Book 1 — CHAPTER II (continued 2)

"No," he said reassuringly, "I'm not Irish. My people have been in Essex for hundreds of years. I'm afraid," he added, for so evident was it that most of her fellow-creatures had dealt cheatingly with her that decent people felt a special obligation to treat her honestly, "my grandmother was an O'Connor, but she was half French. Lord, what's that?"

It seemed as if a heavy sea was breaking on the back of the house as on a sea-wall. The gasolier trembled, the floor throbbed, the little goblin dwelling pulsated as if it were alarmed. Only the continued calm of Mrs. Melville at her knitting and the coarse threads of music running through the sound persuaded him that this riot was the result of some genial human activity.

"Oh, I suppose you notice it, being a stranger," said Mrs. Melville. "We hardly hear it now. You see, they've turned the Wesleyan Hall that backs on to the Square into a dancing-hall, and this is the grand noise they make with their feet. It's not a nice place. 'Gentlemen a shilling, ladies invited,' it says outside. Still, we don't complain, for the noise is nothing noticeable and it reduces the rent."

This was a masterpiece of circumstance. By nothing more than a thin wall which shook to music was this little home divided from a thick-aired place where ugly people lurched against each other lustfully; and yet it had been made an impregnable fort of loveliness and decency by this virtuous ageing woman, whose slight silliness was but a holy abstinence, a refusal to side with common sense because that was so often concerned in cruel decisions, by this girl who was so young that it seemed at the sight of her as if time had turned back again and earth rolled unstained by history, and so beautiful that it seemed as if henceforth eternity could frame nothing but happiness. The smile of Ellen had made a faery ring where heavy-footed dancers could not enter; her gravity had made a sanctuary as safe as any church crowned with a belfry and casketing the Host. And he, participating in the safety of the place, pitied the men behind the shaking wall, and all men over the world who had committed themselves to that search for pleasure which makes joy inaccessible. They had chosen frustration for their destiny. Because they desired some ecstasy that would lighten the leaden substance of life they turned to drunkenness, which did no more than jumble reality, steep the earth in aniline dyes, tinge the sunset with magenta. Because they desired love they sought out women who, although dedicated to sex, were sexually cancelled by repeated use, like postage-stamps on a much re-directed letter, who efficiently went through the form of passion, yet presented it so empty of all exaltation that their lovers left them feeling as if they were victims of a practical joke.

And here, not half a dozen yards from some of these seekers, was one who could bring to these desires a lovelier death than they would meet on the dirty bed of gratification or the hard pallet of renunciation. Because the untouched truth about her could give ecstasy one would not lose the power of seeing things as they are, and she made one forget the usual sexual story. Although she was formed for love and the intention of being her lover was now a fundamental part of him, she was so busy with her voice and body in playing quaint variations on the theme of herself that he did not mind how long might be the journey to their marriage. She was more interesting than any other person or thing in the world. She was going to have more interesting experiences; because her unique simplicity comprehended a wild impatience with lies she would have a claim on reality that would give her unprecedented wisdom. Now he could understand why saints in their narrow cells despise sinners as dull stay-at-homes.

And when she burst into the room again he saw that all he had been thinking about her was true. It might be that everybody else on earth would see her as nothing but a red-haired girl in an ill-fitting blue serge dress with an appalling tartan silk vest, but still it was true.

"Here you are," she said, "you put your name there." She bent over him as he wrote and wished she could put something on the form to show how magnificent he was and what a catch she had made for the movement.

Well, there was no possible excuse for staying any longer, and the poor old lady was yawning behind her knitting. He rose and said good-bye, wondering as he spoke how he could make his entrance here again and how he could break it to these women, who were like hardy secular nuns, that he came for love. If this had been a Spanish or a Cariocan mother and daughter how easy it would have been! The elder woman's eyes would have crackled brightly among her wrinkles and she would have looked at her daughter with the air of genial treachery which old women wear when they contrive a young girl's marriage, and she would have dropped some subtle hint at the next convenient assignation; and the girl herself would have stood by like a dark living scythe in the Latin attitude of modesty, very straight from the waist to the feet, but the shoulders bent as if to hide the bosom and the head bowed, mysteriously intimating that she knew nothing and yet could promise to submit to everything. But here was Mrs. Melville saying something quite vague about hoping that he would drop in if he was passing, and Ellen lifting to him a stubborn face that warned him there would be a thousand resistances to overcome before she would own herself a being accessible to passion. Yet this harsh inexpertness about life was the essence that made these people delightful to him. It was unreasonable, but it was true, that he adored them because they were difficult.

"Ellen, run out and light the hall gas for Mr. Yaverland." And from the courtesy in the tone and something gracious in Ellen's obedience he saw that they were too poor to keep the gas burning in the hall all the evening, and so the lighting of it ranked as a ceremonial for an honoured guest. They were dear people.

As he buttoned his oilskins to the chin while Ellen stood ready to open the front door he did not dare look at her because his stare would have been so fixed and bright. He set his eyes instead on the engravings, which for the most part represented Robert Burns as the Scotch like to picture their national poet, with hair sleek and slightly waved like the coat of a retriever hanging round a face oval and blank and sweet like a tea-biscuit.

"You seem to admire Burns," he said.

"Me? No, indeed. Those are my grandmother's pictures. I think nothing of the man. His intellectual content was miserably small."

"That's a proposition he never butted up against—"

"What?"

"A woman who said that his intellectual content was miserably small. You're one of Time's revenges...."

She didn't follow his little joke, although she smiled faintly with pleasure at being called a woman, because she was distressfully wondering if her reluctance to let him go was a premonition of some disaster that lurked for him outside. She so strangely wanted him to stay. She could actually have wound her arms about him, which was a queer enough thing to want to do, as if the feelers of some nightmare-crawling horned beast were twitching for him in the darkness beyond the door. This inordinate emotion must have some meaning, and it could have none other than that Great Granny Macleod had really had second sight, and she had inherited it; it was warning her that something dreadful was going to happen to him on his way to the hotel. "Well, if I see anything in the papers to-morrow morning about a big man being run down by a motor-car in the fog, I'll know there's something in the supernatural," said the cool elf that dwelt in her head. But agony transfixed her like an arrow because her thought reminded her that this glorious being whose eyes blazed with serenity as other people's eyes blaze only with rage, was susceptible to pain and would some day be subject to death.

"Good-night," he said. He did not know why her breath had failed and why she had raised her hand to her throat, but he knew that his presence was doing marvellous things to her, and he was sure that they were beautiful things, for everything that passed between them from now on till the end of time would be flawlessly beautiful. "Good-night," he said again, and stopped when he had gone a yard or two down the path simply that they might speak to each other again. "You must shut the door. You're letting in the rain and cold."

"No," she said dreamily, sleepily, and slowly closed the door.

He went on in the impatient mood of a man who has been secretly married and must leave his wife in a poor lodging until he can disclose his marriage.