The fresh morning air comes startling after a central heated house. So Aaron found it. He felt himself dashing up the steps into the garden like a bird dashing out of a trap where it has been caught: that warm and luxurious house. Heaven bless us, we who want to save civilisation. We had better make up our minds what of it we want to save. The kernel may be all well and good. But there is precious little kernel, to a lot of woolly stuffing and poisonous rind.
The gardens to Sir William’s place were not imposing, and still rather war-neglected. But the pools of water lay smooth in the bright air, the flowers showed their colour beside the walks. Many birds dashed about, rather bewildered, having crossed the Alps in their migration southwards. Aaron noted with gratification a certain big magnificence, a certain reckless powerfulness in the still-blossoming, harsh- coloured, autumn flowers. Distinct satisfaction he derived from it.
He wandered upwards, up the succeeding flights of step; till he came to the upper rough hedge, and saw the wild copse on the hill-crest just above. Passing through a space in the hedge, he climbed the steep last bit of Sir William’s lane. It was a little vineyard, with small vines and yellowing leaves. Everywhere the place looked neglected — but as if man had just begun to tackle it once more.
At the very top, by the wild hedge where spindle-berries hung pink, seats were placed, and from here the view was very beautiful. The hill dropped steep beneath him. A river wound on the near side of the city, crossed by a white bridge. The city lay close clustered, ruddy on the plains, glittering in the clear air with its flat roofs and domes and square towers, strangely naked-seeming in the clear, clean air. And massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger- like Alps. Tigers prowling between the north and the south. And this beautiful city lying nearest exposed. The snow-wind brushed her this morning like the icy whiskers of a tiger. And clear in the light lay Novara, wide, fearless, violent Novara. Beautiful the perfect air, the perfect and unblemished Alp-sky. And like the first southern flower, Novara.
Aaron sat watching in silence. Only the uneasy birds rustled. He watched the city and the winding river, the bridges, and the imminent Alps. He was on the south side. On the other side of the time barrier. His old, sleepy English nature was startled in its sleep. He felt like a man who knows it is time to wake up, and who doesn’t want to wake up, to face the responsibility of another sort of day.
To open his darkest eyes and wake up to a new responsibility. Wake up and enter on the responsibility of a new self in himself. Ach, the horror of responsibility! He had all his life slept and shelved the burden. And he wanted to go on sleeping. It was so hateful to have to get a new grip on his own bowels, a new hard recklessness into his heart, a new and responsible consciousness into his mind and soul. He felt some finger prodding, prodding, prodding him awake out of the sleep of pathos and tragedy and spasmodic passion, and he wriggled, unwilling, oh, most unwilling to undertake the new business.
In fact he ran away again. He gave a last look at the town and its white-fanged mountains, and descended through the garden, round the way of the kitchen garden and garage and stables and pecking chickens, back to the house again. In the hall still no one. He went upstairs to the long lounge. There sat the rubicund, bald, boy-like Colonel reading the Graphic . Aaron sat down opposite him, and made a feeble attempt at conversation. But the Colonel wasn’t having any. It was evident he didn’t care for the fellow — Mr. Aaron, that is. Aaron therefore dried up, and began to sit him out, with the aid of The Queen . Came a servant, however, and said that the Signor Colonello was called up from the hospital, on the telephone. The Colonel once departed, Aaron fled again, this time out of the front doors, and down the steep little park to the gates.
Huge dogs and little dogs came bounding forward. Out of the lodge came the woman with the keys, smiling very pleasantly this morning. So, he was in the street. The wide road led him inevitably to the big bridge, with the violent, physical stone statue-groups. Men and women were moving about, and he noticed for the first time the littleness and the momentaneousness of the Italians in the street. Perhaps it was the wideness of the bridge and the subsequent big, open boulevard. But there it was: the people seemed little, upright brisk figures moving in a certain isolation, like tiny figures on a big stage. And he felt himself moving in the space between. All the northern cosiness gone. He was set down with a space round him.
Little trams flitted down the boulevard in the bright, sweet light. The barbers’ shops were all busy, half the Novarese at that moment ambushed in lather, full in the public gaze. A shave is nothing if not a public act, in the south. At the little outdoor tables of the cafes a very few drinkers sat before empty coffee-cups. Most of the shops were shut. It was too soon after the war for life to be flowing very fast. The feeling of emptiness, of neglect, of lack of supplies was evident everywhere.
Aaron strolled on, surprised himself at his gallant feeling of liberty: a feeling of bravado and almost swaggering carelessness which is Italy’s best gift to an Englishman. He had crossed the dividing line, and the values of life, though ostensibly and verbally the same, were dynamically different. Alas, however, the verbal and the ostensible, the accursed mechanical ideal gains day by day over the spontaneous life-dynamic, so that Italy becomes as idea-bound and as automatic as England: just a business proposition.
Coming to the station, he went inside. There he saw a money-changing window which was open, so he planked down a five-pound note and got two-hundred-and-ten lire. Here was a start. At a bookstall he saw a man buy a big timetable with a large railway map in it. He immediately bought the same. Then he retired to a corner to get his whereabouts.
In the morning he must move: where? He looked on the map. The map seemed to offer two alternatives, Milan and Genoa. He chose Milan, because of its musical associations and its cathedral. Milano then. Strolling and still strolling, he found the boards announcing Arrivals and Departures. As far as he could make out, the train for Milan left at 9:00 in the morning.
So much achieved, he left the big desolating caravanserai of the station. Soldiers were camped in every corner, lying in heaps asleep. In their grey-green uniform, he was surprised at their sturdy limbs and uniformly short stature. For the first time, he saw the cock- feathers of the Bersaglieri. There seemed a new life-quality everywhere. Many worlds, not one world. But alas, the one world triumphing more and more over the many worlds, the big oneness swallowing up the many small diversities in its insatiable gnawing appetite, leaving a dreary sameness throughout the world, that means at last complete sterility.
Aaron, however, was too new to the strangeness, he had no eye for the horrible sameness that was spreading like a disease over Italy from England and the north. He plunged into the space in front of the station, and took a new, wide boulevard. To his surprise he ran towards a big and over-animated statue that stood resolutely with its back to the magnificent snow-domes of the wild Alps. Wolves in the street could not have startled him more than those magnificent fierce- gleaming mountains of snow at the street-end, beyond the statue. He stood and wondered, and never thought to look who the gentleman was. Then he turned right round, and began to walk home.
Luncheon was at one o’clock. It was half-past twelve when he rang at the lodge gates. He climbed through the leaves of the little park, on a side-path, rather reluctantly towards the house. In the hall Lady Franks was discussing with Arthur a fat Pekinese who did not seem very well. She was sure the servants did not obey her orders concerning the Pekinese bitch. Arthur, who was more than indifferent, assured her they did. But she seemed to think that the whole of the male human race was in league against the miserable specimen of a she-dog. She almost cried, thinking her Queenie might by some chance meet with, perhaps, a harsh word or look. Queenie apparently fattened on the secret detestation of the male human species.
“I can’t bear to think that a dumb creature might be ill-treated,” she said to Aaron. “Thank goodness the Italians are better than they used to be.”
“Are they better than they used to be?”
“Oh, much. They have learnt it from us.”
She then enquired if her guest had slept, and if he were rested from his journey. Aaron, into whose face the faint snow-wind and the sun had brought a glow, replied that he had slept well and enjoyed the morning, thank you. Whereupon Lady Franks knitted her brows and said Sir William had had such a bad night. He had not been able to sleep, and had got up and walked about the room. The least excitement, and she dreaded a break-down. He must have absolute calm and restfulness.
“There’s one for you and your jawing last night, Aaron, my boy!” said our hero to himself.
“I thought Sir William seemed so full of life and energy,” he said, aloud.
“Ah, did you! No, he WANTS to be. But he can’t do it. He’s very much upset this morning. I have been very anxious about him.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
Lady Franks departed to some duty. Aaron sat alone before the fire. It was a huge fireplace, like a dark chamber shut in by tall, finely- wrought iron gates. Behind these iron gates of curly iron the logs burned and flickered like leopards slumbering and lifting their heads within their cage. Aaron wondered who was the keeper of the savage element, who it was that would open the iron grille and throw on another log, like meat to the lions. To be sure the fire was only to be looked at: like wild beasts in the Zoo. For the house was warm from roof to floor. It was strange to see the blue air of sunlight outside, the yellow-edged leaves falling in the wind, the red flowers shaking.
The gong sounded softly through the house. The Colonel came in heartily from the garden, but did not speak to Aaron. The Major and his wife came pallid down the stairs. Lady Franks appeared, talking domestic-secretarial business with the wife of Arthur. Arthur, well- nourished and half at home, called down the stairs. And then Sir William descended, old and frail now in the morning, shaken: still he approached Aaron heartily, and asked him how he did, and how he had spent his morning. The old man who had made a fortune: how he expected homage: and how he got it! Homage, like most things, is just a convention and a social trick. Aaron found himself paying homage, too, to the old man who had made a fortune. But also, exacting a certain deference in return, from the old man who had made a fortune. Getting it, too. On what grounds? Youth, maybe. But mostly, scorn for fortunes and fortune-making. Did he scorn fortunes and fortune- making? Not he, otherwise whence this homage for the old man with much money? Aaron, like everybody else, was rather paralysed by a million sterling, personified in one old man. Paralysed, fascinated, overcome. All those three. Only having no final control over his own make-up, he could not drive himself into the money-making or even into the money-having habit. And he had just wit enough to threaten Sir William’s golden king with his own ivory queen and knights of wilful life. And Sir William quaked.
“Well, and how have you spent your morning?” asked the host.
“I went first to look at the garden.”
“Ah, not much to see now. They have been beautiful with flowers, once. But for two and a half years the house has been a hospital for officers — and even tents in the park and garden — as many as two hundred wounded and sick at a time. We are only just returning to civil life. And flowers need time. Yes — yes — British officers — for two and a half years. But did you go up, now, to the belvedere?”
“To the top — where the vines are? I never expected the mountains.”
“You never expected the mountains? Pray, why not? They are always there!”
“But I was never there before. I never knew they were there, round the town. I didn’t expect it like that.”
“Ah! So you found our city impressive?”
“Very! Ah, very! A new world to me. I feel I’ve come out of myself.”
“Yes, it is a wonderful sight — a wonderful sight — But you have not been INTO the town?”
“Yes. I saw the men being shaved, and all the soldiers at the station: and a statue, and mountains behind it. Oh, I’ve had a full morning.”
“A full morning! That is good, that is good!” The old man looked again at the younger man, and seemed to get life from him, to live in him vicariously.
“Come,” said the hostess. “Luncheon.”
Aaron sat again on his hostess’ left hand. The Colonel was more affable now it was meal-time. Sir William was again in a good humour, chaffing the young ladies with an old man’s gallantry. But now he insisted on drawing Aaron into the play. And Aaron did not want to be drawn. He did not one bit want to chaffer gallantries with the young women. Between him and Sir William there was a curious rivalry — unconscious on both sides. The old knight had devoted an energetic, adventurous, almost an artistic nature to the making of his fortune and the developing of later philanthropies. He had no children. Aaron was devoting a similar nature to anything but fortune-making and philanthropy. The one held life to be a storing-up of produce and a conservation of energy: the other held life to be a sheer spending of energy and a storing-up of nothing but experience. There they were, in opposition, the old man and the young. Sir William kept calling Aaron into the chaffer at the other end of the table: and Aaron kept on refusing to join. He hated long distance answers, anyhow. And in his mood of the moment he hated the young women. He had a conversation with Arthur about statues: concerning which Aaron knew nothing, and Arthur less than nothing. Then Lady Franks turned the conversation to the soldiers at the station, and said how Sir William had equipped rest-huts for the Italian privates, near the station: but that such was the jealousy and spite of the Italian Red Cross — or some such body, locally — that Sir William’s huts had been left empty — standing unused — while the men had slept on the stone floor of the station, night after night, in icy winter. There was evidently much bitter feeling as a result of Sir William’s philanthropy. Apparently even the honey of lavish charity had turned to gall in the Italian mouth: at least the official mouth. Which gall had been spat back at the charitable, much to his pain. It is in truth a difficult world, particularly when you have another race to deal with. After which came the beef-olives.
“Oh,” said Lady Franks, “I had such a dreadful dream last night, such a dreadful dream. It upset me so much. I have not been able to get over it all day.”
“What was it?” said Aaron. “Tell it, and break it.”
“Why,” said his hostess, “I dreamed I was asleep in my room — just as I actually was — and that it was night, yet with a terrible sort of light, like the dead light before dawn, so that one could see. And my maid Giuseppina came running into my room, saying: ‘Signora! Signora! Si alza! Subito! Signora! Vengono su!’— and I said, ‘Chi? Chi sono chi vengono? Chi?’—‘I Novaresi! I Novaresi vengono su. Vengono qui!’— I got out of bed and went to the window. And there they were, in the dead light, rushing up to the house, through the trees. It was so awful, I haven’t been able to forget it all day.”
“Tell me what the words are in English,” said Aaron.
“Why,” she said, “get up, get up — the Novaresi, the people of Novara are coming up — vengono su — they are coming up — the Novara people — work- people. I can’t forget it. It was so real, I can’t believe it didn’t actually happen.”
“Ah,” said Aaron. “It will never happen. I know, that whatever one foresees, and FEELS has happened, never happens in real life. It sort of works itself off through the imagining of it.”
“Well, it was almost more real to me than real life,” said his hostess.
“Then it will never happen in real life,” he said.
Luncheon passed, and coffee. The party began to disperse — Lady Franks to answer more letters, with the aid of Arthur’s wife — some to sleep, some to walk. Aaron escaped once more through the big gates. This time he turned his back on the town and the mountains, and climbed up the hill into the country. So he went between the banks and the bushes, watching for unknown plants and shrubs, hearing the birds, feeling the influence of a new soil. At the top of the hill he saw over into vineyards, and a new strange valley with a winding river, and jumbled, entangled hills. Strange wild country so near the town. It seemed to keep an almost virgin wildness — yet he saw the white houses dotted here and there.
Just below him was a peasant house: and on a little loggia in the sun two peasants in white shirtsleeves and black Sunday suits were sitting drinking wine, and talking, talking. Peasant youths in black hats, their sweethearts in dark stuff dresses, wearing no hat, but a black silk or a white silk scarf, passed slowly along the little road just below the ridge. None looked up to see Aaron sitting there alone. From some hidden place somebody was playing an accordion, a jerky sound in the still afternoon. And away beyond lay the unchanging, mysterious valley, and the infolding, mysterious hills of Italy.
Returning back again another way, he lost himself at the foot of the hill in new and deserted suburb streets — unfinished streets of seemingly unfinished houses. Then a sort of boulevard where bourgeois families were taking the Sunday afternoon walk: stout papas, stout, pallid mamas in rather cheap black fur, little girls very much dressed, and long lads in short socks and round sailor caps, ribbons fluttering. Alien they felt, alien, alien, as a bourgeois crowd always does, but particularly a foreign, Sunday-best bourgeois crowd. Aaron wandered and wandered, finding the tram terminus and trying blank, unfinished street after street. He had a great disinclination to ask his way.
At last he recognised the bank and the little stream of water that ran along the street side. So he was back in time for tea. A hospital nurse was there, and two other strange women. Arthur played the part of host. Sir William came in from a walk with the dogs, but retired to his room without taking tea.
And so the evening fell. Aaron sat in the hall at some distance from the fire, which burned behind its wrought iron gates. He was tired now with all his impressions, and dispirited. He thought of his wife and children at home: of the church-bells ringing so loudly across the field beyond his garden end: of the dark-clad people trailing unevenly across the two paths, one to the left, one to the right, forking their way towards the houses of the town, to church or to chapel: mostly to chapel. At this hour he himself would be dressed in his best clothes, tying his bow, ready to go out to the public house. And his wife would be resenting his holiday departure, whilst she was left fastened to the children.
Rather tired and dispirited in this alien place, he wondered if he wished himself back. But the moment he actually realised himself at home, and felt the tension of barrenness which it meant, felt the curious and deadly opposition of his wife’s will against his own nature, the almost nauseating ache which it amounted to, he pulled himself together and rejoiced again in his new surroundings. Her will, her will, her terrible, implacable, cunning will! What was there in the female will so diabolical, he asked himself, that it could press like a flat sheet of iron against a man all the time? The female will! He realised now that he had a horror of it. It was flat and inflexible as a sheet of iron. But also it was cunning as a snake that could sing treacherous songs.
Of two people at a deadlock, he always reminded himself, there is not one only wholly at fault. Both must be at fault. Having a detached and logical soul, he never let himself forget this truth. Take Lottie! He had loved her. He had never loved any other woman. If he had had his other affairs — it was out of spite or defiance or curiosity. They meant nothing. He and Lottie had loved one another. And the love had developed almost at once into a kind of combat. Lottie had been the only child of headstrong, well-to-do parents. He also had been the only child of his widowed mother. Well then, both he and Lottie had been brought up to consider themselves the first in whatsoever company they found themselves. During the early months of the marriage he had, of course, continued the spoiling of the young wife. But this never altered the fact that, by his very nature, he considered himself as first and almost as single in any relationship. First and single he felt, and as such he bore himself. It had taken him years to realise that Lottie also felt herself first and single: under all her whimsicalness and fretfulness was a conviction as firm as steel: that she, as woman, was the centre of creation, the man was but an adjunct. She, as woman, and particularly as mother, was the first great source of life and being, and also of culture. The man was but the instrument and the finisher. She was the source and the substance.
Sure enough, Lottie had never formulated this belief inside herself. But it was formulated for her in the whole world. It is the substantial and professed belief of the whole white world. She did but inevitably represent what the whole world around her asserted: the life-centrality of woman. Woman, the life-bearer, the life-source.
Nearly all men agree to the assertion. Practically all men, even while demanding their selfish rights as superior males, tacitly agree to the fact of the sacred life-bearing priority of woman. Tacitly, they yield the worship to that which is female. Tacitly, they conspire to agree that all that is productive, all that is fine and sensitive and most essentially noble, is woman. This, in their productive and religious souls, they believe. And however much they may react against the belief, loathing their women, running to prostitutes, or beer or anything , out of reaction against this great and ignominious dogma of the sacred priority of women, still they do but profane the god they worship. Profaning woman, they still inversely worship her.
But in Aaron was planted another seed. He did not know it. He started off on the good old tack of worshipping his woman while his heart was honest, and profaning her in his fits of temper and revolt. But he made a bad show. Born in him was a spirit which could not worship woman: no, and would not. Could not and would not. It was not in him. In early days, he tried to pretend it was in him. But through his plaintive and homage-rendering love of a young husband was always, for the woman, discernible the arrogance of self-unyielding male. He never yielded himself: never. All his mad loving was only an effort. Afterwards, he was as devilishly unyielded as ever. And it was an instinct in her, that her man must yield to her, so that she should envelop him yielding, in her all-beneficent love. She was quite sure that her love was all-beneficent. Of this no shadow of doubt. She was quite sure that the highest her man could ever know or ever reach, was to be perfectly enveloped in her all-beneficent love. This was her idea of marriage. She held it not as an idea, but as a profound impulse and instinct: an instinct developed in her by the age in which she lived. All that was deepest and most sacred in he feeling centred in this belief.
And he outraged her! Oh, from the first day and the first night, she felt he outraged her. True, for some time she had been taken in by his manifest love. But though you can deceive the conscious mind, you can never deceive the deep, unconscious instinct. She could never understand whence arose in her, almost from the first days of marriage with him, her terrible paroxysms of hatred for him. She was in love with him: ah, heaven, how maddeningly she was in love with him: a certain unseizable beauty that was his, and which fascinated her as a snake a bird. But in revulsion, how she hated him! How she abhorred him! How she despised and shuddered at him! He seemed a horrible thing to her.
And then again, oh, God, the agony of her desire for him. The agony of her long, long desire for him. He was a passionate lover. He gave her, ostensibly, all she asked for. He withheld from her nothing, no experience, no degree of intimacy. She was his initiate, or he hers.
And yet, oh, horror for a woman, he withheld everything from her. He withheld the very centre of himself. For a long time, she never realised. She was dazed and maddened only. But as months of married experience passed into years of married torment, she began to understand. It was that, after their most tremendous, and, it seemed to her, heaven-rending passion — yea, when for her every veil seemed rent and a terrible and sacred creative darkness covered the earth — then — after all this wonder and miracle — in crept a poisonous grey snake of disillusionment, a poisonous grey snake of disillusion that bit her to madness, so that she really was a mad woman, demented.
Why? Why? He never gave himself. He never came to her, really . He withheld himself. Yes, in those supreme and sacred times which for her were the whole culmination of life and being, the ecstasy of unspeakable passional conjunction, he was not really hers. He was withheld. He withheld the central core of himself, like the devil and hell-fiend he was. He cheated and made play with her tremendous passional soul, her sacred sex passion, most sacred of all things for a woman. All the time, some central part of him stood apart from her, aside, looking on.
Oh, agony and horror for a passionate, fierce-hearted woman! She who loved him. She who loved him to madness. She who would have died for him. She who did die with him, many terrible and magnificent connubial deaths, in his arms, her husband.
Her husband! How bitter the word grew to her! Her husband! and him never once given, given wholly to her! Her husband — and in all the frenzied finality of desire, she never fully possessed him, not once. No, not once. As time went on, she learned it for inevitable. Not once!
And then, how she hated him! Cheated, foiled, betrayed, forced to love him or to hate him: never able to be at peace near him nor away from him: poor Lottie, no wonder she was as a mad woman. She was strictly as a woman demented, after the birth of her second child. For all her instinct, all her impulse, all her desire, and above all, all her will , was to possess her man in very fulness once: just once: and once and for all. Once, just once: and it would be once and for all.
But never! Never! Not once! Never! Not for one single solitary second! Was it not enough to send a woman mad! Was it not enough to make her demented! Yes, and mad she was. She made his life a hell for him. She bit him to the bone with her frenzy of rage, chagrin, and agony. She drove him mad, too: mad, so that he beat her: mad so that he longed to kill her. But even in his greatest rages it was the same: he never finally lost himself: he remained, somewhere in the centre, in possession of himself. She sometimes wished he would kill her: or that she would kill him. Neither event happened.
And neither of them understood what was happening. How should they? They were both dazed, horrified, and mortified. He took to leaving her alone as much as was possible. But when he had to come home, there was her terrible will, like a flat, cold snake coiled round his soul and squeezing him to death. Yes, she did not relent. She was a good wife and mother. All her duties she fulfilled. But she was not one to yield. He must yield. That was written in eternal letters, on the iron tablet of her will. He must yield. She the woman, the mother of his children, how should she ever even think to yield? It was unthinkable. He, the man, the weak, the false, the treacherous, the half-hearted, it was he who must yield. Was not hers the divine will and the divine right? Ha, she would be less than woman if she ever capitulated, abandoned her divine responsibility as woman! No, he must yield.
So, he was unfaithful to her. Piling reproach after reproach upon himself, he added adultery to his brutality. And this was the beginning of the end. She was more than maddened: but he began to grow silent, unresponsive, as if he did not hear her. He was unfaithful to her: and oh, in such a low way. Such shame, such shame! But he only smiled carelessly now, and asked her what she wanted. She had asked for all she got. That he reiterated. And that was all he would do.
Terrible was, that she found even his smile of insolent indifference half-beautiful. Oh, bitter chain to bear! But she summoned up all her strange woman’s will. She fought against his fascination, the fascination he exerted over her. With fearful efforts of will she fought against it, and mastered it. And then, suddenly, horror and agony of it, up it would rush in her again, her unbearable desire for him, the longing for his contact, his quality of beauty.
That was a cross hard to bear. Yet even that she bore. And schooled herself into a fretful, petulant manner of indifference. Her odd, whimsical petulance hid a will which he, and he alone, knew to be stronger than steel, strong as a diabolical, cold, grey snake that presses and presses and cannot-relax: nay, cannot relax. She became the same as he. Even in her moments of most passionate desire for him, the cold and snake-like tension of her will never relaxed, and the cold, snake-like eye of her intention never closed.
So, till it reached a deadlock. Each will was wound tense, and so fixed. Fixed! There was neither any relaxing or any increase of pressure. Fixed. Hard like a numbness, a grip that was solidifying and turning to stone.
He realised, somehow, that at this terrible passive game of fixed tension she would beat him. Her fixed female soul, her wound-up female will would solidify into stone — whereas his must break. In him something must break. It was a cold and fatal deadlock, profitless. A life-automatism of fixed tension that suddenly, in him, did break. His will flew loose in a recoil: a recoil away from her. He left her, as inevitably as a broken spring flies out from its hold.
Not that he was broken. He would not do her even that credit. He had only flown loose from the old centre-fixture. His will was still entire and unabated. Only he did not know: he did not understand. He swung wildly about from place to place, as if he were broken.
Then suddenly, on this Sunday evening in the strange country, he realised something about himself. He realised that he had never intended to yield himself fully to her or to anything: that he did not intend ever to yield himself up entirely to her or to anything: that his very being pivoted on the fact of his isolate self- responsibility, aloneness. His intrinsic and central aloneness was the very centre of his being. Break it, and he broke his being. Break this central aloneness, and he broke everything. It was the great temptation, to yield himself: and it was the final sacrilege. Anyhow, it was something which, from his profoundest soul, he did not intend to do. By the innermost isolation and singleness of his own soul he would abide though the skies fell on top of one another, and seven heavens collapsed.
Vaguely he realised this. And vaguely he realised that this had been the root cause of his strife with Lottie: Lottie, the only person who had mattered at all to him in all the world: save perhaps his mother. And his mother had not mattered, no, not one-half nor one-fifth what Lottie had mattered. So it was: there was, for him, only her significant in the universe. And between him and her matters were as they were.
