Chapter V: Section ONE: Synthesis (4)

I wish, all the same, that I had tried to play up to Lathom better. It was irritating, of course, to find that he was still regardless of other people’s convenience. I did not object to his bagging the best room for his studio—that was in the bond—but it was tiresome to have him overflowing into my room all day when I was at work. Lathom is one of those spasmodic workers who need constant applause and excitement. He would work like fury for several hours, snarling at me if I came in to retrieve a garment or lighter that he had borrowed; but, the fit over, he would wander in to where I was grimly struggling with a knotty piece of biography and talk. He talks well, but his interests are lop-sided. He is a real creator—narrow, eager, headlong, and loathing introspection and compromise. He questions nothing; I question everything. I am only semi-creative, and that is why I cannot settle and dismiss questions, as he does, in one burst of inspired insight or equally inspired contempt. Lathom is all light and dark—a Rembrandt. I am flat, cold, tentative, uneasily questioning, a labourer in detail. I caught no fire from Lathom, and I quenched his. It is my disease to doubt and to modify—to be unable to cry at a tragedy or shout in a chorus. It was my fault that I did not help Lathom more, for, just because of my uneasy sensitiveness, I understood him far better than he ever understood me. It would have suited him better if I had violently disagreed with him. But I had the fatal knack of seeing his point and cautiously advancing counter-arguments, and that satisfied neither of us. I see this now, and, indeed, I saw it then; it is characteristic of people like me to see a thing and do nothing about it.

This, of course, was where the Harrisons came in. I liked Harrison. If I had not liked him, I should not be making this statement, which is, I am afraid, entirely contrary to the public-school tradition. Harrison was a man of very great sincerity, no imagination and curiously cursed with nerves. It is all wrong for a man of his type to have nerves—nobody believes or understands it. In theory, he was extremely broad-minded, generous and admiringly devoted to his wife; in practice, he was narrow, jealous and nagging. To hear him speak of her, one would have thought him the ideal of chivalrous consideration; to hear him speak to her, one would have thought him a suspicious brute. Her enormous vitality, her inconsequence, her melodrama (that is the real point, I think), got on his nerves, and produced an uncontrollable reaction of irritability. He would have liked her to shine for him and for him only; yet a kind of interior shyness prompted him to repress her demonstrations and choke off her confidences. “That will do, my dear”; “Pull yourself together, my girl,” checked a caress or an enthusiasm; a grunt, a “Can’t you see I’m busy,” a “Why have you suddenly got these ideas about” music or astronomy or whatever the latest interest might be. Into the muffling of his outer manner, her radiance sank and was quenched. Yet to others he spoke with earnest pride of his wife’s brilliance and many-sided intelligence.

Harrison’s instinct was to dominate, but by nature and training he was unfitted to dominate that particular woman. It could have been done in two ways—by capturing the limelight, or by sheer physical exuberance. But neither of these things was in his power; he was inexpressive and sexually unimaginative, as so many decent men are.

He had his means of self-expression: his water-colours and his cookery. It was his misfortune that in the former he should have been weak, conventional and sentimental, and bold and free only in the latter. I believe, indeed, that all the imagination he possessed ran to the composition of sauces and flavourings. It is surely a matter for investigation whether cookery is not one of the subtlest and most severely intellectual of the arts; else, why do its more refined manifestations appeal to women hardly at all and to men only in their later and more balanced age? Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. If Harrison could have made a big public splash with anything, she could have understood that and preened herself happily as the wife of a notoriety. But she had no eyes for the half-lights.

At first it was amazing to me that Lathom showed so much patience with Harrison. Lathom is a barbarian about food and magnificently intolerant of bad painting. Twaddle about Art and Atmosphere got short shrift with him. Yet he let Harrison bore him to any extent with his prattle and his picturesque bits. Harrison did, indeed, treat him with a deference flattering in a man of his age, but under ordinary circumstances that would merely have infuriated Lathom, who, to do him justice, is no drawing-room lion. It was not that Harrison provided the response which I gave so awkwardly. In time I realised that, though I had my selfish reasons for refusing to see it. Mrs. Harrison was the radiant prism for Lathom’s brilliance, and Lathom used Harrison in that service as carelessly as in the old days he had used the prefects’ toasting-forks. He saw the tool ready to his hand and took it, without shame and without remorse.

I have put all this down, as I saw it, without consideration for the feelings of anybody. It is useless to blame people for their peculiarities of temperament. At the time I did not interfere, because, to tell the truth, I was working hard and involved in my own concerns, and did not want to be bothered with Lathom’s affairs. Besides, I rather prided myself on a cynical detachment in such matters. As it turns out, I should have done far better to preserve this cheerful selfishness throughout. That I did not was again due to sentimentality and public-school spirit, and I am heartily ashamed of it.

