He had looked forward to the nights. The open theater, garlanded in
paper lanterns, the carrousel with its comical rugose rounds of music,
the dance-halls by the sea where the salt air swooned in the invasion of
shuffled feet, of perfume, of pop and beer. The silent stretches away
from the lights where he could see the couples under the moon
discovering love, finding for once glad uses for their bodies. All this
Tom loved, and for it had come.... There was the solemn jay decked in
white duck trousers who walked as close as he dared to the girl in
frills, with her face simpering down toward her languid feet. [How far
her puff sleeves kept him off, how dangerous a sealing of adventure to
take her hands! And her lips? Could he have them without the sea rocking
upon them and wiping out the future?] Tom would dance with the prettiest
girl he could find--then with the ugliest: and chuckle as he discovered
the law of compensation unobserved. “She has less looks, no more sense.”
He would be hero to a gang of boys, buying them soda and ice-cream:
confidant of the pendulous matron in virginal crinolines who believed
him when he said that he was sure she could dance: you must not let your
daughters bully you, madam, into being old!... Then aloof, watching the
prides, the passions, the innumerable nonsenses collect, become a
single human clutter, astir in a flare of lights, a ribboning of banal
music, a haze of sweaty odors.... Once more about him silence and at his
feet a Sea--musing in its moveless might as if it were all the heavens,
all the stars made through some portent palpable to him. It lay there
aloof like truth. And he its master since it lay also in his brain. The
crowds he had left were a sputter of sand fallen on the sea and gone.
So, once. Now nothing of all this. The world had fooled him. Ashes were
in his mind. Yet he could not leave his mind and the world. Ten days Tom
moved in this numbness....
Sudden, he went to the station, and sent a wire to David, returned to
his hotel, paid his bill. The message was:
“I am coming home. Save supper for me. Will call for you.”
... He had a sense that if he visited the bay it would be sweet and
fertile like a young woman who is warm with the breathing of her body:
that if he had stayed to dinner at the hotel, the women’s chatter would
amuse him, the naughtiness of the children under the frowns of their
mothers shine like snatches of song. For he was on the train....
A heavy heated day met him in the City: one of those laden evenings when
the air has lost its resilience to throw off the fetid waste poured by
the turmoil of life. All that the millions, in grips with the materials
of work, have thrown impure into the air remained for the millions to
breathe.
But Tom was in high spirits. His ferry had moored him on the west edge
of Manhattan an hour before the time to dine. In this coincidence of his
train--the one good train to catch after his sudden resolution--he read
a happy omen. He would have time to wash at a hotel. He had no fears
because of the short notice of his message. David had few engagements
beyond occasional visits to his family, very few indeed whose urgency
would prevail against the urgency of Tom’s wire.
The thought of that urgency. Why was he so pressed to see his friend? He
felt no need of explaining to himself. That part of him which appraised
explanations seemed content without one--a strange thing in Tom--seemed
willing to nod, to say: “Yes. No need of further words. You wanted to
see him.” But what of the explanation to make to David? He might think
the lack of one peculiar?... Something just above his ears, in the back
of his head, cracked with a swift report like a cleavage in deep ice. It
was an instant: it had not hurt. During it, this thought, marvelously
elaborate and clear, touched light: he would tell the truth: he would
take David to their favorite café--down steps on Sixth Avenue under the
booming elevated structure--where his proprietary waiter, Charles,
designed him dinners, according to the weather, according to the look in
his face, without questions. There they would sit--he would say: “I
missed you, David. My vacation was a failure without you. I had to come
back to New York to see you.” Simple enough, and honest. Yet it had
cleaved some icy armor in his brain in order to get free. David would
blush. He was so droll, so like a girl with his ready blushing. And what
would David answer? Tom walked along with his elastic bound. He was a
little like a pony pacer--a svelte small one. David had had the simile.
But above the sharpness of his steps, he swam in a mist of fantasy. He
believed that his mind would compress this mist, make it clear solid
fact. His mind seemed averse--indolent. Perhaps after all, it could not.
An illusion of the mist perhaps that it had the substance of the
fact-to-be. Tom saved himself from this conclusion: “Don’t live it
now.... There’ll be nothing left after you’ve done imagining.” A faint
reverberance set in: reaction. “Why should I not tell him I was anxious
to see him? Truth is essential with a boy like David. I can’t give him
any _other_ reason.” The steps of David’s lodging house were a bit
steep.