He coldly and terribly hated her, for a moment. Then no more. There was no solution. It was a situation without a solution. But at any rate, it was now a defined situation. He could rest in peace.
Thoughts something in this manner ran through Aaron’s subconscious mind as he sat still in the strange house. He could not have fired it all off at any listener, as these pages are fired off at any chance reader. Nevertheless there it was, risen to half consciousness in him. All his life he had hated knowing what he felt. He had wilfully, if not consciously, kept a gulf between his passional soul and his open mind. In his mind was pinned up a nice description of himself, and a description of Lottie, sort of authentic passports to be used in the conscious world. These authentic passports, self-describing: nose short, mouth normal, etc.; he had insisted that they should do all the duty of the man himself. This ready-made and very banal idea of himself as a really quite nice individual: eyes blue, nose short, mouth normal, chin normal; this he had insisted was really himself. It was his conscious mask.
Now at last, after years of struggle, he seemed suddenly to have dropped his mask on the floor, and broken it. His authentic self- describing passport, his complete and satisfactory idea of himself suddenly became a rag of paper, ridiculous. What on earth did it matter if he was nice or not, if his chin was normal or abnormal.
His mask, his idea of himself dropped and was broken to bits. There he sat now maskless and invisible. That was how he strictly felt: invisible and undefined, rather like Wells’ Invisible Man . He had no longer a mask to present to people: he was present and invisible: they could not really think anything about him, because they could not really see him. What did they see when they looked at him? Lady Franks, for example. He neither knew nor cared. He only knew he was invisible to himself and everybody, and that all thinking about what he was like was only a silly game of Mrs. Mackenzie’s Dead.
So there. The old Aaron Sisson was as if painfully transmuted, as the Invisible Man when he underwent his transmutations. Now he was gone, and no longer to be seen. His visibility lost for ever.
And then what? Sitting there as an invisible presence, the preconceived world melted also and was gone. Lady Franks, Sir William, all the guests, they talked and maneuvered with their visible personalities, manipulating the masks of themselves. And underneath there was something invisible and dying — something fading, wilting: the essential plasm of themselves: their invisible being.
Well now, and what next? Having in some curious manner tumbled from the tree of modern knowledge, and cracked and rolled out from the shell of the preconceived idea of himself like some dark, night-lustrous chestnut from the green ostensibility of the burr, he lay as it were exposed but invisible on the floor, knowing, but making no conceptions: knowing, but having no idea. Now that he was finally unmasked and exposed, the accepted idea of himself cracked and rolled aside like a broken chestnut-burr, the mask split and shattered, he was at last quiet and free. He had dreaded exposure: and behold, we cannot be exposed, for we are invisible. We cannot be exposed to the looks of others, for our very being is night-lustrous and unseeable. Like the Invisible Man, we are only revealed through our clothes and our masks.
In his own powerful but subconscious fashion Aaron realized this. He was a musician. And hence even his deepest ideas : were not word- ideas, his very thoughts were not composed of words and ideal concepts. They too, his thoughts and his ideas, were dark and invisible, as electric vibrations are invisible no matter how many words they may purport. If I, as a word-user, must translate his deep conscious vibrations into finite words, that is my own business. I do but make a translation of the man. He would speak in music. I speak with words.
The inaudible music of his conscious soul conveyed his meaning in him quite as clearly as I convey it in words: probably much more clearly. But in his own mode only: and it was in his own mode only he realised what I must put into words. These words are my own affair. His mind was music.
Don’t grumble at me then, gentle reader, and swear at me that this damned fellow wasn’t half clever enough to think all these smart things, and realise all these fine-drawn-out subtleties. You are quite right, he wasn’t, yet it all resolved itself in him as I say, and it is for you to prove that it didn’t.
In his now silent, maskless state of wordless comprehension, he knew that he had never wanted to surrender himself utterly to Lottie: nor to his mother: nor to anybody. The last extreme of self-abandon in love was for him an act of false behaviour. His own nature inside him fated him not to take this last false step, over the edge of the abyss of selflessness. Even if he wanted to, he could not. He might struggle on the edge of the precipice like an assassin struggling with his own soul, but he could not conquer. For, according to all the current prejudice and impulse in one direction, he too had believed that the final achievement, the consummation of human life, was this flinging oneself over the precipice, down the bottomless pit of love. Now he realised that love, even in its intensest, was only an attribute of the human soul: one of its incomprehensible gestures. And to fling down the whole soul in one gesture of finality in love was as much a criminal suicide as to jump off a church-tower or a mountain-peak. Let a man give himself as much as he liked in love, to seven thousand extremities, he must never give himself away . The more generous and the more passionate a soul, the more it gives itself. But the more absolute remains the law, that it shall never give itself away. Give thyself, but give thyself not away. That is the lesson written at the end of the long strange lane of love.
The idee fixe of today is that every individual shall not only give himself, but shall achieve the last glory of giving himself away. And since this takes two — you can’t even make a present of yourself unless you’ve got somebody to receive the present; since this last extra- divine act takes two people to perform it, you’ve got to take into count not only your giver but your receiver. Who is going to be the giver and who the receiver.
Why, of course, in our long-drawn-out Christian day, man is given and woman is recipient. Man is the gift, woman the receiver. This is the sacrament we live by; the holy Communion we live for. That man gives himself to woman in an utter and sacred abandon, all, all, all himself given, and taken. Woman, eternal woman, she is the communicant. She receives the sacramental body and spirit of the man. And when she’s got it, according to her passionate and all-too- sacred desire, completely, when she possesses her man at last finally and ultimately, without blemish or reservation in the perfection of the sacrament: then, also, poor woman, the blood and the body of which she has partaken become insipid or nauseous to her, she is driven mad by the endless meal of the marriage sacrament, poisoned by the sacred communion which was her goal and her soul’s ambition.
We have pushed a process into a goal. The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. Love is a process of the incomprehensible human soul: love also incomprehensible, but still only a process. The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish. The completion of the process of love is the arrival at a state of simple, pure self- possession, for man and woman. Only that. Which isn’t exciting enough for us sensationalists. We prefer abysses and maudlin self-abandon and self-sacrifice, the degeneration into a sort of slime and merge.
Perhaps, truly, the process of love is never accomplished. But it moves in great stages, and at the end of each stage a true goal, where the soul possesses itself in simple and generous singleness. Without this, love is a disease.
So Aaron, crossing a certain border-line and finding himself alone completely, accepted his loneliness or singleness as a fulfilment, a state of fulfilment. The long fight with Lottie had driven him at last to himself, so that he was quiet as a thing which has its root deep in life, and has lost its anxiety. As for considering the lily, it is not a matter of consideration. The lily toils and spins hard enough, in her own way. But without that strain and that anxiety with which we try to weave ourselves a life. The lily is life-rooted, life-central. She cannot worry. She is life itself, a little, delicate fountain playing creatively, for as long or as short a time as may be, and unable to be anxious. She may be sad or sorry, if the north wind blows. But even then, anxious she cannot be. Whether her fountain play or cease to play, from out the cold, damp earth, she cannot be anxious. She may only be glad or sorry, and continue her way. She is perfectly herself, whatever befall! even if frosts cut her off. Happy lily, never to be saddled with an idee fixe , never to be in the grip of a monomania for happiness or love or fulfilment. It is not laisser aller . It is life-rootedness. It is being by oneself, life-living, like the much-mooted lily. One toils, one spins, one strives: just as the lily does. But like her, taking one’s own life-way amidst everything, and taking one’s own life-way alone. Love too. But there also, taking one’s way alone, happily alone in all the wonders of communion, swept up on the winds, but never swept away from one’s very self. Two eagles in mid-air, maybe, like Whitman’s Dalliance of Eagles. Two eagles in mid-air, grappling, whirling, coming to their intensification of love-oneness there in mid-air. In mid-air the love consummation. But all the time each lifted on its own wings: each bearing itself up on its own wings at every moment of the mid-air love consummation. That is the splendid love-way.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The party was festive at dinner-time, the women in their finest dresses, new flowers on the table, the best wine going. It was Sunday evening. Aaron too was dressed — and Lady Franks, in black lace and pearls, was almost gay. There were quails for dinner. The Colonel was quite happy. An air of conviviality gathered round the table during the course of the meal.
“I hope,” said Aaron, “that we shall have some music tonight.”
“I want so much to hear your flute,” said his hostess.
“And I your piano,” he said.
“I am very weak — very out of practise. I tremble at the thought of playing before a musician. But you must not be too critical.”
“Oh,” said Aaron, “I am not a man to be afraid of.”
“Well, we will see,” said Lady Franks. “But I am afraid of music itself.”
“Yes,” said Aaron. “I think it is risky.”
“Risky! I don’t see that! Music risky? Bach? Beethoven! No, I don’t agree. On the contrary, I think it is most elevating — most morally inspiring. No, I tremble before it because it is so wonderful and elevating.”
“I often find it makes me feel diabolical,” said he.
“That is your misfortune, I am sure,” said Lady Franks. “Please do take another — but perhaps you don’t like mushrooms?”
Aaron quite liked mushrooms, and helped himself to the entree .
“But perhaps,” said she, “you are too modern. You don’t care for Bach or Beethoven or Chopin — dear Chopin.”
“I find them all quite as modern as I am.”
“Is that so! Yes. For myself I am quite old-fashioned — though I can appreciate Strauss and Stravinsky as well, some things. But my old things — ah, I don’t think the moderns are so fine. They are not so deep. They haven’t fathomed life so deeply.” Lady Franks sighed faintly.
“They don’t care for depths,” said Aaron.
“No, they haven’t the capacity. But I like big, deep music. Oh, I love orchestra. But my instrument is the piano. I like the great masters, Bach, Beethoven. They have such faith. You were talking of faith — believing that things would work out well for you in the end. Beethoven inspires that in me, too.”
“He makes you feel that all will be well with you at last?”
“Yes, he does. He makes me feel faith in my PERSONAL destiny. And I do feel that there is something in one’s special fate. I feel that I myself have a special kind of fate, that will always look after me.”
“And you can trust to it?”
“Yes, I can. It ALWAYS turns out right. I think something has gone wrong — and then, it always turns out right. Why when we were in London — when we were at lunch one morning it suddenly struck me, haven’t I left my fur cloak somewhere? It was rather cold, so I had taken it with me, and then never put it on. And I hadn’t brought it home. I had left it somewhere. But whether in a taxi, or in a shop, or in a little show of pictures I had been to, I couldn’t remember. I COULD NOT remember. And I thought to myself: have I lost my cloak? I went round to everywhere I could think of: no-trace of it. But I didn’t give it up. Something prompted me not to give it up: quite distinctly, I felt something telling me that I should get it back. So I called at Scotland Yard and gave the information. Well, two days later I had a notice from Scotland Yard, so I went. And there was my cloak. I had it back. And that has happened to me almost every time. I almost always get my things back. And I always feel that something looks after me, do you know: almost takes care of me.”
“But do you mean when you lose things — or in your life?”
“I mean when I lose things — or when I want to get something I want — I am very nearly ALWAYS successful. And I always feel there is some sort of higher power which does it for me.”
“Finds your cloak for you.”
“Yes. Wasn’t it extraordinary? I felt when I saw my cloak in Scotland Yard: There, I KNEW I should recover you. And I always feel, as I say, that there is some higher power which helps me. Do you feel the same?”
“No, not that way, worse luck. I lost a batch of music a month ago which didn’t belong to me — and which I couldn’t replace. But I never could recover it: though I’m sure nobody wanted it.”
“How very unfortunate! Whereas my fur cloak was just the thing that gets stolen most.”
“I wished some power would trace my music: but apparently we aren’t all gifted alike with guardian angels.”
“Apparently not. And that is how I regard it: almost as a gift, you know, that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle.”
“For always recovering your property?”
“Yes — and succeeding in my undertakings.”
“I’m afraid I had no fairy godmother.”
“Well — I think I had. And very glad I am of it.”
“Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at his hostess.
So the dinner sailed merrily on.
“But does Beethoven make you feel,” said Aaron as an afterthought, “in the same way — that you will always find the things you have lost?”
“Yes — he makes me feel the same faith: that what I lose will be returned to me. Just as I found my cloak. And that if I enter into an undertaking, it will be successful.”
“And your life has been always successful?”
“Yes — almost always. We have succeeded with almost everything.”
“Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at her again.
But even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her satisfaction. She had had her suffering, sure enough. But none the less, she was in the main satisfied. She sat there, a good hostess, and expected the homage due to her success. And of course she got it. Aaron himself did his little share of shoe-licking, and swallowed the taste of boot-polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about.
The dinner wound gaily to an end. The ladies retired. Sir William left his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next to Aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near.
“Now, Colonel,” said the host, “send round the bottle.”
With a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the Colonel sent on the port, actually port, in those bleak, post-war days!
“Well, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “we will drink to your kind Providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by so doing.”
“No, sir; no, sir! The Providence belonged to Mr. Lilly. Mr. Sisson put his money on kindly fortune, I believe,” said Arthur, who rosy and fresh with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous bonne bouchee for a finely-discriminating cannibal.
“Ah, yes, indeed! A much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses to. Mr. Sisson’s kindly fortune. Fortuna gentil-issima ! Well, Mr. Sisson, and may your Lady Fortune ever smile on you.”
Sir William lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head. Nay, more than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it. The devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines. So, with his strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight glowered sightlessly over his glass at Aaron. Then he drank: the strange, careful, old-man’s gesture in drinking.
“But,” said Aaron, “if Fortune is a female —-”
“Fortune! Fortune! Why, Fortune is a lady. What do you say, Major?”
“She has all the airs of one, Sir William,” said the Major, with the wistful grimness of his age and culture. And the young fellow stared like a crucified cyclops from his one eye: the black shutter being over the other.
“And all the graces,” capped Sir William, delighted with himself.
“Oh, quite!” said the Major. “For some, all the airs, and for others, all the graces.”
“Faint heart ne’er won fair lady, my boy,” said Sir William. “Not that your heart is faint. On the contrary — as we know, and your country knows. But with Lady Fortune you need another kind of stout heart — oh, quite another kind.”
“I believe it, sir: and the kind of stout heart which I am afraid I haven’t got,” said the Major.
“What!” said the old man. “Show the white feather before you’ve tackled the lady! Fill the Major’s glass, Colonel. I am quite sure we will none of us ever say die.”
“Not likely. Not if we know it,” said the Colonel, stretching himself heartily inside his tunic. He was becoming ruddier than the cherry. All he cared about at the moment was his gay little port glass. But the Major’s young cheek was hollow and sallow, his one eye terribly pathetic.
“And you, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “mean to carry all before you by taking no thought for the morrow. Well, now, we can only wish you success.”
“I don’t want to carry all before me,” said Aaron. “I should be sorry. I want to walk past most of it.”
“Can you tell us where to? I am intrigued, as Sybil says, to know where you will walk to. Come now. Enlighten us.”
“Nowhere, I suppose.”
“But is that satisfactory? Can you find it satisfactory?”
“Is it even true?” said the Major. “Isn’t it quite as positive an act to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?”
“My dear boy, you can’t merely walk away from a situation. Believe that. If you walk away from Rome, you walk into the Maremma, or into the Alban Hills, or into the sea — but you walk into something. Now if I am going to walk away from Rome, I prefer to choose my direction, and therefore my destination.”
“But you can’t,” said the Major.
“What can’t you?”
“Choose. Either your direction or your destination.” The Major was obstinate.
“Really!” said Sir William. “I have not found it so. I have not found it so. I have had to keep myself hard at work, all my life, choosing between this or that.”
“And we,” said the Major, “have no choice, except between this or nothing.”
“Really! I am afraid,” said Sir William, “I am afraid I am too old — or too young — which shall I say?— to understand.”
“Too young, sir,” said Arthur sweetly. “The child was always father to the man, I believe.”
“I confess the Major makes me feel childish,” said the old man. “The choice between this or nothing is a puzzler to me. Can you help me out, Mr. Sisson? What do you make of this this-or-nothing business? I can understand neck-or-nothing —-”
“I prefer the NOTHING part of it to the THIS part of it,” said Aaron, grinning.
“Colonel,” said the old man, “throw a little light on this nothingness.”
“No, Sir William,” said the Colonel. “I am all right as I am.”
“As a matter of fact, so are we all, perfectly A-one,” said Arthur.
Aaron broke into a laugh.
“That’s the top and bottom of it,” he laughed, flushed with wine, and handsome. We’re all as right as ninepence. Only it’s rather nice to talk.”
“There!” said Sir William. “We’re all as right as ninepence! We’re all as right ninepence. So there well leave it, before the Major has time to say he is twopence short.” Laughing his strange old soundless laugh, Sir William rose and made a little bow. “Come up and join the ladies in a minute or two,” he said. Arthur opened the door for him and he left the room.
The four men were silent for a moment — then the Colonel whipped up the decanter and filled his glass. Then he stood up and clinked glasses with Aaron, like a real old sport.
“Luck to you,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Aaron.
“You’re going in the morning?” said Arthur.
“Yes,” said Aaron.
“What train?” said Arthur.
“Eight-forty.”
“Oh — then we shan’t see you again. Well — best of luck.”
“Best of luck —” echoed the Colonel.
“Same to you,” said Aaron, and they all peered over their glasses and quite loved one another for a rosy minute.
“I should like to know, though,” said the hollow-cheeked young Major with the black flap over his eye, “whether you do really mean you are all right — that it is all right with you — or whether you only say so to get away from the responsibility.”
“I mean I don’t really care — I don’t a damn — let the devil take it all.”
“The devil doesn’t want it, either,” said the Major.
“Then let him leave it. I don’t care one single little curse about it all.”
“Be damned. What is there to care about?” said the Colonel.
“Ay, what?” said Aaron.
“It’s all the same, whether you care or don’t care. So I say it’s much easier not to care,” said Arthur.
“Of course it is,” said the Colonel gaily.
“And I think so, too,” said Aaron.
“Right you are! We’re all as right as ninepence — what? Good old sport! Here’s yours!” cried the Colonel.
“We shall have to be going up,” said Arthur, wise in his generation.
As they went into the hall, Arthur suddenly put one arm round Aaron’s waist, and one arm round the Colonel’s, and the three did a sudden little barn-dance towards the stairs. Arthur was feeling himself quite let loose again, back in his old regimental mess.
Approaching the foot of the stairs, he let go again. He was in that rosy condition when united-we-stand. But unfortunately it is a complicated job to climb the stairs in unison. The whole lot tends to fall backwards. Arthur, therefore, rosy, plump, looking so good to eat, stood still a moment in order to find his own neatly-slippered feet. Having found them, he proceeded to put them carefully one before the other, and to his enchantment found that this procedure was carrying him magically up the stairs. The Colonel, like a drowning man, clutched feebly for the straw of the great stair-rail — and missed it. He would have gone under, but that Aaron’s hand gripped his arm. So, orientating once more like a fragile tendril, he reached again for the banister rail, and got it. After which, lifting his feet as if they were little packets of sand tied to his trouser buttons, he manipulated his way upwards. Aaron was in that pleasant state when he saw what everybody else was doing and was unconscious of what he did himself. Whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a murdered Hamlet resurrected in khaki, with the terrible black shutter over his eye, the young Major came last.
Arthur was making a stern fight for his composure. His whole future depended on it. But do what he would, he could not get the flushed, pleased, mess-happy look off his face. The Colonel, oh, awful man, did a sort of plump roly-poly-cake-walk, like a fat boy, right to the very door of that santum-sanctorum, the library. Aaron was inwardly convulsed. Even the Major laughed.
But Arthur stiffened himself militarily and cleared his throat. All four started to compose themselves, like actors going on the stage, outside that library door. And then Arthur softly, almost wistfully, opened and held the door for the others to pass. The Colonel slunk meekly in, and sat in a chair in the background. The Major stalked in expressionless, and hovered towards the sofa where his wife sat.
There was a rather cold-water-down-your-back feeling in the library. The ladies had been waiting for coffee. Sir William was waiting, too. Therefore in a little tension, half silent, the coffee was handed round. Lady Franks was discussing something with Arthur’s wife. Arthur’s wife was in a cream lace dress, and looking what is called lovely. The Major’s wife was in amethyst chiffon with dark-red roses, and was looking blindingly beautiful. The Colonel was looking into his coffee-cup as wistfully as if it contained the illusion of tawny port. The Major was looking into space, as if there and there alone, etc. Arthur was looking for something which Lady Franks had asked for, and which he was much too flushed to find. Sir William was looking at Aaron, and preparing for another coeur a coeur .
“Well,” he said, “I doubt if you will care for Milan. It is one of the least Italian of all the towns, in my opinion. Venice, of course, is a thing apart. I cannot stand, myself, that miserable specimen the modern Roman. He has most of the vices of the old Romans and none of the virtues. The most congenial town, perhaps, for a stranger, is Florence. But it has a very bad climate.”
Lady Franks rose significantly and left the room, accompanied by Arthur’s wife. Aaron knew, silently, that he was summoned to follow. His hostess had her eye on him this evening. But always postponing his obedience to the cool commands of women, he remained talking with his host in the library, and sipping creme de menthe ! Came the ripple of the pianoforte from the open doorway down at the further end of the room. Lady Franks was playing, in the large drawing-room. And the ripple of the music contained in it the hard insistence of the little woman’s will. Coldly, and decidedly, she intended there should be no more unsettling conversations for the old Sir William. Aaron was to come forthwith into the drawing room. Which Aaron plainly understood — and so he didn’t go. No, he didn’t go, though the pianoforte rippled and swelled in volume. No, and he didn’t go even when Lady Franks left off playing and came into the library again. There he sat, talking with Sir William. Let us do credit to Lady Franks’ will- power, and admit that the talk was quite empty and distracted — none of the depths and skirmishes of the previous occasions. None the less, the talk continued. Lady Franks retired, discomfited, to her piano again. She would never break in upon her lord.
So now Aaron relented. He became more and more distracted. Sir William wandered away like some restless, hunted soul. The Colonel still sat in his chair, nursing his last drop of creme de menthe resentfully. He did not care for the green toffee-stuff. Arthur was busy. The Major lay sprawled in the last stages of everything on the sofa, holding his wife’s hand. And the music came pathetically through the open folding-doors. Of course, she played with feeling — it went without saying. Aaron’s soul felt rather tired. But she had a touch of discrimination also.
He rose and went to the drawing-room. It was a large, vacant-seeming, Empire sort of drawing-room, with yellow silk chairs along the walls and yellow silk panels upon the walls, and a huge, vasty crystal chandelier hanging from a faraway-above ceiling. Lady Franks sat at a large black Bechstein piano at one end of this vacant yellow state- room. She sat, a little plump elderly lady in black lace, for all the world like Queen Victoria in Max Beerbohm’s drawing of Alfred Tennyson reading to her Victorian Majesty, with space before her. Arthur’s wife was bending over some music in a remote corner of the big room.
Aaron seated himself on one of the chairs by the wall, to listen. Certainly it was a beautiful instrument. And certainly, in her way, she loved it. But Aaron remembered an anthem in which he had taken part as a boy.
His eye is on the sparrow
So I know He watches me.
For a long time he had failed to catch the word sparrow , and had heard:
His eye is on the spy-hole
So I know He watches me.
Which was just how it had all seemed to him, as a boy.
Now, as ever, he felt the eye was on the spy-hole. There sat the woman playing music. But her inward eye was on the spy-hole of her vital affairs — her domestic arrangements, her control of her household, guests and husband included. The other eye was left for the music, don’t you know.
Sir William appeared hovering in the doorway, not at all liking the defection of Mr. Aaron. Then he retreated. He seemed not to care for music. The Major’s wife hovered — felt it her duty to aude , or play audience — and entered, seating herself in a breath of lilac and amethyst again at the near distance. The Major, after a certain beating about the bush, followed and sat wrapt in dim contemplation near his wife. Arthur luckily was still busy with something.
Aaron of course made proper musical remarks in the intervals — Arthur’s wife sorted out more pieces. Arthur appeared — and then the Colonel. The Colonel tip-toed beautifully across the wide blank space of the Empire room, and seated himself on a chair, rather in the distance, with his back to the wall, facing Aaron. When Lady Franks finished her piece, to everybody’s amazement the Colonel clapped gaily to himself and said Bravo! as if at a Cafe Chantant, looking round for his glass. But there was no glass. So he crossed his neatly-khakied legs, and looked rapt again.
Lady Franks started with a vivace Schumann piece. Everybody listened in sanctified silence, trying to seem to like it. When suddenly our Colonel began to spring and bounce in his chair, slinging his loose leg with a kind of rapture up and down in the air, and capering upon his posterior, doing a sitting-down jig to the Schumann vivace . Arthur, who had seated himself at the farthest extremity of the room, winked with wild bliss at Aaron. The Major tried to look as if he noticed nothing, and only succeeded in looking agonised. His wife studied the point of her silver shoe minutely, and peeped through her hair at the performance. Aaron grimly chuckled, and loved the Colonel with real tenderness.
And the game went on while the vivace lasted. Up and down bounced the plump Colonel on his chair, kicking with his bright, black-patent toe higher and higher, getting quite enthusiastic over his jig. Rosy and unabashed, he was worthy of the great nation he belonged to. The broad-seated Empire chair showed no signs of giving way. Let him enjoy himself, away there across the yellow Sahara of this silk-panelled salon. Aaron felt quite cheered up.
“Well, now,” he thought to himself, “this man is in entire command of a very important branch of the British Service in Italy. We are a great race still.”
But Lady Franks must have twigged. Her playing went rather stiff. She came to the end of the vivace movement, and abandoned her piece.
“I always prefer Schumann in his vivace moods,” said Aaron.
