Portraits and Passions

September — By Frank Swinnerton

Perhaps it is owing to the composure and deliberation of Mr. Swinnerton's style in this his new novel that we are sensible of a slight chill in the air long before Marion Sinclair discovers that she is in the September of her life. We are given, at the very outset, a full-length and highly finished portrait of her: Portrait of a Lady, œtat. thirty-eight—blond, beautiful, extraordinarily reserved, ‘completely, it seemed, mistress of herself in every emergency.’ She has been married for fifteen years to a wealthy City man whom she knows thoroughly well and is clever enough not to despise. She is childless and without relatives or page 85 intimate friends, but in the country, where she spends the greater part of the year, her neighbours find her mysterious enough and sympathetic enough to make them wish to confide in her, even while they feel ‘rather ashamed in her company of their own silliness and passion for excitement.’ Fond of flowers, enthusiastic over her bees, a good tennis-player, playing the piano with a sensitive touch, though without technical equipment enough for Chopin's Ballade in A Flat—does the author mean to be cruel or to be kind in thus describing her? We are never wholly certain, but having her thus framed and glazed, we are rather acutely conscious of his task when he proceeds to turn the lady into flesh and blood.

The first shock administered is a slight but unexpected one. Offering her husband the cigarettes one evening: ‘What are they?’ he demanded. ‘Two-toed-Twins?’ And she realizes almost immediately that the silly name is a joke he has with another woman, and that he is being unfaithful to her…. ‘She is a little resentful.’ Then some neighbours come to dinner, bringing with them a nephew, Nigel Sinclair, a handsome young man of twenty-six, with a very ardent, naive way of talking that stirs her strangely…. Finally, two young people come to visit her, one of whom, Cherry Mant, a girl of twenty, is of the very nature of Spring. She is not gentle May, but rather early April, or even late March—for there are moments when she is wild and treacherous—a little savage, trying to destroy her own flowers, a little fury, with a needle of ice unmelted in her heart. But there are other moments when she is Beauty, untouched and unbroken, smiling at the sun and at Marion and Marion's husband. The ideas, emotions and suggestions that she evokes in Marion seem inexhaustible; she might be the first young woman whom the older woman had ever encountered. Every glance of hers is a surprise and a wonder, and when Marion discovers her locked in her husband's arms, her astonishment is not particular; it is all a part of her endless astonishment. Cherry, on her side, is drawn to Marion. She page 86 has a longing to confide in the older woman, to try and explain her puzzling self, to try and find out why she is Cherry, but nothing comes out of these intense, emotional dialogues; Cherry is still baffling, and Marion is still wise:

‘Aren't I funny!’ whispered Cherry. ‘You're not funny.’

‘At any rate I'm not unfunny,’ protested Marion.

These words occur at the close of one of their most poignant interviews. There is no hint from the author that he does not mean them to be taken au grand sérieux, but we shudder to consider how many female conversations have ended on precisely that note.

On the very day that Cherry and Howard are discovered together, to comfort Marion's pride comes Nigel Sinclair. He is young, he is twenty-six, and he admires her. He never thinks of her as old—only as ‘wonderful’—and so September defies Spring. Love comes to Marion, ardent, burning love; her quiet untroubled summer is over. The leaves are touched with gold, but it is not yet Autumn; there is a brilliance in these late flowers that mocks the other blossoms of the year. And yet there is an anguish, too, a bitterness. Through it all she is haunted by the vision of Cherry. How can Cherry live so lightly—love so lightly? Be one thing to-day and another to-morrow? Is she evil, is she a ‘wanton,’ or just a child, or just a young creature helpless because there has never been anyone to help her? Marion cannot decide, but it is as though Cherry has stolen her peace of mind and will not say where she has hidden it away, and Marion is too proud to ask. And in some strange way it is because of Cherry that Marion denies Nigel when he asks her to prove her love. Then begins her real agony. She has never known what it was to love ‘like this.’ How could she have known. It is September love—the late love that women are supposed to long for and to dread. And when her misery is at its height, Nigel comes to tea and she offers him one of the fatal cigarettes.

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‘Hullo!’ he cried in a puzzled way. ‘Do you smoke old Two-toed-Twins?’

It is Cherry's name for them. When Marion recovers from this final shock, she begins, as it were, to step back into her frame. She decides, after ‘a frenzy of jealousy,’ that Cherry and Nigel are meant for each other, and it is only through her recovered sympathy and understanding that they are saved from drifting apart.

‘So marriage will be very difficult for you, and it's only if you try hard to be considerate, and find your happiness in Nigel's happiness, that the marriage will succeed….’

These are among her final words, and we feel they are just what she would have spoken before she stepped out of her frame. They are the words of advice given by the Portrait of a Lady, œtat. thirty-eight, blond, beautiful, and with enough air of mystery to invite confidences…. In her frame she could not be more convincing, but out of it—do such ladies ever escape? Do they not rather step into other frames? Portrait of a Lady in Love, Portrait of a Jealous Lady—and then a whole succession of ‘problem’ portraits: Nigel lighting a Two-toed-Twin cigarette with Marion looking on, and Howard and Cherry embracing in the wood with Marion looking through the leaves. They are most carefully, most conscientiously painted, but we are not held. What has happened to Marion, to Nigel, Cherry and Howard? Nothing. They have weathered the storm, and dawn finds them back again in the same harbour from which they put out—none the worse or the better for their mock voyage. We cannot help recalling the words of an old-fashioned Music Professor: ‘My child, leave the “expression” out, you are playing a study. One does not put “expression” into studies.’ Is it possible that Mr. Swinnerton even ever so slightly agrees with him—or would like to agree with him? And what do we mean page 88 exactly by that word ‘expression’? Can we afford to leave it out of a page, of a paragraph—after Tchehov?