JUBILEE
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"Pleasure," her word hurled out and returned to her. It vibrated in a room where he sat, where she sat. It must have had deeper repercussions, even than she had thought; the force of her vituperation set something buzzing in her head, as if something broke there. Something broke there. He ducked his head as if the word that he had spoken, that she had just repeated, had hurtled dangerously in that short space, between the upright, small chair pushed up against the divan where she sat, and the deep arm-chair where he sat. The tea-table had been shoved aside. The word broke no tea-cups. Where everything else was broken.

Now that the echo of the word spoken by him, repeated by her, had died away and there was silence and no word spoken, she realized that her heart was beating. It was pounding. It was as if he had struck her. He had struck her. He looked a small man, who could at times look so tall, cowering in that chair. He seemed to have ducked his head, knowing more words would follow. She knew more words would follow. She would say what she would say. She heard herself say, "You talk more like Savonorola than you do like Christ." She was glad to hear those few words spoken; she had spoken them but they were spoken as by someone outside.

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That someone, she knew, was on her side, because something brutal
and horrible, that was the world, that might have been her world,
had struck at her.

She was glad of this, glad he had spoken as he felt, for
now he was about to become a priest, and she was right, after all.
She had wanted to reconcile her Christ to their Christ, had
thought it possible to do that, through this man. He had lived,
had loved violently she knew, who knew nothing at all about him.
O, she knew he had married in India, that his wife was now dead,
She had written him about her husband. All that was over, a year
before she met him. It had all been dignified and final.

Well, whatever he had been or had not been, there was that
about it. Her fantasy had preserved her. For this moment.

---

It was like any other moment, ticked off by a watch on her
wrist, or on her dressing-table in the other room. The watch was
on her dressing-table. It ticked off the moment. No moment can
hold eternity, or can it? They say when we are drowning, we see
all life, rolled off instantaneously, as on a film. So she saw
all life. She did not actually see it. The scenes did not follow
in any sequence, did not follow at all. She did not actually
even see any one scene that had its special dynamic value, that

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had changed, now here, now there, the course of her whole life.
Her life had been changed, its course shifted. For this moment.

Now "pleasure" hung in the air, a word he had uttered, a
word she had flung back at him. "You are not worthy," she said,
she heard herself say it again, "you are not worthy." She ham-
mered it in, nailed it in, no I.M.R.I. this, but the opposite;
his flesh, his outer man, would make them all subservient to his
calling, to his Deaconship.

She knew he was upright, she could see in his face the
striving, the lines had grown hard; the face was burnt away
almost; the heavy bones alone gave it a false appearance of
fleshiness that was not there. His face was a skull. It was not
an ascetic face, but he had made it that; his new face was set
on the old one, a monk's face on the face of a libertine and the
result was familiar, she had seen it gaze out at her from many a
gallery, Flemish or Italian; it was a familiar face. The very
contradiction of it stamped it with Church of England suavity
and that peculiar arid sweetness of the average churchman; it
was a face of unutterable distinction. But that was not enough.
It was not enough that he should be a Christian. She wanted him
to be a Christ.

"That man I met fifteen years ago," she said, her voice
going lower, registering an octave lower, speaking words as if

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she were simply a machine, a gramophone disc set there, "was more
of a Christ than you are." His hands were clasped, his knuckles
were tight, his skin drawn over the bones like a glove, his flesh
was eaten away; he fasted, she presumed. Maybe this was a fast-
day and it had made him angry. What use was it all, if it de-
prived him of his tolerance, his perception? O, he had perception.
He had flung at her the one weapon that could, if anything could,
annihilate her. But it was a boomerang, she felt, or she could
make it, or had made it, that. Judge not, she might have shrieked
at him, her perception burnt in her head, as if fireworks had gone
off in her head, leaving blind darkness in her skull; there was
no thought there. Only something directed her, so that she spoke
words in a play.

"That man, you - yourself, fifteen years ago," she said,
"was more of a Christ than you are."

