1
The next day the ground was powdered with snow. Large snowflakes were
hurrying through the air driving to and fro on a harsh wind. The wind
snored round the house like a flame and bellowed in the chimneys. An
opened window let in the cold air and the smell of the snow. No sound
came from the woods. The singing of the birds and the faint sound of the
woods had gone.
But when Miriam left her room to go across to the schoolroom and wait
for the children she found the spring in the house. The landing was
bright with the light streaming through many open doors. Rooms were
being prepared. On a large tray on the landing table lay a mass of
spring flowers and little flowered bowls of many shapes and sizes filled
with fresh water. Stokes and Wiggerson were fluttering in and out of the
rooms carrying frilled bed-linen, lace-edged towels and flowered
bed-spreads.
People with money could make the spring come as soon as the days
lengthened. Clear bright rooms, bright clean paint, soft coloured
hangings, spring flowers in the bright light on landings. The warmth
from stoves and fires seemed as if it came from the sun. Its glow
changed suddenly to the glow of sunlight. It drew the scent of the
flowers into the air. And with the new scent of the new flowers
something was moving and leaping and dancing in the air. Outside the
wintry weather might go on and on as though the spring would never come.
In a dull cheap villa there might be a bunch of violets in a bowl on a
whatnot. Snuffing very close you could feel the tide of spring wash
through your brain. But only in the corner where the violets were. In
cold rooms upstairs you could remember the violets and the spring; but
the spring did not get into the house.
There was an extraordinary noise going on downstairs. Standing inside
the schoolroom door Miriam listened. Joey’s contralto laugh coming up in
gusts, the sound of dancing feet, the children shouting names, Mrs.
Corrie repeating them in her laughing wavering chalky voice. Joey;
certainly Joey was not dancing about. She was probably sitting on the
sofa watching them, and thinking. Fancy their being so excited about
people coming. Just like any ordinary people. She went into the
schoolroom saying over the names to herself. “Mélie to-day ... Dad and
Mr. Staple-Craven to-morrow ... the Bean-pole for Sunday” ... someone
they knew very well. It might be either a tall man or a tall woman....
They made the house spring-like because people were coming. Would the
people notice that the house was spring-like? Would they _realise_?
People did not seem to realise anything. They would patronise the
flowers ... they ought to feel wild with joy; join hands and dance round
the flowers.
At lunch time the door at the far end of the dining-room stood open
showing the shrouded length of a billiard-table, and beyond it at the
far end in the gloom a squat oak chimney-piece littered with pipes and
other small objects. The light, even from the overcast sky, came in so
brilliantly that the holland cover looked almost white. There must be
several windows; perhaps three. What a room to have, just for a
billiard-room. A quiet, mannish room, waiting until it was wanted, the
pockets of the table bulging excitingly under the cover, the green glass
supports under the squat round stoutly spindling legs, a bit of a huge
armchair showing near the fireplace, the end of a sofa, the green shaded
lamps low over the table, the dark untidy mantelpiece, tobacco, books,
talks, billiards. In there too the spring flowers stood ready on the
table. They would be put somewhere on the wide dark mantel, probably on
a corner out of the way. “We used to play table billiards at home,” said
Miriam at random, longing to know what part the billiard-room played in
the week-end.
“Billy-billy,” said Mrs. Corrie, “oh, we’ll have some fun. We’ll _all_
play.”
“It was _such_ a bore stretching the webbing,” said Miriam critically,
avoiding Sybil’s eager eyes.
“It _must_ have been--but how awfully jolly to have billiards. I simply
adaw billiards,” said Joey fervently.
“Such a fearful business getting them absolutely taut,” pursued Miriam,
feeling how much the cream caramel was enhanced by the sight of the
length, beyond the length of the dining-room, of that bright long heavy
room. She imagined it lit and people walking about amongst the curious
lights and shadows with cues--and cigarettes; quiet intent faces.
Englishmen. Did the English invent billiards?
“Poor old Joey. Wish you weren’t going to the dentist. You won’t be here
when Mélie comes.”
“Don’t mind the dentist a scrap. I’m looking forward to it. I shall see
Mélie to-night.”
She doesn’t like her, thought Miriam; people being together is awful;
like the creaking of furniture.
2
Mélie arrived an hour before dinner time. Miriam heard Mrs. Corrie
taking her into the room next to her own with laughter and many phrases.
