He talked on about Paris for a little while longer, then he got up to go. ‘Well, good-bye, my dears, I’m off. I’ve given myself indigestion. And do look at Puddle, she’s blind with fury; I believe she’s going to refuse to shake hands! Don’t be angry, Puddle—I’m very well-meaning.’
‘Yes, of course,’ answered Puddle, but her voice sounded cold.
Afterhe had gone they stared at each other, then Stephen said: ‘What a queer revelation. Who would have thought that Brockett could get so worked up? His moods are kaleidoscopic.’ She was purposely forcing herself to speak lightly.
But Puddle was angry, bitterly angry. Her pride was wounded to the quick for Stephen. ‘The man’s a perfect fool!’ she said gruffly. ‘And I didn’t agree with one word he said. I expect he’s jealous of your work, they all are. They’re a mean-minded lot, these writing people.’
And looking at her Stephen thought sadly, ‘She’s tired—I’m wearing her out in my service. A few years ago she’d never have tried to deceive me like this—she’s losing courage.’ Aloud she said: ‘Don’t be cross with Brockett, he meant to be friendly, I’m quite sure of that. My work will buck up—I’ve been feeling slack lately, and it’s told on my writing—I suppose it was bound to.’ Then the merciful lie, ‘But I’m not a bit frightened!’
Stephenrested her head on her hand as she sat at her desk—it was well past midnight. She was heartsick as only a writer can be whose day has been spent in useless labour. All that she had written that day she would destroy, and now it was well past midnight. She turned, looking wearily round the study, and it came upon her with a slight sense of shock that she was seeing this room for the very first time, and that everything in it was abnormally ugly. The flat had been furnished when her mind had been too much afflicted to care in the least what she bought, and now all her possessions seemed clumsy or puerile, from the small, foolish chairs to the large, roll-top desk; there was nothing personal about any of them. How had she endured this room for so long? Had she really written a fine book in it? Had she sat in it evening after evening and come back to it morning after morning? Then she must have been blind indeed—what a place for any author to work in! She had taken nothing with her from Morton but the hidden books found in her father’s study; these she had taken, as though in a way they were hers by some intolerable birthright; for the rest she had shrunk from depriving the house of its ancient and honoured possessions.
Morton—so quietly perfect a thing, yet the thing of all others that she must fly from, that she must forget; but she could not forget it in these surroundings; they reminded by contrast. Curious what Brockett had said that evening about putting the sea between herself and England. . . . In view of her own half-formed plan to do so, his words had come as a kind of echo of her thoughts; it was almost as though he had peeped through a secret keyhole into her mind, had been spying upon her trouble. By what right did this curious man spy upon her—this man with the soft, white hands of a woman, with the movements befitting those soft, white hands, yet so ill-befitting the rest of his body? By no right; and how much had the creature found out when his eye had been pressed to that secret keyhole? Clever—Brockett was fiendishly clever—all his whims and his foibles could not disguise it. His face gave him away, a hard, clever face with sharp eyes that were glued to other people’s keyholes. That was why Brockett wrote such fine plays, such cruel plays; he fed his genius on live flesh and blood. Carnivorous genius. Moloch, fed upon live flesh and blood! But she, Stephen, had tried to feed her inspiration upon herbage, the kind, green herbage of Morton. For a little while such food had sufficed, but now her talent had sickened, was dying perhaps—or had she too fed it on blood, her heart’s blood when she had writtenThe Furrow? If so, her heart would not bleed any more—perhaps it could not—perhaps it was dry. A dry, withered thing; for she did not feel love these days when she thought of Angela Crossby—that must mean that her heart had died within her. A gruesome companion to have, a dead heart.
Angela Crossby—and yet there were times when she longed intensely to see this woman, to hear her speak, to stretch out her arms and clasp them around the woman’s body—not gently, not patiently as in the past, but roughly, brutally even. Beastly—it was beastly! She felt degraded. She had no love to offer Angela Crossby, not now, only something that lay like a stain on the beauty of what had once been love. Even this memory was marred and defiled, by herself even more than by Angela Crossby.
Came the thought of that unforgettable scene with her mother. ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet.’ Oh, yes—very easy to talk about death, but not so easy to manage the dying. ‘We two cannot live together at Morton. . . . One of us must go, which of us shall it be?’ The subtlety, the craftiness of that question which in common decency could have but one answer! Oh, well, she had gone and would go even farther. Raftery was dead, there was nothing to hold her, she was free—what a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes—free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger.
At Morton there lived an ageing woman with sorrowful eyes now a little dim from gazing for so long into the distance. Only once, since her gaze had been fixed on the dead, had this woman turned it full on her daughter; and then her eyes had been changed into something accusing, ruthless, abominably cruel. Through looking upon what had seemed abominable to them, they themselves had become an abomination. Horrible! And yet how dared they accuse? What right had a mother to abominate the child that had sprung from her own secret moments of passion? She the honoured, the fulfilled, the fruitful, the loving and loved, had despised the fruit of her love. Its fruit? No, rather its victim.
