1
By February Stephen’s book was rewritten and in the hands of her
publisher in England. This gave her the peaceful, yet exhilarated
feeling that comes when a writer has given of his best and knows that
that best is not unworthy. With a sigh of relief she metaphorically
stretched, rubbed her eyes and started to look about her. She was in the
mood that comes as a reaction from strain, and was glad enough of
amusement; moreover the spring was again in the air, the year had
turned, there were sudden bright days when the sun brought a few hours
of warmth to Paris.
They were now no longer devoid of friends, no longer solely dependent
upon Brockett on the one hand, and Mademoiselle Duphot on the other;
Stephen’s telephone would ring pretty often. There was now always
somewhere for Mary to go; always people who were anxious to see her and
Stephen, people with whom one got intimate quickly and was thus saved a
lot of unnecessary trouble. Of them all, however, it was Barbara and
Jamie for whom Mary developed a real affection; she and Barbara had
formed a harmless alliance which at times was even a little pathetic.
The one talking of Jamie, the other of Stephen, they would put their
young heads together very gravely. ‘Do you find Jamie goes off her food
when she’s working?’ ‘Do you find that Stephen sleeps badly? Is she
careless of her health? Jamie’s awfully worrying sometimes.’
Or perhaps they would be in a more flippant mood and would sit and
whisper together, laughing; making tender fun of the creatures they
loved, as women have been much inclined to do ever since that rib was
demanded of Adam. Then Jamie and Stephen would pretend to feel
aggrieved, would pretend that they also must hang together, must be on
their guard against feminine intrigues. Oh, yes, the whole business was
rather pathetic.
Jamie and her Barbara were starvation-poor, so poor that a square meal
came as a godsend. Stephen would feel ashamed to be rich, and, like
Mary, was always anxious to feed them. Being idle at the moment, Stephen
would insist upon frequently taking them out to dinner, and then she
would order expensive viands—copper-green oysters straight from the
Marennes, caviare and other such costly things, to be followed by even
more sumptuous dishes—and since they went short on most days in the
week, these stomachic debauches would frequently upset them. Two glasses
of wine would cause Jamie to flush, for her head had never been of the
strongest, nor was it accustomed to such golden nectar. Her principal
beverage was crème-de-menthe because it kept out the cold in the winter,
and because, being pepperminty and sweet, it reminded her of the
bull’s-eyes at Beedles.
They were not very easy to help, these two, for Jamie, pride-galled, was
exceedingly touchy. She would never accept gifts of money or clothes,
and was struggling to pay off the debt to her master. Even food gave
offence unless it was shared by the donors, which though very
praiseworthy was foolish. However, there it was, one just had to take
her or leave her, there was no compromising with Jamie.
After dinner they would drift back to Jamie’s abode, a studio in the old
Rue Visconti. They would climb innumerable dirty stone stairs to the top
of what had once been a fine house but was now let off to such poor rats
as Jamie. The concierge, an unsympathetic woman, long soured by the
empty pockets of students, would peer out at them from her dark ground
floor kennel, with sceptical eyes.
‘Bon soir, Madame Lambert.’
‘Bon soir, mesdames,’ she would growl impolitely.
Jamie’s studio was large, bare, and swept by draughts. The stove was too
small and at times it smelt vilely. The distempered grey walls were a
mass of stains, for whenever it hailed or rained or snowed the windows
and skylight would always start dripping. The furniture consisted of a
few shaky chairs, a table, a divan and a hired grand piano. Nearly every
one seated themselves on the floor, robbing the divan of its moth-eaten
cushions. From the studio there led off a tiny room with an eye-shaped
window that would not open. In this room had been placed a narrow
camp-bed to which Jamie retired when she felt extra sleepless. For the
rest, there was a sink with a leaky tap; a cupboard in which they kept
crème-de-menthe, what remnants of food they possessed at the moment,
Jamie’s carpet slippers and blue jean jacket—minus which she could
never compose a note—and the pail, cloths and brushes with which
Barbara endeavoured to keep down the accumulating dirt and confusion.
For Jamie with her tow-coloured head in the clouds, was not only
short-sighted but intensely untidy. Dust meant little to her since she
seldom saw it, while neatness was completely left out of her make-up;
considering how limited were her possessions, the chaos they produced
was truly amazing. Barbara would sigh and would quite often scold—when
she scolded she reminded one of a wren who was struggling to discipline
a large cuckoo.
