"No," I said. "I won't butt in. I'll play the pianola. The Victrola's a
brute."
I hardly noticed the passage of time. Whether the others danced or not,
I played, and was unconscious of almost everything. In the midst of one
rattling piece. Lord Lathkill touched my arm.
"Listen to Carlotta. She says closing time," he said, in his old musical
voice, but with the sardonic ring of war in it now.
Carlotta stood with her arms dangling, looking like a penitent
schoolgirl.
"The Colonel has gone to bed. He hasn't been able to manage a
reconciliation with Lucy," she said. "My mother-in-law thinks we ought
to let him try to sleep."
Carlotta's slow eyes rested on mine, questioning, penitent--or so I
imagined--and somewhat sphinx-like.
"Why, of course," said Lord Lathkill. "I wish him all the sleep in the
world."
Mrs. Hale said never a word.
"Is Mother retiring too?" asked Luke.
"I think so."
"Ah! then supposing we go up and look at the supper-tray."
We found Lady Lathkill mixing herself some night-cap brew over a
spirit-lamp: something milky and excessively harmless. She stood at the
sideboard stirring her potations, and hardly noticed us. When she had
finished she sat down with her steaming cup.
"Colonel Hale all right, Mother?" said Luke, looking across at her.
The dowager, under her uplift of white hair, stared back at her son.
There was an eye-battle for some moments, during which he maintained his
arch, debonair ease, just a bit crazy.
"No," said Lady Lathkill, "he is in great trouble."
"Ah!" replied her son. "Awful pity we can't do anything for him. But if
flesh and blood can't help him, I'm afraid I'm a dud. Suppose he didn't
mind our dancing? Frightfully good for _us_! We've been forgetting that
we're flesh and blood. Mother."
He took another whisky and soda, and gave me one. And in a paralysing
silence Lady Lathkill sipped her hot brew, Luke and I sipped our
whiskies, the young woman ate a little sandwich. We all preserved an
extraordinary aplomb, and an obstinate silence.
It was Lady Lathkill who broke it. She seemed to be sinking downwards,
crouching into herself like a skulking animal.
"I suppose," she said, "we shall all go to bed?"
"You go, Mother. We'll come along in a moment."
She went, and for some time we four sat silent. The room seemed to
become pleasanter, the air was more grateful.
"Look here," said Lord Lathkill at last. "What do you think of this
ghost business?"
"I?" said I. "I don't like the atmosphere it produces. There may be
ghosts, and spirits, and all that. The dead must be somewhere; there's
no such place as nowhere. But they don't affect me particularly. Do they
you?"
"Well," he said, "no, not directly. Indirectly I suppose it does."
"I think it makes a horribly depressing atmosphere, spiritualism," said
I. "I want to kick."
"Exactly! And ought one?" he asked in his terribly sane-seeming way.
This made me laugh. I knew what he was up to.
"I don't know what you mean by _ought_," said I. "If I really want to
kick, if I know I can't stand a thing, I kick. Who's going to authorise
me, if my own genuine feeling doesn't?"
"Quite," he said, staring at me like an owl, with a fixed, meditative
stare.
"Do you know," he said, "I suddenly thought at dinner-time, what corpses
we all were, sitting eating our dinners. I thought it when I saw you
look at those little Jerusalem artichoke things in a white sauce.
Suddenly it struck me, you were alive and twinkling, and we were all
bodily dead. Bodily dead, if you understand. Quite alive in other
directions, but bodily dead. And whether we ate vegetarian or meat made
no difference. We were bodily dead."
"Ah, with a slap in the face," said I, "we come to life! You or I or
anybody."
"I _do_ understand poor Lucy," said Luke. "Don't you? She forgot to be
flesh and blood while she was alive, and now she can't forgive herself,
nor the Colonel. That must be pretty rough, you know, not to realise it
till you're dead, and you haven't, so to speak, anything left to go on.
I mean it's awfully important to be flesh and blood."
He looked so solemnly at us, we three broke simultaneously into an
uneasy laugh.
"Oh, but I _do_ mean it," he said. "I've only realised how very
extraordinary it is to be a man of flesh and blood, alive. It seems so
ordinary, in comparison, to be dead, and merely spirit. That seems so
commonplace. But fancy having a living face, and arms, and thighs. Oh,
my God, I'm glad I've realised in time!"