I suppose I must say something about Mrs. Harrison. It is difficult, because I both understood and disliked her. Just because she had no use for me, I was detached enough to see through her. I have not the superb and centralised self-confidence that could strike the colours from her prism. I come back to that image, because it expresses her with more accuracy than any description. My diffusion left her dead glass. But in Lathom’s concentration she shone. He gave her the colour and splendour her dramatic soul craved for. She saw herself robed with all the glowing radiance that dazzled her half-educated eyes in the passionate pages of Hichens and de Vere Stacpoole. I hardly think she was wicked—I do not think she had any moral standards of her own. She would adopt any attitude that was offered to her, provided it was exciting and colourful enough. I think she had enjoyed herself at her office; she had radiated there in the little warmth of popularity which always surrounds people of abundant physical and emotional vigour, but at home she had only the devotion of Miss Milsom, with her warped mind and perilous preoccupations. She visualised herself into the character of a wronged and slighted woman, because that was the easiest way to evoke clamorous response from Miss Milsom—and, of course, from Lathom when he came along.

It is rather surprising, I feel, that Harrison was never jealous of Lathom, as he was of every other man, including myself. I fancy it was because he looked on Lathom as his own friend, primarily. Now I come to think of it, it was of his wife’s personal life that he was jealous—her office, her interests, the friends she had made for herself—everything that had not come to her through him. My position was different. He distrusted me because of my work and opinions. I had written an unpleasant book and I had no definite moral judgments. From such a man, nothing but impropriety could be expected. He was wary and uneasy in my presence. He could talk food with me, and did, but only, I think, in despair for want of other appreciation. He was fearfully lonely, poor soul, and I failed him miserably. And he was jockeyed by me into letting his wife’s picture be shown at the Academy—but only because he thought I was belittling his wife’s character. His change of mind was a chivalrous rush to her defence. I was pleased with myself at the time, I remember; I suppose my light-hearted diplomacy was about as disastrous as diplomacy usually is. What devilish things we do when we try to be clever. After all, Harrison probably understood his wife only too well, but he could not bear that anyone should suspect the clay of his idol. He destroyed himself rather than let her down. I rather think that Harrison had something heroic behind his primness and his gold spectacles.

There was one thing which I ought most certainly to have left severely alone, and that was the final disaster, in which Miss Milsom was concerned. For once I was seized with the idiotic whim to play the martyr and the noble-spirited friend. At the very moment when my reasonable and deliberate policy of detachment should have come to my aid, I must choose to take the centre of the stage and indulge in high-mindedness.

Lathom woke me up. He came and sat on my bed, and I noticed with irritation that he had been borrowing my dressing-gown again. He always took things.

“I’m in a mess,” he said.

“Oh?” said I.

He told me what had happened. I have seen Miss Milsom’s account. It is accurate in all points but one. Far from repulsing Lathom, she had encouraged him. He had broken from her at the foot of the staircase with considerable difficulty. He was filled with a righteous disgust, which struck me as funny under the circumstances.

“Disgusting old woman,” said he.

“True,” said I. “None should have passions but the young and the beautiful. What are you going to do? Serve with Leah seven years in the hope of getting Rachel in the end?”

“Don’t be filthy,” said he. “There will be a row about this, I’m afraid.”

“Very likely,” said I. “But that is your affair.”

“Not altogether,” said Lathom. “You see, she thinks it was you.”

“Me?” I was considerably taken aback.

“Yes. You see, I had your dressing-gown——”

“So I observe.”

“She recognised the feel—the quilting, you know—damn it all, she rubbed her ugly face in it——”

“Really,” I said, “the kittenish old creature.”

All the same, I was not pleased. Gestures which delight in the right person are so indecent when performed by the wrong. In fact, it is only when we contemplate the loves of unpleasant people that we see the indecency of passion. It is disgusting to think of the amorous transports of, let us say, Mr. Pecksniff. Grotesque characters only exist for us from the waist upwards.

“I suppose,” I went on, “it didn’t occur to you to mention that you were not me?”

“I didn’t say anything. I got away. I didn’t want to make a noise. In fact . . .”

In fact, he had made use of me cheerfully enough, and was now wondering whether I should put up with it.

“Look here,” I said, “what do you intend to do? If you want to carry on an intrigue with Mrs. Harrison, I tell you, frankly, I’m going to get out and leave you to it. It bores me and I don’t care about these alarms and excursions. Anyhow, why don’t you leave the woman alone? You’re doing her no good.”

Then he exploded and started to tramp about. She was the greatest miracle God had ever made. They were meant for one another. They had got into each other’s blood and all the rest of it. That, of course. Equally, of course, if Harrison had been a decent sort of man he would have sacrificed his own feelings. (As if Lathom had ever thought of sacrificing anything.) But Harrison was a brute, who did not appreciate the wonderful woman who had been entrusted to him. Lathom could suffer himself, but he could not bear to see her suffer. It was all so damned unjust. The man was not fit to live. He deserved to be murdered for his rotten paintings, let alone for his cruelty to his wife. And to think that his revolting hands should have the right . . .

And so on.

It is so very odd that in moments of excitement we should all talk like characters in a penny novelette. However long one lives, I suppose it always strikes one with the same shock of surprise.

“That’ll do,” I said at last. “We can take that as read. If Mrs. Harrison feels as you do about it——”

He interrupted me to assure me at unnecessary length that she did.

