though it's only cold water you want, and sometimes when the night's
been bad it seems as if washing helped. And John at breakfast--the
children--meals are worst, and sometimes there are friends--ferns don't
altogether hide 'em--they guess, too; so out you go along the front,
where the waves are grey, and the papers blow, and the glass shelters
green and draughty, and the chairs cost tuppence--too much--for there
must be preachers along the sands. Ah, that's a nigger--that's a funny
man--that's a man with parakeets--poor little creatures! Is there no
one here who thinks of God?--just up there, over the pier, with his
rod--but no--there's nothing but grey in the sky or if it's blue the
white clouds hide him, and the music--it's military music--and what they
are fishing for? Do they catch them? How the children stare! Well, then
home a back way--"Home a back way!" The words have meaning; might have
been spoken by the old man with whiskers--no, no, he didn't really
speak; but everything has meaning--placards leaning against
doorways--names above shop-windows--red fruit in baskets--women's heads
in the hairdresser's--all say "Minnie Marsh!" But here's a jerk. "Eggs
are cheaper!" That's what always happens! I was heading her over the
waterfall, straight for madness, when, like a flock of dream sheep, she
turns t'other way and runs between my fingers. Eggs are cheaper.
Tethered to the shores of the world, none of the crimes, sorrows,
rhapsodies, or insanities for poor Minnie Marsh; never late for
luncheon; never caught in a storm without a mackintosh; never utterly
unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home--scrapes her
boots.
Have I read you right? But the human face--the human face at the top of
the fullest sheet of print holds more, withholds more. Now, eyes open,
she looks out; and in the human eye--how d'you define it?--there's a
break--a division--so that when you've grasped the stem the butterfly's
off--the moth that hangs in the evening over the yellow flower--move,
raise your hand, off, high, away. I won't raise my hand. Hang still,
then, quiver, life, soul, spirit, whatever you are of Minnie Marsh--I,
too, on my flower--the hawk over the down--alone, or what were the worth
of life? To rise; hang still in the evening, in the midday; hang still
over the down. The flicker of a hand--off, up! then poised again. Alone,
unseen; seeing all so still down there, all so lovely. None seeing, none
caring. The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. Air
above, air below. And the moon and immortality.... Oh, but I drop to the
turf! Are you down too, you in the corner, what's your
name--woman--Minnie Marsh; some such name as that? There she is, tight
to her blossom; opening her hand-bag, from which she takes a hollow
shell--an egg--who was saying that eggs were cheaper? You or I? Oh, it
was you who said it on the way home, you remember, when the old
gentleman, suddenly opening his umbrella--or sneezing was it? Anyhow,
Kruger went, and you came "home a back way," and scraped your boots.
Yes. And now you lay across your knees a pocket-handkerchief into which
drop little angular fragments of eggshell--fragments of a map--a puzzle.
I wish I could piece them together! If you would only sit still. She's
moved her knees--the map's in bits again. Down the slopes of the Andes
the white blocks of marble go bounding and hurtling, crushing to death a
whole troop of Spanish muleteers, with their convoy--Drake's booty,
gold and silver. But to return----
To what, to where? She opened the door, and, putting her umbrella in the
stand--that goes without saying; so, too, the whiff of beef from the
basement; dot, dot, dot. But what I cannot thus eliminate, what I must,
head down, eyes shut, with the courage of a battalion and the blindness
of a bull, charge and disperse are, indubitably, the figures behind the
ferns, commercial travellers. There I've hidden them all this time in
the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as
indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and
rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it
two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of
aspidistra. "The fronds of the aspidistra only partly concealed the
commercial traveller--" Rhododendrons would conceal him utterly, and
into the bargain give me my fling of red and white, for which I starve
and strive; but rhododendrons in Eastbourne--in December--on the
Marshes' table--no, no, I dare not; it's all a matter of crusts and
cruets, frills and ferns. Perhaps there'll be a moment later by the sea.
