“I must suppose that, at present at any rate, it is useless to appeal to your better feelings, to your feeling as a wife and mother — though when I see you, Sophia, still wearing black for those two poor little babies of ours, I should have thought ——”
Taking advantage of the pause he wiped off the involuntary tear.
“However, I see that any such appeal would be useless. And as that is so I intend to assert one right, at least, as your husband. Go with Minna Lemuel if you please. But you go without what you please to call your property.”
“Do you mean to say, Frederick, that you have really been making all these speeches, holding all these confabulations with Léocadie, about my jewel-case and the tops of my scent-bottles?”
“I mean what I say. I mean that until you mend your manners you can whistle for your jewels and your scent-bottles, and everything else you like to think yours. Not a penny do you get from me. It’s mine, do you understand? By the law, it’s mine. When you married me it became mine, and now after ten years it’s high time you understood it. You don’t seem to grasp that very easily, do you? You’d better talk it over with Minna. She’s a Jew, she understands money, she’ll be able to explain to you which side a wife’s bread is buttered. Meanwhile, as I don’t want to expose you to any humiliation, let me tell you that it will be useless to write your Sophia Willoughby on any draft. I’ve written to the bank already and given orders that your signature is not to be honoured.”
“Thank you, Frederick. That is very obliging.”
She walked to the door and stood waiting.
Holding it open for her to pass through, as though the action constrained him to a resumption of civility, he said in his pleasantest, most affable tones,
“Look here, Sophia, can’t we patch it up? Lord knows, I don’t want to do the heavy husband. But really, what else am I to do? I must be responsible for you, I can’t let you compromise yourself without asserting myself in some way. Your great-aunt Léocadie ... ”
In the ante-room was a little table with a salver on it for visiting cards. Taking out her card and a pencil she dog’s-eared the card and wrote on it, p.p.c.
“Pour prendre congé,” she explained. “The usual etiquette.”
Stronger than rage, astonishment, contempt, the pleasurable sense that at last she had slapped Frederick’s face, the less pleasurable surmise that his slap back would be longer-lasting; stronger even than the desire to see Minna was her feeling that of all things, all people, she most at this moment wished to see Ingelbrecht, and the sturdy assurance that she would find in him everything that she expected. If she had gone up the stairs in the rue de la Carabine on her knees, she could not have ascended with a more zealotical faith that there would be healing at the top; and when he opened the door to her, enquiring politely if her errands had gone well she replied with enthusiasm, “Perfectly. My husband — it was he I went to see — has just threatened to cut me off with a penny.”
“A lock-out,” said Ingelbrecht. “Very natural. It is a symptom of capitalistic anxiety. I suppose he has always been afraid of you.”
She nodded, and her lips curved in a grin of satisfaction.
“How is Minna?”
“Still asleep. In that matter, Minna is superb. Her physical aplomb is infallible, when any one else would go to pieces, she develops a migraine and goes to sleep. If only — but it is a gift, and it is idle to envy gifts. The rest of us must do what we can ... .You had better have some coffee.”
There, on the table beside the closed exercise book was the coffee-tray, neatly arranged.
He is everything, she thought, that I expected, everything that I desired; grim and flat, positive without any flavour, a man like plain cold water.
“And can your husband cut off with a penny?”
“I suppose so.”
“You do not know for certain?”
“No.”
“Then you must find out. He may be bluffing you. You had better write to your man of business and enquire exactly how you stand.”
She looked at him abashed but contented.
“You take the wind out of my sails.”
“No, I don’t,” he replied. “But I think you may be leaving the harbour with too much canvas.”
“I should like some coffee, too.”
It was the voice of the convalescent, velveted with sleep. A yawn followed it, a rustle; and Minna strolled into the room, wearing the sleek shriven look of the healthily awakened. Her brown ankles emerged from the blue woollen slippers with an astonishing authenticity of colour, they seemed still tanned and supple from her barefoot childhood. Over her nightgown she wore a purple velvet pelisse, through her hair, hanging in elf-locks, glittered the shallower black of her jet ear-rings.
“He has watched over me like a guardian angel. But more peaceably.”
Sophia glanced at the book and the pencil.
“Perhaps more like a recording angel.”
“More like a recording angel than she knows.”
“Why, Ingelbrecht, am I in your book?”
Flowers for me? asked the prima-donna. Only a natural aptitude for domination polished by years of practice could have achieved that note of candid gratification. Only an aptitude quite as pronounced and the imperturbable unaffectedness of a long vocation could have replied with such simplicity.
“Not your name, Minna. Your defects, in so far as they are typical and instructive.”
Answering a look of genuine grief, he added,
“You will be of great value to future insurgents, my dear.”
