Lilah went to Paris.
In a compartment on the Rome-Lausanne express, she sat with her chin
in her hand, staring out of the window at the slow unrolling of the
landscape, fields, towns, mountains, fields, towns and mountains. But
she was conscious of being stared at from the corridor, and it was
pleasant, even exciting, to attract attention, after six months of life
in the country.
Flagg had not been well, but he had reassured her: “I’m all right. Only
hurry back. I’m going to miss you.”
How strained and white his face had been when, at the station in
Florence, he had followed the moving train for a way, looking up at her
with a curious, unreadable expression.
She thought: “He’ll be all right. I mustn’t worry.”
And the further the train was from Florence--Bologna, Milan,
Brigue--the more certain she became that Flagg was quite well. She
could see him walking up the Vincigliata hill, whistling, swinging
along with the gait of a man who had no enemy. She was comforted by
this vision. The more she thought about it the more she believed in
it. And the memory of his face at the train in Florence faded, was at
length forgotten, since she preferred not to remember. Later, she
promised herself, she would remember.
But now. Paris.
Again she was at that crowded, noisy gateway to Paris, that sordid,
ringing, clashing place full of people with bundles, porters with
luggage, soldiers, nuns, tourists, a mad jumble of dingy, dusty,
worried-looking, crumpled people all going somewhere and in a terrible
hurry. Florence, everything to do with her life there, seemed unreal.
How could she have let herself suffer so? How stupid of her! It was a
mistake, dangerous, to concentrate oneself too much; it would do her
good, do Flagg good, to break the thread of their intimacy; both of
them had been overanxious to prove their right to each other. After
all, who knew or cared whether they succeeded? Lilah hurried through
the crowd, refreshed, as if bathed in that cool, manifold impersonality.
She leaned forward in the taxi, staring at Paris, searching for some
indication of recent wounds. None. None! The streets, shining in a
thin, cold drizzle; a swirl of umbrellas; lights and kiosks; vistas
converging; and that air of brittle gayety, that something precise,
insouciant, perverse--the same! Lilah tapped on the window. “I’ve
changed my mind. The Ritz.” For two days! Why not? But now she could
laugh at herself. She knew that she was ridiculous; a _pension_ would
have done just as well! Only that she longed for warmth and color, the
pageant, not without meaning, of the worldlings. This would be her last
bow before the curtain. And that precarious few hundred dollars cabled
to Flagg after an interval of doubt, of suspense ... her last fling at
luxury. Make-believe.... At least, Robert wouldn’t think that she had
come down in the world! She could confront him clothed in the accepted
garments of his kind, on common ground.... She would wire Flagg at
once: “Ritz. Paris. Love. Lilah.”
* * * * *
When she saw Robert crossing the lobby of the Ritz with that vague,
amiable, short-sighted manner, she was not surprised. This was the sort
of thing that was bound to have happened, what, perhaps, she had hoped
would happen.
“Lilah! Well, I’ll be damned!”
They confronted each other. Robert flushed. He laughed, offered his
hand, remembered, and said miserably: “I suppose this is shocking.
I’m awfully sorry.” But his question, immediate, with an accent of
surprise, irritated her: “You’re staying here?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “Are you?”
“I’m at the Meurice. I’m dining here with the Gaylords, but I can shift
’em, if you say. That lawyer needn’t know, and I want to talk to you.”
He added: “I need to talk to you, Lilah.”
Lilah considered. “I’ve only just come. I haven’t unpacked. I’m
fearfully dusty.”
“I’ll wait.”
Something reminiscent twisted Robert’s face into a sort of grimace.
“Oh, Lord, Lilah--Here we are! There’s no precedent--What am I supposed
to say?”
And, out of the past, Lilah flung back at him: “Something honest! I’ll
dine with you, of course.”
An admiring look came into Robert’s eyes. “Here, then, in an hour,” he
said simply. “I’ll wait.”
* * * * *
Lilah was prompt. She found Robert, characteristically, exactly where
she had left him. She thought, before he caught sight of her: “This
is my husband.” And she gave him a quick, appraising look, trying
to realize what he had been. She failed. He was some one she hadn’t
known.... He turned, and in the meeting of their eyes there was an
immediate recognition, a searching, reproachful, profoundly intimate
encounter. Both of them trembled and pity ran through them. Lilah felt
as if she could not, under any circumstances, speak to him.
“Let’s go where we’ll be alone,” he said. “I know a place across the
river--decent food, French--we won’t see any one we know.” He flushed
again. “Oh, my lord--don’t misunderstand me. I’m not ashamed! Only I
hate advertising my emotions.”
In the taxi, drawn away from him, huddled in her furs, Lilah shivered.
Life had never seemed more of a picture-puzzle; all the pieces lay
about her, and she could not put them together again. The piece that
was missing, the necessary piece--Freedom. It was the answer to
everything. If she could find the meaning of freedom.... Every one
to-day, old and young, cried out for freedom, to put their scattered
picture-puzzle together with, to make it whole and reasonable and
recognizable, something to enjoy. Every one searching, picking up now
this, now that, expedient and finding that nothing fitted, nothing
matched.... Freedom for oneself had been the cry of the generation.
