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  “Have you got his shirt, ’Lizabeth?”

  Elizabeth turned without answering, though she strove to weep and behave as her mother-in-law expected. But she could not, she was silenced. She went into the kitchen and returned with the garment.

  “It is aired,” she said, grasping the cotton shirt here and there to try. She was almost ashamed to handle him; what right had she or anyone to lay hands on him; but her touch was humble on his body. It was hard work to clothe him. He was so heavy and inert. A terrible dread gripped her all the while: that he could be so heavy and utterly inert, unresponsive, apart. The horror of the distance between them was almost too much for her—it was so infinite a gap she must look across.

  At last it was finished. They covered him with a sheet and left him lying, with his face bound. And she fastened the door of the little parlour, lest the children should see what was lying there. Then, with peace sunk heavy on her heart, she went about making tidy the kitchen. She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate master. But from death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.

  New Eve and Old Adam

  1

  “After all,” she said, with a little laugh, “I can’t see it was so wonderful of you, to hurry home to me, if you are so cross when you do come.”

  “You would rather I stayed away?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You would rather I had stayed a day or two in Paris—or a night or two?”

  She burst into a jeering “pouf!” of laughter.

  “You!” she cried. “You and Parisian Nights’ Entertainments! What a fool you would look.”

  “Still,” he said, “I could try.”

  “You would!” she mocked. “You would go dribbling up to a woman—‘Please take me—my wife is so unkind to me’.”

  He drank his tea in silence. They had been married a year. They had married quickly, for love. And during the last three months there had gone on almost continuously that battle between them which so many married people fight, without knowing why. Now it had begun again. He felt the physical sickness rising in him. Somewhere down in his belly the big, feverish pulse began to beat, where was the inflamed place caused by the conflict between them.

  She was a beautiful woman of about thirty, fair, luxuriant, with proud shoulders and a face borne up by a fierce, native vitality. Her green eyes had a curious puzzled contraction just now. She sat leaning on the table against the tea-tray, absorbed. It was as if she battled with herself in him. Her green dress reflected in the silver, against the red of the firelight. Leaning abstractedly forward, she pulled some primroses from the bowl, and threaded them at intervals in the plait which bound round her head in the peasant fashion. So, with her little starred fillet of flowers, there was something of the Gretchen about her. But her eyes retained the curious half-smile.

  Suddenly her face lowered gloomily. She sank her beautiful arms, laying them on the table. Then she sat almost sullenly, as if she would not give in. She was looking away out of the window. With a quick movement she glanced down at her hands. She took off her wedding ring, reached to the bowl for a long flower-stalk, and shook the ring glittering round and round upon it, regarding the spinning gold, and spinning it as if she would spurn it. Yet there was something about her of a fretful, naughty child, as she did so.

  The man sat by the fire, tired, but tense. His body seemed so utterly still because of the tension in which it was held. His limbs, thin and vigorous, lay braced like a listening thing, always vivid for action, yet held perfectly still. His face was set and expressionless. The wife was all the time, in spite of herself, conscious of him: as if the cheek that was turned towards him had a sense which perceived him. They were both rendered elemental, like impersonal forces, by the battle and the suffering.

  She rose and went to the window. Their flat was the fourth, the top storey of a large house. Above the high-ridged, handsome red roof opposite was an assembly of telegraph wires, a square, squat framework, towards which hosts of wires sped from four directions, arriving in darkly sketched lines out of the white sky. High up, at a great height, a seagull sailed. There was a noise of traffic from the town beyond.

  Then, from behind the ridge of the house-roof opposite a man climbed up into the tower of wires, belted himself amid the netted sky, and began to work, absorbedly. Another man, half hidden by the roof-ridge, stretched up to him with a wire. The man in the sky reached down to receive it. The other, having delivered, sank out of sight. The solitary man worked absorbedly. Then he seemed drawn away from his task. He looked round, almost furtively, from his lonely height, the space pressing on him. His eyes met those of the beautiful woman who stood in her afternoon gown, with flowers in her hair, at the window.

  “I like you,” she said, in her normal voice.

  The husband in the darkening room with her looked round slowly and asked:

  “Whom do you like?”

  Receiving no answer, he resumed his tense stillness.

  She remained watching at the window, above the small, quiet street of large houses. The man, suspended there in the sky, looked across at her and she at him. The city was far below. Her eyes and his met across the lofty space. Then, crouching together again into his forgetfulness, he hid himself in his work. He would not look again. Presently he climbed down, and the tower of wires was empty against the sky.

  The woman glanced at the little park at the end of the clean, grey street. The diminished, dark-blue form of a soldier was seen passing between the green stretches of grass, his spurs giving the faintest glitter to his walk.

  Then she turned hesitating from the window, as if drawn by her husband. He was sitting still motionless, and detached from her, hard: held absolutely away from her by his will. She wavered, then went and crouched on the hearthrug at his feet, laying her head on his knee.

  “Don’t be horrid with me!” she pleaded, in a caressing, languid, impersonal voice.