A panting, determined voice, like a voice out of a play, the thick,
smooth, rather common voice of a fair-haired middle-aged lady in a play
kept saying, “The pores, my dear. I must open my pores after the
journey. I’m _choked_ with it.”
Presently Mélie’s door closed and Mrs. Corrie tapped and put her head
inside Miriam’s door. “She’s goin’ to have a steam bath on her floor,
got an injarubber tent on the floor and a spirit lamp. She’s gettin’
inside it. Isn’t she an old _cure_!”
“She’s thinking more about her food than anything they’re saying; she
doesn’t really care about them a bit,” thought Miriam at dinner, gazing
again and again across at Mrs. Staple-Craven’s fat little shape seated
opposite herself in a tightly fitting pale blue silk dress whose sleeves
had tiny puffs instead of the fashionable large square sleeves. Watching
her cross unconscious face, round and blue-eyed and all pure “milk and
roses,” her large yellow head with a tiny twist of hair standing up like
the handle of a jug, exactly on the top of the crown, her fat white
hands with thick soft curly fingers and bright pink nails, the strange
blue stare that went from thing to thing on the table, hearing her thick
smooth heedless voice, with its irrelevant assertions and statements,
Miriam wondered how she had come to be Mrs. Staple-Craven. She was no
more Mrs. Staple-Craven than she was sitting at Mrs. Corrie’s table. She
was not really there. She was just getting through, and neither Mrs.
Corrie nor Joey really knew this. At the same time she was too stout and
gluttonous to be still really a fairy in Devonshire. Where was she? What
did she think? She went on and on because she was afraid someone might
ask her that.
Although Joey had been to have her hair dyed and had not been to the
dentist at all she was not pretending nearly so much. She was a little
ashamed. Why had she said she was going to the dentist and come back
with sheeny bronzy hair, ashamed? She had been worrying about her looks.
Perhaps she was more than twenty-one. Nan Babington said no one need
mind being twenty-one if they were engaged, but if not it was a frantic
age to be. Joey was a poor worried thing, just like any other girl.
3
When they were safely ensconced round the drawing-room fire Mrs.
Staple-Craven sat very upright in her chair with her plump little hands
on either arm and her eyes fixed on the blaze. Joey pleading toothache
had said good night and gone away with her coffee. There was a moment’s
silence.
“You’d never think I’d been fairly banged to death by the spirits last
night,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven in a thick flat reproachful narrative
tone. It sounds like a housekeeper giving an order to a servant she
knows won’t obey her, thought Miriam, swishing more comfortably into her
chair. If Mrs. Craven would talk there would be no need to do anything.
“Ah-ha,” said Mrs. Craven, still looking at the fire, “something’s
pleasing Miss Henderson.”
“Is she rejoicin’? Tell us about the spirits, Mélie. I’m deadly keen.
Deadly. She mustn’t be too delighted. I’ve told her she’s not to get
engaged.”
“Engaged?” enquired Mrs. Craven, of the fire.
“She’s promised,” said Mrs. Corrie, turning off the lights until only
one heavily shaded lamp was left, throwing a rosy glow over Mélie’s
compact form.
“She won’t, if she’s not under the star, to be sure.”
“Oh, she mustn’t think about stars. Why should she marry?”
Miriam looked a little anxiously from one to the other.
“You’ve shocked her, Julia,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven. “Never mind at
all, my dear. You’ll marry if you’re under the star.”
“Star, star, beautiful star, a handsome one with twenty thousand a
year,” sang Mrs. Corrie.
“I don’t think a man has any right to be handsome,” said Miriam
desperately--she must manage to keep the topic going. These women were
so terrible--they filled her with fear. She must make them take back
what they had said.
“A handsome man’s much handsomer than a pretty woman,” said Mrs. Craven.
“It’s cash, cash, cash--that’s what it is,” chanted Mrs. Corrie softly.
“Oh, do you?” said Miriam. “I think a handsome man’s generally so weak.”
Mrs. Craven stared into the fire.
“You take the one who’s got the ooftish, my friend,” said Mrs. Corrie.
“But you say I’m not to marry.”
“You shall marry when my poor little old kiddies are grown up. We’ll
find you a very nice one with plenty of money.”
“Then you _don’t_ think marriage is a failure,” said Miriam, with
immense relief.
