Mais, hélas! quelle raison
Te fait quitter la maison? . . .
Et qu'est-ce que je puis faire
Que je ne fasse pour toi?
DURING the three days of René's absence Ann did not speak to a soul.
She found the comfort of mortification in reading the attorney's
letter from Edinburgh. It made her feel hardly used, and that was
pleasant. René had crept into her life under pretext of being at an
end of his resources when he was incredibly rich. It was not fair: it
was abominable. The grievance became such an obsession as to obscure
her real dread and anxiety. In her almost crazy desire to defend
herself against the alien power that was coming to him she tore up the
letter and burned it. He would not know. She would keep him. She would
get him to take her away. It was a good idea of Casey's. They would
all go down into the country. Casey said there were cinemas in the
country. Through the whole of the last night she sat brooding in the
darkness. Every now and then she would pretend that he was there in
the next room, in the bed, and she would cling to this pretense until
she had deceived herself and could almost believe that she heard him
there. Yes. He was stirring in his sleep as he often did. She would go
into the room and run her hand over the pillows. And her
disappointment was a relief. It would have been terrible to have found
him there when she knew he was away. Where was he? Whom was he with?
Why didn't that beast Kilner know, since it was all that beast's
doing, that sly hulk with his sarcastic way of speaking and his eyes
that looked at you as if you were some sort of animal. It must be
Kilner who had got him away. She brooded herself into hatred.
In the morning she watched the painter go out, and spat after him.
Then she took a knife, went up to his room, found the picture on which
he was working, and slashed it to ribbons.
"Naked women!" she cried as she cut away at the canvas. "Naked women!
That'll teach the filthy brute."
It chanced that she was out when René returned, and he went up to
Kilner's room in the hope of finding him. He saw the havoc that had
been wrought, and understood who had done it. When the painter
returned René was still trying to piece the canvas together. Without a
word Kilner took it in his hands, and sat fingering it. He said:
"What luck! What infernal luck! I thought it was going to put me on my
feet. One of the Professors had been down to see it and was excited
about it. He thought he could get it sold for me. There's months of
work in it."
"I shouldn't have thought----"
"I told you she hated me. I didn't think she'd be clever enough to
know how to get back at me. Oh! they are clever, these women, in their
own mean little way. Drudges, they are, and drabs. It's men like you,
Fourmy, keep them so, asking them for love and taking the much they
choose to give you, and when you sicken of it they take their revenge
where they can."
"I never thought----"
"No. Damn you! You never do think. By God, I'd rather be the sort of
fool to whom a woman is only a meal or a dinner. There's less mischief
in that. What's the good of your emotions if you can't control them?
You'd much better give it up like the rest of the world, shut yourself
up in marriage to keep yourself out of harm's way. Who the devil are
you, that you should claim in life the freedom an artist hopes to get
in his art?"
There was enough truth in Kilner's denunciation to enrage René. He had
felt so clear and confident, so sure of mastering the event of his
evil, and all this bitterness had him once more throbbing and
confused.
"What," he cried, "what does a work of art more or less matter? You
can't expect the rest of us to live in filthiness so that you may
paint pictures of a beauty that is never seen."
To have stung René into a hot fury seemed to appease the artist
somewhat. He grunted and said:
"In a way you're right, and honestly I don't care a hang about the
picture. I can paint it again and better. But I thought I was going to
make some money with it, enough to get out of this forever, and it is
almost more than I can bear to know that the harm has come through
you. It doesn't matter. I'll paint it again. I'll get the fierce
little spark of intelligence burning in Eve. I'd left that out. I'll
paint her feeling half confident of her superiority to both God and
Adam, and ashamed of having to submit to their fatuous pretense of
creation, their old theatrical trick. Art and religion! They stink of
the harem and aphrodisiacs, the abominable East, the gods of lust and
self-mortification. What has your trumpery idealism to say to that?"
He flung the tattered remains of the picture on the fire and held it
down. The flames consumed the paint greedily and roared in the
chimney.
"So much for that," said Kilner. "Finished! I'll start again
to-morrow. Let's go and see your little vixen and annoy her by showing
that she hasn't hurt us in the least."
"That's vindictive."
"Ho! Have you turned Christian?"
"I'm not going to have Ann moithered."
