In her own room again, Lilah went to the telephone and called Flagg at
his apartment. A man’s voice answered that Major Flagg was not well.
“I know,” Lilah said impatiently. “I am Mrs. Peabody. I must speak to
him.”
“I am Major Flagg’s physician,” was the reply, in a tone Lilah thought
a shade too dry. “He cannot speak to any one.” He went on to explain
that Major Flagg was not seriously ill, but that he must, for a
fortnight, be absolutely quiet.
“I saw him less than an hour ago,” Lilah insisted. “He seemed quite all
right.”
The physician, with some acerbity, added that Major Flagg had had
another attack on his way home. He was in bed and must stay there,
undisturbed....
“Thank you,” Lilah said.
She turned away from the instrument with a frightened gesture. She
couldn’t see him! That meant she must meet disaster alone; she had,
irrevocably, committed herself to Grace Fuller. No matter what happened
to Flagg, whether he lived or died, she had lost Robert....
She began, unsteadily, to dress for dinner. The Sinclairs, the
lissome May and her husband, were coming, and, as a balance to their
unimportant millions, Lilah had invited the American violinist and his
curtly intelligent bride, a woman who might amuse the Sinclairs because
she belonged to one of the richest families in the country. In the
Sinclairs, two fortunes had come together, and the only enthusiasm they
had in common was money. Their interest was not vulgar, it was, rather,
fraternal. They enjoyed communion with the rare, kindred blessed.
Lilah thought: “I’ve got to pretend. But none of this is mine--”
In her chemise, with her hair tumbled on her shoulders, she realized
that she had not called her maid. When she did, it was with a certain
humility that she said: “I am very late.”
The maid said: “Yes, m’am,” and went into the bathroom to start the
tub. She was a pretty mulatto, a soft, slight creature with the gait of
an enchantress. Lilah had never liked her because she had the air of
knowing everything, and the suave, the velvet quality of her St. Kitt’s
English gave her a certain distinction.
Lilah wondered: “Could she have heard that row with Grace?”
She studied the girl’s back, her unhurried, expert gestures, and when
she straightened suddenly, and turned, Lilah was embarrassed.
“The bath’s ready, m’am.”
A shower of violet crystals sparkled in the tub, and as Lilah stirred
them, testing the scented water with the tips of her fingers, she had
a sharp memory of tin tubs and basins in Swiss _pensions_.... And,
willfully, she recalled the lovers of Lorelay.... She glanced down at
herself, silver-white, with little bubbles, like quicksilver, climbing
over her skin, bursting on the surface of the water. How lovely her
thighs were, indented, slim, young.... And her knees, her feet....
She could go to Lorelay with Flagg and send for that famous, that
notorious, tin tub without shame. She was like Manet’s Olympe, not
classical but adorable. Flagg would understand if she mentioned Lorelay
and Olympe. Robert would not; or, if he did, he would be shocked....
“Seven o’clock, m’am.”
“Coming!”
In a robe of dark blue silk, thrown over a shift of cream chiffon, she
faced her mirror, while the mulatto girl dressed her hair. Her panic
had been replaced by exuberance. She felt certain that she could handle
Grace. Flagg would say, do, nothing. She was safe for a fortnight, with
both love and beauty....
“Draw it back, away from my ears. Not fluffy! Here, give me the comb!
I’ve told you so many times.”
“Sorry, m’am.”
That pretty, petulant face, honey-colored, was reflected in the triple
mirror in an unguarded moment and Lilah caught a flash of dislike and
contempt from eyes that were usually turned aside.
“Have you a sweetheart?” Lilah asked, twisting her hair into the Second
Empire contour she affected.
“Yes, m’am.”
“Does he love you?”
The mulatto shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Men are funny. He’s
a pretty man, but he gambles. He spends all my money. He’s a sailor.”
“Get me the black dress. I’ll want the white cameo ear-rings. No! Not
there! In the leather box. Stupid! Stupid! I’m late.”
On her way downstairs, where the financial rating of the violinist’s
wife was just dawning on the Sinclairs, Lilah stopped to speak to Grace
Fuller.
