by George Moore
‘From this view it really is not so bad, though the urns and loggia are so intolerably out of keeping with the landscape. But when I have made certain alterations it will harmonise with the downs and the flat flowing country, so English, with its barns and cottages and rich agriculture, and there will be then a charming recollection of old England, the England of the monastic ages, before the — but I forgot I must not speak to you on that subject.’
‘Do you think the house will look prettier than it does now? Mrs. Norton says that it will be impossible to alter Italian architecture into Gothic.’
‘Mother does not know what she is talking about. I have it all down in my pocket-book. I have various plans…. I admit it is not easy, but last night I fancy I hit on an idea. I shall of course consult an architect, although really I don’t see there is any necessity for so doing, but just to be on the safe side; for in architecture there are many practical difficulties, and to be on the safe side I will consult an experienced man regarding the practical working out of my design. I made this drawing last night.’ John produced a large pocket-book.
‘But, oh, how pretty! will it be really like that?’
‘Yes,’ exclaimed John, delighted; ‘it will be exactly like that. The billiard-room can be converted into a chapel by building a new high- pitched roof.’
‘Oh, John, why should you do away with the billiard-room; why shouldn’t the monks play billiards? You played on the day of the meet.’
‘I am not a monk yet.’ The conversation paused a moment and then John continued, ‘That dreadful addition of my mother’s cannot remain in its present form; it is hideous, but it can be converted very easily into a chapel. It will not be difficult. A high-pitched timber roof, throwing out an apse at the end, and putting in mullioned and traceried windows filled with stained glass.’
‘And the cloister you are speaking about — where will that be?’
‘The cloister will come at the back of the chapel, and an arched and vaulted ambulatory will be laid round the house. Later on I shall add a refectory, and put a lavatory at one end of the ambulatory.’
‘But don’t you think, John, you may become tired of being a monk, and then the house will have to be built back again?’
‘No; the house will be from every point of view a better house when my alterations are carried into effect. And as for my becoming a monk, that is in the main an idea of my mother’s. Monastic life, I admit, presents great attractions for me, but that does not mean that I shall become a monk. My mother does not understand an impersonal admiration for anything. She cannot understand that it is impossible to become a monk unless you have a vocation. It is all a question of vocation.’
Later in the day Mrs. Norton stopped John as he was hurrying to his room. She was much excited by the news just received of the engagement of one of the Austin girls. She approved of the match, and spoke enthusiastically of the girl’s beauty.
‘I could never see it. It never appealed to me in the least.’
‘But no woman does. You never think a woman good-looking.’
‘Yes, I do. But you never can understand an impersonal admiration for anything. You say I do not appreciate beauty in women because I do not marry. You say I am determined on becoming a monk, because I admire monastic life.’
‘But are you going to become a monk?’ ‘I am not sure that I should not prefer the world to be my monastery.’
‘Now you are talking nonsense.’
‘Now you are beginning to be rude, mother. … We were discussing the question of beauty in women.’
‘Well, what fault, I should like to know, do you find with Lucy?’
John laughed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he said —
‘Her face is a pretty oval, but it conveys nothing to my mind; her eyes are large and soft, but there is no, no—’ John gesticulated with his fingers.
‘No what?’
‘No beyond.’
‘No what?’
‘No suggestiveness in her face, no strangeness; she seems to me too much like a woman.’
‘I think a woman ought to be like a woman. You would not like a man to be like a woman, would you?’
‘That’s different. Women are often beautiful, but their beauty is not of the highest type. You admit that Kitty is a pretty girl. Well, she’s not nearly so womanly in face or figure as Lucy. Her figure is slight even to boyishness. She’s like a little antique statue done in a period of decadence. She has the far-away look in the eyes which we find in antique sculpture, and which is so attractive to me. But you don’t understand.’
‘I understand very well. I understand you far better than you think,’ Mrs. Norton answered angrily. She was angered by what she deemed her son’s affectations, and by the arrival of the architect before whom John was to lay his scheme for the reconstruction of the house.
Mr. Egerton seemed to think John’s architecture somewhat wild, but he promised to see what could be done to overcome the difficulties he foresaw, and in a week he forwarded John several drawings for his consideration. Judged by comparison with John’s dreams, the practical architecture of the experienced man seemed altogether lacking in expression and in poetry of proportion; and comparing them with his own cherished project, John hung over the billiard-table, where the drawings were laid out.
He could think of nothing but his monastery; his Latin authors were forgotten; he drew facades and turrets on the cloth during dinner, and he went up to his room, not to bed, but to reconsider the difficulties that rendered the construction of a central tower an impossibility.
Once again he takes up the architect’s notes.
’The interior would be so constructed as to make it impossible to carry up the central tower. The outer walls would not be strong enough to take the large gables and roof. Although the chapel could be done easily, the ambulatory would be of no use, as it would lead probably from the kitchen offices.
‘Would have to reduce work on front facade to putting in new arched entrance. Buttresses would take the place of pilasters.
‘The bow-window could remain.
‘The roof to be heightened somewhat. The front projection would throw the front rooms into almost total darkness.’
