A BOOK
[Illustration]
A BOOK
BY
DJUNA BARNES
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1923, by_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
MOTHER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
A NIGHT AMONG THE HORSES 1
THREE FROM THE EARTH 15
THE VALET 31
TO THE DOGS 44
BEYOND THE END 59
PASTORAL 74
OSCAR 76
ANTIQUE 103
KATRINA SILVERSTAFF 104
HUSH BEFORE LOVE 116
THE ROBIN’S HOUSE 117
PARADISE 131
NO-MAN’S-MARE 132
SIX SONGS OF KHALIDINE 145
THE DOVE 147
MOTHER 164
SONG IN AUTUMN 172
THE NIGGER 173
LULLABY 179
INDIAN SUMMER 180
I’D HAVE YOU THINK OF ME 194
THE RABBIT 195
THE FLOWERING CORPSE 209
A BOY ASKS A QUESTION OF A LADY 210
FIRST COMMUNION 219
FINIS 220
ILLUSTRATIONS
Study _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
Portrait 30
Portrait 58
Drawing 102
Portrait Study 144
Portrait 172
A BOOK
A NIGHT AMONG THE HORSES
Toward dusk, in the Summer of the year, a man dressed in a frock coat
and top hat, and carrying a cane, crept through the underbrush bordering
the corral of the Buckler farm.
As he moved, small twigs snapped, fell and were silent. His knees were
green from wounded shrubbery and grass, and his outspread hands tore
unheeded plants. His wrists hurt him and he rested from time to time,
always caring for his hat and knotted yellow cane, blowing through his
moustache.
Dew had been falling, covering the twilight leaves like myriad faces
damp with the perspiration of the struggle for existence, and half a
mile away, standing out against the darkness of the night, a grove of
white birches shimmered like teeth in a skull.
He heard the creaking of a gate, and the splashing of late rain into the
depths of a dark cistern. His heart ached with the nearness of the
earth, the faint murmur of it moving upon itself, like a sleeper who
turns to throw an arm about a beloved.
A frog began moaning among the skunk cabbages, and John thrust his hand
deep into his bosom.
Something somnolent seemed to be here, and he wondered. It was like a
deep, heavy, yet soft prison where, without sin, one may suffer
intolerable punishment.
Presently he went on, feeling his way. He reached a high plank fence and
sensing it with his fingers, he lay down, resting his head against the
ground.
He was tired, he wanted to sleep, but he searched for his hat and cane
and straightened out his coat beneath him before he turned his eyes to
the stars.
And now he could not sleep, and wondered why he had thought of it;
something quick was moving the earth, it seemed to live, to shake with
sudden immensity.
He heard a dog barking, and the dim light from a farm window kept
winking as the trees swung against its square of light. The odor of
daisies came to him, and the assuring, powerful smell of the stables; he
opened his mouth and drew in his moustache.
A faint tumult had begun. A tremor ran under the length of his body and
trembled off into the earth like a shudder of joy—died down and repeated
itself. And presently he began to tremble, answering, throwing out his
hands, curling them up weakly, as if the earth were withholding
something precious, necessary.
His hat fell off, striking a log with a dull hollow sound, and he
pressed his red moustache against the grass, weeping.
Again he heard it, felt it; a hundred hoofs beat upon the earth and he
knew the horses had gone wild in the corral on the other side of the
fence, for animals greet the Summer, striking the earth, as friends
strike the back of friends. He knew, he understood; a hail to Summer, to
life, to death.
He drew himself against the bars, pressing his eyes under them, peering,
waiting.
He heard them coming up across the heavy turf, rounding the curve in the
Willow Road. He opened his eyes and closed them again. The soft menacing
sound deepened, as heat deepens, strikes through the skin into the very
flesh. Head on, with long legs rising, falling, rising again, striking
the ground insanely, like needles taking terrible, impossible and
purposeless stitches.
He saw their bellies, fawn-coloured, pitching from side to side,
flashing by, straining the fence, and he rose up on his feet and
silently, swiftly, fled on beside them.
Something delirious, hysterical, came over him and he fell. Blood
trickled into his eyes down from his forehead. It had a fine feeling for
a moment, like a mane, like that roan mare’s mane that had passed
him—red and long and splendid.
He lifted his hand, and closed his eyes once more, but the soft pounding
did not cease, though now, in his sitting position, it only jogged him
imperceptibly, as a child on a knee.
It seemed to him that he was smothering, and he felt along the side of
his face as he had done in youth when they had put a cap on him that was
too large. Twining green things, moist with earth-blood, crept over his
fingers, the hot, impatient leaves pressed in, and the green of the
matted grass was deathly thick. He had heard about the freeness of
nature, thought it was so, and it was not so.
A trailing ground pine had torn up small blades in its journey across
the hill, and a vine, wrist-thick, twisted about a pale oak, hideously,
gloriously, killing it, dragging it into dust.
A wax Patrick Pipe leaned against his neck, staring with black eyes, and
John opened his mouth, running his tongue across his lips, snapping it
off, sighing.
Move as he would, the grass was always under him, and the crackling of
last Autumn’s leaves and last Summer’s twigs—minute dead of the infinite
greatness—troubled him. Something portentous seemed connected with the
patient noises about him. An acorn dropped, striking a thin fine powder
out of a frail oak pod. He took it up, tossing it. He had never liked to
see things fall.
He sat up, with the dim thunder of the horses far off, but quickening
his heart.
He went over the scene he had with Freda Buckler, back there in the
house, the long quivering spears of pot-grass standing by the window as
she walked up and down, pulling at them, talking to him.