“Grace?”
“Yes.” Grace Fuller was having her own dinner, in the fashion of
nursery governesses, on a card-table before the fire.
“You’ve had dinner?”
“I’m having it--just.”
Lilah came into the room. She was very lovely. She wore no jewelry,
save the heavy white cameos, set in gold, that dangled from her ears.
She gave no hint of her actual years; Grace Fuller thought, in a
moment of judgment, that she was like the city, a creation of that
energy which is all nerves. There was something ageless in the slim,
provocative, sexless body, thrust a little forward, the carriage of her
head, with its dense weight of hair coiled under, her lips, painted
like an Oriental’s, not scarlet, but magenta. She said lightly: “Am I
all right? Will I do?”
“Beautifully,” Grace said, flushing.
Lilah bent down, and Grace became conscious of the odor of sandalwood.
“Dear old Grace; I’m absolutely in your hands.”
“If you mean that I am not to say anything to Robert,” Grace replied,
“I won’t. Things like this are too personal, too terrible, for an
outsider--”
“I will know what to say when I see Robert,” Lilah interrupted. Her
manner became, abruptly, sharp and decisive. “Or whether to say
anything at all.” She added, almost carelessly: “My feeling may have
been pity.”
Grace said nothing. The flush had mounted until her face burned, as if
the shame of Lilah’s confession were hers. For the first time she had
had a glimpse of Lilah’s weakness--she saw her exposed to defeat; the
revelation was, somehow, humiliating. Grace Fuller turned her eyes away.
“I think you can trust me,” she said. And, instantly, she hated herself
for not having struck. Now it was too late.
Lilah went downstairs.
Her guests were already launched. Fred Sinclair was staring at the
violinist’s wife with the satisfaction of an entomologist who has
happened upon a singularly rare insect. Mrs. Sinclair was testing her
charm upon an unyielding surface; the violinist was more a priest than
an artist. Lilah found him parrying Mrs. Sinclair’s sentimental thrusts
with his own peculiar irony. He despised any one who wasted his time.
Lilah trembled for the success of her dinner. She said deftly that in
Robert’s absence she depended perhaps too much on her friends; she
suggested loneliness and a peculiar sensitiveness to “atmospheres.” The
violinist promptly pocketed his ill-temper and his bride surrendered
to Mr. Sinclair’s butterfly-on-a-pin manner. On the way in to dinner,
she graciously stated the size of her fortune, Mr. Sinclair’s
collection thereby gaining a precious specimen.
Lilah had counted on Flagg as a sixth at the table. In her failure
to warn the servants, a place had been set and she had to explain.
Immediately, the silver and glass were removed, the chair taken away,
but Flagg’s name had interested the violinist.
“I’m sorry. I’ve always wanted to know him. What a thundering crime--a
man like that, gassed! There could be no survival of the fittest in
such warfare.”
He spoke with bitterness of the destruction of the world’s best brains
and of the inevitable hiatus--there would be a wide break in both
science and art. As it was, the few who were left carried a double
burden; their responsibility to the past and to the generation that had
had no expression save in death. Flagg was one of the men the world
could not spare. The indignity of his suffering now--
The violinist broke off: “I know it isn’t considered polite to talk
about the war. In Europe, people aren’t so squeamish. It happened. It
may happen again.”
Mrs. Sinclair thought not.
Lilah smiled at the violence of his retort; he had served on the
Russian front, had seen the Kolchak debacle, and, before that, had
flown over Triest and Pola, Villach and Wien, with d’Annunzio. Mrs.
Sinclair listened to his tirade with a pained expression, as if he
were being intentionally disagreeable. Why on earth talk about war when
you could talk about the theaters, reducing and prohibition--there were
enough interesting things....
Lilah pictured Mrs. Sinclair in her Long Island house, a Tudor mansion
set down in a vast wilderness of new rose-gardens upon a featureless
plain, not unadorned but unhallowed. Her security, established when
she was a child, had been deepened by the possession of this enormous
stone house, a fortress against chance or change; in rooms as cold,
as cheerless, as echoing as a series of railway terminals, she seemed
removed from those things which happen to all of us; the walls were
too thick and too new to admit defeat. Lilah wondered what Mrs.
