'You'll fall in love,' I said.
'Oh, pray not. I say, do you think I could have another of those scrumptious meringues?'
BOOK THREE
A TWITCH UPON THE THREAD
[1]
MY theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.
These memories, which are my life - for we possess nothing certainly except the past - were always with me. Like the pigeons of St Mark's, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning of war-time.
For nearly ten dead years after that evening with Cordelia I was borne along a road outwardly full of change and incident, but never during that time, except sometimes in my painting - and that at longer and longer intervals - did I come alive as I had been during the time of my friendship with Sebastian. I took it to be youth, not life, that I was losing. My work upheld me, for I had chosen to do what I could do well, did better daily, and liked doing; incidentally it was something which no one else at that time was attempting to do. I became an architectural painter.
More even than the work of the great architects, I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation, while time curbed the artist's pride and the Philistine's vulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman. In such buildings England abounded, and, in the last decade of their grandeur, Englishmen seemed for the first time to become conscious of what before was taken for granted, and to salute their achievement at the moment of extinction. Hence my prosperity, far beyond my merits; my work had nothing to recommend it except my growing technical skill, enthusiasm for my subject, and independence of popular notions.
The financial slump of the period, which left many painters without employment, served to enhance my success, which was, indeed, itself a symptom of the decline. When the water-holes were dry people sought to drink at the mirage. After my first exhibition I was called to all parts of the country to make portraits of houses that were soon to be deserted or debased; indeed, my arrival seemed often to be only a few paces ahead of the auctioneer's, a presage of doom.
I published three splendid folios - Ryder's Country Seats, Ryder's English Homes, and Ryder's Village and Provincial Architecture, which each sold its thousand copies at five guineas apiece. I seldom failed to please, for there was no conflict between myself and my patrons, we both wanted the same thing. But, as the years passed, I began to mourn the loss of something I had known in the drawing-room of Marchmain House and once or twice since, the intensity and singleness and the belief that it was not all done by hand - in a word, the inspiration.
In quest of this fading light I went abroad, in the augustan manner, laden with the apparatus of my trade, for two years' refreshment among alien styles. I did not go to Europe; her treasures were safe, too safe, swaddled in expert care, obscured by reverence. Europe could wait. There would be a time for Europe, I thought; all too soon the days would come when I should need a man at my side to put up my easel and carry my paints; when I could not venture more than an hour's journey from a good hotel; when I should need soft breezes and mellow sunshine all day long; then I would take my old eyes to Germany and Italy. Now while I had the strength I would go to the wild lands where man had deserted his post and the jungle was creeping back to its old strongholds.
Accordingly, by slow but not easy stages, I travelled through Mexico and Central America in a world which had all I needed, and the change from parkland and hall should have quickened me and set me right with myself. I sought inspiration among gutted palaces and cloisters embowered in weed, derelict churches where the vampire-bats hung in the dome like dry seed-pods and only the ants were ceaselessly astir tunnelling in the rich stalls; cities where no road led, and mausoleums where a single, agued family of Indians sheltered from the rains. There in great labour, sickness, and occasionally in some danger, I made the first drawings for Ryder's Latin America. Every few weeks I came to rest, finding myself once more in the zone of trade or tourism, recuperated, set up my studio, transcribed my sketches, anxiously packed the complete canvases, dispatched them to my New York agent, and then set out again, with my small retinue, into the wastes.
I was in no great pains to keep in touch with England. I followed local advice for my itinerary and had no settled route, so that much of my mail never reached me, and the rest accumulated until there was more than could be read at a sitting. I used to stuff a bundle of letters into my bag and read them when I felt inclined, which was in circumstances so incongruous swinging in my hammock, under the net, by the light of a storm-lantern; drifting down river, amidships in the canoe, with the boys astern of me lazily keeping our nose out of the bank, with the dark water keeping pace with us, in the green shade, with the great trees towering above us and the monkeys screeching in the sunlight, high overhead among the flowers on the roof of the forest; on the veranda of a hospitable ranch, where the ice and the dice clicked, and a tiger cat played with its chain on the mown grass - that they seemed voices so distant as to be meaningless; their matter passed clean through the mind, and out leaving no mark, like the facts about themselves which fellow travellers distribute so freely in American railway trains.
But despite this isolation and this long sojourn in a strange world, I remained unchanged, still a small part of myself pretending to be whole. I discarded the experiences of those two years with my tropical kit and returned to New York as I had set out. I had a fine haul - eleven paintings and fifty odd drawings and when eventually I exhibited them in London, the art critics many of whom hitherto had been patronizing in tone, as my success invited, acclaimed a new and richer note in my work. Mr Ryder, the most respected of them wrote, rises like a fresh young trout to the hypodermic injection of a new culture and discloses a powerful facet in the vista of his potentialities....By focusing the frankly traditional battery of his elegance and erudition on the maelstrom of barbarism, Mr Ryder has at last found himself.
Grateful words, but, alas, not true by a long chalk. My wife, who crossed to New York to meet me and saw the fruits of our separation displayed in my agent's office, summed the thing up better by saying: 'Of course, I can see they're perfectly brilliant and really rather beautiful in a sinister way, but somehow I don't feel they are quite you.'
In Europe my wife was sometimes taken for an American because of her dapper and jaunty way of dressing, and the curiously hygienic quality of her prettiness; in America she assumed an English softness and reticence. She arrived a day or two before me, and was on the pier when my ship docked.
'It has been a long time,' she said fondly when we met.