He caught Mrs. Hale's hand, and pressed her dusky arm against his body.
"Oh, but if one had died without realising it!" he cried. "Think how
ghastly for Jesus, when he was risen and wasn't touchable! How very
awful, to have to say _Noli me tangere_! Ah, touch me, touch me
_alive_!"
He pressed Mrs. Hale's hand convulsively against his breast. The tears
had already slowly gathered in Carlotta's eyes and were dropping on to
her hands in her lap.
"Don't cry, Carlotta," he said. "Really, don't. We haven't killed one
another. We're too decent, after all. We've almost become two spirits
side by side. We've almost become two ghosts to one another, wrestling.
Oh, but I want you to get back your body, even if I can't give it you. I
want my flesh and blood, Carlotta, and I want you to have yours. We've
suffered so much the other way. And the children, it is as well they are
dead. They were born of our will and our disembodiment. Oh, I feel like
the Bible. Clothe me with flesh again, and wrap my bones with sinew, and
let the fountain of blood cover me. My spirit is like a naked nerve on
the air."
Carlotta has ceased to weep. She sat with her head dropped, as if
asleep. The rise and fall of her small, slack breasts was still heavy,
but they were lifting on a heaving sea of rest. It was as if a slow,
restful dawn were rising in her body, while she slept. So slack, so
broken she sat, it occurred to me that in this crucifixion business the
crucified does not put himself alone on the cross. The woman is nailed
even more inexorably up, and crucified in the body even more cruelly.
It is a monstrous thought. But the deed is even more monstrous. Oh,
Jesus, didn't you know that you couldn't be crucified alone!--that the
two thieves crucified along with you were the two women, your wife and
your mother! You called them two thieves. But what would they call you,
who had their women's bodies on the cross? The abominable trinity on
Calvary!
I felt an infinite tenderness for my dear Carlotta. She could not yet be
touched. But my soul streamed to her like warm blood. So she sat slack
and drooped, as if broken. But she was not broken. It was only the great
release.
Luke sat with the hand of the dark young woman pressed against his
breast. His face was warm and fresh, but he too breathed heavily, and
stared unseeing. Mrs. Hale sat at his side erect and mute. But she loved
him, with erect, black-faced, remote power.
"Morier!" said Luke to me. "If you can help Carlotta, you will, won't
you? I can't do any more for her now. We are in mortal fear of each
other."
"As much as she'll let me," said I, looking at her drooping figure, that
was built on such a strong frame.
The fire rustled on the hearth as we sat in complete silence. How long
it lasted I cannot say. Yet we were none of us startled when the door
opened.
It was the Colonel, in a handsome brocade dressing-gown, looking
worried.
Luke still held the dark young woman's hand clasped against his thigh.
Mrs. Hale did not move.
"I thought you fellows might help me," said the Colonel, in a worried
voice, as he closed the door.
"What is wrong, Colonel?" said Luke.
The Colonel looked at him, looked at the clasped hands of Luke and the
dark young woman, looked at me, looked at Carlotta, without changing his
expression of anxiety, fear, and misery. He didn't care about us.
"I can't sleep," he said. "It's gone wrong again. My head feels as if
there was a cold vacuum in it, and my heart beats, and something screws
up inside me. I know it's Lucy. She hates me again. I can't stand it."
He looked at us with eyes half glazed, obsessed. His face seemed as if
the flesh were breaking under the skin, decomposing.
"Perhaps, poor thing," said Luke, whose madness seemed really sane this
night, "perhaps you hate _her_."
Luke's strange concentration instantly made us feel a tension, as of
hate, in the Colonel's body.
"I?" The Colonel looked up sharply, like a culprit. "I! I wouldn't say
that, if I were you."
"Perhaps that's what's the matter," said Luke, with mad, beautiful calm.
"Why can't you feel kindly towards her, poor thing! She must have been
done out of a lot while she lived."
It was as if he had one foot in life and one in death, and knew both
sides. To us it was like madness.
"I--I!" stammered the Colonel; and his face was a study. Expression
after expression moved across it: of fear, repudiation, dismay, anger,
repulsion, bewilderment, guilt. "I was good to her."