Sinclair would do if the armies the violinist invoked should trample
the Sinclair flower-beds and pepper the Tudor walls with machine-gun
bullets.... Send for the Swiss butler, probably, and die, game and
unconvinced, sipping a dry Martini.... Lilah could not decide which
counted for more--the indifference of the Sinclairs or the awareness
of the violinist; they believed that the future was negligible, the
present amusing, which sufficed; he believed that the world could
be saved only by incredible effort, a supreme, unending, unified
intention....
He complained that there was no flame in humanity--too much water had
been thrown on it, perhaps. Life was drab unless kept at an artificial,
stimulated pitch; pleasure, purchased, had taken the place of faith....
Mrs. Sinclair, bending her willowy body from the waist, whispered to
Lilah: “My dear--what’s this I hear about you and Putnam Flagg? It
wouldn’t do for you--it wouldn’t do at all! He’s penniless. Now, don’t
look innocent. A dozen people have seen you together, lunching at _tea
rooms_ and meeting in _art galleries_ ... it’s awfully touching, but no
one believes these naïve--”
“May,” her husband said.
“Oh, yes.” She turned again to the violinist. “Faith. You were
saying--?”
* * * * *
In the morning Flagg telephoned. “Did you think that I would pay any
attention to a doctor’s orders? I want to see you.”
His voice unnerved Lilah. Every time it was like the first time--a
breathless recognition, a summons, alarming and unavoidable, to a self
beyond self. “He was very severe--” Suddenly her voice broke. Through a
flood of frightened tears, she stammered: “Oh, my darling! My darling!”
Flagg said gravely: “Lilah--if I could comfort you.... Will you get
your hat and come over here? It’s quite respectable. There’s a nurse,
who will, if I ask her, leave us alone. Or, if you prefer, she will
stay in the room.”
“I can’t. It isn’t possible! I might be seen.”
“And what if you are? Before long every one who knows you will know
that you love me. Things like this can’t be gone at politely. When you
break up a marriage, it’s war. It’s got to be war. And neither of us
can afford to be afraid, now, or later. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then come!”
“But--”
He was silent, and Lilah knew that the issue was important. If she
refused, she would in all probability never see Flagg again.
“You’re better?”
“Yes.... Take a taxi. You know the number. These are bachelor quarters,
but I’ve prepared the elevator man--he’ll bring you up.... I’ll be a
lot better when I see you.”
Lilah thought: “Don’t be squeamish. All the women you know do this sort
of thing.”
Aloud, she said: “I’ll come at once.”
She dressed with a romantic attention to detail. She chose a small
black hat with an air of intrigue and sophistication; a veil that
seemed to shut her beauty away so that her eyes were remote, enticing
beneath the rakish brim of the tricorn.
A streak of conventionality, a dislike of criticism, warred with her
eagerness to see Flagg. She sent her motor away and walked westward to
the Avenue, then uptown. Lilah wanted to have her own way but to be
considered above reproach. The possibility of scandal frightened her;
she thought: “I’m not a coward! Only, to be torn to bits and thrown to
the yellow journals to make a middle-class holiday! A Sunday supplement
martyr! It’s so stupid.... So ugly.... Robert and Junius, all of us--”
With a shock of relief, she thought: “I’m glad I haven’t a child.”
Still, she might have. Even now, she might have! Robert’s child. Even
now, as she went to Flagg. But that would be a loathsome trick of
destiny; it couldn’t be! Couldn’t.... She didn’t deserve punishment;
not such a punishment! God thought of people--there must be some sort
of divine justice. Now that she had love--But suppose, as Flagg had
said, that there were a God beyond God, and no one watching, no one
caring....
