 CHAPTER VI Three sorts of ignorance. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern, the lake, the marriage of heaven and hell. Constance stood high upon a ladder, vainly trying to keep pace with the interminable, dusting and tidying which mingles domesticity with literature in all well-ordered bookshops. The tightly packed shelves rose like a stratified cliff, from floor to ceiling, within a few inches of her eyes, and she was poised in the air amongst them like some climber hung upon the face of a precipice and tent on their surface as is the way with born librarians and bibliophiles. There was something intimate, personal and homely in her relation with each volume. She loved them and had pleased her to tend them. The monotony of her occupation induced, mechanically, a feeling of security and peace. It was like knitting raised to the intellectual plane. Now and again, when a footstep caught her attention and suggested the possibility of an early customer, she turned for a moment and glanced downward. Then she obtained an excellent view of the establishment and also of the landscape which was framed by the open door, a little patch of pagement, some bits of dirty paper in the gutter, the skirts and trousers of pedestrians, the tail-tips of many passing dogs. These because they were living, moving things, exhilarated her. She longed to touch them and feel their delightful warmth. The exquisite children, in white gaiters, their nurses, who hastened to Kensington Gardens with the novelette peeping under the perambulator rug, the active, prosperous girls taking their terriers for a morning walk. She was alone, and therefore wholly under the dominion of the Watcher, capital W. So constant was his presence, so rare were the moments in which she obtained possession of herself that this state of things had begun to seem almost natural. She was getting accustomed to his point of view to the curious mixture of ignorance and arrogance, the breadth and pettiness that he displayed. She regretted her experiment, for his companionship was not pleasant, and he gave us yet no illumination in return for his lodging. She, as she divined, must teach him the earth. He was busy with his lessons probing, guessing, questioning all the while, but he had nothing to impart about the heavens in exchange, and this was disappointing. Taking her greater freedom, she had been caught in a peculiarly exasperating slavery. But the thing was done, with the fatalism that was an aspect of her general acceptance of life, she acquiesced, quietly enough, in the queer rearrangement of things, and this so completely that her outward demeanor was unchanged by it. So John had not even suspected her of neuralgia, much less of demonic possession. The dust that she was had dignity, it was not easily thrown into turmoil by the breezes of the abyss. She took up her existence and dealt with it day by day, with her old solidity and calm. Nevertheless, she had had a hard week of it. There was her ordinary work to perform, and the spring publishing season was now upon them. There was Vera to attend at the opening and the close of every day. There were the innumerable small duties, the makings and mendings, letting out of tucks, inserting of clean collars, which wage earning women can never delegate. These things had always filled the routine side of life to overflowing. Now there was added to them the entertainment of the sleepless watcher, whose passionate domination of her senses left her exhausted and bewildered every night. He had a ceaseless eagerness to see, hear, touch, and smell the odd and clumsy world into which he had pushed his way. So her ears, her eyes and hands did the work of two, and whenever her will was dormant for a moment, his seized the helm and drove the tired body on to fresh experience and the tired mind to fresh interpretation. There were no more visual hallucinations, no apparent interferences with the laws of external life, only the constant presence of an alien point of view and of a self-a-thing, an actual, if intangible, personality that put the minchinery of her brain to its own purpose. This personality infected her, gave her a new flavor, a new relation to the other constituents of life, as when an aromatic herb is introduced into the casserole, its real spirit enters into a permanent union with the chicken. Thus very often she hardly knew whether the thoughts that she had and the words that she said were symbols of the watcher's ideas or her own. She had almost forgotten what the dear and natural world had been used to look like before her powers of perception received this disagreeable twist. Now unnaturalness had become the standard of reality. There was only one escape from his overpowering companionship, only one door of return to her true self. When other people entered into communication with her, when life, real life, put in a peremptory claim, and she responded, there was civil war. Her will to live struggling with his will to know. Then if the external forces of life were strong enough, the human drove back the inhuman and the social normal constants emerged with a great sense of relief. But even so she was always acutely conscious of the besieger at her gates, waiting till the reinforcements should be withdrawn. Then he was back again, unfriendly, egotistical, rather contemptuous. Life for him was an odd and interesting exhibition, and she the showwoman. He had a right to her services. He had recovered from the first horror of his fall and was prepared to enjoy himself, but he could not understand existence, nor could she explain it, for she had never before noticed that it stood in need of explanation. Violently and passionately he demanded the grammar of life, and she, who had always spoken the language, of course, knew nothing of its rules. He found some difficulty in trimming perceptions which had been framed for eternity, to the narrow outlook of a bookseller's manager in a West End street. And by bit he was learning the uses of her senses, eagerly practicing these new, delightful tricks of sight and hearing on every little object within range. But all manifestations of energy seemed to him to be much upon a level. There were but moments in the movements of the dream, and there was nothing in his idea of things which could help him to distinguish the trivial from the important incidents of life. Death and death, trade and traffic, food and clothes, each raised in him astonished curiosity. Hence he assumed, absurdly, that all these new objects of his knowledge must equally and of necessity be worth the knowing, and concentrated eagerly upon the plots of novels, the flavor of food, the very names of the streets, trying to find out the meaning or, with a more annoying particularity, their use. Worse, when she or those whom he viewed through her eyes acted, he presumed a reason for the act. She was helpless before the misconceptions of a creature who applied the stanzas of the infinite to civilized daily life. He was amazed by all that he saw, by that love of the Aboriginal borough which constrains the Londoner whenever possible to perform the secret operations of storage, cookery, and travel, underground, by the teeming streets in which our urban populations are everlastingly content to fidget. He could not comprehend the incessant pouring to and fro of people by all these spacious highways and plated alleys. Mean from his universe they were like mercury scattered on a disc, which runs without reason in a hundred little processions and solitary drops, unites into a formless, wriggling mass, and breaks away again to an unending repetition of the process. Now from the top of the ladder, as he caught glimpses of the eternal crawl of women past the shops, the eternal vacant hurry of the men, his questions began to besiege her, came between her and the orderly and satisfying work on which she longed to concentrate her weary mind. They are all alive, all conscious, I suppose, these little creatures that I see run by. At least they like to think that they are alive. But why should they be always on the move? What is the use of movement? Are they not able to be still? Their bodies first run one way, and then they run the other. I see them do it with a strange determination, as if it mattered a great deal. But it makes no difference, really, does it? They cannot get away yet. Life means staying here. Does it not? Being glued to the ground, and death means getting away. However much they run about, they cannot get out of the knot until they die. Is this restlessness the beginning of their dying? The creeping of something that is already corrupt? Constance answered, No. It is proof of their vitality. They cannot rest, cannot be idle, because they are alive and have so many things to do. She could think of no better explanation. He retorted at once, But there are no real things to do. Reality does not change. It is perfect and very quiet. I have always existed in it, and therefore I know this activity is a loathsome illusion that has no relation to the real. They think that it has. How can they think that? They know about death. They know that they are crumbling all the time. Well, they don't think about death. This is life, and they want to live it whilst they can. What a foolish and unreasonable wish. Surely one may live, taste life, be in it, even acquiesce in the decay without the eternal fretfulness of doing things. I do not know, said Constance, but it seems to be implicit in the game. We are pushed, you know, for the most part. We don't do very much of it ourselves. Perhaps if you played the game you would understand. You see, when these people die they will leave things behind them, children, perhaps, whom they must get going in life, humanity as a chain, not a lot of little spots. When people run to and fro they are pulled by the other links. But the children will die in their turn, they will all die, then they will exist in the real forever and ever without earning or eating or any kind of fuss. So why undertake this weariness and struggle just to stay a few more hours within the dream? This is so ugly, miserable, and meaningless. Why do they not all try to die as soon as they can? Why do you not try to die? Now at once disentangle yourself from this dream. Constance replied to her own supplies. That is against the rules. She had not known it before. Now she was certain of it. It was as if he coming behind had pushed her on, beyond her normal