She thought of her mother’s protected life that had never had to face this terrible freedom. Like a vine that clings to a warm southern wall it had clung to her father—it still clung to Morton. In the spring had come gentle and nurturing rains, in the summer the strong and health-giving sunshine, in the winter a deep, soft covering of snow—cold yet protecting the delicate tendrils. All, all she had had. She had never gone empty of love in the days of her youthful ardour; had never known longing, shame, degradation, but rather great joy and great pride in her loving. Her love had been pure in the eyes of the world, for she had been able to indulge it with honour. Still with honour, she had borne a child to her mate—but a child who, unlike her, must go unfulfilled all her days, or else live in abject dishonour. Oh, but a hard and pitiless woman this mother must be for all her soft beauty; shamelessly finding shame in her offspring. ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet. . . .’ ‘Too late, too late, your love gave me life. Here am I the creature you made through your loving; by your passion you created the thing that I am. Who are you to deny me the right to love? But for you I need never have known existence.’
And now there crept into Stephen’s brain the worst torment of all, a doubt of her father. He had known and knowing he had not told her; he had pitied and pitying had not protected; he had feared and fearing had saved only himself. Had she had a coward for a father? She sprang up and began to pace the room. Not this—she could not face this new torment. She had stained her love, the love of the lover—she dared not stain this one thing that remained, the love of the child for the father. If this light went out the engulfing darkness would consume her, destroying her entirely. Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation—one point of light. The most perfect Being of all had cried out for light in His darkness—even He, the most perfect Being of all. And then as though in answer to prayer, to some prayer that her trembling lips had not uttered, came the memory of a patient, protective back, bowed as though bearing another’s burden. Came the memory of horrible, soul-sickening pain: ‘No—not that—something urgent—I want—to say. No drugs—I know I’m—dying—Evans.’ And again an heroic and tortured effort: ‘Anna—it’s Stephen—listen.’ Stephen suddenly held out her arms to this man who, though dead, was still her father.
But even in this blessèd moment of easement, her heart hardened again at the thought of her mother. A fresh wave of bitterness flooded her soul so that the light seemed all but extinguished; very faintly it gleamed like the little lantern on a buoy that is tossed by tempest. Sitting down at her desk she found pen and paper.
She wrote: ‘Mother, I am going abroad quite soon, but I shall not see you to say good-bye, because I don’t want to come back to Morton. These visits of mine have always been painful, and now my work is beginning to suffer—that I can not allow; I live only for my work and so I intend to guard it in future. There can now be no question of gossip or scandal, for every one knows that I am a writer and as such may have occasion to travel. But in any case I care very little these days for the gossip of neighbours. For nearly three years I have borne your yoke—I have tried to be patient and understanding. I have tried to think that your yoke was a just one, a just punishment, perhaps, for my being what I am, the creature whom you and my father created; but now I am going to bear it no longer. If my father had lived he would have shown pity, whereas you showed me none, and yet you were my mother. In my hour of great need you utterly failed me; you turned me away like some unclean thing that was unfit to live any longer at Morton. You insulted what to me seemed both natural and sacred. I went, but now I shall not come back any more to you or to Morton. Puddle will be with me because she loves me; if I’m saved at all it is she who has saved me, and so for as long as she wishes to throw in her lot with mine I shall let her. Only one thing more; she will send you our address from time to time, but don’t write to me, Mother, I am going away in order to forget, and your letters would only remind me of Morton.’
She read over what she had written, three times, finding nothing at all that she wished to add, no word of tenderness, or of regret. She felt numb and then unbelievably lonely, but she wrote the address in her firm handwriting: ‘The Lady Anna Gordon,’ she wrote, ‘Morton Hall. Near Upton-on-Severn.’ And when she wept, as she presently must do, covering her face with her large, brown hands, her spirit felt unrefreshed by this weeping, for the hot, angry tears seemed to scorch her spirit. Thus was Anna Gordon baptized through her child as by fire, unto the loss of their mutual salvation.
It wasJonathan Brockett who had recommended the little hotel in the Rue St. Roch, and when Stephen and Puddle arrived one evening that June, feeling rather tired and dejected, they found their sitting-room bright with roses—roses for Puddle—and on the table two boxes of Turkish cigarettes for Stephen. Brockett, they learnt, had ordered these things by writing specially from London.
Barely had they been in Paris a week, when Jonathan Brockett turned up in person: ‘Hallo, my dears, I’ve come over to see you. Everything all right? Are you being looked after?’ He sat down in the only comfortable chair and proceeded to make himself charming to Puddle. It seemed that his flat in Paris being let, he had tried to get rooms at their hotel but had failed, so had gone instead to the Meurice. ‘But I’m not going to take you to lunch there,’ he told them, ‘the weather’s too fine, we’ll go to Versailles. Stephen, ring up and order your car, there’s a darling! By the way, how is Burton getting on? Does he remember to keep to the right and to pass on the left?’ His voice sounded anxious. Stephen reassured him good-humouredly, she knew that he was apt to be nervous in motors.
They lunched at the Hotel des Reservoirs, Brockett taking great pains to order special dishes. The waiters were zealous, they evidently knew him: ‘Oui, monsieur, tout de suite—à l’instant, monsieur!’ Other clients were kept waiting while Brockett was served, and Stephen could see that this pleased him. All through the meal he talked about Paris with ardour, as a lover might talk of a mistress.