What I feel, thought Sophia, is what I have seen painted sometimes on the faces of people listening to Beethoven; the look of those listening to a discourse, to an argument carried on in entire sincerity, an argument in which nothing is impassioned, or persuasive, or reasonable, except by force of sincerity; and there they sit in a heavenly thraldom, as blind people sit in the sun making a purer acknowledgment with their skin than sight, running after this or that flashing tinsel, can ever make. I cannot for the life of me see what Minna and Ingelbrecht are after; to me a revolution means that there is a turmoil and after it people are worse off than they were before; and yet as I see them there, Minna looking like some one in a charade and Ingelbrecht like a respectable Unitarian artisan, it is as though I were listening to music, able to feel and follow the workings of a different world. For it is there, that irrefutable force and logic of a different existence. In Ingelbrecht’s every word and gesture it is manifested, and in this instant I have seen it touch Minna and change her from the world’s wiliest baggage to some one completely humble and sincere.
“What have you written about Minna?” she asked. “I should like to hear it.”
Watching Ingelbrecht turn over the pages of his book, and Minna settling herself to attend, it seemed incredible to her that human beings should ever mince, belittle themselves, or expostulate.
“There are some revolutionaries, on the other hand, who seem incapable of feeling a durable anger against the conditions which they seek to overthrow. In these characters the imagination is too rich, the emotional force too turbulent. The anger which they undoubtedly feel is neutralised by the pleasure they experience in expressing it. They are speech-makers, they are frequently assassins; but when they have finished their speech, or poignarded their tyrant, they are in such a mood of satisfied excitement that they are almost ready to forgive the state of society which allows them such abuses on which to avenge themselves. And this they themselves commonly admit in such remarks as, ‘It is enough,’ or, ‘I have achieved my destiny.’
“In using that antiquated and romantic expression, ‘poignarded the tyrant,’ I use it with intention. These revolutionaries are penetrated with artistic and historical feeling, they turn naturally to the weapons of the past, and to methods which, by being outmoded, appear to be chivalrous. (I point out that there must be an element of the gothic in all chivalry. No perfectly contemporary action can be described as
chivalrous.) This tendency, which is natural in any such character, and therefore ineradicable by any application of reason or analysis, is abetted by another characteristic proper to persons of this temperament — great technical facility. The argument that it is easier to kill a man with a gun than with a rapier carries little force with them, because they are already so skilful with a rapier; the ancestors of these revolutionaries were such good archers that the invention of gunpowder only bored them, so skilful with the flint bolt that no demonstration of the feathered arrow could have persuaded them to a change of weapon. In consequence of this, these skilful assassins seldom despatch more than one tyrant; like the bee they sting once, and lose with that injury their power to inflict another.”
“If I could kill one tyrant,” murmured Minna, “I would die happy.”
“Exactly.” He turned a page. “The assassination of Galeazzo Maria Szorza in 1476 is a typical piece of work in this kind — classical republican sentiments, the choice of a showy moment for the deed itself and, the deed ended, no plan of subsequent action. Even more typical is the enthusiasm which this assassination aroused in Italy, despite the fact that as a political coup it was an utter failure; it was sufficient for the enthusiasm of society that the assassination had been conceived and carried out on classical lines, and the fact that all three perpetrators died on the scaffold only added sublimity to the spectacle.
“For the greatest danger to revolutionary work of this class of revolutionaries is not their personal improvidence (the consequences of that as a rule affect only themselves), not their tendency to exhaust themselves in gusts of eloquence and coups de théâtre, not even their lack of discipline; but in their appeal to bourgeois sympathies. One such revolutionary may attract ten undesirable recruits from the bourgeoisie, sentimentalists, sensation-seekers, idealists, etc. These miserable camp-followers clog action, talk incessantly, make the movement ridiculous, and, parasites themselves, harbour further parasites of spies and agents provocateurs. Moreover, they are extremely difficult to dislodge.”
He read without any appearance of authorship, his little grey eyes like shot rolling swiftly back and forth as though they were the only visibly moving part of the machine which was the man. And when the reading was finished and the book closed the eyes rested upon Minna in a steadfastness that betokened trust and goodwill.
“I feel really proud, Ingelbrecht, that any part of your book should have been written under my roof. In a hundred years’ time people will be reading your book and thinking, It is universal, as true now as when it was written ... .No, no! What am I saying? In a hundred years’ time, thanks to your book, it will all be different, in 1948 the Revolution will be too strong to be endangered any longer by people like me.”
“Or by the despicable characters you attract,” added Sophia.
“There, you see, Ingelbrecht. You are always right, I have done it again. I have converted Sophia now. She admits it.”
Under the easy mischief of her voice was a note of excitement, and the glance she cast on Sophia was at once fostering and predatory.
“I forgot to read you a foot-note,” said Ingelbrecht. “It must be stated, however, that these bourgeois disciples are often both wealthy and generous. Since the character of the party is at all times more important than its finances, this should never be thought a reason for welcoming such recruits. If the party be sufficiently strong it does render their introduction less undesirable, but a weak party should arm itself against them as against a pestilence.”
It seemed unbelievable that such an eye should wink. Wink, however, it did. Untying her bonnet-strings, staring Ingelbrecht resolutely in the face, Sophia said with gravity,
“I will write to my man of business to-morrow.”
“Pray do,” said he. And having advised Minna to eat more and smoke less, he gathered up the book and the rug, bowed like a benevolent gnome and went away.
