After My Fashion (31 page)

‘You are never wholly either. You are a woman Dionysus.'

‘When a woman Dionysus really does appear it will bring all our misery to an end.'

‘By bewitching us into thinking it isn't misery?'

‘By undermining misery with tragedy.'

‘Ah! you separate those two; so do I. That's where Cathy and I quarrel. She enjoys the sentiment of misery and loathes its boredom. I am never miserable.'

‘What are you, Ivan Karmakoff?'

‘I am never happy. I know that. And I am never unhappy. I am a person who works and plays.'

‘Is our dear Catharine part of the play?'

‘You know the answer to that, or you wouldn't ask it! Catharine and I belong to two different worlds.'

‘And
we
belong to the same world?'

‘You will always be a symbol to me; of what I live for.'

‘And that is?'

‘To bring a little order into chaos.'

‘I am the most chaotic person in creation.'

‘You are the greatest artist in America.'

‘What's the use of being that if no one understands me?'

‘Doesn't Storm understand you?'

‘I'm afraid my Richard lives in the same world as your Catharine. Poor darlings! They are both children.'

‘Where and when have you and I talked like this before?'

‘In Nineveh probably, or in Carthage.'

‘Do you believe that kind of thing?'

‘I didn't – an hour ago.'

‘Don't bring me into your play, my friend. I belong to your work.'

‘You belong to the object of my work.'

‘Where did you get those woman's eyes from? I shall think of them when I dance next week.'

‘Neither of us is pure woman or pure man. That's why we understand each other.'

‘What are we?'

‘We're messengers of the forgotten gods.'

‘We ought to give the password, then – the secret sign.'

‘We've given that already.'

‘Have we? Without knowing it?'

‘We are messengers. We know nothing.'

‘I thought when I first saw you just now, that you were the most brutal materialist I'd ever met.'

‘I thought you were the most unhappy woman I'd ever met.'

‘Now we have been flung together we must say everything.'

‘And prove our kinship?'

‘And make the sign of the meeting of messengers.'

‘And leave our play for a day and a night?'

‘How can we do that, Ivan Karmakoff?'

‘Dare you, if I dare? An interlude, a resting place.'

‘I thought you were the most cynical realist I'd ever seen.'

‘I thought your mouth had the look of a thing hunted by dogs; a torn mouth, a bleeding mouth, a mouth of suffering.'

‘Did you try to imagine what it would be like to heal that hurt?'

‘I imagined nothing. I knew that I had been sent for that.'

‘Because of our both being messengers?'

‘Because of our purpose. Because of the clearing up of chaos.'

‘What nonsense we've been talking, Ivan Karmakoff! These seagulls must think us the biggest prigs they've ever listened to.'

‘We have to get used to being thought prigs – by seagulls. The wild geese up there would understand us.'

‘No doubt they would! But I'm afraid our dear pair of tame geese back there wouldn't! To come to a practical question. How are we to manage? How are we to see a little more of each other?'

‘Your new programme doesn't begin until next week, does it?'

‘No, my friend. It doesn't.'

‘When has Richard to go back?'

‘Tomorrow. But oh, dear me! let's have none of this manoeuvring, you green-eyed savage! I'm not married to Richard and you're not married to Catharine. Let's go straight to our hotels, get my things and your things and take the train back to New York.'

‘And leave letters explaining everything?'

‘And leave letters explaining
nothing
! What's the use of living in a modern city if you cannot live in a modern way? We'll treat it simply as a joke. We'll write humorously. It is a joke, you know. Why shouldn't we go back to New York together? Richard has been telegraphing his wife that he was with you and Catharine. Well! He
will
be with Catharine!'

‘And he'll go back with her to Nelly?'

‘Oh
you
know the lady too? I've just met her. She's as pretty as a picture. But oh dear me!
how
English the poor dear is!'

‘I don't think our gods have given us any message to the English.'

‘They've warned us to run away from them. And that's what we'll do.'

They both turned round at that, and surveyed the long line of sand and spindrift that lay behind them white and chilly, lit up by the November sun.

