Fan-shaped, blond, mounted on gauze and guaranteed undetectable, it
arrived from the wig-maker, preciously packed in a stout cardboard box
six times too large for it and accompanied by a quarter of a pint of the
choicest spirit gum. In the privacy of his bedroom Gumbril uncoffined
it, held it out for his own admiration, caressed its silkiness and
finally tried it on, holding it provisionally to his chin, in front of
the looking-glass. The effect, he decided immediately, was stunning, was
grandiose. From melancholy and all too mild he saw himself transformed
on the instant into a sort of jovial Henry the Eighth, into a massive
Rabelaisian man, broad and powerful and exuberant with vitality and
hair.
The proportions of his face were startlingly altered. The podium, below
the mouth, had been insufficiently massive to carry the stately order of
the nose; and the ratiocinative attic of the forehead, noble enough, no
doubt, in itself, had been disproportionately high. The beard now
supplied the deficiencies in the stylobate, and planted now on a firm
basement of will, the order of the senses, the aerial attic of ideas,
reared themselves with a more classical harmoniousness of proportion. It
only remained for him to order from Mr. Bojanus an American coat, padded
out at the shoulders as squarely and heroically as a doublet of the
Cinquecento, and he would look the complete Rabelaisian man. Great
eater, deep drinker, stout fighter, prodigious lover; clear thinker,
creator of beauty, seeker of truth and prophet of heroic grandeurs.
Fitted out with coat and beard, he could qualify for the next vacancy
among the cœnobites of Thelema.
He removed his beard—“put his beaver up,” as they used to say in the
fine old days of chivalry; he would have to remember that little joke
for Coleman’s benefit. He put his beaver up—ha, ha!—and stared ruefully
at the far from Rabelaisian figure which now confronted him. The
moustache—that was genuine enough—which had looked, in conjunction with
the splendid work of art below, so fierce and manly, served by itself,
he now perceived, only droopily to emphasize his native mildness and
melancholy.
It was a dismal affair, which might have belonged to Maurice Barrès in
youth; a slanting, flagging, sagging thing, such as could only grow on
the lip of an assiduous Cultivator of the Me, and would become, as one
grew older, ludicrously out of place on the visage of a roaring
Nationalist. If it weren’t that it fitted in so splendidly with the
beard, if it weren’t that it became so marvellously different in the new
context he had now discovered for it, he would have shaved it off then
and there.
Mournful appendage. But now he would transform it, he would add to it
its better half. Zadig’s quatrain to his mistress, when the tablet on
which it was written was broken in two, became a treasonable libel on
the king. So this moustache, thought Gumbril, as gingerly he applied the
spirit gum to his cheeks and chin, this moustache which by itself serves
only to betray me, becomes, as soon as it is joined to its missing
context, an amorous arm for the conquest of the fair sex.
A little far-fetched, he decided; a little ponderous. And besides, as so
few people had read Zadig, not much use in conversation. Cautiously and
with neat, meticulous finger-tips he adjusted the transformation to his
gummed face, pressed it firmly, held it while it stuck fast. The portals
of Thelema opened before him; he was free of those rich orchards, those
halls and courts, those broad staircases winding in noble spirals within
the flanks of each of the fair round towers. And it was Coleman who had
pointed out the way; he felt duly grateful. One last look at the
Complete Man, one final and definitive constatation that the Mild and
Melancholy one was, for the time at least, no more; and he was ready in
all confidence to set out. He selected a loose, light great-coat—not
that he needed a coat at all, for the day was bright and warm; but until
Mr. Bojanus had done his labour of padding he would have to broaden
himself out in this way, even if it did mean that he might be
uncomfortably hot. To fall short of Complete Manhood for fear of a
little inconvenience would be absurd. He slipped, therefore, into his
light coat—a toga, Mr. Bojanus called it, a very neat toga in real West
Country whipcord. He put on his broadest and blackest felt hat, for
breadth above everything was what he needed to give him completeness,
breadth of stature, breadth of mind, breadth of human sympathy, breadth
of smile, breadth of humour, breadth of everything. The final touch was
a massive and antique Malacca cane belonging to his father. If he had
possessed a bulldog, he would have taken it out on a leash. But he did
not. He issued into the sunshine, unaccompanied.
But unaccompanied he did not mean to remain for long. These warm, bright
May days were wonderful days for being in love on. And to be alone on
such days was like a malady. It was a malady from which the Mild and
Melancholy Man suffered all too frequently. And yet there were millions
of superfluous women in the country; millions of them. Every day, in the
streets, one saw thousands of them passing; and some were exquisite,
were ravishing, the only possible soul-mates. Thousands of unique
soul-mates every day. The Mild and Melancholy one allowed them to
pass—for ever. But to-day—to-day he was the complete and Rabelaisian
man; he was bearded to the teeth; the imbecile game was at its height;
there would be opportunities, and the Complete Man could know how to
take them. No, he would not be unaccompanied for long.