‘Stephen, I’m not going back for ages. I’m going to make you simply adore her. You’ll see, I’ll make you adore her so much that you’ll find yourself writing like a heaven-born genius. There’s nothing so stimulating as love—you’ve got to have an affair with Paris!’ Then looking at Stephen rather intently, ‘I suppose you’re capable of falling in love?’
She shrugged her shoulders, ignoring his question, but she thought: ‘He’s putting his eye to the keyhole. His curiosity’s positively childish at times,’ for she saw that his face had fallen.
‘Oh, well, if you don’t want to tell me—’ he grumbled.
‘Don’t be silly! There’s nothing to tell,’ smiled Stephen. But she made a mental note to be careful. Brockett’s curiosity was always most dangerous when apparently merely childish.
With quick tact he dropped the personal note. No good trying to force her to confide, he decided, she was too damn clever to give herself away, especially before the watchful old Puddle. He sent for the bill and when it arrived, went over it item by item, frowning.
‘Maître d’hotel!’
‘Oui monsieur?’
‘You’ve made a mistake; only one liqueur brandy—and here’s another mistake, I ordered two portions of potatoes,not three; I do wish to God you’d be careful!’ When Brockett felt cross he always felt mean. ‘Correct this at once, it’s disgusting!’ he said rudely. Stephen sighed, and hearing her Brockett looked up unabashed: ‘Well, why pay for what we’ve not ordered?’ Then he suddenly found his temper again and left a very large tip for the waiter.
Thereis nothing more difficult to attain to than the art of being a perfect guide. Such an art, indeed, requires a real artist, one who has a keen perception for contrasts, and an eye for the large effects rather than for details, above all one possessed of imagination; and Brockett, when he chose, could be such a guide.
Having waved the professional guides to one side, he himself took them through a part of the palace, and his mind re-peopled the place for Stephen so that she seemed to see the glory of the dancers led by the youthful Roi Soleil; seemed to hear the rhythm of the throbbing violins, and the throb of the rhythmic dancing feet as they beat down the length of the Galerie des Glaces; seemed to see those other mysterious dancers who followed step by step, in the long line of mirrors. But most skilfully of all did he recreate for her the image of the luckless queen who came after; as though for some reason this unhappy woman must appeal in a personal way to Stephen. And true it was that the small, humble rooms which the queen had chosen out of all that vast palace, moved Stephen profoundly—so desolate they seemed, so full of unhappy thoughts and emotions that were even now only half forgotten.
Brockett pointed to the simple garniture on the mantelpiece of the little salon, then he looked at Stephen: ‘Madame de Lamballe gave those to the queen,’ he murmured softly.
She nodded, only vaguely apprehending his meaning.
Presently they followed him out into the gardens and stood looking across the Tapis Vert that stretches its quarter mile of greenness towards a straight, lovely line of water.
Brockett said, very low, so that Puddle should not hear him: ‘Those two would often come here at sunset. Sometimes they were rowed along the canal in the sunset—can’t you imagine it, Stephen? They must often have felt pretty miserable, poor souls; sick to death of the subterfuge and pretences. Don’t you ever get tired of that sort of thing? My God, I do!’ But she did not answer, for now there was no mistaking his meaning.
Last of all he took them to the Temple d’Amour, where it rests amid the great silence of the years that have long lain upon the dead hearts of its lovers; and from there to the Hameau, built by the queen for a whim—the tactless and foolish whim of a tactless and foolish but loving woman—by the queen who must play at being a peasant, at a time when her downtrodden peasants were starving. The cottages were badly in need of repair; a melancholy spot it looked, this Hameau, in spite of the birds that sang in its trees and the golden glint of the afternoon sunshine.
On the drive back to Paris they were all very silent. Puddle was feeling too tired to talk, and Stephen was oppressed by a sense of sadness—the vast and rather beautiful sadness that may come to us when we have looked upon beauty, the sadness that aches in the heart of Versailles. Brockett was content to sit opposite Stephen on the hard little let-down seat of her motor. He might have been comfortable next to the driver, but instead he preferred to sit opposite Stephen, and he too was silent, surreptitiously watching the expression of her face in the gathering twilight.
When he left them he said with his cold little smile: ‘To-morrow, before you’ve forgotten Versailles, I want you to come to the Conciergerie. It’s very enlightening—cause and effect.’
At that moment Stephen disliked him intensely. All the same he had stirred her imagination.
In theweeks that followed, Brockett showed Stephen just as much of Paris as he wished her to see, and this principally consisted of the tourist’s Paris. Into less simple pastures he would guide her later on, always provided that his interest lasted. For the present, however, he considered it wiser to tread delicately like Agag. The thought of this girl had begun to obsess him to a very unusual extent. He who had prided himself on his skill in ferreting out other people’s secrets, was completely baffled by this youthful abnormal. That she was abnormal he had no doubt whatever, but what he was keenly anxious to find out was just how her own abnormality struck her—he felt pretty sure that she worried about it. And he genuinely liked her. Unscrupulous he might be in his vivisection of men and women; cynical too when it came to his pleasures, himself an invert, secretly hating the world which he knew hated him in secret; and yet in his way he felt sorry for Stephen, and this amazed him, for Jonathan Brockett had long ago, as he thought, done with pity. But his pity was a very poor thing at best, it would never defend and never protect her; it would always go down before any new whim, and his whim at the moment was to keep her in Paris.