A darkly outlined breakwater, about a mile away, broke the line of their vision. Their companions had evidently not yet arrived at that point. The two reckless ones had walked so quickly during their strange dialogue that they were already out of reach of pursuit.

‘You're sure you won't worry about Catharine?' remarked Elise as they made their way up from the sands to the board-walk above.

‘Not if you don't worry about Storm,' retorted Karmakoff.

They exchanged a glance of intimate understanding and allowed their eyes, which certainly had a queer resemblance in colour and expression, to meet and hold each other's gaze.

‘The world would say we were following a funny road to our purpose,' murmured the woman, as they threaded their way through the crowd.

‘You're thinking of what I said about reducing chaos,' responded the man. ‘But it's only when you've got that ingredient in your own veins and are using it with your brain that you can do anything. To
bottle up chaos doesn't help. It has to be ridden on and bitted and bridled. Most people's minds are burial grounds of that kind of thing, sprinkled with dead flowers. We're not leaving our friends for the sake of pleasure. We're leaving them for the sake of our work. We need one another at this juncture, Elise. Perhaps, later, it will be different!'

Again their eyes met and clung together in a long mysterious questioning look. And after that they both were silent.

‘Perhaps later it will be different!' the dancer repeated under her breath; and there awoke within her a sickening envy of that rare company of faithful souls who have the power of loving once and not again.

Then as the great fantastic hotel loomed above them, like the dream palace of some mad king of Thule, the old Dionysian mood surged up once more. ‘I've found him at last!' she whispered to herself. ‘The free spirit worthy of me. It will be easy enough if he loves me. But if I love him – let him beware!'

And in her heart she caught a strain of that southern music to which she was wont to dance when the northern harmonies grew too heavy for the fire within her.

A couple of hours later Richard stood in the hallway of the Hotel Ransom watching Catharine read Karmakoff's letter.

As he saw that tall willowy figure shiver from head to foot and bend and sway under the blow, he thought within himself quite suddenly –
We are all wrong, we irresponsible ones! Suffering goes
deeper than joy and to save from suffering is better than to give
pleasure
.

When the girl turned to him at last, mechanically crumpling up the wicked note in her hand, the look upon her face went to his heart as nothing in his whole life had ever done before. For Catharine had nothing of Nelly's pride, and to see her inarticulate suffering, nakedly exposed before him, made him hate the whole business of love and the whole system of the world in which such things were possible.

It was even worse when the girl tried to smile at him, tried to take the thing lightly. She was so smitten that not a tear came to her eyes. She just swayed backwards and forwards and smiled, her hands fumbling weakly, foolishly, meaninglessly, at the piece of
paper which she held. She kept thrusting it into the envelope and taking it out again; and her words tripped over one another blunderingly, confusedly, like the words of a person in a fever.

Richard experienced such a pang of pity for her that he felt as though his whole philosophy of life would be different from that moment. ‘Damn these cruelties!' he said to himself. ‘This can't be endured!'

They had gone first to his own hotel, thinking to find them there. His feelings when he read Elise's letter had, even then, been swallowed up in his concern for Catharine.

The link between himself and the dancer had been already stretched to the breaking point.
I must get her back to New York at
once
, he thought.
I must take her to Nelly
. His naïve dependence upon his wife's powers of comfort did not arouse any sense of humour in him, did not appear to him as singular under the circumstances.

He could be cynical and sardonic enough sometimes, but at other times he behaved with the innocent egoism of a spoilt child. Elise being disposed of, his natural instinct was to go straight back to Nelly.
She need never know, except in vague suspicion
, he thought,
how things worked out down here
.

Catharine was like wax in his hands during the rest of that day. She let him help her pack her things; she let him convey her to the station and place her by his side in the compartment, without a word.

