by E. F. Benson
“You mean that I am?” asked Violet.
“Quite. But you’ve got a perfect right to be there if you like. I don’t mind where you are, as long as you’re here.”
This personal discussion was carried on, on both sides, without the smallest irritation. Vincent sat there, sipping his port, large and good-humoured, and filling the room with the sense of his superabundant vitality, while Violet levelled insults at him, and Celia smiled at the swift, careful rapier work of the others. Vincent was a frequent visitor here, and he had early made on Celia a far more definite impression than the host of busy, chattering people who made the house so agreeably populous. She liked the rest of her friends of the set far more than she liked him: indeed, she was not sure that she liked him at all, but decidedly he stimulated her. His frank cynicism was often repulsive: he said and clearly meant that his object in life was to get as much for himself out of it as he could, and the unmasked brutality of this outlook somehow appealed to Celia with a sense of moral kinship to herself. Moreover, just as part of her own charm for others was of a challenging sort, derived from her curious emotional indifference to them, so this cold-blooded egoism of Vincent’s had, if not charm, at least a certain domination for her. Celia basked in the blind devotion which she inspired, for instance, both in Violet and her brother, but though she permitted it, she neither returned it, nor, if it got inconveniently warm, did she hesitate to put up her parasol, so to speak, in order to shield herself. She never wholly surrendered herself to it, never quite parted with her parasol, and she found in Vincent a masculine independence which corresponded with this reserve. He never let his clearsightedness be dimmed by affection, and this, too, was becoming a species of challenge to Celia. He was so perfectly free from illusion, that she longed to see him under the spell of another, herself for preference. Physically he had plenty of temperament, but, when he desired, he wished to dominate and not be himself absorbed. Finally, that which gave the sharp point to the impression he made on her, was the fear, as yet remote, that he might make himself somehow essential to her, that she might be beleaguered into some kind of surrender to him. She had got from Violet all that Violet emotionally had to give, though she had never exerted herself to obtain it, while, from the first moment that Bernard set eyes on her, she knew that he regarded her as he never yet had regarded any one. There again she had not been provocative, she had never stirred a finger in the process of his growing devotion. She liked him, she liked Violet also with a positive and strong affection, but without the sense of internal need. But, though she had no affection at all for Vincent, but on the contrary rather disliked him, she felt this unwilling sense of kinship....
Vincent got up after this final exchange of shots and turned to Celia.
“You and I agree,” he said. “We’re both marauders. We want to fleece life. Luckily there are plenty of people who positively adore being fleeced, especially in the affections.”
Celia suddenly felt on the defensive.
“My dear, you had better really not talk about the affections,” she said. “You are the one person I know who does not care two real straws for anybody else.”
“That is another way of saying that we agree,” said he.
She laughed.
“I tear up the treaty,” said she.
“Good Heavens! I’ve been spending all this eloquence to help you against the idealists. Is that all my reward? Or have you got the idealist germ lurking within you? Fumigate yourself: disinfect yourself.”
“I shan’t promise. I want to know more about myself before I sterilize any part of me. Otherwise I might destroy something that was worth preserving. In spite of what I said to Violet about coloured slides, I’m not sure that I want to be a completely sensible person without any sort of illusions. It might conceivably be dull, and to be dull would be the greatest possible misfortune that could happen to one.”
“Dull?” said he. “The only sure refuge from dullness is exact knowledge. Besides, you have got such things as music to supply illusions. You can make a sort of artificial paradise for yourself by hearing the squealing of violins. Yet even then you can’t get away from exact and immutable laws. There is a reason why certain vibrations in certain sequences please you, and certain others displease you. The most exquisite melody is only a pattern of vibrations. The whole thing is purely mathematical.”
Celia laughed.
“I shall try to forget that,” she said. “I should not care for music if I remembered it was but a suitable pattern of vibrations. After all, it is possible to be too sensible. The beauty of curves and colours, I suppose, equally depends upon the arrangement of infinitesimal lines and vibrations, but it would be a great mistake merely to count the vibrations and miss the beauty. No, it won’t do, Vincent.”
