CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 
 MG^^y^^ 
 
 PRINT CO IN U.S. A 
 
 Cornell University Library. 
 PR 6045.O59M72 
 
 Monday or Tuesday. 
 
 3 1924 013 241 066 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3241 066 
 
MONDAY 
 OR TUESDAY 
 
 VI7(GI3^J WOOLF 
 mth woodcuts by VANESSA "BELL 
 
 Published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at 
 
 The Hogarth TresSy Hogarth House^ Tiichmond. 
 
 1921 
 

 
 S,''-^<\ <i_ 
 
A HAUNTED HOUSE. 
 
 Whatever hour you woke therawasa door 
 shutting. From room to room they -went, hand 
 in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure 
 —a ghostly couple^ 
 
 " Here "we left it," she said. And he added, 
 *' Gh, but here too ! " " Its upstairs," she mur- 
 mured, "And in the garden," he whispered. 
 ■ ** Quietly," they said, " or we shall wake them." 
 
 But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. 
 " They 're looking for it; they're drawing the 
 curtain" one might say, and so read on a page 
 or two. " Now they've found it," one would be 
 certain, stopping the pencU on the margin. And 
 then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for 
 oneself, the house ^ all empty, the doors standing 
 open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content 
 and the hum of the threshing machine sounding 
 from the farm. " What did I come in here for? 
 What did 1 want to find?" My hands were 
 empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples 
 were in the loft. And so down again, the garden 
 still as ever, only the book had shpped into the 
 grass. " 
 
 Buttheyhad found itint^ie drawing room. Not 
 that one could ever see them. The window panes 
 reflected apples, reflected roses j all the leaves 
 
 9 
 
A Haunted Home. 
 
 were green in the glass. If they moved in the 
 <bxi,Tnng room, the apple only turned its yellow 
 mde. Yet, tiie moment after, i£ tihe door was 
 opened, spread about the floor, hung upon tlfe 
 tmls, pendant from the ceiling— ■what? My 
 liands wereempty. Theshadowotathrush crossed 
 the carpet; from the deepest wells of «lenoe tib.e 
 wood pigeon drew its bubble of soimd. ""Safe, 
 «afe, safe," the pulse of the house beat softly. 
 "** The treasure buried ; the room • . ." the puke 
 stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure ? 
 A moment later the light had faded. Out in 
 the garden, then ? But t£e trees spun darkness 
 for a wandering beam of sun. So fine^ so rare, 
 •coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought 
 ^ways burnt behind the glass. Death was the 
 ^dass; death was between us; coming to the 
 m>man first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the 
 touse, sealing all the windows; the rooms were 
 •darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went 
 East, saw the stars turned in the Southern eky ; 
 «ought the house, foimd it dropped beneath tibe 
 Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the 
 liouse beat gladly, "The treasure yours." 
 
 The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop 
 :and bend this way and that. Moonbeams spla^ 
 and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the 
 3amp falls straight from the window. The candle 
 tjurns stifE and still. Wandering through the 
 liouse, opening the windows, whisperii^ not to 
 
 10 
 
A Haunted H<mse^ 
 
 wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy. 
 
 "Here we slept,** she says. And he adds,, 
 " Kisses without number." " Waking in the 
 laoming — '' " Silver between the trees — **" 
 "Upstairs—** "In the garden—" "When 
 summer came — " "In winter snowtime — '* The 
 doors go shutting far in the distance, gently 
 knocMng like the pulse o£ a heart. 
 
 Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The 
 wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. 
 Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we 
 .see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands- 
 idiield the Wtem. "Look," he breathes. "Sound 
 asleep. Love upon their lips.'' 
 ' Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us^ 
 long titiey look and deeply. Long they pausej< 
 The wind drives straightly; the flame stoc^k 
 slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross boSf 
 floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces benti 
 the faces pondering; the faces that search the 
 sleepers and seek their hidden joy. 
 
 " Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beat* 
 proudly. "Long years — " he sighs. "Again 
 you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping;: 
 in the ^irden reading ; laughing, rolling apples in. 
 the loft. Here we left our treasure^ — " Stooping^ 
 their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. " Safe!, 
 safe! SMC I" the pulse of the house beats wildly. 
 Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure ?* 
 The light in the heart." 
 
A SOCIETY. 
 
 This is how it all came about. Six or sevei* 
 o£ us were sitting one day after tea. Some were 
 gazing across the street into the windows of a 
 milliners shop where the light still shone brightly 
 upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers. Other* 
 were idly occupied in building httle towers of 
 sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a 
 time, BO fer as I can remember, we drew round 
 the fire and began as usual to praise men — ^how 
 strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous 
 how beautiful they were— how we envied those 
 who by hook or by crook managed to get attached 
 to one for life — when PoU, who had said notiiing^ 
 burst into tears. Poll, I must teU you, hast 
 always been queer. For one thing her father 
 was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his- 
 will, but on condition that she read all the books- 
 in the London Library. We comforted her a» 
 best we could ; but we knew in our hearts how 
 vain it was. For though we like her, Poll is no^ 
 beauty ; leaves her shoe laces untied ; and must^^ 
 have been thinking, while we praised men, that 
 not one o£ them would ever wish .'to marry her. 
 At last she dried her tears. For some time we^^ 
 
 13 
 
A Society. 
 
 could make nothing of what she said. Strange 
 enough it was in all conscience. She told us that, 
 as we knew, she spent most of her time in the 
 London Library, reading. She had begun, she 
 said, with English literature on the top floor ; 
 and was steadily working her way down to the 
 Times on the bottom. And now half, or perhaps 
 only a quarter, way through a terrible thing had 
 happened. She could read no more. Books 
 were not what we thought them. "Books" she 
 cried, rising to her feet and speaking with an 
 intensity of desolation which I shall never forget, 
 "are for the most part unutterably bad ! " 
 
 Of course we cried out that Shakespeare wrote 
 books, and Milton and Shelley. 
 
 "Oh yes," she interrupted us. " You've been 
 well taught, I can see. But you are not members 
 of the London Library." ^ere her sobs broke 
 forth anew. At length, recovering a little, she 
 opened one of the pile of books which she always 
 carried about with her — "From a Window" or 
 "Li a Garden " or some such name as that it was 
 called, and it was written by a man called Benton 
 or Henson or something of that kind. She read 
 the first few pages. We listened in silence. 
 "But that's not a book," someone said. So she 
 chose another. This time it was a history, but I 
 have forgotten the writer's name. Om* trepidation 
 increased as she went on. Not a word of it 
 seemed to be true, and the style in which it was 
 irritten was exeo-able. 
 
 14 
 
A Society. 
 
 "Poetry! Poetry!" we cried, impatiently. 
 "Read us poetry!" I cannot describe tne 
 desoktion which fell upon us as she opened a 
 little volume and mouthed out the verbose, 
 sentimental foolery which it contained. 
 
 " It must have been written by a woman" one 
 of us urged. But no. . She told us that it was 
 written by a young man, one of the most famous 
 poets of the day. I leave you to imagine what the 
 shock of the discovery was. Though we all cried 
 and begged her to read no more she persisted and 
 read us extracts from the Lives of the Lord 
 Chancellors. When she had finished, Jane, the 
 eldest and wisest of us, rose to her feet and said 
 that she for one was not convinced. 
 
 "Why" she asked "if men write such rubbish 
 as this, should our mothers have wasted their 
 youth in bringing tibem into the world ?" 
 
 We were all silent; and in the silence, poor 
 Poll could be heard sobbing out, " Why, why did 
 my father teach me to read ?" 
 
 Clorinda was the first to come to her senses. 
 "It's aU our fault" she said "Every one of us 
 knows how to read. But no one, save Poll, has 
 ever taken the trouble to do it. I, for one, have 
 taken it for granted that it was a woman's duty 
 to spend her youth in bearing children. I 
 venerated my mother for bearing ten j still more 
 my grandmother for bearing fifteen ; it was, I 
 confess, my own ambition to bear twenty. We 
 have gone on all these ages supposing that men 
 
 15 
 
^Society. 
 
 "were equally industrious, and that their works 
 were of eqtm merit. While we have borne the 
 •children, mey, we supposed, have borne the books 
 -and the pictures. W6 have populated the world. 
 They have dvilized it. But now that we can 
 iread, what prevents us firom judging the results ? 
 Before we bring another child into the world we 
 must swear that we will find out what the world 
 is like." 
 
 ' So we made ourselves into a society for asking 
 questions. One of us was to visit a man-of-war ;. 
 isnolher was to hide herself in a scholar's study-; 
 another was to attend a meeting of business men ; 
 while all were to read books, look at pictures^ 
 go to concerts, keep our eyes open in the streets, 
 and ask questions perpetually. We were very 
 young. You can judge of our simplicity when4 
 tell you that before parting that night we agreed 
 that the objects of life were to produce good 
 people and good books. Our questions were to 
 be directed to finding out how far these objects 
 were now attained by men. We vowed solemnly 
 Ihat we would not bear a single child until we 
 were satisfied. 
 
 Off we went then, some to the British Museum ; 
 •others to the King's Navy; some to Oxford; 
 others to Cambridge; we visited the Royal 
 Academy and the Tate ? heard modern music in 
 <5oncert rooms, went to the Law Courts, and saw 
 new plays. No one dined out without asking her 
 
 16 
 
A Society, 
 
 partner certain questions and carefully noting his 
 replies. At intervals we met together and 
 •compared our observations. Oh, those were 
 inerry meetings ! Never have I laughed so much 
 as I did when Rose read her notes upon " Honour " 
 and described how she had dressed herself as an 
 Ethiopian Prince and gone aboard one of His 
 Majesly's ships. Discovering the hoax, the 
 Captain visited her (now disguised as a private 
 ^entieman) and demanded that honour should be 
 satisfied. "But how?" she asked. "How?" 
 he bellowed. ' ' With the cane of course 1 ' * Seeing 
 that he was beside himself with rage and expecting 
 that her last moment had come, she bent over 
 and received, to her amazement, six light taps 
 upon the behind. "The honour of the British 
 Navy is avenged !" he cried, and, raising herself, 
 she saw him with the sweat pouring down his 
 face holding out a tremblmg right hand. 
 *'Away!" she exclaimed, striking an attitude 
 and imitating the ferocity of his own expression, 
 *'My honour has still to be satisfied ! " " Spoken 
 like a gentleman ! " he returned, and fell into 
 profound thought. " If six strokes avenge the 
 honour of the King's Navy" he mused, "how 
 many avenge the honour of a private gentieman ? " 
 He said he would prefer to lay the case before his 
 hrother officers. She replied haughtily that she 
 «could not wait. He praised her sensibility, 
 '**Let me see," he cried suddenly, "did your 
 
 17 
 
A Society^ 
 
 father keep a carriagei?" "No" she said. "Of 
 a riding horse?" "We had a donkey,'*^ ^e 
 l)ethought her, " wMch drew the mowingmachine." 
 At this his face lightened. "My mother's 
 
 name " she added. " For God's sake, man, 
 
 don't mention your mother's name 1" he shrieikedj 
 trembling like an aspen and flushing to the roots 
 of his hair, and it was ten minutes at least befca^ 
 she could induce him to proceed. At length he 
 decreed that if she gave him four strokes and a 
 half in the small of flie back at a spot indicated by 
 himself (the half conceded, be said, in recognition 
 of the fact that her great grandmoliier's uncle was 
 killed at Trafalgar) it was his opinion that lier 
 honour would be as good as new. This wae 
 done; they retired to a restaurant; drank twp 
 bottles of wine for which he insisted upon paying ; 
 and parted with protestations of eternal friendship. 
 Then we had Fanny's accovint of her' visit to 
 the Law Courts. At her first visit she had come 
 to the conclusion that the Judges were either 
 made of wood or were impersonated by large 
 animals resembling man who had been trained to 
 move with extreme dignity, mumble and nod thdr 
 heads. To test her theory she had liberated a 
 handkerchief of bluebottles at the critical moment 
 of a trial, but was unable to judge whether the 
 creatures gave signs of humanity for the buzzing 
 of the flies induced so sound a sleep that she only 
 woke in time to see the prisoners led into the 
 
 18 
 
A Society. 
 
 0ells below. But from the evidence she brought 
 we voted that it is unfair to suppose that th© 
 Judges are men. 
 
 Helen went to the Royal Academy, but when 
 asked to deliver her report upon the pictures she 
 began to redte from a pale blue volume " for 
 the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a, 
 voice that is BtiU. Home is the hunter, home from 
 the hilL He gave his bridle reins a shake. Love 
 is swejjt, love is brief. Spring, the fair spring, is 
 the year's pleasant King. I to be in England 
 now that April's there. Men must work and 
 women must weep. The path of duty is the way 
 to glory — " We could listen to no more of this 
 gibberish. 
 
 "We want no more^poetry 1" we cried. 
 
 ^'Daughters of England 1 she began, but here 
 we pulled her down, a vase of water getting spilt 
 over her in the scuffle. 
 
 " Thank God 1 " she exclaimed, shaking herself 
 like a dog. " Now I'll roll on the carpet and see 
 if I can't brush off what remains of the Union 
 Jack. Then perhaps — " here she rolled energeti- 
 cally. Gretting up she began to explain to Us 
 what modern pictures are like when Castalia. 
 stopped her. 
 
