Looking back over the last chapter, I become aware of an unkept promise. No one will have noticed it but myself, and nobody will care a straw even when it is pointed out. Confess, gentle reader — I call you gentle, as a child says “Nice doggie” because it is so scared of the beast; — confess that you don’t know what promise I mean. Oh, I am not offended.
But I am exact. Now my critic in the Observer of December 1920 says I am out on the quest of some blotched lily of beauty, some fleur du mal, like the defunct Aubrey Beardsley. We live and learn, and I am very pleased indeed to shake hands with the outre-tombe Monsieur Beardsley. On the other hand, I am told that I am not like Swift. I am not out on the search for truth. So the infernal Dean can call me a Yahoo if he likes. I parade with my spangled lily down the avenues of time.
Yet, gentle reader — don’t bite then, don’t bite — I am really quite fond of truth: and even of keeping my word. Which is more than can be said of a certain Dean. And therefore, I recall to you a promise I made.
I said I would indicate, in the following conversation, — or conversations, I forget which — what was the reason of the tenuity of the scarlet thread of human feeling binding the little professor Alfred Kramer to his fellows. That scarlet thread is thin: very thin: spider-web thin. And why? — In professor Alfred, I mean —
Why? That’s what I promised to reveal in further conversations. As a matter of fact I thought the professor was going to unbosom to Gilbert Noon. And he never unbosomed, which is rather a let-down for me.
Pray excuse the unbecoming word let-down, gentle reader. That’s what it is to come of humble origin: these abominable hyphenations rear their flattened heads from among the nettles of the unchastened vocabulary. How a Times critic dropped on me for using the word toney!I’m sure I never knew it wasn’t toney any more to say toney. Because once it was quite toney, I’m sure. Perhaps I even meant then. But now I’m being almost modern, so I shall eschew toney, and yet not eschew let-down. I tell you, gende reader, it was a let-down.
In the Orient Express, which in those paradisal days ran to the Morgenland via Munich and Vienna, sat a lady who ought to have got out at Frankfort. Why then is she spinning on towards the Austrian frontier?
The answer is simple. At dinner, on the train, she sat at a tiny table face to face with a little Japanese. The lady was fair and fresh-faced and just over thirty: the Japanese was a Japanese, presumably about the same age as herself, discounting the aeons of his ancestors. Over the Moselle wine, the two talked in English. Useless to repeat what they said. Sufficient that they talked in English, and as they talked, the face of the woman shone like a flower in the sun, and flashes of strange light seemed to go over the little Japanese face opposite her. Why this strange and electric connection should suddenly have started across a tiny table in an express train, who knows. Suffice that by the time the oranges and apples and nuts were bounced on to the table, the woman had felt a quiet, strangely powerful, hand grip her knee under the board, and linger with a slow, intense, magnetic pressure. She was so startled that her will-power deserted her for the moment, and she sat gazing with transfixed bright eyes into the face of the little Japanese, which was bent down near the white cloth, as the young man stooped ostensibly to pick up his table-napkin.
The sad, almost saurian eyes of the Oriental gazed fixedly into the green-grey eyes of the woman, till she felt she would do anything, anything for him. Then came coffee, and the soft voice of the stranger inviting her to drink a liqueur with him. She would take a Benedictine. Yes, she would take a Benedictine. And as the waiter filled her little glass she felt the two legs of the stranger pressing her knees between his own, under the table, a long, slow, invidious pressure, with all the Japanese magnetic muscular force, while the sad, saurian, oriental face still watched hers. She drank her Benedictine in a little throatful, and by the time it was swallowed she had lost all sense of her surroundings.
The Japanese invited her to go down with him to the saloon car. She went, and sat by him, and he talked to her with his slow quiet voice, and she answered with her bright voice. And the train flew on, and still they sat side by side in the saloon, and still they talked.
Till she felt the jar of the brakes: and she heard the porters yelling Munchen. Munchen — how was that possible? She gave a cry, and collected her wraps and her valise.
“Are we in Munich?”
“Yes, in Munich.”
In dazed bewilderment she was climbing out of the train, and the Japanese was following in his slow oriental fashion, watching. He decided not to leave the train.