“Very well,” I said, “why not do the decent and sensible thing and take her away? You won’t find this kind of backstairs intrigue permanently inspiring, you know. Besides, it seems to be the kind of thing you do very badly.”

“I wish to God,” replied Lathom, “that I could take her away. Heaven and earth, man, do you think I wouldn’t do it like a shot if I had half a chance? But she won’t hear of it. She’s got some poisonous idea about not making a scandal. It’s this damned awful suburban respectability that’s crushing the beautiful life out of her. When you see what she was meant to be—free and splendid and ready to proclaim her splendid passion to the world—and then see what this foul blighter has made of her——”

“Well, there you are,” said I. “That’s the raw, red life of the suburbs, as per specification. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? Look here, Lathom, buzz off and let me get to sleep, there’s a good chap. You can blow your feelings off in the morning.”

“Oh, all right.” He got up from the bed and hesitated at the door. “I only thought I’d warn you,” he added, a little awkwardly, “in case the old woman says anything to you.”

“Dashed good of you,” I said dryly. “What am I to do? Make love to the confidante while you make love to the mistress, and go stark mad in white linen?”

“Oh, you needn’t bother to do that,” said he. “I should just treat the whole thing as a joke. Or, if she makes a fuss, apologise and say you were a bit screwed. I’ll back you up.”

I was so infuriated with him for shoving the responsibility on to me in this light-hearted way that I told him to clear out, which he did.

As a matter of fact, I rather under-estimated the seriousness of the thing. I mean, I did not realise the lengths to which Miss Milsom’s resentment might go. I determined merely to avoid the woman in future, and, in fact, treat the whole episode as if it hadn’t occurred. I thought Lathom had received a salutary shock and useful lesson on the difficulties attending suburban love-affairs, and that he might bethink himself and stop the whole thing before it had gone too far. A good thing, too. I was clearing out and getting married at Easter, and there, so far as I was concerned, was an end of it. Lathom could fish it out for himself after that. My book had made a sudden success, and I was feeling rather cock-a-hoop with myself.

Consequently, I was quite unprepared for the arrival of Harrison with his accusation. He was dead-white with fury and intensely quiet. He did not offer me a single opening by scattering his usual fiery particles of rage. He put the accusation before me. Such and such things had been stated—what had I to reply? I tried to dismiss the thing with airy persiflage. He was not abashed by my assumption of ridicule. He simply asked whether I denied being on the landing at that time, and, if not, what I was doing there. When I refused to answer so absurd an accusation, he told me, without further argument, to leave the house. His wife must not be subjected to any kind of disagreeable contact. The mere fact that I could take such an attitude to the matter (and, indeed, my attitude had nothing dignified about it) showed that I was an entirely unsuitable person to come into any sort of contact with Mrs. Harrison. He was there to protect her from persons of my sort. Would I go quietly or wait to be removed by force?

The deceived husband is usually considered to be a ridiculous figure, but Harrison was not ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder whether he was deceived. I thought at the time that he was, but perhaps the light of faith in his eyes was really the torch of martyrdom. It is fine to die for a faith, but perhaps it is still finer to die for a thing you do not believe in. I do not know. He baffled me. If the garrison was disarmed and beaten behind that impenetrable façade, I was never to know it. Nobody would ever know it.

It is ironical that Lathom, coming to Suburbia to find raw, red life, should have failed to recognise it when he saw it. It was there, all right, in this dry little man, with no imagination beyond beef-steak and mushrooms, but it did not wear bright colours, and Lathom liked colours. The thing was farcical. And I believe I was the most farcical fool in the whole outfit. Even then, the mocking censor which views one’s personality from the outside sat sniggering in a corner of my brain. Here was I, a successful novelist, presented with this monstrous situation—one which was quite in my own line of work, too—and I hadn’t even had the wits to see it coming. The thing was a gift.

I could see myself tackling it, too, in quite the right modern, cynical way. No nonsense. No foolish shibboleths about honour and self-sacrifice. A lucid exposure of the situation—an epigram or so—a confrontation of Harrison (as representing the old morality) with the unsentimental frankness of the new.

And the damnable thing was that I didn’t do it. When it came to saying, “My good man, you are mistaken. My friend Lathom is the man you ought to be after. He and your wife are carrying on a love-affair, for which you are largely to blame, if, indeed, any blame attaches to these unsophisticated manifestations of natural selection”—when it came to the point, I didn’t say it. Looking at Harrison, I couldn’t say it. I behaved like a perfect little gentleman, and said nothing whatever.

After that, I can only suppose that I became quite intoxicated by this new and heroic view of myself. I went straight off to Lathom and told him about it. I oozed priggishness. I said:

“I have stood by you. I have kept silence. I have agreed to leave the house at once. But I will only do it if you will promise me to chuck the whole business—clear out at the same time that I do. Leave these people alone. You have no right to ruin the life of this decent man and his wife, who were getting along quite well in their way till you came along.”

