Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “Of what are you thinking, Lewis?”

  “Thinking?” he replied. “I was just wondering what you were thinking of? How many minutes is it since we have spoken?”

  “A minute, two minutes,” she answered. “It isn’t necessary to be always speaking, is it? Sometimes I think one is nearer in silence than in speech. And you, Lewis? Of what were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that we might walk across the park through the great trees to Changis. The nightingales sing there, and afterwards we might go to Barbizon and dine at the inn, and come back through the forest at midnight. Do you remember the birds the other night?

  There seemed to be as many nightingales in the forest as there were stars in the sky. I shall never forget that midnight. How the birds called to each other and sang against each other, each striving for mastery, pure flames of song! Do you remember, we called to the coachman to stop so that we might listen to the birds?”

  “Of course I remember,” she answered. “It was as you said — nightingales everywhere in the dark branches and a sky full of stars.”

  “We scarcely spoke during the rest of the drive. Why is it, can you tell me, Lucy — why are sensual moments the most illusive? The two hours we spent in each other’s arms are not as clearly remembered as the moment we listened to the birds singing.”

  “We remember intellectual emotions better than bodily.”

  “I suppose that is it. The flesh forgets its pleasures and its pains, one as easily as the other; and yet—”

  The conversation fell, and Lucy did not dare to ask if he had thought of her before he dropped asleep; nor did she dare to tell him that when he left her room she had slipped out of bed and stood in her nightgown looking at his sketches, and that she remained looking at them till she feared she was getting cold, and ran back to bed.

  CHAP. XXI.

  ONE EVENING THEY heard that Fontainebleau had a poet, or, to speak more exactly, Valvins, a riverside village some three and a half miles distant; and as the need of some occupation was upon them it occurred to Lucy to inquire for the poet’s works as they walked through the town. But the bookseller to whom she addressed herself could not furnish her with any verses by Mallarmé, the poet being averse from collecting his poems, preferring to leave this task to posterity rather than to undertake it himself. He contributed poems to reviews, but, as far as the bookseller knew, he had only once published a considerable poem — some three or four hundred lines — a leaflet which, of course, he would be glad to procure for them.

  A few days afterwards a parcel came to their hotel, which on opening was found to contain Mallarmé’s poem — a miracle of typography on the finest Japanese paper, and adorned with three illustrations by Manet.

  “The illustrations are rubbish,” Lewis said. “The man has never learned to draw.”

  Lucy liked the golden strings and tassels, and their imagination was stirred by the title, L’Après-midi d’un Faune. They applied themselves to the poem, perceiving with joy that it was written in words every one of which they had seen before and understood. All the same, they were never sure of the poet’s meaning — at one moment they held it, and a moment after it was gone; and they pursued it through a mist of conjecture, till at last, tantalised by the ever-escaping meaning, they returned to the bookseller to ask him if he could construe some three or four verses that puzzled them especially.

  After some application of mind and eyes to the text the bookseller handed the leaflet back, saying that they had better take their difficulties to the poet himself: he was a professor of the English language in one of the State colleges in Paris, and was very notable for his conrtesy to visitors, and of all to English visitors.

  “The tramway would take you to Changis,” he said; “and from there, by gentle descent through the outskirts of the forest, you will reach the Seine, and after crossing the bridge turn to the left. You cannot fail to find his house. There are only about a dozen houses in Valvins; the first passer-by will direct you.”

  With these directions in their minds they went forth, but they missed the way many times from Changis to the river, and had to turn back and follow a different path; but all the paths were overhung with pleasant branches, so it did not matter, and after debouching from one of these they came upon the Seine suddenly, and stood looking up and down the deep, tranquil river, enchanted by the aspects, and amused by their adventure — their search for a poet who would make plain three puzzling lines to them.

  “His cottage must be one of that group,” Lewis said. “But these cottages are but peasant cottages,” Lucy answered. “Do you know, Lewis, I am beginning to feel nervous; he may look upon our visit as an impertinence. What do you think?”