He found himself outside the door. He was afraid to open. He knocked. He
did not think it right to be so ceremonious. He entered.
David was there. Tom went forward with the slain feelings the occasion
had given birth to. What he saw was a blight that had drawn the life of
his coming. What remained, talking, moving, was a ghost. David was not
alone. With him some friend.
“Farmer was alone. I happened to meet him coming up. I knew you would
not mind, Tom, if he came along.”
“Of course--of course not”
Tom knew that soon he would understand. In order to be polite, he had
better delay the moment. Perhaps, he could put it off till he was rid of
these two fellows.
“Where shall we go. I’m hungry.” David seemed satisfied. He had worried
a little perhaps? David put on his straw hat with a despicable slap of
his palm.
“Where you say. It makes no difference to me.”
Their favorite café--and Charles? David suggested. Tom nodded.
It was a hilarious dinner. Actually. Tom helped it. The Farmer person
had an aptitude for puns. He told them with a Carolina accent. Tom knew
of him, that he wore a straggly ribbon for a tie--gray and brown--tucked
like a shoe-string into the yellow edge of his collar. He knew also that
the collar button showed--it was black bone--and an adam’s-apple: that
the shirt bulged and was half stiff, and wrinkled. Tom knew no more
because his eyes rose no higher and no lower. They remained at their
horizontal tension.
He packed them off to an extravaganza. No, he could not join them. He
simply could not. They would enjoy it without him. One did not go to
the theater for company--as one went to dinner. They were gone at last.
Tom was home like a spent arrow. Down the turbulent avenue with the
trains clamoring overhead. He took off his clothes. He was exhausted, as
if he had run that day, not been carried, to New York. In a moment, he
slept.
He woke early and lay in his bed and understood.
David did not know it: he had done this thing with a knowledge surer
than knowing. That much was clear. If David had had a doubt as to the
true trivial purpose of Tom’s telegram, if he had so much as said:
“There may be something important” he must have given Tom the chance to
tell him. It was plain, David had sensed the lack of a particular
business, guessed the purely social nature of Tom’s wish: keen willing,
without knowing, to avoid it.
Was it stupidity? Tom thought not. The stupid person would not have
understood so much. He would have said: “There may be something
important.” Or, feeling the true inwardness of Tom’s importunity, he
must have been passive before it. Beneath David’s ingenuous behavior,
there worked a deliberate negation. That much seemed certain. Part of
his will’s function it had been to hide from David what it was all
about, since his will was willing to cause Tom’s distress, and David
conscious would not have been willing to cause it, David’s innocence a
cloak over himself. But the detail of his meeting Farmer? Tom believed
that in the wide world of occurrence the searching will could always
find material for its act.
The important thing now was to slur over the affair. A great hurt, an
inexplicable wound: a pin prick that somehow had touched his heart--one
could not talk of such improbable things.
He saw David the next day.
“Really, man, why do you insist on foisting such impossible persons on
yourself and me?”
David squirmed. “I can’t say I like him either. But he seemed begging to
come along.”
“He is the dullest man I have seen in a year. I didn’t cut short my
trip, you know, to dine with your stray cats.”
“I suspected you couldn’t go him.... I knew _something_ was the
matter....”
... That was long since: that could not happen now. Tom sat over his
sleeping friend on the floor and had this thought: “He feels differently
now.” Of a sudden a twinge strangely akin to guilt went through him.
What was he thinking about indeed? He had wanted to be with David those
idle days. David had not had the same wish so strongly since he had
spoiled their first evening together. Perhaps now in a like case he
might wish more strongly. What was there unusual--guilty--in that? He
had no desire to seal David hermetically from the world. Surely he
showed the contrary intentions. Was he not introducing him to his
friends? David had had a full ten days, and he ten empty ones. Another
time, David might be the eager one. What was he troubling himself
about?...
David lay still and asleep on the floor. David was up, brandishing his
arms, and his eyes sleepless as a day after hours of sun.
“I am off for a spin.” David was devoted to his bicycle. “What are you
doing this afternoon?”
Tom seemed to search up and down with his head. “I can’t think of
anything.”
