VLOGAN GIVES A PARTYTHEimpulse to take his doubts to Logan endured, and was aggravated by the wretchedness into which Mendel was plunged by Morrison’s return and her powerful effect upon his life. He raged against himself as an idiot and a fool for taking her seriously and for believing that she could realize his work when as yet he understood it so little himself. If it was love, then have the love-making and get it over. If she refused, then let her go! What did she mean by slipping away just when the day’s happiness began to demand utterance, closeness, intimacy, the promise of the dearest and most comfortable joys?He knew that he was deceiving himself, that she could do just as she liked and it would make no difference, but he also knew that he mistrusted her. In his heart he suspected her of being one of those who like to pretend that life can be all roses and honey, that there can be summer without winter, day without night. . . . Just a pretty English girl, he called her, and, in his most bitter moods, he regarded himself as caught; and in that there was a certain sardonic satisfaction. It seemed appropriate that, having known many women without a particle of love for them, he should be in love with a woman who did not wish to have anything to do with him.When he told Logan about it, that experienced individual smoked three cigarettes and was silent for ten minutes by the clock.“It won’t do,” he said; “give it up. You’re in love with her. Oh yes! You were bound to have your taste of it, being so young. But, for God’s sake, keep it clear of your work. I know it is very delightful and all that, and like the first blush of spring, and that she seems to understand everything. First love is always the same. She seems to understand, but so do the violets in the woods, and the apple-blossom in an orchard, and the singing birds on a spring morning. They all seem to understand everything. Life is solved: there are no more problems, and the rarest flower of all is the human heart. Yet the violets and the apple-blossoms fade and the birds sing no more: the spring passes and the summer is infernally hot and stale, and winter comes at last. So it is with love and women. Nothing endures but art, and that they are physically incapable of understanding. My God! Don’t I know it? A picture of mine means no more to Oliver than my boot does—rather less, because my boot is warmed with the warmth of my body. That’s allsheunderstands.”He looked down at the boots and fidgeted with his hands.“Yes. That’s allsheunderstands,” he repeated.He was very haggard, and he looked up at Mendel as though he were trying to say something more than he could get into words; but Mendel was preoccupied with his own perplexities, and Logan’s appealing glance was lost upon him.“I’m older than you,” Logan continued, “and of course it is difficult for me to say anything that will be of any use to you, but a man like you ought not to let life get in his way. It isn’t worth it. Life is only valuable to you as a condition of working. Nothing in it ought to be valuable for its own sake. Do you hear? You ought never to have anything in your life that you couldn’t sacrifice—couldn’t do without.”He seemed to be rather thinking aloud thantalking, and something indescribably solemn in his voice made Mendel shiver. He had hardly heard what Logan was saying and, thinking he must be in a draught, he looked towards the window.Logan went on:—“She’ll be back in a moment. We don’t often get the opportunity to talk like this. She has begun to read books, and thinks she knows about pictures now. She won’t leave us alone. That damned critic has been stuffing her up and she reads all his articles.”He made a grimace of weary disgust.“I care about you, Kühler, almost more than I do about myself, which is saying a good deal. Don’t let this love business get mixed up with your work, especially if, as you say, it is Platonic—that is the worst poison of all—almost, almost. . . . Still, I’d like to see the girl. Bring her to the party. We might join up and make a quartette—if she can stand Oliver. Women can’t, as a rule. They don’t like full-blooded people of their own sex.”“She wants to know you,” replied Mendel half-heartedly. “I’m always talking to her about you.”“All right,” said Logan. “Bring her to the party.”Downstairs the front door slammed and Logan gave a nervous start. His whole aspect changed. He lost the drooping solemnity that had come come over him and was stiff, quick, and alert, and prepared to be droll, as he was when it was a question of humbugging Tysoe and Cluny.Oliver came in with a bottle of wine under each arm. She was in very good spirits and looking remarkably handsome.“Hello, Kühler!” she cried. “How do you like being a success? We’re full of beans. We’re going to take a house. Did Logan tell you?”“No,” said Mendel. “I hadn’t heard of it.”“Well, it’s true. We’ve done with the slums and being poor and all that. We’re going to have a house and I’m going to have a servant, and I shall have nothing to do all day but eat chocolates and read novels and have people to tea.”“So you’re going to be a real lady.”“Yes. I’m going to wear a wedding-ring, and we’re going to give out that we’re married, so that Mrs. Tysoe can call on me.”“You’re not going to do anything of the kind,” snapped Logan.“I am. I don’t see why I should have a beastly time just because you won’t marry me, setting yourself up against the world and saying you don’t believe in marriage.”