She had not joined the expedition; she explained to our friends that the country was unsuitable and she had her son at home. There was also a daughter now, she remarked, and it came back to me that there had been talk of this before I started, as an additional reason for her staying behind. There had been some mention of it, too, in her letters.
'I don't believe you read my letters,' she said that night, when at last, late, after a dinner party and some hours at a cabaret, we found ourselves alone in our hotel bedroom.
'Some went astray. I remember distinctly your telling me that the daffodils in the orchard were a dream, that the nursery-maid was a jewel, that the Regency four-poster was a find, but frankly I do not remember hearing that your new baby was called Caroline'. Why did you call it that?'
'After Charles, of course.'
'I made Bertha Van Halt godmother. I thought she was safe for a good present. What do you think she gave?'
'Bertha Van Halt is a well-known trap. What?'
'A fifteen shilling book-token. Now that Johnjohn has a companion - '
'Who?'
'Your son, darling. You haven't forgotten him, too?'
'For Christ's sake,' I said, 'why do you call him that?'
'It's the name he invented for himself. Don't you think it sweet? Now that Johnjohn has a companion I think we'd better not have any more for some time, don't you?'
'Just as you please.'
'Johnjohn talks of you such a lot. He prays every night for your safe return.'
She talked in this way while she undressed with an effort to appear at ease; then she sat at the dressing table, ran a comb through her hair, and with her bare back towards me, looking at herself in the glass, said: 'Shall I put my face to bed?'
It was a familiar phrase, one that I did not like; she meant should she remove her make-up, cover herself with grease and put her hair in a net.
'No,' I said, 'not at once.'
Then she knew what was wanted. She had neat, hygienic ways for that too, but there were both relief and triumph in her smile of welcome; later we parted and lay in our twin beds a yard or two distant, smoking. I looked at my watch; it was four o'clock, but neither of us was ready to sleep, for in that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
'I don't believe you've changed at all, Charles.'
'No, I'm afraid not.'
'D'you want to change?'
'It's the only evidence of life.'
'But you might change so that you didn't love me any more.'
'There is that risk.'
'Charles, you haven't stopped loving me.'
'You said yourself I hadn't changed.'
'Well, I'm beginning to think you have. I haven't.'
'No,' I said, 'no; I can see that.'
'Were you at all frightened at meeting me today?'
'Not the least.'
'You didn't wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else in the meantime?'
'No. Have you?'
'You know I haven't. Have you?'
'No. I'm not in love.'
My wife seemed content with this answer. She had married me six years ago at the time of my first exhibition, and had done much since then to push our interests. People said she had 'made' me, but she herself took credit only for supplying me with a congenial background; she had firm faith in my genius and in the 'artistic temperament', and in the principle that things done on the sly are not really done at all.
Presently she said: 'Looking forward to getting home?' (My father gave me as a wedding present the price of a house, and I bought an. old rectory in my wife's part of the country.) 'I've got a surprise for you.'
'Yes?'
'I've turned the old barn into a studio for you, so that you needn't be disturbed by the children or when we have people to stay. I got Emden to do it. Everyone thinks it a great success.
There was an article on it in Country Life; I bought it for you to see.'
She showed me the article: '...happy example of architectural good manners...Sir Joseph Emden's tactful adaptation of traditional material to modern needs...'; there were some photographs; wide oak boards now covered the earthen floor; a high, stone-mullioned bay-window had been built in the north wall, and the great timbered roof, which before had been lost in shadow, now stood out stark, well lit, with clean white plaster between the beams; it looked like a village hall. I remembered the smell of the place, which would now be lost.
'I rather liked that barn.' I said.
'But you'll be able to work there, won't you?'
'After squatting in a cloud of sting-fly,' I said, 'under a sun which scorched the paper off the block as I drew, I could work on the top of an omnibus. I expect the vicar would like to borrow the place for whist drives.'
'There's a lot of work waiting for you. I promised Lady Anchorage you would do Anchorage House as soon as you got back. That's coming down, too, you know - shops underneath and two-roomed flats above. You don't think, do you, Charles, that all this exotic work you've been doing, is going to spoil you for that sort of thing?'
'Why should it?'
'Well, it's so different. Don't be cross.'
'It's just another jungle closing in.'
'I know just how you feel, darling. The Georgian Society made such a fuss, but we couldn't do anything...Did you ever get my letter about Boy?'
'Did I? What did it say?'
('Boy' Mulcaster was her brother.)
'About his engagement. It doesn't matter now because it's all off, but father and mother were terribly upset. She was an awful girl. They had to give her money in the end.'
'No, I heard nothing of Boy.'
'He and Johnjohn are tremendous friends, now. It's so sweet to see them together. Whenever he comes the first thing he does is to drive straight to the Old Rectory. He just walks into the house, pays no attention to anyone else, and hollers out: "Where's my chum Johnjohn?" and Johnjohn comes tumbling downstairs and off they go into the spinney together and play for hours. You'd think, to hear them talk to each other, they were the same age. It was really Johnjohn who made him see reason about that girl; seriously, you know, he's frightfully sharp. He must have heard mother and me talking because next time Boy came he said: "Uncle Boy shan't marry horrid girl and leave Johnjohn," and that was the very day he settled for two thousand pounds out of court. Johnjohn admires Boy so tremendously and imitates him in everything. It's so good for them both.'
I crossed the room and tried once more, ineffectively, to moderate the heat of the radiators; I drank some iced water and opened the window, but, besides the sharp night air, music was borne in from the next room where they were playing the wireless. I shut it and turned back towards my wife.
