The London Venture Page 3

  III

  We sat on chairs in the sun, and after we had been silent a long while,she began to do what women will never cease doing, so wise men say, aslong as men say they love them, to define what the love of a man meantto a woman, and to explain the love of a man. She said that that man waswise who had said that love was like religion, and must be done well ornot at all, but that she had never yet found in any man sincere love anddelicacy, for there was always something coarse, some little note whichjarred, some movement of the mind and body maladroit, in a man who isshown a woman's love. "When men love and are not loved," she said,"often they kept their grace and pride, and women are proud to be lovedby such men--even faithfully for more than ten years; but when men areloved and are confident, then they seem to lose delicacy, to think thatlove breaks down all barriers between man and woman; that love is a vaseof iron, unbreakable, and not, as it is, a vase of the most delicate andbrittle pottery, to be broken to pieces by the least touch of a carelesshand. They seem to think that the state of love stands at the end of agreat striving; they do not realise that it is only the beginning, andthat the striving must never cease, for without striving there is nolove, but only content. But they do not see that; they insist onspoiling love, breaking the vase with stupid, unconscious hands; andwhen it breaks they are surprised, and they say that love is a ficklething and will stand no tests, and that women are the very devil. Alwaysthey spoil love; it comes and finds them helpless, puzzling whether toclothe themselves entirely in reserve or whether to be entirely naked inbrutality; and generally they compromise, and, physically and mentally,walk about in their shirts."

  "As you say that," I said, "you remind me of that woman, Mrs. Millamant,in Congreve's play, 'The Way of the World.' Do you remember that scenebetween her and Mirabell, when she attaches 'provisos' to her consent tomarry him? She says, 'We must be as strange as though we had beenmarried a long time, and as well bred as though we had never beenmarried at all.' And it seems to me that she was right, and that you areright, Shelmerdene. Nowadays there is a reaction against convention, andsuch people make life unclean. They talk about being 'natural,' andsucceed only in being boorish; they think that the opposite of 'natural'is 'artificial,' but that is absurd, for why was the title 'gentleman'invented if not for the man who could put a presentable gloss on hisprimitive, 'natural' instincts in polite company? There must always beetiquette in life and in love, and there is no friendship or passionwhich can justify familiarity trying to break down the barriers whichhide every man and every woman from the outside world. Men grow mentallylimp with their careless way of living; and life is like walking on theEmbankment at three o'clock in the morning, when London is very silent:and if you lounge along as your feet take you, your hands deep in yourpockets, being 'natural,' you will see very little but the generaldarkness of the night and the patch of pavement on which your eyes areglued: but if you walk upright, your mind taut and rigid as it alwaysmust be except when asleep, then you will see many things, how the riverlooks strange beneath the stars, the mystery of Battersea Park whichmight, in the darkness, be an endless forest of distantly murmuringtrees, the figure of a policeman by the bridge, a light here and therein the windows of the houses in Cheyne Walk, which might mean birth ordeath or nothing, but is food for your mind because you are living andinterested in all living things. It was probably some wise philosopher,an Epicurean, and not a buffoon, as is supposed, who first uttered thatsaying which is now become farcical, that 'distance lends enchantment.'For he did not mean the material distance of yards and furlongs andmiles, but the distance of necessary strangeness, of inevitable mystery,and of a rigid mental etiquette, the good manners of the mind. And thatis why Henry James was a great man, and with a great propaganda. He wassubtle with his propaganda--an ugly word which can be used for otherthings than the bawling of tiresome men in this Park on Sundayafternoons--for he could do nothing without an almost obvious subtlety;but it is there in all his work, a teaching for all who care to betaught. In the world of Henry James, for he was more fastidious thanMeredith or Mr. Hardy and would have nothing to do with this world as itwas, but made one of his own, in this world the men and women are notjust men and women, with thoughts and doings bluntly and coarselyexpressed as in real life; but he showed them to be subtle creatures,something higher than clever animals, with different shades of meaningin every word--what fool was it who said that a word spoken must be aword meant!--with barriers of reserve and strangeness between eachperson; and their conversation is not just a string of words, but athing of different values, in which the mind of the speaker and thelistener is alive and rigid to every current of refined thought which isoften unexpressed but understood. I think 'thin' is the right epithetfor the minds of James' characters; and the difference between them andordinary people is that within us there is a sort of sieve between themind and the mouth, or in whatever way we choose to be articulate,which, unlike ordinary sieves, allows only the coarse grains to dropthrough and be given out, but keeps the subtleties and the refinement toitself; but between the minds and the articulation of James' peoplethere are no sieves, and the inner subtleties and shades are givenexpression. There is a strangeness, a kind of mental tautness, anever-ceasing etiquette, about them all."