Small, with cunning fiery eyes and a pink and pointed chin. A daughter
of a mother who had known too many admirers in her youth; a woman with
an ample lap on which she held a Persian kitten or a trifle of fruit.
Bounty, avarice, desire, intelligence—both of them had always what they
wanted.
He blew down his moustache again thinking of Freda in her floating
yellow veil that he had called ridiculous. She had not been angry, he
was nothing but a stable boy then. It was the way with those small
intriguing women whose nostrils were made delicate through the pain of
many generations that they might quiver whenever they caught a whiff of
the stables.
“As near as they can get to the earth,” he had said, and was Freda
angry? She stroked his arm always softly, looking away, an inner
bitterness drawing down her mouth.
She said, walking up and down quickly, looking ridiculously small:
“I am always gentle, John”—frowning, trailing her veil, thrusting out
her chin.
He answered: “I liked it better where I was.”
“Horses,” she said showing sharp teeth, “are nothing for a man with your
bile—pot-boy—curry comber, smelling of saddle soap—lovely!” She
shrivelled up her nose, touching his arm: “Yes, but better things. I
will show you—you shall be a gentleman—fine clothes, you will like them,
they feel nice.” And laughing she turned on one high heel, sitting down.
“I like horses, they make people better; you are amusing, intelligent,
you will see——”
“A lackey!” he returned passionately, throwing up his arm. “What is
there in this for you, what are you trying to do to me? The
family—askance—perhaps—I don’t know.”
He sat down pondering. He was getting used to it, or thought he was, all
but his wordy remonstrances. He knew better when thinking of his horses,
realizing that when he should have married this small, unpleasant and
clever woman, he would know them no more.
It was a game between them, which was the shrewder, which would win out?
He? A boy of ill breeding, grown from the gutter, fancied by this woman
because he had called her ridiculous, or for some other reason that he
would never know. This kind of person never tells the truth, and this,
more than most things, troubled him. Was he a thing to be played with,
debased into something better than he was—than he knew?
Partly because he was proud of himself in the costume of a groom, partly
because he was timid, he desired to get away, to go back to the stables.
He walked up to the mirrors as if about to challenge them, peering in.
He knew he would look absurd, and then knew, with shame, that he looked
splendidly better than most of the gentlemen that Freda Buckler knew. He
hated himself. A man who had grown out of the city’s streets, a fine
common thing!
She saw him looking into the mirrors, one after the other, and drew her
mouth down. She got up, walking beside him in the end, between him and
them, taking his arm.
“You shall enter the army—you shall rise to General, or Lieutenant at
least—and there are horses there, and the sound of stirrups—with that
physique you will be happy—authority you know,” she said, shaking her
chin, smiling.
“Very well, but a common soldier——”
“As you like—afterward.”
“Afterward?”
“Very well, a common soldier.”
He sensed something strange in her voice, a sort of irony, and it took
the patience out of him:
“I have always been common, I could commit crimes, easily, gladly—I’d
like to!”
She looked away. “That’s natural,” she said faintly; “it’s an instinct
all strong men have——”
She knew what was troubling him, thwarted instincts, common beautiful
instincts that he was being robbed of. He wanted to do something final
to prove his lower order; caught himself making faces, idiot faces, and
she laughed.
“If only your ears stuck out, chin receded,” she said, “you might look
degenerate, common, but as it is——”
And he would creep away in hat, coat and with his cane, to peer at his
horses, never daring to go in near them. Sometimes, when he wanted to
weep, he would smear one glove with harness grease, but the other one he
held behind his back, pretending one was enough to prove his revolt.
She would torment him with vases, books, pictures, making a fool of him
gently, persistently, making him doubt by cruel means, the means of
objects he was not used to, eternally taking him out of his sphere.
“We have the best collection of miniatures,” she would say with one knee
on a low ottoman, bringing them out in her small palm.
“Here, look.”
He would put his hands behind him.
“She was a great woman—Lucrezia Borgia—do you know history——” She put it
back because he did not answer, letting his mind, a curious one, torment
itself.
“You love things very much, don’t you?” she would question, because she
knew that he had a passion for one thing only. She kept placing new
ladders beneath his feet, only to saw them off at the next rung, making
him nothing more than a nervous, irritable experiment. He was uneasy,
like one given food to smell and not to taste, and for a while he had
not wanted to taste, and then curiosity began, and he wanted to, and he
also wanted to escape, and he could do neither.
Well, after he had married her, what then? Satisfy her whim and where
would he be? He would be nothing, neither what he had been nor what
other people were. This seemed to him, at times, her wish—a sort of
place between lying down and standing up, a cramped position, a slow
death. A curious woman.
This same evening he had looked at her attentively for the first time.
Her hair was rather pretty, though too mousy, yet just in the nape of
the neck, where it met the lawn of the collar it was very attractive.
She walked well for a little woman, too.
Sometimes she would pretend to be lively, would run a little, catch
herself at it, as if she had not intended to do it, and calm down once
more, or creeping up to him, stroking his arm, talking to him, she would
walk beside him softly, slowly, that he might not step out, that he
would have to crawl across the carpet.
Once he had thought of trying her with honesty, with the truth of the
situation. Perhaps she would give him an honest answer, and he had
tried.
“Now, Miss Freda—just a word—what are you trying to do? What is it you
want? What is there in me that can interest you? I want you to tell me—I
want to know—I have got to ask someone, and I haven’t anyone to ask but
you.”
And for a moment she almost relented, only to discover that she could
not if she had wished. She did not know always what she meant herself.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, hoping that this, somehow, might lead her
into the truth, for herself, if not for him, but it did not, “you are a
little nervous, you will get used to it—you will even grow to like it.
