A Buyer's Market Part 11

"Very plain, I'm afraid, poor boy," said Mr. Deacon. "With a shocking North-Country accent-though I suppose one should not say such a thing. He is a nephew of a client of mine in the Midlands. Rather hard up at the moment, he tells me, so he lends a hand in the shop from time to time. I'm surprised you have never run across him here. It gives him a pittance-and leisure to write. That's where his heart is."

"He is J. G. Quiggin, you know," said Gypsy. "You must have read things by him."

She may have thought that the importance she had ascribed to Quiggin as a potential source of nocturnal persecution of herself had been under-estimated by me, through ignorance of his relative eminence as a literary figure; and it was certainly true that I was unfamiliar with the name of the magazine mentioned by her as the organ to which he was said most regularly to contribute.

"No doubt about Quiggin's talent," said Mr. Deacon. "Though I don't like all his ideas. He's got a rough manner, too. All the same, he made himself very useful disposing of some books of a rather awkward sort-you need not sn.i.g.g.e.r like that, Barnby-that I wanted to get rid of."

Trying to recall terms of our mutual relations.h.i.+p when we had last seen anything of each other, I could remember only that I had met Quiggin from time to time up to the early part of my second year at the university, when, for some reason, he had pa.s.sed completely out of my life. In this process of individual drifting apart, there was, where university circles were concerned, of course, nothing out of the way: undergraduate acquaintance flouris.h.i.+ng and decaying often within a matter of weeks. I could remember commenting at one of Sillery's tea-parties that Quiggin seemed not to have been about for some time, at which, so far as I could recall, Sillery, through the medium of considerable verbal convolution, had indicated, or at least implied, that Quiggin's scholars.h.i.+p had been withdrawn by his college on grounds of idleness, or some other cause of dissatisfaction to the authorities; and that, not long after this had happened, he had been "sent down." That story had been, I thought, more or less substantiated by Brightman, a don at Quiggin's college. Certainly Brightman, at some luncheon party, had referred to "that path trodden by scholars.h.i.+p boys whose mental equipment has been somewhat over-taxed at an earlier stage of their often injudiciously promoted education," and it was possible that he had used the case of Quiggin as an ill.u.s.tration.

I was rather impressed to hear that in the unfamiliar form of "J. G. Quiggin" this former acquaintance was already known as a "writer"; and admired, if only by Gypsy Jones. I also felt a little ashamed, perhaps merely on account of this apparent notoriety of his, to think, after finding in him something that had interested, if not exactly attracted, me, I had so easily forgotten about his existence.

My first sight of him at the party suggested that he had remained remarkably unchanged. He was still wearing his shabby black suit, the frayed trousers of which were maintained insecurely by a heavy leather belt with a bra.s.s buckle. His hair had grown a shade spa.r.s.er round the sides of his dome-like forehead, and he retained that look of an undomesticated animal of doubtful temper. At the same time there was also his doggy, rather pathetic look about the eyes that had reminded me of Widmerpool, and which is a not uncommon feature of those who have decided to live by the force of the will. When we talked, I found that he had abandoned much of the conscious acerbity of manner that had been so much a part of social equipment at the university. It was not that he was milder-on the contrary, he seemed more anxious than ever to approach on his own terms every matter that arose-but he appeared to have come much nearer to perfection of method in his particular method of attacking life, so that for others there was not, as in former days, the same field of conversational pitfalls to be negotiated. No doubt this greater smoothness of intercourse was also to be explained by the fact that we had both "grown up" in the year or two that had pa.s.sed. He asked some searching questions, comparable to Widmerpool's, regarding my firm's publications, almost immediately suggesting that he should write a preface for a book to be included in one or other of some series mentioned to him.

It was at that stage we had been joined by Members, rather to my surprise, because, as undergraduates, Members and Quiggin had habitually spoken of each other in a far from friendly manner. Now a change of relations.h.i.+p seemed to have taken place, or, it would perhaps be more exact to say, appeared desired by each of them; for there was no doubt that they were prepared, at least momentarily, to be on the best of terms. The three of us talked together, at first perhaps with a certain lack of ease, and then with greater warmth than I remembered in the past.

