Death of a Hero (26 page)

“Do tell me who he is!”

Elizabeth blushed slightly and hesitated.

“No, I won't tell you now, but you'll meet him soon.”

“But, Elizabeth, I hope you're careful? You won't go and have a baby?”

Elizabeth laughed scornfully again.

“Have a baby? Of course not! Why ever do you think I'm so silly? George and I talked it – ”

“Oh! His name's ‘George', is it?”

“Yes. Did I let that out? Yes, George Winterbourne. Well, we talked it all out, and we've got a perfectly good arrangement. George says we're too young to have children, so why get married; and anyway we're too poor. If we want children later on, we can always
get
married. I said I wouldn't tie myself down with
any
man – I don't want anybody else's name. I told George that if I wanted other lovers I should have them, and if he wanted any one else he was to have her. But, of course, when there's a relationship as firmly established as ours, one doesn't
want
any one else.”

Fanny smiled.

As a matter of fact, Elizabeth had not said anything of the sort, when George drew up his Triumphal Scheme of the Perfect Sex Relationship. She had been rather timid and uncertain at first. But George's discourses and the books on physiology and psychology and sex which he made her read, and her own exultation at being no longer a virgin, had sent her spinning in the other direction. She had, in a few months, far out-distanced George in “freedom”. Her argument was rational and quite defensible; indeed, it was a corollary to George's own views, though he hadn't seen it. Because you were very fond of one person, she argued, that was no reason why you shouldn't be attracted by others. Monogamy was established to tyrannize women and to make sure offspring were “legitimate” and to provide for them and the mother. But where women are free and there is no offspring, what on earth is the good of an artificial and forced fidelity? Directly one has to
promise
fidelity, directly an effort of will is made to “remain faithful”, a false position is set up. The effort of keeping such a promise is the surest assurance that it will be broken sooner or later. On the other hand, while you are in love with someone, well, you're in love, and you either don't want anyone else, or if you do, you're probably only too happy to get back speedily to the person you do really care for.

There was logic, and a good deal of sense, in this, George had to admit. But he also had to admit to himself that he didn't altogether like
the idea of Elizabeth “going with” somebody else. Nor, for that matter, would Elizabeth have liked George “going with” another girl. But she deceived herself unknowingly. At that time she was very much under the influence of a Swedish book she had read, a book devoted to the Future of the Race. This was the work of an earnest-minded virgin of fifty who laid it down as an indisputable axiom that there must be complete frankness between the sexes. “The old notion of sexual fidelity must go,” declared this enthusiastic writer, “and only from the golden sun-bath of divinely nude freedom can rise the glorious new race,” etc. etc. Elizabeth didn't know the authoress was an old maid, and she was annoyed with George for making fun of the “golden sun-bath of divinely nude freedom”.

“But, Elizabeth,” George had said, when she propounded this argument, “of course I believe that people should be free, and it's disgusting for them to stay together when they don't any longer love each other. But suppose I happened to want someone else, just a sort of whim, and went on loving you, wouldn't it be better if I said nothing about it? And the same with you?”

“And tell each other lies? Why, George, you yourself have said time and again that there can be no genuine relationship which involves deceit. The very essence and beauty and joy of our relation depend upon its being honest and frank and accepting facts.”

“Why, yes, but…”

“Look at the lives of our parents, look at all the sneaking adulteries going on at this very moment in every suburb of London. Don't you see – why, you
must
see – that what's wrong about adultery is not the sexual part of it at all, but the plotting and sneaking and dissimulation and lies and pretence…”

“That's true,” said George slowly and reflectively, “that's true. But – suppose I told you that when I was last in Paris I spent the nights with Georgina Harris?”

“Did you?”

“No, of course not. But, you see…”

“What would it have mattered if you had? My Swedish woman you make fun of is very sound about that. She says that two people should spend a few days or more away from each other every few weeks, and that it may be a very good thing for them to have other sexual experience. It prevents any feeling of sameness and satiety, and often brings
two people together more closely than ever, if only they're frank about it.”

