The Well of Loneliness (31 page)

Out had come notebook and copying pencil; it was easy to talk to this sympathetic woman: ‘Well, if you could give me some interesting details—say, her taste in books and her recreations, I’d be awfully grateful. She hunts, I believe?’

‘Oh, not now!’

‘I see—well then, she did hunt. And wasn’t her father Sir Philip Gordon who had a place down in Worcestershire and was killed by a falling tree or something? What kind of a pupil did you find Miss Gordon? I’ll send her my notes when I’ve worked them up, but I really would like to see her, you know.’ Then being a fairly sagacious young man: ‘I’ve just read The Furrow, it’s a wonderful book!’

Puddle talked glibly while the young man scribbled, and when at last he was just about going she let him out on to the balcony from which he could look in Stephen’s study.

‘There she is at her desk! What more could you ask?’ she said triumphantly, pointing to Stephen whose hair was literally standing on end, as is sometimes the way with youthful authors. She even managed occasionally to make Stephen see the journalists herself:

4

Stephen got up, stretched, and went to the window. The sun had retreated behind the clouds; a kind of brown twilight hung over the Embankment, for the wind had now dropped and a fog was threatening. The discouragement common to all fine writers was upon her, she was hating what she had written. Last night’s work seemed inadequate and unworthy; she decided to put a blue pencil through it and to rewrite the chapter from start to finish. She began to give way to a species of panic; her new book would be a ludicrous failure, she felt it, she would never again write a novel possessing the quality of The Furrow. The Furrow had been the result of shock to which she had, strangely enough, reacted by a kind of unnatural mental vigour. But now she could not react any more, her brain felt like over-stretched elastic, it would not spring back, it was limp, unresponsive. And then there was something else that distracted, something she was longing to put into words yet that shamed her so that it held her tongue-tied. She lit a cigarette and when it was finished found another and kindled it at the stump.

‘Stop embroidering that curtain, for God’s sake, Puddle. I simply can’t stand the sound of your needle; it makes a booming noise like a drum every time you prod that tightly stretched linen.’

Puddle looked up: ‘You’re smoking too much.’

‘I dare say I am. I can’t write any more.’

‘Since when?’

‘Ever since I began this new book.’

‘Don’t be such a fool!’

‘But it’s God’s truth, I tell you—I feel flat, it’s a kind of spiritual dryness. This new book is going to be a failure, sometimes I think I’d better destroy it.’ She began to pace up and down the room, dull-eyed yet tense as a tightly-drawn bow string.

‘This comes of working all night,’ Puddle murmured.

‘I must work when the spirit moves me,’ snapped Stephen.

Puddle put aside her wool work embroidery. She was not much moved by this sudden depression, she had grown quite accustomed to these literary moods, yet she looked a little more closely at Stephen and something that she saw in her face disturbed her.

‘You look tired to death; why not lie down and rest?’

‘Rot! I want to work.’

‘You’re not fit to work. You look all on edge, somehow. What’s the matter with you?’ And then very gently: Stephen, come here and sit down by me, please, I must know what’s the matter.’

Stephen obeyed as though once again they two were back in the old Morton schoolroom, then she suddenly buried her face in her hands: ‘I don’t want to tell you—why must I, Puddle?’

‘Because,’ said Puddle, ‘I’ve a right to know; your career’s very dear to me, Stephen.’

Then suddenly Stephen could not resist the blessed relief of confiding in Puddle once more, of taking this great new trouble to the faithful and wise little grey-haired woman whose hand had been stretched out to save in the past. Perhaps yet again that hand might find the strength that was needful to save her.

Not looking at Puddle, she began to talk quickly: ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, Puddle—it’s about my work, there’s something wrong with it. I mean that my work could be much more vital; I feel it, I know it, I’m holding it back in some way, there’s something I’m always missing. Even in Time Furrow I feel I missed something—I know it was fine, but it wasn’t complete because I’m not complete and I never shall be—can’t you understand? I’m not complete…’ She paused, unable to find the words she wanted, then blundered on again blindly: ‘There’s a great chunk of life that I’ve never known, and I want to know it, I ought to know it if I’m to become a really fine writer. There’s the greatest thing perhaps in the world, and I’ve missed it—that’s what’s so awful, Puddle, to know that it exists everywhere, all round me, to be constantly near it yet always held back—to feel that the poorest people in the streets, the most ignorant people, know more than I do. And I dare to take up my pen and write, knowing less than these poor men and women in the street! Why haven’t I got a right to it, Puddle? Can’t you understand that I’m strong and young, so that sometimes this thing that I’m missing torments me, so that I can’t concentrate on my work any more? Puddle, help me—you were young yourself once.’

