Part 8

In regard to meat, she had sometimes thought she would like to give it up, because she had read in her paper that being killed hurt the poor animals; but she had never gone beyond thought, because it was very difficult to do that. Henry was thin, and distinctly pale; the girls were growing girls; Sunday would hardly seem Sunday without; besides, it did not do to believe what one read in the paper, and it would hurt her butcher’s feelings--she was sure of that. Christmas, too, stood in the way. It was one’s duty to be cheerful at that season, and Christmas would seem so strange without the cheery butchers’ shops and their appropriate holocaust. She had once read some pages of a disgraceful book that seemed going out of its way all the time to prove that _she_ was just an animal--a dreadful book, not at all nice! And if she would eat those creatures if they were really her brother animals, and not just sent by God to feed her. No; at Christmas she felt especially grateful to the good God for his abundance, for all the good things he gave her to eat. For all these reasons she swallowed her scruples religiously. But it was very different in regard to dairy produce; for here there was, she knew, a real danger--not, indeed, to the animals, but to her family and herself. She was for once really proud of the thoroughness with which she dealt with that important nourishment--milk. None came into her house except in sealed bottles, with the name of the cow, spiritually speaking, on the outside. Some wag had suggested, in her hearing, that hens should be compelled to initial their eggs when they were delivered, as well as to put the dates on them. This she had thought ribald; one could go too far.

She was, before all things, an altruist; and in nothing more so than in her relations with her servants. If they did not do their duty, they went. It was the only way, she had found, to really benefit them. Country girls and town girls, they passed from her in a stream, having learned, once for all, the standard that was expected from them. She christened and educated more servants, perhaps, than any one in the kingdom. The Marthas went first, being invariably dirty; the Marys and Susans lasted, on an average, perhaps four months, and then left for many reasons. Cook seldom hurried off before her year was over, because it was so difficult to get her before she came, and to replace her after she was gone; but when she did go it was in a gale of wind. The “day out” was, perhaps, the most fruitful source of disillusionment--girls of that class, no matter how much they protested their innocence, seemed utterly unable to keep away from man’s society. It was only once a fortnight that she required them to exercise their self-control and self-respect in that regard, for on the other thirteen days she took care that they had no chance, suffering no male footstep in her basement. And yet--would you believe it?--on those fourteenth days, she was never able to be easy in her mind. But, however kindly and considerate she might be in her dealings with those of lowly station, she found ever the same ingratitude, the same incapacity, or, as she had reluctantly been forced to believe, the same deliberate unwillingness to grasp her point of view. It was as if they were always rudely saying to themselves: “What do you know of us? We wish you’d leave us alone!” The idea! As if she could, or would! As if it were not an almost sacred charge on her in her station, with the responsibilities that attached to it, to look after her poorer neighbours and see that they acted properly in their own interests. The drink, the immorality, the waste amongst the poor was notorious, and anything she could do to lessen it she always did, dismissing servants for the least slip, and never failing to point a moral. All that new-fangled talk about the rich getting off the backs of the poor, about the law not being the same for both, about how easy it was to be moral and clean on two thousand a year, she put aside as silly. It was just the sort of thing that discontented people would say. In this view she was supported daily by her newspaper and herself, wherever she might be. No, no! If the well-to-do did not look after and control the poor, no one would, which was just what they would like. They were, in her estimation, incurable; but, so far as lay in her power, she would cure them, however painful it might be.

A religious woman, she rarely missed the morning, and seldom went to evening, service, feeling that in daylight she could best set an example to her neighbours.

God knew her views on art, for she was not prodigal of them--her most remarkable pronouncement being delivered on hearing of the disappearance of the “Monna Lisa”: “Oh, that dreadful woman! I remember her picture perfectly. Well, I’m glad she’s gone. I thought she would some day.” When asked why, she would only answer: “She gave me the creeps.”

She read such novels as the library sent, to save her daughters from reading a second time those which did not seem to her suitable, and promptly sent them back. In this way she preserved purity in her home. As to purity outside the home, she made a point of never drawing Frederick’s attention to female beauty; not that she felt she had any real reason to be alarmed, for she was a fine woman; but because men were so funny.

There were no things in life of which she would have so entirely disapproved, if she had known about them, as Greek ideals, for she profoundly distrusted any display of the bare limb, and fully realised that, whatever beauty may have meant to the Greeks, to her and George it meant something very different. To her, indeed, Nature was a “hussy,” to be tied to the wheels of that chariot which she was going to keep as soon as motor-cars were just a little cheaper and really reliable.