Be patient. You will learn soon enough that there is nothing in the
world so agreeable as climbing, changing.”
“Well,” he said, trying to read her, “and then?”
“That’s all, you will regret the stables in the end—that’s all.” Her
nostrils quivered. A light came into her eyes, a desire to defy, to be
defied.
Then on this last night he had done something terrible, he had made a
blunder. There had been a party. The guests, a lot of them, were mostly
drunk, or touched with drink. And he, too, had too much. He remembered
having thrown his arms about a tall woman, gowned in black with loose
shoulder straps, dragging her through a dance. He had even sung a bit of
a song, madly, wildly, horribly. And suddenly he had been brought up
sharp by the fact that no one thought his behaviour strange, that no one
thought him presumptuous. Freda’s mother had not even moved or dropped
the kitten from her lap where it sat, its loud resolute purr shaking the
satin of her gown.
And he felt that Freda had got him where she wanted him, between two
rungs. Going directly up to her, he said:
“You are ridiculous!” and twirled his moustache, spitting into the
garden.
And he knew nothing about what happened until he found himself in the
shrubbery, crawling toward the corral, through the dusk and the dampness
of the leaves, carrying his cane, making sure of his hat, looking up at
the stars.
Now he knew why he had come. He was with his horses again. His eyes,
pressed against the bars, stared in. The black stallion in the lead had
been his special pet, a rough animal, but kindly, knowing. And here they
were once more, tearing up the grass, galloping about in the night like
a ball-room full of real people, people who wanted to do things, who did
what they wanted to do.
He began to crawl through the bars, slowly, deftly, and when half way
through he paused, thinking.
Presently he went on again, and drawing himself into the corral, his hat
and cane thrown in before him, he lay there mouth to the grass.
They were still running, but less madly; one of them had gone up the
Willow Road leading into a farther pasture, in a flare of dust, through
which it looked immense and faint.
On the top of the hill three or four of the horses were standing,
testing the weather. He would mount one, he would ride away, he would
escape. And his horses, the things he knew, would be his escape.
Bareback, he thought, would be like the days when he had taken what he
could from the rush of the streets, joy, exhilaration, life, and he was
not afraid. He wanted to stand up, to cry aloud.
And he saw ten or twelve of them rounding the curb, and he did stand up.
They did not seem to know him, did not seem to know what to make of him,
and he stared at them wondering. He did not think of his white shirt
front, his sudden arising, the darkness, their excitement. Surely they
would know, in a moment more.
Wheeling, flaring their wet nostrils, throwing up their manes, striking
the earth in a quandary, they came on, whinnied faintly, and he knew
what it was to be afraid.
He had never been afraid and he went down on his knees. With a new
horror in his heart he damned them. He turned his eyes up, but he could
not open them. He thought rapidly, calling on Freda in his heart,
speaking tenderly, promising.
A flare of heat passed his throat and descended into his bosom.
“I want to live. I can do it—damn it—I can do it! I can forge ahead,
make my mark.”
He forgot where he was for a moment and found new pleasure in this
spoken admission, this new rebellion. He moved with the faint shaking of
the earth, like a child on a woman’s lap.
The upraised hoofs of the first horse missed him, but the second did
not.
And presently the horses drew apart, nibbling here and there, switching
their tails, avoiding a patch of tall grass.
THREE FROM THE EARTH
PERSONS: │
JAMES │CARSON _brothers_
HENRY │ 〃
JOHN │ 〃
KATE MORLEY—│_An adventuress, a lady of leisure_
TIME—_Late afternoon_.
PLACE—KATE MORLEY’S _boudoir. A long narrow room, with a great many
lacquer screens in various shades of blue, a tastefully
decorated room though rather extreme._
_At the rise of the curtain the three_ CARSON _brothers are discovered
sitting together on a couch to the left. They look like peasants of the
most obvious type. They are tall, rather heavy—and range in age from
nineteen to twenty-five. They have sandy, sun-bleached hair that insists
upon sticking straight up—oily, sweaty skins—large hanging lips and
small eyes on which a faint whitish down moves for lashes. They are_
_clumsy and ill clothed. Russet shoes are on all six feet. They each
wear a purple aster and each has on a tie of the super-stunning
variety—they have evidently done their best to be as one might say “well
dressed.”_
_When they speak—aside from their grunts—their voices are rough, nasal
and occasionally crack. They are stoop-shouldered and their hands are
excessively ugly._
_Yet in spite of all this, their eyes are intelligent, their smiles
gentle, melancholy, compassionate. And though they have a look of
formidable grossness and stupidity, there is, on second observation, a
something beneath all this in no way in keeping with this first
impression._
JOHN, _the youngest, and the smallest, looks around the room carefully_.
JOHN—A nice room, eh? [_He tries to whisper, but it comes forth buzzing
and harsh._]
JAMES—A woman’s room.
HENRY—How?
JAMES—A narrow room, John.
JOHN—Well?
JAMES—Cats and narrow walls.
HENRY—[_Grunting._] Ugh.
JOHN—Hush—I hear her coming! [_The curtains part and_ KATE MORLEY
_enters. She is a woman of about forty. Handsome. Dark. She_ _is
beautifully dressed—in a rather seductive fashion. She has a very
interesting head; she has an air of one used to adulation and the
pleasure of exerting her will. She has a trick of narrowing her eyes. As
she comes forward there is a general commotion among the brothers, but
none manages to stand up._]
KATE—Good day, gentlemen.
ALL THREE—Good day.
KATE—Nice of you to call on me. [_She seats herself, crossing her
legs._] You are the three Carsons, John, James and Henry, aren’t you? I
haven’t seen you for years, yet I think I should have known you.