I had, in fact, met Members with Short, who was a believer in what he called "keeping up with interesting people," soon after I had come to live in London. This taste of Short's, with whom I occasionally had dinner or saw a film-as we had planned to do on the night when I had cut him for the Walpole-Wilson dinner-party-resulted in running across various former acquaintances not seen regularly as a matter of course, and Members, by now of some repute as a litterateur litterateur, was one of these. To find him at Mr. Deacon's was unexpected, however, for I had supposed Members, for some reason, to frequent literary circles of a more sedate kind, though quite why I should have thus regarded him I hardly know.

In contrast with Quiggin, Mark Members had altered considerably since his undergraduate period, when he had been known for the relative flamboyance of his dress. Him too I remembered chiefly from my first year at the university, though this was not because he had left prematurely, but rather on account of his pa.s.sing into a world of local hostesses of more or less academical complexion, which I did not myself frequent. If I had considered the matter, it was to some similar layer of society in London that I should have pictured him attached: perhaps a reason for supposing him out of place at Mr. Deacon's. Possibly these ladies, most of them hard-headed enough in their, own way, had been to some extent responsible for the almost revolutionary changes that had taken place in his appearance; for, even since our meeting with Short, Members had worked hard on his own exterior, in much the same manner that Quiggin had effected the interior modifications to which I have already referred.

There had once, for example, been at least a suggestion of side-whiskers, now wholly disappeared. The Byronic collar and loosely tied tie discarded, Members looked almost as neat round the neck as Archie Gilbert. His hair no longer hung in an uneven fringe, but was brushed severely away from his forehead at an acute angle; while he had also, by some means, ridded himself of most of his freckles, acquiring a sterner expression that might almost have been modelled on Quiggin's. In fact, he looked a rather distinguished young man, evidently belonging to the world of letters, though essentially to the end of that world least well disposed to Bohemianism in its grosser forms. He had been brought-Mr. Deacon had finally declared himself resigned to a certain number of uninvited guests, "modern manners being what they are"-by a strapping, black-haired model called Mona, a friend of Gypsy's belonging, so Barnby reported, to a stage of Gypsy's life before she was known to Mr. Deacon.

Short had told me that Members did occasional work for one of the "weeklies"-the periodical, in fact, that had commented rather disparagingly on Prince Theodoric's visit to England-and I had, indeed, read, with decided respect, some of the pieces there written by him. He had, I believed, failed to secure the "first" expected of him, by Sillery and others, at the end of his university career, but, like Bill Truscott in another sphere, he had never relinquished the reputation of being "a coming young man." Speaking of reviews Written by Members, Short used to say: "Mark handles his material with remarkable facility," and, not without envy, I had to agree with that judgment; for this matter of writing was beginning to occupy an increasing amount of attention in my own mind. I had even toyed with the idea of attempting myself to begin work on a novel: an act that would thereby have brought to pa.s.s the a.s.sertion made at La Grenadiere, merely as a conversational pretext to supply an answer to Widmerpool, to the effect that I possessed literary ambitions.

As I have already said of Mrs. Andriadis's party, such lat.i.tudes are entered by a door through which there is rarely if ever a return. In rather the same manner, that night at Mr. Deacon's seemed to crystallise certain matters. Perhaps this crystallisation had something to do with the presence there of Members and Quiggin, though they themselves were in agreement as to the displeasure they both felt in the company a.s.sembled.

"You must admit," said Members, looking round the room, "it all looks rather like that picture in the Tate of the Sea giving up the Dead that were in It. I can't think why Mona insisted on coming."

