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how he renewed faith or kept faith, by introducing Vernon
and myself to his _table parlant_. We English chaps might
so easily have shouted him down - "

"Dash it, Godfrey, you and Vernon are no English
chaps."

William the Englishman was surprised at his own inten-
sity.

"You've been talking about England, about my staying
in England - what do you mean by saying that Vernon and I
aren't English?"

"Dashed if I know."

"You must mean something."

Godfrey pushed aside the table and deliberately sat
down in the chair that William had just left.

"You've finished with the table?"

"Well, you just said, hadn't we better think about it?
I asked too many questions, at the end. One word or part
of a word sets up a ripple like a pebble thrown into a
pool. That is, if one has a stout, reliable fellow like
yourself about, to put the brakes on. It's that old Icarus
story - "

"Clipping the wings of inspiration? I would like to
go on."

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"To-morrow or any evening, you'll come in. This is to me, what we were to Roland - only, more so, I feel. I had no Latin."

"Do you call that Latin?"

"Sign-post Latin - I mean, I see it carved on old stones - "

"Tomb-stones?"

"Mile-stones."

Godfrey sat down on the window-seat. "But before you go, you must answer my question, as my table or our table answered yours. What do you mean about Vernon and myself not being English?"

"Why does an Englishman take offence at being told he's not English?"

"I wasn't offended; I'm afraid I was rather flattered."

"Will it wait - the table?"

"It will wait forever."

"Perhaps I meant - well, I thought of you and Vernon, Vivien and Carew in some - damn it, you're out of Shakespeare, the house or the Tower is Belmont."

"Belmont?"

"The Merchant, you remember - and there it is. That's what I meant by saying we must go further back than

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Dante and Beatrice in Paradise."

So <u>The Hollow Land</u> was the meeting-place of two lovers,
and the lover sees himself in Margaret, as Chiaro saw himself
in the Lady or the Image, in <u>Hand and Soul</u>. Did Mr. Morris
mean that Margaret was his own soul?

Because, forsooth, the battle was set,
And the scarlet and blue had got to be met,
He rode on the spur till the next warm noon:-
<u>Two red roses across the moon</u>.

She would tell Mr. Morris that she liked the snow
scene, in the first part of <u>The Hollow Land</u>.

She had missed the snow, this winter. Gabriel said
the river had been blotted out, the worst storm they had
had, since that February when she had seen Walter Deverell
on Blackfriars Bridge, after he was dead. She wondered
why Gabriel wrote to her about that; he had never spoken
of it. Soon after, he told her that he had regained some-
thing - faith in his own work. It began by meeting Mr.
Jones at Vernon Lushington's. Mr. Lushington was another
enthusiastic fellow, and then Morris turned up. The old
crowd had evaporated, somehow. Though Brown was dependable
enough, he had quarrelled again with Hunt; he couldn't see
Millais (or Millais wouldn't see him) because of the so-called

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Gabriel came back, carrying a framed picture. He said, "do you remember this, Liz?" It was the unfinished *Blessed Damozel* that he had begun so many years ago, in Red Lion Square.

You scarce could see for the scarlet and blue,
A golden helm or a golden shoe;
So he cried, as the fight grew thick at the noon,
*Two red roses across the moon*.

She had almost forgotten the picture and now Gabriel said, "I'm glad you've got the promise of number seventeen, Ted, when the present tenants move out."

"Number seventeen?" she asked.

"Red Lion," said Gabriel, so he was remembering too.
"The fellows have got our old place, or the promise of it."

But it wasn't "our" place, it belonged to Walter Deverell. Walter Deverell had finished his first picture of her. He had begun it, it is true, before he saw her, but she liked to think of things begun, being finished.

There was Mr. Hunt's *Silvia*, and he had done a second *Viola*.

