Denis did not dance, but when ragtime came squirting out of the pianola
in gushes of treacle and hot perfume, in jets of Bengal light, then
things began to dance inside him. Little black nigger corpuscles jigged
and drummed in his arteries. He became a cage of movement, a walking
palais de danse. It was very uncomfortable, like the preliminary
symptoms of a disease. He sat in one of the window-seats, glumly
pretending to read.
At the pianola, Henry Wimbush, smoking a long cigar through a tunnelled
pillar of amber, trod out the shattering dance music with serene
patience. Locked together, Gombauld and Anne moved with a harmoniousness
that made them seem a single creature, two-headed and four-legged. Mr.
Scogan, solemnly buffoonish, shuffled round the room with Mary. Jenny
sat in the shadow behind the piano, scribbling, so it seemed, in a
big red notebook. In arm-chairs by the fireplace, Priscilla and Mr.
Barbecue-Smith discussed higher things, without, apparently, being
disturbed by the noise on the Lower Plane.
“Optimism,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith with a tone of finality, speaking
through strains of the “Wild, Wild Women”--“optimism is the opening out
of the soul towards the light; it is an expansion towards and into God,
it is a h-piritual self-unification with the Infinite.”
“How true!” sighed Priscilla, nodding the baleful splendours of her
coiffure.
“Pessimism, on the other hand, is the contraction of the soul towards
darkness; it is a focusing of the self upon a point in the Lower Plane;
it is a h-piritual slavery to mere facts; to gross physical phenomena.”
“They’re making a wild man of me.” The refrain sang itself over in
Denis’s mind. Yes, they were; damn them! A wild man, but not wild
enough; that was the trouble. Wild inside; raging, writhing--yes,
“writhing” was the word, writhing with desire. But outwardly he was
hopelessly tame; outwardly--baa, baa, baa.
There they were, Anne and Gombauld, moving together as though they were
a single supple creature. The beast with two backs. And he sat in
a corner, pretending to read, pretending he didn’t want to dance,
pretending he rather despised dancing. Why? It was the baa-baa business
again.
Why was he born with a different face? Why WAS he? Gombauld had a face
of brass--one of those old, brazen rams that thumped against the walls
of cities till they fell. He was born with a different face--a woolly
face.
The music stopped. The single harmonious creature broke in two. Flushed,
a little breathless, Anne swayed across the room to the pianola, laid
her hand on Mr. Wimbush’s shoulder.
“A waltz this time, please, Uncle Henry,” she said.
“A waltz,” he repeated, and turned to the cabinet where the rolls were
kept. He trod off the old roll and trod on the new, a slave at the
mill, uncomplaining and beautifully well bred.
“Rum; Tum; Rum-ti-ti; Tum-ti-ti...”
The melody wallowed oozily along, like a ship moving forward over a
sleek and oily swell. The four-legged creature, more graceful, more
harmonious in its movements than ever, slid across the floor. Oh, why
was he born with a different face?
“What are you reading?”
He looked up, startled. It was Mary. She had broken from the
uncomfortable embrace of Mr. Scogan, who had now seized on Jenny for his
victim.
“What are you reading?”
“I don’t know,” said Denis truthfully. He looked at the title page; the
book was called “The Stock Breeder’s Vade Mecum.”
“I think you are so sensible to sit and read quietly,” said Mary, fixing
him with her china eyes. “I don’t know why one dances. It’s so boring.”
Denis made no reply; she exacerbated him. From the arm-chair by the
fireplace he heard Priscilla’s deep voice.
“Tell me, Mr Barbecue-Smith--you know all about science, I know--” A
deprecating noise came from Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s chair. “This Einstein
theory. It seems to upset the whole starry universe. It makes me so
worried about my horoscopes. You see...”
Mary renewed her attack. “Which of the contemporary poets do you like
best?” she asked. Denis was filled with fury. Why couldn’t this pest of
a girl leave him alone? He wanted to listen to the horrible music, to
watch them dancing--oh, with what grace, as though they had been made
for one another!--to savour his misery in peace. And she came and put
him through this absurd catechism! She was like “Mangold’s Questions”:
“What are the three diseases of wheat?”--“Which of the contemporary
poets do you like best?”
“Blight, Mildew, and Smut,” he replied, with the laconism of one who is
absolutely certain of his own mind.
It was several hours before Denis managed to go to sleep that night.
Vague but agonising miseries possessed his mind. It was not only Anne
who made him miserable; he was wretched about himself, the future, life
in general, the universe. “This adolescence business,” he repeated to
himself every now and then, “is horribly boring.” But the fact that he
knew his disease did not help him to cure it.
After kicking all the clothes off the bed, he got up and sought relief
in composition. He wanted to imprison his nameless misery in words. At
the end of an hour, nine more or less complete lines emerged from among
the blots and scratchings.
“I do not know what I desire
When summer nights are dark and still,
When the wind’s many-voiced quire
Sleeps among the muffled branches.
I long and know not what I will:
And not a sound of life or laughter stanches
Time’s black and silent flow.
I do not know what I desire,
I do not know.”
He read it through aloud; then threw the scribbled sheet into the
waste-paper basket and got into bed again. In a very few minutes he was
asleep.