Violet clapped her hands.
“Hurrah!” she said.
“Shut up!” said Vincent. “I haven’t done. I don’t say you mustn’t have your artificial paradises, but you must be aware that you create them for yourself out of your imagination and that you use the most material of things to work on. That’s the mistake which people who fall in love make, and which makes them so pitiable. They think that the wretched victim of their affections is something apart from the rest of the human race. He or she — the victim is usually he, because women get more stupefiedly intoxicated by love, as a rule, than men—”
“Oh, I doubt that,” said Celia. “The really intoxicated love poems of the world are by men.”
“That’s only because women are so painfully devoid of the power of expressing themselves. I was saying that the adorer looks on the adored as something completely unique, and fully believes he actually is unique, whereas he is not. In other words, the adorer forgets that it is her imagination that has made this artificial paradise. Instead of that, she thinks she has discovered one of the Sons of God among the sons of men. That is childish, and yet it is the commonest illusion in the world and the most mischievous, and somehow attacks the most sensible people and lays them low, just as influenza lays low the strongest. They don’t usually die, but when their intoxication passes off, they come to themselves with the most splitting heartache. To crown all, they bitterly accuse their bored and irritated victim of having infected them. That is purely unfair.”
“But certain people, of whom you are not one,” said Violet acidly, “can’t help falling in love like that.”
“Very likely not. Other people have other congenital tendencies, and can’t help limping or taking to drink. AU I ask of such people is to pull themselves together for just one second as they are beginning to fall in love, and say to themselves, ‘Now I intend to go on the bust. I propose to get more intoxicated than ever any one did before.’ If ever I fall in love in the intoxicated manner, I shall make no reproaches when I come to and see what a brute beast I have been making of myself. With which unanswerable sentiments I shall go down to the House, leaving my character, as Sheridan said, behind me.”
“Come again soon,” said Celia. “Ring up.”
“Rather. I’m off to Rome to-morrow on my craven errand, but I shall be back next week.” The two girls sat in silence for a moment after he had gone, and Celia banked a pile of cushions on to the floor and slid from her chair on to them.
“For about ten minutes I shall be glad that he’s going to Rome,” she said, “and shall wish that he would stop there. Then I shall want to ask him some more questions. He’s rather good for you, you know, Violet: perhaps that’s why you find him so disagreeable.”
“He isn’t good for me. He’s good for nobody: he’s good for nothing. Just poison! Darling, don’t take it. A cup of cold poison.... He’s radically unsound. He builds on a fallacy.”
“Gracious! What a lot of things he is!” said Celia. “But where’s the fallacy?”
“Because he thinks that when he has reduced music to vibrations, and love to intoxication, he has answered the riddle.”
“What riddle?”
“The rid
dle of the world. Artificial paradises indeed! They are the real paradises, from which he is excluded. You can’t get in without a soul.” Celia sat up.
“I must get one,” she said with decision. “Where can I get one?”
“Oh, you’ve got a beauty,” said Violet. “It’s that for which we all love you. Do wake it up. It’s a sleeping beauty.”
“Oh me! And I suppose people like Vincent drug it. Would you go as far as that?”
Violet looked at her in a sort of horror.
“Don’t let him touch it,” she said. “He hasn’t touched it, has he? You don’t like him, do you? Really like, I mean....”
“I think I dislike him. But he’s a pied piper. When he plays tunes I find I have to dance. I don’t want to dance, but I dance. There’s a brutality about him. Brutes have a sort of fascination for me. They look round to see what they want, and then they grab it. Another brute is Princess Lutloff. They both give me the shudders.”
“All right, so long as you shudder.”
“But all wrong, so long as I rather like shuddering. There’s an excitement in not being quite sure about people, in their having something for you to guess about.”
“Well, guess and have done with it. It’s easy enough to guess about them. They are coarse materialists: that’s the answer.”
