1
The enclosed golden light of a party. People transformed. All wearing
the air of festival. All wandering about with happy eyes, expectant; the
eyes of the beginning of a party. All but a few, at every party there
were those few.
And at this party, very soon almost all were like the few. For a while
they had gone in and out of the three rooms as if looking for something
that was about to reveal itself. Something they know is there and are
always seeking.
Something very joyous. The joy of a party is the newness of people to
each other, renewed strikingness of humanity. They love each other, to
distraction. Really to distraction. Before they fall into conversation
and separate.
A large party. More than large enough and varied enough, as the crowd
thickens, to represent the world. Whatever that is.... And because at
least by sight, all are known to each other, each one’s quality already
tested, expectation is baffled. A few go on seeking, will go on all the
evening, looking forth from themselves as if sooner or later the
gathering would assume a single shape and perform a miracle.
This must be true of all gatherings, of all except religious meetings.
The strangeness, and the hopes aroused by strangeness, are illusions.
Mirages arising wherever people gather expectantly together. The few who
at parties have not the glint of expectation in their eyes are those who
know this. Some are cynical. Some enduring. One or two ignore people as
persons. See them only as parts of a process.
It is true then, though town-life hides the fact, that individual life
cannot begin until the illusion of wonderful people presently to be met,
is vanquished. The whole world, all the scattered people brought
together and made known to each other, would soon be like this party,
each tested and placed. Even the best of them known as limited.
Then domestic life, troglodyte life, is the severest test of quality.
The coming to the end of the charm of strangeness. Of Exogamy. The
making terms and going on, or the hard work of silently discovering near
things afresh. Re-thinking them. Keeping them near, as strange things
are at first near, and, like strange things, beloved.
“What have I to do with thee?” Yes. But that was a man who had a message
for everyone in the world and very little time to get round with it. Not
the voice of one who is weary of the near in space and time and hopes to
find the distant more appreciative.
Yet even he demanded a personal allegiance. “If ye love me, keep my
commandments.” What is love? Who can interpret commandments? They all
stood round adoring, begging for explanations and instructions. Perhaps
he meant, “You admire what I am. Take my hints. You will find out the
rest.”
Wandering eyes were growing rarer, though still new-comers arrived and
toured hopefully. Groups were forming of people masked, or visibly
bored, sustaining the familiar. Wit, surrounded, was hard at work. Here
and there rival theorists were audible, disarmed by the occasion and
affably wrangling. And everyone, even the schemers circulating girt and
keen, or wearing the veil of nonchalance, waited now for the gathering
to do something of itself. For here for good or ill in the circling
Lycurgan year, was a party, and everyone counting on at least a moment’s
distraction.
How intolerable with its challenge, its throwing back the self empty on
to the self, and its revelation of the weariness of selves, would be the
whole spectacle, but for here and there a figure of sincerity bearing
the burdens of the rest, drawing nerve-poisoning influences from the
air.
Full, the rooms were now. A moving bright maze of people and amongst
them many strangers, guests. A leaven of the unthinking world, as the
Lycurgans were the leaven that was to drive through the world of
thought. But the strangers were not the zest of the meeting. Now that
they were here, with their bearing of eager curiosity or amused polite
deference, being introduced, talked to, some already the centres of
arguing groups, it was through the familiar figures that life seemed
most strongly to flow. Again as in family life; the quality of the
familiar showing clearest under the beam of an alien light.
Densley, hurrying from far away with arms outstretched.
With the sense of coming down through space, that held her still, yet
welcoming, with a welcome not for him, but for the strange journeying,
his and hers, she reached level in time to rise and greet him as he
seized her hands. For a moment he surveyed her through his laugh. Then
they were off, arms linked, on a tour of the rooms.
Eyes gleamed at him as he went debonnair, talking, not listening,
needing no response but her radiance and abandon to his guiding arm.
Solace at once; a rebuilding of strength to face this crowd that now
stood off, no longer impinging, no longer eloquent except of a friendly
indifference. Life, through all happenings, could pass like this.
Happenings would be disarmed, bright strangeness rooted in an unexamined
sameness. There would be solace for all the wounds of thought in his
unconsciousness. But no companionship. For a long while nothing at all
of profound experience and then, perhaps, her whole being arranged round
a new centre and reality once more accessible, but in a loneliness
beside which the loneliness of the single life was nothing.
He would never know this. A listening radiance and superficial
statements and activities would satisfy him. Yet he suspected a rival
and respected, while contesting its power. Offered as a substitute his
own secret life of faith in human kind, his shining love. For him all
these special people gathered here represented not a determined movement
to arrest juggernaut, but material for joyous existence.