‘Yes, Stephen—a long time ago I was young…

‘But can’t you remember back for my sake?’ And now her voice sounded almost angry in her distress: ‘It’s unfair, it’s unjust. Why should I live in this great isolation of spirit and body—why should I, why? Why have I been afflicted with a body that must never be indulged, that must always be repressed until it grows much stronger than my spirit because of this unnatural repression? What have I done to be so cursed? And now it’s attacking my holy of holies, my work—I shall never be a great writer because of my maimed and insufferable body—’ She fell silent, suddenly shy and ashamed, too much ashamed to go on speaking.

And there sat Puddle as pale as death and as speechless, having no comfort to offer—no comfort, that is, that she dared to offer—while all her fine theories about making good for the sake of those others; being noble, courageous, patient, honourable, physically pure, enduring because it was right to endure, the terrible birthright of the invert—all Puddle’s fine theories lay strewn around her like the ruins of some false and flimsy temple, and she saw at that moment but one thing clearly—true genius in chains, in the chains of the flesh, a fine spirit subject to physical bondage. And as once before she had argued with God on behalf of this sorely afflicted creature, so now she inwardly cried yet again to the Maker whose will had created Stephen: ‘Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together and round about; yet Thou dost destroy me.’ Then into her heart crept a bitterness very hard to endure: ‘Yet Thou dost destroy me—’

Stephen looked up and saw her face: ‘Never mind,’ she said sharply, ‘it’s all right, Puddle—forget it!’

But Puddle’s eyes filled with tears, and seeing this, Stephen went to her desk. Sitting down she groped for her manuscript: ‘I’m going to turn you out now, I must work. Don’t wait for me if I’m late for dinner.’

Very humbly Puddle crept out of the study.

Soon after the New Year, nine months later, Stephen’s second novel was published. It failed to create the sensation that the first had created, there was something disappointing about it. One critic described this as: ‘A lack of grip,’ and his criticism, on the whole, was a fair one. However, the Press was disposed to be kind, remembering the merits of The Furrow.

But the heart of the Author knoweth its own sorrows and is seldom responsive to false consolation, so that when Puddle said: ‘Never mind, Stephen, you can’t expect every book to be The Furrow—and this one is full of literary merit.’ Stephen replied as she turned away: I was writing a novel, my dear, not an essay.’

After this they did not discuss it any more, for what was the use of fruitless discussion? Stephen knew well and Puddle knew also that this book fell far short of its author’s powers. Then suddenly, that spring, Raftery went very lame, and everything else was forgotten.

Raftery was aged, he was now eighteen, so that lameness in him was not easy of healing. His life in a city had tried him sorely, he had missed the light, airy stables of Morton, and the cruel-hard bed that lay under the tan of the Row had jarred his legs badly.

The vet shook his head and looked very grave: ‘He’s an aged horse, you know, and of course in his youth you hunted him pretty freely—it all counts. Everyone comes to the end of their tether, Miss Gordon. Yes, at times I’m afraid it is painful.’ Then, seeing Stephen’s face: ‘I’m awfully sorry not to give a more cheerful diagnosis.’

Other experts arrived. Every good vet in London was consulted, including Professor Hobday. No cure, no cure, it was always the same, and at times, they told Stephen, the old horse suffered; but this she well knew—she had seen the sweat break out darkly on Raftery’s shoulders.

So one morning she went into Raftery’s loosebox, and she sent the groom Jim out of the stable, and she laid her check against the beast’s neck, while he turned his head and began to nuzzle. Then they looked at each other very quietly and gravely, and in Raftery’s eyes was a strange, new expression—a kind of half-anxious, protesting wonder at this thing men call pain: ‘What is it, Stephen?’