“Not all of it,” said Celia. “Princess Lutloff has wonderfully fine perceptions: she has a great sense of what is exquisite, and adores it. Rather like a cat, perhaps, drawing its claws ecstatically over a piece of satin and purring. She was talking to me the other day about cultivating one’s sensibilities and finding beauty in strange places. She is a gourmet, taking little bits of queer things and tasting them with perception. And yet she is like Vincent, who stuffs his mouth full of anything that nourishes him and eats it in enormous quantities. They are both greedy in their particular lines, I think.”
Violet sighed.
“You would be so much more comfortable if you didn’t think so much,” she observed.
Celia took no notice of this.
“Another thing Princess Lutloff said to me was that I was a chameleon, and took my colour from what surrounded me. She said I was on a Scotch plaid at present, meaning mother’s house, and that I must choose my colour. There was a story about a chameleon on a Scotch plaid which tried so hard to resemble all the colours there that it burst. She said that if I burst she would pick up the bits. Am I talking about myself?”
“No,” said Violet. “Go on.”
Celia paused for a moment.
“How much does Bernard want to pick up?” she asked.
“Oh, all!” said Violet. “Now you’ve hit the point. Bernard told me never to talk to you about him, for fear of boring you, but you began.” Violet sat up with sparkling eyes.
“You have hit it,” she said. “He wants all of you just as you are. Can’t you understand the difference? Other people may want bits of you to suit themselves, whereas the point of love is that it wants all. And you said, ‘How much does Bernard want to pick up?’ That was so stupid and unperceptive of you. Love doesn’t deal in fractions. He wants to climb up into heaven for it, not bend down and pick it up.”
Celia’s mouth remained quite grave, but now her eyebrows elevated themselves, not in indulgent amusement, but in sheer bewilderment.
“And yet you’re devoted to me?” she asked. “And yet you want Bernard to take me?”
“Passionately! Can’t you really understand? It’s so simple. I adore Bernard: I adore you. What could I want more? It’s perfect if the people you love get what they want.”
Celia’s mouth followed her eyes, both smiling. “Let’s come down out of these high levels,” she said. “You told me once that Bernard always got what he wanted. He wanted a girl like the Greek head. Well, I ask you, am I like a Greek head? Did you ever see a Greek head like me? Oh, the telephone!”
She got up, saying “Did you?” over her shoulder, and listened.
“Oh, yes, Bernard, of course,” she said. “I understand perfectly. How exciting! Lunch to-morrow with you? Yes, certainly. Violet’s here now. I’ll remind her. Oh, I should like to see it.... Goodbye.”
She put the receiver back.
“Only that he’s terribly busy,” she said. “There’s some excitement about Turkey. He’s like Lovelace. He could not love me, dear, so much, loved he not Turkey more.”
“Oh, I wish you minded!” said Violet.
“Why? He wants me to lunch with him to-morrow, and says you are going. He said another thing, too: he has long been hoping to show me something...”
CHAPTER V
THE party at Florence Courthope’s that night had chiefly asked themselves, and so her responsibility was limited to providing them with food and hoping for the best. Her house really was a sort of sanctuary, a piece of neutral territory, where belligerents, meeting by chance, laid aside their differences. To-night, however, there happened to be a furious pacifist who found himself next the Minister who was chiefly responsible for the Conscription Act, and about the middle of dinner Florence was suddenly aware that a pitched battle was going on about something or other, though she had not yet grasped the probable cause.
“Listen to them,” she said to Evan Lamington, who was sitting next her. “Are they not having an argument? I don’t think their voices sound quite good-natured. Two wild cats. So rare nowadays. What are they talking about? Such screams, that you can’t hear what they say.”
Evan, hearing the word “butchery,” conjectured the reason, and waved his hands to dismiss so sordid a subject.