standpoint as well as his own, till she saw involuntarily things which were yet below his horizon. That is incomprehensible, said the watcher. But if there were rules the game must be real and there must be a meaning in it. The game that I see with your eyes and your brain is lawless. It has no prize and no object, nothing happens within it which is real. Glancing back on her own experience Constance said, real things do happen, even in this corner, but only to oneself. I think that you would hardly notice them. They look so little, so unimportant to outsiders, compared with the beginning and strange endings of the game. But they are hideous these things, replied the watcher. They are like the bubbles of putrescence which happen and die, but cause nothing, leave no trace. They confuse the game, if there is one, hide the meaning. I suppose it is concealed somewhere beneath the froth of action. If it is there, I must find it, I will, and I shall. Then Constance suddenly realized that the thing which he was judging so harshly was not life, the great goddess, but her own life, the little circle of sensation in which she moved and he with her. Seen with the stranger's eye it was indeed squalid, senseless. She thought with shame of her breakfast table, the dingy, threadbare cloth which had to last a week in spite of many brown and greasy stains, the smutty, chipped and unpleasant appearance of the milk jug, the smears and the sloppiness, Vera's face when she had finished eating her egg. Then she thought of the dreary street and the bookshop and Miss Reakin, the next-door milliner, who often offered her a cup of tea. That was really all. Day by day she went around this little ring of experience with the docility and regularity of a circus horse. And she offered this to the watcher, who had been dragged out of infinity by his passionate curiosity, his determination to know that mystery of life which she saw, even from the lodging-house window, as the lustrous and many-colored garment of her god. This was the thing that, with all her opportunities, with the fierce flame of adventure burning in her heart, she offered to eternity as her rendering of existence. She was ashamed, feeling herself guilty of a lack of patriotism, in that she had shown this foreign guest no better thing. She said to him suddenly, Go, go! Find all the wonders, look for the thread, don't stay in this corner with me. That he answered almost in anger, I cannot go, for no one else will receive me, and without a habitation how am I to stay within this dream? Her eyes were opened for an instant then. The cliff of books fled far away, and she saw the tideless and everlasting sea of spiritual existence and life like a little iridescent ball of foam, blown across the surface of the waves. She was an infinitesimal bubble in that insubstantial mass. In an instant it would be dissolved, reabsorbed in the ocean, all its cherished separateness forever gone. Meanwhile, the water nested within her bubble, and was blown with her over the deeps. She shared in this moment his contemptuous bewilderment, confronted with the little-colored, evanescent world of the sense, even admitted a hateful doubt when he murmured, I suppose you are alive, real, eternal, somewhere, inside, behind it all, only caught much tighter than I am, and able to believe in nothing but the dream. She thought, suppose that I were not real, suppose that I too were a dream. She turned from that vision in horror and fear. The collector, who had been making up the order list in the back office, here passed through the shop and said to her, Torrington's traveller is here, miss. The governor says, will you please see him as soon as you are disengaged? Sent him in, said Constance, and she descended the ladder with a feeling of gratitude for unexpected rescue from a thickening web. Mr. John came with the traveller, a bearded, intelligent person, gathering a small black bag, who might have been mistaken for a non-successful doctor had he looked more convincingly antiseptic. I think, said Mr. John to his manager, that we can do with a dozen of their mixed poets in Quartovellum. They come three and nine apiece if you take a quantity, interrupted the traveller, marvellous value, artistically tooled backs and assorted labels. The best thing our firm has done in presentation poets. You won't regret them, a splendid window-line and safe at five and six in this district. Mr. John threw down the catalogue upon Constance's desk. Just make a good selling selection, Miss Tyrell, he said. The action looked dignified, and he knew that it was due dishears. Burns? Scott? With here, suggested the traveller, eagerly. She shook her head. No good to us. I'll take Keats, too, and Shelley, too. Milton, one. We don't do much in Milton's lately, Browning. Only the earlier works, of course. Oh, yes. I had better have three Robert and one Mrs. Four. More to make up the dozen. Put me in some longfellows. We shall want them for the school prize season later on. You're a good buyer, Miss, said the traveller grudgingly. His voice was succeeded by a very sweet and gentle one, which murmured. See, Felix, this is how they order the books we buy to read. Is it not interesting? This must be the lady whom father knows, I think. How sad and how surprising to find that longfellow still sells so well. Why? said Felix. Muriel answered. He had bourgeois ideals, darling. You will understand that when you were a bigger boy. Once, catching this reply at once, divined a customer of the more fastidious sort, assumed that air of understanding which seemed so sympathetic and was really so business-like, and said in a reassuring tone. He has not generally read, of course, but we have a large educational collection, and I am obliged to buy for that. Nothing, I think, said the lady firmly, exerts a worse influence on the developing emotions of children than the feebler poetry of the Victorian era. One should give them myth, the myth of all the religions. For religions were invented in the childhood of the world, were they not? Miss Tyrell, whom these statements had merely amazed, glanced at the new customer, and was at once wholly subjugated by her appearance, being one of those women for whom the crucial encounter and the overmastering appeal must always come from one of her own sex. As she put it to herself, men were interesting animals, but women mattered most. This brilliant, young, absurd, self-conscious creature with her serene expression, embroidered dress and artistically unusual hat, was like a pretty novelty suddenly exhibited in the shop window of life. She revived Constance's drooping belief in the resources of the establishment, so she at once became interested, wanted the delightful thing, and did not stop to ask the price. Muriel, who often found it prudent to adopt a deferential tone when speaking to those whom she believed to be her inferiors, now said to her, I really ought to apologize for coming in and troubling you like this, and just, I am afraid, at the busy time of the day, but you see, my husband mentioned you in connection with a very curious little book on magic that he bought here lately. He seemed to think that you would be kind enough to tell me something about it, and in fact it was he who advised me to come. She thought, as Andrew is such a good customer, she will have to be civil to me after that. As for Constance, she at once perceived that this must be the wife of the midday friend, and was amazed that a creature who was, at once, beautiful, intelligent, and ridiculous, had failed to satisfy the demands of any reasonable man. She had pictured Mrs. Vince as austere, flat-waisted, even early Italian, in type. But Andrew evidently possessed a fascinating toy, and would not be content because it refused to be turned into a companion. This was foolish of him. Where he would not play, Constance, whose toy-covered life had not furnished very richly, was willing enough to enjoy the opportunity of a game. At this moment she felt the desperate need of something to fall in love with, something that would restore her lost confidence in the world of sense, and Muriel, being both silly and pretty, seemed specially adapted to this purpose. She said, I think the little book that you mean must be the grimoire that Mr. Vince bought here a few days ago. I'm afraid I cannot tell you very much about that. It was bought in with the number of other old books at a country sale, and has no history. It was Felix who replied. We don't want to know about history, thank you. Mummy knows about that. We really have come because she doesn't know about undeems, and if they are real. You see, it's rather important because, of course, if they are real, I shall have to know about them when I'm bigger boy. Father said, you know about everything. My husband, said Mrs. Vince, is hardly what one would call a bookish man, though he tells me that he often comes here for novels and so forth. But I am interested in these subjects. They are most curious, as I dare say, and I find few things so satisfying to the intuitive senses as subliminal psychology. I fancied, from what he told me, that you were also a student of psychic things, and of their relation to the mystical and occult. Constance fell. She did not seriously suppose that Muriel's charming appearance indicated any understanding of transcendental matters. But she was in that mood which makes a shipwrecked man drink sea water, knowing that it will only induce a more maddening thirst, but unable to resist the momentary consolation. She therefore said, I told Mr. Vince, when he bought the little book, that it was not so absurd as it seemed. I am afraid that he thought me very silly and credulous, but evidently you are more inclined to agree with me. As she spoke, the troubled movements of the water reminded her that she was dealing disingenuously, even frivolously, with one of the sparsely distributed realities which had enabled him to forge a link between infinity and earth. You must not let my husband's remarks annoy you, said Muriel. All men are materialists, and really I don't know that one wants them to be anything else. But I do so entirely agree with you. Few things are so absurd as they seem, I think, and even if they were, one should keep an open mind toward the unseen. In the light of modern thought we are learning to understand these subjects more and more. Constance replied, Modern thought makes no difference, you know, really. The