“Come, come, Margaret,” said Harrison, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”
“But you said the same thing yourself,” she came back at him.
“Yes, but I don’t care about your discussing them here.”
“Oh!” said Marlowe, loudly, “you are afraid of the flesh. That is our trouble—we are all afraid of it, and that is why we insist and exaggerate. ‘Hoc est corpus,’ said God—but we turn it into hocus-pocus. There’s no hope for this generation till we can see clean flesh and ‘sweet blood’—Meredith’s phrase—without being shocked at its fine troublesomeness. If one were to strip all these people now”—he waved a hand at a fat man in a top-hat and an emaciated girl, who caught his eye and stood paralysed—“you would think it indecent. But it’s not as indecent as the portrait-painter who strips their souls for you. Some men’s work would be publicly censored, if the powers knew how to distinguish between flesh and spirit—which, thank God, they don’t.” He clapped Lathom on the shoulder. “How about that other thing of yours, my boy?”
Lathom laughed a little awkwardly.
“Is that the portrait of Miss Milsom?” I interrupted, hastily—for I saw trouble coming up like a thundercloud over Harrison’s horizon. “We must go and have a look at it. You’re doing pretty well to have two pictures in such a crowded year. We mustn’t keep you too long. Which room is it in, Lathom?”
He told us, and when we had said our farewells, pursued us into the next room.
“I say, old man,” he whispered breathlessly, “I couldn’t really help this. Couldn’t in decency get out of it, could I?”
“No,” said I, “I suppose you couldn’t. It’s not my funeral, anyhow.”
“It’s the first time we’ve met,” he went on, “and it will end here.”
“But for my damned interference it wouldn’t have begun here,” I answered. “I’m not blaming you, Lathom. And I’ve really no right to make conditions. I don’t think it’s wise—but I can’t set up to be a dictator.”
“Oh, you admit that, do you?” said Lathom. “I’m rather glad to know it.” He hesitated, and added abruptly, “Well, so long.”
I was thankful to see the end of the episode. From every point of view it seemed advisable to drop all connection with Lathom and the Harrisons, and I saw none of them again until the 19th of October.
38
Margaret Harrison to Harwood Lathom
Petra darling,
Oh, how wonderful it was, darling, to see you again, even under the Gorgon’s eye—such a cold stony eye, darling, and with all those people around. I had been dead all through those dreadful months. When you went away, I felt as if the big frost had got right into my heart. Do you know, it made me laugh when the pipes froze up in the bathroom and we couldn’t get any water and He was so angry. I thought if he only knew I was just like that inside, and when the terrible numb feeling had passed off, something would snap in me, too. Was that a foolish thing to think, Petra? Not a very poetical idea, I am afraid, but I wished I could have told it to you and heard your big, lovely laugh at your Darling Donkey!
Oh, Petra, we can’t go on like this, can we? I couldn’t go through those long, long weeks again without seeing or hearing you, not so much as your dear untidy writing on an envelope. And, darling, it was so dreadful to hear you say you couldn’t work without your Inspiration, because your work is so wonderful and so important. Why should He stand between you and what God meant you to do? The life we live here is so cramped and useless; the only way I can fulfil any great purpose is in being a little help in your divine work of creation. It is so wonderful to know that one can really be of use—part of the beauty you make and spread all about you. It isn’t even as if I counted for anything in His work. A woman can’t be an inspiration for an electrical profit and loss account, or a set of estimates, can she? He doesn’t think so, anyway. He just wants to have me in a cage to look at, darling—not even to love. He doesn’t care or know about love—thank God! I say now, because I can keep myself all for my own marvellous Man. Oh, I have so much to give, so much, all myself, such as I am—not clever, darling, you know I am not that, though I love to hear about clever, interesting things—but loving and real and alive for you, only you, darling, darling Petra. I never knew how much beauty there was in the world till you showed it to me, and that’s why I feel so sure that our love must be a right thing, because one could not feel so much beauty in anything that was wrong, could one? Fancy going on living for years and years, starved of beauty and love, when there is all that great treasure of happiness waiting to be taken. Oh, darling, he was going on at dinner last night about how his grandfather lived to be a hundred and his father about ninety-four, and what a strong family they were, and I could see them, going on year after year, grinding all the happiness out of their wives and families and making a desert all round them, just as He does. I looked up Gorgons in a book, darling, and it said they were immortal, all except the one Perseus killed, and I’m sure they are, darling, the stony horrors. Sometimes I wish I could die. Do you think they would let me
