‘But the view’s still lovelier from the temple,’ said the little niece, who was evidently very anxious to make me realize the full pricelessness of her Aunt Lilian’s possessions.
Mrs. Aldwinkle turned on her. ‘How utterly thoughtless you are!’ she said severely. ‘Do try to remember that poor Mr. Chelifer is still suffering from the effects of his accident. And you expect him to go climbing up to the temple!’
The little niece blushed and drooped beneath the reproach. We sat down.
‘How are you feeling now?’ asked Mrs. Aldwinkle, remembering once more to be solicitous. . . . ‘Too appalling to think,’ she added, ‘how nearly . . . And I’ve always so enormously admired your work.’
‘So have I,’ declared my colleague in the green frock. ‘Most awfully. Still, I confess, I find some of your things a little, how shall I say, a little alembicated. I like my poetry to be rather straightforwarder.’
‘A very sophisticated desire,’ said the red-faced gentleman. ‘Really simple, primitive people like their poetry to be as complicated, conventional, artificial and remote from the language of everyday affairs as possible. We reproach the eighteenth century with its artificiality. But the fact is that Beowulf is couched in a diction fifty times more complicated and unnatural than that of the Essay on Man. And when you compare the Icelandic Sagas with Dr. Johnson, you find that it’s the Doctor who lisps and prattles. Only the most complicated people, living in the midst of the most artificial surroundings, desire their poetry to be simple and straightforward.’
I shut my eyes and allowed the waves of conversation to roll over me. And what a classy conversation! Prince Papadiamantopoulos could hardly have kept the ball rolling on a higher level. Fatigue was sobering me.
Fatigue, the body’s weariness—some industrious little scientific emmet ought to catalogue and measure all its various effects. All—for it isn’t enough to show that when wage-slaves have worked too long they tend to fall into the machines and get pulped. The fact is interesting, no doubt; but there are other facts of no less significance. There is the fact, for example, that slight fatigue increases our capacity for sentiment. Those compromising love letters are always written in the small hours; it is at night, not when we are fresh and reposed, that we talk about ideal love and indulge our griefs. Under the influence of slight fatigue we feel more ready than at other times to discuss the problems of the universe, to make confidences, to dogmatize about the nature of God and to draw up plans for the future. We are also inclined to be more languidly voluptuous. When, however, the fatigue is increased beyond a certain point, we cease entirely to be sentimental, voluptuous, metaphysical or confiding. We cease to be aware of anything but the decrepitude of our being. We take no further interest in other people or the outside world—no further interest unless they will not leave us in peace, when we come to hate them with a deep but ineffectual loathing, mingled with disgust.
With me, fatigue had almost suddenly passed the critical point. My convalescent’s delight in the world evaporated. My fellow beings no longer seemed to me beautiful, strange and amiable. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s attempts to bring me into the conversation exasperated me; when I looked at her, I thought her a monster. I realized, too late (which made the realization the more vexatious), what I had let myself in for when I accepted Mrs. Aldwinkle’s invitation. Fantastic surroundings, art, classy chats about the cosmos, the intelligentsia, love. . . . It was too much, even on a holiday.
I shut my eyes. Sometimes, when Mrs. Aldwinkle interpellated me, I said yes or no, without much regard to the sense of her remark. Discussion raged around me. From the alembication of my poetry they had gone on to art in general. Crikey, I said to myself, crikey. . . . I did my best to close the ears of my mind; and for some little time I did, indeed, contrive to understand nothing of what was said. I thought of Miss Carruthers, of Fluffy and Mr. Brimstone, of Gog’s Court and Mr. Bosk.
Mrs. Aldwinkle’s voice, raised by irritation to a peculiar loudness, made itself audible to my muffled mind. ‘How often have I told you, Cardan,’ it said, ‘that you understand nothing of modern art?’
‘At least a thousand times,’ Mr. Cardan replied cheerfully. ‘But bless your heart,’ he added (and I opened my eyes in time to see his benevolent smile), ‘I never mind at all.’