Outside in the square the fourteen plane trees glowed in their young,
unsullied green. At the end of every street the golden muslin of the
haze hung in an unwrinkled curtain that thinned away above the sky’s
gauzy horizon to transparent nothing against the intenser blue. The dim,
conch-like murmur that in a city is silence seemed hazily to identify
itself with the golden mistiness of summer, and against this dim, wide
background the yells of the playing children detached themselves,
distinct and piercing. “Beaver” they shouted, “beaver!” and, “Is it cold
up there?” Full of playful menace, the Complete Man shook at them his
borrowed Malacca. He accepted their prompt hail as the most favourable
of omens.
At the first tobacconist’s Gumbril bought the longest cigar he could
find, and trailing behind him expiring blue wreaths of Cuban smoke, he
made his way slowly and with an ample swagger towards the Park. It was
there, under the elms, on the shores of the ornamental waters, that he
expected to find his opportunity, that he intended—how confidently
behind his Gargantuan mask!—to take it.
The opportunity offered itself sooner than he expected.
He had just turned into the Queen’s Road and was sauntering past
Whiteley’s with the air of one who knows that he has a right to a good
place, to two or three good places even, in the sun, when he noticed
just in front of him, peering intently at the New Season’s Models, a
young woman whom in his mild and melancholy days he would have only
hopelessly admired, but who now, to the Complete Man, seemed a destined
and accessible prey. She was fairly tall, but seemed taller than she
actually was, by reason of her remarkable slenderness. Not that she
looked disagreeably thin, far from it. It was a rounded slenderness. The
Complete Man decided to consider her as tubular—flexible and tubular,
like a section of boa constrictor, should one say. She was dressed in
clothes that emphasized this serpentine slimness, in a close-fitting
grey jacket that buttoned up to the neck and a long, narrow grey skirt
that came down to her ankles. On her head was a small, sleek black hat,
that looked almost as though it were made of metal. It was trimmed on
one side with a bunch of dull golden foliage.
Those golden leaves were the only touch of ornament in all the severe
smoothness and unbroken tubularity of her person. As for her face, that
was neither strictly beautiful nor strictly ugly, but combined elements
of both beauty and ugliness into a whole that was unexpected, that was
oddly and somehow unnaturally attractive.
Pretending, he too, to take an interest in the New Season’s Models,
Gumbril made, squinting sideways over the burning tip of his cigar, an
inventory of her features. The forehead, that was mostly hidden by her
hat; it might be pensively and serenely high, it might be of that degree
of lowness which in men is villainous, but in women is only another—a
rather rustic one perhaps, rather _canaille_ even, but definitely
another—attraction. There was no telling. As for her eyes, they were
green, and limpid; set wide apart in her head they looked out from under
heavy lids and through openings that slanted up towards the outer
corners. Her nose was slightly aquiline. Her mouth was full-lipped, but
straight and unexpectedly wide. Her chin was small, round and firm. She
had a pale skin, a little flushed over the cheek-bones, which were
prominent.
On the left cheek, close under the corner of the slanting eye, she had a
brown mole. Such hair as Gumbril could see beneath her hat was pale and
inconspicuously blond. When she had finished looking at the New Season’s
Models she moved slowly on, halting for a moment before the travelling
trunks and the fitted picnic baskets; dwelling for a full minute over
the corsets, passing the hats, for some reason, rather contemptuously,
but pausing, which seemed strange, for a long pensive look at the cigars
and wine. As for the tennis rackets and cricket bats, the school outfits
and the gentleman’s hosiery—she hadn’t so much as a look for one of
them. But how lovingly she lingered before the boots and shoes! Her own
feet, the Complete Man noticed with satisfaction, had an elegance of
florid curves. And while other folk walked on neat’s leather she was
content to be shod with nothing coarser than mottled serpent’s skin.
Slowly they drifted up Queen’s Road, lingering before every jeweller’s,
every antiquarian’s, every milliner’s on the way. The stranger gave him
no opportunity, and indeed, Gumbril reflected, how should she? For the
imbecile game on which he was relying is a travelling piquet for two
players, not a game of patience. No sane human being could play it in
solitude. He would have to make the opportunity himself.
All that was mild in him, all that was melancholy, shrank with a
sickened reluctance from the task of breaking—with what consequences
delicious and perilous in the future or, in the case of the deserved
snub, immediately humiliating?—a silence which, by the tenth or twelfth
shop window, had become quite unbearably significant. The Mild and
Melancholy one would have drifted to the top of the road, sharing, with
that community of tastes which is the basis of every happy union, her
enthusiasm for brass candlesticks and toasting-forks, imitation
Chippendale furniture, gold watch-bracelets and low-waisted summer
frocks; would have drifted to the top of the road and watched her,
dumbly, disappearing for ever into the green Park or along the blank
pavements of the Bayswater Road; would have watched her for ever
disappear and then, if the pubs had happened to be open, would have gone
and ordered a glass of port, and sitting at the bar would have savoured,
still dumbly, among the other drinkers, the muddy grapes of the Douro,
and his own unique loneliness.
