1
THE conversational permutations and combinations of this new fourfold
intimacy inevitably threw new light for each upon the character of the
others, and led to endless discussions.
“But why,” Felix exclaimed to Rose-Ann, after an evening spent in the
company of the two others, “doesn’t Phyllis make up her mind about
Clive, one way or the other. Why should she keep on tormenting him this
way?”
“Why doesn’t Clive make up his own mind?” Rose-Ann retorted. “It’s he
that’s torturing her. I understand Phyllis’s attitude perfectly.”
“We both seem to have rather changed our views about them,” he observed.
“You used to blame Phyllis.”
“I don’t any more,” said Rose-Ann. “I blame Clive.”
“For what, precisely?”
“For not knowing what he wants!”
“He wants Phyllis. That’s simple enough.”
“No, he doesn’t. It would be simple enough if he did. He could have her
in a moment. She’s crazy about him. She wants nothing else than to be
really his sweetheart.”
“Then why isn’t she?”
“Because he won’t let her!”
“What nonsense, Rose-Ann!”
“It’s perfectly true. I was going to tell you; while you and Clive were
over in the corner tonight talking about that novel of his, she was
explaining to me what she was angry at him about. She had proposed to
him that they rent an apartment together in Chicago this fall.”
“And he refused?” Felix asked incredulously.
“Yes ... unless she would marry him first. And she wouldn’t.”
“But why not?” he asked.
“Don’t you understand, Felix?... Before, when they first knew each
other, she would gladly have married him—but he wouldn’t ask her. He
wanted her to be a ‘free-woman.’ And now that she’s ready to be, he
insists on ‘protecting’ her with a marriage. Can’t you see? he wants her
to admit that she’s not in earnest, that she’s afraid.... And she won’t.
I quite agree with her!”
“But what a fuss over nothing,” said Felix.
“Over nothing? Aren’t ideas anything? Isn’t pride anything?”
“Not in comparison with happiness. They’ve been making each other
miserable for two years with their ideas, and their silly pride. The
important thing is to get them—yes, damn it!—into the same bed
together!”
Rose-Ann laughed. “They’ve tried even that, Felix! and it did no good.”
“What!”
“No—they spent the night arguing about whether they really loved each
other!”
Felix groaned. “I never heard of such a crazy pair in my life!”
“Yes, it was utterly ridiculous,” Rose-Ann agreed. “Phyllis told Clive
she was perfectly willing, for the sake of companionship, to become his
mistress—but he wouldn’t have her on those terms. He wanted her to say
she loved him.”
“I can’t exactly blame him for asking that,” said Felix. “Why shouldn’t
she say it?—it was true!”
“She just wasn’t sure; I can understand that, Felix. She wanted to find
out whether she did or not. And if he couldn’t be sure for both of them—
You see, it was his cowardice, not hers.”
“Madness!” said Felix. “Is this what modern love has come to!”
2
Again, Clive and Felix were at the “Tavern,” across the street from the
Chronicle, sitting in front of their afternoon ale.
“Phyllis,” said Clive, “talks about nothing but you, nowadays—you and
Rose-Ann. I gather that you are the most wonderful two people in the
world, with the possible exception of Bernard Shaw and Ellen Key.”
“I hear much more extravagant reports than that about myself,” said
Felix. “Bernard Shaw isn’t in it. I gather that I am almost as wonderful
a person as Clive Bangs!”
Clive shook his head. “I am a deserted altar,” he declared, with mock
mournfulness. “You are the new divinity. How does it feel?”
“It’s—slightly embarrassing sometimes,” said Felix.
Clive grinned. “You just hate it, don’t you? It makes you bored to be
adored!”
“Not exactly,” said Felix. “But Phyllis does have a disturbing way, when
we are alone together, of seeming to be a—well, a child, a very young
child with a ... a beloved parent!”
“Or why not say, a worshipper in the presence of a god!” Clive laughed.
“You find it embarrassing, do you?”
“And also agreeable in a curious way!” Felix confessed. “I’ve never been
regarded as a supernaturally wise being, before. I find I rather like
it!”
“I know,” said Clive. “The truth is, it’s tremendously gratifying to
one’s egotism. It’s nice to be a god. But I fell off my pedestal early
in the game. And what I’d like to know is, how do you manage to stay on
yours so serenely?”
“It comes naturally to me, to be a god, I expect,” said Felix modestly.
“I was probably born that way. I’ve often been told I’m not human. But I
imagine the trouble with you was that you made love to her. That was a
mistake. You should let her make love to you.”
“It sounds all right, Felix—not to make love to her: but do you really
find it so terribly easy?”
“Oh,” said Felix, “I just keep in mind that I am supposed to be calm,
benignant, Olympian intelligence! And really, you know, there’s nothing
in the world less conducive to romance. A gesture betraying anything
more than a condescending paternal affection would shatter the picture.
An importunate lover is merely human, you know, Clive!”