And so it was that Gilbert, reading in bed just after midnight, heard the bell ring in the distant kitchen — and ring again — and again. Till he became uneasy, and went into the passage. And heard a desperate peal. So he shouted for Julie: and got no answer.
The Herr Professor was away: so, apparently, was Julie, in this carousing city of Munich. So Gilbert, who didn’t possess a dressing-gown, went in his pyjamas and opened the door of the flat. And there stood the above-mentioned lady, bright- faced, with her furs and wraps and her valise.
“Ist der Herr Professor Kramer nicht zu Hause?”
The question came in German.
“Isn’t Professor Kramer at home?”
“No — he is in Gottingen for three days.”
“And is no one there? Julie?”
“She doesn’t seem to be here.”
“Oh dear!” A hesitation on the doorstep. “Professor Kramer is my cousin. I forgot to get out at Frankfort, and it took all my money. Can you lend me ten Mark for the taxi?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
“Oh dear,” said the woman, “I am such a fool.” And sighing wearily she came into the hall and threw her wraps and valise on to a seat, whilst Gilbert, in his faded flannel pyjamas, went into his room for the money.
“Ah thank you,” she said. “I must go down and pay! Ah me, I am such a fool.”
Whereupon she ran down the stairs, and Gilbert heard her speaking first to the night-porter, then outside to the taxi- man. He remained in the doorway, and saw her rise like a Wagner Goddess through the floor, in the lift.
“Oh danke!” she cried to the night-porter, and came rushing into the flat again. She shut the door behind her.
“Ah Gott sei dank! Aren’t I hopeless? But who are you? I don’t know you, do I?”
All this in German.
“No,” said Gilbert. “I am staying with Professor Kramer.”
“But are you German?”
“No — ”
“Ah, you are English — !” and here the conversation breaks into English. “I come from America. I am going home to my parents — they are in Frankfort expecting me now. Ach, what a fool I am, I came straight through. Poor papa — I know he is at the station. Oh dear, I hate myself. I just slept and didn’t wake.”
This, as we see, is a complete lie: but then how can a woman confess to a knee-pressing Japanese in a dining car?
Poor Gilbert still stood in the hall in his pyjamas, and felt not so frightfully uncomfortable.
The woman was already so flustered, he did not matter very much. She took off her hat and dropped it unheeding on the couch in the hall, and lifted her soft, dark-fair hair from her brow with her fingers.
“Poor Papa, he will be in such a rage.”
“Perhaps I can telegraph to him,” said Gilbert.
“Can one telegraph now? — Or telephone perhaps? But I don’t know the number. Perhaps we could find it. Oh yes.”
The two went into the study and hunted the telephone books. They found the address — and succeeded after a while in getting the connection.
“Ach Papa — is it you? Oh, I’m in Munich. Think of it. Yes, I slept! Yes! And you were there all the while! Oh dear! No — no — I didn’t have any dinner. I was so tired. No — no. Ach, I hate myself. What? What? Yes. Tomorrow. But I must sleep. When? Yes. No — no, it’s no good. No — he’s not here — only the servant. — Ach, Papa, you dear Papa, I hate myself. No, but I could cry. And were you fearfully disappointed — no — no — you? — yes. Dear Papa, and how are you? And Mama? — Good — Good! I’m awfully glad. — I’m dying to be with you — dying. — Yes. — ” A pause. “Ah Mama, are you there? Ah, what am I for a stupid ass! Yes, yes, I know how you’ll scold me. Never mind, I deserve it. I do. What? What? You can’t be as cross as I am. Yes, good. No, only Julie. You were in bed — yes — Papa still waiting? Oh dear. No, don’t be too cross. No — you’re not surprised. No — No — No “
The conversation drifted to an end, and the woman hung up the receiver. Then she rose from the chair, and for the first time looked at Gilbert. He, for modesty’s sake, had put on his overcoat. She was wearing a dark-blue coat and skirt.
“Well!” she said, in English, scrutinising him.
“Are you hungry?”
“Rather. But where is Julie.”
He spread out his hands in a faint gesture.
“When the cat is away the mouse will play. Is that it?” said the woman. “Poor Julie, she will feel dropped on. I shall have to promise not to tell Alfred. What did you say your name was?”
“Gilbert Noon” — and he spelled it.
