1
WITHIN less than two weeks the studio was furnished, according to their
desire; and not only furnished, but painted and kalsomined, in a light
creamy yellow with a bright green-blue trim—a most cheerful and, as they
felt, out-door effect! And old Mrs. Perk had been brought from Community
House to sew the tall orange silk window-curtains.... “It’s like
painting the scenery and setting the stage for a play,” said Rose-Ann.
“Only this play is to run for—for as long as we like.”
When it was all finished, “Now let’s ask Clive out to see it!” she said.
“Oh—all right,” said Felix.
“You haven’t liked Clive ever since the wedding, have you?” observed
Rose-Ann.
“He behaved so queerly!” said Felix. “But he does seem to have become
rather human again.”
“People do behave queerly at weddings,” said Rose-Ann. “Always. If it
isn’t one way, it’s another. They cry, or get drunk, or something.
There’ve been four weddings in my family—five, with mine—and I can
assure you this one was the sanest of the lot. And they always make the
same jokes, too. You remember, when Clive offered to marry me
himself—I’ve heard that one every time. I know you were bothered; but
it’s the regular thing. People can’t help it. And it’s the regular
thing, too, for the groom to be frightfully angry at his best man.”
“And it’s the regular thing for the young people to be perfectly crazy
about their new house, too, I suppose,” Felix said thoughtfully.
“Well—I’m glad if other people have as much fun about it all as we do!”
“Oh, but they don’t!” Rose-Ann said confidently.
2
Clive came, and saw, and approved. And after dinner, when the
gate-legged table had been pushed back against the wall, and they were
comfortably disposed about the fire, Rose-Ann said:
“Do you remember, Clive, you promised to tell us a story?”
“A story? Yes, so I did. Well, I will tell you a story about St. George
and the Village Dragon.”
He lighted a cigarette. “This particular village is situated, as the
story-books say, not a thousand miles from Chicago. It has a Dragon
there, which—. But let me drop the epic style. The fact is, that in this
village there are three classes of people, each of which strictly avoids
the others—though they maintain casually friendly relations, and say
‘Good Morning’ when they meet in the post-office. The three classes are,
first, the villagers proper, the original inhabitants of the place;
second, the summer people; and third, a few artists and writers.
“The village people live in the village, and keep themselves to
themselves; the summer people live in boarding houses and in nice new
bungalows on the edge of town, and associate with each other; and the
artists and writers live out in the more inaccessible regions, perched
on the edges of ravines, and turn up their noses at everybody else.
“The fact is that they are afraid of some sort of social infection or
contamination from each other’s manners and morals. They all secretly
despise each other; the writers and artists despise the summer
bourgeoisie, and the villagers sell them groceries and taxi them home
from the station and despise them both.
“And yet once in a while some young person of one group happens not to
despise some young person from one of the other groups. Then everybody
else becomes very much alarmed.... Two years ago, it was a young man in
the summer colony and a village girl. Everybody—in the summer colony and
the village—was afraid something terrible would happen. The villagers
have a story about a girl who was betrayed and deserted by a gilded
youth who owned an automobile—and she drowned herself in the Lake. And
the summer colony has an even more heart-rending legend about a foolish
boy who married a pretty village girl and took her to the city, and she
couldn’t speak grammatically, and so on: a dreadful story! Well, the
young man in the summer colony and the village girl, two years ago,
hadn’t heard these stories, it seems; at any rate, they went to dances
together—and the whole community waited, fluttering with horror—until
the young man and the girl, finding themselves the objects of universal
anxiety, became frightened of each other, and stopped seeing one another
at all. They realized in time that they were violating a social
taboo.... That’s the introduction to my story.
“Well, the taboo operates even more powerfully to prevent any
friendships between the villagers and us ravine-folk. Our young men
haven’t got any money or automobiles, and the village girls don’t know
how to talk about art. I don’t know why that should make such a
difference, but it seems to. Besides, we hardly ever meet them. We don’t
go to the local dances; and when we go in swimming, we go up the Lake to
some place where we don’t have to wear bathing suits. The only young
woman in the village with whom we are likely to exchange a dozen words
in as many weeks is the daughter of the man who owns one of the cars
that meet people at the station, and who occasionally drives us home
herself.
“But, after all,”—he paused, and blew a cloud of smoke up toward the
ceiling, “even Woods Point is part of the modern world. Anything can
happen there. It’s not impossible that a girl should be born in Woods
Point who went to the public library and got hold of Shaw and Galsworthy
and H. G. Wells, and dreamed of going to Chicago and getting a job and
living her own life—and yet who, being a girl, stayed on in Woods
Point.”
“Yes,” said Felix, “I can understand that.”
“I can’t,” said Rose-Ann. “How old was she?”
“Nineteen.”
“Well—go on,” said Rose-Ann. “Perhaps I’m wrong.”
“That girl,” said Clive, “wouldn’t be particularly interested in the
summer boarders. But she would be interested in the writers and artists
out on the edge of the ravines. She would hear the gossip about their
‘queer doin’s’”—he smiled, and looked at Rose-Ann—“about how they run
around in the snow without a stitch of clothes on! for instance....”
“Goodness!” said Rose-Ann, “who could have seen me?”
“Us village folks hears about everything that’s goin’ on!” said Clive.