 "What is the average size of a picture ? " she 
 asked. "Perhaps two feet by two and a half,"' 
 she said, Castalia made notes while Helen spoke, 
 and when she had done, and we were trying not 
 
 19 
 
A Society. 
 
 to meet each others eyes, rose and said, " At your 
 wish I spent last week at Oxbridge, disguised as a 
 charwoman. I thus had access to the rooms of 
 several Professors and will now attempt to give 
 you some idea — only," she broke off, "I can't 
 think how to do it. It's all so queer. These 
 Professors," she went on, "live in large housea^ 
 buUt round grass plots each in a kind of cell by 
 himself. Yet they have every convenience and 
 comfort. You have only to press a button or 
 light a little lamp. Their papers are beautifully 
 filed. Books abound. There are no children or 
 animals, save half a dozen stray cats and one aged 
 buUfinch — a cock. I remember," she broke off, 
 'fan Aunt of mine who Hved at Dulwich and kepi 
 cactuses. You reached the conservatory thror^h 
 the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot 
 pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly 
 little plants each in a separate pot. Once in a 
 hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt said^ 
 But she died before that happened — " We told 
 her to keep to the point. "Well," she resumed, 
 "when Professor Hobkin was out I examined hia 
 life work, an edition of Sappho. Its a -ser 
 looking book, six or seven inches thick, not Ja by 
 Skppho. Oh no. Most of it is a defence of 
 Sappho's chastity, which some German had denied, 
 and I can assure you the passion with which these 
 two gentlemen argued, the learning they displayed,, 
 the prodigious ingenuity with which they disputed 
 
 20 
 
A Society. 
 
 the use of some implement which looked to me 
 for all liie world like a hairpin astounded me; 
 especially when the door opened and Professor 
 Hobkin himself appeared. A very nice, mild, 
 old gentleman, but what could he know about 
 chastity ? " We misunderstood her. 
 
 "No, no," she protested, "he's the soul of honour 
 I'm sure — not that he resembles Rose's sea captain 
 in the least. I was thinking rather of my Aunt 's 
 cactuses. What could they know about chastity ? 
 
 * Again we told her not to wander from the 
 point,— did the Oxbridge professors help to pro- 
 duce good people and good books ? — the pbjects 
 of life. 
 
 "There I" she exclaimed. "It never struck 
 me to aak. It never occurred to me that they 
 could possibly produce anything." 
 
 • "I believe," said Sue, "that you made some 
 mistake. Probably Professor Hobkin was a 
 gynaBoologist. A scholar is a very different sort 
 of man. A scholar is overflowing with humour 
 and invention — perhaps addicted to wine, but 
 what of that ? — a delightful companion, generous, 
 subtl'' imaginative — as stands to reason. For he 
 spends his life in company with the finest human 
 beings that have ever existed." 
 
 " Hum," said Castalia. " Perhaps I'd better 
 go back and try again." 
 
 Some three months later it happened that I was 
 sittinffglone when Castalia entered. I don't know 
 
 '"^ 21 
 
A So<iiety> 
 
 what it was in the look o£ her that so moved me \ 
 but I could not restrain myseK, and dashing- 
 across the room, I clasped her in my arms. Not 
 only was she very beautiful ; she seemed also in 
 the higfiest spirits. " How happy you look 1" I 
 exclaimed, as she sat down. 
 
 "I've been at Oxbridge" she said. 
 
 "Asking questions ?" 
 
 "Answering them" she replied. 
 
 "You have not broken our vow?" I said 
 anxiously, noticing something about her figure. 
 
 " Oh, the vow" she said casually. " I'm going- 
 to have a baby if that's what you mean. You 
 can't imagine,' she burst out, "how exciting, how 
 beautiful, how satisfying — " 
 
 "What is?" I asked. 
 
 "To — to — answer questions," she repHed iit 
 some confusion. Whereupon she told me the 
 whole of her story. But in the middle of an 
 account which interested and excited me more than 
 *nything I had ever heard, she gave the strangest- 
 cry, half whoop, haK'liolloa — 
 
 " Chastity ! Chastity 1 Where's my chastity ! " 
 »he cried. " Help Ho 1 The scent bottle ! " 
 
 There was nothing in the room but a cruet 
 containing mustard, which I was about ta^ 
 administer when she recovered her composure. 
 
 " You should have thought of that three months- 
 ago" I said severely. 
 
 "True" she replied. "There's not much good 
 23 
 
4n thinking of it now. It was unfortunate, by the 
 way, that my mother had me called Castalia. 
 
 " Oh Castalia, your mother — " I was be^ning 
 ^hen she reached for the mustard pot. 
 
 "No, no, no," she said, shaking her head. "If 
 you'd been a chaste woman yoiu-self you would 
 nave screamed at the sight of me — ^instead of 
 which you rushed across the room and took me in 
 your arms. No, Cassandra. We are neither of 
 -us chaste." So we went on talking. 
 
 Meanwhile the room was filling up, for it was 
 the day appointed to discuss the results of om' 
 observations. Everyone, I thought, felt as I did 
 About Castalia. They kissed her and said how 
 glad they were to see her again. At length, when 
 ?we were all assembled, Jane rose and said that it 
 was time to begin. She began by saying that we 
 'had now asked questions for over five years, and 
 Ithsit though the results were bound to be incon- 
 clusive — ^here Castalia nudged me and whispered 
 that she was not so sure about that. Then she 
 ^ot up, and, interrupting Jane in the middle of a 
 sentence, said, 
 
 "Before you say any more, I want to know-^ 
 Am. I to stay in the room ? Because," she added 
 ■^'I have to confess that I am an impure- woman." 
 
 Everyone looked at her in astonishment. 
 
 "You are going to have a baby ?" asked Jane. 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 It was extraordinary to see the different 
 23 
 
-4 Society. 
 
 expressions on their faces. A sort of hum went 
 through the room, in which I could catch the 
 words 'impure,' *baby,' 'Castalia,' and so on. 
 Jane, who was herself considerably moved, put it 
 to us, 
 
 "Shall she go ? Is she impure ? " 
 
 Such a roar filled the room as might have been 
 heard in the street outside, 
 
 "No! No! No! Let her stay ! Impure? 
 Fiddlesticks ! " Yet I fancied that some of the 
 youngest, girls of nineteen or twenty, held back 
 as if overcome with shyness. Then we all came 
 about her and began asking questions, and at last 
 I saw one of the youngest, who had kept in the 
 background, approach shyly and say to her : 
 
 "What is chastity then ? I mean is it good, or 
 is it bad, or is it nothing at aU ? " She replied so 
 low that I could not catch what she said. 
 
 "You know I was shocked," said another, "for 
 at l^ist ten minutes." 
 
 "In my opinion," said Poll, who was growing 
 crusty from alyvays reading in the London 
 Library, "chastity is nothing but ignorance — ^a 
 most discreditable state of mind. We should 
 adnait only the unchaste to our society. I vote 
 that Castalia shall be our President." 
 
 This was violently disputed. 
 
 "It is as unfair to brand women with cBkstity 
 as with unchastity," said Moll. "Some of us 
 haven't the opportunity either. Moreover, I 
 
 24 
 
A Society 
 
 don't believe Cassy herself maintains that she 
 acted as she did from a pure love of knowledge.'* 
 
 " He is only twenty one and divinely beautiful" 
 said Cassy, with a ravishing gesture. 
 
 " I move," said Helen, " that no one be allowed 
 to talk of chastity or unchastity save those who 
 are in love." 
 
 "Oh bother," said Judith, who had been 
 enquiring into scientific matters, " I'm not in love ■ 
 and I'm longing to explain my measures for 
 dispcEising with prostitutes and fertilising virgins 
 by Act of Parliament. " , ^ 
 
 She went on to tell us of an invention of 
 hers to be erected at Tube stations and other 
 public resorts, which, upon payment of a- 
 small fee would safeguard the nation's health, 
 accommodate its sons, and relieve its daughters. 
 Then she had contrived a method of preserv- 
 ing, in sealed tubes the germs of future 
 Lord Chancellors. " or poets or painters or 
 musicians'' she went on, "supposing, that 
 is to say, that these breeds are not extinct, and 
 that w^omen still wish to bear children——" 
 
 " Of course we wish to bear children 1 ". cried 
 Castalia impatiently. Jane rapped the table. 
 
 " That is the very point we are met to consider," 
 she said. " For five years we have been trying to 
 find out whether we are justified in continuing 
 the human race. Castalia has anticipated om* 
 
 25 
 
A Society. 
 
 dedeion. But it remains for the rest o£ us to 
 make up our minds." 
 
 Here one after another of our messengers rose 
 and delivered their reports. The marvels of 
 dviUsation far exceeded our expectations, and as 
 we learnt for the first time how man flies in the 
 air, talks across space, penetrates to the heart of 
 an atom, and embraces the universe in his specu* 
 lations a murmur of admiration burst from our 
 lip, 
 
 "We are proud," we cried, " that our mothers 
 sacrificed their youth in such a cause as this I " 
 Castalia, who had been Ustening intently, looked 
 prouder than all the rest. Then Jane reminded 
 us that we had still much to learn, and Castalia 
 begged us to make haste. On we went through 
 a vast tangle of statistics. We learnt that Eng- 
 land has a population of so many milhous, and 
 that such and such a proportion of them is 
 constantly hungry and in prison ; that the average 
 size of a working man's family is such, and thatsa 
 great a percentage of women die from maladies 
 mcident to chUdbirth. Reports were read of visits 
 to factories, shops, slums, and dockyards. Descrip- 
 tions were given of the Stock Exchange, of a 
 digantic house of business in the City, and of a 
 Government Office. The British Colonies were 
 now discussed, and some account was given of our 
 rule in India, Africa and Ireland. I was sitting 
 by Castalia and I noticed her uneasiness. 
 
 26 
 
A Society.. 
 
 " We shall never come to any conclusion at all 
 ■at this rate," she said. "As it appears that 
 ■civilisation is so much more complex than we had- 
 -any notion, would it not be better to confine 
 ourselves to our original enquiry ? We agreed 
 that it was the object of Jife to produce good 
 people and good books. All this time we have 
 been talking of aeroplanes, factories and moneys 
 Let us talk about men themselves and their arts, 
 for that is the heart of the matter." 
 
 So the diners but stepped forward with long 
 slips of paper containing answers to their questions. 
 These had been framed after much consideration. 
 A good man, we had agreed, must at any rate be 
 honest, passionate, and imworldly. But whether 
 or' not a particular man possessed those qualities 
 could only be discovered by asking questions, ofte'ii 
 bemnning &t a remote distance from the centre. 
 Is^ensington a nice place to hve in ? Where is 
 your son being educated — and yom' daughter ? 
 Now please tell me, what do jrou pay for your 
 cigars ?^ By the way, is Sir Joseph a baronet or 
 only a knight ? Often it seemed that we learnt 
 more from trivial questions of this kind than from 
 more direct ones. " I accepted my peerage," said 
 Lord Brinkum " because my wife wished it." I 
 forget how many titles were accepted for the same 
 reason. "Working fifteen hours out the twenty 
 
 four as I do " ten thousand professional men 
 
 began. 
 
 27 
 
A Society 
 
 " No, no, of course you can neither read nor 
 ■write. But why do you work so hard ?** "M^ 
 dear lady, with a growing fanuly- — " |*butw% 
 does your family grow ? " Their wives wished tihat 
 too, or perhaps it was the British Empre. But 
 more significant than the answers were tiierefuBals 
 to answer. Very few would reply at all to qties- 
 fions about moraUty and reli^on, and such answers 
 as were given were not serious. Questions as to the 
 value of money and power were almost invariably 
 brushed aside, or pressed at extreme risk to the 
 asker. 'Tm sure, said Jill, "that if Sir Barley 
 Tightboots hadn't been carving the mutton when 
 I asked him about the (m)italist system he would 
 have cut my throat. The only reason why we 
 escaped with our Uves over and over again is that 
 men are at once so hungry and so chivalrous. 
 They despise us too much to mind what we say." 
 
 "Of course they despise us" said Eleanor. 
 *' At the same time how do you account for tihis-?'- 
 I made enquiries among the artists. Now no 
 womanshas ever been an artist, has she Poll?** 
 
 " Jane-Austen<<]!harlotte-Bronte-6eorge-13iot,** 
 cried Poll, like a man crying mu£Sns in a bock 
 street. 
 
 " Damn the woman !** someone exclaimed. 
 "What a bore she is r 
 
 " Since Sappho there has been no female of first 
 rat e ' Meanor began, quoting from a weekly 
 
 newspaper. 
 
 28 
 
A Society- 
 
 "It's now well known that Sappho was the 
 somewhat lewd invention o£ Professor Hobkin," 
 Ruth interrupted. 
 
 "Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that 
 any woman ever has been able to write or ever 
 will be able to write " Eleanor continued. "And 
 yetj whenever I go among authors they never 
 cease to talk to me about their books. Masterly I I 
 eay, or Shakespeare himself ! (for one must say 
 something) and I assure you, they beUeve me." 
 
 "That proves nothing," said Jane. They all 
 do it. " Only," she sighed, " it dosen't seem to 
 help us much. Perhaps we had better ejamine 
 modern literature next. Liz, it's your turn." 
 
 Elizabeth rose and said that in order to prosecute 
 Iter enquiry she had dressed as a man and~4)een 
 taken for a reviewer. 
 
 " I have read new books pretty steadily for the 
 past five years, said she." " Mr. Wells is the most 
 popular uving writer ; then comes Mr. Arnold 
 Bennett; then Mr. Compton Makenzie; Mr. 
 McEenna and Mr. Walpole may be bracketed 
 together." She sat down. 
 
