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invited George and me to dinner on the Friday evening. The party included Lettie’s host and hostess, and also a Scottish poetess, and an Irish musician, composer of songs and pianoforte rhapsodies.
Lettie wore a black lace dress in mourning for one of Leslie’s maternal aunts. This made her look older, otherwise there seemed to be no change in her. A subtle observer might have noticed a little hardness about her mouth, and disillusion hanging slightly on her eyes. She was, however, excited by the company in which she found herself, therefore she overflowed with clever speeches and rapid, brilliant observations. Certainly on such occasions she was admirable. The rest of the company formed, as it were, the orchestra which accompanied her.
George was exceedingly quiet. He spoke a few words now and then to Mrs Raphael, but on the whole he was altogether silent, listening.
“Really!” Lettie was saying, “I don’t see that one thing is worth doing any more than another. It’s like dessert: you are equally indifferent whether you have grapes, or pears, or pineapple.”
“Have you already dined so far?” sang the Scottish poetess in her musical, plaintive manner.
“The only thing worth doing is producing,” said Lettie. “Alas, that is what all the young folk are saying nowadays!” sighed the Irish musician.
“That is the only thing one finds any pleasure in-that is to say, any satisfaction,” continued Lettie, smiling, and turning to the two artists.
“Do you not think so?” she added.
“You do come to a point at last,” said the Scottish poetess, “when your work is a real source of satisfaction.”
“Do you write poetry then?” asked George of Lettie.
“I! Oh, dear no! I have tried strenuously to make up a Limerick for a competition, but in vain. So you see, I am a failure there. Did you know I have a son, though? — A marvellous little fellow, is he not, Leslie? — He is my work. I am a wonderful mother, am I not, Leslie?”
“Too devoted,” he replied.
“There!” she exclaimed in triumph —“When I have to sign my name and occupation in a visitor’s book, it will be, ‘— Mother’. I hope my business will flourish,” she concluded, smiling.
There was a touch of ironical brutality in her now. She was, at the bottom, quite sincere. Having reached that point in a woman’s career when most, perhaps all, of the things in life seem worthless and insipid, she had determined to put up with it, to ignore her own self, to empty her own potentialities into the vessel of another or others, and to live her life at secondhand. This peculiar abnegation of self is the resource of a woman for the escaping of the responsibilities of her own development. Like a nun, she puts over her living face a veil, as a sign that the woman no longer exists for herself: she is the servant of God, of some man, of her children, or maybe of some cause. As a servant, she is no longer responsible for her self, which would make her terrified and lonely. Service is light and easy. To be responsible for the good progress of one’s life is terrifying. It is the most insufferable form of loneliness, and the heaviest of responsibilities. So Lettie indulged her husband, but did not yield her independence to him; rather it was she who took much of the responsibility of him into her hands, and therefore he was so devoted to her. She had, however, now determined to abandon the charge of herself to serve her children. When the children grew up, either they would unconsciously fling her away, back upon herself again in bitterness and loneliness, or they would tenderly cherish her, chafing at her love-bonds occasionally.
George looked and listened to all the flutter of conversation, and said nothing. It seemed to him like so much unreasonable rustling of pieces of paper, of leaves of books, and so on. Later in the evening Lettie sang, no longer Italian folk songs, but the fragmentary utterances of Debussy and Strauss. These also to George were quite meaningless, and rather wearisome. It made him impatient to see her wasting herself upon them.
“Do you like those songs?” she asked in the frank, careless manner she affected.
“Not much,” he replied, ungraciously.
“Don’t you?” she exclaimed, adding with a smile, “Those are the most wonderful things in the world, those little things”— she began to hum a Debussy idiom. He could not answer her on the point, so he sat with the arrow sticking in him, and did not speak.
She enquired of him concerning Meg and his children and the affairs of Eberwich, but the interest was flimsy, as she preserved a wide distance between them, although apparently she was so unaffected and friendly. We left before eleven.
When we were seated in the cab and rushing down-hill, he said:
“You know, she makes me mad.”
He was frowning, looking out of the window away from me. “Who, Lettie? Why, what riles you?” I asked.
He was some time in replying.
“Why, she’s so affected.”
I sat in the small, close space and waited.
“Do you know —?” he laughed, keeping his face averted from me. “She makes my blood boil. I could hate her.”
“Why?” I said gently.
“I don’t know. I feel as if she’d insulted me. She does lie, doesn’t she?”
“I didn’t notice it,” I said, but I knew he meant her shirking, her shuffling of her life.
“And you think of those poor devils under the bridge — and then of her and them frittering away themselves and money in that idiocy —”
He spoke with passion.
“You are quoting Longfellow,” I said.
“What?” he asked, looking at me suddenly.
“‘Life is real, life is earnest —’”
He flushed slightly at my good-natured gibe.
“I don’t know what it is,” he replied. “But it’s a pretty rotten business, when you think of her fooling about wasting herself, and all the waste that goes on up there, and the poor devils rotting on the Embankment — and —”
“And you — and Mayhew — and me —” I continued.
He looked at me very intently to see if I was mocking. He laughed. I could see he was very much moved.
“Is the time quite out of joint?” I asked.
“Why! “— he laughed. “No. But she makes me feel so angry — as if I should burst. — I don’t know when I felt in such a rage. I wonder why. I’m sorry for him, poor devil. Lettie and Leslie’— they seemed christened for one another, didn’t they?”
“What if you’d had her?” I asked.
“We should have been like a cat and dog; I’d rather be with Meg a thousand times — now!” he added significantly. He sat watching the lamps and the people and the dark buildings slipping past us.
“Shall we go and have a drink?” I asked him, thinking we would call in Frascati’s to see the come-and-go.
“I could do with a brandy,” he replied, looking at me slowly.
We sat in the restaurant listening to the jigging of the music, watching the changing flow of the people. I like to sit a long time by the hollyhocks watching the throng of varied bees which poise and hesitate outside the wild flowers, then swing in with a hum which sets everything aquiver. But still more fascinating it is to watch the come and go of people weaving and intermingling in the complex mesh of their intentions, with all the subtle grace and mystery of their moving, shapely bodies.
I sat still, looking out across the amphitheatre. George looked also, but he drank glass after glass of brandy. “I like to watch the people,” said I.
“Ay — and doesn’t it seem an aimless, idiotic business — look