Mrs. Corrie leaned towards her with laughter in her clear light eyes. It
seemed to fill the room. “Have some more coffy-drink?”
“No, thanks,” said Miriam, shivering.
“Sing us something--she sings, Mélie--German songs. Isn’t she no end
clever?”
“Does she?” said Mrs. Craven. “Yes. She’s got a singing chin. Sing us a
pretty song, my dear.”
As she fluttered the leaves of her Schumann album she saw Mrs. Craven
sit back with closed eyes, and Mrs. Corrie still sitting forward in her
chair with her hands clasped on her knees gazing with a sad white face
into the flames.
“Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht,” sang Miriam, and
thought of Germany. Her listeners did not trouble her. They would not
understand. No English person would quite understand--the need, that the
Germans understood so well--the need to admit the beauty of things ...
the need of the strange expression of music, making the beautiful things
more beautiful and of words when they were together in the beauty of the
poems. Music and poetry told everything--whether you understood the
music or the words--they put you in the mood that made things
shine--then heart-break or darkness did not matter. Things go on shining
in the end; German landscapes and German sunshine and German towns
were full of this knowledge. In England there was something
besides--something hard.
“’Menjous, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Corrie, as she rose from the piano.
“If we lived aright we should all be singing,” said Mrs. Craven, “it’s
natural.”
4
“You look a duck.”
Miriam stood still at the top of the stairs and looked down into the
hall. Mrs. Staple-Craven was standing under the largest lamp near the
fireplace looking up at a tall man in a long ulster. Grizzled hair and a
long face with a long pointed grizzled beard--she was staring up at him
with her eyes “like saucers” and her face pink, white, gold, “like a
full moon”--how awful for him ... he’d come down from town probably in a
smoking carriage, talking, and there she was and he had to say
something.
“I’ve just had my bath,” said Mrs. Craven, without altering the angle of
her gaze.
“You look a duck,” said the tall man fussily, half turning away.
Standing with his back to the couple, opening letters at the hall table
was a little man in a neat little overcoat with a silk hat tilted back
on his head. His figure had a curious crooked jaunty appearance, the
shoulders a little crooked and the little legs slightly bent. “It’s Mr.
Corrie,” mused Miriam, moving backwards as he turned and went swiftly
out banging the front door behind him. “He looks like a jockey”; she got
herself back into her room until the hall should be clear. “He’s gone
down to the stables.” She listened to the quick jerky little footsteps
crunching along the gravel outside her window.
Soon after the quick little steps sounded on the stairs and the children
shouted from their rooms. A door was opened and shut and for five
minutes there was a babel of voices. Then the steps came out again and
went away down the passage leading off the landing to the bathroom and a
little spare room at the further end. They passed the bathroom and the
door of the little room was opened and shut and locked. Everything was
silent in the house, but from the room next to hers came the sounds of
Mr. Craven plunging quickly about and blowing and clearing his throat.
She had not heard him come up.
When at last she came downstairs she found the whole party standing
talking in the hall. The second gong was drowning the terrible voices,
leaving nothing but gesticulating figures. Presently Mr. Staple-Craven
was standing before her with Mrs. Corrie, and her hand was powerfully
wrung and released with a fussy emphatic handshake cancelling the first
impression. Mr. Craven made some remark in a high voice, lost by Miriam
as Mr. Corrie came across to her from talking to Joey under a lamp and
took her hand. “Let me introduce your host,” he said, keeping her hand
and placing it on his arm as he turned towards the dining-room, “and
take you in to dinner.”
Miriam went across the hall past the servants waiting on either side of
the dining-room door and down the long room with her hand on the soft
coat sleeve of a neat little dinner jacket and her footsteps led by the
firm, disconnected, jumpy footsteps of the little figure at her side.
There was a vague crowd of people coming along behind. “Come on,
everybody,” Mrs. Corrie had pealed delicately, and Mrs. Craven had said
in a thick smooth explanatory voice, “Of course she’s the greatest
stranger.”
The table was set with replicas of the little groups of Venetian wine
and finger glasses and fine silver and cutlery that had accompanied
Miriam’s first sense of dining and when she found herself seated at Mr.