“I don’t want to be more tied to you than I am,” said Logan, endeavouring to adopt a reasonable tone.He was curiously subdued, and never took his eyes off her. Mendel had the impression that they must recently have had a quarrel. Logan was endeavouring to placate her, but she was constantly aggressive. She seemed to have gained in personality and to be possessed of a definite will. She was no longer shrouded in the mists of sensuality, but stood out clearly, a figure of such vitality that Mendel could no longer keep his lazy contempt for her. Almost admirable she was, yet he found her detestable. He thought she should be thanking her lucky stars for having found such a man as Logan; she should be taking gratefully what he chose to give her, instead of setting herself up and putting forward her own vulgar needs. If a woman threw in her lot with an artist, she ought to revel in her freedom from the petty interests and insignificant courtesies that made the lives of ordinary women so humiliating.What was she up to? He knew that there was a deeper purpose in her, something very definite, for which she had been able to summon up herraw vitality. He could understand Logan being fascinated. If he had been in love with the woman he would have been the same, and his mind would have been swamped by sensual curiosity.Before, he had always been rather mystified to know what Logan saw in the woman, but now the infatuation was comprehensible to him. His mind played about it with a strange delight, and he was even envious of Logan to be consumed in the heart of that mystery upon whose fringes he himself was held. And he thought that if he brought Morrison to see them he would be able to understand her better, and might even be able to place his finger on the weak place in her armour.“You two do give me the pip,” said Oliver. “You sit there as glum and silent as though you were in church. Taking yourselves too seriously, I call it.”Still in his forbearing tone Logan said:—“We talk of things which are very hard to understand.”“Oh, give it up!” she said. “Leave all that to folk with brains and education. Why can’t you just paint without talking about it? You’d get twice as much work done.”“Because, don’t you see, unless you’re a blasted amateur, you can’t paint without rousing all sorts of questions in your mind—questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with painting; but unless you attempt to answer them there’s no satisfaction in working.”“Oh, cheese it!” she said; “I know what the critics look for, and it has nothing to do with brains. It is like being in love.”“Who told you that?” asked Logan with sudden heat; but before she could answer him Mendel had exploded:—“It is nothing at all like being in love. That is what all the beastly Christians think of—being inlove. And they want art always, always to remind them of that—how they have been, are, or will be in love, as they call it. And what they call being in love is nothing but a filthy lecherous longing, which is a thousand miles beneath love, and twenty thousand miles beneath art, which is so rare, so noble, so beautiful a mystery that only those whom God has chosen can understand it at all; for while you are in this state of longing you can understand, you can feel nothing at all except a hungry delight in yourself and your own sticky sensations. What can women know of art? It needs strength and will, and women have neither; they have only obstinate fancies.”When he had done he was so astonished at himself that he gasped for breath. Logan and Oliver, gaping at him, seemed ridiculous and little. Talking to them was a waste of breath, because when she was there Logan was not himself, but only a kind of excrescence upon her monstrous vitality. The room seemed to stink. It was airless and reeking with sex. He must get out and away, under the sky, among the trees, upon his beloved Hampstead. . . . Without another word he stalked away.“Well! I never!” exclaimed Oliver. “Is Kühler in love?”“Oh! shut up!” said Logan wearily.For the party the room was cleared and a pianola was hired. The guests were invited to bring their own glasses and drink, and also any friends they liked. The result was that half the habitués of the Paris Café turned up, including Jessie Petrie, Mitchell, and Thompson, who was over for a short time from Paris, very important and mysterious because he had something to do with a forthcoming exhibition of Modern French Art which was to knock London silly. And there was a rumour that Calthrop himself was coming.Oliver wore a new evening dress, which she had insisted on buying because she was very proud of her bust and arms. The dress was of emerald green silk and she looked very lovely in it—“Like a water nymph,” said Logan, and he went out and bought her a string of red corals to give the finishing touch.“You won’t have much of this kind of thing when we move,” he said. “It is to be farewell to Bohemia. I’m going to settle down to work. I’ve taught Kühler a thing or two, but he has taught me how to work.”“Damn Kühler! I hate him,” said Oliver.“You can hate him as much as you choose. It won’t hurt him or me. I’m not a Hercules, and my work and you are about as much as I can manage.”“You’re a nice one to be giving a party. You talk as though you would be in your grave next week.”“It is a farewell party.”“‘Farewell to the Piano,’” laughed Oliver. “That was the last piece I learned when I had music lessons.”Mitchell was among the first to arrive. He had been ill, and looked washed-out and unwholesome. There was very little of the Public School boy left in him.“Is Kühler coming?” he asked nervously.“I expect so,” answered Logan. “Do you know how to manage a pianola?”“Yes. We’ve got one at home.”“You might play it then, to keep things going until they liven up.”Mitchell was placed at the pianola, and was still there when Mendel arrived with Morrison.“I’m very glad to meet you,” said Logan. “Kühler has talked about you so often.”“Yes,” said Morrison.“I hope you don’t mind a Bohemian party. They are a mixed lot.”“No,” said Morrison.“Good God!” thought Logan. “Not a word to say for herself!”Mendel introduced her to Oliver, who looked her up and down superciliously—this little schoolgirl in her brown tweed coat and skirt.“I’m sorry I didn’t dress,” said Morrison. “I didn’t know.”She shrank from the big, fleshy woman, who made her feel very unhappy. Yet she wanted to be fair. She had heard Mendel storm and rage against Oliver and she hated to be prejudiced. It distressed her not to like anybody, for she found most people likeable. She tried to be amiable:—“I’m so glad the exhibition was such a success. Everybody is talking about it.”