He sighed and, after a while, tiptoed out to get some fresh air. The urbane old moon with bloodless, ivory face, in tuxedo and mantlet, with a kerchief round his head, a black eye and an opera-hat, so tall and so black that none could see the top, went home to bed elegantly tipsy with lights, empearled bosoms, shining coiffures and late suppers, over the waxy pavements. Oliver trod in his steps, scratching his brains. The moon trailed paper garlands after him and, staggering from side to side, cast leery shadows from cornices, filled the passages, gratings, eaves and chimneys with warm goblin-drenched darks, put eyes in attic windows and put to shame and cried fie to the cozy red lamp glowing behind a hundred shutters. He whistled a bar, and the cats shrieked and the dreaming stallions whinnied. He flung up his clawhammer over his wrists and put his hands in his pockets. He peered a moment at the clock on the Ministère de la Guerre, he footled through the colonnades of the Hôtel Crillon, he blew his nose vulgarly as he strode over the Arc de Triomphe, so that silver flecks danced through the air. He sneezed thrice. Cirrus clouds appeared over the Bois de Boulogne. He shivered, and so did the tramps trying to sleep in doorways and on seats. He went home to bed beyond the Champ de Mars, and Oliver, who had been following the moon several hours, came home cold, drenched with moonshine, singing the beatitudes. He also sneezed and blew his nose, and, entering softly, found that the moon had other deeds to his name, for Elvira lay asleep on the divan, where she had been watching the cool, silent street, and the lingering glim lay on her peeled breasts, as if on the heavenly twins of satiety and renewed desire. ‘Gaze then, my little one,’ said the moon, over his shoulder, as he fastened his nightcap, ‘before I draw the blind and your happiness is over.’
Oliver kissed Elvira, who started up with her hands to her breast. She looked at him, with disordered hair, and began panting. He saw her cheeks were pale and her eyes very dark.
‘My love!’
‘Where were you?’
‘I had a headache. I took a walk.’
‘I am so unhappy; I am so unhappy here. I want to kill myself.’
‘You break my heart! Have pity on me and tell me what I can do: I’ll do anything. I can’t stand it, Elvira.’
‘You think of yourself: you should think of me. You have a future. My life is over.’
‘You must have courage.’
‘Ah—I am so mortified—to death!’
‘You regret—it all?’
‘Yes. You love her, Oliver. Tell me the truth. Did you love her for even a moment? Or did she just flatter your pride?’
‘She just flattered me, my dear; you know my weakness.’
‘Even so, I’m going to leave you, Oliver.’
He said nothing more.
In the morning there was a telegram from Paul:
‘Marpurgo has told me everything: come home, or shall I come for you?’
She showed it to Oliver.
‘What will I do?’
‘What you must.’
He had awakened feeling tender and pitiful towards Elvira. The first hour past, however, she faced him with the cruel coldness of a desperate person unused to fighting.
‘What are your own plans, Oliver?’
Oliver temporised.
She said: ‘You are deceiving me again. You have some idea, no doubt, about this Coromandel. Then I am leaving you. I am going back to London to-day or to-morrow, it depends when I get the packing done. If Paul will not take me back, so much the worse. I’ll go to Adam. Whatever happens, it’s all my fault. Fate punishes adultery. You told me a person who remained faithful too long became a turnip—in England, that day we passed a hard field of turnips, you remember? Oh, I remember everything—well, you’re a Brussels sprouts of infidelity!’ She seemed quite hard. She telephoned Blanche and asked her to come and help her.
‘What did Blanche say?’ queried Oliver.
‘She said, You are quite right, darling, if you are unhappy: you must go back to England and see Paul. At least she is a friend.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to your packing.’
‘Why not take a little trip over to Coromandel?’ He heard her laugh as he closed the door. In fact, he would go to Coromandel; he telephoned her first from the bistrot and said, ‘Coro, it’s all a terrible mistake. It really is: this lady is going back to England this very day. A pure escapade: do see me.’
After a pause, Coro answered. ‘All right, for lunch, at Lafon’s.’
‘Too dear for me,’ said Oliver. ‘Let’s go to the Mabillon.’