"And why not? She must learn her lesson."
"Let me find out why she did it first."
"I know why she did it. Because she thought I had taken you away from
her."
"She can't have been jealous of you."
"Women are always jealous of a man's men friends. They know his
feeling can be just as strong for them without being weakened by sex.
And they hate that-- Now, a feeling fortified by sex--ah! but that
doesn't happen."
"That," said René, "is exactly what has happened."
"Eh? To you?"
René nodded, and he told Kilner something of the walk in the west
wind, the meeting with Cathleen, the deliverance it had brought to
both of them.
"Does she know? Ann, I mean."
"No. I haven't seen her."
"She must have felt it. Poor little devil! No, I'll not see her. It's
between you two--my rotten picture, Ann's rotten little dream of
happiness, both destroyed. You look like a destroyer, my friend. It's
in your eyes, your gestures, and movements. Absolute purpose, absolute
desire. There's nothing else worth having."
"How absurd you are, Kilner. You turn everything into a picture as
soon as you are interested in it at all. Purpose! I feel like a little
schoolboy who has to interview his headmaster. I felt just the same
once when I had been amusing myself with throwing paper out of the
window. The headmaster saw it, but not the culprit. Then I was away
from school ill, and the whole form got into trouble because no one
would own up."
Kilner shouted with laughter:
"What a picture of the young Fourmy. Doing just what he wanted to do
and evading the consequences by luck. I bet it had all blown over by
the time you got back."
"Oh, yes," said René, "but I confessed, and no one was very annoyed."
He went round to Ann's room with a sinking at his heart. She must be
told, she must be made to understand, and she never would. He felt
immeasurably older than she, responsible for her, and rather helpless.
She was out. He gazed round at the room and was touched by its poverty
and thriftlessness, the cheap little ornaments on the mantelshelf, the
souvenirs of Margate and Southend, the cigarette cards pinned to the
wall, to make, with a mirror, its only ornaments. Here they had sat,
so many evenings, he and she, in a kind of playing at happiness. Here
they had quarreled. Between quarreling and laughing they had spent all
their days, laughing into quarrels, quarreling into tears, and out of
them again laughing: the happy life of the poor, the workers, the
thoughtless, whom no care could subdue, no joy uplift. What a relief
that life had been to him when he had turned from that other life,
where all his qualities were exploited and thought and power of
expression were used only to sneak advantages, and even love and
wedded happiness were valued only as possessions! How it had stripped
him of all arrogance and cupidity of mind! The simple innocence of
those who sell themselves for bread, and know nothing of the business
for which they are used, and more despise than envy the shows in the
production of which more than half their efforts are expended. Ann's
scorn of "ladies," believing them all to be light women, her hatred of
charity organization inspectors (she had routed them more than once
when they meddled with Rita), Insurance Cards, and Old Age Pensions.
She resented being underpaid, but even more she loathed the spirit
which tried to supplement the underpayment with instruction in virtue
made impossible by it, with doles and callous assistance. It had not
escaped her that the motor-cars in the mews cost more to maintain than
the income of any one of the families who lived above them. But she
loved her little bare rooms, and if she were allowed to keep them and
the happiness that filled them she asked no more. The brave
independence: that was what René had prized in her, what was expressed
in her room. He had contributed nothing to it but a little comfort, an
easy chair, a few books, and his pleasure in her. He knew that she
treasured that above everything in the world, and he must take it from
her. He was shaken with cowardice and dread and pity--by pity most of
all. That bound him to her, dragged him down. He had not expected it,
so clear had everything seemed in the light of his healthful
experience. And, he knew, pity from him would be to her of all things
the most hateful. He could not shake free of it, and it absorbed him.
He heard her footsteps on the short flight of stairs. He was filled
with a longing to escape. With her hand on the door he lost his head
and fled into the inner room. He heard her go to the fireplace and sit
in the easy-chair. She sat silently brooding. Then she heard him in
the inner room. She had heard that before, and he was never there.
Slowly she came into the inner room, and he could just see her
smoothing the pillows with her hands. She caught the sound of his
breathing and stood stock-still. He could not move. She came toward
him groping with her hands. She touched him.
"Renny, dear."
She was pressed close to him. Her arms went round his neck.
"I knew you'd come back."