Quiggin concurred in finding Mr. Deacon's guests altogether unacceptable, at the same time paying suitable commendation to the aptness of the pictorial allusion. He looked across the room to where Mona was talking to Barnby, and said: "It is a very unusual figure, isn't it? Epstein would treat it too sentimentally, don't you think? Something more angular is required, in the manner of Lipchitz or Zadkine."

"She really hates hates men," said Members, laughing dryly. men," said Members, laughing dryly.

His amus.e.m.e.nt was no doubt directed at the impracticability of the unspoken desires of Quiggin, who, perhaps with the object of moving to ground more favourable to himself, changed the subject, "Did I hear that you had become secretary to St. John Clarke?" he asked, in a casual voice.

Members gave his rather high laugh again. This was evidently a matter he wished to be approached delicately. He seemed to have grown taller since coming to London. His slim waist and forceful, interrogative manner rather suggested one of those strong-willed, elegant young salesmen, who lead the customer from the shop only after the intention to buy a few handkerchiefs has been trans.m.u.ted into a reckless squandering on s.h.i.+rts, socks, and ties, of patterns to be found later fundamentally unsympathetic.

"At first I could not make up my mind whether to take it," he admitted. "Now I am glad I decided in favour. St. J. is rather a great man in his way."

"Of course, one could not exactly call him a very great novelist," said Quiggin, slowly, as if deliberating the question carefully within himself. "But he is a personality personality, certainly, and some of his critical writing might be labelled as-well-shall we say 'not bad'?"

"They have a certain distinction of thought, of course, in their rather old-fas.h.i.+oned manner."

Members seemed relieved to concede this. He clearly felt that Quiggin, catching him in a weak position, had let him off lightly. St. John Clarke was the novelist of whom Lady Anne Stepney had spoken with approval. I had read some of his books towards the end of my time at school with great enjoyment; now I felt myself rather superior to his windy, descriptive pa.s.sages, two-dimensional characterisation, and, so I had come to think, the emptiness of the writing's inner content. I was surprised to find someone I regarded as so impregnable in the intellectual field as I supposed Members to be, saddled with a figure who could only be looked upon by those with literary pretensions of any but the crudest kind as an Old Man of the Sea; although, in one sense, the metaphor should perhaps have been reversed, as it was Members who had, as it were, climbed upon the shoulders of St. John Clarke.

I can now see his defence of St. John Clarke as an interesting example of the power of the will, for his disinclination for St. John Clarke's works must have been at least equal to my own: possibly far in excess. As Members had made up his mind to accept what was probably a reasonable salary-though St. John Clarke was rather well known for being "difficult" about money-his att.i.tude was undoubtedly a sagacious one; indeed, a great deal more discerning than my own, based upon decidedly romantic premises. The force of this justification certainly removed any question of Quiggin, as I had at first supposed he might, opening up some sort of critical attack on Members, based on the charge that St. John Clarke was a "bad writer." On the contrary, Quiggin now seemed almost envious that he had not secured the post for himself.

"Of course, if I had a job like that, I should probably say something one day that wouldn't go down," he commented, rather bitterly. "I've never had the opportunity to learn the way successful people like to be treated."

"St. J. knows your work," said Members, with quiet emphasis. "I brought it to his attention."

He watched Quiggin closely after saying this. Once more I wondered whether there was any truth in Sillery's story, never verified in detail, to the effect that the two of them lived almost next-door in the same Midland town. In spite of Quiggin's uncouth, drab appearance, and the new spruceness of Members, there could be no doubt that they had something in common. As Quiggin's face relaxed at these complimentary words, I could almost have believed that they were cousins. Quiggin did not comment on the subject of this awareness of his own status as a writer now attributed to St. John Clarke, but, in friendly exchange, he began to question Members about his books, in process of being written or already in the press: projected works that appeared to be several in number-at least three, possibly four-consisting of poems, a novel, a critical study, together with something else, more obscure in form, the precise nature of which I have forgotten, as it never appeared.

"And you, J.G.?" asked Members, evidently not wis.h.i.+ng to appear grudging.