ALL THREE—Ah ha.
KATE—Yes, I presume I should have known you. I have a good memory. Well,
as I said, it’s nice of you to come to see me. Social?
HENRY—You might call it that.
KATE—It’s quite nice to get an unexpected visitor or so. I’m the kind of
woman who knows just who is going to call on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday——
ALL THREE—Ah ha.
KATE—How’s the country?
JOHN—Just the same.
KATE—It always is.—Don’t you go mad—watching it?
HENRY—Now and again.
KATE—And how’s your father? [_Not pausing for an answer—almost to
herself._] I remember—_he_ was always mad. He used to wear a green cloth
suit, and he carried white rats all over his shoulders. [_Remembering
the three._] Ah, yes, your father—he was a barber, wasn’t he?
HENRY—No, a chemist.
KATE—[_Laughing uneasily._] I have a bad memory after all. Well, anyway,
in those days he had begun to be queer—everyone noticed it—even that
funny man who had those three flaxen-haired daughters with the thin
ankles who lives at the end of the street—— And your mother—a
prostitute, I believe.
HENRY—[_Calmly._] At times.
KATE—A dancing girl without a clean word in her vocabulary, or a whole
shirt to her name——
JAMES—But a woman with fancies.
KATE—[_Sarcastically._] And what ability?
HENRY—Oh, none, just a burning desire.
KATE—What’s the use of going into that? How did you get here—what for?
ALL THREE—On bicycles.
KATE—[_Bursting into laughter._] How exactly ridiculous and
appropriate—and what else?
JOHN—To see how the sun falls in a place like this.
KATE—[_Angrily, rising._] Well, you see, from left to right, and right
to left——
HENRY—True.
JOHN—[_Quietly._] And we wanted to see how you walked, and sat down, and
crossed your legs——
HENRY—And to get father’s letters.
KATE—Well, you see how I walk, sit down, cross my legs. What letters?
JAMES—Letters to you.
KATE—[_Uneasily._] So you know about that—well, and what would you
fellows do with them—read them to see how clever they are?
JAMES—No, we have the clever ones.
KATE—Mine?
JOHN _and_ HENRY—[_Nodding._] Exactly.
KATE—Oh!
JOHN—You suffer?
KATE—From time to time—there’s always a reaction.
HENRY—That’s vulgar, isn’t it?
KATE—Not unusually.
JOHN—The letters?
KATE—[_To herself._] Well, there is malice in me—what of it? We’ve all
been a while with the dogs, we don’t all learn to bark.
JOHN—Ah ha.
KATE—See here, what will you do with your father’s letters?
HENRY—Destroy them, perhaps.
KATE—And if I give them to you—will your father be as generous with
mine?
HENRY—Father is undoubtedly a gentleman—even at this moment.
KATE—Well, we shall see about that—first tell me how you live.
JOHN—We go down on the earth and find things, tear them up, shaking the
dirt off. [_Making motions to illustrate._] Then there are the cows to
be milked, the horses—a few—to be fed, shod and curried—do you wish me
to continue?
KATE—Yes, yes, go on.
HENRY—[_Taking the tale up._] We get up at dawn, and our father turns
over in bed and whispers: “If you meet anyone, say nothing; if you are
asked a question, look stupid——”
KATE—I believe you.
JAMES—And he says: “Go about your work as if you had neither sight,
speech nor hearing——”
KATE—Yes——
JOHN—And he adds: “If you should meet a woman in the road——”
KATE—[_Excited._] Then what?
HENRY—That’s enough. Then of a Sunday we watch the people going to
church, when we hear the “Amen,” we lift a little and sit back—and then
again——
KATE—Religion?
HENRY—Enough for our simple needs.
KATE—Poor sheep!
JAMES—Wise sheep!
KATE—What! Well perhaps. No one is any longer sure of anything. Then
what?
JOHN—When we come home he says: “What have you seen and heard today?” He
never asks, “What have you said?”
KATE—He trusts you?
JOHN—Undoubtedly. Sometimes we say, “We saw a hawk flying,” or, “A
badger passed,” and sometimes we bring him the best treat of all——
KATE—Well?
JOHN—Something dead.
KATE—Dead?
HENRY—Anything that has destroyed the crops—a mole—a field-mouse.
KATE—And never anything that’s harmless?
JOHN—Never.
KATE—Well, see here, I’ll give you those letters. Suddenly my heart says
to me, “Kate, give the oxen the rope, they won’t run away.”—Isn’t it so?
Very well, I put my hand on a certain package and all is over—I’m about
to be married, you know. [_She has risen and gone over to a little box
standing on the desk. Out from this she takes a package of letters tied
with a red ribbon. She turns and walks straight up to_ JOHN.] I’ll give
them to you. You are the youngest, the gentlest, and you have the nicest
hands. [_She sits down, breathing with difficulty._]
JOHN—[_Putting them into his blouse._] Thank you, Kate Morley.
KATE—Now, tell me about everything. How is that mother of yours? I
remember her—she was on the stage—she danced as they say, and she sang.
She had a pet monkey—fed it honey out of a jar kept full by her
admirers: grooms, stage hands, what not——
HENRY—Yes, and she used to draw pictures of it in the style of
Dürer—almost morbid—and later it caught a disease and died——
KATE—I don’t doubt it—and she, she had an under-lip like a balloon—and
your father kissed that mouth, was even tempted——
JAMES—My father often saw beyond the flesh.
KATE—Kissed such a creature!
HENRY—At such times she was beautiful.
KATE—[_With a touch of humility._] Yes, I’m sorry—I remember. Once I
passed her, and instead of saying something, something horrible—she
might—she looked down.
