Through the disused graveyard in the parish of St. Pancras, Fanny Elmer
strayed between the white tombs which lean against the wall, crossing
the grass to read a name, hurrying on when the grave-keeper approached,
hurrying into the street, pausing now by a window with blue china, now
quickly making up for lost time, abruptly entering a baker's shop,
buying rolls, adding cakes, going on again so that any one wishing to
follow must fairly trot. She was not drably shabby, though. She wore
silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes, only the red feather in her
hat drooped, and the clasp of her bag was weak, for out fell a copy of
Madame Tussaud's programme as she walked. She had the ankles of a stag.
Her face was hidden. Of course, in this dusk, rapid movements, quick
glances, and soaring hopes come naturally enough. She passed right
beneath Jacob's window.
The house was flat, dark, and silent. Jacob was at home engaged upon a
chess problem, the board being on a stool between his knees. One hand
was fingering the hair at the back of his head. He slowly brought it
forward and raised the white queen from her square; then put her down
again on the same spot. He filled his pipe; ruminated; moved two pawns;
advanced the white knight; then ruminated with one finger upon the
bishop. Now Fanny Elmer passed beneath the window.
She was on her way to sit to Nick Bramham the painter.
She sat in a flowered Spanish shawl, holding in her hand a yellow novel.
"A little lower, a little looser, so--better, that's right," Bramham
mumbled, who was drawing her, and smoking at the same time, and was
naturally speechless. His head might have been the work of a sculptor,
who had squared the forehead, stretched the mouth, and left marks of his
thumbs and streaks from his fingers in the clay. But the eyes had never
been shut. They were rather prominent, and rather bloodshot, as if from
staring and staring, and when he spoke they looked for a second
disturbed, but went on staring. An unshaded electric light hung above
her head.
As for the beauty of women, it is like the light on the sea, never
constant to a single wave. They all have it; they all lose it. Now she
is dull and thick as bacon; now transparent as a hanging glass. The
fixed faces are the dull ones. Here comes Lady Venice displayed like a
monument for admiration, but carved in alabaster, to be set on the
mantelpiece and never dusted. A dapper brunette complete from head to
foot serves only as an illustration to lie upon the drawing-room table.
The women in the streets have the faces of playing cards; the outlines
accurately filled in with pink or yellow, and the line drawn tightly
round them. Then, at a top-floor window, leaning out, looking down, you
see beauty itself; or in the corner of an omnibus; or squatted in a
ditch--beauty glowing, suddenly expressive, withdrawn the moment after.
No one can count on it or seize it or have it wrapped in paper. Nothing
is to be won from the shops, and Heaven knows it would be better to sit
at home than haunt the plate-glass windows in the hope of lifting the
shining green, the glowing ruby, out of them alive. Sea glass in a
saucer loses its lustre no sooner than silks do. Thus if you talk of a
beautiful woman you mean only something flying fast which for a second
uses the eyes, lips, or cheeks of Fanny Elmer, for example, to glow
through.
She was not beautiful, as she sat stiffly; her underlip too prominent;
her nose too large; her eyes too near together. She was a thin girl,
with brilliant cheeks and dark hair, sulky just now, or stiff with
sitting. When Bramham snapped his stick of charcoal she started. Bramham
was out of temper. He squatted before the gas fire warming his hands.
Meanwhile she looked at his drawing. He grunted. Fanny threw on a
dressing-gown and boiled a kettle.
"By God, it's bad," said Bramham.
Fanny dropped on to the floor, clasped her hands round her knees, and
looked at him, her beautiful eyes--yes, beauty, flying through the room,
shone there for a second. Fanny's eyes seemed to question, to
commiserate, to be, for a second, love itself. But she exaggerated.
Bramham noticed nothing. And when the kettle boiled, up she scrambled,
more like a colt or a puppy than a loving woman.
Now Jacob walked over to the window and stood with his hands in his
pockets. Mr. Springett opposite came out, looked at his shop window, and
went in again. The children drifted past, eyeing the pink sticks of
sweetstuff. Pickford's van swung down the street. A small boy twirled
from a rope. Jacob turned away. Two minutes later he opened the front
door, and walked off in the direction of Holborn.
