes off his robes. One imagines that he would feel +himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a +crisis. They tramp on for miles. Late in the evening they leave the high +road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. At the fringe +of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds +sleep in the lambing season.</p> + +<p>"The real 'Maison du Berger.'"</p> + +<p>"Precisely," said Miss Penny, and she began to recite:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"<i>Si ton coeur gémissant du poids de notre vie</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Se traine et se débat comme un aigle blessé....</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"How does it go on? I used to adore it all so much when I was a girl.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>"Le seuil est perfumé, l'alcôve est large et sombre,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et là parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"I could go on like this indefinitely."</p> + +<p>"Do," I said.</p> + +<p>"No, no. No, no. I'm determined to finish this wretched story. Kuno +broke the padlock of the door. They entered. What happened in that +little hut?" Miss Penny leaned forward at me. Her large hare's eyes +glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. "Imagine the +emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying +presence of desire. Imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young +man. Oh, there's pages to be made out of this—the absolutely +impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled +crying, the movements! And one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing +about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound +that shakes the air. Why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. In the +morning," Miss Penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their +way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached +the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there +should be need of it. Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress +lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. +'What's the matter?' A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of +tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'What's the +matter?'—'He's gone!' What a queer, indistinct utterance. The +woodcutters regard one another. What does she say? She's a foreigner, +perhaps. 'What's the matter?' they repeat once more. The woman bursts +out violently crying. 'Gone, gone! He's gone,' she sobs out in her +vague, inarticulate way. 'Oh, gone. That's what she says. Who's +gone?'—'He's left me.'—'What?'—'Left me....'—'What the devil...? +Speak a little more distinctly.'—'I can't,' she wails; 'he's taken my +teeth.'—'Your what?—'My teeth!'—and the shrill voice breaks into a +scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. The woodcutters look +significantly at one another. They nod. One of them applies a thick +yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead."</p> + +<p>Miss Penny looked at her watch. "Good heavens!" she said, "it's nearly +half-past three. I must fly. Don't forget about the funeral service," +she added, as she put on her coat. "The tapers, the black coffin, in the +middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy +chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all +caved in like an old woman's, wondering whether she wasn't really and in +fact dead—wondering whether she wasn't already in hell. Good-bye."</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTAL COILS *** + +***** This file should be named 39378-h.htm or 39378-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/3/7/39378/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/old/39378.txt b/old/39378.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c35726 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/39378.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5136 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mortal Coils + +Author: Aldous Huxley + +Release Date: April 5, 2012 [EBook #39378] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTAL COILS *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + + + + +MORTAL COILS + +By + +ALDOUS HUXLEY + +NEW YORK-GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + +1921 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE + +II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES + +III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET + +IV: GREEN TUNNELS + +V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON + + + + +MORTAL COILS + + + + +I: THE GIOCONDA SMILE + + + +I + + +"Miss Spence will be down directly, sir." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence's +parlourmaid was so ugly--ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, +malignantly, criminally ugly--that he could not bear to look at her +more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton +got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes +at the familiar objects it contained. + +Photographs of Greek statuary, photographs of the Roman Forum, coloured +prints of Italian masterpieces, all very safe and well known. Poor, dear +Janet, what a prig--what an intellectual snob! Her real taste was +illustrated in that water-colour by the pavement artist, the one she had +paid half a crown for (and thirty-five shillings for the frame). How +often his had heard her tell the story, how often expatiate on the +beauties of that skilful imitation of an oleograph! "A real Artist in +the streets," and you could hear the capital A in Artist as she spoke +the words. She made you feel that part of his glory had entered into +Janet Spence when she tendered him that half-crown for the copy of the +oleograph. She was implying a compliment to her own taste and +penetration. A genuine Old Master for half a crown. Poor, dear Janet! + +Mr. Hutton came to a pause in front of a small oblong mirror. Stooping a +little to get a full view of his face, he passed a white, well-manicured +finger over his moustache. It was as curly, as freshly auburn as it had +been twenty years ago. His hair still retained its colour, and there was +no sign of baldness yet--only a certain elevation of the brow. +"Shakespearean," thought Mr. Hutton, with a smile, as he surveyed the +smooth and polished expanse of his forehead. + +Others abide our question, thou art free.... Footsteps in the sea ... +Majesty ... Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. No, that +was Milton, wasn't it? Milton, the Lady of Christ's. There was no lady +about him. He was what the women, would call a manly man. That was why +they liked him--for the curly auburn moustache and the discreet +redolence of tobacco. Mr. Hutton smiled again; he enjoyed making fun of +himself. Lady of Christ's? No, no. He was the Christ of Ladies. Very +pretty, very pretty. The Christ of Ladies. Mr. Hutton wished there were +somebody he could tell the joke to. Poor, dear Janet wouldn't appreciate +it, alas? + +He straightened himself up, patted his hair, and resumed his +peregrination. Damn the Roman Forum; he hated those dreary photographs. + +Suddenly he became aware that Janet Spence was in the room, standing +near the door. Mr. Hutton started, as though he had been taken in some +felonious act. To make these silent and spectral appearances was one of +Janet Spence's peculiar talents. Perhaps she had been there all the +time, had seen him looking at himself in the mirror. Impossible! But, +still, it was disquieting. + +"Oh, you gave me such a surprise," said Mr. Hutton, recovering his smile +and advancing with outstretched hand to meet her. + +Miss Spence was smiling too: her Gioconda smile, he had once called it, +in a moment of half-ironical flattery. Miss Spence had taken the +compliment seriously, and had always tried to live up to the Leonardo +standard. She smiled on his silence while Mr. Hutton shook hands; that +was part of the Gioconda business. + +"I hope you're well," said Mr. Hutton. "You look it." + +What a queer face she had! That small mouth pursed forward by the +Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round hole in the middle +as though for whistling--it was like a penholder seen from the front. +Above the mouth a well-shaped nose, finely aquiline. Eyes large, +lustrous, and dark, with the largeness, lustre, and darkness that seems +to invite sties and an occasional blood-shot suffusion. They were fine +eyes, but unchangingly grave. The penholder might do its Gioconda trick, +but the eyes never altered in their earnestness. Above them, a pair of +boldly arched, heavily pencilled black eyebrows lent a surprising air of +power, as of a Roman matron, to the upper portion of the face. Her hair +was dark and equally Roman; Agrippina from the brows upward. + +"I thought I'd just look in on my way home," Mr. Hutton went on. "Ah, +it's good to be back here"--he indicated with a wave of his hand the +flowers in the vases, the sunshine and greenery beyond the windows +--"it's good to be back in the country after a stuffy day of business in +town." + +Miss Spence, who had sat down, pointed to a chair at her side. + +"No, really, I cant sit down," Mr. Hutton protested. "I must get back to +see how poor Emily is. She was rather seedy this morning." He sat down, +nevertheless. "It's these wretched liver chills. She's always getting +them. Women--" He broke off and coughed, so as to hide the fact that he +had uttered. He was about to say that women with weak digestions ought +not to marry; but the remark was too cruel, and he didn't really believe +it. Janet Spence, moreover, was a believer in eternal flames and +spiritual attachments. "She hopes to be well enough," he added, "to see +you at luncheon to-morrow. Can you come? Do!" He smiled persuasively. +"It's my invitation too, you know." + +She dropped her eyes, and Mr. Hutton almost thought that he detected a +certain reddening of the cheek. It was a tribute; he stroked his +moustache. + +"I should like to come if you think Emily's really well enough to have a +visitor." + +"Of course. You'll do her good. You'll do us both good. In married life +three is often better company than two." + +"Oh, you're cynical." + +Mr. Hutton always had a desire to say "Bow-wow-wow" whenever that last +word was spoken. It irritated him more than any other word in the +language. But instead of barking he made haste to protest. + +"No, no. I'm only speaking a melancholy truth. Reality doesn't always +come up to the ideal, you know. But that doesn't make me believe any the +less in the ideal. Indeed, I believe in it passionately the ideal of a +matrimony between two people in perfect accord. I think it's realisable. +I'm sure it is." + +He paused significantly and looked at her with an arch expression. A +virgin of thirty-six, but still unwithered; she had her charms. And +there was something really rather enigmatic about her. Miss Spence made +no reply but continued to smile. There were times when Mr. Hutton got +rather bored with the Gioconda. He stood up. + +"I must really be going now. Farewell, mysterious Gioconda." The smile +grew intenser, focused itself, as it were, in a narrower snout. Mr. +Hutton made a Cinquecento gesture, and kissed her extended hand. It was +the first time he had done such a thing; the action seemed not to be +resented. "I look forward to to-morrow." + +"Do you?" + +For answer Mr. Hutton once more kissed her hand, then turned to go. Miss +Spence accompanied him to the porch. + +"Where's your car?" she asked. + +"I left it at the gate of the drive." + +"I'll come and see you off." + +"No, no." Mr. Hutton was playful, but determined. "You must do no such +thing. I simply forbid you." + +"But I should like to come," Miss Spence protested, throwing a rapid +Gioconda at him. + +Mr. Hutton held up his hand. "No," he repeated, and then, with a gesture +that was almost the blowing of a kiss, he started to run down the drive, +lightly on his toes, with long, bounding strides like a boy's. He was +proud of that run; it was quite marvellously youthful. Still, he was +glad the drive was no longer. At the last bend, before passing out of +sight of the house, he halted and turned round. Miss Spence was still +standing on the steps, smiling her smile. He waved his hand, and this +time quite definitely and overtly wafted a kiss in her direction. Then, +breaking once more into his magnificent canter, he rounded the last dark +promontory of trees. Once out of sight of the house he let his high +paces decline to a trot, and finally to a walk. He took out his +handkerchief and began wiping his neck inside his collar. What fools, +what fools! Had there ever been such an ass as poor, dear Janet Spence? +Never, unless it was himself. Decidedly he was the more malignant fool, +since he, at least, was aware of his folly and still persisted in it. +Why did he persist? Ah, the problem that was himself, the problem that +was other people. + +He had reached the gate. A large, prosperous-looking motor was standing +at the side of the road. + +"Home, M'Nab." The chauffeur touched his cap. "And stop at the +cross-roads on the way, as usual," Mr. Hutton added, as he opened the +door of the car. "Well?" he said, speaking into the obscurity that +lurked within. + +"Oh, Teddy Bear, what an age you've been!" It was a fresh and childish +voice that spoke the words. There was the faintest hint of Cockney +impurity about the vowel sounds. + +Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility +of an animal regaining its burrow. + +"Have I?" he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move. "You +must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long." He sat back +in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him. + +"Teddy Bear...." and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head +declined on to Mr. Hutton's shoulder. Ravished, he looked down sideways +at the round, babyish face. + +"Do you know, Doris, you look like the pictures of Louise de +Kerouaille." He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair. + +"Who's Louise de Kera-whatever-it-is?" Doris spoke from remote +distances. + +"She was, alas! _Fuit_. We shall all be 'was' one of these days. +Meanwhile...." + +Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed smoothly +along. McNab's back, through the front window was stonily impassive, the +back of a statue. + +"Your hands," Doris whispered. "Oh, you mustn't touch me. They give me +electric shocks." + +Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late +in one's existence one makes the discovery of one's body! + +"The electricity isn't in me, it's in you." He kissed her again, +whispering her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific +appellation of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat, +she offered him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting +the sacrificial knife. The sea-mouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: +very peculiar. Or was Doris the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside +out in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, +just to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous, +unbelievably fantastic. + +"Oh, Teddy Bear!" (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His poor +little jokes!) "Teddy Bear, I'm so happy." + +"So am I," said Mr. Hutton. Was it true? + +"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or +wrong?" + +"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty +years." + +"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right +that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and +that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me." + +"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks +rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil." + +"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew +how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you +know, there is a hell, and all that. I don t know what to do. Sometimes +I think I ought to stop loving you." + +"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his +seduction and his moustache. + +"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could hide +from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to you." + +"Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace. + +"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care +if it is." + +Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this +little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, +they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it +hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges +towards it devouringly. + +"Good-bye, good-bye." + +The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris was +left standing by the sign-post at the cross-roads, still dizzy and weak +with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of those +gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up +deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk. +She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies. + +Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling +boredom. + + + + +II + + +Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In +spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the +hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of +digestion, slept before the blaze. + +"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the +room. + +"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on the +verge of tears. "I get so shivery." + +"I hope you're better this evening." + +"Not much, I'm afraid." + +The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against +the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and +with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed +its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy. +Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an _impasse_, she +altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on +playing. Her Patiences always came out. + +"Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer." + +"Well--go, my dear--go, most certainly." + +Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had +driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood, had left the car to wait +for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the +windless sunshine of the chalk down. + +"I'm to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have +massage and electric treatment, too." + +Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing +together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the +flickering of blue fire. The blue fire burst and scattered into whirling +sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting like a child. + +"I'm sure it will do you good, my dear." + +"I was wondering if you'd come with me, dear." + +"But you know I'm going to Scotland at the end of the month." + +Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. "It's the journey," she said. +"The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don't know if I can manage +it. And you know I can't sleep in hotels. And then there's the luggage +and all the worries. I can't go alone. + +"But you won't be alone. You'll have your maid with you." He spoke +impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one. +He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the +quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its +complaining occupant. + +"I don't think I shall be able to go." + +"But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a +change will do you good." + +"I don't think so." + +"But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he's talking about." + +"No, I can't face it. I'm too weak. I can't go alone." Mrs. Hutton +pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes. + +"Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort." + +"I had rather be left in peace to die here." She was crying in earnest +now. + +"O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please." Mrs. Hutton only +sobbed more violently. "Oh, what is one to do?" He shrugged his +shoulders and walked out of the room. + +Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but +he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that +not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, +and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he +spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled +with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed +the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion; and he had +been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was +temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had +been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then. +But now--was it his fault that she was like this? + +Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he +had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he +went up to his wife's room and offered to read to her. She was touched, +gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly +proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French. + +"French? I am so fond of French." Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of +Racine as though it were a dish of green peas. + +Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He +began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole +attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed +to improve the quality of the novel he was reading. + +At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked +up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while, +looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had +been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it, +had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt +before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched +tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like +nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The +lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasised with light and +shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by +Morales. + + _Le squelette etait invisible_ + _Au temps heureux de l'art paien._ + +He shivered a little, and tiptoed out of the room. + +On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some +unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better +now. Besides, she wanted to do honour to her guest. Miss Spence listened +to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy, +lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity. +She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. +Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the +narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess +with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of +a literary or philosophic character--bombardments of Maeterlinck, of +Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. To-day the missiles were +medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of +harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. +Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun. + +Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in +him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that +every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness, +that every woman's small talk was like a vapour hanging over mysterious +gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than +what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different. +Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind +the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What +exactly was there? Mr. Hutton could never quite make out. + +"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence +was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off." + +"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day." + +Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that +prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by +reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. +Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart. + +"My dear, I wouldn't eat those red currants if I were you," he said, +suddenly solicitous. "You know that Libbard has banned everything with +skins and pips." + +"But I am so fond of them," Mrs. Hutton protested, "and I feel so well +to-day." + +"Don't be a tyrant," said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at +his wife. "Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her +good." She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton's arm and patted it +affectionately two or three times. + +"Thank you, my dear." Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants. + +"Well, don't blame me if they make you ill again." + +"Do I ever blame you, dear?" + +"You have nothing to blame me for," Mr. Hutton answered playfully. "I am +the perfect husband." + +They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under +the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in +which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance. + +Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. "It's good +to be alive," he said. + +"Just to be alive," his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed +hand into the sunlight. + +A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were +set on a folding table near the group of chairs. + +"Oh, my medicine!" exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. "Run in and fetch it, Clara, +will you? The white bottle on the sideboard." + +"I'll go," said Mr. Hutton. "I've got to go and fetch a cigar in any +case." + +He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an +instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting +up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence +was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the +cool obscurity of the house. + +"Do you like sugar in your coffee?" Miss Spence inquired. + +"Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I'll drink it after my medicine to +take the taste away." + +Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her +eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky. + +Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the +coffee-cups. + +"I've given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste +away. And here comes the medicine." + +Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wineglass, half full of a pale +liquid. + +"It smells delicious," he said, as he handed it to his wife. + +"That's only the flavouring." She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and +made a grimace. "Ugh, it's so nasty. Give me my coffee." + +Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. "You've made it like +syrup. But it's very nice, after that atrocious medicine." + +At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well +as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have +said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph +of an "I told you so" was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic, +and gave her his arm to the house. + +"A rest will do you good," he said. "By the way, I shan't be back till +after dinner." + +"But why? Where are you going?" + +"I promised to go to Johnson's this evening. We have to discuss the war +memorial, you know." + +"Oh, I wish you weren't going." Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. "Can't +you stay? I don't like being alone in the house." + +"But, my dear, I promised weeks ago." It was a bother having to lie like +this. "And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence." + +He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss +Spence received him aimed and intense. + +"Your wife is dreadfully ill," she fired off at him. + +"I thought she cheered up so much when you came." + +"That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely. +With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked--yes, +wrecked--anything might happen." + +"Libbard doesn't take so gloomy a view of poor Emily's health." Mr. +Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss +Spence's car was standing by the front door. + +"Libbard is only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist." + +He could not refrain from laughing. "You have a macabre passion for +specialists." + +Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. "I am serious. I think poor +Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen at any moment." + +He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the +engine and climbed into his place, ready to drive off. + +"Shall I tell him to start?" He had no desire to continue the +conversation. + +Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction. +"Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon." + +Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved +forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone. + +A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was +waiting at the cross-roads. They dined together twenty miles from home, +at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are +only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr. +Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton +ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent +the evening in his library. + +When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely +affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past +the motionless form of M'Nab, they could see a bright and narrow +universe of forms and colours scooped out of the night by the electric +head-lamps. + +It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in +the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed +features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and +melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the +bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking +in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a +pleasing odour, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and +discreetly delicious. + +"Libbard?" said Mr. Hutton in surprise. "You here? Is my wife ill?" + +"We tried to fetch you earlier," the soft, melancholy voice replied. "It +was thought you were at Mr. Johnson's, but they had no news of you +there." + +"No, I was detained. I had a breakdown," Mr. Hutton answered irritably. +It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie. + +"Your wife wanted to see you urgently." + +"Well, I can go now." Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs. + +Dr. Libbard laid a hand on his arm. "I am afraid it's too late." + +"Too late?" He began fumbling with his watch; it wouldn't come out of +the pocket. + +"Mrs. Hutton passed away half an hour ago." + +The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did +not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local +cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable. + +Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence's words. At any +moment--at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right. + +"What happened?" he asked. "What was the cause?" + +Dr. Libbard explained. It was heart failure brought on by a violent +attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an +irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had +been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease: +something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not +have suffered much. + + + + +III + + +"It's a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow +match for the funeral," old General Grego was saying as he stood, his +top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face +with his handkerchief. + +Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire +to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to +hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great +mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did +nobody care? In theory he didn't much care; let the dead bury their +dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. +Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the +bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he +couldn't go to the Eton and Harrow match. + +Mr. Hutton looked round at the groups of black figures that were +drifting slowly out of the churchyard towards the fleet of cabs and +motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background +of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and +unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that all these people +would soon be dead, too. + +That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of +Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton; +it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after +midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the +French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The +night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the +holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless +flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape, +black and grey under the moon. + +He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the +stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and +night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between +the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and +himself--himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. +Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his +side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There +were only Doris's little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, +the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself--always +himself.... + +Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of +it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: "I will, I will." The sound +of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he +had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: "I will, I +will." There had been New Year's days and solemn anniversaries in the +past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar +resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, +into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a +more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would +live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetites, he +would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved and it would +be so. + +In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural +pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed +in the best modern way--silos and artificial manures and continuous +cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to +serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so +long--_The Effect of Diseases on Civilisation_. + +Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace +had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to +find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had +been transformed by a good night's rest into his customary cheerfulness. +It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life +that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death +seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were +not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could +see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the +farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague +at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern +Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good +anecdote in Skelton's jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would +have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil. + +On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his +correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar +handwriting which he knew to be Doris's. He opened it, and began to +read. She didn't know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife +dying like that, and so suddenly--it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton +sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read on: + + "Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. + But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or + depressed, then I can't help remembering it is there so close, and + I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and + me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so + lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don't know what to do. I + can't get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless + without you. I didn't mean to write to you; I meant to wait till + you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I was + so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn't + help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world + but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is + nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have + been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can t + understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so + dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love + me a little, don't you, Teddy Bear?" + +Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, +worshipped for having seduced the girl--it was too much. It had just +been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no +other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very +little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably +been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to +be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of +reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known +pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew +beforehand--so well, so well--that there was no interest or pleasure to +be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch +came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old +stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife's maid, and Edith, the girl +on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and +others--there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and +boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet.... +Experience doesn't teach. + +Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he +wouldn't see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was +saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old +bailiff was more irritating than usual. + + * * * * * + +Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton ware sitting together on the pier +at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated +happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed +the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a +tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his +side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, +the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a +fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn +oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had +triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was +hopeless, hopeless. + +For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The +girl stirred in her sleep, Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her +direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains +to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair +on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there +moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so +be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of +irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. +In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, +bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses. + +The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The +whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter. + +"Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?" The question came +faintly from distant worlds of love. + +"I think I know somebody who does," Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine +laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and +resound. + +"Who? Tell me. What do you mean?" The voice had come very close; charged +with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate +world. + +"A--ah!" + +"Who?" + +"You'll never guess." Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow +tedious, and then pronounced the name "Janet Spence." + +Doris was incredulous. "Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?" It +was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too. + +"But it's quite true," he said. "She adores me." Oh, the vast joke. He +would go and see her as soon as he returned--see and conquer. "I believe +she wants to marry me," he added. + +"But you wouldn't ... you don't intend...." + +The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. "I +intend to marry you," he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had +ever made in his life. + +When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was +agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the +autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. +Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers. + +The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss +Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda. + +"I was expecting you to come." + +"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Hutton gallantly replied. + +They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place--a little old +stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had +left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della +Robbia plaque. + +"I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn," said Mr. Hutton. He felt +like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous +excitement. + +"Italy...." Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. "I feel drawn +there too." + +"Why not let yourself be drawn?" + +"I don't know. One somehow hasn't the energy and initiative to set out +alone." + +"Alone...." Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing. "Yes, travelling +alone isn't much fun." + +Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still +closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself +for what seemed a very long time. + +Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly +started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they +looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the +farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A +huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of +thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first +drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton +sat on in the growing darkness. + +Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively. + +"I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don't +you?" + +"Most certainly." But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes +generalisations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. +Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid +existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had +always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he +wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy--happier than most men. And +now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the +secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when +Miss Spence went on speaking. + +"People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our +lives." + +"Me?" said Mr. Hutton surprised. + +"Poor Henry! Fate hasn't treated either of us very well." + +"Oh, well, it might have treated me worse." + +"You re being cheerful. That's brave of you. But don't think I can't see +behind the mask." + +Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more +heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked +on, shouting against the noise. + +"I have understood you so well and for so long." + +A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes +were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed +her. + +"You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathise +with you in your solitude. Your marriage ..." + +The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence's voice became audible +once more with the words: + +"... could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a +soul mate." + +A soul mate--he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. Georgette +Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck. He had seen that in +the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted +him in her imagination--a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of +goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he +was what?--Who knows? + +"My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too." Miss +Spence laid her hand on his knee. "You were so patient." Another flash. +She was still aimed, dangerously. "You never complained. But I could +guess--I could guess." + +"How wonderful of you!" So he was an _ame incomprise_. + +"Only a woman's intuition...." + +The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the +rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalised. +Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them. + +"Don't you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this +storm?" He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. +"Passion makes one the equal of the elements." + +What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said "Yes," and +ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took +fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was +serious--terribly serious. He was appalled. + +Passion? "No," he desperately answered. "I am without passion." + +But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on +with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapidly, however, and in such a +burningly intimate whisper that Mr. Hutton found it very difficult to +distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could +make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, +and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her +still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying +intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close +at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel +of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn't it rather--yes, +wasn't it rather George Robey? + +He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, +Pretending he had seen a burglar--Stop thief, stop thief!--and dash off +into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart +attack? or that he had seen, a ghost--Emily's ghost--in the garden? +Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to +Miss Spence's words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his +thoughts. + +"I honoured you for that, Henry," she was saying. + +Honoured him for what? + +"Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the +marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect +you and admire you, and--shall I dare say the word?--" + +Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late. + +"... yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we're free now, Henry." + +Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the +floor by his chair. + +"Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too." + +Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that +she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy. + +"You mustn't, Janet," he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. +"Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed." He patted her +shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her +still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been +sitting. + +Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, +he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door +noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was +shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a +noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr. Hutton +splashed along, not caring if he got wet. + +How heartrendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse +that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why +couldn't she have played the game that he was playing the heartless, +amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn't, she +couldn't play that game; he had known and persisted. + +What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly +stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black bosomed and charged +with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had +sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining +that his toy had drawn the lightning. + +She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying. + +But why hadn't he been able to keep up the game? Why had his +irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold +world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned +steady and luminous in his mind--the idea of flight. He must get away at +once. + + + + +IV + + +"What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?" + +"Nothing." + +There was a silence. Mr. Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the +parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over +Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of +the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one +looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the +bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of +Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in +the September sunshine. + +"Are you worried about anything?" + +"No, thank you." + +"Tell me, Teddy Bear." + +"But, my dear, there's nothing to tell." Mr. Hutton turned round, +smiled, and patted the girl's hand. "I think you'd better go in and have +your siesta. It's too hot for you here." + +"Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?" + +"When I've finished my cigar." + +"All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear." Slowly, +reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards +the house. + +Mr. Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be +alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless +solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving +hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These +last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always +with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good +to be alone. + +He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it; not without +reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something +unpleasant--nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his +sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it +was composed. The words "indecent haste," "social suicide," "scarcely +cold in her grave," "person of the lower classes," all occurred. They +were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and +right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid +letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the +third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It +was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he +had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! +Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr. Hutton found himself +trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling +names--he cursed the woman. + +Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion +that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they +only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to +be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid. + +A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below +the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A +Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen +of the classical type--a little debased. Her profile might have been +taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved +floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. +Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand +of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad +temper.... Under her hideous black clothes, Mr. Hutton divined a +powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a +vague interest and curiosity. To-day the curiosity defined and focused +itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, +alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. He called +to her. + +"Armida!" + +The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so +easy a virtue, that Mr. Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once +more--on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it +was too late. The girl continued to look up at him. + +"_Ha chiamito_?" she asked at last. + +Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility +every time. + +"_Scendo_" he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to +the terrace. Mr. Hutton counted them. Down, down, down, down.... He saw +a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the +next--from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud. + + + + +V + + +For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of +every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since +George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a +warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this +tale of a murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. +Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so notable +because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to +man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. +For months he had lived in sin and fancied security----only to be dashed +at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder +will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were +in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had +been vague, but persistent, rumours in the neighbourhood; the police had +taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the post-mortem +examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of +the coroner's jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had +done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The +newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food +of a whole season. + +Mr. Hutton's first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give +evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a +scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip +seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action for +malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the +Spence woman for slander. + +The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The +experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they +were of opinion that the late Mrs. Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning. + +Arsenic poisoning.... Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, +Mr. Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated +insecticide in his green-houses to poison an army. + +It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against +him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous +tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a +tangled forest. + +When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have +been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, +about lunch-time. Clara, the parlour-maid, was called. Mrs. Hutton, she +remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr. Hutton had +volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence--ah, the +memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all!