Honeycomb · Chapter 3 (3/3)

She struggled in thought to discover why it was she felt that these people did not read books and that she herself did. She felt that she could look at the end, and read here and there a little and know; know something, something they did not know. People thought it was silly, almost wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it spoilt a book, there was something wrong about the book. If it was finished and the interest gone when you know who married who, what was the good of reading at all? It was a sort of trick, a sell. Like a puzzle that was no more fun when you had found it out. There was something more in books than that⁠ ⁠… even Rosa Nouchette Carey and Mrs. Hungerford, something that came to you out of the book, any bit of it, a page, even a sentence⁠—and the “stronger” the author was the more came. That was why Ouida put those others in the shade, not, not, not because her books were improper. It was her, herself somehow. Then you read books to find the author! That was it. That was the difference⁠ ⁠… that was how one was different from most people.⁠ ⁠… Dear Eve; I have just discovered that I don’t read books for the story, but as a psychological study of the author⁠ ⁠… she must write that to Eve at once; tomorrow. It was rather awful and strange. It meant never being able to agree with people about books, never liking them for the same reasons as other people.⁠ ⁠… But it was true and exciting. It meant⁠ ⁠… things coming to you out of books, people, not the people in the books, but knowing, absolutely, everything about the author. She clung to the volume in her hand with a sense of wealth. Its very binding, the feeling of it, the sight of the slender serried edges of the closed leaves came to her as having a sacredness⁠ ⁠… and the world was full of books.⁠ ⁠… It did not matter that people went about talking about nice books, interesting books, sad books, “stories”⁠—they would never be that to her. They were people. More real than actual people. They came nearer. In life everything was so scrappy and mixed up. In a book the author was there in every word.

Why did this strange book come so near, nearer than any others, so that you felt the writing, felt the sentences as if you were writing them yourself? He was a sad pained man, all wrong; bothered and tragic about things, believing in sad black horror. Then why did he come so near? Perhaps because life was sad. Perhaps life was really sad. No; it was somehow the writing, the clearness. That was the thing. He himself must be all right, if he was so clear. Then it was dangerous, dangerous to people like Mrs. Corrie and Joey who would attend only to what he said, and not to him⁠ ⁠… sadness or gladness, saying things were sad or glad did not matter; there was something behind all the time, something inside people. That was why it was impossible to pretend to sympathise with people. You don’t have to sympathise with authors; you just get at them, neither happy nor sad; like talking, more than talking. Then that was why the people who wrote moral stories were so awful. They were standing behind the pages preaching at you with smarmy voices.⁠ ⁠… Bunyan?⁠ ⁠… No.⁠ ⁠… He preached to himself too⁠ ⁠… crying out his sins.⁠ ⁠… He did not get between you and himself and point at a moral. An author must show himself. Anyhow, he can’t help showing himself. A moral writer only sees the mote in his brother’s eye. And you see him seeing it.

A long letter to Eve.⁠ ⁠… Eve would think that she was showing off. But she would be excited and interested too, and would think about it a little. If only she could make Eve see what a book was⁠ ⁠… a dance by the author, a song, a prayer, an important sermon, a message. Books were not stories printed on paper, they were people; the real people;⁠ ⁠… “I prefer books to people”⁠ ⁠… “I know now why I prefer books to people.”

“… I do wish you’d tell me more about your extraordinary days. You must have extraordinary days. I do. Perhaps everyone has. Only they don’t seem to know it!”

… This morning, the green common lying under the sun, still and wide and silent; with a little breeze puffing over it; the intense fresh green near the open door of the little Catholic church; the sandy pathway running up into the common, hummocky and twisting and winding, its sand particles glinting in the sun, always there, going on, whoever died or whatever happened, winding amongst happy greenery, in and out amongst the fresh smell of the common. Inside the chapel the incense streaming softly up, the seven little red lamps hanging in the cloud of incense about the altar; the moving of the thick forest of embroidery on the cope of the priest. Funny when he bobbed, but when he just moved quietly, taking a necessary step, all the colour of the forest on his cope moving against the still high wide colours of the chancel. If only anyone could express how perfect life was at those moments; everyone must know, everyone who was looking must know that life was perfectly happy. That is why people went to church; for those moments with the light on all those things in the chancel. It meant something.⁠ ⁠… Priests and nuns knew it all the time; even when they were unhappy; that was why they could kiss dying people and lepers; they saw something else, all the time. Nothing common or unclean. That was why Christ had blazing eyes. Christianity: the sanctification of bread and wine, and lepers and death; the body; the resurrection of the body. Even if there was some confusion and squabbling about Christ there must be something in it if the things that showed were so beautiful.

Hard cold vows, of chastity and poverty. That did it. Emptiness, in face of⁠—an unspeakable glory. If one could not, was too weak or proud, “Verily they have their reward.” Everyone got something somehow⁠ ⁠… in hell; thou art there also⁠ ⁠… that shows there is no eternal punishment. Earth is hell, with everyone going to heaven.

What was the worldly life? The gay bright shimmering lunch, the many guests, the glitter of the table, mayonnaise red and green and yellow, delicate bright wines; strolling in the woods in the afternoon.⁠ ⁠… Tea, everyone telling anecdotes of the afternoon’s walk as if it were a sort of competition, great bursts of laughter and abrupt silences and then another story, the moments of laughter were something like those moments in church; whilst there was nothing but laughter in the room everybody was perfectly happy and good; everybody forgot everything and ran back somewhere; to the beginning, to the time when they were first looking at things, without troubling about anything. But when the laughter ceased everyone ran away and the rest of their day together showed in a flash, an awful tunnel that would be filled with the echo of the separate footsteps unless more laughter could be made, to hide the sad helpless sounds. Dinners were like all the noise and laughter of teatime grown steadier, a pillow fight with harder whacks and more time for the strokes, no bitterness, just buffeting and shouts, and everyone laughing the same laugh as if they were all in some high secret. They were in some high secret; the great secret of the worldly life; and if you prevented yourself from thinking and laughed, they seemed to take you in. That was the way to live the worldly life. To talk absurdly and laugh; to be lost in laughter. Why had Mrs. Corrie seemed so vexed? Why had she said suddenly and quietly in the billiard-room that it seemed rummy to go to Mass and play billiards in the evening? “Be goody if you are.” It had spoiled the day. Mrs. Corrie would like her to be goody. But then it was she who had pushed her down the steps in the afternoon and called after the actor to take care of her in the woods.

There was something too sad about the worldliness and too difficult about goodness.

Perhaps one had not gone far enough with worldliness.⁠ ⁠…

“Take each fair mask for what it shows itself,

Nor strive to look beneath it.”

That was what she had done drifting about in the wood with the actor listening to his pleasant voice. It was an excursion into pure worldliness. He had never thought for a moment in his life of the world as anything than what it appeared to be. He had no suspicion that anyone ever did. He had accepted her as one of the house-party and talked, on and on busily, about his American tour and his hope of a London engagement, getting emphatic about his chance, the chanciness of everything. And she had drifted along, delighting in the pleasant voice sounding through the wood, seeing the wood clear and steady through the pleasant tone, not caring about chance or chanciness but ready to pretend she was interested in them so that the voice might go on; pretending to be interested when he stopped. That was feminine worldliness, pretending to be interested so that pleasant things might go on. Masculine worldliness was refusing to be interested so that it might go on doing things. Feminine worldliness then meant perpetual hard work and cheating and pretence at the door of a hidden garden, a lovely hidden garden. Masculine worldliness meant never being really there; always talking about things that had happened or making plans for things that might happen. There was nothing that could happen that was not in some way the same as anything else. Nobody was ever quite there, realising.