Chapter 8

"I hate to see the moon," she said, "cynical and prying--an eavesdropper of a moon."

Again a light gave him a fleeting vision of her--photographed on to his soul.

Her deep dark eyes, heavy with distress, the corners of her mouth repudiating the misery of the moment. She put her hand on his arm.

"Don't," she said, "there is in life such an incoherent mass of interwoven strands. And perhaps something comes and tears them all to bits."

Her voice was chanting--as if she were singing him a lullaby--then it became light again.

"Wait till the next lamp," she said. "And you will see in my eyes the old laughter that you used to love."

They turned down a side street and there were no more lights.

Abruptly the taxi stopped.

She got out. Her pale gold coat was a continuation of the moon.

She turned her brooding eyes away from him.

"Thank you for taking me home," she said; her voice had broken. She looked back--a smile turned on to her lips.

He heard her latch key. The door opened and shut.

XV

A TOUCH OF SPRING

[_To W.Y. TURNER_]

The sun was streaming through the curtains silhouetting a strange bloated pattern on the chintz, breaking through an opening and cutting a deep yellow slit in the carpet. She lay in bed subconsciously awake, subconsciously asleep, her thoughts drifting into dreams, her limbs merging into one another. "This is happiness," she murmured to herself, and feeling consciousness invade her, she clutched at the perfect moment, and it was gone.

Smiling at her defeat she stretched herself luxuriously like a cat and poked her toes out into a cool expanse of sheet.

"It is nice," she thought, "to have the whole bed to myself."

She curled herself up and lay for a few moments watching the sun catching little patches of air and turning them into rainbow dust. Then she rang. Her maid let in such a flood of light that she was forced to shade her eyes. An unabashed cuckoo broke into the chorus of birds, glorying in being a solo part and despising them for mixing and intertwining their notes.

She got out of bed and her bare feet sank into the warm furry rug; without putting on her slippers she walked across the room, stepping like a child into the puddles of sunshine on the carpet. Leaning out of the window the air pierced through her transparent nightgown--a tingling quality underlying a faint veil of warmth. Everywhere mist and dew lay on the countryside like the bloom on a grape. The gardener's boy walking across the lawn had left his footprints stamped in emerald on the grass.

Smiling intimately to herself she got into her bath, wondering vaguely at the miracle of water, enjoying impersonally the cool whiteness of her body, doing tricks of perspective with her arms and legs.

She dressed slowly with indolent rhythmical movements, indifferently aware of her effortless inevitable perfection.

Even more slowly she walked down the staircase out through the open window on to the grey terrace. Somehow she felt that she was violating the morning, forcing the human on to the divine. Sipping the day she walked towards the almonds with their pink blush of blossom bursting through the brown; turning round her head she saw the double cherry, its branches nearly breaking under their load of snow. And at the roots of every tree uninvited primroses and violets were crowding out the earth.

She followed the winding terraces towards the gleaming river, past fluttering daffodils and wandering narcissi, over riotous anemones and bright sturdy scyllæ, shaking showers of diamonds off the grasses as she went.

The river lay like a long satin streamer, a curling ribbon dropped on the meadows. And everywhere, hidden and vibrating, was an urgency of life: buds bursting into blossom, birds bursting into flight.

Gradually the veil was lifting from the morning, the sun was rubbing the bloom off it as a child rubs sleep from his eyes.

She retraced her steps, putting down her feet with the delicate fastidiousness of a cat in order not to tread on a flower. "I'm alone with you," she said shyly and ecstatically to the day. Never before had she had the Spring to herself. Always there had been the children (now on a visit) dragging plans and occupations, games, picnics, and bicycles across the pure joy of living, or her husband like a violin very close to her ear tearing her nerves to shreds with poignant urgent beauty.

Looking dispassionately at her life, it seemed to her a slum of human relationships, airless, over-crowded, a dusty arena where psychological acrobats perform by artificial light. And always that dragging of the general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning, feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some human desire.

This not being a wife, or a mother, or a friend, or a beloved, or even herself, but a tiny part of the universal, this surely was happiness. To be at one with the morning, to belong to this frontierless world of nature, to be coaxed into flower by the sun, to be a strand in some unknown design, how much better than the weary steering of your life between the Scylla of your ardent futile longings and the Charybdis of some senseless malignant providence.

She took her lunch into the wood. The bluebells were still in bud and hadn't yet swept everything before them in a headlong rush of waves that never broke. She sat in an open space on a patch of velvety moss, surrounded by tree trunks and waving windflowers and peeping primroses and violets, all diffident forerunners of Spring, shyly enjoying the sun before being submerged in that all-conquering flood of blue.