  But then I laughed, and when she asked me why I did not go on, I saidthat I had suddenly realised that I had strayed from the subject, andthat whereas she had begun to talk of love I had ended by talking ofHenry James. "It is all about the same thing," she said, "for we areboth grumbling at that mental limpness which makes people think thatthey need make no effort, but that life will go on around them just thesame. And that is why I think one of the most dreadful sights is a manasleep. No one should see another person asleep; it seems to me the mostprivate thing in the world, and if I were a man and a woman had watchedme as I lay asleep, I should want to kill her so that she should not goabout and tell people how I had looked as I lay stupidly unconscious ofeverything around me. Only once I have seen a man asleep, and that wasthe end of a perfect love affair. I had suddenly gone to see him in hischambers, and when his man showed me into his room I found him lyingthere on the sofa, with his head thrown back on a cushion, sleeping. Hisman said that he must be very tired as he had been working all night,and that it would be kind of me not to wake him. I waited in the roomfor an hour, trying not to look at him but to read a book, but hisbreathing filled the room and I could not take my eyes away from him;and at the end of an hour I felt that my love had gone from me minute byminute as I had looked at him, and that now I might just as well get upand go away, for I did not care any longer if he was asleep or awake. SoI went away, but I do not know if he woke up as the door closed behindme."

  "And did you ever tell him why you had ceased to love him?" I asked.

  "I couldn't do that," she said, "because if he had not understood me Ishould have hated him, and I do not like hating people whom I haveloved. But now I dine with him from time to time, and I can see that heis still wondering how it was that on Monday I loved him and on TuesdayI didn't."

  As we walked through the Park towards the Park Lane gates, it seemed tome wonderful that this day, one among many days, should already bepassing, irrevocably, and that what we had said and what we had felt aswe sat on chairs in the sun would never be repeated, would never comeagain except perhaps in a different way and with different surprises.And when I asked her if she felt the happiness of the afternoon, shelaughed slightly and said that she liked the Park this spring afternoon."It is perfect now," she said, "but when we come here in a month's ortwo months' time it will be too warm to sit in the sun and talk aboutlove and Henry James, and in the autumn we will sit down for a momentand shiver a little and pity the brown leaves falling, and in the winterwe will walk quickly through because it will be too cold; and then inPark Lane you will put me into a taxi and stand by the door with yourhat in your hand, and say good-bye. For the seasons will have goneround, and we shall each have given what the other will ta
ke, and when Ilook at you you will be different, and when you look at me you will notsee, as you see now, my eyes looking far away over your shoulder, andyou will not wonder what it is that I am looking at. For then, as youstand by the door of the taxi and smile your good-bye at me, the endwill have come, and there will be nothing to look at in the distanceover your shoulders. And next year you will be an 'old friend,' and Ishall ring you up and say that I am very sorry I can't lunch and walk inthe Park with you that day because an Oxfordish young man has fallen inlove with me, and it will be amusing to see what sort of lunch he willorder when he is in love.

  "But is a rose less beautiful because it is sure to die?" she said.

  But the winter she spoke of was not of the seasons, for it rushedincontinently in upon us between the summer and the autumn, and I, too,was delicately added to the sedate statuary of Shelmerdene's "oldfriends...."