"Ah yes," said Luke. "Perhaps _you_ were good to her. But was your body
good to poor Lucy's body, poor dead thing!"
He seemed to be better acquainted with the ghost than with us.
The Colonel gazed blankly at Luke, and his eyes went up and down, up and
down, up and down, up and down.
"My body!" he said blankly.
And he looked down amazedly at his little round stomach, under the silk
gown, and his stout knee, in its blue-and-white pyjama.
"My body!" he repeated blankly.
"Yes," said Luke. "Don't you see, you may have been awfully good to her.
But her poor woman's body, were you ever good to that?"
"She had everything she wanted. She had three of my children," said the
Colonel dazedly.
"Ah yes, that may easily be. But your body of a man, was it ever good to
her body of a woman? That's the point. If you understand the marriage
service: with my body I thee worship. That's the point. No getting away
from it."
The queerest of all accusing angels did Lord Lathkill make, as he sat
there with the hand of the other man's wife clasped against his thigh.
His face was fresh and naïve, and the dark eyes were bright with a
clairvoyant candour, that was like madness, and perhaps was supreme
sanity.
The Colonel was thinking back, and over his face a slow understanding
was coming.
"It may be," he said. "It may be. Perhaps, that way, I despised her. It
may be, it may be."
"I know," said Luke. "As if she weren't worth noticing, what you did to
her. Haven't I done it myself? And don't I know now, it's a horrible
thing to do, to oneself as much as to her? Her poor ghost, that ached,
and never had a real body! It's not so easy to worship with the body.
Ah, if the Church taught us _that_ sacrament: _with my body I thee
worship_! that would easily make up for any honouring and obeying the
woman might do. But that's why she haunts you. You ignored and disliked
her body, and she was only a living ghost. Now she wails in the
afterworld, like a still-wincing nerve."
The Colonel hung his head, slowly pondering. Pondering with all his
body. His young wife watched the sunken, bald head in a kind of stupor.
His day seemed so far from her day. Carlotta had lifted her face; she
was beautiful again, with the tender before-dawn freshness of a new
understanding.
She was watching Luke, and it was obvious, he was another man to her.
The man she knew, the Luke who was her husband, was gone, and this other
strange, uncanny creature had taken his place. She was filled with
wonder. Could one so change, as to become another creature entirely? Ah,
if it were so! If she herself, as she knew herself, could cease to be!
If that woman who was married to Luke, married to him in an intimacy of
misfortune that was like a horror, could only cease to be, and let a
new, delicately-wild Carlotta take her place!
"It may be," said the Colonel, lifting his head. "It may be." There
seemed to come a relief over his soul, as he realised. "I didn't worship
her with my body. I think maybe I worshipped other women that way; but
maybe I never did. But I thought I was good to her. And I thought she
didn't want it."
"It's no good thinking. We all want it," asserted Luke. "And before we
die, we know it. I say, before we die. It may be after. But everybody
wants it, let them say and do what they will. Don't you agree, Morier?"
I was startled when he spoke to me. I had been thinking of Carlotta: how
she was looking like a girl again, as she used to look at the Thwaite,
when she painted cactuses-in-a-pot. Only now, a certain rigidity of the
will had left her, so that she looked even younger than when I first
knew her, having now a virginal, flower-like _stillness_ which she had
not had then. I had always believed that people could be born again: if
they would only let themselves.
"I'm sure they do," I said to Luke.
But I was thinking, if people were born again, the old circumstances
would not fit the new body.
"What about yourself, Luke?" said Carlotta abruptly.
"I!" he exclaimed, and the scarlet showed in his cheek. "I! I'm not fit
to be spoken about. I've been moaning like the ghost of disembodiment
myself, ever since I became a man."
The Colonel said never a word. He hardly listened. He was pondering,
pondering. In his way, he too was a brave man.
"I have an idea what you mean," he said. "There's no denying it, I
didn't like her body. And now, I suppose, it's too late."
He looked up bleakly: in a way, willing to be condemned, since he knew
vaguely that something was wrong. Anything better than the blind
torture.
"Oh, I don't know," said Luke. "Why don't you, even now, love her a
little with your real heart? Poor disembodied thing! Why don't you take
her to your warm heart, even now, and comfort her inside there. Why
don't you be kind to her poor ghost, bodily?"