“Well—this girl would hear about these crazy artists, and their crazy
talk, and their crazy parties—and she would feel that she understood
these people, that she belonged among them. But she would never have
talked to a living soul about the things that interested her. She would
be inarticulate. And if any of these artists or writers had talked to
her for a passing moment, they would never have guessed that she was
anything but what she seemed—a village girl.
“She might see a good deal of these people, first and last. She might be
the girl who drove them home from the station in her father’s car, who
came for them after midnight at the end of one of their crazy parties.
And none of them would ever guess—why should he?—that the girl who
honked the horn impatiently for them out in the road, would go home and
read ‘Man and Superman’ in bed, and then cry herself to sleep.
“Unless, perhaps, one of the ravine-folk happened to be a man of a very
curious and inquiring disposition, who never took anything at its
face-value—who doubted everything—even the villageness of village
girls.... He might ask her one day—and wouldn’t it be absurd? can you
imagine anything more ridiculous to ask a village girl, out of a clear
sky—‘Did you ever read Bernard Shaw?’ And she might reply very quietly,
‘Yes, every play I could get hold of.’”
“Well!” said Rose-Ann.
“You can see what might happen.... Those people would want to see more
of each other. And you can imagine some of the difficulties. Why, they
might as well have belonged to the Montagues and the Capulets! You can
imagine the talk—about two people who only wanted a chance for a little
literary conversation!”
“Only, Clive?” asked Rose-Ann.
“At first, anyway. But with that atmosphere of intrigue and suspicion,
their meetings would assume a romantic colouring—inevitably.... To such
a man, that girl with her need for ideas, for talk, for companionship,
might be very appealing. And to her, in her isolation and ignorance, he
might appear as a very superior, a very wonderful person indeed.... He
would lend her books, and talk with her, and urge her to go to Chicago
and get some kind of a job. He would talk to her about love—”
“In short,” said Felix, “he would fall in love with her!”
Clive shook his head. “He would know better than that. He would know
that what she really needed was Chicago, and friends, and work, and
adventure....”
Felix reflected that Clive could have offered her all these things....
“And what happened?” asked Rose-Ann.
“He couldn’t persuade her to take the plunge into life in Chicago
without some kind of preparation.... She’s terribly afraid of
Chicago.... So she’s worked out a solution of her own. She’s gone off to
a normal school, to learn to be a school-teacher; and get a job in
Chicago that way.... Worse than that—she’s going to teach somewhere else
first, for some damned reason, and later go to Chicago. I tell her, yes,
when she’s forty, she’ll be ready to begin life!”
“So that,” Felix said, “was what was troubling you all winter. I thought
you were trying to get some girl to marry you; and you were merely
trying to get her to go to Chicago and get a job!”
“Am I to be given no credit for the disinterested and unselfish
character of my worrying?” Clive asked gaily.
“I don’t imagine the girl gives you much credit for it,” said Felix.
“Why don’t you marry her and be done with it?”
“Good heavens!” said Clive. “Must one marry a girl because he has talked
to her about Bernard Shaw?”
“Must St. George marry the girl he has rescued from the dragon?” Felix
retorted. “I only know it always happens in the story-books that way.”
“A fine realist you are, young man! Fortunately, there are other St.
Georges in the world.—Why this sudden passion of matrimonial propaganda?
Misery loves company?”
“I wouldn’t worry about Phyllis if I were you,” Rose-Ann said to Felix
coolly. “She’s perfectly able to take care of herself. Her plan is all
right. She’s very young, and it won’t do her any harm to wait a year or
two and learn a trade before she comes here to live. I think she’s a
very sensible young woman, myself.”
It was time for Clive to go, for he was living out at Woods Point again.
They discussed the studio for a few minutes, and then Felix put on his
hat and accompanied Clive to the platform of the Illinois Central
station a block away.
“Spring!” said Clive, sniffing the mild March breeze. “Tomorrow will be
warm.”
“Clive,” said Felix, “what’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re really
in love with Phyllis!”
“Who knows?” said Clive. “Sometimes I think I am, myself!”
“Well, then?”
“But there’s another question you haven’t considered. Is she in love
with me?”
“Ask her and find out!”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt she thinks she is, at this moment. Just because I
don’t seem to care whether she is or not! She’s a queer girl, Felix. You
don’t understand her at all....”
“You exasperate me,” said Felix. “Marry her, and put an end to all this
foolishness.”
“But why should you assume that my intentions—if I have any—are
honourable, young man! What makes you think I want to get married to
anybody? I think I’ll wait and see how your marriage turns out first!”
Felix walked home slowly, but it seemed only an instant before he opened
the door of the studio. “Who is it?” called Rose-Ann from behind the
screen. “It’s me,” he said, and locked the door, and stood there for a
moment.... He felt a kind of vague bewilderment.
He had been so immersed in the story of these other unhappy lives, so
poignantly concerned with their tangled doubts and fears, that it was
strange to return to this scene of his own untroubled happiness. The
sense of those other tormented lives burned at this moment more vividly
in his imagination than his own life and Rose-Ann’s....
“Coming to bed?” Rose-Ann called from behind the screen.
“No,” he said vaguely, “I think I’ll write for a while.”
“All right, then I won’t bother you. Good-night!”
“Good-night, Rose-Ann.”
He went over to his desk, and turned on the electric light, and dipped
his pen in the ink, and then sat dreaming before a white sheet of paper.
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