He wondered, as he saw her lean sideways against the edge of the window, whether she wasn't half-asleep, whether indeed she hadn't swallowed some sort of drug. Once, however, when by a sudden movement forward he obtained a glimpse of her face he knew that she was only too completely in possession of her faculties. It was clear to him then that it was the blow to her heart which had deprived her body of all muscular resistance.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening when Richard and Catharine mounted the steps of the Charlton Street house.

Richard left the girl leaning helplessly against the wall of the passage, as if she were an umbrella or a stick that he had been carrying and, quickly turning the handle of the door, he entered the room.

The place was dark except for the light of a lamp in the street opposite.
Nelly's gone to bed
, he thought.
But I
must
wake her, as
Catharine's here
. He could not help experiencing a certain cowardly relief at the girl's presence, as it was an obvious raft of escape from immediate explanations. He struck a match and lit the gas. Then he went back into the passage. Leading in Catharine by the hand he placed her in that same big armchair where he had first made her acquaintance.

The girl looked at him out of hollow miserable eyes and murmured Nelly's name.

‘Hush! my dear!' he whispered. ‘It's all right. I'll wake her now and she'll look after you.'

He opened the door of the bedroom and went in. The bed was unoccupied, and the empty room, left in perfect order, mocked him with its neatness as if with a leer of derisive contempt.

He went up to the dressing-table, entirely bare now of Nelly's brush and comb and bottle of eau-de-cologne.

In the place of these things was a letter addressed to himself in Nelly's girlish hand.

He returned to the living-room where Catharine was sitting exactly where he had left her, her eyes fixed in vacancy.

Standing under the gas burner he opened the note and read it. It ran as follows: ‘If you only hadn't lied to me it would have been different. Why did you do it, Richard? How
could
you do it? I should have thought – but what's the use of saying any more? If neither for my sake nor the child's you can't give up your pleasures, it's no use pretending that you care for us. By the time you read this I shall be on the sea. Robert is sailing on the same ship. He will take me to Mrs Shotover's. He wants me to divorce you, but I shall never do that. He is very angry with you and unhappy. I think I am
myself too sad about everything to be angry ever again. Goodbye Richard. When you get tired of this person, as I know you will very soon, you will be sorry you forced me to leave you. I have to think of my child and I couldn't endure it any more. You will never be able to understand what a woman feels. Perhaps it isn't your fault altogether. I am afraid I must ask you to send me a
little
money, at regular intervals? I shall be happier when I see the Downs. Don't be afraid I shall do anything rash. I feel only too clear-headed. It is the Village Laundry, not Ebstein's, who come for our washing now. Goodbye. I am all right. The voyage won't hurt me.'

The letter was signed ‘Nelly' and there was a postscript to it containing one sentence: ‘Please keep in touch with Catharine, for the girl has no friends.'

Richard carefully folded up this letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took it out of his pocket and read it again very slowly. Then he carried it to the chimneypiece and placed it under a book.

He noticed casually as he did this that the elemental sprites, who accompany every human disaster with their satiric commentary, had arranged that the book under which he placed it should be the
Vita Nuova
. Well did he recall the romantic nonsense he had written for Nelly on the flyleaf of that book. But it served very well as a letter weight just then to keep that particular letter from blowing away!

He walked up and down the room several times trying to visualize Nelly on the ship. He felt no jealousy of Canyot at that moment. He felt only relief that his wife was not alone. But how he longed for her; for her voice, her look, her silent reproaches even! He had never longed so much for the presence of any human being.

At last he stopped in front of Catharine. What was to be done with the stricken girl?

‘Nelly has gone away,' he said. ‘I've treated her badly and she's gone away. She's sailed for England.'

Catharine stared at him with a puzzled uncomprehending look. ‘Nelly's left you?' she murmured.

‘Yes – devil that I am! She's treated me as I deserve and has gone off.'

‘Not alone?'

‘No, Robert Canyot's with her.'

The absence of anything in his tone except self-abasement seemed to rouse Catharine's pity.