---

Then when she said that, she knew that she had said every-
thing. A boomerang had been flung out, had curved unexpectedly,
had <del>not</del> come back to the sender. Its blow was spent. It had
struck him, not her; she was shivering with terror, for fear of
what it had done. It had done really nothing. It had really
separated herself from herself, or broken his skull, that place

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where all those evil thoughts had hived, that evil bee-hive of
evil thoughts that had garnered an evil impression of her, poison
instead of honey. Out of the strong shall come forth sweetness;
he had been strong. He had been strong when she had been weak,
her physical strength dissipated by that war. She had put up a
good show. She had put up such a good show, that the thing she
offered to this man, seemed almost real to her. The frock she
wore, that she had put on, was part of the show (to keep up her
nerve, her panache) looked probably to him, silly. It wasn't
really, silly. It was a patterned frock with a wing-cape, as
they wore them, not exaggerated, but smart. He wouldn't accept
the thing she was trying to get across to him; would he have
accepted a mask, the drawn lines of a face clamped over another
face, that was meant for joy, really? She presented something,
in sheer decency, a room, a flat in the right part of town, a
frock, a little on the fashionable side, tea-cups of blue-and-
old-gold, a little fold-up table, that might be a garden-table,
but that went with the room, a lamp on a stand, curtains half-
drawn over new windows, in a new building of flats in the right
part of town. She hadn't wanted to look shoddy or a failure.

Would he have accepted her if she had looked shoddy and a
failure?

He presented a conventional exterior; if she hadn't known

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him in the spring of nineteen-twenty, she wouldn't have been taken in by this, wouldn't have bothered at all about him. She could not think, who had thought unceasingly, for fifteen years, about it, what he would seem like, if she had not already known him. She could not now detach herself enough to wonder what he would seem like. He was outwardly depressive, but she never met people of this world, so she tried to minimize the black coat, the "dog-collar" as he called it, or the stock or black scarf. She thought he purposely twisted his scarf, that last time, to look what he had been, an artist.

But she couldn't, at the moment, go into all the technicalities of the unconscious reactions, his being late, his fervid feverish and neurotic excuses when he finally did come. He wanted to come, obviously and he obviously didn't want to. He was torn in two, and one of those halves belonged to her and the other half belonged where he would have it, to his dead wife, to the Church, to another wife in time, possibly. All of that she could let go, give freely (if, in any sense, he was, at all, hers to offer another woman); what she could not forgive, was his treachery, not to her, but to the other half of himself. But his word (when she had just now spoken of the part her suffering played in her ultimate illumination) had settled all that, his "but that was for pleasure" seemed boomerang, to hurl against his heavy,

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bowed skull, seemed to cut him, not her, in half, seemed to leave
her gasping, "you speak more like Savonorola than you do like
Christ," followed by a stream of steady and whirring sounds that
was her voice speaking, thank God, a new gramophone record, some-
thing about beauty and the fault of the Church, or rather the
specific treason of him in his aspect to the Church, in insisting
on the separation of Christ from Love.

Her words sprang out, winged words, words lighted with wings,
stinging like hornets, flaying; let them flay him! What had made
him turn on what he called "pleasure" except disappointment, some
sordid and tragic revelation? What had happened to him?

Was beauty to be blasted, to be destroyed? He would be a
priest, the thought held potence. He could drag beauty out of
the hands of Christ. Why must he?

---

It didn't matter what he did or said, what he had said or
had appeared to offer. Utterly circumspect, no one could accuse
him remotely of any sentimental dallying, nevertheless, he had
seemed to proffer just what she wanted. She wanted only one grain
of understanding, the tiniest possible grain of recognition, of
understanding, that one atom, or molecule that by a miracle can
transform the unfamiliar contents of /test-tube into calculable

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substance. Analytical, cold as she was, clever, clear-sighted,
he cut through her problem or seemed to hold himself remote,
ready to cut through, to cut the hopeless Gordian tangle of her
own psychic affiliations, with one sword-thrust. Perhaps he had
so cut it. Perhaps the miracle was in the unexpected retrogression,
this "but that was for pleasure," as if the surface, slightly
avuncular tolerance had been so much eye-wash. He had not meant
a word of what he had so suavely written. He had not meant any-
thing but now he did mean this. It was as if a snake raised its
head; where she had said, bread, bread, he had proffered her a
scorpion, but a living, true thing. His repudiation, the twisted
mask, clamped over his face, came true. Maybe, it was true. But
if it was true, this once, and as far as she was concerned, for
all time, she had smashed it.