“Gilbert Noon — rather nice,” she said. “Mine is Mrs Johanna Keighley. My husband is an American doctor, and I am just come home to see my mother and father. And this is how I bring it off.”
“Bad luck,” he said.
“Isn’t it! And just like me.”
“Like you, or your luck?” asked Gilbert.
“Me! Me! I’m afraid it’s me. I’m awful, I really am. My husband would be so disgusted. Ach, but it’s lovely to be back. We live in Boston, and I hate it. So dull, so dull. I’m always pining to be here again. I’m German, and I love Germany Do you know where the pantry is? My husband is an Englishman too, but we went to America the first year I was married. — Oh America — I don’t know what to say to it.”
Gilbert in his overcoat, the full-breasted woman in her delicate, dark-coloured blouse went down to the kitchen quarters, switching on lights till the whole flat was aglare. As they were making a collection of cold meat and sausages and cheese and sweets a form suddenly appeared in the open doorway. It was the truant Julie.
“Ach, Frau Doktor — !”
“Ja, Julie! Ja! Yes! What time is this to be coming in, you? I come from the train and the strange gentleman must let me in. Good for you that the Herr Professor is far enough away. But I want to eat — I am so hungry. Make me an omelette, will you — with four eggs: or with six, and the gentleman will eat some.”
“No,” protested Gilbert. “No.”
Julie, who looked flushed and guilty, with her hair astray, flung off her things and darted into her apron. Her kitchen was spotless: not only clean, but of that purity of texture as if the very cast iron of the stove had never known the common, contaminating earth, but had been born out of a black, clean cloud of the sky.
When the two returned to the long drawing-room, Julie darted round switching off the lights. Whatever would the Herr Professor have said to such a mass of brilliance.
“And what are you doing in Munich?” Johanna asked of Gilbert. Whereupon he told her, as briefly as possible. He looked rather a comic figure, sitting there buttoned up in a thick dark-brown overcoat, which would keep sliding apart and exposing his pyjamad knees, so that he was as self- conscious as an elderly woman with short skirts.
“And are you happy here?” asked Johanna.
“Oh yes — very.”
“And is Alfred nice with you, and not too fussy?”
“Very nice.”
“And do you have a good time with the Hebers and the Wolfstangels and Alastair and all those?”
“Yes — quite. I’ve got no money you see, except the little bit I make one way and another — nothing. So I have to go gendy, you know.”
“Oh, but in Munich one doesn’t need money. It’s the loveliest town [in] the world for that. Don’t you think? You can be at court and have a pink flannelette petty, and nobody minds.”
“Why should they?” said Gilbert.
“Well it is rather horrid, pink flannelette. Oh, but if it weren’t for my children, I’d come and live in Munich like a shot.”
“Have you children?”
“Two lovely little boys. They are dears.”
“In America.”
“Yes — so far away.”
“Couldn’t you bring them?”
“No, it’s such a bother dragging children about.”
“Don’t you miss them frightfully?”
“No — not unless I start thinking about them. They’re there, you know — like the sun or the Frauenkirche.”
“Yes, I suppose they’re all right.”
“Yes. I’ve got a perfect German nurse for them. I believe she’s much better with them than I am, though I rather hate her bossy little ways. Let’s go and eat.”
They returned to the dining-room, and Julie carefully switched off the light after them.
So, instead of facing the little white-bearded professor, Gilbert sat facing a young and lovely, glowing woman. His double-breasted overcoat was buttoned over his breast, his fresh face and pouting lips perched above inquiringly. The woman was glowing with zest and animation, her grey-green eyes laughed and lighted, she laughed with her wide mouth and showed all her beautiful teeth. Her hair was soft and brownish and took glints, her throat, as it rose from the fine texture of her blouse, that was dark blue-and-red frail stuff transparent over white, rose like a lovely little column, so soft and warm and curd-white. She was full-bosomed, and full of life, gleaming with life, like a flower in the sun, and like a cat that looks round in the sunshine and finds it good.
Now Gilbert was an impressionable young man, who never left off being smitten. Whether it was the fluff and cuddliness of Emmie, or the ivory irony and slowness of Patty, or the dark-browed peasant passivity of the catholic Marta, or the glow of the learned and wistful and uncertain Louise, he was sure to be smitten. Now he was struck all of a heap, so much so that he did not even know he was smitten at all, but only watched and listened, was all eyes and ears and soul- attentiveness, with no saving afterthought to steady him.
