CHAPTER XXXIII
The curtain rose, and before
them was
'Light, I say! Light!' Brabantio
called from his window. And in an
instant the street was thronged, there was a clanking of weapons and armour,
torches and lanterns burned yellow in the green darkness...
'Horribly vulgar scenery, I'm afraid,' said Anthony as the
curtain fell after the first scene.
Joan looked at him in surprise.
'Was it?' Then: 'Yes, I suppose
it was,' she added, hypocritically paying the tribute of philistinism to
taste. In reality, she had thought it
too lovely. 'You know,' she confessed,
'this is only the fifth time I've ever been in a theatre.'
'Only the fifth time?' he repeated incredulously.
But here was another street and more armed men and Iago again,
bluff and hearty, and Othello himself, dignified like a king, commanding in
every word and gesture; and when Brabantio came in with all his men, and the
torchlight glittering on the spears and halberds, how ironically serene! 'Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will
rust them.' A kind of anguish ran up and
down her spine as she listened, as she saw the dark hand lifted, as the
sword-points dropped, under his irresistible compulsion, towards the ground.
'He speaks the lines all right,' Anthony admitted.
The council chamber was rich with tapestry; the red-robed
senators came and went. And here was
Othello again. Still kingly, but with a
kingliness that expressed itself, not in commands, this time, not in the
lifting of a hand, but on a higher plane than that of the real world in the
calm, majestic music of the record of his wooing.
Wherein of antres vast
and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch
heaven,
It was my hint to speak
Her lips moved as she repeated the familiar words after him
familiar but transfigured by the voice, the bearing of the speaker, the
setting, so that, though she knew them by heart, they seemed completely
new. And here was Desdemona, so young,
so beautiful, with her neck and her bare shoulders rising frail and slender out
of the heavy magnificence of her dress. Sumptuous brocade, and beneath it, the lovely irrelevance of a
girl's body; beneath the splendid words, a girl's voice.
You are the lord of duty,
I am hitherto your daughter; but here's my
husband.
She felt again that creeping
anguish along her spine. And now they
were all gone, Othello, Desdemona, senators, soldiers, all the beauty, all the
nobleness leaving only Iago and Roderigo whispering together in the empty
room. 'When she is sated of his body,
she will find the error of her choice.' And then that fearful soliloquy. Evil, deliberate and conscious of itself
The applause, the lights of the entre'-acte were a sacrilegious
irrelevance; and when Anthony offered to buy her a box of chocolates she
refused almost indignantly.
'Do you think there really are people like Iago?' she asked.
He shook his head. 'Men
don't tell themselves that the wrong they're doing is wrong. Either they do it without thinking. Or else they invent reasons for believing it's right. Iago's a
bad man who passes other people's judgments of him upon himself.'
The lights went down again.
They were in
The sun had set. In
cavernous twilight, between stone walls, the drinking, the quarrel, the rasping
of sword on sword, and Othello again, kingly and commanding, imposing silence,
calling them all to obedience. Kingly and commanding for the last time. For in the scenes that followed, how terrible
it was to watch the great soldier, the holder of high office, the civilized
Venetian, breaking down, under Iago's disintegrating touches, breaking down
into the African, into the savage, into the uncontrolled and primordial
beast! 'Handkerchief confessions
handkerchief!... Noses, ears, and lips! Is it possible?' And then the determination
to kill. 'Do it not with poison,
strangle her in bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.' And afterwards the horrible outburst of his
anger against Desdemona, the blow delivered in public; and in the humiliating
privacy of the locked room, that colloquy between the kneeling girl and an
Othello, momentarily sane again, but sane with the base, ignoble sanity of
Iago, cynically knowing only the worst, believing in the possibility only of
what was basest.
I cry you mercy then;
I took you for that cunning whore of
That married with Othello.
There was a hideous note of derision in his voice, an undertone
of horrible obscene laughter.
Irrepressibly, she began to tremble.
'I can't bear it,' she whispered to Anthony between the
scenes. 'Knowing what's going to
happen. It's too awful. I simply can't bear it.'
Her face was pale, she spoke with a
violent intensity of feeling.
'Well, let's go,' he suggested.
'At once.'
