Mortal Coils

only too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, a

and hatreds. He was enjoying himself immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the Hanoverian nose,

d I'm so glad to see you've brought dear Mrs. Cayman. And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it i

t eminent sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young crit

Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned mot

son-welcome in the n

d in silence. He was too full

few of your younger colleagues, who h

ook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found himself unable t

ft. Confronted with Bomba's succulent cooking and Bomba's wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of one who has lived on greens an

inner, to hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. Eructavi

r. She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wa

n, didn't you say? Isn't that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of course, one wishes

w," said Spode

ometimes. But, then, I feel he's really too old, too farouche and gateux; it would not be doing a kindness to hi

e third time. Lord Badgery tried to head him of

t insane and actually knew a surprising amount about the Old Masters. For their part these young men had realised that their elders were not at all malignant; they were just very stupid a

speech that lasted twenty minutes he told anecdotes of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Leighton, Sir Almo Tadema, and the late Bishop, of Bombay; he made three puns, he quoted Shakespeare and Whittier, he was playful, he was eloquent,

as flushed; his tie was more crooked than ever; the green ribbon of the Order of Chas

ling relic of a man, as he stood there weeping and stammering. It was as though a breath of the wind of death had blown suddenly through the room, lifting the vapours of wine and tobacco-smoke, quenching the laughter and the ca

ss ... this magnificent banquet ... not used t

ng coat tails. Mr. Tillotson paused, took another sip of wi

of spirit. He gives continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is true much fame, it may be-but of material blessings, very few. It is eighty years since first I

han an object of curiosity, a mummy in an absurd suit of evening-clothes with a green ribbon across the shirt front. People could not help wishing that they had subscribed a little more. Fifty-eight

d bravoing and clapping. Mr. Tillotson turned his dim eyes round the room, and smiled gratefully at the misty figures he beheld. "That great man, Benjamin Robert Haydon," he continued, "whom I am proud to call my mas

e Academy, his triumphs, his failures, his despair, his suicide. Half-past ten struck. Mr. Tillotson was declaiming against the stupid and prej

the unkindest cut of all. He who had worked all his life for the recognition, of the artist by the State, he who had petitioned every Prime Minister, including the Duke of Wellington, for thirty years, begging them to employ artists to decorate public

inutes to twelve he collapsed quite speechless into his chair. Most of the guests had already gone away; the few who remained made haste to depart. Lord Badger

lished surface of the road; canals of dark bronze. He would have to bring that into an article some time. The Cayman w

nd very, very old; Boreham's dress-suit was in a terrible state, and the green ribbon of the Order of Chastity was ruined. Mr. Tillotson lay very stil

id, "disgusting, I c

ort, he drew out of his trouser pocket a large

doctor? I don't feel very well. And oh, what shall I do about these clothes? What shall I say to the gentlem

REEN

to take another helping of the risotto which was being offered him. "Excellent risotto

ed in his sad, apologetic voice

Italian cooking abominable. I don't like the oil-especiall

nth century," he began again, making with his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that

e up suddenly from her tranc

rched alleys covered with vines or other creeping

ll. Green tunnels-what a wonderful idea. She would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. She pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas betwe

e period," Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his po

und owlish spectacles flashed as he moved

ind to have one, plan

d." He shook his head and the points of light danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. Then, sud

back I a

d chariot hu

ly difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; and yet what a wealt

st over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave himself at least another fort

green tunnel." Mr. Topes sighed and look

turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of the green tunne

ain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like hen mild little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very young. But he was old; it would be

thu

to his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. I

e to take coffee," said Mr. Buzzacott

said Mrs. Topes, who was no snob, except in E

re you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished family. They

know." Alessi: Aleppo-where a malignant and a turbaned Tur

trange, isn't it"-he turned parenthetically to Mr. Topes-"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of rebels? What a fuss people made of Corsica! Th

r. Topes began timorously and tentativel

They have done no end of good work in this district in the way of pr

ngly. "One would like to see something of the k

n to the funds of the organisation

last coal strike. He was sorry, I know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'Aunt Annie,' he said to me,

ed, were fighting, under the palm trees. Were

nquired Mr. Buzzacott as the maid put d

achine in the village had broken down

. Buzzacott. "Trop

ed about, fighting. They were mounted on big dogs,

proffering the dish of peaches. "How much longer

. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled

ng. It's a

" put in Mr. Topes deprecatingly, with

ar," said his w

is eyes to his plat

ch. "I hope he won't be late. I find I suffer so much from any postponement of my siest

