_Elle avait appris dans sa jeunesse à caresser les phrases, au long
col sinueux et démesuré, de Chopin, si libres, si flexibles, si
tactiles, qui commencent par chercher et essayer leur place en
dehors et bien loin de la direction de leur départ, bien loin du
point où on avait pu espérer qu’atteindrait leur attouchement, et
qui ne se jouent dans cet écart de fantaisie que pour revenir plus
délibérément, d’un retour plus prémédité, avec plus de précision,
comme sur un cristal qui résonnerait jusqu’ à faire crier, vous
frapper au coeur._
_Proust._
He returned to his Schloss park, went down the gravel path into the
hidden nooks where the waters dashing down from steep heights broke
their fall in cool spray. All was as still and wild and pure as on the
first day. So Adam must have brooded, too, in the cool and quiet of
Eden.
He walked on. And suddenly he came upon her in the pine wood.
“My pale primrose.”
“No, no, not here.”
“Yes, here and now. To make sure that you bear me a child.”
“Yes, you and Chris, and everybody.”
He was overwhelmed with tremulous anxiety that he might lose her, his
one, his only woman. To hold her, for a moment, if only for a moment,
was to hold all--eternity in a moment. There was Eva, and no other
woman; and she included all the beauty and the passion in the world.
“Oh, my Eva! My _dear_ love!” He thought of all the loving lost and gone
for ever: of moonlight meetings, heartthrobs, lingering farewells, by
waterfalls, in drifting gondolas, and sunlit glades, and cloistered
streets, and heaths, and lanes, and bridges: the water rushes, the
heart throbs loud; he tried to collect it all and impress it on these
lips, these taut, supple fingers, these heaving young breasts.
And they took of the fruit thereof, and did eat: and they heard the
voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
“It’s you, only you now. When I hold you, Eva, I hold the world.”
“Yes, darling, what is left of it.”
“No distraction left.” He clutched his chin savagely. “I can’t have
them!” he cried. “Can’t have them!”
“Who?”
“All those other women.”
“What’s to be done, darling?”
“I can’t have them! Oh, aren’t I glad!”
“No regrets?”
“None! Eva,” he murmured, “my little Eva.”
“And do you remember,” she said, “how we were lost on the hill?”
“I remember.”
“And how the storm came on, and how you held me, and how it rained and
we ran to hide under the rock?”
“And you remember Count Kolberg?”
“Yes, that soppy-face! And how when he asked us out to dinner he sent in
a long bill next day, charging up to Mummy our share of the meal, giving
all the details:
3 rolls
3 soups
3 cutlets
3 salads
potatoes--3 portions
2 lemonades
1 beer
and so on. And that night he took us to the “München” he ordered
champagne. But when it came to paying, he had no money and began to cry.
And Mummy said to him very kindly: ‘But why, if you _knew_ you hadn’t
any money, did you order champagne?’ ‘Because all the others did,’ he
said.”
“And what happened?”
“Oh, the waiter boxed his ears for him and kicked him out and called him
names. It was very disagreeable for us.”
“How did he take it?”
“Not very badly. Sort of half playfully. ‘You don’t know what I was
going through in my inner soul,’ he said, when we were out of doors.
‘Ach! Ai, ai, ai! Ai, ai, ai!’”
“Then it was we who were lost. Now it is the world. The poor world, with
no lovers in it any more, save you and me. It seems we must love for the
lot. Justify love. We shall not fail. We shall not fail.”
She looked wistful.
“Eva ... honey love....”
“Yes.”
“I am unworthy. But God in His infinite love has brought all this about
that we may come together again, you and I, Eva.”
“Darling,” she said, “I don’t believe it!”
“Nor do I, for that matter,” he said, pressing her to him, “and I
scarcely think that this was an end pursued by de Jones.”
“The last thing that he intended.”
The sun subsided towards evening, and suddenly the landscape shone forth
with a crystalline clearness, as though you had adjusted your binoculars
to the required focus. Before them stretched a plain. No more horizons.
They stood up and walked on, lifting themselves from the ground with one
foot and coming down in a leisurely curve with the other, as horses in a
slow-motion picture clearing a fence.
“The gravitation,” he sniffed, “is ludicrously weak.”
“It’s only a small planet, darling,” she said, “and hasn’t much
strength.”
“We walk as on air.”
“I don’t mind it, darling. And we’re in no great hurry.”
The sun came out again, and, as they climbed up the steep ridge to the
pine wood, shone through the trees with a dazzling whiteness such as
only acetyline lamps can produce. On the edge of the wood they halted;
below was a lake surrounded by firs: a little lake, like a plum dipped
in water. Sky, firs, hills, water, all was blue, each just a shade
darker; all blue and motionless, as if still waiting for something. They
stood still, their hearts thumping; till the sun sank and the first
silver stars twinkled feebly in the sky.