  “All the same we cannot leave Fontainebleau with the meaning of those three lines still upon our minds.”

  “Do you know, Lewis, I think I have got the meaning. It came to me in one of those forest lanes. Won’t you listen?”

  “My dear Lucy, I listened to you all last evening, but having come so far, I’d like to see the poet and receive his own interpretation of the obscure passage. We’ll cross the bridge and ask one of the fishermen on the other side to point out the poet’s house to us.”

  “The fourth house,” the fisherman answered; and as soon as they were admitted into the kitchen their eyes fell on certain rare pieces of furniture. “Pieces that owe some of their attractiveness to their association with the poet in a humble dwelling,” Lewis was saying when the door opened, and Lewis had not time to close the lid of the escritoire he was examining. An awkward moment, surely, but the poet passed over it easily by opening the escritoire for inspection and telling how he had become the owner of some quite genuine pieces.

  “After the war,” he said, “the authorities, deeming it unlikely that the castle would ever be inhabited again, had the furniture taken out of the servants’ rooms and sold by auction.... May I offer you a cigarette?” he asked. “Madame does not object to smoking? The nineteenth-century poet is glad to live amongst the off-scourings of the eighteenth.”

  He had already won them over, and they sat listening to him, charmed by his courtesy, his affability, and, of all, by the pure Voltairean French that came off his tongue like silk. It seemed as if they were listening to French for the first time, and their pleasure was heightened by the contrast his spoken word presented to his written; one was so difficult, the other so easy, and his naturalness so insidious that already they had begun to think he did not seek the contrasts that surprised and almost repelled them at first. He accepted them without question, as a man accepts the colour of his eyes and the shape of his nose. No doubt this was so, and the thought brought them to the study of his appearance, which till now had escaped their scrutiny.

  They found it typical, but enhanced by many special accents: — A French peasant he seemed to them; a handsome rustic of middle age and medium height, but on looking closer they had to acknowledge that his features were finer than a peasant’s. The nose showed some beautiful modelling, and the pale, kindly eyes lighted up an oval face, framed in a close-cut brown heard. He wore a flowing, almost military, moustache, and Lucy watched him take tobacco out of a rare Oriental pot. While he rolled his cigarette she noticed how carefully clipped his nails were, and it was his nails that decided her that the real man was a dandy. Lewis came to the same conclusion almost at the same time, saying to himself, “He wears rough clothes,” and overlooking the trousers and the hang of the jacket, he added: “He’s just one of those men who would go to a first-class tailor and say: ‘I want you to make me a suit of peasant’s clothes.’”

  As soon as his cigarette was lighted the poet returned to his scheme for an entirely new departure in dramatic writing; and, seeing that he had captured Lucy’s enthusiasm, he opened a drawer and showed her a bundle of tiny notebooks, saying that it was on Japanese paper that he put down the thoughts that came to him in walks in the forest and in his boat on the river.

  “Thoughts connected wi
th your drama?” Lucy said, and she begged him to disclose the people of the play to her.

  “There are but two,” he answered. “ A young man, the last of a noble family, a poet living alone in a ruined castle, uncertain whether he is called upon to go out to the wars and add to the glory of the family by some signal act, or whether it would be better for him to engage in commerce and make great sums of money and build up the family fortunes again. He is not sure of himself, and every time he puts the question to himself the wind answers him with the word, ‘Oui,’ long drawn out, resembling the sound of the wind in a ruined tower. It is part of the genius of the French language that the wind in a ruined tower should always be trying to pronounce the word, ‘Oui.’”