From the balcony she watched him go down the street, and as, watching Minna in the rue de l’Abbé de l’Épée she had thought of an animal, Ingelbrecht reminded her of an animal too, so swiftly and circumspectly he made his way, seeming to trot on some intent personal errand, true to his own laws and oblivious of all else.
“Does he always wear that shawl?”
“Yes, almost always. He was imprisoned in the Spielberg, you know. And he was so cold there, so wretchedly cold, that it got into his bones, and he has felt chilly ever since.”
“Have you ever been in a prison, Minna?”
“Yes, once or twice. But never for anything creditable. Vagrancy and theft and so forth, wretched little poverty offences. When I was a girl, going about with Lecoq and his dogs. But once in Vienna I was nearly had for the real thing. I was being very harmless, I was telling my fairy-stories. I described an ogre, a sleek grey ogre, sleek as ice. Wherever he went, I said, it was like a black frost. Whatever he touched stiffened, birds fell dead, the young fruit dropped off the trees. The name of this ogre, I said, was Mitternacht — you know what they call Metternich. There were some students in the audience, and in an instant they were up, shouting and applauding. A riot!
“It was marvellous,” she said, swooping forward like some purple-plumaged bird of prey, her hooked nose impending — ”Marvellous! To have such power, to have them up at a word ... .Just what Ingelbrecht would disapprove of, too.”
In the silence that followed both women turned and looked at the empty chair, the table, the inkpot.
“I do, I do appreciate him!” exclaimed Minna. “I appreciate him implicitly. If he were to say to me, Minna, never another word, no more stories of the oppressed, no more of your sorceries with fairy-tales, I would sew up my mouth. But this afternoon how could I help feeling a little dulled? All the time he was here, the pen whispering on, the shadow of the curtain moving over the bald head, I was saying to myself — That Sophia ... .Will she ever come back?”
Into this opening she must dive.
“Minna! Do you feel equal to a piece of tiresome news?”
“One is always equal to that.”
“I went to see Frederick. I had to. And Frederick has been asserting himself.”
At a nod, wise and parrot-like, the jet ear-rings began to swing slowly in and out of the black hair.
“He dislikes me being with you — ”
“He is jealous of you?”
“Yes. I suppose that is what it is. He is jealous.”
“And no wonder.” The blue slippers moved into a more dignified position, a deft hand tweaked the purple pelisse into nobler folds. Holding her head aloft she said grandly, “If he were to strive for a lifetime, that poor Frederick, he could not appreciate me as you did in our first five minutes. And no doubt that in his darkened way he knows this.”
“No doubt. And so, on the best military models, he has cut off my supplies.”
There was a swift gesture, called back. Locking her hands together, staring down on them as though to ward them from further movement, Minna was silent.
“He has cut off my supplies. As he is entitled to do, being my husband. He has told the bank not to honour my signature, he has removed the gold fittings from my dressing-case. So you see, Minna, I am penniless, or soon shall be. I have what is left over from my ring, that will last a while. I have my clothes, for what they are worth. And my hair. I believe one can always sell one’s hair. After that, unless I comply with Frederick’s wishes, nothing.”
“You will stay? You must, if only to gall him.”
“I don’t think that much of a reason.”
“But you will stay?”
“I will stay if you wish it.”
It seemed to her that the words fell cold and glum as ice-pellets. Only beneath the crust of thought did her being assent as by right to that flush of pleasure, that triumphant cry.
“But of course,” said Minna a few hours later, thoughtfully licking the last oyster shell, “we must be practical.”
This remark she had already made repeatedly,
speaking with the excitement of an adventurous mind contemplating a new and hazardous experience. Each time the remark had led to some fresh attempt at practicality, attempts that never got beyond a beginning. On the sofa lay Sophia’s dresses, three of them valued with the adeptness of an old-clothes woman, the rest only admired and exclaimed over. On the table were strewn several manuscript poems and a novel which only needed finishing and a publisher to make their fortune. Mixed in with these and, like these, read aloud in their more striking passages, were various letters, any one of which, she said, would be a gold-mine if properly negotiated. And why, she added, this prejudice against blackmail, if the results were to be applied to a good end? Why indeed, had answered Sophia, brooding upon the vileness of those who wrote such letters.
“Yes, we must be practical. No more oysters, no more supper-parties. Ah, how I reproach myself that you sold your ring. I don’t suppose Dury got half its value, rushing off like that to a Mont de Piété. If we could raise the money to buy it back, then we could sell it again.”
“I regretted that ring this afternoon. You see, I lost my temper and hit him in the face. And the moment I had done it I remembered my ring and thought how much more it would have hurt if I had been wearing it.”
“Yes. A knuckle-duster. Rings are invaluable, I know, and diamonds most painful of all. Still, I expect you didn’t do too badly. You must be very strong. I suppose you wouldn’t ... No. That would be out of the question, I’m afraid.”
“What?”
“Appear — under good auspices, you know — as a female pugilist. With your figure and height it would be marvellous. But I see that it wouldn’t really do, it is just my natural tendency to turn to circuses. You might not believe it, Sophia, to look at me now, but when I was young and slender as a reed I could go right round the ring in a series of somersaults. And the applause would be like thunder. But now, even if I were to thin, I don’t suppose I should be good for much.”
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