“Yes, I daresay there’s something in that. It seems sound. And yet if the original relationship is so secure and if the other affair is so slight and unimportant and merely physical, it seems unnecessary to hurt one’s love by speaking about it. I don’t tell you every day what I had for lunch. Besides, even if one spends only one night with another person that implies at least a one night’s preference which might hurt.”
“Which might hurt!” Elizabeth mocked. “George, you’re being positively old-fashioned. Why, when you go to Paris, isn’t that a preference? And when I go to Fanny’s cottage in the country for a week-end, isn’t that a preference? How do you know we’re not Sapphic friends?”
“I’m jolly sure you’re not! You’re neither of you in the least bit Lesbian types. Besides, you’d have told me.”
“You see! You know quite well I’d have told you.”
“Yes, but going to Paris or the country for a few days isn’t the same sort of ‘preference.’”
The argument tailed off in a futile attempt to define “preference.” Ultimately Elizabeth carried her point. It was definitely established that “nothing could break” a relationship such as theirs; but that “love itself must have rest” and therefore there was wisdom in occasional short separations; that so far from breaking up such a relationship occasional “slight affairs” elsewhere would only strengthen and stimulate it. George allowed himself to be convinced. The snag here lay in the fact that he had definitely sensed the possible danger of arousing jealousy, whereas Elizabeth, confident in herself and the theories of her Swedish old maid, scorned the idea that so base a passion could even enter their relation.
About two months after this George and Elizabeth were cheerfully dining in a small Soho restaurant when Fanny came in with a young man, the “young man from Cambridge,” Reggie Burnside.
“Oh, look!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “there’s Fanny and a friend with her. Fanny! Fanny!” signalling across the room. Fanny came across.
“This is George Winterbourne. You’ve often heard of Fanny, George. I say, Fanny, do come and have dinner with us.”
“Yes, do.”
“But I’ve got Reggie Burnside with me.”
“Well, bring him along too.”
The young man was introduced, and they sat down at the table. In most respects Fanny was curiously different from Elizabeth; each was not so much the antithesis as the complement to the other. Fanny was just a little taller than Elizabeth (George disliked short women), and where Elizabeth was dark and Egyptian-looking and pale, Fanny was golden and English (not chocolate-box English) and most delicate white and red. She was a bit like Priscilla, George thought, but with the soft gold of Priscilla made hard and glittering like an exquisite metallic flower. There was something both gem-like and flower-like in Fanny. Perhaps that was due to her eyes. With other women you are conscious almost immediately of all sorts of beauties and defects, but with Fanny you were instantaneously absorbed by the eyes. When you thought about her afterwards, you just saw a mental image of those extraordinary blue eyes, disassociated from the rest of her, like an Edgar Poe vision. But unlike so many vivid blue eyes, they were gem-like rather than flower-like; they were not soft nor stupid nor sentimental nor languid, but clear, alert and rather hard. You may see exactly their shade of colour in the deeper parts of Lake Garda on a sunny day. Yet the quality was not aqueous, but vitreous. Venetian glass, perhaps? No, that is too opaque. It is very hard to say what was the quality which made them so remarkable. Men looked at them once and fell helplessly in love, one might say almost noisily in love—Fanny didn’t mind, it was obviously her métier to have men fall in love with her. Perhaps Fanny’s eyes were simply made a symbol in the imagination of that mysterious sexual attraction which radiated from her, or perhaps they conformed to some unwritten but instinctively recognized canon of the perfect eye, the Platonic “idea” of eyes....
With Elizabeth you saw not the eyes alone, but the whole head. You would have liked to keep Fanny’s eyes, magnificently set in gold, in an open jewel-casket, to look at when you doubted whether any beauty remained in the dull world. But with Elizabeth you wanted the whole head, it was so much like one of those small stone heads of Egyptian princesses in the Louvre. So very Egyptian. The full delicately-moulded lips, the high cheek-bones, the slightly oblique eye-sockets, the magnificent line from ear to chin, the upward sweep of the wide brow, the straight black hair. Oddly enough, on analysis Elizabeth’s eyes proved to be quite as beautiful as Fanny’s, but somehow less ostentatiously lovely. They were deeper and softer, and which is rare in dark eyes, intelligent. Fanny’s blue eyes were intelligent enough, but they hadn’t quite the subtle depths of Elizabeth’s, they hadn’t the same reserve.
Elizabeth lived very much in and on herself; Fanny was a whole-hearted extravert. Where Elizabeth hesitated, mused, suffered, Fanny acted, came a cropper, picked herself up gaily and started off again with just the same zest for experience. She was more smartly dressed than Elizabeth. Of course, Elizabeth was always quite charming and attractive, but you guessed that she had other things to think about beside clothes. Fanny loved clothes, and with no more money than Elizabeth, contrived to look stunningly fashionable where Elizabeth merely looked O. K. Oddly enough, Fanny was not devoured by the Scylla of clothes, the monster of millinery which is never satiate with its female victims. Her energy saved her from that. She and Elizabeth were both restlessly energetic, but whereas Elizabeth’s energy went into dreaming and arguing and trying to paint, Fanny’s went into all sorts of activities with all sorts of persons. She did not “do” anything, having sense enough to see that in most young women, “art” is merely a kind of safety-valve for sex. Fanny, I’m glad to say, did not need a safety-valve for her sex; the steam-pressure was kept regulated and the engine worked perfectly, thank you very much. She was emotionally and mentally far less complicated than Elizabeth, less profound; therefore to her the new sexual régime, where perfect freedom has happily taken the place of service, presented fewer possible snags. I’ve said, of course, that Fanny sometimes came a cropper; she did, but she hadn’t Elizabeth’s capacity for suffering, Elizabeth’s desolate despair when her silk purse turned out to be a sow’s ear—which every one else had known long before.
Perhaps the remarkable quality of Elizabeth’s mind and character is best shown by the fact that she never said or implied anything mean or nasty about Fanny’s clothes....
Reggie Burnside was a rich young man engaged in some mysterious “research work” at Cambridge, something connected with the structure of the atom, and highly impressive because the nature of his work could only be explained in elaborate mathematical symbols. He wore spectacles, talked in a high intellectual voice with the peculiar intonation and blurred syllables favoured by some members of that great centre of learning, and appeared exceedingly weary. Even Fanny’s impetuous dash never galvanized him into a spontaneous action or a natural remark. He also was extremely modern, and was devoted to Fanny. He was always at hand when nothing better presented itself—the permanent second string to the fiddle, or, as Fanny put it, one of her fautes, adding sotto-voce, my faute-de-mieux.
The talk at first was the usual high-brow chatter of the period—Flecker and Brooke and Mr. Russell, referred to as “Bertie” in a casual way by Fanny and Reggie, to the mystification of George. This is one of the charming traits of the English intelligentsia. Every one they don’t know is an outsider, and they love to keep the outsider outside by a gently condescending patronage. A most effective method is to talk nonchalantly about well-known people by their Christian names:
“Have you read Johnny’s last book?”
“No-oh. Not yet. The last one was a dreadful bore. Is this any better?”
“No-oh, I don’t think so. Tommy dislikes it profoundly. Says it reminds him of sports on the village green.”
