She coughed. Nothing happened. She coughed again, and walked about heavily, making a noise with her feet and feeling a fool. Should she go downstairs again, and ring the bell?
No; she would play the piano. She seated herself and played what came first into her head, which was her one-time favourite, Danse Macabre. The cat roused itself, yawned at her, and slept again.
She had played for perhaps three minutes, when a voice said very loudly behind her, “Stop that bloody row!” She turned, and standing in the doorway was a man. He was utterly naked.
Nothing in Monica’s previous experience had prepared her for such a spectacle, and it was the most shocking sight, within the bounds of nature, that could have confronted her. The Thirteeners, and everybody else with whom she had ever been intimately acquainted, thought very poorly of nakedness. Courtships, even when carried to lengths which resulted in hasty and muted weddings, were always conducted fully dressed. The intimacies of married life were negotiated in the dark, under blankets. Shame about nakedness was immensely valued, as a guarantee of high character. It is true that, when in Paris, Monica had been taken to the Louvre several times by Amy Neilson, and she had learned to look at naked statuary—even the Hermaphrodite—without betraying the discomfort she felt in the presence of those stony, bare monsters; but that was art and idealized form—no preparation for what she now saw—a naked man, not especially graced with beauty, coloured in shades which ranged between pink and whitey-drab, patchily hairy, and obviously very much alive.
He was smiling, which made it all worse. He seemed quite at his ease; it was she—she who was in the right, she the clothed, she the outraged one, who was overset. Monica had never fainted in her life, but she felt a lightness in her head now, an inability to get her breath, which might well rob her of consciousness.
“You’re the Canadian Nightingale, I suppose,” said he. “I forgot you were coming. Hold on a jiffy, while I get some clothes. But don’t play that trash any more.”
And a jiffy it was, for he was back again almost at once, wearing flannel trousers, and with his bare feet thrust into worn slippers, buttoning his shirt; he went behind the piano, picked up a bundle of woman’s garments and threw them through the door into the next room, shouting, “Come on, Persis, you lazy cow, get up and make us some tea.” The reply, which came through the door in a rich and well-bred contralto, was brief, and couched in words which Monica had never heard spoken in a woman’s voice before. “Shut up,” replied Revelstoke, “can’t you behave yourself when we have company—a distinguished guest from the Premier Dominion, our mighty ally in peace and war? Be a good girl and get some tea, and we shall have music to restore our souls.”
He took the cat in his arms and stroked it, as he turned again to Monica. “You mustn’t mind a degree of informality here which you haven’t met in the elegant environs of Sir Benedict Domdaniel. Brummagem Benny, as we sometimes call him in the musical world—without a hint of malice, mind you—likes to do himself very well. And properly so. He must keep up a position commensurate with his great and well-deserved reputation. But I, you see, am a very different sort of creature. You are now in the editorial offices of Lantern, undoubtedly the most advanced and unpopular critical journal being published in English today. The significance of the name will not escape you. Lantern—it is the lantern of Diogenes, searching for the honest, the true and the good, and it is similarly the lantern, or lamp-post, referred to in the good old Revolutionary cry ‘A la lanterne!’—because from this Lantern we suspend the hacked corpses of those whom we are compelled to judge harshly; you will not miss, either, the allusion to that Lantern Land which Master Francis Rabelais describes in his Pantagruel (with which I presume that you are amply acquainted) and which was the habitation of pedants and cheats in all branches of the arts; we allude to it slyly in our title by a species of gnomic homophony which will at once be apparent to you. This is a workroom, and workrooms are apt to be untidy. This will soon be your workroom, too, if we get on as well as I hope we shall. You had better meet my friend, Pyewacket, a delightful but musically uncritical cat.”
He was interrupted by the entry, from the bedroom, of a tall girl of twenty-three or four, wearing a not very fresh slip and nothing else; her long dark hair was hanging down her back and she had the tumbled look of one who has risen from bed.