--Miss +Spence confirmed Clara's statement, and added that Mr. Hutton had come +back with the medicine already poured out in a wineglass, not in the +bottle. + +Mr. Hutton's indignation evaporated. He was dismayed, frightened. It was +all too fantastic to be taken seriously, and yet this nightmare was a +fact it was actually happening. + +M'Nab had seen them kissing, often. He had taken them for a drive on the +day of Mrs. Hutton's death. He could see them reflected in the +wind-screen, sometimes out of the tail of his eye. + +The inquest was adjourned. That evening Doris went to bed with a +headache. When he went to her room after dinner, Mr. Hutton found her +crying. + +"What's the matter?" He sat down on the edge of her bed and began to +stroke her hair. For a long time she did not answer, and he went on +stroking her hair mechanically, almost unconsciously; sometimes, even he +bent down and kissed her bare shoulder. He had his own affairs, however, +to think about. What had happened? How was it that the stupid gossip had +actually come true? Emily had died of arsenic poisoning. It was absurd, +impossible. The order of things had been broken, and he was at the mercy +of an irresponsibility. What had happened, what was going to happen? He +was interrupted in the midst of his thoughts. + +"It's my fault--it's my fault!" Doris suddenly sobbed out. "I shouldn't +have loved you; I oughtn't to have let you love me. Why was I ever +born?" + +Mr. Hutton didn't say anything but looked down in silence at the abject +figure of misery lying on the bed. + +"If they do anything to you I shall kill myself." + +She sat up, held him for a moment at arm's length, and looked at him +with a kind of violence, as though she were never to see him again. + +"I love you, I love you, I love you." She drew him, inert and passive, +towards her, clasped him, pressed herself against him. "I didn't know +you loved me as much as that, Teddy Bear. But why did you do it--why did +you do it?" + +Mr. Hutton undid her clasping arms and got up. His face became very red. +"You seem to take it for granted that I murdered my wife," he said. +"It's really too grotesque. What do you all take me for? A cinema hero?" +He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and +bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against +her. "It's all such damned stupidity. Haven't you any conception of a +civilised man's mentality? Do I look the sort of man who'd go about +slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love +with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand +that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which +you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me +to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go +about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it." + +Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he +knew--odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn't. +He closed the door behind him. + +"Teddy Bear!" He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. Teddy +Bear! The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonised. +Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then +withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was half-way down +the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly--throw herself +out of the window or God knows what! He listened attentively; there was +no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, +lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night +air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace. +How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking +along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-storey window of the +Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should +he go back? He was damned if he would; he hated her. + +He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was +happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could +find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its +horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with +tears; he wanted so passionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily +had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still +so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer +delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as +seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the +Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to +the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet +southern wines--Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas--others would drink +them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes +between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty +perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering +unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He +would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt +that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he +had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as +wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God +existed after all. + +He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by +his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him +almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. "God +bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and +Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They +were all dead now all except Cissie. + +His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his +spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying +on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a +blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have +drunk about half of it. + +"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find +him bending over her. + +Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences. +"You mustn't do this again," he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the +room. + +"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly. + +Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to +prevent you," he said. "Only yourself and your baby. Isn't it rather bad +luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you +want to go out of it?" + +Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't." + +Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself +now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he +loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and +cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had +become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At six o'clock he +undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours' sleep. In the course of +the same afternoon the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful +Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial. + + + + +VI + + +Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in +the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something +that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from +nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She +talked to him a great deal--mostly about the Hutton case.... Her moral +indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that +one had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one +could have been for so long mistaken about the man's character? (But she +had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off +with--so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that +the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the posthumous child of a +condemned and executed criminal--revolted her; the thing was shocking an +obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed +bromide. + +One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. +"By the way," he said in his soft, melancholy voice, "I suppose it was +really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton." + +Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, +and then quietly said, "Yes." After that she started to cry. + +"In the coffee, I suppose." + +She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in +his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping +draught. + + + + +II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES + + + +A PLAY + + +_It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the +garden facade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage--a bare +white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten +feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the +lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through which a yellow +radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or +three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, +ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set. +At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of +the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous +June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down +to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are +made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender +towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing +of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost +deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest_, COUNT +ALBERTO TIRETTA, _is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic +despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully +sympathetic at his side_, ALBERTO _is a little man with large lustrous +eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the +pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ--almost as pretty +and sentimental as Murillo's little beggars._ + + + +ALBERTO (_making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left +covering his eyes_). Whereupon, Waiter (_he is reciting a tale of +woes_), she slammed the door in my face. (_He brings down his +gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table_.) + +WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible! + +ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a +little weary. (_The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under +his arm and fills Alberto's glass._) + +WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore. + +ALBERTO (_throwing down a note_). Keep the change. + +WAITER (_bowing_). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I +should beat her. (_He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of +illustration slaps its black polished flanks._) + +ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her. + +WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern +disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I assure you, Signore, a +pleasure. + +ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts. +My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity. +Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please. + +WAITER (_pouring out the brandy_). Delicacy, purity.... Ah, believe me, +Signore ... That will be one lira twenty-five. + +ALBERTO (_throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic +gesture_). Keep the change. + +WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, +purity.... You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, +beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the +Signore's sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen +years old, and what eyes, what forms! + +ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of +the young lady (_he points towards the glass doors_). Remember she is an +American. (_The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel_.) + + + +SIDNEY DOLPHIN _and_ MISS AMY TOOMIS + +_come out together on to the terrace._ MISS AMY _supports a well-shaped +head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from +Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses +sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten +Toomis millions_. SIDNEY DOLPHIN _has a romantic aristocratic +appearance. The tailoring of_ 1830 _would suit him. Balzac would have +described his face as_ plein de poesie. _In effect he does happen to be +a poet. His two volumes of verse, "Zeotrope and 'Trembling Ears," have +been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are +poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain. They may be +merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain. +Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at +one of the little iron tables_, ALBERTO _they do not see; the shadow of +the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in +savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There +is a long, uncomfortable silence_. DOLPHIN _assumes the Thinker's +mask--the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead_, AMY +_regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her +interest in him_, DOLPHIN _racks his brains to think of some way of +exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to +play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests_. AMY _makes a +social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones._ AMY. It's +been a wonderful day, hasn't it? + +DOLPHIN (_starting, as though roused from profoundest thought_). Yes, +yes, it has. + +AMY. You don't often get it as fine as this in England, I guess. + +DOLPHIN. Not often. + +AMY. Nor do we over at home. + +DOLPHIN. So I should suppose. (_Silence. A spasm of anguish crosses_ +DOLPHIN'S _face; then he reassumes the old Thinker's mask._ AMY _looks +at him for a little longer, then, unable to suppress her growing +curiosity, she says with a sudden burst of childish confidence:_) + +AMY. It must be wonderful to be able to think as hard as you do, Mr. +Dolphin. Or are you sad about something? + +DOLPHIN (_looks up, smiles, and blushes; a spell has been broken_). The +finger at the temple, Miss Toomis, is not the barrel of a revolver. + +AMY. That means you're not specially sad about anything. Just thinking. + +DOLPHIN. Just thinking. + +AMY. What about? + +DOLPHIN. Oh, just life, you know--life and letters. + +AMY. Letters? Do you mean love letters. + +DOLPHIN. No, no. Letters in the sense of literature; letters as opposed +to life. + +AMY. (_disappointed_). Oh, literature. They used to teach us literature +at school. But I could never understand Emerson. What do you think +about literature for? + +DOLPHIN. It interests me, you know. I read it; I even try to write it. + +AMY (_very much excited_). What, are you a writer, a poet, Mr. Dolphin? + +DOLPHIN. Alas, it is only too true; I am. + +AMY. But what do you write? + +DOLPHIN. Verse and prose, Miss Toomis. Just verse and prose. + +AMY (_with enthusiasm_). Isn't that interesting. I've never met a poet +before, you know. + +DOLPHIN. Fortunate being. Why, before I left England I attended a +luncheon of the Poetry Union at which no less than a hundred and +eighty-nine poets were present. The sight of them made me decide to go +to Italy. + +AMY. Will you show me your books? + +DOLPHIN. Certainly not, Miss Toomis. That would ruin our friendship. I +am insufferable in my writings. In them I give vent to all the horrible +thoughts and impulses which I am too timid to express or put into +practice in real life. Take me as you find me here, a decent specimen of +a man, shy but able to talk intelligently when the layers of ice are +broken, aimless, ineffective, but on the whole quite a good sort. + +AMY. But I know that man already, Mr. Dolphin. I want to know the poet. +Tell me what the poet is like. + +DOLPHIN. He is older, Miss Toomis, than the rocks on which he sits. He +is villainous. He is ... but there, I really must stop. It was you who +set me going, though. Did you do it on purpose. + +AMY. Do what on purpose? + +DOLPHIN. Make me talk about myself. If you want to get people to like +you, you must always lead the conversation on to the subject of their +characters. Nothing pleases them so much. They'll talk with enthusiasm +for hours and go away saying that you're the most charming, cleverest +person they've ever met. But of course you knew that already. You re +Machiavellian. + +AMY. Machiavellian? You're the first person that's ever said that. I +always thought I was very simple and straight-forward. People say about +me that.... Ah, now I'_m_ talking about myself. That was unscrupulous of +you. But you shouldn't have told me about the trick if you wanted it to +succeed. + +DOLPHIN. Yes. It was silly of me. If I hadn't, you'd have gone on +talking about yourself and thought me the nicest man in the world. + +AMY. I want to hear about your poetry. Are you writing any now? + +DOLPHIN. I have composed the first line of a magnificent epic. But I +can't get any further. + +AMY. How does it go? + +DOLPHIN. Like this (_he clears his throat_). "Casbeen has been, and +Moghreb is no more." Ah, the transience of all sublunary things! But +inspiration has stopped short there. + +AMY. What exactly does it mean? + +DOLPHIN. Ah, there you re asking too much, Miss Toomis. Waiter, some +coffee for two. + +WAITER (_who is standing in the door of the lounge_). Si, Signore. Will +the lady and gentleman take it here, or in the gardens, perhaps? + +DOLPHIN. A good suggestion. Why shouldn't the lady and gentleman take it +in the garden? + +AMY. Why not? + +DOLPHIN. By the fountain, then, Waiter. We can talk about ourselves +there to the tune of falling waters. + +AMY. And you shall recite your poetry, Mr. Dolphin. I just love poetry. +Do you know Mrs. Wilcox's _Poems of Passion_? (_They go out to the left. +A nightingale utters two or three phrases of song and from far down the +bells of the city jangle the three-quarters and die slowly away into the +silence out of which they rose and came together._) + +(LUCREZIA GRATTAROL _has come out of the hotel just in time to overhear +Miss Toomis's last remark, just in time to see her walk slowly away with +a hand on_ SIDNEY DOLPHIN's _arm_. LUCREZIA _has a fine thoroughbred +appearance, an aquiline nose, a finely curved sensual mouth, a superb +white brow, a quivering nostril. She is the last of a family whose name +is as illustrious in Venetian annals as that of Foscarini, Tiepolo, or +Tron. She stamps a preposterously high-heeled foot and tosses her +head._) + +LUCREZIA. Passion! Passion, indeed. An American! (_She starts to run +after the retreating couple, when_ ALBERTO, _who has been sitting with +his head between his hands, looks up and catches sight of the +newcomer_.) + +ALBERTO. Lucrezia! + +LUCREZIA (_starts, for in the shade beneath the trees she had not seen +him_). Oh! You gave me such a fright, Alberto. I'm in a hurry now. Later +on, if you.... + +ALBERTO (_in a desperate voice that breaks into a sob_). Lucrezia! You +must come and talk to me. You must. + +LUCREZIA. But I tell you I can't now, Alberto. Later on. + +ALBERTO (_the tears streaming down his cheeks_). Now, now, now! You must +come now. I am lost if you don't. + +LUCREZIA (_looking indecisively first at_ ALBERTO _and then along the +path down which_ AMY _and_ SIDNEY DOLPHIN _have disappeared_). But +supposing I am lost if I do come? + +ALBERTO. But you couldn't be as much lost as I am. Ah, you don't know +what it is to suffer. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss wass ich leide. +Oh, Lucrezia.... (_He sobs unrestrainedly_.) + +LUCREZIA (_goes over to where_ ALBERTO _is sitting. She pats his +shoulder and his bowed head of black curly hair_). There, there, my +little Bertino. Tell me what it is. You mustn't cry. There, there. + +ALBERTO (_drying his eyes and rubbing his head, like a cat, avid of +caresses, against her hand_). How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia? You +are like a mother to me. + +LUCREZIA. I know. That's just what's so dangerous. + +ALBERTO (_lets his head fall upon her bosom_). I come to you for +comfort, like a tired child, Lucrezia. + +LUCREZIA. Poor darling! (_She strokes his hair, twines its thick black +tendrils round her fingers_, ALBERTO _is abjectly pathetic_.) + +ALBERTO (_with closed eyes and a seraphic smile_). Ah, the suavity, the +beauty of this maternal instinct! + +LUCREZIA (_with a sudden access of energy and passion_). The +disgustingness of it, you mean. (_She pushes him from her. His head +wobbles once, as though it were inanimate, before he straightens into +life_.) The maternal instinct. Ugh. It's been the undoing of too many +women. You men come with your sentimental babyishness and exploit it for +your own lusts. Be a man, Bertino. Be a woman, I mean, if you can. + +ALBERTO (_looking up at her with eyes full of doglike, dumb reproach_). +Lucrezia! You, too? Is there nobody who cares for me? This is the +unkindest cut of all. I may as well die. (_He relapses into tears_.) + +LUCREZIA (_who has started to go, turns back, irresolute_). Now, don't +cry, Bertino. Can't you behave like a reasonable being? (_She makes as +though to go again_.) + +ALBERTO (_through his sobs_). You too, Lucrezia! Oh, I can't bear it, I +can't bear it. + +LUCREZIA (_turning back desperately_). But what do you want me to do? +Why should you expect _me_ to hold your hand? + +ALBERTO. I thought better of you, Lucrezia. Let me go. There is nothing +left for me now but death. (_He rises to his feet, takes a step or two, +and then collapses into another chair, unable to move_.) + +LUCREZIA (_torn between anger and remorse_). Now do behave yourself +sensibly, Bertino. There, there ... you mustn't cry. I'm sorry if I've +hurt you. (_Looking towards the left along the path taken by_ AMY _and_ +DOLPHIN.) Oh, damnation! (_She stamps her foot_.) Here, Bertino, do pull +yourself together. (_She raises him up_.) There, now you must stop +crying. (_But as soon as she lets go of him his head falls back on to +the iron table with an unpleasant, meaty bump. That bump is too much +for_ LUCREZIA. _She bends over him, strokes his head, even kisses the +lustrous curls_.) Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I have been a beast. But, +tell me first, what's the matter, Bertino? What is it, my poor darling? +Tell me. + +ALBERTO. Nobody loves me. + +LUCREZIA. But we're all devoted to you, Bertino mio. + +ALBERTO. She isn't. To-day she shut the door in my face. + +LUCREZIA. She? You mean the French-woman, the one you told me about? +Louise, wasn't she? + +ALBERTO. Yes, the one with the golden hair. + +LUCREZIA. And the white legs. I remember: you saw her bathing. + +ALBERTO (_lays his hand on his heart_). Ah, don't remind me of it. (_His +face twitches convulsively_.) + +LUCREZIA. And now she's gone and shut the door in your face. + +ALBERTO. In my face, Lucrezia. + +LUCREZIA. Poor darling! + +ALBERTO. For me there is nothing now but the outer darkness. + +LUCREZIA. Is the door shut forever, then? + +ALBERTO. Definitively, for ever. + +LUCREZIA. But have you tried knocking? Perhaps, after all, it might be +opened again, if only a crack. + +ALBERTO. What, bruise my hands against the granite of her heart? + +LUCREZIA. Don't be too poetical, Bertino mio. Why not try again, in any +case? + +ALBERTO. You give me courage. + +LUCREZIA. There's no harm in trying, you know. + +ALBERTO. Courage to live, to conquer. (_He beats his breast_.) I am a +man again, thanks to you, Lucrezia, my inspirer, my Muse, my Egeria. How +can I be sufficiently grateful. (_He kisses her_.) I am the child of +your spirit. (_He kisses her again_.) + +LUCREZIA. Enough, enough. I am not ambitious to be a mother, yet awhile. +Quickly now, Bertino, I know you will succeed. + +ALBERTO (_cramming his hat down on his head and knocking with his +walking-stick on the ground_). Succeed or die, Lucrezia. (_He goes out +with a loud martial stamp_.) + +LUCREZIA (_to the waiter who is passing across the stage with a +coffee-pot and cups on a tray_). Have you seen the Signorina Toomis, +Giuseppe? + +WAITER. The Signorina is down in the garden. So is the Signore Dolphin. +By the fountain, Signorina. This is the Signore's coffee. + +LUCREZIA. Have you a mother, Giuseppe? + +WAITER. Unfortunately, Signorina. + +LUCREZIA. Unfortunately? Does she treat you badly, then? + +WAITER. Like a dog, Signorina. + +LUCREZIA. Ah, I should like to see your mother. I should like to ask her +to give me some hints on how to bring up children. + +WAITER. But surely, Signorina, you are not expecting, you--ah.... + +LUCREZIA. Only figuratively, Giuseppe. My children are spiritual +children. + +WAITER. Precisely, precisely. My mother, alas! is not a spiritual +relation. Nor is my fiancee. + +LUCREZIA. I didn't know you were engaged. + +WAITER. To an angel of perdition. Believe me, Signorina, I go to my +destruction in that woman--go with open eyes. There is no escape. She is +what is called in the Holy Bible (_crosses himself_) a Fisher of Men. + +LUCREZIA. You have remarkable connections, Giuseppe. + +WAITER. I am honoured by your words, Signorina. But the coffee becomes +cold. (_He hurries out to the left_.) + +LUCREZIA. In the garden! By the fountain! And there's the nightingale +beginning to sing in earnest! Good heavens! what may not already have +happened? (_She runs out after the waiter_.) + +(_Two persons emerge from the hotel_, the VICOMTE DE BARBAZANGE _and the_ +BARONESS KOCH DE WORMS. PAUL DE BARBAZANGE _is a young man--twenty-six +perhaps of exquisite grace. Five foot ten, well built, dark hair, sleek +as marble, the most refined aristocratic features, and a monocle_, +SIMONE DE WORMS _is forty, a ripe Semitic beauty. Five years more and +the bursting point of overripeness will have been reached. But now, +thanks to massage, powerful corsets, skin foods, and powder, she is +still a beauty--a beauty of the type Italians admire, cushioned, +steatopygous._ PAUL, _who has a faultless taste in bric-a-brac and +women, and is by instinct and upbringing an ardent anti-Semite, finds +her infinitely repulsive. The Baronne enters with a loud shrill giggle. +She gives_ PAUL _a slap with her green feather fan_.) + + + +SIMONE. Oh, you naughty boy! Quelle histoire. Mon Dieu! How dare you +tell me such a story! + +PAUL. For you, Baronne, I would risk anything even your displeasure. + +SIMONE. Charming boy. But stories of that kind.... And you look so +innocent, too! Do you know any more like it? + +PAUL (_suddenly grave_). Not of that description. But I will tell you a +story of another kind, a true story, a tragic story. + +SIMONE. Did I ever tell you how I saw a woman run over by a train? Cut +to pieces, literally, to pieces. So disagreeable. I'll tell you later. +But now, what about your story? + +PAUL. Oh, it's nothing, nothing. + +SIMONE. But you promised to tell it me. + +PAUL. It's only a commonplace anecdote. A young man, poor but noble, +with a name and a position to keep up. A few youthful follies, a +mountain of debts, and no way out except the revolver. This is all dull +and obvious enough. But now follows the interesting part of the story. +He is about to take that way out, when he meets the woman of his dreams, +the goddess, the angel, the ideal. He loves, and he must die without a +word. (_He turns his face away from the Baronne, as though his emotion +were too much for him, which indeed it is_.) + +SIMONE. Vicomte--Paul--this young man is you? + +PAUL (_solemnly_). He is. + +SIMONE. And the woman? + +PAUL. Oh, I can't, I mayn't tell you. + +SIMONE. The woman! Tell me, Paul. + +PAUL (_turning towards her and falling on his knees_). The woman, +Simone, is you. Ah, but I had no right to say it. + +SIMONE (_quivering with emotion_). My Paul. (_She clasps his head to her +bosom. A grimace of disgust contorts Paul's classical features. He +endures Simone's caresses with a stoical patience_.) But what is this +about a revolver? That is only a joke, Paul, isn't it? Say it isn't +true. + +PAUL. Alas, Simone, too true. (_He taps his coat pocket_.) There it +lies. To-morrow I have a hundred and seventy thousand francs to pay, or +be dishonoured. I cannot pay the sum. A Barbazange does not survive +dishonour. My ancestors were Crusaders, preux chevaliers to a man. Their +code is mine. Dishonour for me is worse than death. + +SIMONE. Mon Dieu, Paul, how noble you are! (_She lays her hands on his +shoulder, leans back, and surveys him at arm's length, a look of pride +and anxious happiness on her face_.) + +PAUL (_dropping his eyes modestly_). Not at all. I was born noble, and +noblesse oblige, as we say in our family. Farewell, Simone, I love +you--and I must die. My last thought will be of you. (_He kisses her +hand, rises to his feet, and makes as though to go_.) + +SIMONE (_clutching him by the arm_). No, Paul, no. You must not, shall +not, do anything rash. A hundred and seventy thousand francs, did you +say? It is paltry. Is there no one who could lend or give you the money? + +PAUL. Not a soul. Farewell, Simone. + +SIMONE. Stay, Paul. I hardly dare to ask it of you--you with such lofty +ideas of honour--but would you ... from me? + +PAUL. Take money from a woman? Ah, Simone, tempt me no more. I might do +an ignoble act. + +SIMONE. But from me, Paul, from me. I am not in your eyes a woman like +any other woman, am I? + +PAUL. It is true that my ancestors, the Crusaders, the preux chevaliers, +might in all honour receive gifts from the ladies of their +choice--chargers, swords, armour, or tenderer mementoes, such as gloves +or garters. But money--no; who ever heard of their taking money? + +SIMONE. But what would be the use of my giving you swords and horses? +You could never use them. Consider, my knight, my noble Sir Paul, in +these days the contests of chivalry have assumed a different form; the +weapons and the armour have changed. Your sword must be of gold and +paper; your breastplate of hard cash; your charger of gilt-edged +securities. I offer you the shining panoply of the modern crusader. Will +you accept it? + +PAUL. You are eloquent, Simone. You could win over the devil himself +with that angelic voice of yours. But it cannot be. Money is always +money. The code is clear. I cannot accept your offer. Here is the way +out. (_He takes an automatic pistol out of his pocket_.) Thank you, +Simone, and good-bye. How wonderful is the love of a pure woman. + +SIMONE. Paul, Paul, give that to me! (_She snatches the pistol from his +hand_.) If anything were to happen to you, Paul, I should kill myself +with this. You must live, you must consent to accept the money. You +mustn't let your honour make a martyr of you. + +PAUL (_brushing a tear from his eyes_). No, I can't.... Give me that +pistol, I beg you. + +SIMONE. For my sake, Paul. + +PAUL. Oh, you make it impossible for me to act as the voices of dead +ancestors tell me I should.... For your sake, then, Simone, I consent +to live. For your sake I dare to accept the gift you offer. + +SIMONE (_kissing his hand in an outburst of gratitude_). Thank you, +thank you, Paul. How happy I am! + +PAUL. I, too, light of my life. + +SIMONE. My month's allowance arrived to-day. I have the cheque here. +(_She takes it out of her corsage_.) Two hundred thousand francs. It's +signed already. You can get it cashed as soon as the hanks open +to-morrow. + +PAUL (_moved by an outburst of genuine emotion kisses indiscriminately +the cheque, the Baronne, his own hands_). My angel, you have saved me. +How can I thank you? How can I love you enough? Ah, mon petit bouton de +rose. + +SIMONE. Oh, naughty, naughty! Not now, my Paul; you must wait till some +other time. + +PAUL. I burn with impatience. + +SIMONE. Quelle fougue! Listen, then. In an hour's time, Paul cheri, in +my boudoir; I shall be alone. + +PAUL. An hour? It is an eternity. + +SIMONE (_playfully_). An hour. I won't relent. Till then, my Paul. (_She +blows a kiss and runs out: the scenery trembles at her passage._) + +(PAUL _looks at the cheque, then pulls out a large silk handkerchief and +wipes his neck inside his collar_.) (DOLPHIN _drifts in from the left. +He is smoking a cigarette, but he does not seem to be enjoying it_.) + +PAUL. Alone? + +DOLPHIN. Alas! + +PAUL. Brooding on the universe as usual? I envy you your philosophic +detachment. Personally, I find that the world is very much too much with +us, and the devil too; (_he looks at the cheque in his hand_) and above +all the flesh. My god, the flesh.... (_He wipes his neck again_.) + +DOLPHIN. My philosophic detachment? But it's only a mask to hide the +ineffectual longings I have to achieve contact with the world. + +PAUL. But surely nothing is easier. One just makes a movement and +impinges on one's fellow-beings. + +DOLPHIN. Not with a temperament like mine. Imagine a shyness more +powerful than curiosity or desire, a paralysis of all the faculties. You +are a man of the world. You were born with a forehead of brass to +affront every social emergency. Ah, if you knew what a torture it is to +find yourself in the presence of someone a woman, perhaps--someone in +whom you take an interest that is not merely philosophic; to find +oneself in the presence of such a person and to be incapable, yes, +physically incapable, of saying a word to express your interest in her +or your desire to possess her intimacy. Ah, I notice I have slipped into +the feminine. Inevitably, for of course the person is always a she. + +PAUL. Of course, of course. That goes without saying. But what's the +trouble? Women are so simple to deal with. + +DOLPHIN. I know. Perfectly simply if one's in the right state of mind. I +have found that out myself, for moments come alas, how rarely!