“How a-musing!”
“Oh, Tommy can be quite a-musing at times. I was with him and Bernard the other day, and Bernard said...”
And if the outsider is silly enough to bite, and to say timidly or bluntly: “Who’s Johnny?” the answer comes swift and sweet:
“O-oh! Don’t you know...!”
And then the dazzled outsider is condescendingly informed who “Johnny” is, and especially if a mere American or Continental, is crushed to learn that “Johnny” is Johnny Walker or some other enormously brilliant light in the firmament of British culture....
George got sick of hearing about “Bertie” without being told who the devil Bertie was, and began to talk about Ezra Pound, Jules Romains and Modigliani. But he soon learned by sweet implication that such people might be all very well in their way, but after all, well, you know what I mean, Cambridge is Cambridge.... So George shut up, and said nothing. Then Reggie began to talk to Elizabeth about Alpine climbing, the sport of Dons—and a very appropriate one too, if you think about it. And Fanny talked to George.
Now Fanny was quite a subtile little beast of the field, and saw that George was a bit sulky, and guessed why. Vapourish airs were indifferent to her. She had been brought up among such people, and unconsciously adopted their tone when speaking to them. But when she was among other sorts of people she just as unconsciously dropped the vapourish airs, and let her natural self respond to theirs. She had a foot, one might almost say a leg, in several social worlds; and got on perfectly well in any of them. There was a sort of physical indifference in Fanny which at first sight looked like mere hardness, and wasn’t. In fact, she wasn’t nearly as hard as Elizabeth, who could be quite Stonehenge-y at times. And then suddenly crumble. But Fanny’s physical indifference carried her through a lot; one felt that her morning bath had something Lethean about it, and washed away the memory of last night’s lover along with his touch.
So Fanny began to talk to George quite naturally and gaily. He was suspicious, and gave her three verbal bangs in quick succession. She took them with unflinching good humour, and went on talking and trying to find out what he was interested in. George pretty soon melted to her gaiety—or perhaps it was the gem-like eyes. He looked at them, and wondered what it felt like to possess natural organs which were such superb objets d’art. They must, he reflected, cause her a good deal of annoyance. Every man who met her would feel called upon to inform her that she had wonderful eyes, as if he had made an astounding discovery, hitherto unrevealed by any one. George decided that it would be well not to comment upon Fanny’s eyes at a first meeting.
Reggie had failed to interest Elizabeth in Alpine climbing, and switched off on to “amusing” anecdotes, which were more successful. Under the mild influence of a little wine and a sympathetic listener Reggie shed some of his worst mannerisms, and became almost human. He liked Elizabeth. She might not be wholly “amusing” but she was “refreshing.” (She was a good listener.) And when the talk once again became general, George began to think that Reggie was not such a bad fellow after all; there was a sort of “niceness” about him, the genuine English pride and good nature under a screen of affectation.
They sat over coffee and cigarettes until the fidgeting of the waiter and “Madame’s” little games with the electric switches warned them that their money and absence would now be more welcome than their company. It was well after ten—too late for the cinema. They walked down Shaftesbury Avenue, George with Reggie, and Elizabeth with Fanny.
“I like your George,” said Fanny.
“Do you? I’m so glad.”
“He’s a bit farouche, but I like the way he enthuses about what interests him. It’s not put on.”
“I think Reggie’s rather nice.”
“Oh! Reggie....” and Fanny waved her hand with a little shrug.
“But he is nice, Fanny. You know you like him.”
“Yes, he’s all right. I’m not wild about him. You can have him, if you want.”
“Oh! Oh!” Elizabeth laughed, “wait till I ask you!”
They separated at Piccadilly Circus. Fanny and Reggie went off somewhere in a taxi. Coming down Shaftesbury Avenue, George had noticed that it was a clear night with a full moon, and insisted on going to the Embankment to see the moonlight on the Thames. They turned into the Haymarket.
“What do you think of Fanny?” asked Elizabeth.
“I think she has most marvelous eyes.”
“Yes, that’s what every one says.”
“I was trying to be original! But she’s a nice girl, too. At first, when she and Burnside began talking, I thought she was hopelessly infected by his sort of affectation.”
“Why! Don’t you like him? I thought he was charming.”
“Charming? I shouldn’t say that. I think he’s not a bad sort of fellow really, but you know how exasperating I find the Cambridge bleat. Ah’d much raver lis’n to a muckin’ Cawkn’y, swop me bob, I would.”
“But you know he’s a very important young scientist, and supposed to be doing marvelous research work.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No. Fanny couldn’t tell me. She said you had to be a specialist yourself to understand what he’s doing.”
“Well, I must say I’m a bit suspicious of these mysterious ‘specialists,’ who can’t even tell you plainly what they’re doing. I think Boileau’s right—what’s accurately conceived can be clearly expressed. When Science begins to talk the language of mystic Theology and superstition, I begin to suspect it vehemently. Besides, only the feeble sections of any aristocracy take on vapourish airs and affected ways of talk. Well-bred people haven’t any affectations. And men with really fine minds haven’t any intellectual vanity.”
“Oh, but Reggie isn’t vain. He didn’t even mention his work to me. And he told such amusing stories.”
“That’s just another form of insolence—they assume you’re too ignorant and stupid to understand their great and important labours, so they never condescend even to mention them, but tell ‘amusing stories,’ as I see you’ve already learned to call Common-Room gossip.”
Elizabeth was silent, ominously silent. She was more used to the Cambridge manner than George was, and thought he fussed too much about it. Besides, she had been really attracted by Reggie. She thought George was making a jealous scene. There she did him a wrong; it never occurred to George that Elizabeth might fall in love with Reggie. (Oddly enough, it never does occur to a husband or a lover in esse to suspect his probable coadjutor—until it is too late. He suspects plenty of wrong people, but rarely the right one. The Cyprian undoubtedly has artful ways.) As a matter of fact, George had not the slightest feeling of jealousy. He was merely saying what he felt, as he would have done about any other chance acquaintance. He respected Elizabeth’s silence. It was one of their numerous pacts—to respect each other’s silence. So they walked mutely down Whitehall, while George thought vaguely about Fanny and his next day’s work and cocked his head up to try to see the moon and watched the occasional busses bounding along like rapid barges in the empty light-filled river of Belgian blocks; and Elizabeth brooded over the supposed revelation of a hitherto unsuspected tendency to silly jealousy in George. But just as they approached the Abbey, George slipped his arm through hers so naturally, affectionately and unsuspiciously that Elizabeth’s ill-humour vanished, and in two minutes they were chattering as volubly as ever.
