[SEVEN].

Paris in Spring is not an easy place in which to nurse a grudge against oneself. Monica arrived with a long face and a heart full of what she conceived to be self-hatred, but her spirits began to rise almost as soon as she was in Amy Neilson's pretty house in St Cloud, and before the first evening was over she had confided her trouble to that wise and capable woman. She had not meant to confide; she had fully meant to grapple with the problem alone. She was humiliated by her readiness to spill her story to anyone who might be sympathetic; it seemed so weak. But Amy was an American and a woman, and might understand better than Ripon, who was a man, or Domdaniel, who was English. A little to her surprise, Amy came down flatly on the side of conventional morality.

"These affairs don't do," said she. "Particularly not with girls of your temperament. Their tendency is always to harden you, and what would you be like if you were hardened? You'd be very much like your mother, my dear. Oh, different in externals, I'm sure, but very much like her. And in spite of all the nice loyal things you've said to me about her from time to time, I don't think that will answer. What was it you said he told you -- that you had no sense of humour? Lucky for him. A woman with a sense of humour would never have taken up with him in the first place. He sounds an impossible person. Oh, a genius, perhaps. Benedict is always discovering geniuses; it's a craze with him; he's terribly humble about not being a composer himself, and he's always exaggerating the talent of young men who show promise. But suppose Giles Revelstoke is a genius? Geniuses are not people to make a woman happy. The best he could do for you would be to marry you and make a drudge of you. No, you've done the right thing. Get over him as fast as you can."

"But perhaps that's what I'm for -- to drudge for somebody far above me. I'm nothing very much, and I know it."

"Benedict says you can become a very good singer. That's something. Let me be very frank, dear. You're not what I call a big person. It's not just being young, it's a matter of quality. You've got a fair amount of toughness, but essentially you're delicate and sensitive. You must preserve that. It's true you have no sense of humour, but very few women have. You should be glad of it. It's not nearly such a nice or important quality as silly people make out. Wit and high spirits and a sense of fun -- yes, they're wonderful things. But a sense of humour -- a real one -- is a rarity and can be utter hell. Because it's immoral, you know, in the real sense of the word: I mean, it makes its own laws; and it possesses the person who has it like a demon. Fools talk about it as though it were the same thing as a sense of balance, but believe me, it's not. It's a sense of anarchy, and a sense of chaos. Thank God it's rare."

"Maybe what Giles has is a sense of humour."

"You may be right. He sounds like it. But my advice to you, dear, is to get yourself out of this before you're hurt worse than you are -- which isn't nearly as badly as you think, I dare say. It isn't sleeping with a man that makes you a tramp; that's probably healthy, like tennis or yoghourt. But it's having your feelings hurt until they scar over that makes you coarse and ugly. You're not the temperament to survive that sort of thing."

And thus the pattern of Monica's Easter in Paris was set. She was getting over Revelstoke. Amy did not refer to the matter again, but she kept Monica busy with French conversation, French literature, shopping, and visits to plays and sights. And Monica, who was beginning to recognize the chameleon strain in her nature, seemed most of the time to fit very well into the stimulating, pleasant, sensible atmosphere which Amy created.

But in her inmost heart she was hurt and puzzled by the failure of all her advisers to comprehend anything of her feelings. They seemed to know what was expedient, and self-preservative, and what would lead to happiness when she was fifty, but they appeared to have no comprehension at all of what it was like to be Monica Gall in love with Giles Revelstoke. Even Ripon, who was not more than a year or so older than herself, could marshal all the facts and make a judgement about them, but not even Domdaniel could grasp the irrationalities of the situation. Must one live always by balancing fact against fact? Had the irrational side of life no right to be lived? The answer did not have to be formed; the irrational things rose overwhelmingly from their deeps whenever she was not strenuously bending her mind to some matter of immediate concern.