‘But why not a light timber lantern tower?’ thought John. ‘Yes, that would get over the difficulty. Now, if we could only manage to keep my front…. If my design for the front cannot be preserved, I might as well abandon the whole thing! And then?’
His face contracted in an expression of anger. He rose from the table, and looked round the room. The room seemed to him a symbol — the voluptuous bed, the corpulent arm-chair, the toilet-table shapeless with muslin — of the hideous laws of the world and the flesh, ever at variance and at war, and ever defeating the indomitable aspirations of the soul. John ordered his room to be changed; and in the face of much opposition from his mother, who declared that he would never be able to sleep there, and would lose his health, he selected a narrow room at the end of the passage. He would have no carpet. He placed a small iron bed against the wall; two plain chairs, a screen to keep off the draught from the door, a small basin-stand, such as you might find in a ship’s cabin, and a prie-dieu were all the furniture he permitted himself.
‘Oh, what a relief!’ he murmured. ‘Now there is line, there is definite shape. That formless upholstery frets my eye as false notes grate on my ear;’ and, becoming suddenly conscious of the presence of God, he fell on his knees and prayed. He prayed that he might be guided aright in his undertaking, and that, if it were conducive to the greater honour and glory of God, he might be permitted to found a monastery, and that he might be given strength to surmount all difficulties.
VI.
‘Either of two things: I must alter the architecture of this house, or I must return to Stanton College.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, do you think I don’t know you; you are boring yourself because Kitty is upstairs in bed and cannot walk about with you.’
‘I d
o not know how you contrive, mother, always to say the most disagreeable things; the marvellous way in which you pitch on what will, at the moment, wound me most, is truly wonderful. I compliment you on your skill, but I confess I am at a loss to understand why you should, as if by right, expect me to remain here to serve as a target for the arrows of your scorn.’
John walked out of the room. During dinner mother and son spoke very little, and he retired early, about ten o’clock, to his room. He was in high dudgeon, but the white walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow bed, were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better. But he had not finished his outline sketch before he leaned back in his chair, and as if overcome by the insidious warmth of the fire, lapsed into firelight attitudes and meditations.
Nibbling his pencil’s point, he looked into the glare. Wavering light and wavering shade flickered fast over the Roman profile, flowed fitfully — fitfully as his thoughts. Now his thoughts pursued architectural dreams, and now he thought of himself, of his unhappy youth, of how he had been misunderstood, of his solitary life; a bitter, unsatisfactory life, and yet a life not wanting in an ideal — a glorious ideal. He thought how his projects had always met with failure, with disapproval, above all, failure… and yet, and yet he felt, he almost knew, there was something great and noble in him. His eyes brightened, he slipped into thinking of schemes for a monastic life; and then he thought of his mother’s hard disposition and how she misunderstood him. What would the end be? Would he succeed in creating the monastery he dreamed of so fondly? To reconstruct the ascetic life of the Middle Ages, that would be something worth doing, that would be a great ideal — that would make meaning in his life. If he failed… what should he do then? His life as it was, was unbearable… he must come to terms with life….
That central tower! how could he manage it and that built-out front? Was it true, as the architect said, that it would throw all the front rooms into darkness? Without this front his design would be worthless. What a difference it made! Kitty had approved of it.
For a woman she was strangely beautiful. She appealed to him as no other woman ever had. Other women, with their gross display of sex, disgusted him; but Kitty, with her strange, enigmatic eyes, appealed to him like — well, like an antique statuette.
That was how she appealed to him — as an exquisite work of art. His mother had said that he found Thornby Place dull when she was ill, that he missed her, that — that it was because she was not there that he had found the day so wearisome. But this was because his mother could only understand men and women in one relation; she had no feeling for art, for that remoteness from life which is art, and which was everything to him. His thoughts paused, and returned slowly to his architectural projects. But Kitty was in them all; he saw her in decorations for the light timber lantern roof, and she flitted through the ambulatory which was to be constructed at the back of the house. Soon he was absorbed in remembrance of her looks and laughter, of their long talks of the monastery, the neighbours, the pet rooks, Sammy the great yellow cat, and the greenhouses. He remembered the pleasure he had taken in these conversations.
Was it then true that he thought of her as men think of women, was there some alloy of animal passion in his admiration for her beauty? He asked himself this question, and remembered with shame some involuntary thoughts which had sprung upon him, and which, when he listened, he still could hear in the background of his mind; and, listening, he grew frightened and fled, like a lonely traveller from the sound of wolves.
Pausing in his mental flight he asked himself what this must lead to? To a coarse affection, to marriage, to children, to general domesticity.
And contrasted with this…
The dignified and grave life of the cloister, the constant sensation of lofty and elevating thought, a high ideal, the communion of learned men, the charm of headship.
Could he abandon this? No, a thousand times no. This was what was real in him, this was what was true to his nature. The thoughts he deplored were accidental. He could not be held accountable for them. He had repulsed them; and trembling and pale with passion, John fell on his knees and prayed for grace. But prayer was thin upon his lips, and he could only beg that the temptation might pass from him….
