2
“Where is the harm child, in your sitting up at a piano, even behind a curtain; in a large room in Gower Street, I can’t imagine why you say GOWER Street; playing, with the soft pedal either down or up, the kind of music that you play so beautifully? Can you see her difficulty Jan?”
“Not even with the most powerful of microscopes.”
Lolling on the windowsill of their lives to glance at a passing show.... The blessed damosel looked out. Leaning, heavy on the golden balcony. She knew why not. Heavy blossoming weight, weighed down with her heavy hair, the sky blossoming in it, facing, just able to face without sinking, the rose-gold world, blossoming under her eyes.
Thin hard fingers of women chattering and tweaking.... They go up sideways, witches on broomsticks, and chatter angrily in the distance. They cannot stop the sound of the silent crimson blossoming roses.
“I don’t approve of séances.”
“No; but I know I don’t. It was something about the woman when she asked me.”
“That is a personal prejudice.”
“It is not a prejudice; how can it be pre after I have seen her?”
“Séances are wrong; because you have taken a dislike to Madame Devine.”
“It can’t be right to make half a guinea an hour so easily. And she said a guinea for occasional public performances.” That’s all; they know now. I had made up my mind. I wanted them to see me tempted and refusing for conscience sake.
“Good Lord; you’d be a millionaire in no time; why not take it until you are a millionaire and then if you don’t like it, chuck it?”
“I should like it all right, my part.”
“Well surely that is all that concerns you. You have nothing whatever to do with what goes on on the other side of the curtain. I think if you would like the job you are a fool to hesitate, don’t you Jan?”
“A fool there was and he made his prayer, yes I think it is foolish to refuse such an admirable offer.”
“A rag and a bone and a hank of hair; that just describes Madame Devine.” That’s not true; smooth fat thinness with dark filmy cruel clothes that last; having supper afterwards; but it would be true in a magazine; a weird medium; the grocer’s wife with second sight was fat and ordinary; a simple woman. Peter, the rough fisherman.
“Now you are being unchristian.”
“I’m not. I love the rag and bone and hank of hair type. Sallow. Like Mrs. Pat.... The ingénue. Sitting in a corner dressed in white, reading a book. A fat pink face. You can imagine her at forty.”
“Now you are being both morbid and improper.”
“I’m not morbid. Am I, Jan?”
“No I do not call you morbid. I call Gracie Harter-Jones morbid.”
“Who is she?”
“We met her at Mrs. Mackinley’s. She says she is perfectly miserable unless she is in a morbid state. She’s written a book called ‘The Purple Shawl of Ceremony.’”
“She must be awfully clever.”
“She’s mad. She revels in being mad. Like ‘the Sun shivered. Earth from its darkest basements rocked and quivered.’”
“Oh go I said and see the swans harping upon the rooftops in the corn. Where is the grey felt hat I saw go down, wrinkled and old to meet the lily-leaf, where where my child the little stick that crushed the wild infernal apple of the pit where where the pearl. Snarling he cried I will not have you bless the tropics sitting in a sulky row nor fling your banners o’er the stately wave; I heard shrill minstrelsies ... that’s all awfully bad; but you can go on forever.”
“I couldn’t. I don’t know how you do it. I think it’s awfully clever. Jan and I roared over your Madeleine Francis Barry letter.”
“You can go on for days.”
“Barry-paroding.”
“You must not wait, nor think of words. If you are in the mood they come more quickly than you could speak or even think; you follow them and the whole effect entertains you. There’s something in it. You never know what is coming and you swing about, as long as you keep the rhythm, all over the world. It refreshes you. Sometimes there are the most beautiful things. And you see all the things so vividly.”
“She’s not morbid; she’s mad.”
“I’m neither morbid nor mad. It’s a splendid way of amusing yourself; better than imagining the chairs in front of you at a concert quietly collapsing.” They were scarcely listening. Both of them were depending on each other to listen and answer.
“Do you still go to Ruscino’s every night Miriam?”
“With the Spaniard? How is the Spaniard?”
“He’s eaten up with dizizz.”
“With what?”
“That’s what Miss Scott says.”
“All the doctors are prescribing for him.”
“Did they tell her?”
“I don’t know. She just said it suddenly. Like she says things. The doctors are all awfully fond of him.”
“Why are they fond of him?”
“He is extraordinary. He has given up his poster work and does lightning silhouettes, outlines of heads, at five shillings each at some gardens somewhere. Sometimes he makes five pounds an evening at it.”
“So you don’t go to Ruscino’s every evening?”
“He had a few weeks of being awfully poor. One day he had only eightpence in the world. Of course he was having all his meals at Tansley Street. But that evening he found out that I had nothing at all. I had been telling him about my meal arrangements. I always pay Mrs. Bailey at the time for my shilling dinners and when I can’t afford them I get a fourpenny meal at a Y.W.C.A. He made me take his eightpence. The next day he walked I found afterwards, all the way to South Kensington in the grilling heat to see a man about the silhouettes.”