She shook her head. 'No,
no. I must see it to the end. Must.'
'But if you can't bear it
?'
'You mustn't ask me to explain.
Not now.'
The curtain rose again.
My mother had a maid call'd Barbara;
She was in love, and he she lov'd prov'd mad
And did forsake her; she had a song of 'willow'.
Her heart was beating heavily;
she felt sick with anticipation. In an
almost childish voice, sweet, but thin and untrained, Desdemona began to sing.
The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow.
The vision wavered before Joan's eyes, became indistinct; the
tears rolled down her cheeks.
It was over at last; they were out in the street again.
Joan drew a deep breath.
'I feel I'd like to go for a long walk,' she said. 'Miles and miles without
stopping.'
'Well, you can't,' he said shortly. 'Not in those clothes.'
Joan looked at him with an expression of pained
astonishment. 'You're angry with me,'
she said.
Blushing, he did his best to smile it off. 'Angry?
Why on earth should I be angry?'
But she was right, of course. He was
angry angry with everyone and everything that entered into the present
insufferable situation: with Mary for having pushed him into it; with himself
for having allowed her to push him in; with Joan for being the subject of that
monstrous bet; with Brian because he was ultimately responsible for the whole
thing; with Shakespeare, even, and the actors and this jostling crowd
'Don't be cross,' she pleaded.
'It's been such a lovely evening.
If you knew how marvellous it's made me feel! But I have to be so careful with the
marvellousness. Like
carrying a cup that's full to the brim.
The slightest jolt and down it goes.
Let me carry it safely home.'
Her words made him feel embarrasssed, almost guilty. He laughed nervously. 'Do you think you can carry it home safely in
a hansom?' he asked.
Her face lit up with pleasure at the suggestion. He waved his hand; the cab drew up in front
of them. They climbed in and closed the
doors upon themselves. The driver jerked
his reins. The old horse walked a few
steps, then, at the crack of the whip, broke reluctantly into a very slow
trot. Along
Joan sat in silence, holding firm within herself the fragile
cup of that strange happiness that was also and at the same time intensest
sadness. Desdemona was dead, Othello was
dead, and the lamps retreating forever down their narrowing vistas were symbols
of the same destiny. And yet the
melancholy of these converging parallels and the pain of the tragedy were as
essential constituents of her present joy as her delight in the splendour of
the poetry, as her pleasure in the significant and almost allegorical beauty of
those illumined leaves. For this joy of
hers was not one particular emotion exclusive of all others; it was all
emotions a state, so to speak, of general and undifferentiated
movedness. The overtones and aftertones
of horror, of delight, of pity and laughter all lingered harmoniously in her
mind. She sat there, behind the slowly
trotting horse, serene, but with a serenity that contained the potentiality of
every passion. Sadness, delight, fear,
mirth they were all there at once, impossibly conjoined within her mind. She cherished the precarious miracle.
A hansom, he was thinking it was the classical opportunity. They were already at Hyde Park Corner; by
this time he ought at least to have been holding her hand. But she sat there like a statue, staring at
nothing, in another world. She would
feel outraged if he were to call her roughly back to reality.
'I shall have to invent a story for Mary,' he decided. But it wouldn't be easy; Mary had an
extraordinary talent for detecting lies.
Reined in, the old horse gingerly checked itself, came to a
halt. They had arrived. Oh, too soon, Joan thought, too soon. She would have liked to drive on like this
for ever, nursing in silence her incommunicable joy. It was with a sigh that she stepped on to the
pavement.
'Aunt Fanny said you were to come and say goodnight to her if
she was still up.'
That meant that the last chance of doing it had gone, he
reflected, as he followed her up the steps and into the dimly lighted hall.
'Aunt Fanny,' Joan called softly as she opened the drawing-room
door. But there was no answer; the room
was dark.
'Gone to bed?'
She turned back towards him and nodded affirmatively. They stood there for a moment in silence.
'I shall have to go,' he said at last.
'It was a wonderful evening, Anthony. Simply wonderful.'
'I'm glad you enjoyed it.'
Behind his smile, he was thinking with apprehension that that last
chance had not yet disappeared.