“Good! Then, you’ll join us on our walk later on. We’re going to Bronx
Park: and have a supper of popcorn--three colors--hot-dogs and
sauerkraut and ice-cream soda.”
“Who are?”
“Why, Cornelia and I--and you.”
“I don’t like the bill-o’-fare.”
David’s face went a shade less light.
“Besides,” Tom caught himself, “I have an engagement. I promised to have
tea with Mrs. Duffield. Fennido is to be there. She asked me specially
to bring you, too.”
“You don’t seem to go out as much with Cornelia and me, as you used to.”
“My dear fellow, I am getting busier all the time. You know that. If you
don’t understand, who should? You know that there goes into a date like
this something other than free choice.” He walked up and down. David
stood still. “Will you come?” Tom asked.
“I have this engagement with Cornelia.... If you ask Cornelia also.”
Tom’s eyes dropped. He hummed a few high notes of a popular melody. He
found his chair, slapped the Sunday paper into its proper folds on his
knees.
“One doesn’t take one’s family to these chatters, Davie. Fortunately,
since Cornelia would have to be dragged. How unreasonable you are.”
David stood motionless. He was wondering if Tom told all the truth. Tom
took the offensive: “I’ll be blessed, Davie, if you’re not thinking evil
things about me now. I don’t give enough care to my Sister. I don’t
bring her enough into my life, into our life.” He sat back in his chair
and thrust his sharp question into the indecisive vagueness of David’s
“Not so?”
“Why--I didn’t say that.... But why do we go out together so seldom now?
We three. Why is Cornelia here so little?”
“Why don’t you invite her?”
“I always thought that was for you to do.”
“The truth is, David, you see Cornelia plenty.” Tom had achieved the
tune he wanted. He was out of the talk. By stress of David he would
manage to remain out. “I have nothing against your friendship with Sis.
I am happy about it. I had something to do with making it, you may
remember. It is good for her--and she means a lot. But you must broaden
out, man; at your time of life you must not crib yourself, even with a
Cornelia. You have no idea of the gamut of human relationships: of their
variance and wonder.... Why do you think I wished you to come with me,
this afternoon? You see how frank I am. Cornelia you can have any time
and always. But Laura Duffield will get weary of inviting you to meet
her friends, if you continue to show such nimbleness in avoiding her.
That is precisely what you need. Yes--a lot more, just now, than you
need Sister.”
Tom was unanswerable. He did not press the matter further. He read the
news. But David later trudging the deserted side-street, between silent
walls, could not convince himself there was no answer.
“Cornelia,” he said, “come over to our place and spend Wednesday
evening.”
“I have an engagement, Davie.”
“Then come Thursday. Or Friday.”
Cornelia stopped. “Let’s sit on that bench,” she said. “Quick!--before
some one else----” Her first remark had been low, serious. A touch of
brightness in her last words that made David look at her. As they sat,
it was gone.
Carriages flowed before them. Motionless coachmen, immobile ladies,
cramped frilled children passed like wooden figures in a carrousel. Only
the horses lived. And yet not all of them, since their docked tails and
their cruelly reined necks had an air of artifice.
“Listen, David. I want to speak to you. I should love to accept your
invitation. But ...” she stopped.
David felt a strange commotion. Something within him was full of panic,
wanted to get away. At most a fraternal fault was going to be found with
Tom. Why then did he have the sense that it was he who was going to be
accused--and more still, justly? These gusts of emotion were ridiculous.
Cornelia had as yet said nothing. Yet, at that moment, if a man had come
up to him and asked: “Is Thomas Rennard your friend?” David would have
stammered. Cornelia was speaking.
“You know, Davie--it was natural enough--when Tom lived alone, he used
always to come to me. I dropped in occasionally to look after him--his
curtains or his linen--or of course, if he wasn’t well. Then, he’d be
bundled over to my place. But I had ‘our home.’ Now, he has a real,
liveable place--the better of us two. But I have the feeling, David,
that this has not altered the old custom. Tom does not suggest my
spending evenings with you.” Having said so little, she was afraid she
had said too much. She went on: “Oh, course, he still comes to me.”
“Alone, then. We have not been together in your place since Tom is back
from his vacation.”
