Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 33
KIT'S passionate progress was a very rapid one.
Ingeniously learning, no matter how, that Molly Pentreath went daily to her club and drank China tea, and that the path she chose lay through Hyde Park, he became a loiterer when his work allowed him to loiter.
But not as a suppliant. How the fierceness came upon him was beyond his comprehension, nor did he attempt to comprehend it when the leaves were showing, and the gilliflowers were smelling, and even those London trees splintered the sun's lances on shields of green. If Sorrell had shown a fierceness in his struggles with the luggage, his son showed an equal fierceness in this love affair.
As Molly wrote of him in her diary—"No 'if you please' at all. Came striding down on me like a young Berserker; eyes all blue north wind and sea scud. All that he, needed was redressing, a winged helmet, a hauberk, a shield, and a sword. Anyway—you know where you are with him."
She did, and she did not—but that was to be a subsequent discovery. For to feel convinced that you are ten years ahead of the most advanced of your contemporaries, and not to allow that yau are also the child of your hotblooded and ancestral past is to challenge complexities—the most modern of problems, how to eat your cake and have it. Kit disturbed her. She was supremely frank with herself over the sex-reaction as she called it.
She met him too with a level-eyed fearlessness. No feminine tricks. He wanted her and she knew it; the apple was nothing but an apple. He was waylaying her almost daily, and she took no trouble to avoid him; she sailed her ship on the same course, and when his Viking galley came surging down on her she gave him battle. For it was a battle, Norseman and Southern woman, as far apart as their seas, looking at life with different eyes, and asking quite different things of it. Even the language each spoke had a strangeness for the other. Kit's directness was a hurtling spear; she, with an almost equal directness, put up an implacable bright shield, and thrust from behind it with a sword. She was infinitely more clever than he was, swifter, more temperamental, more subtle. He made her think of a big, strong, blundering, generous thing, poignantly male, capable of supreme tendernesses and of exasperating exactions. It was not that he was obvious, or that there were whole spaces of life that he did not understand, mere lacune in the male brain. He understood a part of her only too well. The trouble was that he did not or would not understand the part of her that mattered to herself.
"What do you want with that shop?"
She told him.
"Independence."
"But with your books. You are much better off than I am. A flat in town—and a bungalow at Marley."
"You interfering devil."
Interference may be flattering, but there were times when she lost her temper with him, or pretended to lose it, and said things to him that she thought were unforgivable. And he had a way of turning rather white, and of smiling at her, and of betraying to her another side of himself. If she hurt him he would not show it.
"Well—if I do interfere, it's because I care rather damnably—and you know it."
"Does caring give you the right to talk like a bishop?"
"Your view of life and mine don't tally."
"Well—well! You missionary! Take Bibles to the Chinese. Do you think I am to correct my way of life?"
"Molly!"
"Be quiet. The old bird in the cage idea. What an obsolete creature you are—my dear."
"I'm old fashioned."
"Don't say that. It's such humbug."
"I can't help it. Besides, it isn't humbug. Nobody in these days says 'I love you.' Why is it? Are we too squeamish, and self conscious and self critical? Or is it betause we don't believe?"
"I don't believe."
"No?"
"Exaggerating an incident. O, you know what wicked rot the whole thing is. And do you think I am not keen on myself? I adore myself and my work and my ambition, and success and the money I make. It is the breath in my nostrils. And you want me to fold my wings"
"I don't."
"Demure wings—and think about dear little children. Little beasts! Can't you understand that I won't give up my liberty; I wouldn't, even if I cared."
"You don't care?"
"No."
There were pauses in the struggle, when both of them drew apart, a little out of breath, and she would not see him for a week, and when she had not seen him for seven days she would want to see him. Molly liked combat, the adventure of the thing, this passionate game with a man who was so very much in earnest. She had not said "Come hither"—and it was he who attacked, and so the responsibility of it was more his than hers. She had no thought of surrendering as Kit understood surrender, for the whole urge of her strong young nature was against the old time ties. She both loathed and despised them. Antiquated tyrannies and limitations!
She was free, and freedom is the most precious possession, the very crown of living, and Molly Pentreath had crowned herself. Moreover, she loved her work, her own particular job as much as Kit loved his. She expressed herself in it, just as the duller sort of woman expresses herself in her children. She had an audacity, an independence of mind that demanded a relationship that should leave her free, should she ever consent to give that part of herself to a man. It was not that she was cold. She had ardour, and also a fierce fastidiousness, but she refused to see in sex anything but an incident, and woman's fate had been to have this incident imposed upon her in the form of a permanent bondage. To Molly the idea of marriage as a career was so obsolete that Kit's wilful blindness to what was so obvious tended to make her impatient.