“So I’ve found!” said Clive.
“But it’s your own damned fault. I mean this seriously, Clive. You
taught her this preposterous evasiveness. She’s only learned your
characteristic attitude—or your favourite trick, whichever it is.”
“I must say she’s learned it well.... So you think it’s all a mask. And
what do you imagine is underneath?” Clive asked carelessly.
“I don’t imagine—I know,” Felix said earnestly, thinking of the real
person he had evoked from under her intellectual disguises that first
night of talk in her room. “Something so simple, Clive, that you’d never
believe it.”
Clive yawned. “I might not believe it, but I can guess what you’re about
to say, Felix: a Woman, God bless her, with a capital W!... Come on,
Felix, you’ve reached the maudlin stage; let’s go back to the office.”
3
“Phyllis,” said Clive to Rose-Ann one afternoon at Field’s where they
had met by chance at the stationery counter, and had gone together to
the tea-room for tea and talk, “complains to me that Felix hasn’t been
to his work-room all this week; she seems to think he is idling away his
time in the society of his wife, when he ought to be writing plays and
letting her make coffee for him.”
Rose-Ann laughed. “Whether it’s Phyllis’s coffee or not, he does seem to
be getting some good work done. I really like that new play.”
“‘The Dryad’? A lovely little thing. Why don’t you make him send it to
Gregory Storm?”
Gregory Storm was an enthusiast who was organizing a company of amateurs
to give plays by Schnitzler and Wedekind and other moderns, and Felix
had vainly been urged by Clive to submit some of his one-act plays to
them.
“I’m not going to ‘make’ Felix do anything,” Rose-Ann said impatiently.
“Make him yourself, if you want him to! I _won’t_ manage his career for
him.”
“Afraid he’ll blame you if it fails?” Clive asked maliciously.
“No—afraid he’ll blame me if it succeeds!” she laughed.
“You’re right,” said Clive. “I never saw any one so afraid of success.”
“Oh, it’s not success he’s afraid of. It’s rather, I think, that he’s
afraid of enjoying himself! You know, Clive, he really is a Puritan!”
“Harsh words, Mrs. Fay! On what grounds do you accuse Felix of the
horrid crime of Puritanism?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean, Clive! You were saying that Felix
hadn’t been to his work-room this week. And you know why. It’s because
he’s afraid of Phyllis. Isn’t it absurd!”
“Absurd? Not at all! I’m very much afraid of her, myself!”
“Well, I’m not! Felix ought to know that I’m just as fond of Phyllis as
he is, and that I can perfectly well understand how nice it is to have
her around. I like to have her make coffee for me, and sit at _my_ feet.
And suppose he did kiss her—she’s very kissable; I wish he would, and
get over being afraid of her.”
“No use, Rose-Ann; he never will. And what’s worse, she never will,
either. She’s just as much afraid of him as he is of her. I’m afraid
theirs is a hopeless passion!”
They both commenced to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
4
Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled again, and Phyllis felt in need of
encouragement in her Clive-less way of life. She leaned on Rose-Ann for
philosophic guidance, and the two girls spent many evenings together in
the studio; while Felix, without the sustenance of Phyllis’s coffee,
worked at revising “The Dryad,” which he had decided to submit to
Gregory Storm. But one evening Phyllis came in disconsolately, and said
to Felix:
“I’ve been to the studio and Rose-Ann isn’t there!”
“She’s at the printer’s,” said Felix, “reading page-proof.” He pushed
back his manuscript. “Do you want to make me some—”
“Coffee? No,” said Phyllis, “but you can take me out and buy me a
cocktail or something; and—and give me some spiritual guidance. I need
it!”
They went to a quiet restaurant in the Loop which Clive had discovered,
a foreign-looking place where people sat for hours over one drink: a
place to talk. It was almost empty at this hour. A table across the room
was occupied by an elderly Swede or Dane, who sat moodily sipping a
liqueur.
“What,” Phyllis demanded, fingering the stem of her glass, “_shall_ I
do—I mean, with my life. Tell me, Felix!”
“If I tell you, will you do it?” he demanded.
She hesitated for a moment. “Yes—I will!”
“Marry!”
“Oh—I might have known you would say that.” She sipped her cocktail
disappointedly. “I could have got that advice from St. Paul!”
“I suppose you prefer to take Walter Pater’s advice,” he said
laughingly.
“What is that?”
“Burn always with a hard, gem-like flame! But, no—St. Paul is right: it
is better to marry!”
“Don’t tease me, Felix. I’m in earnest.”
“So am I. I’ve told you what to do.”
“Marry—yes. But why?”
“You’ll find out why, my dear. ‘Open your mouth and shut your eyes—’”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Not a bit.”
“Marry, you say?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m not to ask why?”
“No.”
“Then—whom?”
“A man.”
“Any man?”
“Any man you happen to like.”
“But I don’t happen to like many men.”
“Marry one of those fortunate few.”
