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+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 paďen._
+
+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-ŕ-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 oů 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-ŕ-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 medićval 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' č 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
+č 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 Parcć, 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 lŕ 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
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