by Sarban
‘I went back to the drawing-room where Mrs Guyatt was arranging the music on the piano. Being annoyed with myself, first for having come to the house at all, and then for not having stood my ground in face of the child’s bad temper and bad manners, I said with some irritation, “Ellen evidently doesn’t like visitors to see her room. I’m sorry, I seem to have intruded.”
‘Mrs Guyatt looked at me with no change in her habitual lugubrious expression. She did not seem to take in what I said. I was in the wrong and I tried to cover up my lapse by making a few remarks about Shirley’s ballets and the music, but I got little response.
‘In a few minutes Shirley had changed into her ballet dress and she came back into the hall with Ellen clinging to her by her free hand and gabbling excitedly in her high, thin voice. They consulted with Mrs Guyatt about the music then Ellen seated herself on a chair in the dining-room doorway across the hall and the exhibition began.
‘I don’t want to exaggerate Shirley’s performance. She was not a ballerina, only a member of the corps de ballet; I dare say she did no more that afternoon than any schooled dancer in her company could have done. And yet I knew that Shirley had never danced like that before.
‘I had been expecting her to demonstrate a few isolated steps or movements or positions, as she might have done in a practice hall; instead, she had chosen excerpts from Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and Les Sylphides, and some more modern ballets which I did not recognise—ballerina’s parts which she had never danced on the stage—and she was making a new little ballet of her own out of them.
‘Then there was the setting; the contrast of her graceful figure in snowy, frothy tarlatan with the dingy place she was dancing in. The hall was bare and gloomy; the walls were covered with an embossed, bronze-coloured paper darkened by time and dirt. Everything had been cleared out of it, even the pictures from the walls, and it was as if the place was hung round with an arras of shadows; the stained glass of the fanlight over the front door was so grimy that it admitted scarcely any light and none came through the dining-room doorway where Ellen sat. But from one of the staircase windows a single broad shaft of yellow sunlight struck boldly down through the middle of the hall; it made a round, golden pool upon the parquet floor, and from where I stood near the drawing-room door, it sloped, a shimmering, insubstantial pillar across the uniform brown darkness of the further side of the hall.
‘Perhaps it was that strange lighting as well as the tutu and the satin shoes—the conventional dress of make-believe—that turned the hall into something that had the quality of a real stage, designed for illusion.
‘And, finally, I suppose, I remember that dance of Shirley’s because it was her last—or, at least, the last I ever saw.
‘I have always admired the smoothness, the control and finish of professional dancing, and I suppose that, through Shirley, I knew something about the long training and developing of the muscles that must be gone through before apparently simple and effortless movements can be performed. I could always appreciate the technical excellence of her performances, but I could also see it in its right proportion—subordinate to the feeling, the imagination or the inspiration that a great dancer must have. Shirley, it had always seemed to me—in spite of what the critics said—lacked the inspiration. She had perfectly mastered a means of expression but had nothing of her own to express. That is what I had thought until that afternoon at the Guyatts’.
‘That day she showed that she had more in her than mere technique. As Mrs Guyatt played the passages from Tchaikovsky and Chopin—well enough, but without much spirit—Shirley was using them as a vehicle to transport her into a strange and lovely world of her own. She was composing something of her own and the joy and excitement of the discoveries she was making were radiant in her face. The ability was there: she could do anything she wished with her body, and now, very clearly, the desire and the inspiration to do something of special significance had possessed her. She used all the dimensions of that curious stage with faultless art and confidence, and her imagination turned the central shaft of sunlight into something that had a part in her dance, an immobile partner, as it were, the meaning of whose presence there she was interpreting.
‘I could not even guess what fable or what fancy she was acting out, or even whether there was anything in her mind that could be thought of in words or pictures as a fable. The means of expression often create their own meanings, and perhaps the significance of Shirley’s dance was something only to be understood by the body itself.
‘Ellen understood it. That was beyond doubt. I missed some of Shirley’s dance because for a time I could not take my eyes from Ellen’s face. There was complete comprehension there; but there was something else, something that disturbed and almost frightened me. I had never seen on anyone’s face an expression of such bitter envy. No. That’s too simple a word. It wasn’t anything like the envy you might surprise on the face of any plain girl watching another who is the centre of attraction; it was far more intent and concentrated than that and full of a fierce avidity. I know an absurd analogy came into my mind as I stared at her: the only creature in which I had ever seen anything approaching that look was a cat watching a bird that might come within range of its spring. And yet the analogy could be only partly true: the cat’s stare and attitude express more than hunger, they express a purpose.
‘I looked from Ellen’s face to the clumsy iron brace on her leg. There was the source of her comprehension of Shirley’s dance, of both its beauty and its power. And, understanding that, I found something deeper that was utterly incomprehensible to me. To a girl so sensitive, so acutely conscious of her deformity as Ellen, must it not have been torture to have so sharply pointed the contrast between her own twisted body and useless legs and Shirley’s exquisitely formed body and muscles trained to perform perfectly every movement that her will could command or her imagination prompt? For weeks she had schemed and planned and practised on Shirley to arrange this exhibition, and yet she must have known that it would wring her unbearably. Why had she wanted it? Had the distortion of her body so twisted all her emotions that a refinement of self-torment was now a pleasure?
