It was only her sense of honour that made her refer to this latter point, as she herself would have greatly preferred to continue, in the quiet of their own ménage, an evening so auspiciously commenced. But her hope was that Richard would, as she said to herself, ‘turn the thing down’. Whether it was the California wine, however, or a sudden craving to see his ivory goddess dance her Dionysian dance on this ‘night of all nights in the year’, he leaped eagerly to meet the suggestion, and at once began to hurry through the rest of the meal.
Catharine was surprised at herself over the vexation which this interruption of their little feast caused her; but she fell in gallantly with his mood and while they were washing up the things together the effort she had been making, ever since Elise first appeared, to be ‘good’ in the whole affair was rewarded by one of those rare inspirations of disinterested happiness which selfish people never know and which are by no means as frequent in the experience of the unselfish as ideal justice would demand.
Thus it happened that when, an hour later, they found themselves seated side by side in the new Stuyvesant Theater there was hardly a more excited or more carefree pair among all that holiday-thrilled Bohemian audience.
The new Stuyvesant was in every respect worthy of the great artist. It had been designed by a young acquaintance of Roger Lamb; Richard and Catharine whispered to each other a mutual recognition, as they looked round them, of the passionate theories of their dead friend now realized for the first time. The decoration was not only simple; it was austere. It was rigid and reserved in a manner suggestive of Byzantine work. There was about it something of that kind of ritualistic imagination which, perhaps erroneously, the modern world has come to name ‘archaic’.
Richard could not help becoming conscious that here, in the middle of this orgy of raw newness, there had been evoked something more suggestive of the passion of the human spirit ransacking the remote past and steering into the unborn future than anything in London or Paris. He recalled Karmakoff’s casual remark about certain affinities between Russia and America; and he whispered to Catharine that Roger Lamb’s idea of a revival of real mythology, of something that was both adventurous and religious, was actually present in what they looked at now.
The dancer’s inevitable black curtains were there; but they were there for the first time as an organic portion of a setting that might have been designed for some ancient classic ritual, some real worship of the Platonic idea of beauty, envisaged as a palpable presence. What the new Stuyvesant represented was preeminently an achievement of youth, of youth coming sternly and resolutely into its own, after the deadly disillusionments of the recent war. The actual fabric of the building itself – its contours, its curves, its nobly designed blank spaces – was all part of a musical rhythm which only reached its consummation when Elise began to dance.
It seemed to both Richard and Catharine that Elise had acquired yet more subtle art since they had last seen her. Her first dance was one to a certain musical fantasy written by a little-known Russian composer who was at that moment coming into fame in Revolutionary Moscow. Richard recognized Karmakoff’s influence over the dancer in this choice; and he recognized it without the least touch of jealousy.
There was indeed something about this whole Christmas Eve performance that lifted him as it evidently lifted the girl by his side into a region where personal and possessive instincts had no place. Richard felt ashamed of himself, of his own inadequate and chaotic work, in presence of this achievement. He felt ashamed of himself that he had allowed this thing, this great new creation, to be born without his knowledge. The quiet cynical Roger, the inscrutable Ivan, his own ivory goddess, had together produced something, through the medium of an American boy of whose very name he was ignorant, which put his whole life’s intention to shame!
While he had been trying to detach himself from life’s flood and to see the mystery in large and flowing outlines, these alien spirits had plunged into the stream and had moulded those evasive waters themselves into vast stern human shapes of exultation and grandeur.
What he recognized as he glanced over that audience of cosmopolitan enthusiasts was that here in this new world, in this turbulent city of youth, was an opportunity for the old human passion for beauty such as the earth had never before known. The crudity and rawness of the crushing materialism around that bold experiment gave it an angry and free power which the very mellowness of more civilized places tended to undermine. But what struck him most of all in that thrilling hour was the amazing anonymity of the whole thing achieved by some unknown boy out of the far west whose youthful receptiveness was that of a reed played upon by the undying spirit of dead generations.
As he watched Elise dancing to a rising crescendo of hidden music, it seemed to him as though the whole architecture of that place, with every curve and space and line and mass and colour which it contained, melted into the rhythm of her movements and became part of the Dionysian passion which she evoked. By a wonderful touch of genius, beyond all his expectations, it seemed as though the youthful architect had allowed for the very audience there, and had given it also a part to play in the resultant harmony.
He experienced the sensation, and he was certain that everyone in the theatre experienced the sensation, of taking an actual part in some passionate ritual, some ritual that was itself a very dithyramb of exultant protest against all that was base, gross, possessive and reactionary amid the forces of the world.
Thus he became more vividly conscious than ever of what he had always vaguely held; namely, that art is not something separate from life, but the premonition, reflected inhuman intelligence, of what nature is perpetually aiming at and never altogether reaching.
Elise danced a much larger variety of motifs than he had ever seen her bring together in one evening. She seemed bent on extracting something congruous to her spirit from the music of every race. Richard noted that there was one insistent mood running through the whole series on that night, a mood that was at once heathen and Christian, rebellious and sensual, yet full of a passionate faith.
