The Well of Loneliness
And thus, very gradually just at first, Mary’s finer perceptions began to coarsen.
3
THE MONTHS passed, and now more than a year had slipped by, yet Stephen’s novel remained unfinished; for Mary’s face stood between her and her work—surely the mouth and the eyes had hardened?
Still unwilling to let Mary go without her, she dragged wearily round to the bars and cafés, observing with growing anxiety that Mary now drank as did all the others—not too much perhaps, but quite enough to give her a cheerful outlook on existence.
The next morning she was often deeply depressed, in the grip of a rather tearful reaction: ‘It’s too beastly—why do we do it?’ she would ask.
And Stephen would answer: ‘God knows I don’t want to, but I won’t let you go to such places without me. Can’t we give it all up? It’s appallingly sordid!’
Then Mary would flare out with sudden anger, her mood changing as she felt a slight tug on the bridle. Were they to have no friends? she would ask. Were they to sit still and let the world crush them? If they were reduced to the bars of Paris, whose fault was that? Not hers and not Stephen’s. Oh, no, it was the fault of the Lady Annas and the Lady Masseys who had closed their doors, so afraid were they of contamination!
Stephen would sit with her head on her hand, searching her sorely troubled mind for some ray of light, some adequate answer.
4
THAT winter Barbara fell very ill. Jamie rushed round to the house one morning, hatless, and with deeply tormented eyes: ‘Mary, please come—Barbara can’t get up, it’s a pain in her side. Oh, my God—we quarrelled …’ Her voice was shrill and she spoke very fast: ‘Listen—last night—there was snow on the ground, it was cold—I was angry … I can’t remember … but I know I was angry—I get like that. She went out—she stayed out for quite two hours, and when she came back she was shivering so. Oh, my God, but why did we quarrel, whatever? She can’t move; it’s an awful pain in her side …’
Stephen said quietly: ‘We’ll come almost at once, but first I’m going to ring up my own doctor.’
5
BARBARA was lying in the tiny room with the eye-shaped window that would not open. The stove had gone out in the studio, and the air was heavy with cold and dampness. On the piano lay some remnants of manuscript music torn up on the previous evening by Jamie.
Barbara opened her eyes: ‘Is that you, my bairn?’
They had never heard Barbara call her that before—the great, lumbering, big-boned, long-legged Jamie.
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Come here close …’ The voice drifted away.
‘I’m here—oh, I’m here! I’ve got hold of your hand. Look at me, open your eyes again—Barbara, listen, I’m here—don’t you feel me?’
Stephen tried to restrain the shrill, agonized voice: ‘Don’t speak so loud, Jamie, perhaps she’s sleeping’; but she knew very well that this was not so; the girl was not sleeping now, but unconscious.
Mary found some fuel and lighted the stove, then she started to tidy the disordered studio. Flakes of flue lay here and there on the floor; thick dust was filming the top of the piano. Barbara had been waging a losing fight-strange that so mean a thing as this dust should, in the end, have been able to conquer. Food there was none, and putting on her coat Mary finally went forth in quest of milk and other things likely to come in useful. At the foot of the stairs she was met by the concierge; the woman looked glum, as though deeply aggrieved by this sudden and very unreasonable illness. Mary thrust some money into her hand, then hurried away intent on her shopping.
When she returned the doctor was there; he was talking very gravely to Stephen: ‘It’s double pneumonia, a pretty bad case—the girl’s heart’s so weak. I’ll send in a nurse. What about the friend, will she be any good?’
‘I’ll help with the nursing if she isn’t,’ said Mary.
Stephen said: ‘You do understand about the bills—the nurse and all that?’
The doctor nodded.
They forced Jamie to eat: ‘For Barbara’s sake … Jamie, we’re with you, you’re not alone, Jamie.’
She peered with her red-rimmed, short-sighted eyes, only half understanding, but she did as they told her. Then she got up without so much as a word, and went back to the room with the eye-shaped window. Still in silence she squatted on the floor by the bed, like a dumb, faithful dog who endured without speaking. And they let her alone, let her have her poor way, for this was not their Calvary but Jamie’s.