They walked along the Embankment from Westminster Bridge towards the City. A serene sky hung over London, transposed to an astonishing blue by the complementary yellow of the brilliant street lights. A few trams and taxis were still moving on the Embankment, but after the ceaseless roar of day traffic, the air seemed almost silent. At times, they could hear the lap and gurgle of the swift river water, as the strong flood tide ran inland, bearing a faint flavour of salt. The river was beautifully silver in the soft steady moonlight which wavered into multitudes of ripples as soon as it touched the broken surface of the Thames. Blocks of moored barges stood black and immovable in the silver flood. The Southern bank was dark, low and motionless, except for the luminous announcements of the blessings of Lipton’s Tea and the Daily Mail. The Scotchman in coloured moving lights pledged the bonny highlands in countless sparkling glasses of electric whiskey. Hungerford Railway Bridge seemed filled with the red eyes of immense dragons, whose vast bulk lay coiled somewhere invisibly on either bank. Occasionally a red eye would wink green, and presently a brightly-lit train would crawl cautiously and heavily over the vibrating bridge. The lighted windows of the Cecil and the Savoy aroused no envy in them. Nor did they pine to inspect the records of a great people lying behind the darkened and silent façade of Somerset House.
Opposite the quiet Temple Garden they paused by the parapet and looked up and down that magnificent sweep of river, with its amazing mixture of dignified beauty and almost incredible sordidness. They stood for some time, talking in quiet tones, comparing the Thames with the Seine, and wondering what dream-like city would have arisen by those noble curves if London had been inhabited by a race of artists. Elizabeth wanted to set Florence or Oxford on either side of the Thames between Westminster and St. Paul’s. George agreed that that would be lovely, but thought the buildings would be dwarfed by the width of the river, the long bridges and the length of façade. And they finally agreed that with all its sordidness and hugger-mugger and strange contrast of palaces abutting on slums, the Embankment had a beauty of its own which they would not exchange even for the dream-city of a race of artists.
Midnight boomed with majestic, policeman-like slowness from Big Ben; and as the last deep vibrations faded from the air, the great city seemed to be gliding into sleep and silence. They lingered a little longer, and then turned to go.
Then, for the first time they noticed what they knew would be there but had forgotten in their absorbed delight in the silvery water and moon-washed outlines of the city—that on every bench sat crouched or huddled one or more miserable ragged human beings. In front of them ran the mystically lovely river; behind them the dark masses of the Temple rose solidly and sternly defensive of Law and Order behind the spear-front of its tall sharp-pointed iron fence. And there they crouched and huddled in rags and hunger and misery, free-born members of the greatest Empire the earth has yet seen, citizens of Her who so proudly claimed to be the wealthiest of cities, the exchange and mart of the whole world.
George gave what change he had in his pockets to a noseless syphilitic hag, and Elizabeth emptied her purse into the hand of a shivering child which had to be awakened to receive the gift, and cowered as if it thought it was going to be struck.
Ignoring the hag’s hoarse: “Thank yer kindly, Sir, Gord bless yer, Lidy,” they fled clutching each other’s hands. They did not speak until they said good-night outside Elizabeth’s door.
[ VI ]
During 1913 life ran on very pleasantly and happily for George and Elizabeth. As in the cases of the fortunate nations without a history, there appears to be very little to record about this year. I make no doubt that it was the happiest in George’s life. He was, as they say, “getting on,” and had less need to worry about money. In the spring they went to Dorsetshire and stayed at an Inn. Elizabeth did a certain amount of painting, but apart from a few sketches George did not attempt landscape—especially the picturesque landscape; he wanted his painting to be urban, contemporary and hard. They walked a good deal over Worbarrow Down and the rather desolate heath land round about. On more than one occasion they traversed the very same piece of land where George was afterwards in camp with me, a coincidence which seemed to make a great impression upon him. Certain aspects of a familiar landscape always call up the same train of thought: and as people are never weary of telling us what particularly strikes them, so George rarely failed to convey this piece of stale news to me as we walked out of camp by what had once been the rough cart-track he and Elizabeth had followed in less desolate days. He seemed to think it remarkable that he should be so miserable in exactly the same place where he had once been so happy. As I pointed out, that showed great ignorance of the ironic temper of the gods, who are very fond of such genial contrasts. They delight to lay a corpse in a marriage bed, and to strike down a great nation in the fullest flush of its pride and power. One might think that happiness was “hubris,” the excess which calls down the vengeance of Fate.
They returned to London for a few weeks, and then went to Paris, Elizabeth adored Paris, and wanted to live there permanently; but George was against it. He had got some bug about the best art being “autochthonous,” and declared that an artist ought to live in his own country. But the real reason was that Parisian life seemed so pleasant and the town so full of artists more gifted and more advanced than himself that he found it almost impossible to work there. It was easier to feel important in the comparative desert of London. So they returned to London, and in the autumn George had his first “show,” which was not altogether such a failure as he had expected.
When autumn turned to winter, and the yellow leaves of the plane trees drifted down into heaps in the London squares lying miserably sodden under the rain—the everlasting London drizzle—Elizabeth got very restless. She wanted to get away, anywhere under blue skies and sun. Her throat and lungs were rather sensitive, and when the weather turned foggy, she nearly choked in the heavy soot-laden stifling air. They talked about going to Italy or Spain, but George knew only too well that he could not afford it. He might indeed get assurances from various impresarios he frequented that “work could go on as usual,” but he knew only too well that a month’s absence would mean a decline and that after three months he would be practically forgotten and dropped. It’s a dangerous thing to have a national reputation for honesty—people get to trading upon it and seem to think it absolves them from individual obligations. So George, after forming various vague plans for a delightful winter in Sicily or the island of Majorca, had to admit to Elizabeth that he simply dared not go. He begged her to go alone, or to find some friend to go with her. But Elizabeth flatly refused to go without him. So they stayed in London, and worked and coughed together. Perhaps it might have been better to take the risk, for as things turned out George never saw either Spain or Italy, which he had wanted to see so much.
Fanny came to London for a week in November, before going South for the winter, and they saw her nearly every day. Fanny and George were by this time on a footing of pretty friendly familiarity. That is to say, they always kissed each other on meeting and parting—after Fanny had kissed Elizabeth—and held hands in taxis whether Elizabeth was there or not. Elizabeth didn’t object at all. Not only because of her theory of freedom. She was at that time rather deeply involved in some theory of “erogenous zones” in women, and men’s reaction to them. And she had got it firmly into her mind that Fanny was “sexually antipathetic” to George, because he had one day innocently and casually remarked that he thought Fanny rather flat-chested. Elizabeth leaped on this—it confirmed her theory so nicely. George had known Fanny for over a year and “nothing had happened” between them, and therefore it was plain that Fanny’s “erogenous zones” awoke no response in him.
“Most peculiar,” said Elizabeth, when she discussed the matter with a demure-looking but mighty ironical Fanny, “I should have thought you’d be the very type of woman to attract him. But he only talks about your ‘marvellous eyes,’ and they aren’t erogenous zones at all. That means he only likes you as a human being....”
So Elizabeth took no notice when Fanny kissed George; or when she said: “George darling, do go and get some cigarettes for me,” and George departed with alacrity; or when George called Fanny “My love” or “Fanny darling.” People throw these endearments about so liberally nowadays, how on earth is one to know? And, in fact, all this went on for a long time, and nothing did “happen.” George was quite devoted to Elizabeth, and then they were away when Fanny was in London, and Fanny was away when they were in London. Both George and Fanny begged Elizabeth to “go South” with Fanny, but Elizabeth wouldn’t. She was very loyal, and wouldn’t take a holiday George couldn’t share. But by this time Fanny had become fond of George, very fond indeed. She was weary of Reggie, who was sometimes so absorbed in atoms that he neglected his functions as Fanny’s faute-de-mieux. She thought it might be an excellent plan if she and Elizabeth swopped riders, so to speak. Not that she wanted to “take George away” from his mistress. Oh! Not at all. Fanny didn’t want him as a permanence—Elizabeth was welcome to that. But she felt he might do excellently as a locum tenens, while Elizabeth was widening her experience with Reggie. So there was an unusual warmth in her farewell kiss to George, who had gone down to see her off at Victoria, and a lingeringly soft pressure of her hand, and a particularly inviting look in her beautiful eyes.