"I am trying to remain one of the distinguished few who have not written a novel," said Quiggin, lightly. "The Vox Populi may be doing a fragment of autobiography of mine in the spring. Otherwise I just keep a few notes-odds and ends I judge of interest. I suppose they will find their way into print in due course. Everything does these days."

"No streams of consciousness, I hope," said Members, with a touch of malignity. "But the Vox Populi isn't much of a publis.h.i.+ng house, is it? Will they pay a decent advance?"

"I get so sick of all the 'fine' typography you see about," said Quiggin, dismissing the matter of money. "I've told Craggs to send it out to a jobbing printer, just as he would one of his pamphlets-print it on lavatory paper, if he likes. At least Craggs has the right political ideas."

"I question if there is much of the commodity you mention to be found on the premises of the Vox Populi," said Members, giving his thin, grating laugh. "But no doubt that format format would ensure a certain sale. Don't forget to send me a copy, so that I can try and say something about it somewhere." would ensure a certain sale. Don't forget to send me a copy, so that I can try and say something about it somewhere."

In leaving behind the kind of sh.e.l.l common to all undergraduates, indeed to most young men, they had, in one sense, taken more definite shape by each establis.h.i.+ng conspicuously his own individual ident.i.ty, thereby automatically drawing farther apart from each other. Regarded from another angle, however, Quiggin and Members had come, so it appeared, closer together by their concentration, in spite of differences of approach, upon the same, or at least very similar, aims. They could be thought of, perhaps, as representatives, if not of different cultures, at least of opposed traditions; Quiggin, a kind of abiding prototype of discontent against life, possessing at the same time certain characteristics peculiar to the period: Members, no less dissatisfied than Quiggin, but of more academic derivation, perhaps even sharing some of Mr. Deacon's intellectual origins.

Although he had already benefited from the tenets of what was possibly a dying doctrine, Members was sharp enough to be speedily jettisoning appurtenances, already deteriorated, of an outmoded aestheticism. Quiggin, with his old clothes and astringent manner, showed a similar sense of what the immediate future intimated. This was to be a race neck-and-neck, though whether the compet.i.tors themselves were already aware of the invisible ligament binding them together in apparently eternal contrast and comparison, I do not know. Certainly the att.i.tude that was to exist mutually between them-perhaps best described as "love-hate"-must have taken root long before anything of the sort was noticed by me. At the university their eclectic personalities had possessed, I had thought, a curious magnetism, unconnected with their potential talents. Now I was almost startled by the ease with which both of them appeared able to write books in almost any quant.i.ty; for Quiggin's relative abnegation in that field was clearly the result of personal choice, rather than lack of subject matter, or weakness in powers of expression.

Quiggin was showing no public indication of the attempts to ingratiate himself with Gypsy suggested by her earlier remarks. On the contrary, he seemed to be spending most of his time talking business or literary gossip of the kind in which he had indulged with Members. On the whole, he restricted himself to the men present, though once or twice he hovered, apparently rather ill at ease, in the vicinity of the model, Mona, in whom Barnby was also showing a certain interest. Gypsy had taken manifest steps to clean herself up for the party. She was wearing a bright, fussy little frock that emphasised her waif-like appearance. When I noticed her at a later stage of the evening's evolution, sitting on the knee of Howard Craggs, a tall, baldish man, in early middle age, with a voice like a radio announcer's, rich, oily, and precise in its accents, this sight made me think again of her brush with Widmerpool, and wish for a moment that I knew more of its details. Perhaps some processes of thought-transference afforded at that moment an unexpected dispensation from Gypsy herself of further enlightenment to my curiosity.