“I wonder,” said George, “I wonder. Is there anyone you're interested in, Elizabeth?”

“Of course not. You're really rather unintelligent about this, George. You know perfectly well I love you passionately and shall never love anyone else so much. But there mustn't be any lying and dissimulation, and no artificial fidelity. If you want to go off for a night or a weekend or a week with some charming girl or woman, you must go. And if I want to do the same with a man, I must. Don't you see that by thwarting a mere
béguin
you may turn it into something more serious, whereas by enjoying it you get rid of it? Probably, as my Swedish woman says, one is so much disappointed that a single night is more than enough, and one returns to one's love eagerly, cured of wandering fancies for the next six months.”

“Yes, I daresay there's something in that. It seems sound. And yet if the original relationship is so secure and if the other affair is so slight and unimportant and merely physical, it seems unnecessary to hurt one's love by speaking about it. I don't tell you every day what I had for lunch. Besides, even if one spends only one night with another person, that implies at least a one-night's preference, which might hurt.”

“Which might hurt!” Elizabeth mocked. “George, you're being positively old-fashioned. Why, when you go to Paris, isn't that a preference? And when I go to Fanny's cottage in the country for a week-end, isn't that a preference? How do you know we're not Sapphic friends?”

“I'm jolly sure you're not! You're neither of you in the least bit Lesbian types. Besides, you'd have told me.”

“You see! You know quite well I'd have told you.”

“Yes, but going to Paris or the country for a few days isn't the same sort of ‘preference'.”

The argument tailed off in a futile attempt to define “preference”. Ultimately Elizabeth carried her point. It was definitely established that “nothing could break” a relationship such as theirs; but that “love itself must have rest”, and therefore there was wisdom in occasional short separations; that so far from breaking up such a relationship, occasional “slight affairs” elsewhere would only strengthen and stimulate it. George allowed himself to be convinced. The snag here lay in the fact that he had definitely sensed the possible danger of arousing jealousy; whereas Elizabeth, confident in herself and the theories of her Swedish
old maid, scorned the idea that so base a passion could even enter
their
relation.

About two months after this, George and Elizabeth were cheerfully dining in a small Soho restaurant when Fanny came in with a young man, the “young man from Cambridge”, Reggie Burnside.

“Oh, look!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “there's Fanny and a friend with her. Fanny! Fanny!” signalling across the room. Fanny came across.

“This is George Winterbourne. You've often heard of Fanny, George. I say, Fanny, do come and have dinner with us.”

“Yes, do.”

“But I've got Reggie Burnside with me.”

“Well, bring him along too.”

The young man was introduced, and they sat down at the table. In most respects Fanny was curiously different from Elizabeth; each was not so much the antithesis as the complement to the other. Fanny was just a little taller than Elizabeth (George disliked short women); and where Elizabeth was dark and Egyptian-looking and pale, Fanny was golden and English (not chocolate-box English) and most delicate white arid red. She was a bit like Priscilla, George thought, but with the soft gold of Priscilla made hard and glittering, like an exquisite metallic flower. There was something both gem-like and flower-like in Fanny. Perhaps that was due to her eyes. With other women you are conscious almost immediately of all sorts of beauties and defects, but with Fanny you were instantaneously absorbed by the eyes. When you thought about her afterwards, you just saw a mental image of those extraordinary blue eyes, disassociated from the rest of her, like an Edgar Poe vision. But, unlike so many vivid blue eyes, they were gemlike rather than flower-like; they were not soft or stupid or sentimental or languid, but clear, alert, and rather hard. You may see exactly their shade of colour in the deeper parts of Lake Garda on a sunny day. Yet the quality was not aqueous, but vitreous. Venetian glass, perhaps? No, that is too opaque. It is very hard to say what was the quality which made them so remarkable. Men looked at them once and fell helplessly in love, one might say almost noisily in love – Fanny didn't mind, it was obviously her
métier
to have men fall in love with her. Perhaps Fanny's eyes were simply made a symbol in the imagination of that mysterious sexual attraction which radiated from her, or perhaps
they conformed to some unwritten but instinctively recognized canon of the perfect eye, the Platonic “idea” of eyes…