 " But youVe told us nothing ! " we expostulated. 
 "Or do you mean that these gentlemen have 
 greatly surpassed Jane-Eliot and that English 
 
 lotion is ^where's that review of yours ? On, 
 
 yes, * safe in their hands.*" 
 
 "Safe, quite safe" she said, shifting uneasily from 
 29 
 
A Society. 
 
 foot to foot. " And I'm sure that theygive away 
 even more than they receive/' 
 
 We were all sure o£ that. " But," we prised 
 her, " do they, write good books ? " 
 , " Good books ? " she said, looking at die ceiling, 
 ** You must remember," she began, speaking wim 
 extreme rapidity, " that fiction is the mirror of life. 
 " And you can't deny that education is of the 
 highest importance, and that it would be extrendy 
 annoying, if you found yourself alone at Brighton 
 late at night, not to ^ow which was the best 
 boarding house to stay at, and suppose it was a 
 dripping Simday evening — ^wouldn't it be nice to 
 go to the Movies?" 
 
 "But what has that got to do with it?" we 
 ftsked. 
 
 "Nothing — ^nothing — ^nothing whatever" she 
 replied. 
 
 "Well, tell us the truth" we bad6 her. 
 
 "The truth? But isn't it wonderful,* she 
 broke off — "Mr. Chitter, has written a weekly 
 article for the past thirty years upon love 
 or hot buttered toast and has sent all Ms 
 jBons to Eton——" 
 ^ " The truth I " we demanded. 
 '"'^"Ob the truth," she stammered — "the trudi 
 has nothing to do with Uterature," and sitting 
 down she refused to say another word. 
 
 It all seemed to us very inconclusive. 
 
 "Ladies, we must try to sum up the results* 
 30 
 
A Society, 
 
 Jane was beginning, when a hum, which had 
 been heard for some time through the open 
 \dndow, <irowned her voice. 
 
 "War I War I War! Declaration of War I" 
 men were shouting in the street below. 
 
 We looked at each other in horror* 
 
 "What war? "we cried. "What war?" We 
 remembered, too late, that we had never thought 
 of sendiDig anyone to the House of Commons^ 
 We had forgotten all about it. We turned to 
 Poll, who had reached the history shelves in the 
 London Library, and asked her to enlighten us. 
 
 " "W hy," we cried " do men go to war ? " 
 
 "Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for 
 another" she relied calmly. "Li 1760, for 
 example——"' The shouts outside drowned her 
 words. "Again in 1797 — in 1804 — It was the 
 Austrians in 1866 — 1870 was the Franco- 
 Prussian — In 1900 on the other hand " 
 
 "But its now 1914 I" we cut her short. 
 
 " Ah, I don't know what they're going to war 
 for now," she admitted. 
 
 The war was over and peace was in process of 
 being signed when I once more found myself with 
 Castalia in the room where our meetings used to 
 be held, W^e began idly turning over the pages 
 
 81 
 
A Society. 
 
 of our old minute books. " Queer," I mused, " to* 
 see, what, we were thinking five years ago." 'We 
 are agreed^' Oastalia quoted, reading over my 
 shoulder, 'that it is the object of fife to produce 
 good people and good books.' We made no com- 
 ment upon that. ' A good man is at ajiyrate honest 
 passionate and unworldly.' ""\Vhat a woman's, 
 language " I observed. " Oh dear," cried CastaJia^ 
 pushing the book away from her, "What fools we 
 were! It was allPoU's father's fault," she wfent on^ 
 "I believe he did it on purpose — ^that ridiculous^ 
 wiU, I mean, forcing PoU to read aU the books in 
 the Londpjx Library. I K we hadn't learnt to read,"^ 
 she said bitterly, " we might still have been bearing 
 children in ignorance and that I beheve was the- 
 happiest life after all, I know what you're 
 goifig to say about waf," ' she checked me, "aiid 
 me* horror of bearing children to see them kUled^ 
 but bur mothers did it, and their mothers, and 
 their mothers before them. And they didn't ' 
 complain. They couldn't read. I've done my 
 best," she sighedj " to prevent iny little girl from 
 learning to read, but what's the use ? I caught 
 Ann only yesterday with a newspaper in her hand 
 and she was beginning to ask me if it was ' true." 
 Next she'U ask me whether Mr. Lloyd George i* 
 a good man, then whether Mr. Arnold Bennett is. 
 is a good novehst, and finally wheth^ I believe io 
 God: How can I bring my daughter up to believe-* 
 in nothing ? " she demanded. 
 
 32 
 
A Society^ 
 
 *' Surely you could teach her to believe that »- 
 Boan's inteUect is, and always will be, fundament- 
 ally superior to a woman's ? " I suggested. Shcr 
 hr^htened at this and began to turn over our old; 
 minutes again. " Yes,*' she said, " think of their 
 disoovmes, their mathematics, their science, their 
 
 philosophy, their scholarship " and then she^ 
 
 Ibegan to laugh, " I shall never forget old Hobkin 
 and Ae hairpin," she said, and went on reading, 
 -and laughing and I thought she was quite happy ^, 
 when suddenly she threw the book from her ana 
 burst out, " Oh, Cassandra why do you torment 
 me ? Don't you know that our belief in man'^ 
 intellect is me greatest fallacy of them aU?"- 
 **"What?" I excEiimed. "Ask any journalist^, 
 schoolmaster, politician or public house keeper in 
 ihe land and they will all tell you thatmen are much 
 cleverer than women." " As if I doubted it," she- 
 said scornfully. " How could they help it ^ 
 Haven't we bred them and fed and kept them in. 
 comfort since the beginning of time so that they 
 may be clever even if they're nothing else?* 
 Its all our doing ! " she cried. " We insisted 
 upon having intellect and now we've got it. And 
 it's intellect,"she continued, " that's at the bottom 
 of it. What could be more charming than a bw 
 before he has begun to cultivate his intellect ? Bfe 
 m beautiful to look at ; he gives himself no airs ;, 
 he understands the meaning of art and Hterature^ 
 distinctively ; he goes about enjoying his life and. 
 
^ Society. 
 
 'making other people enjoy theirs. Then they teach 
 iiim to cultivate his intdlect. He becomes abarrister, 
 :a civil servant, a general, an author, a professor. 
 JBlvery day he goes to an office. Every year he 
 iproduces a book. He maintains a whole family 
 
 by the products of his brain poor devil I Soon 
 
 lie cannot come into a room without making us 
 ^ feel uncomfortable; he condescends to every 
 woman he meets, and dares not tell the truth even 
 i» his own wife ; instead of rejoicing our eyes we 
 liave to shut them if we are to take hiTn in our 
 arms. True, they console themselves mth stars 
 of all shapes, ribbons of all shades, and incomes 
 of all sizes — ^but what is to console us ? That 
 we shall be able in ten years time to spend a 
 ■week-end at Lahore ? Or that the least insect in 
 Japan has a name twice the length of its body ? 
 Oh, Cassandra, for Heaven's sake let us devise a 
 method by which men may bear diildren 1 It is 
 our only chance. For unless we provide them 
 ■with some innocent occupation we shall get neither 
 good people nor good books ; we shall perigh 
 beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity; 
 and not a htunan bemg wiU survive to know that 
 there once was Shakespeare ! " 
 
 " It is too late " I said. " We cannot provide 
 •even for the children that we have." 
 
 " And then you ask me to beUeve in intellect *' 
 ^he said. 
 
 While we spoke, men were crying hoarsdy and 
 34 
 
A Society,. 
 
 Tvearily in the street, and listening, we heard that, 
 the Tr^ity of Pe£u:e had just been signed. Th^ 
 voices died away. The rain was falling, and in- 
 terfered no doubt with the proper explosion of 
 the fireworks. 
 
 " My cook will have bought the Evening News '" 
 said Castalia "and Ann will be spelling it out- 
 over her tea. I must go home." 
 
 " It's no good ^not a Ht of good "I said.. 
 
 *' Once she knows how to read there's only one- 
 tibing you can teach her to beheye in — and that ia. 
 herself." 
 
 " Well that would be a change, " said Castalia.. 
 
 So we swept up the papers of our Society, and 
 though Ann was playing with her doU very 
 happily, we solemnly made her a present of ihe lot 
 and told her we had chosen her to be President of 
 the Society of the future— upon which she bursts 
 into tears, poor Httle girl.^ 
 
 35 
 
MONDAY OR TUESDAY. 
 
 Lazy|and indiffra^nt, shaMng space ea^y from 
 "his wings, knowing hia way, the heron passes^ 
 ■over the church beneath the sky. White and 
 •distant, absorbed in itself, endlesdy the ^sky 
 <30ver8 and uncovers, moves and remains, A lake? 
 Blot the shores of it out I A mountun ? Oh, 
 perfect — the sun gold on its slopes. Dovm that 
 falls. Ferns then, or «rhite feathers, for evec aitd 
 ■ever ■ u 
 
 Desiring truth, awaiting it, kboiioui^ distil^ 
 ling a few words, for ever desiring-»(a cty atart^ 
 to the left, anolJjer to the right. Wheeb staike 
 divergently. Omnibuses conglomerate in con- 
 flict) — ^for ever desiring-— (the dock asseverates 
 with twelve distinct strokes that it is mid-day j 
 light sheds gold scales ; children swarm) — ^for 
 ever desiring truth. Red is the dome; coins 
 hang on the trees ; smoke traUs from the chim- 
 neys; bark, shout, cry 'Iron for sale' — ^and 
 truth? 
 
 Radiating to a point men's feet and women's 
 
 feet, black or gold-encrusted — ;(This foggy weatiier 
 
 — Sugar? Ifo, thank you — The commonwealth 
 
 -of the future) — the firelight darting an«J 
 
 tnaking the room red, save Ssar the black 
 
Monday or Tuesday, 
 
 figures and their bright eyes, while outside a va» 
 cBscharges, Mies ITmigununy drinks tea at her 
 <)^k, and pkterglass preserves fur coats m, < 
 
 Flaunted, l^f,light, drifting at corners, blown 
 across the wheels, silvw-spkshed, home or not 
 home, gathered, scatt^ed, squandered in separate 
 scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled — 
 and truth? 
 
 Now to recollect by the fireside on the white 
 square of miffble. From ivory depths words 
 rising shed tJieir blackness, blossom and pene- 
 trate. Fallen the book ; in the flame, in the 
 smoke, in the momentary sparks— or now voyag- 
 ing, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath 
 and the Indian seas, wlule space rushes blue and 
 stars glint— truth ? or now, content with close^ 
 ness ? 
 
 Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the 
 jsky veils her stars ; then bares them. 
 
 W 
 
AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL. 
 
 - Such an expression of unhappiness was enough 
 
 Tay itself to mate one's eyes slide above the paper's 
 
 ■edge to the poor woman's face — ^insignificant 
 
 without that Ipok, almost a symbol of human 
 
 pdestiny with it. Life's what you see in people's 
 
 ieyes; life's what they learn, and, having learnt it, 
 
 ,never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be 
 
 g|ware of — ^what ? That life's like that, it seems. 
 
 Tive faces opposite — ^five mature faces-^and the 
 
 ^owledge in each face. Strange, though, how 
 
 people want to conceal it ! Marks of reticence 
 
 are on all those faces : lips shut, eyes shaded, each 
 
 one of the five doing something to hide or stultify 
 
 his knowledge. One smokes ; another reads ; a 
 
 third checks entries in a pocket book ; a fourth 
 
 stares at the map of the line framed opposite ; and 
 
 the fifth — the terrible thing about the fifth is that 
 
 I she does nothing at all. She looks at fife. Ah, 
 
 j but my poor, unfortunate woman, do play the 
 
 i. game—do, for all our sakes, conceal it ! 
 
 Its if she heard me," sher looked up, shifted 
 slightly in her seat and sighed. She seemed to 
 apologise and at the same time to say to me, " If 
 •only you knew ! " . Then she looked at life agaigu 
 " But I do know," I answered silently, glancing 
 «,t the Times for manners' sake : " I know the 
 
 39 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 whole business. 'Peace between Grermany and 
 the Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered 
 in at Paris — Signer Nitti, the Italian Prime 
 Minister— a passenger train at Doncaster was in 
 collision with a goods train . . .* We all 
 know — the Times knows — ^but we pretend we 
 donV' My eyes had once more crept over the 
 paper's rim. She shuddered, twitched her arm 
 queerly to the middle of her back and shook her 
 head. Agam I dipped into my great reservoir of 
 life. " Take what you like," I continued, 
 "births, deaths, marriages, Court Circular, the 
 habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills 
 murder, high wages and the cost of living— oh, 
 1»ke what you like," I repeated, " it's all in the 
 Times ! " Again with infinite weariness she 
 moved her head from side to side imtil, like^ a 
 top exhausted with spinning, it settied on her 
 nedc. 
 
 The Times was no protection against such 
 sorrow as hers. But other human beings forbade 
 Watercourse. The best thing to do a^inst life 
 was to fold the paper so that it made a perfect 
 square, crisp, thick, imp^vious even to life. 
 This done, I glanced up quickly, armed with a 
 shield of my own. She pierced through my 
 1 shield ; she gazed into my eyes as if searching any 
 .sediment of courage at liie depths of them and 
 dampm^ it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all 
 hope, discounted all illusiou. 
 
 40 
 
An Unwritten NoveU 
 
 So we rattled through Surrey and across the 
 border into Sussex. But with my eyes upoij 
 life. I did not see that the other traveliers had 
 left, one by one, till, save for the man who read, 
 we were alone together. Here was Three Bridges 
 station. We drew slowly down the platform and 
 stopped. Was he going to leave us ? I prayed 
 both ways — I prayed last that he might stay 
 At that instant he roused himseK, crumpled his 
 paper contemptuously, like a thing done with, 
 burst open the door and left us alone. 
 