Corrie’s left hand opposite Mrs. Craven, with Joey away on her left,
facing Mr. Craven and Mrs. Corrie now far away from her at the door end
of the table, it seemed as if these things had been got together only
for the use of the men. Why were women there? Why did men and women dine
together? She would have liked to sit there and watch and listen, but
not to dine--not to be seen dining by Mr. Corrie. It was extraordinary,
this muddle of men and women with nothing in common. The men must hate
it. She knew he did not have such thoughts. All the decanters stood in a
little group between him and the great bowl of flaring purple and
crimson anemones that stood in the centre of the table, and the way in
which he said when her soup came, “Have some Moselle,” and filled her
glass, compelled her to feel welcome to share the ritual of the feast.
She sat with bent head wrapped and protected, hearing nothing as the
voices sounded about the table but the clear sweet narrow rather
drawling tones of Mr. Corrie’s voice. She could hear it talking to men,
on racecourses, talking in clubs, laughing richly, rather drunkenly, at
improper stories in club smoking-rooms; dining, talking and lunching,
dining, talking, talking every day and sitting there now, wonderfully,
giving her security. She knew with perfect certainty that nothing
painful or disagreeable or embarrassing could come near her in his
presence. But he knew nothing about her; much less than Wiggerson knew.
5
Joey felt the same, of course. But Joey was laughing and talking in her
deep voice and making eyes. No, it was not the same. Joey was not happy.
These people sitting at his table were supposed to be friends. But they
knew nothing about him. He made little quiet mocking jokes and laughed
and kept things going. The Staple-Cravens knew nothing at all about him.
Mrs. Staple-Craven did not care for anybody. She looked about and always
spoke as if she were answering an accusation that nobody had made--a
dressmaker persuading you to have something and talking on and on in fat
tones to prevent your asking the price.... Mr. Craven only cared for
himself. He was weak and pompous and fussy with a silly elaborate
chivalrous manner. There was a stillness round the table. Miriam felt
that it centred in her and was somehow her fault. Never mind. She had
successfully got through whitebait and a quail. She would write home
about the quails and whitebait and the guests and say nothing about her
own silence--“Mr. Staple-Craven is a poet ...”
“Give Mélie some more drink, Percy,” said Mrs. Corrie. “It’s all wrong
you two sittin’ together.”
“She likes to sit near me, don’t you, my duck?” said Mr. Craven, looking
about for the wine and bowing to and fro from his hips.
“You’ve been away so long,” murmured Mr. Corrie. “What sort of a place
is Balone to stay in?”
“Oh, nothing of a place in itself, nothing of a place. Why do you call
it Balone?”
“Isn’t that right? That’s right enough. Come.”
Miriam waited eagerly, her eyes on Mr. Craven’s pink face with the
grizzled hair above and below it. How perfectly awful he must look in
his nightshirt, she thought, and flushed violently. “Balloyne,” he was
saying carefully, showing his red lips and two rows of unnaturally even
teeth.... “Oh, Lord, they mean Bologne.” Both men were talking together.
“Balloyne is perfectly correct; the correct pronunciation,” said Mr.
Craven in a loud testy voice, with loose lips. Mrs. Craven gazed up ...
like a distressed fish ... into his flushed face. Mrs. Corrie was
throwing out her little wavering broken laughs. Keeping his angry voice
Mr. Craven went on. Miriam sat eagerly up and glanced at Mr. Corrie. He
was sitting with his lips drawn down and his eyebrows raised ... his
law-court face.... Suddenly his face relaxed and the dark boyish brown
head with the clear thoughtful brow and the gentle kind eyes turned
towards her. “Let’s ask Miss Henderson. She shall be umpire.”
6
Miriam carefully enunciated the word. The blood sang in her ears as
everyone looked her way. The furniture and all the room mimicked her.
What did it matter, after all, the right pronunciation? It did matter;
not that Balone was wrong, but the awfulness of being able to miss the
right sound if you had once heard it spoken. There was some awful
meaning in the way English people missed the right sound; all the names
in India, all the Eastern words. How _could_ an English traveller hear
hahreem, and speak it hairum, Aswân and say Ass-ou-ann? It made them
miss other things and think wrongly about them. “That’s more like it,”
she heard Mr. Corrie say. There was sheeny braiding round the edges of
his curious little coat. “Got you there, Craven, got you there,” he was
saying somewhere in his mind ... his mind went on by itself repeating
things wearily. His small austere face shone a little with dining; the
corners of his thin lips slackened. “I can read all your thoughts. None
of you can disturb my enjoyment of this excellent dinner; none of you
can enhance it” ... but he was not quite conscious of his thoughts. Why
did not the others read them? Perhaps they did. Perhaps they were too
much occupied to notice what people were thinking. Perhaps in society
people always were. The Staple-Cravens did not notice. But they were
neither of them quite sure of themselves. Mrs. Corrie was busy all the
time dancing and singing somewhere alone, wistfully. Joey kept throwing
her smile at Mr. Corrie--lounging a little, easily, over the table and
saying in her mind, “I understand you, the others don’t, I do,” and he
smiled at her, broadened the smile that had settled faintly all over his
face, now and again in her direction. But she did not understand him.