Johanna liked him. Women did like him as a rule, with his full, dark-blue eyes, his pouting lips, and his musician’s hands.
“Tell me about your home, in England,” she said.
He told her about his father, and Whetstone.
“Oh,” she cried, “I know those Midlands. They are a dark, dreary hole in the face of the earth. And did you never have a mother, then?”
“Not to remember.”
“Well I think you’re lucky. Mothers are awful things nowadays, don’t you think?”
Gilbert had not been accustomed to think so, therefore he inquired “why?”
“Don’t you think thev all want to swallow their children again, like the Greek myth? — who was the man? — There isn’t a man worth having, nowadays, who can get away from his mother. Their mothers are all in love with them, and they’re all in love with their mothers, and what are we poor women to do?”
“Do you do so badly?” asked Gilbert.
“Yes! Yes! You don’t believe it!” She made round solemnish eyes at him. “But it’s true. It’s true.”
“In what way,” said Gilbert.
“One wants a man to oneself, and one gets a mother’s darling. — You don’t know what it means. They’re all Hamlets, obsessed by their mothers, and we’re supposed to be all Ophelias, and go and drown ourselves.”
“But you’re not on the way to the water, are you?” asked Gilbert/
“No,” she cried, with a shout of laughter. “No, I’m not. Neither am I going to put rue and rosemary in my hair, though they’d all like to make me. — Ha — mother-love. It is the most awful self-swallowing thing.”
“You’ve got a mother-in-law, then?”
“Yes, but she’s a dear, really. She loves her husband. She’s quite beautiful, really. No, my husband isn’t like that. He wants to set me on a throne and kiss my feet. You don’t know how uncomfortable I feel.”
“I can believe it,” said Gilbert.
“Can you? Can you? Well I’m glad you can. I hate a throne, it’s so hard and uncomfortable. And I don’t think I’m a white snowflower, do you?”
He looked at her across the table.
“I shouldn’t say so,” he said.
“No by Jove! Anything but. Oh, if he knew. — Do you know, he is quite capable of killing me because I’m not a white snowflower. Don’t you think it’s absurd? When I’m a born dandelion. I was born to get the sun. I love love, and I hate worship. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, quite,” said Gilbert, shaking his head solemnly.
“To sit and be worshipped all my life by one solemn ass — well, it’s not good enough. There are lots of men in the world — such lovely men, I think. There was a little Japanese in the train. Don’t you think they’re fascinating — so quick and on the spot.”
“Yes — !” said Gilbert doubtfully.
“I should love a little Japanese baby: brown and solemn and so different. I think they’re dears.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Yes, haven’t you? The first I saw was when I was quite a girl — you know I’m thirty-two, and have a son of twelve. And it was the dearest little thing — a father and a mother Japanese in awful European clothes, carrying this dear little brown baby. It was in Florence, and the people ran after them in crowds, perfectly fascinated. So that they had to get a carriage and drive off. Oh I can remember them so well. And I always knew after that that I wanted a brown baby. Yet there I’ve got an honest English husband and two sweet boys, and I’m adored for being a white snowflower. Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“Very.”
“No you don’t! You think it’s quite right, I know you do, you Englishman. You all want a white snowflower in your button-hole. Say you do, now.”
“Well, I don’t know much about white snowflowers, so perhaps it’s no good my saying.”
“Oh you cautious Englander. And aren’t you in love with anybody now?”
“No, nobody in particular.”
“Nobody in particular! That sounds just like you. When you can’t have a snowflower you have some perfectly impossible horizontale. Oh, the English and the Americans, with their snowflowers and their saintly mothers and their unmentionable incidents in the background! It’s all such a lie.”
“Nay,” said Gilbert. “I never have anything to do with horizontales. No, I left England because of a girl.”
And he told the story of himself and Emmie.
“It does sound awful,” she said. “So common and unrelieved. I don’t like it.”
“No, neither do I,” said Gilbert.
“But you did it, and therefore you must have liked it. Oh, I can’t bear to think of love made so low.”