thing is there, and always has been. At the most we have only given it new names and invented a new explanation. How interesting of you to say so, exclaimed Muriel. I see that you are a medievalist, and you were really inclined to take magic seriously. Do you believe that the old occultists were justified in the claims that they made? That there is something in it beyond self-suggestion and hypnosis? I don't believe, said Constance, because I know. It's the people who don't know, who have to try and believe. I should think that they would find it rather difficult. She stopped, but it was too late. Muriel, whom unorthodox dogmatism always delighted, invited her to tea with enthusiasm. The astonished voice of the watcher cried in its turn, Go, go! And Constance, amazed by the suddenness of the event, consented. As they left the shop, Felix said to his mother, Mummy, I think this is a new kind of lady. Muriel misunderstood him. Darling, she said, lots of ladies were pinafores and do work. And inside, I mean, said Felix, firmly. Muriel, who shared the opinion of the best modern authorities on family life, that we can learn more from our children than they can learn from us, looked back at Miss Tyrell with renewed interest. She felt that her careful development of the boy's subconscious mind was already having its reward. She would be able to use him as a terrier in seeking out those abnormal persons whose presence in her drawing-room gave her so much delight, she caught Constance's eye as she turned. The watcher had come back to the window, and Muriel noticed with surprise their wild and strange expression of bewilderment, loneliness, and curiosity. Poor thing, she thought. I expect she has a very dull time of it. Commercial society must be most trying to such an intelligent woman as that. My visit has been quite an excitement. I'm glad that I asked her to call. Chapter 7 of The Column of Dust by Evelyn Underhill Recording by Josh Middledorf Chapter 7 The Street and the Drawing-Room The key of the great mysteries lies hidden in all things around us, but the perplexities of the convention hinder us from finding it. A.E. Wait, A Book of Mystery and Vision Because she had made a little place for the watcher, had accepted his presence even, took a certain pride in her guardianship, Constance now found herself subjected to a steady invasion, as one after another the chambers of her mind opened their doors to him. His vision was merged with hers, and all save immediately human matters. Thus she was finally made aware of a new aspect of the universe, of an angle from which she might perceive the splendor, aliveness, and mysterious qualities of natural things, the inconceivable lunacy of most man-arranged things. This happened to her with a rush upon the Saturday afternoon on which she went to tea with Mrs. Vince. She had set out with eagerness, a little excited as always when adventure or new experience was on hand, and therefore perhaps the more ready to open her eyes on strange truth. It was early in May, and there were moments of a shy and exquisite sunshine between the passing of the fluffy clouds. Constance, alighting from her omnibus, came down a steep and tree-planted street with her face to the south. She was in a superior residential neighborhood, and the houses upon either hand were built of red brick, and had many large, clean windows, all opened at the top and furnished with casement curtains of soft silk. Expensive tulips of discordant tints grew in the little gardens. There were fantastic knockers on many of the doors. It was in this unexpected district that she saw the shining tree. It sprang upon her consciousness out of the patchy, sunny world of paving stones, window-boxes, and pale blue sky, complete, alive, a radiant personality whose real roots she was sure penetrated far beyond the limitations of this material world. She gazed astonished into the heart of it, saw the travail and stress of the spirit of life crying out for expression, the mysterious sap rushing through its arteries, the ceaseless and ritual dance of every speck of substance which built it, that eternal setting to partners which constitutes the rhythm of the world. She perceived the long and eager fingers fringed with tentacles too delicate for sight, which clawed their way far into the earth, their fervid and restless search for food to nourish the arrogant and tufted tale which they sent into the upper air. It was as if accustomed to glance carelessly at the face of an agreeable and conventionally clothed acquaintance, that acquaintance were now revealed to her in the awful dignity of the nude. As for the tufted tale, it was no elastic and ingenious arrangement of branch and twig, set with buds and young leaves, no convenient perching place for innumerable sparrows. It broke like an imprisoned angel through the concrete prosperities of the street. Its airy filaments enmeshed a light which she had never seen before. In that street it dwelt solitary apart, yet very near. There was something between them, something in spite of her longing which kept them separate. She wondered what it could be. She saw each leaf, fierce and lucent as an emerald, radiant of green fire, blazing, passionate with energy, a verdant furnace wherein transcended life was distilled, cast into the mold of material things. Either as she supposed for a moment, it was not there at all, or else it had always awaited the perceiving intelligence, in virtue of some amazing significance that it had, a nook which it filled, a truth that it expressed within the universal dream. Its presence obliterated the clumsy shapes of the ordinary world and their foolish limitations. It came for a vision of another universe, of the world through space of countless planets, all teeming, feathery, flowering to the angelic eye, with some such radiant inflorescence as this. She saw the cosmos as God's flower garden, in which he strode well content in the cool of the day, and man as the little scuttling insect, breeding and feeding amongst the leaves. She saw it thus for an instant, the shining, glassy, pulsating thing, then as it seemed, another veil was stripped from her eyes, and she saw it in its unimaginable reality as it is seen by the spiritual sight, remote and more wonderfully luminous the fit object for her adoration. The watcher's voice cried within her, ah, beautiful, exquisite world. Here at last is the meaning, the real, the idea. Why did I not understand before? As for her, she had nothing to say, nothing to show. She was too astonished and too full of joy. He said again, ah, what amazing happiness you have, you little creatures, all the shapes and colors and the sharp edges against the light, and the lovely little differences of things, what a splendid dream, what a gloss upon eternity, how satisfying. But why do you always look at the other side? How greatly you are mistaken, and how much joy you must miss, because of being with unreal and ugly things. A woman passed, dressed in Isabella-colored rags. Her coarse hair was gathered in an unseemly knot, by the help of a bit of common string. Her dingy, mottled stockings, lay in folds about the ankles. Her boots were unlaced, she carried a tiny baby at her breast, and a few bunches of shabby violets in a basket. The baby was a condensed statement of human unpleasantness. The violets, in their present condition of purplish pulp, still conveyed, like kings in exile, a poignant suggestion of lost fragrance and shy grace. This smudged sketch of womanhood came between Constance and the tree, unconscious of the thing that was close to her, and of the parted veil through which the other woman peeped. She was wrapped closely in her own cares and discomforts. A ragged vessel, virgin to all delight, save one, so busy tending the difficult flame of life that she never had time to warm herself by its rays. The watcher withdrew from his lookout when she came within its field, when could feel the strong, contractive movement of loathing which her image had evoked. He said, Why do you let your earth breed such horrible things, stamp them out, feed the beautiful, and starve the vile? Constance answered, I don't think one can, because it is all one. The watcher replied, No, no, how foolish, how blind you are! Here is the true and lovely dream close beside you, look at it, live in it. This is the true projection of the will, but the ugly side of vision is all false. Leave that alone, let it die. The woman came nearer and said, Violets, lady, do buy some violets, I ain't taken nothing today. The hopeless effort of the myriad feeble poor, all the teeming alleys, the indistinguishable hordes, seem to come as a wailing chorus to her words. Somewhere in Constance's mind an inhabitant arose who knew that music, who wrestled with the watcher for possession of her will, saying, Cling to the human, however loathsome, do not refuse life in all her implications. But the shining tree was there, as it seemed, with the other message crying, In your eyes to the light, to a world made luminous, leave the shadows, come, come! The watcher applauded those words, there she was, between two worlds of experience, between the two great expressions of the spirit of life, the shining tree in its transcendental splendor and security, and the shifting agonized and pollulating deeps. She called her, through the parted veil of perception, casting open door after door upon the countless aspects of creation. But pain, friendly, ugly human pain, was at her elbow, whispering that this was a birthright which she would only renounce at her cost. The unsavory baby stirred under its shawl at this moment and thrust out a tightly clenched and grimy fist. Then Constance saw for an instant life, the ever-lovely, fertile, heedless, generous life, springing beneath the rags, fresh and exquisite as the nascent corn beneath the mold. Its champion within her acknowledged this presence, recognizing it as identical with that vision by which it had always been guided and upheld, and unconscious of its maimed, degraded face. The child and his mother became a symbol. And love was in the air, very humble and glad, saying, Vita dolcedo et spes nostra salve. The woman had grown to the likeness of the shining tree. She too was radiant, eternal and sublime. The spirit of life ran like a divine fire in her veins and was given to the infant at her breast. She had become a majestic link in the process of creation, an auxiliary of the