 The unhappy woman, leaning a Uttle forward^ 
 palely and colourlessly addressed me— talted of 
 stations and hohdays, of brothers at Eastbourne, 
 and the time of year, which was, I forget now, 
 early or late. But at last looking from the 
 window and seeing, I knew, only life, she breath- 
 ed, " Staying away — that's the drawback of 
 
 it- " Ah, now we approached the catastrophe, 
 
 *' My sister-in-law " — the bitterness of her tone 
 was like lemon on cold steel, and speaking, not to 
 me, but to herself, she muttered, "Nonsense, she 
 would say — that's what they aU say," and while 
 she spoke she fidgeted as though the skin on her 
 back were as a plucked fowl's in a poulterer's 
 shop-window. 
 
 " Oh that cow ! " she broke off nervously, as 
 though the great wooden cow in the meadow had 
 shocked her and saved her from some indiscretion. 
 Then she shuddered, and then she made the 
 
 41 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 awkward angular movement that I had seea 
 before, as if, after the s^asm, some spot between 
 the shoulders burnt or itched. Then again she 
 looked the most unhappy woman in the world, 
 and I once more reproached her, though not with 
 the same conviction, for if there were a reason, 
 and if I knew the reason, the stigma was removed 
 from life. 
 
 " Sisters-in-law," I said — 
 
 Her lips pursed as if to spit venom at the 
 word ; pursed they remained. All she did was 
 to take her glove and rub hard at a spot on the 
 window-pane. She rubbed as if she would rub 
 something out for ever — some stain, some 
 indelible contamination. Indeed, the spot re- 
 mained for aU her rubbing, and back she sank 
 with the shudder and the clutch of the arm I had 
 come to expect.. Something impelled me to take^ 
 my glove and rub my window. There, too, was 
 a httle speck on the glass. For all my rubbing 
 it remained. And then the spasm went through 
 me ; I crooked my arm and plucked at the middle 
 of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp 
 chicken's skin in the poulta:"er's shop window ; 
 one spot between the shoulders itched and 
 irritated, felt clammy, felt raw. Could I reach 
 it ? Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A 
 smile of infinite irony, infinite sorrow, flitted and 
 faded from her face. But she had communicated, 
 shared her secret, passed her poison ; she would 
 
 42 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 speak no more. Leaning back in my corner, 
 shielding my eyes from her eyes, seeing only 
 the slopes and hollows, greys and purples, of the 
 winter's landscape, I read her message, deciphered 
 her secret, reading it beneath her gaze. 
 
 Hilda's the sister-in-law. Hilda ? Hilda ? 
 Hilda Marsh — Hilda the blooming, the full 
 bosomed, the matronly. Hilda stands at the 
 door as the cab draws up, holding a coin. "Poor 
 Mumie, more of a grasshopper than ever — old 
 doak she had last year, well, well, with two 
 children these days one can't do more. No, 
 Minnie, I've got it ; here you are, cabby-^— none 
 of your ways with me. Come in, Minnie. Oh, 
 I could carry i/ou, let alone your basket ! " So 
 they go into the dining-room. " Aimt Mianie, 
 children." 
 
 Slowly the knives and forks sink from the 
 upright. Down they get (Bob and Barbara), 
 hold out hands stiffly ; back again to their chairs, 
 staring between the resumed mouthfuls. [But 
 this we'U skip ; ornaments, curtains, trefoil china 
 plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of 
 biscuit — skip — oh, but wait ! Half-way through 
 luncheon one of those shivers ; Bob stares at her, 
 spoon in mouth. " Gret on with your pudding, 
 Bob ; " but Hilda disapproves. " Why should 
 she twitch ? " Skip, skip, till we reach the 
 landing on the upper floor ; stairs brass-bound ; 
 linolemn worn ; oh, yes ! little bedroom looking 
 
 43 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 out over the roofs of Eastbourne — zagza^ing 
 roofs like the spines of caterpaiars, this way, ^t 
 way, striped red and yeflow^ with blue-blaek 
 siting]. Now, Minnie, the door's shut ; Hilda 
 heavily descends to the basement ; you unstrap 
 the straps of your basfet, lay on the bed a 
 meagre nightgown, stand side by side furred felt 
 sHppers. The looking-glass— no, you avoid the 
 lot^ing-glass. Some methodical disposition of 
 hat-pins. Perhaps the shell box has sometiung 
 in it ? You shake it ; it's the pearl stud there 
 was last year — ^that's all. And then the sniff, 
 the sigh, the sitting by the window. Three 
 o'clock on a December afternoon ; the rain drizz- 
 ling ; one light low in the skylight of a drapery 
 emporimn ; another high in a servant's bedroom-— 
 this one goes out. That gives her nothing to 
 look at. A' moment's bknkness — ^tlien, what are 
 you thinking? (Let me peep across at her 
 opposite ; she's asleep or pretending it ; so what 
 would she think about sitting at the window at 
 three o'clock in the afternoon ? Health, money, 
 hula, her God ?) Yes, sitting on the very edge 
 of the chair looking over the roofs of Eastliourne, 
 Minnie Marsh prays to God. That's all veiy 
 well ; and she may rub the pane too, as though 
 to see God better ; but what God does she see > 
 Who's the God of Minnie Marsh, the God of the 
 back streets of Eastbourne, the God of the three 
 o'clock in the afternoon ? I, too, see roofs, I see 
 
 44 
 
An Unwritten Novell 
 
 sky ; but, oh^ dear — this s/emeeg of Gods ! Mcm% 
 like President Ernser than Prince Albert^-^that's- 
 the best I can do for him ; and I see him on a 
 ^hair^ in ft black frock-coat, not so very high up 
 either ^ I can manage a dond or two for him to 
 JAt on ; and then his hand trailing in the cloud 
 holds a rod, a truncheon is it^-^black, thick, 
 thorned— a brutal old bully— Minnie's God I 
 Did he send the itch and the patch and the: 
 twitch? Is that why she prays > What she 
 rubs on the window is the stain of sin. Oh, shi^ 
 cconmitted some crime ! 
 
 I have my choice of crimes. The woods flit 
 and fly — in summer there are bluebells ; in the? 
 Q^iening there, when Spring comes, primroses^ 
 A parting, was it, twenty years ago ? Vows- 
 broken "i Not Minnie's 1 . . . She was faith- 
 ful. How she nursed her mother ! AU her- 
 savings on the tombstone — wreaths under glass— ^ 
 daffodils in jars- But I'm off the trade. A 
 crime. • . . They would say she kept her 
 sOTrow, suppressed her secret — ^her sex, they'd 
 say— t^e scieatific people. But what flummCTy 
 to saddle her with sex I No — ^more like thia^ 
 Passing down the streets of Croydon twenty 
 ..years ago, the violet loops of ribbon in the- 
 draper's window spangled in the electric light 
 <^tch her eye. She lingers— past six. Still by 
 nmnipg die can reach home. She pushes through^ 
 llie glASB swing door. It's sale-time. Shallow 
 
 45 
 
^n Unwritten Novel. 
 
 strays brim with ribbons. She pauses, pulls this, 
 .^gers that with the raised roses on it — np need 
 ito choose, no need to buy, and each tray "With its 
 surprises. " We don't shut till seven," and then 
 kif is seven. She runs, she rushes, home she 
 i^hes, but too late. Neighbours— the doctor — 
 iaby brother— the kettle — scalded — hospital- — 
 «dead— or only the shock of it, the blame ? Ah» 
 i)ut the detail matters nothing ! It's what she 
 carries with her ; the spot, the crime, the thing 
 4o expiate, always there between her shoulders. 
 *" Yes," she seems to nod to me, " it's the thing 
 i did." 
 
 Whether you did, or what you did, I don't 
 jnind ; it's not the thing I want. The draper's 
 "window looped with violet — ^that'll do ; a fittJe 
 <5heap perhaps, a little commonplaoe-r-sinoe one 
 lias a choice of crimes, but then so many (let 
 me peep across again — still sleeping, or pretend- 
 ing sleep ! white, worn, the mouth closed — a 
 1»uch of obstinacy, more than one would think — 
 no hint of sex) — so many crimes aren't yowr crime; 
 your crime was cheap ; only the retribution 
 solemn; for now the church door opens, the hard 
 wooden peW receives her ; on the brown tiles shfe 
 kneels ; every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn 
 <here she's at it) prays. All her sins fall, fall, 
 for ever fall. The spot receives them. It's 
 raised, it's red, it's burning. Next she twitches. 
 Small boys point. " Bob at lunch to-day"— But 
 
 46 
 
An Unwritten NoveC 
 
 elderly women are the worst. 
 
 Inaeed now you can't sit praying any longer* 
 Emger's sunk beneath the elpuds — washed over 
 as with a painter's brush of liquid grey, to whick 
 he adds a tinge of black — even the tip of th& 
 truncheon gone now. That's what always hap* 
 pens ! Just as you've seen him, Mt him, someone 
 mterrapts. It's Hilda now. 
 
 How you hate her I She'll even lock the bath- 
 room door overnight, too, though it's only cold 
 water you want, and sometimes when the night'» 
 been bad it seems as if washing helped. And 
 John at breakfast — ^the children — ^meals are 
 ^brst, and sometimes there are friends — fem» 
 4ont altogether hide 'em — ^they guess too r so- 
 qnt you go along the front, where the waves are- 
 grey, and the papers blow, and the glass shelter* 
 greeiJb and draughty, and the chairs cost tup- 
 pence — ^too much — ^for there must be preacher** 
 along the sands. Ah, that's a nigger — ^that's a> 
 funny man — ^that's a man with parakeets — ^poor* 
 little creatures 1 Is there no one here who thinksi 
 c^ Grod ?— just up there, over the pier, with hi». 
 rod — ^but no — ^there's nothing but grey in the sky 
 ^ if it's blue the white clouds hide him, and tbe- 
 musio— it's military music — and what are they 
 £shing for ? Do they catch them? How the* 
 children stare ! Well, then home a back way — 
 ** Home a back way ! " The words have meaning^ 
 might have been spoken by the old man witk 
 
 47 
 
j/in Unwritten Novel. 
 
 whiskers— no, no, he didn't really speak ; but 
 iSPerything has meaning-^placards leaiiii^ against 
 doorways — ^names above shopr windows — ^red frmt 
 in baskets — ^women's heads in the hairdreBser'« — 
 ill say "Minnie Marsh 1" But here's a jerl^ 
 -"Eggs are cheaper!" That's what always 
 Jiappens 1 I was heading her over the waterfall, 
 straight for madness, when, like a flock of dream 
 sheep, she turns t'other way and runs between 
 my fingers. Eggs are cheaper. Tethered to the 
 phores of the world, none of the crimes, sorrows, 
 rhapsodies, or insanities for poor Mroiiie Marsh j 
 never late for luncheon; never caught in a stonl) 
 without a mackintosh ; never utterly unoonscious 
 of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches homC'-^ 
 scrapes her boots. 
 
 Have I read you right? But the humaa 
 face — ^the human face at the top of the fullest 
 sheet of print holds more, withholds more. Now, 
 eyes open, she looks out ; and in the human 
 eye — ^how d'you define it ?— there's a break — 
 a division — so that when you've grasped the stem 
 the butterfly's off — ^the moth t&,t hangs in the 
 evening over the yellow flower — ^move, raise your 
 hand, off, high, away. I won't raise my Imnd. 
 Hang still, then, quiver, hfe, soul, spirit, whatever 
 you are of Minnie Mareh — ^I, too, on my flower— 
 the hawk over the down — alone, or what were 
 the worth of life? To rise; hang still in the 
 «v©Qing, in the midday ; hang still over the down. 
 
 48 
 
An Unwniten Navel. 
 
 The flicker o£ a hand— off, up! then poised 
 ^^gadn. Alone, unseen ; seeing all so stiltdown 
 there, all so lovely. None seeing, none caring. 
 The eyes of others our prisons ; their thoughts 
 ^)ur cages. Air above, air bebw. And the moon 
 and immortality. . . Oh, but I drop to the 
 turf! Are you down too, you in the comer, 
 what's your name — ^woman — Mixinie Marsh; 
 «ome sudi name as that ? There she is, tight to 
 her blossom ; opening her hand-bag, from which 
 she takes a hollow sheU — an egg — who was saying 
 iJiat eggs were cheaper ? You or I > Oh, it was 
 jrou who said it on the way home, you remember, 
 when the old gentleman, suddenly opening his 
 umbrella — or sneezing was it ? Anyhow, Krugei* 
 went, and you came "home a back way," and 
 jscraped your boots. Yes. And now you lay 
 ;aeross your knees a pocket-handkerchief into 
 which drop httle angular fragments of eggshell-^ 
 fragments of a noap — a puzzle. I wish I eould 
 piece them together I If you would only sit still. 
 She's moved her knees- — ^the map's in bits again. 
 Down the slopes of the Andes the white blocks 
 -of marble go bounding and hurtUng, crushing to 
 death a whole troop of Spanish muleteers, with 
 their convoy — Drake's booty, gold and silver. 
 But to retm-n— — ' 
 
 To what, to where ? She opened the door, and, 
 pitting her umbrella in the stand — ^that goes 
 without saying j so, too, the whifE of beef from 
 
 49 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 the basement ; dot, dot, dot. But what I cannot 
 thus eluninate, what I must, head down, eyes; 
 shut, with the courage of a battalion and thci 
 blindness of a bull, charge and disperse are^ 
 indubitably, the figures behind the ferns,, com- 
 mercial travellers. There I've hidden them all 
 this time in the hope that somehow they'd- 
 disappear, or better still emerge, as indeed they* 
 mu^t, if the story's to go on gathering richness- 
 and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories- 
 should, rolling along with it two, if not three, 
 conimercial travellers and a whole grove of* 
 aspidistra. " The fronds of the aspidistra only 
 partly concealed the commercial traveller — '*' 
 Rhododendrons would conceal him utterly, and 
 into the bargain give me my fling of red and 
 white, for which I starve and strive ; but rhodo- 
 dendrons in Eastbourne — ^in December — on the- 
 Marshes' table — no, no, T dare not ; it's all a 
 matter of crusts and cruets, frills and ferns. 
 Perhaps there'll be a moment later by the sea. 
 Moreover, I feel, pleasantly pricking through the- 
 green fretwork and over the glacis of cut glass^ 
 a desire to peer and peep at Sie man opposite- 
 one's as much as I can manage. James Moggridge 
 is it, whom the Marshes call Jimmy? [Minnie 
 you must promise not to twitch tiU I've got thi* 
 straight]. James Moggridge travels in — shall 
 we say buttons ? — ^but the time's not come for 
 bringing them in — ^the big and the little on the^ 
 