'It was more than enjoying,' she said. 'It was
I don't know how to say what it
was.' She smiled at him, added,
'Goodnight,' and held out her hand.
Anthony took it, said goodnight in his turn; then, suddenly
deciding that it was now or never, stepped closer, laid an arm round her
shoulder and kissed her.
The suddenness of his decision and his embarrassment imparted
to his movement a clumsy abruptness indistinguishable from that which would
have been the result of a violent impulse irrepressibly breaking through
restraints. His lips touched her cheek
first of all, then found her mouth. She made as if to withdraw, to avert her
face; but the movement was checked almost before it was begun. Her mouth came back to his, drawn
irresistibly. All the diffuse and
indefinite emotion that had accumulated within her during the evening suddenly
crystallized, as it were, round her surprise and the evidence of his desire and
this almost excruciating pleasure that, from her lips, invaded her whole body
and took possession of her mind. The
astonishment and anger of the first second were swallowed up in an apocalypse
of new sensations. It was as though a
quiet darkness were violently illuminated, as though the relaxed dumb strings
of an instrument had been wound up and were vibrating ever more shrilly and
piercingly, until at last the brightness and the tension annihilated themselves
in their own excess. She felt herself
becoming empty; enormous spaces opened up within her, gulfs of darkness.
Anthony felt her body droop limp and heavy in his arms. So heavy indeed, and with so unexpected a
weight, that he almost lost his balance.
He staggered, then braced himself and held her up more closely.
'What is it, Joan?'
She did not answer, but leaned her forehead against his
shoulder. He could feel that if he were
now to let her go, she would fall.
Perhaps she was ill. He would
have to call for help wake up the aunt explain what had happened
Wondering desperately what to do, he looked about
him. The lamp in the hall projected
through the open door of the drawing-room a strip of light that revealed the
end of a sofa covered with yellow chintz.
Still holding her up with one arm about her shoulders, he bent down and
slid the other behind her knees; then, with an effort (for she was heavier than
he had imagined), lifted her off her feet, carried her along the narrow path of
illumination that led into the darkness, and lowered her as gently as her
weight would allow him on to the sofa.
Kneeling on the floor beside her, 'Are you feeling better now?'
he asked.
Joan drew a deep breath, passed a hand across her forehead,
then opened her eyes and looked at him, but only for a moment; overcome by an
access of timidity and shame, she covered her face with her hands. 'I'm so sorry,' she whispered. 'I don't know what happened. I felt so faint all of a sudden.' She was silent for a little; the lamps were
alight again, the stretched wires were vibrating but tolerably, not to
excess. She parted her hands once more
and turned towards him, shyly smiling.
With eyes that had grown accustomed to the faint light, he
looked anxiously into her face. Thank
God, she seemed to be all right. He
wouldn't have to call the aunt. His
feeling of relief was so profound that he took her hand and pressed it
tenderly.
'You're not cross with me, Anthony?'
'Why should I be?'
'Well, you have every right.
Fainting like that
' Her face felt naked and
exposed; withdrawing her hand from his grasp, she once more hid her shame. Fainting like that
The recollection
humiliated her. Thinking of that sudden,
silent, violent gesture of his, 'He loves me,' she said to herself. And Brian? But
Brian's absence seemed to have been raised to a higher power. He was not there with an unprecedented
intensity, not there to the point of never having been there. All that was really there was this living
presence beside her the presence of desire, the presence of hands and mouth,
the presence, potential but waiting to actualize itself again, of those
kisses. She felt her breast lift, though
she was unaware of having taken a deep breath; it was as though someone else
had drawn it. 'He loves me,' she
repeated; it was a justification. She
dropped her hands from her face, looked at him for a moment, then reached out
and, whispering his name, drew his head down towards her.
'Well, what's the result?' Mary called from the sofa as he
entered. By the gloomy expression on
Anthony's face she judged that it was she who had won the bet; and this annoyed
her. She felt suddenly very angry with
him doubly and trebly angry; because he was so spiritless; because he hadn't
cared enough for her to win his bet in spite of the spiritlessness; because he
was forcing upon her a gesture which she didn't in the least want to make. After a day's motoring with him in the
country she had come to the conclusion that Sidney Gattick was absolutely
insufferable. By contrast, Anthony
seemed the most charming of men. She
didn't want to banish him, even temporarily.