In her grand finale the amazing woman certainly surpassed herself. Catharine was so wrought up that she clutched at Richard’s hand and held it tightly in her own. An electric thrill of excitement passed like a spiritual vibration through the whole of the excited house.
Richard thought in his heart, This is more than the work of Bernhardt or Eleanora Duse or Yvette Guilbert. This is on a level with Milton or Nietzsche!
When it was all over and the great audience rose to its feet with one wild cry of applause Richard and Catharine raised their hands into the air and shouted, ‘Elise!’ in the same way no doubt as, at some similar festival, two platonic friends in ancient Hellas might have shouted ‘Evoé!’ Their cry seemed perfectly natural to the ardent young persons about them, and it was caught up, and echoed from every quarter of the theatre.
At length the ovation was over and the two friends, in a state of tremendous excitement, were carried out with the rest of the crowd into the street. They both felt that they could not see Elise again that night. Even to touch her hand after what she had done for them would have seemed a profanation and banality.
They hardly spoke to each other as they made their way across the centre of New York to their own Seventh Avenue subway.
Before their train arrived at Houston Street, Richard, as was his wont when excited to such a pitch, mentally gathered up into one swift vision all the persons and events of his life’s drama. He saw them, these events and these persons, all beautiful, all mysterious, all full of the magic of that Nameless One who, whether he were born child of Semele or child of Mary, had the power to turn the sordid tricks of chance into the music of an exultant rhythm that ‘redeemed all sorrows’.
Richard followed the tall languorous figure of his companion up the narrow stairs to their room; and as soon as they stood alone facing one another there they seemed driven by the power of the impersonal emotion within them to gain relief
for their feelings in each other’s arms. Neither of them could be said to have been more responsible than the other for this disloyalty to Nelly. If anyone was to be held guilty it was the impassioned dancer who had put them both under so irresistible a spell that it seemed to bring with it its own plenary absolution.
The embrace they exchanged at that exalted moment was neither chaste nor unchaste. It was the genius of Elise as it had stirred the soul of the man – rushing to meet the same genius as it had stirred the soul of the woman!
Without any shame or remorse they drew back from one another and resumed their normal mood. And long before the clock in the Metropolitan Tower struck the dawn of Christmas Day the door was shut between them and they were monks again!
Chapter 22
It was early February. In the ditches on both sides of the narrow lane that led up from Selshurst to Furze Lodge the yellow celandines among their great cool leaves shone like stars seen through watery darkness.
In the smaller oak and hazel woods there were already a few early primroses out, throwing upon the moss-scented air of those shadowy places that faint, half-bitter sweetness which seems like the very spiritual body of the spring.
Richard had not wired from Southampton to tell his wife of his arrival, though he had written from New York to let her know the name of the ship. He only prayed that he might be lucky enough to find her alone; and it was this hope that led him to time his appearance to just that particular moment of after-lunch siesta, when it was the custom at Furze Lodge to retire to rest.
He had not been able to resist the temptation to snatch a moment en route in the nave of the familiar cathedral.
The sleeping crusader with the ‘eternally praying hands’ lay there unmoved and unchanged, his mailed feet upon the back of his marble hound.
Arriving straight from the piled-up snow of a great New York blizzard, the warm misty sunshine of the early English spring was like the breath of an amorous and beautiful god; as Richard came out from the cathedral and looked at the yellow and purple crocuses in the ancient gardens, that same indescribable sense of peace descended upon him which he had felt when, nearly a year ago, he had first set his eyes on Selshurst.
As soon as he left the secluded portion of that long West Horthing lane and emerged upon the open Downs he found the air as full of the singing of birds as it had been on the day when he discovered Littlegate. The songs of individual skylarks were lost in one ubiquitous chorus which seemed to descend upon the earth as if it were the voice of universal space, corresponding in the sphere of sound to infinite blueness in the sphere of colour.
His pulses were beating with a good deal more excitement than he had anticipated as he approached the lodge gates of Mrs Shotover’s drive. But he felt confident of the result of his interview with his wife.
The flawless beauty of the day seemed an invincible omen of success; and he had in his notebook eight hundred and fifty dollars!
He rang the bell of the front door at precisely half past two o’clock – the hour of all hours when he deemed it most impossible for Mrs Shotover to be in a state of visibility.
He asked, in a purposely low voice, whether he might see Mrs Storm at once and he repeated his name in a whisper. The servant was apparently a stranger for she gave no particular sign of surprise and, ushering him straight into the well-known drawing room, closed the door discreetly behind her. Richard walked up and down in excited perturbation. His mind called up the image of Nelly. He thought of her child, and how it would be born before April was over, or at any rate in the beginning of May – exactly a year since he had first arrived in Sussex.
It would be wonderful to have a child of his own! If it were a girl he could call it after his mother; and if it were a boy, after his father. He was sure Nelly would be willing to leave the name in his hands! He supposed Canyot would have to be its godfather and Mrs Shotover its godmother. About those little matters he could afford to be generous!