“Good-bye, darling!” and she leaned from the window and to his surprise kissed him again on the lips, “of course, I’ll write—often. And mind you write to me. I shall be back in March at latest.”
Fanny did write—occasionally to Elizabeth, once or twice to them both, frequently to George. Her letters to George were much longer and more amusing than the others. George showed some of them to Elizabeth and forgot to show others. He replied punctually and affectionately.
Just before Christmas, Reggie Burnside passed through London on his way to Mürren. He dropped into Elizabeth’s studio for tea, and finding her alone asked her to marry him, in a casual offhand way, rather as he might have suggested their going to Rumpelmeyer’s instead of having tea in the studio. Elizabeth was surprised, flattered and fluttered. They had quite a long discussion. Elizabeth was amazed that Reggie should want to marry, and above all to marry her. If she hadn’t been so flattered, she would have been offended at any one’s thinking she would do such a thing. She had almost the “thank-you-I’m-not-that-sort-of-girl” sniffiness about it.
“Is this a new brand of joke, Reggie?”
“Good God, no! I’m perfectly serious.”
“But why in heaven’s name do you want to marry?”
“It’s more convenient, you know, addressing letters and meeting people and all that.”
“But why want to marry me?”
“Because I’m in love with you.”
Elizabeth pondered a little over this.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I don’t believe I’m in love with you. I’m sure I’m not. I like you most awfully, but I’m not in love with you, I’m in love with George.”
“Oh, George!” Reggie waved a contemptuous hand. “What’s the good of your wasting your time with a man like that, Elizabeth? He won’t do anything. He doesn’t know anybody worth mentioning, except ourselves, and nobody at Cambridge thinks anything of his painting.”
Elizabeth was on the defensive immediately.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Reggie! George is a dear, and I won’t have you say things like that about him. And as if anybody cares a hang what mouldy young Cambridge thinks about a painter!”
Reggie changed his tack.
“All right, if you don’t want to marry me, don’t. But, look here. You oughtn’t to spend the winter in London with that cough and your chest. I’ll give up Mürren if you’ll come for a month with me to some small place on the Riviera. We can easily find a place where there aren’t any English.”
This was a far more gratifying and dangerous proposal to Elizabeth than matrimony. She was heartily sick of London fog and cold and drizzle and mire and soot and messy open fires which fill the room with dust but don’t warm it. More than once she had regretted not having gone away with Fanny. Moreover, a “month’s affair” with Reggie would perfectly well fit into the arrangement with George, whereas they hadn’t thought of and hadn’t discussed the possibility of either marrying some one else. Elizabeth hesitated, but she had a feeling that it would be rather mean to leave George suddenly alone in London and go off on her own with Reggie, if only for a month. She certainly was extraordinarily fond of George.
“No, Reggie, I can’t come this time. Go to Mürren, and when you come back, perhaps... well, we’ll see.”
Elizabeth made toast and tea, and they sat on a large low divan in front of the fire. The dingy light soon faded from the soiled London sky, but they sat on in the firelight, holding hands.
She let Reggie kiss her as much as he wanted, but for the time being resisted any further encroachments.
Elizabeth’s resistance, at that precise moment, to the advances of Mr. Reginald Burnside, seems to me a striking example of George’s infelicity. I mean that I see a direct link between it and the sudden inexplicable standing up of a man in khaki, before a murderous machine gun fire, not long after dawn, on the morning of the 4th of November, 1918.... Not that I wish melodramatically “to set the brand of Cain” upon Elizabeth or upon Fanny or upon both jointly. Far from it. They didn’t make the war. They didn’t give George the jumps. And after all there is a doubt, almost a mystery involved in George’s death. Did he really commit suicide? I don’t know. I’ve only got circumstantial evidence and my own hunch about it, a sort of intuition, a something haunting in my memory of the man, an Orestes-like feeling of some inexpiated guilt. Who is to say whether a man can really commit suicide on a battlefield? Desperate recklessness and looking for trouble may be the very means of his escaping the death which finds the prudent coward crouching in a shell-hole. And suppose he did deliberately get himself killed, ought we, ought I, to attach any blame to Elizabeth and Fanny? I don’t think so. There were plenty of other things to disgust him with life. And even supposing that he realized the war was ending, realized that in his state of mind he simply could not face the problem of his relation with those two women, still I think them utterly blameless. The mess was as much his fault as theirs. It was really quite an easy mess to clear up. What made it impossible was George’s shattered nerves, and for that they were not to blame. Oh, not in the least. Perhaps I’m as much to blame as anybody. I ought to have done something to get George sent out of the line. I think I might have gone to the Brigadier and have told him in private what I knew about George’s state of mind—or perhaps to his Colonel. But I didn’t go. At that time I was not persona grata with those in authority, for I happened to sympathize then with the young Russian Revolution, and had foolishly argued hotly about it. So perhaps my effort would have been wasted. And anyhow it was a very difficult and ticklish thing to do, and I was tired, very tired....
At any rate, just about a fortnight after Reggie went to Mürren, the abominable winter climate of London gave Elizabeth some sort of a chill inside and upset her interior economy. Within four or five days she became quite demented. She insisted that she was with child, and insisted that the only solution was for George to marry her—at once. Perhaps the afternoon with Reggie had somehow inserted the idea of marriage into her “subconscious.” At all events, her extraordinary energy was suddenly concentrated upon attaining a state which she had hitherto utterly scorned. It was a silly thing to do, but one really cannot blame her. Men are oddly callous about these mysterious female maladies and demoniacal possessions. They get peevish and pathetic enough if something goes wrong with their own livers, but they are strangely unsympathetic about the profounder derangements of their yoke-fellows in iniquity. Perhaps they might feel a little more humane if they too had a sort of twenty-eight day clock inside them, always a nuisance, often liable to go wrong and set up irregular blood-pressure and an intolerable poisoning of the brain. George ought to have hiked her off to a gynecologist at once. Instead of which, he behaved as stupidly as any George Augustus would have done under the circumstances. He did nothing but gasp and stare at Elizabeth’s whirling tantrums, and worry, and offer exasperating comfort, and propose remedies and measures which, as Elizabeth told him, with a stamp of her foot, were impossible, impossible, impossible. Of course, by the Triumphal Scheme for the Perfect Sex Relation, it was duly enacted that under such circumstances there was nothing to do but marry the girl. But elementary prudence would suggest that it might be sensible to make certain the circumstances had arisen, a precaution which they entirely overlooked in the mental disarray caused by Elizabeth’s regrettable dementia.