  He shut his teeth hard, and his lips parted slightly with pain.

  “You know you love me,” she continued, in the same heavy, sing-song way.

  He breathed hard, but kept still.

  “Don’t you?” she said, slowly, and she put her arms round his waist, under his coat, drawing him to her. It was as if flames of fire were running under his skin.

  “I have never denied it,” he said, woodenly.

  “Yes,” she pleaded, in the same heavy, toneless voice. “Yes. You are always trying to deny it.” She was rubbing her cheek against his knee softly. Then she gave a little laugh, and shook her head. “But it’s no good.” She looked up at him. There was a curious light in her eyes, of subtle victory. “It’s no good, my love, is it?”

  His heart ran hot. He knew it was no good his trying to deny he loved her. But he saw her eyes, and his will remained set and hard. She looked away into the fire.

  “You hate it that you have to love me,” she said, in a pensive voice through which the triumph flickered faintly. “You hate it that you love me—and it is petty and mean of you. You hate it that you can’t stay away from me. You hate it that you had to hurry back to me from Paris.”

  Her voice had become again quite impersonal, as if she were talking to herself.

  “At any rate,” he said, “it is your triumph.”

  She gave a sudden, bitter-contemptuous laugh.

  “Ha!” she said. “What is triumph to me, you fool. You can have your triumph. I should be only too glad to give it you.”

  “And I to take it.”

  “Then take it,” she cried, in hostility. “I offer it you often enough.”

  “But you never mean to part with it.”

  “It is a lie. It is you, you, who are too paltry to take a woman. How often do I fling myself at you—!”

  “Then don’t—don’t—”

  “Ha—and if I don’t—I get nothing out of you. Self!—self!—that is all you are.”

  His face remained set and expressionless. She
looked up at him. Suddenly she drew him to her again, and hid her face against him.

  “Don’t kick me off, Pietro, when I come to you,” she pleaded.

  “You don’t come to me,” he answered stubbornly.

  She lifted her head a few inches away from him and seemed to listen, or to think.

  “What do I do then?” she asked, for the first time quietly.

  “You treat me as if I were a piece of cake, for you to eat when you wanted.”

  She rose from him with a mocking cry of scorn, that yet had something hollow in its sound.

  “Treat you like a piece of cake, do I!” she cried. “I, who have done all I have for you—!”

  There was a knock, and the maid entered with a telegram. He tore it open.

  “No answer,” he said, and the maid softly closed the door.

  “I suppose it is for you,” he said, bitingly, rising and handing her the slip of paper.

  She read it, laughed, then read it again, aloud:

  “ ‘Meet me Marble Arch 7.30—theatre—Richard.’ Who is Richard?” she asked, looking at her husband rather interested. He shook his head.

  “Nobody of mine,” he said. “Who is he?”

  “I haven’t the faintest notion,” she said, flippantly.

  “But,” and his eyes went bullying, “you must know.”

  She suddenly became quiet, and jeering, took up his challenge.

  “Why must I know?” she asked.

  “Because it isn’t for me, therefore it must be for you.”

  “And couldn’t it be for anybody else?” she sneered.

  “ ‘Moest, 14 Merrilies Street’,” he read, decisively.

  For a second she was puzzled into earnestness.

  “Pah, you fool,” she said, turning aside. “Think of your own friends,” and she flung the telegram away.

  “It is not for me,” he said, stiffly and finally.

  “Then it is for the man in the moon—I should think his name is Moest,” she added, with a pouf of laughter against him.

  “Do you mean to say you know nothing about it?” he asked.

  “ ‘Do you mean to say’,” she mocked, mouthing the words, and sneering. “Yes I do mean to say, poor little man.”

  He suddenly went hard with disgust.

  “Then I simply don’t believe you,” he said coldly.

  “Oh—don’t you believe me,” she jeered, mocking the touch of sententiousness in his voice. “What a calamity—the poor man doesn’t believe!”

  “It couldn’t possibly be any acquaintance of mine—” he said slowly.

  “Then hold your tongue,” she cried harshly. “I’ve heard enough of it.”

  He was silent, and soon she went out of the room. In a few minutes he heard her in the drawing-room, improvising furiously. It was a sound that maddened him; something yearning, yearning, striving, and something perverse, that counteracted the yearning. Her music was always working up towards a certain culmination, but never reaching it, falling away in a jangle. How he hated it. He lit a cigarette, and went across to the side board for whisky and soda. Then she began to sing. She had a good voice, but she could not keep time. As a rule it made his heart warm with tenderness for her, hearing her ramble through the songs in her own fashion, making Brahms sound so different by altering all his time. But today he hated her for it. Why the devil couldn’t she submit to the natural laws of the stuff!

  In about fifteen minutes she entered laughing. She laughed as she closed the door, and as she came to him where he sat.

  “Oh,” she said, “you silly thing, you silly thing! Aren’t you a stupid clown?”