The Colonel did not answer. He was gazing fixedly at Luke. Then he
turned, and dropped his head, alone in a deep silence. Then,
deliberately, but not lifting his head, he pulled open his dressing-gown
at the breast, unbuttoned the top of his pyjama jacket, and sat
perfectly still, his breast showing white and very pure, so much younger
and purer than his averted face. He breathed with difficulty, his white
breast rising irregularly. But in the deep isolation where he was,
slowly a gentleness of compassion came over him, moulding his elderly
features with strange freshness, and softening his blue eye with a look
it had never had before. Something of the tremulous gentleness of a
young bridegroom had come upon him, in spite of his baldness, his
silvery little moustache, the weary marks of his face.
The passionate, compassionate soul stirred in him and was pure, his
youth flowered over his face and eyes.
We sat very still, moved also in the spirit of compassion. There seemed
a presence in the air, almost a smell of blossom, as if time had opened
and gave off the perfume of spring. The Colonel gazed in silence into
space, his smooth white chest, with the few dark hairs, open and rising
and sinking with life.
Meanwhile his dark-faced young wife watched as if from afar. The
youngness that was on him was not for her.
I knew that Lady Lathkill would come. I could feel her far off in her
room, stirring and sending forth her rays. Swiftly I steeled myself to
be in readiness. When the door opened, I rose and walked across the
room.
She entered with characteristic noiselessness, peering in round the
door, with her crest of white hair, before she ventured bodily in. The
Colonel looked at her swiftly, and swiftly covered his breast, holding
his hand at his bosom, clutching the silk of his robe.
"I was afraid," she murmured, "that Colonel Hale might be in trouble."
"No," said I. "We are all sitting very peacefully. There is no trouble."
Lord Lathkill also rose.
"No trouble at all, I assure you. Mother!" he said.
Lady Lathkill glanced at us both, then turned heavily to the Colonel.
"She is unhappy to-night?" she asked.
The Colonel winced.
"No," he said hurriedly. "No, I don't think so." He looked up at her
with shy, wincing eyes.
"Tell me what I can do," she said in a very low tone, bending towards
him.
"Our ghost is walking to-night. Mother," said Lord Lathkill. "Haven't
you felt the air of spring, and smelt the plum-blossom? Don't you feel
us all young? Our ghost is walking, to bring Lucy home. The Colonel's
breast is quite extraordinary, white as plum-blossom. Mother,
younger-looking than mine, and he's already taken Lucy into his bosom,
in his breast, where he breathes like the wind among trees. The
Colonel's breast is white and extraordinarily beautiful. Mother, I don't
wonder poor Lucy yearned for it, to go home into it at last. It's like
going into an orchard of plum-blossom, for a ghost."
His mother looked round at him, then back at the Colonel, who was still
clutching his hand over his chest, as if protecting something.
"You see, I didn't understand where I'd been wrong," he said, looking up
at her imploringly. "I never realised that it was my body which had not
been good to her."
Lady Lathkill curved sideways to watch him. But her power was gone. His
face had come smooth with the tender glow of compassionate life, that
flowers again. She could not get at him.
"It's no good, Mother. You know our ghost is walking. She's supposed to
be absolutely like a crocus, if you know what I mean: harbinger of
spring in the earth. So it says in my great-grandfather's diary: for she
rises with silence like a crocus at the feet, and violets in the hollows
of the heart come out. For she is of the feet and the hands, the thighs
and breast, the face and the all-concealing belly, and her name is
silent, but her odour is of spring, and her contact is the all-in-all."
He was quoting from his great-grandfather's diary, which only the sons
of the family read. And as he quoted he rose curiously on his toes, and
spread his fingers, bringing his hands together till the finger-tips
touched. His father had done that before him, when he was deeply moved.
Lady Lathkill sat down heavily in the chair next the Colonel.
"How do you feel?" she asked him, in a secretive mutter.
He looked round at her, with the large blue eyes of candour.
"I never knew what was wrong," he said, a little nervously. "She only
wanted to be looked after a bit, not to be a homeless, houseless ghost.