“Oh! yes, yes,” said Oliver vacantly. Obviously she was not listening. She had eyes only for the men, and she bridled with pleasure when she attracted their attention.Morrison was glad to escape to a corner, where she could watch the strange people and be amused by them, their attitudes and gestures and queer, conceited efforts deliberately to charm each other.She blushed when she saw Mitchell at the pianola, and thought she had been rather foolish and weak to allow Mendel to bully her into dismissing him from her acquaintance, and she was relieved when she saw Mendel take in the situation and go up to Mitchell and tap him on the shoulder and enter into eager discussion of the pianola. She was less happy when she saw Mendel take Mitchell’s place, and Mitchell make a bee-line for herself.An astonishing change came over the music, which got into Mendel’s blood. It was maddening, it was glorious to feel that he had all that wealth of sound in his hands. He knew nothing of music, and it was almost pure rhythm to him, and he wished to beat it out, to accentuateit as much as possible. The machine confounded him every now and then by running too fast or too slow, but he soon learned to pedal less violently, and then he was gloriously happy and drunk with excitement.Astonishing, too, was the change in the company. Everybody began to talk and to laugh, and space was cleared in the middle of the room, and Clowes and a young man from the Detmold began to dance. Jessie Petrie and Weldon joined them, and soon the room was full of whirling, gliding couples.Said Mitchell to Morrison:—“I didn’t expect to find you here. Are you going to dance?”“No. I like watching.”He sat on the floor by her side, and, hanging his head, he said woefully:—“So Kühler’s won! Gawd! He always gets what he wants. There’s no resisting him.”“Don’t be absurd,” said Morrison. “I hear you’ve been ill.”“Yes. I’ve been going to the dogs, absolutely to the dogs. I had to pull up. . . . I didn’t know you knew Logan; but, of course, as he’s so thick with Kühler——!”“I met him for the first time to-night. What do you think of his work?”“Flashy!” said Mitchell. “Very flashy. . . . Will you let me come and see you again?”“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”“Why do you dislike me so much?”“I don’t dislike you. I can’t trust you not to be silly.”“Gawd! I bet I’m not half so silly as Kühler!”“He is never silly!”“Ah! Now you’re offended!”She turned away from him and refused to speak again. His half-flirtatious, half-patronizing manner offended her deeply, and was far moreof an affront to her than Logan’s almost open scorn of her as a little bread-and-butter miss. She wished Mendel would leave the pianola, but he was enthralled and could not tear himself away. He played the same tune over and over again, or went straight from one to another, swaying to and fro, beating time with his hands, swinging his head up and down.Mitchell went very red in the face and slipped away. Presently she saw him dancing with Oliver.After a few moments she found Logan by her side, and he said kindly:—“I’m afraid you are not enjoying yourself much.”“Oh yes!” she gasped, in a frightened voice.“I was thinking you were not used to this kind of thing.”“Oh yes! I often go to parties in people’s studios.”“I remember, I saw you at the Merlin’s Cave one night.”“Yes, I remember. I didn’t enjoy that a bit. It all seemed such a sham.”“So it was,” said Logan. “So is most of this. These people aren’t really wicked, though they like to pretend they are. I don’t dance myself. I’m too clumsy. Clog-dancing I can do, but not dancing with anybody else. . . . But perhaps I am keeping you——?”“Oh no! I’m very happy looking on.”“Kühler’s worth watching, isn’t he?”This was said with such insolent meaning that Morrison wilted like a sensitive plant. She managed to gasp out “Yes,” and went on asking wild, pointless questions, with her thoughts whirling far removed from her words.Why were all these people so impertinent, with their trick of plunging into intimate life without waiting for intimacy? She felt that in a moment Logan would be telling her all about himself andOliver by way of luring her on to discuss Mendel. That she had no intention of doing, with him or with any one else.“She’s just a shy little fool,” thought Logan, “and hopelessly, hopelessly young.”“I’m unhappy!” thought Morrison, and it seemed to her foolish and mean to be so. Her loyalty resented her weakness. She owed it to Mendel to enjoy herself and to share as far as she could his friends. But there was in the atmosphere of that gathering something that repelled her and roused the fighting quality in her, something indecent, something that hurt her as the picture of the flayed man in the anatomy book hurt her.Mendel was playing a wild rag-time tune.“I think I’d like to dance to this tune. You must dance with me. I don’t think you ought to be out of your own party,” she said to Logan, who caught her up in a great bear’s hug, trod on her toes, knocked her knees, pressed his fingers so tight into her back that she could hardly bear it, and at last, as the music ceased, deposited her by Mendel’s side.“It is a marvellous thing, this machine,” he said. “I should like to go on at it all night. Have you been dancing? You look hot. You said you weren’t going to dance.”“I made Logan dance. He nearly killed me!”“How did you get on?”“Not—not very well.”“You don’t like him?”Jessie Petrie came running up: “Kühler, Kühler!” she cried. “Do, do dance with me!”He was very angry with Morrison for daring not to like Logan, for making up her mind in two minutes that she did not like him. He gave her a furious glance as Weldon took his place and started a waltz, put his arms round Jessie’s waist, and swung into the dance.