  She crouched between his knees and put her arms round him. She was smiling into his face, her green eyes, looking into his, were bright and wide. But somewhere in them, as he looked back, was a little twist that could not come loose to him, a little cast, that was like an aversion from him, a strain of hate for him. The hot waves of blood flushed over his body, and his heart seemed to dissolve under her caresses. But at last, after many months, he knew her well enough. He knew that curious little strain in her eyes, which was waiting for him to submit to her, and then would spurn him again. He resisted her while ever it was there.

  “Why don’t you let yourself love me?” she asked, pleading, but a touch of mockery in her voice. His jaw set hard.

  “Is it because you are afraid?”

  He heard the slight sneer.

  “Of what?” he asked.

  “Afraid to trust yourself?”

  There was silence. It made him furious that she could sit there caressing him and yet sneer at him.

  “What have I done with myself?” he asked.

  “Carefully saved yourself from giving all to me, for fear you might lose something.”

  “Why should I lose anything?” he asked.

  And they were both silent. She rose at last and went away from him to get a cigarette. The silver box flashed red with firelight in her hands. She struck a match, bungled, threw the stick aside, lit another.

  “What did you come running back for?” she asked, insolently, talking with half-shut lips because of the cigarette. “I told you I wanted peace—I’ve had none for a year. And for the last three months you’ve done nothing but try to destroy me.”

  “You have not gone frail on it,” he answered sarcastically.

  “Nevertheless,” she said, “I am ill inside me. I am sick of you—sick. You make an eternal demand, and you give nothing back. You leave one empty.” She puffed the cigarette in feminine fashion, then suddenly she struck her forehead with a wild gesture. “I have a ghastly, empty feeling in my head,” she said. “I feel I simply must have rest—I must.”

  The rage went through his veins like flame.

  “From your labours?” he asked, sarcastically, suppressing himself.

  “From you—from you!” she cried, thrusting forward her head at him. “You, who use a woman’s soul up, with your rotten life.—I suppose it is partly your health, and you can’t help it,” she added, more mildly. “But I simply can’t stand it—I simply can’t, and that is all.”

  She shook her cigarette carelessly in the direction of the fire. The ash fell on the beautiful asiatic rug. She glanced at it, but did not trouble. He sat, hard with rage.

  “May I ask how I use you up, as you say?” he asked.

  She was silent a moment, trying to get her feeling into words. Then she shook her hand at him passionately, and took the cigarette from her mouth.

  “By—by following me about—by not leaving me alone. You give me no peace.—I don’t know what you do, but it is something ghastly.”

  Again the hard stroke of rage went down his veins.

  “It is very vague,” he said.

  “I know,” she cried. “I can’t put it into words—but there it is.—You—you don’t love. I pour myself out to you, and then—there’s nothing there—you simply aren’t there.”

  He was silent for some time. His jaw had set hard with fury and hate.

  “We have come to the incomprehensible,” he said.—“And now, what about Richard?”

  It had grown nearly dark in the room. She sat silent for a moment. Then she took the cigarette from her mouth and looked at it.

  “I’m going to meet him,” her voice, mocking, answered out of the twilight.

  His heart went molten, and he could scarcely breathe.

  “Who is he?” he asked, though he did not believe the affair to be anything at all, even if there were a Richard.

  “I’ll introduce him to you when I know him a little better,” she said. He waited.

  “But who is he?”

  “I tell you, I’ll introduce him to you later.”

  There was a pause.

  “Shall I come with you?”

  “It would be like you,” she answered, with a sneer.

  The maid came in, softly, to draw the curtains and turn on the light. The husband and wife sat silent.

  “I suppose,” h
e said, when the door was closed again, “you are wanting a Richard for a rest?”

  She took his sarcasm simply as a statement.

  “I am,” she said. “A simple, warm man who would love me without all these reservations and difficulties. That is just what I do want.”

  “Well, you have your own independence,” he said.

  “Ha,” she laughed. “You needn’t tell me that. It would take more than you to rob me of my independence.”

  “I meant your own income,” he answered quietly, while his heart was plunging with bitterness and rage.

  “Well,” she said, “I will go and dress.”

  He remained without moving, in his chair. The pain of this was almost too much. For some moments the great, inflamed pulse struck through his body. It died gradually down, and he went dull. He had not wanted to separate from her at this point of their union: they would probably, if they parted in such a crisis, never come together again. But if she insisted, well then, it would have to be. He would go away for a month. He could easily make business in Italy. And when he came back, they could patch up some sort of domestic arrangement, as most other folk had to do.

  He felt dull and heavy inside, and without the energy for anything. The thought of having to pack and take a train to Milan appalled him, it would mean such an effort of will. But it would have to be done, and so he must do it. It was no use his waiting at home. He might stay in town a night, at his brother-in-law’s, and go away the next day. It were better to give her a little time to come to herself. She was really impulsive. And he did not really want to go away from her.

  He was still sitting thinking, when she came downstairs. She was in costume and furs and toque. There was a radiant, half wistful, half perverse look about her. She was a beautiful woman, her bright, fair face set among the black furs.

  “Will you give me some money?” she said. “There isn’t any.”