She caressed the ground with her hand and watched little gusts of wind play hide and seek with the sun. "I don't believe I've ever been alone before," she thought, and she stretched out her arms into the air, initiating them into freedom.

Gradually the sun began to sink, throwing a riotous tangle of crimson and gold streamers to salute the earth. "They are hauling down the flag of my perfect day," she thought with a stab of poignant sorrow.

The sky became the colour of a primrose stalk and as transparent as green glass. Before touching the horizon it dissolved into violet powder. The colour was being blotted out of everything; one after another the flowers went out like lights; only the white cherry seemed phosphorescent in the gathering darkness. A thick white mist was relentlessly invading everything, climbing higher and higher, enveloping her in its cold, wet clutches.

Bewildered and miserable, she struggled forward through the extinguished beauty of the world. A thin white sickle of a moon painted on the sky looked cynically down at her. Stumbling, shivering, she hurried blindly along.

The big stone hall was flickering in the blaze of an immense fire, peopled with strange, unreal, clustering shadows. In front of it stood a man in a fur coat. He turned towards her with outstretched arms.

"My darling, what have you been doing out without a coat? Look at your hair all white with mist and your sopping dress. I can't trust you to look after yourself for one day, can I?"

She looked at him as if he were a ghost. A look of blankness and horror.

He gathered her up and carried her to her bedroom. Putting her in a chair beside the fire he knelt down and pulled off her shoes and stockings.

She felt as if something were breaking inside her. Cold unrelieving tears were running down her face.

He was kissing her hands and her feet, murmuring little caresses, enveloping her in the glow of his love. And still she couldn't feel any warmer.

Putting his arms tight round her he held her close to him, her cold wet face nestling in his neck.

"I shall never leave you alone again," he whispered passionately, but to his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ground with a thud.

At that moment her old maid came in. "Poor wee thing," she said, "don't you be worrying and fretting yourself. It's just a touch of the Spring."

XVI

FIDO AND PONTO

Fido was a Dalmatian--of the race described by some as blotting paper and by others as plum pudding dogs. Every line of his body had been formed by hundreds of years of tradition. You can find his ancestors in tapestries and petit point in Italian primitives and Flemish family groups, nestling in voluminous satin petticoats, or running at the heels of skating children--moving in sedate indifference beside the cortège of a pope, or barking in gay derision at the tidy Dutch snow. Not "a dog" or "the dog" but "dog" unspecified and absolute. True, till 1700 it was largely a matter of silhouette, the lissom outline was there, but with a certain variety of colouring. Then the 18th century stepped in and made spots de rigueur--Dalmatians invaded new territory. They conquered the kingdom of china and occupied a commanding position in coaching prints. An unaccompanied post chaise, deplorable in life, because unknown in art, and the expression "carriage dog" came into use for the first time.

The 18th and 19th centuries were the golden age of Dalmatian rule, and when their dynasty was finally overthrown, it was not by a new upstart race of dogs, but by a new upstart production of that blind and ugly mother of strong and hideous children--progress. Motors were invented.

If machinery had a conscience, what a procession of ghosts would it not be haunted by--ghosts of white fingers and humming spinning wheels, ghosts of parasols--stiff pagodas of taffetas or rippling fountains of lace--ghosts of victorias and barouches and tandems--ghosts of spotted streaks of lightning bounding forward with the grace of cats and the speed of Derby winners, capering with fastidious frivolity between yellow wheels.

Dalmatians, console yourselves, you are in good company. Beside you walks the ghost of civilisation herself--surrounded by the phantom forms of courtesy and leisure and all the lost company of the divine superfluous.

Cause and effect, demand and supply, where does the vicious circle begin and end? Certain it is that when motors began to drench the countryside in dust and suppress reflexion by providing our afterthoughts with transport, Dalmatians disappeared. Silently, imperceptibly, putting down their paws with all the old fastidious grace, they crept out of a world that had betrayed aristocracy. Only Fido remained--to die of a broken heart.

When I first saw him, he was a puppy--a thin lanky puppy, waiting to be filled in by life, a mere sketch of the masterpiece he was to become. Even in those days he had heavy black charmeuse ears, marvellous thick rich satin they were, and tiny dark rims to his eyes--a setting of pencilled shadow. How am I to describe his spots? The wonderful distribution of black and white, the ruffle at the side of his arched neck made by the meeting of two competitive rhythms of hairs, the looseness of his skin, his long lithe legs that would tie themselves into a tangled heap of grace when he lay down.

To see him move was to see motion made concrete--to see him run was to realise that even Pavlova had never quite overcome the obstacle of being a human.

At night he seemed phosphorescent, the dark itself was defeated by his whiteness. His bark was low and deep and resonant--a church bell of a bark--it reminded [Transcriber's note: original reads 'remainded'] you less of a 'cello than all 'cellos--except M. Casal's--remind you of a bark.