‘Jamie, your dirty shirt, give it to me—leaving it there on the piano,
whatever!’ Or, ‘Jamie, come here and look at your hair-brush; if you
haven’t gone and put it next-door to the butter!’
Then Jamie would peer with her strained, red-rimmed eyes and would
grumble: ‘Oh, leave me in peace, do, lassie!’
But when Barbara laughed, as she must do quite often at the outrageous
habits of the great loose-limbed creature, why then these days she would
usually cough, and when Barbara started to cough she coughed badly. They
had seen a doctor who had spoken about lungs and had shaken his head;
not strong, he had told them. But neither of them had quite understood,
for their French had remained very embryonic, and they could not afford
the smart English doctor. All the same when Barbara coughed Jamie
sweated, and her fear would produce an acute irritation.
‘Here, drink this water! Don’t sit there doing nothing but rack yourself
to bits, it gets on my nerves. Go and order another bottle of that
mixture. God, how can I work if you will go on coughing!’ She would
slouch to the piano and play mighty chords, pressing down the loud pedal
to drown that coughing. But when it had subsided she would feel deep
remorse. ‘Oh, Barbara, you’re so little—forgive me. It’s all my fault
for bringing you out here, you’re not strong enough for this damnable
life, you don’t get the right food, or anything proper.’
In the end it would be Barbara who must console. ‘We’ll be rich some day
when you’ve finished your opera—anyhow my cough isn’t dangerous,
Jamie.’
Sometimes Jamie’s music would go all wrong, the opera would blankly
refuse to get written. At the Conservatoire she would be very stupid,
and when she got home she would be very silent, pushing her supper away
with a frown, because coming upstairs she had heard that cough. Then
Barbara would feel even more tired and weak than before, but would hide
her weakness from Jamie. After supper they would undress in front of the
stove if the weather was cold, would undress without speaking. Barbara
could get out of her clothes quite neatly in no time, but Jamie must
always dawdle, dropping first this and then that on the floor, or
pausing to fill her little black pipe and to light it before putting on
her pyjamas.
Barbara would fall on her knees by the divan and would start to say
prayers like a child, very simply. ‘Our Father,’ she would say, and
other prayers too, which always ended in: ‘Please God, bless Jamie.’ For
believing in Jamie she must needs believe in God, and because she loved
Jamie she must love God also—it had long been like this, ever since
they were children. But sometimes she would shiver in her prim cotton
nightgown, so that Jamie, grown anxious, would speak to her sharply:
‘Oh, stop praying, do. You and all your prayers! Are you daft to kneel
there when the room’s fairly freezing? That’s how you catch cold; now
to-night you’ll cough!’
But Barbara would not so much as turn round; she would calmly and
earnestly go on with her praying. Her neck would look thin against the
thick plait which hung neatly down between her bent shoulders; and the
hands that covered her face would look thin—thin and transparent like
the hands of a consumptive. Fuming inwardly, Jamie would stump off to
bed in the tiny room with its eye-shaped window, and there she herself
must mutter a prayer, especially if she heard Barbara coughing.
At times Jamie gave way to deep depression, hating the beautiful city of
her exile. Homesick unto death she would suddenly feel for the dour
little Highland village of Beedles. More even than for its dull bricks
and mortar would she long for its dull and respectable spirit, for the
sense of security common to Sabbaths, for the kirk with its dull and
respectable people. She would think with a tenderness bred by forced
absence of the greengrocer’s shop that stood on the corner, where they
sold, side by side with the cabbages and onions, little neatly tied
bunches of Scottish heather, little earthenware jars of opaque heather
honey. She would think of the vast, stretching, windy moorlands; of the
smell of the soil after rain in summer; of the piper with his
weather-stained, agile fingers, of the wail of his sorrowful, outlandish
music; of Barbara as she had been in the days when they strolled side by
side down the narrow high street. And then she would sit with her head
in her hands, hating the sound and the smell of Paris, hating the
sceptical eyes of the concierge, hating the bare and unhomely studio.
