John Powys - After My Fashion

‘Don’t bring me into your play, my friend. I belong to your work.’

‘You belong to the object of my work.’

‘Where did you get those woman’s eyes from? I shall think of them when I dance next week.’

‘Neither of us is pure woman or pure man. That’s why we understand each other.’

‘What are we?’

‘We’re messengers of the forgotten gods.’

‘We ought to give the password, then — the secret sign.’

‘We’ve given that already.’

‘Have we? Without knowing it?’

‘We are messengers. We know nothing.’

‘I thought when I first saw you just now, that you were the most brutal materialist I’d ever met.’

‘I thought you were the most unhappy woman I’d ever met.’

‘Now we have been flung together we must say everything.’

‘And prove our kinship?’

‘And make the sign of the meeting of messengers.’

‘And leave our play for a day and a night?’

‘How can we do that, Ivan Karmakoff?’

‘Dare you, if I dare? An interlude, a resting place.’

‘I thought you were the most cynical realist I’d ever seen.’

‘I thought your mouth had the look of a thing hunted by dogs; a torn mouth, a bleeding mouth, a mouth of suffering.’

‘Did you try to imagine what it would be like to heal that hurt?’

‘I imagined nothing. I knew that I had been sent for that.’

‘Because of our both being messengers?’

‘Because of our purpose. Because of the clearing up of chaos.’

‘What nonsense we’ve been talking, Ivan Karmakoff! These seagulls must think us the biggest prigs they’ve ever listened to.’

‘We have to get used to being thought prigs — by seagulls. The wild geese up there would understand us.’

‘No doubt they would! But I’m afraid our dear pair of tame geese back there wouldn’t! To come to a practical question. How are we to manage? How are we to see a little more of each other?’

‘Your new programme doesn’t begin until next week, does it?’

‘No, my friend. It doesn’t.’

‘When has Richard to go back?’

‘Tomorrow. But oh, dear me! let’s have none of this manoeuvring, you green-eyed savage! I’m not married to Richard and you’re not married to Catharine. Let’s go straight to our hotels, get my things and your things and take the train back to New York.’

‘And leave letters explaining everything?’

‘And leave letters explaining nothing ! What’s the use of living in a modern city if you cannot live in a modern way? We’ll treat it simply as a joke. We’ll write humorously. It is a joke, you know. Why shouldn’t we go back to New York together? Richard has been telegraphing his wife that he was with you and Catharine. Well! He will be with Catharine!’

‘And he’ll go back with her to Nelly?’

‘Oh you know the lady too? I’ve just met her. She’s as pretty as a picture. But oh dear me! how English the poor dear is!’

‘I don’t think our gods have given us any message to the English.’

‘They’ve warned us to run away from them. And that’s what we’ll do.’

They both turned round at that, and surveyed the long line of sand and spindrift that lay behind them white and chilly, lit up by the November sun.

A darkly outlined breakwater, about a mile away, broke the line of their vision. Their companions had evidently not yet arrived at that point. The two reckless ones had walked so quickly during their strange dialogue that they were already out of reach of pursuit.

‘You’re sure you won’t worry about Catharine?’ remarked Elise as they made their way up from the sands to the board-walk above.

‘Not if you don’t worry about Storm,’ retorted Karmakoff.

They exchanged a glance of intimate understanding and allowed their eyes, which certainly had a queer resemblance in colour and expression, to meet and hold each other’s gaze.

‘The world would say we were following a funny road to our purpose,’ murmured the woman, as they threaded their way through the crowd.

‘You’re thinking of what I said about reducing chaos,’ responded the man. ‘But it’s only when you’ve got that ingredient in your own veins and are using it with your brain that you can do anything. To bottle up chaos doesn’t help. It has to be ridden on and bitted and bridled. Most people’s minds are burial grounds of that kind of thing, sprinkled with dead flowers. We’re not leaving our friends for the sake of pleasure. We’re leaving them for the sake of our work. We need one another at this juncture, Elise. Perhaps, later, it will be different!’

Again their eyes met and clung together in a long mysterious questioning look. And after that they both were silent.

‘Perhaps later it will be different!’ the dancer repeated under her breath; and there awoke within her a sickening envy of that rare company of faithful souls who have the power of loving once and not again.

Then as the great fantastic hotel loomed above them, like the dream palace of some mad king of Thule, the old Dionysian mood surged up once more. ‘I’ve found him at last!’ she whispered to herself. ‘The free spirit worthy of me. It will be easy enough if he loves me. But if I love him — let him beware!’

And in her heart she caught a strain of that southern music to which she was wont to dance when the northern harmonies grew too heavy for the fire within her.

A couple of hours later Richard stood in the hallway of the Hotel Ransom watching Catharine read Karmakoff’s letter.

As he saw that tall willowy figure shiver from head to foot and bend and sway under the blow, he thought within himself quite suddenly — We are all wrong, we irresponsible ones! Suffering goes deeper than joy and to save from suffering is better than to give pleasure .

When the girl turned to him at last, mechanically crumpling up the wicked note in her hand, the look upon her face went to his heart as nothing in his whole life had ever done before. For Catharine had nothing of Nelly’s pride, and to see her inarticulate suffering, nakedly exposed before him, made him hate the whole business of love and the whole system of the world in which such things were possible.

It was even worse when the girl tried to smile at him, tried to take the thing lightly. She was so smitten that not a tear came to her eyes. She just swayed backwards and forwards and smiled, her hands fumbling weakly, foolishly, meaninglessly, at the piece of paper which she held. She kept thrusting it into the envelope and taking it out again; and her words tripped over one another blunderingly, confusedly, like the words of a person in a fever.

Richard experienced such a pang of pity for her that he felt as though his whole philosophy of life would be different from that moment. ‘Damn these cruelties!’ he said to himself. ‘This can’t be endured!’

They had gone first to his own hotel, thinking to find them there. His feelings when he read Elise’s letter had, even then, been swallowed up in his concern for Catharine.

The link between himself and the dancer had been already stretched to the breaking point. I must get her back to New York at once , he thought. I must take her to Nelly . His naïve dependence upon his wife’s powers of comfort did not arouse any sense of humour in him, did not appear to him as singular under the circumstances.

He could be cynical and sardonic enough sometimes, but at other times he behaved with the innocent egoism of a spoilt child. Elise being disposed of, his natural instinct was to go straight back to Nelly. She need never know, except in vague suspicion , he thought, how things worked out down here .