CHAPTER III

Itwas a pity that Mr. Cardan could not hear what his hostess was saying. He would have been delighted; she was talking about herself. It was a subject on which he specially loved to hear her. There were few people, he used to say, whose Authorised Version of themselves differed so strikingly from that Revised, formed of them by others. It was not often, however, that she gave him a chance to compare them. With Mr. Cardan she was always a little shy; he had known her so long.

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Aldwinkle was saying, as she walked with Chelifer on the second of the three terraces, “sometimes I wish I were less sensitive. I feel everything so acutely—every slightest thing. It’s like being … like being …” she fumbled in the air with groping fingers, feeling for the right word, “like being flayed,” she concluded triumphantly, and looked at her companion.

Chelifer nodded sympathetically.

“I’m so fearfully aware,” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on, “of other people’s thoughts and feelings. They don’t have to speak to make me know what they’ve got in their minds. I know it, Ifeelit just by seeing them.”

Chelifer wondered whether she felt what was going on in his mind. He ventured to doubt it. “A wonderful gift,” he said.

“But it has its disadvantages,” insisted Mrs. Aldwinkle. “For example, you can’t imagine how much I suffer when people round me are suffering, particularly if I feel myself in any way to blame. When I’m ill, it makes me miserable to think of servants and nurses and people having to sit up without sleep and run up and down stairs, all because of me. I know it’s rather stupid; but, do you know, my sympathy for them is so … so …profound, that it actually prevents me from getting well as quickly as I should.…”

“Dreadful,” said Chelifer in his polite, precise voice.

“You’ve no idea how deeply all suffering affects me.” She looked at him tenderly. “That day, thatfirstday, when you fainted—you can’t imagine….”

“I’m sorry it should have had such a disagreeable effect on you,” said Chelifer.

“You would have felt the same yourself—in the circumstances,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, uttering the last words in a significant tone.

Chelifer shook his head modestly. “I’m afraid,” he answered, “I’m singularly stoical about other people’s sufferings.”

“Why do you always speak against yourself?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle earnestly. “Why do you malign your own character? You know you’re not what you pretend to be. You pretend to be so much harder and dryer than you really are. Why do you?”

Chelifer smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, “it’s to re-establish the universal average. So many people, you see, try to make themselves out softer and damper than they are. Don’t they?”

Mrs. Aldwinkle ignored his question. “But you,” she insisted, “I want to know about you.” She stared into his face. Chelifer smiled and said nothing. “You won’t tell me?” she went on. “But it doesn’t matter. I know already. I have an intuition about people. It’s because I’m so sensitive. Ifeeltheir character. I’m never wrong.”

“You’re to be envied,” said Chelifer.

“It’s no good thinking you can deceive me,” she went on. “You can’t. I understand you.” Chelifer sighed, inwardly; she had said that before, more than once. “Shall I tell you what you are really like?”

“Do.”

“Well, to begin with,” she said, “you’re sensitive, just as sensitive as I am. I can see that in your face, in youractions. I can hear it when you speak. You can pretend to be hard and … and … armour-plated, but I….”

Wearily, but with patience, Chelifer listened. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s hesitating voice, moving up and down from note to unrelated note, sounded in his ears. The words became blurred and vague. They lost their articulateness and sense. They were no more than the noise of the wind, a sound that accompanied, but did not interrupt his thoughts. Chelifer’s thoughts, at the moment, were poetical. He was engaged in putting the finishing touches to a little “Mythological Incident,” the idea of which had recently occurred to him and to which, during the last two days, he had been giving its definite form. Now it was finished; a little polishing, that was all it needed now.

Through the pale skeleton of woodsOrion walks. The north wind laysIts cold lips to the twin steel flutesThat are his gun and plays.Knee-deep he goes where, penny-wiserThan all his kind who steal and hoard,Year after year, some sylvan miserHis copper wealth has stored.The Queen of Love and Beauty laysIn neighbouring beechen aisles her baits—Bread-crumbs and the golden maize.Patiently she waits.And when the unwary pheasant comesTo fill his painted maw with crumbs,Accurately the sporting QueenTakes aim. The bird has been.Secure, Orion walks her way.The Cyprian loads, presents, makes fire.He falls. ’Tis Venus all entireAttached to her recumbent prey.

Through the pale skeleton of woodsOrion walks. The north wind laysIts cold lips to the twin steel flutesThat are his gun and plays.

Through the pale skeleton of woods

Orion walks. The north wind lays

Its cold lips to the twin steel flutes

That are his gun and plays.

Knee-deep he goes where, penny-wiserThan all his kind who steal and hoard,Year after year, some sylvan miserHis copper wealth has stored.

