1
BY an unspoken agreement they postponed their discussion from hour to
hour. They were too happy to want to question that happiness. For the
moment all was well.
They were playing at being married; playing that everything was all
right.... And the very fear which lurked in the back of their minds of
that impending hour when they must reopen old wounds, heightened the
beauty of the present moment.
They loitered on “the Palisades,” under palm-trees, in the hot sunshine,
and drank in the cold breeze from the ocean—into whose waters, still
winter-cold, only the seagulls dared to dive.
They walked, under the eaves of that low cliff-wall along the shore,
among the few early holiday-makers, and the mothers who had brought
their children down to play on the beach. They watched the children
feeding the seagulls—throwing their remnants of sandwiches out into the
water, for the friendly birds to swoop down and take; and the children
would clap their hands and venture down closer to the water’s edge until
some icy wave would sweep in and send them scampering barelegged back
over the sand—a lovely game of children and birds and waves that one
could watch for ever....
Further down the beach they came to an Inn, where they sat on a balcony
and drank tea with rice-cakes, and watched the sun sink lingeringly
through bank after bank of cloud into the very ocean, taking with it
suddenly the day.
They went to one of the play-places on the beach, and danced and dined,
and rode on childish and breath-taking roller-coasting journeys. And at
midnight, still unwearied, still flooded with the joy of being alive and
together, they wandered back up the shore, to its remoter haunts, past
the piers gleaming with lights, into the darkness wanly illumined by a
young moon that climbed up behind the ragged rocks to shoreward.
“Let’s come here tomorrow night and build a bonfire,” said Rose-Ann.
“And bring our supper.”
They lay on the sand, still warm from the blaze of day, under the cool
wind from the sea, glad to have put off the testing of their happiness
another day.
They went back to her apartment.
“What about this alleged poet of yours, Rose-Ann?” he asked casually.
“Eugene?”
“I didn’t know his name....”
“Well ... he doesn’t count, if that’s what you mean.”
And she kissed him, as if anxious to prove herself all his. Tonight
there should be no cloud on their happiness.
2
They breakfasted lazily Sunday noon at a tea-shop in Santa Monica, kept
by three quaint little Englishwomen; they dawdled over their shirred
eggs and toast and coffee until mid-afternoon, talking. Their table was
on a porch under a stucco archway, half screened from the road by a
trellis covered with roses.
“Everything is too beautiful,” said Rose-Ann. “What have we done to
deserve this?”
“Would you like to live here—always?” he asked.
“I’d like to have been a child here,” she said. “But the mid-western
winter has got into my blood. I guess I want to see snow again!”
“It does seem immoral,” he laughed, “—flowers in February!”
“I may go away,” she said. “Soon.... But not back to Chicago.”
“Why?” he asked in surprise.
“This—this magazine adventure—is over.... I was working to become
editor. And now they’ve offered me the position. And I don’t want it.
Isn’t it funny? It just doesn’t mean anything to me.... I shall try
something different....”
“So shall I,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m tired of my job, too.”
She smiled. “When you’ve made your fortune in the movies—”
“That was all a damned lie, Rose-Ann. I haven’t the slightest idea of
selling anything to the movies.”
“You’ve no idea how easy it is,” she said.
“Then that’s another reason for my not being interested,” he said. “I’m
tired of easy things.... I lied to the managing editor to get to come
out here. It was too easy. It’s all too easy.... No, I’m in earnest
about it.—I came to Chicago expecting to have to fight my way. Chicago
was too damned nice to me. I’ve been living in a pasteboard world ever
since. Look at my job—I come and go when I please; and I can say
anything I like.”
“The Fortunate Youth!” she murmured.
“The Intellectual Playboy,” he said. “I can say what I like—because
nobody cares. That’s the truth. There’s nothing heroic in differing with
the crowd when the crowd pays you to do it.”
“Do you want to be heroic, Felix?”
“Yes. I’d like to live in a world where ideas counted for
something—where people might put you in jail if you disagreed with them.
Then it would be worth while to have opinions of one’s own. One could
find out whether one really believed in one’s ideas!”
“Find out—how?”
“By suffering for them a little.”
“You _are_ a Puritan!”
“It’s not that.... I want the feeling of other minds resisting the
impact of my own, as sword clashes with sword. How can I know whether my
ideas are true unless they are put to that test? But I’m let think as I
please. It’s not a battle, it’s a sleight-of-hand performance. It’s
vaudeville.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way about your work, Felix.”
“You want to throw up your job, Rose-Ann. Why shouldn’t I?”
She could not quite tell whether he meant it or not.
“And write?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. But that’s not enough. I’m going to do something hard.—Oh, I
could be what’s called a literary artist ... the _mot juste_ and all
that; that’s easy, too. One has only to be sufficiently bored or
unhappy.... No, I want to deal with something harder than words. I want
to build something with my hands—a house, for instance. Why not?”
She leaned forward, smiling. It was sufficiently clear that he was not
in earnest. “Where will you build your house?”
“Not in this golden land where it is always afternoon. And not too near
Chicago, either. Do you remember the Dunes where we picnicked last
summer? There, perhaps. Away from everything.”
“I know where you mean. Yes. What kind of house will you build?”
“I suppose that depends to some extent on how much money I have. Let me
see, I had thrown up my job a moment ago! I take it back again. Now that
I have a house to build, I shall need it. How much do houses cost?”
“It depends on how large they are.”
“This will be large, but not too large, I should say.”
“Then it will take a small, but not too small, sum of money.”
“Just as I thought. And if anybody should be so foolish as to want my
play—”
“But do you really mean all this, Felix?”
“Why not? Why can’t I have a house like other people? I realize more and
more as time goes on that I am not essentially different from other
people. They want houses. Why shouldn’t I?”
“If you’re in earnest about it, then it isn’t a house you mean, Felix.
It’s a studio. That wouldn’t cost very much.”
“No. A house!” he insisted.
“But why a house?” she asked.
“Why do people want houses?” he countered.
“But—” she said.
“Yes?”
“You want a place to write in, Felix.”
“I shall write in the barn,” he said.
“Oh, is there to be a barn?”
“Don’t you think a barn would be nice?”
“I think a barn would be lovely. But then what is the house for?”
“I don’t know, exactly. You see, I’ve never had a house. But people seem
to have found uses for them. I would settle down in mine and await
developments. In the meantime, I could live in it. People do, don’t
they?”
She laughed. “Yes. People do.... But won’t you be lonely in such a big
house?”
“No,” he said, “I sha’n’t be lonely. Not in this house! If I am I shall
go talk to the cook.”
They looked at each other, smiling, and remembering the first morning of
their marriage. And for a moment Felix felt that they had drawn nearer
than they had ever been in their lives—as if in this foolish dream of
house-building he had by some inspired accident touched upon the secret
of happiness.... And then, in his doubting mind, there rose the fear
that this was an emotion shared only in play. It was too trivial a thing
to bear the burden of his need of reassurance. No, the hurts which they
had inflicted upon each other could not be healed by a jest....
For another moment their gaze still met, suspiciously, as he sought to
surprise in her eyes the thoughts, the wishes, that lay mockingly hidden
behind that impenetrable curtain. And then they looked away.
The moment in which they had seemed to understand each other had
vanished, leaving him with the certainty that it had never existed.
“Come,” Rose-Ann cried gaily, “we must go on our picnic.”
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