After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

  “Well, Baby,” said Mr. Stoyte, as he did up the last button of his waistcoat. “You’re not saying much, are you? A penny for your thoughts.”

  Virginia raised that childishly short upper lip in a smile that made his heart melt with tenderness and desire. “I was thinking about you, Uncle Jo,” she said.

  Chapter XIII

  If thou appear untouch’d by solemn thought,

  Thy nature is not therefore less divine;

  Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;

  And worshipps’t at the Temple’s inner shrine,

  God being with thee when we know it not.

  “AND very nice too,” Jeremy said aloud. Transparent was the word, he reflected. The meaning was there like a fly in amber. Or, rather, there was no fly; there was only the amber; and the amber was the meaning. He looked at his watch. Three minutes to midnight. He closed his Wordsworth—and to think, he went on bitterly to remind himself, to think that he might have been refreshing his memory of “Félicia”!—laid the volume down on the table beside his bed and took off his glasses. Deprived of their six and a half diopters of correction, his eyes were instantly reduced to a state of physiological despair. Curved crystal had become their element; unspectacled, they were like a pair of jellied sea creatures, suddenly taken out of water. Then the light went out; and it was as though the poor things had been mercifully dropped, for safe keeping, into an aquarium.

  Jeremy stretched under the bed-clothes and yawned. What a day! But now, thank God, the paradise of bed. The Blessed Damozel leaned out from the gold bed of heaven. But these sheets were cotton ones, not linen; which was really a bit discreditable in a house like this! A house full of Rubenses and Grecos—and your sheets were cotton! But that Crucifixion of St. Peter—what a really staggering machine! At least as good as the Assumption at Toledo. Which had probably been blown up by this time, incidentally. Just to demonstrate what happened when people took things too seriously. Not but that, he went on to reflect, there wasn’t something rather impressive about that old Propter-Object. (For that was what he had decided to call the man in his own mind and when he wrote to his mother; the Propter-Object.) A bit of an Ancient Mariner, perhaps. The wedding guest, he beat his breast on occasions; ought perhaps to have beaten it more often than he had done, seeing what a frightful subversion of all the common decencies and, a fortiori, the common indecencies (such as Félicia, such as every other Friday afternoon in Maida Vale), the creature was inculcating. Not without a considerable persuasiveness, damn his glittering eyes! For this particular Mariner not only held you with that eye of his; he was also and simultaneously the loud bassoon you wanted to hear. One listened without reluctance—though of course one had no intention of permitting one’s own particular little structure of decencies and indecencies to be subverted. One was not going to allow religion (of all things!) to invade the sanctities of private life. An Englishman’s home is his castle; and curiously enough, an American’s castle, as he had discovered after the first shock began to wear off, was turning out to be this particular Englishman’s home. His spiritual home. Because it was the embodiment of an imbecile’s no-track mind. Because there were no issues and nothing led anywhere and the dilemmas had an infinity of horns and you went round and round, like Fabre’s caterpillars, in a closed universe of utter cosiness—round and round among the Hauberk Papers, from St. Peter to La Petite Morphil to Giambologna to the gilded Bodhisattvas in the cellar to the baboons to the Marquis de Sade to St. François de Sales to Felicia and round again in due course to St. Peter. Round and round, like caterpillars inside the mind of an imbecile; round and round in an infinite cosiness of issueless thoughts and feelings and actions, of hermetically bottled art and learning, of culture for its own sake, of self-sufficient little decencies and indecencies, of impassable dilemmas and moral questions sufficiently answered by the circumambient idiocy.

  Round and round, round and round, from Peter’s feet to Morphil’s little buttocks to the baboons’, from the beautiful Chinese spiral of the folds in the Buddha’s robe to the humming-bird drinking in mid-air to Peter’s feet again with the nails in them . . . His drowsiness darkened into sleep.