angels. A fresh door was thrown open upon reality, whereby it was seen that even the prisoners in the dungeon still wore the insignia of kings. The tree was there, throwing, as it were, the shelter of a transcendental loveliness and knowledge about the poor efforts of those entangled in the flesh. The woman and child, seen against it, were an image of all life. It seemed an anticlimax to give the woman six pence to look with interest at the baby's moist and smutty face, but she did it in this act that deep-seated personality within her became dominant. The baffled and disgusted watcher loosed the reins, acknowledging beauty. She had vindicated her humanity by paying her deepest reverence to life, a proceeding which can only seem insane to those spiritual natures which have not been passed through the furnace of love. She came to Mrs. Vince's drawing-room, hardly prepared by the curtain-raiser for a full appreciation of that comedy which was the main business of her afternoon. Andrew met her with surprise, for his wife had forgotten to tell him of the invitation. He looked thicker than ever in his own home, and so out of place that Constance found it difficult to remember that he was her host. His civilities were automatic. He had said, Very good of you to come to us. Before he realized that the goodness for once was actually on Muriel's side, she was going to be kind to Miss Tyrell. This he felt would be a delicate matter, but he was obliged to acknowledge her conduct as perfect. It must clearly be a point of honor with all three of them to forget the bookshop, and Vince saw it were the painful distinctness when his friend was announced. Therefore the curious sincerity of Muriel's welcome amazed him. There were interesting people in the room, but she turned from them all to attend on her new guest. She said, I've been looking forward so much to this, in fact we all have. I know you're wonderful, oh yes, I saw it the moment that I met you. My little boy felt it too, and you know how sensitive children are. They are near the source, and have not had time to forget. But you shan't be teased to tell people things, I promise. They are all longing to meet you, and if you would rather, they will have to be content with just that. She smiled at Constance with an air of secret intimacy, shutting her in the little circle of her own comprehension. The effect was dazzling, for Muriel was looking unusually pretty. Her hair was arranged with a laborious and becoming simplicity, her large eyes shown with spiritual enthusiasm. If Gayety could rightly be attributed to the really high-minded, she was almost gay upon this afternoon, and Andrew, watching her, was amazed that such asgoltation could be produced by lectures, exclusive ideals, and a vegetarian diet. The woollen underclothing which he knew that she affected would have kept any ordinary woman from attaining that air of esoteric spartaness which constituted Muriel's peculiar charm. Constance drifted away, leaving her hostess at liberty. Ms. Foster at once took her place and said softly, Who is the big, dark-haired woman in impossible brown kid gloves? She is going to be interesting, answered Muriel, at least I hope so, but they are very tiresome sometimes, a cold things, magic, and so on. Talk to her, there's a deer, and presently I'll get Mrs. Reed to draw her out. It is her first visit, I've just been putting her at her ease. Oddly enough it was Andrew who discovered her, and as a matter of fact, she keeps a shop. Being in a shop nowadays is so very different, said Phoebe. Yes, but still even now a shop isn't quite. It is books, you see, rather a new idea, isn't it? And rather a pity, I think. Of course, if it were hats or old furniture, anyone would receive her. I expect she is a lady, she certainly moves like one, said another guest, who had been listening to the conversation. Yes, I noticed that at once, replied Muriel, then recollecting herself she added hastily, but at any rate she is a woman, which is of course a far greater thing. And rarer, observed Andrew, abruptly. All the ladies in his vicinity looked at him, with as much surprise as if an infant in arms had made an intelligible remark. I will go and talk to her, said Phoebe, in whom Andrew aroused that instinctive dislike which all women feel for the husbands of their more cultivated friends. Also she wished to help Muriel with her party, and was aware that if the new acquisition were first drawn out by the wrong person, her value as an asset would be sensibly diminished. She approached Constance, but too late, Miss Tyrell had already been captured. A comfortable lady in very worldly clothe sat by her on the sofa, and Phoebe, recognizing in Mrs. Weatherby that hateful form of stupidity which is apt to make one's own cleverness seem absurd, shortened sail and remained at a little distance in an attitude of watchful detachment. I don't think, said Mrs. Weatherby, without further preliminary, that I have seen you at one of Mrs. Vince's parties before. No, said Constance. You were wise to come, I always do, it amuses me. She doesn't want me, but there are some people, you know, that even these clever young women are obliged to ask. You see, I've known Andrew ever since he was in petticoats. Very unsuitable he looked then, such a little man. Muriel dislikes me because I haven't got a soul. But as I live next door, she has never been able to drop me. Tiresome for her, isn't it? She chuckled, stuffed a soft mauve pillow into the space between her shoulders and the sofa, and continued talking in that mood of unbridled confidence about other people's business which the company of an entire stranger will sometimes provoke. Muriel, she said, is a pretty girl, isn't she? Peacot, unusual. Even artistic clothes never looked outy on her. One isn't surprised that Andrew fell in love, or the little wretch hadn't a penny. I admire Mrs. Vince immensely, replied Constance. Too much like a Madonna in a drawing-room to please me, said Mrs. Weatherby. Give her a halo, a blue teagun, and a baby. But she never had another, after Felix, lazy creature. As for poor Andrew, he is just in the position of a Saint Joseph in these nice little pictures you get at high church shops. I can't think how they do them, only eighteen pens and real oak frames. Well, that's what he makes me think of, standing up behind in a very uncomfortable position whilst Muriel is admired. A good, honest fellow with sound business instincts and his living to get at his trade, shut up with a painfully unique and exquisite wife. Everyone else and their knees before her, and he feeling that attitude rather fatiguing after a hard day's work. How coarse and ugly all the ordinary, little comfortable bad habit must appear in such company. Could you drink bottled stout with that sitting at the other end of the table? Would it be possible to snore in the presence of a really spiritual woman? That is Andrew's condition all over. Muriel enjoys her own virtues thoroughly. But his don't agree with the furniture, and so they have to be kept out of sight. Constance, who was too much interested in Muriel's hair to care very much about her virtues, was bewildered by this brutal frankness, and had nothing to say. There was a short silence and Miss Foster seeing her opportunity. Pounced. I want you, she said, to talk to me a little. If you will. We haven't been introduced, but I feel that we know one another. Mrs. Vince told me one or two things. You must not mind. I am sure that we shall be sympathetic. I too have a great belief in the undeveloped faculties of man. Constance replied. I am afraid that Mrs. Vince is mistaken. I am a very ordinary person, and as to the subjects which incest her, I know hardly anything beyond perhaps the immensity of my own ignorance. Intuition, said Phoebe, is greater than knowledge, and especially a woman's intuition unhindered by the love of carnal things. Constance could see Andrew in the middle distance, moving to and fro with the awkward and desperate motions of a man resisting to the utmost his natural instinct for flight. He was so humbly human, so desperately real, that she almost expected house and tea-party to dissolve and leave him in curably actual, poised in space. Muriel had retreated to the window, whence her gentle and earnest voice could be heard now and then. She was conversing with two clean-shaven and frock-coded youths, whose presence was obviously a tribute to the appearances, rather than to the opinions of the assembled ladies. One of them kept a perpetual but an ostentatious watch upon the movements of Miss Foster. The other looked at his hostess, whilst he listened to a heavy, sallow woman with greasy black hair, prominent eyes, and many Egyptian ornaments. The sallow woman, whose name was Mrs. Reed, was speaking in a voice of extraordinary power and sweetness. Salt, sulfur, and mercury, she said, are really in their ultimate implications the three maries at the supple coir of soul. When we have learned this, we are at the threshold of the grand arcanum, for complicity of myth merges in unity of experience if we could but understand. What is the arcanum, asked the youth who was watching Miss Foster. The sallow lady looked at him severely. Osiris, she said, died a sacrifice, and of Osiris, Horus was reborn. Alchemical gold is the fruit of destroying fire. Does this tell you nothing? The questioner was abashed, and his companion muttered, poor old Freddy, in an almost audible tone. Muriel broke in. We must not, she observed, attribute too much finality, even to pre-Christian myths, I think. Can they, after all, be more than methods of training the subconscious mind to an apprehension of truth? No, said Freddy, moving away with the dexterity which was clearly the result of long practice. It was at this point that the watcher, surging up to the encounter of this inner nest of illusion and the new existences that it contained, exclaimed in her mind. It is all unreal, confused and hopeless. Ah, why will they pervert and spoil this dream? She was off her guard. He was strong, and the words were audible. She heard her lips say them. They sounded strange and uncivil, and she wondered what would happen next. Fortunately, Phoebe understood them to be a reply to her last observation. She said approvingly, that is so true. Knowledge without insight leads us from the light instead of to it. I see that you are a mystic. All young people like to call themselves mystics nowadays, interrupted