‘In the morning’ he said, ‘I shall be strong.’
VII.
But if in the morning he were strong, Kitty was more beautiful than ever.
They walked towards the tennis seat, with its red-striped awning. They listened to the feeble cawing of young rooks swinging on the branches. They watched the larks nestle in and fly out of the golden meadow. It was May-time, and the air was bright with buds and summer bees. She was dressed in white, and the shadow of the straw hat fell across her eyes when she raised her face. He was dressed in black, and the clerical frock-coat, buttoned by one button at the throat, fell straight.
They sat under the red-striped awning of the tennis seat. The large grasping hands holding the polished cane contrasted with the reedy, translucent hands laid upon the white folds. The low, sweet breath of the May-time breathed within them, and their hearts were light; hers was only conscious of the May-time, but his was awake with unconscious love, and he yielded to her, to the perfume of the garden, to the absorbing sweetness of the moment. He was no longer John Norton. His being was part of the May — time; it had gone forth and had mingled with the colour of the fields and sky; with the life of the flowers, with all vague scents and sounds.
‘How beautiful the day is,’ he said, speaking slowly. ‘Is it not all light and colour? And you, in your white dress, with the sunlight on your hair, seem more blossom — like than any flower. I wonder what flower I should compare you to? Shall I say a rose? No, not a rose, nor a lily, nor a violet; you remind me rather of a tall, delicate, pale carnation….’
‘Why, John, I never heard you speak like that before. I thought you never paid compliments.’
The transparent green of the limes shivered, the young rooks cawed feebly, and the birds flew out of and nestled with amorous wings in the golden meadow. Kitty had taken off her straw hat, the sunlight caressed the delicate plenitudes of the bent neck, the delicate plenitudes bound with white cambric, cambric swelling gently over the bosom into the narrow of the waist, cambric fluting to the little wrist, reedy, translucid hands; cambric falling outwards, and flowing like a great white flower over the greensward, over the mauve stocking, and the little shoe set firmly. The ear like a rose leaf; a fluff of light hair trembling on the curving nape, and the head crowned with thick brown gold. And her pale marmoreal eyes were haunted by a yearning look which he had always loved, and which he had hitherto only found in some beautiful relics of antiquity. She seemed to him purged, as a Greek statue, of all life’s grossness; and as the women of Botticelli and Mantegna she seemed to him to live in a long afternoon of unchanging aspiration.
And it seemed to him that he thought of her as impersonally as he thought of these women, and the fact that she participated in the life of the flesh neither concerned him nor did it matter. That she lived in the flesh instead of in marble was an accident. He smiled at the paradox, for he had recovered from the fears of overnight and was certain that even the longing to strain her in his arms was only part of the impulse which compels our lips to the rose, which buries our hands in the earth when we lie at length, which fills our souls with longing for white peaks and valleys when the great clouds tower and shine.
And that evening, as he sat in his study, his thoughts suddenly said: ‘She is the symbol of my inner life.’ Surprised and perplexed, he sought the meaning of the words. He was forced to admit that her beauty had penetrated his soul. But was it not natural for him to admire all beautiful things, especially things on a certain plane of idea? He had admired other women: in what then did his admiration for t
his woman differ from that, which others had drawn from him? In his admiration for other women there had always been a sense of repulsion; this feeling of repulsion seemed to be absent from his admiration for Kitty…. He hardly perceived any sex in her; she was sexless as a work of art, as the women of the first Italian painters, as some Greek statues.
Then by natural association of idea his mind was carried back to early youth, to struggles with himself, and to temptations which he had conquered, and the memory of which he was always careful to keep out of mind. In that critical time he had felt that it was essential for him ‘to come to terms with life.’ And the terms he had discovered were strictest adhesion to the rules laid down by the Catholic Church for the conduct of life. He had lived within these rules and had received peace. Now for the first time that peace was seriously assailed. His thoughts continued their questioning, and he found himself asking if sufficient change had come into his nature to allow him to accept marriage. But before answer could be given an opposing thought asked if this girl were more than a mere emissary of Satan; and with that thought all that was mediaeval in him arose.
Femina dulce mahim pariter favus atque venenum.
‘Not sweet evil,’ he said, determined to outdo the monk in denunciation, ‘but the vilest of evils, not honeycomb and venom but filth and venom. Though as fair as roses the beginning the end is gall and wormwood; heartache and misery are the end of love. Why then do we seek passion when we may find happiness only in calm?’
He had known the truth, as if by instinct, from the first. No life was possible for him except an ascetic life. But he had no vocation for the priesthood. True that in a moment of weakness, after a severe illness, he had returned to Stanton College with the intention of taking orders; but with renewal of health the truth had come home to him that he was as unfitted to the priesthood as he was for marriage, or nearly so. The path of his life lay between the church and the world; he must remain in the world though he never could be of the world, he could only view the world as a spectator, as a passing pageant it interested him; and with art and literature and music, for necessary distraction, and the fixed resolve to save his soul — nothing really mattered but that — he hoped to achieve his destiny.