It's all right! She's all right here." He pressed his clutched hand on
his breast. "It's all right; it's all right. She'll be all right now."
He rose, a little fantastic in his brocade gown, but once more manly,
candid and sober.
"With your permission," he said, "I will retire."--He made a little
bow.--"I am glad you helped me. I didn't know--didn't know."
But the change in him, and his secret wondering were so strong on him,
he went out of the room scarcely being aware of us.
Lord Lathkill threw up his arms, and stretched, quivering.
"Oh, pardon, pardon," he said, seeming, as he stretched, quivering, to
grow bigger and almost splendid, sending out rays of fire to the dark
young woman. "Oh, Mother, thank you for my limbs, and my body! Oh,
Mother, thank you for my knees and my shoulders at this moment! Oh,
Mother, thank you that my body is straight and alive! Oh, Mother,
torrents of spring, torrents of spring, whoever said that?"
"Don't you forget yourself, my boy?" said his mother.
"Oh no, dear, no! Oh, Mother dear, a man has to be in love in his
thighs, the way you ride a horse. Why don't we stay in love that way all
our lives? Why do we turn into corpses with consciousness? Oh, Mother of
my body, thank you for my body, you strange woman with white hair! I
don't know much about you, but my body came from you, so thank you, my
dear. I shall think of you to-night!"
"Hadn't we better go?" she said, beginning to tremble.
"Why, yes," he said, turning and looking strangely at the dark young
woman. "Yes, let us go; let us go!"
Carlotta gazed at him, then, with strange, heavy, searching look, at me.
I smiled to her, and she looked away. The dark young woman looked over
her shoulder as she went out. Lady Lathkill hurried past her son, with
head ducked. But still he laid his hand on her shoulder, and she stopped
dead.
"Good-night, Mother, Mother of my face and my thighs. Thank you for the
night to come, dear. Mother of my body."
She glanced up at him rapidly, nervously, then hurried away. He stared
after her, then switched off the light.
"Funny old Mother!" he said. "I never realised before that she was the
mother of my shoulders and my hips, as well as my brain. Mother of my
thighs!"
He switched off some of the lights as we went, accompanying me to my
room.
"You know," he said, "I can understand that the Colonel is happy, now
the forlorn ghost of Lucy is comforted in his heart. After all, he
married her! And she must be content at last: he has a beautiful chest,
don't you think? Together they will sleep well. And then he will begin
to live the life of the living again. How friendly the house feels
to-night! But, after all, it is my old home. And the smell of
plum-blossom--don't you notice it? It is our ghost, in silence like a
crocus. There, your fire has died down! But it's a nice room! I hope our
ghost will come to you. I think she will. Don't speak to her. It makes
her go away. She, too, is a ghost of silence. We talk far too much. But
now I am going to be silent too, and a ghost of silence. Good-night!"
He closed the door softly and was gone. And softly, in silence, I took
off my things. I was thinking of Carlotta, and a little sadly, perhaps,
because of the power of circumstance over us. This night I could have
worshipped her with my body, and she, perhaps, was stripped in the body
to be worshipped. But it was not for me, at this hour, to fight against
circumstances.
I had fought too much, even against the most imposing circumstances, to
use any more violence for love. Desire is a sacred thing, and should not
be violated.
"Hush!" I said to myself. "I will sleep, and the ghost of my silence can
go forth, in the subtle body of desire, to meet that which is coming to
meet it. Let my ghost go forth, and let me not interfere. There are many
intangible meetings, and unknown fulfilments of desire."
So I went softly to sleep, as I wished to, without interfering with the
warm, crocus-like ghost of my body.
And I must have gone far, far down the intricate galleries of sleep, to
the very heart of the world. For I know I passed on beyond the strata of
images and words, beyond the iron veins of memory, and even the jewels
of rest, to sink in the final dark like a fish, dumb, soundless, and
imageless, yet alive and swimming.
And at the very core of the deep night the ghost came to me, at the
heart of the ocean of oblivion, which is also the heart of life. Beyond
hearing, or even knowledge of contact, I met her and knew her. How I
know it I don't know. Yet I know it with eyeless, wingless knowledge.