How slow she was in coming! Had that confounded maid forgotten to announce him? Perhaps she too was resting, and they were reluctant to disturb her. Well! he could wait. She would probably be up and about before the lady of the house showed herself. He surveyed the teasing knickknacks and the incredible frippery of that early-Victorian shrine. Why was it that young English women in evening dress photographed so badly? He supposed they ought to be ‘snapshotted’ on the hunting field or in walking costume. They seemed to be all chin and forehead and shoulders and elbows when adorned for civilized intercourse!
Suddenly the door opened. He sprang forward with a cry of recognition on his lips, only to step back in cold dismay at the entrance of Mrs Shotover. The lady closed the door behind her and bowed stiffly.
‘I can’t think what your purpose can be,’ she began, uttering the words very much as some pompous statesman of her youth might have addressed a recalcitrant delegacy, ‘in forcing yourself into my house. You don’t suppose for a moment, do you, that I can permit you to agitate my dear Eleanor by silly dramatic scenes? She has done with you, sir! Let me make that quite plain: she has done with you and your ill-bred vulgar behaviour.’
‘But Mrs Shotover—’
‘I won’t argue with you. It is bad for me to get angry directly after lunch. Fortunately I had lunch late today because of that idiot of a vet, making such mistakes with Bobby, else I shouldn’t have been able to tell you what I think of you.’
‘I don’t want to argue with you, Mrs Shotover. I want to see Nelly. I want to explain to Nelly that—’
‘It’s no use, my good man. I can see what you’re after. You’re after money. You’re trying to blackmail us. But let me tell you at once that though I have made your wife my heir and left her everything, it’s all tied up so that you cannot touch a penny of it! So there! The best thing you can do is to clear right off, before I am compelled to ring for Thomas.’ And the lady with a grand toss of her head opened the door for him, making a vague movement with her hands as if she were about to drive off an intrusive fowl from a precious flowerbed.
Richard stepped out into the hall; but instead of meekly picking up his hat from the hall table he made a sudden bolt up the polished stairs and, arriving at the top where all the bedrooms were, called in loud violent tones the name of his wife.
One of the doors promptly opened and Nelly appeared. She had evidently just removed her dress, for she wore a long soft bedroom gown and her hair was loose about her shoulders.
She turned very white when she saw her husband and leaned against the side of the doorway uttering his name in a tremulous voice as if she had seen a ghost.
He rushed up to her and was about to embrace her when Mrs Shotover who had closely pursued him pushed her way in between them.
The old lady dragged the girl back into her room and held her tightly there with her thin arms, muttering all the while, ‘The rascal! the bandit! the highwayman! the scoundrel! I’ll have the law on him! Why doesn’t Emma come? Where is Thomas?’
Richard, following them into the room, made a desperate appeal to Nelly. ‘Send the woman away, sweetheart! Send her away! I must and will talk to you!’
Making a brave effort to gather up all her mental and physical energy, Nelly extricated herself from Mrs Shotover’s clutches; turning sternly upon her, she said in a tone that the old lady seemed to recognize as not to be controverted, ‘I must see him alone. You must leave us alone, please. You needn’t be afraid. He is my husband. It will not be for long. Go now, dear, and leave us by ourselves.’
Like some eighteenth-century caricature of a defeated Juno, obedient to the commands of an irresistible daughter of Jove, the indignant old woman retreated, muttering vague threats. Nelly closed the door and turned the key in the lock. But she astonished Richard by waving him back when he tried to take her in his arms.
‘My darling! my sweetheart!’ he cried, making a second attempt to embrace her. Again she drew away from him and, wrapping herself closely in her dressing gown, clutched at it a
s if it had been protecting armour, her hands against her breast.
‘Nelly!’ he whispered with an intensity in his voice that betrayed an emotion which she had never noted in him before.
She looked straight into his eyes. ‘Have you given up that woman?’ she said, repeating the words as if in the presence of some formidable tribunal. ‘Do you promise me that never, under any circumstances, you’ll see her again?’
Richard murmured the word ‘yes’ and added hoarsely, ‘I will never see her again without your consent.’
As soon as those words had been uttered Nelly’s face changed and her whole body seemed to relax and unbend, as if relieved from an unbearable load.
She turned whiter still and, taking her hand away from his, clasped her fingers tightly together while her mouth also compressed itself into an almost hard expression.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘You needn’t look so scared, my dearest one, it’s all over now and thank God there are no complications!’
She bit her underlip; her eyebrows twitched; her fingers clasped one another so violently that they became white as her face.
If one of his demons had whispered into his ear some huge palpable lie at that juncture and had compelled him to utter it, the situation might still have been saved for both of them. But by a cruel irony in things the good in him – if such an instinct for confession was good – drove him so fast that no demon’s help arrived.
‘You know you told me to look after Catharine?’ he said.
A tiny little red spot appeared on both her cheeks, but she only answered by a barely perceptible nod.
‘Well, I did take care of her.’ He gave a little uneasy laugh. ‘And she took care of me. In fact we lived together in Charlton Street right up to the end. She slept in your room and I slept in the sitting room. We were always good – like two monks – and I left her much happier when I came away.
After My Fashion Page 33