“Do you?” said Lady Franks. “Oh, I don’t know.”
It was now the turn of Arthur’s wife to sing. Arthur seemed to get further away: if it was possible, for he was at the remotest remote end of the room, near the gallery doors. The Colonel became quiet, pensive. The Major’s wife eyed the young woman in white lace, and seemed not to care for lace. Arthur seemed to be trying to push himself backwards through the wall. Lady Franks switched on more lights into the vast and voluminous crystal chandelier which hung like some glory-cloud above the room’s centre. And Arthur’s wife sang sweet little French songs, and Ye Banks and Braes , and Caro mio ben , which goes without saying: and so on. She had quite a nice voice and was quite adequately trained. Which is enough said. Aaron had all his nerves on edge.
Then he had to play the flute. Arthur strolled upstairs with him, arm- in-arm, where he went to fetch his instrument.
“I find music in the home rather a strain, you know,” said Arthur.
“Cruel strain. I quite agree,” said Aaron.
“I don’t mind it so much in the theatre — or even a concert — where there are a lot of other people to take the edge off — But after a good dinner —”
“It’s medicine,” said Aaron.
“Well, you know, it really is, to me. It affects my inside.” Aaron laughed. And then, in the yellow drawing-room, blew into his pipe and played. He knew so well that Arthur, the Major, the Major’s wife, the Colonel, and Sir William thought it merely an intolerable bore. However, he played. His hostess even accompanied him in a Mozart bit.
Aaron was awakened in the morning by the soft entrance of the butler with the tray: it was just seven o’clock. Lady Franks’ household was punctual as the sun itself.
But our hero roused himself with a wrench. The very act of lifting himself from the pillow was like a fight this morning. Why? He recognized his own wrench, the pain with which he struggled under the necessity to move. Why shouldn’t he want to move? Why not? Because he didn’t want the day in front — the plunge into a strange country, towards nowhere, with no aim in view. True, he said that ultimately he wanted to join Lilly. But this was hardly more than a sop, an excuse for his own irrational behaviour. He was breaking loose from one connection after another; and what for? Why break every tie? Snap, snap, snap went the bonds and ligatures which bound him to the life that had formed him, the people he had loved or liked. He found all his affections snapping off, all the ties which united him with his own people coming asunder. And why? In God’s name, why? What was there instead?
There was nothingness. There was just himself, and blank nothingness. He had perhaps a faint sense of Lilly ahead of him; an impulse in that direction, or else merely an illusion. He could not persuade himself that he was seeking for love, for any kind of unison or communion. He knew well enough that the thought of any loving, any sort of real coming together between himself and anybody or anything, was just objectionable to him. No — he was not moving towards anything: he was moving almost violently away from everything. And that was what he wanted. Only that. Only let him not run into any sort of embrace with anything or anybody — this was what he asked. Let no new connection be made between himself and anything on earth. Let all old connections break. This was his craving.
Yet he struggled under it this morning as under the lid of a tomb. The terrible sudden weight of inertia! He knew the tray stood ready by the bed: he knew the automobile would be at the door at eight o’clock, for Lady Franks had said so, and he half divined that the servant had also said so: yet there he lay, in a kind of paralysis in this bed. He seemed for the moment to have lost his will. Why go forward into more nothingness, away from all that he knew, all he was accustomed to and all he belonged to?
However, with a click he sat up. And the very instant he had poured his coffee from the little silver coffee-pot into his delicate cup, he was ready for anything and everything. The sense of silent adventure took him, the exhilarated feeling that he was fulfilling his own inward destiny. Pleasant to taste was the coffee, the bread, the honey — delicious.
The man brought his clothes, and again informed him that the automobile would be at the door at eight o’clock: or at least so he made out.
“I can walk,” said Aaron.
“Milady ha comandato l’automobile,” said the man softly.
It was evident that if Milady had ordered it, so it must be.
So Aaron left the still-sleeping house, and got into the soft and luxurious car. As he dropped through the park he wondered that Sir William and Lady Franks should be so kind to him: a complete stranger. But so it was. There he sat in their car. He wondered, also, as he ran over the bridge and into the city, whether this soft-running automobile would ever rouse the socialistic bile of the work-people. For the first time in his life, as he sat among the snug cushions, he realised what it might be to be rich and uneasy: uneasy, even if not afraid, lurking there inside an expensive car.— Well, it wasn’t much of a sensation anyhow: and riches were stuffy, like wadded upholstery on everything. He was glad to get out into the fresh air of the common crowd. He was glad to be in the bleak, not-very-busy station. He was glad to be part of common life. For the very atmosphere of riches seems to be stuffed and wadded, never any real reaction. It was terrible, as if one’s very body, shoulders and arms, were upholstered and made cushiony. Ugh, but he was glad to shake off himself the atmosphere of wealth and motor-cars, to get out of it all. It was like getting out of quilted clothes.
“Well,” thought Aaron, “if this is all it amounts to, to be rich, you can have riches. They talk about money being power. But the only sort of power it has over me is to bring on a kind of numbness, which I fairly hate. No wonder rich people don’t seem to be really alive.”
The relief of escaping quite took away his self-conscious embarrassment at the station. He carried his own bags, bought a third-class ticket, and got into the train for Milan without caring one straw for the comments or the looks of the porters.
It began to rain. The rain ran across the great plain of north Italy. Aaron sat in his wood-seated carriage and smoked his pipe in silence, looking at the thick, short Lombards opposite him without heeding them. He paid hardly any outward attention to his surroundings, but sat involved in himself.
In Milan he had been advised to go to the Hotel Britannia, because it was not expensive, and English people went there. So he took a carriage, drove round the green space in front of Milan station, and away into the town. The streets were busy, but only half-heartedly so.
It must be confessed that every new move he made was rather an effort. Even he himself wondered why he was struggling with foreign porters and foreign cabmen, being talked at and not understanding a word. But there he was. So he went on with it.
The hotel was small and congenial. The hotel porter answered in English. Aaron was given a little room with a tiny balcony, looking on to a quiet street. So, he had a home of his own once more. He washed, and then counted his money. Thirty-seven pounds he had: and no more. He stood on the balcony and looked at the people going by below. Life seems to be moving so quick, when one looks down on it from above.
Across the road was a large stone house with its green shutters all closed. But from the flagpole under the eaves, over the central window of the uppermost floor — the house was four storeys high — waved the Italian flag in the melancholy damp air. Aaron looked at it — the red, white and green tricolour, with the white cross of Savoy in the centre. It hung damp and still. And there seemed a curious vacancy in the city — something empty and depressing in the great human centre. Not that there was really a lack of people. But the spirit of the town seemed depressed and empty. It was a national holiday. The Italian flag was hanging from almost every housefront.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. Aaron sat in the restaurant of the hotel drinking tea, for he was rather tired, and looking through the thin curtains at the little square outside, where people passed: little groups of dark, aimless-seeming men, a little bit poorer looking — perhaps rather shorter in stature — but very much like the people in any other town. Yet the feeling of the city was so different from that of London. There seemed a curious emptiness. The rain had ceased, but the pavements were still wet. There was a tension.
Suddenly there was a noise of two shots, fired in rapid succession. Aaron turned startled to look into the quiet piazza. And to his amazement, the pavements were empty, not a soul was in sight. Two minutes before the place was busy with passers-by, and a newspaper man selling the Corriere, and little carriages rattling through. Now, as if by magic, nobody, nothing. It was as if they had all melted into thin air.
The waiter, too, was peeping behind the curtain. A carriage came trotting into the square — an odd man took his way alone — the traffic began to stir once more, and people reappeared as suddenly as they had disappeared. Then the waiter ran hastily and furtively out and craned his neck, peering round the square. He spoke with two youths — rather loutish youths. Then he returned to his duty in the hotel restaurant.
“What was it? What were the shots?” Aaron asked him.
“Oh — somebody shooting at a dog,” said the man negligently.
“At a dog!” said Aaron, with round eyes.
He finished his tea, and went out into the town. His hotel was not far from the cathedral square. Passing through the arcade, he came in sight of the famous cathedral with its numerous spines pricking into the afternoon air. He was not as impressed as he should have been. And yet there was something in the northern city — this big square with all the trams threading through, the little yellow Continental trams: and the spiny bulk of the great cathedral, like a grey-purple sea- urchin with many spines, on the one side, the ornamental grass-plots and flower beds on the other: the big shops going all along the further strands, all round: and the endless restless nervous drift of a north Italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy; nervous and twitchy as the slipping past of the little yellow tram-cars; it all affected him with a sense of strangeness, nervousness, and approaching winter. It struck him the people were afraid of themselves: afraid of their own souls, and that which was in their own souls.
Turning up the broad steps of the cathedral, he entered the famous building. The sky had cleared, and the freshened light shone coloured in living tablets round the wonderful, towering, rose-hearted dusk of the great church. At some altars lights flickered uneasily. At some unseen side altar mass was going on, and a strange ragged music fluttered out on the incense-dusk of the great and lofty interior, which was all shadow, all shadow, hung round with jewel tablets of light. Particularly beautiful the great east bay, above the great altar. And all the time, over the big-patterned marble floor, the faint click and rustle of feet coming and going, coming and going, like shallow uneasy water rustled back and forth in a trough. A white dog trotted pale through the under-dusk, over the pale, big-patterned floor. Aaron came to the side altar where mass was going on, candles ruddily wavering. There was a small cluster of kneeling women — a ragged handful of on-looking men — and people wandering up and wandering away, young women with neatly dressed black hair, and shawls, but without hats; fine young women in very high heels; young men with nothing to do; ragged men with nothing to do. All strayed faintly clicking over the slabbed floor, and glanced at the flickering altar where the white-surpliced boys were curtseying and the white-and-gold priest bowing, his hands over his breast, in the candle-light. All strayed, glanced, lingered, and strayed away again, as if the spectacle were not sufficiently holding. The bell chimed for the elevation of the Host. But the thin trickle of people trickled the same, uneasily, over the slabbed floor of the vastly-upreaching shadow-foliaged cathedral.
The smell of incense in his nostrils, Aaron went out again by a side door, and began to walk along the pavements of the cathedral square, looking at the shops. Some were closed, and had little notices pinned on them. Some were open, and seemed half-stocked with half-elegant things. Men were carrying newspapers. In the cafes a few men were seated drinking vermouth. In the doorway of the restaurants waiters stood inert, looking out on the streets. The curious heart-eating ennui of the big town on a holiday came over our hero. He felt he must get out, whatever happened. He could not bear it.
So he went back to his hotel and up to his room. It was still only five o’clock. And he did not know what to do with himself. He lay down on the bed, and looked at the painting on his bedroom ceiling. It was a terrible business in reckitt’s blue and browny gold, with awful heraldic beasts, rather worm-wriggly, displayed in a blue field.
As he lay thinking of nothing and feeling nothing except a certain weariness, or dreariness, or tension, or God-knows-what, he heard a loud hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening. Rising, he went on to his little balcony. It was a sort of procession, or march of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man’s fist. There had been a big meeting, and this was the issue. The procession was irregular, but powerful, men four abreast. They emerged irregularly from the small piazza to the street, calling and vociferating. They stopped before a shop and clotted into a crowd, shouting, becoming vicious. Over the shop-door hung a tricolour, a national flag. The shop was closed, but the men began to knock at the door. They were all workmen, some in railway men’s caps, mostly in black felt hats. Some wore red cotton neck-ties. They lifted their faces to the national flag, and as they shouted and gesticulated Aaron could see their strong teeth in their jaws. There was something frightening in their lean, strong Italian jaws, something inhuman and possessed-looking in their foreign, southern-shaped faces, so much more formed and demon-looking than northern faces. They had a demon-like set purpose, and the noise of their voices was like a jarring of steel weapons. Aaron wondered what they wanted. There were no women — all men — a strange male, slashing sound. Vicious it was — the head of the procession swirling like a little pool, the thick wedge of the procession beyond, flecked with red flags.
A window opened above the shop, and a frowsty-looking man, yellow- pale, was quickly and nervously hauling in the national flag. There were shouts of derision and mockery — a great overtone of acrid derision — the flag and its owner ignominiously disappeared. And the procession moved on. Almost every shop had a flag flying. And every one of these flags now disappeared, quickly or slowly, sooner or later, in obedience to the command of the vicious, derisive crowd, that marched and clotted slowly down the street, having its own way.
Only one flag remained flying — the big tricolour that floated from the top storey of the house opposite Aaron’s hotel. The ground floor of this house consisted of shop-premises — now closed. There was no sign of any occupant. The flag floated inert aloft.
The whole crowd had come to a stop immediately below the hotel, and all were now looking up at the green and white and red tricolour which stirred damply in the early evening light, from under the broad eaves of the house opposite. Aaron looked at the long flag, which drooped almost unmoved from the eaves-shadow, and he half expected it to furl itself up of its own accord, in obedience to the will of the masses. Then he looked down at the packed black shoulders of the mob below, and at the curious clustering pattern of a sea of black hats. He could hardly see anything but hats and shoulders, uneasily moving like boiling pitch away beneath him. But the shouts began to come up hotter and hotter. There had been a great ringing of a door-bell and battering on the shop-door. The crowd — the swollen head of the procession — talked and shouted, occupying the centre of the street, but leaving the pavement clear. A woman in a white blouse appeared in the shop-door. She came out and looked up at the flag and shook her head and gesticulated with her hands. It was evidently not her flag — she had nothing to do with it. The leaders again turned to the large house-door, and began to ring all the bells and to knock with their knuckles. But no good — there was no answer. They looked up again at the flag. Voices rose ragged and ironical. The woman explained something again. Apparently there was nobody at home in the upper floors — all entrance was locked — there was no caretaker. Nobody owned the flag. There it hung under the broad eaves of the strong stone house, and didn’t even know that it was guilty. The woman went back into her shop and drew down the iron shutter from inside.
The crowd, nonplussed, now began to argue and shout and whistle. The voices rose in pitch and derision. Steam was getting up. There hung the flag. The procession crowded forward and filled the street in a mass below. All the rest of the street was empty and shut up. And still hung the showy rag, red and white and green, up aloft.
Suddenly there was a lull — then shouts, half-encouraging, half- derisive. And Aaron saw a smallish-black figure of a youth, fair- haired, not more than seventeen years old, clinging like a monkey to the front of the house, and by the help of the heavy drain-pipe and the stone-work ornamentation climbing up to the stone ledge that ran under ground-floor windows, up like a sudden cat on to the projecting footing. He did not stop there, but continued his race like some frantic lizard running up the great wall-front, working away from the noise below, as if in sheer fright. It was one unending wriggling movement, sheer up the front of the impassive, heavy stone house.
The flag hung from a pole under one of the windows of the top storey — the third floor. Up went the wriggling figure of the possessed youth. The cries of the crowd below were now wild, ragged ejaculations of excitement and encouragement. The youth seemed to be lifted up, almost magically on the intense upreaching excitement of the massed men below. He passed the ledge of the first floor, like a lizard he wriggled up and passed the ledge or coping of the second floor, and there he was, like an upward-climbing shadow, scrambling on to the coping of the third floor. The crowd was for a second electrically still as the boy rose there erect, cleaving to the wall with the tips of his fingers.
But he did not hesitate for one breath. He was on his feet and running along the narrow coping that went across the house under the third floor windows, running there on that narrow footing away above the street, straight to the flag. He had got it — he had clutched it in his hand, a handful of it. Exactly like a great flame rose the simultaneous yell of the crowd as the boy jerked and got the flag loose. He had torn it down. A tremendous prolonged yell, touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of yelling rose up unheard.
There was a great clutch and hiss in the crowd. The boy still stood unmoved, holding by one hand behind him, looking down from above, from his dangerous elevation, in a sort of abstraction.
And the next thing Aaron was conscious of was the sound of trumpets. A sudden startling challenge of trumpets, and out of nowhere a sudden rush of grey-green carabinieri battering the crowd wildly with truncheons. It was so sudden that Aaron heard nothing any more. He only saw.
In utmost amazement he saw the greeny-grey uniformed carabinieri rushing thick and wild and indiscriminate on the crowd: a sudden new excited crowd in uniforms attacking the black crowd, beating them wildly with truncheons. There was a seething moment in the street below. And almost instantaneously the original crowd burst into a terror of frenzy. The mob broke as if something had exploded inside it. A few black-hatted men fought furiously to get themselves free of the hated soldiers; in the confusion bunches of men staggered, reeled, fell, and were struggling among the legs of their comrades and of the carabinieri. But the bulk of the crowd just burst and fled — in every direction. Like drops of water they seemed to fly up at the very walls themselves. They darted into any entry, any doorway. They sprang up the walls and clambered into the ground-floor windows. They sprang up the walls on to window-ledges, and then jumped down again, and ran — clambering, wriggling, darting, running in every direction; some cut, blood on their faces, terror or frenzy of flight in their hearts. Not so much terror as the frenzy of running away. In a breath the street was empty.
And all the time, there above on the stone coping stood the long- faced, fair-haired boy, while four stout carabinieri in the street below stood with uplifted revolvers and covered him, shouting that if he moved they would shoot. So there he stood, still looking down, still holding with his left hand behind him, covered by the four revolvers. He was not so much afraid as twitchily self-conscious because of his false position.
Meanwhile down below the crowd had dispersed — melted momentaneously. The carabinieri were busy arresting the men who had fallen and been trodden underfoot, or who had foolishly let themselves be taken; perhaps half a dozen men, half a dozen prisoners; less rather than more. The sergeant ordered these to be secured between soldiers. And last of all the youth up above, still covered by the revolvers, was ordered to come down. He turned quite quietly, and quite humbly, cautiously picked his way along the coping towards the drain-pipe. He reached this pipe and began, in humiliation, to climb down. It was a real climb down.
Once in the street he was surrounded by the grey uniforms. The soldiers formed up. The sergeant gave the order. And away they marched, the dejected youth a prisoner between them.
Then were heard a few scattered yells of derision and protest, a few shouts of anger and derision against the carabinieri. There were once more gangs of men and groups of youths along the street. They sent up an occasional shout. But always over their shoulders, and pretending it was not they who shouted. They were all cowed and hang-dog once more, and made not the slightest effort to save the youth. Nevertheless, they prowled and watched, ready for the next time.
So, away went the prisoner and the grey-green soldiers, and the street was left to the little gangs and groups of hangdog, discontented men, all thoroughly out of countenance. The scene was ended.
Aaron looked round, dazed. And then for the first time he noticed, on the next balcony to his own, two young men: young gentlemen, he would have said. The one was tall and handsome and well-coloured, might be Italian. But the other with his pale thin face and his rimless monocle in his eye, he was surely an Englishman. He was surely one of the young officers shattered by the war. A look of strange, arch, bird- like pleasure was on his face at this moment: if one could imagine the gleaming smile of a white owl over the events that had just passed, this was the impression produced on Aaron by the face of the young man with the monocle. The other youth, the ruddy, handsome one, had knitted his brows in mock distress, and was glancing with a look of shrewd curiosity at Aaron, and with a look of almost self-satisfied excitement first to one end of the street, then to the other.
“But imagine, Angus, it’s all over!” he said, laying his hand on the arm of the monocled young man, and making great eyes — not without a shrewd glance in Aaron’s direction.
“Did you see him fall!” replied Angus, with another strange gleam.
“Yes. But was he HURT—?”
“I don’t know. I should think so. He fell right back out of that on to those stones!”
“But how perfectly AWFUL! Did you ever see anything like it?”
“No. It’s one of the funniest things I ever did see. I saw nothing quite like it, even in the war —”
Here Aaron withdrew into his room. His mind and soul were in a whirl. He sat down in his chair, and did not move again for a great while. When he did move, he took his flute and played he knew not what. But strange, strange his soul passed into his instrument. Or passed half into his instrument. There was a big residue left, to go bitter, or to ferment into gold old wine of wisdom.
He did not notice the dinner gong, and only the arrival of the chamber- maid, to put the wash-table in order, sent him down to the restaurant. The first thing he saw, as he entered, was the two young Englishmen seated at a table in a corner just behind him. Their hair was brushed straight back from their foreheads, making the sweep of the head bright and impeccable, and leaving both the young faces clear as if in cameo. Angus had laid his monocle on the table, and was looking round the room with wide, light-blue eyes, looking hard, like some bird-creature, and seeming to see nothing. He had evidently been very ill: was still very ill. His cheeks and even his jaw seemed shrunken, almost withered. He forgot his dinner: or he did not care for it. Probably the latter.
“What do you think, Francis,” he said, “of making a plan to see Florence and Sienna and Orvieto on the way down, instead of going straight to Rome?” He spoke in precise, particularly-enunciated words, in a public-school manner, but with a strong twang of South Wales.
“Why, Angus,” came the graceful voice of Francis, “I thought we had settled to go straight through via Pisa.” Francis was graceful in everything — in his tall, elegant figure, in the poses of his handsome head, in the modulation of his voice.
“Yes, but I see we can go either way — either Pisa or Florence. And I thought it might be nice to look at Florence and Sienna and Orvieto. I believe they’re very lovely,” came the soft, precise voice of Angus, ending in a touch of odd emotion on the words “very lovely,” as if it were a new experience to him to be using them.
“I’m SURE they’re marvellous. I’m quite sure they’re marvellously beautiful,” said Francis, in his assured, elegant way. “Well, then, Angus — suppose we do that, then?— When shall we start?”
Angus was the nervous insister. Francis was quite occupied with his own thoughts and calculations and curiosity. For he was very curious, not to say inquisitive. And at the present moment he had a new subject to ponder.
This new subject was Aaron, who sat with his back to our new couple, and who, with his fine sharp ears, caught every word that they said. Aaron’s back was broad enough, and his shoulders square, and his head rather small and fairish and well-shaped — and Francis was intrigued. He wanted to know, was the man English. He looked so English — yet he might be — he might perhaps be Danish, Scandinavian, or Dutch. Therefore, the elegant young man watched and listened with all his ears.
The waiter who had brought Aaron his soup now came very free and easy, to ask for further orders.
“What would you like to drink? Wine? Chianti? Or white wine? Or beer?”— The old-fashioned “Sir” was dropped. It is too old-fashioned now, since the war.
“What SHOULD I drink?” said Aaron, whose acquaintance with wines was not very large.
“Half-litre of Chianti: that is very good,” said the waiter, with the air of a man who knew only too well how to bring up his betters, and train them in the way they should go.
“All right,” said Aaron.
The welcome sound of these two magic words, All Right! was what the waiter most desired. “All right! Yes! All Right!” This is the pith, the marrow, the sum and essence of the English language to a southerner. Of course it is not all right . It is Or-rye — and one word at that. The blow that would be given to most foreign waiters, if they were forced to realize that the famous orye was really composed of two words, and spelt all right , would be too cruel, perhaps.
“Half litre Chianti. Orye,” said the waiter. And we’ll let him say it.
“ENGLISH!” whispered Francis melodramatically in the ear of Angus. “I THOUGHT so. The flautist.”
Angus put in his monocle, and stared at the oblivious shoulders of Aaron, without apparently seeing anything. “Yes. Obviously English,” said Angus, pursing like a bird.
“Oh, but I heard him,” whispered Francis emphatically. “Quite,” said Angus. “But quite inoffensive.”
“Oh, but Angus, my dear — he’s the FLAUTIST. Don’t you remember? The divine bit of Scriabin. At least I believe it was Scriabin.— But PERFECTLY DIVINE!!! I adore the flute above all things —” And Francis placed his hand on Angus’ arm, and rolled his eyes — Lay this to the credit of a bottle of Lacrimae Cristi, if you like.
“Yes. So do I,” said Angus, again looking archly through the monocle, and seeing nothing. “I wonder what he’s doing here.”
“Don’t you think we might ASK him?” said Francis, in a vehement whisper. “After all, we are the only three English people in the place.”
“For the moment, apparently we are,” said Angus. “But the English are all over the place wherever you go, like bits of orange peel in the street. Don’t forget that, Francesco.”
“No, Angus, I don’t. The point is, his flute is PERFECTLY DIVINE— and he seems quite attractive in himself. Don’t you think so?”
“Oh, quite,” said Angus, whose observations had got no further than the black cloth of the back of Aaron’s jacket. That there was a man inside he had not yet paused to consider.
“Quite a musician,” said Francis.
“The hired sort,” said Angus, “most probably.”
“But he PLAYS— he plays most marvellously. THAT you can’t get away from, Angus.”
“I quite agree,” said Angus.
“Well, then? Don’t you think we might hear him again? Don’t you think we might get him to play for us?— But I should love it more than anything.”
“Yes, I should, too,” said Angus. “You might ask him to coffee and a liqueur.”
“I should like to — most awfully. But do you think I might?”
“Oh, yes. He won’t mind being offered a coffee and liqueur. We can give him something decent — Where’s the waiter?” Angus lifted his pinched, ugly bare face and looked round with weird command for the waiter. The waiter, having not much to do, and feeling ready to draw these two weird young birds, allowed himself to be summoned.
“Where’s the wine list? What liqueurs have you got?” demanded Angus abruptly.
The waiter rattled off a list, beginning with Strega and ending with cherry brandy.
“Grand Marnier,” said Angus. “And leave the bottle.”
Then he looked with arch triumph at Francis, like a wicked bird. Francis bit his finger moodily, and glowered with handsome, dark-blue uncertain eyes at Mr. Aaron, who was just surveying the Frutte , which consisted of two rather old pomegranates and various pale yellow apples, with a sprinkling of withered dried figs. At the moment, they all looked like a Natura Morta arrangement.
“But do you think I might —?” said Francis moodily. Angus pursed his lips with a reckless brightness.