It was often said that she was a vanishing type, but she knew better. Pedantic fools murmured that Ibsen had destroyed her, but she had not yet heard of him. Literary folk and artists, socialists and society people, might talk of types, and liberty, of brotherhood, and new ideas, and sneer at Mrs. Grundy. With what unmoved solidity she dwelt among them! They were but as gadflies, buzzing and darting on the fringes of her central bulk. To those flights, to that stinging she paid less attention than if she had been cased in leather. In the words of her favourite Tennyson: “They may come, and they may go, but--whatever you may think--I go on forever!”

VIII.--THE LATEST THING

There was in her blood that which bade her hasten, lest there should be something still new to her when she died. Death! She was continually haunted by the fear lest that itself might be new. And she would say: “Do you know what it feels like to be dead? I do.” If she had not known this, she felt that she would not have lived her life to the full. And one must live one’s life to the full. Indeed, yes! One must experience everything. In her relations with men, for instance, there was nothing, so far as she could see, to prevent her from being a good wife, good mother, good mistress, and good friend--to different men all at the same time, and even to more than one man of each kind, if necessary. One had merely to be oneself, a full nature, giving and taking generously. Greed was a low and contemptible attribute, especially in woman; a woman wanted nothing more than--everything, and the best of that. And it was intolerable if one could not have that little. Woman had always been kept down. Not to be kept down was still, on the whole, new. Yet sometimes, after she had not been kept down rather violently, she would feel: Oh, the weariness! I shall throw it all up, and live on a shilling a day, like a sweated worker--that, at all events, will be new! She even sometimes dreamed of retirement to convent life--the freshness of its old-world novelty appealed to her.

To such an idealist, the very colours of the rainbow did not suffice, nor all the breeds of birds there were; her life was piled high with cages. Here she had had them one by one, borrowed their songs, relieved them of their plumes; then, finding that they no longer had any, let them go; for to look at things without possessing them was intolerable, but to keep them when she had got them even more so.

She often wondered how people could get along at all whose natures were not so full as hers. Life, she thought, must be so dull for the poor creatures, only doing one thing at a time, and that time so long. What with her painting, and her music, her dancing, her flying, her motoring, her writing of novels and poems, her love-making, maternal cares, entertaining, friendships, housekeeping, wifely duties, political and social interests, her gardening, talking, acting, her interest in Russian linen and the woman’s movement; what with travelling in new countries, listening to new preachers, lunching new novelists, discovering new dancers, taking lessons in Spanish; what with new dishes for dinner, new religions, new dogs, new dresses, new duties to new neighbours, and newer charities--life was so full that the moment it stood still and was simply old “life,” it seemed to be no life at all.

She could not bear the amateur; feeling within herself some sacred fire that made her “an artist” whatever she took up--or dropped. She had a particular dislike, too, of machine-made articles; for her, personality must be deep-woven into everything--look at flowers, how wonderful they were in that way, growing quietly to perfection, each in its corner, and inviting butterflies to sip their dew! She knew, for she had been told it so often, that she was the crown of creation--the latest thing in women, who were, of course, the latest thing in creatures. There had never, till quite recently, been a woman like her, so awfully interested in so many things, so likely to be interested in so many more. She had flung open all the doors of life, and was so continually going out and coming in, that life had some considerable difficulty in catching a glimpse of her at all. Just as the cinematograph was the future of the theatre, so was she the future of women, and in the words of the poet “prou’ title.” To sip at every flower before her wings closed; if necessary, to make new flowers to sip at. To smoke the whole box of cigarettes straight off, and in the last puff of smoke expire! And withal, no feverishness, only a certain reposeful and womanly febrility; a mere perpetual glancing from quick-sliding eyes, to see the next move, to catch the new movement--God bless it! And, mind you, a high sense of duty--perhaps a higher sense of duty than that of any woman who had gone before; a deep and intimate conviction that women had an immensity of leeway to make up, that their old, starved, stunted lives must be avenged, and that right soon. To enlarge the horizon--this was the sacred duty! No mere Boccaccian or Louis Quinze cult of pleasurable sensations; no crude, lolling, plutocratic dollery of a spoiled dame. No! the full, deep river of sensations nibbling each other’s tails. Life was real, life was earnest, and time the essence of its contract.