The change wrought in Elizabeth’s outlook in a few days was amazing. If she hadn’t felt so tragically about it, she would have been ludicrous in her mental manœuvres. The whole Triumphal Scheme was scrapped almost instantaneously, and by a rapid and masterly series of evolutions her whole army of arguments was withdrawn from the outpost line of Complete Sexual Freedom, and fell back upon the Hindenburg line of Safety First, Female Honour, and Legal Marriage. It was, of course, ridiculous for them to marry at all, either of them. They weren’t the marrying sort. They were adventurers in life, not good citizens. Neither of them was the kind of person who exults in life insurance and buying a house on the hire-purchase system and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoon and taking the “kiddies” (odious word) to the seaside. Neither of them looked forward to the “Old Age Will Come” summit of felicity, with an elderly and imbecilly contented-looking George sitting beside a placid and motherly white-haired Elizabeth in the garden of a dear little home, contemplating together with smug beatitude the document from the insurance company guaranteeing a safe ten pounds a week for the remainder of their joint lives. I am glad to say that George and Elizabeth would have shuddered at any such prospect. But Elizabeth insisted upon marriage, and married they duly were, despite the feeble protests of Elizabeth’s family and the masterly denunciations of Isabel, already recorded.
In all outward respects the legal marriage made no difference whatever to their lives and relationships. Elizabeth retained her studio, and George his. They met no more frequently and on exactly the same terms of affectionate sensuality into which their first exultant passion had long ago evolved. One of the terms of the Triumphal Scheme emphatically laid down the axiom that it was most undesirable and dangerous for two lovers to inhabit the same flat or small house. If they were rich enough to live in separate wings of a large house, all well and good; but if not, then they should live no nearer than neighbouring streets. The essence of freedom is the disposal of one’s own time in one’s own way, and how can two people do that if they are living on top of each other? Moreover, a daily absence of several hours is quite indispensable to the avoidance of the domestic den atmosphere. It is far better for two lovers to be happy together for three or four hours a day than to be indifferent or miserable for twenty-four. The joint marriage-bed, Elizabeth used to state impressively, is destructive of all self-respect and sexual charm, and blunts the finer edges of sensibility....
Soon after the legal formalities were irrevocably accomplished and Elizabeth’s social anxieties somewhat calmed, it occurred to her that she ought to consult a doctor, in order to learn how to behave during these months of “expecting,” as the modest working-class matron calls it. So she got the address of a “modern” physician, who was supposed to have all the latest and most enlightened methods of dealing with pregnancy and its distresses. To Elizabeth’s amazement she found she was not pregnant at all! With the not unnatural suspicion that most doctors are more or less charlatans imposing on the ignorance of the public, she refused to believe him until he told her flatly that in her present condition she might wait till doomsday for the appearance of an infant, but that if she neglected her present slight disorder it might become dangerous and permanent. She then condescended to accept his diagnosis and advice. George had accompanied her, and was in the specialist’s waiting room. A serious, concentrated, rather pi-jaw Elizabeth had left him to enter the consulting room, and George fidgeted over the imbecilities of “Punch,” wondering how on earth they would deal with the problem of an infant and feeling that he would probably have to take a job and “settle down” into the horrible morass of domestic life. To his amazement, as the consulting-room door opened, he heard Elizabeth laugh with her old merry gaiety which was so attractive, and caught the words:
“Well, if it’s twins, Doctor, you shall be godfather.”
To which the Doctor replied with a laugh George thought rather ribald and heartless under the circumstances. Elizabeth rushed into the room, exclaiming:
“It’s all right, darling, a false alarm. I’m no more pregnant than you are.”
George, who was wool-gathering, might have remained indefinitely perplexed, if the doctor had not taken him aside and told him briefly the situation, adding that for a little time it would be well if Elizabeth refrained from sexual relations.
“How long do you advise?” asked George.
“Oh, let her follow the treatment prescribed for about a month, and then let me examine her again. I’ve no doubt whatever that she’ll be perfectly all right again. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t have a child without a slight operation. Only, in the future, she must avoid chills. She ought not to spend the winter in England.”
George wrote out a cheque for three guineas (which Elizabeth insisted on repaying afterwards), and they celebrated the event with a dinner.
“Let us drink,” said George, “to this happy occasion when we have NOT committed the unforgivable sin of thrusting an unwanted existence upon one more unfortunate human being.”
But perhaps the most amazing circumstance in this peculiar episode was the speed with which Elizabeth once more evacuated the old familiar Hindenburg Line, and reoccupied the most advanced positions of Sexual Freedom. But, of course, she did so with a difference. Though she wouldn’t admit it even to herself, and though George tried not to see it, in her case the Triumphal Scheme had broken down badly under its first stern test. Directly that test had come, she had fallen back in panic on the old cut-and-dried solution; she hadn’t had the courage to go through with it. In a way one could excuse her by saying that the interior trouble had temporarily deranged her brain, that she wasn’t really responsible for her actions. But that’s only a quibble—the fact remains that she did fly in a panic to social safety and the registrar. And then the legal tie introduced a subtle difference in their relation. You may say, of course, that it needn’t, that since they continued to live in exactly the same way and to profess exactly the same attitude towards each other and “freedom,” it made no difference whether they were legally married or not. But it did. And it does. You can see that perfectly well if you watch people. Somehow the mere fact of marriage introduces the sense of possession, and hence jealousy. Lovers, of course, may be and frequently are just as possessive and quite as jealous. But there is a difference. As a rule lovers are not first occupants, so to speak; and they are generally willing to grant each other more liberty and to “forgive.” But you will see married people who have become totally indifferent to each other, rise in a fury of possessiveness and jealousy when they happen to find out that the wife or husband, as the case may be, is in love with some one else. This, indeed may be only another aspect of that peculiar vindictiveness bred by marriage. And another curious modification of their relationship arose. When Elizabeth reoccupied the Sexual Freedom line, without knowing it she did so for herself alone, and not for George. If George liked to accept the subsequent Elizabeth-Reggie affair, in accordance with the provisions of the Triumphal Scheme, all well and good; that was his lookout. But when it came to Elizabeth’s accepting the Fanny-George affair in the same spirit, that was a very different matter. Elizabeth now felt somehow responsible for George, and feeling responsible translated itself into keeping possession of....
However, three months after the false alarm, Elizabeth seemed more “advanced” and full of “freedom” than ever. Her position as a married woman enabled her to talk with greater liberty on all sorts of topics which are now discussed in every nursery, but at that time were considered highly improper and not to be named before Citizens of the Empire. She got hold of a book on the woes of the Uranians, and was deeply affected by it. She wanted to start a crusade on their behalf, and was greatly disappointed by the coolness with which George met her enthusiasm.
“It is ridiculous,” said Elizabeth, “that these unfortunate people should be persecuted by obsolete laws derived from the prejudices of the Jewish prophets and mediæval ignorance.”
“Of course it is, but what can one do about it? Persecution-mania has always existed. It’s a very curious coincidence that the vulgar English word for one sort of intermediate sexual type originally meant a heretic. But there’s nothing to be done.”
“I think something ought to be done.”
