CHAPTER XXVII
“COME,” said Lot, gently, one morning, sitting
with Elly in the sitting-room where he came so
often to chat and have tea with her in the old days
before they were married, “come, let us talk sensibly.
It put both of us out to be dragged back
from Italy, from our work, while—very foolishly—we
never thought that this might easily happen
one day. Dear old Grandpapa was so very old!
We thought that he would live for ever! …
But now that we are here, Elly, and Steyn has told
us that all the affairs are settled, we may as well
come to a sensible decision. You don’t want to
stay in this house; and it is, no doubt, too big, too
gloomy, too old…. To live with Mamma
… well, I did hint at it the other day, but
Mamma talked of it so vaguely, as though she really
didn’t much care about it…. Now that Hugh
is with her she’s quite ‘off’ me: it’s Hugh here
and Hugh there. It was always like that: it was
like that in ‘Mr.’ Trevelley’s time, when I was a
boy and Hugh a child. John and Mary didn’t
count for much either; and it’s just the same now.
… So we won’t talk of setting up house together….
But what shall we do, Elly? Look
out for a smaller house and settle down? Or go
abroad again, go back to Italy? … You enjoyed
it, after all, and we were working together
so pleasantly…. We were very happy there,
weren’t we, Elly?”
His voice sounded gentle, as it always did, but
there was a note almost of entreaty in it now. His
nature, his fair-haired person—was he not turning
a little grey at the temples?—lacked physical
vitality and concealed no passionate soul; but there
was a great gentleness in him: under that touch of
laughing bitterness and vanity and superficial
cynicism he was kind and indulgent to others, with
no violent longings for himself. Under his feminine
soul lay the philosophy of an artist who contemplates
everything around and within himself without
bursting into vehemence and violence about anything
whatever. He had asked Elly to be his wife, perhaps
upon her own unspoken suggestion that she
needed him in her work and in her life; and, often
in jest and once in a way in earnest, he had asked
himself why he was getting married, why he had
got married and whether liberty and independence
did not suit him better. But, since he had seen his
sister’s happiness with Aldo at Nice and had also
felt his own, softer-tinted happiness, very fervent
and very true in his wistfully-smiling, neutral-tinted
soul, which withdrew itself almost in panic under
his fear of old age; since he had been able to seize
the moment, carefully, as he would have seized a
precious butterfly: since then it had all remained
like that, since then his still, soft happiness had
remained with him as something very serious and
very true, since then he had come to love Elly as
he never thought that he could love any one. And
it had been a joy to him to roam about Italy with
Elly, to watch her delight in that beautiful past
which lay so artistically dead and, on returning to
Florence, to plunge at her instance into ( earnest
studies of the Medici period. How they had rooted
and ransacked together, taking notes as they
worked; how he had written in the evenings, feeling
so utterly, so fondly happy in their sitting-room
at the pension where they stayed! Two lamps, one
beside Elly, one beside himself, shed a light over
their papers and books; vases of fragrant flowers
surrounded them; photographs pinned to the walls
shadowed back the beauties of the museums in the
gathering dusk. But, amid the beauties of that
land and of that art, amid his happiness, amid
the sunshine, an indolence had stolen over him; he
often proposed a trip into the country, a drive, a
walk to Fiesole, to Ema; he l!^ved looking at the
life of the people in the street, smiling at it with
gladness: the Archives were cold and dusty; and he
simply could not keep on working so regularly. And
in the evening he would gaze across the Arno and
sit blissfully smoking his cigarette at the window,
until Elly also shut up her books and the Medicis
drifted away in the changing lights of early evening
outside and grew indistinct…..
He had at first not noticed her disappointment.
When he did, he was unwilling to pain her and he
went back to his research. But he did it against the
grain. That regular work did not suit him. It
tired his brain; behind his forehead he plainly felt
a reluctancy, a barrier that prevented something
from entering … just as he had felt when, at
school, he had to do a sum and failed, twice and
thrice over…. In addition, he was burning
to write ephemeral essays: he had a superabundance
of material, about the Medicis, about Benozzo
Gozzoli’s frescoes at the Palazzo Riccardi, for instance….
Oh, to write an essay like that from
afar, all aglow, with azure jewels and gold! But
he dared not write the article, because Elly had once
said:
“Don’t go cutting up into articles all that we have
discovered.”
As for Elly, she devoted herself earnestly and
with masculine perseverance to her research and
felt almost an inner inclination herself to write their
book, a fine, serious historical study; but she understood
that her art alone would not suffice for it.
Whereas she thought that Lot had only to wish it
and that they would then turn out something very
good between them…. But Lot felt that
indolence impairing his powers more and more,
felt his reluctance, like an impeding, resisting
barrier, drawn right across his forehead; and one
morning he said, a little nervously, that it was impossible
for him, that it was too difficult for him,
that he couldn’t do it. She had not insisted; but
a great disappointment had come over her and yet
she had remained gentle and kind and had answered
lightly and not betrayed the depth of her disappointment….