Did she want to be a singer? She had been assured so often that it lay within her power to be one, but not since she left Canada had anyone thought of asking if that were truly her desire. What was it, after all, to be a public performer of any kind? One morning, when Amy was busy elsewhere, Monica strayed into the museum of the Opera to pass the time. She had been there before, but under Amy's firmly enthusiastic guidance; she had been told to marvel, and she had obediently marvelled. But now, alone, she looked about her. How dreary it was! So many pompous busts of Gounod; Gounod's real immortality was through the wall, on the great stage. But here was the monocle of someone called Diaghilev; Amy had said something about him, but who was he, and what had he done? Where was his immortality? And these pianos of the great -- how small they seemed; they bore about them a suggestion that they must have been played by very small men. And these worn-out ballet shoes to which names, presumably great, were attached -- was this trash all that the darlings of the public left behind them? There were things here which had belonged to great singers, bits of costume and pitiful, dingy stage jewellery. This was what remained of people who had breathed the muhd as she could hardly hope to breathe it; was this worth the struggle? Would it not be better to be Revelstoke's drudge and his trull, contributing thereby to something which might live when they both were dead?

She brought herself near to tears with these gloomy broodings. She looked out of a window across the Rue Auber, where a sign caught her eye; it said "Canada Furs", and suddenly she was sick with longing for the cold, clean, remorseless land of her birth. Why had she ever come away, to get herself into this mess?

Luncheon raised her spirits, and she was a little surprised to discern that what she had really been thinking about, and longing for, was immortality -- and a vain, earthly immortality at that, the very kind of thing which the Thirteeners (who were in no great danger of attaining it) condemned so strongly.

Ah, the Thirteeners! After that shaking hour in the Sheldonian, when she had sung her seven bars, and felt herself sealed of the seal of Bach, she could no longer be one of them. But what, then, was she? A whirligig, like Domdaniel, who confessed that he took the colour of whatever work he was engaged on at the moment? But that was unjust to a man whom the world called great, and who was certainly the greatest man in every way that she had ever met. It was, indeed, a moral judgement. And what was it that Domdaniel had said to her, on that drive from Oxford, concerning her own harsh judgement on herself? -- "Moral judgements belong to God, and it is part of God's mercy that we do not have to undertake that heavy part of His work, even when the judgement concerns ourselves." But wasn't that just gas? If you didn't make moral judgements, what were you? Well, of course Domdaniel said that you were an adult human being, and as such ought to have some clear notion of what you were doing with your life. Clarity, always clarity. The more she puzzled, the less clear anything became.

Reflection, even on these somewhat elementary lines, was hard work for Monica, and it made her very hungry. After her lunch, she continued her wandering through familiar tourist sights, putting in time until she should meet Amy again, and return to St Cloud. Her wanderings took her to the Pantheon.

A vivid imagination is not of great use in the Pantheon, unless one knows much of the earthly history of the great ones who lie buried there, and can summon splendid visions of them to warm the grey, courteous unfriendliness of its barren stones. In spite of Amy's cramming, Voltaire was not a living name to Monica, nor was Balzac, or any of the others who gave the place meaning, and everywhere the bleak, naked horror of enthroned Reason was ghastly palpable. Within five minutes she had left the place, and wandered on a few paces into the church of St etienne du Mont.

All she knew of this church was that it possessed a remarkable rood-screen which Amy, stuffing her charges with culture like Strasbourg geese, had insisted that she see and admire. And there it was, its two lovely staircases twining upward toward a balcony surrounding the High Altar; Monica, as upon her first visit, longed to climb one of them and look down into the church; she yearned, for no reason that she could define, to see that balcony filled with singing, trumpeting, viol-playing angels. She sat down in a corner, and stared, trying to see what existed only in her imagination.

She saw no musical angels, but she became conscious of the windows, so strong and jewel-like in colour. She was warmed and soothed by the dark splendour, and some of the pain in her head -- the fullness and muddle -- began to go away. She hated thinking, and was ashamed of hating it. But thought was like the Pantheon. Here was feeling, and feeling was reality. If only life could be lived in terms of those windows, of that aspiring, but not frightening, screen! If only things and feelings existed, and thoughts and judgements did not have to trouble and torture!

She was conscious of movement and sound nearby, but it was not for some time that she looked to see what it was. Quite close was a canopy, not very high, of stone, under which was a tomb, not particularly impressive. A grille surrounded it, but an old woman was reaching through this fence, as she knelt, and as she prayed she rubbed the stone gently with her arthritic hand. Tears stood in her eyes, but did not fall. A Negro came near, knelt until he was almost prostrate, prayed briefly, and left.