For man in the body is formed through countless ages, and at the centre
is the speck, or spark, upon which all his formation has taken place. It
is even not himself, deep beyond his many depths. Deep from him calls to
deep. And according as deep answers deep, man glistens and surpasses
himself.
Beyond all the pearly mufflings of consciousness, of age upon age of
consciousness, deep calls yet to deep, and sometimes is answered. It is
calling and answering, new-wakened God calling within the deep of a man,
and new God calling answer from the other deep. And sometimes the other
deep is a woman, as it was with me, when my ghost came.
Women were not unknown to me. But never before had woman come, in the
depths of night, to answer my deep with her deep. As the ghost came,
came as a ghost of silence, still in the depth of sleep.
I know she came. I know she came even as a woman, to my man. But the
knowledge is darkly naked as the event. I only know, it was so. In the
deep of sleep a call was called from the deeps of me, and answered in
the deeps, by a woman among women. Breasts or thighs or face, I remember
not a touch, no, nor a movement of my own. It is all complete in the
profundity of darkness. Yet I know it was so.
I awoke towards dawn, from far, far away. I was vaguely conscious of
drawing nearer and nearer, as the sun must have been drawing towards the
horizon, from the complete beyond. Till at last the faint pallor of
mental consciousness coloured my waking.
And then I was aware of a pervading scent, as of plum-blossom, and a
sense of extraordinary silkiness--though where, and in what contact, I
could not say. It was as the first blemish of dawn.
And even with so slight a conscious registering, _it_ seemed to
disappear. Like a whale that has sounded to the bottomless seas. That
knowledge of _it_, which was the marriage of the ghost and me,
disappeared from me, in its rich weight of certainty, as the scent of
the plum-blossom moved down the lanes of my consciousness, and my limbs
stirred in a silkiness for which I have no comparison.
As I became aware, I also became uncertain. I wanted to be certain of
_it_, to have definite evidence. And as I sought for evidence, _it_
disappeared, my perfect knowledge was gone. I no longer knew in full.
Now as the daylight slowly amassed, in the windows from which I had put
back the shutters, I sought in myself for evidence, and in the room.
But I shall never know. I shall never know if it was a ghost, some sweet
spirit from the innermost of the ever-deepening cosmos; or a woman, a
very woman, as the silkiness of my limbs seems to attest; or a dream, a
hallucination! I shall never know. Because I went away from Riddings in
the morning, on account of the sudden illness of Lady Lathkill.
"You will come again," Luke said to me. "And in any case, you will never
really go away from us."
"Good-bye," she said to me. "At last it was perfect!"
She seemed so beautiful, when I left her, as if it were the ghost again,
and I was far down the deeps of consciousness.
The following autumn, when I was overseas once more, I had a letter from
Lord Lathkill. He wrote very rarely.
"Carlotta has a son," he said, "and I an heir. He has yellow hair, like
a little crocus, and one of the young plum-trees in the orchard has come
out of all season into blossom. To me he is flesh and blood of our ghost
itself. Even mother doesn't look over the wall, to the other side, any
more. It's all this side for her now.
"So our family refuses to die out, by the grace of our ghost. We are
calling him Gabriel.
"Dorothy Hale also is a mother, three days before Carlotta. She has a
black lamb of a daughter, called Gabrielle. By the bleat of the little
thing, I know its father. Our own is a blue-eyed one, with the dangerous
repose of a pugilist. I have no fears of our family misfortune for him,
ghost-begotten and ready-fisted.
"The Colonel is very well, quiet and self-possessed. He is farming in
Wiltshire, raising pigs. It is a passion with him, the crême de la
crême of swine. I admit, he has golden sows as elegant as a young Diane
de Poitiers, and young hogs like Perseus in the first red-gold flush of
youth. He looks me in the eye, and I look him back, and we understand.
He is quiet, and proud now, and very hale and hearty, raising swine _ad
maiorem gloriam Dei_. A good sport!
"I am in love with this house and its inmates, including the
plum-blossom-scented one, she who visited you, in all the peace. I
cannot understand why you wander in uneasy and distant parts of the
earth. For me, when I am at home, I am there. I have peace upon my
bones, and if the world is going to come to a violent and untimely end,
as prophets aver, I feel the house of Lathkill will survive, built upon
our ghost. So come back, and you'll find we shall not have gone
away...."