“Match,” said she to Revelstoke. He found one on the table and gave it to her.
“Allow me to introduce Miss Persis Kinwellmarshe, daughter of Admiral Sir Percy Kinwellmarshe, retired, now of Tunbridge Wells. Miss Kinwellmarshe is one of my principal editorial assistants. We have been engaged in a type of editorial conference known as scrouperizing. You do know Rabelais? No? Pity!”
Monica disliked Miss Kinwellmarshe on sight. She had Bad Girl written all over her, and in addition she was extremely handsome, with a finely formed nose, through the crimson-shadowed nostrils of which she now seemed to be looking at Monica.
“It’s a pleasure to meet any acquaintance of Mr. Revelstoke’s,” said she.
Monica knew when she was being mocked, but Amy’s prime injunction—“You can never go wrong by being simple, dear”—came to her rescue. So she bowed her head slightly toward Miss Kinwellmarshe, and said “How do you do?”
Miss Kinwellmarshe, taking the match, turned and went to the kitchen. She’s got a butt-end on her like a bumble-bee, said the voice of Ma Gall, very clearly, inside Monica’s head,—so clearly that Monica started.
“Now, let’s do some work,” said Revelstoke, who appeared to have enjoyed this encounter. “You’ve been with the ineffable Molloy for a while, Sir Benny tells me. An admirable coach, with a splendid, policeman-like attitude toward the art of song. Sing me a few of the things he’s taught you.”
Unlike Molloy, he made no move to accompany her, so Monica sat at the piano and sang half-a-dozen English folksongs. She could not have explained why it was so, but the knowledge that Miss Kinwellmarshe was within earshot had a tonic effect on her, and she sang them well.
“The accompaniments are charming, aren’t they?” said Revelstoke. “Cecil Sharp had a delightful small talent for such work. But of course folksongs are not meant to be accompanied. Just sing me Searching for Lambs without all that agreeable atmospheric deedle-deedle.”
So Monica sang the song again. If he thinks I’ve never sung this without accompaniment he certainly doesn’t know Murtagh Molloy, she thought.
“Not bad. You have a true ear, and a nice sense of rhythm.—Ah, here is dear Miss Kinwellmarshe with the tea. I won’t ask you to take a cup, Miss—I forget for the moment—yes, of course, Miss Gall, but you shall have one when you’ve finished singing. Now, Brum Benny tells me you have a special line in Victorian drawing-room ballads—such a novelty, and so original of you to have worked it up in a time when that kind of music is so undeservedly neglected. I understand that Tosti’s Good-Bye! is one of your specialties. I can hardly wait. Will you sing it now, please. You won’t mind if we have tea as you do so? The perfect accompaniment for the song, don’t you think?”
Miss Kinwellmarshe had laid herself out voluptuously on the work table, pillowing her head on a pile of manuscript and permitting her long and beautifully wavy hair to hang over the edge; the splendour of her figure in this position was somewhat marred by the dirtiness of the soles of her feet, but it was clear that she aimed at large effects, and scorned trifles.
“I haven’t sung that song for several months,” said Monica. Indeed, she had learned to be thoroughly ashamed of Tosti under the rough but kindly guidance of Molloy. How could Sir Benedict have mentioned it! These English! Sly, sneaky, mocking! You never knew when you had them.
“But after we have put a favourite work aside for a time, we often find that we have unconsciously arrived at a new understanding of it,” said Revelstoke, and he was smiling like a demon.
“I’d really rather not,” said Monica.
“But I wish it. And I dislike having to remind you that if I a
m to teach you anything, you must do as I wish.” His smile was now from the teeth only.
He just wants to roast me in front of that grubby bitch, thought Monica. I’ll walk out. I’ll tell Sir Benedict I won’t bear it. I’ll go home.