“Why not? I see no reason why you shouldn’t,” he said. Whereupon Francis cleared his throat, disposed of his serviette, and rose to his feet, slowly but gracefully. Then he composed himself, and took on the air he wished to assume at the moment. It was a nice degage air, half naive and half enthusiastic. Then he crossed to Aaron’s table, and stood on one lounging hip, gracefully, and bent forward in a confidential manner, and said:
“Do excuse me. But I MUST ask you if it was you we heard playing the flute so perfectly wonderfully, just before dinner.”
The voice was confidential and ingratiating. Aaron, relieved from the world’s stress and seeing life anew in the rosy glow of half a litre of good old Chianti — the war was so near but gone by — looked up at the dark blue, ingenuous, well-adapted eyes of our friend Francis, and smiling, said:
“Yes, I saw you on the balcony as well.”
“Oh, did you notice us?” plunged Francis. “But wasn’t it an extraordinary affair?”
“Very,” said Aaron. “I couldn’t make it out, could you?”
“Oh,” cried Francis. “I never try. It’s all much too new and complicated for me.— But perhaps you know Italy?”
“No, I don’t,” said Aaron.
“Neither do we. And we feel rather stunned. We had only just arrived — and then — Oh!” Francis put up his hand to his comely brow and rolled his eyes. “I feel perfectly overwhelmed with it still.”
He here allowed himself to sink friendlily into the vacant chair opposite Aaron’s.
“Yes, I thought it was a bit exciting,” said Aaron. “I wonder what will become of him —”
“— Of the one who climbed for the flag, you mean? No!— But wasn’t it perfectly marvellous! Oh, incredible, quite incredible!— And then your flute to finish it all! Oh! I felt it only wanted that.— I haven’t got over it yet. But your playing was MARVELLOUS, really marvellous. Do you know, I can’t forget it. You are a professional musician, of course.”
“If you mean I play for a living,” said Aaron. “I have played in orchestras in London.”
“Of course! Of course! I knew you must be a professional. But don’t you give private recitals, too?”
“No, I never have.”
“Oh!” cried Francis, catching his breath. “I can’t believe it. But you play MARVELLOUSLY! Oh, I just loved it, it simply swept me away, after that scene in the street. It seemed to sum it all up, you know.”
“Did it,” said Aaron, rather grimly.
“But won’t you come and have coffee with us at our table?” said Francis. “We should like it most awfully if you would.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Aaron, half-rising.
“But you haven’t had your dessert,” said Francis, laying a fatherly detaining hand on the arm of the other man. Aaron looked at the detaining hand.
“The dessert isn’t much to stop for,” he said. “I can take with me what I want.” And he picked out a handful of dried figs.
The two went across to Angus’ table.
“We’re going to take coffee together,” said Francis complacently, playing the host with a suave assurance that was rather amusing and charming in him.
“Yes. I’m very glad,” said Angus. Let us give the show away: he was being wilfully nice. But he was quite glad; to be able to be so nice. Anything to have a bit of life going: especially a bit of pleased life. He looked at Aaron’s comely, wine-warmed face with gratification.
“Have a Grand Marnier,” he said. “I don’t know how bad it is. Everything is bad now. They lay it down to the war as well. It used to be quite a decent drink. What the war had got to do with bad liqueurs, I don’t know.”
Aaron sat down in a chair at their table.
“But let us introduce ourselves,” said Francis. “I am Francis — or really Franz Dekker — And this is Angus Guest, my friend.”
“And my name is Aaron Sisson.”
“What! What did you say?” said Francis, leaning forward. He, too, had sharp ears.
“Aaron Sisson.”
“Aaron Sisson! Oh, but how amusing! What a nice name!”
“No better than yours, is it?”
“Mine! Franz Dekker! Oh, much more amusing, I think,” said Francis archly.
“Oh, well, it’s a matter of opinion. You’re the double decker, not me.”
“The double decker!” said Francis archly. “Why, what do you mean!—” He rolled his eyes significantly. “But may I introduce my friend Angus Guest.”
“You’ve introduced me already, Francesco,” said Angus.
“So sorry,” said Francis.
“Guest!” said Aaron.
Francis suddenly began to laugh.
“May he not be Guest?” he asked, fatherly.
“Very likely,” said Aaron. “Not that I was ever good at guessing.”
Francis tilted his eyebrows. Fortunately the waiter arrived with the coffee.
“Tell me,” said Francis, “will you have your coffee black, or with milk?” He was determined to restore a tone of sobriety.
The coffee was sipped in sober solemnity.
“Is music your line as well, then?” asked Aaron.
“No, we’re painters. We’re going to work in Rome.”
“To earn your living?”
“Not yet.”
The amount of discretion, modesty, and reserve which Francis put into these two syllables gave Aaron to think that he had two real young swells to deal with.
“No,” continued Francis. “I was only JUST down from Oxford when the war came — and Angus had been about ten months at the Slade — But I have always painted.— So now we are going to work, really hard, in Rome, to make up for lost time.— Oh, one has lost so much time, in the war. And such PRECIOUS time! I don’t know if ever one will even be able to make it up again.” Francis tilted his handsome eyebrows and put his head on one side with a wise-distressed look.
“No,” said Angus. “One will never be able to make it up. What is more, one will never be able to start again where one left off. We’re shattered old men, now, in one sense. And in another sense, we’re just pre-war babies.”
The speech was uttered with an odd abruptness and didacticism which made Aaron open his eyes. Angus had that peculiar manner: he seemed to be haranguing himself in the circle of his own thoughts, not addressing himself to his listener.
So his listener listened on the outside edge of the young fellow’s crowded thoughts. Francis put on a distressed air, and let his attention wander. Angus pursed his lips and his eyes were stretched wide with a kind of pleasure, like a wicked owl which has just joyfully hooted an ill omen.
“Tell me,” said Francis to Aaron. “Where were YOU all the time during the war?”
“I was doing my job,” said Aaron. Which led to his explaining his origins.
“Really! So your music is quite new! But how interesting!” cried Francis.
Aaron explained further.
“And so the war hardly affected you? But what did you FEEL about it, privately?”
“I didn’t feel much. I didn’t know what to feel. Other folks did such a lot of feeling, I thought I’d better keep my mouth shut.”
“Yes, quite!” said Angus. “Everybody had such a lot of feelings on somebody else’s behalf, that nobody ever had time to realise what they felt themselves. I know I was like that. The feelings all came on to me from the outside: like flies settling on meat. Before I knew where I was I was eaten up with a swarm of feelings, and I found myself in the trenches. God knows what for. And ever since then I’ve been trying to get out of my swarm of feelings, which buzz in and out of me and have nothing to do with me. I realised it in hospital. It’s exactly like trying to get out of a swarm of nasty dirty flies. And every one you kill makes you sick, but doesn’t make the swarm any less.”
Again Angus pursed and bridled and looked like a pleased, wicked white owl. Then he polished his monocle on a very choice silk handkerchief, and fixed it unseeing in his left eye.
But Francis was not interested in his friend’s experiences. For Francis had had a job in the War Office — whereas Angus was a war-hero with shattered nerves. And let him depreciate his own experiences as much as he liked, the young man with the monocle kept tight hold on his prestige as a war hero. Only for himself, though. He by no means insisted that anyone else should be war-bitten.
Francis was one of those men who, like women, can set up the sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising what he is doing. So there sat our friend Aaron, amusingly unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis. Angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his shrunken jaw. And Aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, and told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things in this life. Mixed.
It was quite late before this seance broke up: and the waiter itching to get rid of the fellows.
“Well, now,” said Francis, as he rose from the table and settled his elegant waist, resting on one hip, as usual. “We shall see you in the morning, I hope. You say you are going to Venice. Why? Have you some engagement in Venice?”
“No,” said Aaron. “I only was going to look for a friend — Rawdon Lilly.”
“Rawdon Lilly! Why, is he in Venice? Oh, I’ve heard SUCH a lot about him. I should like so much to meet him. But I heard he was in Germany —”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Angus! Didn’t we hear that Lilly was in Germany?”
“Yes, in Munich, being psychoanalysed, I believe it was.”
Aaron looked rather blank.
“But have you anything to take you to Venice? It’s such a bad climate in the winter. Why not come with us to Florence?” said Francis.
Aaron wavered. He really did not know what to do.
“Think about it,” said Francis, laying his hand on Aaron’s arm. “Think about it tonight. And we’ll meet in the morning. At what time?”
“Any time,” said Aaron.
“Well, say eleven. We’ll meet in the lounge here at eleven. Will that suit you? All right, then. It’s so awfully nice meeting you. That marvellous flute.— And think about Florence. But do come. Don’t disappoint us.”
The two young men went elegantly upstairs.
The next day but one, the three set off for Florence. Aaron had made an excursion from Milan with the two young heroes, and dined with them subsequently at the most expensive restaurant in the town. Then they had all gone home — and had sat in the young men’s bedroom drinking tea, whilst Aaron played the flute. Francis was really musical, and enchanted. Angus enjoyed the novelty, and the moderate patronage he was able to confer. And Aaron felt amused and pleased, and hoped he was paying for his treat.
So behold them setting off for Florence in the early morning. Angus and Francis had first-class tickets: Aaron took a third-class.
“Come and have lunch with us on the train,” said Angus. “I’ll order three places, and we can lunch together.”
“Oh, I can buy a bit of food at the station,” said Aaron.
“No, come and lunch with us. It will be much nicer. And we shall enjoy it as well,” said Angus.
“Of course! Ever so much nicer! Of course!” cried Francis. “Yes, why not, indeed! Why should you hesitate?”
“All right, then,” said Aaron, not without some feeling of constraint.
So they separated. The young men settled themselves amidst the red plush and crochet-work, looking, with their hair plastered smoothly back, quite as first class as you could wish, creating quite the right impression on the porters and the travelling Italians. Aaron went to his third-class, further up the train.
“Well, then, au revoir , till luncheon,” cried Francis.
The train was fairly full in the third and second classes. However, Aaron got his seat, and the porter brought on his bags, after disposing of the young men’s luggage. Aaron gave the tip uneasily. He always hated tipping — it seemed humiliating both ways. And the airy aplomb of the two young cavaliers, as they settled down among the red plush and the obsequiousness, and said “Well, then, au revoir till luncheon,” was peculiarly unsettling: though they did not intend it so.
“The porter thinks I’m their servant — their valet,” said Aaron to himself, and a curious half-amused, half-contemptuous look flickered on his face. It annoyed him. The falsity occasioned by the difference in the price of the tickets was really humiliating. Aaron had lived long enough to know that as far as manhood and intellect went — nay, even education — he was not the inferior of the two young “gentlemen.” He knew quite well that, as far as intrinsic nature went, they did not imagine him an inferior: rather the contrary. They had rather an exaggerated respect for him and his life-power, and even his origin. And yet — they had the inestimable cash advantage — and they were going to keep it. They knew it was nothing more than an artificial cash superiority. But they gripped it all the more intensely. They were the upper middle classes. They were Eton and Oxford. And they were going to hang on to their privileges. In these days, it is a fool who abdicates before he’s forced to. And therefore:
“Well, then — au revoir till luncheon.”
They were being so awfully nice. And inwardly they were not condescending. But socially, they just had to be. The world is made like that. It wasn’t their own private fault. It was no fault at all. It was just the mode in which they were educated, the style of their living. And as we know, le style, c’est l’homme .
Angus came of very wealthy iron people near Merthyr. Already he had a very fair income of his own. As soon as the law-business concerning his father’s and his grandfather’s will was settled, he would be well off. And he knew it, and valued himself accordingly. Francis was the son of a highly-esteemed barrister and politician of Sydney, and in his day would inherit his father’s lately-won baronetcy. But Francis had not very much money: and was much more class-flexible than Angus. Angus had been born in a house with a park, and of awful, hard-willed, money-bound people. Francis came of a much more adventurous, loose, excitable family, he had the colonial newness and adaptability. He knew, for his own part, that class superiority was just a trick, nowadays. Still, it was a trick that paid. And a trick he was going to play as long as it did pay.
While Aaron sat, a little pale at the gills, immobile, ruminating these matters, a not very pleasant look about his nose-end, he heard a voice:
“Oh, there you ARE! I thought I’d better come and see, so that we can fetch you at lunch time.— You’ve got a seat? Are you quite comfortable? Is there anything I could get you? Why, you’re in a non-smoker!— But that doesn’t matter, everybody will smoke. Are you sure you have everything? Oh, but wait just one moment —”
It was Francis, long and elegant, with his straight shoulders and his coat buttoned to show his waist, and his face so well-formed and so modern. So modern, altogether. His voice was pleasantly modulated, and never hurried. He now looked as if a thought had struck him. He put a finger to his brow, and hastened back to his own carriage. In a minute, he returned with a new London literary magazine.
“Something to read — I shall have to FLY— See you at lunch,” and he had turned and elegantly hastened, but not too fast, back to his carriage. The porter was holding the door for him. So Francis looked pleasantly hurried, but by no means rushed. Oh, dear, no. He took his time. It was not for him to bolt and scramble like a mere Italian.
The people in Aaron’s carriage had watched the apparition of the elegant youth intently. For them, he was a being from another sphere — no doubt a young milordo with power wealth, and glamorous life behind him. Which was just what Francis intended to convey. So handsome — so very, very impressive in all his elegant calm showiness. He made such a bella figura . It was just what the Italians loved. Those in the first class regions thought he might even be an Italian, he was so attractive.
The train in motion, the many Italian eyes in the carriage studied Aaron. He, too, was good-looking. But by no means as fascinating as the young milordo. Not half as sympathetic. No good at all at playing a role. Probably a servant of the young signori.
Aaron stared out of the window, and played the one single British role left to him, that of ignoring his neighbours, isolating himself in their midst, and minding his own business. Upon this insular trick our greatness and our predominance depends — such as it is. Yes, they might look at him. They might think him a servant or what they liked. But he was inaccessible to them. He isolated himself upon himself, and there remained.
It was a lovely day, a lovely, lovely day of early autumn. Over the great plain of Lombardy a magnificent blue sky glowed like mid-summer, the sun shone strong. The great plain, with its great stripes of cultivation — without hedges or boundaries —-how beautiful it was! Sometimes he saw oxen ploughing. Sometimes. Oh, so beautiful, teams of eight, or ten, even of twelve pale, great soft oxen in procession, ploughing the dark velvety earth, a driver with a great whip at their head, a man far behind holding the plough-shafts. Beautiful the soft, soft plunging motion of oxen moving forwards. Beautiful the strange, snaky lifting of the muzzles, the swaying of the sharp horns. And the soft, soft crawling motion of a team of oxen, so invisible, almost, yet so inevitable. Now and again straight canals of water flashed blue. Now and again the great lines of grey-silvery poplars rose and made avenues or lovely grey airy quadrangles across the plain. Their top boughs were spangled with gold and green leaf. Sometimes the vine- leaves were gold and red, a patterning. And the great square farm- homesteads, white, red-roofed, with their out-buildings, stood naked amid the lands, without screen or softening. There was something big and exposed about it all. No more the cosy English ambushed life, no longer the cosy littleness of the landscape. A bigness — and nothing to shelter the unshrinking spirit. It was all exposed, exposed to the sweep of plain, to the high, strong sky, and to human gaze. A kind of boldness, an indifference. Aaron was impressed and fascinated. He looked with new interest at the Italians in the carriage with him — for this same boldness and indifference and exposed gesture. And he found it in them, too. And again it fascinated him. It seemed so much bigger, as if the walls of life had fallen. Nay, the walls of English life will have to fall.
Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. The presence of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England. In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free. Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside. And every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. Which in the end becomes a sort of self-conscious madness.
But here, in the third class carriage, there was no tight string round every man. They were not all trussed with self-conscious string as tight as capons. They had a sufficient amount of callousness and indifference and natural equanimity. True, one of them spat continually on the floor, in large spits. And another sat with his boots all unlaced and his collar off, and various important buttons undone. They did not seem to care if bits of themselves did show, through the gaps in the wrapping. Aaron winced — but he preferred it to English tightness. He was pleased, he was happy with the Italians. He thought how generous and natural they were.
So the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have got outside himself and his old conditions. It seemed like a great escape. There was magic again in life — real magic. Was it illusion, or was it genuine? He thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a if there was no danger.
Lunch-time came. Francis summoned Aaron down the rocking tram. The three men had a table to themselves, and all felt they were enjoying themselves very much indeed. Of course Francis and Angus made a great impression again. But in the dining car were mostly middle-class, well-to-do Italians. And these did not look upon our two young heroes as two young wonders. No, rather with some criticism, and some class- envy. But they were impressed. Oh, they were impressed! How should they not be, when our young gentlemen had such an air! Aaron was conscious all the time that the fellow-diners were being properly impressed by the flower of civilisation and the salt of the earth, namely, young, well-to-do Englishmen. And he had a faint premonition, based on experience perhaps, that fellow-passengers in the end never forgive the man who has “impressed” them. Mankind loves being impressed. It asks to be impressed. It almost forces those whom it can force to play a role and to make an impression. And afterwards, never forgives.
When the train ran into Bologna Station, they were still in the restaurant car. Nor did they go at once to their seats. Angus had paid the bill. There was three-quarters-of-an-hour’s wait in Bologna.
“You may as well come down and sit with us,” said Francis. “We’ve got nobody in our carriage, so why shouldn’t we all stay together during the wait. You kept your own seat, I suppose.”
No, he had forgotten. So when he went to look for it, it was occupied by a stout man who was just taking off his collar and wrapping a white kerchief round his neck. The third class carriages were packed. For those were early days after the war, while men still had pre-war notions and were poor. Ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and the mysterious revolution would be effected. Then, the second class and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on all great trains: and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would be comparatively empty. Oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody will condescend to travel third!
However, these were still modest, sombre months immediately after the peace. So a large man with a fat neck and a white kerchief, and his collar over his knee, sat in Aaron’s seat. Aaron looked at the man, and at his own luggage overhead. The fat man saw him looking and stared back: then stared also at the luggage overhead: and with his almost invisible north-Italian gesture said much plainer than words would have said it: “Go to hell. I’m here and I’m going to stop here.”
There was something insolent and unbearable about the look — and about the rocky fixity of the large man. He sat as if he had insolently taken root in his seat. Aaron flushed slightly. Francis and Angus strolled along the train, outside, for the corridor was already blocked with the mad Bologna rush, and the baggage belonging. They joined Aaron as he stood on the platform.
“But where is YOUR SEAT?” cried Francis, peering into the packed and jammed compartments of the third class.
“That man’s sitting in it.”
“Which?” cried Francis, indignant.
“The fat one there — with the collar on his knee.”
“But it was your seat —!”
Francis’ gorge rose in indignation. He mounted into the corridor. And in the doorway of the compartment he bridled like an angry horse rearing, bridling his head. Poising himself on one hip, he stared fixedly at the man with the collar on his knee, then at the baggage aloft. He looked down at the fat man as a bird looks down from the eaves of a house. But the man looked back with a solid, rock-like impudence, before which an Englishman quails: a jeering, immovable insolence, with a sneer round the nose and a solid-seated posterior.
“But,” said Francis in English — none of them had any Italian yet. “But,” said Francis, turning round to Aaron, “that was YOUR SEAT?” and he flung his long fore-finger in the direction of the fat man’s thighs.
“Yes!” said Aaron.
“And he’s TAKEN it —!” cried Francis in indignation.
“And knows it, too,” said Aaron.
“But —!” and Francis looked round imperiously, as if to summon his bodyguard. But bodyguards are no longer forthcoming, and train-guards are far from satisfactory. The fat man sat on, with a sneer-grin, very faint but very effective, round his nose, and a solidly-planted posterior. He quite enjoyed the pantomime of the young foreigners. The other passengers said something to him, and he answered laconic. Then they all had the faint sneer-grin round their noses. A woman in the corner grinned jeeringly straight in Francis’ face. His charm failed entirely this time: and as for his commandingness, that was ineffectual indeed. Rage came up in him.
“Oh well — something must be done,” said he decisively. “But didn’t you put something in the seat to RESERVE it?”
“Only that New Statesman — but he’s moved it.”
The man still sat with the invisible sneer-grin on his face, and that peculiar and immovable plant of his Italian posterior.
“Mais — cette place etait RESERVEE—” said Francis, moving to the direct attack.
The man turned aside and ignored him utterly — then said something to the men opposite, and they all began to show their teeth in a grin.
Francis was not so easily foiled. He touched the man on the arm. The man looked round threateningly, as if he had been struck.
“Cette place est reservee — par ce Monsieur —” said Francis with hauteur, though still in an explanatory tone, and pointing to Aaron.
The Italian looked him, not in the eyes, but between the eyes, and sneered full in his face. Then he looked with contempt at Aaron. And then he said, in Italian, that there was room for such snobs in the first class, and that they had not any right to come occupying the place of honest men in the third.
“Gia! Gia!” barked the other passengers in the carriage.
“Loro possono andare prima classa — PRIMA CLASSA!” said the woman in the corner, in a very high voice, as if talking to deaf people, and pointing to Aaron’s luggage, then along the train to the first class carriages.
“C’e posto la,” said one of the men, shrugging his shoulders.
There was a jeering quality in the hard insolence which made Francis go very red and Augus very white. Angus stared like a death’s-head behind his monocle, with death-blue eyes.
“Oh, never mind. Come along to the first class. I’ll pay the difference. We shall be much better all together. Get the luggage down, Francis. It wouldn’t be possible to travel with this lot, even if he gave up the seat. There’s plenty of room in our carriage — and I’ll pay the extra,” said Angus.
He knew there was one solution — and only one — Money.
But Francis bit his finger. He felt almost beside himself — and quite powerless. For he knew the guard of the train would jeer too. It is not so easy to interfere with honest third-class Bolognesi in Bologna station, even if they have taken another man’s seat. Powerless, his brow knitted, and looking just like Mephistopheles with his high forehead and slightly arched nose, Mephistopheles in a rage, he hauled down Aaron’s bag and handed it to Angus. So they transferred themselves to the first-class carriage, while the fat man and his party in the third-class watched in jeering, triumphant silence. Solid, planted, immovable, in static triumph.
So Aaron sat with the others amid the red plush, whilst the train began its long slow climb of the Apennines, stinking sulphurous through tunnels innumerable. Wonderful the steep slopes, the great chestnut woods, and then the great distances glimpsed between the heights, Firenzuola away and beneath, Turneresque hills far off, built of heaven-bloom, not of earth. It was cold at the summit-station, ice and snow in the air, fierce. Our travellers shrank into the carriage again, and wrapped themselves round.
Then the train began its long slither downhill, still through a whole necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. So down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley. But then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in Italian travel. The train began to hesitate — to falter to a halt, whistling shrilly as if in protest: whistling pip-pip-pip in expostulation as it stood forlorn among the fields: then stealing forward again and stealthily making pace, gathering speed, till it had got up a regular spurt: then suddenly the brakes came on with a jerk, more faltering to a halt, more whistling and pip-pip-pipping, as the engine stood jingling with impatience: after which another creak and splash, and another choking off. So on till they landed in Prato station: and there they sat. A fellow passenger told them, there was an hour to wait here: an hour. Something had happened up the line.
“Then I propose we make tea,” said Angus, beaming.
“Why not! Of course. Let us make tea. And I will look for water.”
So Aaron and Francis went to the restaurant bar and filled the little pan at the tap. Angus got down the red picnic case, of which he was so fond, and spread out the various arrangements on the floor of the coupe. He soon had the spirit-lamp burning, the water heating. Francis proposed that he and Aaron should dash into Prato and see what could be bought, whilst the tea was in preparation. So off they went, leaving Angus like a busy old wizard manipulating his arrangements on the floor of the carriage, his monocle beaming with bliss. The one fat fellow — passenger with a lurid striped rug over his knees watched with acute interest. Everybody who passed the doorway stood to contemplate the scene with pleasure. Officials came and studied the situation with appreciation. Then Francis and Aaron returned with a large supply of roast chestnuts, piping hot, and hard dried plums, and good dried figs, and rather stale rusks. They found the water just boiling, Angus just throwing in the tea-egg, and the fellow-passenger just poking his nose right in, he was so thrilled.
Nothing pleased Angus so much as thus pitching camp in the midst of civilisation. The scrubby newspaper packets of chestnuts, plums, figs and rusks were spread out: Francis flew for salt to the man at the bar, and came back with a little paper of rock-salt: the brown tea was dispensed in the silver-fitted glasses from the immortal luncheon- case: and the picnic was in full swing. Angus, being in the height of his happiness, now sat on the seat cross-legged, with his feet under him, in the authentic Buddha fashion, and on his face the queer rapt alert look, half a smile, also somewhat Buddhistic, holding his glass of brown tea in his hand. He was as rapt and immobile as if he really were in a mystic state. Yet it was only his delight in the tea-party. The fellow-passenger peered at the tea, and said in broken French, was it good. In equally fragmentary French Francis said very good, and offered the fat passenger some. He, however, held up his hand in protest, as if to say not for any money would he swallow the hot- watery stuff. And he pulled out a flask of wine. But a handful of chestnuts he accepted.
The train-conductor, ticket-collector, and the heavy green soldier who protected them, swung open the door and stared attentively. The fellow passenger addressed himself to these new-comers, and they all began to smile good-naturedly. Then the fellow-passenger — he was stout and fifty and had a brilliant striped rug always over his knees — pointed out the Buddha-like position of Angus, and the three in-starers smiled again. And so the fellow-passenger thought he must try too. So he put aside his rug, and lifted his feet from the floor, and took his toes in his hands, and tried to bring his legs up and his feet under him. But his knees were fat, his trousers in the direst extreme of peril, and he could no more manage it than if he had tried to swallow himself. So he desisted suddenly, rather scared, whilst the three bunched and official heads in the doorway laughed and jested at him, showing their teeth and teasing him. But on our gypsy party they turned their eyes with admiration. They loved the novelty and the fun. And on the thin, elegant Angus in his new London clothes, they looked really puzzled, as he sat there immobile, gleaming through his monocle like some Buddha going wicked, perched cross-legged and ecstatic on the red velvet seat. They marvelled that the lower half of him could so double up, like a foot-rule. So they stared till they had seen enough. When they suddenly said “Buon ’appetito,” withdrew their heads and shoulders, slammed the door, and departed.