 50 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 long cards, some peacock-eyed, others dull gold ; 
 'Cairngorms some, and others coral sprays — ^but I 
 =say the time's not come. He travels, and on 
 Thursdays, his Eastbourne day, takes his meals 
 with the Marshes. His red face, his little steady 
 ♦eyes — ^by no means altogether commonplace — ^his 
 enormous appetite (that's safe ; he won't look at 
 Minnie till the bread's swamped the gravy dry), 
 napkin tucked diamond-wise — ^but this is primi- 
 tive, and, whatever it may do the reader, don't 
 take me in. Let's dodge to the Moggridge 
 household, set that in motion. Well, the family 
 Jboots are mended on Sundays by James himself. 
 /Re resids Truth. But his passion ? Roses — and 
 his wife a retired hospital nurse — interesting — 
 for God's sake let me have one woman with a 
 name I like 1 But no; she's of the unborn child- 
 ren of the mind, illicit, none the less loved, like 
 -my rhododendrons. How many die in every 
 novel that's written — ^the best, the dearest, while 
 Moggridge lives. It's life's fault. Here's Minnie 
 -eating her egg at the moment opposite and at 
 t'other end of the line — ^are we past Lewes ? — 
 there must be Jimmy — or what's her twitch for ) 
 There must be Moggridge — ^life's fault. Life 
 imposes her laws; Kfe blocks the wa\ life's 
 behind the fern ; life's the tyrant ; oh, but not th4 
 ■bully ! No, for I assure you I come willingly ;| 
 I come wooed by Heaven knows what compulsion! 
 dicross ferns and cruets, table splashed and bottles 
 
 51 
 
An Unuintten N&oet, 
 
 smeared. I come iaresistibly to lodge mysdf 
 somewh^e on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, 
 wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on tie 
 person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. 
 The enormous stabiUty of the fabric ; the spine 
 tough as whalebone, straight as oak'tree; the 
 i-ibs radiating branches ; the flesh taut tarpaulin ; 
 the red hollows ; tlie suck and regur^tation or 
 the heart ; while from above meat falls in brown 
 cubes and beer gushes to be churned to blood 
 again— and so we reach the eyes. Behind the 
 aspidistra they see something: black, white,, 
 dismal ; now the plate again ; behind the aspidis- 
 tra they see elderly woman; "Marsh's sista*,, 
 Hilda s more my sort ; " the tablecloth now, 
 "Marsh would know what's wrong wiiib 
 Morrises . . ." talk that over ; cheese has 
 come ; the plate again ; turn it round — ^the enor^ 
 mous fingers ; now the woman opposite. 
 "Marsh's sister — not a bit like Marsh; wretched 
 elderly female. . . . You should feed your 
 hens. . . . God's truth, what's set her 
 twitching? Not what / said? Dear, dear, 
 dear I these elderly women. Dear, dear !" 
 
 [Yes, Minnie ; I know ybu've twitched, but 
 one moment — James Moggridge]. 
 
 'Dear, dear, dear I" How beautiful the sound 
 is ! like the knock of a mallet on seasoned timber,, 
 like the throb of the heart of an ancient whaler 
 when the seas press thick and the green is- 
 
 52 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 clouded. * Dear, dear 1 ' what a passing bell for 
 the souls of the &et£ul to soothe them and solace 
 them, lap them in linen, saying, " So long. Good 
 iMfk to you t " and then, " What's your pleasure ? " 
 for though Moggridge would pluck his rose for 
 h«*, that's done, that's over. Now what's the 
 next thing ? " Madam, you'll miss your train," 
 tor they don't linger. 
 
 That's the man's way ; that's the sound that 
 reverberates ; that's St. Paul's and the motor- 
 omnibuses. But we're brushing the crumbs off. 
 Oh, Moggridge, you won't stay ? You must be 
 pff ? Are you driving through Eastbourne this 
 afternoon in one o£ those little carriages ? Are 
 you the man who's walled up in green cardboard 
 boxes, and sometimes has the blinds down, and 
 sometimes sits so solemn staring like a sphinx, 
 and always there's a look of the sepidchral, 
 something of the undertaker, the coffin, and the 
 dusk about horse and driver ? Do tell me — ^but 
 the doors slammed. We shall never meet again. 
 Mog^dge, ferewell I 
 
 Yes, yes, I 'm coming. Right up to the top of 
 the house. One moment I'll linger. How the 
 mud goes round in the mind — ^what a swirl these 
 monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds 
 Avaving and green here, black there, striking to 
 the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, 
 the deposit sifts itself, and again through the 
 eyes bne sees clear and still, and there comes to 
 
 53 
 
. An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 the lips some prayer for the departed, some 
 ■obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the 
 ■people one never meets agam. 
 
 James Mog^idge is dead now, gone for ever. 
 Weir," Minnie—" I can face it no longer;"- H she 
 said that — (Let me look at her. She is brushing 
 the eggshell into deep declivities). She said it 
 certainly, leaning against the wall of the bedroom, 
 and plucking at the little balls whidi edge the 
 claret-coloured ciuiain. But when the self speaks 
 to the self, who is speaking ? — ^the entombed 
 soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central 
 catacomb ; the self that took the veil and left tiie 
 world — a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, 
 as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down 
 the dark corridors. " I can bear it no longer," 
 I her spirit says. " That man at lunch — HUdar— 
 \ the children." Oh, heavens, her sob I It!s the 
 1 spirit wailing its destiny, the spirit driven hither, 
 thither, lodging on the diminishing carpets — 
 meagre fooQiolds — shrunken shreds of eQI the 
 vanishing universe — ^love, life, faith, husband, 
 children, I know not what splendours and pag- 
 eantries glimpsed in girlhood. " Not for mfr-^ 
 not for me." 
 
 But then — ^the mufl&ns, the bald elderly dog ? 
 Bead mats I should fancy and the consolation of 
 underlinen. If Minnie Marsh were run over and 
 taken to hospital, nurses and doctors themselves 
 would exclaim. . . . There's the vista and 
 
 54 
 
An Unwritten Novel. 
 
 tiie vision — ^there's the distance — ^the blue blot at 
 the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is 
 rich, the muffin hot, and the dog-—" Benny, to 
 your basket, sir, and see what mother's brought 
 you ! " So, taking the glove with the worn 
 thumb, defying once more Qie encroaching demon 
 of what's called going in holes, you renew the 
 fortifications, threading the grey wool, running 
 it in and out, 
 
 Kunning it in and out, across and over, spinn- 
 ing a web through which God himselE — ^hush, 
 don't think of God I How firm the stitches are ! 
 You must be proud of your darning. Let 
 nothing disturb her. Let the light faU. gently, 
 and the clouds show an inner vest of the first 
 green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig 
 and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's 
 elbow. . , Why look up ? Was it a sound, 
 a thought ? Oh, heavens I Back again to the 
 thing you did, the plate glass with the violet 
 loops ? But Hilda wiU come Ignominies, 
 humiliations, oh ! Close the breach. 
 , Having mended her glove, Minnie Marsh lays 
 it in the drawer. She shuts the drawer with 
 decision. I^gat^^si^t of.her-face ia the^lass. 
 Lips are pursed, Chm held high. Next she 
 laces her shoes. Then she touches her throat. 
 What's your brooch ? Mistletoe or merry- 
 thought ? And what is happening ? Unless 
 I'm much mistaken, the pulse s quickened, the 
 
 65 
 
An Unwritten Novell 
 
 moments coming, the threads are racing, Niagara's 
 ahead. Here's the crisis 1 Heaven be vrith you I 
 Down she goes. Coin-age, courage 1 Face it, be 
 it I For God's sake don^t wait on the mat now I 
 There's the door I I'm on your side. Speak ! 
 Confront her, confound her soul I 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon I Yes, this is East- 
 bourne. I'll reach it down for you. Let mei try 
 the handle." [But, Minnie, though we keep up 
 pretences, I've read you right — ^I'm with you 
 now], 
 
 " That's aU your luggage ? " 
 
 " Much obliged, I'm sure." 
 
 (But why do you look about you ? Hilda 
 won't come to the station, nor John ; and 
 Moggridge is driving at the far side of East- 
 bourne). 
 
 "I'll wait by my bag, ma'am, that's safest. 
 He said he'd meet me. . , . Oh, there he is I 
 That's my son. 
 
 So they walk off together. 
 
 Well, but I'm confounded. . , . Surdv 
 Minnie, you know better I A strange young 
 man. . . . Stop I I'll teU h\vn — Minnie ) — 
 Miss Marsh 1 — I don't know though. There's 
 something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, 
 but it's untrue, it's indecent. . . , Look 
 how he bends as they reach the gateway. She 
 finds her ticket. What's the joke ? OS tUey 
 go, down the road, side by side. . , , Well, 
 
 56 
 
An Unwritten NoveL 
 
 ms world's done for ! What do I stand on R 
 What do I know ? That's not Minnie. Ther^ 
 never was Moggridge. Who am I ? Life's.1 
 bare as bone. 
 
 And yet the last look of them — ^he stepping 
 from the kerb and she following him round the 
 edge of the big building brims me with wonder — r 
 floods me anew. Mysterious figures I Mother 
 and son. Who are you ? Why do you walk 
 down the street ? Where to-night will you sleep^ 
 and then, to-morrow ? Oh, how it whirls and 
 surges — floats me afresh ! I start after them. 
 People drive this way and that. The white light 
 splutters and pours. Plate-glass windows. Car- 
 nations ; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark gardens. 
 Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, myster- 
 ious figures, I see you, turning the corner^ 
 mothers and eons ; you, you, you. I hasten, I. 
 foUow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grrey 
 is the landscape ; dim as ashes ; the water mur- 
 murs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I gO' 
 through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, 
 unknown figures, you I adore ; if I open my 
 arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me — 
 adorable world ! 
 
 m 
 
THE STRING QUARTET. 
 
 Well, here we are, and i£ you cast your eye 
 over the room you will see that Tubes and 
 trams and omnibuses, private carriages not a few, 
 even, I venture to believe, landaus with bays in : 
 them, have been busy at it, weaving threads froia- 
 one end of London to the other. Yet I begin t» i 
 have my doubts-^ 
 
 If J indeed it's true, as they're saying, that 
 Eegent Street , is up, and the Treaty signed, and 
 the weather not cold for the time of year,, 
 and even at that rent not a flat to be had, and 
 1h& worst of influenza its after effects ; if I be- 
 think me of having forgotten to write about the. 
 leak in the larder, and left iny glove in the train ;. 
 if the ties of blood require me, leaning forward, 
 >to accept cordially the hand which is perhaps, 
 offeried hesitatingly — _t 
 
 ''>";Seven year& since we met ! " ' . 
 ■• " The last time in Venice." 
 •'^hd where are you hving now ? " 
 '" Well, the late afternoon suits me the best,. 
 
 1|iough, if it weren't asking too much " 
 
 S^ But I knew you at once ! " 
 '"Still, the' war made a break- 
 
 \Ifthfe mind's shot through by such little- 
 
 1 S( " 
 
 '59 
 
 'ows, and-^for human society compels it — no- j 
 
T%e Siring Quartet. 
 
 sooner is one launched than another presses for- 
 ward ; if this engenders heat and in addition 
 tJieyVe turiied on th.e electric li^t; if sa^g one 
 thing does^ in so many cases, leave behind it a 
 need to izaprove and revise, stirring besides 
 regrets, pleasures, vanities, and desire»<— ^ it's all 
 the facts I mean, and the hats, the fur boas, tiie 
 gentiemen^s swaUow-tail coats, and pearl tie-[^8 
 that come to the surface— what chance is there F 
 
 Of what) It becomes eveiy nunute mco'e 
 difficult to say why, in spite of everytMng, I sit 
 here believing I can't now say w&t, or even 
 r^nember the last time it happ^ied. 
 
 " Did you see the procession >" 
 
 " The King looked cold." 
 
 No, no, no. But what was it ? 
 
 " She's bought a house at Malmesbury." 
 