“What a little brick.”
“He is like that to everybody. And always so....”
“So what?”
“Oh, I can’t express him. But he’s a Jew, you know, a Spanish Jew. Isn’t it extraordinary?”
“Well really Miriam I can’t see that there is anything extraordinary about a man’s being a Spanish Jew if he wants to?”
“I was most awfully surprised. Mrs. Bailey told me. There is some Jewish girl he has been meeting in Kensington; he drew her portrait, a special one, for her father, for five guineas, and he has engaged himself to her because he thought she had money and now finds she has not damn her, he said damn her to Mrs. Bailey, and that he has been boring himself for nothing. He is going into hospital for his gastric ulcer when the season is over and then going to disappear. He told me he never spoke to a woman more than twice; but that he is willing to marry any woman with enough money.”
“Wise man.”
“He has spoken more than twice to you.”
“Yes but I know what he means. Besides we don’t talk, in the society way.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I air my theories sometimes. He always disagrees. Once he told me suddenly it was very bad for me to go about with him.”
“But you go.”
“Of course I do.” The untold scenes were standing in the way. There was no way of telling them.... Tansley Street life was more and more unreal to them the deeper it grew. It was unreal to them because things were kept back. They were still interested in stories of Wimpole Street, but even there now they only glanced in passing, their thoughts busy in the shared life they perpetually jested over. They listened with reservations; not always believing; sitting in dressing-gowns believing or not as they chose; because one knew one had lost touch and tried to make things interesting to get back into the old glow....
“How did the dinner-party go off?”
“Beautifully.”
“Did you talk German?”
“There was no need; the man talked better English than anybody.”
“Why did it go off beautifully? Tell us about the beautiful things.”
The strange silent twilight, the reassuring shyness of all the guests; no attempt to talk about anything in particular; cool hard face and upright coldly jewelled body; the sense of success with each simple remark. The evening of music. Life-marked people; their marks showing without pain, covered, half-healed by the hours of kindness.
“It’s something in the Orlys.”
“What do you think it is?”
“It’s something frightfully beautiful.”
“They are very nice people.”
“That doesn’t mean anything at all.”
“The secret of beauty is colour and texture. The ointment will preserve the colour and the texture of your skin—in any climate. Read her the piece about the movement of the hands over a tea-tray.... In pouring out tea never allow the hands to fall slack, or below the level of the tray. Keep them well in view, moving deftly among the articles on the tray; sitting well back on the seat of the chair the body upright and a little inclined forward from the hips—see Chap.: III. “How to Sit”—so that the movements of the wrist and hands are in easy harmony with the whole body. Restrain the hands. Do not let the fingers splay out. Do not cramp them or allow any effort to appear in the movement of any part of the hand.”
“Good heavens. Can’t you see those women. But that must be by an American.”
“Why an American?”
“Oh. I don’t know. You can tell. Are you going to try all these things?”
“Rather. We’re going in heavily for beauty culture.”
“We are going to skip, and have Turkish baths, and steam our faces.”
“I suppose one ought.”
“I think so. I don’t see why one should look old before one’s time. One’s life is ageing and ravaging. After a Turkish bath one feels like a new-born babe.”
“But it would take all one’s time and money.”
“Even so. It restores your self-respect to feel perfectly groomed and therefore perfectly self-possessed. It makes the office respect you.”
“I know. I hate the grubbiness of snipe-life—sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“Well, I forget about it. If I didn’t I should go mad of grit and dust.”
“We are mad of grit and dust. That’s why we think it’s time to do something.”
“H’m.”
“You really like the Orlys, don’t you?”
“You can’t like everybody at once. You have to choose. That’s the trouble. If you are liking one set of people very much you get out of touch with the others.”
“You have so many sets of people.”
“I haven’t. I hardly know anybody.”
“You have hosts of friends.”
“I haven’t. In the way you mean. I expect I give you wrong impressions.”
“Well I think you’ve a capacity—Don’t you think she has a capacity—von Bohlen?”
“She has some very nice friends and some extraordinary ones.”
“Like the Flat.”
“How is the Flat?”
“Is she still living on a hard-boiled egg and a bottle of stout?”
“And sending notes?”
“Come round at once my state of mind is awful?”
“She’s moved. I forgot to tell you. She came to tell me. She stood on the landing and said she had taken up journalism. Writing articles, for The Taper. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Isn’t what wonderful?”
“Suddenly being able to write articles. She’s met some people called occultists and says she has never been so happy in her life.”... Are you going to say anything ... why do you not think it wonderful?...