Tears would well up from heaven alone knew what abyss of half-understood
desolation, and would go splashing down upon her tweed skirt, or
trickling back along her red wrists until they had wetted her frayed
flannel wristbands. Coming home with their evening meal in a bag, this
was how Barbara must sometimes find her.
2
Jamie was not always so full of desolation; there were days when she
seemed to be in excellent spirits, and on one such occasion she rang
Stephen up, asking her to bring Mary round after dinner. Every one was
coming, Wanda and Pat, Brockett, and even Valérie Seymour; for she,
Jamie, had persuaded a couple of negroes who were studying at the
Conservatoire to come in and sing for them that evening—they had
promised to sing Negro Spirituals, old slavery songs of the Southern
plantations. They were very nice negroes, their name was Jones—Lincoln
and Henry Jones, they were brothers. Lincoln and Jamie had become great
friends; he was very interested in her opera. And Wanda would bring her
mandolin—but the evening would be spoilt without Mary and Stephen.
Mary promptly put on her hat; she must go and order them in some supper.
As she and Stephen would be there to share it, Jamie’s sensitive pride
would be appeased. She would send them a very great deal of food so that
they could go on eating and eating.
Stephen nodded: ‘Yes, send them in tons of supper!’
3
At ten o’clock they arrived at the studio; at ten thirty Wanda came in
with Brockett, then Blanc together with Valérie Seymour, then Pat
wearing serviceable goloshes over her house shoes because it was
raining, then three or four fellow students of Jamie’s, and finally the
two negro brothers.
They were very unlike each other, these negroes; Lincoln, the elder, was
paler in colour. He was short and inclined to be rather thick-set with a
heavy but intellectual face—a strong face, much lined for a man of
thirty. His eyes had the patient, questioning expression common to the
eyes of most animals and to those of all slowly evolving races. He shook
hands very quietly with Stephen and Mary. Henry was tall and as black as
a coal; a fine, upstanding, but coarse-lipped young negro, with a roving
glance and a self-assured manner.
He remarked: ‘Glad to meet you, Miss Gordon—Miss Llewellyn,’ and
plumped himself down at Mary’s side, where he started to make
conversation, too glibly.
Valérie Seymour was soon talking to Lincoln with a friendliness that put
him at his ease—just at first he had seemed a little self-conscious.
But Pat was much more reserved in her manner, having hailed from
abolitionist Boston.
Wanda said abruptly: ‘Can I have a drink, Jamie?’ Brockett poured her
out a stiff brandy and soda.
Adolphe Blanc sat on the floor hugging his knees; and presently Dupont
the sculptor strolled in—being minus his mistress he migrated to
Stephen.
Then Lincoln seated himself at the piano, touching the keys with firm,
expert fingers, while Henry stood beside him very straight and long and
lifted up his voice which was velvet smooth, yet as clear and insistent
as the call of a clarion:
‘Deep, river, my home is over Jordan.
Deep river—Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground,
Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground,
Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground,
Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground. . . .’
And all the hope of the utterly hopeless of this world, who must live by
their ultimate salvation, all the terrible, aching, homesick hope that
is born of the infinite pain of the spirit, seemed to break from this
man and shake those who listened, so that they sat with bent heads and
clasped hands—they who were also among the hopeless sat with bent heads
and clasped hands as they listened. . . . Even Valérie Seymour forgot to
be pagan.
He was not an exemplary young negro; indeed he could be the reverse very
often. A crude animal Henry could be at times, with a taste for liquor
and a lust for women—just a primitive force rendered dangerous by
drink, rendered offensive by civilization. Yet as he sang his sins
seemed to drop from him, leaving him pure, unashamed, triumphant. He
sang to his God, to the God of his soul, Who would some day blot out all
the sins of the world, and make vast reparation for every injustice: ‘My
home is over Jordan, Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground.’
Lincoln’s deep bass voice kept up a low sobbing. From time to time only
did he break into words; but as he played on he rocked his body: ‘Lord,
I want to cross over into camp ground. Lord, I want to cross over into
camp ground.’