... Is civilisation juggernaut? Are there not within it as many, and
more, of those who promote its best qualities as there are of socialists
attacking its defects? And of those like Densley, who work consciously
for the increase of human happiness, how many there are and how much
kindlier than these people, most of whom seem so little kind, so much
merely the jealous custodians of ideas....
“Ideas are such chancy things. We not only can’t get along without them.
There’s no escaping them, and they are all figures of speech.”
“_Homo sapiens_, eh? Well, so long as he has a good figure ...” Kind
imbecile, imbecile, but kind. “But ideas, my dear girl, are not the
greatest thing in the world. And they easily take one too far away from
life.”
“That wouldn’t matter. But while they last they keep you on a monorail.
All specialists are on monorails.”
“Monomaniacs, eh? Now tell me who is the lassie in the white smock?”
“That’s a djibbêh. And her name is Nora Beaworthy. Keep your pun.
Although I daresay in the end she will. All those pink people will be
worthy when they’re grey. Anyhow it’s no good. Having had a thoroughly
vivid time and made a number of hurried young men take up socialism,
she’s now engaged.”
“She leaves me heart-whole, my dear. But I saw her on the way here,
running at top speed down Pall Mall in her white gown, the spirit of
spring.”
His glance was wandering as it always would, gathering up and delighting
in bright youth, in the appearance of animation; utterly blind to all
the tricks of conscious attractiveness. Blind, too, to cattish
subtleties. He was wax in the hands of his mondaines.
She looked round for people upon whom he might exercise his social
graces. Who would give him what he needed to keep him at his glowing
best. But there were none here of his kind. None who rushed
thoughtlessly through ready-made evolutions. Refusal to accept these
evolutions at their surface value he would see only as uncharitableness.
Alone together, he and she might make terms. But in his ready-made
social surroundings they would at once be antagonists. The so much less
sociable, so much more discriminating socialists became suddenly dear,
the salt of the earth. They were, after all, little as she knew them,
her own people. She thought with them, was ready to act with them. They,
and not those others, were her family.
She chose a group of young women and set him in the midst of their ready
smiles and swift replies. Saw them sum him up.
Dancing was beginning in the end room. The first dancing she had seen
since she left home. It held her eyes. People transfigured, circling,
lit from above. But only for a moment. It was memory that had put the
happy haze about them. They were clear and cold, not lost in their
dancing. Not even those whose heads gleamed with youth. They danced with
a difference. They were the new generation.
She longed to dance and drop the years. And here, as if in ironic
commentary, was old Hayle-Vernon, handsome in smooth evening dress,
stepping elegantly towards her. With a light in his young dark eyes. He
too felt his youth beckon and come close.
“Shall we dance?” His pallor was flushed. With boyish uncertainty. With
the distance he came in ignoring that they were strangers.
To him her twenty-eight years were infancy. He was saying so with his
smile. Knew, besides, no more of their number than of her. She felt her
youth rise to lead him back to his, and his gratitude for the gift
vibrating in his smooth voice as he began, the moment they swung in
amongst the dancers, by remarking that it was pleasing to see Lycurgans
as ready to hop as they were to hope. On and on as they circled—the
tails of djibbêhs beating about them, every couple vocal, some straining
away from each other as they danced, to argue more effectually—his voice
persisted. Her scraps of reply, though he bent his head for them until
his beard brushed her cheek, did not get through his slight deafness.
But all they had in common, known to them both, was speaking between
them, making a sadness; making them hate each other for apprehending.
Never again would they attract each other from afar, nor ever now that
they had spoken, want to speak again. Unless presently they could meet
in some mental difference. She gathered as his voice went on, emerging
suavely above the primitive swinging pressure of his body and theorising
now, about art in the socialist state, material for discussion when
presently they should be seated.
But on their sofa in the alcove they were immediately joined by Arnold
Englehart who stood before them deferentially, yet like a threat;
equally oblivious of Hayle-Vernon’s deep-seated indifference to
socialism and of the sacredness of sitting-out couples, pouring out his
newest plan to bring about socialism in a fortnight.
Englehart was real, and his plans burned as enthusiastically as upon his
bent head his hair, lit from behind and standing out like a bush above
his unseeing face. Hayle-Vernon was alight in pursuance of his hobby of
pulling a thread of thought through shapeless assertions. But in every
word he spoke sounded his central unbelief. Prominent Lycurgans. Good
men. Keeping an eye on injustices. Trying, from whatever motive, to
reform the world. One chasing an abstraction called humanity, and the
other an abstraction called intelligence.