--when I +am filled with a spirit of confidence, possessed by some angel or devil +of power. Ah, then I feel myself to be superb. I carry all before me. In +those brief moments the whole secret of the world is revealed to me. I +perceive that the supreme quality in the human soul is effrontery. +Genius in the man of action is simply the apotheosis of charlatanism. +Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mr. Gladstone, Lloyd George--what are +they? Just ordinary human beings projected through the magic lantern of +a prodigious effrontery and so magnified to a thousand times larger than +life. Look at me. I am far more intelligent than any of these fabulous +figures; my sensibility is more refined than theirs, I am morally +superior to any of them. And yet, by my lack of charlatanism, I am made +less than nothing. My qualities are projected through the wrong end of a +telescope and the world perceives me far smaller than I really am. But +the world--who cares about the world? The only people who matter are the +women. + +PAUL. Very true, my dear Dolphin. The women.... (_He looks at the cheque +and mops himself once more with his mauve silk handkerchief_.) + +DOLPHIN. To-night was one of my moments of triumph. I felt myself +suddenly free of all my inhibitions. + +PAUL. I hope you profited by the auspicious occasion. + +DOLPHIN. I did. I was making headway. I had--but I don't know why I +should bore you with my confidences. Curious that one should be dumb +before intimates and open one's mind to an all but stranger. I must +apologise. + +PAUL. But I am all attention and sympathy, my dear Dolphin. And I take +it a little hardly that you should regard me as a stranger. (_He lays a +hand on Dolphin's shoulder._) + +DOLPHIN. Thank you, Barbazange, thank you. Well, if you consent to be +the receptacle of my woes, I shall go on pouring them out.... Miss +Toomis.... But tell me frankly what you think of her. + +PAUL. Well.... + +DOLPHIN. A little too ingenuous, a little silly even, eh? + +PAUL. Now you say so, she certainly isn't very intellectually +stimulating. + +DOLPHIN. Precisely. But ... oh, those china-blue eyes, that +ingenuousness, that pathetic and enchanting silliness! She touches lost +chords in one's heart. I love the Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, I am +transported by Beethoven's hundred-and-eleventh Sonata; but the fact +doesn't prevent my being moved to tears by the last luscious waltz +played by the hotel orchestra. In the best constructed brains there are +always spongy surfaces that are sensitive to picture postcards and +Little Nelly and the End of a Perfect Day. Miss Toomis has found out my +Achilles's heel. She is boring, ridiculous, absurd to a degree, but oh! +how moving, how adorable. + +PAUL. You're done for, my poor Dolphin, sunk--spurlos. + +DOLPHIN. And I was getting on so well, was revelling in my new-found +confidence, and, knowing its transience, was exploiting it for all I +was worth. I had covered an enormous amount of ground and then, hey +presto! at a blow all my labour was undone. Actuated by what malice I +don't know, la Lucrezia swoops down like a vulture, and without a +by-your-leave or excuse of any kind carries off Miss Toomis from under +my very eyes. What a woman! She terrifies me. I am always running away +from her. + +PAUL. Which means, I suppose, that she is always pursuing you. + +DOLPHIN. She has ruined my evening and, it may me, all my chances of +success. My precious hour of self-confidence will be wasted (though I +hope you'll not take offence at the word)--wasted on you. + +PAUL. It will return. + +DOLPHIN. But when--but when? Till it does I shall be impotent and in +agony. + +PAUL. I know the agony of waiting. I myself was engaged to a Rumanian +princess in 1916. But owing to the sad collapse in the Rumanian rate of +exchange I have had to postpone our union indefinitely. It is painful, +but, believe me, it can be borne. (_He looks at the cheque and then at +his watch_.) There are other things which are much worse. Believe me, +Dolphin, it can be borne. + +DOLPHIN. I suppose it can. For, when all is said, there are damned few +of us who really take things much to heart. Julie de Lespinasses are +happily not common. I am even subnormal. At twenty I believed myself +passionate: one does at that age. But now, when I come to consider +myself candidly, I find that I am really one of those who never deeply +felt nor strongly willed. Everything is profoundly indifferent to me. I +sometimes try to depress myself with the thought that the world is a +cess-pool, that men are pathetic degenerates from the ape whose +laboriously manufactured ideals are pure nonsense and find no rhyme in +reality, that the whole of life is a bad joke which takes a long time +coming to an end. But it really doesn't upset me. I don't care a curse. +It's deplorable; one ought to care. The best people do care. Still, I +must say I should like to get possession of Miss Toomis. Confound that +Grattarol woman. What on earth did she want to rush me like that for, do +you suppose? + + +PAUL. I expect we shall find out now. (PAUL _jerks his head towards the +left._ LUCREZIA _and_ AMY _are seen entering from the garden_, LUCREZIA +_holds her companion's arm and marches with a firm step towards the two +men_. AMY _suffers herself to be drugged along_.) + +LUCREZIA. Vicomte, Miss Toomis wants you to tell her all about +Correggio. + +AMY (_rather scared_). Oh, really--I.... + +LUCREZIA. And (_sternly_)--and Michelangelo. She is so much interested +in art. + +AMY. But please--don't trouble.... + +PAUL (_bowing gracefully_). I shall be delighted. And in return I hope +Miss Toomis will tell me all about Longfellow. + +AMY (_brightening_). Oh yes, don't you just love Evangeline? + +PAUL. I do; and with your help, Miss Toomis, I hope I shall learn to +love her better. + +LUCREZIA (_to_ DOLPHIN, _who has been looking from_ AMY _to the_ VICOMTE +_and back again at_ AMY _with eyes that betray a certain disquietude_). +You really must come and look at the moon rising over the hills, Mr. +Dolphin. One sees it best from the lower terrace. Shall we go? + +DOLPHIN (_starts and shrinks_). But it's rather cold, isn't it? I +mean--I think I ought to go and write a letter. + +LUCREZIA. Oh, you can do that to-morrow. + +DOLPHIN. But really. + +LUCREZIA. You've no idea how lovely the moon looks. + +DOLPHIN. But I must.... + +LUCREZIA (_lays her hand on his sleeve and tows hint after her, crying +as she goes_). The moon, the moon.... (PAUL _and_ AMY _regard their exit +in silence_.) + +PAUL. He doesn't look as though he much wanted to go and see the moon. + +AMY. Perhaps he guesses what's in store for him. + +PAUL (_surprised_). What, you don't mean to say you realised all the +time? + +AMY. Realised what? + +PAUL. About la belle Lucrezia. + +AMY. I don't know what you mean. All I know is that she means to give +Mr. Dolphin a good talking to. He's so mercenary. It made me quite +indignant when she told me about him. Such a schemer, too. You know in +America we have very definite ideas about honour. + +PAUL. Here too, Miss Toomis. + +AMY. Not Mr. Dolphin. Oh dear, it made me so sad; more sad than angry. I +can never be grateful enough to Signorina Grattarol. + +PAUL. But I'm still at a loss to know exactly what you're talking about. + +AMY. And I am quite bewildered myself. Would you have believed it of +him? I thought him such a nice man. + +PAUL. What has he done? + +AMY. It's all for my money, Miss Grattarol told me. She knows. He was +just asking me to marry him, and I believe I would have said Yes. But +she came in just in the nick of time. It seems he only wanted to marry +me because I'm so rich. He doesn't care for me at all. Miss Grattarol +knows what he's like. It's awful, isn't it? Oh dear, I wouldn't have +thought it of him. + +PAUL. But you must forgive him, Miss Toomis. Money is a great +temptation. Perhaps if you gave him another chance.... + +AMY. Impossible. + +PAUL. Poor Dolphin! He's such a nice young fellow. + +AMY. I thought so too. But he's false. + +PAUL. Don't be too hard on him. Money probably means too much to him. +It's the fault of his upbringing. No one who has not lived among the +traditions of our ancient aristocracy can be expected to have that +contempt, almost that hatred of wealth, which is the sign of true +nobility. If he had been brought up, as I was, in an old machicolated +castle on the Loire, surrounded by ancestral ghosts, imbued with the +spirit of the Crusaders and preux chevaliers who had inhabited the +place in the past, if he had learnt to know what noblesse oblige really +means, believe me, Miss Toomis, he could never have done such a thing. + +AMY. I should just think he couldn't, Monsieur de Barbazange. + +PAUL. You have no idea, Miss Toomis, how difficult it is for a man of +truly noble feelings to get over the fact of your great wealth. When I +heard that you were the possessor of a hundred million dollars.... + +AMY. Oh, I'm afraid it's more than that. It's two hundred million. + +PAUL. ... of two hundred million dollars, then ... it only makes it +worse; I was very melancholy, Miss Toomis. For those two hundred million +dollars were a barrier, which a descendant of Crusaders and preux +chevaliers could not overleap. Honour, Miss Toomis, honour forbade. Ah, +if only that accursed money had not stood in the way.... When I first +saw you oh, how I was moved by that vision of beauty and innocence--I +wanted nothing better than to stand gazing on you for ever. But then I +heard about those millions. Dolphin was lucky to have felt no +restraints. But enough, enough. (_He checks a rising tide of emotion_.) +Give poor Dolphin another chance, Miss Toomis. At bottom he is a good +fellow, and he may learn in time to esteem you for your own sake and to +forget the dazzling millions. + +AMY. Never. I can only marry a man who is entirely disinterested. + +PAUL. But, can't you see, no disinterested man could ever bring himself +to ask you? How could he prove his disinterestedness? No one would +believe the purity of his intentions. + +AMY (_much moved_). It is for me to judge. I know a disinterested man +when I see him. Even in America we can understand honour. + +PAUL (_with a sob in his voice_). Good-bye Miss Toomis. + +AMY. But no, I don't want it to be good-bye. + +PAUL. It must be. Never shall it be said of a Barbazange that he hunted +a woman for her money. + +AMY. But what does it matter what the world says, if I say the opposite? + +PAUL. You say the opposite? Thank you, thank you. But no, good-bye. + +AMY. Stop. Oh! you're forcing me to do a most unwomanly thing. You're +making me ask you to marry me. You're the only disinterested man I've +ever met or, to judge from what I've seen of the world, I'm ever likely +to meet. Haven't you kept away from me in spite of your feelings? +Haven't you even tried to make me listen to another man--a man not +worthy to black your boots? Oh, it's so wonderful, so noble! It's like +something in a picture play. Paul, I offer myself to you. Will you take +me in spite of my millions? + +PAUL (_falling on his knees and kissing the hem of_ AMY'S _skirt_). My +angel, you're right; what does it matter what the world says as long as +you believe in me? Amy, amie, bien-aimee.... Ah, it's too good too, too +good to be true! (_He rises to his feet and embraces her with an +unfeigned enthusiasm_.) + +AMY. Paul, Paul.... And so this is love. Isn't it wonderful? + +PAUL (_looking round anxiously_). You mustn't tell anyone about our +engagement, my Amy. They might say unpleasant things in the hotel, you +know. + +AMY. Of course I won't talk about it. We'll keep our happiness to +ourselves, won't we? + +PAUL. Entirely to ourselves; and to-morrow we'll go to Paris and arrange +about being married. + +AMY. Yes, yes; we'll take the eight o'clock train. + +PAUL. Not the eight o clock, my darling. I have to go to the bank +to-morrow to do a little business. We must wait till the twelve thirty. + +AMY. Very well, then. The twelve-thirty. Oh, how happy I am! + +PAUL. So am I, my sweetheart. More than I can tell you. (_The sound of a +window being opened is heard. They look up and see the_ BARONESS +_dressed in a peignoir of the tenderest blue, emerging on to the right +hand of the three balconies_.) + +AMY. Oh, my soul! I think I'd better go in. Good-night, my Paul. (_She +runs in_.) + +SIMONE. Has that horrid little American girl gone? (_She peers down, +then, reassured, she blows a kiss to_ PAUL.) My Romeo! + +PAUL. I come, Juliet. + +SIMONE. There's a kiss for you. + +PAUL (_throwing kisses with both hands_). And there's one for you. And +another, and another. Two hundred million kisses, my angel. + +SIMONE (_giggling_). What a lot! + +PAUL. It is; you re quite right. Two hundred million.... I come, my +Juliet. (_He darts into the hotel, pausing when just inside the door and +out of sight of the_ BARONESS, _to mop himself once again with his +enormous handkerchief. The operation over, he advances with a resolute +step, The_ BARONESS _stands for a moment on the balcony. Then, seeing_ +DOLPHIN _and_ LUCREZIA _coming in from the left, she retires, closing +the window and drawing the curtains behind her_. DOLPHIN _comes striding +in_; LUCREZIA _follows a little behind, looking anxiously up at him_.) + +LUCREZIA. Please, please.... + +DOLPHIN. NO, I won t listen to anything more. (_He walks with an +agitated step up and down the stage_. LUCREZIA _stands with one hand +resting on the back of a chair and the other pressed on her heart.)_ Do +you mean to say you deliberately went and told her that I was only after +her money? Oh, it's too bad, too bad. It's infamous. And I hadn't the +faintest notion that she had any money. Besides, I don't want money; I +have quite enough of my own. It's infamous, infamous! + +LUCREZIA. I know it was a horrible thing to do. But I couldn't help it. +How could I stand by and see you being carried off by that silly little +creature? + +DOLPHIN. But I cared for her. + +LUCREZIA. But not as I cared for you. I've got red blood in my veins; +she's got nothing but milk and water. You couldn't have been happy with +her. I can give you love of a kind she could never dream of. What does +she know of passion? + +DOLPHIN. Nothing, I am thankful to say. I don't want passion; can't you +understand that? I don't possess it myself and don't like it in others. +I am a man of sentimental affections, with a touch of quiet sensuality. +I don't want passion, I tell you. It's too violent; it frightens me. I +couldn't possibly live with you. You'd utterly shatter my peace of mind +in a day. Oh, how I wish you'd go away. + +LUCREZIA. But Sidney, Sidney, can't you understand what it is to be +madly in love with somebody? You can't be so cruel. + +DOLPHIN. You didn't think much of my well-being when you interfered +between Miss Toomis and me, did you? You've probably ruined my whole +life, that's all. I really don't see why you should expect me to have +any pity for you. + +LUCREZIA. Very well, then, I shall kill myself. (_She bursts into +tears_.) + +DOLPHIN. Oh, but I assure you, one doesn't kill oneself for things like +that. (_He approaches her and pats her on the shoulder_.) Come, come, +don't worry about it. + +LUCREZIA (_throws her arms round his neck_). Oh, Sidney, Sidney.... + +DOLPHIN (_freeing himself with surprising energy and promptitude from +her embrace_). No, no, none of that, I beg. Another moment and we shall +be losing our heads. Personally I think I shall go to bed now. I should +advise you to do the same, Miss Grattarol. You're overwrought. We might +all be better for a small dose of bromide. (_He goes in_.) + +LUCREZIA (_looking up and stretching forth her hands_). Sidney.... +(DOLPHIN _does not look round, and disappears through the glass door +into the hotel_, LUCREZIA _covers her face with her hands and sits for a +little sobbing silently. The nightingale sings on. Midnight sounds with +an infinite melancholy from all the twenty campaniles of the city in the +valley. From far away comes the spasmodic throbbing of a guitar and the +singing of an Italian voice, high-pitched, passionate, throaty. The +seconds pass_, LUCREZIA _rises to her feet and walks slowly into the +hotel. On the threshold she encounters the_ VICOMTE _coming out_.) + +PAUL. You, Signorina Lucrezia? I've escaped for a breath of fresh, cool +air. Mightn't we take a turn together? (LUCREZIA _shakes her head_.) Ah, +well, then, good-night. You'll be glad to hear that Miss Toomis knows +all about Correggio now. + +(_He inhales a deep breath of air. Then looking at his dinner-jacket he +begins brushing at it with his hand. A lamentable figure creeps in from +the left. It is_ ALBERTO. _If he had a tail, it would be trailing on the +ground between his legs_.) + +PAUL. Hullo, Alberto. What is it? Been losing at cards? + +ALBERTO. Worse than that. + +PAUL. Creditors foreclosing? + +ALBERTO. Much worse. + +PAUL. Father ruined by imprudent speculations? + +ALBERTO. No, no, no. It's nothing to do with money. + +PAUL. Oh, well, then. It can't be anything very serious. It's women, I +suppose. + +ALBERTO. My mistress refuses to see me. I have been beating on her door +for hours in vain. + +PAUL. I wish we all had your luck, Bertino. Mine opens her door only too +promptly. The difficulty is to get out again. Does yours use such an +awful lot of this evil-smelling powder? I'm simply covered with it. Ugh! +(_He brushes his coat again_.) + +ALBERTO. Can't you be serious, Paul? + +PAUL. Of course I can ... about a serious matter. But you can't expect +me to pull a long face about your mistress, can you, now? Do look at +things in their right proportions. + +ALBERTO. It's no use talking to you. You're heartless, soulless. + +PAUL. What you mean, my dear Alberto, is that I'm relatively speaking +bodiless. Physical passion never goes to my head. I'm always _compos +mentis_. You aren't, that's all. + +ALBERTO. Oh, you disgust me. I think I shall hang myself to-night. + +PAUL. Do. It will give us something to talk about at lunch to-morrow. + +ALBERTO. Monster! (_He goes into the hotel_, PAUL _strolls out towards +the garden, whistling an air from Mozart as he goes. The window on the +left opens and_ LUCREZIA _steps on to her balcony. Uncoiled, her red +hair falls almost to her waist. Her nightdress is always half slipping +off one shoulder or the other, like those loose-bodied Restoration gowns +that reveal the tight-blown charms of Kneller's Beauties. Her feet are +bare. She is a marvellously romantic figure, as she stands there, +leaning on the balustrade, and with eyes more sombre than night, gazing +into the darkness. The nightingales, the bells, the guitar, and +passionate voice strike up. Great stars palpitate in the sky. The moon +has swum imperceptibly to the height of heaven. In the garden below +flowers are yielding their souls into the air, censers invisible. It is +too much, too much.... Large tears roll down_ LUCREZIA's _cheeks and +fall with a splash to the ground. Suddenly, but with the noiselessness +of a cat,_ ALBERTO _appears, childish-looking in pink pajamas, on the +middle of the three balconies. He sees_ LUCREZIA, _but she is much too +deeply absorbed in thought to have noticed his coming_, ALBERTO _plants +his elbows on the rail of the balcony, covers his face, and begins to +sob, at first inaudibly, then in a gradual quickening crescendo. At the +seventh sob_ LUCREZIA _starts and becomes aware of his presence_.) + +LUCREZIA. Alberto. I didn't know.... Have you been there long? (ALBERTO +_makes no articulate reply, but his sobs keep on growing louder_.) +Alberto, are you unhappy? Answer me. + +ALBERTO (_with difficulty, after a pause_). Yes. + +LUCREZIA. Didn't she let you in? + +ALBERTO. No. (_His sobs become convulsive_.) + +LUCREZIA. Poor boy. + +ALBERTO (_lifting up a blubbered face to the moonlight_). I am so +unhappy. + +LUCREZIA. You can't be more unhappy than I am. + +ALBERTO. Oh yes, I am. It's impossible to be unhappier than me. + +LUCREZIA. But I _am_ more unhappy. + +ALBERTO. You re not. Oh, how can you be so cruel Lucrezia? (_He covers +his face once more_.) + +LUCREZIA. But I only said I was unhappy Alberto. + +ALBERTO. Yes, I know. That showed you weren't thinking of me. Nobody +loves me. I shall hang myself to-night with the cord of my +dressing-gown. + +LUCREZIA. NO, no, Alberto. You mustn't do anything rash. + +ALBERTO. I shall. Your cruelty has been the last straw. + +LUCREZIA. I'm sorry, Bertino mio. But if you only knew how miserable I +was feeling. I didn't mean to be unsympathetic. Poor boy. I'm so sorry. +There, don't cry, poor darling. + +ALBERTO. Oh, I knew you wouldn't desert me, Lucrezia. You've always been +a mother to me. (_He stretches out his hand and seizes hers, which has +gone half-way to meet him; but the balconies are too far apart to allow +him to kiss it. He makes an effort and fails. He is too short in the +body_,) Will you let me come onto your balcony, Lucrezia? I want to tell +you how grateful I am. + +LUCREZIA. But you can do that from your own balcony. + +ALBERTO. Please, please, Lucrezia. You mustn't be cruel to me again. I +can't bear it. + +LUCREZIA. Well, then.... Just for a moment, but for no more, (BERTINO +_climbs from one balcony to the other. One is a little reminded of the +trousered monkeys on the barrel organs. Arrived, he kneels down and +kisses_ LUCREZIA'S _hand_.) + +ALBERTO. You've saved me. You've given given me a fresh desire to live +and a fresh faith in life. How can I thank you enough, Lucrezia, +darling? + +LUCREZIA (_patting his head_). There, there. _We_ are just two unhappy +creatures. We must try and comfort one another. + +ALBERTO. What a brute I am! I never thought of your unhappiness. I am so +selfish. What is it, Lucrezia? + +LUCREZIA. I can't tell you, Bertino; but it's very painful. + +ALBERTO. Poor child, poor child. (_His kisses, which started at the +hand, have mounted, by this time, some way up the arm, changing +perceptibly in character as they rise. At the shoulder they have a +warmth which could not have been inferred from the respectful salutes +which barely touched the fingers_.) Poor darling! You've given me +consolation. Now you must let me comfort your unhappiness. + +LUCREZIA (_with an effort_). I think you ought to go back now, Bertino. + +ALBERTO. In a minute, my darling. There, there, poor Lucrezia. (_He puts +an arm round her, kisses her hair and neck._ LUCREZIA _leans her bowed +head against his chest. The sound of footsteps is heard. They both look +up with scared, wide-open eyes_.) + +LUCREZIA. We mustn't be seen here, Bertino. What would people think? + +ALBERTO. I'll go back. + +LUCREZIA. There's no time. You must come into my room. Quickly. + +(_They slip through the French window, but not quickly enough to have +escaped the notice of_ PAUL, _returning from his midnight stroll. The_ +VICOMTE _stands for a moment looking up at the empty balcony. He laughs +softly to himself, and, throwing his cigarette away, passes through the +glass door into the house. All is now silent, save for the nightingales +and the distant bells. The curtain comes down for a moment to indicate +the passage of several hours. It rises again with the sun_. LUCREZIA's +_window opens and she appears on the balcony. She stands a moment with +one foot over the threshold of the long window in a listening pose. Then +her eyes fall on the better half of a pair of pink pyjamas lying +crumpled on the floor, like a body bereft of its soul; with her bare +foot she turns it over. A little shudder plucks at her nerves, and she +shakes her head as though, by this symbolic act, to shake off something +clinging and contaminating. Then she steps out into the full glory of +the early sun, stretching out her arms to the radiance. She bows her +face into her hands, crying out loud to herself_.) LUCREZIA. Oh, why, +why, why? (_The last of these Why's is caught by the_ WAITER, _who has +crept forth in shirt-sleeves and list-slippers, duster in hand, to clean +the tables. He looks up at her admiringly, passes his tongue over his +lips. Then, with a sigh, turns to dust the tables_.) + + + +CURTAIN. + + + + +III: THE TILLOTSON BANQUET + + + +I + + +Young Spode was not a snob; he was too intelligent for that, too +fundamentally decent. Not a snob; but all the same he could not help +feeling very well pleased at the thought that he was dining, alone and +intimately, with Lord Badgery. It was a definite event in his life, a +step forward, he felt, towards that final success, social, material, and +literary, which he had come to London with the fixed intention of +making. The conquest and capture of Badgery was an almost essential +strategical move in the campaign. + +Edmund, forty-seventh Baron Badgery, was a lineal descendant of that +Edmund, surnamed Le Blayreau, who landed on English soil in the train of +William the Conqueror. Ennobled by William Rufus, the Badgerys had been +one of the very few baronial families to survive the Wars of the Roses +and all the other