I grew solemn and portentous about it. I enlarged on Harrison’s sufferings. I painted a vivid picture of the miseries the woman must needs undergo in the course of a secret love-affair. I called it vulgar. I called it wicked and selfish. I used expressions which I thought had perished from the vocabulary since the ’eighties. And I ended by saying:

“If you do not promise me to do the decent thing, you cannot expect me to stand by you.” Which was mere blackmail.

There must be more of the old inhibitions alive in even the most modern of us than one would readily credit. Lathom was actually abashed by my eloquence. He protested at first; then he grew sulky; finally, he was touched.

“You’re quite right, old man,” he said, “damn it. I’ve been behaving like a cad. I couldn’t make her happy. I ought to go away. I will go away. You’ve been damned decent to me.” He wrung my hand. I clapped him sentimentally on the shoulder. We wallowed in our own high-mindedness. It must have been a touching sight.

The first disagreeable consequence of this foolish interference with the course of events arrived in the shape of a letter from my fiancée. Miss Milsom had felt it her duty to send one of those warnings. I dashed up to Scotland to put matters right. The greatest compliment I can pay to the open mind and generous common sense of Elizabeth is to say plainly that I had no difficulty about doing this. But I was reminded with a slight shock that Victorian quixotry has a way of landing one in complications. However, no harm appeared to be done, and later on I received a letter from Lathom, dated from Paris, in which he informed me that he was playing the game (the words were proof in themselves of the condition to which I must have reduced him), and that, after a highly emotional scene, Mrs. Harrison and he had agreed to part.

* * * * *

I got married soon after that, and forgot all about Lathom and the Harrisons—the more so as Elizabeth did not encourage me to dwell on the subject. A natural jealousy, I thought, particularly as she had not seemed altogether impressed by my quixotic gesture. But women are unconquerable realists, and nowadays they are not taught to flatter male delusions as they once were. It is uncomfortable to think that perhaps our repressed Victorian ancestresses were as clear-sighted as their franker granddaughters. If so, how they must have laughed, as they made their meek responses. In this century we do know, more or less, what they are thinking, and meet them on equal terms—at least, I hope we do.

I was reminded of Lathom by receiving my ticket for the Private View at the Academy on May 3rd. We had had our honeymoon, and were ready to return to our place in the world. Almost the first thing I saw, as we surged through the crowd, was the painted face of Mrs. Harrison, blazing out from a wall full of civic worthiness and fagged society beauties, with the loud insistence of a begonia in a bed of cherry-pie. There was a little knot of people in front of it, and I recognised Marlowe, the man who paints those knotty nudes, and created a sensation two years ago with “The Wrestlers.” He was enjoying his usual pastime of being rude to Garvice, the portrait-painter. His voice bellowed out over the din, and his black cloak flapped gustily from a flung-out arm. “Of course you don’t like it,” he boomed lustily, “it kills everything in the place dead. That’s none of your damned art—that’s painting—a _painting_, I tell you.” Several pained people, who had been discussing values in low tones, shrank at the unseemly noise, and dodged waveringly from the sweep of his hairy fist. “None of you poor pimples,” went on Marlowe, threateningly “can _see_ colour—or thickness—you’re only fit to colour Christmas cards at twopence a hundred. There isn’t a painter in the whole beastly boarding-house crowd of you except this chap.” I will do Marlowe the justice to say that, except where nudes are concerned, he is singularly generous to the younger men. He glowered round through his bush of beard and spectacles, and caught sight of me. “Hullo, Munting!” he bawled. “Come here. Somebody said you knew this fellow Lathom. Who is he? Why haven’t you brought him round to see me?”

I explained that I had only just returned from my honeymoon, and introduced Marlowe to my wife. Marlowe roared approval in his characteristic way, and added:

“Come along on Friday—same old crowd, you know, and bring this man Lathom. I want to know him. He can _paint_.”

He spun round to face the picture again, and the crowd retired precipitately to avoid him.

“Well,” said a man’s voice, almost in my ear, “and how do you think it looks, now it’s hung?”

I spun round and saw Lathom, and with him, before I could adopt any suitable attitude to the situation, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, flung up from the waves of sightseers like the ball from a Rugby scrum.

Retreat was hopeless, because Marlowe now had me tightly by the shoulder, while with his other hand he sketched large, thumby gestures towards the portrait to indicate the modelling and brushwork.

“Hullo, Munting!” said Lathom.

“Hullo, Lathom!” I said, and added nervously, “Hullo-ullo-ullo!” like something by P. G. Wodehouse.

“Good God!” exploded Marlowe, “is this the man? The man and the model, by all that’s lucky,” he bellowed on, without waiting for my embarrassed answer. “I’m Marlowe; and I say you’ve done a good piece of work.”

Lathom came to my rescue by making a suitable acknowledgment of the great man’s condescension, and I was sliding away with a vague bow and a muttered remark about an engagement, when I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Harrison.

“Excuse me one moment, Mr. Munting,” said he.

A row in the Academy would have its points from the point of view of my Press agent, but I was not anxious for it. However, I asked Elizabeth to wait a moment for me, and stepped aside with Harrison.

“I think,” said he, “I am afraid—that is, I feel I owe you an apology, Mr. Munting.”

