It was a pity that Mr. Cardan could not hear what his hostess was
saying. He would have been delighted; she was talking about herself. It
was a subject on which he specially loved to hear her. There were few
people, he used to say, whose Authorised Version of themselves differed
so strikingly from that Revised, formed of them by others. It was not
often, however, that she gave him a chance to compare them. With Mr.
Cardan she was always a little shy; he had known her so long.
“Sometimes,” Mrs. Aldwinkle was saying, as she walked with Chelifer on
the second of the three terraces, “sometimes I wish I were less
sensitive. I feel everything so acutely—every slightest thing. It’s like
being ... like being ...” she fumbled in the air with groping fingers,
feeling for the right word, “like being flayed,” she concluded
triumphantly, and looked at her companion.
Chelifer nodded sympathetically.
“I’m so fearfully aware,” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on, “of other people’s
thoughts and feelings. They don’t have to speak to make me know what
they’ve got in their minds. I know it, I _feel_ it just by seeing them.”
Chelifer wondered whether she felt what was going on in his mind. He
ventured to doubt it. “A wonderful gift,” he said.
“But it has its disadvantages,” insisted Mrs. Aldwinkle. “For example,
you can’t imagine how much I suffer when people round me are suffering,
particularly if I feel myself in any way to blame. When I’m ill, it
makes me miserable to think of servants and nurses and people having to
sit up without sleep and run up and down stairs, all because of me. I
know it’s rather stupid; but, do you know, my sympathy for them is so
... so ... profound, that it actually prevents me from getting well as
quickly as I should....”
“Dreadful,” said Chelifer in his polite, precise voice.
“You’ve no idea how deeply all suffering affects me.” She looked at him
tenderly. “That day, that _first_ day, when you fainted—you can’t
imagine....”
“I’m sorry it should have had such a disagreeable effect on you,” said
Chelifer.
“You would have felt the same yourself—in the circumstances,” said Mrs.
Aldwinkle, uttering the last words in a significant tone.
Chelifer shook his head modestly. “I’m afraid,” he answered, “I’m
singularly stoical about other people’s sufferings.”
“Why do you always speak against yourself?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle
earnestly. “Why do you malign your own character? You know you’re not
what you pretend to be. You pretend to be so much harder and dryer than
you really are. Why do you?”
Chelifer smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, “it’s to re-establish the universal
average. So many people, you see, try to make themselves out softer and
damper than they are. Don’t they?”
Mrs. Aldwinkle ignored his question. “But you,” she insisted, “I want to
know about you.” She stared into his face. Chelifer smiled and said
nothing. “You won’t tell me?” she went on. “But it doesn’t matter. I
know already. I have an intuition about people. It’s because I’m so
sensitive. I _feel_ their character. I’m never wrong.”
“You’re to be envied,” said Chelifer.
“It’s no good thinking you can deceive me,” she went on. “You can’t. I
understand you.” Chelifer sighed, inwardly; she had said that before,
more than once. “Shall I tell you what you are really like?”
“Do.”
“Well, to begin with,” she said, “you’re sensitive, just as sensitive as
I am. I can see that in your face, in your actions. I can hear it when
you speak. You can pretend to be hard and ... and ... armour-plated, but
I....”
Wearily, but with patience, Chelifer listened. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s
hesitating voice, moving up and down from note to unrelated note,
sounded in his ears. The words became blurred and vague. They lost their
articulateness and sense. They were no more than the noise of the wind,
a sound that accompanied, but did not interrupt his thoughts. Chelifer’s
thoughts, at the moment, were poetical. He was engaged in putting the
finishing touches to a little “Mythological Incident,” the idea of which
had recently occurred to him and to which, during the last two days, he
had been giving its definite form. Now it was finished; a little
polishing, that was all it needed now.
Through the pale skeleton of woods
Orion walks. The north wind lays
Its cold lips to the twin steel flutes
That are his gun and plays.
Knee-deep he goes where, penny-wiser
Than all his kind who steal and hoard,
Year after year, some sylvan miser
His copper wealth has stored.
The Queen of Love and Beauty lays
In neighbouring beechen aisles her baits—
Bread-crumbs and the golden maize.
Patiently she waits.
And when the unwary pheasant comes
To fill his painted maw with crumbs,
Accurately the sporting Queen
Takes aim. The bird has been.