But was there such a thing? Weren’t people, lives, inextricably woven
together, so that one experience involved another, one giving another,
one selfishness another? She could never be free again because of this
man at her side.
She stole a look at his face. There was something pathetic in his
expression, as if, he too, were groping for the missing fragment,
baffled by the confusion of ideas and morals; pitying her, loving her,
despising her, yet, in spite of himself, understanding her.
They were afraid to say anything; afraid and miserable.
The restaurant, Robert’s choice of a place where they’d not see any
one, was half-way down a short, dark street. He had engaged a private
room; before a coal fire burning in a shallow grate a table had been
set for two. The room was small, of the eighteenth century, faded,
crackled and mellow. And an old waiter in an enveloping apron took
Lilah’s cloak with that paternal gesture which is the gift of inspired
waiters, waiters of a certain persuasion, a genius, a _flair_. His
exit was discreet, but promising, and when he returned, with _bisque_
of crayfish, he offered it as an artist turns a canvas from the wall:
“_Voila!_”
Robert’s glance was beseeching. You couldn’t disappoint such a fellow
as this waiter; he expected them to be jolly! Lilah felt this, too. A
room so exquisite. The festive air imparted by the _bisque_, steaming
in real Sèvres bowls. Her gown, the last of the trousseau, a slip
of metal cloth, girdled with flat emerald stones set in silver....
Suddenly, she felt smooth, like the _bisque_, exclusive and desirable.
The walls of the little room seemed to shut her away from confusion in
a world made secure by the tradition of elegance, by the permanence
of all rare and lovely things. She felt again the conviction that she
belonged peculiarly in this world; it was stimulating, just for an hour
or two, to pretend that she had never left it. It was stimulating,
also, to discover that Robert could still look at her as if he found
her the most mysterious and delightful woman in the world. Perhaps he
wanted her back, at any cost--She looked at him with that half-smile
which means: “Do you forgive me?” But she waited for him to speak, to
commit himself, because there was always the memory of Grace Fuller, in
a gray dress and a clever hat....
“Lilah,” he said suddenly. He stopped, as if appalled by his audacity.
He stretched out his hand and she took it. They clasped hands solemnly,
with scared looks. And the waiter, lowering his eyes, whisked the
crayfish away and disappeared behind a silk screen decorated in the
Fragonard manner.
“Lilah,” Robert began again. He couldn’t go on. He squeezed her hand,
held fast to it as if he would never let it go. “Isn’t this a nice
place? Chew told me about it. The _filet_ of sole’s famous--better’n
Marguery.... Lilah....”
Lilah wanted to laugh. She shook her head, instead, and tears came into
her eyes; it was easy to cry nowadays. She wiped them away with the
tips of her fingers. Then Robert said the one thing he should not have
said: “It was all my fault, Lilah.”
The waiter came in again, bearing a silver platter with a great dome
of a cover. “_Filet Esterhazy_,” he announced. He looked as if he had
presented them with an heir.
Robert said: “Ah!” He loved good food. Lilah remembered how she had
grown to wince inwardly whenever he leaned forward at the table with
that look of dedication and rapture, that sort of hovering, like a
gull over a floating morsel. She remembered the way he had of flapping
his elbows, as if he were skimming down, close, to snatch the tid-bit;
only, he never snatched; he ate slowly, with the peculiar relish, the
rapt appreciation of the gourmet. “_Bon!_” he said in a loud voice.
“_Tres bon!_”
“_Merci, m’sieur!_”
“You’ll want wine, of course, Lilah--champagne; what d’you say to
champagne?”
Lilah thought: “Just this once.” She nodded. In Florence they had red
wine, thin and sour, if they had wine at all, wine that puckered her
mouth, the strong, sharp wine of Dionysius. But this--a pale amber
bubble, an eternal spring of levity and carelessness, of love and
daring, of wit and dreaming.... She lifted the glass and a little
light danced on her bare arm, leaped to the table-cloth, frisked and
quivered, a drunken little light....
“I remember....” Robert began. He stopped.
The waiter hurried away, as if he were saying: “One moment! One little
moment! I’ll leave you alone as soon as I can.”
A perverse notion caused Lilah to say: “How is dear old Grace?”
She could see the slow, inevitable flush, self-conscious, painful, the
sudden mistiness of his eyes. Elaborately careless, he said: “She’s
awfully well.”
“Where is she?”
“Now?”
Robert drained his glass, set it down again. “At the Point.”
“Your grandfather isn’t ill?”
“No.”
Lilah thought: “I see. He’s going to marry her.” And she felt a
tightness around her heart.
“Grace is awfully fond of you, Lilah.”
“Is she?” Lilah smiled. “Are you going to marry her?”
“Damn it all,” Robert cried. He pushed his plate away with a violent
gesture. “No!”