Coro had slept all night in a ballet. First, as she lay in the dew, ghosts came tiptoeing back and forth like footless reeds round her, while down long corridors students sat and held their temples and groaned ‘Ah!’ like a musical saw; melodies in minor keys began to weave about them, and faster and faster they rocked their shoulders and cried ‘Ah!’ The ghosts went on with their strolling: in the second ballet, an old man mourning with a shepherd’s crook went leaden-heeled over the landscape, but every so long he suddenly turned himself about, lifted his skirts and did a black-faced, statuesque pas seul, statuesque indeed as to the upper part, abandoned and twinkling as to the lower. In the third ballet, hundreds of dancers in black and yellow with smooth black caps, like a colony of ants, did a dull measure back and forth, up and down and round about for as many hours as she seemed to have dreamed: they never varied, and their song went on for ever with the crooning train of thoughts. Sometimes, if they hesitated, a solitary singer made a musical question, or intoned a new phase; then he had a response, and the response was taken up and ornamented and involved by all the dancers in the regiments about her. Then they fell flat, they melted into the earthskin, they vanished: once more she was left with the waste land, the long horizon, from which rainclouds now rose in puffs. It lowered, rain came, like splinters of glass; the earth quaked, the seed, agonising to reach the air, quaked the whole earth, which boiled and bubbled about it, when it shook the dirt from its shoulders; then it sprang up, bearing the grey seeds just fallen out of the sky upon it, not dew but seeds (whence else are they, the myriad seeds which come from a single sowing?), and in a trice Coro found herself lying, a golden maiden among golden tracts and nodding swathes and cornucopias of grain: these fell into her mouth, and with a great relish and great hunger she began to eat. As she held the ear of wheat to her mouth, she felt its texture, and nothing had been more pleasant in life. On the borders of the wheatfield now appeared blue clouds, blue mountains, green meadows and untrimmed orchards of apples, a ciderous, earthy, waxy smell passed through the air…The landscape was bathed in brilliant light, as brilliant as the latest and most experienced morning of the earth breaking on a cultivated landscape, and Coro said to the wheatfield this cannibal word:
‘Thou art a dish of sweet apples, the crown of the orchard, the blood of the vat, the robe of the table, a feast to the eye: thou art a white wheaten loaf, a silver cloud fallen, a cloud of gold risen, like locusts in myriad filling the bins, a white river from the dribbling maw of Leviathan, soft as milk, white as milk, a salute to the morn, a staff to the hungry, the yellow-curled king of the board. Thou art a swarm of sweet odours from nut trees, apple trees, wheatfields and paddocks, from clover and sainfoin, wild barley and meadowsweet, from birds, bees and beetles and tree-singing frogs, from grasshoppers, flies, crushed beetles and cockchafers, that fly with twined limbs through the deep glassy air, the food of our nostrils, the pulse of our hearts, the substance of dreams.’ But as she proceeded thus long-windedly to apostrophise some creature she didn’t see nor even think of, she awakened and found the bright morning sun streaming into her chamber. She took her clothes from behind a long black linen curtain: she cast her black coverlet stencilled with griffins, pelicans, foxes, salamanders, cranes, ostriches and bandicoots over the foot of the bed.
Oliver telephoned: ‘I love you.’
Coromandel cried into the telephone: ‘I just dreamed a poem: Thou art a dish of sweet apples…’
‘You man-eater,’ co
mmented Oliver.
At lunch Coro was gay and had lost her memory for yesterday. He could not get a word in edgewise about his escapades, and he did not hear a reproach. Coro told him she was going to the country for a few days, took her valise from under the restaurant table and went out ahead of him. She had called a taxi. She said: ‘Will you hop in, and we’ll talk while I go on an errand. I’m going rather a distance, to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Can you do it? Or are you busy this afternoon?’
‘Well, I’m not busy—I’d like to drive out there. It’s so frightfully close in Paris.’
‘I have a cousin out there: he can drive us back, or lend me his car. He’s a car salesman.’
‘That’s fine, then. I’d love to go—with you! You’re the best friend I’ve ever met among women.’
She mentioned Marpurgo. Oliver laughed. ‘Oh, I just found out something: he’s a dark dog. He’s got an invalid wife on Lake Como, a permanent invalid. He never mentions her.’
‘He would have a sick wife: he loves transformation scenes of frailty. He’s a very strange man. I’d like to know him better. He promised to take me to Calais to see through the factories. I am glad you told me about the wife. I hardly feel like doing it.’