He had the divine irrelevant grace of a cat. Always he was showing off, practising his paws, curling and stretching and pirouetting, letting himself go like an arrow out of a bow, circling on the lawn like a swallow above water, giving you daily a thousand illustrations of how much you would have lost by only having 100 masterpieces in bronze of him.

Living with Fido was a daily revelation of absolute beauty. He was the key to the secret of Phidias and Ucello Pascal and Mozart.

But he was alive, warm and gay and moody--joyous and absurd--full of little confiding gestures--a nose pressed under one's chin, or a paw laid in alluring appeal on one's hand. Withal he was detached with the detachment of his separate universe--a divine world of smells and sounds and ever new adventurous possibilities, unspoilt by memory and untarnished by experience.

Dogs are the best company in the world--I would watch Fido abandoning himself to each moment of the day, the victim or the hero of a hundred impulses, torn by competing smells and sounds as we are torn by overlapping warring emotions and ambitions.

And then he would lie sprawling in front of the fire with a half open eye and when you said "Fido" his ears would answer you, taut with response, while his tail would beat the floor in indolent happiness. Is there anything in life so infectiously joyous as a wagging tail? Worry, distress, crossness, all melt at the sight of it--a hypnotic conductor's, baton beating the rhythm of triumphant joie de vivre.

Fido was a daily, hourly delight.

I would shut my eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and realise--with fresh acuteness--his infinite variety. There was to me something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love gives mortality to everything.

Fido grew limp and listless. His nose was hot and dry. He no longer trotted about, he wandered from room to room. His eyes were dull. His heart bumped about like money in a money-box. With an effort he wagged his tail to cheer me up. Wearily he would climb into a chair and lie there indifferent to my trembling caresses.

Fido died.

* * * * *

I gave up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted. Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a creation of the Gods.

If I saw a sheepdog, or a greyhound, a spaniel or a retriever, I would avert my eyes, shivering a little as when the hitherto harmless buzzing machine reaches the hidden nerve.

"Don't you like dogs?" people would say.

LIKE!

"No!" I would answer.

"How strange. I adore animals."

ADORE!

Oh the verbs of the untouched. And then, in spite of everything, because of everything, a Dalmatian once more invaded my life--the life that I had so resolutely determined never again to expose to any dog. What is invulnerability but a pis-aller? Which of us, given the choice between perfect peace and imperfect love would hesitate for one moment?

When Providence gave me Ponto I accepted him with hungry passion, with nervous propitiatory prayers to the Gods.

He was a stray dog, masterless and collarless, an erring emigré of civilisation and he came to me. At first I did not dare look--my heart was beating so fast. I was frightened of being radiant. I was frightened of being miserable.

And then I turned to him. He was bigger than Fido, with longer, stronger legs. His ears were not quite black, there were two little white spots on them, his eyes were not set in pencilled rims. But he was beautiful, as beautiful as a Greek athlete--to see him run was to see the Olympic games, and in the house he would curl and stretch and tangle up his paws, and put his head on my lap and reassure me with his eyes.

Once more I lived with motion made concrete, with beauty made absolute--once more a wagging tail brought the inexhaustible dot of gaiety.

Ponto had finer manners than Fido. He was maturer, with a deeper sense of noblesse oblige. He never forgot that even if he had been born a Dalmatian, privilege entails certain obligations.

Perhaps he lacked something of Fido's moody charm, of his frivolous pathos, of his absurd joyousness, of his enchanting vanity.

Perhaps it was just Fido's youth that he lacked, and his irresponsibility. There was a certain gravity about Ponto--a perfect dignity. His fastidiousness had gone beyond the stage of selections, and had reached the stage of exclusions. But he never lost his manners, or his manner.

Always he said "Good-morning," and "Good-night." If I was embarrassed, or worried, he would pretend not to notice it, but if I was happy, or sad, he would show his sympathy in a hundred ways--putting his head on my lap, or cutting absurd capers to distract my mind.

And then one day I went away.

I told Ponto when I said good-bye to him that it would be some time before I saw him again.

How was I to explain partings to him? The monstrous rôle that geography plays in our lives? I just told him that I loved him, that his image was in my heart, that our separation was only the preparation of a glorious meeting when old-remembered delights would merge into newly discovered ones.

He listened to me while I stroked his heavy charmeuse ears. He licked my hand, knowing that with my whispering words, I was trying to console myself as well as him.

Then I left him quickly.

They wrote to me that he had disappeared.

They wrote to me that his master had reclaimed him.

But I know that he is mine.

For I have made a great discovery.

What I love belongs to me. Not the chairs and tables in my house, but the masterpieces of the world.

It is only a question of loving them enough.

THE END