“Oh!” I said. “That’s all right. I mean, it doesn’t matter at all.” Then I pulled myself together. “I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s my fault, really. I ought not to have come. I might have known you would be here.”

“It’s not that,” he said, determined to face it. “The fact is—I fear I did you an injustice that—er—that last time we met. Er—the unfortunate woman who made all the trouble——”

“Miss Milsom?” I asked; not because I didn’t know, but to help him on with his sentence.

“Yes. She has had to take a rest—in fact, to undergo a course of treatment—in fact, she is in a kind of nursing-home.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. There can really be no doubt that the poor creature is—well, demented is perhaps an unkind way of putting it. Perhaps we had better say, unbalanced.”

I expressed sympathy.

“Yes. From what my wife tells me—and Mr. Lathom—and from what I hear from the poor creature’s relatives, I now feel no doubt at all that the—the accusation, you know—was entirely unfounded. A nervous delusion, of course.”

“Yes, yes,” said I.

“I quite understand, of course, your very chivalrous motives for not putting the blame on her at the time. The position was most awkward for you. You might perhaps have given me a hint—but I perfectly understand. And my wife, you will realise, was so very much upset——”

“Please,” I broke in, “do not blame her or yourself for a single moment.”

“Thank you. It is very kind of you to take it in this reasonable spirit: I cannot say how much I regret the misunderstanding. I hope you are very well and prosperous. You are quite a famous man now, of course. And married. Will you do me the honour to present me to your wife? I hope you will come and see us some day.”

I was not keen to make the introduction, but it could scarcely be avoided. The preposterous situation was there, and had to be imagined away. Mrs. Harrison glowed. For the first time I saw her in full prismatic loveliness, soaked and vibrating with colour and light. I asked her what she thought of the show.

“We haven’t seen much of it yet,” she said, laughing, “we came straight to see _the_ picture. Is it going to be the picture of the year as they call it, do you think, Mr. Munting?”

“It looks rather like it,” said I.

“Fancy that! It does make me feel important—though, of course, I don’t count for anything, really. The painting is the thing, isn’t it!”

“The subject of the portrait counts for something, too,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t see how anybody can make a picture of one of those cow-faced people. Except a satirical one, of course. It’s the painter’s job to get the personality on the canvas, but what is he to do if there is no personality? Mr. Lathom . . .”

She looked at the portrait, and then at Mrs. Harrison, and something seemed to strike her. It was the thing that had struck me, months before, when I first saw what Lathom had made of it. She grew a little confused, and Lathom struck in.

“Mrs. Harrison and you would agree about the importance of subject-matter,” he said. “I can’t persuade her to admire Laura Knight.”

Mrs. Harrison blushed a little.

“I think they are very clever pictures,” she said, a trifle defiantly, and with a side-glance at her husband, “but they are rather peculiar for a woman to have painted, aren’t they? Not very refined. And I mean, they are so unnatural. I’m sure people don’t walk about, even in their bedrooms, like that, with nothing on. And I think pictures ought to make one feel—uplifted, somehow.”

“Come, come, Margaret,” said Harrison, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”

“But you said the same thing yourself,” she came back at him.

“Yes, but I don’t care about your discussing them here.”

“Oh!” said Marlowe, loudly, “you are afraid of the flesh. That is our trouble—we are all afraid of it, and that is why we insist and exaggerate. ‘_Hoc est corpus_,’ said God—but we turn it into hocus-pocus. There’s no hope for this generation till we can see clean flesh and ‘sweet blood’—Meredith’s phrase—without being shocked at its fine troublesomeness. If one were to strip all these people now”—he waved a hand at a fat man in a top-hat and an emaciated girl, who caught his eye and stood paralysed—“you would think it indecent. But it’s not as indecent as the portrait-painter who strips their souls for you. Some men’s work would be publicly censored, if the powers knew how to distinguish between flesh and spirit—which, thank God, they don’t.” He clapped Lathom on the shoulder. “How about that other thing of yours, my boy?”

Lathom laughed a little awkwardly.

“Is that the portrait of Miss Milsom?” I interrupted, hastily—for I saw trouble coming up like a thunder-cloud over Harrison’s horizon. “We must go and have a look at it. You’re doing pretty well to have two pictures in such a crowded year. We mustn’t keep you too long. Which room is it in, Lathom?”

He told us, and when we had said our farewells, pursued us into the next room.

“I say, old man,” he whispered breathlessly, “I couldn’t really help this. Couldn’t in decency get out of it, could I?”

“No,” said I, “I suppose you couldn’t. It’s not my funeral, anyhow.”

“It’s the first time we’ve met,” he went on, “and it will end here.”

“But for my damned interference it wouldn’t have begun here,” I answered. “I’m not blaming you, Lathom. And I’ve really no right to make conditions. I don’t think it’s wise—but I can’t set up to be a dictator.”

“Oh, you admit that, do you?” said Lathom. “I’m rather glad to know it.” He hesitated, and added abruptly, “Well, so long.”

