But it had been a moment, a dream, a yellow lotus of forgetfulness and it couldn’t hold on into the room, into the smoke, into the lack of coal and now into another leave. . another leave. . how they came back, how they came around and the sort of half-state, the sort of Limbo that she was in, that she managed to maintain, not seeing people, reading, sewing a little, had to be broken. . another leave. . and she was caught back into her body, caught back into the body of Mrs. Darrington, the person she was, it appeared, still, caught back, held into it, like a bird caught in a trap, like a bird caught in bird-lime, caught and held in it, all the time remembering her Limbo, the state she maintained through weeks, going on and on, not at Delia’s any more, but digging out her books, determined to remember, like the Centurion, to stand guard over Beauty, one soldier over Beauty, while the lava fell and fell and the ashes rose higher to suffocate. Darrington said, “well, why did you?” and she didn’t know the answer to that for she had said, “go ahead” and that meant only one thing for Darrington. How was she to know after it happened, after it kept on happening (Florient had the big room on the second landing for the county dame in the Air Ministry had had to leave London) that she would so care? Did she care? It was worse than caring. It was like having a body and being dead, mercifully, and then someone coming and saying no, you aren’t dead, you are only half-dead, crawl back to your body. Conscientiously she had crawled back to her body, after she had winged out, gold, gold gauze of wings, winging up and up against a rose shaded light (she remembered) and now back in her body (not even comfortable Limbo) and she had been so happy. “I never thought—” “You never thought. Well you might have thought—” He was right. She was wrong. She had not thought in her pride, in her habitations, in her frank terror of this newest of the new Darringtons that they would (as one used to say) “carry on” to that extent, but why shouldn’t they? Did people in the house know? That was what wracked her, people in munitions, all the people, good people, though she had repudiated good people, repudiated Delia and the Red Cross work and the munitions, still you had to think, had to remember, but Darrington was an officer, so everything was excused him if he wasn’t a gentleman and it went on and it went on. “You’re upstairs so much of the time—” “What did you expect when you so sweetly gave us carte blanche?” “I don’t in the least know what I did expect—” “I should think you didn’t. It’s obvious that you only wanted to get me out of the way—” “Out of the way?” “One can’t be expected to believe in the entire altruism of your scheme.” “Scheme?” “Obvious—” Darrington was huge. He seemed to loom huger and huger each time he came back. He was so huge (but they go that way) that he would soon, it appeared, burst. Horrors of his bursting. . yes, it was rather good of Florient after all, to take him on, a bargain is a bargain, “no, I don’t want him, take him,” for she wasn’t going on with this sweet to sweet to sweeter, saccharine stuff of Merry Dalton, never never that again. Let it be daggers drawn, she wasn’t one to clutch at that hulk of flesh that had been Jerrold. Hulk of something that was like a bloated great zeppelin but women seemed to like it. Rent him out, lend him about, military stallion. Florient was the right note, chic, pre-war chic, Paris, rue gauche, knowing all about it, he wouldn’t break her, pressing upon her, O let it rip. Let him go, he had gone but what an agony, herself was like a wound, a burn against herself, within herself. Hermione in Mrs. Darrington turned and festered, was it the spirit simply? Trying to get out, trying to get away, worse than having a baby a real one, herself in herself trying to be born, pain that tore and wracked and what was there to do? Yes, my husband’s due again. . keep it up, one spark of pride. She had nothing against Florient, little bitch, but Florient might have thought of the munition workers. That was all she had against Florient done up in fresh rouge and looking pretty at that. The sort of thing absolutely for him, the sort of touch absolutely. Pre-war — no she wouldn’t say it. She had nothing against the sheen and lustre of Florient with her lips the right red and her cheeks the righter red, peony made up, peony on a lacquered Japanese screen, thin and tall and with that Sienna slant to eyes. Sienna, Siamese slant to eyes. Yes, Darrington couldn’t have done better, had he got her the room or was it true that she had had to move, had had to find somewhere to go, that the horizon blue officer had known Miss Aimes who had the house, that it was he—who had got her the room? In their house? But there were rooms, everybody knew there were rooms, they were free to anyone who could pay the rent. There must be no mystery. Let it be all in the open, the house was turned into a “house,” that simple, by the coming of Florient, the house, her house that she had found, had taken (because of Flora spilling petals) was a “house.” Her house was a “house” now and she didn’t care, didn’t think, for what did it matter? She couldn’t any more go and watch Delia being white and white and the smell of blood on the bandages, she knew she was mad, it was all over everything and no one saw it. Out damned spot. What was there to do? Soul beating and tearing, why don’t you get born? “You’re quite wrong.” “Wrong?” “I mean I haven’t. Have been alone here.” “Who can make me believe that?” “No one. Nothing. It’s the truth. Truth will last—” “Your truth is a—” If he said anything disgusting now, she would tear at his throat. Her hands were thin, were fine but if they met in his bull-throat one or the other would go for her hands would never, never come out of that throat. Her hands were quiet. She was quiet. She was looking at Darrington and it appeared she would soon go — soon go mad. “Darling—” Why did he say that? “What’s come over us?” She didn’t know, couldn’t say. Something had apparently come over them and she was tired and she couldn’t go on getting colds and the coal had at last utterly given out. Wrapped in a coat. Feet drawn up. Looking at each other like two Russian peasants in a Tolstoy novel. Life was Russian. Life was damn bad art.