The nurse arrived, a calm, practical woman: ‘You’d better lie down for a bit,’ she told Jamie, and in silence Jamie lay down on the floor.
‘No, my dear—please go and lie down in the studio.’
She got up slowly to obey this new voice, lying down, with her face to the wall, on the divan.
The nurse turned to Stephen: ‘Is she a relation?’
Stephen hesitated, then she shook her head.
‘That’s a pity, in a serious case like this I’d like to be in touch with some relation, some one who has a right to decide things. You know what I mean—it’s double pneumonia.’
Stephen said dully: ‘No—she’s not a relation.’
‘Just a friend?’ the nurse queried.
‘Just a friend,’ muttered Stephen.
6
THEY went back that evening and stayed the night. Mary helped with the nursing; Stephen looked after Jamie.
‘Is she a little—I mean the friend—is she mental at all, do you know?’ The nurse whispered, ‘I can’t get her to speak—she’s anxious, of course; still, all the same, it doesn’t seem natural.’
Stephen said: ‘No—it doesn’t seem natural to you.’ And she suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. Dear God, the outrage of this for Jamie!
But Jamie seemed quite unconscious of outrage. From time to time she stood in the doorway peering over at Barbara’s wasted face, listening to Barbara’s painful breathing, and then she would turn her bewildered eyes on the nurse, on Mary, but above all on Stephen.
‘Jamie—come back and sit down by the stove; Mary’s there, it’s all right.’
Came a queer, halting voice that spoke with an effort: ‘But …Stephen … we quarrelled.’
‘Come and sit by the stove—Mary’s with her, my dear.’
‘Hush, please,’ said the nurse, ‘you’re disturbing my patient.’
7
BARBARA’S fight against death was so brief that it hardly seemed in the nature of a struggle. Life had left her no strength to repel this last foe—or perhaps it was that to her he seemed friendly. Just before her death she kissed Jamie’s hand and tried to speak, but the words would not come—those words of forgiveness and love for Jamie.
Then Jamie flung herself down by the bed, and she clung there, still in that uncanny silence. Stephen never knew how they got her away while the nurse performed the last merciful duties.
But when flowers had been placed in Barbara’s hands, and Mary had lighted a couple of candles, then Jamie went back and stared quietly down at the small, waxen face that lay on the pillow; and she turned to the nurse:
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, ‘I think you’ve done all that there is to do—and now I suppose you’ll want to be going?’
The nurse glanced at Stephen.
‘It’s all right, we’ll stay. I think perhaps—if you don’t mind, nurse …’
‘Very well, it must be as you wish, Miss Gordon.’
When she had gone Jamie veered round abruptly and walked back into the empty studio. Then all in a moment the floodgates gave way and she wept and she wept like a creature demented. Bewailing the life of hardship and exile that had sapped Barbara’s strength and weakened her spirit; bewailing the cruel dispensation of fate that had forced them to leave their home in the Highlands; bewailing the terrible thing that is death to those who, still loving, must look upon it. Yet all the exquisite pain of this parting seemed as nothing to an anguish that was far more subtle: ‘
I can’t mourn her without bringing shame on her name—I can’t go back home now and mourn her,’ wailed Jamie; ‘oh, and I want to go back to Beedles, I want to be home among our own people—I want them to know how much I loved her. Oh God, oh God! I can’t even mourn her, and I want to grieve for her home there in Beedles.’
What could they speak but inadequate words: ‘Jamie, don’t, don’t! You loved each other—isn’t that something? Remember that, Jamie.’ They could only speak the inadequate words that are given to people on such occasions.
But after a while the storm seemed to pass, Jamie seemed to grow suddenly calm and collected: ‘You two,’ she said gravely, ‘I want to thank you for all you’ve been to Barbara and me.’
Mary started crying.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Jamie.
The evening came. Stephen lighted the lamp, then she made up the stove while Mary laid the supper. Jamie ate a little, and she actually smiled when Stephen poured her out a weak whisky.
