The Only Poet

by Rebecca West

  That was a trial to Gerda’s nerves; but not so much as the evenings when Ursula went out alone. No one was happier than Gerda that her little sister should have a gay time, but these occasions filled her with sick apprehension. She used to sit up reading by the fire, wondering whether the hosts were people that it was really wise for Ursula to know, and, as the hours went by and it drew near eleven o’clock, whether she was not staying monstrously late. Before her there appeared a humiliating picture of a drawing-room with everybody gone home except Ursula, who sat there talking and laughing in her over-excited way, while the host and hostess looked stonily at the clock. When Ursula came in she used to tax her with these things. ‘Did everybody else go first? Are they really nice people?’ she would ask. At first Ursula used to answer sunnily and reassuringly, but then she began to be impatient, and soon she was taking it worse and worse. With horror Gerda slowly realized that there must be something very wrong in Ursula’s life, for she began to behave in the strangest way. As soon as Gerda started to ask harmless and necessary questions she used to throw herself down in her chair, covering her face and sobbing as if she were utterly tired out and utterly desperate.

  Very soon Gerda knew that her suspicions were fully justified. One day Ursula ran away with a married man, Gordon Ayliss, the artist. It was an act of madness. There she was with a brilliant career opening in front of her, and a perfectly happy home life, and she had made this suicidal dive into an illicit love affair, which had even less promise of happiness than most, since Ayliss had run away with other young women and made them very unhappy. Mrs Heming went almost mad with grief, and Ellida, who had a peculiar horror of sex, turned from her sister in a pallid stupor of disgust. But suddenly Gerda knew that though they were feeling what was right and natural she could not feel it with them. She discovered that she loved Ursula far more, even, than she supposed. She remembered – and at the memory the blood seemed to leave her heart for a minute and rush down into her hands and her feet and back again – how warm and sweet her little sister used to be when she was tiny. She could not have what survived of that darling companion, however much it had let itself be soiled by the world, cast out into the darkness. Moreover, she felt that Ursula’s going had left a hole in the air of the house, that stood before her in her sister’s shape, forever calling her to mind, but empty of her sister’s beloved substance. In spite of all her mother’s shrieks and Ellida’s peevish shudders, she went to see Ursula, who ran to her arms with a lack of shame that she found maddeningly characteristic in its oddity, its inability to appreciate the normal and proper view of things. And a month or two afterwards, Ursula, just as characteristically, tarnished Gerda’s sacrifice by starting to have a child.

  At this Gerda suffered the last bitterness of agony. The birth of this child fixed on her family for ever the stigma of undesirability that she had struggled from her infancy to remove. It took from her all hope of ever breaking into that world of conventional homes for which she longed far more than she had yet longed for Heaven. In her bed at night she sometimes envisaged the sort of home which she had seen when her schoolfellows asked her to tea, when they had thick red wallpaper in the dining-room and a massive sideboard glittering with silver-boxes and decanters, and in the drawing-room a grand piano; and she wept like an exiled angel. She remembered how she had always felt humiliated because her mother had no ‘At Home’ day, and though she laughed at herself for that she knew that it still humiliated her. Nevertheless she still wanted to cherish her little sister, to be a shield between that dark and merry thing and the destruction the others wished for it. She felt, too, as if some higher power compelled her to stand by Ursula’s side just then, as if an essential part of her destiny would escape her did she not take her place there. The approaching birth of the child could not, she thought, have meant more to her had it been she who was to be the mother. It was not only that she felt full of the tenderest love for the little creature; she was also in a state of rapt anticipation regarding the actual hour of its birth. Of course she shrank from thinking of it, because she could not bear to think of her little sister undergoing such terrible pain. Yet she was sure that at that moment something wonderful was going to happen. The universe would be struck by a blow, and shattered, and then remade in a new and beautiful and purified form. Thinking of it, her heart used to beat quicker and quicker till she had to let her head droop back and draw in her breath through her parted lips.

  She could no more have kept away from Ursula during this time than she could have done without food or water or air. In spite of Mrs Heming’s protests, which were by this time almost maniacal, she went to see Ursula before the baby was born, at the watering-place where she was hiding. It was something of an anticlimax when she got there because Ursula had not yet abandoned her repellently odd point of view regarding her situation. With amazing egotism she seemed to consider that the welfare of herself and her child ought to count exclusively at this time. When Gerda told her how Mrs Heming was going about the streets of the suburb where they lived with tears running down her cheeks, Ursula said grimly, ‘That’s going to do a lot to keep down scandal,’ and began complaining about her mother’s lack of self-control. She did not seem to see that she was the person who was the proper object of blame in the family, and that of course everybody else was in the right. Gerda spent the weekend trying quietly to make her see things in the normal way, and she seemed more subdued by Sunday night. But then they walked down to the station and the sea air gave her better spirits. The train was late in starting, and they had some moments to pass with Gerda leaning out of the window and Ursula standing on the platform below. ‘Look at the evening star,’ said Ursula, and turned away to regard it. As she stood there the serene absorption of her profile and the straightness of her back filled Gerda with despair. She must do something to make her understand. Leaning further out of the window, she began gravely, ‘I don’t think you realize what you’ve done, dear,’ when Ursula, not hearing, and still looking at the star, said, ‘I wonder if I will die.’