I was thankful to see the end of the episode. From every point of view it seemed advisable to drop all connection with Lathom and the Harrisons, and I saw none of them again until the 19th of October.

38. _Margaret Harrison to Harwood Lathom_

May 4th, 1929

PETRA DARLING,

Oh, how wonderful it was, darling, to see you again, even under the Gorgon’s eye—such a cold stony eye, darling, and with all those people around. I had been dead all through those dreadful months. When you went away, I felt as if the big frost had got right into my heart. Do you know, it made me laugh when the pipes froze up in the bathroom and we couldn’t get any water and He was so angry. I thought if he only knew I was just like that inside, and when the terrible numb feeling had passed off, something would snap in me, too. Was that a foolish thing to think, Petra? Not a very poetical idea, I am afraid, but I wished I could have told it to you and heard your big, lovely laugh at your Darling Donkey!

Oh, Petra, we can’t go on like this, can we? I couldn’t go through those long, long weeks again without seeing or hearing you, not so much as your dear untidy writing on an envelope. And, darling, it was so dreadful to hear you say you couldn’t work without your Inspiration, because your work is so wonderful and so important. Why should He stand between you and what God meant you to do? The life we live here is so cramped and useless; the only way I can fulfil any great purpose is in being a little help in your divine work of creation. It is so wonderful to know that one can really be of use—part of the beauty you make and spread all about you. It isn’t even as if I counted for anything in _His_ work. A woman can’t be an inspiration for an electrical profit and loss account, or a set of estimates, can she? He doesn’t think so, anyway. He just wants to have me in a cage to look at, darling—not even to love. He doesn’t care or know about love—thank God! I say now, because I can keep myself all for my own marvellous Man. Oh, I have so much to give, so much, all myself, such as I am—not clever, darling, you know I am not that, though I love to hear about clever, interesting things—but loving and real and _alive_ for you, only you, darling, darling Petra. I never knew how much beauty there was in the world till you showed it to me, and that’s why I feel so sure that our love must be a _right_ thing, because one could not feel so much beauty in anything that was wrong, could one? Fancy going on living for years and years, starved of beauty and love, when there is all that great treasure of happiness waiting to be taken. Oh, darling, he was going on at dinner last night about how his grandfather lived to be a hundred and his father about ninety-four, and what a strong family they were, and I could see them, going on year after year, grinding all the happiness out of their wives and families and making a desert all round them, just as He does. I looked up Gorgons in a book, darling, and it said they were immortal, all except the one Perseus killed, and I’m sure they are, darling, the stony horrors. Sometimes I wish I could die. Do you think they would let me come and be near you after I was dead? But I know you think we don’t live after we are dead, but just turn into flowers and earth again. It does seem much more likely, doesn’t it, whatever the clergymen say—so I suppose it would be no good me dying, would it? Just think—only one life, and to be able to do nothing with it—nothing at all, and then just die and be finished. It makes me shudder. It’s all so cold and dreary. What right have people to make life such a wasted, frozen thing? Why are they allowed to live at all if they don’t _live_ in the true sense of the word? And life can be such a great thing if it is really _lived_. Oh, Pet darling, thank you for having taught me to live, even if it was only for a few short, wonderful weeks! When I’m all alone (and I’m always alone, nowadays, not even poor Milsom to talk to now), I sit and try to read some of the books you told me about. But I stop reading, and my mind wanders away, and I’m just living over again the hours we had together, and the feel of your dear arms round me. Sometimes he comes in and finds me like that, and scolds me for letting the fire out and not putting the light on. “You’re always mooning about,” he says, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing.” Oh, darling, if he only did know, how angry he would be and how wicked he would think me in his ugly little mind!

Dear one, you won’t leave me all alone again, will you? We said we would try to forget one another, but I think you knew as well as I did how impossible it was. Well, we have tried, haven’t we, and we’ve found it is no good. You thought it would be better for me, but it isn’t. I feel far, far more miserable than I did, even in the days when we were seeing each other and trying to keep down all the things we were thinking and feeling together. I would rather suffer the awful pain of seeing and wanting you, than feel so dead and empty, as if my heart had been all drained out of me, beloved. And I know now that it is just as bad for you, because you can’t do your work without me, and your work ought to come first, darling, even if you have to mix your paints with my heart’s blood.

Darling, if you think it’s better we shouldn’t be real lovers, don’t leave me altogether. Let us see each other sometimes. It doesn’t matter even if the Gorgon is there and we have to talk the silly meaningless tea-party talk. Our real selves will be saying the real things to one another all the time, and we can look at one another and be a little bit happy. I can _feel_ with my eyes, can’t you, darling? When you met us yesterday and stood there with that absurd top-hat in your hand—it was so funny to see you in that stiff, formal morning dress, but you looked very splendid and it made me so proud to think you were really all mine and no one knew it—well, when I saw you, I could feel in all my fingers, darling, the queer lovely feel of your hair that first day—do you remember—when you put your head on my knees and broke down and said you loved me. Such a dear head, darling, all rough and crisp, and the strong, splendid bones under it, full of wonderful thoughts. If I shut my eyes I can feel it—I’m doing it now, darling. Shut yours—now, this minute—and see if you can’t feel my hands. Did you, Petra darling—did you feel all the love and life in them? Tell me when you write if you can feel me as I feel you!