But her threat had been solemn and explicit; if she didn't carry it out,
at least in part, all her authority was gone.
And now the wretch was forcing her to keep her word. In a tone of angry reproach, 'You've been a
coward and lost,' she said. 'I can see
it.'
He shook his head. 'No,
I've won.'
Mary regarded him doubtfully. 'I believe you're lying.'
'I'm not.' He sat down
beside her on the sofa.
'Well, then, why do you look so glum? It's not very flattering to me.'
'Why on earth did you make me do it?' he burst out. 'It was idiotic.' It had also been wrong; but Mary would only
laugh if he said that. 'I always knew it
was idiotic. But you insisted.' His voice was shrill with a complaining
resentment. 'And now God knows where
I've landed myself.' Where
he'd landed Joan and Brian, for that matter. 'God knows.'
'But explain,' cried Mary Amberley, 'explain! Don't talk like a
minor prophet.' Her eyes were bright
with laughing curiosity. She divined
some delightfully involved and fantastic situation. 'Explain,' she repeated.
'Well, I did what you told me,' he answered sullenly.
'Hero!'
'There's nothing funny about it.'
'What! did you get your face slapped?'
Anthony frowned angrily and shook his head.
'Then how did she take it?'
'That's just the trouble: she took it seriously.'
'Seriously?' Mary questioned. 'You mean, she threatened to tell papa?'
'I mean, she thought I was in love with her. She wants to break it off with Brian.'
Mrs Amberley threw back her head and gave utterance to a peal
of her clear, richly vibrant laughter.
Anthony felt outraged.
'It's not a joke.'
'That's where you make your mistake.' Mary wiped her eyes and took a deep
breath. 'It's one of the best jokes I
ever heard. But what do you propose to
do?'
'I shall have to tell her it's all a mistake.'
'That'll be an admirable scene!'
He shook his head. 'I
shall write a letter.'
'Courageous, as usual!' She patted his knee. 'But now I want to hear the details. How was it that you let her go as far as she
did? To the point of thinking you were
in love with her. To
the point of wanting to break it off with Brian. Couldn't you nip it in the bud?'
'It was difficult,' he muttered, avoiding her inquisitive
eye. 'The situation
well, it got a bit
out of control.'
'You mean, you lost your head?'
'If you like to put it that way,' he admitted reluctantly,
thinking what a fool he had been, what an utter fool. He ought, of course, to have retreated when
she turned towards him in the darkness; he ought to have refused her kisses, to
have made it quite clear that his own had been lighthearted and without
significance. But instead of that he had
accepted them: out of laziness and cowardice, because it had been too much of
an effort to make the necessary and necessarily difficult explanation; out of a
certain weak and misplaced kindness of heart, because it would have hurt and
humiliated her if he had said no and to inflict a suffering he could actually
witness was profoundly distasteful to him.
And having accepted, he had enjoyed her kisses, had returned them with a
fervour which he knew to be the result only of a detached, a momentary
sensuality, but which Joan, it was obvious now (and he had known it even at the
time), would inevitably regard as being roused specifically by herself, as
having her for its special and irreplaceable object. An impartial observer would say that he had
done his best, had gone out of his way, to create the greatest possible amount
of misunderstanding in the shortest possible time.
'How do you propose to get out of it?' Mary asked.
He hated her for putting the question that was tormenting
him. 'I shall write her a letter,' he
said. As though that
were an answer!
'And what will Brian say about it?'
'I'm going to stay with him tomorrow,' he replied
irrelevantly. 'In the
Lakes.'
'Like Wφ-φdsworth,' said Mary.
'What fun that'll be! And what
exactly do you propose to tell him about Joan?' she went on inexorably.
'Oh, I shall explain.'
'But suppose Joan explains first in a different way?'
He shook his head. 'I
told her I didn't want her to write to Brian before I'd talked to him.'
'And you think she'll do what you ask?'
'Why shouldn't she?'
Mary shrugged her shoulders and looked at him, smiling
crookedly, her eyes bright between narrowed eyelids. 'Why should she, if it comes to that?'