There was Mr. Millais' *Ophelia*. She had been happy about the *Ophelia* until he did the floating draperies. She didn't see why she had to be submerged with them. But she had so admired his work that she wanted to be helpful. It wasn't so much lying in the water as the thoughts (Ophelia's thoughts) that turned afterwards to a fever. They blamed

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was holding the flower-stem. Gabriel had carefully painted
the green stalk and blade-like leaves and the three flowers.
He had tinted her eyes the same blue as the iris. Her hair
was smoothed back, not looped or tumbled as he so often did
it. She had placed the canvas beside her, on the dressing-
table and looked at both faces in the glass. They were the
same size and proportion.

Now she glanced at the dressing-table and her painted
face looked back at her, from the mirror-frame.

After the wear and tear of travel and the lack of
privacy in the pension, her room drew about her, enfolded
her. It was sanctuary.

She thought backward, of the other painted faces. It
was painful to think of Ophelia because of the blame they
put on Everett Millais for the cough she had that winter.
Dr. Ackland had said, when she saw him in Oxford, that
the cough was partly a nervous affectation, there was
nothing wrong really. She was glad now, that she had had
that time in Oxford. People were kind, really. She was
shy and unsure of herself; she did not like their assumption
of superiority. She was "received" because of Mr. Ruskin who

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in that way, artistic."

"It's friendly and delightful," said Mr. Morris, "all this."

"If I touch the books in the hall, he says I have disturbed the sequence. I don't know what sequence. He says he has his own method and can find things best when they're lost."

"He doesn't always find them."

"That doesn't make any difference. If he's looking for an old photograph of Florence for a Dante background and can't lay his hands on it, he turns up something else in the search and says that it will do for his *Carillon* or for another of the sequence he planned, after his trip with Mr. Hunt to Belgium."

"I didn't know that Gabriel had been to Belgium."

"It was a long time ago, after he sold *The Girlhood of the Virgin*."

Mr. Morris said, did she mind his smoking? She said, "of course not. He sold *The Girlhood* for eighty guineas."

Now she could have bitten out her tongue, "but it's sordid, isn't it," she said, "to speak of money?"

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Mr. Morris said, "I will make up in some other way,
but I want you to give me the picture."

"What picture?" she said.

"The one I asked you to hide."

"Oh - but it isn't finished."

"I want it as it is, unfinished."

"It's always like that, everything's unfinished," she
said. "Oh, don't tell me all Gabriel's done, I know that,"
she added quickly.

"And done," she went on, still standing at the table,
"not only for art, writing, translating - look at his
Dante - painting, teaching and generally inspiring people -
I should say _inflaming_ people - "

Mr. Morris did not answer.

"He fairly brought me alive - and other people. Don't
think I don't know what Gabriel's done for me and other
people."

"He has done a great deal for me," said William Morris.

"You haven't known Gabriel very long," said Elizabeth
Siddall. "At first, he set me in a flame. I called it a
magic-circle."

"I understand that," said Mr. Morris.

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"But it burnt away everything outside the circle."

"I understand that," said William Morris.

"You can't understand it," she said. She noted and tried to check the stammer that always threatened her when she was nervous or excited. That is why she spoke so carefully, when she was embarrassed. But as she considered the bent head of William Morris, her fear of stammering left her.

"It's funny, you sitting there," she said.

He did not answer her, he was fully occupied stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

"Friendly, like you said. Only the kitchen at home doesn't look like this."

Mr. Morris felt in his pocket for his matches. His gesture was slow, deliberate, over-controlled.

"What I mean is, if I had been at Oxford, one of the gentlemen would have jumped to his feet and pretended he could help me, when I started to clear the table."

What he said, he felt was irrelevant, "you know Oxford?"

"I was sent there by Mr. Ruskin, to be looked over by Dr. Ackland. I was looked over by a great many people. It was last summer, before I went to France. Various people

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knew, I don't yet know what <u>Gules</u> are."

"<u>Gules</u> is a colour, really," said William Morris, "if you're speaking of a coat of arms; it's the <u>Bend</u> or band drawn across the shield, <u>Vert and Gules</u>, green and red."