“Divine,” perhaps he was, or could be. But Joey did not know him. She
only knew that he had a life of his own and no one else at the table had
quite completely. She did not know that with all his worldly happiness
and success and self-control he was miserable and lost and needing
consolation ... but neither did he. Perhaps he never would; would not
find it out because he had so many thoughts and was always talking. So
he thought he liked Joey. Because she smiled and responded. “Jabez
Balfour,” he was saying slowly, savouring the words and smiling through
his raised wineglass with half closed eyes. That was for Mr.
Staple-Craven; there was some exciting secret in it. Presently they
would be two men over their wine and nuts. Mr. Staple-Craven took this
remark for himself at once, scorning the women with a thick polite
insolence. His lips shot out. “Ah,” he said busily, “Jabez Balfour,
Jabez Balfour; ah,” he swung from side to side from his waist. “Let me
see, Jabez....”
“The Liberator scheme,” said Mr. Corrie interestedly with a bright young
eye. “They’ve got ’im this time; fairly got ’im on the hop.”
Jabez Balfour; what a beautiful name. He could not have done anything
wrong. There was a soft glare of anger in Mr. Corrie’s eyes; as if he
were accusing Mr. Staple-Craven of some crime, or everybody. Perhaps one
would hear something about crime; crime. That’s crime--somebody taking
down a book and saying triumphantly, “that’s crime,” and people talking
excitedly about it, in the warm, at dinners ... like that moment at
Richmond Park, the ragged man with panting mouth, running ... the quiet
grass, the scattered deer, the kindly trees, the gentlemen with
triumphant faces, running after him; enough, enough, he had suffered
enough ... his poor face, their dreadful faces. He knew more than they
did. Crime could not be allowed. People murdering you in your sleep. But
criminals knew that--the running man knew. He was running away from
himself. He knew he had spoiled the grass and the trees and the deer. To
have stopped him and hidden him and let him get over it. His poor
face.... The awful moment of standing up trying to say or do something,
feeling so weak, trembling at the knees, the man’s figure pelting along
in the distance, the two gentlemen passing, their white waistcoats,
homes, wives, bathrooms, stuffiness, indigestion....
7
“It comes perfectly into line with Biblical records, my dear Corrie: a
single couple, two cells originating the whole creation.”
“I’m maintaining that’s not the Darwinian idea at all. It was not a
single couple, but several different ones.”
“We’re not descended from monkeys at all. It’s not natural,” said Mrs.
Craven loudly, across the irritated voices of the men. Their faces were
red. They filled the room with inaccurate phrases pausing politely
between each and keeping up a show of being guest and host. How nice of
them. But this was how cultured people with incomes talked about Darwin.
“The great thing Darwin did,” said Miriam abruptly, “was to point out
the power of environment in evolving the different species--selecting.”
“That’s it, that’s it!” sang Mrs. Corrie. “Let’s all select ourselves
into the droin’-room.” “Now I’ve offended the men and the women too,”
thought Miriam.
8
Mr. Staple-Craven joined the ladies almost at once. He came in leaving
the door open behind him and took a chair in the centre of the fireside
circle and sat giving little gasps and sighs of satisfaction, spreading
his hands and making little remarks about the colours of the fire, and
the shape of the coffee cups. There he was and he would have to be
entertained, although he had nothing at all to say and was puzzling
about himself and life all the time behind his involuntary movements and
polite smiles and gestures. Perhaps he was uneasy because he knew there
was someone saying all the time, “You’re a silly pompous old man and you
think yourself much cleverer than you are.” But it was not altogether
that; he was always uneasy, even when he was alone, unless he was
rapidly preparing to go and be with people who did not know what he was.
If he had been alone with the other three women he would have forgotten
for a while and half-liked, half-despised them for their affability.
