come to the end of transports: they had no more mystery for him; at
least this kind: or perhaps no more charm. Some bubble or other had
burst in his heart. All his body and fibres wanted to go over and touch
the other great being into a storm of response. But his soul wouldn’t.
The coloured bubble had burst.
Kangaroo sat up and adjusted his eyeglasses.
“Don’t you run away with the idea, though,” he said, “that I am just an
emotional fool.” His voice was almost menacing, and with a strange cold,
intellectual quality that Somers had never heard before.
“I believe in the one fire of love. I believe it is the one inspiration
of all creative activity. I trust myself entirely to the fire of love.
This I do with my reason also. I don’t discard my reason. I use it at
the service of love, like a sharp weapon. I try to keep it very
sharp--and very dangerous. Where I don’t love, I use only my will and my
wits. Where I love, I trust to love alone.” The voice came cold and
static.
Somers sat rather blank. The change frightened him almost as something
obscene. This was the reverse to the passionate thunder-god.
“But is love the only inspiration of creative activity?” he asked,
rather feebly.
“This is the first time I have heard it questioned. Do you know of any
other?”
Somers thought he did, but he was not going to give himself away to that
sharp weapon of a voice, so he did not answer.
“_Is_ there any other inspirational force than the force of love?”
continued Kangaroo. “There is no other. Love makes the trees flower and
shed their seed, love makes the animals mate and birds put on their best
feather, and sing their best songs. And all that man has ever created on
the face of the earth, or ever will create--if you will allow me the use
of the word create, with regard to man’s highest productive
activities.”
“It’s the word I always use myself,” said Somers.
“Naturally, since you know how to think inspiredly. Well then, all that
man ever has created or ever will create, while he remains man, has been
created in the inspiration and by the force of love. And not only
man--all the living creatures are swayed to creation, to new creation,
to the creation of song and beauty and lovely gesture, by love. I will
go further. I believe the sun’s attraction for the earth is a form of
love.”
“Then why doesn’t the earth fly into the sun?” said Somers.
“For the same reason. Love is mutual. Each attracts the other. But in
natural love each tries at the same time to withhold the other, to keep
the other true to its own beloved nature. To any true lover, it would be
the greatest disaster if the beloved broke down from her own nature and
self and began to identify herself with him, with his nature and self. I
say, to any genuine lover this is the greatest disaster, and he tries by
every means in his power to prevent this. The earth and sun, on their
plane, have discovered a perfect equilibrium. But man has not yet begun.
His lesson is so much harder. His consciousness is at once so
complicated and so cruelly limited. This is the lesson before us. Man
has loved the beloved for the sake of love, so far, but rarely, rarely
has he _consciously_ known that he could only love her for her own
separate, strange self: forever strange and a joyful mystery to him.
Lovers henceforth have got to _know_ one another. A terrible mistake,
and a self delusion. True lovers only learn that as they know less, and
less, and less of each other, the mystery of each grows more startling
to the other. The tangible unknown: that is the magic, the mystery, and
the grandeur of love, that it puts the tangible unknown in our arms, and
against our breast: the beloved. We have made a fatal mistake. We have
got to know so much _about_ things, that we think we know the actuality,
and contain it. The sun is as much outside us, and as eternally unknown,
as ever it was. And the same with each man’s beloved: like the sun. What
do the facts we know _about_ a man amount to? Only two things we can
know of him, and this by pure soul-intuition: we can know if he is true
to the flame of life and love which is inside his heart, or if he is
false to it. If he is true, he is friend. If he is wilfully false, and
inimical to the fire of life and love in his own heart, then he is my
enemy as well as his own.”
Somers listened. He seemed to see it all and hear it all with marvellous
clarity. And he believed that it was all true.
“Yes,” he said, “I believe that is all true.”
“What is it then that you disbelieve?”
“I don’t quite believe that love is the one and only exclusive force or
mystery of living inspiration. I don’t quite believe that. There is
something else.”
Kangaroo looked at him for once overbearingly and with a sort of
contempt.
“Tell me what it is,” he replied briefly.
“I am not very clear myself. And, you see, what I want to say, you don’t
want to hear.”
“Yes, I do,” snapped Kangaroo.
“With your ears and your critical mind only.”
“Say it, anyhow, say it.”
Richard sat feeling very stupid. The communicative soul is like the ass,
you can lead him to the water, but you can’t make him drink.
“Why,” he said, “it means an end of us and what we are, in the first
place. And then a re-entry into us of the great God, who enters us from
below, not from above.”