"That was the Greaves quartering and <u>an Eagle displayed</u>. I tried to write a story that was a sort of vision. It was here, I had it, before I went to France, sitting here in an old basket-chair that's in my room now, in Weymouth Street. I called the story <u>Gold Cord</u> because the girl in the story had a hunting-falcon and the cord got tangled when she fell off her horse. She had the falcon embroidered on her saddle-cloth."

"I would like to see the story," said William Morris.

"It's the same style as you and Gabriel, romantic but it isn't finished. You make me want to finish <u>Gold Cord</u>. It got mixed up with those old drawings from the wall in Pisa, that Gabriel was speaking about last time. The book is in the hall. Would you like to see it?"

"We can wait till they come back," said William Morris.

"It got mixed up with my being frightened of the cholera."

"Cholera is frightening," said William Morris.

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"I was here alone. Gabriel was out at Brown's, for they kept the cart and the calf there for his *Drover* picture. He called it *The Bridge* sometimes. Like everything else in our lives, it isn't finished. But I shouldn't say that, either. People finished pictures of me. But it's like that, I mean the magic-circle. I was Ophelia and I was Viola and Silvia and some half-sketched Beatrice and the Damozel, that never will be finished. But I was the freak at Mrs. Tozer's, or the scarecrow."

"Mrs. Tozer?" asked William Morris, preoccupied with matches.

"Where I worked, I was a shop-girl. I had twenty-four pounds a year."

Mr. Morris dropped the match in a saucer.

They were still laughing and talking in the next room.

"You see what I mean by the magic-circle. Inside it, I am Viola, Ophelia, Beatrice or the Damozel. Outside it, I am afraid people will laugh. They didn't laugh at Oxford."

His heart was breaking.

"Do you think I'm funny?" she said.

"Why - ah - yes, to speak in that way."

"It wasn't just my clothes. But Gabriel likes this

332

dress."

"It's very beautiful," he said.

He saw only the long oval of the pale face, the heavy
weight of the carefully braided hair, the fragile hands
resting on the grey silk.

"But in Paris, I was fashionable."

Would Ophelia ever be fashionable?

"Ah - you ladies - "

"You see, it having been my profession, I knew how
people should look. It wasn't just bonnets; we had
model gowns to copy."

Almost William Morris wished the others would come
back.

"What it was, was my hair."

Her hair was, as he had written ... dusky golden.

"What they called the civet-cat," she said.

Her face was, as he had written ... not fair in white
and red, being rather pale. He said, "I think that frame
was stuck behind a curtain. I saw the picture last winter,
the first time I saw Gabriel alone, when he told me about
the 'scutcheon and read me part of a letter from you."

"Was it the blocked-up window?"

333

He said, "I don't know. I wanted to look out at the
snow. I lifted a curtain. Gabriel told me not to touch it."

"It's the draught there," she said. "He works in the
other corner, and anyway, he said, he didn't want the cross-
light. Perhaps Mr. Jones pulled the curtain back, like you
did. All the curtains should be pulled down and shaken. I
wanted to do it, while he was away, but I couldn't get a
ladder. I knew he would be angry if Mrs. Birrell came in."

"Then, you'll keep the picture for me?"

"I wonder why you want it."

"He said, "I'll be perfectly frank with you. It
resembles, in some way, the lady that I spoke of, the
Margaret of my stories."

So he was going to be married.

"I hope you will be happy," she said, "with - Margaret."

"I don't know when - or if - " he said, "but I will
ask you to think of me as happy, with this lady I call Lis."

"Lis?" she questioned.

"It's from the story, he is de Liliis. I told you, I
think, that my rose was a lily. That is what I meant, her
name, I mean, being Lis."

She did not know what had happened to her. She felt

334

like a stone being dropped down a deep well.

It was not a new sensation, but she had not had it
for some time.

It wasn't that she resented people being happy.