JOHN—She was beautiful, looking down.
KATE—[_Angry._] And I, I suppose I wasn’t beautiful to look at——
HENRY—No, I suppose not, that is, not for her.
KATE—[_Viciously._] Well, let me tell you, you haven’t inherited her
beauty. Look at your hands—thick, hard, ugly—and the life lines in them
like the life lines in the hands of every laborer digging sewers——
JOHN—There’s something in that, but they are just beginning.
KATE—[_Turning on them._] Look at you! You’re ugly, and clumsy, and
uncouth. You grunt and roar, you wear abominable clothes—and you have no
manners—and all because of your father, your mighty righteous and
original father. You don’t have to be like this. You needn’t have little
pigs’ eyes with bleached lashes, and thick hanging lips—and noses—but I
suppose you’ve got adenoids, and you may suffer from the fact that your
mother had a rupture, and in all probability you have the beginning of
ulcers of the stomach, for God knows your father couldn’t keep a meal
down like a gentleman!
HENRY—He _was_ delicate.
KATE—And why was he delicate? He called himself “The little Father,” as
one might say, “The great Emperor.” Well, to have a father to whom you
can go and say, “All is not as it should be”—that would have been
everything. But what could you say to him, and what had he to say to
you? Oh, we all have our pathetic moments of being at our best, but he
wasn’t satisfied with that, he wanted to be at it all the time. And the
result, the life of a mole. “Listen and say nothing.” Then he becomes
the gentleman farmer because he discovers he cannot be the Beloved Fool.
Suddenly he is the father of three creatures for all the world like
Russian peasants—without an idea, a subtlety—it’s wicked, that’s all,
wicked—and as for that, how do you know but that all three of you had a
different mother? Why, great God, I might be the mother of one of you!
JOHN—[_Significantly._] So I believe, madam.
KATE—[_Unheeding._] Do you think a man like your father had any right to
bring such children as you into the world—three columns of flesh without
one of the five senses! [_She suddenly buries her head in her hands._]
JOHN—[_Gently._] You loved our father.
HENRY—And you also had your pot of honey——
KATE—Thank God I had no ideals—I had a religion.
JOHN—Just what?
KATE—You wouldn’t understand.
HENRY—Shoes to the needy?
KATE—No, I’m not that kind, vicious boy.
JOHN—Are you quite certain?
KATE—I’ll admit all my candles are not burning for God. Well, then, blow
them out, still I’ll have a light burning somewhere, for all your great
breaths, you oxen!
HENRY—You were never a tower builded of ivory——
KATE—You’re too stupid to be bitter—your voices are too
undeveloped—you’d say “love” and “hate” the same way.
JAMES—True, we have been shut away from intonations.
KATE—You wouldn’t even wish to die.
JOHN—We shall learn.
KATE—Why bother?
John—[_Abruptly rising._] You have posed for the madonna?
KATE—Every woman has.
JOHN—You have done it better than most.
KATE—What do you mean?
JOHN—I looked at it when I came in. [_He picks up the photograph._]
KATE—Let it be—I was playing in the “Crown of Thorns,” an amateur
theatrical.
JOHN—Yes, I presumed it was amateur——
JAMES—You were a devoted mother?
KATE—I have no virtues.
HENRY—And vices?
KATE—Weak in one, weak in the other.
JOHN—However, the baby had nice hands——
KATE—[_Looking at him._] That is true.
JAMES—But then babies only use their hands to lift the breast, and
occasionally to stroke the cheek——
KATE—Or throw them up in despair—not a heavy career.
JOHN—And then?
KATE—[_In an entirely new tone._] Won’t you have tea?— But no, pay no
attention to me, that’s another of my nasty malicious tricks. Curse
life!
HENRY—Your life is drawing to a close.
JAMES—And from time to time you place your finger on a line of Nietzsche
or Schopenhauer, wondering: “How did he say it all in two lines?” Eh?
KATE—As you say, [_She looks at them slowly, one by one._] You are
strange things. [_Coming back._] But at least I’ve given up
something—look at your mother, what did she give up for your father—a
drunken husband——
JAMES—A drunken lover—that’s different.
KATE—I can’t help thinking of that great gross stomach of hers.
JAMES—Gross indeed, it won’t trouble him any more.
KATE—What’s that?
JOHN—He cut his throat with a knife——
KATE—Oh, my God! [_Pause._] How did he look?
JOHN—You can’t satisfy your æsthetic sense that way—he looked—well,
ugly, played out; yes, played out. Everything had been too much for
him—you—us—you could see that in the way he——
KATE—[_In a whisper._] Well, that’s strange—everything seems—I knew him,
you know. [_She begins to laugh._] And the dogs barked?
JAMES—So I believe.
KATE—[_Dazed._] And you, what are you three going to do?
HENRY—We are coming out of the country—we are going abroad—we can listen
there.
KATE—Abroad—listen—what are you saying?
HENRY—There are great men abroad.
JAMES—Anatole France, De Gourmont——
KATE—De Gourmont is dead.
JOHN—There will be others.
KATE—[_Still dully._] And how did you come to know such names—oh, your
father, of course——
JOHN—We needed them.
KATE—Strange, I’ve been prepared for every hour but this——
JAMES—Yet I dare say you’ve never cried out.
KATE—You are mistaken. I’ve cried: “To the evil of mind all is evil——”
HENRY—Ah ha, and what happened?
KATE—Sometimes I found myself on my knees——
JAMES—And sometimes?
KATE—That’s enough, haven’t we about cleared all the shavings out of the
carpenter shop?
HENRY—You at least will never kill yourself.