," began Mrs. Topes in a tone of superiorit

palm trees. Cavalcades of

y well. My daughter. Charmed. Often seen the signorina bathing. Admired the way she dives. Beautiful-the hand made a long, caressing gesture. These athletic English signorine. The teeth f

ided to settle i

ed at them. Beside the marquis they all seemed half dead. His face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. Her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; and Mr. Topes was all dry and

ne evening she would come, with her father, and the Signora Topes. He and his sister gave little dances sometimes. Only the gramophone, of cour

me for th

etting, my dear," Mr. Buzzacott exhorted.

had driven through the Campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed in an improvised tent of netting. The monuments along the Appian Way had loomed

y asked. "The one with the Donor kneeling in the left-hand corner as if about to

do yo

I was just th

mean the one in th

probably. In

lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "In India we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. An Englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all intents and purposes Italians ar

illy, effeminate, townish white. If only one could run about with no clothes on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and tumbled in the burning sand! Now she was just underdone, half-baked, and wholly ridiculous. For a long time she looked at her pal

in a mirror. It was very silly. But still. She turned away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. The flies buzzed about her, settled incessantly on her face. She shook her head, flapped at them angrily with her hands. There would b

sed her mind. She saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and medi?val spoons and armou

stop being boring? The tears came into her eyes. How awful everything was! And perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her l

ked as small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. But behind them, across the level plain, were the mountains. Sharp, bare peaks of limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced olive trees-they seemed marvellously close and clear in this e

ly. She had known somebody, a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. He sank like a stone. Like

nd regular as clockwork. Zip zip, zip zip zip. Boring, boring. Was the animal never bored by its own noise? It seemed odd that it shouldn't be. But, when she came to thi

her at the sea; all seemed to be well with them. All was well with her, too, this morning. Seated at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far obscure corner

rning, M

among the vines. He turned round,

pens to be September. Nature is fresh and bright, and there is at least one specimen in this dream garden"-he wriggled more uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round spectacle lenses of t

us read the Canterbury Tales at school. But t

es shook his head. "One is gett

'I'? She couldn't help laughing at him. "Well, I must hurry, or els

ng up towards his bathing hut. Catching sight of her, he flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. Barbara waved her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar-but at this hour of the morning i

slender as a boy, with long, bounding strides. He watched her go jumping with great splashes through the deepening w

the beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as th

rquis shook him by the hand wit

lowing his hand to be shaken. He rese

ery well, Mi

himself to think what beautiful, poetical

loquial by half. He shook hands again, an

ing boom of the gong floating out from the villa. Damn! she'd be late again. She qui

Mrs. Topes would be on the war-path again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as

go galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. Right away down to Bocca d'Arno she'd go, swim the river-she saw herself crouching on th

in the ruffled sand she had seen a writing. Big l

A D'EL

d. The beach was quite empty. And what was the meaning? "O Clara d'Ellébeuse." She took her bath-gown from the cab

midday the thunderclouds had covered half the sky. The sun still blazed on the sea, but over the mountains all

es, painfully calm, "sh

ot to see the lightning. When the room was dark

o see? He-for there could be no doubt who had written it. The flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. He had written

Topes was saying, "

e orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. But that was different-not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly ugly. She saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert

clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the exchange went down to seventy. The income on three hundred was fifteen pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. And fifteen hundred lire, when you came

perfectly

ale. Was she right in believing that the thunder

e problem-that was the problem. And there was youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to get himself entangled among them. And he was after all so old and so ineffective. He put on his spectacles again, and definition came into the foggy world beyond his eyes. The shut