Moreover, I feel, pleasantly pricking through the green fretwork and
over the glacis of cut glass, a desire to peer and peep at the man
opposite--one's as much as I can manage. James Moggridge is it, whom the
Marshes call Jimmy? [Minnie, you must promise not to twitch till I've
got this straight]. James Moggridge travels in--shall we say
buttons?--but the time's not come for bringing _them_ in--the big and
the little on the long cards, some peacock-eyed, others dull gold;
cairngorms some, and others coral sprays--but I say the time's not come.
He travels, and on Thursdays, his Eastbourne day, takes his meals with
the Marshes. His red face, his little steady eyes--by no means
altogether commonplace--his enormous appetite (that's safe; he won't
look at Minnie till the bread's swamped the gravy dry), napkin tucked
diamond-wise--but this is primitive, and, whatever it may do the reader,
don't take me in. Let's dodge to the Moggridge household, set that in
motion. Well, the family boots are mended on Sundays by James himself.
He reads _Truth_. But his passion? Roses--and his wife a retired
hospital nurse--interesting--for God's sake let me have one woman with a
name I like! But no; she's of the unborn children of the mind, illicit,
none the less loved, like my rhododendrons. How many die in every novel
that's written--the best, the dearest, while Moggridge lives. It's
life's fault. Here's Minnie eating her egg at the moment opposite and at
t'other end of the line--are we past Lewes?--there must be Jimmy--or
what's her twitch for?
There must be Moggridge--life's fault. Life imposes her laws; life
blocks the way; life's behind the fern; life's the tyrant; oh, but not
the bully! No, for I assure you I come willingly; I come wooed by Heaven
knows what compulsion across ferns and cruets, table splashed and
bottles smeared. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the
firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find
foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous
stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as
oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red
hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat
falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be churned to blood again--and
so we reach the eyes. Behind the aspidistra they see something: black,
white, dismal; now the plate again; behind the aspidistra they see
elderly woman; "Marsh's sister, Hilda's more my sort;" the tablecloth
now. "Marsh would know what's wrong with Morrises ..." talk that over;
cheese has come; the plate again; turn it round--the enormous fingers;
now the woman opposite. "Marsh's sister--not a bit like Marsh; wretched,
elderly female.... You should feed your hens.... God's truth, what's
set her twitching? Not what _I_ said? Dear, dear, dear! these elderly
women. Dear, dear!"
[Yes, Minnie; I know you've twitched, but one moment--James Moggridge].
"Dear, dear, dear!" How beautiful the sound is! like the knock of a
mallet on seasoned timber, like the throb of the heart of an ancient
whaler when the seas press thick and the green is clouded. "Dear, dear!"
what a passing bell for the souls of the fretful to soothe them and
solace them, lap them in linen, saying, "So long. Good luck to you!" and
then, "What's your pleasure?" for though Moggridge would pluck his rose
for her, that's done, that's over. Now what's the next thing? "Madam,
you'll miss your train," for they don't linger.
That's the man's way; that's the sound that reverberates; that's St.
Paul's and the motor-omnibuses. But we're brushing the crumbs off. Oh,
Moggridge, you won't stay? You must be off? Are you driving through
Eastbourne this afternoon in one of those little carriages? Are you the
man who's walled up in green cardboard boxes, and sometimes has the
blinds down, and sometimes sits so solemn staring like a sphinx, and
always there's a look of the sepulchral, something of the undertaker,
the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver? Do tell me--but the
doors slammed. We shall never meet again. Moggridge, farewell!
Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up to the top of the house. One moment I'll
linger. How the mud goes round in the mind--what a swirl these monsters
leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there,
striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit
sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still, and
there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for
the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again.