Once started they seemed unable to stop; carried away they were by their
music, drunk with that desperate hope of the hopeless—far drunker than
Henry would get on neat whisky. They went from one spiritual into
another, while their listeners sat motionless, scarcely breathing. While
Jamie’s eyes ached from unshed tears quite as much as from her
unsuitable glasses; while Adolphe Blanc, the gentle, the learned,
grasped his knees and pondered many things deeply; while Pat remembered
her Arabella and found but small consolation in beetles; while Brockett
thought of certain brave deeds that he, even he had done out in
Mespot—deeds that were not recorded in dispatches, unless in those of
the recording angel; while Wanda evolved an enormous canvas depicting
the wrongs of all mankind; while Stephen suddenly found Mary’s hand and
held it in hers with a painful pressure; while Barbara’s tired and
childish brown eyes turned to rest rather anxiously on her Jamie. Not
one of them all but was stirred to the depths by that queer, half
defiant, half supplicating music.
And now there rang out a kind of challenge; imperious, loud, almost
terrifying. They sang it together, those two black brethren, and their
voices suggested a multitude shouting. They seemed to be shouting a
challenge to the world on behalf of themselves and of all the afflicted:
‘Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
Daniel, Daniel!
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
Then why not every man?’
The eternal question, as yet unanswered for those who sat there
spellbound and listened. . . . ‘Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, then why
not every man?’
Why not? . . . Yes, but how long, O Lord, how long?
Lincoln got up from the piano abruptly, and he made a small bow which
seemed strangely foolish, murmuring some stilted words of thanks on
behalf of himself and his brother Henry: ‘We are greatly obliged to you
for your patience; we trust that we have satisfied you;’ he murmured.
It was over. They were just two men with black skins and foreheads
beaded with perspiration. Henry sidled away to the whisky, while Lincoln
rubbed his pinkish palms on an elegant white silk handkerchief. Every
one started to talk at once, to light cigarettes, to move about the
studio.
Jamie said: ‘Come on, people, it’s time for supper,’ and she swallowed a
small glass of crème-de-menthe; but Wanda poured herself out some more
brandy.
Quite suddenly they had all become merry, laughing at nothing, teasing
each other; even Valérie unbent more than was her wont and did not look
bored when Brockett chaffed her. The air grew heavy and stinging with
smoke; the stove went out, but they scarcely noticed.
Henry Jones lost his head and pinched Pat’s bony shoulder, then he
rolled his eyes: ‘Oh, boy! What a gang! Say, folks, aren’t we having the
hell of an evening? When any of you folk decide to come over to my
little old New York, why, I’ll show you around. Some burg!’ and he
gulped a large mouthful of whisky.
After supper Jamie played the overture to her opera, and they loudly
applauded the rather dull music—so scholarly, so dry, so painfully
stiff, so utterly inexpressive of Jamie. Then Wanda produced her
mandolin and insisted upon singing them Polish love songs; this she did
in a heavy contralto voice which was rendered distinctly unstable by
brandy. She handled the tinkling instrument with skill, evolving some
quite respectable chords, but her eyes were fierce as was also her
touch, so that presently a wire snapped with a ping, which appeared
completely to upset her balance. She fell back and lay sprawled out upon
the floor to be hauled up again by Dupont and Brockett.
Barbara had one of her bad fits of coughing: ‘It’s nothing . . .’ she
gasped, ‘I swallowed the wrong way; don’t fuss, Jamie . . . darling
. . . I tell you it’s . . . nothing.’
Jamie, flushed already, drank more crème-de-menthe. This time she poured
it into a tumbler, tossing it off with a dash of soda. But Adolphe Blanc
looked at Barbara gravely.
The party did not disperse until morning; not until four o’clock could
they decide to go home. Everybody had stayed to the very last moment,
everybody, that is, except Valérie Seymour—she had left immediately
after supper. Brockett, as usual, was cynically sober, but Jamie was
blinking her eyes like an owl, while Pat stumbled over her own goloshes.
As for Henry Jones, he started to sing at the top of his lungs in a high
falsetto:
‘Oh, my, help, help, ain’t I nobody’s baby?
Oh, my, what a shame, I ain’t nobody’s baby.’
‘Shut your noise, you poor mutt!’ commanded his brother, but Henry still
continued to bawl: ‘Oh, my, what a shame, I ain’t nobody’s baby.’
They left Wanda asleep on a heap of cushions—she would probably not
wake up before mid-day.