steps moving between the dining-room and the kitchen, there and back
again, to the tune of the clattering dishes. And now all is quiet. What
is happening now? Oh, I know just as surely as if I’d gone to see—she is
standing in the middle of the kitchen facing the rainy window. Her head
is bent, with one finger she is tracing something—nothing—on the table.
It is cold in the kitchen; the gas jumps; the tap drips; it’s a forlorn
picture. And nobody is going to come behind her, to take her in his arms,
to kiss her soft hair, to lead her to the fire and to rub her hands warm
again. Nobody is going to call her or to wonder what she is doing out
there. And she knows it. And yet, being a woman, deep down, deep down,
she really does expect the miracle to happen; she really could embrace
that dark, dark deceit, rather than live—like this.
§
To live like this.... I write those words, very carefully, very
beautifully. For some reason I feel inclined to sign them, or to write
underneath—Trying a New Pen. But seriously, isn’t it staggering to
think what may be contained in one innocent-looking little phrase? It
tempts me—it tempts me terribly. Scene. The supper-table. My wife has
just handed me my tea. I stir it, lift the spoon, idly chase and then
carefully capture a speck of tea-leaf, and having brought it ashore, I
murmur, quite gently, “How long shall we continue to live—like—this?” And
immediately there is that famous “blinding flash and deafening roar. Huge
pieces of débris (I must say I like débris) are flung into the air ...
and when the dark clouds of smoke have drifted away....” But this will
never happen; I shall never know it. It will be found upon me “intact” as
they say. “Open my heart and you will see....”
Why? Ah, there you have me! There is the most difficult question of all
to answer. Why do people stay together? Putting aside “for the sake
of the children,” and “the habit of years” and “economic reasons” as
lawyers’ nonsense—it’s not much more—if one really does try to find out
why it is that people don’t leave each other, one discovers a mystery.
It is because they can’t; they are bound. And nobody on earth knows
what are the bonds that bind them except those two. Am I being obscure?
Well, the thing itself isn’t so frightfully crystal clear, is it? Let me
put it like this. Supposing you are taken, absolutely, first into his
confidence and then into hers. Supposing you know all there is to know
about the situation. And having given it not only your deepest sympathy
but your most honest impartial criticism, you declare, very calmly, (but
not without the slightest suggestion of relish—for there is—I swear there
is—in the very best of us—something that leaps up and cries “A-ahh!”
for joy at the thought of destroying), “Well, my opinion is that you
two people ought to part. You’ll do no earthly good together. Indeed,
it seems to me, it’s the duty of either to set the other free.” What
happens then? He—and she—agree. It is their conviction too. You are only
saying what they have been thinking all last night. And away they go to
act on your advice, immediately.... And the next time you hear of them
they are still together. You see—you’ve reckoned without the unknown
quantity—which is their secret relation to each other—and that they can’t
disclose even if they want to. Thus far you may tell and no further. Oh,
don’t misunderstand me! It need not necessarily have anything to do with
their sleeping together.... But this brings me to a thought I’ve often
half entertained. Which is that human beings, as we know them, don’t
choose each other at all. It is the owner, the second self inhabiting
them, who makes the choice for his own particular purposes, and—this
may sound absurdly far-fetched—it’s the second self in the other which
responds. Dimly—dimly—or so it has seemed to me—we realize this, at any
rate to the extent that we realize the hopelessness of trying to escape.
So that, what it all amounts to is—if the impermanent selves of my wife
and me are happy—_tant mieux pour nous_—if miserable—_tant pis_.... But
I don’t know, I don’t know. And it may be that it’s something entirely
individual in me—this sensation (yes, it is even a sensation) of how
extraordinarily _shell-like_ we are as we are—little creatures, peering
out of the sentry-box at the gate, ogling through our glass case at the
entry, wan little servants, who never can say for certain, even, if the
master is out or in....
The door opens.... My wife. She says, “I am going to bed.”
And I look up vaguely, and vaguely say, “You are going to bed.”
“Yes.” A tiny pause. “Don’t forget—will you?—to turn out the gas in the
hall.”
And again I repeat, “The gas in the hall.”
There was a time—the time before—when this habit of mine—it really has
become a habit now—it wasn’t one then—was one of our sweetest jokes
together. It began, of course, when on several occasions I really was
deeply engaged and I didn’t hear. I emerged only to see her shaking her
head and laughing at me, “You haven’t heard a word!”