What could it be? Monica found a sacristan, and soon had her answer. It was the tomb of St Genevieve, the patroness of the city of Paris.

"Formerly in the Pantheon," said the man, "but it was taken from there and publicly burned when the church was re-dedicated to Reason; the ashes and relics were brought here when all that foolishness was over."

Then, in the darkness beneath the canopy, there was something of a saint? A saint who had found a haven here after the persecutions of Reason? She had never considered saints before. But, with a sense of awe and wonder that she had never known, Monica went to the tomb and, when no one was near, knelt and stretched her hand through the grille.

"Help me," she prayed, touching the smooth stone, "I can't think; I can't clarify; I don't know what I want. Help me to do what is right -- No! Help me -- help me --." She could not put any ending on her supplication, for none would express what she wanted, because she did not know what she wanted.

Nevertheless, when she met Amy at the end of the afternoon, she seemed in splendid spirits, and Amy was convinced that she was forgetting Giles Revelstoke, and that the whole thing had been one of those fusses about very little, which were so common among girls who matured late.

[EIGHT].

Within three hours of her return to London, Monica was at the flat in Tite Street; her excuse was that it was hopeless to try to reach Revelstoke by telephone, and she must make her own arrangement about future lessons, or else give an embarrassing explanation to Domdaniel. Giles greeted her more warmly than he had ever done.

"I've something that I think you'll like," said he, handing her a bundle of music paper. It was a solo cantata for a soprano voice with piano accompaniment. She looked quickly through it; the manner was very much his own -- the old solo cantata form, recitatives alternating with melodic passages, but in a modern idiom; she saw immediately that the tessitura of the lyric passages was unusually high and that the recitatives lay in a lower register. Yet it was for one voice.

"You haven't looked at the title," he said.

It read:

KUBLA KHAN.

a setting of Coleridge's poem, by GILES REVELSTOKE.

for MONICA GALL

"A present," said he. "We'll work on it, and you'll sing it the first time it's heard which, if my plans don't fall through, will be quite early next autumn -- Third Programme again."

She did not dare to ask if this were an amends for the quarrel before Easter. And what did it matter? She did not dare to ask if this meant that he loved her; even that did not seem to matter, now. The great fact was that he was in better spirits than she had ever known, and that they were to work together again. On something written specially for me -- it was that voice which she had heard within herself before, that voice of which she was afraid, because it spoke so selfishly and so powerfully.

But -- Oh, Saint Genevieve, was this your doing?

"There's another thing," said Giles. "I've been approached -- only approached, mind you -- by the Association for English Opera; they wanted to know if I had anything in their line. It was Discoverie that interested them; they were very complimentary."

"Giles!"

"Yes, I know. I can't tell you what it was like, talking about it to people who really knew, and could understand what was implicit in it, as well as what was staring out of the score. The upshot of it was, they want something. Now don't go off the deep end, because it's all very tentative. I haven't anything -- not on paper -- but I've been tinkering with a notion for years. So I'm to make a sketch, and rough out some of the scenes, and they'll hear it. Wait, wait -- don't exult too much; there's a sticker even if they like it. They're broke. They can't commission a new work, but they can do one if it's up to standard. Production here; perhaps production in Venice. But I don't see how it's to be done."

"But it must be done! It's unthinkable that it shouldn't. Why can't you do it? Would it take too long? How long does it take to write an opera?"

"Well, Rossini used to knock one off in three weeks, when he was in form. It can also take any number of years. The one sure thing is that you have to live and eat while you're doing it. If I'm to do this, I must give up all teaching -- not that it brings in much -- I'd have to give up everything else -- bits of film work, editing, the lot. I'm a fairly rapid worker, but an opera is a back-breaker -- worse than a symphony in lots of ways. And the costs can be staggering; copying the parts can eat up a packet. The Association is long on prestige, short on cash. I can't expect help from them."

"Would your mother help?"

"I've asked her, and she has sent me fifty pounds and a lecture, saying that there will be no more, and couldn't I find a professorship in a conservatoire, or something. The worst of it is, Raikes are getting rough about the Lantern bill and I had to give them the fifty to keep them quiet."

"Giles, with this on hand, you'll have to give up Lantern."

"That is what I positively refuse to do. Nothing would please Aspinwall better. He wants to kill Lantern, and I am not going to oblige him."