All unwittingly Stephen played into his hands, while having no illusions about him. He represented a welcome distraction that helped her to keep her thoughts off England. And because under Brockett’s skilful guidance she developed a fondness for the beautiful city, she felt very tolerant of him at moments, almost grateful she felt, grateful too towards Paris. And Puddle also felt grateful.
The strain of the sudden complete rupture with Morton had told on the faithful little grey woman. She would scarcely have known how to counsel Stephen had the girl come to her and asked for her counsel. Sometimes she would lie awake now at nights thinking of that ageing and unhappy mother in the great silent house, and then would come pity, the old pity that had come in the past for Anna—she would pity until she remembered Stephen. Then Puddle would try to think very calmly, to keep the brave heart that had never failed her, to keep her strong faith in Stephen’s future—only now there were days when she felt almost old, when she realized that indeed she was ageing. When Anna would write her a calm, friendly letter, but with never so much as a mention of Stephen, she would feel afraid, yes, afraid of this woman, and at moments almost afraid of Stephen. For none might know from those guarded letters what emotions lay in the heart of their writer; and none might know from Stephen’s set face when she recognized the writing, what lay in her heart. She would turn away, asking no questions about Morton.
Oh, yes, Puddle felt old and actually frightened, both of which sensations she deeply resented; so being what she was, an indomitable fighter, she thrust out her chin and ordered a tonic. She struggled along through the labyrinths of Paris beside the untiring Stephen and Brockett; through the galleries of the Luxembourg and the Louvre; up the Eiffel Tower—in a lift, thank heaven; down the Rue de la Paix, up the hill to Montmartre—sometimes in the car but quite often on foot, for Brockett wished Stephen to learn her Paris—and as likely as not, ending up with rich food that disagreed badly with the tired Puddle. In the restaurants people would stare at Stephen, and although the girl would pretend not to notice, Puddle would know that in spite of her calm, Stephen was inwardly feeling resentful, was inwardly feeling embarrassed and awkward. And then because she was tired, Puddle too would feel awkward when she noticed those people staring.
Sometimes Puddle must really give up and rest, in spite of the aggressive chin and the tonic. Then all alone in the Paris hotel, she would suddenly grow very homesick for England—absurd of course and yet there it was, she would feel the sharp tug of England. At such moments she would long for ridiculous things; a penny bun in the train at Dover; the good red faces of English porters—the old ones with little stubby side-whiskers; Harrods Stores; a properly upholstered arm-chair; bacon and eggs; the sea front at Brighton. All alone and via these ridiculous things, Puddle would feel the sharp tug of England.
And one evening her weary mind must switch back to the earliest days of her friendship with Stephen. What a lifetime ago it seemed since the days when a lanky colt of a girl of fourteen had been licked into shape in the schoolroom at Morton. She could hear her own words: ‘You’ve forgotten something, Stephen; the books can’t walk to the bookcase, but you can, so suppose that you take them with you,’ and then: ‘Even my brain won’t stand your complete lack of method.’ Stephen fourteen—that was twelve years ago. In those years she, Puddle, had grown very tired, tired with trying to see some way out, some way of escape, of fulfilment for Stephen. And always they seemed to be toiling, they two, down an endless road that had no turning; she an ageing woman herself unfulfilled; Stephen still young and as yet still courageous—but the day would come when her youth would fail, and her courage, because of that endless toiling.
She thought of Brockett, Jonathan Brockett, surely an unworthy companion for Stephen; a thoroughly vicious and cynical man, a dangerous one too because he was brilliant. Yet she, Puddle, was actually grateful to this man; so dire were their straits that she was grateful to Brockett. Then came the remembrance of that other man, of Martin Hallam—she had had such high hopes. He had been very simple and honest and good—Puddle felt that there was much to be said for goodness. But for such as Stephen men like Martin Hallam could seldom exist; as friends they would fail her, while she in her turn would fail them as lover. Then what remained? Jonathan Brockett? Like to like. No, no, an intolerable thought! Such a thought as that was an outrage on Stephen. Stephen was honourable and courageous; she was steadfast in friendship and selfless in loving; intolerable to think that her only companions must be men and women like Jonathan Brockett—and yet—after all what else? What remained? Loneliness, or worse still, far worse because it so deeply degraded the spirit, a life of perpetual subterfuge, of guarded opinions and guarded actions, of lies of omission if not of speech, of becoming an accomplice in the world’s injustice by maintaining at all times a judicious silence, making and keeping the friends one respected, on false pretences, because if they knew they would turn aside, even the friends one respected.
Puddle abruptly controlled her thoughts; this was no way to be helpful to Stephen. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. Getting up she went into her bedroom where she bathed her face and tidied her hair.
‘I look scarcely human,’ she thought ruefully, as she stared at her own reflection in the glass; and indeed at that moment she looked more than her age.
It wasnot until nearly the middle of July that Brockett took Stephen to Valérie Seymour’s. Valérie had been away for some time, and was even now only passing through Paris en route for her villa at St. Tropez.