Fanny Elmer took down her cloak from the hook. Nick Bramham unpinned his
drawing and rolled it under his arm. They turned out the lights and set
off down the street, holding on their way through all the people, motor
cars, omnibuses, carts, until they reached Leicester Square, five
minutes before Jacob reached it, for his way was slightly longer, and he
had been stopped by a block in Holborn waiting to see the King drive by,
so that Nick and Fanny were already leaning over the barrier in the
promenade at the Empire when Jacob pushed through the swing doors and
took his place beside them.
"Hullo, never noticed you," said Nick, five minutes later.
"Bloody rot," said Jacob.
"Miss Elmer," said Nick.
Jacob took his pipe out of his mouth very awkwardly.
Very awkward he was. And when they sat upon a plush sofa and let the
smoke go up between them and the stage, and heard far off the
high-pitched voices and the jolly orchestra breaking in opportunely he
was still awkward, only Fanny thought: "What a beautiful voice!" She
thought how little he said yet how firm it was. She thought how young
men are dignified and aloof, and how unconscious they are, and how
quietly one might sit beside Jacob and look at him. And how childlike he
would be, come in tired of an evening, she thought, and how majestic; a
little overbearing perhaps; "But I wouldn't give way," she thought. He
got up and leant over the barrier. The smoke hung about him.
And for ever the beauty of young men seems to be set in smoke, however
lustily they chase footballs, or drive cricket balls, dance, run, or
stride along roads. Possibly they are soon to lose it. Possibly they
look into the eyes of faraway heroes, and take their station among us
half contemptuously, she thought (vibrating like a fiddle-string, to be
played on and snapped). Anyhow, they love silence, and speak
beautifully, each word falling like a disc new cut, not a hubble-bubble
of small smooth coins such as girls use; and they move decidedly, as if
they knew how long to stay and when to go--oh, but Mr. Flanders was only
gone to get a programme.
"The dancers come right at the end," he said, coming back to them.
And isn't it pleasant, Fanny went on thinking, how young men bring out
lots of silver coins from their trouser pockets, and look at them,
instead of having just so many in a purse?
Then there she was herself, whirling across the stage in white flounces,
and the music was the dance and fling of her own soul, and the whole
machinery, rock and gear of the world was spun smoothly into those swift
eddies and falls, she felt, as she stood rigid leaning over the barrier
two feet from Jacob Flanders.
Her screwed-up black glove dropped to the floor. When Jacob gave it her,
she started angrily. For never was there a more irrational passion. And
Jacob was afraid of her for a moment--so violent, so dangerous is it
when young women stand rigid; grasp the barrier; fall in love.
It was the middle of February. The roofs of Hampstead Garden Suburb lay
in a tremulous haze. It was too hot to walk. A dog barked, barked,
barked down in the hollow. The liquid shadows went over the plain.
The body after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness,
but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in
the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and
brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I
faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in
Judges Walk looking at Hampstead Garden Suburb. But the dog went on
barking. The motor cars hooted on the road. She heard a far-away rush
and humming. Agitation was at her heart. Up she got and walked. The
grass was freshly green; the sun hot. All round the pond children were
stooping to launch little boats; or were drawn back screaming by their
nurses.
At mid-day young women walk out into the air. All the men are busy in
the town. They stand by the edge of the blue pond. The fresh wind
scatters the children's voices all about. My children, thought Fanny
Elmer. The women stand round the pond, beating off great prancing shaggy
dogs. Gently the baby is rocked in the perambulator. The eyes of all the
nurses, mothers, and wandering women are a little glazed, absorbed. They
gently nod instead of answering when the little boys tug at their
skirts, begging them to move on.
And Fanny moved, hearing some cry--a workman's whistle perhaps--high in
mid-air. Now, among the trees, it was the thrush trilling out into the
warm air a flutter of jubilation, but fear seemed to spur him, Fanny
thought; as if he too were anxious with such joy at his heart--as if he
were watched as he sang, and pressed by tumult to sing. There! Restless,
he flew to the next tree. She heard his song more faintly. Beyond it was
the humming of the wheels and the wind rushing.