Kangaroo sat bunched up like some creature watching round-eyed out of a
darker corner.
“How do you mean, enters us from below?” he barked.
“Not through the spirit. Enters us from the lower self, the dark self,
the phallic self, if you like.”
“Enters us from the phallic self?” snapped Kangaroo sharply.
“Sacredly. The god you can never see or visualise, who stands dark on
the threshold of the phallic me.”
“The phallic you, my dear young friend, what is that but love?”
Richard shook his head in silence.
“No,” he said, in a slow, remote voice. “I know your love, Kangaroo.
Working everything from the spirit, from the head. You work the lower
self as an instrument of the spirit. Now it is time for the spirit to
leave us again; it is time for the Son of Man to depart, and leave us
dark, in front of the unspoken God: who is just beyond the dark
threshold of the lower self, my lower self. There is a great God on the
threshold of my lower self, whom I fear while he is my glory. And the
spirit goes out like a spent candle.”
Kangaroo watched with a heavy face like a mask.
“It is time for the spirit to leave us,” he murmured in a somnambulist
voice. “Time for the spirit to leave us.”
Somers, who had dropped his face, hiding it as he spoke, watched the
other man from under his brows. Kangaroo, who still sat impassive, like
a frozen, antagonised Buddha, gave himself a jerk of recovery.
“Ah well!” he sighed, with a weary, impatient, condescending sigh. “I
was never able to follow mysticism and metaphysics. One of my many
limitations. I don’t know what you mean.”
“But what is your ‘love’ but a mystical thing?” asked Richard
indignantly.
“My love? Why, that is something I _feel_, as plain as toothache.”
“Well, so do I feel the other: and love has become like cardboard to
me,” said Richard, still indignant.
“Like cardboard? Well, I don’t quite see love like cardboard, dear boy.
For you _are_ a dear boy, in spite of yourself. Oh yes, you are. There’s
some demon inside you makes you perverse, and won’t let you be the dear,
beautiful thing you are. But I’m going to exorcise that demon.”
Somers gave a short laugh, the very voice of the demon speaking.
“Oh yes I am,” said Kangaroo, in a steely voice. “I’m going to exorcise
that demon, and release your beautiful Andromeda soul.”
“Try,” ejaculated Richard dryly, turning aside his face in distaste.
Kangaroo leaped to his feet and stood towering over the little enemy as
if he would stoop over him and smother him in violent warmth and drive
out the demon in that way. But Richard sat cold and withheld, and
Kangaroo had not the power to touch him.
“I’m going to try,” shouted the lawyer, in his slightly husky roar.
“You’ve made it my prerogative by telling me to try. I’m going to love
you, and you won’t get away from that. I’m the hound of heaven after
you, my boy, and I’m fatal to the hell hound that’s leading you. Do you
know I love you?--that I loved you long before I met you?”
Richard, curled narrow in his chair like a snake, glanced up at the big
man projecting over him. A sort of magnetic effusion seemed to come out
of Kangaroo’s body, and Richard’s hand was almost drawn in spite of
himself to touch the other man’s body. He had deliberately to refrain
from laying his hand on the near, generous stomach of the Kangaroo,
because automatically his hand would have lifted and sought that rest.
But he prevented himself, and the eyes of the two men met. Kangaroo
searched Lovat’s eyes: but they seemed to be of cloudy blue like
hell-smoke, impenetrable and devilish. Kangaroo watched a long time: but
the other man was the unchangeable. Kangaroo turned aside suddenly.
“Ah well,” he said. “I can see there is a beast in the way. There is a
beast in your eyes, Lovat, and if I can’t conquer him then--then
woe-betide you, my dear. But I love you, you see.”
“Sounds like a threat,” laughed Somers.
Kangaroo leaned and laid his hand gently on Lovat’s shoulder.
“Don’t say that”; his voice was small now, and very gentle. “I loved you
before I knew you. My soul cries for you. And you hurt me with the demon
that is in you.”
Richard became very pale, and was silent for some moments. The hand sank
heavier, nearer, on his shoulder.
“You see,” said Somers, trying hard to be fair, “what you call my demon
is what I identify myself with. It’s my best me, and I stick to it. I
think love, all this love of ours, is a devilish thing now: a slow
poison. Really, I know the dark god at the lower threshold--even if I
have to repeat it like a phrase. And in the sacred dark men meet and
touch, and it is a great communion. But it isn’t this love. There’s no
love in it. But something deeper. Love seems to me somehow trivial: and
the spirit seems like something that belongs to paper. I can’t help
it--I know another God.”