That was what the Mild and Melancholy one would have done. But the
sight, as he gazed earnestly into an antiquary’s window, of his own
powerful bearded face reflected in a sham Heppelwhite mirror, reminded
him that the Mild and Melancholy one was temporarily extinct, and that
it was the Complete Man who now dawdled, smoking his long cigar, up the
Queen’s Road towards the Abbey of Thelema.
He squared his shoulders; in that loose toga of Mr. Bojanus’s he looked
as copious as François Premier. The time, he decided, had come.
It was at this moment that the reflection of the stranger’s face joined
itself in the little mirror, as she made a little movement away from the
Old Welsh dresser in the corner, to that of his own. She looked at the
spurious Heppelwhite. Their eyes met in the hospitable glass. Gumbril
smiled. The corners of the stranger’s wide mouth seemed faintly to move;
like petals of the magnolia, her eyelids came slowly down over her
slanting eyes. Gumbril turned from the reflection to the reality.
“If you want to say Beaver,” he said, “you may.”
The Complete Man had made his first speech.
“I want to say nothing,” said the stranger. She spoke with a charming
precision and distinctness, lingering with a pretty emphasis on the _n_
of nothing. “N—n—nothing”—it sounded rather final. She turned away, she
moved on.
But the Complete Man was not one to be put off by a mere ultimatum.
“There,” he said, falling into step with her, “now I’ve had it—the
deserved snub. Honour is saved, prestige duly upheld. Now we can get on
with our conversation.”
The Mild and Melancholy one stood by, gasping with astonished
admiration.
“You are v—very impertinent,” said the stranger, smiling and looking up
from under the magnolia petals.
“It is in my character,” said the Complete Man. “You mustn’t blame me.
One cannot escape from one’s heredity; that’s one’s share of original
sin.”
“There is always grace,” said the stranger.
Gumbril caressed his beard. “True,” he replied.
“I advise you to pr—ray for it.”
His prayer, the Mild and Melancholy one reflected, had already been
answered. The original sin in him had been self-corrected.
“Here is another antique shop,” said Gumbril. “Shall we stop and have a
look at it?”
The stranger glanced at him doubtfully. But he looked quite serious.
They stopped.
“How revolting this sham cottage furniture is,” Gumbril remarked. The
shop, he noticed, was called ‘Ye Olde Farme House.’
The stranger, who had been on the point of saying how much she liked
those lovely Old Welsh dressers, gave him her heartiest agreement. “So
v—vulgar.”
“So horribly refined. So refined and artistic.”
She laughed on a descending chromatic scale. This was excitingly new.
Poor Aunt Aggie with her Arts and Crafts, and her old English furniture.
And to think she had taken them so seriously! She saw in a flash the
fastidious lady that she now was—with Louis whatever-it-was furniture at
home, and jewels, and young poets to tea, and real artists. In the past,
when she had imagined herself entertaining real artists, it had always
been among really artistic furniture. Aunt Aggie’s furniture. But
now—no, oh no. This man was probably an artist. His beard; and that big
black hat. But not poor; very well dressed.
“Yes, it’s funny to think that there are people who call that sort of
thing artistic. One’s quite s—sorry for them,” she added, with a little
hiss.
“You have a kind heart,” said Gumbril. “I’m glad to see that.”
“Not v—very kind, I’m af—fraid.” She looked at him sideways, and
significantly as the fastidious lady would have looked at one of the
poets.
“Well, kind enough, I hope,” said the Complete Man. He was delighted
with his new acquaintance.
Together they disembogued into the Bayswater Road. It was here, Gumbril
reflected, that the Mild and Melancholy one would dumbly have slunk away
to his glass of port and his loneliness among the alien topers at the
bar. But the Complete Man took his new friend by the elbow, and steered
her into the traffic. Together they crossed the road, together entered
the park.
“I still think you are v—very impertinent,” said the lady. “What induced
you to follow me?”
With a single comprehensive gesture, Gumbril indicated the sun, the sky,
the green trees airily glittering, the grass, the emerald lights and
violet shadows of the rustic distance. “On a day like this,” he said,
“how could I help it?”
“Original sin?”
“Oh,” the Complete Man modestly shook his head, “I lay no claim to
originality in this.”
The stranger laughed. This was nearly as good as a young poet at the
tea-table. She was very glad that she’d decided, after all, to put on
her best suit this afternoon, even if it was a little stuffy for the
warmth of the day. He, too, she noticed, was wearing a great-coat; which
seemed rather odd.