ZZO SPADA, ROMA"-a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. And she would go riding every day in the Pincio. "Mi porta il mio cavallo" she would say to the footman, who answered the bell. Porta? Would that be quite correct? Hardly. She'd have to take some proper Italian less

got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one could see oneself sideface. She saw herself leaning forward, pow

il Marchese?" "Nella sala di pranza, signora." I began without you, I was so hungry. Pasta asciutta. Where have you been, my love? Riding,

ols and bombs and things? They would bring him back one day on a stretcher. She saw i

er breath came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she

e storm had receded far enough into the distanc

te stoppe

er face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They might see and ask her why she had been crying. She hated Mrs. Topes fo

late, I fear, for a siesta now," he sa

Mr. Topes, with a tremolo and a sigh. "

guest-"that I may be able to afford that pretty little cinque cassone, after

waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples ordinarily expired. Smoot

among superhuman conceptions, planning huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there's something of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath it." Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, "Yes, yes," though she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "It's

it is?" They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a lamp with life. He at least wasn't dead. She wondered

ck-and-white straw hat. He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old tree he was; built up

ver," said Mr.

see the plain, and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more intense than at ordinary times. And though al

res were slowly approaching. Whit

nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like these, one realises it. One

the marquis? And who was with him

and I, we collect pictures and read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, or b

a and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and yet timeles

g couple were

old walrus,"

he marquis laughed. "He's much too dry to be a w

that poor little girl. Think of hav

y, isn

too young,

the in

ish girls. Oh, la la! They may l

They'll h

don't unders

rus...." he whispered; then addressed him

, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air is

s a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked at th

au re

turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy w

on the place, on the emotion. They haven't the innocence for this ... this...."-he wrig

lly frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What coul

ky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, cl

t really what h

emed to be getting more muddled than ever. "It's an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could feel it. Those people couldn't." He was feeling his way through obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? "Certain poems

e?" She stopped a

me think, you make me think of them. 'F'aime dans les temps Cl

crying, for no

S AT L

Miss Penny repeated my question in her loud, e

e been June,

been proposed to by

hearing about the

g and rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simi

ld have heard of it. I love my Russian General sto

very bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness.

l motto, don't you think? Like 'Sans peur et sans reproche.' But let me think; what have I been d

I said parenthetic

. "I haven't seen you since my German trip. Al

ur

n. I must tell yo

re always curious. I looked for

been in German

as a matter of

circle in the air with her gaudily jewelled hand. She

s to make the best of all possible worlds, don't you find? But we mustn't talk shop. Well, I was wandering round, and very pleasant I found it. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig. Then down to Munich and all over the place. One fine day I got to Grauburg. You know Grauburg? It's one of those picture-book German t

ow app

of Charity to nurse me-I couldn't have been in better hands. But it was a bore being tied there by the leg for four week

atches. A round, pink, pretty face in a winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether t

look at the tolle Engl?nderin. Her name was Sister Agatha. During the war, they told me, she had converte

and convert y

Penny laughed, and rattled th

ttling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, meeting t

ad appeared one morning, after two or three days absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the ove

e thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she h

he passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. The little Italian looke

dered Miss Penny. "And, after

oll to-da

Penny. "Bring me w

aiter's tail and re

scrub the floor. When she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse when she next came in. 'Can't say.'-'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took nearly a week to find out what really had happen

ou do," I s

away from her.'-It seems to grow thinner again.-'They brought her back here; she's been disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel-coffin and all. She had to be present at it-her own funeral. She isn't a nun any more. She has to do

cried "Guinness" down the lift, and from

e police circulated one when he got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always carry it about with me; it's become a superstition. F

ve produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the finely m

superb," I said, hand

, for dominating and exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and a brother of the electrical engineers. Only Kuno-that was his name-didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how to harness the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. The commercial exploitation

n honestly say that she had charm or was attractive. That high Scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the

said. The silence, with all its impl

. We all have our occasional accesses of folly. They gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting pneumonia, I think it was, a week after entering jail. He was tran