The pressure of the hand became inert.
“But aren’t you merely inventing other terms for the same thing that I
mean, and that I call love?” said Kangaroo, in a strange, toneless
voice, looking aside.
“Does it seem to you that I am?” asked Lovat, gently and
dispassionately.
The strange, great passionate cloud of Kangaroo still hung there,
hovering over the pale, sharp isolation of Somers, who lay looking up.
And then it seemed as if the glow and vibration left Kangaroo’s body,
the cloud became grey and heavy. He sighed, removed his hand, and turned
away.
“Ah well!” he said. “Ah well!”
Somers rose, trembling now, and feeling frail.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“Yes, do go,” said Kangaroo.
And without another word Somers went, leaving the other man sunk in a
great heap in his chair, as if defeated. Somers did not even pity him.
His heart felt queer and cave-like and devoid of emotion.
He was spending the night at the Callcotts. Harriet, too, was there. But
he was in no hurry to get back there. It was a clear and very starry
night. He took the tram-car away from the centre of the town, then
walked. As was always the case with him, in this country, the land and
the world disappeared as night fell, as if the day had been an illusion,
and the sky came bending down. There was the Milky Way, in clouds of
star-fume, bending down right in front of him, right down till it seemed
as if he would walk on to it, if he kept going. The pale, fumy drift of
the Milky Way drooped down and seemed so near, straight in front, that
it seemed the obvious road to take. And one would avoid the strange dark
gaps, gulfs, in the way overhead. And one would look across to the
floating isles of star-fume, to the south, across the gulfs where the
sharp stars flashed like lighthouses, and one would be in a new way
denizen of a new plane, walking by oneself. There would be a real new
way to take. And the mechanical earth quite obliterated, sunk out.
Only he saw, on the sea’s high black horizon, the various reddish
sore-looking lights of a ship. There they were--the signs of the ways of
men--hot-looking and weary. He turned quickly away from the marks of
the far-off ship, to look again at the downward slope of the great hill
of the Milky Way. He wanted so much to get out of this lit-up cloy of
humanity, and the exhaust of love, and the fretfulness of desire. Why
not swing away into cold separation? Why should desire always be
fretting, fretting like a tugged chain? Why not break the bond and be
single, take a fierce stoop and a swing back, as when a gannet plunges
like a white, metallic arrow into the sea, raising a burst of spray,
disappearing, completing the downward curve of the parabola in the
invisible underwater where it seizes the object of desire, then away,
away with success upwards, back flashing into the air and white space?
Why not? Why want to urge, urge, urge oneself down the causeways of
desirous love, hard pavements of love? Even like Kangaroo. Why shouldn’t
meeting be a stoop as a gannet stoops into the sea, or a hawk, or a
kite, in a swift rapacious parabola downwards, to touch at the lowermost
turn of the curve, then up again?
It is a world of slaves: all love-professing. Why unite with them? Why
pander to them? Why go with them at all? Why not strike at communion out
of the unseen, as the gannet strikes into the unseen underwater, or the
kite from above at a mouse? One seizure, and away again, back away into
isolation. A touch, and away. Always back, away into isolation. Why be
cloyed and clogged down like billions of fish in water, or billions of
mice on land? It is a world of slaves. Then why not gannets in the upper
air, having two worlds? Why only one element? If I am to have a meeting
it shall be down, down in the invisible, and the moment I re-emerge it
shall be alone. In the visible world I am alone, an isolate instance. My
meeting is in the underworld, the dark. Beneath every gannet that jumps
from the water ten thousand fish are swimming still. But they are
swimming in a shudder of silver fear. That is the magic of the ocean.
Let them shudder the huge ocean aglimmer.
He arrived at Wyewurk at last, and found a little party. William James
was there, and Victoria had made, by coincidence, a Welsh rarebit. The
beer was on the table.
“Just in time,” said Jack. “As well you’re not half an hour later, or
there might ’a been no booze. How did you come--tram?”
“Yes--and walked part of the way.”
“What kind of an evening did you have?” said Harriet.
He looked at her. A chill fell upon the little gathering, from his
presence.
“We didn’t agree,” he replied.
“I knew you wouldn’t--not for long, anyhow,” she replied. “I don’t see
you agreeing and playing second fiddle for long.”
“Do you see me as a fiddler at all?”
“I’ve seen you fiddling away hard enough many times,” retorted Harriet.
“Why, what else do you do, all your life, but fiddle some tune or
other?”