Now he said, “is it true Vane wants you to go off to Cornwall with him?” It was another day and she was so happy spreading her fingers to the unaccustomed luxury of the fire that she didn’t think, couldn’t think and Darrington, Jerrold, had brought her winter daffodils. “He never came here while you were away. Only lately.” “Lately?” Darrington was different, he was looking at her, eyes wide and staring, not the mad badness of him but wide and somehow lost, lost in the room, looking around the room, their room, that he hardly ever came to now, asking her about Vane. “What — does — he — want?” “He doesn’t want anything. He’s just sorry—” “Sorry? You told him?” “No. Things get about. You can’t expect them not to. He asked me if I — liked you.” “And you told him?” “I said I had liked you, loved you. That you were different.” “And he said?” “He said, you’d better wait till the war’s over and give the lieutenant a fresh chance.’” “Why did he say that?” “I don’t know. He doesn’t really like me. He wants to— save me.” “Damn right—” “Right?” “To save you. You’d best hop it. Clear out. You can’t stay here another flu epidemic. You’re most all in now.” “Yes. We — all — are.” “Astraea—”
Trampled flowers smell sweet. “Do you remember the spray of violets that were growing, by just that miracle at the base of the broken white marble foot, that hadn’t been dug out yet, leaves brushed away, a foot that had been there, had been standing. So Beauty is still standing, a broken foot—” “You are obsessed with these things, sister of Charmides.” “Charmides? I don’t remember.” “Surely you do, Astraea. That poem of Wilde. He loved statues.” “Yes, Charmides. Statues—” “You never loved, cared. We were never married.” “Married? But Naples?” “The wind from the Bay was as married, more, than I to you, Astraea. The rock cytisus was more your lover, not as people love.” “Was that my fault?” “Fault? Your misfortune I sometimes think, seeing others, knowing the red wine of ecstacy that you’ve missed.” “Missed? Have I missed anything? I smell the locust blossoms that fell along the quay, the smell of salt weed and the honey locust blossom and the atrocious guitars with Verdi, their Bella Lucia which weren’t atrocious. Things are what they are in proportion to their setting. Love is what it is in relation to its surroundings. I loved you, loved the wrong sound of guitars that weren’t wrong. Things change and love is not to be measured even with an angel’s rod. You are wrong. I loved more than all these people.” “I tell you, frankly, (we were always frank) you do not.” “Do they know that ecstacy of the senses when a phosphorescent eel or some globe shaped sea-monster turns and makes a cone of light in the shadowy tank of the aquarium? There are senses and sets of sense vibration that they don’t know. I felt with senses that you don’t know—” “Don’t argue. You can’t argue of Love. You don’t know about love—” Let him go on. Broken cyclamen, trampled flowers are sweeter. He loved her very much and his self had opened to let self out. His other self, or sleeping self opened before her eyes. It was hidden like the fleck of colour in the tulip bulb, that fleck of colour that was his life, his soul. It opened before her eyes but it couldn’t go on opening. They were severed, had been severed. It is to their credit that they recognized that severance, saw it, stood up to it, dared it, challenged it. “You won’t forget—” “Forget?” What was forget. Things are part of you as the threads of a deep sea creature, its threads of feelers are itself. Butterfly antennae are the butterfly body, more subtly, more intrinsically than the soft moth-belly of it. It was her misfortune (sometimes her questionable strength) that she felt outwardly with her aura as it were of vibrant feelers rather than with the soft moth-belly of her body. She felt knowing her limitations, more than they felt. Knowing her limitations, she realised that the tender feelers of her being were in danger. Butterfly antennae to be withered like the soft forward feeling of a moth’s breath. Breath of a moth, of some soul. . “Does he really want you?”