But his persistence and his staying power were equally obvious. He appeared to her as the born husband, a man capable of giving great happiness to a gentler type of woman. His duty was to fall in love with a dormouse, or some easy, clinging creature to whom his square virility would always seem splendid and final. Her own cleverness would always be knocking against the corners of his robust and rather simple stability. He was like a fine piece of furniture, good oak, lasting; and her mobile temperament revolted from the idea of being shut up in an oak cupboard. She preferred lacquer, something lighter and less solemn.
Their affair grew almost grim. He walked into her shop one afternoon at the very moment when she and Mr. Oscar Wolffe were making merry over some new Paris frocks. In fact she was trying them on, disappearing into the ivory-painted fitting-room, and emerging with mischievous frivolity. Wolffe sat on a stool with a sleek smirk on his formless face, and his clever little coffee-berry eyes glimmering. There was very little that Wolffe did not know. His broad and pulpy nose was a very organ of sophistication. His ugliness and his air of pallid sagacity were attractive; he understood the finer, decadent shades; he knew at once what was wrong with a dress. Nothing shocked him. He had the whole Monte Carlo culture vibrant in the tips of his thick but sensitive fingers. He made you laugh, and he made a lot of money.
One moment they were alone, delicately fooling,—and then Kit was there with a face like a white squall. Always this Mr. Oscar Wolffe had been stormily sinister in the back of Kit's mind, but he had never spoken of him to Molly. His interference had not gone quite so far.
Molly introduced them. They nodded at each other, Wolffe slyly secure on his stool and looking upwards with whimsical solemnity at Kit's stiff face.
"Interested in frocks?"
Kit was not interested in frocks. He was chiefly conscious of that solemn, pudgy countenance, so sagacious, so enigmatic. He divined the smile at the back of it, the ironical attention of the worldling who was pleasantly amused.
"I have tickets for the Haymarket to-night. Can you come?"
He turned squarely to Molly, interposing himself between her and the man on the stool.
"Afraid not."
"Oh, all right. Thought you might be able to. Just turned in to see."
He went out abruptly with the same fierce white face, ignoring Mr. Oscar and leaving that Paris atmosphere disturbed as by a rush of north-east wind. Wolffe glanced quizzically at the door.
"What a draughty fellow! Wanted to blow me out into the street."
Molly was looking at herself in a long mirror, not because she was interested in her reflection, but because she had realized the hidden violence of Kit's coming and going. Also, Wolffe's flat and watchful face was an embarrassment, like a full moon shining suddenly upon unsuspected emotions. She had not wanted these two men to meet. Each of them symbolized a part of her incompatible impulses and cynicisms. With little body movements she appraised the hang of the dress.
"A little too—rigid."
"Not enough flow for you. That young man ought to wear cast-iron trousers."
"Oh, he has his virtues."
"Not very flexible—I think. Reinforced concrete."
"No, not rubber."
She looked into the mirror with hard eyes. She was thinking that in half an hour she would be walking to her club, and that if she went through the park—and alone. Yes, probably. One of those Norse onslaughts. She might fake Oscar with her and interpose him fie a big mite pillow. But—then—did she want him interposed? So flabby and flexible and so sophisticated! A man who understood everything, and condoned everything. No passionate rage. All very well as a judge of frocks and as a playfully cynical sleeping-partner. But on the North Sea, with ice about, and a wind blowing, and a man on the prow of a ship omer a live sword in fie eyes.
No; she would go alone.
And so she went.
He was waiting for her inside the Grosvenor Gate, on the other side of the road, sitting on a green chair, leaning forward with a stick fomecen his knees. Yes, like a man with his hands on the pommel of a sword. He came across to her, passing almost directly in front of the nose of a big car.
He looked extraordinarily serious, not angry now—but serious.
"What—exactly—is that fellow's business?"
Interference with a vengeance!
"Oscar? Oh, Oscar is an insurance broker."
"You know what I mean. What is his position with regard to—your business?"
Each spoke with nice precision and restrained distinctness, faces turned full south.
"He financed it. He is half 'Salome';—whichever half you please."
"I see. He found the money?"
"Exactly?"
"And—what—precisely—does he?"
He had gone too far, and she answered him with sudden, extraordinary fierceness.
"How dare you? Caddishness. Have I to explain my interior motives—because—you"
"Sorry," he said, with eyes of frank distress. "You are right. That was caddish of me. I'm sorry. But I do hate; I think I'm a little mad"
She seemed relentless.
"Indeed! That a man—you—should ask me such a question! If I choose to have an affair—what business is it?"
"Molly!"
"Well?"
"Don't mock me. Don't pretend. You—you couldn't make such"
"Is it any business of yours?"
"My dear, it is. I can't help it. I love you."