Craggs had been making fairly free for a considerable time in a manner that certainly suggested some truth in the aspersions put forward by Barnby. However, this perseverance on his part had apparently promoted no very ardent feeling of sympathy between them, there and then, for she was looking sullen enough. Now she suddenly scrambled out of his lap, straightening her skirt, and pushed her way across the room to where I was sitting on the sofa, talking-as I had been for some time-to a bearded man interested in musical-boxes. This person's connection with Mr. Deacon was maintained purely and simply through their common interest in the musical-box market, a fact the bearded man kept on explaining: possibly fearing that his reputation might otherwise seem cheap in my eyes. At the arrival of Gypsy, probably supposing that the party was getting too rough for a person of quiet tastes, he rose from his seat, remarking that he must be "finding Gillian and making for Hampstead." Gypsy took the deserted place. She sat there for a second or two without speaking.

"We don't much like each other, do we?" she said at length.

I replied, rather lamely, that, even supposing some such mutual hostility to exist between us, there was no good reason why anything of the sort should continue; and it was true that I was conscious, that evening, of finding her notably more engaging than upon earlier meetings, comparatively amicable though some of these had been.

"Have you been seeing much of your friend Widmerpool lately?" she asked.

"I've just had a letter from his mother inviting me to dine with them next week."

She laughed a lot at this news.

"I expect you heard he forked out," she said.

"I gathered something of the sort."

"Did he tell you himself?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Was he fed up about it?"

"He was, rather."

She laughed again, though less noisily. I wondered what unthinkable pa.s.sages had pa.s.sed between them. It was evident that any interest, emotional or venal, invested by her in Widmerpool was now expended. There was something odious about her that made her, at the same time-I had to face this-an object of desire.

"After all, somebody had to cough up," she said, rather defensively.

"So I suppose."

"In the end he went off in a huff."

This statement seemed explicit enough. There could be little doubt now that she had made a fool of Widmerpool. I felt, at that moment, she was correct in a.s.suming that I did not like her. She was at once aware of this disapproval.

"Why are you so stuck up?" she asked, truculently.

"I'm just made that way."

"You ought to fight it."

"I can't see why."

As far as I can remember, she went on to speak of the "social revolution," a subject that occupied a great deal of her conversation and Cragg's, too, while even Mr. Deacon could not hold his own in such discussions, though representing a wilder and less regimented point of view than the other two. I was relieved of the necessity of expressing my own opinions on this rather large question-rivalling in intensity Lady Anne Stepney's challenge to the effect that she was herself "on the side of the People" in the French Revolution-by the sudden appearance of Howard Craggs himself in the neighbourhood of the sofa upon which we were sitting; or rather, by then, lying, since for some reason she had put up her feet in such a manner as to require, so it seemed at the time, a change of position on my own part.

"I'm going soon, Gypsy," said Craggs in his horrible voice, as if speaking lines of recitation for some public performance, an illusion additionally suggested by the name itself. "Should you be requiring a lift?"

"I'm dossing down here," she said. "But I've got one or two things to tell you before you leave."

"All right, Gypsy, I'll have one more drink."

He shambled off. We chatted for a time in a desultory manner-and some sort of an embrace may even have taken place. Soon after that she had said that she must find Craggs and tell him whatever information she wished to pa.s.s on. The party was by then drawing to close, or at least changing its venue, with such disastrous consequences for its host. I did not see Mr. Deacon again, after saying good night to him on the pavement: nor Barnby until we met at the cremation.

Most funerals incline, through general atmosphere, to suggest the presence, or at least the more salient characteristics of the deceased; and, in the case of Mr. Deacon, the ceremony's emphasis was on the disorganised, undisciplined aspect of his character, rather than an echo of the shrewdness and precision that certainly made up the opposite side of his nature. Matters had been arranged by his sister, a small, grey-haired woman, whose appearance hardly at all recalled her brother. There had been some question as to what rites would be appropriate, as Mr. Deacon, latterly agnostic, was believed to have been a Catholic convert for some years as a young man. His sister had ruled out the suggestion of an undenominational service in favour of that of the Church of England. Upon this subject, according to Barnby, she had words with Gypsy Jones; with the result that Gypsy, on anti-religious grounds, had finally refused to attend the funeral. This withdrawal had not worried Mr. Deacon's sister in the least. Indeed, it may have relieved her, since there was reason to suppose that she suspected, perhaps not unreasonably, the propriety of Gypsy's connection with the shop. However, Barnby was extremely annoyed.

