To say that Johanna and Gilbert found that famous first night of theirs a success would be false. It was not a success for either of them. The passion did not get free in either, and therefore neither of them felt satisfied or assuaged or fulfilled. And yet in the morning they were rather happy. They were happy just being together. The very fact that the attempt at passion had failed for the moment kindled a deeper gratification in companionship. They were delighted like two children at being together.
“What are you doing today?” cried Johanna at breakfast — which was at half-past ten.
“Alfred is coming back this afternoon,” said Gilbert.
“Oh dear! And tomorrow I must go to Frankfort. Isn’t it maddening! — Shall we go out?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert — though he should have gone to the university.
Therefore they wandered through the streets of the town till midday, then took the train to the mountains. They went to Kochel, to the Kochelsee. It is a little, deep, dark-watered lake. The day was sunny, with a vivid radiance enhanced by the not-far-off flashing of many snows and spear-heads of mountains. At the foot of the Alps, among the foot-hills, there are bogs where the peasants cut turf. The two walked across the bogs, picking blue gentian and delicate pink primulas and bog-flowers like violets. In the village they bought food and oranges — which Gilbert liked because the peasant woman who sold them called them Apfelsinen, applesses, feminine apples. By the side of a little white shrine they sat in the sun, listening to the Alpine gurgling of running waters, smelling the tang of ice and bog in the sunshine, and eating the black bread, which is so very good with mountain butter, and the slices of rare good sausage, and sipping the Schnapps from a tiny shilling bottle, and hearing the cow-bells tong-tong-tong, behind the fir-trees at the back, and seeing the mountains in heaven pale and radiant.
“If I were you,” said Gilbert, “I shouldn’t go back to America.”
He was holding her hand quietly in his.
“When, never? Oh, I must.”
“But I should write and tell Everard.”
“What?”
“That you won’t come back.”
“But he’d want to know why.”
“Because you are staying with me.”
She was quite still, whilst the cow-bells clonked from the slopes above, and a peasant far off yodelled in the spring air.
“But I must go back, mustn’t I?” she said wistfully. “I’d love not to. — But I must.”
“Write and tell him you are with me.”
“Must I?”
“Yes.”
“I am frightened.”
“What’s the good of being frightened. — It would be better if you told him to his face. But you can’t. So write. Write tonight.”
“And say what?”
“That you are with me.”
“But shall I?”
“Yes. Write openly. Then let things develop.”
“I’m afraid to.”
“But you must.”
“Are you sure.”
“Yes I am.”
“I’m frightened.”
And she clung to his fingers. He stared away into the marshes of the foot-hills, where clumps of birch-trees balanced magically in the air, on silver stems, radiant almost as the mountains are radiant, yet near, and alive.
“Are you sure I must?” she said. His face, so still, looking into the distance and seeming devoid of feeling, frightened her.
“Yes, you know I am.”
But she knitted her woman’s brows, and thought of things he did not think of: her children, her many years of married life in England and America, her parents: all the old scheme of things. She knew he thought of nothing: only he looked away into the distance. And she didn’t remind him. She let his far-awayness decide.
As the afternoon wore on they rose and went to the lake. It was deep and dark blue, dark green, heavily ice-cold. There was a little pier, a little wooden jetty near a small bathing establishment that was shut. They sat on this jetty and dipped their feet in the heavy, clear water, and watched the light on the steep slopes opposite, and the deep shadows infolded in the encroaching mountains. They seemed quite alone — there was nobody else.
After a while she got up and went away, through the shrubby walks by the water — a sort of hand-breadth of deserted pleasure ground. He stayed fastening his boots.
She drifted on alone, with head dropped, brooding. It was her instinct to get away and be alone. She came to the mountain high-road. Bullocks with a load of wood were slowly swinging along. Some soldiers passed. And she walked towards the infolding of the mountains, and still did not look up.
Then suddenly she remembered she was alone. She looked along the white, lost road, that ran between birch-trees. She turned. The soldiers were looking back at her. The scarlet band of their round caps showed so plainly above their ruddy, rude, peasant faces. She was frightened. Always fear took possession of her when she found herself alone in lonely places: a strange fear of men, of being attacked.
Why didn’t Gilbert come? Why wasn’t he in sight? She hurried towards the little pleasure ground. But the seats were bare. She went round the paths between the shrubs. But there was no sign of him. The world seemed strangely empty, void, and fear overcame her.
Bewildered she hurried to the little jetty. There she had left him, sitting at the end with his feet dangling over, not touching the water. Now it was empty. There was nobody. The sense of emptiness in the air was overwhelming.
Could it be possible he had slipped in and was drowned? She went forward trembling along the jetty, and peered into the deep, ice-heavy water. Oh god, was he gone? Was he gone down then? Terror mounted into her heart. She kneeled on the end of the jetty and peered down into the water. Could she see something down there? Could she?