  Gerda dropped back into her seat. It had never occurred to her that Ursula might die. Thereafter the thought haunted her, making her more liable than ever to violent palpitations of the heart. When Mrs Heming railed at her because of her intention to be with Ursula when the child was born, she kept her eyes down on the floor and did not answer, nursing within her the reason why in this matter she must go against her mother as she had never done before. At last, very shortly before the date that had been foreseen for the birth, she felt that she must not hold it back any longer, and, with a curious feeling of pride as if she were lifting a curtain on some great drama, she said, ‘But Ursula may die!’ When Mrs Heming replied, petulantly as a tragedy queen who sees the centre of the stage usurped by a rival, ‘Nonsense, Ursula won’t die, she’s so strong!’ Gerda’s heart turned over in her, and she felt herself pierced by two griefs. The one was horror that Ursula should be so uncherished by her mother. She did not know what the other was. It felt like disappointment. She supposed it was because she had raised the whole matter on to a certain plane and her mother had dragged it down to a lower one. The house became distasteful to her. She was not at ease until she found herself in the train on her way to Ursula. It was a long and uncomfortable journey; Ursula had always annoyed her by talking and writing as if her willingness to face it were the remarkable feature of her sacrifice, instead of her disregard of the conventional aspect of the situation. But she felt relaxed and content once she could sit face to face with her fear of Ursula’s death, contemplating and arguing with her, not having to think of anything else.

  When she got to Ursula’s lodgings and had her supper with her and the nurse under the gaslight it all seemed like a dream. She looked at her sister’s face, which had an expression of fatigue and power, as if she were performing a task that called for an immense expenditure of energy but she knew she had enough to last her till its completion, and she thought, ‘Mother was right, Ursula is very stro
ng, there is no danger of her dying.’ All at once she became very tired. She felt that the vast amount of emotion she had expended on Ursula during the last few months had been got from her on false pretences. As soon as supper was over she got up and said she could not keep awake any longer. Ursula looked up at her apprehensively, as if she were a little girl again and were frightened of a scolding from her elders. That made Gerda laugh and bend down and kiss her.

  She fell asleep very quickly, turning sullenly away from the thoughts that had occupied her nightly for many weeks as if she had been deceived by them. But she was to stay awake in that bedroom till dawn, three nights later. For Ursula’s strength after all did not settle everything when the child was born. She began to suffer late in the evening, just before supper, but not severely. The doctor came and looked at her, and said that all was going well, and he would come back in a few hours. But about ten o’clock she suddenly lost all self-control. She began to moan very loudly, and even to cry out. Gerda ran at once to shut the windows, which were very wide open, as it was a hot night. The house backed on to the garden of a very nice villa, and she did not want the people living there to hear. Ursula sat up in bed to watch her doing this, shaking with hysterical laughter which changed, as she dropped back on the pillows, to shrieks. Gerda had done everything she could to make her pull herself together. She felt sure that other women did not behave like this when they were having children. But soon the nurse told her that she must go and tell the doctor to come at once. She ran down the road to his house, her eyes set gravely before her and her very short upper lip raised right off her teeth. She did not like asking him to come, when he had said he would come later. Probably he was resting after a hard day’s work. It was so like Ursula to have her baby in the night. She was so apologetic that indeed he did not hurry himself, but when he got to the house and saw Ursula he seemed greatly perturbed. He sent Gerda back to tell his wife to telephone another doctor in the town. She did it very quickly, and then ran back to the house. Nobody said how quick she had been. The doctor held the door of Ursula’s room while he spoke to her. It was hard to hear what he was saying because of the dreadful noises Ursula was making, but she gathered that he was telling her to go to her room, but hold herself in readiness to be called at any moment. To try and make excuses for Ursula, she said, ‘She has been very brave till now, Doctor.’ He looked at her strangely and said, ‘She isn’t quite conscious now, you know.’

  Gerda went and knelt by her bed. In his face she had seen quite clearly that he thought Ursula was going to die, that he was being faced with some technical problem which he did not think he could master. The hour she had anticipated was striking now. The hair stood up on her scalp, her skin was goose-fleshed. She whimpered, ‘Ursula, my baby Ursula!’ and rolled her head about. She heard the steps of the second doctor coming up the stairs. He moved heavily; it did not sound as if he would be much help in an emergency. In her misery she groaned aloud, and stretched herself on the rack of intense prayer. It mysteriously seemed to her during the hours that followed as if the battle between life and death that was being waged in Ursula’s body was being waged within herself also. It was true that she was praying, that her soul was going up in a steady flow to God, but she felt other forces raging within her. Sometimes she felt as if she were slipping off a ledge into a black abyss where there would be eternal agony. Sometimes she knew an inrush of pleasure that made her sway from side to side till she remembered with a start that no good news had come as yet. Then it was as if these two feelings were trying to enter into her at once; she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time and felt as if she were tickled to the degree of the most exquisite torture. There was also the feeling she had always anticipated that this was the supreme hour of her life, that everything which passed was of the highest importance. Then her mind seemed to split, like a canvas too tightly stretched. It no longer held up to her a picture of what was happening. She still was conscious of the physical signs of her alternating states, the sweat and driving heartbeats of her pain, the easier breathing of its relief, but it was no longer apparent to her what mental events were causing them and she had to search for these, naming them slowly and repeatedly, to make herself understand. Then everything went save expectation of the moment when they would knock on the door and tell her. Hour after hour passed and her brain was blank of everything but that. Presently she completely forgot what it would mean; but she still lay stark with attention.

