wished to. Cornelia seemed inadequate to his young hunger. He was angry
at himself for this. He owed her better. He was not a very good and
loyal friend, he supposed. Tom was right in what he said, however wrong
in what he was. He walked beside Cornelia to the car, through the sweet
May night: and in order to hold himself beside her and take her arm at
the crossing, he needed to forget her....
* * * * *
On the top floor of the house of the Daindries was a wide quiet room
which Helen had fitted out for her own. Its easy spaces were conserved
and rounded by the uncluttered furniture. Nothing was large and
ponderous to defeat them. Two lamps stood wide away on little tables.
Their low light brought out the warm dark stroke of the couch and
absorbed the rugs. The gray walls had a retreating texture.
The guests sat very hushed and hidden in the shadows and the music. A
tall girl swayed by the piano: she was raw-boned and gaunt above the
light of the lamp. Her docked hair flung away from the sheer strong
forehead. She played with a restraint that burned: it was her restraint
that she flung circling and lowering from her sharp shoulders down upon
the hidden guests.
The guests sat, suddenly tamed, suddenly cowed. They were the world to
David--a motley mass made one by the dark and the music, that would rise
up again and be a tearing thing against his life. Now they were
breathing hard; something had shut them up in their own narrow breasts.
The girl stepped toward them, away from the piano. The piano was silent.
He who had sat at it and followed her mood, who had trailed like a wake
in a muffled sea upon her passage was now withdrawn. The girl stood like
one naked above the room. The music she had played and the guests lay
trammeled spirits at her feet. She moved and stepped upon them. She
lifted her violin to play alone. It was Bach she was playing.
She was a sharp high figure cutting the dark room. Her violin was a hard
creature that sobbed and was soft. She and her violin and the huddled
life of the world within the room were the music that was Bach.
As she played she moved. She moved up and down: she was very free with
her sweeping arm and her long legs walking as she played. From her
freedom came an uttered Law and fell upon them all.
They were struck by the clear strokes of her playing and her walking up
and down: they were showered in the fire of this molten music....
David recaptured himself. He seemed to be sitting in a black pool of
life. All of the lives of these about him were one: they were melted
together. They had no being apart, they had no light. They were a black
pool, stirless. Now he felt somewhere still a glow: under the black hush
and above the strokes of the music. His senses went seeking a glow that
he felt somewhere still.
He sat on a couch. Next him a woman: next her a man. The music flooded
and beat and these had no life against it. They were a dim base on which
the music dwelt. Still he knew that this glow he felt was real and was
near. It was a presence to him. His eyes wandered to find it.
Against the music and himself and the room, his eyes went, seeking the
magic more real than the music whereby he might come to life. They
found!
She was sitting far back at the other end of the couch: she was lost in
the black pool of the room as no one else, so that he could not see her.
Yet David knew her, glowing alone, and knew what precious thing this was
which he had found in the world. Once more, and as never before, it came
to him, that he had never known her: that he had never seen her. She was
hidden there with her true magic, in a false real world, and he could
not know her now, nor see her. But he knew that he wanted to know her,
and that he wanted to see her.
He sat with a new quiet holding him tenderly. The girl played on. A
passionate fantasy flooded forth from the round mouth of the violin. It
rocked the room. It tore at these submerged ones living there and
shredded them in its measured frenzy. But David was quiet and sure. The
world was a mad wild place for this moment dominioned: the music lashing
it was also wild and was sunless, it was a river buried under rocks of
the earth and making them tremble. The glow he had found was a warm
place where he would dwell.
The girl had stopped, she was leaning over her violin, she was packing
it away.
The guests moved slow and uncertain, like the maimed creatures they
were. Their voices were splinters of their broken selves.
They began to leave.
Cornelia stood near the door. She was looking for David. She saw him.
She saw that he did not want to escort her home. Very dimly his
conscience was stirring in his mind. If she disappeared, his conscience
would go also. It would leave no trace.
She was very shrunk and pitiful in the long swell of the music. She knew
he must not see her another moment. His conscience might win and he
might take her home: he would never forgive her. She saw a new world in
his eyes, turning his eyes from hers.
She slipped out.
And all the guests were gone.
There was no one in the room save David and this Helen he did not know.
She stood there, straight and small in the center of the room. She
looked at him.
He came to her. Everything he did was slow. He had a sense of an
eternity in which he was about to step. The passions of his life seemed
shivered fragments beside the steadfast vastness of this moment.
She was near him now. He had her warm pervasion all about him. He put
his arms around her waist. Her arms were stiff at her side. As she
leaned faintly back from the pressure of his hands, her face turned
upward. So he drew her in, until her mouth was his....
* * * * *
Cornelia was home. Straight she went into her little bedroom and lit the
gas. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was pale, but a dim
flush flowered her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and deep with a dry
passion. She looked at herself; aloud she said:
“This is I. This is Cornelia Rennard.” Her voice ceased, she went on
speaking. “I am beautiful. For one time, I am beautiful. If he could see
me now----” It was so. It was a pity he could not see her now.