James Moggridge is dead now, gone for ever. Well, Minnie--"I can face it
no longer." If she said that--(Let me look at her. She is brushing the
eggshell into deep declivities). She said it certainly, leaning against
the wall of the bedroom, and plucking at the little balls which edge the
claret-coloured curtain. But when the self speaks to the self, who is
speaking?--the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the
central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world--a
coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern
restlessly up and down the dark corridors. "I can bear it no longer,"
her spirit says. "That man at lunch--Hilda--the children." Oh, heavens,
her sob! It's the spirit wailing its destiny, the spirit driven hither,
thither, lodging on the diminishing carpets--meagre footholds--shrunken
shreds of all the vanishing universe--love, life, faith, husband,
children, I know not what splendours and pageantries glimpsed in
girlhood. "Not for me--not for me."
But then--the muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats I should fancy
and the consolation of underlinen. If Minnie Marsh were run over and
taken to hospital, nurses and doctors themselves would exclaim....
There's the vista and the vision--there's the distance--the blue blot at
the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin
hot, and the dog--"Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mother's
brought you!" So, taking the glove with the worn thumb, defying once
more the encroaching demon of what's called going in holes, you renew
the fortifications, threading the grey wool, running it in and out.
Running it in and out, across and over, spinning a web through which God
himself--hush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must
be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall
gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let
the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the
twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens!
Back again to the thing you did, the plate glass with the violet loops?
But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! Close the breach.
Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh lays it in the drawer. She shuts
the drawer with decision. I catch sight of her face in the glass. Lips
are pursed. Chin held high. Next she laces her shoes. Then she touches
her throat. What's your brooch? Mistletoe or merry-thought? And what is
happening? Unless I'm much mistaken, the pulse's quickened, the moment's
coming, the threads are racing, Niagara's ahead. Here's the crisis!
Heaven be with you! Down she goes. Courage, courage! Face it, be it! For
God's sake don't wait on the mat now! There's the door! I'm on your
side. Speak! Confront her, confound her soul!
"Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for
you. Let me try the handle." [But, Minnie, though we keep up pretences,
I've read you right--I'm with you now].
"That's all your luggage?"
"Much obliged, I'm sure."
(But why do you look about you? Hilda won't come to the station, nor
John; and Moggridge is driving at the far side of Eastbourne).
"I'll wait by my bag, ma'am, that's safest. He said he'd meet me.... Oh,
there he is! That's my son."
So they walk off together.
Well, but I'm confounded.... Surely, Minnie, you know better! A strange
young man.... Stop! I'll tell him--Minnie!--Miss Marsh!--I don't know
though. There's something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but it's
untrue, it's indecent.... Look how he bends as they reach the gateway.
She finds her ticket. What's the joke? Off they go, down the road, side
by side.... Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I
know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's
bare as bone.
And yet the last look of them--he stepping from the kerb and she
following him round the edge of the big building brims me with
wonder--floods me anew. Mysterious figures! Mother and son. Who are you?
Why do you walk down the street? Where to-night will you sleep, and
then, to-morrow? Oh, how it whirls and surges--floats me afresh! I start
after them. People drive this way and that. The white light splutters
and pours. Plate-glass windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark
gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I
see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten,
I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as
ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go
through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I
adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me--adorable
world!
THE STRING QUARTET
Well, here we are, and if you cast your eye over the room you will see
that Tubes and trams and omnibuses, private carriages not a few, even, I
venture to believe, landaus with bays in them, have been busy at it,
weaving threads from one end of London to the other. Yet I begin to have
my doubts--
If indeed it's true, as they're saying, that Regent Street is up, and
the Treaty signed, and the weather not cold for the time of year, and
even at that rent not a flat to be had, and the worst of influenza its
after effects; if I bethink me of having forgotten to write about the
leak in the larder, and left my glove in the train; if the ties of blood
require me, leaning forward, to accept cordially the hand which is
perhaps offered hesitatingly--
"Seven years since we met!"
"The last time in Venice."
"And where are you living now?"
"Well, the late afternoon suits me the best, though, if it weren't
asking too much----"
"But I knew you at once!"