“I suppose you mean Clive?”
“He’ll do.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t believe in marriage. And, Felix, one of the two people must
believe in a marriage, for it to _be_ a marriage!”
“Then marry—Herbert Bond.”
Herbert Bond was a staid young business man with whom Phyllis had
flirted outrageously during her last quarrel with Clive.
“You said—any man I happened to _like_,” she protested.
“What kind of man _do_ you happen to like, then?”
“Clive’s kind!”
“I suspected as much,” he said. “Well, then, marry one of Clive’s
kind—but without Clive’s fatal weakness.”
“Not believing in marriage—is that his fatal weakness?”
“Not being able to believe in anything!—in marriage—in love—”
“Or in me,” said Phyllis sadly.
Felix was silent.
“Can any one—any one of Clive’s kind—believe in me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
“Are you sure?” she demanded, leaning across the table.
“Quite sure,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze.
She looked down. “There’s only one other man—of Clive’s kind—that I can
think of,” she said. “And he’s—out of my reach.”
“Then you must look around for some others,” Felix said, smiling.
“Are there others?” she asked incredulously.
“Of course. It’s only youth and ignorance that makes you imagine they
are scarce. You don’t find them by the dozens in little country towns,
of course; but you are in Chicago, now. They are a type familiar in all
great cities. How long have you been here? A few months! And because
you’ve only found two, so far—”
She sighed. “You think there may be a third?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you think I’ll find him?”
“If you look.”
“And will he like _me_, do you think?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if he did, rather!”
“Thank you!” she said mockingly. “It is awfully kind of you to say so!”
At this moment they noticed the man who was sitting across the room, the
elderly Scandinavian, rising and bowing in their direction. They looked
at him in surprise, and he came over to their table, and bowed again. He
was drunk, but none the less a gentleman.
“Pardon me,” he said, speaking quietly, in a voice which had only the
trace of an alien accent, “for the liberty I take in addressing you. But
I have been sitting there, seeing you—seeing your happiness—and it gave
me such pleasure that I wanted to tell you—to thank you. Yes, to thank
you!” He put his hand on his breast.
“I felt sure,” he said, smiling affectionately at them, “—I said to
myself, these two happy lovers will forgive a lonely old man for telling
them how much it has meant only to look on for a moment at their
happiness—their young happiness!”
He bowed again. “Pardon me,” he said, smiling, and again bowed, and went
out the door.
Felix and Phyllis stared after him, and then looked at each other, and
burst out laughing.
5
But, interesting as such incidental discussions might be, the heart of
their fourfold relationship was in the mid-day discussions at the little
Hungarian restaurant. They named it the Rendezvous. There they talked of
everything in the world that interested them.... Two people talking
together tell secrets; three people talking are a conspiracy; but four
talkers are a world. They told the truth; they were hard in their
sincerity; and nobody flinched. They were proud of their robustness. The
theme of a tête-à-tête confession might at any moment be flung into the
stark publicity of that arena. They no longer had secrets; or, if they
had, it was because these were secrets of which they had not become
aware.
One day Clive said laughingly, “If anything ever happens to us, of the
sort that ‘can’t’ be discussed, we’ll come here, and discuss it in the
teeth of God and Nature!”
6
They had planned a vacation together, but Phyllis and Clive had
quarrelled once more, and Felix and Rose-Ann set out disappointedly by
themselves on the appointed day, through Gary and beyond to “the Dunes.”
But, after a little having pitched their tent and wandered out over the
great wastes of sand by the Lake, they were conscious, both of them, of
a sense of release. In this wilderness of sandhills, they seemed to be a
million miles distant from all the world they had lived in.
“It’s good to be away from people,” said Rose-Ann.
“Even from Clive and Phyllis,” said Felix.
Rose-Ann’s lips pouted mutinously. “_Especially_ from Clive and
Phyllis!” she said.
“Yes....” Felix said hesitatingly. “But—why?”
“They’re family all over again,” said Rose-Ann. “I thought I had escaped
from families.... But one never does.”
They cooked and ate and slept and kissed and bathed in the lake, and lay
idly on the sand. They did not discuss anything all week long. And when
the end came, and it was time to begin the miles-long walk back to the
nearest street-car line, they stood looking back lingeringly at the
peace they were leaving behind.
“It would be nice to have a house here,” said Rose-Ann.
“Yes,...” said Felix.
“Only—the lake and the sand are sort of wasted, without children to
enjoy them.”
A burning flash of memory lighted Felix’s mind, and he saw himself and
Rose-Ann, the summer before, walking in a park under great trees that
lifted their shivering glooms to the sky.... “Everything is all right
now,” she had said—now that they were to have no child....
He felt, again, forces that he did not understand hurling themselves on
his heart, crushing and stunning it.... He looked at her, questioning
her with his eyes.
“I hope,” she was saying, “that Clive and Phyllis make up again—soon. We
_are_ rather dull without them, aren’t we?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------