 " How luc^ to find one 1 " 
 
 On the contrary, it seems to me pretty sure 
 that she, whoever she may be, is damoe^ since 
 it's all a matter of flats and hats and sea goB&t or 
 so it seems to be for a hundred people sitting 
 here well dress^, walled in, furred, r^tete. Not 
 that I can boast, since I too sit pasdv« on a gilt 
 chair, only turning the earth above a buried 
 memory, as we all do, for there are mgOBf if I'm 
 not mistaken, that we're all recalling sometiung, 
 furtively seeking something. Why fidget ? Why 
 eoamdous about tiie sit of cloaks ; and glovea-^ 
 
 60 
 
The S^ng Quartet. 
 
 whether to button or unbutton ? Then watch 
 that elderly (aoe against the dark canvas, a. 
 moment ago urbane and flushed ; now tadtioii 
 and sad, as i£ in shadow. Was it the sound of 
 l^e second violin tuning in the anteroom > Here 
 they oom£ ; four black figures, carrying instru- 
 mmits, and seat themselves facing the white 
 squares under the downpour of Ught ; rest the 
 tips c^ their bows on the music stand ; wilii a 
 simultaneous movement lift them ; lightly poise 
 them, and, looking across at the pinyer opposite, 
 the fost vio&i counts one, two, thre o". ' • 
 
 Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst I The pear 
 •ties on the ixm of the mountain. Fountains jet; 
 drops descend. But the waters of the Rhone 
 iSow swift and deep, race under the arches, and 
 sweep ike trailing water leaves, washing shadows 
 over the silver fish, the spotted fish rushed down 
 hy (he swift wat^s, now swept into an eddy 
 tehere^-'it's difficult this-'-conglom^ral^on of &m 
 all in a pool ; leaping, splashing, scraping sharp 
 fins ; and such a boil of current that tlie yellow 
 p^Mes are diurned round and round, roimd and 
 round— free now, rushing downwards, or even 
 somehow ascending in exquisite spirals into the 
 ior ; curled like thin shavings from under a 
 plane; up an up. ... How lovely goodness 
 is in those who, stepping lightly, go smiling 
 throu^ the world ! Also in old, jodly fishwives, 
 squatted under arches, obscene old women, how 
 
 61 
 
The String Quartet. 
 
 deeply they laugh and shake and rollick, whenf 
 they walk, from side to side, hum, hah ! 
 
 " That's an early Mozart, of course " 
 
 "But the tune, like all his tunes, makes one- 
 despair — I mean hope. What do I mean ?' 
 That's the worst of music ! I want to dance,, 
 laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin^. 
 sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now — ^I could . 
 relish that. The older one grows the more one 
 likes indecency. Hah, hah ! I'm laughing. What 
 at ? You said nothing, nor did the old gentleman 
 
 opposite But suppose — suppose — 
 
 Hush ! " 
 
 The me lancholy river bears us on. When the- 
 moon comes through the trailing~wiflow boughs,. 
 I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird, 
 singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you 
 whispering ? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven 
 I together Uke reeds in moonhght. Woven to- 
 Igether, inextricably commingled, bound in paio^ 
 ' and stoewn in sorrow crash ! 
 
 The boat sinks. Rising, the figures ascend^ 
 but now leaf thin, tapering to a dusky wriith^, 
 which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion 
 frc«n my heart. For me it sings, unseals my 
 sorrow, thaws compassion, floods with love the 
 sunless world, nor ceasing, abates its tenderness^ 
 but deftly, stibtly, weaves in and out until irt 
 this pattern, this consummation, the cleft ones:- 
 unify ; soar, sob, sink to rest, sorrow and ioy. 
 
 62 
 
The String Quartet. 
 
 Why then grieve? Ask what? Remain un- 
 satisfied? I say all's been settled ; yes ; laid to 
 rest under a coverlet o£ rose leaves, falling. 
 Falling. Ah, but they cease. One rose leaf, fall- 
 ing from an enormous height, Hke a little para- 
 chute dropped from an invisible balloon, turns, 
 flutters waveringly. It won't reach us. 
 
 " No, no. I noticed nothing. That's the worst 
 of music — ^these siUy dreams. The second violin 
 was late, you say?" 
 
 " There's old Mrs. Munro, feeling her way out 
 — ^blinder each year, poor woman — on this slip- 
 pery floor." 
 
 Eyeless old age, grey-headed Sphinx. . . . 
 There she stands on the pavement, beckoning, so 
 sternly to the red omnibus, 
 
 " How lovely ! How well they play ! How — 
 how — ^how I " 
 
 -Thfi^tonguejs^but a clapper. Simplidty it- 
 self. The feathers in the hiitnext me are bright 
 ;and pleasing as a child's rattle. The leaf on the 
 plane-tree flashes green through the chink in the 
 'Curtain. Very strange, very exciting. 
 
 " How— how— how ! " Hush ! 
 
 These are the lovers on the grass. 
 
 " If, madam, you will take my han d " 
 
 " Sir, I would trust you with my heart. More- 
 •over, we have left our bodies in the banqueting 
 
 63 
 
The String Quartet 
 
 hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our 
 soule," 
 
 " Then these are the embraces o£ our souls. 
 The lemons nod assent. The swan pushes from 
 the bmk and floats dreaming into mid strmm. 
 
 " But to return. He followed me down the 
 corridor, and, as we turned the corner, trod on the 
 lace of my petticoat. What could I do but cry 
 'Ah I ' and stop to finger it? At which he drew 
 Mb sword, made passes as if he were staJbl»iiec 
 something to death, and med, ' Mad ! Madl 
 Mftdr Whereupon I screamed, and the Prince, 
 who was writing in the large vdlmn book in the- 
 orid window, came out in ms velvet skull-cap and 
 fufred slippers, snatched a rapier from the wall — 
 the King of Spain's gift, you know— ^n which 
 1 scaped, flinging on lius cloak to hide the 
 ravages to my skirt — ^to hide . . . But listen I; 
 the horns 1" 
 
 The gentleman replies so fast to the lady, and 
 db.e runs up the scale with such witty exdiange- 
 of compliment now culminating in a sob of 
 passion, that the words are iadistingui^iafoie 
 though the meaning is plain enough — ^love, 
 lau^ter, flighty pursuit, celestial bUss — all floated 
 out on the gayest ripple of tender endeannent. 
 — until the sound of the silver horns^ at first- 
 far distant, gradually sounds more and more 
 distinctly, as if seneschals were saluting the- 
 *stewn or proclaiming ominously the escape of the^ 
 
 64 
 
T%e String QmrteL. 
 
 lovera. . . . The green garden, mooi^t pool^ 
 lonons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the; 
 «pid sl^, across which, as the horns are joiiied:i 
 iJy trumpets and supported hy clarions there rise- 
 white arches firmly planted on marble pilkrs. . . ^ 
 Tramp and trumpeting. Clang and chuigotir.' 
 Firm establidmient. Fast foundations. March: 
 d myriads. Confusion and chaos trod to earth. 
 But tiiis iatyto which we travel has neith^ stone^ 
 near marble; hangs enduring; stands unshakable;: 
 DOT does a face, nor does a flag greet or welcome^ 
 lieave then to perish yoxu" hope ; droop in the-- 
 desert my joy; naked advance. Bare are the- 
 j^llars; auspicious to none; casting no shade;; 
 resplendent ; severe. Back then I &1II, eager no 
 mcH-e^ desiring only to go, find the street, mark 
 the huEding^ greet the applewoman, say to tii^: 
 aasud who opens the door : A starry night. 
 
 " Good n^ht, good night. Tou go this way ? ' 
 *A]aB. I go that." 
 
 65 
 
BLUE ^ GREEN. 
 
 GREEX. 
 
 ■ The pointed fingers of glass hang downwards. 
 The light eUdes down the glass, and drops a pool 
 *of green. AU day long the ten fingers o£ the 
 iustre drop green upon the marble. The feathers 
 -of parakeets — ^their harsh cries — sharp blades of 
 palm trees — ^green too; green needles ghttering 
 in the sun. But the hard glass drips on to the 
 marble ; the ppols hover above the desert sand ; 
 ^he camels lurch through them ; the pools settle 
 on the marble ; rushes edge them ; weeds dog them ; 
 tiere and there a white blossom; the frog flops 
 over ; at night the stars are set there unbroken. 
 Evening comes, and the shadow sweeps the greea 
 -over the mantelpiece ; the ruffled surface of ocean. 
 !No ships come ; the aimless waves sway beneath. 
 >"the empty sky. It's night ; the needles drip blots 
 of blue. The green's out. 
 
 66 
 
Blue 4t Green.. 
 
 BLUE. 
 
 The snub-nosed monster rises to the surface? 
 and spouts through his blunt nostrils two columns- 
 e£ "water, which, fiery -white in the centre, spray 
 cS. into a fringe of blue beads. Strokes of blue; 
 fine the black tarpaulin of his iide. Slushing the ; 
 water through mouth and nostrils he sinks, heavy 
 with water, and the blue closes oyer him dowsing; 
 iJie polished pebbles of his eyes. Thrown i^on^ 
 ihe b^u:h he lies, blunt, obtuse, shedding dry blue, 
 scales. Their metallic blue stains the rusty iron* 
 on the beach. Blue are the ribs of the wreckedi 
 rowing boat. A wave roUs beneath the blue bells.. 
 But the cathedral's different, cold, incense laden,^ 
 faint Hue with the veils of madonnas. 
 
 67 
 
EEW GARDENS. 
 
 From the oval shaped flower-bed there rose 
 perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart 
 «haped or tongue shaped leaves half way up and 
 tuofurling at me tip red or blue or yellow petak 
 marked with spots o£ colour raised upon lihe 
 «ar£ace ; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom 
 of the tiiroat emerged a straight bar, rougn with 
 ^Id dust and slightly clubb^ at the end. The 
 jpetals were voluminous enough to be starred by 
 iStae summer breea^ and when they moved, llie 
 red blue and yellow lights passed one over Ibe 
 other, staining an inch of the brown earth 
 lieneath with a spot of ihQ most intricate colour. 
 The light fell eitii^ upon the smooth g^j back 
 of a pebble, or the shm of a snail with its brown 
 <srciuar vms, or, £alUng into a r^drop, it 
 «n>anded with sudi intenidty of red, blue and 
 yeUow the thin walls of water that one expected 
 ihem to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop 
 was left in a second silver grey once more^ and 
 the light now settled upon the flesh of a lea^ 
 reveaOng the In'andung thread of fibre beneath 
 'die surnioe, and t^dn it moved on and spread its 
 illumination in the vs^t green spaces beneath the 
 dome of the heart shaped and tongue shaped 
 leaves. Then the fare^ stirred rather moi?e 
 
 C8 
 
Kem Gardens. 
 
 triskl^ overhead and the colour was flashed into 
 the air above, into ^e ^es of the men and 
 women who walk in Kew Gardens in July. 
 
 The figures of these men and women stoa^lesd 
 past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular 
 movement not unlike that of the white and blue 
 butterflies who o-ossed the turf in zig-zag flints 
 from bed to bed. The man was about six iiusheg 
 in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while 
 she bore on with greater purpose, only turning 
 her head now and then to see that the children 
 were not too far behind. The man kept tMs 
 distance in front of the woman purposely, thou^ 
 perhaps unooz^ously, for he wished to go (m 
 with his thoughts. 
 
 "Fifteen years ago I came here with LUy," he 
 thought. "We sat somewhere over there by a 
 lake, and I begged her to marry me all through 
 the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly k^ 
 circling round Us : how dearfy I see the dragon^ 
 and her shoe with the square ralver buckle at tlie 
 toe. All the tame I spoke I saw h^ shoe smd 
 when it moved impatiently I knew without look- 
 ing up what she was going to eay : the whole of 
 her seemed to be in her smw. And my love, my 
 desire, were in the dragonfly ; iar some reason 1 
 thought that if it settled there, on that le:^ Hm 
 broad one with the red flower in the middle ofi 
 if the diragodbly settled on the leaf she would eny 
 ** Yes " at once. But the dn^nfly went round 
 
 €9 
 
Kew Gardens. 
 
 and round : it never settled anywhere-r«£ course 
 notj happily not^ or I shouldn't be walking here 
 with Eleanor and the children — Tell me, Eleanor. 
 D'yoii ever think o£ the past ? " 
 
 " Why do you ask, Simon ? " 
 
 '' Because I've been thinking o£ the past. , I've 
 been thinking of Lity, the woman I might have 
 married . . . WeU, w:hy are you silent ? 
 Do you mind my thinking o£ the past ? " 
 
 "Why should I mind, Simon ? Doesn't one 
 always think o£ the past^ in a garden with men 
 and women lying under the trees ? Aren't they 
 one's past, all that remains of, it, those men and 
 women, those ghosts lying under the trees, . . . 
 one's happiness, one's reality ? " 
 
 "For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a 
 dragonfly — " 
 
 "For me, a kiss. Imagine six little ■ girls 
 sit]bing before their .easels twenty years agOj down 
 lay the side of a lake, painting the water -HlieSj 
 the, first red water-lilies Td ever seen. And 
 (Suddenly a kiss, there on the back of my neck. 
 And, my hand shook all the afternoon so that •! 
 couldn't paint. I took out my watch and marked 
 the hour when I would allow myself to think of 
 the kiss for five minutes only — it was so pre- 
 «iqus— the kiss of an old grey -haired woman with 
 a Wart on her nose, the mother of all my kisses 
 all; my hfe. Come Caroline, come Hubert." 
 
 They wa^ed on past the flower-bed, now 
 70 
 
Kew Gardens, 
 
 walking four abreast, and aoon diminished in 
 size among the trees and looked half transparent 
 as the sunlight and shade swam over their backs 
 in large trembling irregular patches. 
 
 In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell 
 had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the 
 ifepace of two minutes or so, now appeared to be 
 moving very slightly in its shell, and next began 
 to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which 
 broke away and rolled down as it passed over 
 them. It appeared to have a definite goal in 
 front of it, differing in this respect from the 
 singular high stepping angular green insect who 
 attempted to cross in front of it, and waited for 
 a second with its antennae trembling as if in 
 deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly and 
 strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs 
 with deep ^een lakes in the hollows, flat blade- 
 like trees that waved from root to tip, round 
 boulders of grey stone, vast crmnpled surfaces of 
 a thin crackling texture — aU these objects lay 
 across the snail's progress between one stalk and 
 another to his goal. Before he had decided 
 whether to circumvent the arched tent of a dead 
 leaf or to breast it there came past the bed the feet 
 of other human beings. 
 
