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The Painted Lilies
From a Collection of Crowley's Plays and Scenarios
Paris. Alfred de Moret, 40, unmarried, already world-famous for his novels, realistic-romantic, his philosophy, cynical-subtle, and his contempt for the women who peter him. One of these, a notoriously fast mondaine, repulsed by him, forces her husband to insult and challenge him.
He is introduced to the screen at the beginning of this duel (swords). The husband is disarmed and dishonourably dismissed. Alfred at once becomes immersed in a book as he walks home through the forest. A pretty country girl meets him, and tries to flirt. Alfred literally takes to his heels. In his library he finds an old friend waiting, and makes a scene about women's persistence. Alfred's servant is shown telling the story of the duel to a journalist. The friend laughs “He jots at scars that never felt a wound.” Alfred picks up a letter from the top of his pile of mail.
“There's only one woman I respect! We've been writing to each other these three years and she never slops over.”
He shows her photograph. The face is strong and intellectual. Her hair is brushed straight back from high brows; she wears pince-nez, and severely cut high-necked black dress with a doctor's robe over it. A mortar board is on the table by her side; and in her hands is an electrical instrument of her own invention.
“How did you get to know her?”
She is introduced to the screen. She is at her home in California, sitting on her verandah in a dressing gown. It is night; she is reading one of Alfred's novels by a lamp. She jumps up, paces; presently writes a letter.
“Science is only one method of filing facts. You philosophers are less orderly but less superficial. Your last book has given me the key to a great problem. But I want further light ——— won't you tell me your views on ———, etc?”
The friend: “That was three years ago?” Alfred: “I can see her now!”
Fancy-picture: she is working — the film is speeded up. “You inspire her; that's dangerous.”
A Month Later. Jean Miller in her study. She is reading a letter of Alfred's and seems disturbed and annoyed. She looks at his pictures, where he is thoughtfully reading. She shakes her fist. The maid brings a budget of papers, Jean, restless, picks one up, then another, and comes presently to a ‘Sunday page’ about the duel, with lots of spiteful remarks that he has made about women.
“I can't believe it; he writs so charmingly to me. If I thought ———” her womanhood menaces him, subconsciously.
Six Weeks Elapse. Jean is in her laboratory, in despair about her work. “Science has hand and eye; it lacks nerve and mind. I wish ———”
Alfred at home: midnight; he is dishevelled, haggard, excited. He runs to a table and scrawls furiously, then tears the sheets, He breathes on a mirror.
“I feel the breath of Truth in me; but I need to demonstrate it to the senses.”
He sees Jean's picture — goes wild with delight; pounds on the bell, rouses a sleepy servant, writes telegram:
“I have the secret I have sought these ten years. I need your collaboration to devise experimental proof. Will you come?” “Yes. Make definite appointment.”
Alfred in trouble; he reflects that it won't do at all, that the papers will make fun of him — and her too. He will go away quietly to some unfrequented spot.
“Nearly midsummer — I think I can hardly do better than Tunis.” He tells servant to lie to all inquiries. The servant takes the telegram, and calls at the office of Le Potin to give the news. The editor details a reporter to follow Alfred.
The telegram reads: “I shall leave Marseille by the boat of June 21. If you arrive first, meet it; otherwise I will meet all boats as they come in. Wire me Posts Restante Tunis, though, the date you sail.”
Alfred leaves for Marseilles with a day or two to spare. On the train is an old friend, Bax, an English cavalry colonel, whom he has not seen for fifteen years. Bax is smart and looks thirty.
(Scene of last meeting: Bax obviously the elder man.)
Alfred feels ashamed of his untidiness, which makes him look more than his due 40. They dine together: he confesses. “Not vanity or coxcombry; women plague me; but I realise how good you must feel. Alert, self-confidant!”
“Keeps a man from getting slack about his body.” “Mind too. I'll spruce up.”
Alfred at the barber's, hatter's, haberdasher's, bootmaker's. He comes out looking a well preserved man of 28. Instead of straggling moustache, untidy beard, lank hair, he has a soldier's tooth-brush, a clean chin, neat curls arranged to hide the bald streak. Instead of the low collar and artist's scarf, he has a tall stiff collar and a four-in-hand with a horseshoe pin. He carries lavender gloves and a very long gold topped cane. His hat is straw instead of shapeless felt. He has new white trousers, and pointed buckskin shoes and open work socks.
Bax, amazed, amused, approving. “Now you're ready to meet her!” “Her” Alfred storms. Bax: “I know you don't know it, but your real reason was the peacock's.”
(The reporter has spied on all this, of course.)
Alfred at steamer office. No berth on the boat! but there's one a day earlier. That suits him. He asks if she is booked on the boat: she is not.
Jean arrives in Paris: stays with a cousin, Rue de la Paix.
“And I've missed all this for a row of old test-tubes!”