"Giles, listen to me. Do you really think Lantern is so good? Why must you sacrifice to it? Because it is a sacrifice. People I know say it's -- only one of a lot of small magazines, and not the best, except for your things; everyone agrees they're wonderful. Why can't you give it up?"

"Because it is a personal mouthpiece which I value. I know that a lot of the stuff in it is tripe; do you suppose I really thrill to the off-key twanglings of Bridget Tooley's lyre? Or even to Tuke's tosh? You can't tell me anything about Lantern that I don't know. But I have said my say in it for four long years and I want to go on. I might have dropped it if Aspinwall had not so clearly revealed that he wants me to do so, but I shall keep it on to spite him, even if the opera goes up the flue in the process. No, if I write The Golden Asse, it must be done with Lantern still in existence."

"The Golden Asse? Is that what it's called? You have a story?"

"I have one of the oldest and best stories in the world; it is The Golden Asse, by Lucius Apuleius. I have been haunted by it since boyhood, and any operatic jottings I have done, have been done with it in mind."

They talked long and eagerly, for Giles was off his guard as Monica had never known him to be. He was enthusiastic; he forgot to play the genius; he was -- she was ashamed of herself for admitting the phrase, even mentally -- almost human. But talk as they might, the ground never changed. He wanted to write his opera: he must somehow get money to live while doing so, and to pay the heavy costs involved: he would not give up Lantern because he was convinced that somewhere in London a malignant demon named Stanhope Aspinwall was consumed with the desire that he should do so.

"But it's lunatic," cried Monica, in exasperation; "I don't suppose Aspinwall really gives a damn."

"I know what I'm talking about," said Revelstoke, and as he seemed about to close himself up in his unapproachable character again, she let that matter drop.

Of course this conversation led at last to the pokey bedroom, where Monica, for the first time in her life, really enjoyed what passed -- enjoyed it not because it gave pleasure to Giles, or because it was a sign that she held some place in his life, or because it was a proof of her freedom, but because it gave pleasure to herself, and because it was herself, and not Persis, to whom he had confided his great news. It was plain enough that Giles needed her.

He should need her more. Monica conceived a great plan. She would find the money which should make possible the writing of The Golden Asse.

[NINE].

Her first proposal was that she should go to Sir Benedict, and ask him to lend Giles enough money to keep him going for a year. Giles vetoed this plan at once; his attitude toward Domdaniel was an unpredictable mingling of admiration for his great gifts as a conductor, and contempt for his success. "I'm not going to give it to him to say that he made it possible for me to write anything," said he; "if I'm to have a patron it won't be Brummagem Benny." And from this position he would not budge. It was pride, and Monica admired him for it, though she could not have analysed it.

Nevertheless, if she could not go to Domdaniel, Monica's list of possible patrons was at an end. She knew no moneyed people. She confided her trouble to Bun Eccles, as they sat in The Willing Horse.

"Why don't you finance it yourself?" he asked.

"Me?" said Monica, incredulous.

"Well, Monny, you know your own affairs best, but you look to me like a pretty flush type."

"Oh, Bun, I'm a church mouse. I've always been poor. I mean, Dad had to leave school at sixteen, and we've always just managed, you know. All I've got now is this scholarship thing."

"It seems to amount to a good deal. You've got some pretty expensive clothes, Monny, and all kinds of costly junk in that flat at Ma Merry's. Are you sure you're really poor, or are you just one of those people who assume that they're poor? Have you ever gone without a meal? Ever had less than two pair of shoes? I have, often, but I don't consider myself poor. I mean, I'm not telling you what you should do. I'm just asking. But the menagerie thinks you're rolling."

It took Monica a full two days to comprehend this, but in the end she was forced to admit to herself that she was not really poor -- was, indeed, very well situated. She had all her bills paid; she could buy things on tick; she got five hundred a year, now, as pin-money. The idea was breath-taking; she did not want to be well-off -- that was something one said of people against whom one felt an honest working man's grudge. People who had more than enough money (with a few splendid exceptions like Domdaniel) were for that very reason morally suspect. But at last she accepted the reality of her situation.