“No. What did you say?”
Why should she think that so funny and charming? She did; it delighted
her. “Oh, my darling, it’s so like you! It’s so—so—” And I knew she
loved me for it. I knew she positively looked forward to coming in and
disturbing me, and so—as one does—I played up. I was guaranteed to be
wrapped away every evening at 10.30 p.m. But now? For some reason I feel
it would be crude to stop my performance. It’s simplest to play on. But
what is she waiting for to-night? Why doesn’t she go? Why prolong this?
She is going. No, her hand on the door-knob, she turns round again, and
she says in the most curious, small, breathless voice, “You’re not cold?”
Oh, it’s not fair to be as pathetic as that! That was simply damnable. I
shuddered all over before I managed to bring out a slow “No-o!” while my
left hand ruffles the reference pages.
She is gone; she will not come back again to-night. It is not only I who
recognize that; the room changes too. It relaxes, like an old actor.
Slowly the mask is rubbed off; the look of strained attention changes to
an air of heavy sullen brooding. Every line, every fold breathes fatigue.
The mirror is quenched; the ash whitens; only my sly lamp burns on....
But what a cynical indifference to me it all shows! Or should I perhaps
be flattered? No, we understand each other. You know those stories of
little children who are suckled by wolves and accepted by the tribe, and
how for ever after they move freely among their fleet, grey brothers?
Something like that has happened to me. But wait! That about the wolves
won’t do. Curious! Before I wrote it down, while it was still in my head,
I was delighted with it. It seemed to express, and more, to suggest, just
what I wanted to say. But written, I can smell the falseness immediately
and the ... source of the smell is in that word fleet. Don’t you agree?
Fleet, grey brothers! “Fleet.” A word I never use. When I wrote “wolves”
it skimmed across my mind like a shadow and I couldn’t resist it. Tell
me! Tell me! Why is it so difficult to write simply—and not only simply
but _sotto voce_, if you know what I mean? That is how I long to write.
No fine effects—no bravura. But just the plain truth, as only a liar can
tell it.
§
I light a cigarette, lean back, inhale deeply—and find myself wondering
if my wife is asleep. Or is she lying in her cold bed, staring into the
dark, with those trustful, bewildered eyes? Her eyes are like the eyes
of a cow that is being driven along a road. “Why am I being driven—what
harm have I done?” But I really am not responsible for that look; it’s
her natural expression. One day, when she was turning out a cupboard,
she found a little old photograph of herself, taken when she was a girl
at school. In her confirmation dress, she explained. And there were the
eyes, even then. I remember saying to her, “Did you always look so sad?”
Leaning over my shoulder, she laughed lightly, “Do I look sad? I think
it’s just ... me.” And she waited for me to say something about it. But
I was marvelling at her courage at having shown it to me at all. It was
a hideous photograph! And I wondered again if she realized how plain she
was, and comforted herself with the idea that people who loved each other
didn’t criticize but accepted everything, or if she really rather liked
her appearance and expected me to say something complimentary.
Oh, that was base of me! How could I have forgotten all the numberless
times when I have known her to turn away to avoid the light, press her
face into my shoulders. And, above all, how could I have forgotten the
afternoon of our wedding day when we sat on the green bench in the
Botanical Gardens and listened to the band, how, in an interval between
two pieces, she suddenly turned to me and said in the voice in which one
says, “Do you think the grass is damp?” or “Do you think it’s time for
tea?” ... “Tell me, do you think physical beauty is so very important?”
I don’t like to think how often she had rehearsed that question. And do
you know what I answered? At that moment, as if at my command there came
a great gush of hard, bright sound from the band, and I managed to shout
above it cheerfully, “I didn’t hear what you said.” Devilish! Wasn’t
it? Perhaps not wholly. She looked like the poor patient who hears the
surgeon say, “It will certainly be necessary to perform the operation—but
not now!”
§
But all this conveys the impression that my wife and I were never really
happy together. Not true! Not true! We were marvellously, radiantly
happy. We were a model couple. If you had seen us together, any time, any
place, if you had followed us, tracked us down, spied, taken us off our
guard, you still would have been forced to confess, “I have never seen a
more ideally suited pair.” Until last autumn.