“Is it original,” he went on, “to go and tumble stupidly like an
elephant into a pitfall, head over ears, at first sight...?”
She looked at him sideways, then closed down the magnolia petals, and
smiled. This was going to be the real thing—one of those long, those
interminable, or, at any rate, indefinitely renewable conversations
about love; witty, subtle, penetrating and bold, like the conversations
in books, like the conversations across the tea-table between brilliant
young poets and ladies of quality, grown fastidious through an excessive
experience, fastidious and a little weary, but still, in their subtle
way, insatiably curious.
“Suppose we sit down,” suggested Gumbril, and he pointed to a couple of
green iron chairs, standing isolated in the middle of the grass close
together and with their fronts slanting inwards a little towards one
another in a position that suggested a confidential intimacy. At the
prospect of the conversation that, inevitably, was about to unroll
itself, he felt decidedly less elated than did his new friend. If there
was anything he disliked it was conversations about love. It bored him,
oh, it bored him most horribly, this minute analysis of the passion that
young women always seemed to expect one, at some point or other in one’s
relation with them, to make. How love alters the character for both good
and bad; how physical passion need not be incompatible with the
spiritual; how a hateful and tyrannous possessiveness can be allied in
love with the most unselfish solicitude for the other party—oh, he knew
all this and much more, so well, so well. And whether one can be in love
with more than one person at a time, whether love can exist without
jealousy, whether pity, affection, desire can in any way replace the
full and genuine passion—how often he had had to thrash out these dreary
questions!
And all the philosophic speculations were equally familiar, all the
physiological and anthropological and psychological facts. In the theory
of the subject he had ceased to take any interest. Unhappily, a
discussion of the theory always seemed to be an essential preliminary to
the practice of it. He sighed a little wearily as he took his seat on
the green iron chair. But then, recollecting that he was now the
Complete Man, and that the Complete Man must do everything with a
flourish and a high hand, he leaned forward and, smiling with a charming
insolence through his beard, began:
“Tiresias, you may remember, was granted the singular privilege of
living both as a man and a woman.”
Ah, this was the genuine young poet. Supporting an elbow on the back of
her chair and leaning her cheek against her hand, she disposed herself
to listen and, where necessary, brilliantly to interpellate; it was
through half-closed eyes that she looked at him, and she smiled faintly
in a manner which she knew, from experience, to be enigmatic, and though
a shade haughty, though a tiny bit mocking and ironical, exceedingly
attractive.
An hour and a half later they were driving towards an address in Bloxam
Gardens, Maida Vale. The name seemed vaguely familiar to Gumbril. Bloxam
Gardens—perhaps one of his aunts had lived there once?
“It’s a dr—dreadful little maisonnette,” she explained. “Full of awful
things. We had to take it furnished. It’s so impossible to find anything
now.”
Gumbril leaned back in his corner, wondering, as he studied that averted
profile, who or what this young woman could be. She seemed to be in the
obvious movement, to like the sort of things one would expect people to
like; she seemed to be as highly civilized, in Mr. Mercaptan’s rather
technical sense of the term, as free of all prejudices as the great
exponent of civilization himself.
She seemed, from her coolly dropped hints, to possess all the dangerous
experience, all the assurance and easy ruthlessness of a great lady
whose whole life is occupied in the interminable affairs of the heart,
the senses and the head. But, by a strange contradiction she seemed to
find her life narrow and uninteresting. She had complained in so many
words that her husband misunderstood and neglected her, had complained,
by implication, that she knew very few interesting people.
The maisonnette in Bloxam Gardens was certainly not very splendid—six
rooms on the second and third floors of a peeling stucco house. And the
furniture—decidedly Hire Purchase. And the curtains and
cretonnes—brightly ‘modern,’ positively ‘futurist.’
“What one has to put up with in furnished flats!” The lady made a
grimace as she ushered him into the sitting-room. And while she spoke
the words, she really managed to persuade herself that the furniture
wasn’t theirs, that they had found all this sordid stuff cluttering up
the rooms, not chosen it, oh with pains! themselves, not doggedly paid
for it, month by month.
“Our own things,” she murmured vaguely, “are stored. In the Riviera.” It
was there, under the palms, among the gaudy melon flowers and the
croupiers that the fastidious lady had last held her salon of young
poets. In the Riviera—that would explain, now she came to think of it, a
lot of things, if explanation ever became necessary.
The Complete Man nodded sympathetically. “Other people’s tastes,” he
held up his hands, they both laughed. “But why do we think of other
people?” he added. And coming forward with a conquering impulsiveness he
took both her long, fine hands in his and raised them to his bearded
mouth.
She looked at him for a second, then dropped her eyelids, took back her
hands. “I must go and make the tea,” she said. “The servants”—the plural
was a pardonable exaggeration—“are out.”