The smile was evidently too much for Mrs. Aldwinkle’s patience. With the gesture of a queen who implies that the audience is at an end she rose from her seat. ‘Just time,’ she said, looking at her watch, ‘there’s just time. I really must give Mr. Chelifer some idea of the inside of the palace before lunch. You’d like to come?’ She smiled at me like a siren.
Too polite to remind her of her recent outburst against the little niece, I declared myself delighted by the idea. Wamblingly I followed her into the house. Behind me I heard the young rower exclaiming on a note of mingled astonishment and indignation: ‘But a moment ago she was saying that Mr. Chelifer was too ill to . . .’
‘Ah, but that was different,’ said the voice of the red-faced man.
‘Why was it different?’
‘Because, my young friend, the other fellow is in all cases the rule; but I am invariably the exception. Shall we follow?’
Mrs. Aldwinkle made me look at painted ceilings till I almost fell down from giddiness. She dragged me through room after baroque room; then drove me up dark stairs into the Middle Ages. By the time we were back in the trecento I was so much exhausted that I could hardly stand. My knees trembled, I felt sick.
‘This is the old armoury,’ said Mrs. Aldwinkle with mounting enthusiasm. ‘And there are the stairs leading up to the tower.’ She pointed to a low archway, through which, in a dusty twilight, the bottom of a steep stair could be seen corkscrewing up to unknown heights. ‘There are two hundred and thirty-two steps,’ she added.
At this moment the gong for luncheon rumbled remotely from the other end of the huge empty house.
‘Thank God!’ said the red-faced man devoutly.
But our hostess, it was evident, had no feeling for punctuality. ‘What a bore!’ she exclaimed. ‘But never mind. We can make time. I wanted just to run up the tower before lunch. There’s such a wonderful bird’s-eye . . .’ She looked inquiringly round. ‘What do you think, all of you? Shouldn’t we just dash up? It won’t take a minute.’ She repeated the siren smile. ‘Do let’s. Do!’ And without waiting for the result of her plebiscite she walked rapidly towards the stairs.
I followed her. But before I had taken five steps, the floor, the walls of the room seemed to fade into the distance. There was a roaring in my ears. It grew suddenly dark. I felt myself falling. For the second time since breakfast I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was lying on the floor, with my head on Mrs. Aldwinkle’s knees; and she was dabbing my forehead with a wet sponge. The first objects of which I was aware were her bright blue eyes hanging over me, very close, very bright and alarming. ‘Poor fellow,’ she was saying, ‘poor fellow.’ Then, looking up, she shouted angrily to the owners of the various legs and skirts which I distinguished mistily to right and left of me: ‘Stand back, you must stand back! Do you want to suffocate the poor fellow?’
PART III, The Loves of the Parallels
CHAPTER I
Do all he could, Lord Hovenden had somehow found it impossible, these last few days, to get Irene for a moment to himself. The change had come about almost suddenly, just after that fellow Chelifer had made his appearance. Before he came, there had been a time—beginning, strangely enough, almost as suddenly as it had ended—a time of blissful happiness. Whenever during those days an opportunity for a tête-à-tête presented itself Irene had been always at hand and, what was more, always delighted to seize the opportunity. They had been for long walks together, they had swum together far out into the sea, sat together in the gardens, sometimes talking, sometimes silent; but very happy, whether they spoke or not. He had talked to her about motoring and dancing and shooting, and occasionally, feeling rather shamefaced and embarrassed by the disquieting gravity of the subject, about the working classes. And Irene had listened with pleasure to everything he said and had talked too. They found that they had many tastes in common.
It had been an enchantment while it lasted. And then, all at once, with the coming of that creature Chelifer, it all came to an end. Irene was never on the spot when opportunities offered, she never suggested spontaneously, as once or twice, during the heavenly time, she had actually done, that they should go for a walk together. She had no time to talk to him; her thoughts, it seemed, were elsewhere, as with grave and preoccupied face she hurried mysteriously about the palace and the gardens. With an extreme anguish of spirit Lord Hovenden observed that it was always in the direction of Chelifer that Irene seemed to be hurrying. Did he slip out unobtrusively into the garden after lunch, Irene was sure, a moment later, to slip out after him. When he