You will write, darling, won’t you? You will spare me that little ray at least from the great fire of your life and love. Don’t leave me all in the dark, Petra, and I’ll be content with whatever you give me. Everything has been so ghastly that I haven’t got it in me to be exacting, dear.

Always your own, only, for ever,
LOLO

39. _The Same to the Same_

June 6th, 1929

PETRA, MY DARLING, MY DEAR, DEAR MAN DARLING,

Oh, my dearest, isn’t it terrible to see the summer coming, and to feel so wintry and lonely. Your letters have been a help, but what wouldn’t I give for you yourself, the real you!

You will tell me again that I’m not telling the truth. That I don’t really love you because I won’t give up being conventional and respectable and go away with you, but it isn’t that, Petra darling. You think in your dear, impetuous way that it would all be so easy, but it wouldn’t really, darling. You think that because you are a man, and you don’t consider how awful it would be, day after day, all the sordidness and trouble. It wouldn’t really be fair to make you go through all that. Even if He would let me go—which, of course, he wouldn’t, because he is so selfish—it would be a long, drawn-out misery. I know how horrid it is because I know a woman who got her divorce. Of course, her husband took all the blame, but it was a miserable time for everybody, and she and her man friend had to go right away, and he gave up his post, a very good post, and they are living in quite a slummy little place in rooms, and don’t even get enough to eat sometimes.

Anyway, the Gorgon would _never_ consent to me divorcing him, because he prides himself on being very virtuous and proper, and he would probably have to leave his firm or something. He would never do that. He thinks more of his firm than of anything in the world—far more than he does of me or my happiness, which he has never considered at all from the day he married me.

Doesn’t it seem too awful that one has to pay so heavily for making a mistake? I keep on thinking, if only I hadn’t married him. If only I were free to come to you, Petra darling—what a wonderful time we could have together! But then I think again that if I hadn’t married him, I should never have lived here, never met you, and oh, darling, what could make up for that? So I suppose, as they say in the nature-books, that He has “fulfilled his function” in bringing us together. I looked at him last night as he sat glooming over the mutton, which wasn’t quite done as he likes it (you would never let a stupid thing like mutton poison the whole beautiful day for you, but he does), and I thought of Mr. Munting saying once, “All God’s creatures have their uses,” when Miss Milsom had made me one of her lovely scarves—and I said to myself, “If only you could know, my dear Gorgon, what is the one thing in our lives I thank you for!” That would really have given him something to gloom about, wouldn’t it?

It is so funny—he is always asking when you are coming to see us again. His Cookery Book is going to be published in a few weeks’ time, and he is ridiculously excited about it. He thinks it is a great work of art, and is going to send you a copy as from one artist to another. Wouldn’t that make a good reason for you to call on us, if you could get over to England? It is clever of you to be able to find so many things to say about his silly little water-colours—you who are a really great painter (I have learnt not to say artist now. Do you remember how impatient you were with me when I called you “artistic”? We nearly had a quarrel that day. Fancy us quarrelling about anything—now!).

It makes me sad, Petra darling, to think of my poor lonely Man so far away, wanting his Lolo. And I’m a little frightened, too, when I think of all the beautiful ladies in Paris. I expect they think a lot of you, don’t they? Do you go to a great many fashionable parties? Or do you live the student-life I used to read about and think how gay and jolly it must be? You don’t tell me very much about the people you see and the places you go to. I wish you weren’t a portrait-painter—you must have so many opportunities to find someone more beautiful than your poor Lolo and so much cleverer. Don’t say they aren’t more beautiful than I am, because I shall know you aren’t telling the truth. I’m not really beautiful at all—only when I had been with you I sometimes used to look in the glass and think that happiness made me _almost_ beautiful, sometimes. I have been reading in a book about the real Laura and Petrarch—did you know, she was really only a little girl and that he hardly saw her at all? Perhaps she was only beautiful in his imagination, too. But that didn’t prevent her from being his inspiration, did it? I wonder if you are the same. Perhaps I inspire you better from a distance. I don’t think a woman _could_ feel like that. She wants her Man always, close to her. Darling, do say you want me like that, too.

I must stop now. The Gorgon will be wanting its tea. I am living just like a hermit now. I never go anywhere and I try to do all I can to keep him in a good temper, for fear he should get the idea that there is Somebody Else in my life. How dreadful it would be if he suspected anything. He is fairly reasonable now, except when his food isn’t quite right. But oh! I am so lonely.