To say that she had favourite books, plays, men, dogs, colours, was to do her but momentary justice. A deeper equity assigned her only one favourite--the next; and, for the sake of that one favourite, no Catharine, no Semiramis or Messalina, could more swiftly dispose of all the others. With what avidity she sprang into its arms, drained its lips of kisses, looking hurriedly the while for its successor; for Heaven alone--she felt--knew what would happen to her if she finished drinking before she caught sight of that next necessary one.

And yet, now and again, time played her false, and she got through too soon. It was then that she realised the sensation of death. After the first terrible inanition, those moments lived without “living” would begin to assume a sort of preciousness, to acquire holy sensations of their own. “I am dead,” she would say to herself: “I really am dead; I lie motionless, hearing, feeling, smelling, seeing, thinking nothing. I lie impalpable--yes, that is the word--completely impalpable; above me I can see the vast blue blue, and all around me the vast brown brown--it is something like what I remember of Egypt. And there is a kind of singing in my ears, that are really not ears now, a grey, thin sound, like--ah!--Maeterlinck, and a very faint honey smell, like--er--Omar Khayyám. And I just move as a blade of grass moves in the wind. Yes, I am dead. It feels exactly like it.” And a new exhilaration would seize her, for she felt that, in that sensation of death, she was living! At lunch, or it might be dinner, she would tell her newest man, already past the prime of her interest, exactly what it felt like to be dead. “It’s not really disagreeable,” she would say; “it has its own flavour. You know, like Turkish coffee, just a touch of india-rubber in it--I mean the coffee.” And the poor man would sneeze, and answer: “Yes, I know a little what you mean; asphodels, too; you get it in Greece. My only difficulty is that, if you _are_ dead, you know--you--er--are.” She would not admit that; it sounded true, but the man was getting stupid--to be dead like that would be the end of novelty, which was, to her, unthinkable.

Once, in a new book, she came across a little tale of a man who “lived” in Persia, of all heavenly places, frantically pursuing sensation. Entering one day the courtyard of his house, he heard a sigh behind him, and, looking round, saw his own spirit, apparently in the act of breathing its last. The little thing, dry and pearly-white as a seed-pod of “honesty,” was opening and shutting its mouth, for all the world like an oyster trying to breathe. “What is it?” he said; “you don’t seem well.” And his spirit answered: “All right, all right! Don’t distress yourself--it’s nothing! I’ve just been crowded out. That’s all. Good-bye!” And, with a wheeze, the little thing went flat, fell onto the special blue tiles he had caused to be put down there, and lay still. He bent to pick it up, but it came off on his thumb in a smudge of grey-white powder.

This fancy was so new that it pleased her greatly, and she recommended the book to all her friends. The moral, of course, was purely Eastern, and had no applicability whatever to Western life, where, the more one did and expressed, the bigger and more healthy one’s spirit grew--as witness what she always felt to be going on within herself. But next spring she changed the blue tiles of her Persian smoking-room, put in a birch-wood floor, and made it all Russian. This she did, however, merely because one new room a year was absolutely essential to her spirit.

In her perpetual journey toward an ever-widening horizon of woman’s life, she was not so foolish as to prize danger for its own sake--that was by no means her idea of adventure. That she ran some risks it would be idle to deny, but only when she had discerned the substantial advantage of a new sensation to be had out of adventures, not at all because they were necessary to keep her soul alive. She was, she felt, a Greek in spirit, only more so perhaps, having in her also something of America and the West End.

How she came to be at all was only known to that age--whose daughter she undoubtedly was--an age which ran all the time, without any foolish notion where it was running to. There was no novelty in a destination, and no sensation to be had from sitting cross-legged in a tub of sunlight--not, at least, after you had done it once. _She_ had been born to dance the moon down, to ragtime. The moon, the moon! Ah, yes! It was the one thing that had as yet eluded her avidity. That, and her own soul.