"Just like the little b.i.t.c.h," he said.

The weather had turned warmer, almost muggy. About a dozen or fifteen people showed up, most of them belonging to that race of shabby, anonymous mourners who form the bulk of the congregation at all obsequies, whether high or low, rich or poor; almost as if the identical band trooped round unceasingly-like Archie Gilbert to his dances-from interment to interment. Among the leaden-coloured garments of these perpetual attendants upon Death, the lightish suit of a tall young man in spectacles stood out. The face was, for some reason, familiar to me. During the responses his high, quavering voice, repeating the words from the row behind, resounded throughout the little chapel. The sound was churchly, yet not of the Church. Then I remembered that this young man was Max Pilgrim, the "public entertainer"-as Mr. Deacon had called him-with whom the scene had taken place at the end of Mrs. Andriadis's party. At the close of the service, his willowy figure shuddering slightly as he walked, Pilgrim hurried away. The reasons that had brought him there, however commendable, were only to be conjectured, and could be interpreted according to taste.

"That was a desperate affair," Barnby had said, as we returned to the shop together.

We climbed the stairs to his studio, where, in preparation for tea, he put a kettle on a gas-ring, and, although it was still warm, lighted the fire; then, changing into overalls, began to prepare a canvas. I lay on the divan. We talked of Mr. Deacon for a time, until conversation fell into more general channels, and Barnby began to discourse on the subject of love.

"Most of us would like to be thought of as the kind of man who has a lot of women," he said. "But take such fellows as a whole, there are few enough of them one would wish to be at all like."

"Do you wish to change your ident.i.ty?"

"Not in the least. Merely to improve my situation in certain specific directions."

"Which particular Don Juan were you thinking of?"

"Oh, myself, of course," said Barnby. "Funerals make one's mind drift in the direction of moral relaxation-though it's unaccountable to me the way intimate relations between the s.e.xes are always spoken of, and written about, as if of necessity enjoyable or humorous. In practice they might much more truly be described as encompa.s.sing the whole range of human feeling from the height of bliss to the depths of misery."

"Is something on your mind?"

Barnby agreed that this diagnosis was correct. He was about to enter into some further explanation, when as if making a kind of rejoinder to the opinion just expressed, the bell of the telephone began to ring from below. Barnby wiped his hands on a cloth, and went off down the stairs to where the instrument stood on a ledge by the back entrance to the shop. For a time I heard him talking. Then he returned to the room, greatly exhilarated.

"That was Mrs. Wentworth," he said. "I was about to tell you when the telephone went that she was, in fact, the matter on my mind."

"Is she coming round here?"

"Better than that. She wants me to go round and see her right away. Do you mind? Finish your tea, of course, and stay here as long as you like."

He tore off his overalls, and, without attempting to tidy up the material of his painting, was gone almost immediately. I had never before seen him so agitated. The front door slammed. A sense of emptiness fell on the house.

In the circ.u.mstances, I could not possibly blame Barnby for absenting himself so precipitately, experiencing at the same time a distinct feeling of being left in a void, not less so on account of the substance of our conversation that had been in this way terminated so abruptly. I poured out another cup of tea, and thought over some of the things he had been saying. I could not help envying the opportune nature, so far as Barnby himself was concerned, of the telephone call, which seemed an outward indication of the manner in which he had-so it seemed to me in those days-imposed his will on the problem at hand.