Once again she sought Eccles' advice, and then began such a complication of chicanery as Monica had never dreamed possible. Eccles had a genius for the finance of desperation, and assuming that she wanted as much money as possible, he gave himself a free hand. Within a week he had sold her expensive radiogramophone and her collection of records. ("They are going to Mr Revelstoke's for a time," she explained to Mrs Merry, and the landlady was impressed.) He sold some of her personal luggage, including the fitted case which she had been given by the Thirteeners; it was gone before she realized what was happening. He persuaded her to dispose of quite a large part of her wardrobe. He even got ninepence for War and Peace, which had been unopened for fifteen months. All this was done in an ecstasy of haggling and what he called "flogging".

"This clothes caper is absolutely endless, Monny," he explained. "We can go on and on. You buy a few smart things every month, charge 'em, wear 'em once and turn 'em over to me. I flog 'em. Good for eight or ten quid. These lawyers aren't going to snoop through your cupboard. Go right ahead till they squawk."

Well, thought Monica, Sir Benedict said they wanted me to spend more money.

She had a few pounds in hand, left from the money she had received for her visit to Paris. Eccles pounced on it.

"You can save a lot on food," said he, "and you'd better let me have a look at your gas-meter. Those things eat shillings. There's a little jigger inside that controls how much you get for a bob; I'll just bring over a tool I have, and put yours right. I don't doubt Ma Merry's been swindling you; the only fair thing is to make an adjustment right now. Pity you don't have your own electric light meter; I've a sweet little trick with a magnet that does wonders with one of those. Still, can't be helped. Oh, you'd be amazed what money you can raise when you know how!"

Monica was indeed amazed, and the uneasiness she felt was shouted down by her pleasure in being able to put a substantial sum of money -- nearly two hundred pounds -- in Giles Revelstoke's hand. He was delighted.

"You're keeping me!" he shouted.

"No, no; it's a loan, or an investment, or something like that. You mustn't mind."

"But I don't mind. I love it. I've never been kept by a woman before."

The situation seemed to gratify something perverse to him. He knew how Monica came by the money, and he delighted in calling it "her immoral earnings". But she very soon discovered that it had been a mistake to give him the money, for he had no idea of how to keep it, or use it sparingly. He did not want things for himself, particularly, but he gave Raikes Bros, another fifty pounds on the Lantern account, and he gave a party for the menagerie, to whom he confided, as the best joke in the world, that he was now Monica's kept man. Monica was so torn between shame and exultation that, for the first time in her life, her digestion troubled her. All the better, said Bun Eccles; she'd want less to eat.

The menagerie thought it all wonderful, and Tuke and Tooley courted Monica embarrassingly, seeing in her the saviour of Lantern. It was true that Miss Tooley, who kept Tuke (but in a sublimated, disciple-like way), made a few veiled references to the iniquity of diverting trust funds: and it was also true that Tuke, who was deeply hurt because he was not to make the libretto of The Golden Asse (which Giles was adapting himself) was a little bitter about artists who sold themselves for money. Persis was jealous, because she could not afford to keep Giles; it would have been such a sell for her straight-laced parents if they had discovered that she kept a man. But she shut up when Eccles suggested to her that she might try her luck on Piccadilly, and put her earnings into the general fund. Though there were under-currents, it was accepted among them that Monica was a heroine.

Eccles had no money, but he gave his talent to the acquirement and husbanding of anything that Monica could lay her hands on. There was only one source of income which he ruled out.

Odingsels approached Monica one evening, and sitting beside her, so that his unpleasant head was very close to hers, said: "If you really want money, I can always pay you for work -- though I can't afford to contribute anything for nothing. But I do figure studies -- the nude, you know -- oh, nothing unpleasant and very well thought of by judges; the right models are always a problem, and it so happens that you have an excellent figure, of just the sort I require. You know me, Monica, and I am sure you have no silly ideas about such things. I could run to ten guineas a sitting, and I could make use of you quite often."

Monica was willing; after all, if Persis could take off her clothes for Odingsels, so could she. But Eccles was firm.

"No you don't," said he.

"But he says it's not dirty pictures. And it's ten guineas a time. I don't mind. Why, Bun, you know you employ models yourself. What's the fuss?"

"Monny, some day that fellow is going to be in very bad trouble. And when he is, you don't even want to know about him, see? Now don't argue. You're not going to do it."