“Well, I think it’s too soon to do anything. You’ve got to allow time for knowledge to percolate into rock-like heads, and for ignorance and superstitions to be dispelled. Let’s get the ordinary relations of men and women on to a decent basis first, and then it’ll be time to think about the heretics in love.”
“But, George darling, these people are hunted and exiled and despised for something which is not their ‘fault’ at all, some difference in their physiological or psychological structure. There probably isn’t any such thing as a perfectly ‘normal’ sexual type. Simply because we’re ‘normal’ why should we hate and despise these people?”
“I know, I know. Theoretically, I agree with you absolutely. But it’s no good my mind trying to defend what my instincts and feelings reject. Frankly, I don’t like homosexuals. I respect their freedom, of course, but I don’t like them. As a matter of fact, I don’t know any, at least so far as I am aware. No doubt some of our friends are homosexual, but as I’m not personally interested in it, I never notice it.”
“Yes, but because you don’t notice it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Don’t be narrow-minded, George. There are probably tens of thousands of people living miserable lives....”
“Oh, I know all about that! But you can’t break down the inherited prejudices of ages in five minutes. I personally don’t object to such people doing as they want. There’s no tort to person or property. But my advice to them would be to keep jolly quiet about it, and not try to make themselves martyrs, and flaunt themselves publicly.”
“Oh, oh!” Elizabeth laughed. “Grandpa George foregathering with the Victorians.”
“All right, but I’m not going to say what I don’t feel. In this matter you must look upon me as a neutral.”
“Well, I think you ought to look into it more carefully and sympathetically, and get Bobbe to let you write some articles on it.”
“Thanks very much. You ask him to do it himself, it’s far more likely to attract him. If I wrote such articles I should immediately be suspect. It’s a damned dangerous thing to do in England; in most cases the suspicion is far too likely to be true!”
And they left it at that.
All this time the war was drawing steadily nearer. Probably it had become certain since 1911, though most people were taken quite unawares. Why did it happen? Who was responsible? Questions which have been interminably debated already and will furnish exultant historians with controversial material for generations to come. Already one foresees the creation of Chairs in the History of the First World War, to be set up in whatever civilized countries remain in existence after the next one. But for us the debate is vain, as vain as the pathetic and reiterated enquiry, “Where did I catch this horrible cold?” If anybody or bodies engineered this catastrophe they must have been gratified by its shattering success. Few lives indeed in the belligerent countries remained unaffected by it, and in most cases the effect was unpleasant. Adult lives were cut sharply into three sections—pre-war, war, and post-war. It is curious—perhaps not so curious—but many people will tell you that whole areas of their pre-war lives have become obliterated from their memories. Pre-war seems like prehistory. What did we do, how did we feel, what were we living for in those incredibly distant years? One feels as if the period 1900-14 has to be treated archæologically, painfully recreated by experts from slight vestiges. Those who were still children at the Armistice, who were so to speak born into the war, can hardly understand the feeling of tranquil security which existed, the almost smug optimism of our lives. Especially in England, for the French retained uncomfortable memories of 1870; but still, even in France life seemed established and secure. Since Waterloo, England had engaged in no great war. There were frontier and colonial skirmishes, and the reputation of the country for military organization and efficiency was immensely strengthened in the world’s eyes by the conduct of the Crimean and Boer Wars. But there had been nothing on a really big scale. The Franco-Prussian War was just one of those unfortunate occurrences one must expect from backward Continental nations, and the huge struggle of the War of Secession was observed through the wrong end of the telescope. In some quarters, indeed, that war had been considered as a peculiar mercy of God to His Chosen People, enabling the British Merchant Marine to re-establish an indisputable primacy at the expense of a regrettable upstart among nations.
Talleyrand used to say that those who had not known Europe before 1789, had never known the real pleasure of living. No one would dare to substitute 1914 for 1789 in that sentence. But such a wholesale shattering of values had certainly not occurred since 1789. God knows how many governments and rulers crashed down in the earthquake, and those which remain are agitatedly trying to preserve their existence by the time-honoured methods of repression and persecution. And yet 1914 was greeted as a great release, a purgation from the vices supposed to be engendered by peace! My God! Three days of glory engender more vices and misery than all the alleged corrupters of humanity could achieve in a millennium. Les jeunes would be amazed if they read the nauseous poppycock which was written in 1914-15 in England, and doubtless in all the belligerent countries, except France where practically nothing was printed at all. (However, the French have made up handsomely for the loss since then.) “Our splendid troops” were to come home—oh, very soon—purged and ennobled by slaughter and lice, and were to beget a race of even nobler fellows to go and do likewise. We were to have a great revival in religion, for peoples’ thoughts were now turned from frivolities to great and serious themes. We were to have a new and greater literature—hence the alleged vogue for “war poets,” which resulted in the parents of the slain being asked to put up fifty pounds for the publication (which probably cost fifteen) of poor little verses which should never have passed the home circle. We were to have... but really I lack courage to continue. Let those who are curious in human imbecility consult the newspaper-files of those days....
But we are still lingering in the golden calm of the last few months preceding August, 1914.
Fanny had followed Elizabeth’s amazing evolutions with considerable surprise and that feeling of “something not displeasing” with which we contemplate the misfortunes of our best friends. She chiefly felt rather sorry for George....
“You have a vendetta of the dead against the living.” Yes, it is true, I have a vendetta. Not a personal vendetta. What am I? O God, nothing, less than nothing, a husk, a leaving, a half-chewed morsel on the plate, a reject. But an impersonal vendetta, an unappeased conscience crying in the wilderness, a river of tears in the desert. What right have I to live? Is it five million, is it ten million, is it twenty million? What does the exact count matter? There they are, and we are responsible. Tortures of hell, we are responsible! When I meet an unmaimed man of my generation, I want to shout at him: “How did you escape? How did you dodge it? What dirty trick did you play? Why are you not dead, trickster?” It is dreadful to have outlived your life, to have shirked your fate, to have overspent your welcome. There is nobody upon earth who cares whether I live or die, and I am glad of it. To be alone, icily alone. You, the war dead, I think you died in vain, I think you died for nothing, for a blast of wind, a blather, a humbug, a newspaper stunt, a politician’s ramp. But at least you died. You did not reject the sharp sweet shock of bullets, the sudden smash of the shell-burst, the insinuating agony of poison gas. You got rid of it all. You chose the better part. “They went down like a lot o’ Charlie Chaplins,” said the little ginger-hair sergeant of the Durhams. Like a lot of Charlie Chaplins. Marvellous metaphor! Can’t you see them staggering on splayed-out test and waving ineffective hands as they went down before the accurate machine-gun fire of the Durhams sergeant? A splendid little hero—he got the Military Medal for it. Like a lot of Charlie Chaplins. Marvellous. But why weren’t we one of them? What right have we to live? And the women? Oh, don’t let’s talk about the women. They were splendid, wonderful. Such devotion, such devotion. How they comforted the troops. Oh, wonderful, beyond all praise! They got the vote for it, you know. Oh, wonderful! Steel-true and blade-straight. Yes, indeed, wonderful, wonderful! Whatever should we have done without them? White feathers, and all that, you know. Oh, the women were marvellous. You can always rely upon the women to come up to scratch, you know. Yes, indeed. What would the Country be without them? So splendid, such an example.