She found herself standing before a shop window, and was conscious of
the blurred reflection of herself, the fashionable outline of a woman
of the world. There was security, insurance against a detestable, a
repugnant reality, in the fact of her worldliness. Like Mrs. Sinclair,
she was a product of civilization, a vital, representative image of
society, removed, by her unquestioned right to her position, from the
blind attacks of destiny. She was powerful because she was instructed.
She was indomitable because she was intelligent. If there was a God
beyond a God she could reach Him. She would not take punishment--need
not--
She shook herself, tried to stare at the things in the window--a
Florentine chair, more graceful than most of them; a Persian bowl; a
Flemish chest; a Luini; a strip of ecclesiastical velvet; a pair of
Waterford glass chandeliers....
Her thoughts flew back to the house she had just left. She had wanted
glass chandeliers for her bedroom--one on either side of the narrow
mantel, to balance the _trumeau_. These were delightful--a shower
of crystals, delicate as cobwebs after a rain. They were, probably,
expensive....
Lilah hesitated. Her room was lifeless, almost gloomy; it needed such
a sparkle as these little chandeliers would give.... She saw herself,
moving about in a bland, crystal light....
She went into the shop, conscious, as always, nowadays, of her ability
to reach out and take what she wanted. The chandeliers were displayed
by a collector who flattered her by making no comments. That they were
genuine, and rare, was beyond question.
“I’ll take them.”
“Very well.”
“Mrs. Robert Peabody.”
“I know. We had the pleasure of importing some Venetian glass--”
Lilah interrupted: “Be sure to send a man to hang the chandeliers.”
“Certainly. To-morrow.”
She went out again, somehow relieved, as if she had come unscathed
through a hurricane. Buying things always gave her a sense of security.
Silly of her, to have been afraid of something that could never happen
to her ... never....
* * * * *
Flagg lived in the West Fifties, not far from the noisy “L” track where
trains passed like steel comets, clattering, insistent.... An old man
in an alpaca jacket admitted her to a narrow hallway and to a slow,
dingy elevator operated by a cable. His face was scarlet; there seemed
to have been an explosion of veins beneath the surface of the skin....
Without glancing at Lilah, he let the cable slip through his hands, as
if, in his dejection and ennui, there could be no end to this ascent.
Lilah thought: “How easy, after all.” He let her out and indicated a
door “to the left. Push the button.”
Lilah saw the name “Flagg.” There was a rustle behind the door and it
opened sharply. A woman in starched linen said: “Mrs. Peabody? Major
Flagg is waiting. This way, please.”
Lilah had expected him to be in bed. But he rose from an arm-chair and
smiled down at her.
“You’re better?”
“Yes.... Now! You were a long time getting here.”
“I walked.”
“Miss Peterson--Mrs. Peabody.”
The starched woman, who was, to Lilah, as featureless as an egg, bowed,
murmured something and went out, closing the door.
“Don’t be afraid,” Flagg said. “I won’t keel over again. I’ll give
you tea presently. But now I want to talk to you. You lovely thing!
She can’t hear--there’s a corridor, and then my bedroom, where she’s
sitting. Shall I send her away?”
“No. No.” Lilah shook her head. “It’s bad enough--my being here.”
He leaned forward and caught her hands, smiling. He drew off her
gloves, turned her palms over and kissed them. His gestures were
slow but there was nothing of Robert’s hesitancy about him; his eyes
flew over her. She felt again that penetrating delight in him, and
because he did not expect pity, her pity made her tremble; there was
a maternal, a brooding pain in her heart. Without speaking, she went
back to her eager search for the things she loved, enumerated them--the
line of his cheek, the peculiar, sharp modelling of his lips, his
lids, a way his hair had of growing, like a sort of fur, short, thick,
lusterless--she wanted to stroke it, but she didn’t. Somehow, he was
still a stranger whose presence excited and embarrassed her. She
wondered if any one had ever known him; whether she would ever know
him. Robert was like a plant that recoils at the touch of a prying
finger. But Flagg was like an animal; he had the grace, the aloofness
of an animal, the eyes of an animal. She was almost afraid to touch
him. His absorption flattered her, as if a creature of the woods had
strayed close to rub against her and purr--a big cat. Without stirring,
she let him kiss her fingers, one after the other. And she felt again
that sense of a moment prolonged, suspended, until she lost reality.