‘Drink it, Jamie—it may help you to get some sleep.’
Jamie shook her head: ‘I shall sleep without it—but I want to be left alone to-night, Stephen.’
Mary protested but Jamie was firm: ‘I want to be left alone with her, please—you do understand that, Stephen, don’t you?’
Stephen hesitated, then she saw Jamie’s face; it was full of a new and calm resolution: ‘It’s my right,’ she was saying, ‘I’ve a right to be alone with the woman I love before they—take her.’
Jamie held the lamp to light them downstairs—her hand, Stephen thought, seemed amazingly steady.
8
THE NEXT morning when they went to the studio quite early, they heard voices coming from the topmost landing. The concierge was standing outside Jamie’s door, and with her was a young man, one of the tenants. The concierge had tried the door; it was locked and no one made any response to her knocking. She had brought Jamie up a cup of hot coffee—Stephen saw it, the coffee had slopped into the saucer. Either pity or the memory of Mary’s large tips, had apparently touched the heart of this woman.
Stephen hammered loudly: ‘Jamie!’ she called, and then again and again: ‘Jamie! Jamie!’
The young man set his shoulder to a panel, and all the while he pushed he was talking. He lived just underneath, but last night he was out, not returning until nearly six that morning. He had heard that one of the girls had died—the little one—she had always looked fragile.
Stephen added her strength to his; the woodwork was damp and rotten with age, the lock suddenly gave and the door swung inwards.
Then Stephen saw: ‘Don’t come here—go back, Mary!’
But Mary followed them into the studio.
So neat, so amazingly neat it was for Jamie, she who had always been so untidy, she who had always littered up the place with her large, awkward person and shabby possessions, she who had always been Barbara’s despair … Just a drop or two of blood on the floor, just a neat little hole low down in her left side. She must have fired upwards with great foresight and skill—and they had not even known that she owned a revolver!
And so Jamie who dared not go home to Beedles for fear of shaming the woman she loved, Jamie who dared not openly mourn lest Barbara’s name be defiled through her mourning, Jamie had dared to go home to God—to trust herself to His more perfect mercy, even as Barbara had gone home before her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
1
THE TRAGIC deaths of Barbara and Jamie cast a gloom over everyone who had known them, but especially over Mary and Stephen. Again and again Stephen blamed herself for having left Jamie on that fatal evening; if she had only insisted upon staying, the tragedy might never have happened, she might somehow have been able to impart to the girl the courage and strength to go on living. But great as the shock undoubtedly was to Stephen, to Mary it was even greater, for together with her very natural grief, was a new and quite unexpected emotion, the emotion of fear. She was suddenly afraid, and now this fear looked out of her eyes and crept into her face when she spoke of Jamie.
‘To end in that way, to have killed herself; Stephen, it’s so awful that such things can happen—they were like you and me.’ And then she would go over every sorrowful detail of Barbara’s last illness, every detail of their finding of Jamie’s body.
‘Did it hurt, do you think, when she shot herself? When you shot that wounded horse at the front, he twitched such a lot, I shall never forget it—and Jamie was all alone that night, there was no one there to help in her pain. It’s all so ghastly; supposing it hurt her!’
Useless for Stephen to quote the doctor who had said that death had been instantaneous; Mary was obsessed by the horror of the thing, and not only its physical horror either, but the mental and spiritual suffering that must have strengthened the will to destruction.
‘Such despair,’ she would say, ‘such utter despair … and that was the end of all their loving. I can’t bear it!’ And then she would hide her face against Stephen’s strong and protective shoulder.
Oh, yes, there was now little room for doubt, the whole business was preying badly on Mary.
Sometimes strange, amorous moods would seize her, in which she must kiss Stephen rather wildly: ‘Don’t let go of me, darling—never let go. I’m afraid; I think it’s because of what’s happened.’