She turned away, she took off her dress. Carefully she smoothed out its
folds: she placed it away. She had a housegown of warm quilted
silk-brocade--it was brown. She put it on. She fastened it tight about
her and made the belt sure about her waist with a knot.
She went to her desk and sat down.
She took a calendar date-book and laid it before her. There was an
engagement inscribed for the following Sunday. The rest of the days were
blank. She began to write.
“_Sunday_: prepare sketch for the Trenton fountain. Evening, Purzes for
dinner. _Tuesday_: ask Mr. Bailey about Philadelphia. _Friday_: Jack and
Clara to tea.”
She filled ten days with her mental notes of engagements. When she had
done so much, suddenly she grasped the book in her two hands as if to
tear it. Her hands stopped in suspense. Her face turned upward.
“It has to be,” she said, once more aloud. “It is a lie.... What is a
lie?” She was smiling. “Cornelia----” she tenderly spoke, almost
maternally to herself, “when one does a thing, do it well.”
She laid the date-book open at the center of the desk.
With a swift thrust she opened the drawers. She closed them. No. There
was nothing there to be concealed.
She was up. She smiled; once more she took a pencil and turned the pages
of the book to a day two weeks away. She wrote:
“Ask David to dinner.”
Then, she straightened and crossed the room.
A batch of painted sheets were in her arms. Her water-colors, her
incomprehensible confessions. She laid them forth on the table, looked
long at them. They were very lovely, these delirious designs, these
flauntings of form and color. Color rose in them to form, form faded and
died away to the realms of color. But she looked at them and shook her
head. They meant nothing to her.
“What nonsense,” she breathed.
Then: “Perhaps some of my statues may live. That first bronze----”
She swept the sketches back into her arms, she thrust them into the
hearth. It was cold and black. In a moment it blazed. But the sheets
burned slowly, imperfectly. The fire went out. She had to scatter them
and work upon them and light them several times with many matches before
they were ash.
At last it was done. Stubborn confessional!
She laughed at the daubed papers that had not wanted to die.
She turned out the light and went once more into the bedroom. She opened
the window wide.
The balmy night swept over her head into the room. Street slumbered.
Brutal lines of the street seemed broken into curves: its hard stillness
rose now and swayed, fell murmuring beyond her eyes.
Cornelia leaned heavy on her arms. She could feel the weight of her body
against her elbows. This was the night and this was the world. The one
world she had ever known: the one night also.
Why had all of it been? She saw herself. She must have been above and
beyond herself; she saw herself from the back. She was leaning there, a
slender girl, out of the window. She was a narrow form, swathed in warm
brown silk-brocade, with a neck that was a little too long for such
slight shoulders. And her elbows ached. And the window framing her led
into the world. It was a round place: it went twirling about in
interminable ether. It flung near blazing monsters like the Sun, that
also were lost in the black, blind spaces so that their conflagrations
were sparks flecking the universal slumber. Upon this twirling ball was
life. Everywhere she looked, was life. One spot of earth was a city of
creation, one drop of water was a multitudinous welter. Here, somehow,
she. She could look beyond herself and the window and the gyring City.
She could see the world and the stars and the Sun lost like specks in
the universal slumber.
This was her yearning. Let her sleep! She was tired. Let her be one with
slumber beyond creation. Out of slumber creation had come, creation
which was a scum of eggs on a black flower. Let her brush it away. Let
her brush it clean.
What she yearned was a thing more sure and real than world. Her eyes
went out from behind where she stood yearning, passed the world in a
flash. So small it was. Passed the stars that were dim above houses. The
black Nothing was All. The stirrings of suns were flecks upon glow of
black spaces.
She leaned there and yearned, and argued; she could not move.
She sobbed dryly.
She stayed there long. Then, in dim eyes, she left the window, she threw
herself upon the bed.
She fell asleep.
She awoke.
It was very dark. About her was nothing. About her was no obstruction.
She was aware of her breathing as of an intruder. She rose from her bed.
All of the weight was within, all of the clutter was within, all of the
pain was within. She moved outside herself with a vast, sweet freedom,
for outside her was nothing.
She went to the window and jumped out.
* * * * *
How long David had held Helen in his embrace, he did not know. It was
almost like sleep: measureless. Now waking from her arms, he felt her
there like a world in which he dwelt.
She was drawing herself away. She took his hand.
“You must go, now, Dear,” she said. “It is late, you know.”
She smiled up into his serious dazed face.
“You will come to-morrow to dinner, will you not?...” Still he said
nothing. He was looking beyond her.
“I am so eager to have my family really know you.”
_1917-1918._
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
they paddling=> they paddled {pg 10}
short shift of him=> short shrift of him {pg 167}
paused momently=> paused momentarily {pg 287}
It has esstranged=> It has estranged {pg 305}