"Still, the war made a break----"
If the mind's shot through by such little arrows, and--for human society
compels it--no sooner is one launched than another presses forward; if
this engenders heat and in addition they've turned on the electric
light; if saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a
need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures,
vanities, and desires--if it's all the facts I mean, and the hats, the
fur boas, the gentlemen's swallow-tail coats, and pearl tie-pins that
come to the surface--what chance is there?
Of what? It becomes every minute more difficult to say why, in spite of
everything, I sit here believing I can't now say what, or even remember
the last time it happened.
"Did you see the procession?"
"The King looked cold."
"No, no, no. But what was it?"
"She's bought a house at Malmesbury."
"How lucky to find one!"
On the contrary, it seems to me pretty sure that she, whoever she may
be, is damned, since it's all a matter of flats and hats and sea gulls,
or so it seems to be for a hundred people sitting here well dressed,
walled in, furred, replete. Not that I can boast, since I too sit
passive on a gilt chair, only turning the earth above a buried memory,
as we all do, for there are signs, if I'm not mistaken, that we're all
recalling something, furtively seeking something. Why fidget? Why so
anxious about the sit of cloaks; and gloves--whether to button or
unbutton? Then watch that elderly face against the dark canvas, a moment
ago urbane and flushed; now taciturn and sad, as if in shadow. Was it
the sound of the second violin tuning in the ante-room? Here they come;
four black figures, carrying instruments, and seat themselves facing
the white squares under the downpour of light; rest the tips of their
bows on the music stand; with a simultaneous movement lift them; lightly
poise them, and, looking across at the player opposite, the first violin
counts one, two, three----
Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst! The pear tree on the top of the
mountain. Fountains jet; drops descend. But the waters of the Rhone flow
swift and deep, race under the arches, and sweep the trailing water
leaves, washing shadows over the silver fish, the spotted fish rushed
down by the swift waters, now swept into an eddy where--it's difficult
this--conglomeration of fish all in a pool; leaping, splashing, scraping
sharp fins; and such a boil of current that the yellow pebbles are
churned round and round, round and round--free now, rushing downwards,
or even somehow ascending in exquisite spirals into the air; curled like
thin shavings from under a plane; up and up.... How lovely goodness is
in those who, stepping lightly, go smiling through the world! Also in
jolly old fishwives, squatted under arches, obscene old women, how
deeply they laugh and shake and rollick, when they walk, from side to
side, hum, hah!
"That's an early Mozart, of course----"
"But the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair--I mean hope. What
do I mean? That's the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink
cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story,
now--I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes
indecency. Hah, hah! I'm laughing. What at? You said nothing, nor did
the old gentleman opposite.... But suppose--suppose--Hush!"
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the
trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird
singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow,
sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight. Woven
together, inextricably commingled, bound in pain and strewn in
sorrow--crash!
The boat sinks. Rising, the figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering
to a dusky wraith, which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion from
my heart. For me it sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws compassion, floods
with love the sunless world, nor, ceasing, abates its tenderness but
deftly, subtly, weaves in and out until in this pattern, this
consummation, the cleft ones unify; soar, sob, sink to rest, sorrow and
joy.
Why then grieve? Ask what? Remain unsatisfied? I say all's been settled;
yes; laid to rest under a coverlet of rose leaves, falling. Falling. Ah,
but they cease. One rose leaf, falling from an enormous height, like a
little parachute dropped from an invisible balloon, turns, flutters
waveringly. It won't reach us.
"No, no. I noticed nothing. That's the worst of music--these silly
dreams. The second violin was late, you say?"
"There's old Mrs. Munro, feeling her way out--blinder each year, poor
woman--on this slippery floor."
Eyeless old age, grey-headed Sphinx.... There she stands on the
pavement, beckoning, so sternly, the red omnibus.
"How lovely! How well they play! How--how--how!"