Oliver began to relate tales of Marpurgo. They laughed over his mannerisms, his possession, his inspired manner of discourse.
‘Marpurgo had a crush on you,’ said Oliver, ‘I know it. That’s one time when he didn’t worship frailty.’
She smiled rosily and slily.
‘I was enchanted by him at first: he is marvellous in his way. But I’ve learned too much lately. I’m going to get out of all this.’
‘All what?’
‘This sort of company: these gabblers, illumined failures, heroes of invalidity, these poets of detraction, these artists for art’s sake. I never was in it much, and I’m on the wrong track. I’m giving it all up.’
‘Me too?’
‘You too. Elvira will be happy, won’t she?’ He cleared his throat, but she said: ‘Don’t blame me, you are to blame: you are a gay Lothario, aren’t you? And worse than that, you are really very severely to blame. I will not hear a word from you on the subject.’ Oliver licked his lips. ‘Am I really to believe that Elvira is going back to her husband? It’ll be better for you if she does!’
‘Yes; I’m going to steer clear of women for a while.’
‘Ah!’
She changed the subject. She smiled sidelong at Oliver, and she really looked very well that day. She took off her hat and gave him the sensation that she was leaning towards him, although she was not. She said it was too sunny, and lowered the blind on her side of the car. She said drowsily to Oliver, on whom she saw their dinner wine sitting heavily too: ‘I am so sleepy, villain! Why do you so misuse your Coromandel?’ Oliver was seduced. ‘The farm is yet some distance off,’ said Coro. The sun shone hot, bewildering the eyes and arousing the same juices in human bodies as he arouses in grapes: the sun was on fire: he should have cooled his ardour, on him is great blame. Coro held her watch in front of Oliver’s eyes: they had been on the road three hours. He put up the blind in a hurry and looked out through a screen of tall trees into the broad unfenced country: a windmill turned on the horizon, they were passing through the outskirts of an ancient town built on a hill; on the hill was a Roman tower; round the town were notices, ‘Nomads must not camp here,’ so on both sides, and in a moment they sped through the town and out into the country.
‘Where are we, in God’s name?’ said Oliver, staring at Coromandel.
Coro spoke to the driver, speaking so fast and sibilantly in French that Oliver could not follow her.
‘Wait just a moment,’ said Coro.
In a few minutes they turned into a sideroad and went along this at a very great rate: Oliver craned his neck.
‘Coro!’
She smiled at him so tenderly and kindly that he became less alarmed.
‘Have a little patience, you will be happy,’ said she.
‘I must get back soon, you know,’ said Oliver.
‘We are not very far,’ said Coromandel, ‘and Saugrenelle’s a fine driver, you’ll not be hindered getting back: and perhaps you’d better not come to the station with me. Indeed we have now turned right round; I know the road perfectly, we shall be in in half an hour.’
They continued to run into the heart of the country.
‘Coro!’
She smiled again: ‘We are in Burgundy.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Running away with you for the night,’ she said roguishly. ‘No harm’s done, and you’re leaving me anyhow, for a few weeks; grant me this favour.’
‘I must be back to-night,’ said Oliver. ‘Poor Elvira will worry: she worries so about me.’
‘I sent her a telegram,’ said Coro calmly, ‘as from you, saying you had to go to Le Havre to meet some professor.’
‘Coro!’
‘It is all right,’ said she equably.
‘All right,’ said Oliver. ‘To-night, then—you should have told me, though: but I must get back to-morrow.’
‘Four hours from Paris,’ said Coro musing.