‘The climax of Shirley’s dance seemed to confirm that she was miming some fancy of her own. With a circling and pirouetting movement on her points she revolved round and round the pool of sunlight on the floor, and, as the music mounted to its conclusion, Shirley glided into the column of light itself and posed there, arching her body and extending her arms along the oblique line of the rays of light, and seemed to achieve a striking fusion with them. Against the dark background her pale body and white dress seemed suddenly to have become a transparent vessel into which the sunlight flowed, filling it and shining through it, and she herself, and she alone, the thing that shaft of light had pierced the dusk to find.
‘It was a ridiculous anticlimax after that to sit down to tea among the ugly encumbrances of that frowzy drawing-room. I would have felt it somehow more appropriate if we had all gone into Ellen’s room. Her barbaric treasures and the doves fluttering at her windows were nearer to the world of symbolism and fancy that Shirley’s dancing had opened to us.
‘Some such link of association, I suppose, made me mention Ellen’s trophies to Mrs Guyatt while Ellen and Shirley were talking away at each other so loudly and elatedly that they could not pay any attention to us.
‘Mrs Guyatt sighed. “Yes. They mean a lot to her,” she said. “They help her.”
‘ “Did she collect all those things there?”
‘ “Yes,”’ Mrs Guyatt said. “Our congregation where we lived in the hills used to bring their offerings to her.”
‘She lifted her head and looked at me and for the first time she seemed, for a moment, to shake off her dejection as she added, “We are the Lord’s people you see, I and my daughter.”
‘It was said with the flat assurance of those who know they are born to be saved even in their own despite. I did not know which of them I liked least
, Mrs Guyatt or Ellen. Both left a very bad taste in my mouth. As we travelled home that evening and, I fear, the spell of Shirley’s dancing was beginning to wear off, I felt a smouldering resentment at that lugubrious, narrow bigot having somehow entrammelled my sister and tied her to her warped and spiteful daughter. I had no illusions about the unpleasantness of Ellen’s character after what I had seen of her that afternoon.
‘All the same, I think I should have said nothing about what I felt to Shirley even then, if it had not been that the remark I made particularly to avoid the subject brought me directly to it.
‘ “I’ve never known you dance as you did today,” I said. “Have you done that before or is it something you’ve composed for yourself? It looked like that.”
‘ “No, I didn’t invent it. At least, not the steps. I’ve seen nearly all those things done lots of times. I just used them for something I thought of.”
‘ “What was it?”
‘She did not want to tell me, and then, when I urged her to explain her idea, she said, defiantly, “Something Mrs Guyatt told me. Something in their religion.”
‘We were in a bus, with people all round us, but I could not help saying, with as much irritation and disgust as one can get into a whisper, “The woman’s a dingy Pharisee. I wonder you can’t see that.”
‘It made Shirley angry, but all she said then was, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
‘I suppose the place saved us from a quarrel just then, and by the time we reached home I had reasoned out my own attitude. I saw that I must speak my mind. It seemed to me to be my clear duty to show Shirley that she was behaving in an exaggerated way, an eccentric way, even, in associating so much with the Guyatts. I had no doubt in my own mind that our mother, if she had been alive, and our aunt, if she had known of it, would have taken exactly the same view and advised her to drop them; and so, I was sure, would Shirley’s old dance teacher and the choreographer of her company—the only two people whose opinion about anything counted for very much with her.
‘So, as we were both spending the evening at home, I had it out with her.
‘At this distance of time, of course, I can see that I might have spoken, and ought to have spoken in a different way. Whether I should if I were doing it again, I don’t know. I was blunt with her, and I’ve no doubt I sounded insufferably interfering and dictatorial. Shirley didn’t say much; in fact she showed more self-control than I did.
‘Precisely what I said doesn’t matter much, even if I could remember all I said. I do remember, though, that at one point Shirley said, “Even supposing that I did for one moment admit that you had a right to tell me what friends I should have and shouldn’t have, you haven’t yet told me what’s objectionable about the Guyatts unless it’s that they’re poor.”
‘She’d taken up a superior and contemptuously tolerant attitude that drove me to the limits of my patience. But I made one more effort to get her to look at the matter as I saw it—as any sensible person of our own sort would see it.
‘ “Look, Shirley,” I said. “To have taken pity on the kid is natural enough. Anybody would have done. To go and visit her and show her some dancing, well, I dare say that was kind too, or at any rate, kindly meant—though I imagine most girls in the theatre would have just sent her a photo and a nice note and left it at that. But I know you get rushes of sentiment to the head and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong about that, if it stops at that. But when you spend half your spare time there, and on top of it all talk as if you’re being converted to whatever sanctimonious humbug that creature calls her religion, well, frankly, there’s something abnormal about it and it’s time you came to your senses.”
‘Shirley said, “I don’t think it shows a very scientific spirit, does it, to call somebody’s religion ‘sanctimonious humbug’ when you don’t even know what their religion is?”
