<SPAN name="VII"></SPAN><h2>VII</h2>
<h3>THE MASTERPIECE</h3>
<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Harold Child</span></i>]</h4>
<p>He sat in front of his writing-table with a blank sheet of paper in
front of him—a creamy, virginal sheet, inviting and elusive. "A few
black smudges and the whole of life might be there," he thought,
"concentrated but limited with four corners and no boundaries." He
thought of the untouched whiteness of the paper violated by a
masterpiece—or a love letter. He didn't want to think of love letters.
He had written such hundreds, and for four years now they had all been
to the same person. His fidelity had been due, he supposed, to the fact
that to him she was almost more an idea than an individual, a legend
that he had created. She was his faith, his religion, his shrine. She
was on a pedestal from which she shed a pale gold light—silvery
gold—of serenity won through suffering. He saw her very seldom, but
when he was with her she reminded him of a catch in the voice. It was as
if her life had reached breaking point and for one moment she would give
him as divine gift a little poignant stumble before she regained the
sure foothold of her calm courage. It was these precious moments that
gave a burning spirit to his image of her. The legend had a soul.</p>
<p>But to-day he didn't want to think of her. He wanted to work. The word
made him smile a little. There had been a time when ideas had seized
hold of him and driven him recklessly wherever they wanted him to go.
Then he had made form his fetish and it had become his prison. Now he
had lost both his abandon and his rigidity and with each, a certain
driving force had been taken away from him. He would sit in front of his
table and remember that all the masterpieces of the world are contained
in the alphabet and it would prevent him from writing. And then he would
think of her and that would mean writing to her or writing for her. In a
sense, everything he wrote was "To her." He remembered the first time
that he had dared to write her a letter without a beginning. His pen had
trembled in his hand. And yet it is the way all borderland letters
begin, whether the frontier is between acquaintanceship and friendship,
or between friendship and love. For there are moments in life when if
you can't say "My own Blessed," you can say nothing—omission is the
substitute for the absolute. Only with her, formality was a flavouring
of intimacy, a curious fragrance like a faint clinging of unseen
pot-pourri. And so, for a long time after he had sent her his first
endless, beginningless out-pouring, her letters had begun, "Dear
Mr. ——" and had ended very tidily, with a signature at the bottom of a
page.</p>
<p>He had dedicated his first novel to her,—"To Mrs. ——" The dedication
had pleased him. It was so immensely full of reserve and respect and the
possibility of other things. A little, locked box of a dedication. It
had pleased her, too. "It is a lovely dedication," she had said with
that smile she had, which was like a peeping glimmer of sunshine on a
grey day.</p>
<p>He had always gone on dedicating his books to her. His collection of
poems had been called "To Jane"—which was not her name, but his name
for her—a deep, clear name, resolute and courageous, calm and direct
and sure. A still name. He wondered if any one had ever given to another
human being as much as he had given her. Or perhaps it was no longer a
question of giving. Everything came from her and belonged to her. She
was the womb of his thoughts and feelings. She was his roots in life and
his blossoming. She was the only fixed point in the chaotic muddle of
things, giving a certain reality to the world simply by being in it.</p>
<p>He hardly ever saw her. He couldn't bring himself to force his way
through the labyrinthine tangle of circumstances that surrounded her. It
was as if by doing so, he could only reach her mud-spattered and chipped
and bedraggled, an unworthy, battered object. And so he preferred her to
live in his heart, warming and watering his imagination, glowing in
cold, dark places, gilding the tips of his fancies, fertilising his
soul. He hardly wanted her outside in the physical world. But when she
was with him, he felt a deep serenity, an absolute harmony of life.
Questions and questionings seemed remote and frivolous, the useless
paraphernalia of empty lives. There came, with her, a fullness, a sense
of completion.</p>
<p>He sat and thought of her and gradually he shut his eyes and imagined
her coming into the room. Her movements would be very slow and
deliberate and a little tired, as if gently, almost imperceptibly, she
were laying down the burden of her life and allowing herself, just for a
few moments, the luxurious restfulness of fatigue. Slowly she would pull
off her long, clinging gloves and he would hold his breath with joy as
she unsheathed her marvelous arms and hands. And then very tenderly, he
would lift them to his lips, one by one, laying them down on her lap
again where he could see them. And they would smile at one another—a
faint smile hers would be, seen as it were, through the veils of her
exquisite reticencies. And then because she knew it made him happy, she
would take off her hat and release the shimmer of her silvery gold hair,
a halo made of sunshine and moonlight, inextricably interwoven. She
always gave him a feeling of gold and silver and luminous whiteness, a
steady radiance that illuminated without blinding. And perhaps she would
sink her head back into a cushion and shut her eyes with a little
grateful sigh to these moments of respite, and he would watch her, proud
beyond measure to be able to give her these little patches of peace. And
between them there would be a fullness of silence. Sometimes she would
talk a little with a low, clear, echoless voice like a note without a
pedal. A still voice—monotonous, people called it—with almost
imperceptible modulations which seemed gradually deeply significant as
your ear became attuned to them, like a dim room in which you are able
to see everything when your eye is accustomed to the light.</p>
<p>It was one of the altogether satisfying things about her, this abundant
treasure of intimacy which could not be guessed at or even suspected by
the ordinary passer-by. "That is the woman with the lovely hair? I never
know what to talk to her about," he had heard people say, and
exultantly, reverently, he had pressed her image to his heart. She never
talked much. Seeing her in imagination to-day, he saw her leaning back,
everything about her drooping and relaxed, her arms, her hands, her
feet—they had all abdicated—only from the depths of her infinite
tiredness she was smiling faintly and her smile was the dedication of
this moment to him. Every now and then she would ask him a question and
he would answer—rather shortly—or she would make a statement which he
would seal with a monosyllable. There were never any comments between
them. In the absoluteness of their understanding, explanations and
amplifications had become impossible.</p>
<p>And she would get up slowly, giving herself a little shake to wake
herself up into reality while he gave her her hat, her hat-pins, her
veil, her gloves, her bag, one by one, and taking her hands, he would
kiss them first on the backs and then on the palms and then give them
too back to her.</p>
<p>And she would say, "Thank you," and look slowly all round the room, as
she always did, wanting to take it away with her without one detail
missing, for it was to this room that her soul retreated in its moments
of unbearable loneliness.</p>
<p>With difficulty, she would make her way to the door and rather
hurriedly, because she knew it was a weakness—she who was so deliberate
and so strong—she would say, "Write to me," and then she would open and
shut the door herself because she liked to take away the picture of him
standing in the middle of his sanctuary—her sanctuary....</p>
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<p>He opened his eyes. The room was so full of her that he took a deep
breath, breathing the certainty of her into his soul. And he seemed to
hear the words, "Write to me." He smiled very tenderly. He loved her to
have this one little wish—she was so far above and beyond concrete
manifestations—she who had such a deep contempt for imprisoning forms.
And he remembered her once looking at a cheque and saying, "The figures,
after all, are a limitation." And suddenly in front of him he saw the
blank sheet of paper. "She shall have the most wonderful love-letter
ever written by man to woman," he said to himself and at the very bottom
of the page, he put one initial. Then very tenderly he folded it up and
addressed it, remembering that it was thus that his first novel had been
dedicated—"To Mrs. ——." "The difference is," he thought, "that this is
a masterpiece."</p>
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