It seemed that the air grew icy about them. It was a relief to catch
sight of Densley, beaming with social happiness. Through the rising tide
of Englehart’s talk she watched him afar. Tall and lean and swiftly
graceful in all his movements. Yet padded. A lean tall firmly-padded
baby. The slight rotundity of his slenderness, like his bantering
man-of-the-world society talk, was the radiation of his substantially
nourished mind. His mind spoke from his broad unconscious brow. Serene
and attentive between his frivolous words and friendly curling hair. A
Harley Street brow. Calm where all these Lycurgans were irritable. And
in his shapely nose, slightly blunted, like so many professional noses,
was the cause, or the explanation, of his interest in philosophy.
Flirtatious interest, in the intervals of listening for the
ever-changing gossip of science and accepting, because they bore out his
own kindly experience, the statements of evangelistic religion.
“Multiple shops, proliferating—” she glanced in time to catch
Hayle-Vernon’s flicker of amusement—“like a cancerous growth.” But
Englehart’s adoration of Wells was a charming _décor_, taking nothing
from his individuality. He had so much intensity that it blazed, like
paraffin, a little wildly, but never with the wind. That was the great
thing about the Lycurgans. That they thought. They were not
impressionists further than everyone, by being merely alive and not sure
of the whence and the whither, must be helplessly impressionist.
The accumulations of two years of attention to Lycurgan thought, the
images fashioned by their more articulate intelligentsia to express
their sense of the destruction of modern civilisation by disorderly
forces grown out of that civilisation were again uppermost as she
returned to the thought of Densley and his indiscriminate social
happiness. His friendship, for instance, with little Mr. Taunton.
Perhaps that was inevitable. Poor little Taunton, shocked into worldly
wisdom by his experience at the hands of Eleanor, flying, from his
refuge under the tiles with his Plato, into marriage, must now have
visitors. And doctors and clergy and lawyers must hang together. And
their wives support the fabric. “A _charming_ little woman,” said
Densley, “she listened while her man and I discussed the sacraments.”
Meaning that Densley and Taunton putting their heads together about
religion were swimming in waters beyond her depth; that she being not
only a woman, but charming, that is to say an apparently uncritical
listener, sat respectfully by and earned in due course the indulgent
lowering of the conversation to matters she could understand. But would
they have talked so busily, kept on their amicable duel, without an
audience? And would they have been so serene if they had seen into her
thoughts, seen her read them as she watched their play?
Conversation of this type, comfortably fed and armchaired men discussing
in the presence of deferential wives, was the recreation of his less
frivolous leisure. And for the rest, fashionable dinner-parties,
opinions about the latest plays and the latest novels, scandals, the
comparing of notes about foreign travel, hotels and so on—always the
same world, always shut in however far away, with the same assumptions,
not about life, for these people never thought about the fact of life,
only about the details of living, and about behaviour. His world was
ready-made, and clearly now as she watched him for the first time from
afar and socially surrounded, she saw that if she went into that world
she would fail him; fail just where a rising doctor’s wife must be a
tower of strength.
The sadness of farewell, bringing with it in equal companionship a
humiliating annoyance, was shallow; farewell to a selfish coveting,
doomed all along by its heartlessness. Yet even as she saw him cut off,
going his own bright way, it stirred within her, asserting a depth she
had not guessed; prompting to recklessness, reminding her with a long
backward glance how clearly, through all the years she had known him,
“fate” had been at work throwing them together in solitude, carefully
not revealing him in association with grouped humanity until now. To
draw back now was to reduce their common past from the moment of his
coming, bounding lightly at midnight into Eleanor Dear’s garret, an
abrupt tired man, prescribing a sleeping draught and thankful to get
away as soon as he knew there was someone prepared to stay all night and
not afraid to go out and ring up a chemist, to waste of time.
Waste of time in an alcove—a comfortable alcove inviting waste of time
by being there and being unable to protest. Waste of time; except for
the gathered knowledge of his goodness? Perhaps Hayle-Vernon, whose
elegant sophistries had at last broken the tide of Englehart’s talk and
left him standing, still eager, aware that his ardour had miscarried,
and though not actually looking about him, yet already on the lookout
for another listener, had gathered, in the time Englehart had wasted
with him, a knowledge of Englehart’s unconscious goodness?
Wilkins the author, gesticulating greetings, came up and hooked
Englehart away by the arm.