Mrs. Weatherby, with a knowing air of kindly contempt. I often wonder whether they know what they mean by it. Surely, said Phoebe gently, a mystic is one who lives in reality, instead of in appearance. Constance heard her own voice, saying, then there can be no mystics on the earth. Oh, I cannot agree with you there, replied Phoebe. Indeed, we know to the contrary, for the great mystics have left their records behind. Did we not know that ecstasy and meditation can shift the threshold of consciousness and open the soul's eyes upon the unseen, we should be miserable indeed. Constance, still at the mercy of her lodger, and possessed by that curious exultation and freedom from self-consciousness which society sometimes induces in those who live much alone, said, that is but one illusion the more. Just so, agreed Mrs. Weatherby, a mystic's experience is only valid for himself. All the books say so. He may not be mad, of course, but you can't prove it. Besides these subjects make people cold and unsociable. In a married woman they generally mean a husband who is either unsatisfied or unsatisfactory. Probably both in the end. The fact is, they aren't quite normal, and that is why nice women have always felt that they are not right. Muriel had joined them. A nice woman, dear Mrs. Weatherby, she said, is unfortunately so often called nice, because she has not sufficient character to suggest any other adjective. She always has womanliness, replied Mrs. Weatherby. Oh yes, I know, it's an old-fashioned word, and what's more, I don't care if it is. You may depend upon it, my dear, that the really womanly woman is the grandest figure in the world, and when you young people have got through with your mysticism, the men will make you come back to it. She is sublime as a mother, and often unacceptably clever in making love, observed Phoebe dispassionately, if you mean by womanly the deep bosomed, quiescent creature with steady nerves. For the rest she is afraid of life, like priests and other people who are born to the perfect performance of a restricted job. For instance, took fire at that. But she is life, she said. She has it. You who watch and classify, do you think that you live? You are only the wall-flowers at the ball. You haven't joined the dance. You haven't earned your supper. I wonder whether you'll get it in the end. Phoebe looked at her in some surprise, and then answered very placently, You do not take into account the interior life of the soul, or the spiritual children that it bears. No, you forget them, observed the youth called Freddie, who had been waiting for an opportunity of agreeing with Miss Foster's remarks. Yes, Admirial, that is the real existence, the higher consciousness as it not, and it is all here, she tapped her chest mysteriously as she spoke. Of course, in the plexus, exclaimed another lady, a pretty fluffy person, quaintly dressed in the early Victorian style. What a wonderful discovery is it not, once it has awakened, they say that even the most dispeptic people may eat anything without endangering their inner peace. And pray, how does one awake it? asked Mrs. Weatherby, Phoebe replied, by the practice of meditation. Yes, of course, said the fluffy lady, rather plaintively, meditation is the beginning of everything, is it not, at least in spiritual things, and now they say it leads to success in business as well, which would be so very delightful, through the will-force, you know, and concentration. But it isn't as easy as it sounds, not by any means. The other day I shut myself up in my bedroom and tried hard to meditate on the mystic rose. They recommend that, you know, in some of the books, and it is a very sweet idea, but I must say it did not seem particularly helpful. Nothing happened, and after a little time I went to sleep. You should ask Miss Tyrell to advise you, said Muriel, anxious to show the positive aspects of her new acquisition. She is a student of the old occultists. You know they practiced all these things under different names in the Middle Ages. For magic has a great deal to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. Constance looked at the fluffy lady, aware that in the eyes of the angels the faint and delightful tints of her complexion were more of importance than many higher thoughts. She also noticed that Mrs. Reed had drawn the air and formed part of a little circle that seemed to wait upon her words, she said. But I don't quite know why you should want to do these things. When you have done them life will never be the same again to you. All its proportions will have altered, and you may not like it so well. You have so many worlds of your own that you can hardly miss the real world which is the one that you have not got. When you have got it all the others must go, and it is so simple that I think at first you might be rather bored. As for me I had very little that was worth having in my world, and so I was tempted to explore, but you. She looked at them, at the eager circle of small, sold, egotists at Muriel, who said appealingly, isn't she wonderful? And at the other women who agreed without enthusiasm. She saw the little struggling scraps of life within these curious and fragile envelopes, tiny flames disguised and differentiated by the variety of their enclosing lamps. They all, as it seemed, took the lamps very seriously, forgetting that these were matters of artifice built up from the atmospheric gases and the substance of the earth, and that their inhabitants were alike sparks from the same central fire. But Constance was not allowed to forget it. That hawk-eyed lodger of hers pierced through the pretense and saw the poor bewildered flame struggling for air within its elaborate prison. The odd thing was that the crowd of little souls, some nearly smothered by the cobwebs that they had gathered round themselves, took no interest in each other but only in each other's lamps. The polite life of the drawing-room was just that, the myriad inextinguishable flames, disdaining their own immortal heat and radiance, feeding hungrily upon the illusions, which caused them to mistake colored glass for divine flame. Constance finished her sentence, you can live your life, your dream life, if you choose, in all its richness, down to the bottom and up to the heights. That is very close to reality and the only satisfying thing, I am afraid, if you explore, all that you will learn will be the necessity of getting back there, if you can. How interesting, said Muriel, in a slightly disappointed tone. The fluffy lady looked displeased and bewildered. Her pretty mouth was drawn into the beginning of a pout. But presently her face cleared and she said triumphantly, I think I know what you must mean, exactly. A friend of mine had a baby through Christian Science last year, so you see, it does all fit in. Everything fits in, observed Mrs. Reed solemnly, for the many are comprehended in the one. When Miss Tyra left, Andrew followed her into the hall, found her umbrella, and with more than his usual obtuseness, asked whether she wanted a cab. I was wondering, don't you know, he said, slowly. His mind rambled to the bookshop and back again to his own home. He wished to realize Constance in both situations and found the idea difficult to deal with. Finally, he said, we must keep this up, eh? Capital plan, so good for Muriel. Change of society. These women, don't you know, are all alike. Constance answered, they all seem very different to me. Quite a new world. That's it, they're a little lot all to themselves. Don't seem to catch on to ordinary life somehow. It's been made too soft for them, I fancy. And they're mostly clever. Not that one minds clever women, but they are to be given a toughish time. They're like boys, they need it. She smiled. Don't give Mrs. Vince a hard time, she's delicious. He seemed pleased. She has nice coloring, he said. I thought you would admire her, but these women never think of that. They come here because she lets them talk. Waste of a pretty girl, isn't it, to give her up to that sort of thing? Constance, who had been pursued all the afternoon by a longing to enjoy Muriel in peace without the disturbing follies of persons who were not pretty, agreed cordially. He would have continued the conversation, but Mrs. Reed appeared at the foot of the staircase. Andrew shook hands hastily and said, Mind you, look us up again, and retreated. Mrs. Reed came to the door and allowed the parlor maid to cover her dress with a shabby alpaca dustcoat. She looked almost ordinary once her scarabs were concealed. Oblivious of this abrupt relapse into undistinguished dowdiness, she fixed her large and solemn eyes on Miss Tyrell's face, and said, Shall we go a little way together? When the door was safely closed upon them, she continued, I have been wishing to talk with you all the afternoon. I think this is your first visit, is it not? A delightful house, quite a refuge for those who long for a more spiritual environment than that provided by modern civilisation. Mr. Vince, of course, is very male, but one doesn't mind that. But today people were not as receptive as usual. You, for instance, were not understood. I see so well what you were trying to express to them. These foolish young women know nothing of the vast and secret forces with which they play. That's it, said Constance, eagerly. But you and I, who know, whom neither the flux of time nor the wreck of dogma can disturb, we can safely accept the extended life that is offered to those who have seen the metaphysical lover faced to face. She turned down a narrow lane beneath the high wall of a church, stopped at a vivid red brick portico named 230-315, and added, Here is my little irie. Will you not come in for a moment? I feel sure that we have much in common. The long climb up cemented and uncarped stairs, past distempered corridors speckled with innumerable front doors that seemed to have strayed out of Doll's house land to relieve the hygienic severity of germ-proof walls and fire-proof flooring, concentrated the attention of both ladies on material things. They clutched the fronts of their skirts, husbanded their breath, and spoke little until Mrs. Reed inserted her latch-key in a Yale lock on the top floor. Then Constance said politely, How nice and airy you must be up here, and the water within, muttered, You certainly make the dream as inconvenient as you can. It was with an almost conventional courtesy that Mrs. Reed now led