“The great man’s always at work, always at work,” he said suddenly, in a
desperate sort of way. They were like some sort of needlework guild
sitting round, just people, in the end; it made the surroundings seem
quite ordinary. The room fell to pieces; one could imagine it being
turned out, or all the things being sold up and dispersed.
“All work and no play,” scolded Mrs. Craven, “makes Jack....”
Miriam heard the swish of the bead curtain at the end of the short
passage.
“Heah he _is_,” smiled Joey.
“A miracle,” breathed Mrs. Craven, glancing round the circle. Evidently
he did not usually come in.
Mr. Corrie came quietly into the room with empty hands; in the clear
light he looked older than he had done in the dining-room, fuller in the
face; grey threads showed in his hair. Everyone turned towards him. He
looked at no one. His loose little smile had gone. The straight chair
into which he dropped with a dreamy careless preoccupied air was set a
little back from the fireside circle. No one moved.
“Absorbed the evidence, m’lud?” squeaked Mr. Craven.
“Ah-m,” growled his host, clearing his throat.
Why can’t they let him alone, Miriam asked herself, and leave him to me,
added her mind swiftly. She sat glaring into the fire; the room had
resumed its strange magic.
9
“Do you think it is wrong to teach children things you don’t believe
yourself?...” said Miriam, and her thoughts rushed on. “You’re an
unbeliever and I’m an unbeliever and both of us despise the thoughts and
opinions of ‘people’; you’re a successful wealthy man and can amuse
yourself and forget; I must teach and presently die, teach till I die.
It doesn’t matter. I can be happy for a while teaching your children,
but you know, knowing me a little what a task that must be; you know I
know nothing and that I know that nobody knows anything; comfort me....”
She seemed to traverse a great loop of time waiting for the answer to
her hurried question. Mr. Corrie had come into the drawing-room dressed
for dinner and sat down near her with a half-smile as she closed the
book she was reading and laid it on her knee and looked up with
sentences from “A Human Document” ringing through her, and by the time
her question was out she knew it was unnecessary. But she had flung it
out and it had reached him and he had read the rush of thoughts that
followed it. She might as well have been silent; better. She had missed
some sort of opportunity. What would have happened if she had been quite
silent? His answer was swift, but in the interval they had said all they
would ever have to say to each other. “Not in the least,” he said, with
a gentle decisiveness.
She flashed thanks at him and sighed her relief. He did not mind about
religion. But how far did he understand? She had made him think she was
earnest about the teaching children something. He would be very serious
about their being “decently turned out.” She was utterly incapable of
turning them out for the lives they would have to lead. She envied and
pitied and despised those lives. Envied the ease and despised the
ignorance, the awful cruel struggle of society that they were growing up
for--no joy, a career and sport for the boy, clubs, the weary dyspeptic
life of the blasé man, and for the girl lonely cold hard bitter
everlasting “social” life. She envied the ease. Mr. Corrie must know she
envied the ease. Did he know that she tried to hide her incapacity in
order to go on sharing the beauty and ease?
“It is so difficult,” she pursued helplessly, and saw him wonder why she
went on with the subject and try to read the title of her book. She did
not mean to tell him that. That would lead them away; just nowhere. If
only she could tell him everything and get him to understand. But that
would mean admitting that she was letting the children’s education
slide; and he was sitting there, confidently, so beautifully dressed for
dinner, paying her forty pounds a year not to let the children’s
education slide.... “It’s an opportunity; he’s come in here, and sat
down to talk to me. I ought to tell him; I’m cheating.” But he had
looked for the title of her book, and would have talked, about anything,
if she could have talked. He had a little air of deference, quiet kind
indulgent deference. His neat little shoulders, bent as he sat turned
towards her, were kind. “I’m too young,” she cried in her mind. If only
she could say aloud, “I’m too young--I can’t do it,” and leave
everything to him.
Or leave the children out altogether and talk to him, man to man, about
the book. She could not do that. Everything she said would hurt her,
poisoned by the hidden sore of her incapability to do anything for his
children. He ought to send them to school. But they would not go to a
school where anything real was taught. Science, strange things about
India and Ireland, the æsthetic movement, Ruskin; making things
beautiful. How far away all that seemed, that sacred life of her old
school--forgotten. The thought of it was like a breath in the room. Did
he know of these things? That sort of school would take the children
away, out of this kind of society life. Make them think--for themselves.