  And now I am in this strange library whose rows of books stare sounfamiliarly at me. The table at which I write is by the big Frenchwindows, and I must be careful to keep my elbows from sprawling as theywould, for everything is covered with dust, and if I were fussy andwiped it away I should raise a great cloud of it around my head.... Allis quiet and leisurely this morning. Outside there is no sun or mildnessto make me restless and self-conscious about my laziness; it is one ofthose days on which one need not think of doing anything which will be"good for one," and until about tea-time the outside world will bebetter to look at than to breathe. For the windows show me a very dark,wet-laden garden, and the steady rain falling among the last leaves ofthe trees and their myriad dead comrades on the grass and gravel makesthat "swish" which comes so coolly and pleasantly to ears which need notbe wet with it. But at about five o'clock, if the rain has stopped bythen, I shall go out and walk about the garden for an hour or so; Ishall walk to the top of the Divvil Mound, which lies above half thecounty to the west and, on a fine day, gives your eyes a rugged lengthof the distant Cheviots, and there I shall look up to the sky and drawin long draughts of the fresh rain-scented air, and feel that I shallnever be ill again in all my life; and as I walk back under the treesthe wet will drip on to me and I shall splash myself here and there; butI shall not swear, for my clothes are done for the day, and when I getin I shall have a bath and change, and feel all new and clean forwhatever the evening may bring.

  Beside me now is an envelope with an American stamp, and the vaguelywoebegone look which readdressed envelopes have; for it followed me heresome ten days ago from London, reaching me the same morning that I satdown to write this (for it has taken me more than a week of longmornings to write these few thousand words) which was at first to havebeen an essay on London, but seems now to have fallen into the state ofa personal confession. Many times I have taken out this letter andre-read it, for it is a strange letter, such a one as a man may receiveonly once in his life. This letter needs no answer, for it is dead likethe person who sent it; and that the sender should not now care if Iread it or not gives me a queer feeling of triviality; for in her lettershe asks me to write back, not knowing then that a letter from a deadperson is the only sort one need not answer without blame or reproach.

  The day has long passed when, if you felt inclined, you could moraliseon death and the frailty of human life to your heart's content and besure of a hearing. I am sorry that the commonplaces on death find nowonly impatient readers, for they make pleasant reading in the pioneeressayists from poor Overbury to Steele; for death, with all itsembroideries and trappings of destiny and Nemesis, is a pretty way ofexercising that philosophy which no one is without. I envy the courageof the man who could now write an essay "On Death" as Bacon did once,laying down the law of it with no hint of an apology for the monotony ofhis subject; but there is now no essayist or philosopher with the calmand aloof assurance and arrogance of a Bacon, that you might see, afterthe last written words on the most trivial theme, this last seal, asthough he were God, "Thus thought Francis Bacon." But of death there isnothing trivial and pleasant left to be said, and as a subject it hasgrown monotonous, except for the inevitable slayer and the slain, andthat prevalent instinct for fair play ("the essential quality of thelooker-on") which interests itself in the manner of the slaying.

  But this letter has seemed strange to me because, perhaps, I shall neveragain receive a letter whose writer is dead, and who, when writing it,dreamt of all material things but death. Were I Oscar Wilde I mightwonder now if English-women who die in America come back to London; forthere is much of London in the letter: "I should like to be in Londonto-day--Bloomsbury London, Mayfair London, Chelsea London, London of thesmall restaurants and large draughts of wine, London of the intellectualhalf-lights, drone of flippant phrases and racy epigrams, with a thinfog outside; London of a resigned good humour, of modulated debauchmoving like her traffic, strips of colour through dusk, and drab,optimistic, noisy solitude, tranquillity of incessant sound: autumnlamplight, busy park, sheep, men, women, prostitutes: doors slamming,people coming in and sitting by the fire, more cigarettes, cakes, shops,myriads of people...."

  But I would not like to be in London this month of November.

  _The London Venture_: IV