Gallantly, the Complete Man offered to come and help her. These scenes
of intimate life had a charm all their own. But she would not allow it.
“No, no,” she was very firm, “I simply forbid you. You must stay here. I
won’t be a moment,” and she was gone, closing the door carefully behind
her.
Left to himself, Gumbril sat down and filed his nails.
As for the young lady, she hurried along to her dingy little kitchen,
lit the gas, put the kettle on, set out the teapot and the cups on a
tray, and from the biscuit-box, where it was stored, took out the
remains of a chocolate cake, which had already seen service at the
day-before-yesterday’s tea-party. When all was ready here, she tiptoed
across to her bedroom and sitting down at her dressing-table, began with
hands that trembled a little with excitement to powder her nose, and
heighten the colour of her cheeks. Even after the last touch had been
given, she still sat there, looking at her image in the glass.
The lady and the poet, she was thinking, the _grande dame_ and the
brilliant young man of genius. She liked young men with beards. But he
was not an artist, in spite of the beard, in spite of the hat. He was a
writer of sorts. So she gathered; but he was reticent, he was
delightfully mysterious. She too, for that matter. The great lady slips
out, masked, into the street; touches the young man’s sleeve: Come with
me. She chooses, does not let herself passively be chosen. The young
poet falls at her feet; she lifts him up. One is accustomed to this sort
of thing.
She opened her jewel box, took out all her rings—there were not many of
them, alas!—and put them on. Two or three of them, on second thoughts,
she took off again; they were a little, she suspected with a sudden
qualm, in other people’s taste.
He was very clever, very artistic—only that seemed to be the wrong word
to use; he seemed to know all the new things, all the interesting
people. Perhaps he would introduce her to some of them. And he was so
much at ease behind his knowledge, so well assured. But for her part,
she felt pretty certain, she had made no stupid mistakes. She too had
been, had looked at any rate—which was the important thing—very much at
ease.
She liked young men with beards. They looked so Russian. Catherine of
Russia had been one of the great ladies with caprices. Masked in the
streets. Young poet, come with me. Or even, Young butcher’s boy. But
that, no, that was going too far, too low. Still, life, life—it was
there to be lived—life—to be enjoyed. And now, and now? She was still
wondering what would happen next, when the kettle, which was one of
those funny ones which whistle when they come to the boil, began,
fitfully, at first, then, under full steam, unflaggingly, to sound its
mournful, other-worldly note. She sighed and bestirred herself to attend
to it.
“Let me help you.” Gumbril jumped up as she came into the room. “What
can I do?” He hovered rather ineptly round her.
The lady put down her tray on the little table. “N—nothing,” she said.
“N—nothing?” he imitated her with a playful mockery. “Am I good for
n—nothing at all?” He took one of her hands and kissed it.
“Nothing that’s of the l—least importance.” She sat down and began to
pour out the tea.
The Complete Man also sat down. “So to adore at first sight,” he asked,
“is not of the l—least importance?”
She shook her head, smiled, raised and lowered her eyelids. One was so
well accustomed to this sort of thing; it had no importance. “Sugar?”
she asked. The young poet was safely there, sparkling across the
tea-table. He offered love and she, with the easy heartlessness of one
who is so well accustomed to this sort of thing, offered him sugar.
He nodded. “Please. But if it’s of no importance to you,” he went on,
“then I’ll go away at once.”
The lady laughed her section of a descending chromatic scale. “Oh no,
you won’t,” she said. “You can’t.” And she felt that the _grande dame_
had made a very fine stroke.
“Quite right,” the Complete Man replied; “I couldn’t.” He stirred his
tea. “But who are you,” he looked up at her suddenly, “you devilish
female?” He was genuinely anxious to know; and besides, he was paying
her a very pretty compliment. “What do you do with your dangerous
existence?”
“I enjoy life,” she said. “I think one ought to enjoy life. Don’t you? I
think it’s one’s first duty.” She became quite grave. “One ought to
enjoy every moment of it,” she said. “Oh, passionately, adventurously,
newly, excitingly, uniquely.”
The Complete Man laughed. “A conscientious hedonist. I see.”
She felt uncomfortably that the fastidious lady had not quite lived up
to her character. She had spoken more like a young woman who finds life
too dull and daily, and would like to get on to the cinema. “I am very
conscientious,” she said, making significant play with the magnolia
petals and smiling her riddling smile. She must retrieve the Great
Catherine’s reputation.
“I could see that from the first,” mocked the Complete Man with a
triumphant insolence. “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
The fastidious lady only contemptuously smiled. “Have a little chocolate
cake,” she suggested. Her heart was beating. She wondered, she wondered.