IX.--THE PERFECT ONE

When you had seen him you knew that there was really nothing to be said. Idealism, humanity, culture, philosophy, the religious and æsthetic senses--after all, where did all that lead? Not to him! What led to him was beef, and whisky, exercise, wine, strong cigars, and open air. What led to him was anything that ministered to the coatings of the stomach and the thickness of the skin. In seeing him, you also saw how progress, civilisation, and refinement simply meant attrition of those cuticles which made him what he was. And what was he? Well--perfect! Perfect for that high, that supreme purpose--the enjoyment of life as it was. And, aware of his perfection--oh, well aware!--with a certain blind astuteness that refused reflection on the subject--not caring what anybody said or thought, just enjoying himself, taking all that came his way, and making no bones about it; unconscious, indeed, that there were any to be made. He must have known by instinct that thought, feeling, sympathy only made a man chickeny, for he avoided them in an almost sacred way. To be “hard” was his ambition, and he moved through life hitting things, especially balls--whether they reposed on little inverted tubs of sand, or moved swiftly toward him, he almost always hit them, and told people how he did it afterward. He hit things, too, at a distance, through a tube, with a certain noise, and a pleasant swelling sensation under his fifth rib every time he saw them tumble, feeling that they had swollen still more under their fifth ribs and would not require to be hit again. He tried to hit things in the middle distance with little hooks which he flung out in front of him, and when they caught on, and he pulled out the result, he felt better. He was a sportsman, and not only in the field. He hit any one who disagreed with him, and was very angry if they hit him back. He hit the money-market with his judgment when he could, and when he couldn’t, he hit it with his tongue. And all the time he hit the Government. It was a perpetual comfort to him in those shaky times to have that Government to hit. Whatever turned out wrong, whatever turned out right--there it was! To give it one--two--three, and watch it crawl away, was wonderfully soothing. Of a summer evening, sitting in the window of his club, having hit balls or bookies hard all day, how pleasant still to have that fellow Dash, and that fellow Blank, and all the ----y crew to hit still harder. He hit women, not, of course, with his fists, but with his philosophy. Women were made for the perfection of men; they had produced, nourished, and nursed him, and he now felt the necessity for them to comfort and satisfy him. When they had done that he felt no further responsibility in regard to them; to feel further responsibility was to be effeminate. The idea, for instance, that a spiritual feeling must underlie the physical was extravagant; and when a woman took another view, he took--if not actually, then metaphorically--a stick. He was almost Teutonic in that way. But the Government, the Government! Right and left, he hit it all the time. He had a rooted conviction that some day it would hit him back, and this naturally exasperated him. In the midst of danger to the game laws, of socialism, and the woman’s movement, the only hope, almost the only comfort, lay in hitting the Government. For socialists were getting so near that he could only hit them now in clubs, music-halls, and other quite safe places; and the woman’s movement might be trusted implicitly to hit itself. Thus, in the world arena there was nothing left but that godsend. Always a fair man, and of thoroughly good heart, he, of course, gave it credit for the same amount of generosity and good will that he felt present in his own composition. There was no extravagance in that; and any man who gave it more he deemed an ass.

He had heard of “the people,” and, indeed, at times had seen and smelt them; it had sufficed. Some persons, he knew, were concerned about their condition and all that; but what good it would do him to share that concern he could not see. Fellows spoke of them as “poor devils,” and so forth; to his mind they were “pretty good rotters,” most of them--especially the working-man, who wanted something for nothing all the time, and grumbled when he got it. The more you gave him the more he wanted, and, if he were this ---- Government, instead of coddling the blighters up he would hit them one, and have done with it. Insurance, indeed; pensions; land reform; minimum wage--it was a bit too thick! They would soon be putting the beggars into glass cases, and labelling them “This side up.”

Sometimes he dreamed of the time when he would have to ride for God and the king. But he strongly repelled, of course, any suggestion that he had been brought up to a belief in “caste.” At his school he had once kicked a small scion of the royal family; this heroic action had dispersed in his mind once for all any notion that he was a snob. “Caste,” indeed! There was no such thing in England nowadays. Had he not sung “The Leather Bottel” to an audience of dirty people in his school mission-hall, and--rather enjoyed it. It was not his fault that Labor was not satisfied. It was all those professional agitators, confound them! He himself was opposed to setting class against class. It was, however, ridiculous to imagine that he was going to hobnob with or take interest in people who weren’t clean, who wore clothes with a disagreeable smell--people, moreover, who, in the most blatant way, showed him continually that they wanted what he had got. No, no! there were limits. Clean, at all events, any one could be--it was the _sine quâ non_. What with clothes, a man to look after them, baths, and so on, he himself spent at least two hundred a year on being clean, and even took risks with the thickness of his skin, from the way he rubbed and scrubbed it. A man could not be hard and healthy if he wasn’t clean, and if the blighters were only hard and healthy they would not be bleating about their wants.