As they drove to her apartment on the Quai Voltaire, Brockett began to extol their hostess, praising her wit, her literary talent. She wrote delicate satires and charming sketches of Greek mœurs—the latter were very outspoken, but then Valérie’s life was very outspoken—she was, said Brockett, a kind of pioneer who would probably go down to history. Most of her sketches were written in French, for among other things Valérie was bilingual; she was also quite rich, an American uncle had had the foresight to leave her his fortune; she was also quite young, being just over thirty, and according to Brockett, good-looking. She lived her life in great calmness of spirit, for nothing worried and few things distressed her. She was firmly convinced that in this ugly age one should strive to the top of one’s bent after beauty. But Stephen might find her a bit of a free lance, she was libre penseuse when it came to the heart; her love affairs would fill quite three volumes, even after they had been expurgated. Great men had loved her, great writers had written about her, one had died, it was said, because she refused him, but Valérie was not attracted to men—yet as Stephen would see if she went to her parties, she had many devoted friends among men. In this respect she was almost unique, being what she was, for men did not resent her. But then of course all intelligent people realized that she was a creature apart, as would Stephen the moment she met her.
Brockett babbled away, and as he did so his voice took on the effeminate timbre that Stephen always hated and dreaded: ‘Oh, my dear!’ he exclaimed with a high little laugh, ‘I’m so excited about this meeting of yours, I’ve a feeling it may be momentous. What fun!’ And his soft, white hands grew restless, making their foolish gestures.
She looked at him coldly, wondering the while how she could tolerate this young man—why indeed, she chose to endure him.
The firstthing that struck Stephen about Valérie’s flat was its large and rather splendid disorder. There was something blissfully unkempt about it, as though its mistress were too much engrossed in other affairs to control its behaviour. Nothing was quite where it ought to have been, and much was where it ought not to have been, while over the whole lay a faint layer of dust—even over the spacious salon. The odour of somebody’s Oriental scent was mingling with the odour of tuberoses in a sixteenth century chalice. On a divan, whose truly regal proportions occupied the best part of a shadowy alcove, lay a box of Fuller’s peppermint creams and a lute, but the strings of the lute were broken.
Valérie came forward with a smile of welcome. She was not beautiful nor was she imposing, but her limbs were very perfectly proportioned, which gave her a fictitious look of tallness. She moved well, with the quiet and unconscious grace that sprang from those perfect proportions. Her face was humorous, placid and worldly; her eyes very kind, very blue, very lustrous. She was dressed all in white, and a large white fox skin was clasped round her slender and shapely shoulders. For the rest she had masses of thick fair hair, which was busily ridding itself of its hairpins; one could see at a glance that it hated restraint, like the flat it was in rather splendid disorder.
She said: ‘I’m so delighted to meet you at last, Miss Gordon, do come and sit down. And please smoke if you want to,’ she added quickly, glancing at Stephen’s tell-tale fingers.
Brockett said: ‘Positively, this is too splendid! I feel that you’re going to be wonderful friends.’
Stephen thought: ‘So this is Valérie Seymour.’
No sooner were they seated than Brockett began to ply their hostess with personal questions. The mood that had incubated in the motor was now becoming extremely aggressive, so that he fidgeted about on his chair, making his little inadequate gestures. ‘Darling, you’re looking perfectly lovely! But do tell me, what have you done with Polinska? Have you drowned her in the blue grotto at Capri? I hope so, my dear, shewassuch a bore and so dirty! Do tell me about Polinska. How did she behave when you got her to Capri? Did she bite anybody before you drowned her? I always felt frightened; I loathe being bitten!’
Valérie frowned: ‘I believe she’s quite well.’
‘Then you have drowned her, darling!’ shrilled Brockett.
And now he was launched on a torrent of gossip about people of whom Stephen had never even heard: ‘Pat’s been deserted—have you heard that, darling? Do you think she’ll take the veil or cocaine or something? One never quite knows what may happen next with such an emotional temperament, does one? Arabella’s skipped off to the Lido with Jane Grigg. The Grigg’s just come into pots and pots of money, so I hope they’ll be deliriously happy and silly while it lasts—I mean the money. . . . Oh, and have you heard about Rachel Morris? They say. . . .’ He flowed on and on like a brook in spring flood, while Valérie yawned and looked bored, making monosyllabic answers.
And Stephen as she sat there and smoked in silence, thought grimly: ‘This is all being said because of me. Brockett wants to let me see that he knows what I am, and he wants to let Valérie Seymour know too—I suppose this is making me welcome.’ She hardly knew whether to feel outraged or relieved that here, at least, was no need for pretences.
But after a while she began to fancy that Valérie’s eyes had become appraising. They were weighing her up and secretly approving the result, she fancied. A slow anger possessed her. Valérie Seymour was secretly approving, not because her guest was a decent human being with a will to work, with a well-trained brain, with what might some day become a fine talent, but rather because she was seeing before her all the outward stigmata of the abnormal—verily the wounds of One nailed to a cross—that was why Valérie sat there approving.