Her glance went beyond him to the room. She had never thought of him as
living anywhere.... A shabby, slovenly room. Rows of white shelves were
weighted with books. There were no photographs. Only a small bronze of
a woman and a jar filled with pipes....
“This isn’t my place,” he said, glancing up quickly. “It belongs to
a man I knew in France, who’s broke. He loves books, and I’ve had a
feast....”
His eyes deepened and there came into them that look of a satyr,
mischievous and sensual. She wanted to kiss him, but she held herself
away. Something told her that there would be no going back after
to-day; he would not grant her a reprieve.
“I’m sorry,” he began, “for what I said yesterday. In time, you’ll love
love--not the idea, but the thing itself. That’s what I’m waiting for.
When it comes to you, so that you understand it--its beauty and its
penalty--you will lose yourself. And then you will be exquisite.”
“I love you,” she insisted, “now.”
He shook his head.
He relinquished her hands and, crossing the room, filled and lighted a
pipe. Then he asked abruptly: “What are you going to tell your husband?”
“I don’t know.” Catching her breath, she evaded him: “Must I tell him
anything?”
He did not answer. His expression was mocking. And angrily Lilah cried:
“It isn’t easy! For you, yes! But for me--to break with a man who loves
me and who doesn’t suspect--”
“Oh. He loves you. I didn’t know that. I had hoped that he didn’t. Are
you sure he does?”
“Of course! It will kill him. He trusts me.”
“You haven’t betrayed him!” Flagg said sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“Love is never a betrayal. It’s the truth! I am convinced that it is a
sin to deny love, under any circumstances, for any reason--to live with
one man and love another is unmoral, ugly, inexcusable. To live with
one woman and love another is to betray them both. I am not arguing on
the side of promiscuousness. I despise filth. But there is, after all,
a definite standard. A responsibility--to the emotion itself. There’s
your obligation! Only, the world won’t recognize it.... You’ve got to
be sure--dead certain--that what you feel justifies what you do.”
“You’re putting it up to me, then?”
He came over and kneeled beside her. He was asking something. His
body pressed against her knees. His hands were supplicating. For
the first time he was humble, but more than ever insistent; life
itself, demanding that she say yes or no, that she take or leave,
give or refuse. In spite of herself, she touched his hair, and with a
terrifying sense of being lost, slipped forward into his arms.
“I’ll tell him, simply, that I love you.”
“When?”
She struggled back, away from him again. But Flagg remained on his
knees, no longer a suppliant; stubbornly, he repeated: “When?”
“When he comes back--next week.”
She added, with a flash of disdain: “You might at least be sorry for
him!” She put out her hand quickly and caught his. “I didn’t mean that!
I hurt everybody. Don’t let me hurt you!”
Flagg laughed. “I don’t let myself be hurt.”
What he thought was: “If she cares for me, I can hurt her--that’s my
weapon, and she knows it.” He got up and went to the window, stood
there, smoking, his back turned. He waited with admirable restraint for
Lilah to speak again. Behind him, she was absolutely silent. The sun
had gone. The room was fading into the gray shadows of late afternoon,
retreating, dimming, like a blurred photograph. Flagg kept his eyes
on the street; his senses were aware of her; he had no comfort in her
presence, but he wanted her there. Suddenly, she was close to him,
soft, propitiating. She put her arms around him, pressed her face
against his back and they stood, in silence, for a long time. Flagg
no longer saw the city; that slate-gray twilight seemed to envelope
them both, to isolate them. And he had a deep pity for himself and
for her. What should be so simple, so natural, so uncomplicated,
would be raveled and frayed and tarnished.... Between this moment and
anything like the realization of happiness, there would be a struggle
of egos--rebellion, shocked pride, jealousy, in conflict. Before he
could show himself to her and lose himself in her loveliness, both
of them would suffer. And for what? Because life was so confounded
complicated--no passion could be single, perfect, but must be linked up
to other passions, an endless tangle of little, petty feelings--like
lichens on a tree. The growth was hindered, the sap cut off so that the
blossoms withered and the whole plant, tree and parasite, came down
into the dust, choked to death....