But she met Revelstoke’s eyes, and she sang. She was angrier than she had ever been in her life. She hated this man who dared to show himself naked, and whose talk was one smooth, sneering incivility after another; she hated that nearly naked tart lolling on the table. She hated Sir Benedict, who had been making fun of her behind her back. She was so full of passionate hatred that her head seemed ready to burst. But she had not spent six months with Murtagh Molloy for nothing. She took possession of herself, she breathed the muhd, and she sang.
She finished, and the seven bars of diminuendo regret on the piano were completed. There was silence. The first to break it was Miss Kinwellmarshe, and her comment was a derisive, dismissive, derogatory monosyllable.
“Not at all,” said Revelstoke; “and let me remind you, Persis, that I am the critic here, and any comment will come from me, not you. Take yourself off, you saucy puss, and do some typing, or wash up, or something.” Rising, he hauled Miss Kinwellmarshe off the table and pushed her toward the kitchen, giving her a resounding slap on her splendid buttocks. She repeated her previous comment with hauteur, but she went.
“Now,” said he, “let’s get down to business. What’s that song all about?”
Monica had occasionally been questioned in this way by Molloy, and she always hated it. A song was a song, and it was about what it said; it was almost bad luck to probe it and pull it to pieces, for it might never regain its shape. But Revelstoke had made her sing against her will, and she knew that he could make her speak. Might as well give in at once and get it over.
“It’s about people saying good-bye.”
“People?”
“Lovers, I suppose.”
“Why are they saying good-bye?”
“I don’t know; the song doesn’t say.”
“Doesn’t it? Who wrote it?”
“Tosti.”
“The music, yes. When did he live?”
“Oh, quite recently; Mr. Molloy once saw him.”
“Who wrote the words?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Oh, then I assume that you consider the words of small importance in comparison with the music. Do you think it is good music?”
“No, not really.”
“How would you describe it?”
“A sort of drawing-room piece, I suppose.”
“Yes, yes; but technically?”
“A ballad?”
“No, not a ballad. It is hardly a tune at all—certainly not a hummable sort of tune like a ballad. It’s what’s called an aria parlante. Know what that means?”
“A sort of speaking song?”
“A declamatory song. So there must be something to declaim. The words were written by a Scottish Victorian novelist and poet called George John Whyte-Melville. I see that your copy of the song gives his initials as ‘G.T.’ and robs him of his hyphen; just shows what the firm of Ricordi thought about him. Ever heard of him?”
“Never.”
“An interesting man. Quite successful, but always underestimated his own work and was apt to run himself down, in a gentlemanly sort of way. Wrote a lot about fox-hunting, but there is always a melancholy strain in his work which conflicts oddly with the subjects. His biographer thought it was because his married life was most unhappy. Does that seem to you to throw any light on that song?”
“It’s very unhappy. You mean that perhaps it wasn’t lovers, but himself and his wife he was writing about?”
“I am charmed by your implied opinion of the married state. Married people are sometimes lovers, and lovers are not always happy. Why are they unhappy, do you suppose?”
“Well, usually because they can’t get married. Or because one of them may be married already.”
“There can be other reasons. Read me the first verse.”
In a constricted tone, and without expression, Monica read:
Falling leaf, and fading tree,
Lines of white in a sullen sea,
Shadows rising on you and me;
The swallows are making them ready to fly
Wheeling out on a windy sky—
Good-bye, Summer,
Good-bye.
“You see? A succession of pictures—the fall of the leaf, the birds going south, a rising storm, and darkness falling. And it all adds up to—what?”
This is worse than Eng. Lit. at school, thought Monica. But she answered, “Autumn, I suppose.”
“Autumn, you suppose. Now let me read you the second verse, with a little more understanding than you choose to give to your own reading—
Hush, a voice from the far away!
‘Listen and learn,’ it seems to say,
‘All the tomorrows shall be as today.
The cord is frayed, the cruse is dry
The link must break and the lamp must die.
Good-bye to Hope,
Good-bye.’
“What do you make of that?”
“Still Autumn?”
“An Autumn that continues forever? Examine the symbols—lamp gone out, chain broken, jug empty, cord ready to break, and all the tomorrows being like today—what’s that suggest? What is the warning voice? Think!”