She spent tenpence on lunch.
"Dear, miss, she's left her umbrella," grumbled the mottled woman in the
glass box near the door at the Express Dairy Company's shop.
"Perhaps I'll catch her," answered Milly Edwards, the waitress with the
pale plaits of hair; and she dashed through the door.
"No good," she said, coming back a moment later with Fanny's cheap
umbrella. She put her hand to her plaits.
"Oh, that door!" grumbled the cashier.
Her hands were cased in black mittens, and the finger-tips that drew in
the paper slips were swollen as sausages.
"Pie and greens for one. Large coffee and crumpets. Eggs on toast. Two
fruit cakes."
Thus the sharp voices of the waitresses snapped. The lunchers heard
their orders repeated with approval; saw the next table served with
anticipation. Their own eggs on toast were at last delivered. Their eyes
strayed no more.
Damp cubes of pastry fell into mouths opened like triangular bags.
Nelly Jenkinson, the typist, crumbled her cake indifferently enough.
Every time the door opened she looked up. What did she expect to see?
The coal merchant read the Telegraph without stopping, missed the
saucer, and, feeling abstractedly, put the cup down on the table-cloth.
"Did you ever hear the like of that for impertinence?" Mrs. Parsons
wound up, brushing the crumbs from her furs.
"Hot milk and scone for one. Pot of tea. Roll and butter," cried the
waitresses.
The door opened and shut.
Such is the life of the elderly.
It is curious, lying in a boat, to watch the waves. Here are three
coming regularly one after another, all much of a size. Then, hurrying
after them comes a fourth, very large and menacing; it lifts the boat;
on it goes; somehow merges without accomplishing anything; flattens
itself out with the rest.
What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree
yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch,
streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in
dishevelment away? The corn squirms and abases itself as if preparing to
tug itself free from the roots, and yet is tied down.
Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run
through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes
desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the
exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars
would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops--as
sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this
cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any
making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much
like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.
"People are so nice, once you know them."
"I couldn't think ill of her. One must remember--" But Nick perhaps, or
Fanny Elmer, believing implicitly in the truth of the moment, fling off,
sting the cheek, are gone like sharp hail.
"Oh," said Fanny, bursting into the studio three-quarters of an hour
late because she had been hanging about the neighbourhood of the
Foundling Hospital merely for the chance of seeing Jacob walk down the
street, take out his latch-key, and open the door, "I'm afraid I'm
late"; upon which Nick said nothing and Fanny grew defiant.
"I'll never come again!" she cried at length.
"Don't, then," Nick replied, and off she ran without so much as
good-night.
How exquisite it was--that dress in Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury
Avenue! It was four o'clock on a fine day early in April, and was Fanny
the one to spend four o'clock on a fine day indoors? Other girls in that
very street sat over ledgers, or drew long threads wearily between silk
and gauze; or, festooned with ribbons in Swan and Edgars, rapidly added
up pence and farthings on the back of the bill and twisted the yard and
three-quarters in tissue paper and asked "Your pleasure?" of the next
comer.
In Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury Avenue the parts of a woman were shown
separate. In the left hand was her skirt. Twining round a pole in the
middle was a feather boa. Ranged like the heads of malefactors on Temple
Bar were hats--emerald and white, lightly wreathed or drooping beneath
deep-dyed feathers. And on the carpet were her feet--pointed gold, or
patent leather slashed with scarlet.
Feasted upon by the eyes of women, the clothes by four o'clock were
flyblown like sugar cakes in a baker's window. Fanny eyed them too. But
coming along Gerrard Street was a tall man in a shabby coat. A shadow
fell across Evelina's window--Jacob's shadow, though it was not Jacob.