His life's unusual variety of form provided a link between what I came, in due course, to recognise as the world of Power, as represented, for example, by the ambitions of Widmerpool and Truscott, and that imaginative life in which a painter's time is of necessity largely spent: the imagination, in such a case, being primarily of a visual kind. In the conquest of Mrs. Wentworth, however, other spheres-as the figures of Sir Magnus Donners and Prince Theodoric alone sufficiently ill.u.s.trated-had inevitably to be invaded by him. These hinterlands are frequently, even compulsively, crossed at one time or another by almost all who practise the arts, usually in the need to earn a living; but the arts themselves, so it appeared to me as I considered the matter, by their ultimately sensual essence, are, in the long run, inimical to those who pursue power for its own sake. Conversely, the artist who traffics in power does so, if not necessarily disastrously, at least at considerable risk. I was making preparations to occupy my mind with such thoughts until it was time to proceed to the Widmerpools', but the room was warm, and, for a time, I dozed.

Nothing in life can ever be entirely divorced from myriad other incidents; and it is remarkable, though no doubt logical, that action, built up from innumerable causes, each in itself allusive and unnoticed more often than not, is almost always provided with an apparently ideal moment for its final expression. So true is this that what has gone before is often, to all intents and purposes, swallowed up by the aptness of the climax, opportunity appearing at least on the surface, to be the sole cause of fulfilment. The circ.u.mstances that had brought me to Barnby's studio supplied a fair example of this complexity of experience. There was, however, more to come.

When I awoke from these sleepy, barely coherent reflections, I decided that I had had enough of the studio, which merely reminded me of Barnby's apparent successes in a field in which I was then, generally speaking, feeling decidedly unsuccessful. Without any very clear idea of how I would spend my time until dinner, I set off down the stairs, and had just reached the door that led from the back of the shop to the foot of the staircase, when a female voice from the other side shouted: "Who is that?"

My first thought was that Mr. Deacon's sister had returned to the house. After the cremation, she had announced herself as retiring for the rest of the day to her hotel in Bloomsbury, as she was suffering from a headache.

I supposed now that she had changed her mind, and decided to continue the task of sorting her brother's belongings, regarding some of which she had already consulted Barnby, since there were books and papers among Mr. Deacon's property that raised a number of questions of disposal, sometimes of a somewhat delicate kind. She had probably come back to the shop and again sought guidance on some matter. It was to be hoped that the point would not prove an embarra.s.sing one. However, when I said my name, the person beyond the door turned out to be Gypsy.

"Come in for a moment," she called.

I turned the handle and entered. She was standing behind the screen, in the shadows, at the back of the shop. My first impression was that she had stripped herself stark naked. There was, indeed, good reason for this misapprehension, for a second look showed that she was wearing a kind of bathing-dress, flesh-coloured, and of unusually sparing cut. I must have showed my surprise, because she burst into a paroxysm of laughter.

"I thought you would like to see my dress for the Merry Thought fancy-dress party," she said. "I am going as Eve,"

She came closer.

"Where is Barnby?" she asked.

"He went out. Didn't you hear him go? After he spoke on the telephone."

"I've only just come in," she said. "I wanted to try out my costume on both of you."

She sounded disappointed at having missed such an opportunity to impress Barnby, though I thought the display would have annoyed rather than amused him; which was no doubt her intention.

"Won't you be cold?"

"The place is going to be specially heated. Anyway, the weather is mild enough. Still, shut the door. There's a bit of a draught."

She sat down on the divan. That part of the shop was shut off from the rest by the screen in such a way as almost to form a cubicle. As Mr. Deacon had described, shawls or draperies of some sort were spread over the surface of this piece of furniture.

"What do you think of the fig leaf?" she asked. "I made it myself."

I have already spoken of the common ground shared by conflicting emotions. As Barnby had remarked, the funeral had been "hard on the nerves," and a consciousness of sudden relief from pressure was stimulating. Gypsy, somewhat altering the manner she had adopted on my first arrival in the shop, now managed to look almost prim. She had the air of waiting for something, of asking a question to which she already knew the answer. There was also something more than a little compelling about the atmosphere of the alcove: the operation perhaps of memories left over as a residue from former states of concupiscence, although so fanciful a condition could hardly be offered in extenuation. I asked myself whether this situation, or something not far from it, was not one often premeditated, and, although I still felt one half awake, not to be lightly pa.s.sed by.