KATE—Not likely, I’ll probably die in bed with my slippers on—you see, I
have a pretty foot.
HENRY—We understand—you are about to be married.
KATE—To a supreme court judge—so I’m cleaning house.
JOHN—[_Standing with the photograph._] But it won’t be quite cleared out
until this goes. [_He takes it out of the frame and turning it over_
_reads._] “Little John, God bless him.” [_He turns it back._] God bless
him. Well, just for that I’d like to keep it.
KATE—That’s my affair.
JOHN—So I see. [_He puts the photo in his blouse with the letters._]
KATE—Well, perhaps—well, you’re not so stupid after all—— Come, for the
madonna give me back the letters—I’ll burn them I swear, and you can put
the madonna at the foot of the bed.
JOHN—I shan’t put it at the foot of the bed—I don’t look at the foot of
the bed——
HENRY _and_ JAMES—[_Rising._] And now we shall go.
KATE—[_Her hands to her head._] But, gentlemen, gentlemen——
HENRY—We won’t need to bother you again. We are leaving the country and
going elsewhere—and there was only one of us to whom you might have
shown a little generosity—in other words we do not wish to be reminded,
and now we can forget, and in time become quite hilarious——
KATE—But, gentlemen, gentlemen, not this way——
JOHN—Well? [_Quite suddenly he takes her in his arms, raises her face
and kisses her on the mouth._]
KATE—[_Crying out._] Not that way! Not that way!
JAMES—That’s the way you bore him!
[_The curtain drops behind them._]
[Illustration]
THE VALET
The fields about Louis-Georges’ house grew green in early Spring,
leaving the surrounding country in melancholy grey, for Louis-Georges
was the only man who sowed his ground to rye.
Louis-Georges was of small stature. His face was oblong, too pale. A dry
mouth lay crookedly beneath a nose ending in a slight bulb. His long
animal-like arms swung half a rhythm ahead of his legs.
He prided himself on his farming, though he knew nothing about it. He
surveyed the tender coming green with kindly good nature, his acres were
always a month ahead of his neighbours’.
Sometimes standing in the doorway, breathing through the thick hair in
his nostrils, stretching his gloves, he would look at the low-lying
sheds and the stables and the dull brown patches of ploughed earth, and
mutter, “Splendid, splendid!”
Finally he would stroll in among the cattle where, in dizzy circles,
large coloured flies swayed, emitting a soft insistent drone, like
taffeta rubbed against taffeta.
He liked to think that he knew a great deal about horses. He would look
solemnly at the trainer and discuss length of neck, thinness and shape
of flank by the hour, stroking the hocks of his pet racer. Sometimes he
would say to Vera Sovna: “There’s more real breeding in the rump of a
mare than in all the crowned heads of England.”
Sometimes he and Vera Sovna would play in the hay, and about the grain
bins. She in her long flounces, leaping in and out, screaming and
laughing, stamping her high heels, setting up a great commotion among
her ruffles.
Once Louis-Georges caught a rat, bare-handed, and with such skill that
it could not bite. He disguised his pride in showing it to her by
pretending that he had done so to inform her of the rodent menace to
Winter grain.
Vera Sovna was a tall creature with thin shoulders; she was always
shrugging them as if her shoulder-blades were heavy. She dressed in
black and laughed a good deal in a very high key.
She had been a great friend of Louis-Georges’ mother, but since her
death she had fallen into disrepute. It was hinted that she was
“something” to Louis-Georges; and when the townsfolk and neighbouring
landholders saw her enter the house they would not content themselves
until they saw her leave it.
If she came out holding her skirts crookedly above her thin ankles, they
would find the roofs of their mouths in sudden disapproval, while if she
walked slowly, dragging her dress, they would say: “See what a dust Vera
Sovna brings up in the driveway; she stamps as if she were a mare.”
If she knew anything of this feeling, she never showed it. She would
drive through the town and turn neither to right nor left until she
passed the markets with their bright yellow gourds and squashes, their
rosy apples and their splendid tomatoes, exhaling an odour of decaying
sunlight. On the rare occasions when Louis-Georges accompanied her, she
would cross her legs at the knee, leaning forward, pointing a finger at
him, shaking her head, laughing.
Sometimes she would go into the maids’ quarters to play with Leah’s
child, a little creature with weak legs and neck, who always thrust out
his stomach for her to pat.
The maids, Berthe and Leah, were well-built complacent women with serene
blue eyes, quite far apart, and good mouths in which fine teeth grew
gratefully and upon whom round ample busts flourished like plants. They
went about their work singing or chewing long green salad leaves.
In her youth Leah had done something for which she prayed at intervals.
Her memory was always taking her hastily away to kneel before the gaudy
wax Christ that hung on a beam in the barn. Resting her head against the
boards she would lift her work-worn hands, bosom-high, sighing, praying,
murmuring.
Or she would help Berthe with the milking, throwing her thick ankles
under the cow’s udders, bringing down a sudden fury of milk, shining and
splashing over her big clean knuckles, saying quietly, evenly:
“I think we will have rain before dawn.”
And her sister would answer: “Yes, before dawn.”
Leah would spend hours in the garden, her little one crawling after her,
leaving childish smears on the dusty leaves of the growing corn, digging
his hands into the vegetable tops, falling and pretending to have fallen
on purpose; grinning up at the sun foolishly until his eyes watered.
These two women and Louis-Georges’ valet, Vanka, made up the household,
saving occasional visits from Louis-Georges’ aunts, Myra and Ella.
This man Vanka was a mixture of Russian and Jew. He bit his nails,
talked of the revolution, moved clumsily.