The books now remained closed,
the notes under the paper-weights; and there was
no more question of the Medicis. It produced a
void about them, but Lot nevertheless felt happy and
remained true to that soft blissfulness which had
come to him smilingly and which cast a soft gloss
over both his worldly cynicism and the overhanging
dread. But Elly’s disappointment increased and became
a great sorrow to her, greater even, she
thought, than the sorrow which she had felt as a
young girl at her broken engagement, at the loss of
the man whom she had first loved. She was a
woman to suffer more for another than for herself;
and she suffered because she could not rouse Lot to
great things. Her love for Lot, after her emotional
passion for another, was very intellectual, more that
of a cultured woman than of a woman all heart and
senses. She did not see this so plainly herself; but
her disappointment was very great that she could
not lead Lot on to do great work; and the void
around her widened, whereas he, in the beauty of
the land that was dear to him, in his gentle happiness,
just felt the void around himself shrinking
into a perspective in which his eyes wandered
dreamily…. Not a bitter word was spoken
between them; but, when they sat together, Elly
felt herself grow very aimless. She was not of
a contemplative mind. That wandering through
Italian cities, that pleasant rambling among the
beauties of the museums did not satisfy her, to whom
action was a real and positive need. Her fingers had
a nervous tremor of aimlessness between the pages
of her Baedeker. She could not be always admiring
and musing and existing in that way. She must act.
She must devote herself. And she longed for a
child…. And yet a child, or perhaps several
children, while not bringing unhappiness, would not
bring happiness either; for she knew that, even if
she had children, she would not find sufficient satisfaction
for her activity in educating them and bringing
them up: she would do it as a loving duty, but
it would not fill her life. She felt that almost masculine
call within her, to strive as far as she could.
If her limit was reached, well, then she would go no
farther. But to strive to that limit, to perform her
task as far as her nature demanded! … And
she spoke to Lot in this sense. He did not know
how to answer her, did not understand her and felt
that something was escaping him. It never came to
bitter words, but on both sides there were little
thrills and counterthrills, after the first harmonious
soft billowing over them both….
This sudden journey home, though causing an
abrupt distraction, had, because of its relative
futility, intensified Elly’s feeling that she was out of
tune with things. She had loved the old man, as a
father more than a grandfather, but she was too
late to see him on his deathbed and the business-matters
could have been arranged by power of attorney.
“Yes, but we’re here now,” said Lot, “and we
must have a talk like sensible people…. Shall
we go back to Italy, Elly? ”
“No, Lot, I’m glad I saw the place, with you;
why go back at once and try to repeat…?”
“Settle down here at the Hague? Go and live
in the country, when the winter is over?”
She looked at him because she heard the note of
entreaty in his voice: he was entreating her because
he felt something escape him … and she suddenly
felt pity for him. She flung herself on his
breast, threw her arms round him:
“My dear, darling boy!” she said. “I am so
absolutely devoted to you.”
“And I to you, Elly dearest…. I love you
more than I thought I could love anybody. Oh,
Elly, let us keep this feeling! Don’t let us be
irritable…. You see, there has never been an
unkind word between us, but still I feel something
in you, a dissatisfaction…. Is it because …”
“Because what, Lot?”
“Because I can’t do … as much as you would
like me to? … We were working together so
pleasantly; and the work we did is not wasted …
that sort of work is never wasted…. But, you
know, darling, to do it as you would have me do it
… is beyond me: I am not so thorough as that.
I am a writer for the magazines, a dilettante, not an
historian. Mine is an ephemeral talent and all that
I create is ephemeral: it always was…. Take
it like that….”
“Yes, Lot, I do take it like that. I am no longer
distressed … about our poor Medicis.”
“You’ll see, I shall make a series of articles out
of our researches: really, something quite good.
A series: they’ll follow on one another….”
“Yes, do it that way.”
“But then you must interest yourself in it.”
“That I certainly shall.”
“And now let us talk about what we shall do,
where we shall live.”
“We’d better not settle down…. Stay here,
until the house is sold, and then …”
“Very well, then we can see.”
“Yes.”
“We haven’t seen Grandmamma yet. Shall we
go this afternoon?”
“I don’t believe that she has been up since, but
we can go and ask.”
She gave him an affectionate kiss. It was as an
atonement after what had clashed and thrilled
through them, without bitter words. She tried to
recollect herself, to force herself, in the empty
hunger of her soul. She loved Lot with all her
heart; she would devote herself to him … and
perhaps later to his children…. That must be
enough to fill a woman’s life…. She would
have her hobbies: she would take up her modelling
again; after all, the Beggar Boy was very good.
… That would certainly give completeness to
her life, so long as she was happy with her husband;
and that she was sure she was. She began to talk in
a livelier strain than at first: something seemed to
recover itself in her dejection. She would lead an
ordinary life, as a happy wife, a happy mother, and
cease longing for great, faraway things…. She
would give up striving for horizons difficult of approach,
horizons that proved to be limits, so that
she had to go back after all.
She was gay at luncheon and Aunt Adèle brightened:
the poor thing had been depressed lately
and walked with a stoop, as though bending under a
heavy load; she was sad also because she thought
that Lot and Elly were not quite happy. Aunt
Adèle now freshened up, glad because lly was
more cheerful and looked brighter and was once
more talking with her restless volubility.
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