Then the train set off also — and shortly after six arrived in Florence. It was debated what should Aaron do in Florence. The young men had engaged a room at Bertolini’s hotel, on the Lungarno. Bertolini’s was not expensive — but Aaron knew that his friends would not long endure hotel life. However, he went along with the other two, trusting to find a cheaper place on the morrow.
It was growing quite dark as they drove to the hotel, but still was light enough to show the river rustling, the Ponte Vecchio spanning its little storeys across the flood, on its low, heavy piers: and some sort of magic of the darkening, varied houses facing, on the other side of the stream. Of course they were all enchanted.
“I knew,” said Francis, “we should love it.”
Aaron was told he could have a little back room and pension terms for fifteen lire a day, if he stayed at least fifteen days. The exchange was then at forty-five. So fifteen lire meant just six-shillings-and- six pence a day, without extras. Extras meant wine, tea, butter, and light. It was decided he should look for something cheaper next day.
By the tone of the young men, he now gathered that they would prefer it if he took himself off to a cheaper place. They wished to be on their own.
“Well, then,” said Francis, “you will be in to lunch here, won’t you? Then we’ll see you at lunch.”
It was as if both the young men had drawn in their feelers now. They were afraid of finding the new man an incubus. They wanted to wash their hands of him. Aaron’s brow darkened.
“Perhaps it was right your love to dissemble
But why did you kick me down stairs? . . .”
Then morning found him out early, before his friends had arisen. It was sunny again. The magic of Florence at once overcame him, and he forgot the bore of limited means and hotel costs. He went straight out of the hotel door, across the road, and leaned on the river parapet. There ran the Arno: not such a flood after all, but a green stream with shoals of pebbles in its course. Across, and in the delicate shadow of the early sun, stood the opposite Lungarno, the old flat houses, pink, or white, or grey stone, with their green shutters, some closed, some opened. It had a flowery effect, the skyline irregular against the morning light. To the right the delicate Trinita bridge, to the left, the old bridge with its little shops over the river. Beyond, towards the sun, glimpses of green, sky-bloomed country: Tuscany.
There was a noise and clatter of traffic: boys pushing hand-barrows over the cobble-stones, slow bullocks stepping side by side, and shouldering one another affectionately, drawing a load of country produce, then horses in great brilliant scarlet cloths, like vivid palls, slowly pulling the long narrow carts of the district: and men hu-huing!— and people calling: all the sharp, clattering morning noise of Florence.
“Oh, Angus! Do come and look! OH, so lovely!”
Glancing up, he saw the elegant figure of Francis, in fine coloured- silk pyjamas, perched on a small upper balcony, turning away from the river towards the bedroom again, his hand lifted to his lips, as if to catch there his cry of delight. The whole pose was classic and effective: and very amusing. How the Italians would love it!
Aaron slipped back across the road, and walked away under the houses towards the Ponte Vecchio. He passed the bridge — and passed the Uffizi — watching the green hills opposite, and San Miniato. Then he noticed the over-dramatic group of statuary in the Piazza Mentana — male and physical and melodramatic — and then the corner house. It was a big old Florentine house, with many green shutters and wide eaves. There was a notice plate by the door —“Pension Nardini.”
He came to a full stop. He stared at the notice-plate, stared at the glass door, and turning round, stared at the over-pathetic dead soldier on the arm of his over-heroic pistol-firing comrade; Mentana — and the date! Aaron wondered what and where Mentana was. Then at last he summoned his energy, opened the glass door, and mounted the first stairs.
He waited some time before anybody appeared. Then a maid-servant.
“Can I have a room?” said Aaron.
The bewildered, wild-eyed servant maid opened a door and showed him into a heavily-gilt, heavily-plush drawing-room with a great deal of frantic grandeur about it. There he sat and cooled his heels for half an hour. Arrived at length a stout young lady — handsome, with big dark-blue Italian eyes — but anaemic and too stout.
“Oh!” she said as she entered, not knowing what else to say.
“Good-morning,” said Aaron awkwardly.
“Oh, good-morning! English! Yes! Oh, I am so sorry to keep you, you know, to make you wait so long. I was upstairs, you know, with a lady. Will you sit?”
“Can I have a room?” said Aaron.
“A room! Yes, you can.”
“What terms?”
“Terms! Oh! Why, ten francs a day, you know, pension — if you stay — How long will you stay?”
“At least a month, I expect.”
“A month! Oh yes. Yes, ten francs a day.”
“For everything?”
“Everything. Yes, everything. Coffee, bread, honey or jam in the morning: lunch at half-past twelve; tea in the drawing-room, half- past four: dinner at half-past seven: all very nice. And a warm room with the sun — Would you like to see?”
So Aaron was led up the big, rambling old house to the top floor — then along a long old corridor — and at last into a big bedroom with two beds and a red tiled floor — a little dreary, as ever — but the sun just beginning to come in, and a lovely view on to the river, towards the Ponte Vecchio, and at the hills with their pines and villas and verdure opposite.
Here he would settle. The signorina would send a man for his bags, at half past two in the afternoon.
At luncheon Aaron found the two friends, and told them of his move.
“How very nice for you! Ten francs a day — but that is nothing. I am so pleased you’ve found something. And when will you be moving in?” said Francis.
“At half-past two.”
“Oh, so soon. Yes, just as well.— But we shall see you from time to time, of course. What did you say the address was? Oh, yes — just near the awful statue. Very well. We can look you up any time — and you will find us here. Leave a message if we should happen not to be in — we’ve got lots of engagements —”
The very afternoon after Aaron’s arrival in Florence the sky became dark, the wind cold, and rain began steadily to fall. He sat in his big, bleak room above the river, and watched the pale green water fused with yellow, the many-threaded streams fuse into one, as swiftly the surface flood came down from the hills. Across, the dark green hills looked darker in the wet, the umbrella pines held up in vain above the villas. But away below, on the Lungarno, traffic rattled as ever.
Aaron went down at five o’clock to tea, and found himself alone next a group of women, mostly Swedes or Danish or Dutch, drinking a peculiar brown herb-brew which tasted like nothing else on earth, and eating two thick bits of darkish bread smeared with a brown smear which hoped it was jam, but hoped in vain. Unhappily he sat in the gilt and red, massively ornate room, while the foreign women eyed him. Oh, bitter to be a male under such circumstances.
He escaped as soon as possible back to his far-off regions, lonely and cheerless, away above. But he rather liked the far-off remoteness in the big old Florentine house: he did not mind the peculiar dark, uncosy dreariness. It was not really dreary: only indifferent. Indifferent to comfort, indifferent to all homeliness and cosiness. The over-big furniture trying to be impressive, but never to be pretty or bright or cheerful. There it stood, ugly and apart. And there let it stand.— Neither did he mind the lack of fire, the cold sombreness of his big bedroom. At home, in England, the bright grate and the ruddy fire, the thick hearth-rug and the man’s arm-chair, these had been inevitable. And now he was glad to get away from it all. He was glad not to have a cosy hearth, and his own arm-chair. He was glad to feel the cold, and to breathe the unwarmed air. He preferred the Italian way of no fires, no heating. If the day was cold, he was willing to be cold too. If it was dark, he was willing to be dark. The cosy brightness of a real home — it had stifled him till he felt his lungs would burst. The horrors of real domesticity. No, the Italian brutal way was better.
So he put his overcoat over his knee, and studied some music he had bought in Milan: some Pergolesi and the Scarlatti he liked, and some Corelli. He preferred frail, sensitive, abstract music, with not much feeling in it, but a certain limpidity and purity. Night fell as he sat reading the scores. He would have liked to try certain pieces on his flute. But his flute was too sensitive, it winced from the new strange surroundings, and would not blossom.
Dinner sounded at last — at eight o’clock, or something after. He had to learn to expect the meals always forty minutes late. Down he went, down the long, dark, lonely corridors and staircases. The dining room was right downstairs. But he had a little table to himself near the door, the elderly women were at some little distance. The only other men were Agostmo, the unshapely waiter, and an Italian duke, with wife and child and nurse, the family sitting all together at a table halfway down the room, and utterly pre-occupied with a little yellow dog.
However, the food was good enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and the maid-servant cheerful and bustling. Everything felt happy-go- lucky and informal, there was no particular atmosphere. Nobody put on any airs, because nobody in the Nardini took any notice if they did. The little ducal dog yapped, the ducal son shouted, the waiter dropped half a dozen spoons, the old women knitted during the waits, and all went off so badly that it was quite pleasant. Yes, Aaron preferred it to Bertolini’s, which was trying to be efficient and correct: though not making any strenuous effort. Still, Bertolini’s was much more up to the scratch, there was the tension of proper standards. Whereas here at Nardini’s, nothing mattered very much.
It was November. When he got up to his far-off room again, Aaron felt almost as if he were in a castle with the drawbridge drawn up. Through the open window came the sound of the swelling Arno, as it rushed and rustled along over its gravel-shoals. Lights spangled the opposite side. Traffic sounded deep below. The room was not really cold, for the summer sun so soaks into these thick old buildings, that it takes a month or two of winter to soak it out.— The rain still fell.
In the morning it was still November, and the dawn came slowly. And through the open window was the sound of the river’s rushing. But the traffic started before dawn, with a bang and a rattle of carts, and a bang and jingle of tram-cars over the not-distant bridge. Oh, noisy Florence! At half-past seven Aaron rang for his coffee: and got it at a few minutes past eight. The signorina had told him to take his coffee in bed.
Rain was still falling. But towards nine o’clock it lifted, and he decided to go out. A wet, wet world. Carriages going by, with huge wet shiny umbrellas, black and with many points, erected to cover the driver and the tail of the horse and the box-seat. The hood of the carriage covered the fare. Clatter-clatter through the rain. Peasants with long wagons and slow oxen, and pale-green huge umbrellas erected for the driver to walk beneath. Men tripping along in cloaks, shawls, umbrellas, anything, quite unconcerned. A man loading gravel in the river-bed, in spite of the wet. And innumerable bells ringing: but innumerable bells. The great soft trembling of the cathedral bell felt in all the air.
Anyhow it was a new world. Aaron went along close to the tall thick houses, following his nose. And suddenly he caught sight of the long slim neck of the Palazzo Vecchio up above, in the air. And in another minute he was passing between massive buildings, out into the Piazza della Signoria. There he stood still and looked round him in real surprise, and real joy. The flat empty square with its stone paving was all wet. The great buildings rose dark. The dark, sheer front of the Palazzo Vecchio went up like a cliff, to the battlements, and the slim tower soared dark and hawk-like, crested, high above. And at the foot of the cliff stood the great naked David, white and stripped in the wet, white against the dark, warm-dark cliff of the building — and near, the heavy naked men of Bandinelli.
The first thing he had seen, as he turned into the square, was the back of one of these Bandinelli statues: a great naked man of marble, with a heavy back and strong naked flanks over which the water was trickling. And then to come immediately upon the David, so much whiter, glistening skin-white in the wet, standing a little forward, and shrinking.
He may be ugly, too naturalistic, too big, and anything else you like. But the David in the Piazza della Signoria, there under the dark great palace, in the position Michelangelo chose for him, there, standing forward stripped and exposed and eternally half-shrinking, half — wishing to expose himself, he is the genius of Florence. The adolescent, the white, self-conscious, physical adolescent: enormous, in keeping with the stark, grim, enormous palace, which is dark and bare as he is white and bare. And behind, the big, lumpy Bandinelli men are in keeping too. They may be ugly — but they are there in their place, and they have their own lumpy reality. And this morning in the rain, standing unbroken, with the water trickling down their flanks and along the inner side of their great thighs, they were real enough, representing the undaunted physical nature of the heavier Florentines.
Aaron looked and looked at the three great naked men. David so much white, and standing forward, self-conscious: then at the great splendid front of the Palazzo Vecchio: and at the fountain splashing water upon its wet, wet figures; and the distant equestrian statue; and the stone-flagged space of the grim square. And he felt that here he was in one of the world’s living centres, here, in the Piazza della Signoria. The sense of having arrived — of having reached a perfect centre of the human world: this he had.
And so, satisfied, he turned round to look at the bronze Perseus which rose just above him. Benvenuto Cellini’s dark hero looked female, with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant: graceful, and rather vulgar. The clownish Bandinellis were somehow more to the point.— Then all the statuary in the Loggia! But that is a mistake. It looks too much like the yard of a monumental mason.
The great, naked men in the rain, under the dark-grey November sky, in the dark, strong inviolable square! The wonderful hawk-head of the old palace. The physical, self-conscious adolescent, Michelangelo’s David, shrinking and exposing himself, with his white, slack limbs! Florence, passionate, fearless Florence had spoken herself out.— Aaron was fascinated by the Piazza della Signoria. He never went into the town, nor returned from it to his lodging, without contriving to pass through the square. And he never passed through it without satisfaction. Here men had been at their intensest, most naked pitch, here, at the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. Since then, always rather puling and apologetic.
Aaron felt a new self, a new life-urge rising inside himself. Florence seemed to start a new man in him. It was a town of men. On Friday morning, so early, he heard the traffic. Early, he watched the rather low, two-wheeled traps of the peasants spanking recklessly over the bridge, coming in to town. And then, when he went out, he found the Piazza della Signoria packed with men: but all, all men. And all farmers, land-owners and land-workers. The curious, fine-nosed Tuscan farmers, with their half-sardonic, amber-coloured eyes. Their curious individuality, their clothes worn so easy and reckless, their hats with the personal twist. Their curious full oval cheeks, their tendency to be too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs. Their close- sitting dark hair. And above all, their sharp, almost acrid, mocking expression, the silent curl of the nose, the eternal challenge, the rock-bottom unbelief, and the subtle fearlessness. The dangerous, subtle, never-dying fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief. But men! Men! A town of men, in spite of everything. The one manly quality, undying, acrid fearlessness. The eternal challenge of the un-quenched human soul. Perhaps too acrid and challenging today, when there is nothing left to challenge. But men — who existed without apology and without justification. Men who would neither justify themselves nor apologize for themselves. Just men. The rarest thing left in our sweet Christendom.
Altogether Aaron was pleased with himself, for being in Florence. Those were early days after the war, when as yet very few foreigners had returned, and the place had the native sombreness and intensity. So that our friend did not mind being alone.
The third day, however, Francis called on him. There was a tap at the bedroom door, and the young man entered, all eyes of curiosity.
“Oh, there you ARE!” he cried, flinging his hand and twisting his waist and then laying his hand on his breast. “Such a LONG way up to you! But miles —! Well, how are you? Are you quite all right here? You are? I’m so glad — we’ve been so rushed, seeing people that we haven’t had a MINUTE. But not a MINUTE! People! People! People! Isn’t it amazing how many there are, and how many one knows, and gets to know! But amazing! Endless acquaintances!— Oh, and such quaint people here! so ODD! So MORE than odd! Oh, extraordinary —!” Francis chuckled to himself over the extraordinariness. Then he seated himself gracefully at Aaron’s table. “Oh, MUSIC! What? Corelli! So interesting! So very CLEVER, these people, weren’t they!— Corelli and the younger Scarlatti and all that crowd.” Here he closed the score again. “But now — LOOK! Do you want to know anybody here, or don’t you? I’ve told them about you, and of course they’re dying to meet you and hear you play. But I thought it best not to mention anything about — about your being hard-up, and all that. I said you were just here on a visit. You see with this kind of people I’m sure it’s much the best not to let them start off by thinking you will need them at all — or that you MIGHT need them. Why give yourself away, anyhow? Just meet them and take them for what they’re worth — and then you can see. If they like to give you an engagement to play at some show or other — well, you can decide when the time comes whether you will accept. Much better that these kind of people shouldn’t get it into their heads at once that they can hire your services. It doesn’t do. They haven’t enough discrimination for that. Much best make rather a favour of it, than sort of ask them to hire you.— Don’t you agree? Perhaps I’m wrong.”
Aaron sat and listened and wondered at the wisdom and the genuine kindness of the young beau . And more still, he wondered at the profound social disillusionment. This handsome collie dog was something of a social wolf, half showing his fangs at the moment. But with genuine kindheartedness for another wolf. Aaron was touched.
“Yes, I think that’s the best way,” he said.
“You do! Yes, so do I. Oh, they are such queer people! Why is it, do you think, that English people abroad go so very QUEER— so ultra- English — INCREDIBLE!— and at the same time so perfectly impossible? But impossible! Pathological, I assure you.— And as for their sexual behaviour — oh, dear, don’t mention it. I assure you it doesn’t bear mention.— And all quite flagrant, quite unabashed — under the cover of this fanatical Englishness. But I couldn’t begin to TELL you all the things. It’s just incredible.”
Aaron wondered how on earth Francis had been able to discover and bear witness to so much that was incredible, in a bare two days. But a little gossip, and an addition of lurid imagination will carry you anywhere.
“Well now,” said Francis. “What are you doing today?”
Aaron was not doing anything in particular.
“Then will you come and have dinner with us —?”
Francis fixed up the time and the place — a small restaurant at the other end of the town. Then he leaned out of the window.
“Fascinating place! Oh, fascinating place!” he said, soliloquy. “And you’ve got a superb view. Almost better than ours, I think.— Well then, half-past seven. We’re meeting a few other people, mostly residents or people staying some time. We’re not inviting them. Just dropping in, you know — a little restaurant. We shall see you then! Well then, a rivederci till this evening.— So glad you like Florence! I’m simply loving it — revelling. And the pictures!— Oh —”
The party that evening consisted all of men: Francis and Angus, and a writer, James Argyle, and little Algy Constable, and tiny Louis Mee, and deaf Walter Rosen. They all snapped and rattled at one another, and were rather spiteful but rather amusing. Francis and Angus had to leave early. They had another appointment. And James Argyle got quite tipsy, and said to Aaron:
“But, my boy, don’t let yourself be led astray by the talk of such people as Algy. Beware of them, my boy, if you’ve a soul to save. If you’ve a soul to save!” And he swallowed the remains of his litre.
Algy’s nose trembled a little, and his eyes blinked. “And if you’ve a soul to LOSE,” he said, “I would warn you very earnestly against Argyle.” Whereupon Algy shut one eye and opened the other so wide, that Aaron was almost scared. “Quite right, my boy. Ha! Ha! Never a truer thing said! Ha-ha-ha.” Argyle laughed his Mephistophelian tipsy laugh. “They’ll teach you to save. Never was such a lot of ripe old savers! Save their old trouser-buttons! Go to them if you want to learn to save. Oh, yes, I advise it seriously. You’ll lose nothing — not even a reputation.— You may lose a SOUL, of course. But that’s a detail, among such a hoard of banknotes and trouser-buttons. Ha-ha! What’s a soul, to them —?”
“What is it to you, is perhaps the more pertinent question,” said Algy, flapping his eyelids like some crazy owl. “It is you who specialise in the matter of soul, and we who are in need of enlightenment —”
“Yes, very true, you ARE! You ARE in need of enlightenment. A set of benighted wise virgins. Ha-ha-ha! That’s good, that — benighted wise virgins! What —” Argyle put his red face near to Aaron’s, and made a moue , narrowing his eyes quizzically as he peered up from under his level grey eyebrows. “Sit in the dark to save the lamp-oil — And all no good to them.— When the bridegroom cometh —! Ha-ha! Good that! Good, my boy!— The bridegroom —” he giggled to himself. “What about the bridegroom, Algy, my boy? Eh? What about him? Better trim your wick, old man, if it’s not too late —”
“We were talking of souls, not wicks, Argyle,” said Algy.
“Same thing. Upon my soul it all amounts to the same thing. Where’s the soul in a man that hasn’t got a bedfellow — eh?— answer me that! Can’t be done you know. Might as well ask a virgin chicken to lay you an egg.”
“Then there ought to be a good deal of it about,” said Algy.
“Of what? Of soul? There ought to be a good deal of soul about?— Ah, because there’s a good deal of —, you mean.— Ah, I wish it were so. I wish it were so. But, believe me, there’s far more damned chastity in the world, than anything else. Even in this town.— Call it chastity, if you like. I see nothing in it but sterility. It takes a rat to praise long tails. Impotence set up the praise of chastity — believe me or not — but that’s the bottom of it. The virtue is made out of the necessity.— Ha-ha-ha!— Like them! Like them! Ha-ha! Saving their souls! Why they’d save the waste matter of their bodies if they could. Grieves them to part with it.— Ha! ha!— ha!”
There was a pause. Argyle was in his cups, which left no more to be said. Algy, quivering and angry, looked disconcertingly round the room as if he were quite calm and collected. The deaf Jewish Rosen was smiling down his nose and saying: “What was that last? I didn’t catch that last,” cupping his ear with his hand in the frantic hope that someone would answer. No one paid any heed.
“I shall be going,” said Algy, looking round. Then to Aaron he said, “You play the flute, I hear. May we hear you some time?”
“Yes,” said Aaron, non-committal.
“Well, look here — come to tea tomorrow. I shall have some friends, and Del Torre will play the piano. Come to tea tomorrow, will you?”
“Thank you, I will.”
“And perhaps you’ll bring your flute along.”
“Don’t you do any such thing, my boy. Make them entertain YOU, for once.— They’re always squeezing an entertainment out of somebody —” and Argyle desperately emptied the remains of Algy’s wine into his own glass: whilst Algy stood as if listening to something far off, and blinking terribly.
“Anyhow,” he said at length, “you’ll come, won’t you? And bring the flute if you feel like it.”
“Don’t you take that flute, my boy,” persisted Argyle. “Don’t think of such a thing. If they want a concert, let them buy their tickets and go to the Teatro Diana. Or to Marchesa del Torre’s Saturday morning. She can afford to treat them.” Algy looked at Argyle, and blinked. “Well,” he said. “I hope you’ll get home all right, Argyle.”
“Thank you for your courtesy, Algy. Won’t you lend me your arm?”
As Algy was small and frail, somewhat shaky, and as Argyle was a finely built, heavy man of fifty or more, the slap was unkind.
“Afraid I can’t tonight. Good-night —”
Algy departed, so did little Mee, who had sat with a little delighted disapproval on his tiny, bird-like face, without saying anything. And even the Jew Rosen put away his deaf-machine and began awkwardly to take his leave. His long nose was smiling to itself complacently at all the things Argyle had been saying.
When he, too, had gone, Argyle arched his brows at Aaron, saying:
“Oh, my dear fellow, what a lot they are!— Little Mee — looking like an innocent little boy. He’s over seventy if he’s a day. Well over seventy. Well, you don’t believe me. Ask his mother — ask his mother. She’s ninety-five. Old lady of ninety-five —” Argyle even laughed himself at his own preposterousness.
“And then Algy — Algy’s not a fool, you know. Oh, he can be most entertaining, most witty, and amusing. But he’s out of place here. He should be in Kensington, dandling round the ladies’ drawing rooms and making his mots . They’re rich, you know, the pair of them. Little Mee used to boast that he lived on eleven-and-three-pence a week. Had to, poor chap. But then what does a white mouse like that need? Makes a heavy meal on a cheese-paring. Luck, you know — but of course he’s come into money as well. Rich as Croesus, and still lives on nineteen-and-two-pence a week. Though it’s nearly double, of course, what it used to be. No wonder he looks anxious. They disapprove of me — oh, quite right, quite right from their own point of view. Where would their money be otherwise? It wouldn’t last long if I laid hands on it —” he made a devilish quizzing face. “But you know, they get on my nerves. Little old maids, you know, little old maids. I’m sure I’m surprised at their patience with me.— But when people are patient with you, you want to spit gall at them. Don’t you? Ha-ha-ha! Poor old Algy.— Did I lay it on him tonight, or did I miss him?”
“I think you got him,” said Aaron.
“He’ll never forgive me. Depend on it, he’ll never forgive me. Ha- ha! I like to be unforgiven. It adds ZEST to one’s intercourse with people, to know that they’ll never forgive one. Ha-ha-ha! Little old maids, who do their knitting with their tongues. Poor old Algy — he drops his stitches now. Ha-ha-ha!— Must be eighty, I should say.”
Aaron laughed. He had never met a man like Argyle before — and he could not help being charmed. The other man had a certain wicked whimsicality that was very attractive, when levelled against someone else, and not against oneself. He must have been very handsome in his day, with his natural dignity, and his clean-shaven strong square face. But now his face was all red and softened and inflamed, his eyes had gone small and wicked under his bushy grey brows. Still he had a presence. And his grey hair, almost gone white, was still handsome.
“And what are you going to do in Florence?” asked Argyle.
Aaron explained.
“Well,” said Argyle. “Make what you can out of them, and then go. Go before they have time to do the dirty on you. If they think you want anything from them, they’ll treat you like a dog, like a dog. Oh, they’re very frightened of anybody who wants anything of them: frightened to death. I see nothing of them.— Live by myself — see nobody. Can’t stand it, you know: their silly little teaparties — simply can’t stand it. No, I live alone — and shall die alone.— At least, I sincerely hope so. I should be sorry to have any of them hanging round.”
The restaurant was empty, the pale, malarial waiter — he had of course contracted malaria during the war — was looking purple round the eyes. But Argyle callously sat on. Aaron therefore rose to his feet.
“Oh, I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Argyle.
He got unsteadily to his feet. The waiter helped him on with his coat: and he put a disreputable-looking little curly hat on his head. Then he took his stick.