And then, as though these bitter thoughts had reached her, Valérie suddenly smiled at Stephen. Turning her back on the chattering Brockett, she started to talk to her guest quite gravely about her work, about books in general, about life in general; and as she did so Stephen began to understand better the charm that many had found in this woman; a charm that lay less in physical attraction than in a great courtesy and understanding, a great will to please, a great impulse towards beauty in all its forms—yes, therein lay her charm. And as they talked on it dawned upon Stephen that here was no mere libertine in love’s garden, but rather a creature born out of her epoch, a pagan chained to an age that was Christian, one who would surely say with Pierre Louÿs: ‘Le monde moderne succombe sous un envahissement de laideur.’ And she thought that she discerned in those luminous eyes, the pale yet ardent light of the fanatic.
Presently Valérie Seymour asked her how long she would be remaining in Paris.
And Stephen answered: ‘I’m going to live here,’ feeling surprised at the words as she said them, for not until now had she made this decision.
Valérie seemed pleased: ‘If you want a house, I know of one in the Rue Jacob; it’s a tumbledown place, but it’s got a fine garden. Why not go and see it? You might go to-morrow. Of course you’ll have to live on this side, the Rive Gauche is the only possible Paris.’
‘I should like to see the old house,’ said Stephen.
So Valérie went to the telephone there and then and proceeded to call up the landlord. The appointment was made for eleven the next morning. ‘It’s rather a sad old house,’ she warned, ‘no one has troubled to make it a home for some time, but you’ll alter all that if you take it, because I suppose you’ll make it your home.’
Stephen flushed: ‘My home’s in England,’ she said quickly, for her thoughts had instantly flown back to Morton.
But Valérie answered: ‘One may have two homes—many homes. Be courteous to our lovely Paris and give it the privilege of being your second home—it will feel very honoured, Miss Gordon.’ She sometimes made little ceremonious speeches like this, and coming from her, they sounded strangely old-fashioned.
Brockett, rather subdued and distinctly pensive as sometimes happened if Valérie had snubbed him, complained of a pain above his right eye: ‘I must take some phenacetin,’ he said sadly, ‘I’m always getting this curious pain above my right eye—do you think it’s the sinus?’ He was very intolerant of all pain.
His hostess sent for the phenacetin, and Brockett gulped down a couple of tablets: ‘Valérie doesn’t love me any more,’ he sighed, with a woebegone look at Stephen. ‘I do call it hard, but it’s always what happens when I introduce my best friends to each other—they foregather at once and leave me in the cold; but then, thank heaven, I’m very forgiving.’
They laughed and Valérie made him get on to the divan where he promptly lay down on the lute.
‘Oh God!’ he moaned, ‘now I’ve injured my spine—I’m so badly upholstered.’ Then he started to strum on the one sound string of the lute.
Valérie went over to her untidy desk and began to write out a list of addresses: ‘These may be useful to you, Miss Gordon.’
‘Stephen!’ exclaimed Brockett, ‘Call the poor woman Stephen!’
‘May I?’
Stephen acquiesced: ‘Yes, please do.’
‘Very well then, I’m Valérie. Is that a bargain?’
‘The bargain is sealed,’ announced Brockett. With extraordinary skill he was managing to strum ‘O Sole Mio’ on the single string, when he suddenly stopped: ‘I knew there was something—your fencing, Stephen, you’ve forgotten your fencing. We meant to ask Valérie for Buisson’s address; they say he’s the finest master in Europe.’
Valérie looked up: ‘Does Stephen fence, then?’
‘Does she fence! She’s a marvellous, champion fencer.’
‘He’s never seen me fence,’ explained Stephen, ‘and I’m never likely to be a champion.’
‘Don’t you believe her, she’s trying to be modest. I’ve heard that she fences quite as finely as she writes,’ he insisted. And somehow Stephen felt touched, Brockett was trying to show off her talents.
Presently she offered him a lift in the car, but he shook his head: ‘No, thank you, dear one, I’m staying.’ So she wished them good-bye; but as she left them she heard Brockett murmuring to Valérie Seymour, and she felt pretty sure that she caught her own name.
‘Well,what did you think of Miss Seymour?’ inquired Puddle, when Stephen got back about twenty minutes later.
Stephen hesitated: ‘I’m not perfectly certain. She was very friendly, but I couldn’t help feeling that she liked me because she thought me—oh, well, because she thought me what I am, Puddle. But I may have been wrong—she was awfully friendly. Brockett was at his very worst though, poor devil! His environment seemed to go to his head.’ She sank down wearily on to a chair: ‘Oh, Puddle, Puddle, it’s a hell of a business.’
Puddle nodded.
Then Stephen said rather abruptly: ‘All the same, we’re going to live here in Paris. We’re going to look at a house to-morrow, an old house with a garden in the Rue Jacob.’
For a moment Puddle hesitated, then she said: ‘There’s only one thing against it. Do you think you’ll ever be happy in a city? You’re so fond of the life that belongs to the country.’
Stephen shook her head: ‘That’s all past now, my dear; there’s no country for me away from Morton. But in Paris I might make some sort of a home, I could work here—and then of course there are people. . . .’
Something started to hammer in Puddle’s brain: ‘Like to like! Like to like! Like to like!’ it hammered.
Stephenbought the house in the Rue Jacob, because as she walked through the dim, grey archway that led from the street to the cobbled courtyard, and saw the deserted house standing before her, she knew at once that there she would live. This will happen sometimes, we instinctively feel in sympathy with certain dwellings.