“Are you sure we’re right?” Lilah asked. “I’ve got to be sure! Isn’t it
selfish to be happy?”
Flagg answered that to be unhappy was the worst sort of selfishness.
For centuries the world had been in the grip of a superstitious fear of
acknowledged happiness, as if being contented with one’s lot were an
indication of alliance with the devil. If you sang, in old Salem, you
were hanged for a witch. “But to-day, if you sing, you are selfish! And
it amounts to the same thing--the world has its fingers crossed....”
Flagg asked, without turning: “Have you ever loved your husband, Lilah?”
Lilah pressed against him. “Don’t ask me, now, to say.... A moment....
Perhaps, yes. But not like this! I am perfectly willing to divorce him.”
Flagg wanted to know what reasons she would give. She said impatiently:
“Why--I _want_ a divorce! Isn’t that enough? Such things are arranged.
Nowadays, you don’t have to give reasons, do you?”
Flagg answered that he would prefer that she allow Robert to bring
suit; the defection, such as it was, was hers; she had tired of her
bargain; she had broken her word; she had found compensation. If
any one was to blame, she was.... Lilah interrupted: “You’re mad!
It would ruin me! It is accepted, usual, for men to take the public
blame for these things--every one understands. It isn’t serious. Don’t
you know--you silly--idealist--that in New York a man can arrange an
adulterous affair by simply hiring a woman, a room and a witness? I
know decent men, respectable men, who have done it, not once, but
several times. Like vaccination, it doesn’t always take. My darling,
you don’t want me talked about.... And it would be so funny.... Robert,
in silk pajamas, entertaining a chorus girl.”
“You and I, in love--and your husband, caught with a hired adulteress
in a rotten hotel, for your sake! What cheap irony! Such things
are damned ugly. You and I will take our medicine, Lilah. Or we’ll
renounce, now, what might be so fine. If you’re afraid, say so.”
After a moment, Lilah said, “I’m not afraid.”
She drew away. A knock at the door was followed, discreetly, by a
professional inquiry: “You are feeling better, Major Flagg?” And that
starched, rustling presence entered, carrying a glass. With a gesture
of rebellion, funny because it was unconscious, Flagg took the mixture
and drank it.
“You’re talking too much,” the nurse said. With another crackle of
starched skirts, she moved from lamp to lamp and the room came into
sharp outline. The slovenly carpet and worn chairs, a frayed scarf on
the table....
“I’ll go,” Lilah said quickly.
“Hang the doctor!” Flagg exploded. “I beg your pardon, Miss
Peterson--but doctors don’t always understand.”
She took the empty glass from him, shrugging her shoulders. And the
door closed upon her with a disapproving bang.
“I must go,” Lilah said again. “I must. If anything should happen to
you--”
Flagg made her sit down. He made her remove the concealing veil and
the little black hat. He began to take the pins out of her hair, but,
laughing, she stopped him. She could not, now, imagine that he had
ever been ill; a mood of playfulness had followed his rebellion; he
was curiously like a young animal again, lost in his delight in her.
He was lovable, willful; she stayed because he wanted it. It was hard
to refuse him anything. And she couldn’t see that her being there hurt
him--he had forgotten his enemy in his discovery of Lilah. Sitting
on the floor with his arm thrown across her knees, he talked about
himself. Himself, as a little boy. As an almost grown boy. As a young
man. It was as if he wanted her to share everything, all in a moment;
as if he could make her see the whole pattern of his life, so that he
would never be alone again. Lilah could feel herself change, relent,
bend down to him with a lovely tenderness. It was what she had always
wanted to be, the way she had wanted to feel, only that no one had
let her be herself. People had allowed her to be hard and bright and
dominating! Now she was the woman she might have been. The simplest
things he said touched her. She had no desire to ridicule, to hurt him.