“You like love on a high plane?” said Gilbert.
“Yes! Yes! There must be something ideal about it.”
“Japanese?” said Gilbert ironically.
“Yes. I think they’re so wonderful.”
“Perhaps I think Emmie wonderful,” said Gilbert.
“Oh no! Oh no! How can you. Such a common little thing, and rather a minx, I’ll bet.”
“And what about a Japanese? Isn’t he common? Isn’t he an ugly toad?”
“No! No! It’s an ugliness that fascinates me. — No! No! I hate commonness. The commonest man I’ve ever had is my husband, really. — No, I had a wonderful lover — a doctor and a philosopher, here in Munich. Oh, I loved him so much — and I waited for his letters — ”
“When, before you were married?”
“Oh no. It is only two years ago. He was Louise’s lover first. It was he who freed me, really. I was just the conventional wife, simply getting crazy boxed up. But he was wonderful, Eberhard. Ah, I did love him.”
“And don’t you any more?”
“No — no! I knew it was no good. When I’d been with him — I was only with him two weeks — two separate weeks — here, and in Utrecht. He was a marvellous lover — but I knew it was no good. He never let one sleep. He talked and talked. Oh he was so marvellous. I once went with him to a zoo place. And you know he could work up the animals, by merely looking at them, till they nearly went mad.”
“A psychiatrist.”
“Perhaps! Perhaps! He took drugs. And he never slept. He just never slept. And he wouldn’t let you sleep either. And he talked to you while he was loving you. He was wonderful, but he was awful. — He would have sent me mad. Perhaps I am a bit mad now. — But he was my first lover — four years ago.”
“And where is he now?”
“I don’t know. In Berlin or somewhere. He simply lives on drugs. And he was so beautiful, like a white Dionysos. He never writes. But Louise will know. She was his wife’s best friend. But Wilhelmine never tried to keep him. You couldn’t try to keep a man like that. — The only thing I couldn’t quite stand, was that he would have two women, or more, going at the same time. And I couldn’t bear it.”
“No,” said Gilbert, who was becoming depressed. “But why did you think he was so wonderful.”
“Oh, he was a genius — a genius at love. He understood so much. And then he made one feel so free. He was almost the first psychoanalyst, you know — he was Viennese too, and far, far more brilliant than Freud. They were all friends. But Eberhard was spiritual — he may have been demoniacal, but he was spiritual. Which Freud isn’t, don’t you think.”
“I don’t think Freud is spiritual,” said Gilbert. “But what was it that Eberhard taught you, that made you feel so free?”
“He made me believe in love — in the sacredness of love. He made me see that marriage and all those things are based on fear. How can love be wrong? It is the jealousy and grudging that is wrong. Love is so much greater than the individual. Individuals are so poor and mean. — And then there can’t be love without sex. Eberhard taught me that. And it is so true. Love is sex. But you can have your sex all in your head, like the saints did. But that I call a sort of perversion. Don’t you? Sex is sex, and ought to find its expression in the proper way — don’t you think. And there is no strong feeling aroused in anybody that doesn’t have an element of sex in it — don’t you think?”
These theories were not new to Gilbert. How could they be, in the professor’s house? But he had never given them serious attention. Now, with the gleaming, distraught woman opposite him, he was troubled by the ideas. He was troubled, and depressed. It all saddened him, and he did not agree, but did not know what to say.
“I never know quite what you mean by sex,” he said.
“Just sex. It is the kind of magnetism that holds people together, and which is bigger than individuals.”
“But you don’t have sexual connection with everybody,” said Gilbert, in opposition.
“Not directly — but indirectly.”
“Nay,” he said. “I don’t see that. Sex is either direct sex, or it is something else which I don’t call sex.”
“But don’t you see,” she said, “sex is always being perverted into something else — all the time.”
“Ay,” said Gilbert. “And perhaps something else is always being perverted into sex.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
It was evident she was all distraught, bewildered, roused, and yet not having any direction.
“Of course,” she said, “I daren’t tell Everard. When I try to tell him, he sneers. I tried to tell him about Eberhard. But he wouldn’t let me. He didn’t want to know. And he would kill me rather than know. Isn’t it strange. — And yet the secrecy almost sends me mad. — Why can’t I tell him?”