“Don’t look at my appearance, my dear fellow,” said Argyle. “I am frayed at the wrists — look here!” He showed the cuffs of his overcoat, just frayed through. “I’ve got a trunkful of clothes in London, if only somebody would bring it out to me.— Ready then! Avanti! ”
And so they passed out into the still rainy street. Argyle lived in the very centre of the town: in the Cathedral Square. Aaron left him at his hotel door.
“But come and see me,” said Argyle. “Call for me at twelve o’clock — or just before twelve — and let us have luncheon together. What! Is that all right?— Yes, come just before twelve.— When?— Tomorrow? Tomorrow morning? Will you come tomorrow?”
Aaron said he would on Monday.
“Monday, eh! You say Monday! Very well then. Don’t you forget now. Don’t you forget. For I’ve a memory like a vice. I shan’t forget.— Just before twelve then. And come right up. I’m right under the roof. In Paradise, as the porter always says. Siamo nel paradiso . But he’s a cretin . As near Paradise as I care for, for it’s devilish hot in summer, and damned cold in winter. Don’t you forget now — Monday, twelve o’clock.”
And Argyle pinched Aaron’s arm fast, then went unsteadily up the steps to his hotel door.
The next day at Algy’s there was a crowd Algy had a very pleasant flat indeed, kept more scrupulously neat and finicking than ever any woman’s flat was kept. So today, with its bowls of flowers and its pictures and books and old furniture, and Algy, very nicely dressed, fluttering and blinking and making really a charming host, it was all very delightful to the little mob of visitors. They were a curious lot, it is true: everybody rather exceptional. Which though it may be startling, is so very much better fun than everybody all alike. Aaron talked to an old, old Italian elegant in side-curls, who peeled off his grey gloves and studied his formalities with a delightful Mid-Victorian dash, and told stories about a plaint which Lady Surry had against Lord Marsh, and was quite incomprehensible. Out rolled the English words, like plums out of a burst bag, and all completely unintelligible. But the old beau was supremely satisfied. He loved talking English, and holding his listeners spell-bound.
Next to Aaron on the sofa sat the Marchesa del Torre, an American woman from the Southern States, who had lived most of her life in Europe. She was about forty years of age, handsome, well-dressed, and quiet in the buzz of the tea-party. It was evident she was one of Algy’s lionesses. Now she sat by Aaron, eating nothing, but taking a cup of tea and keeping still. She seemed sad — or not well perhaps. Her eyes were heavy. But she was very carefully made up, and very well dressed, though simply: and sitting there, full-bosomed, rather sad, remote-seeming, she suggested to Aaron a modern Cleopatra brooding, Anthony-less.
Her husband, the Marchese, was a little intense Italian in a colonel’s grey uniform, cavalry, leather gaiters. He had blue eyes, his hair was cut very short, his head looked hard and rather military: he would have been taken for an Austrian officer, or even a German, had it not been for the, peculiar Italian sprightliness and touch of grimace in his mobile countenance. He was rather like a gnome — not ugly, but odd.
Now he came and stood opposite to Signor di Lanti, and quizzed him in Italian. But it was evident, in quizzing the old buck, the little Marchese was hovering near his wife, in ear-shot. Algy came up with cigarettes, and she at once began to smoke, with that peculiar heavy intensity of a nervous woman.
Aaron did not say anything — did not know what to say. He was peculiarly conscious of the woman sitting next to him, her arm near his. She smoked heavily, in silence, as if abstracted, a sort of cloud on her level, dark brows. Her hair was dark, but a softish brown, not black, and her skin was fair. Her bosom would be white.— Why Aaron should have had this thought, he could not for the life of him say.
Manfredi, her husband, rolled his blue eyes and grimaced as he laughed at old Lanti. But it was obvious that his attention was diverted sideways, towards his wife. Aaron, who was tired of nursing a tea- cup, placed in on a table and resumed his seat in silence. But suddenly the little Marchese whipped out his cigarette-case, and making a little bow, presented it to Aaron, saying:
“Won’t you smoke?”
“Thank you,” said Aaron.
“Turkish that side — Virginia there — you see.”
“Thank you, Turkish,” said Aaron.
The little officer in his dove-grey and yellow uniform snapped his box shut again, and presented a light.
“You are new in Florence?” he said, as he presented the match.
“Four days,” said Aaron.
“And I hear you are musical.”
“I play the flute — no more.”
“Ah, yes — but then you play it as an artist, not as an accomplishment.”
“But how do you know?” laughed Aaron.
“I was told so — and I believe it.”
“That’s nice of you, anyhow — But you are a musician too.”
“Yes — we are both musicians — my wife and I.”
Manfredi looked at his wife. She flicked the ash off her cigarette.
“What sort?” said Aaron.
“Why, how do you mean, what sort? We are dilettanti, I suppose.”
“No — what is your instrument? The piano?”
“Yes — the pianoforte. And my wife sings. But we are very much out of practice. I have been at the war four years, and we have had our home in Paris. My wife was in Paris, she did not wish to stay in Italy alone. And so — you see — everything goes —”
“But you will begin again?”
“Yes. We have begun already. We have music on Saturday mornings. Next Saturday a string quartette, and violin solos by a young Florentine woman — a friend — very good indeed, daughter of our Professor Tortoli, who composes — as you may know —”
“Yes,” said Aaron.
“Would you care to come and hear —?”
“Awfully nice if you would —” suddenly said the wife, quite simply, as if she had merely been tired, and not talking before.
“I should like to very much —”
“Do come then.”
While they were making the arrangements, Algy came up in his blandest manner.
“Now Marchesa — might we hope for a song?”
“No — I don’t sing any more,” came the slow, contralto reply.
“Oh, but you can’t mean you say that deliberately —”
“Yes, quite deliberately —” She threw away her cigarette and opened her little gold case to take another.
“But what can have brought you to such a disastrous decision?”
“I can’t say,” she replied, with a little laugh. “The war, probably.”
“Oh, but don’t let the war deprive us of this, as of everything else.”
“Can’t be helped,” she said. “I have no choice in the matter. The bird has flown —” She spoke with a certain heavy languor.
“You mean the bird of your voice? Oh, but that is quite impossible. One can hear it calling out of the leaves every time you speak.”
“I’m afraid you can’t get him to do any more than call out of the leaves.”
“But — but — pardon me — is it because you don’t intend there should be any more song? Is that your intention?”
“That I couldn’t say,” said the Marchesa, smoking, smoking.
“Yes,” said Manfredi. “At the present time it is because she WILL not — not because she cannot. It is her will, as you say.”
“Dear me! Dear me!” said Algy. “But this is really another disaster added to the war list.— But — but — will none of us ever be able to persuade you?” He smiled half cajoling, half pathetic, with a prodigious flapping of his eyes.
“I don’t know,” said she. “That will be as it must be.”
“Then can’t we say it must be SONG once more?”
To this sally she merely laughed, and pressed out her half-smoked cigarette.
“How very disappointing! How very cruel of — of fate — and the war — and — and all the sum total of evils,” said Algy.
“Perhaps —” here the little and piquant host turned to Aaron.
“Perhaps Mr. Sisson, your flute might call out the bird of song. As thrushes call each other into challenge, you know. Don’t you think that is very probable?”
“I have no idea,” said Aaron.
“But you, Marchesa. Won’t you give us hope that it might be so?”
“I’ve no idea, either,” said she. “But I should very much like to hear Mr. Sisson’s flute. It’s an instrument I like extremely.”
“There now. You see you may work the miracle, Mr. Sisson. Won’t you play to us?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t bring my flute along,” said Aaron “I didn’t want to arrive with a little bag.”
“Quite!” said Algy. “What a pity it wouldn’t go in your pocket.”
“Not music and all,” said Aaron.
“Dear me! What a comble of disappointment. I never felt so strongly, Marchesa, that the old life and the old world had collapsed. — Really — I shall soon have to try to give up being cheerful at all.”
“Don’t do that,” said the Marchesa. “It isn’t worth the effort.”
“Ah! I’m glad you find it so. Then I have hope.”
She merely smiled, indifferent.
The teaparty began to break up — Aaron found himself going down the stairs with the Marchesa and her husband. They descended all three in silence, husband and wife in front. Once outside the door, the husband asked:
“How shall we go home, dear? Tram or carriage —?” It was evident he was economical.
“Walk,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Aaron. “We are all going the same way, I believe.”
Aaron said where he lived. They were just across the river. And so all three proceeded to walk through the town.
“You are sure it won’t be too much for you — too far?” said the little officer, taking his wife’s arm solicitously. She was taller than he. But he was a spirited fellow.
“No, I feel like walking.”
“So long as you don’t have to pay for it afterwards.”
Aaron gathered that she was not well. Yet she did not look ill — unless it were nerves. She had that peculiar heavy remote quality of pre- occupation and neurosis.
The streets of Florence were very full this Sunday evening, almost impassable, crowded particularly with gangs of grey-green soldiers. The three made their way brokenly, and with difficulty. The Italian was in a constant state of returning salutes. The grey-green, sturdy, unsoldierly soldiers looked at the woman as she passed.
“I am sure you had better take a carriage,” said Manfredi.
“No — I don’t mind it.”
“Do you feel at home in Florence?” Aaron asked her.
“Yes — as much as anywhere. Oh, yes — quite at home.”
“Do you like it as well as anywhere?” he asked.
“Yes — for a time. Paris for the most part.”
“Never America?”
“No, never America. I came when I was quite a little girl to Europe — Madrid — Constantinople — Paris. I hardly knew America at all.”
Aaron remembered that Francis had told him, the Marchesa’s father had been ambassador to Paris.
“So you feel you have no country of your own?”
“I have Italy. I am Italian now, you know.”
Aaron wondered why she spoke so muted, so numbed. Manfredi seemed really attached to her — and she to him. They were so simple with one another.
They came towards the bridge where they should part.
“Won’t you come and have a cocktail?” she said.
“Now?” said Aaron.
“Yes. This is the right time for a cocktail. What time is it, Manfredi?”
“Half past six. Do come and have one with us,” said the Italian. “We always take one about this time.”
Aaron continued with them over the bridge. They had the first floor of an old palazzo opposite, a little way up the hill. A man-servant opened the door.
“If only it will be warm,” she said. “The apartment is almost impossible to keep warm. We will sit in the little room.”
Aaron found himself in a quite warm room with shaded lights and a mixture of old Italian stiffness and deep soft modern comfort. The Marchesa went away to take off her wraps, and the Marchese chatted with Aaron. The little officer was amiable and kind, and it was evident he liked his guest.
“Would you like to see the room where we have music?” he said. “It is a fine room for the purpose — we used before the war to have music every Saturday morning, from ten to twelve: and all friends might come. Usually we had fifteen or twenty people. Now we are starting again. I myself enjoy it so much. I am afraid my wife isn’t so enthusiastic as she used to be. I wish something would rouse her up, you know. The war seemed to take her life away. Here in Florence are so many amateurs. Very good indeed. We can have very good chamber-music indeed. I hope it will cheer her up and make her quite herself again. I was away for such long periods, at the front.— And it was not good for her to be alone.— I am hoping now all will be better.”
So saying, the little, odd officer switched on the lights of the long salon. It was a handsome room in the Italian mode of the Empire period — beautiful old faded tapestry panels — reddish — and some ormolu furniture — and other things mixed in — rather conglomerate, but pleasing, all the more pleasing. It was big, not too empty, and seemed to belong to human life, not to show and shut-upedness. The host was happy showing it.
“Of course the flat in Paris is more luxurious than this,” he said. “But I prefer this. I prefer it here.” There was a certain wistfulness as he looked round, then began to switch off the lights.
They returned to the little salotta. The Marchesa was seated in a low chair. She wore a very thin white blouse, that showed her arms and her throat. She was a full-breasted, soft-skinned woman, though not stout.
“Make the cocktails then, Manfredi,” she said. “Do you find this room very cold?” she asked of Aaron.
“Not a bit cold,” he said.
“The stove goes all the time,” she said, “but without much effect.”
“You wear such thin clothes,” he said.
“Ah, no, the stove should give heat enough. Do sit down. Will you smoke? There are cigarettes — and cigars, if you prefer them.”
“No, I’ve got my own, thanks.”
She took her own cigarette from her gold case.
“It is a fine room, for music, the big room,” said he.
“Yes, quite. Would you like to play for us some time, do you think?”
“Do you want me to? I mean does it interest you?”
“What — the flute?”
“No — music altogether —”
“Music altogether —! Well! I used to love it. Now — I’m not sure. Manfredi lives for it, almost.”
“For that and nothing else?” asked Aaron.
“No, no! No, no! Other things as well.”
“But you don’t like it much any more?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I don’t. I’m not sure.”
“You don’t look forward to the Saturday mornings?” he asked.
“Perhaps I don’t — but for Manfredi’s sake, of course, I do. But for his sake more than my own, I admit. And I think he knows it.”
“A crowd of people in one’s house —” said Aaron.
“Yes, the people. But it’s not only that. It’s the music itself — I think I can’t stand it any more. I don’t know.”
“Too emotional? Too much feeling for you?”
“Yes, perhaps. But no. What I can’t stand is chords, you know: harmonies. A number of sounds all sounding together. It just makes me ill. It makes me feel so sick.”
“What — do you want discords?— dissonances?”
“No — they are nearly as bad. No, it’s just when any number of musical notes, different notes, come together, harmonies or discords. Even a single chord struck on the piano. It makes me feel sick. I just feel as if I should retch. Isn’t it strange? Of course, I don’t tell Manfredi. It would be too cruel to him. It would cut his life in two.”
“But then why do you have the music — the Saturdays — then?”
“Oh, I just keep out of the way as much as possible. I’m sure you feel there is something wrong with me, that I take it as I do,” she added, as if anxious: but half ironical.
“No — I was just wondering — I believe I feel something the same myself. I know orchestra makes me blind with hate or I don’t know what. But I want to throw bombs.”
“There now. It does that to me, too. Only now it has fairly got me down, and I feel nothing but helpless nausea. You know, like when you are seasick.”
Her dark-blue, heavy, haunted-looking eyes were resting on him as if she hoped for something. He watched her face steadily, a curious intelligence flickering on his own.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand it. And I know, at the bottom, I’m like that. But I keep myself from realising, don’t you know? Else perhaps, where should I be? Because I make my life and my living at it, as well.”
“At music! Do you! But how bad for you. But perhaps the flute is different. I have a feeling that it is. I can think of one single pipe-note — yes, I can think of it quite, quite calmly. And I can’t even think of the piano, or of the violin with its tremolo, or of orchestra, or of a string quartette — or even a military band — I can’t think of it without a shudder. I can only bear drum-and-fife. Isn’t it crazy of me — but from the other, from what we call music proper, I’ve endured too much. But bring your flute one day. Bring it, will you? And let me hear it quite alone. Quite, quite alone. I think it might do me an awful lot of good. I do, really. I can imagine it.” She closed her eyes and her strange, sing-song lapsing voice came to an end. She spoke almost like one in a trance — or a sleep-walker.
“I’ve got it now in my overcoat pocket,” he said, “if you like.”
“Have you? Yes!” She was never hurried: always slow and resonant, so that the echoes of her voice seemed to linger. “Yes — do get it. Do get it. And play in the other room — quite — quite without accompaniment. Do — and try me.”
“And you will tell me what you feel?”
“Yes.”
Aaron went out to his overcoat. When he returned with his flute, which he was screwing together, Manfredi had come with the tray and the three cocktails. The Marchesa took her glass.
“Listen, Manfredi,” she said. “Mr. Sisson is going to play, quite alone in the sala. And I am going to sit here and listen.”
“Very well,” said Manfredi. “Drink your cocktail first. Are you going to play without music?”
“Yes,” said Aaron.
“I’ll just put on the lights for you.”
“No — leave it dark. Enough light will come in from here.”
“Sure?” said Manfredi.
“Yes.”
The little soldier was an intruder at the moment. Both the others felt it so. But they bore him no grudge. They knew it was they who were exceptional, not he. Aaron swallowed his drink, and looked towards the door.
“Sit down, Manfredi. Sit still,” said the Marchesa.
“Won’t you let me try some accompaniment?” said the soldier.
“No. I shall just play a little thing from memory,” said Aaron.
“Sit down, dear. Sit down,” said the Marchesa to her husband.
He seated himself obediently. The flash of bright yellow on the grey of his uniform seemed to make him like a chaffinch or a gnome.
Aaron retired to the other room, and waited awhile, to get back the spell which connected him with the woman, and gave the two of them this strange isolation, beyond the bounds of life, as it seemed.
He caught it again. And there, in the darkness of the big room, he put his flute to his lips, and began to play. It was a clear, sharp, lilted run-and-fall of notes, not a tune in any sense of the word, and yet a melody, a bright, quick sound of pure animation, a bright, quick, animate noise, running and pausing. It was like a bird’s singing, in that it had no human emotion or passion or intention or meaning — a ripple and poise of animate sound. But it was unlike a bird’s singing, in that the notes followed clear and single one after the other, in their subtle gallop. A nightingale is rather like that — a wild sound. To read all the human pathos into nightingales’ singing is nonsense. A wild, savage, non-human lurch and squander of sound, beautiful, but entirely unaesthetic.
What Aaron was playing was not of his own invention. It was a bit of mediaeval phrasing written for the pipe and the viol. It made the piano seem a ponderous, nerve-wracking steam-roller of noise, and the violin, as we know it, a hateful wire-drawn nerve-torturer.
After a little while, when he entered the smaller room again, the Marchesa looked full into his face.
“Good! “she said. “Good!”
And a gleam almost of happiness seemed to light her up. She seemed like one who had been kept in a horrible enchanted castle — for years and years. Oh, a horrible enchanted castle, with wet walls of emotions and ponderous chains of feelings and a ghastly atmosphere of must-be. She felt she had seen through the opening door a crack of sunshine, and thin, pure, light outside air, outside, beyond this dank and beastly dungeon of feelings and moral necessity. Ugh!— she shuddered convulsively at what had been. She looked at her little husband. Chains of necessity all round him: a little jailor. Yet she was fond of him. If only he would throw away the castle keys. He was a little gnome. What did he clutch the castle-keys so tight for?
Aaron looked at her. He knew that they understood one another, he and she. Without any moral necessity or any other necessity. Outside — they had got outside the castle of so-called human life. Outside the horrible, stinking human castle Of life. A bit of true, limpid freedom. Just a glimpse.
“Charming!” said the Marchese. “Truly charming! But what was it you played?”
Aaron told him.
“But truly delightful. I say, won’t you play for us one of these Saturdays? And won’t you let me take the accompaniment? I should be charmed, charmed if you would.”
“All right,” said Aaron.
“Do drink another cocktail,” said his hostess.
He did so. And then he rose to leave.
“Will you stay to dinner?” said the Marchesa. “We have two people coming — two Italian relatives of my husband. But —”
No, Aaron declined to stay to dinner.
“Then won’t you come on — let me see — on Wednesday? Do come on Wednesday. We are alone. And do bring the flute. Come at half-past six, as today, will you? Yes?”
Aaron promised — and then he found himself in the street. It was half- past seven. Instead of returning straight home, he crossed the Ponte Vecchio and walked straight into the crowd. The night was fine now. He had his overcoat over his arm, and in a sort of trance or frenzy, whirled away by his evening’s experience, and by the woman, he strode swiftly forward, hardly heeding anything, but rushing blindly on through all the crowd, carried away by his own feelings, as much as if he had been alone, and all these many people merely trees.
Leaving the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele a gang of soldiers suddenly rushed round him, buffeting him in one direction, whilst another gang, swinging round the corner, threw him back helpless again into the midst of the first gang. For some moments he struggled among the rude, brutal little mob of grey-green coarse uniforms that smelt so strong of soldiers. Then, irritated, he found himself free again, shaking himself and passing on towards the cathedral. Irritated, he now put on his overcoat and buttoned it to the throat, closing himself in, as it were, from the brutal insolence of the Sunday night mob of men. Before, he had been walking through them in a rush of naked feeling, all exposed to their tender mercies. He now gathered himself together.
As he was going home, suddenly, just as he was passing the Bargello, he stopped. He stopped, and put his hand to his breast pocket. His letter-case was gone. He had been robbed. It was as if lightning ran through him at that moment, as if a fluid electricity rushed down his limbs, through the sluice of his knees, and out at his feet, leaving him standing there almost unconscious. For a moment unconscious and superconscious he stood there. He had been robbed. They had put their hand in his breast and robbed him. If they had stabbed him, it could hardly have had a greater effect on him.
And he had known it. He had known it. When the soldiers jostled him so evilly they robbed him. And he knew it. He had known it as if it were fate. Even as if it were fated beforehand.
Feeling quite weak and faint, as if he had really been struck by some evil electric fluid, he walked on. And as soon as he began to walk, he began to reason. Perhaps his letter-case was in his other coat. Perhaps he had not had it with him at all. Perhaps he was feeling all this, just for nothing. Perhaps it was all folly.
He hurried forward. He wanted to make sure. He wanted relief. It was as if the power of evil had suddenly seized him and thrown him, and he wanted to say it was not so, that he had imagined it all, conjured it up. He did not want to admit the power of evil — particularly at that moment. For surely a very ugly evil spirit had struck him, in the midst of that gang of Italian soldiers. He knew it — it had pierced him. It had got him.
But he wanted to say it was not so. Reaching the house, he hastened upwards to his far-off, lonely room, through the dark corridors. Once in his own apartment, he shut the door and switched on the light, a sensation like fear at his heart. Then he searched his other pockets. He looked everywhere. In vain.
In vain, truly enough. For he knew the thing was stolen. He had known it all along. The soldiers had deliberately plotted, had deliberately rushed him and taken his purse. They must have watched him previously. They must have grinned, and jeered at him.
He sat down in a chair, to recover from the shock. The pocket-book contained four hundred francs, three one-pound notes, and various letters and private effects. Well, these were lost. But it was not so much the loss as the assault on his person that caused him to feel so stricken. He felt the jeering, gibing blows they had given as they jostled him.
And now he sat, weak in every limb, and said to himself: “Yes — and if I hadn’t rushed along so full of feeling: if I hadn’t exposed myself: if I hadn’t got worked up with the Marchesa, and then rushed all kindled through the streets, without reserve, it would never have happened. I gave myself away: and there was someone ready to snatch what I gave. I gave myself away. It is my own fault. I should have been on my guard. I should be always on my guard: always, always. With God and the devil both, I should be on my guard. Godly or devilish, I should hold fast to my reserve and keep on the watch. And if I don’t, I deserve what I get.”
But still he sat in his chair in his bedroom, dazed. One part of his soul was saying emphatically: It serves you right. It is nothing but right. It serves everybody right who rushes enkindled through the street, and trusts implicitly in mankind and in the life-spirit, as if mankind and the life-spirit were a playground for enkindled individuals. It serves you right. You have paid about twelve pounds sterling for your lesson. Fool, you might have known beforehand, and then you needn’t have paid at all. You can ill afford twelve pounds sterling, you fool. But since paid you have, then mind, mind the lesson is learned. Never again. Never expose yourself again. Never again absolute trust. It is a blasphemy against life, is absolute trust. Has a wild creature ever absolute trust? It minds itself. Sleeping or waking it is on its guard. And so must you be, or you’ll go under. Sleeping or waking, man or woman, God or the devil, keep your guard over yourself. Keep your guard over yourself, lest worse befall you. No man is robbed unless he incites a robber. No man is murdered unless he attracts a murderer. Then be not robbed: it lies within your own power. And be not murdered. Or if you are, you deserve it. Keep your guard over yourself, now, always and forever. Yes, against God quite as hard as against the devil. He’s fully as dangerous to you. . . .
Thus thinking, not in his mind but in his soul, his active, living soul, he gathered his equanimity once more, and accepted the fact. So he rose and tidied himself for dinner. His face was now set, and still. His heart also was still — and fearless. Because its sentinel was stationed. Stationed, stationed for ever.
And Aaron never forgot. After this, it became essential to him to feel that the sentinel stood guard in his own heart. He felt a strange unease the moment he was off his guard. Asleep or awake, in the midst of the deepest passion or the suddenest love, or in the throes of greatest excitement or bewilderment, somewhere, some corner of himself was awake to the fact that the sentinel of the soul must not sleep, no, never, not for one instant.
Aaron and Lilly sat in Argyle’s little loggia, high up under the eaves of the small hotel, a sort of long attic-terrace just under the roof, where no one would have suspected it. It was level with the grey conical roof of the Baptistery. Here sat Aaron and Lilly in the afternoon, in the last of the lovely autumn sunshine. Below, the square was already cold in shadow, the pink and white and green Baptistery rose lantern-shaped as from some sea-shore, cool, cold and wan now the sun was gone. Black figures, innumerable black figures, curious because they were all on end, up on end — Aaron could not say why he expected them to be horizontal — little black figures upon end, like fishes that swim on their tails, wiggled endlessly across the piazza, little carriages on natural all-fours rattled tinily across, the yellow little tram-cars, like dogs slipped round the corner. The balcony was so high up, that the sound was ineffectual. The upper space, above the houses, was nearer than the under-currents of the noisy town. Sunlight, lovely full sunlight, lingered warm and still on the balcony. It caught the facade of the cathedral sideways, like the tips of a flower, and sideways lit up the stem of Giotto’s tower, like a lily stem, or a long, lovely pale pink and white and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral. Florence, the flowery town. Firenze — Fiorenze — the flowery town: the red lilies. The Fiorentini, the flower-souled. Flowers with good roots in the mud and muck, as should be: and fearless blossoms in air, like the cathedral and the tower and the David.