His clothes fitted him badly, he pomaded his hair, which was reddish
yellow, pulled out the short hairs that tormented his throat, and from
beneath his white brows distributed a kindly intelligent look. The most
painful thing about him was his attempt to seem alert, his effort to
keep pace with his master.
Louis-Georges would say, “Well now, Vanka, what did they do to you in
Russia when you were a boy?”
“They shot my brother for a red,” Vanka would answer, pulling the hairs.
“They threw him into prison, and my sister took him his food. One day
our father was also arrested, then she took two dinner pails instead of
one. Once she heard a noise, it sounded like a shot, and our father
returned her one of the pails. They say he looked up at her like a man
who is gazed at over the shoulder.” He had told the tale often, adding:
“My sister became almost bald later on, yet she was a handsome woman;
the students used to come to her chambers to hear her talk.”
At such times Louis-Georges would excuse himself and shut himself up to
write, in a large and scrawling hand, letters to his aunts with some of
Vanka’s phrases in them.
Sometimes Vera Sovna would come in to watch him, lifting her ruffles,
raising her brows. Too, she would turn and look for a long time at Vanka
who returned her look with cold persistence, the way of a man who is
afraid, who does not approve, and yet who likes.
She would stand with her back to the fireplace, her high heels a little
apart, tapping the stretched silk of her skirt, saying:
“You will ruin your eyes,” adding: “Vanka, won’t you stop him?”
She seldom got answers to her remarks. Louis-Georges would continue,
grunting at her, to be sure, and smiling, but never lifting his eyes:
and as for Vanka he would stand there, catching the sheets of paper as
they were finished.
Finally Louis-Georges would push back his chair, saying: “Come, we will
have tea.”
In the end he fell into a slow illness. It attacked his limbs, he was
forced to walk with a cane. He complained of his heart, but he persisted
in going out to look at the horses, to the barn to amuse Vera Sovna,
swaying a little as he watched the slow-circling flies, sniffing the
pleasant odours of cow’s milk and dung.
He still had plans for the haying season, for his crops, but he gave
them over to his farm hands, who, left to themselves, wandered aimlessly
home at odd hours.
About six months later he took to his bed.
His aunts came, testing with their withered noses the smell of decaying
wood and paregoric, whispering that “he never used to get like this.”
Raising their ample shoulders to ease the little black velvet straps
that sunk into their flesh, they sat on either side of his bed.
They looked at each other in a pitifully surprised way. They had never
seen illness, and death but once—a suicide, and this they understood:
one has impulses, but not maladies.
They were afraid of meeting Vera Sovna. Their position was a difficult
one; having been on friendly terms while Louis-Georges’ mother lived,
they had nevertheless to maintain a certain dignity and reserve when the
very townsfolk had turned against her. Therefore they left her an hour
in the evening to herself. She would come creeping in, saying:
“Oh, my dear,” telling him long unheard stories about a week she had
spent in London. A curious week, full of near adventure, with amusing
tales of hotel keepers, nobility. And sometimes leaning close to him,
that he might hear, he saw that she was weeping.
But in spite of this and of his illness and the new quality in the air,
Vera Sovna was strangely gay.
During this illness the two girls served as nurses, changing the sheets,
turning him over, rubbing him with alcohol, bringing him his soup,
crossing themselves.
Vanka stood long hours by the bedside coughing. Sometimes he would fall
off into sleep, at others he would try to talk of the revolution.
Vera Sovna had taken to dining in the kitchen, a long bare room that
pleased her. From the window one could see the orchards and the pump and
the long slope down to the edge of the meadow. And the room was pleasant
to look upon. The table, like the earth itself, was simple and abundant.
It might have been a meadow that Leah and Berthe browsed in,
red-cheeked, gaining health, strength.
Great hams, smoked fowl with oddly taut legs hung from the beams, and
under these the girls moved as if there were some bond between them.
They accepted Vera Sovna’s company cheerfully, uncomplainingly, and when
she went away they cleared up her crumbs, thinking and talking of other
things, forgetting.
Nothing suffered on account of his illness. The household matters went
smoothly, the crops ripened, the haying season passed, and the sod in
the orchards sounded with the thud of ripe falling fruit. Louis-Georges
suffered alone, detached, as if he had never been. Even about Vera Sovna
there was a strange quiet brilliancy, the brilliancy of one who is about
to receive something. She caressed the medicine bottles, tended the
flowers.
Leah and Berthe were unperturbed, except from overwork; the face of
Vanka alone changed.
He bore the expression at once of a man in pain and of a man who is
about to come into peace. The flickering light in Louis-Georges’ face
cast its shadow on that of his valet.
Myra and Ella became gradually excited. They kept brushing imaginary
specks of dust from their shoulders and bodices, sending each other in
to observe him. They comforted themselves looking at him, pretending
each to the other that he was quite improved. It was not so much that
they were sorry to have him die, as it was that they were not prepared
to have him die.
When the doctor arrived they shifted their burden of worry. They bought
medicine with great relish, hurriedly. Finally to lessen the torment
they closed their eyes as they sat on either side of his bed, picturing
him already dead, laid out, hands crossed, that they might gain comfort
upon opening them, to find him still alive.
When they knew that he was really dying they could not keep from
touching him. They tried to cover him up in those parts that exposed too
plainly his illness: the thin throat, the damp pulsing spot in the neck.
They fondled his hands, driving doctor and nurse into a passion.
At last, in desperation, Myra knelt by his bed, touched his face,
stroked his cheeks, trying to break the monotonous calm of approaching
death.