“Oh, Kühler!” said Jessie in her pretty birdlike voice, “I heard the most awful story about you the other day.”“Do be quiet!” he grunted. “Dance!”But he was out of temper, out of tune, and the music he had been crashing out on the pianola was thudding in his head, so that he could not respond either to the music of the waltz or to Jessie’s eagerness.“Isn’t it funny Thompson being back in London? I don’t like him a bit now. You have spoiled me for everybody else. Do you want me to come on Friday as usual?”“Do be quiet.”“What’s the matter? You aren’t dancing at all nicely and you haven’t looked at me once this evening.”“No; don’t come on Friday.”“Not——?”Her voice was shrill with pain.“No. That’s all over.”She hung limp in his arms and her face was a ghastly yellow. She muttered:—“Take me out. . . . I think I’m going to faint.”He half-carried her into the passage, where she sat on the stairs and began to cry. Neither of them noticed Clowes and the young man from the Detmold sitting above them.“Don’t cry!” he said roughly; “what have you got to cry about?”“I never thought you only wanted me for that.”“You came to me. I didn’t ask you to come.”“But I do love you so. I only want you to love me a little.”“I don’t know how to love a little. When I love it is with the whole of me, and it is for always.”“But can’t we be pals, just pals? We’ve been such pals.”“I’m sick to death of it all,” he said violently,“sick to death. You’re the best girl in London, Jessie, but it’s no good—it’s no good.”Clowes and the young man ostentatiously and with a great clatter went higher up the stairs, but neither Jessie nor Mendel heard them. The pain and the shame they were suffering absorbed them.“I never thought,” said Jessie, “it was near the end. I’ve always known when it was near the end before. It is like being struck by lightning.”Mendel was silent. He could do nothing. There was nothing to be said. Jessie had consoled him, comforted him, but she had only made his suffering worse. By the side of Morrison she simply did not exist, and it had been a lie to pretend that she did. That lie must be cut out.“I never thought you only wanted me for that,” she repeated, and began to move slowly down the stairs. At the bend she stopped and looked up at him, gave a little muffled cry, and moved slowly down into the dim lobby of the house.Mendel gripped the banisters with both hands and shook them until they cracked.“How horrible!” he muttered to himself; “how horrible!”Upstairs, Clowes was boiling with rage. She lost all interest in her young man, and as soon as Mendel had returned to the room she raced downstairs, almost sobbing, and saying to herself:—“That settles you, Master Kühler! That settles you!”She darted across to Morrison, who had taken refuge in a corner, seized her by the hand and whispered:—“Greta! Greta! I’ve just heard the most frightful thing. I couldn’t help overhearing it and I ought not to tell anybody, but you ought to know. Kühler and Petrie! It must have been going on for months. He broke with her in the most cold-blooded way. It was heart-rending. I can’t bear it. Oh! these men, these men!”Morrison clenched her fists and her eyes blazed.“Don’t tell me any more!” she said. “Don’t tell me any more!”“I want to go home,” whispered Clowes. “It is a dreadful party. That awful green woman spoils everything. It is like a nightmare to me now.“It wouldn’t be fair to go without telling him,” said Morrison. “It wouldn’t be fair.”“But you can’t think of him after that,” protested Clowes. “Oh! good gracious! There’s Calthrop coming in. It is getting worse and worse.”Calthrop swung into the room with his magnificent stride. As usual, his entrance created a dramatic sensation. Logan, who had always decried his work, leaped to meet him and Mendel stood shyly waiting for his nod. . . . Whom would the great man speak to? That was the question. . . . He fixed his eyes on Oliver and strode up to her.“You’re the best-looking woman in the room,” he said. “Do you like cinemas?”“I adore them,” said Oliver, with an excited giggle.“Now, now’s the chance!” whispered Clowes. “We can slip away now, before they begin drinking.”“I must tell him,” replied Morrison, and, summoning up all her courage, she went up to Mendel and asked if she could speak to him. He went out with her, trembling in every limb.“I am going,” she said. “I have just heard something. Clowes overheard you and Jessie Petrie. She ought not to have told me. I don’t know what I feel about it. Very wretched, chiefly. Please don’t try to see me.”“I have told you what I am again and again,” he said.“Yes. You are very honest, but it is hard fora girl to imagine these things. Please, please see how hard it is and let me be.”“Very well,” he answered, feeling that the whole world had come to an end. “Very well.”She called Clowes, who had stayed just inside the door, and together, like little frightened children, they crept downstairs.“Good-bye love!” said Mendel. “My God, what rubbish, what folly, what nonsense! Love and a Christian girl! That’s over. That’s finished. I am outside it all—outside, outside, outside. Oh! Dark and vile and bitter, and no sweetness anywhere but in my own thoughts!”Inside the room someone began to sing:—I want to be, I want to be,I want to be down home in Dixie. . . .Oh! the mad folly of these Christians, with their childish songs, their idiotic pleasures, their preposterous belief in happiness. . . . Happiness! They ruin the world to satisfy their childish longing, and all their happiness lies in words and foolish songs. . . . The rhythm of the pianola tunes began to beat in his head, and another deeper rhythm came up from the depths of his soul and tried to break through them. It was the same rhythm that always came up when he had reached the lowest depths of misery. It came gushing forth like water from the rock of Moses, and crept through his being like ice, up, up into his thoughts, bringing him to an intolerable agony.In the room glasses clinked. He turned towards the light and plunged into the carouse.