“And don’t you miss your dear Rex?”
“He was so strange and peculiar.”
“Yet I never met anyone who did not like him. It was his eagerness which
fascinated one. I once arrived during a very agitated conversation
between him and Vernon Sprott, who was pained by the alterations made by
Ottercove in his last article, when Ottercove defended himself with
spirit. ‘What’s the good of being a newspaper proprietor,’ he said, ‘if
you can’t butt in occasionally?’ There was a rare dash about him. It was
a joy to dine with him; all the waiting service congregated round his
table in the restaurants. Dinner over, he would step into the lift, a
panting waiter stepping in with him to present the bill, which Ottercove
would sign without looking. ‘Don’t they ever swindle you?’ I once asked
him. He looked at me earnestly. ‘Dickin: I expect them to swindle me.’
This was great, if you like. But he would come out with better things,
too. Once, in failing to please him with my definition of him I
suggested that my definition was not flattering enough, and he said:
‘Not a bit. If I only listened to flatteries, it wouldn’t do my
character any good, now would it? I wouldn’t develop, would I?’”
“The darling,” said Eva. “The little pet.”
“What made him greater than most men of action was that there was, side
by side with his sense of his own abilities, an essential humility in
him. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for one who
had started literally with nothing, and rose to a share in the control,
and an enlightened control, of the destiny of a great empire, himself
surrounded on every side by awe-struck relatives and bowing sycophants,
to grow bumptious and megalomaniacal, intolerant and overbearing. Not a
sign of it in Ottercove! Instead, an enquiring charm, a readiness to
listen and learn even from youths. The same bright-eyed mischievous
boyishness at forty as at twenty, a touching eagerness to do worthwhile
things, ever the man of the world equal to every situation, and yet, a
sort of wayward kindness, an engaging modesty which left him unaware of
what it was in him that made up his charm. And withal a public
fearlessness, the sure touch of a genius in everything he did. I doubt
if he was ever told his worth. We did not tell him. And now it is too
late.”
He paused before he spoke again. “For us who can remember him he is
gentle, human, and kind. But to those who will follow us he will be just
a star god, together with Sprott-Pollux, the two gods of material
success! What I say is, if not Ottercove, then the cigar of Ottercove!
May it shine for ever and ever.”
They kneeled down and bowed low, touching the earth with their brow. And
in that attitude of holy prostration they remained a long time.
“Look,” he said, lifting his face from the ground and sitting back on
his heels, “there they are, Castor and Pollux, looking down on us
through the clouds.” Eva, who, like a small girl in church, had followed
all Frank’s movements through her spread fingers while prostrate in
prayer, uncouched as yet in the new ritual, now also sat back on her
heels and looked up at the stars. “Pollux once wrote something about
somebody with the High Hand.”
“Yes. There he stands with raised hand; you feel as if the whole of the
Five Towns were gazing down on us with quiet, benignant reproach. And
next him is Castor. Even in life Castor never used more than one eye at
a time: he closed one and put it all into the other. What an eye! All
the fire of Zeus was in that eye; it could pierce through stone walls.
He sees everything we do. There, read that look now. He seems to say:
‘You have disintegrated my thousand reporters: yet from here I see
everything and report it all direct to my God.’”
“Good God!” Eva turned to him, alarmed. “Then he has seen how you have
loved me a minute ago.”
“Castor was a reasonable being. His morality was pragmatic and rational.
Look again at that eye of his. What does it say? Not ‘go and sin no
more,’ but ‘sin and sin again till you have brought the population of
the earth back to pre-dissolution standard.’ Rex, you see, was always a
man who believed in giving you another chance.”
Eva looked thoughtful.
“The curse of Eve is upon you, my girl!”
“What is that, darling?”
“I haven’t got my Bible here--and I fear we haven’t a copy of it in this
world--but I believe it is something to do with bringing forth children
in pain and labour.”
“It is a pity,” she said, “that we haven’t brought with us any
labour-saving devices.”
“Lacked foresight, lacked vision.”
“And you, darling, will have to work in the sweat of your brow.”
“Not I! My motto is: ‘Give us peace in our time, O Lord, and _après nous
le déluge_.’”
“They may do it yet. They may come to it yet. We must not lose faith.”
“No, we must not! We must not lose faith in the sense of mankind to wipe
out mankind. But must wait, must be patient. That this idea may occur to
one among millions of men, we must breed millions of men, till there
emerges out of these masses the new Messiah, not a half-hearted devil
like de Jones who has let himself be tempted by this blue-eyed woman
Eva, but a man who will at last administer the _coup de grâce_. And so,
_allons, enfants de la patrie_! Breed, breed, breed!”