He was a tired man with bowed shoulders, sitting in the big
arm-chair, turned sideways to her fire-place. On the white mantel
ledge, was a seven- branched candle-stick. Sometimes, she perched
an old Italian print there, unframed, until it would blow down,
or curve awkwardly under; Carlo Crivelli with the Madonna and
the baby, the pears matched in point and suavity, the long pear-
knees of the quaint baby and the pear-oval of the fragrant insipid
face of the mother of God. Sometimes she perched a little vase
there, half ironically, of small Carlo Crivelli flower heads,

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pinks in their season. But she was away most of that season.
She would soon be leaving. Thank God, she would take this with
her. She would carry with her, the image of a man, nearing sixty,
with a bowed head and hands meant to be a painter's hands,
now loosened in their clasp, hanging limp between his knees.
He was tired and summer was almost on them. She had been sharp,
acrid; she was sorry she had been sharp and sordid who had this
lovely flat, friends. She had everything, was rich, like a
Carlo Crivelli Madonna that does not go old or bitter, whose
child is ever in her arms.

She saw the man, Savonorola, the destroyer of beauty, who
had been Christ. There was no doubt at all, now in her mind of
what he had been. He was severed neatly, thank God for that
neat severance that he himself, with a phrase, had brought about.
He himself had cut the Gordian knot of her psychic complexities;
"but that was for pleasure" let free other things; other remarks,
spoken fifteen years ago rose up to judge him. Rose up to save
him or to save that other-person who was not the man sitting
there, awkwardly, yet graciously, in the early dusk of an early
summer evening. He had severed self from self. He had left her,
Himself.

She had the right sort of curtains and the lamp on the tall
stand was beautiful, was quattrocento, a gilt stand with a tall

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candle tipped by a dull bulb, and a parchment shade that gave,
when she switched on the light, the right blurr of softly shaded
old-gold light. Everything was right, was not extreme, was ele-
gant. Well, everything was elegant.

She had struggled for this moment.

Because of this moment, he struck at her.

He struck at her.

He had so struck her.

She put words to something that was mood on mood, woven
round two moods, as a dexterous spinner may toss the shuttle to
one end of the spinning-frame, may turn a thread, knot or unknot a
thread, toss back the shuttle.

Her mind that had watched, desperately alert, through the
years, warding off here, an undesirable acquaintance, here accept-
ing a new friend, all in keeping with the great mood, the great
moment, the great acceptance and the great sacrifice, still watched
said the weaving was well done. The mind said, I wove well, but
what did I weave all this for?

Back of her mind, had been the thought always, one day, he
will find me. One day he will find me in the right dress, with
the right friends, no failure, a middle-aged woman but not bitter.
A woman who had accepted life, had repudiated life in a set pat-
tern and for one purpose. For this moment.

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He wanted to come; if he had not wanted to come, he would not have called. She came back to town always for part of the year; he wanted to come, so he edged about it; she thought, probably already there is another woman, another wife-to-be, if he tells me about that now, I shall just laugh.

He would have to talk, or she would have to talk, they would have to say something.

She would have to talk because if she didn't now begin to tell him about that other man he had been, that woman she still was, he might tell her about someone else, or something else and spoil it. It was possible for him to spoil it. He had flung out a boomerang that had returned and struck his own head, not here. She sat upright; a Brunhilda, on the small chair that was a small modern bit of un-ornate furniture.

This, that he had said, was not important, it was a cruel thing, it was a blighting thing, but it was not important.

The words that she had spoken had cleared the air, like a clap of thunder, followed by vivid hiss of lightning or of summer-lightning that releases fervid under-layers of sullen heat; resentment of these years had blazed out like an angry rocket.

"That man was more of a Christ than you are", was spoken in vibrant anger and repudiation, but back of the anger was a stronger solvency. Anger had dissolved them, like that grain, that molecule she

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had asked from him, of understanding.

She had thought, a scorpion for broad, but the vitriolic
acid of his repudiation was perhaps some potent dynamic substance
that had blown away some false foundation, or had eaten away the
false ingredient of that substance that was her spirit. That was
their Spirit.