THEimpulse to take his doubts to Logan endured, and was aggravated by the wretchedness into which Mendel was plunged by Morrison’s return and her powerful effect upon his life. He raged against himself as an idiot and a fool for taking her seriously and for believing that she could realize his work when as yet he understood it so little himself. If it was love, then have the love-making and get it over. If she refused, then let her go! What did she mean by slipping away just when the day’s happiness began to demand utterance, closeness, intimacy, the promise of the dearest and most comfortable joys?
He knew that he was deceiving himself, that she could do just as she liked and it would make no difference, but he also knew that he mistrusted her. In his heart he suspected her of being one of those who like to pretend that life can be all roses and honey, that there can be summer without winter, day without night. . . . Just a pretty English girl, he called her, and, in his most bitter moods, he regarded himself as caught; and in that there was a certain sardonic satisfaction. It seemed appropriate that, having known many women without a particle of love for them, he should be in love with a woman who did not wish to have anything to do with him.
When he told Logan about it, that experienced individual smoked three cigarettes and was silent for ten minutes by the clock.
“It won’t do,” he said; “give it up. You’re in love with her. Oh yes! You were bound to have your taste of it, being so young. But, for God’s sake, keep it clear of your work. I know it is very delightful and all that, and like the first blush of spring, and that she seems to understand everything. First love is always the same. She seems to understand, but so do the violets in the woods, and the apple-blossom in an orchard, and the singing birds on a spring morning. They all seem to understand everything. Life is solved: there are no more problems, and the rarest flower of all is the human heart. Yet the violets and the apple-blossoms fade and the birds sing no more: the spring passes and the summer is infernally hot and stale, and winter comes at last. So it is with love and women. Nothing endures but art, and that they are physically incapable of understanding. My God! Don’t I know it? A picture of mine means no more to Oliver than my boot does—rather less, because my boot is warmed with the warmth of my body. That’s allsheunderstands.”
He looked down at the boots and fidgeted with his hands.
“Yes. That’s allsheunderstands,” he repeated.
He was very haggard, and he looked up at Mendel as though he were trying to say something more than he could get into words; but Mendel was preoccupied with his own perplexities, and Logan’s appealing glance was lost upon him.
“I’m older than you,” Logan continued, “and of course it is difficult for me to say anything that will be of any use to you, but a man like you ought not to let life get in his way. It isn’t worth it. Life is only valuable to you as a condition of working. Nothing in it ought to be valuable for its own sake. Do you hear? You ought never to have anything in your life that you couldn’t sacrifice—couldn’t do without.”
He seemed to be rather thinking aloud thantalking, and something indescribably solemn in his voice made Mendel shiver. He had hardly heard what Logan was saying and, thinking he must be in a draught, he looked towards the window.
Logan went on:—
“She’ll be back in a moment. We don’t often get the opportunity to talk like this. She has begun to read books, and thinks she knows about pictures now. She won’t leave us alone. That damned critic has been stuffing her up and she reads all his articles.”
He made a grimace of weary disgust.
“I care about you, Kühler, almost more than I do about myself, which is saying a good deal. Don’t let this love business get mixed up with your work, especially if, as you say, it is Platonic—that is the worst poison of all—almost, almost. . . . Still, I’d like to see the girl. Bring her to the party. We might join up and make a quartette—if she can stand Oliver. Women can’t, as a rule. They don’t like full-blooded people of their own sex.”
“She wants to know you,” replied Mendel half-heartedly. “I’m always talking to her about you.”
“All right,” said Logan. “Bring her to the party.”
Downstairs the front door slammed and Logan gave a nervous start. His whole aspect changed. He lost the drooping solemnity that had come come over him and was stiff, quick, and alert, and prepared to be droll, as he was when it was a question of humbugging Tysoe and Cluny.
Oliver came in with a bottle of wine under each arm. She was in very good spirits and looking remarkably handsome.
“Hello, Kühler!” she cried. “How do you like being a success? We’re full of beans. We’re going to take a house. Did Logan tell you?”
“No,” said Mendel. “I hadn’t heard of it.”
“Well, it’s true. We’ve done with the slums and being poor and all that. We’re going to have a house and I’m going to have a servant, and I shall have nothing to do all day but eat chocolates and read novels and have people to tea.”
“So you’re going to be a real lady.”
“Yes. I’m going to wear a wedding-ring, and we’re going to give out that we’re married, so that Mrs. Tysoe can call on me.”
“You’re not going to do anything of the kind,” snapped Logan.
“I am. I don’t see why I should have a beastly time just because you won’t marry me, setting yourself up against the world and saying you don’t believe in marriage.”
“I don’t want to be more tied to you than I am,” said Logan, endeavouring to adopt a reasonable tone.
He was curiously subdued, and never took his eyes off her. Mendel had the impression that they must recently have had a quarrel. Logan was endeavouring to placate her, but she was constantly aggressive. She seemed to have gained in personality and to be possessed of a definite will. She was no longer shrouded in the mists of sensuality, but stood out clearly, a figure of such vitality that Mendel could no longer keep his lazy contempt for her. Almost admirable she was, yet he found her detestable. He thought she should be thanking her lucky stars for having found such a man as Logan; she should be taking gratefully what he chose to give her, instead of setting herself up and putting forward her own vulgar needs. If a woman threw in her lot with an artist, she ought to revel in her freedom from the petty interests and insignificant courtesies that made the lives of ordinary women so humiliating.