Secure, Orion walks her way.
The Cyprian loads, presents, makes fire.
He falls. ’Tis Venus all entire
Attached to her recumbent prey.
Chelifer repeated the verses to himself and was not displeased. The
second stanza was a little too “quaint,” perhaps; a little too—how
should he put it?—too Walter-Crane’s-picture-book. One might omit it
altogether, perhaps; or substitute, if one could think of it, something
more perfectly in harmony with the silver-age, allusive elegance of the
rest. As for the last verse, that was really masterly. It gave Racine
his _raison d’être_; if Racine had never existed, it would have been
necessary to invent him, merely for the sake of those last lines.
He falls. ’Tis Venus all entire
Attached to her recumbent prey.
Chelifer lingered over them in ecstasy. He became aware, all at once,
that Mrs. Aldwinkle was addressing herself to him more directly. From
inharmoniously Aeolian, her voice became once more articulate.
“That’s what you’re like,” she was saying. “Tell me I’m right. Say I
understand you.”
“Perhaps,” said Chelifer, smiling.
Meanwhile, on the terrace below, Calamy and Miss Thriplow strolled at
leisure. They were discussing a subject about which Miss Thriplow
professed a special competence; it was—to speak in the language of the
examination room—her Special Subject. They were discussing Life. “Life’s
so wonderful,” Miss Thriplow was saying. “Always. So rich, so gay. This
morning, for instance, I woke up and the first thing I saw was a pigeon
sitting on the window sill—a big fat grey pigeon with a captive rainbow
pinned to his stomach.” (That phrase, peculiarly charming and
felicitous, Miss Thriplow thought, had already been recorded for future
reference in her note-books.) “And then high up on the wall above the
washstand there was a little black scorpion standing tail-upwards,
looking quite unreal, like something out of the signs of the Zodiac. And
then Eugenia came in to call me—think of having one’s hot water brought
by a maid called Eugenia to begin with!—and spent a quarter of an hour
telling me about her fiancé. It seems that he’s so dreadfully jealous.
So should I be, if I were engaged to a pair of such rolling eyes. But
think of all that happening before breakfast, just casually! What
extravagance! But Life’s so generous, so copious.” She turned a shining
face to her companion.
Calamy looked down at her, through half-closed eyes, smiling, with that
air of sleepy insolence, of indolent power, characteristic of him,
especially in his relations with women. “Generous!” he repeated. “Yes, I
should think it was. Pigeons before breakfast. And at breakfast it
offers you!”
“As if I were a broiled kipper,” said Miss Thriplow, laughing.
But Calamy was not disturbed by her laughter. He continued to look at
her between his puckered eyelids with the same steady insolence, the
same certainty of power—a certainty so complete that he could afford to
make no exertions; placidly, drowsily, he could await the inevitable
triumph. He disquieted Miss Thriplow. That was why she liked him.
They strolled on. Fifteen days ago they could never have walked like
this, two on a terrace, talking at leisure of Miss Thriplow’s Special
Subject. Their hostess would have put an end to any such rebellious
attempt at independence in the most prompt and ruthless fashion. But
since the arrival of Chelifer Mrs. Aldwinkle had been too much
preoccupied with the affairs of her own heart to be able to take the
slightest interest in the doings, the sayings, the comings and goings of
her guests. Her gaoler’s vigilance was relaxed. Her guests might talk
together, might wander off alone or in couples, might say good-night
when they pleased; Mrs. Aldwinkle did not care. So long as they did not
interfere with Chelifer, they might do what they liked. _Fay ce que
vouldras_ had become the rule in Cybo Malaspina’s palace.
“I can never understand,” Miss Thriplow went on, meditatively pursuing
her Special Subject, “I can never understand how it is that everybody
isn’t happy—I mean fundamentally happy, underneath; for of course
there’s suffering, there’s pain, there are a thousand reasons why one
can’t always be consciously happy, on the top, if you see what I mean.
But fundamentally happy, underneath—how can any one help being that?
Life’s so extraordinary, so rich and beautiful—there’s no excuse for not
loving it always, even when one’s consciously miserable. Don’t you think
so?” She was fairly carried away by her love of Life. She was young, she
was ardent; she saw herself as a child who goes and turns head over
heels, out of pure joy, in the perfumed haycocks. One could be as clever
as one liked, but if one had that genuine love of Life it didn’t matter;
one was saved.