“There’s only Frau König and me,” sighed Eva. “The cook does not count.”
“Cook or no cook, we shall have to bring down the age of consent, or
else to precipitate the age of puberty, to twelve. In twelve years nine
months from to-day you and Frau König (for I have commended her to the
bereaved policeman) will be able, all being well, to give birth to
sixteen children, a total of thirty-two, of which two will come of age
that day. Some of the children may die, and the Baron’s may prove
apoplectic. But the general outlook, if not rosy, yet enables me to look
into the future with confidence.”
He sat down, and was lost in reverie. He saw the population of their
little planet rising annually, in geometrical progression, till it was
black with people, like a dish with cranberries, people packed like
sardines: working in mills, the din of machines, roaring furnaces:
producing, producing, producing roaring furnaces: producing,
producing--a sight fit to delight the eyes of the gods. And Sunday
always spent in devotion, kneeling (for lack of other gods) before
Castor and Pollux, while a priest in flowing robes held forth on the
dignity, the nobility of hard work, winding up his oration with the new
mundic anthem, and from a million throttles came one long roar:
“_Finnegan!_
_Begin again!_”
What a religion!
With a start, he detached himself from his reverie. “The stars are
getting more golden,” he said, rising, “and the sky is a dark deep
blue.”
“And, darling, look at them, I mean the stars. We can see them
everywhere, underneath as well as on top.”
“That is quite natural. The earth is a tiny ball and we can walk round
it like flies.”
“But Castor and Pollux are on top.”
“Always were top dogs even in life.”
“See, darling, Castor and Pollux are now pure gold.”
“Not unnaturally, either. Look at that wood, secretive, leering. Hush!
Hark!”
“Yes.”
“Listen:
“_‘Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht:_
_“Hab Acht!”_
_Halb neun, halb zehn, halb elf, elf, zwölf._
_Die Rehlein beten zur Nacht,_
_Sie falten die kleine Zehlein,_
_Die Rehlein._’”
“Sweet. What makes you think in German?”
“I quote in the language of the country.”
“Which country?”
“Technically this is a piece of old Austria.”
“M’m! It makes you think. A piece of old Austria. But Australia gone,
America gone, India, Russia, Paris, London, Vienna--all gone!”
“To kingdom come. Didn’t Christ always warn us that it was at hand?”
“Nobody took any notice of Him, darling.”
“Till too late. But we shall muddle through. It is an English
characteristic, to give the old country its due. Not because we are
muddle-headed, but because no other race is clear-headed enough to
perceive how muddled they are, except the Russians, who, having
perceived the muddled nature of all life, have identified themselves
with it for good.”
“There is the moon.”
“Yes, there she is.”
The moon swam out in all the fulness of her glory.
“Oh, do you remember that passage in _Hermann und Dorothea_, as they go
homeward by night, as we are doing now? How goes it?--
“‘_Herrlich glänzte der Mond, der volle, vom Himmel herunter;_
_Nacht war’s, völlig bedeckt das letzte Schimmern der Sonne._
_Und so lagen vor ihnen in Massen gegen einander_
_Lichter, hell wie der Tag, und Schatten dunkeler Nächte._’
My memory is the only repository of poetry that we have with us. And
nature, or what is left of it, the only promise of heaven. Look at those
rocks,” he pointed. “What serene dispassionate peace! They are death.
They brood, but not darkly. They are pressing upon us: you and I have to
bear their intolerable weight! The clouds sail above them, barely
touching them, toppling over. They teach us that life is not what we do
or think: that life is elsewhere, barely touching us, as those clouds.”
Somebody, probably Frau König, began to play Chopin, and the rippling
waterfall of sound, marvellous and enchanting, filtered through the air;
the strains pressed into the night and asked questions.
“O God of Love! How that woman plays. Her madness, resentment, then a
cowed, shuddering awe, and overflowing tears of tenderness. They have
summoned, you see, those other creatures, visitants from a world,
certainly not ours. ‘Perhaps,’ says Proust, ‘we shall lose them, perhaps
they will be obliterated, if we return to nothing in the dust. Perhaps
it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is
without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these
phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our
dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages
these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in
their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, and perhaps
even less certain.’”
“It dawns.”
“It dawns. Home, darling, and to bed.”
They began the descent, as the sky grew threadbare, the moon paled, and
a small peevish sun looked out, sleepy, red-eyed. Then a shaft of light
licked a fugitive cloud. A cock cleared his throat in the yard below.
The rich odour of mown grass and the rays on the ricks of straw bid them
live. They blessed their fate, and that neither of them was to be
hanged at dawn, that they had sufficient to eat and could go home and
sleep in clean sheets upon feather beds.