‘ “You’re not going to make me lose my temper,” I said. “I’ve heard what Mrs Guyatt said about the child’s deformity being a judgement on her, and that’s not merely humbug, it’s wicked humbug. No one with one spark of genuine Christianity in them would think like that.”
‘ “Ah, but then, you see,” Shirley said very softly and coolly, “the Guyatt’s aren’t Christians.”
‘I suddenly knew that that was literally true, and it frightened me. It told me that there was something after all to be frightened of in that house. Shirley saw that she had shocked me and she smiled.
‘ “I can’t tell you how amusing it’s been listening to you but now that it has at last penetrated that I know slightly more about my friends than you do, perhaps you’ll dry up and allow me in future to go and see them without having to listen to a lot of preposterous ranting and pompous sermonising from you when I come back?”
‘The whole thing seemed to me too urgent and too full of danger now for me to be angry with her. At least, I thought I was controlling my temper, but fear very often expresses itself in a kind of anger.
‘ “Shirley,” I said. “Listen to me! I oughtn’t to have to tell you this. You, with your feeling for atmosphere, with your sensitivity, you ought to have felt it for yourself. I tell you there’s something wrong about those people. Oh, it’s not just that they’re not your sort, neither your class nor your kind in character, interests, background or anything, it’s that they’re not any honest, good people’s sort. That girl’s not just a cripple, she’s a warped, malicious little devil; she’s cleverer than you are in her own unnatural way, and her mother’s a wicked woman. Who are they? Why do they live like that? Why have they shut themselves up in that house full of evil old rubbish, lurking there like a couple of spiders in a dirty, dark corner?”
‘Shirley went pale while I was speaking—or scolding at her, as I suppose it must have seemed. She was as white as a sheet when I had finished and she got up trembling.
‘ “I won’t listen to you,” she said in a whisper. “I won’t listen to you another minute. You can tell Miss Willis I don’t want any supper. I’m going out. I’ve never heard anything so unjust and so vicious. I won’t stay with you to hear it.”
‘She went upstairs and put on her things and left the house; and I let her go. I ought not to have done. But I was exhausted and baffled and miserable because I could not find the way to make her see what was wrong.
‘I don’t know where she went that night. It was very late when she came back. I heard her come upstairs but she did not come into my room. I had a faint hope that she might have been to see some of her friends in the company and that they might have brought her back to a sense of reality, but I doubt whether that’s whom she did go to see.
‘The next morning, when Miss Willis—that was our landlady—woke me up, she was very upset. Shirley had got up very early, paid her bill up to the end of the month and left. She had taken a couple of suitcases and said she would fetch the rest of her things later. Everything was packed up, Miss Willis said. She must have spent most of the night doing it. She had left a note for me.
‘It was only two or three lines. Shirley said in it that it had been obvious for some time past that we had been getting on each other’s nerves and what I had said the night before showed that it would be wiser if we ceased sharing lodgings forthwith. She had been offered a comfortable room with some friends and had taken it. There was no telephone, she pointed out, where she had gone.
‘I was finely embarrassed to make it appear to poor little Miss Willis that I was not worried by her departure—that I had in fact been expecting it; and I resented being left to make shamefaced apologies for Shirley’s behaviour.
‘It was dead certain where she had gone. The friends she spoke of could be no one else but the Guyatts. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned them by name in her note seemed to show that she wasn’t so confidently defiant of my advice as she had affected to be. However, I certainly wasn’t going to run after her. I thought—and I confess I thought it with some satisfaction—that a week of living in t
hat gloomy, decaying place would cure her of her affection for the Guyatts. I couldn’t see Shirley putting up with dirt and frowziness and cooking which I was sure would be awful for very long. And yet, under my irritation I was alarmed. I should have done something, but I was angry with Shirley. That was the mistake. You should never lose patience with people whose relations with you are important.
‘When I came home again in the evening I found that Shirley had been in and had collected the remainder of her things. Miss Willis had asked her where she was to re-address letters and Shirley had told her to send them to the theatre. That confirmed for me that she had gone to the Guyatts. She was rather naïvely trying to conceal the fact.
‘The whole affair took on a different aspect from that day. Before, it was, I suppose, very much a matter of a difference of opinion, of impressions—of taste, perhaps. Shirley liked the Guyatts and I didn’t. To a third person the whole quarrel between us might have seemed no more than that. But now something was happening to Shirley, and I didn’t quite know what.
‘In the course of the next few days several people rang up asking for Shirley in the evenings. Their voices took on a note of surprise when I said she had left our lodgings and they must have guessed that we had had a serious row when I had to tell them that I wasn’t sure where she was living now.
‘I stuck to my plan of giving her a week to get tired of the Guyatts’. I was working hard for my finals at that time; with lectures and labs all day and masses of reading at night. I had no leisure to go and look Shirley up and argue with her again, even if I had thought that it would do any good.
‘The week passed and she did not come back. I wrote her a note addressed to Number Fourteen, Old Mill Lane, saying I presumed the cooking wasn’t as foul as one might have guessed it would be, but, anyway, would she let her friends know where she was so that they would stop ringing me up. I suppose she did that, at least, because enquiries for her stopped. She did not answer my note.