She started up and looked round in horror. The sombre mountains stood almost upon her. She looked back at the little pleasure grounds. Empty. It was all empty, empty. He was drowned in the dark, still water of the Kochelsee, and there was a terrifying absence in all the chill air. She stared round. She called, and called again. No one answered.
Wildly she hurried towards the station. She asked a peasant woman if she had seen her husband — Mein Mann. But the woman had not seen Gilbert. Johanna arrived at the small terminus station. Nobody there. She asked a porter. Nothing.
And she felt sure he was drowned. She felt sure he was drowned. He was drowned, and she was alone, and what should she do. She felt a thrill of horror, and somewhere else, a pang of relief that the great solitude surrounded her again. In the midst of terrible fear, an awful void, there was a tiny motion of gratification that she was free. For in a way, she feared him — she had an incomprehensible small dread of him.
But her chief feeling was one of bewildered terror. As yet she spoke to no one. But she raced back along the white, empty high-road towards the lake. That was where he was: in the lake at the end of the jetty. It fascinated her, drew her on.
And as she raced in the frenzy of her heart, she saw him coming, a solitary figure, along the high-road towards her. Ah! All the tension dropped from her. He was there. And yet her heart was still aching from its strain.
“Where have you been? I thought you were drowned,” she cried almost angrily, as he approached her.
“Drowned! Why? I’ve been looking for you.”
“But where? Where? I’ve been nowhere? What have you been doing?” Her voice was peremptory and rather angry still.
“I came out on to the road and turned towards the village, thinking I was following you. I can’t have been two minutes behind you — not two minutes. Which way did you go?”
He too was rather angry, having been wandering in bewilderment and fear, looking for her. And neither of them could believe that such a small thing should have shattered them as this half-hour’s evasion had shattered them. The effect was by no means in proportion to the cause. And as they stood looking at one another in angry relief, there on the high-road, they knew it.
“I thought you were drowned. I was sure you were drowned,” she insisted.
“But why should I be drowned?” he answered irritably.
“I thought you’d fallen in the lake.”
“Am I such a fool?”
“Heaven knows. But I was sure.”
“Ah well then, you had no need to be sure.”
They walked slowly towards the station, a curious couple. But once in the train, she was glad again of his presence. He relieved her from the world. She was afraid of the world:
terrified of its sentence on her. It seemed to emit a horrible police-suspicion of her, which maddened her with fear and unease. And this man seemed to relieve her of it — though she did not know why. He made her feel quiet. And he too rested within her presence, and looked out from the little inaccessible conning-tower of his submerged spirit upon the world, as if the world were some endless streaming phenomenon. Without noticing one another, they gave each other a strange ease in the midst of a life that was alien to them both.
They arrived at the flat in town to find Alfred irritably expecting them, waiting for dinner.
“Ho! Johanna! You are a nice girl. You are a nice girl!” he cried in English. “So you slept in the train while your father and mother were waiting for you! Well, you are a dutiful loving daughter. You are a nice vestal. Ho! Julie told me. And where have you been? Do you know Mr Noon?”
“Quite well,” laughed Johanna significantly.
“Quite well! Quite well! Well, that is quick work. And behind my back! And when do you go to Frankfort?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! Well, it is lucky, because Professor Hartstein is coming and I shall want your room.”
“Don’t you like it that I came here and settled myself in? — But I had no money — I spent it all and hadn’t enough to pay the auto.”
“Ach, what a girl, what a girl! What should you do if you had no relations to go to? Well? What? Ha! What would you do without your relations?”
“Ya, Alfred, in a world where all men are brothers, you know — ”
“And all women sisters! Yes, I know. I know! Well. And where have you been? What have you been doing with yourself? Well? What? Have you been to see Louise? Have you been to see your cousin. Because I am only your cousin- in-law, remember. I am only your cousin-in-law. — How do you say that in English — ?” he turned to Mr Noon.
“The same,” said Gilbert.
“Well! Well! You haven’t told me where you have been, and what you have been doing.”
“Ach, du guter Alfred — we’ve been to Kochel.”
“To Kochel? To Kochel! But why? And who is we? Did Louise go?”
“No. Louise doesn’t know I’m here. Mr Noon and I went.”
“So! You two! You two! And what would your dear husband say? — your dear forsaken husband. — Ach, you know, Gilbert — ” said the professor, turning to Noon, “these women have no conscience AT ALL. It is an awful family of women: an awful family for women: I don’t know which. I married one, so I know. I know, who am a-telling of you. Well — well! Well — well! — And how goes it with you then, Johanna? Eh? Eh?”
“Well, thank you,” she said mockingly.
“Well, eh? Ah well, all I can say, Gilbert, is that I am sorry for you. I am SORRY for you.”
“Green grapes, green grapes, you old fox, you!” cried Johanna. The conversation, if such it can be called, had lapsed into German.
