Edith had been brought her large German pewter beer-mug, and for the moment she had put her face into it, like old-fashioned gentlemen praying into their hats on Sunday morning before service. There was a little froth on the end of her rather long nose when she took it out.
"Why not?" she said. "All artistic activity is a sort of celestial disease, and its antidote is bodily activity which is a material disease. A perfectly healthy body, like mine, does not need exercise, except in order to bring down the temperature of the celestial fever. When I am playing golf, my artistic soul goes to sleep and rests. And when I am composing, I should not know a golf-ball from an egg. That is me. You might think I am being egoistic, but I only take myself as an instance of a type. I speak for the whole corporate body of artists."
"Militant here on earth," remarked Dodo.
"Militant? Of course all artists are militant, and they fight against blind eyes and deaf ears. They scream and lighten, and hope to shake this dull world into perception. But it is fighting against prodigious odds. The drama that seems to interest the world now is a presentation of the hopeless lives of suburban people. Any note of romance or distinction is sufficient to secure a failure. It's the same in music: Debussy when he tells us of rain in the garden makes the rain fall into a small backyard with sooty blighted plants growing in it, out of a foggy sky. When he gives us 'reflets dans l'eau' the water is a little cement basin in the same backyard, with anemic goldfish swimming about in it. As for Strauss, he began and finished with that terrible 'domestic symphony.' It went from the kitchen into the scullery, and back again. Fiction is the same. Any book that deals with entirely dull people, provided that they, none of them, ever show a spark of real fire or are touched by romance or joy or beauty, makes success. They must have the smell of oilcloth and Irish stew around them, and then the world says, 'This is art' or 'This is reality.' There's the mistake! Art is never real: it is fantasy, a fairy-story, a soap-bubble sailing into the sunset. It is Art because it takes you out of reality. Of course artists are militant; they fight against dullness, and they will fight forever, and they will never win. As for their being militant here on earth, you must be militant somewhere. I shall be militant in heaven by and by. I wonder if you understand. As I said, I was disappointed in Nadine artistically, but I am enraptured with her humanly. On that same plane I am enraptured with you, Dodo. Humanly speaking, I have watched you with sobs in my throat, battling perilously on the great seas. And now you are like a battered ship, having weathered all storms, and putting into port, with all the piers and quays shouting congratulation. Artistically speaking, you are a derelict, and I should like to have you blown up. Hullo, what has happened to Dr. Cardew?"
Dodo looked quickly round. The thought just crossed her mind that he might be asleep or having a fit. But there was no Dr. Cardew there, nor anywhere about, to be seen.
"He has gone away while we weren't attending, just as a conjurer changes a rabbit to an omelette while you aren't attending," she said, "and I'm sure I don't wonder. Oh, Edith, at last the 'Hunting of the Snark' has come true. I see now that we are Boojums. People softly and silently vanish away when you and I are talking, poor dears. They can't stand it, and I've noticed it before. Dear old Chesterford used to vanish sometimes like that, and I never knew until I saw he wasn't there. I'm sure Bertie vanishes too sometimes. I suppose we ought to vanish also, as the table must be laid again for dinner to-night."
Edith finished her beer.
"I had breakfast, lunch and dinner on the same cloth once," she said. "I was composing all day, and at intervals things were stuck in front of me while I ate or drank. I didn't move from nine in the morning till half-past eight in the evening, and I wrote forty pages of full score, and the inspiration never flagged for a moment. I wonder why artists are so fond of writing what they call 'My Memories'; they ought to be content, as I am, to stand or fall by what they have done. Thank God, I have never had any doubts about my standing. Oh, I see a telegraph-boy coming up the drive. It is sure to be for me. I am expecting a quantity."
This particular one happened to be for Dodo. Edith was disposed to take it as a personal insult.