‘Poor Richard!' she murmured and stretched out one of her long arms towards him. That naïve gesture of sympathy from one so cruelly hit herself was too much for Richard's self-control. He found himself on his knees by the side of the girl's chair struggling with violent sobs that shook his whole frame. Still tearless herself Catharine smoothed his hair caressingly with her fingers. An onlooker would have been made aware at that moment of what an immense fund of passionate human feeling lay beneath that queer Greenwich Village smock-frock, coloured like a Matisse painting.

He rose to his feet in a little while, relieved by his outburst. One of the cynical demons that were always ready to whisper unpardonable things in his ear commented with sardonic interest on the fact that somewhere within his consciousness there was an actual throb of self-congratulation that he was still able to shed tears.

The question now presented itself vividly to his mind: what was to be done with Catharine?

The girl had crossed her knees and clasped her hands round them, and now sat staring blankly in front of her.

It struck his inner consciousness how queer a thing it was, this pathology of wounded love! How it seemed to be something impersonal, like a madness that fell upon a person out of the air, quite independently of the value or worth or nature of the object for which it vexed itself.

He looked at his watch. It was already past ten. ‘Shall I see you back to your flat?' he said, touching the girl's hand.

The idea of her room in Thirty-fifth Street, full of little objects associated with her friendship for Ivan, brought such a woebegone expression into Catharine's face that he wished he had not suggested such a thing. But what else was to be done? He hesitated for a moment, looking helplessly round the apartment. Then he said, ‘All right. The best thing you can do is to stay right here, where you are. You shall sleep in Nelly's room and I'll pull my own bed into this room. Nobody will be any the wiser. And after all what does it matter? We're both past fussing about things of that sort!'

She seemed relieved at his suggestion; and he got a grim satisfaction
from the thought of that postscript in Nelly's letter –
Look
after Catharine. She has no friends
.

Having settled this matter he proceeded to drag the second of the two beds into the sitting room. Then he lit the gas under the stove so as to make them both some tea. He was touched by finding that Nelly had stocked their small cupboard with more provisions than he had ever seen there before.

He managed with difficulty to persuade the unhappy girl to swallow some oatmeal biscuits and a raw egg made palatable by the last drops of his brandy flask. These things and a cup of milkless tea formed their melancholy supper.

It was a curious situation, not likely to recur in either of their lives – sitting thus alone together beneath the same roof, while the man and the woman who had thrown them aside were no doubt drinking Olympian drinks in the sumptuous apartment so well known to Richard.

‘I shall have to get another job,' said Catharine wearily. But Richard was relieved to hear her say even that; still more relieved when she didn't refuse the cigarette he proffered.

‘How lucky Roger is to be safe out of the whole thing!' she remarked after a long silence.

‘Well! we shall all be out of it before so very long!' responded Richard.

‘I've got some morphia tablets in my room,' she added.

He laid his hand upon hers. ‘You mustn't talk like that, Catharine,' he said sadly. ‘You'll have to see it through, just as I shall. Sometimes I feel as if the whole mad business were a sort of dream and that when we wake up we shall be quite free from all this misery.'

‘Do you mean death?'

‘Yes. Death – but something else too. Anyway we should quite spoil what I mean by killing ourselves.'

The girl sighed. ‘I wish I could understand better what is underneath it all. If there were any point in it, any purpose in it, it would be easier.' She added desperately, ‘I would give my life for Ivan.'

‘I have a sort of idea,' Richard went on, ‘that after death all the people who care for each other come together without any of this wretched jealousy.'

‘I shall never bear to see him again, or her either!' cried Catharine Gordon.

‘Some day,' said Richard, ‘it may be completely different with these complications. The human race may learn to disentangle itself from its flesh and blood. It may learn to love without wanting to possess.'

‘Do you feel like that now?' she asked him suddenly.

‘No, no, my dear; I'm far below such feelings. Don't talk about me. I sometimes wonder whether I've got a heart at all.'

She looked at him with a puzzled frown and he fancied that she had been hurt by his words as if by something clumsy and banal.

‘You must never say a thing like that to anyone who loves you,' she said earnestly.

Richard smiled. ‘Why not, my dear?'