“Ah well, we shall see who pulls the longest face when he’s eaten the grapes,” said Alfred. Then rather pettishly, pantingly. “Ach! Ach! I’ve got such a headache. Ach, such a head-ache.”
“You want your dinner,” said Johanna, “and so do I.”
“No! No! I have had it all day. Ach, such a head-ache!” And he rested his head on his hand and made miserable eyes.
“Ja, du arrner Alfred!” said Johanna, in a tone of commiseration, as to a spoilt child. “Go and wash thy face in hot water — really hot water — and then let us have dinner.”
“Nein! Nein! Hot water won’t do it any good,” lamented Alfred peevishly.
“Perhaps senna,” said Johanna brightly, going away.
Alfred was in one of his pets. He was very much put out at arriving home and finding no one there. He thought he was angry at the way people appropriated his hospitality, and never gave him a thought. So he said ach!, and turned his shoulder to Gilbert, and would not speak; thus betraying his displeasure. So Gilbert also went away.
Johanna was hovering in the doorway of her room as he went down the passage. A bright, roused look was on her face. She lifted her eyelids with a strange flare of invitation, like a bird lifting its wings. And for the first time the passion broke like lightning out of Gilbert’s blood: for the first time in his life. He went into her room with her and shut the door. The sultriness and lethargy of his soul had broken into a storm of desire for her, a storm which shook and swept him at varying intervals all his life long.
Oh wonderful desire: violent, genuine desire! Oh magnificence of stormy, elemental desire, which is at once so elemental and so intensely individual! Oh storms of acute sex passion, which shatter the soul, and re-make it, as summer is made up out of the debacle of thunder! Oh cataclysm of fulminous desire in the soul: oh new uprising from the cataclysm. This is a trick of resurrection worth two.
The cyclone of actual desire — not mere titillation and functional gratification — or any other -ation — broke now for the first time upon Gilbert, and flung him down the wind. Not, dear moralist, to break him against the buttresses of some christian cathedral which rose in his path. Not at all. It flung him smack through the cathedrals like a long-shotted shell. Heaven knows where it did not fling him. I’ll tell you later on.
But for the moment, I insist on apostrophising desire, intense individual desire, in order to give my hero time. Oh thunder-god, who sends the white passion of pure, sensual desire upon us, breaking through the sultry rottenness of our old blood like jagged lightning, and switching us into a new dynamic reaction, hail! Oh thunder-god, god of the dangerous bolts — ! — No, gentle reader, please don’t interrupt, I am not going to open the door of Johanna’s room, not until Mr Noon opens it himself. I’ve been caught that way before. I have opened the door for you, and the moment you gave your first squeal in rushed the private detective you had kept in the background. Thank you, gentle reader, you can open your own doors. I am busy apostrophising Jupiter Tonans, Zeus of the thunder-bolt, the almighty Father of passion and sheer desire. I’m not talking about your little messy feelings and licentiousnesses, either. I’m talking about desire. So don’t interrupt. Am I writing this book, or are you? Let me tell you, even if, gentle reader, you happen to be a wonderful, chirping, gentle, soft-billed gosling of a critic, gentilissimo, I am writing this book, and it is not being chirped out by you. That is the mistake you make, gentle critic. You think I ought to write down what you chirpingly dictate to me. But you’re wrong, you fluffy little thing. I’m writing this book myself, and nobody is chirping it out to me like a piece of dictation. — Oh Jupiter Tonans, oh God of great desire, oh Storm-Father, I pour out my wine to you! Let the lightning play in my blood, let the —
“Johanna! Jo — han — nah — h — h!”
That is the voice of Alfred, calling from the door of the drawing-room in long-drawn musicality, high-low.
“Din — nerrr! Essenrin! Kommm!”
“Ja — ah — h!” piped the shrill voice of Johanna from behind the ever-closed door. “Kdm — me — e — !”
And in two more minutes she appeared, bright, a little dazzled, and very handsome. Alfred still stood waiting in the doorway of the drawing-room; a small, correct figure with a white imperial.
“Where is Mr Noo — oon?” he asked, still singing.
“Mr Noo — oo — n!” sang Johanna in antiphony. And she led her cousin-in-law into the dining-room.
Critic, gentle reader, I shall not say a word about Mr Noon’s movements. Suffice that he walked in a dignified manner into the dining-room, wearing a neat bow tie, just as Julie was removing the soup plates.
“Late! Late!” cried Alfred. “Has your toilet taken you so lo — ong?” Pray reverse the intonation of the last word: start low, and go high.
Gilbert seemed not to hear, but sat and ate his soup quickly. He too was fresh in the face.
“He looks very clean and nice,” said Johanna.
“Ye — es! Quite a nice young man,” said Alfred, whose attention was now, fortunately, attracted by the good brown lump of larded venison on the dish before him.