She walked on for some way in a still white silence. "Those old words! And the same old-man-of-the-sea meaning! You Gulliver, you Gulliver!"
There followed an interlude, marked in Kit by an impulse towards humility. He wrote and apologized. "I'm sorry I behaved like a cad, and I have no excuses to offer. When may I see you again?" His letter came to her at a moment when she was standing between yesterday and to-morrow, at the summit of a little hill of restlessness towards which she had long been climbing. Decisions sometimes seem to happen of themselves, or a mood puts on the clothes of a considered purpose, only to find that it was nothing but the shadow of that very purpose.
The shop in Taunton Street had begun to bore her; it had become superfluous, for the success of her books had made her independent of it; also it absorbed too much time. She was finding herself a very busy young woman, in the public eye. Editors approached her, asking for articles and stories; her views upon the topics of the day had social value; her agents were suggesting that she should lecture, and the more provocatively—the better. She had found her career; her work fascinated her. As for "Salome's," it had been a piece of mischief, an adventure, a testing of her wits, and now she was ready to be rid of it.
And Mr. Oscar Wolffe? On the peak of her little hill she discovered with a self-questioning surprise that she no longer needed Mr. Wolffe. It was not that he bored her; rather was it that he had lost his significance. He had become frog-like, cold, and his humorous croakings vaguely irritated her. He suggested a white fog through which an urgent sun was beginning to shine. Clammy. Yes, he was clever and clammy. Their relationship had been a mere flirtatious, financial jest. He had expected more of it, as a discreet and sagacious worldling, always appearing perfectly dressed in an easy understanding, in no hurry to grab at his bone.
She decided to sell her share of the business. It was a paying concern and Mr. Wolffe could dispose of his portion of "Salome," head or bust or legs, whatever he chose to call it. As usual he would have made money. There would be no obligation, and over that she smiled a little cynical smile. Bad luck for Mr. Wolffe! She had been tactlessly successful. There should have been little difficulties, calls for additional cash, and therefore additional but unpressed calls upon her complicity. She had entered the affair with her eyes wide open, and she would leave it with them still more widely open, and wholly unabashed.
Incidentally she wrote to Kit, a letter that in the old days might have been described as sisterly. She said nothing of the change in her plans.
"It seems difficult for you to realize that a domestic partnership does not enter into my scheme of things. That's to say—if I ever cared. I am just as keen on my work as you are. I suppose it is not easy for a man to get past his ancestral prejudices and to understand that there are women nowadays who wish to be themselves. I mean—to be myself, always and everywhere. I wish to remain free. Cannot you understand that? And my love of my job, and my revolt against interference, especially against that particular form of interference that has made individual creative work impossible for women? The sexual servitude, for it is a servitude, argue as you please.
"Therefore, dear man, I advise you to eliminate me. I am a Vestal. I suppose that I ought to feel flattered. But why should I feel flattered because certain physical trixies of mine happen to pique you?
"I am not your kind of woman. I am not the sort of woman who could make you happy, for—in spite of the philosophers—we do live for happiness, though its forms differ. You need someone gentler than I am, someone more easily pleased. I get so fiercely bored, and so quickly. I must be moving, chasing moods, and putting them on paper.
"Take off your hat nicely and say good-bye, and in twelve months you will be wondering what on earth you saw in me."
Yet, her curiosity remained alive after the ending of that letter. She had made it sound so final, and yet she knew that there is no finality in anything, but merely repetition. She was centuries older than Christopher, who was in the stage of seeing finality everywhere, in love and marriage and work, and in those solid results that we call progress. How would he react? Would he accept her decision as Mr. Oscar Wolffe had accepted the decease of "Salome" With a sort of humorous shrug of the shoulders? She thought not.
She did not see Christopher or hear from him for a fortnight. She should have guessed that her lover had been to Chelsea, and that women—mothering women—pass on ood news to their adopted children.
"Molly has decided to sell that business. You see, her books matter. She is the rage."
And Kit had walked back from Chelsea with a glow of homage towards his lady. Magnanimous of her—that! After the way he had spoken! It must mean—it could only mean! No, damn it, he was no prig to feel sleek and self important about it, but the event had a significance. Yes, she was big.
He wrote his letter, and when Molly read it she felt an immense desire to slap him.
"Dear Molly,—I'm sorry, but I remain in chains. Won't you leave me the possible chance of a compromise? Let these twelve months elapse, and let us see what sort of prophetess you are.
"I hear that 'Salome' is dead, or transferring herself to other owners. I can't help feeling glad, because you are so much finer than you will allow."
"She dashed off a hot reply.
"Dear Kit,—Go and be damned. Salome has gone because she bored me. And because my real work is the one and only thing. Man has no spoon in my porridge plate.—Yours—with utter sincerity,
"Molly Pentreath."