“Oh, pacifism,” she said. “Pacifists are always fiercer than anybody. They would make such wonderful soldiers. Why don’t they go and be soldiers instead? What am I to do? Shall I tell the butler to pepper them? Don’t you pepper things when they quarrel? Or is it salt on claret? Let me see, what is the pacifist’s name? He wrote those clever books. Mr. Akroyd, of course it is. Mr. Akroyd!” she called out.
There was a momentary lull.
“Mr. Akroyd,” she said. “I was asking Evan what was the name of your last book? So clever. You must explain it to us.”
“The Curse of War,” he shouted out. “I was explaining it to my neighbour.”
He turned to him again.
“Total misapprehension of the whole psychology of the race—” he began.
Florence now really interfered.
“But how dreadful,” she said. “Total misapprehension is it? Don’t they understand at all? You must write another book and explain it. You must tell all of us about it. Olga, dear, Mr. Akroyd is going to tell us all about psychology. Will not that be interesting? Lord Antrobus doesn’t want to know about it, do you, Edgar, so he will talk to Celia in a low voice while Mr. Akroyd explains it to us. Now, Mr. Akroyd. And then you must come to dinner with me one day next week, when there’s a Cardinal coming. We will make him tell the Pope to order France and Austria to stop fighting. That will be a beginning.”
The glorious fatuity of these remarks met with the success it aimed at, for it was impossible for two men to go on shouting at each other when their hostess, in full panoply of absurdity, threw herself into the gulf in this manner. Celia was heard beginning her rôle to the infuriated Minister by saying in a slow, deep voice, “Are you fond of reading?” Mr. Akroyd was annexed by Olga, and Mrs. Courthope continued her interrupted conversation with Evan.
“Yes, he was here this afternoon,” she said. “Then a speech in the House, and Rome to-morrow. ‘Nach Rome!’ How wonderful it will be to hear German opera again. I hate knowing what the people say in opera. Much better only to understand a word here and there. Why don’t we have operas in Fijian? So tropical! We were all thrilled at the Russian opera because we understood none of it, except when somebody said ‘Czar’! Quite sufficient knowledge for one act. A Czar! Then there’s English opera, where you can’t hear more than about two words in an act. But the objection is that you listen for the words, which is an effort. Music shoul
d be no effort, except of course to the musicians. Why do men quarrel like those two? They must be partners at bridge afterwards, and then they will have the same interests, and not think anything more of pacifism and conscription. Community of interests! And wine! When we women go upstairs you must make them drink a great deal of wine, and after that they shall be partners at bridge. How hungry dear Olga is looking. Has there been enough to eat?”
Evan waved his hands. They were white and manicured, and he wore several rings with cabochon stones in them.
“My dear!” he said. “If you want them to go on quarrelling, give them plenty of wine and make them partners at bridge. It will exceed your wildest expectations.”
Florence looked completely puzzled.
“I thought it would be so nice!” she said. “Port, you know! I thought it was such a friendly wine. And bridge! Partners! I wonder if there are any cards. I was telling you about Vincent Douglas. All the way to Rome. Naked too. He seems to say, ‘Here am I just as I am,’ and then you have to take off your clothes too. Like a searchlight turned on to your bedroom. So bracing. There’s so much nonsense in the world. That’s the mode now, to find everybody priceless, don’t they say? And the moment afterwards, when their backs are turned, to put on labels with the cheapest figures very plainly nailed on them. Twopence a dozen, or something dreadful. But Vincent always says we are all cowards and liars and cheats. Such a luxury to be abused. Frankness! Devoted to Celia. Why don’t you marry? All these war-weddings, which lead to so much bigamy, when they think they’re dead and have a memorial service. Let us all have memorial services for ourselves, and then we can begin all over again.”
She made a hissing aside to Evan.
“What is the name of that beautiful woman next but one to Olga?” she asked, “whom nobody is talking to?”
“My mother,” said Evan.
“Why, of course! Priscilla, dear: Evan and I are going to have memorial services to-morrow. He’s going to attend mine, and I his. Then we shall begin all over again, under an alias.”