Mary Olivier: a Life Part 62

"You don't mean to say you're still thinking of that man?"

"Not thinking exactly. Only wondering. Wondering what it was he hated so."

"You wouldn't wonder if you knew the sort of man he is. A man who could threaten you with his infidelity."

"He never threatened me."

"I suppose it was me he threatened, then."

"What did he say?"

"He said that if his wife didn't take care to please him there were other women who would."

"He ought to have said that to me. It was horrible of him to say it to you."

She didn't know why she felt that it was horrible.

"I can tell you _one_ thing," said her mother, as if she had not told her anything. "It was those books you read. That everlasting philosophy. He said it was answerable for the whole thing."

"Then it was the--_the whole thing_ he hated."

"I suppose so," her mother said, dismissing a matter of small interest.

"You'd better change that skirt if you're going with me to Mrs. Waugh's."

"Do you mind if I go for a walk instead?"

"Not if it makes you any more contented."

"It might. Are you sure you don't mind?"

"Oh, go along with you!"

Her mother was pleased. She was always pleased when she scored a point against philosophy.

III.

Mr. and Mrs. Belk were coming along High Row. She avoided them by turning down the narrow pa.s.sage into Mr. Horn's yard and the Back Lane. From the Back Lane you could get up through the fields to the school-house lane without seeing people.

She hated seeing them. They all thought the same thing: that you wanted Maurice Jourdain and that you were unhappy because you hadn't got him.

They thought it was awful of you. Mamma thought it was awful, like--like Aunt Charlotte wanting to marry the piano-tuner, or poor Jenny wanting to marry Mr. Spall.

Maurice Jourdain knew better than that. He knew you didn't want to marry him any more than he wanted to marry you. He nagged at you about your hair, about philosophy--she could hear his voice nag-nagging now as she went up the lane--he could nag worse than a woman, but he knew. _She_ knew. As far as she could see through the working of his dark mind, first he had cared for her, cared violently. Then he had not cared.

That would be because he cared for some other woman. There were two of them. The girl and the married woman. She felt no jealousy and no interest in them beyond wondering which of them it would be and what they would be like. There had been two Mary Oliviers; long-haired-- short-haired, and she had been jealous of the long-haired one. Jealous of herself.

There had been two Maurice Jourdains, the one who said, "I'll understand.

I'll never lose my temper"; the one with the crystal mind, s.h.i.+ning and flas.h.i.+ng, the mind like a big room filled from end to end with light. But he had never existed.

Maurice Jourdain was only a name. A name for intellectual beauty. You could love that. Love was "the cle-eansing _fi_-yer!" There was the love of the body and the love of the soul. Perhaps she had loved Maurice Jourdain with her soul and not with her body. No. She had _not_ loved him with her soul, either. Body and soul; soul and body. Spinoza said they were two aspects of the same thing. _What_ thing? Perhaps it was silly to ask what thing; it would be just body _and_ soul. Somebody talked about a soul dragging a corpse. Her body wasn't a corpse; it was strong and active; it could play games and jump; it could pick Dan up and carry him round the table; it could run a mile straight on end. It could excite itself with its own activity and strength. It dragged a corpse-like soul, dull and heavy; a soul that would never be excited again, never lift itself up again in any ecstasy.

If only he had let her alone. If only she could go back to her real life.

But she couldn't. She couldn't feel any more her sudden, secret happiness. Maurice Jourdain had driven it away. It had nothing to do with Maurice Jourdain. He ought not to have been able to take it from you.

She might go up to Karva Hill to look for it; but it would not be there.

She couldn't even remember what it had been like.

IV.

New Year's night. She was lying awake in her white cell.

She hated Maurice Jourdain. His wearily searching eyes made her restless.

His man's voice made her restless with its questions. "Do you know what it will be like--afterwards?" "Do you really want me?"

She didn't want him. But she wanted Somebody. Somebody. Somebody. He had left her with this ungovernable want.

Somebody. If you lay very still and shut your eyes he would come to you.

You would see him. You knew what he was like. He had Jimmy's body and Jimmy's face, and Mark's ways. He had the soul of Sh.e.l.ley and the mind of Spinoza and Immanuel Kant.

They talked to each other. Her reverie ran first into long, fascinating conversations about s.p.a.ce and Time and the Thing-in-itself, and the Transcendental Ego. He could tell you whether you were right or wrong; whether Substance and the Thing-in-itself were the same thing or different.

"Die--If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek." He wrote that.

He wrote all Sh.e.l.ley's poems except the bad ones. He wrote Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_. He could understand your wanting to know what the Thing-in-itself was. If by dying to-morrow, to-night, this minute, you could know what it was, you would be glad to die. Wouldn't you?

The world was built up in s.p.a.ce and Time. Time and s.p.a.ce were forms of thought--ways of thinking. If there was thinking there would be a thinker. Supposing--supposing the Transcendental Ego was the Thing-in-itself?

That was _his_ idea. She was content to let him have the best ones. You could keep him going for quite a long time that way before you got tired.

The nicest way of all, though, was not to be yourself, but to be him; to live his exciting, adventurous, dangerous life. Then you could raise an army and free Ireland from the English, and Armenia from the Turks. You could go away to beautiful golden cities, melting in suns.h.i.+ne. You could sail in the China Sea; you could get into Central Africa among savage people with queer, b.l.o.o.d.y G.o.ds. You could find out all sorts of things.

You were he, and at the same time you were yourself, going about with him. You loved him with a pa.s.sionate, self-immolating love. There wasn't room for both of you on the raft, you sat cramped up, huddled together.

Not enough hard tack. While he was sleeping you slipped off. A shark got you. It had a face like Dr. Charles. The lunatic was running after him like mad, with a revolver. You ran like mad. Morfe Bridge. When he raised his arm you jerked it up and the revolver went off into the air. The fire was between his bed and the door. It curled and broke along the floor like surf. You waded through it. You picked him up and carried him out as Sister Dora carried the corpses with the small-pox. A screw loose somewhere. A tap turned on. Your mind dribbled imbecilities.

She kicked. "I won't think. I won't think about it any more!"

Restlessness. It ached. It gnawed, stopping a minute, beginning again, only to be appeased by reverie, by the running tap.

Restlessness. That was desire. It must be.

Desire: imeros. Eros. There was the chorus in the Antigone:

"Eros anikate machan, Eros os en ktaemasi pipteis."

There was Swinburne:

"...swift and subtle and blind as a flame of fire, Before thee the laughter, behind thee the tears of desire."

There was the song Minna Acroyd sang at the Sutcliffes' party. "Sigh-ing and sad for des-ire of the bee." How could anybody sing such a silly song?