changes and chances of English history. They were a +sensible and philoprogenitive race. No Badgery had ever fought in any +war, no Badgery had ever engaged in any kind of politics. They had been +content to live and quietly to propagate their species in a huge +machicolated Norman castle, surrounded by a triple moat, only sallying +forth to cultivate their property and to collect their rents. In the +eighteenth century, when life had become relatively secure, the Badgerys +began to venture forth into civilised society. From boorish squires they +blossomed into _grands seigneurs_, patrons of the arts, virtuosi. Their +property was large, they were rich; and with the growth of industrialism +their riches also grew. Villages on their estate turned into +manufacturing towns, unsuspected coal was discovered beneath the surface +of their barren moorlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century the +Badgerys were among the richest of English noble families. The +forty-seventh baron disposed of an income of at least two hundred +thousand pounds a year. Following the great Badgery tradition, he had +refused to have anything to do with politics or war. He occupied himself +by collecting pictures; he took an interest in theatrical productions; +he was the friend and patron of men of letters, of painters, and +musician. A personage, in a word, of considerable consequence in that +particular world in which young Spode had elected to make his success. + +Spode had only recently left the university. Simon Gollamy, the editor +of the _World's Review_ (the "Best of all possible Worlds"), had got to +know him--he was always on the look out for youthful talent--had seen +possibilities in the young man, and appointed him art critic of his +paper. Gollamy liked to have young and teachable people about him. The +possession of disciples flattered his vanity, and he found it easier, +moreover, to run his paper with docile collaborators than with men grown +obstinate and case-hardened with age. Spode had not done badly at his +new job. At any rate, his articles had been intelligent enough to arouse +the interest of Lord Badgery. It was, ultimately, to them that he owed +the honour of sitting to night in the dining-room of Badgery House. + +Fortified by several varieties of wine and a glass of aged brandy, Spode +felt more confident and at ease than he had done the whole evening. +Badgery was rather a disquieting host. He had an alarming habit of +changing the subject of any conversation that had lasted for more than +two minutes. Spode had found it, for example, horribly mortifying when +his host, cutting across what was, he prided himself, a particularly +subtle and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a +wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked +parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously towards him, fancying +that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white, +fleshy, Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There +was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely +want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his +irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about +parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story, when +his host began to talk about Beethoven. And so the game went on. Spode +cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of +ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto +Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish +architecture. Lord Badgery thought him the most charming young man, and +so intelligent. + +"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as +he spoke, "we'll go and look at the pictures." + +Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realised that he had drunk +just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk +deliberately, plant his feet consciously, one after the other. + +"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery +complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last +week; but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their +portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think? +Why couldn't they have chosen Gainsborough, or even Reynolds? I've had +all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It's such a comfort to +know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all +about the ancient Hittites?" + +"Well...." the young man replied, with befitting modesty. + +"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a +case near the dining-room door. "It's not Greek, or Egyptian, or +Persian, or anything else; so if it isn't ancient Hittite, I don't know +what it is. And that reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger, +the Circus King...." and, without giving Spode time to examine the +Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now +and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or +beauty. + +"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as +the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about +Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous +Sanger. "What a perfect man, isn't he? He used to...." + +"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of +a tall folding door. "I must apologise for it. It looks like a +roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches and there +was suddenly light--light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly +receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare +say you've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little +insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used +to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about +the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the +cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them: +mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now I'm rather proud of this +Poussin; he painted it for Scarron." + +"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though +he were modelling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of +those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they re caught up, as it +were, and stemmed by that single godlike form opposing them with his +contrary movement! And the draperies...." + +But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little +fifteenth-century Virgin of carved wood. + +"School of Rheims," he explained. + +They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest +to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would +have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in +front of some of these lovely things. But it was not permitted. + +The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At +the sight of what the lights revealed, Spode gasped. + +"It's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons +dores ou se deploie un luxe insolent. You know." + +"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of +its kind, I flatter myself, outside the State Apartments at Windsor." + +Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the +objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in leathers, in +embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most +fantastic shapes and colours, all the queer products of a decadent +tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the +walls--a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Ettys, a big +Haydon, a slight pretty water-colour of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil +of Blake and arsenic poisoner, a score of others. But the picture which +arrested Spode's attention was a medium sized canvas representing +Troilus riding into Troy among the flowers and plaudits of an admiring +crowd, and oblivious (you could see from his expression) of everything +but the eyes of Cressida, who looked down at him from a window, with +Pandarus smiling over her shoulder. + +"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed. + +"Ah, you've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased. + +"What bright harmonious colours! Like Etty's, only stronger, not so +obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of +Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in +taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly. + +"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered, "It's by +his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work. But +nobody seems to know anything about him. And he seems to have done so +little." + +This time it was the younger man who interrupted. + +"Tillotson, Tillotson...." He put his hand to his forehead. A frown +incongruously distorted his round, floridly curved face. No ... yes, I +have it. He looked up triumphantly with serene and childish brows. +"Tillotson, Walter Tillotson--the man's still alive." + +Badgery smiled. "This picture was painted in 1846, you know." + +"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his +masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it's 1913 now; that's to say +he's only ninety-three. Not as old as Titian yet." + +"But he's not been heard of since 1860," Lord Badgery protested. + +"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made +the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the +archives of the _World's Review_.(One has to bring them up to date every +year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these t old birds +chooses to shuffle off suddenly.) Well, there, among them--I remember my +astonishment at the time--there I found Walter Tillotson's biography. +Pretty full to 1860, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the +early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the +East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious +conclusion: the old chap isn't dead yet. He's just been overlooked +somehow." + +"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him, +Spode--you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescoes round +this room. It's just what I've always vainly longed for a real +nineteenth-century artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must +find him at once--at once." + +Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement. + +"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. "We'd +clear away all these cases and have the whole of that wall filled by a +heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent', or +Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved' anything like that, +provided it's in the grand manner of the 'thirties and 'forties. And +here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else +something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast. +Then we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something +Mauro-Gothic. And on these walls I'll have mirrors, or no! let me +see...." + +He sank into meditative silence, from which he finally roused himself to +shout: + +"The old man, the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old +creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our +secret. Oh, it's too perfect, it's incredible! Think of the frescoes." + +Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a +single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour. + + + + +II + + +Three weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon +somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one. +"Found.--SPODE." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord +Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman +padded away on noiseless feet. + +Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a +room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The +frescoes, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling.... And a small, +shrivelled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick +like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away, +painting away.... Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or +why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt +of Clarence. ... Lord Badgery was asleep. + +Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by +six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber, +engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-a-brac. Spode found +him looking hot and out of breath. + +"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. You see me already preparing for +the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him. + +"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He's ninety-seven this +year. Born in 1816. Incredible, isn't it! There, I'm beginning at the +wrong end." + +"Begin where you like," said Badgery genially. + +"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You've no idea what a +job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story, +immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some +day. At any rate, I found him at last." + +"Where?" + +"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and +lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was +he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he +did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the 'sixties, to go to +Palestine to get local colour for his religious pictures--scapegoats and +things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount +Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor, +he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years." + +"But what did he do all that time?" + +"Oh, he painted, and started a mission, and converted three Turks, and +taught the local Pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, and +perspective, and God knows what else. Then, in about 1904, it seems to +have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away +from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England, +only to find that everyone he had known was dead, that the dealers had +never heard of him and wouldn't buy his pictures, that he was simply a +ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a +girl's school in Holloway, and there he's been ever since, growing older +and older, and feebler and feebler, and blinder and deafer, and +generally more gaga, until finally the school has given him the sack. He +had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind +of black hole in a basement full of beetles. When his ten pounds are +spent, I suppose he'll just quietly die there." + +Badgery held up a white hand. "No more, no more. I find literature quite +depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer. +Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?" + +"But he can't paint. He's too blind and palsied." + +"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what's the good of the +old creature?" + +"Well, if you put it like that...." Spode began. + +"I shall never have my frescoes. Ring the bell, will you?" + +Spode rang. + +"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on +Lord Badgery petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for +occupying a place in the sun." + +"He doesn't have much sun in his basement." + +The footman appeared at the door. + +"Get someone to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery +commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the +confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor, the +pictures unhooked. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more +comfortable there." + +He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs. + +"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode +sympathetically. + +"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me. + +"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got +ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you'd seen the +black-beetles in his basement!" + +"Enough enough. I'll do everything you think fitting." + +"I thought we might get up a subscription amongst lovers of the arts." + +"There aren't any," said Badgery. + +"No; but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobbism." + +"Not unless you give them something for their money." + +"That's true. I hadn't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment. +"We might have a dinner in his honour. The Great Tillotson Banquet. +Doyen of the British Art. A Link with the Past. Can't you see it in the +papers? I'd make a stunt of it in the _World's Review_. That ought to +bring in the snobs." + +"And we'll invite a lot of artists and critics--all the ones who can't +stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery +laughed. Then his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it'll +be a very poor second best to my frescoes. You'll stay to dinner, of +course." + +"Well, since you suggest it. Thanks very much." + + + + +III + + +The Tillotson Banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later. +Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent +organiser. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Cafe Bomba, and was +successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty +persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out +invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on +Tillotson in the _World's Review_--one of those charming, witty articles +couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt with which one +speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself. +He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's +endless stories about Asia Minor and the Great Exhibition of '51 and +Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another +age. + +Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of +South Holloway. A little grey light percolated through the area bars, +forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent +itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an inkpot, among the +inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the spur +smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to moulder secretly +at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a +washstand and chest of drawers, a table and one or two chairs, lurked in +the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open. +Hither Spode now came almost every day, bringing the old man news of the +progress of the banquet scheme. Every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting +in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny +puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore grey hairs," Spode +reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on +that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr. +Tillotson would turn in his chair, stare in the direction of the door +with blinking, uncertain eyes. He was always full of apologies for being +so slow in recognising who was there. + +"No discourtesy meant," he would say, after asking. "It's not as if I +had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark and my sight isn't what it +was." + +After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of +the window at the area railings, would say: + +"Ah, this is the plate for somebody with good sight. It's the place for +looking at ankles. It's the grand stand." + +It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual, and Mr. +Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode, +as punctually laughed. + +"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had +died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and +fashion. You'll find some changes." + +"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode +could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it, that he had +forgotten the black hole and the black-beetles and the almost exhausted +ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing +piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just +when you did. Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the +world. I shall have money, and in a little while--who knows?--I shall be +able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting +better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy." + +Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and nodded his +head in affirmation of his words. + +"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed +for shame at the cruelty of the words. + +But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their +significance. + +"Life to come," he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff +not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No +life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement of +course. You re very young Mr. Spode." + +"Well, I'm not so old as I was," Spode replied. "You know how +middle-aged one is as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Now I'm old enough +to know I'm young." + +Spode was about to develop this little paradox further, but he noticed +that Mr. Tillotson had not been listening. He made a note of the gambit +for use in companies that were more appreciative of the subtleties. + +"You were talking about the 'Origin of Species,'" he said. + +"Was I?" said Mr. Tillotson, waking from reverie. + +"About its effect on your faith, Mr. Tillotson." + +"To be sure, yes. It shattered my faith. But I remember a fine thing by +the Poet Laureate, something about there being more faith in honest +doubt, believe me, than in all the ... all the ...: I forget exactly +what; but you see the train of thought. Oh, it was a bad time for +religion. I am glad my master Haydon never lived to see it. He was a man +of fervour. I remember him pacing up and down his studio in Lisson +Grove, singing and shouting and praying all at once. It used almost to +frighten me. Oh, but he was a wonderful man, a great man. Take him for +all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. As usual, the Bard is +right. But it was all very long ago, before your time, Mr. Spode." + +"Well, I'm not as old as I was," said Spode, in the hope of having his +paradox appreciated this time. But Mr. Tillotson went on without +noticing the interruption. + +"It's a very, very long time. And yet, when I look back on it, it all +seems but a day or two ago. Strange that each day should seem so long +and that many days added together should be less than an hour. How +clearly I can see old Haydon pacing up and down! Much more clearly, +indeed, than I see you, Mr. Spode. The eyes of memory don t grow dim. +But my sight is improving, I assure you; it's improving daily. I shall +soon be able to see those ankles." He laughed like a cracked bell--one +of those little old bells, Spode fancied, that ring, with much rattling +of wires, in the far-off servants quarters of ancient houses. "And very +soon," Mr. Tillotson went on, "I shall be painting again. Ah, Mr. Spode, +my luck is extraordinary. I believe in it, I trust in it. And after all, +what is luck? Simply another name for Providence, in spite of the Origin +of Species and the rest of it. How right the Laureate was when he said +that there was more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the +... er, the ... er ... well, you know. I regard you, Mr. Spode, as the +emissary of Providence. Your coming marked a turning-point in my life, +and the beginning, for me, of happier days. Do you know, one of the +first things I shall do when my fortunes are restored will be to buy a +hedgehog." + +"A hedgehog, Mr. Tillotson?" + +"For the blackbeetles. There's nothing like a hedgehog for beetles. It +will eat blackbeetles till it's sick, till it dies of surfeit. That +reminds me of the time when I told my poor great master Haydon--in joke, +of course--that he ought to send in a cartoon of King John dying of a +surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament. As +I told him, it's a most notable event in the annals of British +liberty--the providential and exemplary removal of a tyrant." + +Mr. Tillotson laughed again--the little bell in the deserted house; a +ghostly hand pulling the cord in the drawing-room, and phantom footmen +responding to the thin, flawed note. + +"I remember he laughed, laughed like a bull in his old grand manner. But +oh, it was a terrible blow when they rejected his design, a terrible +blow. It was the first and fundamental cause of his suicide." + +Mr. Tillotson paused. There was a long silence. Spode felt strangely +moved, he hardly knew why, in the presence of this man, so frail, so +ancient, in body three parts dead, in the spirit so full of life and +hopeful patience. He felt ashamed. What was the use of his own youth and +cleverness? He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds +rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile +activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were +always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! widewinged and +beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only +visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. Those gracious +visitants he was for ever using all his energies to drive away. But this +old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of +it--his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and +going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged +creatures. He felt ashamed. But then, was it possible to alter one's +life? Wasn't it a little absurd to risk a conversion? Spode shrugged his +shoulders. + +"I'll get you a hedgehog at once," he said. "They're sure to have some +at Whiteley's." + +Before he left that evening Spode made an alarming discovery. Mr. +Tillotson did not possess a dress-suit. It was hopeless to think of +getting one made at this short notice, and, besides, what an unnecessary +expense! + +"We shall have to borrow a suit, Mr. Tillotson. I ought to have thought +of that before." + +"Dear me, dear me." Mr. Tillotson was a little chagrined by this unlucky +discovery. "Borrow a suit?" + +Spode hurried away for counsel to Badgery House. Lord Badgery +surprisingly rose to the occasion. "Ask Boreham to come and see me," he +told the footman, who answered his ring. + +Boreham was one of those immemorial butlers who linger on, generation +after generation, in the houses of the great. He was over eighty now, +bent, dried up, shrivelled with age. + +"All old men are about the same size," said Lord Badgery. It was a +comforting theory. "Ah, here he is. Have you got a spare suit of evening +clothes, Boreham?" + +"I have an old suit, my lord, that I stopped wearing in let me see was +it nineteen seven or eight?" + +"That's the very thing. I should be most grateful, Boreham, if you could +lend it to me for Mr. Spode here for a day." + +The old man went out, and soon reappeared carrying over his arm a very +old black suit. He held up the coat and trousers for inspection. In the +light of day they were deplorable. + +"You've no idea, sir," said Boreham deprecatingly to Spode you've no +idea how easy things get stained with grease and gravy and what not. +However careful you are, sir--however careful. + +"I should imagine so." Spode was sympathetic. + +"However careful, sir." + +"But in artificial light they'll look all right." + +"Perfectly all right," Lord Badgery repeated. "Thank you, Boreham; you +shall have them back on Thursday." + +"You re welcome, my lord, I'm sure." And the old man bowed and +disappeared. + +On the afternoon of the great day Spode carried up to Holloway a parcel +containing Boreham's retired evening-suit and all the necessary +appurtenances in the way of shirts and collars. Owing to the darkness +and his own feeble sight Mr. Tillotson was happily unaware of the +defects in the suit. He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. It +was with some difficulty that Spode could prevent him, although it was +only three o'clock, from starting his toilet on the spot. + +"Take it easy, Mr. Tillotson, take it easy. We needn't start till +half-past seven, you know." + +Spode left an hour later, and as soon as he was safely out of the room +Mr. Tillotson began to prepare himself for the banquet. He lighted the +gas and a couple of candles, and, blinking myopically at the image that +fronted him in the tiny looking-glass that stood on his chest of +drawers, he set to work, with all the ardour of a young girl preparing +for her first ball. At six o'clock, when the last touches had been +given, he was not unsatisfied. + +He marched up and down his cellar, humming to himself the gay song which +had been so popular in his middle years: + + "_Oh, oh, Anna, Maria Jones!_ + _Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones!_" + +Spode arrived an hour later in Lord Badgery's second Rolls-Royce. +Opening the door of the old man's dungeon, he stood for a moment, +wide-eyed with astonishment, on the threshold. Mr. Tillotson was +standing by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one +leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude. The +effect of the candlelight shining on his face was to deepen every line +and wrinkle with intense black shadow; he looked immeasurably old. It +was a noble and pathetic head. On the other hand, Boreham's out-worn +evening-suit was simply buffoonish. The coat was too long in the sleeves +and the tail; the trousers bagged in elephantine creases about his +ankles. Some of the grease-spots were visible even in candlelight. The +white tie, over which Mr. Tillotson had taken infinite pains and which +he believed in his purblindness to be perfect, was fantastically +lop-sided. He had buttoned up his waistcoat in such a fashion that one +button was widowed of its hole and one hole of its button. Across his +shirt front lay the broad green ribbon of some unknown Order. + +"Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones," Mr. Tillotson +concluded in a gnat-like voice before welcoming his visitor. + +"Well, Spode, here you are. I'm dressed already, you see. The suit, I +flatter myself, fits very well, almost as though it had been made for +me. I am all gratitude to the gentleman who was kind enough to lend it +to me; I shall take the greatest care of it. It's a dangerous thing to +lend clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. The Bard is +always right." + +"Just one thing," said Spode. "A touch to your waistcoat." He unbuttoned +the dissipated garment and did it up again more symmetrically. + +Mr. Tillotson was a little piqued at being found so absurdly in the +wrong. + +"Thanks, thanks," he said, protestingly, trying to edge away from his +valet. "It's all right, you know; I can do it myself. Foolish oversight. +I flatter myself the suit fits very well." + +"And perhaps the tie might...." Spode began tentatively. But the old +man would not hear of it. + +"No, no. The tie's all right. I can tie a tie, Mr. Spode. The tie's all +right. Leave it as it is, I beg." + +"I like your Order." + +Mr. Tillotson looked down complacently at his shirt front. "Ah, you've +noticed my Order. It's a long time since I wore that. It was given me by +the Grand Porte, you know, for services rendered in the Russo-Turkish +War. It's the Order of Chastity, the second class. They only give the +first class to crowned heads, you know--browned heads and ambassadors. +And only Pashas of the highest rank get the second. Mine's the second. +They only give the first class to crowned heads...." + +"Of course, of course," said Spode. + +"Do you think I look all right, Mr. Spode?" Mr. Tillotson asked, a +little anxiously. + +"Splendid, Mr. Tillotson--splendid. The Order's, magnificent." + +The old man's face brightened once more. "I flatter myself," he said, +"that this borrowed suit fits me very well. But I don't like borrowing +clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend, you know. And the +Bard is always right." + +"Ugh, there's one of those horrible beetles!" Spode exclaimed. + +Mr. Tillotson bent down and stared at the floor. "I see it," he said, +and stamped on a small piece of coal, which crunched to powder under his +foot. "I shall certainly buy a hedgehog." + +It was time for them to start. A crowd of little boys and girls had +collected round Lord Badgery's enormous car. The chauffeur, who felt +that honour and dignity were at stake, pretended not to notice the +children, but sat gazing, like a statue, into eternity. At the sight of +Spode and Mr. Tillotson emerging from the house a yell of mingled awe +and derision went up. It subsided to an astonished silence as they +climbed into the car. "Bomba's," Spode directed. The Rolls-Royce gave a +faintly stertorous sigh and began to move. The children yelled again, +and ran along beside the car, waving their arms in a frenzy of +excitement. It was then that Mr. Tillotson, with an incomparably noble +gesture, leaned forward and tossed among the seething crowd of urchins +his three last coppers. + + + + +IV + + +In Bomba's big room the company was assembling. The long gilt-edged +mirrors reflected a singular collection of people. Middle-aged +Academicians shot suspicious glances at youths whom they suspected, only +too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist +Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered +with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, +those indefatigable hunters of artistic big game, came on one another +all unawares in this well-stored menagerie, where each had expected to +hunt alone, and were filled with rage. Through this crowd of mutually +repellent vanities Lord Badgery moved with a suavity that seemed +unconscious of all the feuds and hatreds. He was enjoying himself +immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the +Hanoverian nose, the little lustreless pig's eyes, the pale thick lips, +there lurked a small devil of happy malice that rocked with laughter. + +"So nice of you to have come, Mrs. Mandragore, to do honour to England's +artistic past. And I'm so glad to see you've brought dear Mrs. Cayman. +And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it is! I hadn't noticed her before. How +delightful! I knew we could depend on your love of art." + +And he hurried away to seize the opportunity of introducing that eminent +sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young critic who had called +him, in the public prints, a monumental mason. + +A moment later the Maitre d'Hotel came to the door of the gilded saloon +and announced, loudly and impressively, "Mr. Walter Tillotson." Guided +from behind by young Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and +hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, +painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned moth, over his filmy eyes. +Once inside the door he halted and drew himself up with a conscious +assumption of dignity. Lord Badgery hurried forward and seized his hand. + +"Welcome, Mr. Tillotson--welcome in the name of English art!" + +Mr. Tillotson inclined his head in silence. He was too full of emotion +to be able to reply. + +"I should like to introduce you to a few of your younger colleagues, +who have assembled here to do you honour." + +Lord Badgery presented everyone in the room to the old painter, who +bowed, shook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found +himself unable to speak. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore +all said charming things. + +Dinner was served; the party took their places. Lord Badgery sat at the +head of the table, with Mr. Tillotson on his right hand and Sir Herbert +Herne on his left. Confronted with Bomba's succulent cooking and Bomba's +wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of +one who has lived on greens and potatoes for ten years among the +blackbeetles. After the second glass of wine he began to talk, suddenly +and in a flood, as though a sluice had been pulled up. + +"In Asia Minor," he began, "it is the custom when one goes to dinner, to +hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. _Eructavit cor meum_, as +the Psalmist has it; he was an Oriental himself." + +Spode had arranged to sit next to Mrs. Cayman; he had designs upon her. +She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wanted +to bamboozle her into buying some of his young friends' pictures. + +"In a cellar?" Mrs. Cayman was saying, "with, blackbeetles? Oh, how +dreadful! Poor old man! And he's ninety-seven, didn't you say? Isn't +that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of +course, one wishes one could have given more oneself. But then, you +know, one has so many expenses, and things are so difficult now." + +"I know, I know," said Spode, with feeling. + +"It's all because of Labour," Mrs. Cayman explained. "Of course, I +should simply love to have him in to dinner sometimes. But, then, I feel +he's really too old, too _farouche_ and _gateux_; it would not be doing +a kindness to him, would it? And so you are working with Mr. Gollamy +now? What a charming man, so talented, such conversation...." + +"_Eructavit cor meum_," said Mr. Tillotson for the third time. Lord +Badgery tried to head him off the subject of Turkish etiquette, but in +vain. + +By half-past nine a kinder vinolent atmosphere had put to sleep the +hatreds and suspicions of before dinner. Sir Herbert Herne had +discovered that the young Cubist sitting next him was not insane and +actually knew a surprising amount about the Old Masters. For their part +these young men had realised that their elders were not at all +malignant; they were just very stupid and pathetic. It was only in the +bosoms of Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore that hatred still +reigned undiminished. Being ladies and old-fashioned, they had drunk +almost no wine. + +The moment for speech-making arrived. Lord Badgery rose to his feet, +said what was expected of him, and called upon Sir Herbert to propose +the toast of the evening. Sir Herbert coughed, smiled and began. In the +course of a speech that lasted twenty minutes he told anecdotes of Mr. +Gladstone, Lord Leighton, Sir Almo Tadema, and the late Bishop, of +Bombay; he made three puns, he quoted Shakespeare and Whittier, he was +playful, he was eloquent, he was grave.... At the end of his harangue +Sir Herbert handed to Mr. Tillotson a silk purse containing fifty-eight +pounds ten shillings, the total amount of the subscription. The old +man's health was drunk with acclamation. + +Mr. Tillotson rose with difficulty to his feet. The dry, snakelike skin +of his face was flushed; his tie was more crooked than ever; the green +ribbon of the Order of Chastity of the second class had somehow climbed +tip his crumpled and maculate shirt front. + +"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he began in a choking voice, and then +broke down completely. It was a very painful and pathetic spectacle. A +feeling of intense discomfort afflicted the minds of all who looked upon +that trembling relic of a man, as he stood there weeping and stammering. +It was as though a breath of the wind of death had blown suddenly +through the room, lifting the vapours of wine and tobacco-smoke, +quenching the laughter and the candle flames. Eyes floated uneasily, not +knowing where to look. Lord Badgery, with great presence of mind, +offered the old man a glass of wine. Mr. Tillotson began to recover. The +guests heard him murmur a few disconnected words. + +"This great honour ... overwhelmed with kindness ... this magnificent +banquet ... not used to it ... in Asia Minor ... _eructuvit cor meum_." + +At this point Lord Badgery plucked sharply at one of his long coat +tails. Mr. Tillotson paused, took another sip of wine, and then went on +with a newly won coherence and energy. + +"The life of the artist is a hard one. His work is unlike other men's +work, which may be done mechanically, by rote and almost, as it were, +in sleep. It demands from him a constant expense of spirit. He gives +continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is +true much fame, it may be--but of material blessings, very few. It is +eighty years since first I devoted my life to the service of art; eighty +years, and almost every one of those years has brought me fresh and +painful proof of what I have been saying: the artist's life is a hard +one." + +This unexpected deviation into sense increased the general feeling of +discomfort. It became necessary to take the old man seriously, to regard +him as a human being. Up till then he had been no more than an object of +curiosity, a mummy in an absurd suit of evening-clothes with a green +ribbon across the shirt front. People could not help wishing that they +had subscribed a little more. Fifty-eight pounds ten it wasn't enormous. +But happily for the peace of mind of the company, Mr. Tillotson paused +again, took another sip of wine, and began to live up to his proper +character by talking absurdly. + +"When I consider the life of that great man, Benjamin Robert Haydon, one +of the greatest men England has ever produced...." The audience heaved a +sigh of relief; this was all as it should be. There was a burst of loud +bravoing and clapping. Mr. Tillotson turned his dim eyes round the room, +and smiled gratefully at the misty figures he beheld. "That great man, +Benjamin Robert Haydon," he continued, "whom I am proud to call my +master and who, it rejoices my heart to see, still lives in your memory +and esteem, that great man, one of the greatest that England has ever +produced, led a life so deplorable that I cannot think of it without a +tear." + +And with infinite repetitions and divagations, Mr. Tillotson related the +history of B.R. Haydon, his imprisonments for debt, his battle with the +Academy, his triumphs, his failures, his despair, his suicide. Half-past +ten struck. Mr. Tillotson was declaiming against the stupid and +prejudiced judges who had rejected Haydon's designs for the decoration +of the new Houses of Parliament in favour of the paltriest German +scribblings. + +"That great man, one of the greatest England has ever produced, that +great Benjamin Robert Haydon, whom I am proud to call my master and who, +it rejoices me to see, still lives on in your memory and esteem--at that +affront his great heart burst; it was the unkindest cut of all. He who +had worked all his life for the recognition, of the artist by the +State, he who had petitioned every Prime Minister, including the Duke of +Wellington, for thirty years, begging them to employ artists to decorate +public buildings, he to whom the scheme for decorating the Houses of +Parliament was undeniably due...." Mr. Tillotson lost a grip on his +syntax and began a new sentence. "It was the unkindest cut of all, it +was the last straw. The artist's life is a hard one." + +At eleven Mr. Tillotson was talking about the pre-Raphaelites. At a +quarter past he had begun to tell the story of B.R. Haydon all over +again. At twenty-five minutes to twelve he collapsed quite speechless +into his chair. Most of the guests had already gone away; the few who +remained made haste to depart. Lord Badgery led the old man to the door +and packed him into the second Rolls-Royce. The Tillotson Banquet was +over; it had been a pleasant evening, but a little too long. + +Spode walked back to his rooms in Bloomsbury, whistling as he went. The +arc lamps of Oxford Street reflected in the polished surface of the +road; canals of dark bronze. He would have to bring that into an article +some time. The Cayman woman had been very successfully nobbled. "Voi che +sapete," he whistled--somewhat out of tune, but he could not hear that. + +When Mr. Tillotson's landlady came in to call him on the following +morning, she found the old man lying fully dressed on his bed. He looked +very ill and very, very old; Boreham's dress-suit was in a terrible +state, and the green ribbon of the Order of Chastity was ruined. Mr. +Tillotson lay very still, but he was not asleep. Hearing the sound of +footsteps, he opened his eyes a little and faintly groaned. His landlady +looked down at him menacingly. + +"Disgusting!" she said, "disgusting, I call it. At your age." + +Mr. Tillotson groaned again. Making a great effort, he drew out of his +trouser pocket a large silk purse, opened it, and extracted a sovereign. + +"The artist's life is a hard one, Mrs. Green," he said, handing her the +coin. "Would you mind sending for the doctor? I don't feel very well. +And oh, what shall I do about these clothes? What shall I say to the +gentleman who was kind enough to lend them to me? Loan oft loseth both +itself and friend. The Bard is always right." + + + + +IV: GREEN TUNNELS + + +"In the Italian gardens of the thirteenth century...." Mr. Buzzacott +interrupted himself to take another helping of the risotto which was +being offered him. "Excellent risotto this," he observed. "Nobody who +was not born in Milan can make it properly. So they say." + +"So they say," Mr. Topes repeated in his sad, apologetic voice, and +helped himself in his turn. + +"Personally," said Mrs. Topes, with decision, "I find all Italian +cooking abominable. I don't like the oil--especially hot. No, thank +you." She recoiled from the proffered dish. + +After the first mouthful Mr. Buzzacott put down his fork. "In the +Italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he began again, making with +his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a +clutch at his beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of +green tunnels." + +"Green tunnels?" Barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence. +"Green tunnels?" + +"Yes, my dear," said her father. "Green tunnels. Arched alleys covered +with vines or other creeping plants. Their length was often very +considerable." + +But Barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. +Green tunnels--the word had floated down to her, through profound depths +of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the +sound of a strange-voiced bell. Green tunnels--what a wonderful idea. +She would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. +He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. +She pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and +scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured corals; endless dim green +corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. +Green-faced monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened +and shut. Green tunnels.... + +"I have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," +Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his pointed brown +beard--clutched and combed it with his long fingers. + +Mr. Topes looked up. The glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed +as he moved his head. "I know what you mean," he said. + +"I have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here." + +"It will take a long time to grow," said Mr. Topes. "In this sand, so +close to the sea, you will only be able to plant vines. And they come up +very slowly very slowly indeed." He shook his head and the points of +light danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his +grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. Then, suddenly, he +pulled himself up. A shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. He +wriggled uncomfortably. Then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he +gave vent to a quotation: + + _But at my back I always hear_ + _Time's winged chariot hurrying near_." + +He spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. He always found +it painfully difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; +and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were +always surging through his mind! + +"They don't grow so slowly as all that," said Mr. Buzzacott confidently. +He was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave +himself at least another forty years; indeed, he had not yet begun to +contemplate the possibility of ever concluding. + +"Miss Barbara will enjoy it, perhaps--your green tunnel." Mr. Topes +sighed and looked across the table at his host's daughter. + +Barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, +staring in front of her. The sound of her own name reached her faintly. +She turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself +confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of +the green tunnel--she stared at the shining circles--hung the eyes of a +goggling fish. They approached, floating, closer and closer, along the +dim submarine corridor. + +Confronted by this fixed regard, Mr. Topes looked away. What thoughtful +eyes! He couldn't remember ever to have seen eyes so full of thought. +There were certain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like hen +mild little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very +young. But he was old; it would be many years, in spite of Buzzacott, +before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. He took a sip of wine; +then, mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache. + +"Arthur!" + +At the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Topes started, raised his napkin to +his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. It was +only in moments of absent-mindedness that he ever offended, now. + +"The Marchese Prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said Mr. +Buzzacott suddenly. "I almost forgot to tell you." + +"One of these Italian marquises, I suppose," said Mrs. Topes, who was no +snob, except in England. She raised her chin with a little jerk. + +Mr. Buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "I +assure you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished +family. They are Genoese in origin. You remember their palace, Barbara? +Built by Alessi." + +Barbara looked up. "Oh yes," she said vaguely. "Alessi. I know." Alessi: +Aleppo--where a malignant and a turbaned Turk. _And_ a turbaned; that +had always seemed to her very funny. + +"Several of his ancestors," Mr. Buzzacott went on, "distinguished +themselves as vice-roys of Corsica. They did good work in the +suppression of rebellion. Strange, isn't it"--he turned parenthetically +to Mr. Topes--"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of +rebels? What a fuss people made of Corsica! That ridiculous book of +Gregorovius, for example. And the Irish, and the Poles, and all the rest +of them. It always seems to me very superfluous and absurd." + +"Isn't it, perhaps, a little natural?" Mr. Topes began timorously and +tentatively, but his host went on without listening. + +"The present marquis," he said, "is the head of the local Fascisti. They +have done no end of good work in this district in the way of preserving +law and order and keeping the lower classes in their place." + +"Ah, the Fascisti," Mrs. Topes repeated approvingly. "One would like to +see something of the kind in England. What with all these strikes...." + +"He has asked me for a subscription to the funds of the organisation. I +shall give him one, of course." + +"Of course." Mrs. Topes nodded. "My nephew, the one who was a major +during the war, volunteered in the last coal strike. He was sorry, I +know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'Aunt Annie,' he said to me, when +I saw him last, 'if there had been a fight we should have knocked them +out completely--completely.'" + +In Aleppo, the Fascisti, malignant _and_ turbaned, were fighting, under +the palm trees. Weren't they palm trees, those tufted green plumes? + +"What, no ice to-day? _Niente gelato?_" inquired Mr. Buzzacott as the +maid put down the compote of peaches on the table. + +Concetta apologised. The ice-making machine in the village had broken +down. There would be no ice till to-morrow. + +"Too bad," said Mr. Buzzacott. "_Troppo male, Concetta_." + +Under the palm trees, Barbara saw them: they pranced about, fighting. +They were mounted on big dogs, and in the trees were enormous +many-coloured birds. + +"Goodness me, the child's asleep." Mrs. Topes was proffering the dish of +peaches. "How much longer am I to hold this in front of your nose, +Barbara?" + +Barbara felt herself blushing. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled, and took the +dish clumsily. + +"Day-dreaming. It's a bad habit." + +"It's one we all succumb to sometimes," put in Mr. Topes deprecatingly, +with a little nervous tremble of the head. + +"You may, my dear," said his wife. "I do not." + +Mr. Topes lowered his eyes to his plate and went on eating. + +"The marchese should be here at any moment now," said Mr. Buzzacott, +looking at his watch. "I hope he won't be late. I find I suffer so much +from any postponement of my siesta. This Italian heat," he added, with +growing plaintiveness, "one can't be too careful." + +"Ah, but when I was with my father in India," began Mrs. Topes in a tone +of superiority: "he was an Indian civilian, you know...." + +Aleppo, India--always the palm trees. Cavalcades of big dogs, and tigers +too. + +Concetta ushered in the marquis. Delighted. Pleased to meet. Speak +English? Yes, yess. _Pocchino_. Mrs. Topes: and Mr. Topes, the +distinguished antiquarian. Ah, of course; know his name very well. My +daughter. Charmed. Often seen the signorina bathing. Admired the way she +dives. Beautiful--the hand made a long, caressing gesture. These +athletic English signorine. The teeth flashed astonishingly white in the +brown face, the dark eyes glittered. She felt herself blushing again, +looked away, smiled foolishly. The marquis had already turned back to +Mr. Buzzacott. + +"So you have decided to settle in our Carrarese." + +Well, not settled exactly; Mr. Buzzacott wouldn't go so far as to say +settled. A villine for the summer months. The winter in Rome. One was +forced to live abroad. Taxation in England.... Soon they were all +talking. Barbara looked at them. Beside the marquis they all seemed half +dead. His face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. +Her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; +and Mr. Topes was all dry and shrivelled; and Mrs. Topes looked more +than ever like something worked by clockwork. They were talking about +Socialism and Fascisti, and all that. Barbara did not listen to what +they were saying; but she looked at them, absorbed. + +Good-bye, good-bye. The animated face with its flash of a smile was +turned like a lamp from one to another. Now it was turned on her. +Perhaps one evening she would come, with her father, and the Signora +Topes. He and his sister gave little dances sometimes. Only the +gramophone, of course. But that was better than nothing, and the +signorina must dance divinely--another flash--he could see that. He +pressed her hand again. Good-bye. + +It was time for the siesta. + +"Don't forget to pull down the mosquito netting, my dear," Mr. Buzzacott +exhorted. "There is always a danger of anophylines." + +"All right, father." She moved towards the door without turning round to +answer him. He was always terribly tiresome about mosquito nets. Once +they had driven through the Campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed +in an improvised tent of netting. The monuments along the Appian Way had +loomed up mistily as through bridal veils. And how everyone had laughed. +But her father, of course, hadn't so much as noticed it. He never +noticed anything. + +"Is it at Berlin, that charming little Madonna of Montagna's?" Mr. Topes +abruptly asked. "The one with the Donor kneeling in the left-hand corner +as if about to kiss the foot of the Child." His spectacles flashed in +Mr. Buzzacott's direction. + +"Why do you ask?" + +"I don't know. I was just thinking of it." + +"I think you must mean the one in the Mond Collection." + +"Ah yes; very probably. In the Mond...." + +Barbara opened the door and walked into the twilight of her shuttered +room. It was hot even here; for another three hours it would hardly be +possible to stir. And that old idiot, Mrs. Topes, always made a fuss if +one came in to lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "In +India we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. +An Englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all +intents and purposes Italians _are_ natives." And so she always had to +put on shoes and stockings and a regular frock just at the hottest hour +of the day. What an old ass that woman was! She slipped off her clothes +as fast as she could. That was a little better. + +Standing in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe door she came to +the humiliating conclusion that she looked like a piece of badly toasted +bread. Brown face, brown neck and shoulders, brown arms, brown legs from +the knee downwards; but all the rest of her was white, silly, +effeminate, townish white. If only one could run about with no clothes +on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and +tumbled in the burning sand! Now she was just underdone, half-baked, and +wholly ridiculous. For a long time she looked at her pale image. She saw +herself running, bronzed all over, along the sand; or through a field of +flowers, narcissus and wild tulips; or in soft grass under grey olive +trees. She turned round with a sudden start. There, in the shadows +behind her.... No, of course there was nothing. + +It was that awful picture in a magazine she had looked at, so many years +ago, when she was a child. There