 This time they were both men. The younger 
 of the two wore an expression of perhaps un- 
 natural cahn ; he raised his eyes and fixed them 
 very steadily in front of him while hie companion 
 
 71 
 
»{>oke» asd diitectiy his compamcw hsd done 
 f^MHildng he ktoleed on the ground again and 
 wosm^mi^ opened hi« lips only aEt^ a long pau6« 
 and sometdmes did not c^ei) thi^D »t al]. The 
 ^cliM" man had » onriou^y uneven and sjj^ky 
 method of walking, jerkuaglns hand £onrazd mi 
 thi'owhig up his head a]»*ttptiy, rather in tib» 
 manner o£ an indpatimt carriage horae tired (^ 
 waiting outside a house ; hut m the man these 
 gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked 
 almost incessantly i he snuled to himself and 
 a^in began to ta&, as if the smile had been an 
 answer. He was talking about spirits— the 
 spirits of the dead, who, according to him, were 
 even now telling him all sorts of odd things 
 about their experiences in Heav^i. 
 
 " Heaven was known to the ancients as Thes- 
 saly, William, and now, with this war, the spirit 
 matter is rolling betwerai the hills like thunder," 
 He paused, seemed to listen, smUed^ jerked his 
 head and continued : — 
 
 "You have a small electa*ic battray and a piece 
 of rubber to insulate the wir&— isolate ?--^insUlate ? 
 -^weU, we'U skip the details, no good going into 
 details that wouldn't be und^stood — ^and in 
 short the little machine staads in any convenient 
 position by the head of the bed, we will say, on 
 a> neat maho^oiy stand.. All arrangent^ts being 
 properly fixed by workmen under my direction, 
 the widow applies her ear and stunmons the spirit 
 
 72 ^ 
 
Keib Gardens^ 
 
 by sign as agireei. Women I Widows I Women 
 in black——?* 
 
 Here he seemed to iiave caught sight of ft 
 woman's dress in the distance, which in the shade 
 looked a purple black. He took off his hat^ 
 placed his hand upon his heart, and hurried to- 
 wards her muttering and gesticulating feverishly. 
 But William caught him by the sleeve and touched 
 a flower with the tip of his walMng-stick in order 
 to divert tiie old man's attention. After looking 
 at it for a moment in some confusion the old man 
 bent his ear to it and seemed to answer a voice 
 speaking from it, for he began talking about tlie 
 fcn-ests of Uruguay which he had visited hundreds 
 of years ago in company with the most beautiful 
 young woman in Europe. He could be heard 
 murmuring about forests of Uruguay blanketed 
 with the wax -petals of tropical roses, nightin*- 
 gales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned 
 at sea, as he suffered himself to be moved on by 
 William, upon whose face the look of stoicu 
 patience grew slowly cteeper and deeper. 
 
 Following his steps so closely as to-be slightiy 
 puzzled by his gestures came two dderly women 
 of the lower middle class, one stout and ponder- 
 ous, the other rosy dieeked and nimble. Like 
 most people of their station they were frankly 
 f asdnated by any signs of eccentricity betokening 
 a disordered brain, especially in the well-to-do; 
 but thev were too far off to be certain whether 
 
 73 
 
Kew Gardens. / 
 
 the gestures were merely eccentric or genuinely- 
 mad. After they had scrutinised the old man'& 
 bapk in silence for a moment and given ea<;h 
 oliier a queer, sly lookj they went on energeti- 
 cally piecing together their very complicated 
 dialogue : 
 
 " N^eU, Bert, Lot, Cess, PhU, Pa, he says, I 
 says, she says, I says, I says, I saysr- " 
 
 *VMy Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man^ 
 sugar. 
 
 Sugar, flour, kippers, greens. 
 Sugar, sugar, sugar." 
 
 The ponderous woman looked through the. 
 pattern of falling words at the flowers standing 
 cool, firm, and upright in the earth, with a curious 
 expression. She saw them as a, sleeper waking 
 from a heavy sleep sees a brass candlestick 
 reflecting the hght in an unfamiliar way, and 
 closes his eyes and opens them, and seeing the 
 brass candlestick again, finally starts broad awake 
 and stares at the candlestick with all his powers^ 
 So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite 
 the oval slxaped flower bed, and ceased even to 
 pretend to fisten to what the other woman was 
 saying, She stood there letting the words fall 
 oyer her, swaying the top part of her body slowly 
 backwards and forwards, looking at the flowers. 
 Then she suggested that they should find a seat 
 and have their tea. 
 
 The snail had now considered every possible 
 
Kew Gardens. 
 
 method of reaching his goal without going round 
 the dead leaf or climbing over it. Let alone the 
 effort needed for climbing a leaf, he was doubtful 
 "whether the thin texture which vibrated with 
 such an alarming crackle when touched even by 
 the tip of his horns would bear his weight ; and 
 this determined him finally to creep beneath it, 
 for there was a point where the leaf curved high 
 enough from the ground to admit him. He had 
 just inserted his head in the opaiing and was 
 taking stock of the high brown roof and was 
 getting used to the cool brown light when two 
 other j,eople came past outside on the turL This 
 time they were botii young, a young man and a 
 young woman. They were both in the prime of 
 youth, or even in that season which precedes the 
 prime of youth, the season before the smooth 
 pink folds of the flower have burst their gimamy 
 case, when the wings of the butterfly, though 
 f uUy grown, are motionless in the sun. 
 " Lucky it isn't Friday," he observed. 
 " Why ? D'you believe in luck ? " 
 *' They make you pay sixpence on Friday." 
 "What's sixpence anyway? Isn't it worth 
 sixpence ? " 
 
 " What's ' it '—what do you mean by * it ' ? " 
 "0 anything — I mean — ^you know what I 
 mean." 
 
 Long pauses came between each of these 
 remarks : they were uttered in toneless and 
 75 
 
Kfiw Gardens. 
 
 monotonous voices. The couple stood still on 
 liie edge of the flower bed, and together pressed 
 the end o£ her parasol deep down into tiie sofit 
 earth. The action and the £act that his hand 
 rested on the top o£ hers expressed their feelings 
 m a strange way, as these short insignificant 
 words also expressed something, words with 
 short wings for their heavy body of meaning, 
 ioiadequate to carry them far and thus alighting 
 awkwardly upon the very conunon objects that 
 SHirrounded than, and were to their inexperienced 
 touch so massive; but who knows (so they 
 thought as they pressed the parasol into the 
 earth) what precipices aren't concealed in them, 
 or what slopes of ice don't shine in the sun on 
 the other side ? Who knows ? Who has ever 
 seen this before ? Even when she wondered 
 what sort of tea they gave you at Kew, he felt 
 that something loomed up behind her words, and 
 stood vast and solid behind them ; and the mist 
 very slowly rose and uncovered — Heavens, 
 "What were those shapes ? — ^little white tables, and 
 waitresses who looked first at her and then at 
 him ; and there was a biU that he would pay with 
 a real two shilling piece, and it was real, all real, 
 he assured himself, fingering the coin in his 
 pocket, real to everyone except to biin and to 
 her ; even to him it began to seem real ; and 
 then — ^but it was too exciting to stand and tbinir 
 any longer, and he pulled the parasol out of the 
 76 
 
Kew Gardens, 
 
 earth ^ipith a jerk and was impatient to find the 
 place where one had tea with other people, like 
 otiier people. 
 
 "Came along, Trissie; it's time we had our 
 tea." 
 
 "Wherever does one have one's tea ? " she 
 aeked with the oddest thrill of excitement in her 
 ^oice, looking vaguely round and letting herself 
 be drawn on down the grass path, trailing her 
 parasol, turning her head this way and that way^ 
 forgetting her tea, wishing to go down there and 
 then down there, remembering orchids and 
 cranes among wild flowers, a Chinese pagoda and 
 a crimson crested bird ; but he bore her on. 
 
 Thus one couple after another with much the 
 same iiregular and aimless movement passed the 
 flower-bed and were enveloped in layer after layer 
 of green blue vapour, in which at first their bodies; 
 had substance and a dash of colour, but later both 
 substance and colour dissolved in the green-blue 
 atmosphere. How hot it was I So hot that eveji. 
 the thrush chose to hop, like a mechanical bird, in- 
 the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses. 
 betweeiL one movement and the next ; instead of" 
 rambling vaguely the white butterflies danced one^ 
 kbove another, making with their white shifting: 
 flakes the outline of a shattered marble column 
 above tlie tallest flowers ; the glass roofs of the 
 pahu houge shone as if a whole market full of 
 shiny green umbrellas had opened in the sun j 
 
 77 
 
Kew Gardens. 
 
 ^nd in the drone o£ the aeroplane the voice of tiie 
 .Bummer sky murmured its fiCTce souL Yellow 
 ::and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all 
 these colours, men, women, and children were 
 -spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, 
 iseeing the lo'eadth of yellow tliat lay upon the 
 grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath 
 *he trees, dissolving like drops of water in the 
 j^ellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly 
 with red and blue. It seemol as if all gross and 
 3ieavy bodies had sunk down in the beat motion- 
 less and lay huddled upon the ground, but their 
 voices went wavering from them as if they werte 
 fiames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of 
 •candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, 
 breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of 
 •contentment, such passion of desire, or, in tbe 
 voices of children, such freshness of surprise ; 
 breaking the silence ? But there was no silence ; 
 all the time the motor omnibuses were turning 
 "their wheels and changing their gear ; like a vast 
 nest of Chinese boxes aU. of wrought steel turning 
 ««i8eles8ly one within another the city murmured ; 
 on the top of which the voices cried aloud and 
 the petals of myriada of floWers flashed their 
 •colours into the aii*. 
 
 78 
 
TEE MABK ON THE WALL. 
 
 Perhaps it was the middle o£ January inihe^, 
 present year that I first looked up and saw the- 
 inark on the wall. In order tD_fix_a_date it,i» 
 necessary to rememher what one saw. So now I 
 think of the fire ; the steady film of yeUow light 
 Tippn the page of my book ; the three chrysanthfe- 
 muiuB in the round glass howl on the mantelpiecieo.. 
 Yes, it must have heen the winter tiine^ and we- 
 had just finish^ our teia, for I remember ibhat I 
 was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and^ 
 saw the mark on the wall for the first time. T 
 looked up through the smoke of my cigarette and:' 
 my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning, 
 coals, knd that old fancy of the crimson fla^. 
 flapping from the castle tower came into my 
 mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of reoL* 
 knights riding up the side of the black rock.. 
 Bather to my rehef the sight of the mark inter- 
 rupted the fencyj for it is an old fancy, an: 
 automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. Thes- 
 mark was a small round mark, black upon the- 
 ^white wall, about six or seven inches above the ;• 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new" 
 object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade- 
 of straw so feverishly, and then leave it. . . .- 
 
 7» 
 
Tfne Mark m, O^ WaU. 
 
 .Jf tbat omrk wae made by a wB^ ^ caaH Iwtfe 
 lieen for a picture, it moat bave been £or a 
 rimniatto'e-^lne numatore q£ a lady vn6k vAitit 
 jMwdered curls, powder>dusted <^edts, and UpB 
 Joke red camataons. A fraud of eaata^ JvjDie 
 xeople who had this house be&Hre us wmdd iiave 
 ^^Ben pictures in that waj-nm (dd jHiatwe Cor 
 sua old room. That is the sort o£ peo|Ae dhey 
 yr&e — very upiteresling people,^ and I Ifaink tit 
 them BO often^ in such queer pfiuSesj because one 
 '«nll never se& them again, never know what; 
 iiappened next They wanted to leave Hob hottctK 
 because they wanted to dbauge their style oC 
 furniture, so he sakl, and he was in prooeBaof 
 flaying that in his opiiuoa art should mtve ideaa 
 bdbind it when we were torn asunder, as one » 
 torn £rom the old lady about to pour out tea and 
 ■Qis young man about to hit the tramis ball in tibe 
 back garden of the suburban villa as one rusfaee 
 past in the train. 
 
 But' as iov that mark, I'm not sure about it f 
 I don't believe it was made by a nail after all ; 
 it's too big, too round, for that. I mi^t get ufK 
 but if I &A up and looked at it, ten to one J 
 shoxildn't be able to say for certain ; because onoe 
 a tlung's done, no one ever knows how it 
 bapp^ed. dear me, the mystray of life I 
 The inaccuracy of thought ! liie ignorance of 
 bunranity ! To show how very little control of 
 our possessions we have-^wliat an aoeidental 
 
 80 
 
The Mark on the WeH* 
 
 «fitir this living ie after all our civUizatioiif-^^Ieft 
 me just count over a few o£ the tUngs lost 'm 
 <ms Me&oaR, b^nmng, fen* that seems always the 
 most mysterious o£ losses-~-what cat wouM gnaw, 
 what rat woidd nibble— ^hree psAe blue caonterB 
 <dt book-binding tools ? Then there were the 
 ]^d cages, the iron hoops, ih.e sted skates, the 
 <^een Anne ooal'scuttle, the bagatelle board, the 
 Imnd oargan-^all g(»ie, and jewels too. (Xpale 
 «(id emeraMs,, they lie about tlie roots of tnnups« 
 What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure I 
 The wonder is that I've any clothes on my bac&> 
 iibat I eit surrounded by solid furniture at this 
 moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to 
 4Bything, one must liken it to bemg bbwn 
 ' through the Tube at fifty miles an hour — ^landing 
 «t the otiber end without a single hairpin in one's 
 fatar I Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked I 
 Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel mea- 
 ^ws like brown paper parcels pitched down a 
 ^hoot in the post office ! With one's hair flying 
 iMck like the tail of a raoe-horse. Xes, that 
 ^erans to express the ramdity of life, the perpetual 
 waste and repair ; au so casual, all so hap- 
 hazard. 
 