“Yes, he comes alone.” Cornelia spoke this slowly, pensively. Her next
words trembled swift upon each other as if escaping her thought. “I have
the idea that perhaps he likes to have his place apart---- It was that
way with his old room. When he wanted me, he came to me. He knew I was
not that way: that I was always glad to see him. I guess, don’t you
think, he still needs his corner for being solitary?”
“But, Cornelia--why then, share a----”
“Oh, that is different, Davie. Women are in the way.”
“I don’t feel that you are. Cornelia.”
“He does. He is a strange dear, you know. He feels that--that women are
in the way. He must.”
David’s inexorable logic was a burden to Cornelia who loved it--even as
his candor hurt though she was nursing it. “Then you won’t come, next
week?”
“Not until Tom asks me. Only the first time I will feel like that. The
first time, it seems to me, the invitation had better come from him.”
She wanted to talk on. She had so much to ask and to confess. She had
not been invited to help fix their rooms. This was a most hurting
difference. She had concealed it. She felt that her words with David had
been stupid. Better silence than her feeble approach to speaking. What
she wanted David to see she had most hidden. All her moods toward him
were of that sort. Always, always. If she wanted to give herself, there
she was turning away. Of course Tom was not helpless in such a matter as
arranging his apartment. He had his own ideas. She had been sure at
least that she would be consulted. One afternoon she came: “How do you
like things?” They were complete. “Splendidly, Tom.” That was all. It
was not the artist who was offended. The artist in Cornelia could always
be disposed of. But the woman--the sister. She realized that David also
had been but perfunctorily consulted. This was still _Tom’s_ place.
Thinking of that Cornelia forgot her own slight.
She looked at the boy beside her, looked up at him. They sat on the
ground. A pine tree rose straight above them. David studied the split
roll in his hand, with its long red sausage sticking out at both ends.
“I never know where to begin,” he chuckled.
Why could she not at least ask questions? What did they talk of, idle
nights? What was Tom’s attitude at home toward David? _Tom’s place._ Did
David feel this?
“First you must even up the roll and the sausage--bite off both ends.
Like this.”
“That’s the rule?”
“The rule....” She was like a woman carrying a great load upon her back
afraid to ease it, shift it a bit from the sore spot lest it crush her.
She was silent.
David ate methodically. He enjoyed eating. The bite of the mustard was
good on his tender tongue. He felt Cornelia beside him eating, not
knowing she ate. The “hot dog” was gone: he felt in her silence a need
of question which aroused his own.
He wanted to know the truth of this strange problem between Tom and his
sister. He wanted to know if Cornelia was really somewhat sentimental,
somewhat “the old woman.” He wanted to be sure that she was; that Tom
was right, loving her, prizing her, putting her in her place. He wanted
to be sure that she was not.... He did not want to lose a tithe of his
respect for her--and for himself, sitting beside her close and wanting
no change....
A pause, with the weight of their questions clear and compact--closing
them in. He was beside her coming close. She was open. Could they not be
open in this silence, whatever came? A tree, warm air, no one. Could
they not stay open, whatever was born?
Cornelia stirred with anguish. She was afraid: she was afraid to look at
David: for she was very open. He would pour in through her eyes, if her
eyes touched him. All he--into her all. Why not? Her answer was a word
of escape.
“----that party, tell me about it----” Escape from herself since
already, she knew, David was within her. She could not drive him away.
She had no will to. She could escape from herself.
“----I am not made for parties. But, oh, Cornelia? There was a man, a
wonderful man! He played piano for us. He said----”
Their spirits had met. Upon the tiny separateness of their questions of
Tom their spirits had met and tremorously touched. Now, their spirits
floated in opposite directions; timidly, still eye to eye, but with
contrary wings propelling them away.
They clasped hands.
“Good-by.” “Good-by, Davie.”
The true psychic reaction of their separateness together came to them
both.... David wondered if Tom was right. He had a good time with
Cornelia. Nothing fecund about it. Being with her led, if to anything,
to gaps and to stops invisible, before which always they turned away.
“Perhaps she is sterile.” “Why doesn’t she get married?” Sudden he had a
grievance against Cornelia. Life to them must be two separate things. He
was happy with her, but even that was a mere emptiness he would with
youthful eagerness have sold for a rich battle of pain. She was a woman,
yet no woman to him.... Cornelia walked away, knowing what David felt.