Knee-deep he goes where, penny-wiser

Than all his kind who steal and hoard,

Year after year, some sylvan miser

His copper wealth has stored.

The Queen of Love and Beauty laysIn neighbouring beechen aisles her baits—Bread-crumbs and the golden maize.Patiently she waits.

The Queen of Love and Beauty lays

In neighbouring beechen aisles her baits—

Bread-crumbs and the golden maize.

Patiently she waits.

And when the unwary pheasant comesTo fill his painted maw with crumbs,Accurately the sporting QueenTakes aim. The bird has been.

And when the unwary pheasant comes

To fill his painted maw with crumbs,

Accurately the sporting Queen

Takes aim. The bird has been.

Secure, Orion walks her way.The Cyprian loads, presents, makes fire.He falls. ’Tis Venus all entireAttached to her recumbent prey.

Secure, Orion walks her way.

The Cyprian loads, presents, makes fire.

He falls. ’Tis Venus all entire

Attached to her recumbent prey.

Chelifer repeated the verses to himself and was not displeased. The second stanza was a little too “quaint,” perhaps; a little too—how should he put it?—too Walter-Crane’s-picture-book. One might omit it altogether, perhaps; or substitute, if one could think of it, something more perfectly in harmony with the silver-age, allusive elegance of the rest. As for the last verse, that was really masterly. It gave Racine hisraison d’être; if Racine had never existed, it would have been necessary to invent him, merely for the sake of those last lines.

He falls. ’Tis Venus all entireAttached to her recumbent prey.

He falls. ’Tis Venus all entire

Attached to her recumbent prey.

Chelifer lingered over them in ecstasy. He became aware, all at once, that Mrs. Aldwinkle was addressing herself to him more directly. From inharmoniously Aeolian, her voice became once more articulate.

“That’s what you’re like,” she was saying. “Tell me I’m right. Say I understand you.”

“Perhaps,” said Chelifer, smiling.

Meanwhile, on the terrace below, Calamy and Miss Thriplow strolled at leisure. They were discussing a subject about which Miss Thriplow professed a special competence; it was—to speak in the language of the examination room—her Special Subject. They were discussing Life. “Life’s so wonderful,” Miss Thriplow was saying. “Always. So rich, so gay. This morning, for instance, I woke up and the first thing I saw was a pigeon sitting on the window sill—a big fat grey pigeon with a captive rainbow pinned to his stomach.” (That phrase, peculiarly charming and felicitous, Miss Thriplow thought, had already been recorded for future reference in her note-books.) “And then high up on the wall above the washstand there was a little black scorpion standing tail-upwards, looking quite unreal, like something out of the signs of the Zodiac. And then Eugeniacame in to call me—think of having one’s hot water brought by a maid called Eugenia to begin with!—and spent a quarter of an hour telling me about her fiancé. It seems that he’s so dreadfully jealous. So should I be, if I were engaged to a pair of such rolling eyes. But think of all that happening before breakfast, just casually! What extravagance! But Life’s so generous, so copious.” She turned a shining face to her companion.

Calamy looked down at her, through half-closed eyes, smiling, with that air of sleepy insolence, of indolent power, characteristic of him, especially in his relations with women. “Generous!” he repeated. “Yes, I should think it was. Pigeons before breakfast. And at breakfast it offers you!”

“As if I were a broiled kipper,” said Miss Thriplow, laughing.

But Calamy was not disturbed by her laughter. He continued to look at her between his puckered eyelids with the same steady insolence, the same certainty of power—a certainty so complete that he could afford to make no exertions; placidly, drowsily, he could await the inevitable triumph. He disquieted Miss Thriplow. That was why she liked him.

They strolled on. Fifteen days ago they could never have walked like this, two on a terrace, talking at leisure of Miss Thriplow’s Special Subject. Their hostess would have put an end to any such rebellious attempt at independence in the most prompt and ruthless fashion. But since the arrival of Chelifer Mrs. Aldwinkle had been too much preoccupied with the affairs of her own heart to be able to take the slightest interest in the doings, the sayings, the comings and goings of her guests. Her gaoler’s vigilance was relaxed. Her guests might talk together, might wander off alone or in couples, might say good-night when they pleased; Mrs. Aldwinkle did not care. So long as they did not interfere with Chelifer, they might do what they liked.Fay ce que vouldrashad become the rule in Cybo Malaspina’s palace.