"Friends tell me that Mr. Millais and Mrs. Ruskin -
I mean, Mrs. Millais are very happy."

"Ruskin - " he did not really want to talk about them.

"He was very kind, Mr. Ruskin, I mean; he offered me
one hundred and fifty pounds a year, for all my drawings.
I can't go on taking it. It's almost seven times as much
as I got a year at Mrs. Tozer's."

He wished she wouldn't talk about it, but she might
think he was indifferent, "ah - how long ago - when - "

"When I left? Didn't you know about it?"

"How should I know about it?"

"I thought someone might have told Mr. Jones about it."

"I don't think Ted would have mentioned it to me, if
they had."

"You see, that's what I mean. My home is Kent Place,"
she spoke deliberately, "a street or two off <u>Elephant and Castle</u>."

"I am always delighted with the theory that <u>Elephant</u>

335

and Castle is a derivative of Infanta of Castile."

"Is it?" she said, "You mean like Charing Cross."

"Chère Reine?" he said, "yes."

"It's a small house," she said, "but we have some nice pieces, what Mum said they thought was Chippendale, two chairs, and we have a Flemish cabinet."

Why did she tell him these things?

"They were given to Mum - "

"Listen," said William Morris, "I must know everything about you. They'll come back in a minute. But before I hear the story of the Flemish cabinet, you must promise to meet me somewhere. I'm coming up on Saturday. I'm in an office, an architect's office, and I've got to finish up some detail drawings and tracings, before I leave Oxford."

She was looking at him from far away; her eyes were not as blue as the blue eyes in the picture. They were greenish-blue or grey, depending on what light she was sitting in and on what she wore. Even as William Morris looked at her, the colour disappeared and he was staring into the dark wells of the over-luminous pupils.

He was shocked suddenly.

Her expression had not changed, perhaps her face was

336

paler. Was she suffering?

"I've tired you," he said, "frankly, I'm selfish."

Would he lose her now?

"I want to talk, I want to talk to you and of you.
But understand, it is because of Lis that I must see you.
We have been separated, such a long time. Have you -
have you -" he turned his head. "I mean, I wonder if you
have a bowl or something - I can't tap out my ashes."

"There's that tray, Gabriel uses," she said.

He did not see the tray, though it was at his elbow.

"It's there, on the window-sill," she said.

William Morris laid his pipe down on the ash-tray.
He stood with his hands on the back of the chair. He
stared at the darkening window.

She must have moved away, for there was light and
shadow, where there had been gathering darkness.

"I like candles," she said.

She had come back to the chair.

He thought of Godfrey and his room in Balliol.

He thought of _The Little Tower_.

"You will come," he said, "it's just an idea, a
sentiment, but I would like to meet you, just inside the

337

station waiting-room."

She said, "at what time and what station?"

William Morris said, "at four-fifteen exactly -
chère reine."

William Morris said,

"No furlong further for us to-night,
The Little Tower draweth in sight."

340

warped without an occasional coat of beeswax." He didn't
want to interrupt her reverie. She was thinking out loud.
Even his thoughts might interrupt her.

"What would a sign be that had wind and rain and
flowers in it? You could hardly draw it."

William Morris did not answer.

"It wouldn't be lions, **rampant** or **passant** or anything
like that. Perhaps what they call **wayy** or **undy**. Funny, me
remembering those words. All of them seem to have poems in
them, like your poetry. I mean, it must make a difference
to you, if you can take guidance from the star-patterns.
But not knowing the day - not even the month - makes you - "
she laughed, "**wayy** or **undy**."

"Undine," he said, under his breath, "was a mermaid."

He didn't know if she had heard him.

"It seemed I could write a whole book of poems, just
looking at those words and the pictures that went with them.
Taking a word, any word would make a poem. I was looking
up bird-pictures because of the **Three Birds**. I don't know
what sort of birds they were, though we had **per bend vert**
**and gules** stamped on a china plaque, so I did find **Eagle**
**displayed**. I had thought displayed meant just shown, but