All the way back to her rooms she felt David moving toward Tom, David
doubting, David beginning to patronize and to take her in circumstance
and reason.
She thought his thoughts. She followed his eyes as they turned away from
hers, as they turned away from her. Her own were filled only with what
filled his. Seeing with his eyes she saw her enemy. She saw her
brother....
IX
David did not understand or question the spirit in which, the following
night, he went with Tom to dine at the apartment of Constance Bardale.
She had watched him with large eyes at the table, where he sat mostly
silent and very busy with the food that he found delicious. She had
manoeuvered him later aside from the chattering group. They talked
quietly together. David had no sense of her as yet, beyond the silk cold
sheath of an earth-colored dress fending a woman’s body.
But he did not suffer. He said to himself: “I don’t know really what to
say to her. But it goes all right.” He was pleased at this, grateful to
her. He showed it.
The opposing group broke into laughter. It broke its confines. A tall
massive man stood over the two.
“Constance,” he said, “you must hear this.” A thick, foreign accent
marred his otherwise perfect English. He was an Austrian: head of the
Stegending Galleries on Fifth Avenue where second-rate examples of
second-rate old masters fetched first-rate prices. He stood very close
to Constance Bardale, who looked askance at him with sly knowledge
lighting the flecks in her gray eyes. She seemed to be saying: “So this
is the best excuse you could find for breaking into my tête-à-tête?
Don’t you see it is hopeless? No, of course, you wouldn’t.”
The Austrian’s sally had its success. It was a breach toward the hostess
through which now the others began to flow upon her. The guests shifted
near. David remarked how directly Mr. Stegending spoke to Miss Bardale.
Unlike himself. But he took comfort in his partial isolation. He rested
back in it as he would have in his chair had his self-consciousness not
made him crane stiffly forward.
“It was Fennido’s idea,” said Stegending.
“I assure you, Karl, it was Con’s.” Fennido balanced himself with grace.
In a half courtesy he thrust out an indicating palm toward his hostess.
“Mine?”
“Now wait.” Richard Fennido rose to his full plump height. David saw how
large his buttocks were, like a woman’s: his small blue eyes peered from
beside the curved nose like a bird’s. He was poising evidently for his
sort of flight--in words.
“I said it was your idea, Constance, and I can prove it.”
A little woman at his side laughed prematurely. Her eyes seemed fixed in
a sort of perpetual fright. This was Mrs. May Delano, and her great fear
was not to appreciate and not to appear at home. Fennido began.
David found, as he talked, no need of the effort of attention. This Mr.
Fennido did not notice him at all. He seemed to hold Constance Bardale
with his eyes, the group about him with his shoulders that were
curiously sharp above so plump a body. He was done. There was a breaking
up. A new shredding of words, a new scramble from which another voice
emerged, momently mastered attention, sank away.
David watched Tom. Not consciously so much as because he nearly always
saw him, when Tom was there to see. He felt a strange thing. Tom, the
casual, easy Tom, was uneasy. He was fretted by some sharp discomfort.
His eyes wandered, his feet tapped, he lighted a cigarette and threw it
away. Fennido talked again. A great talker. Tom gathered the sharp
points of his nerves together: he was once more composed but with a
tension that had in it the power of some prefatory move: almost a
charge. In the ensuing scatter of minds, Tom was busy gathering them
together, gathering them to him. Ill-at-ease no longer. He was
speaking....
He spoke for a while, wreathed in the comfortable silence of the others.
David’s eyes, moved by an impulse he was not conscious of, wandered.
They met the eyes of Marcia Duffield. He looked away, shocked by a
current which had flowed momently between them. David knew Tom’s words
held him unpleasantly; at times held him not at all. What was the
interest in them, what their motive, beyond Tom’s wish to speak and to
hold interest? David sensed this: sensed the rebuke he felt in this for
Tom. As his eyes went back to the eyes of Marcia Duffield it came to him
that she was feeling similar things with him. In the brief meeting of
their eyes, it was as if they had discovered one another in themselves.
This was absurd and impossible! Marcia Duffield? David’s mind could not
grasp this flashing intuition; it slipped leaving no conscious mark. He
looked harder at the others in the unwitting need not to look again at
her. Already, what he could carry with him of that strange momentary
kinship across the room was reduced to the sense of bright, black, hard
eyes, filled with a wistful question.