The tongue is but a clapper. Simplicity itself. The feathers in the hat
next me are bright and pleasing as a child's rattle. The leaf on the
plane-tree flashes green through the chink in the curtain. Very strange,
very exciting.
"How--how--how!" Hush!
These are the lovers on the grass.
"If, madam, you will take my hand----"
"Sir, I would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies
in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls."
"Then these are the embraces of our souls." The lemons nod assent. The
swan pushes from the bank and floats dreaming into mid stream.
"But to return. He followed me down the corridor, and, as we turned the
corner, trod on the lace of my petticoat. What could I do but cry 'Ah!'
and stop to finger it? At which he drew his sword, made passes as if he
were stabbing something to death, and cried, 'Mad! Mad! Mad!' Whereupon
I screamed, and the Prince, who was writing in the large vellum book in
the oriel window, came out in his velvet skull-cap and furred slippers,
snatched a rapier from the wall--the King of Spain's gift, you know--on
which I escaped, flinging on this cloak to hide the ravages to my
skirt--to hide.... But listen! the horns!"
The gentleman replies so fast to the lady, and she runs up the scale
with such witty exchange of compliment now culminating in a sob of
passion, that the words are indistinguishable though the meaning is
plain enough--love, laughter, flight, pursuit, celestial bliss--all
floated out on the gayest ripple of tender endearment--until the sound
of the silver horns, at first far distant, gradually sounds more and
more distinctly, as if seneschals were saluting the dawn or proclaiming
ominously the escape of the lovers.... The green garden, moonlit pool,
lemons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky, across
which, as the horns are joined by trumpets and supported by clarions
there rise white arches firmly planted on marble pillars.... Tramp and
trumpeting. Clang and clangour. Firm establishment. Fast foundations.
March of myriads. Confusion and chaos trod to earth. But this city to
which we travel has neither stone nor marble; hangs enduring; stands
unshakable; nor does a face, nor does a flag greet or welcome. Leave
then to perish your hope; droop in the desert my joy; naked advance.
Bare are the pillars; auspicious to none; casting no shade; resplendent;
severe. Back then I fall, eager no more, desiring only to go, find the
street, mark the buildings, greet the applewoman, say to the maid who
opens the door: A starry night.
"Good night, good night. You go this way?"
"Alas. I go that."
BLUE & GREEN
GREEN
The pointed fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the
glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the
lustre drop green upon the marble. The feathers of parakeets--their
harsh cries--sharp blades of palm trees--green, too; green needles
glittering in the sun. But the hard glass drips on to the marble; the
pools hover above the dessert sand; the camels lurch through them; the
pools settle on the marble; rushes edge them; weeds clog them; here and
there a white blossom; the frog flops over; at night the stars are set
there unbroken. Evening comes, and the shadow sweeps the green over the
mantelpiece; the ruffled surface of ocean. No ships come; the aimless
waves sway beneath the empty sky. It's night; the needles drip blots of
blue. The green's out.
BLUE
The snub-nosed monster rises to the surface and spouts through his blunt
nostrils two columns of water, which, fiery-white in the centre, spray
off into a fringe of blue beads. Strokes of blue line the black
tarpaulin of his hide. Slushing the water through mouth and nostrils he
sings, heavy with water, and the blue closes over him dowsing the
polished pebbles of his eyes. Thrown upon the beach he lies, blunt,
obtuse, shedding dry blue scales. Their metallic blue stains the rusty
iron on the beach. Blue are the ribs of the wrecked rowing boat. A wave
rolls beneath the blue bells. But the cathedral's different, cold,
incense laden, faint blue with the veils of madonnas.
KEW GARDENS
From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks
spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and
unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of
colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom
of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly
clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by
the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights
passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath
with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the
smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown,
circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such
intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one
expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a
second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh
of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fibre beneath the surface,
and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green
spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves.
Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was
flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk
in Kew Gardens in July.