They came to a small farm belonging to Coro’s father. The house had expected them, and all was prepared. In the evening they drove to the neighbouring town and amused themselves. He chuckled to himself, had twinges of conscience about Elvira, and resolved to pay out Coro for this trick. They returned to the house. He went to his room, very large, sparely furnished, with polished floor and rich curtains. He looked out over the orchard: a peach tree loaded with fruit had split in two and lay still fresh under his window: on one side stood a row of seedling frames, and on the other a flower-bed leading to an arbour covered with ivy, beyond which stood a small vinery. In the centre grew peaches, nectarines, comquats, loquats, almonds, mulberries, Japanese plums. The earth was strewn with small plants and humble flowers, but in the centre grew roses and dahlias. It was a very simple, honest, countrified, sweet and nectarious orchard. The uncoloured flowers moved scarcely in the transparent shade, the stars like volcanic dust flew above, but Sirius blazed. Sounds came from the night’s faintly beating heart, and if all was still, sweet crystal bells, like those of a ghostly yucca, seemed to ring in the transparent air, and to be one with the ghostly shades. Shortly, he perceived another star, a geaster at the end of the orchard brighter than a cluster of glow-worms. It wandered along the paths, carrying the upper pink mask of a man. He spoke under his voice occasionally, walked slowly as if to a funeral, with his head bent: once or twice he turned and, looking into the tree-thick dark of the paths, spoke. The light was only a candle: the man moved like a mute, a black mantle hung from his shoulders. He came closer, and Oliver withdrew a few paces, but he stared: he saw the man was old, thin, bent, grey, melancholy—and though alone, he was talking to himself. Oliver’s heart beat fast. The man went past slowly, with his head bent, murmuring, and held the candle steady. Oliver peered behind, for he fully expected to see a coffin. None came. In two minutes Coromandel came along the path, also with a candle and her head bent, but Oliver saw she was searching for something. He called her softly.
‘Who is that man?’
‘Charpy, the gardener.’
‘Have you lost something?’
‘My bracelet.’
‘Leave it till morning!’
‘See the faint sky? I fear rain.’ She shielded the candle with her hand and looked up at him with hospitable enquiries. Then she said: ‘Now I look up and you look down from on high,’ in her accustomed literary phraseology.
‘For the last time,’ he answered without thinking.
‘Why?’
He apologised. ‘I am tired, I spoke unconsciously.’ He offered to hunt for the bracelet, and went down to her. In the distance Charpy still moved.
‘Has he been with you long?’
‘Certainly.’
Oliver wished to see his face, but as he said the word the man moved into the garden tool
-house, and when they reached it, had disappeared.
‘He has gone up to the loft to bed,’ said Coro. ‘To-morrow you’ll see him.’ She yawned: they stood wearily side by side. She bade him wait for her while she put a watering-can in the tool-house, and he stood there, looking at the stars and trees, leaves and earth, whispering familiars of Coro. He looked at the house, example of all he would have desired at another time, and turned his back on it.
Love for Elvira, yearning, receptive, unassuming, compliant, strangely sensual, strangely modest, suddenly burned in his heart. At this hour Elvira was probably sobbing to herself quietly on the dusky pillow above the midnight street. Coro stood in the tool-house, built of undressed wood and smelling sweetly of bulbs, earth, seeds and raffia strands, and looked out at the stars over the barn through the farther door. Suddenly her soul burned for adventure, for traversing the Saint Bernard Pass, dipping into mountain villages, for viewing Siberia, flying with flying hair and garments through the air, for the bustle and elbowing, and manners and vanities and flatteries of thousands of people, poor and elegant. Outside stood this humble clay, this Oliver of such poor conquerable stuff, to which she was now in some sort bound. She brushed some earth from her hands. Disagreeable was bondage, and charming youth and liberty: and then, what was she, to be intriguing for a flabby soul like this, one so ragged and inharmonious? Marpurgo now—Blanche’s Septennat—she imagined numbers of polished, subtle men of genius to whom she could have given her hand and heart. She came slowly out of the tool-house, and said to Oliver: ‘Do you think Elvira is suffering? Would you rather return to her? If so, I beg you to go, take the car: I feel sordid and confined here if I think she is in pain.’
She was pained, but the idea of freedom from Oliver and from reproach blew with a keener breath than any other. Oliver looked surprised. She put her hand beseechingly on his arm: ‘To-morrow morning, go to her: it is true, she loves you, she is not so strong as I am. Take her to England.’
Coro stood straighter and straighter, her eyes rolled with celestial softness, like two bright continents in the beam of everlasting mercy. Oliver took a step backwards. Then he stepped forward swiftly, kissed her hand, and left her standing under the peach tree. Oh, sweet peach-blossom that scattered in spring, with such traditional sweetness and rosiness falls the rain of generous love on my spirit and the night-airs on my bosom! Lulled by all intimations of joy, nobility, and the highest sensual gratification, Coromandel climbed the stairs to her chamber and almost fell asleep by her window: but Oliver, who went also straight to his window, saw Charpy retrace his path with the same gait and mien. A parchment skin was drawn tight over the skull.
The Beauties and Furies Page 37