He did not reply, and there was a pause. His face was pale and very
definite, as if it were some curious seashell.
“What did you get the wind up about, between you?” said Jack soothingly,
pouring Somers a glass of beer.
“No wind. We’re only not the same pair of shoes.”
“I could have told you that before you went,” said Jaz with quiet
elation in his tones.
Victoria looked at Somers with dark, bright eyes. She was quite
fascinated by him, as an Australian bird by some adder.
“Isn’t Mr Somers queer?” she said. “He doesn’t seem to mind a bit.”
Somers looked at her quickly, a smile round his eyes, and a curious,
smiling devil inside them, cold as ice.
“Oh yes, he minds. Don’t take any notice of his pretence. He’s only in a
bad temper,” cried Harriet. “I know him by now. He’s been in a temper
for days.”
“Oh, why?” cried Victoria. “I thought he was lovely this afternoon when
he was here.”
“Yes,” said Harriet grimly. “Lovely! You should live with him.”
But again Victoria looked at his clear, fixed face, with the false smile
round the eyes, and her fascination did not diminish.
“What an excellent Welsh rarebit,” he said. “If there were a little red
pepper.”
“Red pepper!” cried Victoria. “There is!” And she sprang up to get it
for him. As she handed it to him he looked into her dilated, dark bright
eyes, and thanked her courteously. When he was in this state his voice
and tone in speaking were very melodious. Of course it set Harriet on
edge. But Victoria stood fluttering with her hands over the table,
bewildered.
“What are you feeling for?” asked Jack.
She only gave a little blind laugh, and remembered that she was going to
sit down. So she sat down, and then wondered what it was she was going
to do after that.
“So you don’t cotton on to Kangaroo either?” said Jack easily.
“I have the greatest admiration for him.”
“You’re not alone there. But you don’t fall over yourself, loving him.”
“I only trip, and recover my balance for the moment.”
Jaz gave a loud laugh, across his cheese.
“That’s good!” he said.
“You trip, and recover your balance,” said Jack. “You’re a wary one. The
rest of us falls right in, flop, and are never heard of again. And how
did you part then?”
“We parted in mutual esteem. I said I would go, and he asked me please
to do so as quickly as possible.”
Jack made round eyes, and even Jaz left off eating.
“Did you _quarrel_?” cried Harriet.
“Oh yes, violently. But of course, not vulgarly. We parted, as I said,
in mutual esteem, bowing each other out.”
“You _are_ awful. You only went on purpose to upset him. I knew that all
along. Why must you be so spiteful?” said Harriet. “You’re never happy
unless you’re upsetting somebody’s apple-cart.”
“Am I doomed to agree with everybody, then?”
“No. But you needn’t _set out_ to be disagreeable. And to Mr Cooley
especially, who likes you and is such a warm, big man. You ought to be
flattered that he _cares_ what you think. No, you have to go and try and
undermine him. Ah--why was I ever pestered with such a viperish husband
as you!” said Harriet.
Victoria made alert, frightened eyes. But Somers sat on with the same
little smile and courteous bearing.
“I am, of course, immensely flattered at his noticing me,” he replied.
“Otherwise, naturally, I should have resented being told to leave. As it
was I didn’t resent it a bit.”
“Didn’t you!” cried Harriet. “I know you and your pretences. That is
what has put you in such a temper.”
“But you remember I’ve been in a temper for days,” he replied calmly and
gravely. “Therefore there could be no putting.”
“Oh, it only made you worse. I’m tired of your temper, really.”
“But Mr Somers isn’t in a temper at all!” cried Victoria. “He’s nicer
than any of us, really. Jack would be as angry as anything if I said all
those things to him. Shouldn’t you, Jack?” And she cuddled his arm.
“You’d be shut up in the coal-shed for the night before you got half way
through with it, if ever you started trying it on,” he replied, with
marital humour.
“No, I shouldn’t, either: or it would be the last door you’d shut on
_me_, so there. But anyhow you’d be in a waxy old temper.”
And she smiled at Somers as she cuddled her husband’s arm.
“If my hostess says I’m nice,” said Somers, “I am not going to feel
guilty, whatever my _wife_ may say.”
“Oh yes, you do feel guilty,” said Harriet.
“Your hostess doesn’t find any fault with you at all,” cried Victoria.
She was looking very pretty, in a brown chiffon dress. “She thinks
you’re the nicest of anybody here, there.”
“What?” cried Jack. “When I’m here as well?”