The courtyard was sunny and surrounded by walls. On the right of this courtyard some iron gates led into the spacious, untidy garden, and woefully neglected though this garden had been, the trees that it still possessed were fine ones. A marble fountain long since choked with weeds, stood in the centre of what had been a lawn. In the farthest corner of the garden some hand had erected a semi-circular temple, but that had been a long time ago, and now the temple was all but ruined.
The house itself would need endless repairs, but its rooms were of careful and restful proportions. A fine room with a window that opened on the garden, would be Stephen’s study; she could write there in quiet; on the other side of the stone-paved hall was a smaller but comfortable salle à manger; while past the stone staircase a little round room in a turret would be Puddle’s particular sanctum. Above there were bedrooms enough and to spare; there was also the space for a couple of bathrooms. The day after Stephen had seen this house, she had written agreeing to purchase.
Valérie rang up before leaving Paris to inquire how Stephen had liked the old house, and when she heard that she had actually bought it, she expressed herself as being delighted.
‘We’ll be quite close neighbours now,’ she remarked, ‘but I’m not going to bother you until you evince, not even when I get back in the autumn. I know you’ll be literally snowed under with workmen for months, you poor dear, I feel sorry for you. But when you can, do let me come and see you—meanwhile if I can help you at all. . . .’ And she gave her address at St. Tropez.
And now for the first time since leaving Morton, Stephen turned her mind to the making of a home. Through Brockett she found a young architect who seemed anxious to carry out all her instructions. He was one of those very rare architects who refrain from thrusting their views on their clients. So into the ancient, deserted house in the Rue Jacob streamed an army of workmen, and they hammered and scraped and raised clouds of dust from early morning, all day until evening—smoking harsh caporal as they joked or quarrelled or idled or spat or hummed snatches of song. And amazingly soon, wherever one trod one seemed to be treading on wet cement or on dry, gritty heaps of brick dust and rubble, so that Puddle would complain that she spoilt all her shoes, while Stephen would emerge with her neat blue serge shoulders quite grey, and with even her hair thickly powdered.
Sometimes the architect would come to the hotel in the evening and then would ensue long discussions. Bending over the little mahogany table, he and Stephen would study the plans intently, for she wished to preserve the spirit of the place intact, despite alterations. She decided to have an Empire study with grey walls and curtains of Empire green, for she loved the great roomy writing tables that had come into being with the first Napoleon. The walls of the salle à manger should be white and the curtains brown, while Puddle’s round sanctum in its turret should have walls and paintwork of yellow, to give the illusion of sunshine. And so absorbed did Stephen become in these things, that she scarcely had time to notice Jonathan Brockett’s abrupt departure for a mountain top in the Austrian Tyrol. Having suddenly come to the end of his finances, he must hasten to write a couple of plays that could be produced in London that winter. He sent her three or four picture postcards of glaciers, after which she heard nothing more from him.
At the end of August, when the work was well under way, she and Puddle fared forth in the motor to visit divers villages and towns, in quest of old furniture, and Stephen was surprised to find how much she enjoyed it. She would catch herself whistling as she drove her car, and when they got back to some humble auberge in the evening, she would want to eat a large supper. Every morning she diligently swung her dumb-bells; she was getting into condition for fencing. She had not fenced at all since leaving Morton, having been too much engrossed in her work while in London; but now she was going to fence before Buisson, so she diligently swung her dumb-bells. During these two months of holiday-making she grew fond of the wide-eyed, fruitful French country, even as she had grown fond of Paris. She would never love it as she loved the hills and the stretching valleys surrounding Morton, for that love was somehow a part of her being, but she gave to this France, that would give her a home, a quiet and very sincere affection. Her heart grew more grateful with every mile, for hers was above all a grateful nature.
They returned to Paris at the end of October. And now came the selecting of carpets and curtains; of fascinating blankets from the Magasin de Blanc—blankets craftily dyed to match any bedroom; of fine linen, and other expensive things, including the copper batterie de cuisine, which latter, however, was left to Puddle. At last the army of workmen departed, its place being taken by a Breton ménage—brown-faced folk, strong-limbed and capable looking—a mother, father and daughter. Pierre, the butler, had been a fisherman once, but the sea with its hardships had prematurely aged him. He had now been in service for several years, having contracted rheumatic fever which had weakened his heart and made him unfit for the strenuous life of a fisher. Pauline, his wife, was considerably younger, and she it was who would reign in the kitchen, while their daughter Adèle, a girl of eighteen, would help both her parents and look after the housework.
Adèle was as happy as a blackbird in springtime; she would often seem just on the verge of chirping. But Pauline had stood and watched the great storms gather over the sea while her men were out fishing; her father had lost his life through the sea as had also a brother, so Pauline smiled seldom. Dour she was, with a predilection for dwelling in detail on people’s misfortunes. As for Pierre, he was stolid, kind and pious, with the eyes of a man who has looked on vast spaces. His grey stubbly hair was cut short to his head en brosse, and he had an ungainly figure. When he walked he straddled a little as though he could never believe in a house without motion. He liked Stephen at once, which was very propitious, for one cannot buy the good-will of a Breton.