“It isn’t a pretty thing for a man to hear — from his wife,” said Gilbert.
“But why? It isn’t unnatural. And he’s my husband. And he lets me do what I like. He lets me come to Germany for three months at a time, and he is quite happy there in Boston, with his work, and his love for me as a snowflower. Why won’t he let me tell him I’m not a snowflower? I do tell him that. But why won’t he let me tell him about Eberhard? He knows, at the bottom. He knows. In his unconscious, he knows I’m not faithful to him. But he would kill me rather than let me tell him. And that is what is so awful to me. I feel it is awful — I live in a lie, and it sends me mad. But what am I to do?”
“Write to him, and tell him.”
“Yes, but it seems cowardly. And one writes all the wrong things. And then he’s one of the people who make it just impossible. He would never face it — never. He would just make horrors for himself and me and the children, and it wouldn’t be faced at the end. He might commit murder, but he would funk facing what I’ve done and what I am. You see it’s what I am that he’s got to see, and which he never will see. Whatever Eberhard was, he was something which Everard, my husband, never could be: something wonderful, something beautiful, and something so much more intense and real. Well, I can’t help it that I needed that, can I? I did need it. I was just arrested without it. — And Everard would just either kill me or show off in some other way like a maniac, if I tried to tell him. Why will men never know their own limitation?”
“Will women?” said Gilbert.
“Oh much sooner. — You see I could always be friends with Everard: even be married to him. I am fond of him, really. But I did love Eberhard — and my husband would have to admit it. I loved Eberhard. And I rather love Freyling and Berry. I do, and so I do. It’s no use denying it. And I won’t deny it. Why should I deny them any more than Everard? Why should I?”
Gilbert sat with his head dropped, and did not answer. Johanna watched him.
“Ah!” she said, with a distraught, reckless sigh. “It is all so complicated, I feel sometimes I might go mad. Why is it all so complicated? Why can’t we admit love simply, and not go into paroxysms about it?”
“Perhaps it isn’t natural to be simple about it,” said Gilbert. “Perhaps it would be unnatural if Everard, your husband, let you do as you do and knew about it.”
“But why can it be any more natural, his just refusing to know? He only refuses to know. And if that is natural, well, better be educated beyond nature.”
“Probably,” said Gilbert.
“You know that’s what makes me hate him. I don’t hate him. I’m fond of him really. And it sends me mad to have to hate him, when I’m fond of him. But I shall go mad if I have to live with him. Because I’ve got to keep it all secret, and that just does for me.”
“Why don’t you tell him, then?”
“I’ve tried. Ha, haven’t I tried, God knows. But he’d expect me to be a weeping Magdalen, which I’m not: repenting at his feet, which would be just a lie. I loved Eberhard, God knows I loved him: and I’ll never go back on it. And I love Berry and Freyling, but not so much. And I’m fond of Everard. And they’re all true, so I shan’t deny any of them. But I hate Everard, really, for making me lie. I hate him for it, with a deep, deep hatred. He has made me lie, and I can’t do it any more. I can’t do it.”
“Then don’t,” said Gilbert. “Write and tell him.”
“I don’t know what he’d do to the children.”
“Nothing,” said Gilbert. “Be tragic over them.”
“But I don’t want him to be tragic over them. — It might all be so simple.”
“While you’ve got people, things never will be simple,” said Gilbert.
“No, I suppose they won’t. — But I’m not going to be self- sacrificing. Since Eberhard, I can’t even if I want to. I can’t, I really disbelieve in it.”
“So do I,” said Gilbert.
They relapsed into silence.
“Well — ” she sighed after a while, looking up with her bright, reckless, rather pathetic smile again. “There it is!”
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “There it is.”
“Goodness!” she cried, looking at the clock. “It’s nearly three.”
“It is,” said Gilbert.
She rose, letting her serviette drop on the floor, and turned towards the door.
“Well goodnight,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Goodnight,” said Gilbert, shaking hands.
“You wouldn’t like to come to me?” she said, looking direct at him.
“When?” he asked, looking back into her eyes.
“Tonight,” she said.
He was silent for a moment, looking unconsciously at her.
“Yes,” he said, and was surprised that his lungs had no breath.
“In about ten minutes,” she said, turning away.