What was she up to? He knew that there was a deeper purpose in her, something very definite, for which she had been able to summon up herraw vitality. He could understand Logan being fascinated. If he had been in love with the woman he would have been the same, and his mind would have been swamped by sensual curiosity.
Before, he had always been rather mystified to know what Logan saw in the woman, but now the infatuation was comprehensible to him. His mind played about it with a strange delight, and he was even envious of Logan to be consumed in the heart of that mystery upon whose fringes he himself was held. And he thought that if he brought Morrison to see them he would be able to understand her better, and might even be able to place his finger on the weak place in her armour.
“You two do give me the pip,” said Oliver. “You sit there as glum and silent as though you were in church. Taking yourselves too seriously, I call it.”
Still in his forbearing tone Logan said:—
“We talk of things which are very hard to understand.”
“Oh, give it up!” she said. “Leave all that to folk with brains and education. Why can’t you just paint without talking about it? You’d get twice as much work done.”
“Because, don’t you see, unless you’re a blasted amateur, you can’t paint without rousing all sorts of questions in your mind—questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with painting; but unless you attempt to answer them there’s no satisfaction in working.”
“Oh, cheese it!” she said; “I know what the critics look for, and it has nothing to do with brains. It is like being in love.”
“Who told you that?” asked Logan with sudden heat; but before she could answer him Mendel had exploded:—
“It is nothing at all like being in love. That is what all the beastly Christians think of—being inlove. And they want art always, always to remind them of that—how they have been, are, or will be in love, as they call it. And what they call being in love is nothing but a filthy lecherous longing, which is a thousand miles beneath love, and twenty thousand miles beneath art, which is so rare, so noble, so beautiful a mystery that only those whom God has chosen can understand it at all; for while you are in this state of longing you can understand, you can feel nothing at all except a hungry delight in yourself and your own sticky sensations. What can women know of art? It needs strength and will, and women have neither; they have only obstinate fancies.”
When he had done he was so astonished at himself that he gasped for breath. Logan and Oliver, gaping at him, seemed ridiculous and little. Talking to them was a waste of breath, because when she was there Logan was not himself, but only a kind of excrescence upon her monstrous vitality. The room seemed to stink. It was airless and reeking with sex. He must get out and away, under the sky, among the trees, upon his beloved Hampstead. . . . Without another word he stalked away.
“Well! I never!” exclaimed Oliver. “Is Kühler in love?”
“Oh! shut up!” said Logan wearily.
For the party the room was cleared and a pianola was hired. The guests were invited to bring their own glasses and drink, and also any friends they liked. The result was that half the habitués of the Paris Café turned up, including Jessie Petrie, Mitchell, and Thompson, who was over for a short time from Paris, very important and mysterious because he had something to do with a forthcoming exhibition of Modern French Art which was to knock London silly. And there was a rumour that Calthrop himself was coming.
Oliver wore a new evening dress, which she had insisted on buying because she was very proud of her bust and arms. The dress was of emerald green silk and she looked very lovely in it—“Like a water nymph,” said Logan, and he went out and bought her a string of red corals to give the finishing touch.
“You won’t have much of this kind of thing when we move,” he said. “It is to be farewell to Bohemia. I’m going to settle down to work. I’ve taught Kühler a thing or two, but he has taught me how to work.”
“Damn Kühler! I hate him,” said Oliver.
“You can hate him as much as you choose. It won’t hurt him or me. I’m not a Hercules, and my work and you are about as much as I can manage.”
“You’re a nice one to be giving a party. You talk as though you would be in your grave next week.”
“It is a farewell party.”
“‘Farewell to the Piano,’” laughed Oliver. “That was the last piece I learned when I had music lessons.”
Mitchell was among the first to arrive. He had been ill, and looked washed-out and unwholesome. There was very little of the Public School boy left in him.
“Is Kühler coming?” he asked nervously.
“I expect so,” answered Logan. “Do you know how to manage a pianola?”
“Yes. We’ve got one at home.”
“You might play it then, to keep things going until they liven up.”
Mitchell was placed at the pianola, and was still there when Mendel arrived with Morrison.
“I’m very glad to meet you,” said Logan. “Kühler has talked about you so often.”
“Yes,” said Morrison.
“I hope you don’t mind a Bohemian party. They are a mixed lot.”
“No,” said Morrison.
“Good God!” thought Logan. “Not a word to say for herself!”
Mendel introduced her to Oliver, who looked her up and down superciliously—this little schoolgirl in her brown tweed coat and skirt.
“I’m sorry I didn’t dress,” said Morrison. “I didn’t know.”
She shrank from the big, fleshy woman, who made her feel very unhappy. Yet she wanted to be fair. She had heard Mendel storm and rage against Oliver and she hated to be prejudiced. It distressed her not to like anybody, for she found most people likeable. She tried to be amiable:—
“I’m so glad the exhibition was such a success. Everybody is talking about it.”
“Oh! yes, yes,” said Oliver vacantly. Obviously she was not listening. She had eyes only for the men, and she bridled with pleasure when she attracted their attention.
Morrison was glad to escape to a corner, where she could watch the strange people and be amused by them, their attitudes and gestures and queer, conceited efforts deliberately to charm each other.