“Whether you’re here or not. You’re not very nice to me to-night, and
William James never is. But Mr Somers is _awfully_ nice.” She blushed
suddenly quite vividly, looking under her long lashes at him. He smiled
a little more intensely to himself.
“I tell you what, Mrs Somers,” said Jack. “We’d better make a swap of
it, till they alter their opinion. You and me had better strike up a
match, and let them two elope with one another for a bit.”
“And what about William James?” cried Victoria, with hurried, vivid
excitement.
“Oh nobody need trouble themselves about William James,” replied that
individual. “It’s about time he was rolling home.”
“No,” said Harriet, in answer to Jack. “I’m striking off no more
matches, thank you. The game’s not worth the candle.”
“Why, maybe you’ve only struck on the rough side, you know,” said Jack.
“You might strike on the smooth next time.”
“No,” said Harriet. “I’m going to bed, and leave you all to your
striking and your bad tempers. Good-night!”
She rose roughly. Victoria jumped up to accompany her to her room. The
Somers had had a room each in Torestin, so Victoria had put them each
separately into a nice little room in her house.
“Is it right,” said Jack, “that you got the wind up to-night?”
“No,” said Somers. “At least we only quite lovingly agreed to differ.
Nothing else.”
“I thought it would be like that,” said Jack. “He thinks the world of
you, I can see that.”
William James stood ready to leave. He looked at Somers cunningly, as if
reading into him with his light-grey, sceptical eyes.
“Mr Somers doesn’t care to commit himself so easily,” he said.
“No,” said Jack. “You blighters from the old country are so mighty
careful of risking yourselves. That’s what I’m not. When I feel a thing
I jump up and go for it, and damn the consequences. There’s always
plenty of time to think about a thing after you’ve done it. And then if
you’re fool enough to wish you hadn’t done it, why, that shows you
_shouldn’t_ have. I don’t go in for regrets, myself. I do what I want.
And if I wanted to do a thing, then it’s _all right_ when it’s done. All
a man’s got to do is to keep his mouth shut and his fist ready, and go
down on his knees to _nothing_. Then he can damn well do as he pleases.
And all he asks is that other folks shall do as they please, men or
women. Damn all this careful stunt. I’ll step along as far as the tram
with you, Jaz, I feel like walking the Welsh rabbit down into his
burrow. Vicky prefers Mr Somers to me _pro tem._--and I don’t begrudge
it her. Why should I?”
Victoria was putting away the dishes, and seemed not to hear. The two
men went. Somers still sat in his chair. He was truly in a devil of a
temper, with everybody and everything: a wicked, fiendish mood that made
him _look_ quite handsome, as fate would have it. He had heard Jack’s
hint. He knew Victoria was attracted to him: that she imagined no
nonsense about love, she was too remote from the old world, and too
momentary for that. The moment--that was all her feelings were to her.
And at this moment she was fascinated, and when she said, in her
slightly contralto voice:
“You’re not in a temper with _me_, though, are you Mr Somers?” she was
so comely, like a maiden just ready for love, and like a comely,
desirous virgin offering herself to the wayfarer, in the name of the god
of bright desire, that Somers stretched out his hand and stroked her hot
cheek very delicately with the tips of his fingers, replying:
“I could never be angry with you. You’re much too winsome.”
She looked at him with her dark eyes dilated into a glow, a glow of
offering. He smiled faintly, rising to his feet, and desire in all his
limbs like a power. The moment--and the power of the moment. Again he
felt his limbs full of desire, like a power. And his days of anger
seemed to culminate now in this moment, like bitter smouldering that at
last leaps into flame. Not love--just weapon-like desire. He knew it.
The god Bacchus. Iacchos! Iacchos! Bacchanals with weapon hands. She had
the sacred glow in her eyes. Bacchus, the true Bacchus. Jack would not
begrudge the god. And the fire was very clean and steely, after the
smoke. And he felt the velvety fire from her face in his finger-tips.
And still his old stubborn self intervened. He decided almost
involuntarily. Perhaps it was fear.
“Good-night,” he said to her. “Jack will be back in a moment. You look
bonnie to-night.”
And he went to his room. When he had shut the door, he wondered if it
was merely a sort of cowardice. Honour? No need as far as Jack was
concerned, apparently. And Harriet? She was too honest a female. She
would know that the dishonour, as far as she felt it, lay in the
desire, not in the act. For her, too, honour did not consist in a
pledged word kept according to pledge, but in a genuine feeling
faithfully followed. He had not to reckon with honour here.