There was a long silence. Gumbril finished his chocolate cake, gloomily
drank his tea and did not speak. He found, all at once, that he had
nothing to say. His jovial confidence seemed, for the moment, to have
deserted him. He was only the Mild and Melancholy one foolishly
disguised as a Complete Man; a sheep in beaver’s clothing. He entrenched
himself behind his formidable silence and waited; waited, at first,
sitting in his chair, then, when this total inactivity became
unbearable, striding about the room.
She looked at him, for all her air of serene composure, with a certain
disquiet. What on earth was he up to now? What could he be thinking
about? Frowning like that, he looked like a young Jupiter, bearded and
burly (though not, she noticed, quite so burly as he had appeared in his
overcoat) making ready to throw a thunderbolt. Perhaps he was thinking
of her—suspecting her, seeing through the fastidious lady and feeling
angry at her attempted deception. Or perhaps he was bored with her,
perhaps he was wanting to go away. Well, let him go; she didn’t mind. Or
perhaps he was just made like that—a moody young poet; that seemed, on
the whole, the most likely explanation; it was also the most pleasing
and romantic. She waited. They both waited.
Gumbril looked at her and was put to shame by the spectacle of her
quiet serenity. He must do something, he told himself; he must recover
the Complete Man’s lost _morale_. Desperately he came to a halt in
front of the one decent picture hanging on the walls. It was an
eighteenth-century engraving of Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’—better, he
always thought, in black and white than in its bleakly-coloured
original.
“That’s a nice engraving,” he said. “Very nice.” The mere fact of having
uttered at all was a great comfort to him, a real relief.
“Yes,” she said, “That belongs to me. I found it in a second-hand shop,
not far from here.”
“Photography,” he pronounced, with that temporary earnestness which made
him seem an enthusiast about everything, “is a mixed blessing. It has
made it possible to reproduce pictures so easily and cheaply, that all
the bad artists who were well occupied in the past, making engravings of
good men’s paintings, are now free to do bad original work of their
own.” All this was terribly impersonal, he told himself, terribly off
the point. He was losing ground. He must do something drastic to win it
back. But what?
She came to his rescue. “I bought another at the same time,” she said.
“‘The Last Communion of St. Jerome,’ by—who is it? I forget.”
“Ah, you mean Domenichino’s ‘St. Jerome’?” The Complete Man was afloat
again. “Poussin’s favourite picture. Mine too, very nearly. I’d like to
see that.”
“It’s in my room, I’m afraid. But if you don’t mind.”
He bowed. “If _you_ don’t.”
She smiled graciously to him and got up. “This way,” she said, and
opened the door.
“It’s a lovely picture,” Gumbril went on, loquaciously now, behind her,
as they walked down the dark corridor. “And besides, I have a
sentimental attachment to it. There used to be a copy of an engraving of
it at home, when I was a child. And I remember wondering and
wondering—oh, it went on for years—every time I saw the picture;
wondering why on earth that old bishop (for I did know it was a bishop)
should be handing the naked old man a five-shilling piece.”
She opened a door; they were in her very pink room. Grave in its solemn
and subtly harmonious beauty, the picture hung over the mantelpiece,
hung there, among the photographs of the little friends of her own age,
like some strange object from another world. From within that chipped
gilt frame all the beauty, all the grandeur of religion looked darkly
out upon the pink room. The little friends of her own age, all
deliciously nubile, sweetly smiled, turned up their eyes, clasped
Persian cats or stood jauntily, feet apart, hand in the breeches pocket
of the land-girl’s uniform; the pink roses on the wallpaper, the pink
and white curtains, the pink bed, the strawberry-coloured carpet, filled
all the air with the rosy reflections of nakedness and life.
And utterly remote, absorbed in their grave, solemn ecstasy, the robed
and mitred priest held out, the dying saint yearningly received, the
body of the Son of God. The ministrants looked gravely on, the little
angels looped in the air above a gravely triumphant festoon, the lion
slept at the saint’s feet, and through the arch beyond, the eye
travelled out over a quiet country of dark trees and hills.
“There it is,” she waved towards the mantelpiece.
But Gumbril had taken it all in long ago. “You see what I mean by the
five-shilling piece.” And stepping up to the picture, he pointed to the
round bright wafer which the priest holds in his hand and whose averted
disk is like the essential sun at the centre of the picture’s harmonious
universe. “Those were the days of five-shilling pieces,” he went on.
“You’re probably too young to remember those large, lovely things. They
came my way occasionally, and consecrated wafers didn’t. So you can
understand how much the picture puzzled me. A bishop giving a naked old
man five shillings in a church, with angels fluttering overhead, and a
lion sleeping in the foreground. It was obscure, it was horribly
obscure.” He turned away from the picture and confronted his hostess,
who was standing a little way behind him smiling enigmatically and
invitingly.
“Obscure,” he repeated. “But so is everything. So is life in general.
And you,” he stepped towards her, “you in particular.”