Darling, I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I have kissed the paper twenty times where your dear, darling name is. You must kiss it, too, and think you are kissing your own, your absolutely ownest own,

LOLO

40. _The Same to the Same_

14th June, 1929

DARLING,

Your letter hurt me so dreadfully, I cried and cried. Oh, Petra, you can’t love me at all, or you wouldn’t say such awful things. You can’t really think that if I love you I ought to let _him_ divorce _me_. Darling, do think how horrible it would be! How could I go through all that terrible shame in public, and all my friends looking on and thinking hateful things about our beautiful love! At least, I suppose I could go through with it—one can go through all kinds of agonies and still live—but that you should _want_ me to do it—that you could think of your Lolo in such a sordid way—that’s what hurts me, darling. You used to say you wanted to stand between me and trouble, and couldn’t bear to think of anything ugly touching our pure and lovely passion. And yet now you want to smirch me with the stain of the divorce courts and see my name in the papers for people to snigger at. Oh, Petra, it’s absolutely clear you don’t really love me one bit.

You couldn’t feel the same to me, Petra, I know that, if I came to you all dirtied and draggled from an ordeal like that. Just think of having to stand up in the witness-box and tell the judge all about our love. It would all sound so different to their worldly, coarse, horrible minds, and our love would seem just a vulgar, nasty—I don’t like to write the word they would call it, even to you—instead of the pure, clean, divine thing it really is.

Darling, I’m not thinking of myself—I’m thinking of you and our love. I don’t want a single spot to touch it. It would be better to suffer all our lives as we are suffering now—as _I_ am suffering, for sometimes, Petra, I don’t think you suffer at all—rather than to look at each other with the shadow of an ugly scandal between us. You don’t understand. You don’t realise what a difference these things make to a woman. It does not make any difference to a man, but even you would see the stain on me for ever afterwards, and would turn against me.

Tell me you don’t really mean it, darling. There must be some other way out. Let us think very hard and find out. Or if you really think so little of me, tell me so, and we will say good-bye again—for always, this time. I expect I was wrong to stick to our agreement before. You wanted to be released then, and you wouldn’t have asked it if you hadn’t been tired of me already in your heart. Let’s end it all, Petra. Perhaps I shall die, and then you will be free. I feel unhappy enough to die—and if I’m too strong for wretchedness to kill me, there are always easy ways out of it all.

Your heart-broken
LOLO

41. _The Same to the Same_

15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
30th June, 1929

DARLING, DEAR PETRA, MY DEAREST,

Of course I do forgive you. It’s you really that must forgive me for saying such awful things. I didn’t mean them. I knew really, deep down in my heart, that you loved me all the time. Of course I couldn’t say good-bye—it would kill me—— Yes, I meant that part of it.

But you do see now, don’t you, that we can’t take that way out. For my sake, you say, darling, but, indeed, I could bear anything for myself—only I don’t want to spoil the lovely thing we have made. We will do just as you say, wait for a year and see if anything happens. It may, if we only want it enough. God might make a miracle to help us. Such things have happened before now. He might even die—“in him Nature’s copy’s not eterne”—doesn’t somebody say that in a play somewhere? We used to go and see Shakespeare sometimes when I was at school, and do the plays in class, though I didn’t pay much attention to them then. I didn’t understand what a difference art and poetry make to one’s life. I was waiting for you to come and teach me, my dear.

I am going to do some really solid reading now, to try and be more worthy of my darling when the happy time comes. (I must believe there will be a happy time, or I should go mad.) This year of waiting shall be a year of self-development. That will make the desolate days pass more quickly. Goodness knows I shall have time enough, for He never lets me go out anywhere or have any of my own friends to see me. The only people I ever have to talk to are his friends from the office. They talk about bridges and electrical plant interminably. I don’t know how people can live with such petty, dull things taking up all their minds. Sometimes one or two of them have the graciousness to ask me if I have seen the latest play or film, but I never have, and I just have to sit and smile while He says, “We’re quiet, domestic people, my wife and I; we don’t care about this night life.” And if I ever suggest going out, he pretends that I want to be “gadding round” in nightclubs at all hours. I am ashamed of being so ignorant of the things everybody is talking about. Other husbands take their wives out. But no—if I want to stir out of doors, I’m a bad woman—“one of these modern wives who don’t care for their homes.” What kind of place is my home, that I should care about it?

I have got that book you were talking about, _Women in Love_. It is very queer and coarse in parts, don’t you think, and rather bewildering, but some of the descriptions are very beautiful. I don’t understand it all, but it is thrilling, like music. That bit about the horse, for instance. I can’t quite make out what he means, but it is terribly exciting. What funny people Lawrence’s characters are! They don’t seem to have any ordinary lives, or have to make money or run households or anything. That woman who is a schoolmistress—she never seems to have to bother about her work, one would think it was all holidays at her school. I suppose the author means that the humdrum things don’t really count in one’s life at all, and I expect that is true, only in actual life they do seem to make a lot of difference.

Oh, I do hate this cramping life—always telling lies and smothering up one’s feelings. But tyrants make liars. It is what somebody I read about in the papers calls “slave-psychology.” I feel myself turning into a cringing slave, lying and crawling to get one little scrap of precious freedom—a book, a letter, a thought even—and carrying it off into a corner to gloat over it in secret. That is the way in which I am learning to build up an inner life for myself, a lovely, secret freedom, so that the things He says and does can’t really hurt me any longer. The real Me is free and happy, worshipping in my hidden temple with my darling Idol, my own dear Petra darling.