She blushed when she saw Mitchell at the pianola, and thought she had been rather foolish and weak to allow Mendel to bully her into dismissing him from her acquaintance, and she was relieved when she saw Mendel take in the situation and go up to Mitchell and tap him on the shoulder and enter into eager discussion of the pianola. She was less happy when she saw Mendel take Mitchell’s place, and Mitchell make a bee-line for herself.
An astonishing change came over the music, which got into Mendel’s blood. It was maddening, it was glorious to feel that he had all that wealth of sound in his hands. He knew nothing of music, and it was almost pure rhythm to him, and he wished to beat it out, to accentuateit as much as possible. The machine confounded him every now and then by running too fast or too slow, but he soon learned to pedal less violently, and then he was gloriously happy and drunk with excitement.
Astonishing, too, was the change in the company. Everybody began to talk and to laugh, and space was cleared in the middle of the room, and Clowes and a young man from the Detmold began to dance. Jessie Petrie and Weldon joined them, and soon the room was full of whirling, gliding couples.
Said Mitchell to Morrison:—
“I didn’t expect to find you here. Are you going to dance?”
“No. I like watching.”
He sat on the floor by her side, and, hanging his head, he said woefully:—
“So Kühler’s won! Gawd! He always gets what he wants. There’s no resisting him.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Morrison. “I hear you’ve been ill.”
“Yes. I’ve been going to the dogs, absolutely to the dogs. I had to pull up. . . . I didn’t know you knew Logan; but, of course, as he’s so thick with Kühler——!”
“I met him for the first time to-night. What do you think of his work?”
“Flashy!” said Mitchell. “Very flashy. . . . Will you let me come and see you again?”
“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
“Why do you dislike me so much?”
“I don’t dislike you. I can’t trust you not to be silly.”
“Gawd! I bet I’m not half so silly as Kühler!”
“He is never silly!”
“Ah! Now you’re offended!”
She turned away from him and refused to speak again. His half-flirtatious, half-patronizing manner offended her deeply, and was far moreof an affront to her than Logan’s almost open scorn of her as a little bread-and-butter miss. She wished Mendel would leave the pianola, but he was enthralled and could not tear himself away. He played the same tune over and over again, or went straight from one to another, swaying to and fro, beating time with his hands, swinging his head up and down.
Mitchell went very red in the face and slipped away. Presently she saw him dancing with Oliver.
After a few moments she found Logan by her side, and he said kindly:—
“I’m afraid you are not enjoying yourself much.”
“Oh yes!” she gasped, in a frightened voice.
“I was thinking you were not used to this kind of thing.”
“Oh yes! I often go to parties in people’s studios.”
“I remember, I saw you at the Merlin’s Cave one night.”
“Yes, I remember. I didn’t enjoy that a bit. It all seemed such a sham.”
“So it was,” said Logan. “So is most of this. These people aren’t really wicked, though they like to pretend they are. I don’t dance myself. I’m too clumsy. Clog-dancing I can do, but not dancing with anybody else. . . . But perhaps I am keeping you——?”
“Oh no! I’m very happy looking on.”
“Kühler’s worth watching, isn’t he?”
This was said with such insolent meaning that Morrison wilted like a sensitive plant. She managed to gasp out “Yes,” and went on asking wild, pointless questions, with her thoughts whirling far removed from her words.
Why were all these people so impertinent, with their trick of plunging into intimate life without waiting for intimacy? She felt that in a moment Logan would be telling her all about himself andOliver by way of luring her on to discuss Mendel. That she had no intention of doing, with him or with any one else.
“She’s just a shy little fool,” thought Logan, “and hopelessly, hopelessly young.”
“I’m unhappy!” thought Morrison, and it seemed to her foolish and mean to be so. Her loyalty resented her weakness. She owed it to Mendel to enjoy herself and to share as far as she could his friends. But there was in the atmosphere of that gathering something that repelled her and roused the fighting quality in her, something indecent, something that hurt her as the picture of the flayed man in the anatomy book hurt her.
Mendel was playing a wild rag-time tune.
“I think I’d like to dance to this tune. You must dance with me. I don’t think you ought to be out of your own party,” she said to Logan, who caught her up in a great bear’s hug, trod on her toes, knocked her knees, pressed his fingers so tight into her back that she could hardly bear it, and at last, as the music ceased, deposited her by Mendel’s side.
“It is a marvellous thing, this machine,” he said. “I should like to go on at it all night. Have you been dancing? You look hot. You said you weren’t going to dance.”
“I made Logan dance. He nearly killed me!”
“How did you get on?”
“Not—not very well.”
“You don’t like him?”
Jessie Petrie came running up: “Kühler, Kühler!” she cried. “Do, do dance with me!”
He was very angry with Morrison for daring not to like Logan, for making up her mind in two minutes that she did not like him. He gave her a furious glance as Weldon took his place and started a waltz, put his arms round Jessie’s waist, and swung into the dance.
“Oh, Kühler!” said Jessie in her pretty birdlike voice, “I heard the most awful story about you the other day.”
“Do be quiet!” he grunted. “Dance!”
But he was out of temper, out of tune, and the music he had been crashing out on the pianola was thudding in his head, so that he could not respond either to the music of the waltz or to Jessie’s eagerness.
