“You see how it is, old girl,” said Geraint. “Just one of those unlucky things. Neither of us to blame. The working of Fate.”
“I’ve been a selfish shit and embarrassed everybody,” said Schnak. Tears did nothing to improve her looks.
“No, you haven’t and you aren’t. And I wish you’d take a vow to stop saying ‘shit’ all the time; talk shit and your life will be shit.”
“My life is shit. Everything goes contrary with me.”
“Mrs. Gummidge!”
“Who’s Mrs. Gummidge?”
“If you’re a good girl and get well soon I’ll lend you the book.”
“Oh, somebody in a book! All you people like Nilla and the Cornishes and that man Darcourt seem to live out of books. As if everything was in books!”
“Well, Schnak, just about everything is in books. No, that’s wrong. We recognize in books what we’ve met in life. But if you’d read a few books you wouldn’t have to meet everything as if it had never happened before, and take every blow right on the chin. You’d see a few things coming. About love, for instance. You thought you loved me.”
Schnak gave a painful howl.
“All right then, you think you love me now. Come on, Schnak, say it. Say, ‘I love you, Geraint.’ “
Another howl.
“Come on. Out with it! Say it, Schnak.”
“I’d die first.”
“Look, Schnak, that’s what comes of building your vocabulary on words like ‘shit’. Great words choke you. If you can’t say love, you can’t feel love.”
“Yes I can!”
“Then say so!”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Good. Here’s a basin. I’ll hold your head. Up she comes! Hmm—doesn’t look too bad, for what you’ve been doing to yourself. Almost as good as new. I’ll just put this down the John, then you have a sip of water and we’ll go on.”
“Leave me alone!”
“I will not leave you alone! You’ve got to whoop up more than that eggnog if you’re to be really well. Let me wipe your mouth. Now we’ll try again: say, ‘I love you, Geraint.’ “
The defeated Schnak buried her face in her pillow, but among the sobs she managed to whisper, “I love you.”
“That’s my brave girl! Now look at me, and I’ll sponge your eyes. I’m your friend, you know, but I don’t love you—not the way you think you love me. Oh, my dear old Schnak, don’t think I don’t understand! We’ve all had these awful hopeless passions, and they hurt like hell. But if we were romantic lovers, the kind you’re thinking of, do you suppose I’d hold your head while you puked, and mop your face, and try to make you see reason? The kind of love you’re dreaming about takes place on mossy banks, amid the scent of flowers and the song of birds. Or else in luxurious chambers, where you loll on a chaise longue, and I take off your clothes very slowly until we melt into a union of intolerable sweetness, and not a giggle or a really kind word spoken the whole time. It’s the giggles and the kind words that you need for the long voyage.”
“I feel like a fool!”
“Then you’re quite wrong. You’re not a fool, and only a fool would think you were. You’re an artist, Schnak. Maybe a very good one. Romantic Art—which is what’s kept you busy since last autumn—is feeling, shaped by technique. You’ve got bags of technique. It’s feeling that kills you.”
“If you grew up like I grew up, you’d hate the word feeling.”
“I grew up in a boiling tank of feeling. All tied up, somehow, with religion. When I said I was going to be an actor my parents raved as if they’d seen me in Hell already. But my dad was a fine actor—a pulpit actor. And my mam was Sarah Bernhardt twenty-four hours a day. They poured it all into the chapel, of course. But I wanted a bigger stage than that, because I had an idea of God, you see, and my God showed himself in art. I couldn’t trap God in the chapel. An artist doesn’t want to trap God; he wants to live and breathe God, and damned hard work it is, stumbling and falling.”
“I hate God.”
“Good for you! You don’t say, ‘There is no God,’ like a fool; you say you hate Him. But Schnak—you won’t like this, but you have to know—God doesn’t hate you. He’s made you special. When Nilla is being confidential she hints that you may be really special. So think of it this way: give God His chance. Of course He’ll take it anyway, but its easier for you if you don’t kick and scream.”
“How can anybody live God?”
“By living as well as they can with themselves. It doesn’t always look very well to the bystanders. Truth to yourself, I suppose you’d call it. Following your nose. But don’t expect me to explain. My dad was the explainer. He could go on about living in God’s light till your head swam. Duw, he was a fine preacher! A true God-intoxicated man. But he thought God had one, single, unwinking light for everybody, and that was where he and I fell out.”
“Now that I’ve said what you made me say—don’t you say anything?”
“Yes. I say it won’t do. Suppose I took you up on it, and we had an affair, you loving and me using you as long as it lasted—which wouldn’t be long. It would be a cheat. I haven’t time or inclination for that, and when it finished you would be bitter, and you’re quite bitter enough already. What about Gunilla? Did you love her?”
“It wasn’t the same.”
“No love ever is the same as any other. The lucky ones get the big thing. You know—’The silver link, the silken tie’—but it’s not common. That’s one of the big mistakes, you know—that everybody loves in the same way and that everybody may have a great love. You might as well say that everybody can compose a great symphony. A lot of love is misery; bad weather punctuated by occasional flashes of sunlight. Look at this opera we’re busy with; the love in it is pretty rough. Its not the best of Arthurs life, or Lancelot’s, or Guenevere’s.”
“It’s the best of Elaines.”
“Elaine wasn’t a gifted musician, so don’t try that on. She had your trouble, though. ‘Fantasy’s hot fire, / Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly.’ You set those words to some very good music. Didn’t you learn anything from them? Schnak, if you and I set out on a love affair, you’d have had enough of it in two weeks.”
“Because I’m ugly! Because my looks make everybody sick! It isn’t fair! It’s a curse! That Cornish bitch, and Nilla and Dulcy all look great and they can do anything with you, or any man! I’ll kill myself!”
“No, you won’t. You’ve got other fish to fry. But truth is truth, Schnak; you’re no beauty queen and that’s just something you have to put up with, and it isn’t the worst affliction, let me tell you. What do you suppose Nilla looked like at your age? A big gawk, I’ll bet. Now she’s marvellous. When you’re her age, you’ll be totally different. Success will have given you a new look. You’ll be a kind of distinguished goblin, I expect.”
Schnak howled again, and hid her face in the pillows.
“I’m sorry if that hurt your feelings, but you see, Schnak old girl, I’m under considerable stress myself. Everybody says I have to talk to you, and be nice to you, though I protest I hadn’t an inkling of the way you felt about me, and I won’t take any responsibility. I can’t run the risk of feeding your flame, and making things worse. So I’m talking entirely against my inclination. You know how I am; I love to talk and talk as gaudily as I can, just for the pleasure it gives me. But with you, I’m trying to speak on oath, you see. Not a word I don’t truly mean. If I let myself go, I could rave on about the Livery of Hell, and the demon’s dunghill, and all the rest of it. Welsh rhetoric is part of me, and my curse is that the world is full of literal-minded morlocks who don’t understand, and think I’m a crook because their tongues are wrapped in burlap and mine is hinged with gold. I’ve been as honest as I know how. You see, don’t you?”