Ellen is quite another matter. By far the most interesting of them. I think she would do something remarkable if she'd only break away from the family and get outside it. Part of her unhappiness comes, I'm sure, from her not being able to make up her mind to do this. She despises herself. And she despises everybody else too. Men especially, she detests men, although she dresses rather like them. Victoria and Clarice are both afraid of her because of the bitter things she says. She glares at the people who come to lunch and tea as though she would like to call fire down and burn them all. It's amusing to see one of the new artists (I beg their pardon—New Artists) trying to approach her, attempting flattery and then falling back aware that he has made one enemy in the house at any rate. The funny thing is that she rather likes me, and that is all the stranger because I understand from Brooker, the little doctor, that she always disliked the secretaries. And I haven't been especially sweet to her. Just my ordinary which Mary says is less than civility. . . .
April 16.—Ephraim Block and his friend Adam P. Quinzey (that isn't his real name but it's something like that) to luncheon. I couldn't help asking him whether he didn't think the "Eve" rather too large. And didn't he despise me for asking! He told me that when he gets a commission for sculpting in an open space, the tree that goes with the "Eve" will be large enough to shelter all the school children of Europe.
Although he's absurd I can't help being sorry for him. He is so terribly hungry and eats Victoria's food as though he were never going to see another meal again. Ellen tells me that he's got a woman who lives with him by whom he's had about eight children. Poor little things! And I think Victoria's beginning to get tired of him. She's irritated because he wants her to pay for the tree and the serpent as well as Eve herself. He says it isn't his fault that Victoria's house isn't large enough and she says that he hasn't even begun the Tree yet and when he's finished it it will be time enough to talk. Then there are the Balaclavas (the nearest I can get to their names). She's a Russian dancer, very thin and tall and covered with chains and beads, and he's very fat with a dead white face and long black hair. They talk the strangest broken English and are very depressed about life in general—as well they may be, poor things. He thinks Pavlowa and Karsavina simply aren't in it with her as artists and I daresay they're not, but one never has a chance of judging because she never gets an engagement anywhere. So meanwhile they eat Victoria's food and try to borrow money off any one in the house who happens to be handy. You can't help liking them, they're so helpless. Of course I know that Block and the Balaclavas and Clarice's friends are all tenth-rate as artists. I've seen enough of Henry's world to see that. They are simply plundering Victoria as Brooker says, but I'm rather glad all the same that for a time at any rate they've found a place with food in it.
I shan't be glad soon. I'm beginning to realize in myself a growing quite insane desire to get this house straight—insane because I don't even see how to begin. And Victoria's very difficult! She loves Power and if you suggest anything and she thinks you're getting too authoritative she at once vetoes it whatever it may be. On the other hand she's truly warm-hearted and kind. If I can keep my temper and stay on perhaps I shall manage it. . . .
April 17.—I've had thorough "glooms" to-day. I'm writing this in bed whither I went as early as nine o'clock, Mary being out at a party and the sitting-room looking grizzly. I feel better already. But a visit to mother always sends me into the depths. It is terrible to me to see her lying there like a dead woman, staring in front of her, unable to speak, unable to move. Extraordinary woman that she is! Even now she won't see Katherine although Katherine tries again and again.
And I think that she hates me too. That nurse (whom I can't abide) has tremendous power over her. I detest the house now. It's so gloomy and still and corpse-like. When you think of all the people it used to have in it—so many that nobody would believe it when we told them. What fun we used to have at Christmas time and on birthdays, and down at Garth too. Philip finished all that—not that he meant to, poor dear.
After seeing mother I had tea with father down in the study. He's jolly when I'm there, but honestly, I think he forgets my very existence when I'm not. He never asked a single question about Henry. Just goes from his study to his club and back again. He says that his book Haslitt and His Contemporaries is coming out in the Autumn. I wonder who cares?
It makes me very lonely if one thinks about it. Of course there's dear Henry—and after him Katherine and Mary. But Henry's got this young woman he picked up in Piccadilly Circus and Katherine's got her babies and Mary her medicine. And I've got the Platts I suppose. . . .
All the same sometimes it isn't much fun being a modern girl. I daresay liberty and going about like a man's a fine thing, but sometimes I'd like to have some one pet me and make a fuss over me and care whether I'm alive or not.