her visitor into the single sitting-room of that little flat. Constance was not surprised to find white-washed, rush carpet, a small cast of ISIS nursing at the infant-horus, and a complete absence of tablecloths and other textile amenities, but she was slightly astonished when she perceived a very old and red-faced gentleman dozing by the small fire. A large blue Persian cat was folded into a compact parcel on his knee. The completeness of Mrs. Reed's personality, the authoritative position which she had seemed to occupy in Muriel's circle, had suggested a detachment from the more ordinary human relations. It seemed hardly credible that the metaphysical lover could suffer a domestic rivalry. Yet Mrs. Reed now approached the old gentleman, looked at him with profound interest and tenderness, and said, Dear, have you had a good afternoon? Hey, what? You back my love? Said the old man. Been gallivanting with your young friends, eh? Had a pleasant party? That's right. I'd like you to enjoy yourself. Roy and I had a quiet hour together, very comfortable. In fact I fancy we have both had forty winks. You must have your milk now, replied Mrs. Reed, and you will have to entertain Miss Tyrell whilst I get it. She said to Constance, in a lower tone, will you talk to my husband a little? It would be kind. He's rather deaf, but it will be all right if you articulate distinctly. My wife, said Mr. Reed to Constance when they were alone, is a dear good girl, very intelligent, as I dare say you know. I'm proud of her. I like to see her friends come here. It shows that she is appreciated. It is very presidential that she should have these interests, for we never had any family, and that's a sad misfortune for any woman. As I sometimes say, I have to be father, husband, and baby, all in one. He chuckled with immense and senile enjoyment of this well digested pleasantry. Mrs. Reed, returned with hot milk in a feeding cup, helped him to take it, and said, That's a good old dear, as the last drop was neatly disposed of. My little knell makes me quite lazy, murmured Mr. Reed, when the meal was over, and his mouth had been wiped. His big head settled down again upon the shoulders, the loose baggy cheeks almost touching the lapels of his velveteen coat. His lips fell apart, and one saw that a few dark yellow stumps still remained in the sunken gums. His eyelids closed. A very comforting drop of milk, very comforting indeed, he said, sleepily. Then the water cried suddenly and silently in his nest. Vile, vile, why feed the foul and useless body when it is beginning to decay. Let it go, let it die. Nourish the beautiful things. Constance in horror exclaimed, No, no. He said, Why not? This bit of the dream is finished and done with. Why clutch it? Where is its value? Let it pass away and join the real. Only enough the only reply which came to her mind was the word which Helen Reed had spoken. The many are comprehended in the one. It seemed inappropriate, as well as absurd, for it suggested a vital connection between ineffable beauty and the old man who was huddled by the fire. Nevertheless she said it. Chapter VIII of The Column of Dust by Evelyn Underhill This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Josh Middledorf, Chapter VIII, two sorts of solitude. The bird, a nest, the spider, a web, man, friendship, Blake, proverbs of hell. One morning in the beginning of July Andrew asked Miss Tyrell to go with him to the play, and the forces of Thistia and Bohemia went to war in her mind. Muriel had been placed upon the committee of the psychodeistic league, and its annual meeting was to take place at her house. On these occasions Vince always took refuge in musical comedy. He went as a rule alone, laughed without restraint at the horse-play jokes, and topical songs, luxuriated in the vague emotions which were evoked by the more amorous passages, observed with understanding the physical charms of the performers. But this year, in one of those spasms of philanthropy which are indistinguishable from self-indulgence, he had conceived the notion of giving Constance a treat. He spoke of it to Muriel, who was depressingly tolerant, but hardly encouraging. Miss Tyrell, she said, will scarcely care for your kind of theatre, will she? I had been thinking that next time there was anything good at the stage, I would give her your ticket. She's really very cultivated, you know. Girton, in fact, and she reads all the right things. The popular drama exasperates that type of mind. But you might ask her. It will be a kindness. And I can't have her here that evening. The inner circle meets, and only members are admitted. Andrew was a little grieved. He had hoped for a jealousy, which he would certainly have discountenanced. And the excessive breadth of Muriel's mind, in which he could not help seeing something slightly unwombly, discounted the joys of the undertaking. But his spirits were raised when he perceived that Constance, at any rate, felt her decision to be governed by considerations of propriety. No male creature likes to feel harmless. Andrew's self-respect was stimulated by the fact that he had to persuade Miss Tyrell that the civility he offered was neither unusual nor objectionable in such a friendship as theirs. That friendship, founded on Vince's refreshingly materialistic point of view, had been confirmed by the addition of a new element, the hopeless determination in both of them to admire in Muriel all those fascinations which were most at variance with her intellectual claims. They talked like rival lovers of her beauty, and disputed the supremacy of each feature over the rest. She was the unending subject of their conversation. Andrew had come to recognize the bookshop as the one place in which he might speak freely and enthusiastically of his wife, and Constance looked for his coming because he brought with him some of the glamour which hung about the aggravating object of their adoration. To her this was but the renewal of an experience which had been constant in her girlhood, that feverish and bewildering period in which the sonorous rhythms of the classics that she wished to love had seldom succeeded in drowning the throb of life that exasperated her nerves and confused her brain, had been characterized by the savage and shame-faced emotion which she poured out unasked at the feet of certain chosen women. Her attitude towards them, always shy and always passionate, was seldom appreciated and never understood. Some had taken advantage of it and made demands on her. These she had served with an almost tiresome eagerness so that they soon became indifferent to her affection. Others had never perceived the existence of the sentiment. These she preferred, for she was able, in their case, to preserve her illusions intact. She proposed, if possible, to keep Mrs. Vince in this fortunate ignorance, an undertaking which was made easier by the presence of a fellow victim upon whom one could inflict the enthousiasms that might otherwise have become tediously apparent to their object. To these circumstances Vince owed the secure and comfortable position which he now occupied in her life. Few things seemed safer than a platonic friendship which is founded upon a conspiracy to admire the wife of one of the parties concerned. Constance then accepted Andrew's invitation and, to the amazement of the watcher, devoted a Saturday afternoon to the renovation of her only evening dress. He wished to be out in the sun, seeing beautiful shapes, for nature appeared to him now as the one enticing aspect of the dream. Compared with this exploration of beauty, these magical encounters with the real, all other occupations seemed but foolishness, and he hated the necessity which made his every movement dependent on his entertainer's whims. Hence, when she paid no attention to his reiterated hints, disgust grew on him and there was a note of irritation in his remonstrances. Surely, he said, you must see the extreme absurdity of your behavior that, even on your own interpretation of the facts, your actions are entirely inconsistent. You shut yourself in a space that has no beauty in order that you may concentrate on dress, dress! How came you, I wonder, to think of that insane device? She was busy. His comments distracted her. We do it, she answered rather angry, because we, also, like to add to outer beauty, if we can. Add to beauty? How can you add to the beauty by these masses of queer and colored rags spun from the poor patient plants and animals and chopped to inconvenient shapes? Why it is but more dust in different patterns, rolled round you in order to conceal the mysterious body underneath. A curious mania, when all that matters is the soul, which is already assured of secrecy which no one in the body can ever see. One body, I had thought, were enough disguise for the shyest spirit. Yet, you must all, it seems, have two, at least, and elevate the fashioning of the second to a very solemn thing. But the result of this fashioning can never add to beauty, for it is meant to hide, not to express, the real. Constance was intent on the ladies' own magazine, which assured its readers that a very French effect might be secured by the application of two yards of black crepe de chine, and some spangled fringe to an old white satin bodice, an operation which it described as well within the powers of the home worker. She was a woman, she was preparing for a, probably, delightful evening with her only friend. She was determined that he should have no cause to be ashamed of her appearance. It is therefore hardly surprising that she found the phenomena beneath her fingers more interesting than the inner witness to their unreality. She went on with her work, keeping one eye upon Vir, who showed a disposition to begin illicit doll's dressmaking at the other end of the crepe de chine, and resolutely turning her attention from the fretful voice which urged on her its ignorance, its annoyance, and her duty of conciliation and enlightenment. But he would not let her be. He said again, I suppose that you are compelled to believe in your body, and this distresses you, and so you cover it with pretenses in which even you can hardly believe. Then exasperated she cried aloud, No, I am proud of it. I love it. I, at any rate, have never been ashamed. Vir elused her end of the crepe de chine, dropped the scissors and said reproachfully, Tante, how queer you shouted, you shouldn't. It made me jump. Constance was