---

A clock should be ticking. If a clock had been ticking
and her mind had not been whirring so swiftly that she herself
was left, as it were, invisible, she might have counted, in time,
maybe the marking off of five slow minutes, maybe seven slow
minutes; at the outside, ten. It couldn't have been more than
ten minutes since he had flung out his final remark, his condemnation
of a thing that he had seemed, in a letter, to be willing to
meet half-way.

She had wanted to reconcile her Christ to their Christ but
it was impossible, she ought to have known that it would be impossible
and now she was sorry for this poor devil who was damned.
Christ couldn't get in to him, he had woven the cocoon of self-
abnegation round him so tight, and the cocoon of accepted tradition
wound him so tight, that there was only one way to get at
him, and that way was dangerous. He might see in a moment, like
Paul and, in a second, he shattered. But he could see, if he would

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see. She couldn't do anything about it, and he was her guest and
she was a comparative stranger, and she had no claim on him, what-
ever. She said, "I'm sorry - how should I know if you are or
are not worthy." He said, "I am not worthy."

It was a traditional thing to say and he said it in a tra-
ditional manner, but it was no use anyway, she had let flare a
rocket that was spent, and she was spent; she was tired out.
Soul, to be sustained, eats raw flesh off tired bones, she was
terribly tired and London was spent and famished, after its hectic
celebration of a Jubilee, and time was marked for a King and for a
country and for the world, twenty-five years; and for her, time
was marked fifteen years since I met him.

He wouldn't go at once, it would be walking out on something,
he wouldn't walk out on a quarrel, she didn't care if he did.

Oh, he was right. She had not lived like a man, these fifteen
years; she had not been altogether faithful. She had been alto-
gether faithful, burning and loyal, so that eventually each strange
and charming friendship had been marred by memory, by the memory
of searing and unescapable beauty. She did not need now to tell
him of that beauty. She had waited these years, his wife was dead.
But he was afraid of her, that is what it was, and maybe even he
would rush backward, like a lobster into a lobster-pot, into another
marriage, to fortify himself and his conscience in his work. The
whole sea of unescapable beauty, however, can not be escaped like

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that; he couldn't escape, finally. Maybe, he would go mad, as he seemed to think she had gone mad.

Well, of course, if he had managed to scuttle back into the safety of accepted theology and escape God, she supposed he was very lucky. The poor devil had only to scuttle a little further and he would escape her altogether. Well, let him. It was no fun, this knowledge, it was no small feat to have endured, simply to have salvaged one's sanity, no fun at all, really.

After all, if he had escaped God, he had escaped. What was the Church for, but for the sustaining of the naked spirit? You can't talk and walk all alone with God, the thing is unthinkable. He could scuttle backward, still a little further, he had not quite managed to burrow into safety and that is why he feared her. Maybe, if she went away (anyhow, she was about to go away) and gave him time to think her over, he might delicately lift a feeler from rock-bottom, to her, next autumn, or, in another ten years, come out with something.

She couldn't do anything else. In true medieval spirit, she had let herself be humiliated, forgiven him when he was late or didn't turn up at all, done all the things she knew he knew were humiliating. She had sustained her pose, her poise of mature and slightly disappointed woman. But she was not disappointed,

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she was not mature. He had seen through her bluff, he had tried,
he had succeeded in humiliating her, in knocking her off her
high-horse of detachment and poise. Because all along really,
beneath her outward pseudo-mellow moderate modernity, he had
guessed what was there. He knew what was there. He knew her
story was true. He knew she had had vision, illumination, had
paid for it. He knew she had seen God...he wouldn't quibble
further.

There was no need of quibbling.

She was simply worn out.

Why didn't he go home?

If it were any other guest, any of her friends, an impasse
in vivid conversation, at this moment, would be delicately mellow-
ed into good-bye over a glass of sherry. She would automatically
offer a late-stay; a glass of sherry, whether really because she
wanted to continue some vivid argument or because it would be a
hint that the afternoon was over. Well, the afternoon was over.

"I'm sorry I scolded you," sounded like anti-climax.

"I dare say it does one good to be scolded, once in a while,"
he answered.

What thin lines; the play was over; they had said every-
thing; let him go home.

London
Summer 1935