She wanted him to want her, to need her, to get closer and closer to
her heart.
“I wish I had seen you when you were a little boy,” she said.
“I was a sort of flat face and terribly earnest. From the beginning,
before I could reason, I wanted to know about God. I couldn’t believe.
And the harder they tried to make me believe, the more stubborn I was.
God was unimaginable. They sent me to Sunday school, where I sat with
my underlip sticking out, denying God with my muscular system--braced
against acceptance. I remember that this refusal made me, in my own
eyes, an outcast. I thought of myself as the loneliest and wickedest
child on the crust of the globe. But I believed only what I could see,
touch or smell.” He shook his head. “And I never got a whiff of God! I
remember that one day a sort of evangelist came to the Sunday school.
He asked all the little boys and girls who believed in God to stand up.
I sat where I was, burning with shame. He leveled at me a shouting and
frothing, invective, hate and threats of damnation--eternal. And how I
loathed God! When he got through he asked all the little boys and girls
who didn’t believe in God to stand up, and I stood up, alone....
“Aren’t kids everlastingly funny? I hadn’t an ounce of prevarication in
me; I told the truth, always, until I was a grown man, when I learned
that there are times when the truth hurts. Then I drew in my claws. I
make velvet paws nowadays. But that doesn’t affect my honesty--I am
deadly honest with myself.”
Lilah wondered whether he could feel her shivering with delight in
being near him, whether he saw how her eyes looked at him. She could
never go back to Robert. She could never again pretend. It was going to
be hard. It was going to hurt her to strip herself naked of pretense
and fight for this new, this strange and wonderful raiment.
“Did you ever change,” she asked unsteadily, “about God?”
He was launched again. He told her about his student days in
Germany--how he had gone back, patiently, to the sources. His days of
pessimism. His romantic year. A period of mysticism. A frightened, at
first tentative groping through the mazes of science. Then, something
like a personal conviction, emerging.... He began to shake off support
and to stand alone, almost against his will, for to stand alone was
a responsibility. It forever removed him from the sensuous, happy,
careless self he had wanted to be and demanded that he face facts,
cold, brutal, unadorned and make of them what he could. God came to him
out of these facts--not the God he had refused to believe in--a vastly
different--
He made her see, somehow, why he was not afraid of pain or death, and
why he was reconciled. He hadn’t much longer--but why should he have
longer? Only to love her. To make her happy, if that was what she
wanted.
“I didn’t know you could care like this. But since you do--”
She still trembled; he could not help but see what she was feeling. The
thing that hurt her now was that he would have to know how little and
selfish she had been. The self she had to offer him was inadequate.
Her magic was tawdry, like cheap spangles on a dancer’s skirt. Her
beauty was painted on. The reality, the real Lilah had nothing to give
him. And some day, when he had stopped loving her technique, he would
look for her art, and find nothing, only fear and an ugly desire to
keep him, at all costs. She saw herself, in a sort of contorted and
nightmarish vision, pleading with him; she saw his indifference--no,
his recognition--crushing her down. It wasn’t Robert and Junius,
scandal, that she was afraid of; it was not having Flagg. That was the
most terrible thing--to be alone again, inventing enthusiasms, because
the reason for being was not there.
This was what Robert had meant.
“You’re not listening,” Flagg said.
“I am. I am.”
“I changed,” he went on, from what beginning Lilah could not guess, “as
every one changed. And like every one else, I saw freedom as the most
desirable end, gaining it all important. Only that I differed from most
in that I didn’t want freedom for personal reasons. I’ve always been
singularly free of the crooked, inherited notions that hold men back.
But a freedom that releases the mental power of humanity--I can’t make
you understand; I’ve only the vaguest notion myself! But I see that if
we don’t adapt ourselves, we’ll disappear from the earth. We don’t need
web feet or fluffy little wings or snouts, yet we do need an entirely
new sort of mind. And the old way of thinking has got to be pitched
out, forgotten.”