“I love it,” said Lilly. “I love this place, I love the cathedral and the tower. I love its pinkness and its paleness. The Gothic souls find fault with it, and say it is gimcrack and tawdry and cheap. But I love it, it is delicate and rosy, and the dark stripes are as they should be, like the tiger marks on a pink lily. It’s a lily, not a rose; a pinky white lily with dark tigery marks. And heavy, too, in its own substance: earth-substance, risen from earth into the air: and never forgetting the dark, black-fierce earth — I reckon here men for a moment were themselves, as a plant in flower is for the moment completely itself. Then it goes off. As Florence has gone off. No flowers now. But it HAS flowered. And I don’t see why a race should be like an aloe tree, flower once and die. Why should it? Why not flower again? Why not?”
“If it’s going to, it will,” said Aaron. “Our deciding about it won’t alter it.”
“The decision is part of the business.”
Here they were interrupted by Argyle, who put his head through one of the windows. He had flecks of lather on his reddened face.
“Do you think you’re wise now,” he said, “to sit in that sun?”
“In November?” laughed Lilly.
“Always fear the sun when there’s an ‘r’ in the month,” said Argyle. “Always fear it ‘r’ or no ‘r,’ I say. I’m frightened of it. I’ve been in the South, I know what it is. I tell you I’m frightened of it. But if you think you can stand it — well —”
“It won’t last much longer, anyhow,” said Lilly.
“Too long for me, my boy. I’m a shady bird, in all senses of the word, in all senses of the word.— Now are you comfortable? What? Have another cushion? A rug for your knees? You’re quite sure now? Well, wait just one moment till the waiter brings up a syphon, and you shall have a whiskey and soda. Precious — oh, yes, very precious these days — like drinking gold. Thirty-five lire a bottle, my boy!” Argyle pulled a long face, and made a noise with his lips. “But I had this bottle given me, and luckily you’ve come while there’s a drop left. Very glad you have! Very glad you have.”
Here he poked a little table through the window, and put a bottle and two glasses, one a tooth-glass, upon it. Then he withdrew again to finish shaving. The waiter presently hobbled up with the syphon and third glass. Argyle pushed his head through the window, that was only a little higher than the balcony. He was soon neatly shaved, and was brushing his hair.
“Go ahead, my boys, go ahead with that whiskey!” he said.
“We’ll wait for you,” said Lilly.
“No, no, don’t think of it. However, if you will, I shall be one minute only — one minute only. I’ll put on the water for the tea now. Oh, damned bad methylated spirit they sell now! And six francs a litre! Six francs a litre! I don’t know what I’m going to do, the air I breathe costs money nowadays — Just one moment and I’ll be with you! Just one moment —”
In a very little while he came from the tiny attic bedroom, through the tiniest cupboard of a sitting-room under the eaves, where his books were, and where he had hung his old red India tapestries — or silk embroideries — and he emerged there up above the world on the loggia.
“Now then — siamo nel paradiso , eh? Paradisal enough for you, is it?”
“The devil looking over Lincoln,” said Lilly laughing, glancing up into Argyle’s face.
“The devil looking over Florence would feel sad,” said Argyle. “The place is fast growing respectable — Oh, piety makes the devil chuckle. But respectability, my boy, argues a serious diminution of spunk. And when the spunk diminishes we-ell — it’s enough to make the most sturdy devil look sick. What? No doubt about it, no doubt whatever — There —!” he had just finished settling his tie and buttoning his waistcoat. “How do I look, eh? Presentable?— I’ve just had this suit turned. Clever little tailor across the way there. But he charged me a hundred and twenty francs.” Argyle pulled a face, and made the little trumping noise with his lips. “However — not bad, is it?— He had to let in a bit at the back of the waistcoat, and a gusset, my boy, a gusset — in the trousers back. Seems I’ve grown in the arsal region. Well, well, might do worse.— Is it all right?”
Lilly eyed the suit.
“Very nice. Very nice indeed. Such a good cloth! That makes all the difference.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, all the difference! This suit is eleven years old — eleven years old. But beautiful English cloth — before the war, before the war!”
“It looks quite wonderfully expensive and smart now,” said Lilly.
“Expensive and smart, eh! Ha-ha-ha! Well, it cost me a hundred and twenty francs to have it turned, and I found that expensive enough. Well, now, come —” here Argyle’s voice took on a new gay cheer. “A whiskey and soda, Lilly? Say when! Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You’re going to have double that. You’re no lily of the valley here, remember. Not with me. Not likely. Siamo nel paradiso , remember.”
“But why should we drink your whiskey? Tea would do for us just as well.”
“Not likely! Not likely! When I have the pleasure of your company, my boy, we drink a glass of something, unless I am utterly stripped. Say when, Aaron.”
“When,” said Aaron.
Argyle at last seated himself heavily in a small chair. The sun had left the loggia, but was glowing still on Giotto’s tower and the top of the cathedral facade, and on the remoter great red-tiled dome.
“Look at my little red monthly rose,” said Argyle. “Wonderful little fellow! I wouldn’t have anything happen to him for the world. Oh, a bacchic little chap. I made Pasquale wear a wreath of them on his hair. Very becoming they were, very.— Oh, I’ve had a charming show of flowers. Wonderful creatures sunflowers are.” They got up and put their heads over the balcony, looking down on the square below. “Oh, great fun, great fun.— Yes, I had a charming show of flowers, charming.— Zinnias, petunias, ranunculus, sunflowers, white stocks — oh, charming. Look at that bit of honeysuckle. You see the berries where his flowers were! Delicious scent, I assure you.”
Under the little balcony wall Argyle had put square red-tiled pots, all round, and in these still bloomed a few pansies and asters, whilst in a corner a monthly rose hung flowers like round blood-drops. Argyle was as tidy and scrupulous in his tiny rooms and his balcony as if he were a first-rate sea-man on a yacht. Lilly remarked on this.
“Do you see signs of the old maid coming out in me? Oh, I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it. We all end that way. Age makes old maids of us all. And Tanny is all right, you say? Bring her to see me. Why didn’t she come today?”
“You know you don’t like people unless you expect them.”
“Oh, but my dear fellow!— You and Tanny; you’d be welcome if you came at my busiest moment. Of course you would. I’d be glad to see you if you interrupted me at any crucial moment.— I am alone now till August. Then we shall go away together somewhere. But you and Tanny; why, there’s the world, and there’s Lilly: that’s how I put it, my boy.”
“All right, Argyle.— Hoflichkeiten.”
“What? Gar keine Hoflichkeiten. Wahrhaftiger Kerl bin ich.— When am I going to see Tanny? When are you coming to dine with me?”
“After you’ve dined with us — say the day after tomorrow.”
“Right you are. Delighted —. Let me look if that water’s boiling.” He got up and poked half himself inside the bedroom. “Not yet. Damned filthy methylated spirit they sell.”
“Look,” said Lilly. “There’s Del Torre!”
“Like some sort of midge, in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. I can’t stand it, I tell you. I can’t stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. Like a blight on the human landscape. Like a blight. Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. Europe’s got the smother-fly in these infernal shoddy militarists.”
“Del Torre’s coming out of it as soon as he can,” said Lilly.
“I should think so, too.”
“I like him myself — very much. Look, he’s seen us! He wants to come up, Argyle.”
“What, in that uniform! I’ll see him in his grandmother’s crinoline first.”
“Don’t be fanatical, it’s bad taste. Let him come up a minute.”
“Not for my sake. But for yours, he shall,” Argyle stood at the parapet of the balcony and waved his arm. “Yes, come up,” he said, “come up, you little mistkafer — what the Americans call a bug. Come up and be damned.”
Of course Del Torre was too far off to hear this exhortation. Lilly also waved to him — and watched him pass into the doorway far below.
“I’ll rinse one of these glasses for him,” said Argyle.
The Marchese’s step was heard on the stone stairs: then his knock.
“Come in! Come in!” cried Argyle from the bedroom, where he was rinsing the glass. The Marchese entered, grinning with his curious, half courteous greeting. “Go through — go through,” cried Argyle. “Go on to the loggia — and mind your head. Good heavens, mind your head in that doorway.”
The Marchese just missed the top of the doorway as he climbed the abrupt steps on to the loggia.— There he greeted Lilly and Aaron with hearty handshakes.
“Very glad to see you — very glad, indeed!” he cried, grinning with excited courtesy and pleasure, and covering Lilly’s hand with both his own gloved hands. “When did you come to Florence?”
There was a little explanation. Argyle shoved the last chair — it was a luggage stool — through the window.
“All I can do for you in the way of a chair,” he said.
“Ah, that is all right,” said the Marchese. “Well, it is very nice up here — and very nice company. Of the very best, the very best in Florence.”
“The highest, anyhow,” said Argyle grimly, as he entered with the glass. “Have a whiskey and soda, Del Torre. It’s the bottom of the bottle, as you see.”
“The bottom of the bottle! Then I start with the tail-end, yes!” He stretched his blue eyes so that the whites showed all round, and grinned a wide, gnome-like grin.
“You made that start long ago, my dear fellow. Don’t play the ingenue with me, you know it won’t work. Say when, my man, say when!”
“Yes, when,” said Del Torre. “When did I make that start, then?”
“At some unmentionably young age. Chickens such as you soon learn to cheep.”
“Chickens such as I soon learn to cheap,” repeated Del Torre, pleased with the verbal play. “What is cheap, please? What is TO CHEAP?”
“Cheep! Cheep!” squeaked Argyle, making a face at the little Italian, who was perched on one strap of the luggage-stool. “It’s what chickens say when they’re poking their little noses into new adventures — naughty ones.”
“Are chickens naughty? Oh! I thought they could only be good!”
“Featherless chickens like yourself, my boy.”
“Oh, as for featherless — then there is no saying what they will do.—” And here the Marchese turned away from Argyle with the inevitable question to Lilly:
“Well, and how long will you stay in Florence?”
Lilly did not know: but he was not leaving immediately.
“Good! Then you will come and see us at once. . . .”
Argyle rose once more, and went to make the tea. He shoved a lump of cake — or rather panetone, good currant loaf — through the window, with a knife to cut it.
“Help yourselves to the panetone,” he said. “Eat it up. The tea is coming at once. You’ll have to drink it in your glasses, there’s only one old cup.”
The Marchese cut the cake, and offered pieces. The two men took and ate.
“So you have already found Mr. Sisson!” said Del Torre to Lilly.
“Ran straight into him in the Via Nazionale,” said Lilly.
“Oh, one always runs into everybody in Florence. We are all already acquainted: also with the flute. That is a great pleasure.”
“So I think.— Does your wife like it, too?”
“Very much, indeed! She is quite eprise . I, too, shall have to learn to play it.”
“And run the risk of spoiling the shape of your mouth — like Alcibiades.”
“Is there a risk? Yes! Then I shan’t play it. My mouth is too beautiful.— But Mr. Sisson has not spoilt his mouth.”
“Not yet,” said Lilly. “Give him time.”
“Is he also afraid — like Alcibiades?”
“Are you, Aaron?” said Lilly.
“What?”
“Afraid of spoiling your beauty by screwing your mouth to the flute?”
“I look a fool, do I, when I’m playing?” said Aaron.
“Only the least little bit in the world,” said Lilly. “The way you prance your head, you know, like a horse.”
“Ah, well,” said Aaron. “I’ve nothing to lose.”
“And were you surprised, Lilly, to find your friend here?” asked Del Torre.
“I ought to have been. But I wasn’t really.”
“Then you expected him?”
“No. It came naturally, though.— But why did you come, Aaron? What exactly brought you?”
“Accident,” said Aaron.
“Ah, no! No! There is no such thing as accident,” said the Italian. “A man is drawn by his fate, where he goes.”
“You are right,” said Argyle, who came now with the teapot. “A man is drawn — or driven. Driven, I’ve found it. Ah, my dear fellow, what is life but a search for a friend? A search for a friend — that sums it up.”
“Or a lover,” said the Marchese, grinning.
“Same thing. Same thing. My hair is white — but that is the sum of my whole experience. The search for a friend.” There was something at once real and sentimental in Argyle’s tone.
“And never finding?” said Lilly, laughing.
“Oh, what would you? Often finding. Often finding. And losing, of course.— A life’s history. Give me your glass. Miserable tea, but nobody has sent me any from England —”
“And you will go on till you die, Argyle?” said Lilly. “Always seeking a friend — and always a new one?”
“If I lose the friend I’ve got. Ah, my dear fellow, in that case I shall go on seeking. I hope so, I assure you. Something will be very wrong with me, if ever I sit friendless and make no search.”
“But, Argyle, there is a time to leave off.”
“To leave off what, to leave off what?”
“Having friends: or a friend, rather: or seeking to have one.”
“Oh, no! Not at all, my friend. Not at all! Only death can make an end of that, my friend. Only death. And I should say, not even death. Not even death ends a man’s search for a friend. That is my belief. You may hang me for it, but I shall never alter.”
“Nay,” said Lilly. “There is a time to love, and a time to leave off loving.”
“All I can say to that is that my time to leave off hasn’t come yet,” said Argyle, with obstinate feeling.
“Ah, yes, it has. It is only a habit and an idea you stick to.”
“Indeed, it is no such thing. Indeed, it is no such thing. It is a profound desire and necessity: and what is more, a belief.”
“An obstinate persistency, you mean,” said Lilly.
“Well, call it so if it pleases you. It is by no means so to me.” There was a brief pause. The sun had left the cathedral dome and the tower, the sky was full of light, the square swimming in shadow.
“But can a man live,” said the Marchese, “without having something he lives for: something he wishes for, or longs for, and tries that he may get?”
“Impossible! Completely impossible!” said Argyle. “Man is a seeker, and except as such, he has no significance, no importance.”
“He bores me with his seeking,” said Lilly. “He should learn to possess himself — to be himself — and keep still.”
“Ay, perhaps so,” said Aaron. “Only —”
“But my dear boy, believe me, a man is never himself save in the supreme state of love: or perhaps hate, too, which amounts to the same thing. Never really himself.— Apart from this he is a tram-driver or a money-shoveller or an idea-machine. Only in the state of love is he really a man, and really himself. I say so, because I know,” said Argyle.
“Ah, yes. That is one side of the truth. It is quite true, also. But it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself, than in the supreme state of love. Never less himself, than then.”
“Maybe! Maybe! But what could be better? What could be better than to lose oneself with someone you love, entirely, and so find yourself. Ah, my dear fellow, that is my creed, that is my creed, and you can’t shake me in it. Never in that. Never in that.”
“Yes, Argyle,” said Lilly. “I know you’re an obstinate love-apostle.”
“I am! I am! And I have certain standards, my boy, and certain ideals which I never transgress. Never transgress. And never abandon.”
“All right, then, you are an incurable love-maker.”
“Pray God I am,” said Argyle.
“Yes,” said the Marchese. “Perhaps we are all so. What else do you give? Would you have us make money? Or do you give the centre of your spirit to your work? How is it to be?”
“I don’t vitally care either about money or my work or —” Lilly faltered.
“Or what, then?”
“Or anything. I don’t really care about anything. Except that —”
“You don’t care about anything? But what is that for a life?” cried the Marchese, with a hollow mockery.
“What do YOU care for?” asked Lilly.
“Me? I care for several things. I care for my wife. I care for love. And I care to be loved. And I care for some pleasures. And I care for music. And I care for Italy.”
“You are well off for cares,” said Lilly.
“And you seem to me so very poor,” said Del Torre.
“I should say so — if he cares for nothing,” interjaculated Argyle. Then he clapped Lilly on the shoulder with a laugh. “Ha! Ha! Ha!— But he only says it to tease us,” he cried, shaking Lilly’s shoulder. “He cares more than we do for his own way of loving. Come along, don’t try and take us in. We are old birds, old birds,” said Argyle. But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering.
“A man can’t live,” said the Italian, “without an object.”
“Well — and that object?” said Lilly.
“Well — it may be many things. Mostly it is two things.— love, and money. But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art — many things. But it is some objective. Something outside the self. Perhaps many things outside the self.”
“I have had only one objective all my life,” said Argyle. “And that was love. For that I have spent my life.”
“And the lives of a number of other people, too,” said Lilly.
“Admitted. Oh, admitted. It takes two to make love: unless you’re a miserable —”
“Don’t you think,” said Aaron, turning to Lilly, “that however you try to get away from it, if you’re not after money, and can’t fit yourself into a job — you’ve got to, you’ve got to try and find something else — somebody else — somebody. You can’t really be alone.”
“No matter how many mistakes you’ve made — you can’t really be alone —?” asked Lilly.
“You can be alone for a minute. You can be alone just in that minute when you’ve broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone, because the other thing wasn’t to be borne. But you can’t keep on being alone. No matter how many tunes you’ve broken free, and feel, thank God to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh air and be alone), no matter how many times you’ve felt this — it wears off every time, and you begin to look again — and you begin to roam round. And even if you won’t admit it to yourself, still you are seeking — seeking. Aren’t you? Aren’t you yourself seeking?”
“Oh, that’s another matter,” put in Argyle. “Lilly is happily married and on the shelf. With such a fine woman as Tanny I should think so — RATHER! But his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case. As for me, I made a hell of my marriage, and I swear it nearly sent me to hell. But I didn’t forswear love, when I forswore marriage and woman. Not by ANY means.”
“Are you not seeking any more, Lilly?” asked the Marchese. “Do you seek nothing?”
“We married men who haven’t left our wives, are we supposed to seek anything?” said Lilly. “Aren’t we perfectly satisfied and in bliss with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?”
“Ah, yes, yes!” said the Marchese. “But now we are not speaking to the world. Now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre of our hearts.”
“And what have we there?” said Lilly.
“Well — shall I say? We have unrest. We have another need. We have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. Do I speak the truth?”
“Yes. But what is the something?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. But it is something in love, I think. It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer,” said the Italian.
“But why should it? Is that the nature of love?” said Lilly.
“I don’t know. Truly. I don’t know.— But perhaps it is in the nature of love — I don’t know.— But I tell you, I love my, wife — she is very dear to me. I admire her, I trust her, I believe her. She is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother.— And so, I am very happy. I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage.— But wait. Nothing has changed — the love has not changed: it is the same.— And yet we are NOT happy. No, we are not happy. I know she is not happy, I know I am not —”
“Why should you be?” said Lilly.
“Yes — and it is not even happiness,” said the Marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. “It is not even happiness. No, I do not ask to be happy. Why should I? It is childish — but there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don’t know where. But it drives us, and eats away the life — and yet we love each other, and we must not separate — Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me at all in what I say? I speak what is true.”
“Yes, I understand. I’m in the same dilemma myself.— But what I want to hear, is WHY you think it is so. Why is it?”
“Shall I say what I think? Yes? And you can tell me if it is foolish to you.— Shall I tell you? Well. Because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. Do you understand?— You know — supposing I go to a woman — supposing she is my wife — and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well. I do not feel like it. She puts me off — till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am — but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and I don’t want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me — till she rouses me once more. So, and so she rouses me — and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good, very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.— I do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. She will yield to me — because I insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? It is something worse than nothing — worse than nothing. And so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.— If I say to her, she says it is not true — not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know —”
The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly’s face.
“But does it matter?” said Lilly slowly, “in which of you the desire initiates? Isn’t the result the same?”
“It matters. It matters —” cried the Marchese.
“Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters —” interrupted Argyle sagely.
“Ay!” said Aaron.
The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.
“It matters!” he cried. “It matters life or death. It used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman’s desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a woman’s head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. This is Eve. Ah, I hate Eve. I hate her, when she knows, and when she WILLS. I hate her when she will make of me that which serves her desire.— She may love me, she may be soft and kind to me, she may give her life for me. But why? Only because I am HERS. I am that thing which does her most intimate service. She can see no other in me. And I may be no other to her —”
“Then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?” said Lilly.
“Because I cannot. I cannot. I would. But I cannot. The Borghesia — the citizens — the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can. Oh, yes. The bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and their wives love them. They are the marital maquereaux — the husband- maquereau, you know. Their wives are so stout and happy, and they dote on their husbands and always betray them. So it is with the bourgeoise. She loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to betray him. Or she is a Madame Bovary, seeking for a scandal. But the bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same. He is the horse, and she the driver. And when she says gee-up, you know — then he comes ready, like a hired maquereau. Only he feels so good, like a good little boy at her breast. And then there are the nice little children. And so they keep the world going.— But for me —” he spat suddenly and with frenzy on the floor.
“You are quite right, my boy,” said Argyle. “You are quite right. They’ve got the start of us, the women: and we’ve got to canter when they say gee-up. I— oh, I went through it all. But I broke the shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, I can tell you, and I didn’t care whether I smashed her up along with it or not. I didn’t care one single bit, I assure you.— And here I am. And she is dead and buried these dozen years. Well — well! Life, you know, life. And women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of you. There’s NOTHING they won’t do to you, once they’ve got you. Nothing they won’t do to you. Especially if they love you. Then you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and her in it. Otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose. And you’ll submit. Oh, you’ll submit, and go on calling her my darling. Or else, if you won’t submit, she’ll do for you. Your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. Or she’ll do for you. For a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength — she’s a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she’s got the start of you. Oh, it’s a terrible experience, if you’re not a bourgeois, and not one of the knuckling-under money-making sort.”
“Knuckling-under sort. Yes. That is it,” said the Marchese.
“But can’t there be a balancing of wills?” said Lilly.
“My dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the other goes down. One acts, the other takes. It is the only way in love — And the women are nowadays the active party. Oh, yes, not a shadow of doubt about it. They take the initiative, and the man plays up. That’s how it is. The man just plays up.— Nice manly proceeding, what!” cried Argyle.
“But why can’t man accept it as the natural order of things?” said Lilly. “Science makes it the natural order.”
“All my —- to science,” said Argyle. “No man with one drop of real spunk in him can stand it long.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” cried the Italian. “Most men want it so. Most men want only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up to her when she has roused them. Most men want only this: that a woman shall choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and come up when she shall provoke him. Otherwise he is to keep still. And the woman, she is quite sure of her part. She must be loved and adored, and above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire. There she must not be thwarted, or she becomes a devil. And if she is obeyed, she becomes a misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round for the next man whom she can bring under. So it is.”
“Well,” said Lilly. “And then what?”
“Nay,” interrupted Aaron. “But do you think it’s true what he says? Have you found it like that? You’re married. Has your experience been different, or the same?”
“What was yours?” asked Lilly.
“Mine was the same. Mine was the same, if ever it was,” said Aaron.
“And mine was EXTREMELY similar,” said Argyle with a grimace.
“And yours, Lilly?” asked the Marchese anxiously.
“Not very different,” said Lilly.
“Ah!” cried Del Torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something.
“And what’s your way out?” Aaron asked him.
“I’m not out — so I won’t holloa,” said Lilly. “But Del Torre puts it best.— What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?”
“The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker and the woman the answerer. It must change.”
“But it doesn’t. Prrr!” Argyle made his trumpeting noise.
“Does it?” asked Lilly of the Marchese.
“No. I think it does not.”
“And will it ever again?”
“Perhaps never.”
“And then what?”
“Then? Why then man seeks a pis-aller . Then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will.— So he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. He thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes.— But in this, too, he is mistaken. Because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man.”
“And so young girls are no good, even as a pis-aller .”
“No good — because they are all modern women. Every one, a modern woman. Not one who isn’t.”
“Terrible thing, the modern woman,” put in Argyle.
“And then —?”
“Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love. — But it is all pis-aller , you know.”
“Not by any means, my boy,” cried Argyle.
“And then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not bearable to love her.”
“Or one leaves her, like Aaron,” said Lilly.
“And seeks another woman, so,” said the Marchese.
“Does he seek another woman?” said Lilly. “Do you, Aaron?”
“I don’t WANT to,” said Aaron. “But — I can’t stand by myself in the middle of the world and in the middle of people, and know I am quite by myself, and nowhere to go, and nothing to hold on to. I can for a day or two — But then, it becomes unbearable as well. You get frightened. You feel you might go funny — as you would if you stood on this balcony wall with all the space beneath you.”
“Can’t one be alone — quite alone?” said Lilly.
“But no — it is absurd. Like Saint Simeon Stylites on a pillar. But it is absurd!” cried the Italian.
“I don’t mean like Simeon Stylites. I mean can’t one live with one’s wife, and be fond of her: and with one’s friends, and enjoy their company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet KNOW that one is alone? Essentially, at the very core of me, alone. Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or LONELY. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one’s own nature one is alone. The being with another person is secondary,” said Lilly.
“One is alone,” said Argyle, “in all but love. In all but love, my dear fellow. And then I agree with you.”
“No,” said Lilly, “in love most intensely of all, alone.”
“Completely incomprehensible,” said Argyle. “Amounts to nothing.”
“One man is but a part. How can he be so alone?” said the Marchese.
“In so far as he is a single individual soul, he IS alone — ipso facto. In so far as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, in so far, I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self- knowledge.”
“My dear boy, you are becoming metaphysical, and that is as bad as softening of the brain,” said Argyle.
“All right,” said Lilly.
“And,” said the Marchese, “it may be so by REASON. But in the heart —? Can the heart ever beat quite alone? Plop! Plop!— Can the heart beat quite alone, alone in all the atmosphere, all the space of the universe? Plop! Plop! Plop!— Quite alone in all the space?” A slow smile came over the Italian’s face. “It is impossible. It may eat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against the others. It may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent. But this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone.— But either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of someone, mother, wife, friend, children — so must the heart of every man beat. It is so.”
“It beats alone in its own silence,” said Lilly.
The Italian shook his head.
“We’d better be going inside, anyhow,” said Argyle. “Some of you will be taking cold.”
“Aaron,” said Lilly. “Is it true for you?”