 But after life. The slow pulling down of 
 
 thick green stalks so that the cup of the flower, 
 
 ^a£ it turns over, deluges one with purple and 
 
 • red light. Why, after all, should one not be 
 
 l)om there as one is bc^n here, helpless, speechless, 
 
 81 
 
The Mark on the Wall. 
 
 unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the^ 
 roots o£ the grass, at the toes of the Giants ,? As 
 for saying which are trees, and. which are men 
 and women, or whether . there are such thingB, 
 that one won't be in a condition to do for fifty 
 years or So. There will be nothing but spaces df" 
 Hght and darkj intersected by thick stalks, and 
 rather higher up perhaps, rose-shaped blots of [ 
 an indistinct colour — dim pinks and blues — \ 
 which wiU, as time goes on, become more definite,! 
 become — I don't know what. ... ' 
 
 And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at 
 gdl. It may even be caused by some round black 
 substa^ce, such as a small rose leaf, left over from 
 the summer, and I, not being a very vigilant 
 housekeeper — look at the dust on the mantelpiece, 
 for example, the dust which, so they say, buried- 
 Troy three times over, only fragments of pots 
 utterly refusing annihilation, as one can believe. 
 
 The tree outside the window taps very gently^ 
 on the pane, ... I want to think quietly, 
 calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never- 
 j to have to rise from my chair, to sUp easily from 
 ! one thing to another, without any sense of 
 I hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper arid 
 deeper, away from the surface, with its hard 
 separate facts. To steady myself, let me catch 
 hold of the first idea that passes. . . . Shakes- 
 peare. . . Well, he will do as well as another.. 
 A man who sat himself solidly in an tmn-chair. 
 
The Mark on the Wall. 
 
 •=and looked into the fire, so — A shower o£ 
 ideas fell perpetually from scane very high Heaven 
 down through his mind. He leant his for^ead 
 -on his hand, and people, looking in through the 
 •open door, — ^£or this scene is supposed to take 
 rplace on a summer's evening, — But how dnU this 
 is, this historical fiction ! It doesn't interest me 
 at alL I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track 
 
 . -of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit 
 upon myself, for those are the pleasantest 
 thoughts^ and very frequent even in the minds of 
 modest mouse-coloured people, who believe gen- 
 uinely that they dislike to hear their own praises. 
 
 / They are not thoughts directly praising oneself ; 
 -tiiat is the beauty of them ; they are thoughts 
 Jike this : 
 
 " And then I came into the room. They were 
 •Kiliscusshig botany. I said how I'd seen a flower 
 growing on a dust heap on the site of an old 
 iouse in Kingsway. The seed, I said, must have 
 vbeen sown in the reign of Charles the First. 
 What flowers grew in the reign of Charles the 
 First ? " I asked — (but I don't remember the 
 -answer). Tall flowers with purple tassels to 
 Ahem perhaps. And so it goes on. All the time 
 I'm dressing up the figure of myself in my own 
 mind, lovingly, stealtMy, not openly adoring it, 
 for if I did that, I should catch myself out, and 
 jsfretch my hand at once for a book in aelf- 
 m-otection. Indeed, it is curious how instinctively 
 
 83 
 
The Mark on the Wall 
 
 one protects the image of oneself frcon idoktiy 
 or any other handling that could make it ridicu- 
 lous, or too unlike the original to be believed in 
 any longer. Or is it not so very curious after 
 all ? It is a matter of great- importance. Sup- 
 pose the looking glass emashes, the image 
 disappears, and me romantic figure with the 
 green of forest depths all about it is there n€ 
 longer, but only that shell of a person which i» 
 seen by other people — ^what an airless, shallow, 
 bald, prominent world it becomes I A world not 
 to be lived_in. As we face each other in omni- 
 buses and underground railways we are looking 
 into the mirror ; that accounts for the vagueness,, 
 the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes. And the 
 novelists in future will realize more and more the; 
 importance of these reflections, for of course there 
 is not one reflection but an almost infinite 
 number ; those are the depths they will explore,," 
 those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the 
 description of reality more and more out of their 
 stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted, as 
 the G-reeks did and Shakespeare perhaps — hv^ 
 these generalizations are very worthless. The 
 military sojand of the word is enough. It recalls 
 leading articles, cabinet ministers — a whole class 
 of things indeed which as a child one thought 
 the thing itself, the standard thing, the real 
 lluBg, from which one could not depart save at 
 the risk of nameless damnation. Generalizations- 
 
 84 
 
The Marl on the Wall, 
 
 fcrii^ back somehow Sunday in London, Sunday 
 afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons, and also 
 ways of speaking of the dead, clothes, and 
 habits — ^like the habit of sitting aU together in 
 one room until a certain hour, although nobody 
 liked it. There was a rule for everything. The 
 fuleior tablecloths at that particular period was 
 that they should be made of tapestry with little 
 yellow compartments marked upon them, such as 
 you may see in photographs of the carpets in the 
 corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a 
 dofEerent kind were not real tablecloths. How 
 shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to 
 discover that these real things, Sunday luncheons, 
 Sunday walks, country houses, and tablecloths 
 were not entirely real, were indeed half phantoms, 
 and the damnation which visited the disbeliever 
 in them was only a sense of ille^timate freedom. 
 What now takes the place of those things I 
 wonder, those real standard things ? Men per- 
 haps, should you be a woman ; the masculine 
 point of view which governs our lives, which 
 sets the standard, which establishes Whitaker's 
 Table of Precedency, which has become, I sup- 
 pose, since the war half a phantom to many 
 men and women, which soon, one may hope, 
 will be laughed into the dustbin where 
 the phantoms go, the mahogany sideboards 
 and the Landseer prints, Gods and Devils, 
 Hell and so forth, leaving us all with an intox- 
 
 85 
 
The Mark on the Wall. 
 
 icating sense o£ illegitimate freedom — i£ freedom 
 ■exists. . ... 
 
 In certain lights that mark on the wall seems 
 sictually to project from the wall. Nor is it 
 ■entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it seems 
 to cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if I 
 ran my finger down that strip of the wall it 
 would!, at a certain point, mount and descend a 
 small tumulus, a smooth tumulus like those 
 barrows on the South Downs which are, they 
 say, either tombs or camps. Of the two I dK)uld 
 prefer them to be tombs, desiring melancholy like 
 most English people, and finding it natural at the 
 end of a walk to think of the bones stretched 
 beneath the turf. ... . There must be some 
 book about it. Some antiquary must have dug 
 up those bones and given tiem a name. . . . 
 What sort of a man is an antiquary, I wonder ? 
 fietired Colonels for the most part, I daresay, 
 leading parties of aged labourers to the top here, 
 examining clods of earth and stone, and getting 
 into correspondence with the ndghbouring dergv, 
 which, being opened at breakfast time, gives them 
 a feeling of importance, and the comparison of 
 arrow-heads necessitates cross-country journeys 
 to the coimty towns, an agreeable necessity both 
 to them and to their elderly wives, who wish to 
 make plum jam or to clean out the study, and 
 have every reason for keeping that great questioil 
 of the camp or the tomb in perpetual suspension, 
 
 86 
 
The Mark on the WalL 
 
 while the Colonel himself feels- agreeably philo-, 
 sophic in accumulating evidence on both sides of- 
 the question. It is true that he does finally in- 
 cline to beheve in the Camp ; and, being opposed,, 
 indites a pamphlet which he is about to read at 
 the quarterly meeting o£ the local society when a 
 stroke lays him low, and his last conscious thoughts 
 are not of wife or child, but of the camp and that' 
 arrowhead there, which is now in the case at thef 
 local museum, together with the foot of a Chinese' 
 murderess, a handful of Ehzabethan nails, a 
 great many Tudor clay pipes, a piece of Roman 
 pottery, ' and the wine-glass that Nelson drank 
 out of — proving I really don't know what.. 
 
 No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. 
 And if I were to get up at this very moment and 
 ascertain that the mark on the waU\sreaUy — 
 what shall we say ? — the head of a gi^Htirold 
 nail, driven in two hundred years ago, which has 
 now, owing to the patient attrition of many 
 generations of housemaids, revealed its head above 
 the coat of paint, and is taking its first view of 
 modern fife in the sight of a white-walled fire-Ht 
 room, what shovild I gain ?— Knowledge ? 
 Matter for further speculation ? I can think 
 sitting still as well as standing up. And what 
 is knowledge ? What ai-e our learned men save 
 the descendants of witches and hermits wha 
 crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, 
 interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the 
 
The Mark on the Wall. 
 
 language 6i the fitare ? Aa4 the less we hoiunfr 
 tl^ as our superstitions dwindle and^onr re^MCt 
 tor beaut; and health ci mind increases. . . . 
 Tes, one could imagine a very pleasant wcvld 
 A quiet spacious world, with the flowa>s so red 
 and hhie in the op^ fields. A world without 
 professors or specialists or house-keepers wi^ 
 the profiles of polioemen, a world which one could 
 dke with ones thought as a fish slices the water 
 with his fin, grazing tiie stems o£ the water-lilica^ 
 hanging suspended over nests of white sea 
 €ggs. . , . How peaceful it is down ha«, rooted 
 in the centre of the world and gazing up through 
 the gray waters, with thdr sudden gleams of 
 light, and thdr reflections-~If it were not for 
 wnitaker's Ahnanadc-^if it were not for tiie TaUe 
 <£ Precedency I 
 
 I must jump up and see f ^ mysdf what tiiat 
 mark on tihe wall really Is— a nail, a rose-leaf, a 
 crack in the wood ? 
 
 Here is Nature onoe more at her old game of 
 aelf-preservgbtion. This/train of thought, she 
 percaves, is l^reatening mere waste of energy^ 
 even some collision with reality, for who wSf 
 ever be able to lift a finger against Whitaker^s 
 Table of Precedency ? The Archbishcm of 
 Canterbury is followed by the Lord High 
 Chancellor ; the Lord High Chancellor is followed 
 by the Archbishop of York. Evoybcdy follows 
 somebody, sudi is the tMoeophy of Whitaker ; 
 
 88 
 
The Mark m the Wa^, 
 
 •nd the great thing is to know who foUows 
 wiiom. Whitaker jknowa, and let that, so Nature 
 counsels, wmt<xet yo\i, instead of enraging you j 
 and i£ you can't be comforted, i£ you must shatter 
 tbis hour o£ peace, think of the mark on the 
 waU, 
 
 I understand Nature's game — ^her prompting 
 to take action as a way of raiding any thought 
 that tJireatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I 
 suppose, comes our slight amtWpt for men of 
 a0tion-~mesn, we assume, who don't think. Still, 
 th^^'s no harm in putting a full stop to one's 
 dkiagreeable tliQUghts by looking at a mark on 
 the wall. 
 
 Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon 
 1% I feel Itot I have grasped a pl^nk in the sea ; 
 I fed a satisfying^sense of reality which at once 
 turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High 
 Chancellor to ttie shadows ctf shades. Here is 
 aemething definite, something reaL Thus, wak- 
 ing from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily 
 turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping 
 the chest of drawers, worslnppmg soiidity, wor- 
 shipping reality, worshipping the impersonal 
 world which is a proof oi some existence other 
 tfcin ours. That is what one wants to he sure 
 of . . . • Wood is a pleasant thing to think 
 about. It comes from a tree; and trees grow, 
 and we don't know how they grow. For years 
 and years they grow, without paying any atten- 
 
 8.9 
 
(The Mark on the Wall. 
 
 tion to us, in meadows, in forests, and by thfe 
 side o£ rivers— all things one likes to think about. 
 The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot 
 iafternooris; they painit rivers so green that when 
 a moorhen dives one expects to see its feath^s 
 all green when it comes up again. I like to 
 think of the fish balanced against the stream like 
 flags blown out ; and of water ^beetles slowly 
 raising domes of mud upon the bed of the river. 
 ( I like to think of the tree itself :' first the close 
 ' dry sensation of being wood ; then the grirlding 
 I of the storm ; then the slow, delicious ooze of 
 I sap. I like to think of it, too, on winter's nights 
 ^ standing in the empty field with all leaves close- 
 furled, nothing tender exposed to the iron bullets 
 of the moon, a naked mast upon an earth that goes 
 tumbling, txmibling, all night long. The song of 
 birds must sound very loud and strange in June; 
 and how cold the feet of insects must feel upon 
 it, as they make laborious progresses up the 
 creases of the bark, or sun themselves upon the 
 thin green awning of the leaves, and look straight 
 in front of them with diamond-cut red eyes. . . . 
 One by one the fibres snap beneath the immense 
 cold pressure of the earth, then the last storm 
 comes and, falling, the highest branches drive 
 deep into the ground again. Even so, fife isn't \ 
 done with; there are a million patient, watchful ' 
 lives still for a tree, all over the world, in bed- \ 
 rooms, in ships, on the pavement, lining rooms 
 
 90 
 
The Mark on the WalL 
 
 where men and women sit after tea, smoking 
 cigarettes. It is full of peaceful thoughts, happy 
 thoughts, this tree. I should like to take each 
 one separately — ^but something is getting in the. 
 way. . . . Where was I ? What has it all ; 
 been about ? A tree ? A river ? The Downs ? ! 
 Whitaker's Almanack? The fields of asphodel? I 
 can't remember a thing. Everything's moving, 
 falling, slipping, vanishing. . . . There is a 
 vast upheaval of matter. Someone is standing 
 over me and saying — 
 
 " I'm going out to buy a newspaper." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Though it's no good buying newspapers. . . . 
 Nothing ever happens. Curse this war ! God 
 danm l£is war ! . . . AU the same, I don't 
 see why we should have a snail on our waU." 
 
 Ah, the mark on the wall ! It^was a snail. 
 
 91 
 
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