“I agree,” said Calamy. “It’s always worth living, even at the worst of
times. And if one happens to be in love, it’s really intoxicating.”
Miss Thriplow glanced at him. Calamy was walking with bent head, his
eyes fixed on the ground. There was a faint smile on his lips; his
eyelids were almost closed, as though he were too drowsy to keep them
apart. Miss Thriplow felt annoyed. He made a remark like that and then
didn’t even take the trouble to look at her.
“I don’t believe you’ve ever been in love,” she said.
“I can’t remember ever having been out of it,” Calamy answered.
“Which is the same thing as saying that you’ve never really been in. Not
really,” Miss Thriplow repeated. She knew what the real thing was like.
“And you?” asked Calamy.
Mary Thriplow did not answer. They took two or three turns in silence.
It was a folly, Calamy was thinking. He wasn’t really in love with the
woman. It was a waste of time and there were other things far more
important to be done, to be thought about. Other things. They loomed up
enormously behind the distracting bustle of life, silently on the
further side of the noise and chatter. But what were they? What was
their form, their name, their meaning? Through the fluttering veil of
movement it was impossible to do more than dimly guess; one might as
well try to look at the stars through the London smoke. If one could
stop the movement, or get away from it, then surely one would be able to
see clearly the large and silent things beyond. But there was no
stopping the movement and there was, somehow, no escaping from it. To
check it was impossible; and the gesture of escape was ludicrous. The
only sensible thing to do was to go on in the usual way and ignore the
things outside the world of noise. That was what Calamy tried to do. But
he was conscious none the less that the things were still there. They
were still calmly and immutably there, however much he might agitate
himself and distractedly pretend to ignore them. Mutely they claimed
attention. They had claimed it, of late, with a most irritating
persistence. Calamy’s response had been to make love to Mary Thriplow.
That was something which ought to keep him well occupied. And up to a
point it did. Up to a point. The best indoor sport, old Cardan had
called it; but one demanded something better. Could he go on like this?
Or if not, what should he do? The questions exasperated him. It was
because the things were there, outside the tumult, that he had to ask
them. They forced themselves on him, these questions. But it was
intolerable to be bullied. He refused to let himself be bullied. He’d do
what he damned well liked. But then, did he really like philandering
with Mary Thriplow? In a way, no doubt, up to a point. But the real
answer was no; frankly, no. But yes, yes, he insisted with another part
of his mind. He did like it. And even if he didn’t, he’d damned well say
that he did. And if necessary he’d damned well do what he didn’t
like—just because he chose to. He’d do what he didn’t like; and that was
the end of it. He worked himself up into a kind of fury.
“What are you thinking about?” Miss Thriplow suddenly asked.
“You,” he said; and there was a savage exasperation in his voice, as
though he passionately resented the fact that he was thinking about Mary
Thriplow.
“_Tiens!_” she said on a note of polite curiosity.
“What would you say if I told you I was in love with you?” he asked.
“I should say that I didn’t believe you.”
“Do you want me to compel you to believe?”
“I’d be most interested to know, at any rate, how you proposed to set
about it.”
Calamy halted, put his hand on Mary Thriplow’s shoulder and turned her
round towards him. “By force, if necessary,” he said, looking into her
face.
Miss Thriplow returned his stare. He looked insolent still, still
arrogantly conscious of power; but all the drowsiness and indolence that
had veiled his look were now fallen away, leaving his face bare, as it
were, and burning with a formidable and satanic beauty. At the sight of
this strange and sudden transformation Miss Thriplow felt at once
exhilarated and rather frightened. She had never seen that expression on
a man’s face before. She had aroused passions, but never a passion so
violent, so dangerous as this seemed to be.
“By force?” By the tone of her voice, by the mockery of her smile she
tried to exasperate him into yet fiercer passion.
Calamy tightened his grip on her shoulder. Under his hand the bones felt
small and fragile. When he spoke, he found that he had been clenching
his teeth. “By force,” he said. “Like this.” And taking her head between
his two hands he bent down and kissed her, angrily, again and again. Why
do I do this? he was thinking. This is a folly. There are other things,
important things. “Do you believe me now?” he asked.
Mary Thriplow’s face was flushed. “You’re insufferable,” she said. But
she was not really angry with him.
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