He did not think or approve of thought. Even the hard Banbury Park
people would be nearer to him than any of those things.... That was the
world. Nearly everyone seemed to be in it. He was whimsically trying to
read the title of her book with the little half-smile he shared with the
boy.
People came in and they both rose. It was over. She sank back miserably
into the offering of the moment, retiring into a lamp-lit corner with
her book, enclosing herself in its promise.
10
She sat long that night over her fire dipping into the strange book,
reading passages here and there; feeling them come nearer to her than
anything she had read before. She knew at once that she did not want to
read the book through; that it was what people called a tragedy, that
the author had deliberately made it a tragedy; something black and
twisted and painful, painful came to her out of every page; but
seriously to read it right through and be excited about the tragic story
seemed silly and pitiful. The thought of Mrs. Corrie and Joey doing this
annoyed her and impatiently she wanted to tell them that there was
nothing in it, nothing in the things the author wanted to make them
believe; that was fraud, humbug ... they missed everything. They could
not see through it, they read through to the happy ending or the sad
ending and took it all seriously.
She struggled in thought to discover why it was she felt that these
people did not read books and that she herself did. She felt that she
could look at the end, and read here and there a little and know; know
something, something they did not know. People thought it was silly,
almost wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it spoilt a book,
there was something wrong about the book. If it was finished and the
interest gone when you know who married who, what was the good of
reading at all? It was a sort of trick, a sell. Like a puzzle that was
no more fun when you had found it out. There was something more in books
than that ... even Rosa Nouchette Carey and Mrs. Hungerford, something
that came to you out of the book, any bit of it, a page, even a
sentence--and the “stronger” the author was the more came. That was why
Ouida put those others in the shade, not, not, _not_ because her books
were improper. It was her, herself somehow. Then you read books to find
the author! That was it. That was the difference ... that was how one
was different from most people.... Dear Eve; I have just discovered that
I don’t read books for the story, but as a psychological study of the
author ... she must write that to Eve at once; to-morrow. It was rather
awful and strange. It meant never being able to agree with people about
books, never liking them for the same reasons as other people.... But it
was true and exciting. It meant ... things coming to you out of books,
people, not the people in the books, but knowing, absolutely, everything
about the author. She clung to the volume in her hand with a sense of
wealth. Its very binding, the feeling of it, the sight of the slender
serried edges of the closed leaves came to her as having a sacredness
... and the world was full of books.... It did not matter that people
went about talking about nice books, interesting books, sad books,
“stories”--they would never be that to her. They were people. More real
than actual people. They came nearer. In life everything was so scrappy
and mixed up. In a book the author was there in every word.
Why did this strange book come so near, nearer than any others, so that
you _felt_ the writing, felt the sentences as if you were writing them
yourself? He was a sad pained man, all wrong; bothered and tragic about
things, believing in sad black horror. Then why did he come so near?
Perhaps because life was sad. Perhaps life was really sad. No; it was
somehow the writing, the clearness. That was the thing. He himself must
be all right, if he was so clear. Then it was dangerous, dangerous to
people like Mrs. Corrie and Joey who would attend only to what he said,
and not to him ... sadness or gladness, saying things were sad or glad
did not matter; there was something behind all the time, something
inside people. That was why it was impossible to pretend to sympathise
with people. You don’t have to sympathise with authors; you just get at
them, neither happy nor sad; like talking, more than talking. Then that
was why the people who wrote moral stories were so awful. They were
standing behind the pages preaching at you with smarmy voices....
Bunyan?... No.... He preached to himself too ... crying out his sins....
He did not get between you and himself and point at a moral. An author
must show himself. Anyhow, he can’t help showing himself. A moral writer
only sees the mote in his brother’s eye. And you see him seeing it.
11
A long letter to Eve.... Eve would think that she was showing off. But
she would be excited and interested too, and would think about it a
little. If only she could make Eve see what a book was ... a dance by
the author, a song, a prayer, an important sermon, a message. Books were
not stories printed on paper, they were people; the real people; ... “I
prefer books to people” ... “I know now why I prefer books to people.”
12
“... I do wish you’d tell me more about your extraordinary days. You
must have extraordinary days. I do. Perhaps everyone has. Only they
don’t seem to know it!”