abruptly recalled to the consideration of a body in which it was certainly very difficult to take pride, for even when freshly washed and dressed in the clean clothes which she detested, Vir always carried with her a curious suggestion of squalor. She had hands which defied the nail-brush and looked as though even her white pinafores had come to her by a mistake. They never remained white very long, for dirt of all kinds flew to her as if detecting congenial company. Miss Tyrell heard a regular liquid sound as of surreptitious sucking, looked up and exclaimed sharply, Take that stuff out of your mouth at once! The child unwillingly extracted a dark and glutinous mass composed of a rag of black silk which had met a half-dissolved piece of toffee and become inextricably entwined with it. The resulting compound was not pleasant to handle, but it was necessary to take it from Vir and ensure its destruction, a proceeding which the victim watched with a sullen scowl. She seldom cried and never failed to resent authority. Ends of late had begun to detest these episodes. It was a part, perhaps, of the growing influence of the water, whose homesickness betrayed itself in a passionate aestheticism. The lens through which she had looked for an instant on reality offered no renewal of that vision, but it persistently magnified the hideous properties of those illusions to which she was chained. On this stifling afternoon, with the usual summer smells of London coming through the open window, the crooked Venetian blind moving in the draught and making zebra patterns on the shabby wall, this moist, chewy, gummy rag which she must take between her fingers nauseated her. When she had disposed of it, she felt that Vera's neighborhood had become loathsome. She gathered her work, went into the little bedroom, and gave herself with an almost morbid pleasure to the contemplation and analysis of her own fury of disgust. She perceived that she hated her life. Standing aside and looking at it, it seemed to her weary and distorted vision, a mere travesty of existence, an uneventful sequence of sordid material acts. The watcher encouraged this attitude, crying out on his incarceration, casting himself with fury against the bars. Sometimes he was interested, but happy he never was. Urged then, as by a double spur, there came to her mind a momentary longing to renew the active revolt of her youth when, stung not by squalor but by the hopeless inertia of the comfortable class, she had cut her way out of the garden and bartered all privilege for a little actuality. The crushed, primeval spirit of adventure rose and pricked her, this capable wage-earning woman of thirty-five or so, reminding her of those wild raptures and wonderful deeps of existence which formed part of the great and confused heritage of the human soul. Then the recoil wave came, bringing a memory of the savage tooth that waits behind those soft lips of nature whose kiss she had once accepted with courage, even with delight, thence a venom had come which still worked in her life. That experiment was not worth repeating. The old white evening bodice slipped from her knee, and her indifference was so great that she did not put out her hand to save it. One of the bones which had cut its way through the covering sheath caught in a flounce of her skirt, it made a little tear and anchored itself. She rescued her work, then, and it reminded her of the brightening margin of her life, of Andrew, who wanted her companionship, and of Muriel, whom she wanted even more. She possessed, after all, the essentials of existence, a little place in the dance, and a little opportunity of service. At a quarter to nine, upon the following Monday evening, Constance arrived at the Tottenham Court Road tube station and took her place in the lift. Her depression had passed away, she felt happy and dreamy. After her long and sordid solitude, the mere putting on of evening dress was an excitement. It gave to her a curious sensation of well-being, armed her, as it were, for the encounter with life. As the platform rose, taking her to the surface, she contemplated in a mood of slightly cynical amusement the advertisements which covered its walls, appeals every one of them to the supposed needs of man. You cannot afford to do your writing the old way. You want our shirts? We want you. The new note, decorative smartness combined with the comfort of the home. The watcher, too, always entertained by our odd habit of burrowing, our quaint conceits as to the reality of levels, the air of importance which characterizes the running to and fro of modern men. The watcher looked on these things with pleased surprise, saying, strange cries of one immortal spirit to another, but there was another advertisement, less conspicuous, in little red and black letters, without ornament. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. It was so modest an air amidst all the heraldry of trade that it would hardly have held Constance's attention had he not exclaimed, What's that? That is different. That is real. How has it got into the dream? The long absent note of fear had returned to his voice, and he said, I'm caught. We all are. How can we be other than deceived? It is we that are mocked, hoodwinked and made helpless. We stand in great danger, with none to advise us, no power of right judgment, no means of escape, and beyond the eternal idea and eternal seeking within it. Oh cruel, treacherous, and blinding dream! The words in their simple frame glared out as from another dimension and drew the great ring of eternity about the small illusions, the childish conveniences, the little scrambles and self-seekings of twentieth-century London life. They followed Constance and her lodger, indeed, not truly one, but truly two, to the doors of the theatre. They obliterated the spiling portrait of Miss Sibyl Selby as, evenet, the little Breton bride. They shone fierce and accusative under the arc lights and passed with them through the violently swinging doors, which seemed themselves infected with some exalted and dramatic emotion. Thus they came at last to the corner opposite the box-office where Vince awaited his friend. He said to her, Here we are, all ready for a ripping evening, eh? Jolly places, stalls, forth row, the nicest bit of the house. See everything you want to see and nothing that you don't. I hate to notice the wigs and the rouge, plenty of them outside in the street, awfully good piece, too. I've seen it three times, and by jove I don't mind if I see it a dozen more. Nice voice, that girl's got, Sibyl Selby. Dance as well, neat ankles. Come along, it's time we were in our seats. The curtain rose upon the little Breton bride. On a set which ingeniously utilized the caves of Quimper with their many little bridges and a strolling crowd of chorus girls in quaffs. The orchestra stuck up an airy, worldly waltz, and the hero and his party made a realistic entrance in a Demmler sixteen-horse-power motor whilst the chorus girls sang an amorous and cheerfully unmeaning entwot appropriate to the business of the night. At once they were in the thick of it of the swirling, dancing, vastly sensuous world. Rhythm and sentiment, cloying melodies and pretty passions were poured out upon the audience, producing in them an agreeable anesthesia of forgetfulness of all they held for real. Soon, their dreamy minds were enchained by the deliberate measure of the dance, the mot-naughtness cadence of the songs. They were at the mercy of those whom they had hired to amuse them, the eternal paradox of the arts. Yet the drugs with which the thing was done were very simple, merely coordinated sounds and movements expressing a gay and incoherent love-tail in which light affections triumphed and the deeps of life were carefully ignored. At the end of the first act, Andrew, cheered by Miss Tyrell's evident enjoyment, said to her, Hope you are liking it, awfully good of you to come, you know. Just to a thing like this, nothing out of the ordinary, Muriel was afraid you might be bored. Constance looked at him and at the glittering house with its air of sleek smartness and then at the box of chocolates in her lap, and her mouth trembled a little. She was, for the moment, in the position of a protected woman, back amongst the foolish comforts and dear easy habits of a class that she had deliberately left. She answered, It is about eight years since any man waited on me, considered my pleasure, gave me sweets, so is it likely that I should be bored? Vince was genuinely shocked and affected. By Jove, he said, by Jove, poor girl! He had not supposed that book-selling entailed such social ostracism as this. Then he thought, with a little comforting spasm of self-sufficiency, I expect she is jolly particular about whom she does go out with. That explained it. Fatty women always get left in the lurch. The water, meanwhile, clamored for some explanation of the proceedings of the night, the lurid and untruthful simulation of an existence that was itself untrue, the crowd of attentive spectators looking eagerly at a false distorted picture of their own false distorted lives. This paradox of the drama was far beyond the understanding of a poor, uneducated spirit for whom even space and time were still foolish and puzzling conventions. If you really like these curious ways, he said, to dance and to sing when you wish to express your feelings, and to kiss one another a great deal, after all, this is not much more foolish than the ordinary, ugly, earthly ways, why not do it yourselves instead of watching other people pretend? If this be your standard of beauty, do you not waste time in merely watching? Should you not participate while you can? Rush together, embrace, be ecstatic. Why delegate these picturesque emotions to a race of slaves? Life has strange rules, but this is the strangest that you should be impelled to enjoy watching in imitation, in a corner. When you might go out and live the real before you die. At the end of the second act, the high-born hero had lifted his peasant bride into his motor-car and held her with one hand against his breast whilst the other feebly grasped the steering wheel. He leaned over her with the realistic gesture of protection singing, Dear little bride, through the world wide, I'll carry my dove in her nest. They may offer us gold or riches untold, but we know that true love is the best. The chorus-girls tossed confetti in the air until miss Sibyl Selby, resplendent