Within the bodies of such people what unknown senses might there not be
developed? Well, it might very well be that a young woman, such as John
Webster was trying to fancify into existence, that on such evenings
such a young woman might be lying quietly in a bed in an upper chamber
of one of the houses along the dark street. One went in at the open
door of the house and taking up the lamp went to her. One could fancy
the lamp itself as a thing of beauty too. There was a small ring-like
arrangement through which one slipped the finger. One wore the lamp
like a ring on the finger. The little flame of it was like a jewel
shining in the darkness.
One went up the stairs and softly into the room where the woman was
lying on the bed. One held the lamp above one’s head. Its light shone
into one’s eyes and into the eyes of the woman. There was a long slow
time when the two just remained so, looking at each other.
There was a question being asked. “Are you for me? Am I for you?”
People had developed a new sense, many new senses. People saw with
their eyes, smelled with their nostrils, heard with their ears. The
deeper-lying, buried-away senses of the body had been developed too.
Now people could accept or dismiss one another with a gesture. There
was no more slow starvation of men and women. Long lives did not
have to be lived during which one knew, and then but faintly, a few
half-golden moments.
* * * * *
There was something about all this having fancies closely connected
with his marriage and with his life since his marriage. He was trying
to make that clear to his daughter but it was difficult.
There had been that moment once, when he had gone into the upper room
of a house and had found a woman lying before him. There had been a
question come suddenly and unexpectedly into his own eyes and it had
found a quick eager answer in hers.
And then--the devil, it was hard to get things straight! In some way a
lie had been told. By whom? There had been a poison he and the woman
had breathed together. Who had blown the cloud of poison vapor into the
air of that upper bed-chamber?
The moment had kept coming back into the mind of the young man. He
walked in streets of strange towns having thoughts of coming into the
upper bed-chamber of a new kind of womanhood.
Then later he went to the hotel and sat for hours writing letters. To
be sure he did not write out the fancies he had been having. O, had he
but had the courage to do that! Had he but known enough to do that!
What he did was to write the word “love,” over and over rather
stupidly. “I went walking and I thought of you and I loved you so. I
saw a house I liked and I thought of you and me living in it as man and
wife. I am sorry I was so stupid and blundering when I saw you that
other time. Give me another chance and I will prove my ‘love’ to you.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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