... This morning, the green common lying under the sun, still and wide
and silent; with a little breeze puffing over it; the intense fresh
green near the open door of the little Catholic church; the sandy
pathway running up into the common, hummocky and twisting and winding,
its sand particles glinting in the sun, always there, going on, whoever
died or whatever happened, winding amongst happy greenery, in and out
amongst the fresh smell of the common. Inside the chapel the incense
streaming softly up, the seven little red lamps hanging in the cloud of
incense about the altar; the moving of the thick forest of embroidery on
the cope of the priest. Funny when he bobbed, but when he just moved
quietly, taking a necessary step, all the colour of the forest on his
cope moving against the still high wide colours of the chancel. If only
anyone could express how perfect life was at those moments; everyone
must know, everyone who was looking must know that life was perfectly
happy. That is why people went to church; for those moments with the
light on all those things in the chancel. It meant something.... Priests
and nuns knew it all the time; even when they were unhappy; that was why
they could kiss dying people and lepers; they saw something else, all
the time. Nothing common or unclean. That was why Christ had blazing
eyes. Christianity: the sanctification of bread and wine, and lepers and
death; the body; the resurrection of the body. Even if there was some
confusion and squabbling about Christ there must be something in it if
the things that showed were so beautiful.
Hard cold vows, of chastity and poverty. That did it. Emptiness, in face
of--an unspeakable glory. If one could not, was too weak or proud,
“Verily they have their reward.” Everyone got something somehow ... in
hell; thou art there also ... that shows there is no eternal punishment.
Earth is hell, with everyone going to heaven.
What was the worldly life? The gay bright shimmering lunch, the many
guests, the glitter of the table, mayonnaise red and green and yellow,
delicate bright wines; strolling in the woods in the afternoon.... Tea,
everyone telling anecdotes of the afternoon’s walk as if it were a sort
of competition, great bursts of laughter and abrupt silences and then
another story, the moments of laughter were something like those moments
in church; whilst there was nothing but laughter in the room everybody
was perfectly happy and good; everybody forgot everything and ran back
somewhere; to the beginning, to the time when they were first looking at
things, without troubling about anything. But when the laughter ceased
everyone ran away and the rest of their day together showed in a flash,
an awful tunnel that would be filled with the echo of the separate
footsteps unless more laughter could be made, to hide the sad helpless
sounds. Dinners were like all the noise and laughter of tea-time grown
steadier, a pillow fight with harder whacks and more time for the
strokes, no bitterness, just buffeting and shouts, and everyone laughing
the same laugh as if they were all in some high secret. They were in
some high secret; the great secret of the worldly life; and if you
prevented yourself from thinking and laughed, they seemed to take you
in. That was the way to live the worldly life. To talk absurdly and
laugh; to be lost in laughter. Why had Mrs. Corrie seemed so vexed? Why
had she said suddenly and quietly in the billiard-room that it seemed
rummy to go to Mass and play billiards in the evening? “_Be_ goody if
you _are_.” It had spoiled the day. Mrs. Corrie would like her to be
goody. But then it was she who had pushed her down the steps in the
afternoon and called after the actor to take care of her in the woods.
There was something too sad about the worldliness and too difficult
about goodness.
Perhaps one had not gone far enough with worldliness....
“Take each fair mask for what it shows itself,
Nor strive to look beneath it.”
That was what she had done drifting about in the wood with the actor
listening to his pleasant voice. It was an excursion into pure
worldliness. He had never thought for a moment in his life of the world
as anything than what it appeared to be. He had no suspicion that anyone
ever did. He had accepted her as one of the house-party and talked, on
and on busily, about his American tour and his hope of a London
engagement, getting emphatic about his chance, the chanciness of
everything. And she had drifted along, delighting in the pleasant voice
sounding through the wood, seeing the wood clear and steady through the
pleasant tone, not caring about chance or chanciness but ready to
pretend she was interested in them so that the voice might go on;
pretending to be interested when he stopped. That was feminine
worldliness, pretending to be interested so that pleasant things might
go on. Masculine worldliness was refusing to be interested so that it
might go on doing things. Feminine worldliness then meant perpetual hard
work and cheating and pretence at the door of a hidden garden, a lovely
hidden garden. Masculine worldliness meant never being really there;
always talking about things that had happened or making plans for things
that might happen. There was nothing that could happen that was not in
some way the same as anything else. Nobody was ever quite there,
realising.