It was that Easter that Hugo met Paulina Connell. He saw her
first in _The Tempest_. She was playing Miranda, and she did it
very well.
We were all there. Guy and George and Mollie and I. We all enjoyed
the performance, and we all thought Miranda charming, but Hugo
was bowled over.
‘Isn’t it lovely? isn’t it lovely?’ he kept saying. ‘I think
that Miranda is quite perfect. She is just what Miranda should
be.’
We knew that that was high praise from Hugo, for _The Tempest_
was one of his favourite plays at this time.
We went back to Guy’s rooms in Clifford’s Inn and had coffee
and biscuits, and George began to chaff Hugo about his enthusiasm
for Miranda, but Hugo was serious.
‘I want to see her,’ he said. ‘I must get to know her.
How beauteous Mankind is! Oh brave new world
That has such people in’t!
Didn’t she do that divinely?’
‘I shouldn’t get to know her if I were you, Hugo,’ said George.
‘She will probably be a disillusionment. Let her remain the “stuff
that dreams are made of.”’
Mollie was laughing and I laughed too, but I didn’t like it.
It gave me an odd little pain to watch Hugo as he talked about
her and then I felt ashamed of myself.
Hugo did get to know Paulina. He found that Anthony Cowper knew
some one who knew her, and Anthony Cowper’s friend took Hugo
and him to call one Sunday afternoon.
Hugo told us all about it when they came back. She was just as
lovely in private life, he said. She lived with her mother in
a flat in Battersea. Her father was dead and she had one brother,
called Victor, who was a professional singer. Hugo did not see
him, for he was touring somewhere. Mr. Connell had been in business,
Mrs. Connell said, but it was an army family—“‘military people,
you know, and well connected.”’
It was Anthony Cowper who reported the conversation. Hugo blushed
a little and laughed.
‘So hard on dear Paulina,’ Mrs. Connell had said to Anthony,
‘to have to go on the stage—not that it was a penance at all
to her, for if ever a girl had a passion for her art it was Paulina;
but of course you understand, Mr. Cowper, it is not the sort
of profession her father’s family would approve at all. My family
is different, you see. We are all artists—artists to the finger-tips—and
you understand, Mr. Cowper, to an artist social distinctions
do not exist. But I do feel it hard for Paulina. . . . Yes, of
course, her father’s relations do _not_ take the interest in her
which one might have expected.’
Anthony Cowper was a mimic, and he made us laugh very much when
he described the interview with Mrs. Connell; and now and again
he turned to Hugo and said: ‘It was just like that, Hugo, wasn’t
it?’ and Hugo admitted with good humour that it was.
‘She was rather a terror,’ he agreed. ‘But Paulina was quite
different, and she didn’t like it much, I thought.’
Hugo gave a tea-party in Guy’s rooms before he went back to Oxford.
He invited us all to meet Paulina, and Mrs. Connell came too.
‘I had to ask her too,’ he explained, ‘for she said she did not
allow Paulina to go out alone.’
Paulina was beautiful; that was true. She was very fair, with
bright, golden hair, very straight and smooth and shining, and
serious blue eyes. She had red lips, curved and rather like a
Rossetti saint. She was dressed in white, with white furs, and
she did not talk very much. She sat looking beautiful and statuesque,
and made rather solemn remarks from time to time.
‘It is only in the true Socialist State that art will be duly
recognized,’ she said, and at another time: ‘True art has no
need for subterfuge.’
What she meant I didn’t know, for I only caught scraps of the
conversation. Guy and Anthony Cowper were talking to her—but
I felt convinced somehow that she didn’t really know what she
meant herself that she was repeating things she had learnt from
somebody else, and that annoyed me, for I had never liked that
sort of person.
She always talked about Art. Once she said:
‘I live for my Art. A true artist must’; and it sounded silly.
A ‘true artist’ would never have said it, I felt sure.
She was talking to Guy when she said that, and Guy was very funny
with her. He looked serious too, and said:
‘Really. How interesting. I suppose it is awfully hard work to
be a true artist.’
And she answered in a sombre sort of way:
‘A crucifixion at times, but one cannot escape one’s destiny.’
‘Oh no; one can’t,’ agreed Guy. ‘Awfully hard luck, isn’t it?’
Guy saw me watching them and his eyes twinkled. He had a trick
of raising one eyebrow, the left, when he was amused.
Mrs. Connell said to Hugo:
‘Paulina is so sensitive—the artistic temperament all through.
Modern life is very hard for the artist.’
Hugo murmured something sympathetic. He wanted to talk to Paulina.
Mollie crossed the room and talked to Mrs. Connell. I saw Mrs.
Connell pouring out a long confidence, and Mollie nodding her
head from time to time.
George came over to me.
‘Are you impressed, Helen?’ he asked with his wide smile. ‘Does
the goddess thrill you?’