was a lady sitting at her +dressing-table, doing her hair in front of the glass; and a huge, hairy +black monkey creeping up behind her. She always got the creeps when she +looked at herself in a mirror. It was very silly. But still. She turned +away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the +mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. The flies buzzed about her, +settled incessantly on her face. She shook her head, flapped at them +angrily with her hands. There would be peace if she let down the +netting. But she thought of the Appian Way seen mistily through the +bridal veil and preferred to suffer the flies. In the end she had to +surrender; the brutes were too much for her. But, at any rate, it wasn't +the fear of anophylines that made her lower the netting. + +Undisturbed now and motionless, she lay stretched stiffly out under the +transparent bell of gauze. A specimen under a glass case. The fancy +possessed her mind. She saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, +full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and mediaeval spoons +and armour and Florentine jewellery and mummies and carved ivory and +illuminated manuscripts. But in one of the cases was a human being, +shut up there alive. + +All of a sudden she became horribly miserable. "Boring, boring, boring," +she whispered, formulating the words aloud. Would it never stop being +boring? The tears came into her eyes. How awful everything was! And +perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her life. Seventeen from +seventy was fifty three. Fifty three years of it. And if she lived to a +hundred there would be more than eighty. + +The thought depressed her all the evening. Even her bath after tea did +her no good. Swimming far out, far out, she lay there, floating on the +warm water. Sometimes she looked at the sky, sometimes she turned her +head towards the shore. Framed in their pinewoods, the villas looked as +small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. But behind +them, across the level plain, were the mountains. Sharp, bare peaks of +limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced +olive trees--they seemed marvellously close and clear in this evening +light. And beautiful, beautiful beyond words. But that, somehow, only +made things worse. And Shelley had lived a few miles farther up the +coast, there, behind the headland guarding the Gulf of Spezia. Shelley +had been drowned in this milk-warm sea. That made it worse too. + +The sun was getting very low and red over the sea. She swam slowly in. +On the beach Mrs. Topes waited, disapprovingly. She had known somebody, +a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. He sank +like a stone. Like a stone. The queer people Mrs. Topes had known! And +the funny things they did, the odd things that happened to them. + +Dinner that evening was duller than ever. Barbara went early to bed. All +night long the same old irritating cicada scraped and scraped among the +pine trees, monotonous and regular as clockwork. Zip zip, zip zip zip. +Boring, boring. Was the animal never bored by its own noise? It seemed +odd that it shouldn't be. But, when she came to think of it, nobody ever +did get bored with their own noise. Mrs. Topes, for example; she never +seemed to get bored. Zip zip, zip zip zip. The cicada went on without +pause. + +Concetta knocked at the door at half-past seven. The morning was as +bright and cloudless as all the mornings were. Barbara jumped up, looked +from one window at the mountains, from the other at the sea; all seemed +to be well with them. All was well with her, too, this morning. Seated +at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far +obscure corner of the room. A bathing dress and a bath-gown, sandals, a +handkerchief round her head, and she was ready. Sleep had left no +recollection of last night's mortal boredom. She ran downstairs. + +"Good morning, Mr. Topes." + +Mr. Topes was walking in the garden among the vines. He turned round, +took off his hat, smiled a greeting. + +"Good morning, Miss Barbara." He paused. Then, with an embarrassed +wriggle of introduction he went on; a queer little falter came into his +voice. "A real Chaucerian morning, Miss Barbara. A May-day morning--only +it happens to be September. Nature is fresh and bright, and there is at +least one specimen in this dream garden"--he wriggled more +uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round +spectacle lenses of the poet's 'yonge fresshe folkes.' He bowed in her +direction, smiled deprecatingly, and was silent. The remark, it seemed +to him, now that he had finished speaking, was somehow not as good as he +had thought it would be. + +Barbara laughed. "Chaucer! They used to make us read the _Canterbury +Tales_ at school. But they always bored me. Are you going to bathe?" + +"Not before breakfast." Mr. Topes shook his head. "One is getting a +little too old for that." + +"Is one?" Why did the silly old man always say 'one' when he meant 'I'? +She couldn't help laughing at him. "Well, I must hurry, or else I shall +be late for breakfast again, and you know how I catch it." + +She ran out, through the gate in the garden wall, across the beach, to +the striped red-and-white bathing cabin that stood before the house. +Fifty yards away she saw the Marchese Prampolini, still dripping from +the sea, running up towards his bathing hut. Catching sight of her, he +flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. Barbara waved +her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar--but at +this hour of the morning it was difficult not to have bad jolly +manners--and added the corrective of a stiff bow. After all, she had +only met him yesterday. Soon she was swimming out to sea, and, ugh! what +a lot of horrible huge jelly-fish there were. + +Mr. Topes had followed her slowly through the gate and across the sand. +He watched her running down from the cabin, slender as a boy, with +long, bounding strides. He watched her go jumping with great splashes +through the deepening water, then throw herself forward and begin to +swim. He watched her till she was no more than a small dark dot far out. + +Emerging from his cabin, the marquis met him walking slowly along the +beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as though he were +repeating something, a prayer or a poem, to himself. + +"Good morning, signore." The marquis shook him by the hand with a more +than English cordiality. + +"Good morning," replied Mr. Topes, allowing his hand to be shaken. He +resented this interruption of his thoughts. + +"She swims very well, Miss Buzzacott." + +"Very," assented Mr. Topes, and smiled to himself to think what +beautiful, poetical things he might have said, if he had chosen. + +"Well, so, so," said the marquis, too colloquial by half. He shook hands +again, and the two men went their respective ways. + +Barbara was still a hundred yards from the shore when she heard the +crescendo and dying boom of the gong floating out from the villa. Damn! +she'd be late again. She quickened her stroke and came splashing out +through the shallows, flushed and breathless. + +She'd be ten minutes late, she calculated; it would take her at least +that to do her hair and dress. Mrs. Topes would be on the war-path +again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as she +did, goodness only knew. She always succeeded in making herself horribly +offensive and unpleasant. + +The beach was quite deserted as she trotted, panting, across it, empty +to right and left as far as she could see. If only she had a horse to go +galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. Right away down to Bocca +d'Arno she'd go, swim the river--she saw herself crouching on the +horse's back, as he swam, with legs tucked up on the saddle, trying not +to get her feet wet--and gallop on again, goodness only knew where. + +In front of the cabin she suddenly halted. There in the ruffled sand she +had seen a writing. Big letters, faintly legible, sprawled across her +path. + +O CLARA D'ELLEBEUSE. + +She pieced the dim letters together. They hadn't been there when she +started out to bathe. Who?... She looked round. The beach was quite +empty. And what was the meaning? "O Clara d'Ellebeuse." She took her +bath-gown from the cabin, slipped on her sandals, and ran back towards +the house as fast as she could. She felt most horribly frightened. + +It was a sultry, headachey sort of morning, with a hot sirocco that +stirred the bunting on the flagstaffs. By midday the thunderclouds had +covered half the sky. The sun still blazed on the sea, but over the +mountains all was black and indigo. The storm broke noisily overhead +just as they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee. + +"Arthur," said Mrs. Topes, painfully calm, "shut the shutters, please." + +She was not frightened, no. But she preferred not to see the lightning. +When the room was darkened, she began to talk, suavely and incessantly. + +Lying back in her deep arm-chair, Barbara was thinking of Clara +d'Ellebeuse. What did it mean and who was Clara d'Ellebeuse? And why had +he written it there for her to see? He--for there could be no doubt who +had written it. The flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she +knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. He had written it there while +she was swimming out. Written it and then run away. She rather liked +that--just an extraordinary word on the sand, like the footprint in +_Robinson Crusoe._ + +"Personally," Mrs. Topes was saying, "I prefer Harrod's." + +The thunder crashed and rattled. It was rather exhilarating, Barbara +thought; one felt, at any rate, that something was happening for a +change. She remembered the little room half-way up the stairs at Lady +Thingumy's house, with the bookshelves and the green curtains and the +orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug +who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. But that was +different--not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly +ugly. She saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert. Copper +coloured all over, with black hair. He was certainly very handsome. But +as for being in love, well ... what did that exactly mean? Perhaps when +she knew him better. Even now she fancied she detected something. O +Clara d'Ellebeuse. What an extraordinary thing it was. + +With his long fingers Mr. Buzzacott combed his beard. This winter, he +was thinking, he would put another thousand into Italian money when the +exchange was favourable. In the spring it always seemed to drop back +again. One could clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the +exchange went down to seventy. The income on three hundred was fifteen +pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. And +fifteen hundred lire, when you came to think of it, was really sixty +pounds. That was to say that one would make an addition of more than one +pound a week to one's income by this simple little speculation. He +became aware that Mrs. Topes had asked him a question. + +"Yes, yes, perfectly," he said. + +Mrs. Topes talked on; she was keeping up her morale. Was she right in +believing that the thunder sounded a little less alarmingly loud and +near? + +Mr. Topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. +Vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, +homeless, unhappy. He was thinking about beauty. There were certain +relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and +the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. But what about +them? Ah, that was the problem--that was the problem. And there was +youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were +so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to +get himself entangled among them. And he was after all so old and so +ineffective. He put on his spectacles again, and definition came into +the foggy world beyond his eyes. The shuttered room was very dark. He +could distinguish the Renaissance profile of Mr. Buzzacott, bearded and +delicately featured. In her deep arm-chair Barbara appeared, faintly +white, in an attitude relaxed and brooding. And Mrs. Topes was nothing +more than a voice in the darkness. She had got on to the marriage of the +Prince of Wales. Who would they eventually find for him? + +Clara d'Ellebeuse, Clara d'Ellebeuse. She saw herself so clearly as the +_marchesa_. They would have a house in Rome, a palace. She saw herself +in the Palazzo Spada--it had such a lovely vaulted passage leading from +the courtyard to the gardens at the back. "MARCHESA PRAMPOLINI, PALAZZO +SPADA, ROMA"--a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. And she +would go riding every day in the Pincio. "_Mi porta il mio cavallo_" she +would say to the footman, who answered the bell. _Porta_? Would that be +quite correct? Hardly. She'd have to take some proper Italian lessons to +talk to the servants. One must never be ridiculous before servants. +"_Voglio il mio cavallo._ Haughtily one would say it sitting at one's +writing-table in a riding-habit, without turning round. It would be a +green riding-habit, with a black tricorne hat, braided with silver. + +"_Prendero la mia collazzione al letto."_ Was that right for breakfast +in bed? Because she would have breakfast in bed, always. And when she +got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one +could see oneself sideface. She saw herself leaning forward, powdering +her nose, carefully, scientifically. With the monkey creeping up behind? +Ooh. Horrible! _Ho paura di questa scimmia, questo scimmione_. + +She would come back to lunch after her ride. Perhaps Prampolini would be +there; she had rather left him out of the picture so far. "_Dov' e il +Marchese?_" "_Nella sala di pranza, signora_." I began without you, I +was so hungry. _Pasta asciutta_. Where have you been, my love? Riding, +my dove. She supposed they'd get into the habit of saying that sort of +thing. Everyone seemed to. And you? I have been out with the Fascisti. + +Oh, these Fascisti! Would life be worth living when he was always going +out with pistols and bombs and things? They would bring him back one day +on a stretcher. She saw it. Pale, pale, with blood on him. _Il signore +e ferito. Nel petto. Gruvamente. E morto_. + +How could she bear it? It was too awful; too, too terrible. Her breath +came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she had been hurt. _E +morto, E morto_. The tears came into her eyes. + +She was roused suddenly by a dazzling light. The storm had receded far +enough into the distance to permit of Mrs. Topes's opening the shutters. + +"It's quite stopped raining." + +To be disturbed in one's intimate sorrow and self-abandonment at a +death-bed by a stranger's intrusion, an alien voice.... Barbara turned +her face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They +might see and ask her why she had been crying. She hated Mrs. Topes for +opening the shutters; at the inrush of the light something beautiful had +flown, an emotion had vanished, irrecoverably. It was a sacrilege. + +Mr. Buzzacott looked at his watch. "Too late, I fear, for a siesta now," +he said. "Suppose we ring for an early tea." + +"An endless succession of meals," said Mr. Topes, with a tremolo and a +sigh. "That's what life seems to be--real life." + +"I have been calculating"--Mr. Buzzacott turned his pale green eyes +towards his guest--"that I may be able to afford that pretty little +_cinque_ cassone, after all. It would be a bit of a squeeze." He played +with his beard. "But still...." + +After tea, Barbara and Mr. Topes went for a walk along the beach. She +didn't much want to go, but Mrs. Topes thought it would be good for her; +so she had to. The storm had passed and the sky over the sea was clear. +But the waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer +shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or +thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples +ordinarily expired. Smooth, shining expanses of water advanced and +receded like steel surfaces moved out and back by a huge machine. +Through the rain-washed air the mountains appeared with an incredible +clarity. Above them hung huge masses of cloud. + +"Clouds over Carrara," said Mr. Topes, deprecating his remark with a +little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. "I like to +fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among +these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the +clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. I imagine their ghosts"--his +voice trembled--"feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning +huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; +planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there's something +of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath +it." Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, "Yes, yes," though +she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "It's like Night on the +Medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. +And there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour--you see the +one I mean--there's a Bernini. All the passion's on the surface, +expressed; the gesture's caught at its most violent. And that sleek, +smug white fellow over there, that's a delicious absurd Canova." Mr. +Topes chuckled. + +"Why do you always talk about art?" said Barbara. "You bring these dead +people into everything. What do I know about Canova or whoever it is?" +They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a +lamp with life. He at least wasn't dead. She wondered whether the +letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. No, of course +not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out. + +Mr. Topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes +were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. +He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old +tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to +keep him from rotting away. They walked on for a long time in silence. + +"Here's the river," said Mr. Topes at last. + +A few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came +down slowly through the plain to the sea. Just inland from the beach it +was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, +and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the +storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more +intense than at ordinary times. And though all was so clear, there was a +mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. There was no sound +except the continuous breathing of the sea. They stood for a little +while, looking; then turned back. + +Far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. White +flannel trousers, a pink skirt. + +"Nature," Mr. Topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. "One always +comes back to nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like +these, one realises it. One lives now--more quietly, perhaps, but more +profoundly. Deep watery. Deep waters...." + +The figures drew closer. Wasn't it the marquis? And who was with him? +Barbara strained her eyes to see. + +"Most of one's life," Mr. Topes went on, "is one prolonged effort to +prevent oneself thinking. Your father and I, we collect pictures and +read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, +or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. Anything rather than +think calmly about the important things." + +Mr. Topes was silent. He looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, +at the great clouds, at his companion. A frail Montagna madonna, with +the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity +as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and +yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. He thought of death and +the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt +inclined to weep. + +The approaching couple were quite near now. + +"What a funny old walrus," said the lady. + +"Walrus? Your natural history is quite wrong." The marquis laughed. +"He's much too dry to be a walrus. I should suggest some sort of an old +cat." + +"Well, whatever he is, I'm sorry for that poor little girl. Think of +having nobody better to go about with!" + +"Pretty, isn't she?" + +"Yes, but too young, of course." + +"I like the innocence." + +"Innocence? Cher ami! These English girls. Oh, la la! They may look +innocent But, believe me...." + +"Sh, sh. They'll hear you." + +"Pooh, they don't understand Italian." + +The marquis raised his hand. "The old walrus...." he whispered; then +addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers. + +"Good evening, signorina. Good evening, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air +is always the purest, don't you find, eh?" + +Barbara nodded, leaving Mr. Topes to answer. It wasn't his sister. It +was the Russian woman, the one of whom Mrs. Topes used to say that it +was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had +turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked +at the line of her averted face. Mr. Topes was saying something about +the Pastoral Symphony. Purple face powder in the daylight; it looked +hideous. + +"Well, au revoir." + +The flash of the marquis's smile was directed at them. The Russian woman +turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy +white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous +ennui. + +"They jar a little," said Mr. Topes when they were out of earshot--"they +jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. They haven't the +innocence for this ... this...."--he wriggled and tremoloed out the +just, the all too precious word--"this prelapsarian landscape." + +He looked sideways at Barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully +frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What could he +adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? Tenderness.... + +"All this," he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the +sky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, +clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening +time." + +But that was not really what he wanted to say. + +"You see what I mean?" he asked dubiously. She made no reply. How could +she see? "This scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the +corresponding emotion. Those people were out of harmony. They weren't +clear and pure enough." He seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. +"It's an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could +feel it. Those people couldn't." He was feeling his way through +obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? "Certain poems express it. +You know Francis Jammes? I have thought so much of his work lately. Art +instead of life, as usual; but then I'm made that way. I can't help +thinking of Jammes. Those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about +Clara d'Ellebeuse." + +"Clara d'Ellebeuse?" She stopped and stared at him. + +"You know the lines?" Mr. Topes smiled delightedly. "This makes me +think, you make me think of them. '_F'aime dans les temps Clara +d'Ellebeuse_....' But, my dear Barbara, what is the matter?" + +She had started crying, for no reason whatever. + + + + +V: NUNS AT LUNCHEON + + +"What have I been doing since you saw me last?" Miss Penny repeated my +question in her loud, emphatic voice. "Well, when did you see me last?" + +"It must have been June," I computed. + +"Was that after I'd been proposed to by the Russian General? + +"Yes; I remember hearing about the Russian General." + +Miss Penny threw back her head and laughed. Her long ear-rings swung and +rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simile. And her +laughter was like brass, but that had been said before. + +"That was an uproarous incident. It's sad you should have heard of it. I +love my Russian General story. '_Vos yeux me rendent fou_.'" She laughed +again. + +_Vos yeux_--she had eyes like a hare's, flush with her head and very +bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness. What a +formidable woman. I felt sorry for the Russian General. + +"'_Sans coeur et sans entrallies_,'" she went on, quoting the poor +devil's words. "Such a delightful motto, don't you think? Like '_Sans +peur et sans reproche_.' But let me think; what have I been doing since +then?" Thoughtfully she bit into the crust of her bread with long, +sharp, white teeth. + +"Two mixed grills," I said parenthetically to the waiter. + +"But of course," exclaimed Miss Penny suddenly. "I haven't seen you +since my German trip. All sorts of adventures. My appendicitis; my nun." + +"Your nun?" + +"My marvellous nun. I must tell you all about her." + +"Do." Miss Penny's anecdotes were always curious. I looked forward to an +entertaining luncheon. + +"You knew I'd been in Germany this autumn?" + +"Well, I didn't, as a matter of fact. But still--" + +"I was just wandering round." Miss Penny described a circle in the air +with her gaudily jewelled hand. She always twinkled with massive and +improbable jewellery. + +"Wandering round, living on three pounds a week, partly amusing myself, +partly collecting material for a few little articles. 'What it Feels +Like to be a Conquered Nation'--sob-stuff for the Liberal press, you +know--and 'How the Hun is Trying to Wriggle out of the Indemnity,' for +the other fellows. One has to make the best of all possible worlds, +don't you find? But we mustn't talk shop. Well, I was wandering round, +and very pleasant I found it. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig. Then down to +Munich and all over the place. One fine day I got to Grauburg. You know +Grauburg? It's one of those picture-book German towns with a castle on a +hill, hanging beer-gardens, a Gothic church, an old university, a river, +a pretty bridge, and forests all round. Charming. But I hadn't much +opportunity to appreciate the beauties of the place. The day after I +arrived there--bang!--I went down with appendicitis--screaming, I may +add." + +"But how appalling!" + +"They whisked me off to hospital, and cut me open before you could say +knife. Excellent surgeon, highly efficient Sisters of Charity to nurse +me--I couldn't have been in better hands. But it was a bore being tied +there by the leg for four weeks--a great bore. Still, the thing had its +compensations. There was my nun, for example. Ah, here's the food, thank +Heaven!" + +The mixed grill proved to be excellent. Miss Penny's description of the +pun came to me in scraps and snatches. A round, pink, pretty face in a +winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether too +perfect--false, in fact; but the general effect extremely pleasing. A +youthful Teutonic twenty eight. + +"She wasn't my nurse," Miss Penny explained. "But I used to see her +quite often when she came in to have a look at the _tolle Englaenderin_. +Her name was Sister Agatha. During the war, they told me, she had +converted any number of wounded soldiers to the true faith--which wasn't +surprising, considering how pretty she was." + +"Did she try and convert you?" I asked. + +"She wasn't such a fool." Miss Penny laughed, and rattled the miniature +gallows of her ears. + +I amused myself for a moment with the thought of Miss Penny's +conversion--Miss Penny confronting a vast assembly of Fathers of the +Church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, +laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate +Conception, meeting the stern look of the Grand Inquisitor with a flash +of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. What was the secret of the +woman's formidableness? + +But I was missing the story. What had happened? Ah yes, the gist of it +was that Sister Agatha had appeared one morning, after two or three days +absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital +charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven +head. + +"Dead," said Miss Penny; "she looked as though she were dead. A walking +corpse, that's what she was. It was a shocking sight. I shouldn't have +thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She +walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had +great burnt rings round her eyes and deep lines in her face. And the +general expression of unhappiness--that was something quite appalling." + +She leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and +caught the passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. The little +Italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into +terror on his face. + +"Half a pint of Guinness," ordered Miss Penny. "And, after this, bring +me some jam roll." + +"No jam roll to-day, madam." + +"Damn!" said Miss Penny. "Bring me what you like, then." + +She let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative. + +"Where was I? Yes, I remember. She came into my room, I was telling you, +with a bucket of water and a brush, dressed like a charwoman. Naturally +I was rather surprised. 