Monica thought. “Death, perhaps?”
“Quite correct. Death—perhaps: but not quite Death as it is ordinarily conceived. The answer is in the last verse—
What are we waiting for?
Oh, my heart!
Kiss me straight on the brows!
And part—again—my heart!
What are we waiting for, you and I?
A pleading look, a stifled cry—
Good-bye forever,
Good-bye!
There it is! Plain as the nose on your face! What is it all about? What are they saying Good-bye to? Come on! Think!”
His repeated insistence that she think made Monica confused and mulish. She sat and stared at him for perhaps two minutes, and then he spoke.
“It is Death, right enough, but not the Death of the body; it is the Death of Love. Listen to the passion in the last verse—passion which Tosti has quite effectively partnered in the music. Haste—the sense of constraint around the heart—the pleading for a climax and the disappointment of that climax—What is it? In human experience, what is it?”
Monica had no idea what it was.
“Well, Miss Lumpish Innocence, it is the Autumn of love; it is the failure of physical love; it is impotence. It is a physical inadequacy which brings in its train a terrible and crushing sense of spiritual inadequacy. It is the sadness of increasing age. It is the price which life exacts for maturity. It is the foreknowledge of Death itself. It is the inspiration of some of the world’s great art, and it is also at the root of an enormous amount of bad theatre, and Hollywood movies, and the boo-hoo-hoo of popular music. It is one of the principal springs of that delicious and somewhat bogus emotion—Renunciation. And Whyte-Melville and old Tosti have crammed it into twenty lines of verse and a hundred or so bars of music, and while the result may not be great, by God it’s true and real, and that is why that song still has a kick like a mule, for all its old-fashionedness. Follow me?”
Monica sat for a time, pondering. What Revelstoke had said struck forcibly on her mind, and she felt that it would have opened new doors to her if she had fully understood it. And she wanted to understand. So, after a pause, she looked him in the eye.
“What’s impotence?”
Revelstoke looked at her fixedly. Ribald comment rose at once to his tongue, but Monica’s seriousness asked for something better than that. He answered her seriously.
“It is when you want to perform the act of love, and can’t,” he said. “The difficulty is peculiar to men in that particular form, but it is equally distressing to both partners. The sym
bolism of the poem is very well chosen.”
There was silence for perhaps three minutes, while Monica pondered. “I don’t see the good of it,” she said at last. “You take an old song that hundreds of people must have sung and you drag it down so it just means a nasty trouble that men get. Is that supposed to make it easier for me to sing it? Or are you making fun of me?”
“I am not making fun of you, and I have not done what you said. I have related quite a good poem to a desperate human experience which, in my opinion, is the source from which it springs. If you think of a poem as a pretty trifle that silly men make up while smelling flowers, my interpretation is no good to you. But if you think of a poem as a flash of insight, a fragment of truth, a break in the cloud of human nonsense and pretence, my interpretation is valid. When you sing, you call from the depth of your own experience to the depth of experience in your hearer. And depth of experience has its physical counterpart, believe me; we aren’t disembodied spirits, you know, nor are we beautiful, clear souls cumbered with ugly indecent bodies. This song isn’t about ‘a nasty trouble that men get’—to use your own depressingly middle-class words; it is about the death of love, and the foreknowledge of death; it is an intimation of mortality. As you say, hundreds of people have sung it without necessarily looking very deeply into it, and thousands of listeners have been moved without knowing why. Poetry and music can speak directly to depths of experience in us which we possess without being conscious of them, in language which we understand only imperfectly. But there must be some of us who understand better than others, and who give the best of ourselves to that understanding. If you are to be one of them, you must be ready to make a painful exploration of yourself. When I came in here just now, you were playing a rather silly piece in a very silly way. You sang your folksongs like a cheap Marie Antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess. Domdaniel wants you to be better than that, and so he has sent you to me.”