But really to explain what happened then I should have to go back
and back, I should have to dwindle until my two hands clutched the
banisters, the stair-rail was higher than my head, and I peered through
to watch my father padding softly up and down. There were coloured
windows on the landings. As he came up, first his bald head was scarlet;
then it was yellow. How frightened I was! And when they put me to bed,
it was to dream that we were living inside one of my father’s big
coloured bottles. For he was a chemist. I was born nine years after my
parents were married. I was an only child, and the effect to produce even
me—small, withered bud I must have been—sapped all my mother’s strength.
She never left the room again. Bed, sofa, window, she moved between the
three. Well I can see her, on the window days, sitting, her cheek in her
hand, staring out. Her room looked over the street. Opposite there was a
wall plastered with advertisements for travelling shows and circuses and
so on. I stand beside her, and we gaze at the slim lady in a red dress
hitting a dark gentleman over the head with a parasol, or at the tiger
peering through the jungle while the clown, close by, balances a bottle
on his nose, or at a little golden-haired girl sitting on the knee of
an old black man in a broad cotton hat.... She says nothing. On sofa
days there is a flannel dressing gown that I loathe, and a cushion that
keeps on slipping off the hard sofa. I pick it up. It has flowers and
writing sewn on. I ask what the writing says, and she whispers, “Sweet
Repose!” In bed her fingers plait, in tight little plaits, the fringe of
the quilt, and her lips are thin. And that is all there is of my mother,
except the last queer “episode” that comes later.
My father.... Curled up in the corner on the lid of a round box that held
sponges, I stared at my father so long, it’s as though his image, cut off
at the waist by the counter, has remained solid in my memory. Perfectly
bald, polished head, shaped like a thin egg, creased, creamy cheeks,
little bags under his eyes, large pale ears like handles. His manner was
discreet, sly, faintly amused and tinged with impudence. Long before I
could appreciate it, I knew the mixture.... I even used to copy him in my
corner, bending forward, with a small reproduction of his faint sneer. In
the evening his customers were, chiefly, young women; some of them came
in every day for his famous five-penny pick-me-up. Their gaudy looks,
their voices, their free ways, fascinated me. I longed to be my father,
handing them across the counter the little glass of bluish stuff they
tossed off so greedily. God knows what it was made of. Years after I
drank some, just to see what it tasted like, and I felt as though someone
had given me a terrific blow on the head; I felt stunned.
One of those evenings I remember vividly. It was cold; it must have
been autumn, for the flaring gas was lighted after my tea. I sat in my
corner and my father was mixing something; the shop was empty. Suddenly
the bell jangled and a young woman rushed in, crying so loud, sobbing so
hard, that it didn’t sound real. She wore a green cape trimmed with fur
and a hat with cherries dangling. My father came from behind the screen.
But she didn’t stop herself at first. She stood in the middle of the
shop and wrung her hands and moaned; I’ve never heard such crying since.
Presently she managed to gasp out, “Give me a pick-me-up!” Then she
drew a long breath, trembled away from him and quavered, “I’ve had _bad
news_!” And in the flaring gaslight I saw the whole side of her face was
puffed up and purple; her lip was cut, and her eyelid looked as though
it was gummed fast over the wet eye. My father pushed the glass across
the counter, and she took the purse out of her stocking and paid him. But
she couldn’t drink; clutching the glass, she stared in front of her as if
she could not believe what she saw. Each time she put her head back the
tears spurted out again. Finally she put the glass down. It was no use.
Holding the cape with one hand, she ran in the same way out of the shop
again. My father gave no sign. But long after she had gone I crouched
in my corner, and when I think back it’s as though I felt my whole body
vibrating—“So that’s what it is outside,” I thought. “That’s what it’s
like out there.”