And Fanny turned and walked along Gerrard Street and wished that she had
read books. Nick never read books, never talked of Ireland, or the House
of Lords; and as for his finger-nails! She would learn Latin and read
Virgil. She had been a great reader. She had read Scott; she had read
Dumas. At the Slade no one read. But no one knew Fanny at the Slade, or
guessed how empty it seemed to her; the passion for ear-rings, for
dances, for Tonks and Steer--when it was only the French who could
paint, Jacob said. For the moderns were futile; painting the least
respectable of the arts; and why read anything but Marlowe and
Shakespeare, Jacob said, and Fielding if you must read novels?
"Fielding," said Fanny, when the man in Charing Cross Road asked her
what book she wanted.
She bought Tom Jones.
At ten o'clock in the morning, in a room which she shared with a school
teacher, Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones--that mystic book. For this dull
stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes.
Good people like it. Dowdy women who don't mind how they cross their
legs read Tom Jones--a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny
thought, about books which if I had been educated I could have
liked--much better than ear-rings and flowers, she sighed, thinking of
the corridors at the Slade and the fancy-dress dance next week. She had
nothing to wear.
They are real, thought Fanny Elmer, setting her feet on the mantelpiece.
Some people are. Nick perhaps, only he was so stupid. And women
never--except Miss Sargent, but she went off at lunch-time and gave
herself airs. There they sat quietly of a night reading, she thought.
Not going to music-halls; not looking in at shop windows; not wearing
each other's clothes, like Robertson who had worn her shawl, and she had
worn his waistcoat, which Jacob could only do very awkwardly; for he
liked Tom Jones.
There it lay on her lap, in double columns, price three and sixpence;
the mystic book in which Henry Fielding ever so many years ago rebuked
Fanny Elmer for feasting on scarlet, in perfect prose, Jacob said. For
he never read modern novels. He liked Tom Jones.
"I do like Tom Jones," said Fanny, at five-thirty that same day early in
April when Jacob took out his pipe in the arm-chair opposite.
Alas, women lie! But not Clara Durrant. A flawless mind; a candid
nature; a virgin chained to a rock (somewhere off Lowndes Square)
eternally pouring out tea for old men in white waistcoats, blue-eyed,
looking you straight in the face, playing Bach. Of all women, Jacob
honoured her most. But to sit at a table with bread and butter, with
dowagers in velvet, and never say more to Clara Durrant than Benson said
to the parrot when old Miss Perry poured out tea, was an insufferable
outrage upon the liberties and decencies of human nature--or words to
that effect. For Jacob said nothing. Only he glared at the fire. Fanny
laid down Tom Jones.
She stitched or knitted.
"What's that?" asked Jacob.
"For the dance at the Slade."
And she fetched her head-dress; her trousers; her shoes with red
tassels. What should she wear?
"I shall be in Paris," said Jacob.
And what is the point of fancy-dress dances? thought Fanny. You meet the
same people; you wear the same clothes; Mangin gets drunk; Florinda sits
on his knee. She flirts outrageously--with Nick Bramham just now.
"In Paris?" said Fanny.
"On my way to Greece," he replied.
For, he said, there is nothing so detestable as London in May.
He would forget her.
A sparrow flew past the window trailing a straw--a straw from a stack
stood by a barn in a farmyard. The old brown spaniel snuffs at the base
for a rat. Already the upper branches of the elm trees are blotted with
nests. The chestnuts have flirted their fans. And the butterflies are
flaunting across the rides in the Forest. Perhaps the Purple Emperor is
feasting, as Morris says, upon a mass of putrid carrion at the base of
an oak tree.
Fanny thought it all came from Tom Jones. He could go alone with a book
in his pocket and watch the badgers. He would take a train at
eight-thirty and walk all night. He saw fire-flies, and brought back
glow-worms in pill-boxes. He would hunt with the New Forest Staghounds.
It all came from Tom Jones; and he would go to Greece with a book in his
pocket and forget her.
She fetched her hand-glass. There was her face. And suppose one wreathed
Jacob in a turban? There was his face. She lit the lamp. But as the
daylight came through the window only half was lit up by the lamp. And
though he looked terrible and magnificent and would chuck the Forest, he
said, and come to the Slade, and be a Turkish knight or a Roman emperor
(and he let her blacken his lips and clenched his teeth and scowled in
the glass), still--there lay Tom Jones.