“Am I?” she lifted her limpid eyes at him. Oh, how her heart was
beating, how hard it was to be the fastidious lady, calmly satisfying
her caprice. How difficult it was to be accustomed to this sort of
thing. What was going to happen next?
What happened next was that the Complete Man came still closer, put his
arms round her, as though he were inviting her to the fox-trot, and
began kissing her with a startling violence. His beard tickled her neck;
shivering a little, she brought down the magnolia petals across her
eyes. The Complete Man lifted her up, walked across the room carrying
the fastidious lady in his arms and deposited her on the rosy catafalque
of the bed. Lying there with her eyes shut, she did her best to pretend
she was dead.
Gumbril had looked at his wrist watch and found that it was six o’clock.
Already? He prepared himself to take his departure. Wrapped in a pink
kimono, she came out into the hall to wish him farewell.
“When shall I see you again, Rosie?” He had learnt that her name was
Rosie.
She had recovered her great lady’s equanimity and detachment, and was
able to shrug her shoulders and smile. “How should I know?” she asked,
implying that she could not foresee what her caprice might be an hour
hence.
“May I write then, and ask one of these days if you do know?”
She put her head on one side and raised her eyebrows, doubtfully. At
last nodded. “Yes, you can write,” she permitted.
“Good,” said the Complete Man, and picked up his wide hat. She held out
her hand to him with stateliness, and with a formal gallantry he kissed
it. He was just closing the front door behind him, when he remembered
something. He turned round. “I say,” he called after the retreating pink
kimono. “It’s rather absurd. But how can I write? I don’t know your
name. I can’t just address it ‘Rosie’”
The great lady laughed delightedly. This had the real _capriccio_
flavour. “Wait,” she said, and she ran into the sitting-room. She was
back again in a moment with an oblong of pasteboard. “There,” she said,
and dropped it into his great-coat pocket. Then blowing a kiss she was
gone.
The Complete Man closed the door and descended the stairs. Well, well,
he said to himself; well, well. He put his hand in his coat pocket and
took out the card. In the dim light of the staircase he read the name on
it with some difficulty. Mrs. James—but no, but no. He read again,
straining his eyes; there was no question of it. Mrs. James Shearwater.
Mrs. James Shearwater.
That was why he had vaguely known the name of Bloxam Gardens.
Mrs. James Shear——. Step after step he descended, ponderously. “Good
Lord,” he said out loud. “Good Lord.”
But why had he never seen her? Why did Shearwater never produce her? Now
he came to think of it, he hardly ever spoke of her.
Why had she said the flat wasn’t theirs? It was; he had heard Shearwater
talk about it.
Did she make a habit of this sort of thing!
Could Shearwater be wholly unaware of what she was really like? But, for
that matter, what _was_ she really like?
He was half-way down the last flight, when with a rattle and a squeak of
hinges the door of the house, which was only separated by a short lobby
from the foot of the stairs, opened, revealing, on the doorstep,
Shearwater and a friend, eagerly talking.
“... I take my rabbit,” the friend was saying—he was a young man with
dark, protruding eyes, and staring, doggy nostrils; very eager, lively
and loud. “I take my rabbit and I inject into it the solution of eyes,
pulped eyes of another dead rabbit. You see?”
Gumbril’s first instinct was to rush up the stairs and hide in the first
likely-looking corner. But he pulled himself together at once. He was a
Complete Man, and Complete Men do not hide; moreover, he was
sufficiently disguised to be quite unrecognizable. He stood where he
was, and listened to the conversation.
“The rabbit,” continued the young man, and with his bright eyes and
staring, sniffing nose, he looked like a poacher’s terrier ready to go
barking after the first white tail that passed his way; “the rabbit
naturally develops the appropriate resistance, develops a specific
anti-eye to protect itself. I then take some of its anti-eye serum and
inject it into my female rabbit; I then immediately breed from her.” He
paused.
“Well?” asked Shearwater, in his slow, ponderous way. He lifted his
great round head inquiringly and looked at the doggy young man from
under his bushy eyebrows.
The doggy young man smiled triumphantly. “The young ones,” he said,
emphasizing his words by striking his right fist against the extended
palm of his left hand, “the young ones are born with defective sight.”
Thoughtfully Shearwater pulled at his formidable moustache. “H’m,” he
said slowly. “Very remarkable.”
“You realize the full significance of it?” asked the young man. “We seem
to be effecting the germ-plasm directly. We have found a way of making
acquired characteristics....”
“Pardon me,” said Gumbril. He had decided that it was time to be gone.
He ran down the stairs and across the tiled hall, he pushed his way
firmly but politely between the talkers.
“... heritable,” continued the young man, imperturbably eager, speaking
through and over and round the obstacle.
“Damn!” said Shearwater. The Complete Man had trodden on his toe.
“Sorry,” he added, absent-mindedly apologizing for the injury he had
received.