“Isn’t it funny Thompson being back in London? I don’t like him a bit now. You have spoiled me for everybody else. Do you want me to come on Friday as usual?”
“Do be quiet.”
“What’s the matter? You aren’t dancing at all nicely and you haven’t looked at me once this evening.”
“No; don’t come on Friday.”
“Not——?”
Her voice was shrill with pain.
“No. That’s all over.”
She hung limp in his arms and her face was a ghastly yellow. She muttered:—
“Take me out. . . . I think I’m going to faint.”
He half-carried her into the passage, where she sat on the stairs and began to cry. Neither of them noticed Clowes and the young man from the Detmold sitting above them.
“Don’t cry!” he said roughly; “what have you got to cry about?”
“I never thought you only wanted me for that.”
“You came to me. I didn’t ask you to come.”
“But I do love you so. I only want you to love me a little.”
“I don’t know how to love a little. When I love it is with the whole of me, and it is for always.”
“But can’t we be pals, just pals? We’ve been such pals.”
“I’m sick to death of it all,” he said violently,“sick to death. You’re the best girl in London, Jessie, but it’s no good—it’s no good.”
Clowes and the young man ostentatiously and with a great clatter went higher up the stairs, but neither Jessie nor Mendel heard them. The pain and the shame they were suffering absorbed them.
“I never thought,” said Jessie, “it was near the end. I’ve always known when it was near the end before. It is like being struck by lightning.”
Mendel was silent. He could do nothing. There was nothing to be said. Jessie had consoled him, comforted him, but she had only made his suffering worse. By the side of Morrison she simply did not exist, and it had been a lie to pretend that she did. That lie must be cut out.
“I never thought you only wanted me for that,” she repeated, and began to move slowly down the stairs. At the bend she stopped and looked up at him, gave a little muffled cry, and moved slowly down into the dim lobby of the house.
Mendel gripped the banisters with both hands and shook them until they cracked.
“How horrible!” he muttered to himself; “how horrible!”
Upstairs, Clowes was boiling with rage. She lost all interest in her young man, and as soon as Mendel had returned to the room she raced downstairs, almost sobbing, and saying to herself:—
“That settles you, Master Kühler! That settles you!”
She darted across to Morrison, who had taken refuge in a corner, seized her by the hand and whispered:—
“Greta! Greta! I’ve just heard the most frightful thing. I couldn’t help overhearing it and I ought not to tell anybody, but you ought to know. Kühler and Petrie! It must have been going on for months. He broke with her in the most cold-blooded way. It was heart-rending. I can’t bear it. Oh! these men, these men!”
Morrison clenched her fists and her eyes blazed.
“Don’t tell me any more!” she said. “Don’t tell me any more!”
“I want to go home,” whispered Clowes. “It is a dreadful party. That awful green woman spoils everything. It is like a nightmare to me now.
“It wouldn’t be fair to go without telling him,” said Morrison. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“But you can’t think of him after that,” protested Clowes. “Oh! good gracious! There’s Calthrop coming in. It is getting worse and worse.”
Calthrop swung into the room with his magnificent stride. As usual, his entrance created a dramatic sensation. Logan, who had always decried his work, leaped to meet him and Mendel stood shyly waiting for his nod. . . . Whom would the great man speak to? That was the question. . . . He fixed his eyes on Oliver and strode up to her.
“You’re the best-looking woman in the room,” he said. “Do you like cinemas?”
“I adore them,” said Oliver, with an excited giggle.
“Now, now’s the chance!” whispered Clowes. “We can slip away now, before they begin drinking.”
“I must tell him,” replied Morrison, and, summoning up all her courage, she went up to Mendel and asked if she could speak to him. He went out with her, trembling in every limb.
“I am going,” she said. “I have just heard something. Clowes overheard you and Jessie Petrie. She ought not to have told me. I don’t know what I feel about it. Very wretched, chiefly. Please don’t try to see me.”
“I have told you what I am again and again,” he said.
“Yes. You are very honest, but it is hard fora girl to imagine these things. Please, please see how hard it is and let me be.”
“Very well,” he answered, feeling that the whole world had come to an end. “Very well.”
She called Clowes, who had stayed just inside the door, and together, like little frightened children, they crept downstairs.
“Good-bye love!” said Mendel. “My God, what rubbish, what folly, what nonsense! Love and a Christian girl! That’s over. That’s finished. I am outside it all—outside, outside, outside. Oh! Dark and vile and bitter, and no sweetness anywhere but in my own thoughts!”
Inside the room someone began to sing:—
I want to be, I want to be,I want to be down home in Dixie. . . .
I want to be, I want to be,
I want to be down home in Dixie. . . .
Oh! the mad folly of these Christians, with their childish songs, their idiotic pleasures, their preposterous belief in happiness. . . . Happiness! They ruin the world to satisfy their childish longing, and all their happiness lies in words and foolish songs. . . . The rhythm of the pianola tunes began to beat in his head, and another deeper rhythm came up from the depths of his soul and tried to break through them. It was the same rhythm that always came up when he had reached the lowest depths of misery. It came gushing forth like water from the rock of Moses, and crept through his being like ice, up, up into his thoughts, bringing him to an intolerable agony.
In the room glasses clinked. He turned towards the light and plunged into the carouse.