John Powys - After My Fashion

He felt at that moment as though there was a region of delicate, evasive, exquisitely attuned vibrations in Nelly’s spirit, of which he might suddenly awake to discover he had lost the clue for ever; to discover that he had lost it, when it was too late to get it back.

As he chattered superficially with her, of this piece of gossip and that piece of scandal, over their meal, there slowly grew upon him the bitter cruel sense that he had, in his clumsy sensuality, thrown away something much more exquisite and precious than any merely physical thrill. After all, he could have given himself up to the divine genius of Elise, to her inspiration, her great instinctive art, without dragging her down to the level of an odalisque, a courtesan, an amorous plaything.

There was no reason to suppose that if he had made it clear to Elise that he loved his wife and intended to remain faithful to her she would have rejected his platonic friendship. The passionate paganism of Elise was a thing quite uninvolved with her deeper nature and a few clear indications of loyalty to Nelly would have placed his relations with the dance on a basis much more honourable to both of them.

Every mouthful he took at that meal, as he sat facing the delicate being whose love he had deliberately set himself, so it seemed to him now, to trample on and to kill, tasted of miserable remorse.

Had she sulked, had she thrown out sarcastic speeches, had she been vituperative and vindictive, he could have hardened his heart in his unfaithfulness. But as it was, thinking his self-accusing thoughts beneath their friendly chatter, it seemed to him as though he had dragged down and exploited in sheer stupidity of sensuality both these finer spirits. His remorse about Nelly diffused itself over Elise too, and he felt he had betrayed them both. The great creative spirit of life — the only god he worshipped — had given him Nelly’s love and the child she carried within her; had also given him the friendship of Elise and the child she carried within her, that incomparable art of hers. And what had he done to both these mirrors of the eternal vision? Tossed them down, flung one against the other, tried to see his own egotistic countenance in each of them, and clouded and blurred them in the effort.

He sought, absurdly enough, on this particular evening, to soothe the smart of his conscience by an exaggerated consideration. He helped Nelly clear the table, he helped her to wash up; it was only afterwards, when seated near her in their small living room looking out on the quiet houses opposite, that he was made starkly aware how futile such catchpenny offerings were.

He found himself leaning forward and touching her hand as she worked at the piece of sewing spread over her knees. ‘Nelly — my dear — my dear, can’t you bring yourself to forget and forgive? It’s more than I can stand, this way we’re living now. It makes me homesick for the old days. It makes me long for Sussex.’

She let his hand stay where it was, but her fingers lay passive and cold within his own.

‘What can I do, Richard?’ she murmured, looking at him gravely and quietly. ‘What can I do that I haven’t done? I haven’t interfered with your pleasure. I haven’t made a fuss or tried to leave you. Many women would have … well! you know! But when you ask me to be just the same, as if nothing were going on, when you’re still seeing that person, I can’t understand quite what you mean. Sometimes, my dear,’ and she looked at him with a puzzled look that almost flickered into a faint smile, ‘sometimes I doubt whether you’ve ever grown up. You seem to be so blind to certain things; as if you actually didn’t understand, as if you were not quite an ordinary human being; as if you were hurting me without knowing that you were hurting me. You can’t expect me to laugh and smile and encourage you to go off to someone else.’

He moved a little nearer to her. ‘But you do love me still, my darling, my darling?’ he whispered.

Her forehead puckered up into a concentrated frown and her lips quivered.

‘You don’t think I like the way we’re living?’ she broke out. ‘But how can I bear it differently? What can I do? When I asked you that first day whether you’d give this person up, you wouldn’t answer. And of course I know you haven’t given her up. I know you see her every day. I know you came straight from her this very night. And how can I feel as if it were just the same — when it’s like that? I can hold myself in, from saying any more. I must hold myself in, for our child’s sake. But I can’t help feeling bitter. You can’t expect me to go on just the same. It takes a little time to make a person’s heart numb and dead. I don’t think you know — that’s what I keep saying to myself — I don’t think you know what a woman feels. I don’t think you can know. You couldn’t have done it, you couldn’t have done it, if you did.’

Her voice broke at this point but she controlled herself with a pathetic struggle, and got up from her chair. ‘You mustn’t expect too much from me, Richard,’ she added. ‘I’m not made of wood and stone.’

The direct cause of her rising was the sound of the doorbell accompanied by a sound of quite a number of voices in the street.

‘Here they are!’ she cried, moving to the window and drawing aside the curtain. ‘They’ve come all together. Let them in, will you Richard? You’ve got cigarettes for them? We’ll have the coffee at once. I’ve got two of those cakes.’

He ran downstairs. A few minutes later the little apartment was full of tobacco smoke and lively conversation.

Roger Lamb sat by Nelly’s side on the sofa. Robert Canyot established himself on the windowsill, his long legs dangling awkwardly, and his dusty boots looking large and prominent.

Karmakoff and Catharine shared the armchair; while Richard seated at the table before his coffee cup munched one piece of cake after another, as if by the mere process of devouring this sticky substance he fortified himself against unhappy thoughts.

‘It’s all very well for you to speak of Russia as if nothing but sweetness and goodness emerged from it,’ said Karmakoff suddenly, throwing the remark like a hand grenade straight at the head of Roger Lamb. ‘Russia’s no better and no worse than the rest of the world. All this sentimentality is as false as all this savage abuse.

‘Where we Russians differ from you people is simply that we’ve no false shame. We express everything — all that there is to be expressed — and a good deal more sometimes!’ He laughed a rather bitter laugh.

Nelly made an unconscious little movement of her hand towards the young man as if to protect him from this frontal attack; but Roger Lamb seemed quite unruffled.

‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I ought not to have dragged Russia into it at all. It was a lapse. It was only that Mrs Storm seemed so awfully pessimistic. I just reminded her of the nicer side of things — of human nature, you know? I was trying to explain my own feeling about it. Russia was a by-issue and a silly one. I apologize to Russia, Ivan.’

‘Oh Roger,’ cried Catharine Gordon, ‘while I think of it Elise wants you to write her up in The Manhattan . She’s getting sick of the rotten notices they give her.’

The colour rose in Nelly’s cheeks at this name. Karmakoff deliberately pinched Catharine in the arm. Richard put an enormous piece of cake into his mouth. Canyot, kicking the wall with his heels, remarked surlily, ‘She gets better ones than she deserves as it is. I’d leave her alone, Roger.’

Nelly, who had bent her head over her lap, raised it at this. ‘ The Manhattan ought to have something about her,’ she said calmly, looking straight at her husband.