But really, really, to wake a sensitive person like that was positively dangerous! It took him hours to get over it—simply hours. She came into the room buttoned up in an overall, with a handkerchief over her head—thereby proving that she had been up herself and slaving since dawn—and called in a low, warning voice: “Reginald!”
“Eh! What! What’s that? What’s the matter?”
“It’s time to get up; it’s half-past eight.” And out she went, shutting the door quietly after her, to gloat over her triumph, he supposed.
He rolled over in the big bed, his heart still beating in quick, dull throbs, and with every throb he felt his energy escaping him, his—his inspiration for the day stifling under those thudding blows. It seemed that she took a malicious delight in making life more difficult for him than—Heaven knows—it was, by denying him his rights as an artist, by trying to drag him down to her level. What was the matter with her? What the hell did she want? Hadn’t he three times as many pupils now as when they were first married, earned three times as much, paid for every stick and stone that they possessed, and now had begun to shell out for Adrian’s kindergarten? . . . And had he ever reproached her for not having a penny to her name? Never a word—never a sign! The truth was that once you married a woman she became insatiable, and the truth was that nothing was more fatal for an artist than marriage, at any rate until he was well over forty. . . . Why had he married her? He asked himself this question on an average about three times a day, but he never could answer it satisfactorily. She had caught him at a weak moment, when the first plunge into reality had bewildered and overwhelmed him for a time. Looking back, he saw a pathetic, youthful creature, half child, half wild untamed bird, totally incompetent to cope with bills and creditors and all the sordid details of existence. Well—she had done her best to clip his wings, if that was any satisfaction for her, and she could congratulate herself on the success of this early morning trick. One ought to wake exquisitely, reluctantly, he thought, slipping down in the warm bed. He began to imagine a series of enchanting scenes which ended with his latest, most charming pupil putting her bare, scented arms round his neck, and covering him with her long, perfumed hair. “Awake, my love!” . . .
As was his daily habit, while the bath water ran, Reginald Peacock tried his voice.
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
Looping up her laces, tying up her hair,
he sang, softly at first, listening to the quality, nursing his voice until he came to the third line:
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded . . .
and upon the word “wedded” he burst into such a shout of triumph that the tooth-glass on the bathroom shelf trembled and even the bath tap seemed to gush stormy applause. . . .
Well, there was nothing wrong with his voice, he thought, leaping into the bath and soaping his soft, pink body all over with a loofah shaped like a fish. He could fill Covent Garden with it! “Wedded,” he shouted again, seizing the towel with a magnificent operatic gesture, and went on singing while he rubbed as though he had been Lohengrin tipped out by an unwary Swan and drying himself in the greatest haste before that tiresome Elsa came along along. . . .
Back in his bedroom, he pulled the blind up with a jerk, and standing upon the pale square of sunlight that lay upon the carpet like a sheet of cream blotting-paper, he began to do his exercises—deep breathing, bending forward and back, squatting like a frog and shooting out his legs—for if there was one thing he had a horror of it was of getting fat, and men in his profession had a dreadful tendency that way. However, there was no sign of it at present. He was, he decided, just right, just in good proportion. In fact, he could not help a thrill of satisfaction when he saw himself in the glass, dressed in a morning coat, dark grey trousers, grey socks and a black tie with a silver thread in it. Not that he was vain—he couldn’t stand vain men—no; the sight of himself gave him a thrill of purely artistic satisfaction. “Voilà tout!” said he, passing his hand over his sleek hair.
That little, easy French phrase blown so lightly from his lips, like a whiff of smoke, reminded him that someone had asked him again, the evening before, if he was English. People seemed to find it impossible to believe that he hadn’t some Southern blood. True, there was an emotional quality in his singing that had nothing of the John Bull in it. . . . The door-handle rattled and turned round and round. Adrian’s head popped through.
“Please, father, mother says breakfast is quite ready, please.”
“Very well,” said Reginald. Then, just as Adrian disappeared: “Adrian!”
“Yes, father.”
“You haven’t said ‘good morning.’”
A few months ago Reginald had spent a week-end in a very aristocratic family, where the father received his little sons in the morning and shook hands with them. Reginald thought the practice charming, and introduced it immediately, but Adrian felt dreadfully silly at having to shake hands with his own father every morning. And why did his father always sort of sing to him instead of talk? . . .
In excellent temper, Reginald walked into the dining-room and sat down before a pile of letters, a copy of the Times, and a little covered dish. He glanced at the letters and then at his breakfast. There were two thin slices of bacon and one egg.
“Don’t you want any bacon?” he asked.
“No, I prefer a cold baked apple. I don’t feel the need of bacon every morning.”
Now, did she mean that there was no need for him to have bacon every morning, either, and that she grudged having to cook it for him?
“If you don’t want to cook the breakfast,” said he, “why don’t you keep a servant? You know we can afford one, and you know how I loathe to see my wife doing the work. Simply because all the women we have had in the past have been failures and utterly upset my regime, and made it almost impossible for me to have any pupils here, you’ve given up trying to find a decent woman. It’s not impossible to train a servant—is it? I mean, it doesn’t require genius?”
“But I prefer to do the work myself; it makes life so much more peaceful. . . . Run along, Adrian darling, and get ready for school.”
“Oh no, that’s not it!” Reginald pretended to smile. “You do the work yourself, because, for some extraordinary reason, you love to humiliate me. Objectively, you may not know that, but, subjectively, it’s the case.” This last remark so delighted him that he cut open an envelope as gracefully as if he had been on the stage. . . .
“DEAR MR. PEACOCK,
I feel I cannot go to sleep until I have thanked you again for the wonderful joy your singing gave me this evening. Quite unforgettable. You make me wonder, as I have not wondered since I was a girl, if this is all. I mean, if this ordinary world is all. If there is not, perhaps, for those of us who understand, divine beauty and richness awaiting us if we only have the courage to see it. And to make it ours. . . . The house is so quiet. I wish you were here now that I might thank you in person. You are doing a great thing. You are teaching the world to escape from life!
Yours, most sincerely,
ÆNONE FELL.
P.S.—I am in every afternoon this week. . . .”
The letter was scrawled in violet ink on thick, handmade paper. Vanity, that bright bird, lifted its wings again, lifted them until he felt his breast would break.