On Sundays the Union Jack flies over the cemetery at Etaples. It’s not so big as it was in the old wooden cross days, but it will serve. Acres and acres. Yes, acres and acres. And it’s too late to get one’s little lot in the acres. Too late, too late....
Yes, Fanny was sorry for George, and showed it with practical feminine sympathy. In the late spring Elizabeth “had” to go and spend a fortnight with her parents in the north. Mrs. Paston—who never failed in any of her duties, and took jolly good care to let you know it—was accustomed to write every week to Elizabeth. This weekly letter was supposed to be a nice, chatty, affectionate record of the little home circle and friends, something to keep Elizabeth in touch with their purer lives (of pure boredom) and preserve her from the decadents and degenerates she frequented in London. In fact the letter was almost invariably a perfidious and insinuating effort to make Elizabeth uncomfortable and to discourage her with her own life. Under the endearing words of conventional family affection lurked a curious resentment and hatred. If Mrs. Paston could think of anything likely to worry Elizabeth she never failed to convey it, in the strain of “isn’t it a pity, dear?...” Sometimes Elizabeth answered these letters, sometimes she did not. Recently, they had been filled with discouraging hints about the state of Mr. Paston’s health. “Your dear father” could not shake off his “bronchitis” (i.e., a cold in the head), he was very “languid” (i.e., bored, the golf links were under water), he “scarcely ever went out” (he hardly ever had done, except to play golf), he was “getting so frail and white-haired, poor darling daddy” (he’d been grey for fifteen years and still ate four hearty meals daily), he “seemed to be failing fast”—a pure piece of mythology. Elizabeth was rather fond of her father, and began to get alarmed, although she was more or less aware of her mother’s strategy. But it is the misfortune of youth never really to credit the aged with their full meed of perfidy and dislike. She felt she ought to go and see her father for herself—it would be awful if he suddenly died without her seeing him. She told George she was going.
“All right, of course, if you want to. I’ll take you to the station. When are you going?”
“I wish you’d come with me, George. Father and mother would like to see you, and they’d appreciate it so much.”
“Now look here, Elizabeth, don’t let’s have any humbug here. I don’t ask you to meet my parents and I don’t see why I should have to stay with yours. I think your mother’s quite awful, one of those nagging martyr women who’re always taking on unnecessary jobs and worries, and then grumbling about how much they have to do and how little they’re appreciated. Your father’s all right. He’s a decent sort, with a human respect for other people. But after I’ve feigned an interest I don’t feel in golf and we’ve shaken our heads over the wickedness of Liberal governments, we’ve really nothing left to say to each other.”
“But it’s so much easier for me if you’d come too.”
“No, it wouldn’t. We’d be shown off as the happy married pair to your mother’s friends, and our sufferings would be dreadful. Besides, it’ll be easier for you to adjust yourself temporarily to their prejudices if you don’t have the sensation of a satirical me watching you.”
So Elizabeth went by herself, and George remained alone in London. He always missed Elizabeth frightfully when she went away, but instead of going out and amusing himself, he stayed in and tried to pass the time by overworking. By the evening of the fifth day, he was thoroughly fed up. He decided to go out and ring up various friends in turn, until he found some one to have dinner with him. He had just finished washing and was putting on a clean collar, when some one knocked at the door of his studio.
“Half a minute,” shouted George, “I’m dressing. Who is it?”
The door opened, and in came Fanny, wearing a charming new dress and a gay wide-brimmed hat with a large feather in it.
“Why, Fanny! How good to see you, and how lovely you look!”
They kissed affectionately. Fanny sat down on the bed.
“I’ve come to be taken out to dinner. If you think you’re doing anything else, you’re mistaken. You’ll have to ring up and say you can’t come.”
“As a matter of fact, I was on the point of going out to find somebody to dine with me, so your coming is a godsend.”
“How’s Elizabeth?”
“She’s all right. I got a letter from her this morning. She’s with her parents, you know.”
“Yes, I know. How long’ll she be away?”
“Another ten days. Poor darling, she sounds awfully bored already.”
“And what are you doing?”
“Oh, fighting the lone hand here. Do you want to see the picture I’m finishing?”
And George dragged round an easel with a large canvas on it, into the light.
“But it’s good, George! It’s got great qualities of energy and design.”
“You don’t think it’s too hard and angular?”
“No, not a bit. It’s excellent. By far the best thing you’ve done.”
And Fanny jumped up from the bed, put her arm around George, and kissed him again. For the first time her lips were not cool, shut and sisterly, but warm and open and delicious—the lips of an accomplice. The sudden flicker of warm desire awoke in George’s flesh, and he felt his heart leap and the blood flush to his face. He held her to him, and pressed eager firm lips to her soft yielding mouth. For a few seconds she seemed to resist, and made as if to thrust him from her. He held her more closely, and suddenly her stiffened body yielded delicately, moulded itself to his, her head moved slowly backwards with closed eyes. Between the moist velvet of her lips he felt on his the exquisite caress of a gentle tongue-tip. George gently laid his hand on her left breast, and felt the rapid beating of her heart. She softly drew away her lips and looked at him.
“Fanny! Fanny!”
Her gem-like eyes, now all flower-like, looked at him.
“Fanny! Most dear Fanny! I must have loved you a long time without knowing it.”
Fanny spoke slowly, still watching him:
“You’re such a nice man, George, and yet such a boy.”
“And you are divine and inexpressibly lovely and thrilling and adorable....”
They kissed again, and stood there embraced until George felt dizzy with the blood beating in his brain. He pulled her gently towards the bed, and they lay down, clothed, in each other’s arms. George’s hand moved tenderly and delicately over her uncorseted girl body, so warm and firm and fragile under the thin cool silk dress. The incoherent words of lovers gave place to silence, and they lay trembling in each other’s arms, almost like frightened children comforting each other.
Fanny sighed, and opened her eyes.
“What time is it?”
George fumbled for his watch.
“Nearly half-past eight!”
“Heavens! We shall be too late for dinner if we don’t hurry.”
George went to get his coat, and returned to find Fanny unconcernedly drawing her silk stockings tight and trim.
“Where can we go that’s near?”
“There’s a new place just started in Frith Street—we can go there.”
George watched her as she smoothed her mussed hair, and absorbedly fitted on the large hat before the mirror. He was still trembling a little, and noticed how steady her hands were. Only a few minutes before they had been so close, all the barriers down, each existence melted in the other. That had been perfect, complete happiness. “Had been.” Already the current of ordinary life was sweeping them apart again. Oh, not very far really, still within hailing distance. But very far, compared with that wonderful nearness. Such an ecstasy could not last. But why not? Perhaps one of the many bitter jests of the gods—to show us for an hour what happiness might be if we were gods. None can possess another, none can be possessed. Is it possible to give, is it possible to take? Does one existence really melt into another for a few minutes, or does it only seem to? What is she thinking now? Her mind is as remote from mine as if she had slipped into another dimension. Romantically we ask too much. It is much that she is lovely and finds me desirable. Let us not ask too much. Enjoyment is enough. Yet how fragile even that is! It is as if one tried to carry a small flickering light in a thin glass vessel through a tumultuous hostile crowd. How earnest is the world to suppress the delight of lovers! How bitterly wrong all that is!
