Chapter IX: Part TWO: Andante Cantabile (4)

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?”

Fanny was a little annoyed. Why couldn’t he _see_, why couldn’t he take a hint?

“If she’s as acute and experienced as she tells us, she ought to have seen the possibility long ago. No doubt, if she’s said nothing about it to you, the reason is that she just doesn’t want to discuss it. If she accepts, that’s enough.”

“But she always believes that two people should be perfectly open and frank with each other about their other affairs.”

“Does she? Well, I advise you to say nothing until she asks you.”

“All right, darling, if you think so.”

* * * * *

George duly met Elizabeth at Euston. She was delighted to be back in London, away from the stuffiness of family and the solemn boredom of middle-class existence. She leaned out the window of the taxi and sniffed the air.

“How lovely to smell dirty old London mud again! It means I’m free, free, free again!”

“Was it very awful?”

“Oh, awful, interminable.”

“I’m so glad you’re back.”

“It’s wonderful. And lovely to be with you again. How well you look, George, quite handsome and Italian!”

“That’s because you haven’t seen me for a fortnight.”

“How’s Fanny?”

“Oh, very well. Sent her love to you.”

“Dear old beastly ugly Tottenham Court Road!” said Elizabeth with her nose out the window again.

“By the way, it was awfully frowsty in Soho while you were away. Don’t you think we might move to somewhere more modern?”

“What, to a suburb? Why, George! You know you hate suburbs, and always said you liked to live in the middle of London.”

“Yes, I know. But we might find something at Chelsea.”

“But we couldn’t possibly afford two places at Chelsea rents.”

“Well, why not share a fairly large one?”

“What, and live in the same flat? George!”

“Oh, all right, if you don’t want to, but Fanny thinks Soho is unhealthy for you.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

* * * * *

Whether, as the Swedish old-maid hinted in her book, it was the stimulus of another affair or whether George was anxious to display the artistries of Fanny or whether it was merely remorse, Elizabeth found George peculiarly charming and ardent.

She attributed this to the happy effect of a brief absence.

[ VII ]

In a few weeks they duly moved to Chelsea. Fanny found them an excellent apartment, with two large rooms, a kitchen and a modern bathroom, for less than the combined rental of their two ramshackle rooms in Soho. Elizabeth developed an unexpected talent for “home-making,” and fussed a good deal over the installation in spite of George’s light satire. But they were both only too happy to get away from the frowstiness of Soho to a clean modern flat.

This was in June, 1914. They did not go away when the hot weather arrived, intending to stay the summer in London, and go to Paris for September and October. Elizabeth spent a good deal of her spare time with Reggie Burnside, and George was absorbed in his painting. He wanted to get enough good canvasses for a small show in Paris in the autumn.

One day towards the end of July he left his painting early, to meet Reggie and Elizabeth for lunch somewhere near Piccadilly. It was a benign day, with fine white fleecy clouds suspended in a blue sky, and a light wind ruffling the darkened foliage of summer trees. Even the King’s Road looked pleasant. George noticed, and afterwards remembered vividly, because these were the last really tranquil moments of his life, how the policeman’s gloves made a clear blotch of white against a plane-tree as he regulated the traffic. A little band of sparrows were squabbling and twittering noisily in the lilacs of one of the gardens. The heat was reflected, not unpleasantly, from the warm white flagstones of the sidewalk.

As he waited for the number 19 bus, George did what he very rarely did—bought a newspaper. He always said it was a waste of life to read newspapers—if something really important happened people would tell you about it soon enough. He didn’t know why he bought a paper that morning. He had been working hard for two or three weeks without seeing any one but Elizabeth, and perhaps thought he would see what was going on in the world. Perhaps it was only to see if there was any new film.