Her kisses would awaken a swift response, and so in these days that were shadowed by death, they clung very desperately to life with the passion they had felt when first they were lovers, as though only by constantly feeding that flame could they hope to ward off some unseen disaster.
2
AT THIS time of shock, anxiety and strain, Stephen turned to Valérie Seymour as many another had done before her. This woman’s great calm in the midst of storm was not only soothing but helpful to Stephen, so that now she often went to the flat on the Quai Voltaire; often went there alone, since Mary would seldom accompany her—for some reason she resented Valérie Seymour. But in spite of this resentment Stephen must go, for now an insistent urge was upon her, the urge to unburden her weary mind of the many problems surrounding inversion. Like most inverts she found a passing relief in discussing the intolerable situation; in dissecting it ruthlessly bit by bit, even though she arrived at no solution; but since Jamie’s death it did not seem wise to dwell too much on this subject with Mary. On the other hand, Valérie was now quite free, having suddenly tired of Jeanne Maurel, and moreover she was always ready to listen. Thus it was that between them a real friendship sprang up—a friendship founded on mutual respect, if not always on mutual understanding.
Stephen would again and again go over those last heartrending days with Barbara and Jamie, railing against the outrageous injustice that had led to their tragic and miserable ending. She would clench her hands in a kind of fury. How long was this persecution to continue? How long would God sit still and endure this insult offered to His creation? How long tolerate the preposterous statement that inversion was not a part of nature? For since it existed what else could it be? All things that existed were a part of nature!
But with equal bitterness she would speak of the wasted lives of such creatures as Wanda, who, beaten down into the depths of the world, gave the world the very excuse it was seeking for pointing at them an accusing finger. Pretty bad examples they were, many of them, and yet—but for an unforeseen accident of birth, Wanda might even now have been a great painter.
And then she would discuss very different people whom she had been led to believe existed; hard-working, honourable men and women, but a few of them possessed of fine brains, yet lacking the courage to admit their inversion. Honourable, it seemed, in all things save this that the world had forced on them—this dishonourable lie whereby alone they could hope to find peace, could hope to stake out a claim on existence. And always these people must carry that lie like a poisonous asp pressed against their bosoms; must unworthily hide and deny their love, which might well be the finest thing about them.
And what o
f the women who had worked in the war—those quiet, gaunt women she had seen about London? England had called them and they had come; for once, unabashed, they had faced the daylight. And now because they were not prepared to slink back and hide in their holes and corners, the very public whom they had served was the first to turn round and spit upon them; to cry: ‘Away with this canker in our midst, this nest of unrighteousness and corruption!’ That was the gratitude they had received for the work they had done out of love for England!
And what of that curious craving for religion which so often went hand in hand with inversion? Many such people were deeply religious, and this surely was one of their bitterest problems. They believed, and believing they craved a blessing on what to some of them seemed very sacred—a faithful and deeply devoted union. But the church’s blessing was not for them. Faithful they might be, leading orderly lives, harming no one, and yet the church turned away; her blessings were strictly reserved for the normal.
Then Stephen would come to the thing of all others that to her was the most agonizing question. Youth, what of youth? Where could it turn for its natural and harmless recreations? There was Dickie West and many more like her, vigorous, courageous and kind-hearted youngsters; yet shut away from so many of the pleasures that belonged by right to every young creature—and more pitiful still was the lot of a girl who, herself being normal, gave her love to an invert. The young had a right to their innocent pleasures, a right to social companionship; had a right, indeed, to resent isolation. But here, as in all the great cities of the world, they were isolated until they went under; until, in their ignorance and resentment, they turned to the only communal life that a world bent upon their destruction had left them; turned to the worst elements of their kind, to those who haunted the bars of Paris. Their lovers were helpless, for what could they do? Empty-handed they were, having nothing to offer. And even the tolerant normal were helpless—those who went to Valérie’s parties, for instance. If they had sons and daughters, they left them at home; and considering all things, who could blame them? While as for themselves, they were far too old—only tolerant, no doubt because they were ageing. They could not provide the frivolities for which youth had a perfectly natural craving.