  Lucy asked the poet if the play would be performed in Paris, and the poet passed over the question. It did not seem to her that he answered it directly. He seemed to foresee himself travelling from fair to fair, interpreting his play himself from a tilt-cart, and she began to wonder if he preferred an audience of rustics rather than one of the sophisticated Parisians. And then, her mood changing, she entertained the thought that Mallarmé’s desire to interpret his own drama from under a tilt was in keeping with his aversion from a collected edition of his poems during his lifetime. He wished to return to the versifying vagabond — to Villon.

  There is something of Villon in us all, in every poet’s heart, and the eternal Villon had led this professor of English in a State college to buy a peasant’s cottage in the neighbourhood of a forest, and to dream of himself as a mummer travelling with a show: a young man, the last of an ancient line, listening to the wind in a ruined tower. We would all escape from the coil of civilisation, and the very title and the obscure diction of L’Après-midi d’un Faune testifies to a soul in revolt. But the precise versification presents some difficulties. Ah, we are subject to more souls than one....

  It was in this way that Mallarmé became comprehensible to Lucy. He was trying, as we all are, to escape from ourselves, and she fell to thinking of Marie Antoinette milking the cows at the Petit Trianon.

  “The same thing,” she said to herself, and at that moment she remembered that the afternoon was slipping by, and that they must be thinking of departure — but they must not go before asking for a translation of the enigmatic verses into Voltairean French. The rest of the poem they hoped to puzzle out for themselves, and, summoning all her courage, Lucy confessed that her French never seemed to her so inadequate as it did while reading L’Après-midi d’un Faune.

  “The language you write,” she said, “is not the language of the streets.”

  “No, it is not,” the poet answered. “The painter, the sculptor, and the musician have special languages, and therefore only the general significance of their work is understood by the public. You were kind enough to say that you found beauty in my poem: is not that enough? My poem brought you to me. It has achieved already a great deal. The revelation has begun, and any explanation from me would only divide us. To be with you always, I must not lift the veil.”

  “But we fear,” Lucy interjected, “we shall never understand the passage beginning with the word ‘Alors,’ when the faun awakens — I mean when his sexual appetite awakens. We would know if his desire is concerned with the nymphs that are bathing or with the water-lilies. Would this be a true interpretation of the sense?” she asked. “‘Then I shall awaken to my primal ardour, erect and solitary, under an antique flood of light, Lily, and one of you all (the reward) for my ingenuousness.’”

  “I can only repeat,” the poet said, with a look of gratification on his face, “that the interpretation of my poem is henceforth with you, and you will forgive me if I am averse from robbing the poem of all chance of future life in your hearts.”

  On these words he turned the conversation from his poem to the morning illumination of the river, mentioning that his boat was awaiting him in the reeds.

  “You will come,” he said, “for a sail with me, for I am indebted to you for my boat — at least for part of it. It was bought with the five hundred francs that the bookseller paid me for it, and you paid ten francs for your copy of L’Après-midi d’un Faune. My wife,” he said, introducing them to a long, thin female, who reminded them of a dried herring in a bonnet, and to an amiable daughter, who had inherited a good deal of her father’s beauty.

  His family accepted the introduction, apologising for their intrusion. They did not know that M. Mallarmé was receiving visitors. “And my husband always has tea in the afternoon.”

  “To-day we will have tea an hour later. My friends here are kind enough to say that they will go for a sail with me.”

  The family bowed as they retired through the door, and the poet led his visitors out of the house.

  “This is my first day sailing,” he said, and they were not very far from the bank when this fact became plain. A puffing wind caused the boat to heel over, and they would have all found themselves in the water if Lewis had not thrown all his weight over on the other side.

  “A narrow escape,” Lewis said.

  “I hope you’re not frightened,” the poet said, turning to Lucy, who by this time had obtained sufficient control of her voice to answer that she always felt safe with Lewis — a plain avowal of her love. But Mallarmé’s tact was equal to the occasion, and neither that day nor the next, nor any of the succeeding days, did he ever allow the lovers to think for a moment that he had divined their secret.