He clasped her hands, tight, between both of his. “But we can’t pitch
it out all at once! The social wheel is still revolving, although the
engine has been smashed--it is carried forward by its own momentum,
down-hill--a few hundred years of coasting! The survivors will look
back at us as we look back at the Neanderthal ape--that’s how fast
we’re going.... In the meantime, here we are, you and I, trying to
conform to the decencies.”
“Are we?” Lilah asked. In spite of herself, she laughed. “I don’t think
it’s decent, exactly, to cheat Robert. If we’re being honest....”
He interrupted: “Lilah, have you stopped to think about me?”
“Why, yes.”
“Aren’t you thinking about yourself?”
She shook her head.
He insisted: “Do you know what I want? What I dream of? Hours of
sunshine. Hours of perfectly imbecile happiness, lying on a green
hill with my head in your lap, watching the clouds go over. Must we
wait? It isn’t so far to Spring. Can’t we go somewhere--I know a town
in Connecticut, off the tourist track, where we’d be let alone. In
April, the frogs sing at dusk, and the air is moist, cool, full of
little gnats that dance as the sun goes down. I used to go there, years
ago, to watch things grow. A marvelous season, Lilah. There’s a stir,
actual, in the soil, and those prying, green fingers come through....
Suppose you and I were there to watch it together? I stayed at a
farmhouse. We could go there. The apple orchard--if it hasn’t changed,
and God forbid!--is deep with grass. And our room would be under the
eaves....”
“You mustn’t talk like this!”
“Why not?”
“You mustn’t.”
“Does it hurt you? Tell me!”
“Yes.”
“Then I know I’m right. You’ve got to come to me as soon as you’ve
told your husband. It isn’t fair to take from him what you don’t
deserve--that house, and these clothes and all your ease and luxury!
It doesn’t belong to you! After to-day, I’ll hate every hour you spend
there. I want you to give back everything he’s given you. I’m not
jealous, only I believe in value received.”
Lilah felt like a runner. Breathlessly, she dodged this obstacle. “You
wouldn’t expect Robert to bargain?”
“I’m not thinking of Robert. I’m thinking of you. What I want you to
be. If you love me, you’ll come to me, free, not all tangled up in
another man’s possessions.”
She pushed him away.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Not yet. It’s only six o’clock.”
“But it’s dark. What will that nurse think?”
“I’m all right. I only want you.”
“I know. But some day you may have too much of me.”
“Stay.”
She got up and he stood close, pleading. Lilah was afraid, with that
same delicious fear. Now, she wanted to hide her trembling from him,
to ward off what must happen if he guessed the extent, the danger, of
her surrender. She began to fasten her veil, her arms, in tight, black
sleeves, upraised; Putnam Flagg watched her, and, characteristically,
avoided, at that moment, any caress. When she glanced up, he said:
“Very charming. What a minx you are! An artist. I admire you
inordinately, if for nothing more than your gift of putting me off!”
Suddenly she clung to him. “Tell me the truth. Are you going to get
well?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it terrible--the pain?”
“Bad enough. As if a hand squeezed, here, harder and harder. I could
die, if I’d let myself. Only I won’t.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“Nothing. He’s used to bad hearts.”
“I hate doctors. They’re beasts! I hate suffering. I hate bodies.”
She beat with her palms against his breast. “It’s terrible. Terrible!
That you should suffer so! And we stand here, talking about houses and
clothes and my owing something to Robert. When I only owe myself to
you, now and forever.”
They kissed. They trembled against each other. And Lilah had never
known such giving. He said: “The world’s full of ugliness. It needn’t
be, perhaps. But it is. We’ll have to face this pain of mine along with
the rest.... Now I’ll let you go.”
She went out into the street again. No one she knew was, at the moment,
passing. She turned East, facing a cold wind. Her figure passed in and
out of the squares and rounds of light cast by shop windows and street
lamps, hurrying, bent a little forward. Her thoughts were hurrying,
hurrying, ahead of her, toward the Spring, a dusk when frogs would sing
and gnats dance, and she would lie against Flagg, holding the pain away
with her two arms, her lips, her love....