With Elizabeth you saw not the eyes alone, but the whole head. You would have liked to keep Fanny's eyes, magnificently set in gold, in an open jewel-casket, to look at when you doubted whether any beauty remained in the dull world. But with Elizabeth you wanted the whole head, it was so much like one of those small stone heads of Egyptian princesses in the Louvre. So very Egyptian. The full, delicately-moulded lips, the high cheek-bones, the slightly oblique eye-sockets, the magnificent line from ear to chin, the upward sweep of the wide brow, the straight black hair. Oddly enough, on analysis Elizabeth's eyes proved to be quite as beautiful as Fanny's, but somehow less ostentatiously lovely. They were deeper and softer, and, which is rare in dark eyes, intelligent. Fanny's blue eyes were intelligent enough, but they hadn't quite the subtle depths of Elizabeth's, they hadn't the same reserve.

Elizabeth lived very much in and on herself; Fanny was a whole-hearted extravert. Where Elizabeth hesitated, mused, suffered, Fanny acted, came a cropper, picked herself up gaily and started off again with just the same zest for experience. She was more smartly dressed than Elizabeth. Of course, Elizabeth was always quite charming and attractive, but you guessed that she had other things to think about beside clothes. Fanny loved clothes, and, with no more money than Elizabeth, contrived to look stunningly fashionable where Elizabeth merely looked O.K. Oddly enough, Fanny was not devoured by the Scylla of clothes, the monster of millinery which is never satiate with its female victims. Her energy saved her from that. She and Elizabeth were both restlessly energetic; but whereas Elizabeth's energy went into dreaming and arguing and trying to paint, Fanny's went into all sorts of activities with all sorts of persons. She did not “do” anything, having sense enough to see that in most young women “arts' is merely a kind of safety-valve for sex. Fanny, I'm glad to say, did not need a safety-valve for her sex; the steam-pressure was kept regulated and the engine worked perfectly, thank you very much. She was emotionally and mentally far less complicated than Elizabeth, less profound; therefore to her the new sexual régime, where perfect freedom has happily taken the place of service, presented fewer possible snags. I've said, of course, that Fanny sometimes came a cropper; she did, but she hadn't Elizabeth's capacity for suffering, Elizabeth's desolate despair when her silk purse
turned out to be a sow's ear – which everyone else had known long before.

Perhaps the remarkable quality of Elizabeth's mind and character is best showed by the fact that she never said or implied anything mean or nasty about Fanny's clothes…

Reggie Burnside was a rich young man engaged in some mysterious “research work” at Cambridge, something connected with the structure of the atom, and highly impressive because the nature of his work could only be explained in elaborate mathematical symbols. He wore spectacles, talked in a high intellectual voice with the peculiar intonation and blurred syllables favoured by some members of that great centre of learning, and appeared exceedingly weary. Even Fanny's impetuous dash never galvanized him into a spontaneous action or a natural remark. He also was extremely modern, and was devoted to Fanny. He was always at hand when nothing better presented itself – the permanent second string to the fiddle, or, as Fanny put it, one of her
fautes
, adding
sotto voce
, my
faute-de-mieux.

The talk at first was the usual highbrow chatter of the period – Flecker and Brooke and Mr. Russell, referred to as “Bertie” in a casual way by Fanny and Reggie, to the mystification of George. This is one of the charming traits of the English intelligentsia. Everyone they don't know is an outsider, and they love to keep the outsider outside by a gently condescending patronage. A most effective method is to talk nonchalantly about well-known people by their Christian names:

“Have you read Johnny's last book?”

“No-oh. Not yet. The last one was a dreadful bore. Is this any better?”

“No-oh, I don't think so. Tommy dislikes it profoundly. Says it reminds him of sports on the village green.”

“How
amusing!”

“Oh, Tommy can be quite amusing at times. I was with him and Bernard the other day, and Bernard said…”