  “Mr. Seymour is, I can see, a skilful yachtsman. We are both safe while he is in charge of the sheet,” thereby pleasing Lucy, the end he had in view. Lucy smiled acquiescence, her smile seemed to the poet a permission for him to steer up and down the current, and along the broad, bright banks sloping steeply upwards to the forest.

  “You will always remember,” the poet said, as he handed the lady ashore, “that after crossing the bridge you turn to the left: my cottage is the third. You see, I do not fear explanation when I want my guests to arrive in time for breakfast. I may add that my wife would never forgive me if, through my fault, you were late for her breakfast. She sets much store upon her cooking.”

  “The day after, Monsieur Mallarmé,” Lewis said, “you will turn to the right, for you have promised to dine with us at the inn. Now, with kind regards to your wife and daughter, we thank you very much. We have received more than we expected. Then, to-morrow.”

  “Isn’t he charming? “Lucy said, when they had hidden the poet good-bye. “We have spent a most enjoyable day, as agreeable as unexpected. He’s not a bit like what I imagined him to be. Every incident seems to contribute to our happiness: this poet and the river-side inn over yonder. I was so anxious to leave Fontainebleau; it was beginning to be tiresome, and now the poet and the inn will give us a fresh start, and we shall probably stay here for some days longer.”

  And for a week the poet came and dined with them at the inn, or they breakfasted with him in his hamlet, and the three spent long days together in the open air, returning home tired and looking forward to next day’s adventure.

  There were no empty days, and ten had passed away before they began to see that it would be without meaning to remain any longer in Valvins. All the same there was sadness in the thought that this river-side adventure was but a moment in their lives.

  “If we stay any longer we shall lose a pleasant memory,” Lucy said on their way back to Paris. “Things are always falling behind us; and don’t you think, Lewis, we would enjoy life less if it ceased to flow like a river?”

  “But shall we never see Valvins again?” Lewis asked. “We may see it again,” she answered, “but it will never be the same Valvins: Valvins is now a memory.” And, taking up her thread of thought, he said:

  “It will be memory that will never grow less, but will increase and multiply in imagination as the years go by.” His words seemed strange to him. He regretted having spoken them, and to put them out of Lucy’s mind he said that he was glad to return to his art.

  “My painting is an
excuse for breaking up our honeymoon,” he said.

  To which she replied: “It is not broken up, Lewis; we shall continue to live it in Paris.”

  “Yes,” he said, and it was then that he had broached the subject, “not only in the flat, but in my studio.”

  “In your studio, Lewis?”

  He had drawn enough models, and must return to himself — to his dreams. She asked him if he thought he was doing well to leave the Beaux-Arts, but lent a willing ear to his assertion that long hours of work in a public studio wore away the natural spontaneous artist that alone was of any value. He had drawn, he said, from the model long enough, and the argument he put forward to prove that the Beaux-Arts was a bane could not be well gainsaid. “Every year,” he said, “an artist wins the Prix de Rome, but no great artist — except Ingres — ever won it, from which it seems to me that we must conclude that education is detrimental”; and convinced that he had learnt as much as he could carry away, he returned to designing, which, he said, was himself, and to his portrait of Lucy, which, though a portrait in essentials, was a decorated surface.

  In his studio was a piano, an organ, and a violin. He had what is known as a good ear, and could ramble over the keys and strings at great length, and Lucy listened to his performance on all three instruments with equal pleasure; and for some reason which she could not explain, her love for him seemed to reach its height when he laid aside his fiddle after playing some fashionable melody. He used to sing words by Ronsard to a voluptuous undulating rhythm, till she could bear it no longer, and, bending over the arm-chair, waited for him to come and kiss her from behind on the neck. And the combat over, they went forth shopping together.

  “You won’t lose patience, darling? I have some hats waiting at Esther Myers’s.”

  “Who is Esther Myers?”

  “The great milliner.”

  “But who can tell you better than I which hat to choose?”