Gumbril hurried off along the street. “If we really have found out a
technique for influencing the germ-plasm directly ...” he heard the
doggy young man saying; but he was already too far away to catch the
rest of the sentence. There are many ways, he reflected, of spending an
afternoon.
The doggy young man refused to come in, he had to get in his game of
tennis before dinner. Shearwater climbed the stairs alone. He was taking
off his hat in the little hall of his own apartment, when Rosie came out
of the sitting-room with a trayful of tea-things.
“Well?” he asked, kissing her affectionately on the forehead. “Well?
People to tea?”
“Only one,” Rosie replied. “I’ll go and make you a fresh cup.”
She glided off, rustling in her pink kimono towards the kitchen.
Shearwater sat down in the sitting-room. He had brought home with him
from the library the fifteenth volume of the _Biochemical Journal_.
There was something in it he wanted to look up. He turned over the
pages. Ah, here it was. He began reading. Rosie came back again.
“Here’s your tea,” she said.
He thanked her without looking up. The tea grew cold on the little table
at his side.
Lying on the sofa, Rosie pondered and remembered. Had the events of the
afternoon, she asked herself, really happened? They seemed very
improbable and remote, now, in this studious silence. She couldn’t help
feeling a little disappointed. Was it only this? So simple and obvious?
She tried to work herself up into a more exalted mood. She even tried to
feel guilty; but there she failed completely. She tried to feel
rapturous; but without much more success. Still, he certainly had been a
most extraordinary man. Such impudence, and at the same time such
delicacy and tact.
It was a pity she couldn’t afford to change the furniture. She saw now
that it wouldn’t do at all. She would go and tell Aunt Aggie about the
dreadful middle-classness of her Art and Craftiness.
She ought to have an Empire _chaise longue_. Like Madame Récamier. She
could see herself lying there, dispensing tea. “Like a delicious pink
snake.” He had called her that.
Well, really, now she came to think of it all again, it had been too
queer, too queer.
“What’s a hedonist?” she suddenly asked.
Shearwater looked up from the _Journal of Biochemistry_. “What?” he
said.
“A hedonist.”
“A man who holds that the end of life is pleasure.”
A ‘conscientious hedonist’—ah, that was good.
“This tea is cold,” Shearwater remarked.
“You should have drunk it before,” she said. The silence renewed and
prolonged itself.
Rosie was getting much better, Shearwater reflected, as he washed his
hands before supper, about not interrupting him when he was busy. This
evening she had really not disturbed him at all, or at most only once,
and that not seriously. There had been times in the past when the child
had really made life almost impossible. There were those months at the
beginning of their married life, when she had thought she would like to
study physiology herself and be a help to him. He remembered the hours
he had spent trying to teach her elementary facts about the chromosomes.
It had been a great relief when she abandoned the attempt. He had
suggested she should go in for stencilling patterns on Government linen.
Such pretty curtains and things one could make like that. But she hadn’t
taken very kindly to the idea. There had followed a long period when she
seemed to have nothing to do but prevent him from doing anything.
Ringing him up at the laboratory, invading his study, sitting on his
knee, or throwing her arms round his neck, or pulling his hair, or
asking ridiculous questions when he was trying to work.
Shearwater flattered himself that he had been extremely patient. He had
never got cross. He had just gone on as though she weren’t there. As
though she weren’t there.
“Hurry up,” he heard her calling. “The soup’s getting cold.”
“Coming,” he shouted back, and began to dry his large, blunt hands.
She seemed to have been improving lately. And to-night, to-night she had
been a model of non-existence.
He came striding heavily into the dining-room. Rosie was sitting at the
head of the table, ladling out the soup. With her left hand she held
back the flowing pink sleeve of her kimono so that it should not trail
in the plates or the tureen. Her bare arm showed white and pearly
through the steam of lentils.
How pretty she was! He could not resist the temptation, but coming up
behind her bent down and kissed her, rather clumsily, on the back of her
neck.
Rosie drew away from him. “Really, Jim,” she said, disapprovingly. “At
meal-times!” The fastidious lady had to draw the line at these
ill-timed, tumbling familiarities.
“And what about work-times?” Shearwater asked laughing. “Still, you were
wonderful this evening, Rosie, quite wonderful.” He sat down and began
eating his soup. “Not a sound all the time I was reading; or, at any
rate, only one sound, so far as I remember.”
The great lady said nothing, but only smiled—a little contemptuously and
with a touch of pity. She pushed away the plate of soup unfinished and
planted her elbows on the table. Slipping her hands under the sleeves of
her kimono, she began, lightly, delicately, with the tips of her
fingers, to caress her own arms.
How smooth they were, how soft and warm and how secret under the
sleeves. And all her body was as smooth and warm, was as soft and
secret, still more secret beneath the pink folds. Like a warm serpent
hidden away, secretly, secretly.