The lack of demur on her part seemed quite in accordance with the almost somnambulistic force that had brought me into that place, and also with the torpid, dream-like atmosphere of the afternoon. At least such protests as she put forward were of so formal and artificial an order that they increased, rather than diminished, the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffords.h.i.+re figures and papier-mache papier-mache trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare. Perhaps some demand, not to be denied in its overpowering force, had occasioned simultaneously both this summons and Mrs. Wentworth's telephone call; each product of that slow process of building up of events, as already mentioned, coming at last to a head. I was conscious of Gypsy changing her individuality, though at the same time retaining her familiar form: this illusion almost conveying the extraordinary impression that there were really three of us-perhaps even four, because I was aware that alteration had taken place within myself too-of whom the pair of active partic.i.p.ants had been, as it were, projected from out of our normally unrelated selves. trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare. Perhaps some demand, not to be denied in its overpowering force, had occasioned simultaneously both this summons and Mrs. Wentworth's telephone call; each product of that slow process of building up of events, as already mentioned, coming at last to a head. I was conscious of Gypsy changing her individuality, though at the same time retaining her familiar form: this illusion almost conveying the extraordinary impression that there were really three of us-perhaps even four, because I was aware that alteration had taken place within myself too-of whom the pair of active partic.i.p.ants had been, as it were, projected from out of our normally unrelated selves.

In spite of the apparently irresistible nature of the circ.u.mstances, when regarded through the larger perspective that seemed, on reflection, to prevail-that is to say of a general subordination to an intricate design of cause and effect-I could not help admitting, in due course, the awareness of a sense of inadequacy. There was no specific suggestion that anything had, as it might be said, "gone wrong", it was merely that any wish to remain any longer present in those surroundings had suddenly and violently decreased, if not disappeared entirely. This feeling was, in its way, a shock. Gypsy, for her part, appeared far less impressed than myself by consciousness of anything, even relatively momentous, having occurred. In fact, after the brief interval of extreme animation, her subsequent indifference, which might almost have been called torpid, was, so it seemed to me, remarkable. This imperturbability was inclined to produce an impression that, so far from knowing each other a great deal better, we had progressed scarcely at all in that direction; perhaps, become more than ever, even irretrievably, alienated. Barbara's recurrent injunction to avoid any question of "getting sentimental" seemed, here in the embodiment of Gypsy, now carried to lengths which might legitimately be looked upon as such a principle's logical conclusion.

This likeness to Barbara was more clearly indicated, however, than by a merely mental comparison of theory, because, while Gypsy lay upon the divan, her hands before her, looking, perhaps rather self-consciously, a little like Goya's Maja nude Maja nude-or possibly it would be nearer the mark to cite that picture's derivative, Manet's Olympia Olympia, which I had, as it happened, heard her mention on some former occasion-she glanced down, with satisfaction, at her own extremities.

"How brown my leg is," she said. "Fancy sunburn lasting that long."

Were Barbara and Gypsy really the same girl, I asked myself. There was something to be said for the theory; for I had been abruptly reminded of Barbara's remark, uttered under the trees of Belgrave Square earlier in the year: "How blue my hand is in the moonlight." Self-admiration apart, there could be no doubt now that they had a great deal in common. It was a concept that made me feel that, in so far as I was personally involved in matters of sentiment, the season was, romantically speaking, autumn indeed, and that the leaves had undeniably fallen from the trees so far as former views on love were concerned: even though such views had been held by me only so short a time before. Here, at least, at the back of Mr. Deacon's shop, some conclusion had been reached, though even that inference, too, might be found open to question. At the same time, I could not help being struck, not only by a kind of wonder that I now found myself, as it were, with Barbara in conditions once pictured as beyond words vain of achievement, but also at that same moment by a sense almost of solemnity at this latest ill.u.s.tration of the pattern that life forms. A new phase in conversation was now initiated by a question from Gypsy.