She answered, forcing back her hot tears: ‘Perhaps, for you, the beginning, Raftery…’

After a while she went to his manger and let the fodder slip through her fingers; but he would not eat, not even to please her, so she called the groom back and ordered some gruel. Very gently she readjusted the clothing that had slipped to one side, first the under-blanket, then the smart blue rug that was braided in red—red and blue, the old stable colours of Morton.

The groom Jim, now a thick-set stalwart young man, stared at her with sorrowful understanding, but he did not speak; he was almost as dumb as the beasts whom his life had been passed in tending—even dumber, perhaps, for his language consisted of words, having no small sounds and small movements such as Raftery used when he spoke with Stephen, and which meant so much more than words.

She said: ‘I’m going now to the station to order a horse-box for tomorrow, I’ll let you know the time we start, later. And wrap him up well; put on plenty of clothing for the journey, please, he mustn’t feel cold.’

The man nodded. She had not told him their destination, but he knew it already; it was Morton. Then the great clumsy fellow must pretend to be busy with a truss of fresh straw for the horse’s bedding, because his face had turned a deep crimson, because his coarse lips were actually trembling—and this was not really so very strange, for those who served Raftery loved him.

2

Raftery stepped quietly into his horse-box and Jim with great deftness secured the halter, then he touched his cap and hurried away to his third-class compartment, for Stephen herself would travel with Raftery on his last journey back to the fields of Morton. Sitting down on the seat reserved for a groom she opened the little wooden window into the box, whereupon Raftery’s muzzle came up and his face looked out of the window. She fondled the soft, grey plush of his muzzle. Presently she took a carrot from her pocket, but the carrot was rather hard now for his teeth, so she bit off small pieces and these she gave him in the palm of her hand; then she watched him eat them uncomfortably, slowly, because he was old, and this seemed so strange, for old age and Raftery went very ill together.

Her mind slipped back and back over the years until it recaptured the coming of Raftery—grey-coated and slender, and his eyes as soft as an Irish morning, and his courage as bright as an Irish sunrise, and his heart as young as the wild, eternally young heart of Ireland. She remembered what they had said to each other. Raftery had said: ‘I will carry you bravely, I will serve you all the days of my life.’ She had answered: ‘I will care for you night and day, Raftery—all the days of your life.’ She remembered their first run with the hounds together—she a youngster of twelve, he a youngster of five. Great deeds they had done on that day together, at least they had seemed like great deeds to them—she had had a kind of fire in her heart as she galloped astride of Raftery. She remembered her father, his protective look, so broad, so kind, so patiently protective; and towards the end it had stooped a little as though out of kindness it carried a burden. Now she knew whose burden that back had been bearing so that it stooped a little. He had been very proud of the fine Irish horse, very proud of his small and courageous rider: ‘Steady, Stephen!’ but his eyes had been bright like Raftery’s. ‘Steady on, Stephen, we’re coming to a. stiff one!’ but once they were over he had turned round and smiled, as he had done in the days when the impudent Collins had stretched his inadequate legs to their utmost to keep up with the pace of the hunters.

Long ago, it all seemed a long time ago. A long road it seemed, leading where? She wondered. Her father had gone away into its shadows, and now after him, limping a little, went Raftery; Raftery with hollows above his eyes and down his grey neck that had once been so firm; Raftery whose splendid white teeth were now yellowed and too feeble to bite up his carrot.

The train jogged and swayed so that once the horse stumbled. Springing up, she stretched out her hand to soothe him. He seemed glad of her hand: ‘Don’t be frightened, Raftery. Did that hurt you Raftery acquainted with pain on the road that led into the shadows.

Presently the hills showed over on the left, but a long way off, and when they came nearer they were suddenly very near on the right, so near that she saw the white houses on them. They looked dark; a kind of still, thoughtful darkness brooded over the hills and their low white houses. It was always so in the later afternoons, for the sun moved across to the wide Wye Valley—it would set on the western side of the hills, over the wide Wye Valley. The smoke from the chimney-stacks bent downwards after rising a little and formed a blue haze, for the air was heavy with spring and dampness. Leaning from the window she could smell the spring, the time of mating, the time of fruition. When the train stopped a minute outside the station she fancied that she heard the singing of birds; very softly it came but the sound was persistent—yes, surely, that was the singing of birds…