  In another room on the same floor of the donjon Pete Boone was not even trying to get to sleep; he was trying, on the contrary, to figure things out. To figure out science and Mr. Propter, social justice and eternity and Virginia and Anti-Fascism. It wasn’t easy. Because if Mr. Propter was right, then you’d have to start thinking quite differently about almost everything. “Disinterested quest for truth”—that was what you said (if you were ever forced to say anything so embarrassing) about why you were a biologist. And in the case of Socialism it was “humanity,” it was “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” it was “progress”—and, of course, that linked up with biology again: happiness and progress through science as well as Socialism. And while happiness and progress were on the way there was loyalty to the cause. He remembered a piece about loyalty by Josiah Royce, a piece he had had to read in his sophomore year at college. Something about all loyal people grasping in their own way some form of religious truth—winning some kind of genuine religious insight. It had made a big impression on him at the time. He had just lost his faith in that old Blood-of-the-Lamb business he’d been brought up in, and this had come as a kind of reassurance, had made him feel that after all he was religious even if he didn’t go to church any more—religious because he was loyal. Loyal to causes, loyal to friends. He had been religious, it had always seemed to him, over there in Spain. Religious, again, when he felt that way about Virginia. And yet, if Mr. Propter was right, old Royce’s ideas about loyalty were all wrong. Being loyal didn’t of itself give you religious insight. On the contrary, it might prevent you from having insight—indeed, was absolutely certain to prevent you, if you gave your loyalty to anything less than the highest cause of all and the highest cause of all (if Mr. Propter was right) was almost terrible in its farness and strangeness. Almost terrible; and yet the more he thought about it, the more dubious he felt about everything else. Perhaps it really was the highest. But if it was, then Socialism wasn’t enough. And it wasn’t enough, because humanity wasn’t enough. Because the greatest happiness didn’t happen to be in the place where people had thought it was, because you couldn’t make it come by doing things in the sort of fields you worked in if you were a social reformer. The best you could do in those fields was to make it easier for people to go on to where the greatest happiness could be had. And, of course, what applied to Socialism would apply to biology or any other science, if you thought of it as a means to progress. Because, if Mr. Propter was right, then what people called progress wasn’t progress. That is, it wouldn’t be progress, unless it had made it easier for people to go on to where the greatest happiness actually was. Easier, in other words, to be loyal to the highest cause of all. And, obviously, if that was your standard, you had to think twice about using progress as a justification for science. And then there was that disinterested quest for truth. But again, if Mr. Propter was right, biology and the rest were the disinterested quest for only one aspect of truth. But a half-truth was a falsehood, and it remained a falsehood even when you’d told it in the belief that it was the whole truth. So it looked as though that justification wouldn’t do either—or at any rate as though it wouldn’t do unless you were at the same time disinterestedly trying to discover the other aspect of truth, the aspect you were looking for when you gave your loyalty to the highest cause of all. And meanwhile what about Virginia, he asked himself in mounting anguish, what about Virginia? For, if Mr. Propter was right, then even Virginia wasn’t enough, even Virginia might actually be an obstacle to prevent him from giving his loyalty to the highest cause of all. Even those eyes and her innocence and that utterly adorable mouth; even what he felt about her; even love itself, even the best kind of love (for he could honestly say that he hated the other kind—that dreadful brothel in Barcelona, for example, and here, at home, those hu
ggings after the third or fourth cocktail, those gropings by the roadside in a parked car)—yes, even the best kind of love might be inadequate, might actually be worse than inadequate. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not something or other more.” Hitherto, something or other had been his biology, his socialism. But now these had turned out to be inadequate, or even, taken as ends in themselves, worse than inadequate. No loyalty was good in itself, or brought religious insight, except loyalty to the highest cause of all. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not the highest cause of all more.” But the question, the agonizing question, was this: Could you love the highest cause of all and go on feeling as you did about Virginia? The worst love was obviously incompatible with loyalty to the highest cause of all. Obviously so; because the worst love was just being loyal to your own physiology, whereas, if Mr. Propter was right, you couldn’t be loyal to the highest cause of all without denying such loyalties to yourself. But was the best love so fundamentally different, after all, from the worst? The worst was being loyal to your physiology. It was hateful to admit it; but so too was the best: being loyal to your physiology and at the same time (which was its distinguishing mark) loyal also to your higher feelings—to that empty ache of longing, to that infinity of tenderness, to that adoration, that happiness, those pains, that sense of solitude, that longing for identity. You were loyal to these, and being loyal to these was the definition of the best kind of love, of what people called romance and praised as the most wonderful thing in life. But being loyal to these was being loyal to yourself; and you couldn’t be loyal to yourself and loyal at the same time to the highest cause of all.

  The practical conclusion was obvious. But Pete refused to draw it. Those eyes were blue and limpid, that mouth, adorable in its innocence. And, then, how sweet she was, how beautifully thoughtful! He remembered the conversation they had had on the way into dinner. He had asked her how her headache was. “Don’t talk about it,” she had whispered; “it might upset Uncle Jo. Doc’s been going over him with his stethoscope; doesn’t think he’s so good this evening. I don’t want to have him worrying about me. And anyhow, what is a headache?” Not only beautiful, not only innocent and sweet, but brave, too, and unselfish. And how adorable she had been to him all the evening, asking him about his work, telling him about her home in Oregon, making him talk about his home down in El Paso. In the end Mr. Stoyte had come and sat down beside them—in silence, and his face black as thunder. Pete had glanced inquiringly at Virginia, and she had given him a look that said, “Please, go,” and another when he rose to say good-night, so pleadingly apologetic, so full of gratitude, so understanding, so sweet and affectionate, that the recollection of it was enough to bring the tears into his eyes. Lying there in the darkness, he cried with happiness.