'What on earth are you doing, Sister Agatha?' I +asked. No answer. She just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. +When she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me +again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse when she +next came in. 'Can't say.'--'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took +nearly a week to find out what really had happened. Nobody dared tell +me; it was _strengst verboten_, as they used to say in the good old +days. But I wormed it out in the long run. My nurse, the doctor, the +charwomen--I got something out of all of them. I always get what I want +in the end." Miss Penny laughed like a horse. + +"I'm sure you do," I said politely. + +"Much obliged," acknowledged Miss Penny. "But to proceed. My information +came to me in fragmentary whispers. 'Sister Agatha ran away with a +man.'--Dear me.--'One of the patients.'--You don't say so.--'A criminal +out of the jail.'--The plot thickens.--'He ran away from her.'--It +seems to grow thinner again.--'They brought her back here; she's been +disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel--coffin +and all. She had to be present at it--her own funeral. She isn't a nun +any more. She has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest in the +hospital. She's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to +speak to her. She's regarded as dead.'" Miss Penny paused to signal to +the harassed little Italian. "My small 'Guinness,'" she called out. + +"Coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "Guinness" down the lift, +and from below another voice echoed, "Guinness." + +"I filled in the details bit by bit. There was our hero, to begin with; +I had to bring him into the picture, which was rather difficult, as I +had never seen him. But I got a photograph of him. The police circulated +one when he got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny +opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always carry it about with +me; it's become a superstition. For years, I remember, I used to carry a +little bit of heather tied up with string. Beautiful, isn't it? There's +a sort of Renaissance look about it, don't you think? He was +half-Italian, you know." + +Italian. Ah, that explained it. I had been wondering how Bavaria could +have produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the +finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and +sensually curved. + +"He's certainly very superb," I said, handing back the picture. + +Miss Penny put it carefully away in her bag. "Isn't he?" she said. +"Quite marvellous. But his character and his mind were even better. I +see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are +simply unaware of the existence of right and wrong. And he had +genius--the real Italian genius for engineering, for dominating and +exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and +a brother of the electrical engineers. Only Kuno--that was his +name--didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how to harness +the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. The +commercial exploitation of love-power, that was his specialty. I +sometimes wonder," Miss Penny added in a different tone, "whether I +shall ever be exploited, when I get a little more middle-aged and +celibate, by one of these young engineers of the passions. It would be +humiliating, particularly as I've done so little exploiting from my +side." + +She frowned and was silent for a moment. No, decidedly, Miss Penny was +not beautiful; you could not even honestly say that she had charm or was +attractive. That high Scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the voice, +the terrifying laugh, and the size of her, the general formidableness of +the woman. No, no, no. + +"You said he had been in prison," I said. The silence, with all its +implications, was becoming embarrassing. + +Miss Penny sighed, looked up, and nodded. "He was fool enough," she +said, "to leave the straight and certain road of female exploitation for +the dangerous courses of burglary. We all have our occasional accesses +of folly. They gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting +pneumonia, I think it was, a week after entering jail. He was +transferred to the hospital. Sister Agatha, with her known talent for +saving souls, was given him as his particular attendant. But it was he, +I'm afraid, who did the converting." + +Miss Penny finished off the last mouthful of the ginger pudding which +the waiter had brought in lieu of jam roll. + +"I suppose you don't smoke cheroots," I said, as I opened my cigar-case. + +"Well, as a matter of fact, I do," Miss Penny replied. She looked +sharply round the restaurant. "I must just see if there are any of those +horrible little gossip paragraphers here to-day. One doesn't want to +figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'A fact +which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that Miss Penny, +the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon with a +six-inch Burma cheroot. I saw her yesterday in a restaurant--not a +hundred miles from Carmelite Street--smoking like a house on fire.' You +know the touch. But the coast seems to be clear, thank goodness." + +She took a cheroot from the case, lit it at my proffered match, and went +on talking. + +"Yes, it was young Kuno who did the converting. Sister Agatha was +converted back into the worldly Melpomene Fugger she had been before she +became the bride of holiness." + +"Melpomene Fugger?" + +"That was her name. I had her history from my old doctor. He had seen +all Grauburg, living and dying and propagating for generations. +Melpomene Fugger why, he had brought little Melpel into the world, +little Melpchen. Her father was Professor Fugger, the great Professor +Fugger, the _beruemter Geolog_. Oh, yes, of course, I know the name. So +well.... He was the man who wrote the standard work on Lemuria--you +know, the hypothetical continent where the lemurs come from. I showed +due respect. Liberal-minded he was, a disciple of Herder, a +world-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. Anglophile, too, +and always ate porridge for breakfast--up till August 1914. Then, the +radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and +with tears in his eyes. The national food of a people who had betrayed +culture and civilisation--how could he go on eating it? It would stick +in his throat. In future he would have a lightly boiled egg. He sounded, +I thought, altogether charming. And his daughter, Melpomene--she sounded +charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tails when she was young! Her +mother was dead, and a sister of the great Professor's ruled the house +with an iron rod. Aunt Bertha was her name. Well, Melpomene grew up, +very plump and appetising. When she was seventeen, something very odious +and disagreeable happened to her. Even the doctor didn't know exactly +what it was; but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had had something +to do with the then Professor of Latin, an old friend of the family's, +who combined, it seems, great erudition with a horrid fondness for very +young ladies." + +Miss Penny knocked half an inch of cigar ash into her empty glass. + +"If I wrote short stories," she went on reflectively "(but it's too much +bother), I should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, +beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in +Melpomene's life. I see the scene so clearly. Poor little Melpel is +leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June +night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is +besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. +Professor Engelmann, her father's old friend, with the magnificent red +Assyrian beard.... Too awful--too awful! But then, as I was saying, +short stones are really too much bother; or perhaps I'm too stupid to +write them. I bequeath it to you. You know how to tick these things +off." + +"You're generous." + +"Not at all," said Miss Penny. "My terms are ten per cent commission on +the American sale. Incidentally there won't be an American sale. Poor +Melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of Those States. But let +me hear what you propose to do with Melpomene now you've got her on the +castle bastions." + +"That's simple," I said. "I know all about German university towns and +castles on hills. I shall make her look into the June night, as you +suggest; into the violet night with its points of golden flame. There +will be the black silhouette of the castle, with its sharp roofs and +hooded turrets, behind her. From the hanging beer-gardens in the town +below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, +will float up through the dark-blue spaces. '_Roeslein, Roeslein, Roeslein +rot_' and '_Das Ringlein sprang in zwei_'--the heart-rendingly sweet old +songs will make her cry all the more. Her tears will patter like rain +among the leaves of the mulberry trees in the garden below. Does that +seem to you adequate?" + +"Very nice," said Miss Penny. "But how are you going to bring the sex +problem and all of its horrors into the landscape?" + +"Well, let me think." I called to memory those distant foreign summers +when I was completing my education. "I know. I shall suddenly bring a +swarm of moving candles and Chinese lanterns under the mulberry trees. +You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the +faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone +again. They are students and girls of the town come out to dance, this +windless, blue June night, under the mulberry trees. And now they begin, +thumping round and round in a ring, to the music of their own singing. + + "_Wir koennen spielen_ + _Vio-vio-vio-lin_ + _Wir koennen spielen_ + _Vi-o-lin_ + +"Now the rhythm changes, quickens. + + "_Und wir koennen tanzen Bumstarara,_ + _Bumstarara, Bumstarara,_ + _Und wir koennen tanzen Bumstarara,_ + _Bumstarara-rara._ + +"The dance becomes a rush, an elephantine prancing on the dry lawn under +the mulberry trees. And from the bastion Melpomene looks down and +perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is +sex, sex, sex. Men and women, male and female--always the same, and all, +in the light of the horror of the afternoon, disgusting. That's how I +should do it, Miss Penny." + +"And very nice, too. But I wish you could find a place to bring in my +conversation with the doctor. I shall never forget the way he cleared +his throat, and coughed before embarking on the delicate subject. 'You +may know, ahem, gracious Miss,' he began--'you may know that religious +phenomena are often, ahem, closely connected with sexual causes.' I +replied that I had heard rumours which might justify me in believing +this to be true among Roman Catholics, but that in the Church of England +--and I for one was a practitioner of Anglicanismus--it was very +different. 'That might be,' said the doctor; he had had no opportunity +in the course of his long medical career of personally studying +Anglicanismus. But he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, +here in Grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the +_Geschlechtsleben_. Melpomene was a case in point. After that hateful +afternoon she had become extremely religious; the Professor of Latin had +diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. She rebelled against +the placid Agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when +Aunt Bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden +books as _The Life of St. Theresa, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, +The Imitation of Christ_, and the horribly enthralling _Book of +Martyrs_. Aunt Bertha confiscated, these works whenever she came upon +them; she considered them more pernicious than the novels of Marcel +Prevost. The character of a good potential housewife might be completely +undermined by reading of this kind. It was rather a relief for Melpomene +when Aunt Bertha shuffled off, in the summer of 1911, this mortal coil. +She was one of those indispensables of whom one makes the discovery, +when they are gone, that one can get on quite as well without them. Poor +Aunt Bertha!" + +"One can imagine Melpomene trying to believe she was sorry, and horribly +ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." The +suggestion seemed to me ingenious, but Miss Penny accepted it as +obvious. + +"Precisely," she said; "and the emotion would only further confirm and +give new force to the tendencies which her aunt's death left her free to +indulge as much as she liked. Remorse, contrition--they would lead to +the idea of doing penance. And for one who was now wallowing in the +martyrology, penance was the mortification of the flesh. She used to +kneel for hours, at night, in the cold; she ate too little, and when her +teeth ached, which they often did,--for she had a set, the doctor told +me, which had given trouble from the very first,--she would not go and +see the dentist, but lay awake at night, savouring to the full her +excruciations, and feeling triumphantly that they must, in some strange +way, be pleasing to the Mysterious Powers. She went on like that for two +or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. In the end +she went down with gastric ulcer. It was three months before she came +out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and +with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. And in +mind, too, she was changed--for the better, I suppose. The nuns who +nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted +supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, +she had sinned. The only road to salvation, they told her, lay in +discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to +authority. Secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose +Agnosticismus was extremely dogmatic, for all its unobtrusiveness, +Melpomene became a Roman Catholic. She was twenty-two. Only a few months +later came the war and Professor Fugger's eternal renunciation of +porridge. He did not long survive the making of that patriotic gesture. +In the autumn of 1914 he caught a fatal influenza. Melpomene was alone +in the world. In the spring of 1915 there was a new and very +conscientious Sister of Charity at work among the wounded, in the +hospital of Grauburg. Here," explained Miss Penny, jabbing the air with +her forefinger, "you put a line of asterisks or dots to signify a six +years' gulf in the narrative. And you begin again right in the middle of +a dialogue between Sister Agatha and the newly convalescent Kuno." + +"What's their dialogue to be about?" I asked. + +"Oh, that's easy enough," said Miss Penny. "Almost anything would do. +What about this, for example? You explain that the fever has just +abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. He +feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world--a world so +bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of +it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being +extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have +suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural +history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet--ha, ha! What an +uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet--that's good, that's damned +good! You can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the +irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, +where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to +jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. Ha, ha! Laugh on, +unhappy boy. It is the quacking of the Fates, the Parcae, the Norns!" + +Miss Penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. At +the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables +looked up, startled. + +"You can write pages about Destiny and its ironic quacking. It's +tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line." + +"You may be sure I shall." + +"Good! Then I can get on with my story. The days pass and the first +hilarity of convalescence fades away. The young man remembers and grows +sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. +His mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. As for the +consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha +perseveres--oh, with what anxious solicitude!--in the attempt to make +him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously +important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. +And now you see the _Geschlechtsleben_ working yeastily and obscurely, +and once again the quacking of the Norns is audible. By the way," said +Miss Penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the +table, "I wish you'd tell me something. Tell me, do you +really--honestly, I mean--do you seriously believe in literature?" + +"Believe in literature?" + +"I was thinking?" Miss Penny explained, "of Ironic Fate and the quacking +of the Norns and all that." + +"'M yes." + +"And then there's this psychology and introspection business; and +construction and good narrative and word pictures and _le mot juste_ and +verbal magic and striking metaphors." + +I remembered that I had compared Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings to +skeletons hanging in chains. + +"And then, finally, and to begin with--Alpha and Omega--there's +ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of +sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of +turning her misfortunes into cash. It's all very curious, isn't +it?--when one begins to think about it dispassionately." + +"Very curious," I agreed. "But, then, so is everything else if you look +at it like that." + +"No, no," said Miss Penny. "Nothing's so curious as our business. But I +shall never get to the end of my story if I get started on first +principles." + +Miss Penny continued her narrative. I was still thinking of literature. +Do you believe in it? Seriously? Ah! Luckily the question was quite +meaningless. The story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the +young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, +he would be well--well enough to go back to jail. No, no. The question +was meaningless. I would think about it no more. I concentrated my +attention again. + +"Sister Agatha," I heard Miss Penny saying, "prayed, exhorted, +indoctrinated. Whenever she had half a minute to spare from her other +duties she would come running into the young man's room. 'I wonder if +you fully realise the importance of prayer?' she would ask, and, before +he had time to answer, she would give him a breathless account of the +uses and virtues of regular and patient supplication. Or else, it was: +'May I tell you about St. Theresa?' or 'St. Stephen, the first +martyr--you know about him, don't you?' Kuno simply wouldn't listen at +first. It seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd +interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the +future. Prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with +her ridiculous fairy-tales. Then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, +he showed signs of contrition and conversion. Sister Agatha announced +her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost +sheep. Melpomene had never felt so happy in her life, and Kuno, looking +at her radiant face, must have wondered how he could have been such a +fool as not to see from the first what was now so obvious. The woman had +lost her head about him. And he had only four days now--four days in +which to tap the tumultuous love power, to canalise it, to set it +working for his escape. Why hadn't he started a week ago? He could have +made certain of it then. But now? There was no knowing. Four days was a +horribly short time." + +"How did he do it?" I asked, for Miss Penny had paused. + +"That's for you to say," she replied, and shook her ear-rings at me. "I +don't know. Nobody knows, I imagine, except the two parties concerned +and perhaps Sister Agatha's confessor. But one can reconstruct the +crime, as they say. How would you have done it? You're a man, you ought +to be familiar with the processes of amorous engineering." + +"You flatter me," I answered. "Do you seriously suppose--" I extended my +arms. Miss Penny laughed like a horse. "No. But, seriously, it's a +problem. The case is a very special one. The person, a nun, the place, a +hospital, the opportunities, few. There could be no favourable +circumstances--no moonlight, no distant music; and any form of direct +attack would be sure to fail. That audacious confidence which is your +amorist's best weapon would be useless here." + +"Obviously," said Miss Penny. "But there are surely other methods. There +is the approach through pity and the maternal instincts. And there's the +approach through Higher Things, through the soul. Kuno must have worked +on those lines, don't you think? One can imagine him letting himself be +converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her +sympathy and even threatening--with a great air of seriousness---to kill +himself rather than go back to jail. You can write that up easily and +convincingly enough. But it's the sort of thing that bores me so +frightfully to do. That's why I can never bring myself to write fiction. +What is the point of it all? And the way you literary men think +yourselves so important--particularly if you write tragedies. It's all +very queer, very queer indeed." + +I made no comment. Miss Penny changed her tone and went on with the +narrative. + +"Well," she said, "whatever the means employed, the engineering process +was perfectly successful. Love was made to find out a way. On the +afternoon before Kuno was to go back to prison, two Sisters of Charity +walked out of the hospital gates, crossed the square in front of it, +glided down the narrow streets towards the river, boarded a tram at the +bridge, and did not descend till the car had reached its terminus in the +farther suburbs. They began to walk briskly along the high road out into +the country. 'Look!' said one of them, when they were clear of the +houses; and with the gesture of a conjurer produced from nowhere a red +leather purse. 'Where did it come from?' asked the other, opening her +eyes. Memories of Elisha and the ravens, of the widow's cruse, of the +loaves and fishes, must have floated through the radiant fog in poor +Melpomene's mind. 'The old lady I was sitting next to in the tram left +her bag open. Nothing could have been simpler.' 'Kuno! You don't mean to +say you stole it?' Kuno swore horribly. He had opened the purse. 'Only +sixty marks. Who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in +silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. And I must have +a thousand at least to get away. It's easy to reconstruct the rest of +the conversation down to the inevitable, 'For God's sake, shut up,' with +which Kuno put an end to Melpomene's dismayed moralising. They trudge on +in silence. Kuno thinks desperately. Only sixty marks; he can do nothing +with that. If only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some +gold or silver anything, anything. He knows such a good place for +selling things. Is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? +Melpomene is also thinking. Evil must often be done that good may +follow. After all, had not she herself stolen Sister Mary of the +Purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? Had not she +run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she +was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphatically +approved; she felt sure of it. And now there was the red purse. But +what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul--and, after all, +what was she doing hut saving Kuno's soul?" Miss Penny, who had adapted +the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought +her hand with a slap on to the table. "Lord, what a bore this sort of +stuff is!" she exclaimed. "Let's get to the end of this dingy anecdote +as quickly as possible. By this time, you must imagine, the shades of +night were falling fast--the chill November twilight, and so on; but I +leave the natural descriptions to you. Kuno gets into the ditch at the +roadside and takes off his robes. One imagines that he would feel +himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a +crisis. They tramp on for miles. Late in the evening they leave the high +road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. At the fringe +of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds +sleep in the lambing season. + +"The real 'Maison du Berger.'" + +"Precisely," said Miss Penny, and she began to recite: + + "_Si ton coeur gemissant du poids de notre vie_ + _Se traine et se debat comme un aigle blesse...._ + +"How does it go on? I used to adore it all so much when I was a girl. + + _"Le seuil est perfume, l'alcove est large et sombre,_ + _Et la parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,_ + _Pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux._ + +"I could go on like this indefinitely." + +"Do," I said. + +"No, no. No, no. I'm determined to finish this wretched story. Kuno +broke the padlock of the door. They entered. What happened in that +little hut?" Miss Penny leaned forward at me. Her large hare's eyes +glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. "Imagine the +emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying +presence of desire. Imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young +man. Oh, there's pages to be made out of this--the absolutely +impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled +crying, the movements! And one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing +about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound +that shakes the air. Why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. In the +morning," Miss Penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their +way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached +the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there +should be need of it. Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress +lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. +'What's the matter?' A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of +tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'What's the +matter?'--'He's gone!' What a queer, indistinct utterance. The +woodcutters regard one another. What does she say? She's a foreigner, +perhaps. 'What's the matter?' they repeat once more. The woman bursts +out violently crying. 'Gone, gone! He's gone,' she sobs out in her +vague, inarticulate way. 'Oh, gone. That's what she says. Who's +gone?'--'He's left me.'--'What?'--'Left me....'--'What the devil...? +Speak a little more distinctly.'--'I can't,' she wails; 'he's taken my +teeth.'--'Your what?--'My teeth!'--and the shrill voice breaks into a +scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. The woodcutters look +significantly at one another. They nod. One of them applies a thick +yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead." + +Miss Penny looked at her watch. "Good heavens!" she said, "it's nearly +half-past three. I must fly. Don't forget about the funeral service," +she added, as she put on her coat. "The tapers, the black coffin, in the +middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy +chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all +caved in like an old woman's, wondering whether she wasn't really and in +fact dead--wondering whether she wasn't already in hell. Good-bye." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mortal Coils, by Aldous Huxley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTAL COILS *** + +***** This file should be named 39378.txt or 39378.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/3/7/39378/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/39378.zip b/old/39378.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..913e07c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/39378.zip |