Coningsby Dawson

“ Probably Hal had thought to do the same for Vashti, and Horace for Fluffy—all the men who had loved in vain had promised themselves to do just that; but they hadn’t loved with sufficient obstinacy—with sufficient courage.
He helped her into her wraps. They passed out into the gold and silver landscape. It was like entering into a new faith—like leaving deceit behind. Merriness was in the air. Birds fluttered out of hedges, making the snow glitter in their exit. From farms out of sight, roosters blew shrill challenges, like trumpeters riding through a Christmas faeryland. ”

“ Now she was white and warm, exquisitely clothed with glowing flesh. It was not the magic cloak any longer, but Desire herself, sweetly perverse and wilfully cold, that he worshiped.
How old he had become since last night, and yet how young! In kissing her he had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge; from now on his thirst would grow unquenchably till he knew her as himself. All that that knowledge might mean passed before his mind in slow procession. Ominous as the rustle of God’s feet in Eden, he could hear her humming her plaintive warning:
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard.” ”

“ In her absence Teddy borrowed her comforting words—he had heard them so often. “Your work’s too good,” he said emphatically. “Every great man has been neglected.”
The phrase, uttered parrot-wise by the lips of a child, stirred the man to a grim humor. He saw himself as that white bird, battering itself into exhaustion against invisible panes that shut it out from the heavens. Every time it ceased to struggle the dream music recommenced, maddening it into aspiration; the old woman, so old that she might be dead, who fingered the strings of the harp was Fate. ”

“ It was Vashti, always Vashti, when Hal spoke to him.
“I think of her only as a faery story. It’s silly of me. I don’t think about her more often than I can help.”
“Than you can help!” Hal leant forward with a strained expression. “You can’t help. You always remember. That’s the curse of it. The doors of the past won’t keep shut; they slam and they slam. They wake you up in the night; you can’t rest. You’re always creeping down the stairs and finding yourself in the rooms of old memories. Would you know her again if you saw her?”
Teddy looked up at the question. ”

“ As he sauntered up Fifth Avenue in the ripe September sunlight, the scene drew from out the shadows of his memory: a little boy standing naked in a stable-studio, while a piratical-looking wild-haired father worked upon a canvas and chanted, “‘She feedeth among the lilies. She looketh forth in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. If a man give all his substance for love he cannot...’” He remembered how his father had wagged his head at him: “No, he cannot, Teddy. Yet many waters cannot quench love.” ”

“ All day I’ve been making discoveries. I’ve found out that you’re half-a-dozen persons—not just the one person whom I thought you, Desire. Sometimes you’re Joan of Arc, with dreams in your eyes and your hands lying idly in your lap. Sometimes you’re Nell Gwynn, utterly unshockable and up to any naughtiness. That’s the way you are now—the way I like you best. And sometimes you’re a faery’s child, a Belle Dame Sans Merci, a beautiful witch-girl, who won’t come into my life and won’t let me forge. ”

“ In the studio with its hint of the exotic, its canvases where pale figures raced through woodlands, its infinite yearning after beauty, its red fire burning, swinging lamps and gaping chairs, and against the window the muffled silence, Vashti looked like the materialization of a man’s desire. One arm was flung about the boy, her face leant against his shoulder, brooding out across the narrow distance at the man’s.
“How did we meet!” she echoed. “How does any one meet? In a fog, by accident, after loneliness. Sometimes it’s for better; sometimes it’s for worse. One never knows until the end.” ”

“ In the presence of her frailty he looked more robust, more of a Phoenician pirate than ever. She gloried in his picturesque lawlessness, in the unrestraint of his gestures, in his uncouth silences. What a lover for a woman to have! As she lay there in her weakness she recalled the passion of his arms about her: how he had often hurt her with his kisses, and she had been glad. She wished that she might feel his arms about her now.
“Who is she?” she asked again.
Her question went unanswered. She turned her head wearily to the little boy. “Teddy, what’s my old pirate been doing? Who is she? ”

“ They could hear the harp fingered gently; it brought memories of the ghost-bird of romance, beating its wings against the panes, struggling vainly to get out.
“Too righteous,” Mr. Sheerug muttered. “Not a business woman.” And then, as though stoking up his courage, “Won’t I? I shall.”
He heaved him up from the steps and wandered off in the direction of the shrubbery to find comfort with his pigeons.
It was Duke Nineveh, with his knowledge of human vanity, who won Mrs. Sheerug. He spoke to her as an artist to an artist, and asked permission to see her tapestries. ”

“ Scarcely daring to stir, Teddy turned his eyes away from Harriet, and stared into the darkness of the room. The air was tense with tragedy. In the flickering half-circle of firelight a man was crouched against the armchair—kneeling like a child with his head in the faery-godmother’s lap. He was sobbing. Teddy had heard his mother cry; this was different. There was shame in the man’s crying and the dry choking sound of a horrible effort to regain self-mastery. The faery-godmother bent above him. Teddy could see the glint of her spectacles. ”

“ It was what Vashti had said: “Oh, no, I didn’t mind; but I should have if it had been any one but Teddy.”
So he found himself isolated on a peak of chivalry, from which the old sweet ways of love looked satyrish. Other men would have tried to hold her hands. Given his opportunities, other men would have crushed their lips against her sweet red mouth. Because she had proclaimed him nobler than other men he refrained from any of these brutalities—and all the while his mind was on fire with the vision of them. ”