And although Monica was rebellious, she obeyed.

The fact was that the small engagements and sources of income which Giles gave up to work on his opera -- some examination of manuscripts for a music publisher, some arranging of music for the BBC, scores for documentary films, and some occasional critical writing outside Lantern -- might have brought him twenty pounds or so a month. Monica was providing him with about twice that sum, but it all vanished without anybody seeming to be better off. The same hand-to-mouth methods of finance continued; for Monica, who understood the management of money best, was not asked to take charge of it. Nor did it ever seriously occur to her that it should be so.

Monica never thought of herself as keeping Giles; she thought of it as financing the creation of The Golden Asse, which went swimmingly. Giles worked very hard, and during the time when he should have been teaching her (and he was still sending his bills to Domdaniel for her lessons) she kept up her work for Lantern, and provided him with food, comfort and companionship in bed. But other people thought of the situation quite differently, as she discovered within a few weeks.

Ripon had written to her soon after their meeting in Oxford, to ask her to go with him to the Vic-Wells Ball; he had been asked to go with a party, and wanted a partner. She grudged the money for the costume-hire, but when Ripon called for her, not very happily disguised as a toreador, she was ready in an outfit which included a large panniered skirt and a tricorne hat, which the costumier called a Venetian Domino.

The ball was held in the Albert Hall, not very far from Courtfield Gardens, and when they arrived the floor was well filled with those characters inseparable from such occasions. There were soldiers and sailors of all sorts, whole tribes of gypsies, Harlequins and Columbines in all shades, and platoons of Pierrots; there were fifteen or twenty head of Mephistopheleses, and quite as many Gretchens; Cavaliers and Roundheads abounded. These were the staples, the bread-and-butter, of disguise. In addition there were the lazy people who had come as monks, or simply as robed figures, and the over-zealous people who had come in costumes so ingenious and original that they could neither sit down nor dance, but wandered the floor smirking self-consciously, and hoping to be admired. The saddest of these was a gentleman whose costume consisted of a clever arrangement of Old Vic and Sadler's Wells programmes; people kept stopping him to read the fine print, and to debate about what it said, quite as if he were not inside it. There were homosexuals in pairs and singly, their eyes -- they hoped -- speaking volumes to understanding hearts. A few Lesbians swaggered menacingly in very masculine costumes, smacking their riding-boots with whips. A pitiful little man, dressed with loving care to resemble Nijinsky in L'Apres Midi d'un Faune, crept about in a contorted posture, meant to remind the beholder of the best-known picture of the great dancer in that part; but it was pathetically apparent that he had a crooked spine. Like all costume balls, it was a fascinating study in self-doubt, self-assurance, thwarted ambition, self-misprision, well-meaning ineptitude and, very occasionally, imagination or beauty.

Monica found it dull. A year ago she would have exulted in such an affair, but tonight she thought it rather silly, and was annoyed that Ripon had to wear his spectacles with his costume if he were not to trip over things and tumble on the stairs.

When he had gone to fetch drinks, she stood in one of the upper corridors, wondering how soon it would be before she could decently ask to be taken home. She was conscious that the door of a box near her had been opening and shutting indecisively, but she was taken unawares when a stumpy Mephistopheles burst from it, seized her arm, and dragged her inside. They were at the back of the box, which was otherwise unoccupied, and at a little distance, over the railing, the full rampaging splendour of The Veleta was to be seen. The Mephistopheles snorted within his mask for a moment, then seized Monica and kissed her.

She was too surprised to resist, conscious chiefly of the hot-buckram-and-glue smell of the mask, and when the Mephistopheles clutched at her again, she stumbled backward into a chair, bearing him down with her.

"It's about time," snorted the figure, in a Cork accent which could only belong to one person known to Monica.

"Mr Molloy!" she cried.

"You'd better call me Murtagh," said the Mephistopheles, tearing off his mask, and showing a very red face. "We've some business together, my girl, that's waited long enough." He made another dart forward and thrust his hand deep into the bosom of the Venetian Domino. It was an inexpert move, too vigorous; the hooks on the back of her gown burst, and his hand stopped not far from Monica's stomach. She seized his arm and removed it.

"Whatever is wrong," said she. "Are you ill?"