§
Do you remember your childhood? I am always coming across these
marvellous accounts by writers who declare that they remember
“everything.” I certainly don’t. The dark stretches, the blanks, are much
bigger than the bright glimpses. I seem to have spent most of my time
like a plant in a cupboard. Now and again, when the sun shone, a careless
hand thrust me out on the window-sill, and a careless hand whipped me in
again—and that was all. But what happened in the darkness—I wonder? Did
one grow? pale stem ... timid leaves ... white reluctant bud. No wonder I
was hated at school. Even the masters shrank from me. I somehow knew that
my soft hesitating voice disgusted them. I knew, too, how they turned
away from my shocked, staring eyes. I was small and thin, and I smelled
of the shop; my nickname was Gregory Powder. School was a tin building,
stuck on the raw hillside. There were dark red streaks like blood in the
oozing clay banks of the playground. I hide in the dark passage, where
the coats hang, and am discovered there by one of the masters. “What
are you doing there in the dark?” His terrible voice kills me; I die
before his eyes. I am standing in a ring of thrust-out heads; some are
grinning, some look greedy, some are spitting. And it is always cold. Big
crushed-up clouds press across the sky; the rusty water in the school
tank is frozen; the bell sounds numb. One day they put a dead bird in my
overcoat pocket. I found it just when I reached home. Oh, what a strange
flutter there was at my heart when I drew out that terribly soft, cold
little body, with the legs thin as pins and the claws wrung. I sat on the
back door step in the yard and put the bird in my cap. The feathers round
the neck looked wet, and there was a tiny tuft just above the closed eyes
that stood up too. How tightly the beak was shut! I could not see the
mark where it was divided. I stretched out one wing and touched the soft,
secret down underneath; I tried to make the claws curl round my little
finger. But I didn’t feel sorry for it—no! I wondered. The smoke from our
kitchen chimney poured downwards, and flakes of soot floated—soft, light
in the air. Through a big crack in the cement yard a poor-looking plant
with dull, reddish flowers had pushed its way. I looked at the dead bird
again.... And that is the first time that I remember singing—rather ...
listening to a silent voice inside a little cage that was me.
§
But what has all this to do with my married happiness? How can all this
affect my wife and me? Why—to tell what happened last autumn—do I run
all this way back into the Past? The Past—what is the Past? I might
say the star-shaped flake of soot on a leaf of the poor-looking plant,
and the bird lying on the quilted lining of my cap, and my father’s
pestle and my mother’s cushion belong to it. But that is not to say they
are any less mine than they were when I looked upon them with my very
eyes, and touched them with these fingers. No, they are more; they are
a living part of me. Who am I, in fact, as I sit here at this table,
but my own past? If I deny that, I am nothing. And if I were to try to
divide my life into childhood, youth, early manhood and so on, it would
be a kind of affectation; I should know I was doing it just because of
the pleasantly important sensation it gives one to rule lines, and to
use green ink for childhood, red for the next stage, and purple for
the period of adolescence. For one thing I have learnt, one thing I do
believe is, Nothing Happens Suddenly. Yes, that is my religion, I suppose.
My mother’s death, for instance. Is it more distant from me today than
it was then? It is just as close, as strange, as puzzling, and in spite
of all the countless times I have recalled the circumstances, I know no
more now than I did then, whether I dreamed them, or whether they really
occurred. It happened when I was thirteen and I slept in a little strip
of a room on what was called the half-landing. One night I woke up with a
start to see my mother, in her night-gown, without even the hated flannel
dressing-gown, sitting on my bed. But the strange thing which frightened
me was, she wasn’t looking at me. Her head was bent; the short, thin tail
of hair lay between her shoulders; her hands were pressed between her
knees, and my bed shook; she was shivering. It was the first time I had
ever seen her out of her own room. I said, or I think I said, “Is that
you, Mother?” And as she turned round, I saw in the moonlight how queer
she looked. Her face looked small—quite different. She looked like one
of the boys at the school baths, who sits on a step, shivering just like
that, and wants to go in and yet is frightened.
“Are you awake?” she said. Her eyes opened; I think she smiled. She
leaned towards me. “I’ve been poisoned,” she whispered. “Your father’s
poisoned me.” And she nodded. Then, before I could say a word, she was
gone; I thought I heard the door shut. I sat quite still, I couldn’t
move, I think I expected something else to happen. For a long time I
listened for something; there wasn’t a sound. The candle was by my
bed, but I was too frightened to stretch out my hand for the matches.
But even while I wondered what I ought to do, even while my heart
thumped—everything became confused. I lay down and pulled the blankets
round me. I fell asleep, and the next morning my mother was found dead of
failure of the heart.
Did that visit happen? Was it a dream? Why did she come to tell me? Or
why, if she came, did she go away so quickly? And her expression—so
joyous under the frightened look—was that real? I believed it fully the
afternoon of the funeral, when I saw my father dressed up for his part,
hat and all. That tall hat so gleaming black and round was like a cork
covered with black sealing-wax, and the rest of my father was awfully
like a bottle, with his face for the label—_Deadly Poison_. It flashed
into my mind as I stood opposite him in the hall. And Deadly Poison, or
old D. P., was my private name for him from that day.