  That niche in the wall between the windows in Virginia’s bedroom had been intended, no doubt, for a bookshelf. But Virginia was not very keen on books; the recess had been fitted up instead as a little shrine. You drew back a pair of short white velvet curtains (everything in the room was white) and there, in a bower of artificial flowers, dressed in real silk clothes, with the cutest little gold crown on her head and six strings of seed pearls round her neck, stood Our Lady brilliantly illuminated by an ingenious system of concealed electric bulbs. Barefooted and in white satin pyjamas, Virginia was kneeling before this sacred doll’s house, saying her evening prayers. Our Lady, it seemed to her, was looking particularly sweet and kind tonight. Tomorrow, she decided, while her lips pronounced the formulas of praise and supplication, tomorrow morning, first thing, she’d go right down to the sewing-room and get one of the girls to help her make a new mantle for Our Lady out of that lovely piece of blue brocade she had bought last week at the junk shop in Glendale. A blue brocade mantle, fastened in front with a gold button—or, better still, with a little gold cord that you could tie in a bow, with the ends hanging down, almost to Our Lady’s feet. Oh, that would be just gorgeous! She wished it were morning so that she could start right away.

  The last prayer had been said; Virginia crossed herself and rose from her knees. Happening to look down as she did so, she saw to her horror that some of the cyclamen-coloured varnish had scaled off the nails of the second and third toes of her left foot. A minute later she was squatting on the floor beside the bed, the right leg outstretched, the other foot drawn across it, making ready to repair the damage. An open bottle stood beside her; she held a small paint brush in her hand, and a horribly industrial aura of acetone had enveloped the Schiaparelli “Shocking” with which her body was impregnated. She started to work and as she bent forward, two strands of auburn hair broke loose from their curly pattern and fell across her forehead. Under frowning brows, the large blue eyes intently stared. To aid concentration, the tip of a pink tongue was held between the teeth. “Helll” she suddenly said aloud, as the little brush made a false stroke. Then, immediately, the teeth clamped down again.

  Interrupting her work to allow the first coat of varnish to dry, she shifted her scrutiny from the toes to the calf and shin of her left leg. The hairs were beginning to grow again, she noticed with annoyance; it would soon be time for another of those wax treatments. Still pensively caressing the leg, she let her mind travel back over the events of the day. The memory of that close call with Uncle Jo still gave her shivers of apprehensive excitement. Then she thought of Sig with his stethoscope, and the upper lip lifted ravishingly in a smile of amusement. And then there was that book, which it served Uncle Jo right that she should have had Sig read to her. And Sig getting fresh with her between the chapters and making passes; that also served Uncle Jo right for trying to spy on her. She remembered how mad she got at Sig. Not so much for what he actually did; for besides serving Uncle Jo right (of course it was only afterwards that she discovered quite how right it served him), what he actually did had been rather thrilling than otherwise; because after all Sig was terribly attractive and in those ways Uncle Jo didn’t hardly count; in fact you might almost say that he counted the other way; in the red, so to speak; counted less than nobody, so that anybody else who was attractive seemed still more attractive when Uncle Jo had been around. No, it wasn’t what he actually did that had made her mad at him. It was the way he did it. Laughing at her, like that. She didn’t mind a bit of kidding at ordinary times. But kidding while he was actually making passes—that was treating her like she was a tart on Main Street. No romance, or anything; just that sniggering sort of laugh and a lot of dirty cracks. Maybe it was sophisticated; but she didn’t like it. And didn’t he see that it was just plain dumb to act that way? Because, after all, when you’d been reading that book with someone so attractive as Sig—well, you felt you’d like a bit of romance. Real romance, like in the pictures, with moonlight, and swing music, or perhaps a torch singer (because it was nice to feel sad when you were happy), and a boy saying lovely things to you, and a lot of kissing, and at the end of it, almost without your knowing it, almost as if it weren’t happening to you, so that you never felt there was anything wrong, anything that Our Lady would really mind . . . Virginia sighed deeply and shut her eyes; her face took on an expression of seraphic tranquillity. Then she sighed again, shook her head and frowned. Instead of that, she was thinking angrily, instead of that, Sig had to go and spoil it all by acting hard-boiled and sophisticated. It just shot all the romance to pieces and made you feel mad at him. And what was the sense in that? Virginia concluded resentfully. What was the sense in that, either from his point of view or from hers?

  The first coat of varnish seemed to be dry. Bending over her foot, she blew on her toes for a little, then started to apply the second coat. Behind her, all of a sudden, the door of the bedroom was opened and as gently closed again.

  “Uncle Jo,” she said inquiringly and with a note of surprise in her voice, but without looking up from her enamelling.

  There was no answer, only the sound of an approach across the room.

  “Uncle Jo?” she repeated and,
this time, interrupted the painting of her toes to turn round.