“I can never understand,” Miss Thriplow went on, meditatively pursuing her Special Subject, “I can never understand how it is that everybody isn’t happy—I mean fundamentally happy, underneath; for of course there’s suffering, there’s pain, there are a thousand reasons why one can’t always be consciously happy, on the top, if you see what I mean. But fundamentally happy, underneath—how can any one help being that? Life’s so extraordinary, so rich and beautiful—there’s no excuse for not loving it always, even when one’s consciously miserable. Don’t you think so?” She was fairly carried away by her love of Life. She was young, she was ardent; she saw herself as a child who goes and turns head over heels, out of pure joy, in the perfumed haycocks. One could be as clever as one liked, but if one had that genuine love of Life it didn’t matter; one was saved.

“I agree,” said Calamy. “It’s always worth living, even at the worst of times. And if one happens to be in love, it’s really intoxicating.”

Miss Thriplow glanced at him. Calamy was walking with bent head, his eyes fixed on the ground. There was a faint smile on his lips; his eyelids were almost closed, as though he were too drowsy to keep them apart. Miss Thriplow felt annoyed. He made a remark like that and then didn’t even take the trouble to look at her.

“I don’t believe you’ve ever been in love,” she said.

“I can’t remember ever having been out of it,” Calamy answered.

“Which is the same thing as saying that you’ve never really been in. Not really,” Miss Thriplow repeated. She knew what the real thing was like.

“And you?” asked Calamy.

Mary Thriplow did not answer. They took two or three turns in silence. It was a folly, Calamy was thinking. He wasn’t really in love with the woman. It was a waste of time and there were other things far more important to be done, to be thought about. Other things. They loomed up enormously behind the distracting bustleof life, silently on the further side of the noise and chatter. But what were they? What was their form, their name, their meaning? Through the fluttering veil of movement it was impossible to do more than dimly guess; one might as well try to look at the stars through the London smoke. If one could stop the movement, or get away from it, then surely one would be able to see clearly the large and silent things beyond. But there was no stopping the movement and there was, somehow, no escaping from it. To check it was impossible; and the gesture of escape was ludicrous. The only sensible thing to do was to go on in the usual way and ignore the things outside the world of noise. That was what Calamy tried to do. But he was conscious none the less that the things were still there. They were still calmly and immutably there, however much he might agitate himself and distractedly pretend to ignore them. Mutely they claimed attention. They had claimed it, of late, with a most irritating persistence. Calamy’s response had been to make love to Mary Thriplow. That was something which ought to keep him well occupied. And up to a point it did. Up to a point. The best indoor sport, old Cardan had called it; but one demanded something better. Could he go on like this? Or if not, what should he do? The questions exasperated him. It was because the things were there, outside the tumult, that he had to ask them. They forced themselves on him, these questions. But it was intolerable to be bullied. He refused to let himself be bullied. He’d do what he damned well liked. But then, did he really like philandering with Mary Thriplow? In a way, no doubt, up to a point. But the real answer was no; frankly, no. But yes, yes, he insisted with another part of his mind. He did like it. And even if he didn’t, he’d damned well say that he did. And if necessary he’d damned well do what he didn’t like—just because he chose to. He’d do what he didn’t like; and that was the end of it. He worked himself up into a kind of fury.

“What are you thinking about?” Miss Thriplow suddenly asked.

“You,” he said; and there was a savage exasperation in his voice, as though he passionately resented the fact that he was thinking about Mary Thriplow.

“Tiens!” she said on a note of polite curiosity.

“What would you say if I told you I was in love with you?” he asked.

“I should say that I didn’t believe you.”

“Do you want me to compel you to believe?”

“I’d be most interested to know, at any rate, how you proposed to set about it.”

Calamy halted, put his hand on Mary Thriplow’s shoulder and turned her round towards him. “By force, if necessary,” he said, looking into her face.

Miss Thriplow returned his stare. He looked insolent still, still arrogantly conscious of power; but all the drowsiness and indolence that had veiled his look were now fallen away, leaving his face bare, as it were, and burning with a formidable and satanic beauty. At the sight of this strange and sudden transformation Miss Thriplow felt at once exhilarated and rather frightened. She had never seen that expression on a man’s face before. She had aroused passions, but never a passion so violent, so dangerous as this seemed to be.

“By force?” By the tone of her voice, by the mockery of her smile she tried to exasperate him into yet fiercer passion.

Calamy tightened his grip on her shoulder. Under his hand the bones felt small and fragile. When he spoke, he found that he had been clenching his teeth. “By force,” he said. “Like this.” And taking her head between his two hands he bent down and kissed her, angrily, again and again. Why do I do this? he was thinking. This is a folly. There are other things, important things. “Do you believe me now?” he asked.

Mary Thriplow’s face was flushed. “You’re insufferable,” she said. But she was not really angry with him.

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