They went down into the warm, airless street, where the lamps were already lighted. Dirty children still played noisily and screamed on the side-walks. An Italian woman slip-slopped past them in felt slippers, carrying a jug of beer. Soho smelled frowzy and stale. Fanny noticed this.
“Why do you and Elizabeth live in this horrid district? It must be awfully unhealthy, especially for Elizabeth.”
“Oh, one gets used to it. Hampstead’s too far out. Kensington’s too dear, Chelsea’s both dear and ungetatable. When I’m in town I like to be in the middle of it. Suburbs are beastly. We all suffer from the English ‘home’ system of building—one hut, one family—and from our peculiar desire to be in a town and the country simultaneously. We don’t seem able to live the purely urban life of the Latins. But London’s too big and frowzy.”
They dined in the small restaurant, which had been “decorated” with rather feeble pictures by young artists, to give it that Latin Quarter air. It was somehow ineffectual. A bit amateurish. However, they didn’t care about that. Since they were comparatively old friends, they did not suffer the haunting and disagreeable uneasiness and strangeness which fall between those who suddenly become lovers. The spontaneity of their passion absorbed any possible feeling of remorse. They talked quietly, but without any strain and effort. Fanny gave some amusing descriptions of the odd freaks among the British “colonies” on the Riviera. Why is it that one sees such curious and freakish specimens of one’s countrymen abroad, types one never sees at home? Do the foreign surroundings bring out the freakishness, or were such people destined to emigration by their very oddity? But there could be no doubt—Fanny and George were on a new footing with each other. There was a new and delicious intimacy between them. Strange that a few kisses and caresses should make such a difference.
As they were leaving the restaurant, Fanny was hailed by some friends at a table near the door.
“Hullo, Fanny! How are you? I say, why don’t you come along with us? We’re all going to Marshall’s chambers at ten. There’ll be lots of people there. It ought to be amusing.”
“No, I want to see that new film at the Shaftesbury.”
“But you can see that any time.”
“No, this is the last week, and I’m going to Dieppe to-morrow for a week.”
“Oh, all right. Sorry you won’t come. Look us up when you get back. Good-bye, good-bye.”
They got into a taxi, and Fanny gave the address of her flat.
“Did you really mean that you are going to Dieppe to-morrow?” asked George a little wistfully.
Fanny squeezed his arm, and kissed him briefly and skilfully as the taxi lurched them together.
“Of course not, goose! We’re going to be together, unless you piously decide not to. But it’s useful to have an alibi. People are still fussy about one’s ‘reputation,’ you know.”
“But suppose we meet them, or some one else who knows you?”
“I shall say I changed my mind, or that I got bored and came straight back.”
Fanny’s flat was small, but pleasantly clean and modern. After the picturesque but rather dingy antiquity of his large eighteenth-century panelled room, George found it delightful to be in bright-painted clean rooms with a white-tiled bathroom. Among Fanny’s many remarkable efficiencies was the genius of discovering excellent flats at a fabulously cheap rental, furnishing them charmingly for about five pounds and running them perfectly without the slightest fuss. She generally shifted her quarters about every six months, and invariably for the better. How pleasant is efficiency in others, especially when you are rather inefficient yourself! I wouldn’t exactly say that George was inefficient, but the details of material life rather bored him. When you had so much else to do and so little time to do it in, he thought it rather a waste of life to be too pernickety about one’s surroundings and fixings. However, he decided then and there that he and Elizabeth would have to get out of Soho. It was too disgustingly frowzy.
Fanny was a marvelous lover. Or, at least, George thought so. It was not only that she was golden and supple and lithe, where Elizabeth was dark and rather stiff and virginal, but she really cared about love-making. It was her art. It was for her neither a painful duty nor a degrading necessity nor a series of disappointing experiments, but a delightful art which gave full expression to her vitality, energy and efficiency. Like all great artists, she was entirely disinterested—art for art’s sake. She chose her lovers with great care, and rather preferred them to be poor, to avoid any suspicion of commercialism or arrivism. She knew she had the genius of touch, and was unwilling that it should be wasted. If she hadn’t been a great lover, she might have been a good sculptor. But like all artists she was exacting, and had her vanity. She would not waste her talents. If a subject was not profoundly responsive and appreciative, she put him aside at the earliest possible moment. No clumsy, inhibited Englishman for her! No, thank you. Perhaps that is why she spent so much of her time abroad.
But this particular Englishman was not inhibited or ineradicably clumsy. Crude perhaps, rather lacking in style and finish, but capable of rapid progress under expert guidance. Fanny, with the artist’s unerring glance, had long ago perceived that there were considerable possibilities in George. He had natural aptitudes and, what is far more important, the sense of delicate artistry which finds its highest satisfaction in bestowing delight. He was neither a bull nor a turkey gobbler. Fanny was satisfied; she had not made a mistake....
For the remaining days of Elizabeth’s absence George did no work whatever. And a very good thing too, for he needed a holiday. He stayed at Fanny’s flat. They made picnic meals in the flat, or ate out at places where they were pretty certain not to meet friends—City stockbrokers’ taverns or curious pubs with sawdust and spittoons on the floors, where you sat on stools at the bar and had a cut from the joint and two vegetables with beer. They went to “low” music-halls and saw all the primitive films of the day—Charlie’s were the only good ones—and for a lark went to see what the inside of the Abbey looked like, a place no Londoner ever visits. They agreed that it looked like the atelier of an incredibly bad academic sculptor installed in an overcrowded but rather beautiful Gothic barn. Fanny rather hated Gothic architecture, she said all those points and squiggles gave her the creeps; but George said that if you wanted to see the real spirit of mediæval sculpture you ought to look underneath the seats of the canon’s stalls. But they didn’t quarrel about that. They were far too happy.
Nothing more was said about Elizabeth, until the day before she returned.
“You’ll meet her, of course?” said Fanny.
“Of course.”
“Well, give her my love.”
“I suppose I ought to tell her about us,” said George reflectively.
Fanny saw the danger in a flash. Her “freedom” was of a different kind from Elizabeth’s rather theoretical and idealizing kind. Fanny’s was light-hearted and practical; moreover, she had observed human beings and knew her Elizabeth far better than George did. She also knew her George. If George told Elizabeth, she knew quite well there would be a bust-up, that Elizabeth’s theories would be abandoned as speedily as on the former occasion. But she knew it was useless to reveal the truth to George. On the other hand, she didn’t want to lose him and didn’t want to “take him away” from Elizabeth—not until much later when Elizabeth started the struggle. Fanny knew that George had to be managed within the limits of masculine stupidity.
“Oh, tell her if you like. But I shouldn’t discuss it with her, if I were you. She must have long ago felt subconsciously the attraction between us, and you can see by her attitude that she accepts it. I don’t see the need for all this talk and re-hashing of what’s a private and personal matter between two people. We’re so hypnotized by words, that we think nothing exists until we have talked about it. How can you interpret all these deep feelings and sensations in words? It’s because words don’t suffice that we need touch. Tell Elizabeth by loving her better.”
“Then you really thinks she knows?”