“Nearly,” said Aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet frightening eyes of the other man. “Or it has been.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” laughed Lilly, rising and picking up his chair to take it indoors. And the laughter of his voice was so like a simple, deliberate amiability, that Aaron’s heart really stood still for a second. He knew that Lilly was alone — as far as he, Aaron, was concerned. Lilly was alone — and out of his isolation came his words, indifferent as to whether they came or not. And he left his friends utterly to their own choice. Utterly to their own choice. Aaron felt that Lilly was there , existing in life, yet neither asking for connection nor preventing any connection. He was present, he was the real centre of the group. And yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing. He left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself: neither more nor less. And there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating. Aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man’s placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver’s hands. Lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality. Neither would he violently refuse it. He let it lie unmarked. And yet at the same time Aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself — so long as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of Lilly’s soul. But this condition was also hateful. And there was also a great fascination in it.
So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi. He was quite startled when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. She seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. It was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms. Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires. Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. She was most carefully made up — yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron. He thought her wonderful, and sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.
She must have seen his face, seen that he was ebloui .
“You brought the flute?” she said, in that toneless, melancholy, unstriving voice of hers. Her voice alone was the same: direct and bare and quiet.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you’ll accompany me. Will you?”
“I thought you hated accompaniments.”
“Oh, no — not just unison. I don’t mean accompaniment. I mean unison. I don’t know how it will be. But will you try?”
“Yes, I’ll try.”
“Manfredi is just bringing the cocktails. Do you think you’d prefer orange in yours?”
“Ill have mine as you have yours.”
“I don’t take orange in mine. Won’t you smoke?”
The strange, naked, remote-seeming voice! And then the beautiful firm limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust. Her beautiful woman’s legs, slightly glistening, duskily. His one abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them. He had never known a woman to exercise such power over him. It was a bare, occult force, something he could not cope with.
Manfredi came in with the little tray. He was still in uniform.
“Hello!” cried the little Italian. “Glad to see you — well, everything all right? Glad to hear it. How is the cocktail, Nan?”
“Yes,” she said. “All right.”
“One drop too much peach, eh?”
“No, all right.”
“Ah,” and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered legs as if gaily. He had a curious smiling look on his face, that Aaron thought also diabolical — and almost handsome. Suddenly the odd, laughing, satanic beauty of the little man was visible.
“Well, and what have you been doing with yourself?” said he. “What did you do yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” said Aaron. “I went to the Uffizi.”
“To the Uffizi? Well! And what did you think of it?”
“Very fine.”
“I think it is. I think it is. What pictures did you look at?”
“I was with Dekker. We looked at most, I believe.”
“And what do you remember best?”
“I remember Botticelli’s Venus on the Shell.”
“Yes! Yes!—” said Manfredi. “I like her. But I like others better. You thought her a pretty woman, yes?”
“No — not particularly pretty. But I like her body. And I like the fresh air. I like the fresh air, the summer sea-air all through it — through her as well.”
“And her face?” asked the Marchesa, with a slow, ironic smile.
“Yes — she’s a bit baby-faced,” said Aaron.
“Trying to be more innocent than her own common-sense will let her,” said the Marchesa.
“I don’t agree with you, Nan,” said her husband. “I think it is just that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true Venus: the true modern Venus. She chooses NOT to know too much. And that is her attraction. Don’t you agree, Aaron? Excuse me, but everybody speaks of you as Aaron. It seems to come naturally. Most people speak of me as Manfredi, too, because it is easier, perhaps, than Del Torre. So if you find it easier, use it. Do you mind that I call you Aaron?”
“Not at all. I hate Misters, always.”
“Yes, so do I. I like one name only.”
The little officer seemed very winning and delightful to Aaron this evening — and Aaron began to like him extremely. But the dominating consciousness in the room was the woman’s.
“DO you agree, Mr. Sisson?” said the Marchesa. “Do you agree that the mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of Botticelli’s Venus are her great charms?”
“I don’t think she is at all charming, as a person,” said Aaron. “As a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all. But as a picture — and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air. She doesn’t seem so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning- feelings at the seaside.”
“Quite! A sort of sea-scape of a woman. With a perfectly sham innocence. Are you as keen on innocence as Manfredi is?”
“Innocence?” said Aaron. “It’s the sort of thing I don’t have much feeling about.”
“Ah, I know you,” laughed the soldier wickedly. “You are the sort of man who wants to be Anthony to Cleopatra. Ha-ha!”
Aaron winced as if struck. Then he too smiled, flattered. Yet he felt he had been struck! Did he want to be Anthony to Cleopatra? Without knowing, he was watching the Marchesa. And she was looking away, but knew he was watching her. And at last she turned her eyes to his, with a slow, dark smile, full of pain and fuller still of knowledge. A strange, dark, silent look of knowledge she gave him: from so far away, it seemed. And he felt all the bonds that held him melting away. His eyes remained fixed and gloomy, but with his mouth he smiled back at her. And he was terrified. He knew he was sulking towards her — sulking towards her. And he was terrified. But at the back of his mind, also, he knew there was Lilly, whom he might depend on. And also he wanted to sink towards her. The flesh and blood of him simply melted out, in desire towards her. Cost what may, he must come to her. And yet he knew at the same time that, cost what may, he must keep the power to recover himself from her. He must have his cake and eat it.
And she became Cleopatra to him. “Age cannot wither, nor custom stale —” To his instinctive, unwilled fancy, she was Cleopatra.
They went in to dinner, and he sat on her right hand. It was a smallish table, with a very few daisy-flowers: everything rather frail, and sparse. The food the same — nothing very heavy, all rather exquisite. They drank hock. And he was aware of her beautiful arms, and her bosom; her low-crowded, thick hair, parted in the centre: the sapphires on her throat, the heavy rings on her fingers: and the paint on her lips, the fard. Something deep, deep at the bottom of him hovered upon her, cleaved to her. Yet he was as if sightless, in a stupor. Who was she, what was she? He had lost all his grasp. Only he sat there, with his face turned to hers, or to her, all the time. And she talked to him. But she never looked at him.
Indeed she said little. It was the husband who talked. His manner towards Aaron was almost caressive. And Aaron liked it. The woman was silent mostly, and seemed remote. And Aaron felt his life ebb towards her. He felt the marvellousness, the rich beauty of her arms and breast. And the thought of her gold-dusted smooth limbs beneath the table made him feel almost an idiot.
The second wine was a gold-coloured Moselle, very soft and rich and beautiful. She drank this with pleasure, as one who understands. And for dessert there was a dish of cacchi — that orange-coloured, pulpy Japanese fruit — persimmons. Aaron had never eaten these before. Soft, almost slimy, of a wonderful colour, and of a flavour that had sunk from harsh astringency down to that first decay-sweetness which is all autumn-rich. The Marchese loved them, and scooped them out with his spoon. But she ate none.
Aaron did not know what they talked about, what was said. If someone had taken his mind away altogether, and left him with nothing but a body and a spinal consciousness, it would have been the same.
But at coffee the talk turned to Manfredi’s duties. He would not be free from the army for some time yet. On the morrow, for example, he had to be out and away before it was day. He said he hated it, and wanted to be a free man once more. But it seemed to Aaron he would be a very bored man, once he was free. And then they drifted on to talk of the palazzo in which was their apartment.
“We’ve got such a fine terrace — you can see it from your house where you are,” said Manfredi. “Have you noticed it?”
“No,” said Aaron.
“Near that tuft of palm-trees. Don’t you know?”
“No,” said Aaron.
“Let us go out and show it him,” said the Marchesa.
Manfredi fetched her a cloak, and they went through various doors, then up some steps. The terrace was broad and open. It looked straight across the river at the opposite Lungarno: and there was the thin-necked tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the great dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees.
“You see,” said the Marchesa, coming and standing close to Aaron, so that she just touched him, “you can know the terrace, just by these palm trees. And you are in the Nardini just across there, are you? On the top floor, you said?”
“Yes, the top floor — one of the middle windows, I think.”
“One that is always open now — and the others are shut. I have noticed it, not connecting it with you.”
“Yes, my window is always open.”
She was leaning very slightly against him, as he stood. And he knew, with the same kind of inevitability with which he knew he would one day die, that he would be the lover of this woman. Nay, that he was her lover already.
“Don’t take cold,” said Manfredi.
She turned at once indoors. Aaron caught a faint whiff of perfume from the little orange trees in tubs round the wall.
“Will you get the flute?” she said as they entered.
“And will you sing?” he answered.
“Play first,” she said.
He did as she wished. As the other night, he went into the big music- room to play. And the stream of sound came out with the quick wild imperiousness of the pipe. It had an immediate effect on her. She seemed to relax the peculiar, drug-like tension which was upon her at all ordinary times. She seemed to go still, and yielding. Her red mouth looked as if it might moan with relief. She sat with her chin dropped on her breast, listening. And she did not move. But she sat softly, breathing rather quick, like one who has been hurt, and is soothed. A certain womanly naturalness seemed to soften her.
And the music of the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call- note, or like a long quick message, half command. To her it was like a pure male voice — as a blackbird’s when he calls: a pure male voice, not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something, and soothing her soul to sleep. It was like the fire-music putting Brunnhilde to sleep. But the pipe did not flicker and sink. It seemed to cause a natural relaxation in her soul, a peace. Perhaps it was more like waking to a sweet, morning awakening, after a night of tormented, painful tense sleep. Perhaps more like that.
When Aaron came in, she looked at him with a gentle, fresh smile that seemed to make the fard on her face look like a curious tiredness, which now she might recover from. And as the last time, it was difficult for her to identify this man with the voice of the flute. It was rather difficult. Except that, perhaps, between his brows was something of a doubt, and in his bearing an aloofness that made her dread he might go away and not come back. She could see it in him, that he might go away and not come back.
She said nothing to him, only just smiled. And the look of knowledge in her eyes seemed, for the moment, to be contained in another look: a look of faith, and at last happiness. Aaron’s heart stood still. No, in her moment’s mood of faith and at last peace, life-trust, he was perhaps more terrified of her than in her previous sinister elegance. His spirit started and shrank. What was she going to ask of him?
“I am so anxious that you should come to play one Saturday morning,” said Manfredi. “With an accompaniment, you know. I should like so much to hear you with piano accompaniment.”
“Very well,” said Aaron.
“Will you really come? And will you practise with me, so that I can accompany you?” said Manfredi eagerly.
“Yes. I will,” said Aaron.
“Oh, good! Oh, good! Look here, come in on Friday morning and let us both look through the music.”
“If Mr. Sisson plays for the public,” said the Marchesa, “he must not do it for charity. He must have the proper fee.”
“No, I don’t want it,” said Aaron.
“But you must earn money, mustn’t you?” said she.
“I must,” said Aaron. “But I can do it somewhere else.”
“No. If you play for the public, you must have your earnings. When you play for me, it is different.”
“Of course,” said Manfredi. “Every man must have his wage. I have mine from the Italian government —-”
After a while, Aaron asked the Marchesa if she would sing.
“Shall I?” she said.
“Yes, do.”
“Then I will sing alone first, to let you see what you think of it — I shall be like Trilby — I won’t say like Yvette Guilbert, because I daren’t. So I will be like Trilby, and sing a little French song. Though not Malbrouck, and without a Svengali to keep me in tune.”
She went near the door, and stood with heir hands by her side. There was something wistful, almost pathetic now, in her elegance.
“Derriere chez mon pere
Vole vole mon coeur, vole !
Derriere chez mon pere
Il y a un pommier doux.
Tout doux, et iou
Et iou, tout doux.
Il y a unpommier doux .
Trois belles princesses
Vole vole mon coeur, vole !
Trois belles princesses
Sont assis dessous.
Tout doux, et iou
Et iou, tout doux.
Sont asses dessous. ”
She had a beautiful, strong, sweet voice. But it was faltering, stumbling and sometimes it seemed to drop almost to speech. After three verses she faltered to an end, bitterly chagrined.
“No,” she said. “It’s no good. I can’t sing.” And she dropped in her chair.
“A lovely little tune,” said Aaron. “Haven’t you got the music?”
She rose, not answering, and found him a little book.
“What do the words mean?” he asked her.
She told him. And then he took his flute.
“You don’t mind if I play it, do you?” he said.
So he played the tune. It was so simple. And he seemed to catch the lilt and the timbre of her voice.
“Come and sing it while I play —” he said.
“I can’t sing,” she said, shaking her head rather bitterly.
“But let us try,” said he, disappointed.
“I know I can’t,” she said. But she rose.
He remained sitting at the little table, the book propped up under the reading lamp. She stood at a little distance, unhappy.
“I’ve always been like that,” she said. “I could never sing music, unless I had a thing drilled into me, and then it wasn’t singing any more.”
But Aaron wasn’t heeding. His flute was at his mouth, he was watching her. He sounded the note, but she did not begin. She was twisting her handkerchief. So he played the melody alone. At the end of the verse, he looked up at her again, and a half mocking smile played in his eyes. Again he sounded the note, a challenge. And this time, as at his bidding, she began to sing. The flute instantly swung with a lovely soft firmness into the song, and she wavered only for a minute or two. Then her soul and her voice got free, and she sang — she sang as she wanted to sing, as she had always wanted to sing, without that awful scotch, that impediment inside her own soul, which prevented her.
She sang free, with the flute gliding along with her. And oh, how beautiful it was for her! How beautiful it was to sing the little song in the sweetness of her own spirit. How sweet it was to move pure and unhampered at last in the music! The lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! She wasn’t aware of the flute. She didn’t know there was anything except her own pure lovely song- drift. Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings. For the first time! For the first time her soul drew its own deep breath. All her life, the breath had caught half-way. And now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest extent of her being.
And oh, it was so wonderful, she was dazed. The song ended, she stood with a dazed, happy face, like one just coming awake. And the fard on her face seemed like the old night-crust, the bad sleep. New and luminous she looked out. And she looked at Aaron with a proud smile.
“Bravo, Nan! That was what you wanted,” said her husband.
“It was, wasn’t it?” she said, turning a wondering, glowing face to him.
His face looked strange and withered and gnome-like, at the moment.
She went and sat in her chair, quite silent, as if in a trance. The two men also sat quite still. And in the silence a little drama played itself between the three, of which they knew definitely nothing. But Manfredi knew that Aaron had done what he himself never could do, for this woman. And yet the woman was his own woman, not Aaron’s. And so, he was displaced. Aaron, sitting there, glowed with a sort of triumph. He had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder- worker, to whom reverence was due. And as in a dream the woman sat, feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit. She was as a swan which never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could get up into the open, where alone it can sing. For swans, and storks make their music only when they are high, high up in the air. Then they can give sound to their strange spirits. And so, she.
Aaron and Manfredi kept their faces averted from one another and hardly spoke to one another. It was as if two invisible hands pushed their faces apart, away, averted. And Aaron’s face glimmered with a little triumph, and a little grimace of obstinacy. And the Italian’s face looked old, rather monkey-like, and of a deep, almost stone-bare bitterness. The woman looked wondering from one man to the other — wondering. The glimmer of the open flower, the wonder-look, still lasted. And Aaron said in his heart, what a goodly woman, what a woman to taste and enjoy. Ah, what a woman to enjoy! And was it not his privilege? Had he not gained it?
His manhood, or rather his maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort of mastery. He felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile title to strength and reward. Suddenly, and newly flushed with his own male super-power, he was going to have his reward. The woman was his reward. So it was, in him. And he cast it over in his mind. He wanted her — ha, didn’t he! But the husband sat there, like a soap- stone Chinese monkey, greyish-green. So, it would have to be another time.
He rose, therefore, and took his leave.
“But you’ll let us do that again, won’t you?” said she.
“When you tell me, I’ll come,” said he.
“Then I’ll tell you soon,” said she.
So he left, and went home to his own place, and there to his own remote room. As he laid his flute on the table he looked at it and smiled. He remembered that Lilly had called it Aaron’s Rod.
“So you blossom, do you?— and thorn as well,” said he.
For such a long time he had been gripped inside himself, and withheld. For such a long time it had been hard and unyielding, so hard and unyielding. He had wanted nothing, his desire had kept itself back, fast back. For such a long time his desire for woman had withheld itself, hard and resistant. All his deep, desirous blood had been locked, he had wanted nobody, and nothing. And it had been hard to live, so. Without desire, without any movement of passionate love, only gripped back in recoil! That was an experience to endure.
And now came his desire back. But strong, fierce as iron. Like the strength of an eagle with the lightning in its talons. Something to glory in, something overweening, the powerful male passion, arrogant, royal, Jove’s thunderbolt. Aaron’s black rod of power, blossoming again with red Florentine lilies and fierce thorns. He moved about in the splendour of his own male lightning, invested in the thunder of the male passion-power. He had got it back, the male godliness, the male godhead.
So he slept, and dreamed violent dreams of strange, black strife, something like the street-riot in Milan, but more terrible. In the morning, however, he cared nothing about his dreams. As soon as it was really light, he rose, and opened his window wide. It was a grey, slow morning. But he saw neither the morning nor the river nor the woman walking on the gravel river-bed with her goose nor the green hill up to San Miniato. He watched the tuft of palm-trees, and the terrace beside it. He could just distinguish the terrace clearly, among the green of foliage. So he stood at his window for a full hour, and did not move. Motionless, planted, he stood and watched that terrace across above the Arno. But like a statue.
After an hour or so, he looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. So he rang for his coffee, and meanwhile still stood watching the terrace on the hill. He felt his turn had come. The phoenix had risen in fire again, out of the ashes.
Therefore at ten o’clock he went over the bridge. He wrote on the back of his card a request, would she please let him have the little book of songs, that he might practise them over. The manservant went, and came back with the request that Aaron should wait. So Aaron entered, while the man took his hat.
The manservant spoke only French and Spanish, no English. He was a Spaniard, with greyish hair and stooping shoulders, and dark, mute- seeming eyes. He spoke as little as possible. The Marchesa had inherited him from her father.
Aaron sat in the little sitting-room and waited. After a rather long time the Marchesa came in — wearing a white, thin blouse and a blue skirt. She was hardly made up at all. She had an odd pleased, yet brooding look on her face as she gave Aaron her hand. Something brooded between her brows. And her voice was strange, with a strange, secret undertone, that he could not understand. He looked up at her. And his face was bright, and his knees, as he sat, were like the knees of the gods.
“You wanted the book of chansons ?” she said.
“I wanted to learn your tunes,” he replied.
“Yes. Look — here it is!” And she brought him the little yellow book. It was just a hand-book, with melody and words only, no accompaniment. So she stood offering him the book, but waiting as if for something else, and standing as if with another meaning.
He opened the leaves at random.
“But I ought to know which ones you sing,” said he, rising and standing by her side with the open book.
“Yes,” she said, looking over his arm. He turned the pages one by one. “Trois jeunes tambours ,” said she. “Yes, that. . . . Yes, En passant par la Lorraine . . . . Aupres de ma blonde . . . . Oh, I like that one so much —” He stood and went over the tune in his mind.
“Would you like me to play it?” he said.
“Very much,” said she.
So he got his flute, propped up the book against a vase, and played the tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily. But as he played, he felt that he did not cast the spell over her. There was no connection. She was in some mysterious way withstanding him. She was withstanding him, and his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire. She was, in some indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly risen from the ashes of its nest in flames.
He realised that she did not want him to play. She did not want him to look at the songs. So he put the book away, and turned round, rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was withstanding him. He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it. He could not understand it. What was it in her face that puzzled him? Almost angered him? But she could not rob him of his male power, she could not divest him of his concentrated force.
“Won’t you take off your coat?” she said, looking at him with strange, large dark eyes. A strange woman, he could not understand her. Yet, as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at his limbs, his physical body. And this went against him, he did not want it. Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body. And such desire he would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted. It was his will also. Her whole soft white body — to possess it in its entirety, its fulness.
“What have you to do this morning?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “Have you?” He lifted his head and looked at her.
“Nothing at all,” said she.
And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he looked at her.
“Shall we be lovers?” he said.
She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck heavily, but he did not relax.
“Shall we be lovers?” came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony.
Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it.
“Yes,” said she, still not looking at him. “If you wish.”
“I do wish,” he said. And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her face, and she sat with her face averted.
“Now?” he said. “And where?”
Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself. Then she looked at him — a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible, and which he did not like.
“You don’t want emotions? You don’t want me to say things, do you?” he said.
A faint ironic smile came on her face.
“I know what all that is worth,” she said, with curious calm equanimity. “No, I want none of that.”
“Then —?”
But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes. It annoyed him.
“What do you want to see in me?” he asked, with a smile, looking steadily back again.
And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky colour came in her cheek. He waited.
“Shall I go away?” he said at length.
“Would you rather?” she said, keeping her face averted.
“No,” he said.
Then again she was silent.
“Where shall I come to you?” he said.
She paused a moment still, then answered:
“I’ll go to my room.”
“I don’t know which it is,” he said.
“I’ll show it you,” she said.
“And then I shall come to you in ten minutes. In ten minutes,” he reiterated.
So she rose, and led the way out of the little salon. He walked with her to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at him, holding the door handle; and then he turned and went back to the drawing-room, glancing at his watch.
In the drawing-room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and waited. He stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite motionless, planted and firm. So the minutes went by unheeded. He looked at his watch. The ten minutes were just up. He had heard footsteps and doors. So he decided to give her another five minutes. He wished to be quite sure that she had had her own time for her own movements.
Then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room, entered, and locked the door behind him. She was lying in bed, with her back to him.
He found her strange, not as he had imagined her. Not powerful, as he had imagined her. Strange, in his arms she seemed almost small and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman. Strange, the naked way she clung to him! Almost like a sister, a younger sister! Or like a child! It filled him with a curious wonder, almost a bewilderment. In the dark sightlessness of passion, she seemed almost like a clinging child in his arms. And yet like a child who in some deep and essential way mocked him. In some strange and incomprehensible way, as a girl-child blindly obstinate in her deepest nature, she was against him. He felt she was not his woman. Through him went the feeling, “This is not my woman.”
When, after a long sleep, he awoke and came fully to himself, with that click of awakeness which is the end, the first shades were closing on the afternoon. He got up and reached for his watch.
“Quarter past four,” he said.
Her eyes stretched wide with surprise as she looked at him. But she said nothing. The same strange and wide, perhaps insatiable child- like curiosity was in her eyes as she watched him. He dressed very quickly. And her eyes were wide, and she said no single word.
But when he was dressed, and bent over her to say goodbye, she put her arms round him, that seemed such frail and childish arms now, yet withal so deadly in power. Her soft arms round his neck, her tangle of hair over his face. And yet, even as he kissed her, he felt her deadly. He wanted to be gone. He wanted to get out of her arms and her clinging and her tangle of hair and her curiosity and her strange and hateful power.
“You’ll come again. We’ll be like this again?” she whispered.
And it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea at Algy’s.
“Yes! I will! Goodbye now!” And he kissed her, and walked straight out of the room. Quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and left the house. In his nostrils was still the scent with which the bed linen was faintly scented — he did not know what it was. But now he wiped his face and his mouth, to wipe it away.
He had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry, faint- feeling. And his face, and his mind, felt withered. Curiously he felt blasted as if blighted by some electricity. And he knew, he knew quite well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural faculties. And in his male spirit he felt himself hating her: hating her deeply, damnably. But he said to himself: “No, I won’t hate her. I won’t hate her.”
So he went on, over the Ponte Vecchio, where the jeweller’s windows on the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town. He wanted to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where one could stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami sandwiches, and drink Marsala. So one after the other he ate little truffle rolls, and drank a few glasses of Marsala. And then he did not know what to do. He did not want to eat any more, he had had what he wanted. His hunger had been more nervous than sensual.
So he went into the street. It was just growing dark and the town was lighting up. He felt curiously blazed, as if some flame or electric power had gone through him and withered his vital tissue. Blazed, as if some kind of electric flame had run over him and withered him. His brain felt withered, his mind had only one of its many-sighted eyes left open and unscorched. So many of the eyes of his mind were scorched now and sightless.
Yet a restlessness was in his nerves. What should he do? He remembered he had a letter in his pocket from Sir William Franks. Sir William had still teased him about his fate and his providence, in which he, Aaron, was supposed to trust. “I shall be very glad to hear from you, and to know how your benevolent Providence — or was yours a Fate — has treated you since we saw you —-”
So, Aaron turned away, and walked to the post office. There he took paper, and sat down at one of the tables in the writing room, and wrote his answer. It was very strange, writing thus when most of his mind’s eyes were scorched, and it seemed he could hardly see to hold the pen, to drive it straight across the paper. Yet write he must. And most of his faculties being quenched or blasted for the moment, he wrote perhaps his greatest, or his innermost, truth.—“I don’t want my Fate or my Providence to treat me well. I don’t want kindness or love. I don’t believe in harmony and people loving one another. I believe in the fight and in nothing else. I believe in the fight which is in everything. And if it is a question of women, I believe in the fight of love, even if it blinds me. And if it is a question of the world, I believe in fighting it and in having it hate me, even if it breaks my legs. I want the world to hate me, because I can’t bear the thought that it might love me. For of all things love is the most deadly to me, and especially from such a repulsive world as I think this is. . . .”
Well, here was a letter for a poor old man to receive. But, in the dryness of his withered mind, Aaron got it out of himself. When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else. Perhaps the same is true of a book.
His letter written, however, he stamped it and sealed it and put it in the box. That made it final. Then he turned towards home. One fact remained unbroken in the debris of his consciousness: that in the town was Lilly: and that when he needed, he could go to Lilly: also, that in the world was Lottie, his wife: and that against Lottie, his heart burned with a deep, deep, almost unreachable bitterness.— Like a deep burn on his deepest soul, Lottie. And like a fate which he resented, yet which steadied him, Lilly.
He went home and lay on his bed. He had enough self-command to hear the gong and go down to dinner. White and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner. And then, thank God, he could go to bed, alone, in his own cold bed, alone, thank God. To be alone in the night! For this he was unspeakably thankful.