The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly’s face.
“But does it matter?” said Lilly slowly, “in which of you the desire initiates? Isn’t the result the same?”
“It matters. It matters — ” cried the Marchese.
“Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters — ” interrupted Argyle sagely.
“Ay!” said Aaron.
The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.
“It matters!” he cried. “It matters life or death. It used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman’s desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a woman’s head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. This is Eve. Ah, I hate Eve. I hate her, when she knows, and when she WILLS. I hate her when she will make of me that which serves her desire. — She may love me, she may be soft and kind to me, she may give her life for me. But why? Only because I am HERS. I am that thing which does her most intimate service. She can see no other in me. And I may be no other to her — ”
“Then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?” said Lilly.
“Because I cannot. I cannot. I would. But I cannot. The Borghesia — the citizens — the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can. Oh, yes. The bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and their wives love them. They are the marital maquereaux — the husband-maquereau, you know. Their wives are so stout and happy, and they dote on their husbands and always betray them. So it is with the bourgeoise. She loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to betray him. Or she is a Madame Bovary, seeking for a scandal. But the bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same. He is the horse, and she the driver. And when she says gee-up, you know — then he comes ready, like a hired maquereau. Only he feels so good, like a good little boy at her breast. And then there are the nice little children. And so they keep the world going. — But for me — ” he spat suddenly and with frenzy on the floor.
“You are quite right, my boy,” said Argyle. “You are quite right. They’ve got the start of us, the women: and we’ve got to canter when they say gee-up. I — oh, I went through it all. But I broke the shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, I can tell you, and I didn’t care whether I smashed her up along with it or not. I didn’t care one single bit, I assure you. — And here I am. And she is dead and buried these dozen years. Well — well! Life, you know, life. And women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of you. There’s NOTHING they won’t do to you, once they’ve got you. Nothing they won’t do to you. Especially if they love you. Then you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and her in it. Otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose. And you’ll submit. Oh, you’ll submit, and go on calling her my darling. Or else, if you won’t submit, she’ll do for you. Your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. Or she’ll do for you. For a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength — she’s a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she’s got the start of you. Oh, it’s a terrible experience, if you’re not a bourgeois, and not one of the knuckling-under money-making sort.”
“Knuckling-under sort. Yes. That is it,” said the Marchese.
“But can’t there be a balancing of wills?” said Lilly.
“My dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the other goes down. One acts, the other takes. It is the only way in love — And the women are nowadays the active party. Oh, yes, not a shadow of doubt about it. They take the initiative, and the man plays up. That’s how it is. The man just plays up. — Nice manly proceeding, what!” cried Argyle.
“But why can’t man accept it as the natural order of things?” said Lilly. “Science makes it the natural order.”
“All my — — to science,” said Argyle. “No man with one drop of real spunk in him can stand it long.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” cried the Italian. “Most men want it so. Most men want only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up to her when she has roused them. Most men want only this: that a woman shall choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and come up when she shall provoke him. Otherwise he is to keep still. And the woman, she is quite sure of her part. She must be loved and adored, and above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire. There she must not be thwarted, or she becomes a devil. And if she is obeyed, she becomes a misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round for the next man whom she can bring under. So it is.”
“Well,” said Lilly. “And then what?”
“Nay,” interrupted Aaron. “But do you think it’s true what he says? Have you found it like that? You’re married. Has your experience been different, or the same?”
“What was yours?” asked Lilly.
“Mine was the same. Mine was the same, if ever it was,” said Aaron.
“And mine was EXTREMELY similar,” said Argyle with a grimace.
“And yours, Lilly?” asked the Marchese anxiously.
“Not very different,” said Lilly.
“Ah!” cried Del Torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something.
“And what’s your way out?” Aaron asked him.
“I’m not out — so I won’t holloa,” said Lilly. “But Del Torre puts it best. — What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?”
“The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker and the woman the answerer. It must change.”
“But it doesn’t. Prrr!” Argyle made his trumpeting noise.
“Does it?” asked Lilly of the Marchese.
“No. I think it does not.”
“And will it ever again?”
“Perhaps never.”
“And then what?”
“Then? Why then man seeks a pis-aller. Then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will. — So he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. He thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes. — But in this, too, he is mistaken. Because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man.”
“And so young girls are no good, even as a pis-aller.”
“No good — because they are all modern women. Every one, a modern woman. Not one who isn’t.”
“Terrible thing, the modern woman,” put in Argyle.
“And then — ?”
“Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love. — But it is all pis-aller, you know.”
“Not by any means, my boy,” cried Argyle.
“And then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not bearable to love her.”
“Or one leaves her, like Aaron,” said Lilly.
“And seeks another woman, so,” said the Marchese.
“Does he seek another woman?” said Lilly. “Do you, Aaron?”
“I don’t WANT to,” said Aaron. “But — I can’t stand by myself in the middle of the world and in the middle of people, and know I am quite by myself, and nowhere to go, and nothing to hold on to. I can for a day or two — But then, it becomes unbearable as well. You get frightened. You feel you might go funny — as you would if you stood on this balcony wall with all the space beneath you.”
“Can’t one be alone — quite alone?” said Lilly.
“But no — it is absurd. Like Saint Simeon Stylites on a pillar. But it is abs
urd!” cried the Italian.
“I don’t mean like Simeon Stylites. I mean can’t one live with one’s wife, and be fond of her: and with one’s friends, and enjoy their company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet KNOW that one is alone? Essentially, at the very core of me, alone. Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or LONELY. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one’s own nature one is alone. The being with another person is secondary,” said Lilly.