He caressed her soothingly, gently, consumed and burning in his pity
for her, and his terror lest she should discover it too suddenly.
He tried to draw her into the outer room, but she clung to him and
kept him in the darkness, forcing him to feel her animal possession of
him and hunger for him. Rage and the desire for self-preservation
thrust back his pity and he carried her back to the outer room.
Then it was some moments before she could recover herself. She stood
giggling and laughing nervously, almost hysterically.
"Renny, dear," she said, "you did say once we'd go off together. I
want to. I want to. I'm sorry I went on working. I oughtn't to have
done that. We ought to have had a house and me looking after it."
"You would have been even more unhappy."
"I'm not unhappy, Renny, dear. You've come back. And there's that
coming----"
("She must be kept off that," he thought.)
"Old Martin's been that kind," she said. "He says he'll see us through
if it's money."
"I can make enough money," he replied, and then stopped, puzzled and
startled by the malicious pleasure that came into her eyes. He leaned
forward the better to see her, for the gas jet was flickering, and she
turned away with a half smile that was exasperatingly silly.
"It isn't money," he said, "and you know it. I've seen Kilner."
She was instantly defiant on that.
"Well, and what had he to say for himself?"
"Nothing you would understand."
"Heuh! Clever, aren't you, you two, when you get your heads together."
She began to lay supper. "I'm hungry," she said. "I've not felt like
eating while you've been away. Where you been?"
"Away," he answered. "Out of London."
"To your home?"
"No."
"I thought you'd have gone to your home."
"There's nothing to take me there. I've been with friends."
"Women?"
"Yes."
She had nothing to say to that. He went on:
"One of them I knew years ago, when I was a boy."
"That's not so long ago. A lady?"
"Yes."
"A lady wouldn't take up with you now."
"She works for her living."
"The same as me?"
"The same as you."
"Well. What of it?"
"We went down into the country, she and I and her friend."
"I don't want to know about that."
"But I want to tell you."
She stood by the table and her fingers drew patterns on the cloth.
"What is it you want to tell me?"
"I'm in love with her."
Ann's lips set in a hard line, and her eyes narrowed and her brows
scowled.
"Did you come back to tell me that?"
"Yes."
"Why? Did you think I'd want to know?"
"I'm so sorry."
"Sorry, you devil? You came down to torment me. You'd better go, d'ye
hear."
René could not move. He was fascinated by the suffering in the little
creature, melted and weakened by his pity for her.
"You'd better go," she repeated. "And tell her you left a poor girl
hating you, and see how she'll like that. Sorry! That's what you say
when you step on a fellow's foot in a bus. Sorry! When you got a girl
body and soul, and you throw her away like dirt."
"I came back."
"Yes. To tell me that. To tell me I was dirt, to throw me down for her
to walk on so's she shan't get her feet wet."
She changed her tone and asked quietly:
"You knew her before me?"
"Long years before."
"Before that other one as you married?"
"Before that."
"And she's pretty and has pretty things?"
"I've told her about you."
"Oh! and she sent you back! Thank you for nothing."
"She did not. I came of my own accord. I couldn't leave you like
that."
"I'd rather you did. I'd rather you did. My Christ! I can't bear to
see you sitting there and talking and talking----"
He rose to his feet: "I can't leave you, Ann. I couldn't leave you
like you are. . . ."
She leaned across the table and put out her hand.
"Look here, Renny. D'you love me?"
"Yes."
"Heh!" She gave a snarl of incredulity. "Heh! See here! D'you want
me!"
Her eyes were staring at him cunningly, invitingly. He saw that she
half believed his weakness would lead him to evasion or consent to her
will. He waited, and made her repeat her question.
"D'you want me?"
"I want your happiness," he said. "I don't believe you will find it in
me."
She was inarticulate. Her eyes closed and she swayed. She jerked her
head toward the door. He took that for a sign that he was to go, and
moved round the table. She was before him, crouching, barring the way.
Strangled sobbing sounds came from her throat. He stretched out his
hands to implore her, to tell her of his almost intolerable pity. She
sprang at him. She had a knife in her hand. He saw it flash, felt a
burning pain in his breast, and fell. He could see her face twisted in
an agony of fear close to his. Spittle from her lips fell upon his
cheek. Her hands were busy at his breast. He lost consciousness.
V