Death did not seem to be anywhere in him saving in his face ... it
seemed to Myra that to drive it from his eyes would mean life. It was
then that she and her sister were locked out, to wander up and down the
hall, afraid to speak, afraid to weep, unless by that much they might
hasten his death.
When he finally died, they had the problem of Vera Sovna.
But they soon forgot her, trying to follow the orders left by the dead
man. Louis-Georges had been very careful to see to it that things should
go on growing; he had given many orders, planned new seasons, talked of
“next year,” knowing that he would not be there.
The hens cackled with splendid performances, the stables resounded with
the good spirits of the horses, the fields were all but shedding their
very life on the earth as Vanka moved noiselessly about, folding the
dead man’s clothes.
When the undertaker arrived Vanka would not let him touch the body. He
washed and dressed it to suit himself. It was he who laid Louis-Georges
in the shiny coffin, it was he who arranged the flowers, and he who
finally left the room on the flat of his whole noisy feet for the first
time in years. He went to his own room overlooking the garden.
He paced the room. It seemed to him that he had left something undone.
He had loved service and order; he did not know that he also loved
Louis-Georges, who made service necessary and order desirable.
This distressed him, he rubbed his hands, holding them close to his
mouth, as if by the sound of one hand passing over the other he might
learn some secret in the stoppage of sound.
Leah had made a scene, he thought of that. A small enough scene,
considering. She had brought her baby in, dropping him beside the body,
giving the flat-voiced: “Now you can play with him a minute.”
He had not interfered, the child had been too frightened to disturb the
cold excellence of Louis-Georges’ arrangement, and Leah had gone out
soon enough in stolid silence. He could hear them descending the steps,
her heavy slow tread followed by the quick uneven movements of the
child.
Vanka could hear the rustling of the trees in the garden, the call of an
owl from the barn; one of the mares whinnied and, stamping, fell off
into silence.
He opened the window. He thought he caught the sound of feet on the
pebbles that bordered the hydrangea bushes; a faint perfume, such as the
flounces of Vera Sovna exhaled, came to him. Irritated, he turned away,
when he heard her calling.
“Vanka, come, my foot is caught in the vine.”
Her face, with wide hanging lips, came above the sill, and the same
moment she jumped into the room.
They stood looking at each other. They had never been alone together
before. He did not know what to do.
She was a little dishevelled, twigs from the shrubbery clung to the
black flounces of her gown. She raised her thin shoulders once, twice,
and sighed.
She reached out her arm, whispering:
“Vanka.”
He moved away from her, staring at her.
“Vanka,” she repeated, and came close, leaning a little on him.
In a voice of command, she said simply, “You must tell me something.”
“I will tell you,” he answered, automatically.
“See, look at your hands——” She kissed them suddenly, dropping her wet
lips into the middle of the palms, making him start and shiver.
“Look at these eyes—ah, fortunate man,” she continued, “most fortunate
Vanka; he would let you touch him, close, near the heart, the skin. You
could know what he looked like, how he stood, how his ankle went into
his foot.” He ceased to hear her.
“And his shoulders, how they set. You dressed and undressed him, knew
him, all of him, for many years—you see, you understand? Tell me, tell
me what he was like!”
He turned to her. “I will tell you,” he said, “if you are still, if you
will sit down, if you are quiet.”
She sat down with another sigh, with a touch of her old gaiety; she
raised her eyes, watching him.
“His arms were too long, you could tell that—but beautiful, and his back
was thin, tapering—full of breeding——”
TO THE DOGS
PERSONS: │
HELENA │
HUCKSTEPPE │
GHEID STORM—│_Her neighbour_
TIME—_Late afternoon_.
PLACE—_In the mountains of Cornwall-on-Hudson—the_ HUCKSTEPPE _house_.
SCENE—_The inner room of the_ HUCKSTEPPE _cottage_.
_To the left, in the back wall, a large window overlooks a garden. Right
centre, a door leads off into a bedroom, and from the bedroom one may
see the woods of the mountain. The door is slightly open, showing a
glimpse of a tall mirror and the polished pole of a bed._
_In the right wall there is a fireplace._
_A dog lies across the threshold, asleep, head on paws._
_About this room there is perhaps just a little too much of a certain
kind of frail beauty of object. Crystal glasses, scent bottles, bowls of
an almost too perfect design, furniture that is too antiquely
beautiful._
HELENA HUCKSTEPPE, _a woman of about thirty-five, stands almost back
view to the audience, one arm lying along the mantel. She is rather
under medium in height. Her hair, which is dark and curling, is done
carefully about a small fine head. She is dressed in a dark, long gown,
a gown almost too faithful to the singular sadness of her body._
_At about the same moment as the curtain’s rising_, GHEID STORM _vaults
the window-sill. He is a man of few years, a well-to-do man of property,
brought up very carefully by upright women, the son of a conscientious
physician, the kind of man who commutes with an almost religious
fervour, and who keeps his wife and his lawns in the best possible trim,
without any particular personal pleasure._
GHEID _is tall, but much too honourable to be jaunty, he is decidedly
masculine. He walks deliberately, getting all the use possible out of
his boot-leather, his belt-strap and hat-bands._
_His face is one of those which, for fear of misuse, has not been used
at all._
HELENA HUCKSTEPPE _does not appear to be in the least astonished at his
mode of entrance._
GHEID STORM—As you never let me in at the door, I thought of the window.
[HELENA _remains silent_.] I hope I did not startle you. [_Pause._]
Women are better calm, that is, some kinds of calm——
HELENA—Yes?
GHEID—[_Noticing the dog, which has not stirred._] You’ve got funny
dogs, they don’t even bark. [_Pause._] I expected you’d set them on me;
however, perhaps that will come later——
HELENA—Perhaps.