“One is alone,” said Argyle, “in all but love. In all but love, my dear fellow. And then I agree with you.”
“No,” said Lilly, “in love most intensely of all, alone.”
“Completely incomprehensible,” said Argyle. “Amounts to nothing.”
“One man is but a part. How can he be so alone?” said the Marchese.
“In so far as he is a single individual soul, he IS alone — ipso facto. In so far as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, in so far, I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-knowledge.”
“My dear boy, you are becoming metaphysical, and that is as bad as softening of the brain,” said Argyle.
“All right,” said Lilly.
“And,” said the Marchese, “it may be so by REASON. But in the heart — ? Can the heart ever beat quite alone? Plop! Plop! — Can the heart beat quite alone, alone in all the atmosphere, all the space of the universe? Plop! Plop! Plop! — Quite alone in all the space?” A slow smile came over the Italian’s face. “It is impossible. It may eat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against the others. It may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent. But this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone. — But either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of someone, mother, wife, friend, children — so must the heart of every man beat. It is so.”
“It beats alone in its own silence,” said Lilly.
The Italian shook his head.
“We’d better be going inside, anyhow,” said Argyle. “Some of you will be taking cold.”
“Aaron,” said Lilly. “Is it true for you?”
“Nearly,” said Aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet frightening eyes of the other man. “Or it has been.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” laughed Lilly, rising and picking up his chair to take it indoors. And the laughter of his voice was so like a simple, deliberate amiability, that Aaron’s heart really stood still for a second. He knew that Lilly was alone — as far as he, Aaron, was concerned. Lilly was alone — and out of his isolation came his words, indifferent as to whether they came or not. And he left his friends utterly to their own choice. Utterly to their own choice. Aaron felt that Lilly was there, existing in life, yet neither asking for connection nor preventing any connection. He was present, he was the real centre of the group. And yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing. He left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself: neither more nor less. And there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating. Aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man’s placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver’s hands. Lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality. Neither would he violently refuse it. He let it lie unmarked. And yet at the same time Aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself — so long as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of Lilly’s soul. But this condition was also hateful. And there was also a great fascination in it.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE MARCHESA
So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi. He was quite startled when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. She seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. It was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms. Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires. Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. She was most carefully made up — yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron. He thought her wonderful, and sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.
She must have seen his face, seen that he was ebloui.
“You brought the flute?” she said, in that toneless, melancholy, unstriving voice of hers. Her voice alone was the same: direct and bare and quiet.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you’ll accompany me. Will you?”
“I thought you hated accompaniments.”
“Oh, no — not just unison. I don’t mean accompaniment. I mean unison. I don’t know how it will be. But will you try?”
“Yes, I’ll try.”
“Manfredi is just bringing the cocktails. Do you think you’d prefer orange in yours?”
“Ill have mine as you have yours.”
“I don’t take orange in mine. Won’t you smoke?”
The strange, naked, remote-seeming voice! And then the beautiful firm limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust. Her beautiful woman’s legs, slightly glistening, duskily. His one abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them. He had never known a woman to exercise such power over him. It was a bare, occult force, something he could not cope with.
Manfredi came in with the little tray. He was still in uniform.
“Hello!” cried the little Italian. “Glad to see you — well, everything all right? Glad to hear it. How is the cocktail, Nan?”
“Yes,” she said. “All right.”
“One drop too much peach, eh?”
“No, all right.”
“Ah,” and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered legs as if gaily. He had a curious smiling look on his face, that Aaron thought also diabolical — and almost handsome. Suddenly the odd, laughing, satanic beauty of the little man was visible.
“Well, and what have you been doing with yourself?” said he. “What did you do yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” said Aaron. “I went to the Uffizi.”
“To the Uffizi? Well! And what did you think of it?”
“Very fine.”
“I think it is. I think it is. What pictures did you look at?”
“I was with Dekker. We looked at most, I believe.”
“And what do you remember best?”
“I remember Botticelli’s Venus on the Shell.”
“Yes! Yes! — ” said Manfredi. “I like her. But I like others better. You thought her a pretty woman, yes?”
“No — not particularly pretty. But I like her body. And I like the fresh air. I like the fresh air, the summer sea-air all through it — through her as well.”
“And her face?” asked the Marchesa, with a slow, ironic smile.
“Yes — she’s a bit baby-faced,” said Aaron.
“Trying to be more innocent than her own common-sense will let her,” said the Marchesa.
“I don’t agree with you, Nan,” said her husband. “I think it is just that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true Venus: the true modern Venus. She chooses NOT to know too much. And that is her attraction. Don’t you agree, Aaron? Excuse me, but everybody speaks of you as Aaron. It seems to come naturally. Most people speak of me as Manfredi, too, because it is easier, perhaps, than Del Torre. So if you find it easi
er, use it. Do you mind that I call you Aaron?”
“Not at all. I hate Misters, always.”
“Yes, so do I. I like one name only.”
The little officer seemed very winning and delightful to Aaron this evening — and Aaron began to like him extremely. But the dominating consciousness in the room was the woman’s.
“DO you agree, Mr. Sisson?” said the Marchesa. “Do you agree that the mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of Botticelli’s Venus are her great charms?”
“I don’t think she is at all charming, as a person,” said Aaron. “As a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all. But as a picture — and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air. She doesn’t seem so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning-feelings at the seaside.”
“Quite! A sort of sea-scape of a woman. With a perfectly sham innocence. Are you as keen on innocence as Manfredi is?”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 332