in lace quaff and brocaded apron, seemed another denyre beneath its significant showers, and the curtain fell as the car moved slowly away to the plaintive and haunting music of violins. Then Andrew turned and saw with astonishment a woman whom he had never known before, a being with softened eyes, absurdly entranced. The magnetism of the play had affected Constance. Her strained vision followed the ridiculous lovers, her strained ear extracted from the sentimental music the regretful cry of all that she had missed in life. There was a lump in her throat. It was as if some magic power had been mingled with the confetti, pollen from the divine flower which grows upon the walls of might have been. She was invaded by a gentle, sensuous melancholy, by an absurd longing to be kissed. The disdain of reality, the rhythm of the dancers, the mildly voluptuous music came like an overpowering perfume to enchain her mind, so that the crude emotion of the lovers, the simple insistence on happiness, on the joy and paramount importance of the mating instinct, stung to life, something that had long slept. All about them, triumphant sentimentalism was having its way. People leaned forward with shining eyes and slightly foolish smiles. The few detached persons who were amongst the audience enjoyed the ironic spectacle of a house full of prosperous, civilized and artificial beings, tightly strapped every one of them within the uniform of society. Each hair assigned to its place by inexorable law, responding in spite of themselves to an irrational and primitive appeal, in every part of the theatre, woman at the moment, looked at man. How odd, said the watcher, in order to make people natural, you obliged to resort to artifice, so that is why you make a dream about the dream. But Constance took no notice. The burden of reality had been shifted. She was swept away into a joyous, absurd, bespangled country where her starved heart was fed upon emotional meringues, and her aching senses were lulled and warmed. She sat thus for a moment or two, holding tight this lovely, selfless sense of wonder, of vivid and exalted life. Then Andrew rose and put her cloak about her shoulders, and she realized with a stab of sorrow that her evening was at an end. In him also the feast of sensuous melody and mild emotion had woke a certain wistfulness. As they came into the foyer and stood a few moments to let the crowd pass by, he said anxiously, It has been rather jolly, hasn't it? Do it again, eh? Constance looked at him, but did not speak. He continued, an abrupt burst of confidence. We are both a bit out of it, you know, in some ways, so it's natural enough we should be friends. She exclaimed, You shouldn't feel out of it. You are not alone in the world as I am. You have so many things to care for in your life. She spoke impulsively, and was astonished at herself. But his answer astonished her more, he said. Yes, in a way, I know I seem to have, but then, you see, the things aren't really mine. I can't catch on. Don't fit. I'm rather like that Johnny in the Arabian Nights who went out to dinner and kept on seeing imaginary food he couldn't eat. Nicely dished up. One admires it. One's hungry, all the same. There's Muriel, she's adorable, and she is my wife, of course, but her life's stuffed full of other things. Very natural, she's clever, and I'm not. But she's fenced round by him. I can't get near. She's so young, said Constance gently, and so pretty, and enjoying it so much. It must be rather nice to watch her being happy. And after all, she is yours. Oh, it's not that. I don't mind her having a good time, lots of friends running about and so on. I'm not that sort of beast, harem type. Girls must play round, don't you know? One likes it. They all do it, not peculiar in any way, so where's the harm? Very different from what it was in my poor old father's time. But these women, they've got her into a shell of fads. Women can't get past, and there she is all the time, attractive as ever, and just out of reach. It's a bit maddening. His voice had the growl in it now, and he spoke as if to himself, deliberately and without self-consciousness. There was no knowledge between them of the outrageous quality of their conversation. It had grown, as it were, out of the events of the night. His speech did not strike her as a complaint, a sin against the code of married men. It seemed rather an explanation which he was making to himself. She saw something, the essential man in him, the creature of ideals, struggling like a dumb animal against the circumstances of his life. The sight moved her to an almost maternal pity, so that she felt with him as well as for him when he said, one's growing older all the while, too, losing chances, getting fixed, and the whole thing is dreary and jangled up. There she is, as I say, pretty, fetching. People envy one. But we live in watertight compartments in our house. My fault. It's a silly mistake. Wish now I'd push things a bit at the start. Then there's the boy, bound to keep an eye on him, protect him a bit from the woman. And she doesn't like it, of course. Though he's between us as well as the culture and things, that's the damnation of children, responsible for him, must do it. You wait till you have one. Constance blushed furiously, and Andrew, instantly contrite, apologized for the violence of his language, and returned to his normal state of clumsy shyness. She said, Oh, don't be unhappy. Just be fond of them both. You might enjoy it all so very much. He replied, I am awfully fond, really. If I wasn't, don't you know, I shouldn't care. Fact is, I'm a bit lonely, it's just that. On my soul I believe it always is that, at the bottom. When we feel lonely we're miserable, and when we don't feel lonely we're not. Other things don't matter except when they make us notice that we're alone. Constance looked at him with moist eyes and answered, Yes, I believe it is just that. He would have driven her home, but she, with the prudence of intrepid and experienced people, refused it. Her landlady was a Puritan who slept in the basement and was easily disturbed. As they said good night, he asked anxiously, We're chumps now, aren't we? She counter-quested with, What do you want? Oh, just to come in and out, he said, with eagerness. Talk a bit, you know, swap ideas. To be consigned, though it was of her own choice to a green and yellow omnibus full of brisk and dingy people from the pit, to end the evening by a solitary return to her lodgings where lights would be out and she must fumble for the chain of the frontier. All this gave to Constance a foolish but poignant sense of isolation, of having missed fire in life. She saw from the window of the omnibus bare-headed women in exquisite cloaks leaning upon the arms of men who protected them and walking delicately beneath the great arcs of lights. There was something intimate in the relation of each couple. They carried with them a suggestion of romance. She was shut out from that aspect of existence, could only watch it with her own uncanny experience hugged tightly in her breast. At this moment she wanted it very badly, the prettiness, the protection, all the airy, fluffy way of taking things. The omnibus brought her to the tube station and she sank into the burrow again, continuing automatically the cheap and undistinguished scurry to her cheap and undistinguished lair. But within the lift the real and dreadful words in their little frame awaited her, be not deceived. The hard inexorable quality of that eternity which is behind these illusory miseries and excitements struck her like a blow. She thought bitterly of Andrew's simple statement. One is growing older all the while. She ran forward along the years and came upon the final necessity of his death. Then she knew that even whilst she knelt at Muriel's trine she needed Andrew and she hated that knowledge. Somewhere, somehow, even this she supposed had beauty and significance. But she was blinded, altogether overcome by her lassitude, by the reaction from the short and feverish evening. She the brave lover of life, whispered with inward tears. I don't think I want to live any more. Then something within her exclaimed, Ah, do not be grieved. I cannot bear it. It is horrible. I think it gives me pain. Surely it were better to die than to be hurt by these little foolish things. Instantly and absurdly the social instinct, the craving for sympathy, awoke. Constance turned on her inner companion and said, I am alone, so dreadfully alone, I can't endure it. It was an astonished voice which answered, Alone? Is that what matters? Must you always for your comfort be linked up with other creatures? And is that why I do not understand? She was intent on her own wretchedness and did not reply until presently to her amazement he said gently, Am I no use to you? Can I not help? Then she was conscious of a tiny inward revolution and with it of the birth of some new thing. He said, I do not want you to be lonely. Ah, be happy again with the beautiful colors and shapes. Are these not sufficient for your joy? A strange pain has come between us. It pushes. Because of it, I want to help you if I can. Do not suffer. It is so horrible that you should have pain. She asked him with eagerness, Do you really care? He answered, Yes, I don't know why, but somehow I am sorry for your sadness. It hurts me and I want you to be glad. And then, as in the glorious moment when he saw the shining tree he added, I think that I begin to understand. And for this strange and unexpected sympathy, companioned by it, she came home, crept up the dingy staircase to her room. She took off the evening dress slowly and wearily. Already the black creptachine looked crushed and sad. The blind was up. The window opened wide for coolness sake. As she raised her eyes from a careful folding of the satin skirt which might have to do duty many other times. She saw far up the mighty and eternal stars that peered through the summer haze. Again she had the sensation of a white and changeless ring set about her. Again she remembered the hateful and sysive words that were set on the wall of the lift. Then both were obliterated by Andrew's figure, solid and imperturbable, fixed upon the margin of her life. The watcher had exclaimed in his bitterness, It is we that are mocked, hoodwinked, and made helpless. But now there was a grieving and strangely humanized voice which murmured. I am sorry for the sorrow of my friend.