  At last the windows let in white daylight; and then it came. Gerda was on her feet in an instant, and her fingers found the handle of the door. She had to steady herself for a minute before she opened it, because a red mist covered her eyes and something seemed to cleave her body down to the heart. She did not know which of the doctors it was that said, ‘The patient is doing very well now, and there is a fine little girl.’ While she leant against the door-post and sobbed there ran through her mind a desire, which she knew to be childish and unkind, to hurry along the corridor and scold Ursula for having given everybody so much trouble, but that was immediately eclipsed by another feeling even more strange than anything that had happened during the night. It was not merely the relief that was bound to come when she heard that her dear little sister was out of danger. It was an unmistakable feeling of redemption from guilt. Happy tears gushed up in her as if their source had been sealed and was now opened. She felt as if at the last moment she had been saved from committing a terrible crime. Yet she had been in no danger whatsoever of committing any crime. She perceived that no explanation for her emotion could be found on the rational plane; and that it must therefore be sought in the sphere of mystical experience to which, as she had been increasingly conscious for some years, she seemed to have some special right of entry. In a flash she realized that what she had been doing the whole night long was to take upon her own soul the burden of Ursula’s sin, for which no doubt God had meant to punish her by death; and God had rewarded her sacrifice by sheathing His sword and letting there be not death but life. She clasped her hands and, raising her eyes in thankfulness, looked up a shaft of light.

  It was something of an anticlimax to go into Ursula’s bedroom, and find her sleepily self-satisfied and aware of nothing but the merely material events of the night; and of course one could not tell her, she was not on that plane. But anticlimax was to be the note of Gerda’s life for many years to come. If she had not known that it was God’s way to test those whom He had honoured with special spiritual blessing by subsequent tedium, she would have despaired at the flatness and savourlessness of the days that followed that miraculous night. She returned alone, since Ursula would not leave Ayliss, and resumed her life at home. Again she tried to take her family in hand, and make them lead a life more like other people’s. But she was frustrated there by the development of a new phase in Ellida’s eccentricity. From being exceptionally shy and retiring, and reluctant to be in the society of men, she became frank and frenzied in her efforts to marry. She began to dress with desperate and inexpert frivolity, attaching untimely frills to the soberest garments, and to make up her face with a determination that hardly compensated for lack of practice. Formerly she had spoken with disgust of a certain schoolfellow of hers, who was understood to have been leading rather a fast life since her marriage, but now she sought her out. The woman was amused at the adoration of this odd fish and took her about with her. Ellida came back laughing knowingly and repeating silly libidinous jokes and stories. Gerda suffered agonies of shame till, as it happened, Ellida met a simple scholar who was too inexpert in social ways to realize that she was behaving oddly, and only realized that here was someone who was offering him freely the affection which he had always wanted and had been too shy to ask from the more reserved. They married; and at once Ellida abandoned her extravagant demeanour. It was as if it had been a brightly coloured flag that she had waved out of a window to tell the passer-by that she was a prisoner and wanted to escape. Thereafter she took no interest in her family. She had tw
o children, but she did not welcome any of the help that Gerda tried to give her with them. She muddled away at their upbringing as if they were her toys and she were a poor child who had never had any of her own before.

  She had gone. Ursula had gone. Gerda felt very lonely. She was now well over thirty, and it seemed certain that she would never marry. It was difficult to understand the reason for this. Of course her circumstances had worked against it. When she was young she had had many admirers, some of whom had seemed to have serious intentions regarding her; and that these had never matured into definite proposals she had put down to the handicap of her family. When the time came when it was natural for her to ask them to her home, she used to be overcome by the hopelessness of it all when she had to bring them in and introduce them to her mother and sisters, so odd, so different from other people’s mothers and sisters. Her embarrassment used to make her unable to speak, she would sit with her head down, looking at the floor. It was never a success. Of course the men never wanted to come back. She could not blame them: though she could not help feeling that they should have seen her value and realized that it was worth their while to overlook the awfulness of her family. But oddly enough, things did not get any better now that she was free of all her family except old Mrs Heming, who had now exchanged most of her individual characteristics except the generalized ones of age. Gerda supposed it was because she was no longer young, and because most men would not want to marry a woman whose sister had behaved like Ursula. But she had to admit that two men had seemed mysteriously chilled. It was as if they had found in her character either not as much as they had expected or something definitely repellent. Yet what could she have done to be better than she was? She felt amazed and hurt, until it became plain to her that it had been laid on her as a special cross that nobody should appreciate her.