Her answer was a surprise to him. ‘Because it's unfair; because it's mean and cunning!'

There was a considerable flicker of annoyance at that moment flung across ‘the lake of his mind'. Had the girl managed to pierce the core of a very subtle form of self-complacency and vanity? Her words certainly broke up Richard's mood of superior protective strength. In some profoundly recondite way they gave him the sensation of being exposed. The feeling he derived from this sensation was not a pleasant one; he experienced that kind of unharmonious shock from it which, as he had noted on other occasions, gave a severer prod to his life illusion than anything else.

‘I expect you are right, Catharine,' he muttered, resuming his walk up and down the room. He made that time a genuine effort to break the crust of egoism which imprisoned his soul. Yes, the girl was undoubtedly right. That vague self-accusation ‘I have no heart' was only too obvious an example of a mental trick he was always playing himself – an unctuous salve of moral evasion with which he covered up drastic issues!

His analysis of his real inmost reaction to all these events revealed to him that he had been all the while, secretly and without any self-forgetful suffering, dramatizing his situation. He had been making it all a part of one long stream of not wholly intolerable occurrences, in the flowing tide of which the figure of Nelly herself, the figures of Elise and Catharine and all the rest, were there to be exploited, were there to be contemplated subjectively, as scenes in
the human play which after all remained his play – whereof he was not only an actor on the stage but an appreciative critic in the gallery!

His thoughts whirled confusedly through his brain now as he paced that little room, his guest's purple stockings and white sand-shoes mingling with first one mental image and then another.

It cannot, he thought, be altogether selfish and contemptible to
dramatize one's life and to detach one's self from it. Nelly never
does that. Catharine never does. But surely Elise must do it, or she
couldn't put so much art into her dancing. How is it then that I
annoy Elise so much with the way my mind works? Why does she
despise my poetry so? Poetry must, surely, be detached from a
person's life and yet be the residuum of a person's life. Am I hopelessly
inhuman and unnatural in all this?

Suddenly it occurred to him, as quite a new discovery, that it was queer that instead of being reduced to hopeless misery by his wife's departure he could occupy himself like this in cold-blooded abstract analysis!

Was it that, at the back of his mind, he felt confident that he had only to return to England, to receive Nelly's forgiveness and settle down happily with her as before? Or was it really that
nothing
, beyond extreme immediate physical pain, could break up the crust of his indurated egoism? Was he actually wanting in some normal human attribute; and did everything that occurred to him approach his consciousness through some vaporous veil like a thick sea mist? He began naïvely to wonder what the great artists of the world were like in these complicated human relations. It occurred to him that they must have the power of transfiguring the results of analysis and forcing the issue by the use of some sort of creative energy which the gods had completely denied to him.

Where was
his
place in the world then, he who was neither a normal human being nor a creative genius? Was he doomed for ever to live this wretched half-life, neither deeply happy nor deeply unhappy, cheated in some mysterious way of the prerogative of being born a man? He looked at the long tenuous figure of the young girl in the chair; and he felt, for one swift moment, as some fabulous
merman or neckan
might feel, as it craved for the human soul that had been denied it by destiny.

When Catharine was at last safely in bed in Nelly's room and he
had kissed her goodnight and turned out her light, he felt amused to note how the mere fact of sleeping in the sitting room gave him a curious pleasure.

He lay for a long time before he went to sleep, smoking one cigarette after another, enjoying in spite of his conscience a certain primitive and heathen satisfaction at being alive at all in this mad complicated world; at being able to say still, with the royal villain in the famous drama – ‘
Richard is Richard – that is I am I
.'

His mind called up the image of Roger Lamb as he had last seen him. And with the thought of the dead boy he found himself recalling an interview which he himself had had with a great Paris specialist, when his heart troubled him in earlier days. ‘Any extreme physical strain may finish you off,' the great man had warned him. He had thought of that verdict during his fit of exhaustion at the stage-door of Elise's theatre; he thought of it again now as he began to grow drowsy. ‘That would be a better way than morphia,' he said to himself.