Her friend, Comtesse de la Barre, very mondaine and smart, urges her to dress at Poiret's. Jean hesitates: “I won't risk Alfred's friendship and respect. I won't look like other women.”
“You won't, my dear, with those eyes and brows. Nut men either see a woman's dress, and like it to be beautiful; or they don't, in which case no harm's done.”
Her friend warns her that France is not California; she must either have a chaperone, or travel incognita. She calls herself Lucy Ford. She goes to steamer office in Paris; decides to go by the one which, in fact, he is sailing.
“I'll get there first and meet him. 'Twill give me a day to look around and settle. Appearances may not count; but I don't want his first impression to be a travel-worn person, probably still sea-sick.”
She wires him at Tunis, as arranged. They travel together. He sticks to the smoking room and the men. Neither suspects the other's presence.
Jean at Tunis in a hotel. Alfred the guest of the Cercle Militaire. She meets the boat next day: he isn't there! He goes to the Post Office: no wire. They have got Soret for Moret, and its lying in the S folder.
A Week Passes. No sight or sound of Jean. He can't even wore her anywhere nearer than California. Alfred — already angry and puzzled — at the Club; Le Potin arrives from Paris. There is a long sarcastic story, with pictures, of how the famous woman-scorner has gone off to meet one, made himself look pretty, and got left on the beach!
Ridicule maddens him; he starts to drink. Damn all women! says he; Jean is as bad as the rest. But as for Le Potin, I'll show 'em. He gambles and drinks all night, and in the morning finds a new insult in the papers:
“AMERICAN GIRL AVENGES HER SEX.”
He rages through the Arab town, accosts an old negress, proposes and drags her off to the cathedral. Various officials oppose the marriage; he only brings it off after several stormy and comic scenes.
Of course he can't stay at the Club; he motors off to La Goulette, sobers up, and begins to be sorry he spoke.
This strange wedding excites even the Tunis papers, and Jean realizes that some big misunderstanding has taken place. Also, a sudden pang makes her aware that she really loves him.
The reporter has been trying vainly to identify her, finds her at this juncture, and asks for an interview. She says there is no romance in the affair at all; it is pure science; but she finds out where he is, and decides to watch him from the front row of the stalls.
She takes a room at his hotel; the negress is of course pensioned to stay in the background. She meets him: they fall desperately in love. The reporter, still on the job, snapshots them bathing. Alfred catches him, comes out, knocks him down, drags him in and ducks him. “That won't kill my story.”
“Your damned interference has robbed me of my one woman friend; don't dare meddle with the one woman I love!” The man stares; then roars with laughter. “You damned ass! don't you know that woman is Jean Miller?”
The recognition: Jean bolts. Alfred is in collapse. The reporter repents: “I've made a mess: I'll clean it up.”
That night he talks to the negress, urges her to insist on a wife's rights, gets her to make a scene by claiming him at dinner. Then he goes round the corner and brings a man — her husband — with a shriek; “She's always running off with men, drat her!”
Alfred, reviving, starts in pursuit of Jean, finds her in Paris, and proposes to her. She refuses: her friends have mocked her till she hates him for the scandal he has caused her. But the Comtesse insists that she can't go back unmarried; an American fiend from the Embassy confirms it. She'll be ostracized. She decides to turn the tables on him, marries him, slips away from the wedding breakfast, gets into a waiting car, puts on widow's weeds with a thick veil, and gets back to California.
Again the doctor's robe, the hair brushed back, the battery of test tubes! She opens her note book, writes, needs to refer to her library, pulls out a thick book: one of his letters falls out. She stamps on it, tears it up, then collapses in tears.
Alfred too has shut himself up, and will see nobody. He cannot work; he takes out her old letters, kisses a photograph she gave him in Tunis. He decides to write to California with a “Please forward if away” on the envelope.
“I understand how my silly temper and vanity has ended by wrecking your my life. I understand that your hurt pride can never forgive my crazy insult. I am broken; but no matter for me! Remember, though, we met in order to work together to give mankind a gift. Mankind is more than our pretty selves; I am not ashamed to ask you to join me in that work.”
She answers: “Amen to that! We'll meet half way this time, and take no chance of missing. Meet me at noon on Christmas Day in the Hall of the Waldorf-Astoria.”
“Waldorf-Astoria Hall, Christmas Day. Noon.”
She starts to pack, eyes her glad clothes with sad desire, shakes her head. She pulls out her Red Cross costume. “What he needs is a nurse!”
He eyes his barber wistfully. “No: what she wants is a Roman Father!”
Epilogue
Her house. He is writing his book. She runs in from the laboratory, holding a tube in triumph. A servant announces dinner. Arm-in-arm, they go down, and on the stairs meet the nurse, who is taking the baby to bed.
[Added later by Crowley in pencil: “Nurse produces black baby to horror of adepts. Explained this is only a patient or model.”)
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