“ The yearning to be mothered, which the strongest men feel at times, swept over him like a tide. He wanted to hear himself called Teddy, as though his name was not absurd or disgraceful—a name to be avoided with a nickname.
If he appealed to Desire one last time, would she understand—would she be kind to him as she had been to Fluffy? He wondered—and he doubted. If he told her of the loss of the three hundred pounds his trouble would sound paltry. It might sound to her as though he were asking her to restore to him the watch-bracelet. ”

“ They were as unintelligible to Teddy as if they had spoken a different language.
What was it that he wanted? It was something for which he never found a name—something which continually eluded his grasp. He was haunted by desire for an intenser beauty. All kinds of things, totally unrelated, would stab him into yearning: sometimes a passage in a book; sometimes the freedom of a bird in flight; and now the music of girlish laughter. He was burdened with the sense that life would not wait for him—would not last ”

“ When the tour had first been planned it had included Ruddy; but at the last moment Ruddy had joined a pierrot-troupe, leaving Teddy to set off by himself. That vacant place at his side reproached him; a two-seater is so obviously meant for two persons. He had told himself faery-tales about how he might fill it. Sometimes he had invented a companion for himself—a girl with gray eyes and bronze-black hair. She seemed especially real to him when night had fallen and the timid shadows of lovers pressed back into the hedges as his lamps discovered them on the road ahead. ”

“ Once more it was a world of spun glass, of whiteness and quiet, that they traversed. To Teddy it seemed that the cab was magic; it knew its way out of ugliness to the places where dreams grow up.
The cab halted; the window flew back and the doors opened of themselves. They stepped out on to the pavement. The little white gate was there, just as Vashti had said. A path led up, through snow as soft as cotton-wool, to a red-brick nest of a house. A look of warmth lay behind its windows. Plants, leaning forward to catch the light, pressed against the panes. ”

“ They came to The Belshazzar with its blazing sign, branding Janice Audrey on the night in fiery letters. There was something rather magnificent about marching in at the stage-entrance unchallenged. As they turned into the narrow passage which ran up beside the theatre, passers-by would halt to watch them, thinking they had discovered a resemblance in their faces to persons well known in stage-land. Even Teddy felt the thrill of it, though he was loth to own it, for these peeps behind the scenes cost him dearly; they invariably rekindled Desire’s ambitions to be an actress. ”

“ Years later Teddy looked back and questioned, was it love that the little boy felt that winter’s morning? He had experienced what the grown world calls real love by then, and yet he couldn’t see the difference, except that real love is more afraid, thinks more of itself and is more exacting. If love be a divine uplifting, a desirable madness, a mirage of fine deception which exists only in the lover’s brain, then he felt it that morning. ”

“ Hanging from the ceiling was a cage with a canary. On the sill were flower-boxes. From the window, across trees, one could catch a glimpse of Kensington Gardens and the blown petals of children. It was an old lady’s room, filled with memories. On the walls were faded photographs with spidery signatures; on the table a work-basket; beside the table a rocking chair.
“Here’s where my soul lives,” she said. “The other person, phew!” Her hands opened expressively. “She’s the husk. Those who live to please, must please to live, Teddy. ”

“ Through a locked gate in the garden you get a glimpse of an oriental street with the dust scurrying; but in my sister’s garden the air hangs listless. The fountain is dry; the well is boarded over. And here’s the last touch: halting in the street, peering in through the bars of the gate is the figure of Love. The woman doesn’t see him, though he’s whispering and beckoning. Love’s got to be stark naked; that’s how he always comes. Because he’s naked he looks the same in all ages. D’you get the contrast between Love and the girl’s modern dress? There’s where I’ll need you, Teddy. ”

“ Ruddy stole away to see what was happening, thinking that he might prove more acceptable elsewhere.
Teddy stared at the pool. Birds flew across its quiet breast; fish leaped; the sun smiled grandly. Everything was as it had been, yet he was altered. They would take her away from him; of that he was certain. Perhaps they would put her on another ship and send her traveling again across the world. There would be other boys who had never had a sister. He hated them. Because he was young, he would have to stay just where he had been always—in Eden Row, where nothing ever happened. ”

“ They were two children who had experimented with things they did not understand, and were a little frightened at what had happened and a little glad.
“You called me Teddy just now,” he whispered. “It’s the third time.”
She smiled at him with a flicker of her old wickedness. “I didn’t intend to. It slipped out because—because I was so unhappy.”
“But you needn’t be unhappy. Neither of us need be unhappy. Everything’s in our own hands. I’d work for you, Desire. I’d become famous for you. We’d live life splendidly. The way we’ve been living is stupid and wasteful; it doesn’t lead anywhere. ”

“ Why should he worry himself about a little girl who was younger than himself? When next Hal came to the farm, he would tell him that he was leaving.
It was in his bedroom, where the moonlight fell softly, that memories of her sweetness tiptoed back. He remembered the provocative tenderness of her laughter, the velvet softness of her tiny hands, and the way she had wreathed him with flowers, pretending that he was her knight. Life would never be the same without her. Romance walked into his day only when she had passed down the stairs. ”

“ He had no courage to look ahead to any brightness in the future. The taste of the present was as ashes in his mouth. He felt old, disillusioned, exhausted. The grayness of the plunging wintry sea was the reflection of his soul’s gray loneliness.
He had spent so long in listening and waiting that listening and waiting had become a habit. He would hear the telephone tinkle soon. His heart would fly up like a bird into his throat. Her voice would steal to him across the distance: “Meester Deek, hulloa! What are we going to do this morning?” He often heard it in imagination. ”