A Severed Head Read Free Page B

scandals. Her marriage to me, when it came, was a sensation.
    I was not sure at the time, and am still not sure, whether I was precisely what Antonia wanted, or whether she didn ’ t take me simply because she felt it was time to take somebody. However that may be, we were formidably happy; and for quite a long time, handsome clever couple that we were, we were everyone ’ s darlings. So for a while everything was for me at a standstill and I was absorbed completely into the delightful task of being Antonia ’ s husband. When I as it were came round, emerged, that is, from the warm golden haze of those honeymoon years, I found that certain roads were closed to me. My father had died meanwhile, and I settled down to being a wine-merchant, still and even here feeling myself something of an amateur and none the worse for that; and although my conception of myself had somewhat altered, I did not stop feeling happy. After all, as Antonia ’ s husband I could not be other than happy.
    Let me now attempt to describe Antonia. She is a woman long accustomed to admiration, long accustomed to think of herself as beautiful. She has long goldenish hair - I prefer women with long hair - which she wears usually in an old-fashioned knot or bun, and indeed ‘ golden ’ is the best general epithet for her appearance. She is like some rich gilded object over which time has cast the moonlit pallor of a gentle veneer; or in a more effective simile one might compare her to the water-haunted sunlight on an old pavement in Venice, for there is always something a little fluid and shivering, a little mobile and tremulous about Antonia. She has, especially of late, aged, her face taking on that look which is sometimes described as ‘ ravaged ’ and which I notice is usually applied when, as in this case, there is a slight drooping and discomposing of essentially fine features. To my mind such a look can be, and is in the case of Antonia, exceedingly moving and attractive, composing a dignity which was not to be found in the same face when younger. Antonia has great tawny-coloured intelligent searching eyes and a mobile expressive mouth which is usually twisted into some pout of amusement or tender interest. She is a tall woman, and although always a little inclined to plumpness has been called ‘ willowy ’ , which I take as a reference to her characteristic twisted and unsymmetrical poses. Her face and body are never to be discovered quite in repose.
    Antonia has a sharp appetite for personal relations. She is an intense and passionate woman and has passed for this reason for being humourless, though this latter charge in fact is false. Antonia, like me, has no religion; but she achieves what might be called religiosity in relation to certain beliefs. She holds that all human beings should aspire towards, and are within working distance of, a perfect communion of souls. This creed, which borrows as little from popular Oriental cults as it does from Antonia ’ s vestigial Christianity, may best be described as a metaphysic of the drawing-room. In the form in which Antonia holds it, it is original to her, although I can discern its statelier predecessor in Antonia ’ s now frail but resolutely exquisite mother with whom I have maintained a tenuous but gallant relationship. Antonia ’ s undogmatic apprehension of an imminent spiritual interlocking where nothing is withheld and nothing hidden certainly makes up in zeal for what it lacks in clarity. The mere presence of such a belief in a woman, particularly in a beautiful woman, tends of course to create a rich centripetal eddy of emotion round about her, thereby providing itself with an immediate pragmatic verification; and in the early days particularly people were always falling in love with Antonia and wanting to tell her all their troubles. I had no objection to this, as it eased some of my anxieties about her welfare by making her happier than if she had had no soul to commune with but