With Englehart gone, Hayle-Vernon was left in a void, statuesque, draped
only with his manner of a prominent Lycurgan. He had joined the society
for the sake of self-realisation, consciously contributing his proud
talent for straightening out the statements of those who in so far as
they were driven by feelings that were clearer than their thoughts, were
careless about language? Separated from passionate conviction he was
inoperative. Perhaps, identifying me with the new group of young
Lycurgans, he credits me with passionate convictions? And here I
sit—while from far away in the cold centre where he formulates his
criticisms, facing cessation, he is coming back to make suitable
remarks—equally stranded, in a perfect equality of inoperativeness.
“You are going to write for _The New Order_?”
“Not in _The New Order_. I write about socialism in an anarchist paper.”
“The Impossibility of Anarchy?”
“No. That anarchy and socialism are the same in spirit. Only that
socialists think they can define the future and anarchists know they
can’t.”
“That’s very amusing. But, I think, scarcely true. To begin with,
anarchy, as defined——”
Densley, swinging about on his tall stride, halting for a moment with
head turned, near at hand; seeing her sitting at the feet of a
distinguished looking elderly Lycurgan, moving clear of groups, keeping
himself free to come forward when the next dance should begin. Sounding
through Hayle-Vernon’s undulating vocalisation came her own thoughts, as
if he were speaking them.
Farewell to Densley is farewell to my one chance of launching into life
as my people have lived it. I am left with these strangers—people
without traditions, without local references and who despise marriage or
on principle disapprove of it. And in my mind I agree. Yet affairs not
ending in marriage are even more objectionable than marriage. And
celibates, outside religion, though acceptable when thought of as alone,
are always, socially, a little absurd. Then I must be absurd. Growing
absurd. To others I am already absurd.
There is no one on earth who knows the right and wrong of these things.
There are only prejudices. Where do they come from? People are
prejudices. Life is a prejudice. Or it wouldn’t go on. Your life is the
prejudices you are born with. That is determinism. But something must be
determined. By their prejudices ye shall know them. Not by anything
acquired. By instincts. Which are judgments ready-made.
Free-lovers seem all in some indefinable way shoddy. Born shoddy. Men as
well as women. Marriage is not an institution, it is an intuition.
Marriage, or sooner or later absurdity. Free-love is better than
absurdity....
Yet the free-lovers dancing there seemed both sadness and mockery.
Dancing is shimmer. Satin and silk and white slippers. Rooms white and
gold. Massed flowers. Rapt faces to whom problems and socialism are
unknown. Youth, and an audience of elderly parents and friends. It seems
mockery for these people with their brains full of ideas and their
bodies decked in protests, to dance. Dancing brings an endlessness in
which nothing matters but to go on dancing—in a room, till the walls
disappear—in the open, till the sky, moving as you dance, seems to
cleave and let you through.
2
People from South Place, gravely circling.
“That’s not dancing, it’s the Ethical Movement.”
Shaw. The darling. Religiously enduring. Coming to Lycurgan gatherings
as others go to church.
3
The ring, made by those who remained, extended when their linked hands
were stretched at arm’s length, all the way round the large room. These
people were part of the crowd that had stood shouting the refrains of
the folk-songs led by the woman on the estrade with the determined
voice. Seen thus they had seemed threatening, inhuman; and _édition de
luxe_ of the noisy elements in a street crowd. And more threatening,
because they were driven by ideas. The massed effect of djibbêhs and
tweeds and dress-suits, bellowing, was of a wilful culture banded
together in defiance of a world it could not see.
But now, standing ringed round the room with linked hands they were
charming. Innocent; children linked for a game, dependent on each other.
In the midst of them, somehow in the centre to which all their faces
were turned, was something beyond the reach of socialism. It sounded
even in the dismal notes of _Auld Lang Syne_ with its suggestion of
mournful survival from a golden past. To stand thus linked and singing
was to lose the weight of individuality and keep its essence, its queer
power of being one with every one alive.
But it was also embarrassing. Made an embarrassment that everyone had to
share. For the thread of song was stronger than anyone there. Even those
who meeting known eyes above an unusually opened mouth, or imagining
themselves to be objects of hilarious scrutiny, tried to be individually
funny, were presently overwhelmed and drawn along. The thin beginning on
a few voices had swelled to a unison of varying octaves and strengths.
She heard her own voice within it and felt as she sang how short and
wavering and shapeless was her life, and short and wavering even the
most shapely lives about her.
As the dismal refrain was lifting its third monotonous howl there came
from behind her, where a door opened on to a cloakroom, a woman’s voice
angry, deep and emphatic, like an ox roaring at a gate. Her hand was
torn from her nearest companion’s and the newcomer was in the ring
singing with stern lustiness below a hat askew. The last words of the
song echoed round the room upon the might of her voice.