Thus gradually chaos gave place to order, and on the morning of her twenty-seventh birthday, on Christmas Eve, Stephen moved into her home in the Rue Jacob on the old Rive Gauche, there to start her new life in Paris.
All alonein the brown and white salle à manger, Stephen and Puddle ate their Christmas dinner. And Puddle had bought a small Christmas tree and had trimmed it, then hung it with coloured candles. A little wax Christ-child bent downwards and sideways from His branch, as though He were looking for His presents—only now there were not any presents. Rather clumsily Stephen lit the candles as soon as the daylight had almost faded. Then she and Puddle stood and stared at the tree, but in silence, because they must both remember. But Pierre, who like all who have known the sea, was a child at heart, broke into loud exclamations. ‘Oh, comme c’est beau, l’arbre de Noël!’ he exclaimed, and he fetched the dour Pauline along from the kitchen, and she too exclaimed; then they both fetched Adèle and they all three exclaimed: ‘Comme c’est beau, l’arbre de Noël!’ So, that after all the little wax Christ-child did not very much miss His presents.
That evening Pauline’s two brothers arrived—they were Poilus stationed just outside Paris—and they brought along with them another young man, one Jean, who was ardently courting Adèle. Very soon came the sound of singing and laughter from the kitchen, and when Stephen went up to her bedroom to look for a book, there was Adèle quite flushed and with very bright eyes because of this Jean—in great haste she turned down the bed and then flew on the wings of love back to the kitchen.
But Stephen went slowly downstairs to her study where Puddle was sitting in front of the fire, and she thought that Puddle sat there as though tired; her hands were quite idle, and after a moment Stephen noticed that she was dozing. Very quietly Stephen opened her book, unwilling to rouse the little grey woman who looked so small in the huge leather chair, and whose head kept guiltily nodding. But the book seemed scarcely worth troubling to read, so that presently Stephen laid it aside and sat staring into the flickering logs that hummed and burnt blue because it was frosty. On the Malvern Hills there would probably be snow; deep snow might be capping the Worcestershire Beacon. The air up at British Camp would be sweet with the smell of winter and open spaces—little lights would be glinting far down in the valley. At Morton the lakes would be still and frozen, so Peter the swan would be feeling friendly—in winter he had always fed from her hand—he must be old now, the swan called Peter. Coup! C-o-u-p! and Peter waddling towards her. He, who was all gliding grace on the water, would come awkwardly waddling towards her hand for the chunk of dry bread that she held in her fingers. Jean with his Adèle along in the kitchen—a nice-looking boy he was, Stephen had seen him—they were young, and both were exceedingly happy, for their parents approved, so some day they would marry. Then children would come, too many, no doubt, for Jean’s slender purse, and yet in this life one must pay for one’s pleasures—they would pay with their children, and this appeared perfectly fair to Stephen. She thought that it seemed a long time ago since she herself had been a small child, romping about on the floor with her father, bothering Williams down at the stables, dressing up as young Nelson and posing for Collins who had sometimes been cross to young Nelson. She was nearly thirty, and what had she done? Written one good novel and one very bad one, with few mediocre short stories thrown in. Oh, well, she was going to start writing again quite soon—she had an idea for a novel. But she sighed, and Puddle woke up with a start.
‘Is that you, my dear? Have I been asleep?’
‘Only for a very few minutes, Puddle.’
Puddle glanced at the new gold watch on her wrist; it had been a Christmas present from Stephen. ‘It’s past ten o’clock—I think I’ll turn in.’
‘Do. Why not? I hope Adèle’s filled your hot water bottle; she’s rather light-headed over her Jean.’
‘Never mind, I can fill it myself,’ smiled Puddle.
She went, and Stephen sat on by the fire with her eyes half closed and her lips set firmly. She must put away all these thoughts of the past and compel herself to think of the future. This brooding over things that were past was all wrong; it was futile, weak-kneed and morbid. She had her work, work that cried out to be done, but no more unworthy books must be written. She must show that being the thing she was, she could climb to success over all opposition, could climb to success in spite of a world that was trying its best to get her under. Her mouth grew hard; her sensitive lips that belonged by rights to the dreamer, the lover, took on a resentful and bitter line which changed her whole face and made it less comely. At that moment the striking likeness of her father appeared to have faded out of her face.
Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their righteous judgments. They sinned grossly; even vilely at times, like lustful beasts—but yet they were normal! And the vilest of them could point a finger of scorn at her, and be loudly applauded.
‘God damn them to hell!’ she muttered.
Along in the kitchen there was singing again. The young men’s voices rose tuneful and happy, and with them blended Adèle’s young voice, very sexless as yet, like the voice of a choirboy. Stephen got up and opened the door, then she stood quite still and listened intently. The singing soothed her over-strained nerves as it flowed from the hearts of these simple people. For she did not begrudge them their happiness; she did not resent young Jean with his Adèle, or Pierre who had done a man’s work in his time, or Pauline who was often aggressively female. Bitter she had grown in these years since Morton, but not bitter enough to resent the simple. And then as she listened they suddenly stopped for a little before they resumed their singing, and when they resumed it the tune was sad with the sadness that dwells in the souls of most men, above all in the patient soul of the peasant.