Freddie took a step towards Annabelle so that she straightened out on her feet. “Well what are you going to do to-night?” he said. “What else are you doing?”
“I’m having dinner,” Annabelle said. She stood miserably.
“Oh,” Freddie said. He let go of her. She stood where she was. Freddie walked over to Peter. “Let’s have your drinks then,” he said. “Where are they?”
“No drinks,” Peter said. “Only lettuces.”
“On the wagon?” Freddie sneered.
“No, they’ve arrived,” Peter said. He began to laugh uncontrollably.
Nancy was plucking at the prancing man’s sleeve. “We’d better go,” she said. “Don’t let’s stay if Annabelle doesn’t want to.”
“We’ll stay,” Freddie said. “We’ll have some lettuces.” He stood obstinately while Annabelle cut him some ham, and I felt rather sorry for him. Peter was still laughing, and Hilton Weekes was holding a book up, saying, “I say, has anybody read this?” and no one was taking any notice of him.
There was a silence. Freddie was chewing his ham. Then—“Annabelle has become very superior, hasn’t she?” he said speaking to no one in particular.
“Oh yes,” Peter said, “she’s become religious.”
“Oh religious,” Freddie said. He looked at Marius and then at me. I suddenly realized that I was copying Marius, although I could not do it as he did. He was leaning on the back of a chair and I was propped against the piano, but I felt a fool when Freddie looked at me. Marius was smiling faintly at the carpet, but he did not look a fool. “Do you mean to say she goes to church?” Freddie said, watching Marius.
“No,” Peter said: “the Church comes to her.” He began laughing again, and Annabelle put a hand in front of her eyes like someone very tired. Then Peter saw her, suddenly, and he stopped laughing, so that the noise between them died.
“Oh,” Freddie said. Hilton Weekes coughed nervously; he was looking for somewhere to deposit his book. The girl was by the door, a powder puff in her hand, holding it arrested in front of her nose like a handkerchief. She looked as if she were about to sneeze. Then she said “Oh do let’s go, please,” in a kind of despair.
“We certainly don’t seem to be very welcome here,” Freddie said.
Peter looked miserably at Annabelle, who still had her hand in front of her eyes. Then he went up to Freddie. “But you are welcome,” he said, “really; won’t you stay and have a drink?”
“We’ll go,” Freddie said.
“But I think you’re terribly nice,” Peter said. “Really Freddie, I am sure I can find you a drink. Do stay.”
“No,” Freddie said.
“I was joking,” Peter said. “I am always joking.” He looked very sad and quite sincere. “You should know that I am joking.” Then he turned to the girl. “I think you’re terribly nice too,” he said. “Can’t you show us what you’ve got in that lovely bag?”
“Oh just one or two things,” said the girl, happy now, starting to struggle with the clips.
“Do let’s see.”
“Come on,” Freddie said, swearing furiously from the passage.
“Just the few things that I always carry about with me. . ” She was like a child showing off a new toy.
“How exciting!” Peter said.
Freddie seized the girl and dragged her into the passage. Now that Peter had become friendly he was determined to go. I supposed he thought it was a joke. I did not blame him. Hilton Weekes followed them quickly. On the landing the bag burst, scattering a few dainty objects on the floor. The girl and Hilton Weekes knelt to pick them up, and Peter was hovering round saying, “That’s a nice one, that really is: I’ve never seen one like that before;” and Freddie was looking as if he was going to burst too. At length they gathered themselves together and went. We could hear Peter’s voice following them pleasantly down the passage.
We waited uneasily. Then Peter returned. He went straight to Annabelle. “I am so sorry,” he said. “So sorry, sweet Annabelle.” She took her hand from her eyes and smiled. “You were quite funny,” she said.
“I am an ass and a pig,” he said, “and I am going to pour ashes on my head.” He went into the bathroom.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Marius said.
“Yes,” Annabelle said.
Peter joined us. His hair was neatly brushed. We set out. In the lift I had a feeling of elation that I had not felt before in my life. Peter touched Annabelle gently on the shoulder, and when she looked at him I saw that she had tears in her eyes. Marius’s head was bowed as if he were asleep again. As we stepped out of the building into the night I felt as though I wanted to do something for these people because they were so peculiar.
The square was huge and moonlit. A statue stood folded like the wings of a bird. Peter said, “I should like to get out of England because England is dying.”
Marius said, “You do not leave a deathbed, you go to it. You go to it because a deathbed always has meaning while life very often has not.”
“England will not admit that it is dying,” Peter said. “That is what makes it unbearable. There is nothing so ugly as a sick-room in which the patient has to pretend that he is well.”
“There is meaning even in that ugliness,” Marius said. “I do not care much about beauty and ugliness, I only care for meanings and the sadness of the world.”
“I don’t,” Peter said. “I am too close to it. All I hate is ugliness and all I want is beauty.”
Annabelle walked a little ahead of us with her coat thrown carelessly over her shoulder and the cold wind blowing against her neck. Her arms and legs were white like water, and as she moved her dress became darker than her hair which the moon made icy.
“There is no beauty without meaning,” Marius said. “You may make an image of your own and call it beauty, you may give it your praise and worship all your life, but in the end it will fail you. On a death-bed it will fail you. You cannot die beautifully without meaning.”
“Die beautifully?” Peter said.
“Yes. And that is what faces us. Did you not say that England was dying? Well then, you die beautifully, and that is what always faces people, as individuals, at any time in history, whether or not a civilization is dying as well.”
“We should be beginning,” Peter said.
“Our world is old, and with the arrogance of age it is complaining. You cannot praise it and you cannot pity it, because praise and pity are reserved for achievement. It has built its images and has seen them broken, and on its knees it is searching for the fragments that it loved. It finds them, sometimes, among the rubble of cities — a pedestal, a memory, limbs of old glories that are dug from the dust and refastened with wires to give an illusion of solidity. And then illusion is there, for some: a civilization will worship its images until there is no one left to worship them. But when there is no one left then few will ever have known what their ending has meant. And you, you hate the world, but it is you who are part of it. You want your images, you want your shapes; and your complaint is the same as the complaint of the world, the complaint that what is breakable has been broken, that what is temporal is not eternal, that what is of the earth is no more than the earth and crumbles. You have seen the pretty castles that were built in the sand, and now you are lamenting that the tide has run over them. But the tide is greater than the castles, and if it is beauty that you want then you should see the beauty in the tide. Praise and pity are the noises of history, they are not the noises of life. The noise of life is the tide. Why will you not hear it?”
“I hear you,” Peter said, “but I do not hear the tide.”
“Your complaint is the complaining of the body whose blood has grown thin, but the body is not the meaning and still you can love it. You look at the body and you see that it is drowned, but when you look why do you not say ‘The tide has gone over it’ instead of ‘The body is ugly’?”