hful of the ginger pudding which the

ke cheroots," I said, as

to figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'A fact which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that Miss Penny, the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon wit

case, lit it at my proffered

gatha was converted back into the worldly Melpomene Fugg

mene F

rld-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. Anglophile, too, and always ate porridge for breakfast-up till August 1914. Then, the radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and with tears in his eyes. The national food of a people who had betrayed culture and civilisation-how could he go on eating it? It would stick in his throat. In future he would have a lightly boiled egg. He sounded, I thought, altogether charming. And his daughter, Melpomene-she sounded charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tai

f an inch of cigar ash

rly. Poor little Melpel is leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. Professor Engelmann, her f

e gene

ly there won't be an American sale. Poor Melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of Those Sta

the castle, with its sharp roofs and hooded turrets, behind her. From the hanging beer-gardens in the town below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, will float up through the dark-blue spaces. 'R?slein, R?slei

re you going to bring the sex problem an

er the mulberry trees. You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone again. They are students

?nnen

io-vi

nnen s

-o

ythm change

nnen tanzen

ara, Bu

nen tanzen

arara

oks down and perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is sex, sex, sex. Men and women, male and f

had no opportunity in the course of his long medical career of personally studying Anglicanismus. But he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, here in Grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the Geschlechtsleben. Melpomene was a case in point. After that hateful afternoon she had become extremely religious; the Professor of Latin had diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. She rebelled against the placid Agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when Aunt Bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden books as The Life of St. Theresa, T

ly ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." The s

rs. She went on like that for two or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. In the end she went down with gastric ulcer. It was three months before she came out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. And in mind, too, she was changed-for the better, I suppose. The nuns who nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, she had sinned. The only road to salvation, they told her, lay in discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to authority. Secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose Agnosticismus w

ialogue to be a

ht of it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet-ha, ha! What an uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet-that's good, that's damned good

assy laughter. At the sound of it the few lunchers who

s ironic quacking. It's tremendously impr

be sure

ligion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha perseveres-oh, with what anxious solicitude!-in the attempt to make him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. And now you see the Geschlechtsleb

in lite

ained, "of Ironic Fate and the qu

ye

ss; and construction and good narrative and word pictures

Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings

h an absolute lack of sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of turning her mi

t, then, so is everything els

as our business. But I shall never get to the end

ngless. The story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, he wou

about him, don't you?' Kuno simply wouldn't listen at first. It seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the future. Prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with her ridiculous fairy-tales. Then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, he showed signs of contrition and conversion. Sister Agatha announced her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost sheep. Melpomene ha

" I asked, for Mis

pt the two parties concerned and perhaps Sister Agatha's confessor. But one can reconstruct the crime, as they sa

ase is a very special one. The person, a nun, the place, a hospital, the opportunities, few. There could be no favourable circumstances-no moonlight, no

him letting himself be converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her sympathy and even threatening-with a great air of seriousness--to kill himself rather than go back to jail. You can write that up easily and convincingly enough. But it's the s

nny changed her tone and w

re horribly. He had opened the purse. 'Only sixty marks. Who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. And I must have a thousand at least to get away. It's easy to reconstruct the rest of the conversation down to the inevitable, 'For God's sake, shut up,' with which Kuno put an end to Melpomene's dismayed moralising. They trudge on in silence. Kuno thinks desperately. Only sixty marks; he can do nothing with that. If only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some gold or silver anything, anything. He knows such a good place for selling things. Is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? Melpomene is also thinking. Evil must often be done that good may follow. After all, had not she herself stolen Sister Mary of the Purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? Had not she run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphati

'Maison du

Miss Penny, and sh

émissant du poi

débat comme un

sed to adore it all so

fumé, l'alc?ve es

leurs, nous trouv

eux unis un l

n like this i

" I

e palpable vibrations like a deep sound that shakes the air. Why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. In the morning," Miss Penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there should be need of it. Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. 'What's the matter?' A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'What's the matter?'-'He's gone!' What a queer, indistinct utterance. The woodc

her coat. "The tapers, the black coffin, in the middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy chanting, and the poor cowering creature witho