§
Late, it grows late. I love the night. I love to feel the tide of
darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over,
lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that
lies hid in rocky hollows. I love, I love this strange feeling of
drifting—whither? After my mother’s death I hated to go to bed. I used
to sit on the window-sill, folded up, and watch the sky. It seemed to me
the moon moved much faster than the sun. And one big, bright green star
I chose for my own. My star! But I never thought of it beckoning to me,
or twinkling merrily for my sake. Cruel, indifferent, splendid—it burned
in the airy night. No matter—it was mine! But, growing close up against
the window, there was a creeper with small, bunched-up pink and purple
flowers. These did know me. These, when I touched them at night, welcomed
my fingers; the little tendrils, so weak, so delicate, knew I would not
hurt them. When the wind moved the leaves I felt I understood their
shaking. When I came to the window, it seemed to me the flowers said
among themselves, “The boy is here.”
As the months passed, there was often a light in my father’s room below.
And I heard voices and laughter. “He’s got some woman with him,” I
thought. But it meant nothing to me. Then the gay voice, the sound of
laughter, gave me the idea it was one of the girls who used to come to
the shop in the evenings—and gradually I began to imagine which girl it
was. It was the dark one in the red coat and skirt, who once had given me
a penny. A merry face stooped over me—warm breath tickled my neck—there
were little beads of black on her long lashes, and when she opened her
arms to kiss me, there came a marvellous wave of scent! Yes, that was the
one.
Time passed, and I forgot the moon and my green star and my shy creeper—I
came to the window to wait for the light in my father’s window, to listen
for the laughing voice, until one night I dozed and I dreamed she came
again—again she drew me to her, something soft, scented, warm and merry
hung over me like a cloud. But when I tried to see, her eyes only mocked
me, her red lips opened and she hissed, “Little sneak! Little sneak!” But
not as if she were angry,—as if she understood, and her smile somehow was
like a rat—hateful!
The night after, I lighted the candle and sat down at the table instead.
By and by, as the flame steadied, there was a small lake of liquid wax,
surrounded by a white, smooth wall. I took a pin and made little holes
in this wall and then sealed them up faster than the wax could escape.
After a time I fancied the candle flame joined in the game; it leapt up,
quivered, wagged; it even seemed to laugh. But while I played with the
candle and smiled and broke off the tiny white peaks of wax that rose
above the wall and floated them on my lake, a feeling of awful dreariness
fastened on me—yes, that’s the word. It crept up from my knees to my
thighs, into my arms; I ached all with misery. And I felt so strangely
that I couldn’t move. Something bound me there by the table—I couldn’t
even let the pin drop that I held between my finger and thumb. For a
moment I came to a stop, as it were.
Then the shrivelled case of the bud split and fell, the plant in the
cupboard came into flower. “Who am I?” I thought. “What is all this?” And
I looked at my room, at the broken bust of the man called Hahnemann on
top of the cupboard, at my little bed with the pillow like an envelope.
I saw it all, but not as I had seen before.... Everything lived,
everything. But that was not all. I was equally alive and—it’s the only
way I can express it—the barriers were down between us—I had come into my
own world!
§
The barriers were down. I had been all my life a little outcast; but
until that moment no one had “accepted” me; I had lain in the cupboard—or
the cave forlorn. But now I was taken, I was accepted, claimed. I did not
consciously turn away from the world of human beings; I had never known
it; but I from that night did beyond words consciously turn towards my
silent brothers....
THE DOVES’ NEST
After lunch Milly and her mother were sitting as usual on the balcony
beyond the salon, admiring for the five hundredth time the stocks, the
roses, the small, bright grass beneath the palms, and the oranges against
a wavy line of blue, when a card was brought them by Marie. Visitors
at the Villa Martin were very rare. True, the English clergyman, Mr.
Sandiman, had called, and he had come a second time with his wife to tea.
But an awful thing had happened on that second occasion. Mother had made
a mistake. She had said “More tea, Mr. Sandybags?” Oh, what a frightful
thing to have happened! How could she have done it? Milly still flamed
at the thought. And he had evidently not forgiven them; he’d never come
again. So this card put them both into a flutter.