“Meaning you are,” Lilah said sweetly. “Meaning, it’s none of my
business. But it is! After all, I’m your wife, my dear.”
“Don’t be too modern, Lilah.” But in spite of himself, he smiled.
Lilah couldn’t be sure. She smiled back at him while the waiter filled
her glass again.... They were all three playing a game. What if they
should speak what was in their minds? The waiter would probably say:
“It’s late. I’m tired. I want to be at home with my family, reading the
newspaper by the lamp, with my tired feet in slippers.” Robert would
probably say: “I want you, and I want Grace, too. I don’t respect you.
I love you and I want my freedom.” And she would say: “I love Flagg.
But I’m afraid.” Because, it was true, she was afraid; she was at the
mercy of her fear. She could not remember the wonderful self she had
been a week ago, three days ago; it seemed far away, unreal, the self
that had loved Flagg, that had promised to give seventy-five thousand
lire to Robert, the self that had feared nothing, nothing. That self
had fluttered away out of this warm, bright room, away from her body
into the darkness outside and there it was waiting, mournful and alone,
for Lilah. Which was Lilah? This, or that other?
“_Salade, madame._”
A plate. A deep bowl. A wooden spoon. Lettuce. String beans, very
green. How did the French do it? And a dressing flavored faintly with
garlic.
“I’m going into my grandfather’s business,” Robert said. He mixed the
salad thoroughly, tossing and stirring it, his face intent. “Seriously.
I had to do something. I found that sitting in the shade wasn’t enough;
I had to plant some trees of my own. You remember what Dave Harum said
about a dog and his fleas....” He paused to stare at the salad. Then he
said suddenly: “It was a good thing you left me. Good for me, I mean.”
“Oh.”
“I was counting on you to make something of me. It’s a damn sight more
fun to make something of myself. A rum world, Lilah. We’re put here for
some reason. I didn’t used to think so. Now I know! I’m not inquiring
the reason. It’s enough to be sure that the lessons we learn aren’t
wasted.”
“_Fromage, madame?_”
Lilah looked at the creamy pie-shaped wedge of Camembert.... Robert was
reminding her that she had failed. “_Oui_,” she said to the waiter. She
must not let him sense her humiliation. She must make him see that she,
too, was triumphant. And the image of Flagg, walking by the train as it
pulled out of the station, assailed her. She said: “Mmm! Good cheese!
Try it. Delicious.”
“I prefer American cheese. They make a cheese in California--I’ve
forgotten what they call it--a rich orange color, finely flavored....”
“Then you’re glad I left?”
He looked up. His eyes were startled. “No. I loved you.”
“Don’t you love me now?”
The waiter disappeared at the word love. The verb _aimer_ ... _to love,
I love, you love_ ... these people were _amants_, after all.
Robert got up. He came around the table. Lilah said nothing, did
nothing to stop him. He came slowly, but his intention was in his
deliberate gesture. And Lilah thought: “This is my worst self.” A
wave of pity engulfed her; she closed her eyes. She wanted, wanted
everything Robert could offer her; her mind flew back to the “Villino
Sans-Souci”; she did not see herself in Flagg’s arms, submerged in that
deep rapture; she saw herself, alone. She waited.... But Robert did
not touch her. With a feeling of faintness, she opened her eyes again.
Robert was standing just there, his napkin in his hand, as if he had
been frozen. “You didn’t mean that, Lilah.”
“Sit down! The waiter--”
The waiter appeared, very sorry, with downcast eyes, just as Robert
hurriedly regained his place. This time, the talented one bore a silver
tray full of pastries, fat chocolate ones and long, snaky green ones
and twisted ones full of cream, and pink ones upon which a devilish
clever pastry-cook had painted flowers and bow-knots of sugar.
“You haven’t told me about your grandfather,” Lilah said, in her
special voice, eyeing the pastries as if she hated them. “The green
one--that one--please.”
“_Oui, madame._”
Robert answered that Junius was well. “Wonderful old chap! You can’t
imagine how gratified he is that I’ve taken hold. He’d about given me
up.”
“I suppose Grace Fuller’s responsible?”
Robert flushed again. He said nothing. Lilah smiled and stretched out
her hand. “Cigarette, please. And don’t frown like that! Why shouldn’t
you marry Grace Fuller if you want to? That’s why you’ve come to Paris,
isn’t it? For her sake. Not for mine! One of the last things you said
was that you’d never divorce me....”
“Lilah....”
At last the waiter was gone. They were alone in the room.
Lilah put the cigarette between her lips and tilted her head: “Light,
please.” And while Robert struck the match she watched him, her eyes
enigmatic. A quiver passed over his face. His hand trembled. “Lilah.
Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“You’re trying to get at me. God knows why.” He tossed the match away.
“After all, we have things to say that aren’t easy to say. It’s all
very well to pretend that what we’re doing to-night is usual--it’s
wrong, terrible, and I’m sorry we tried it. We’re married. That’s my
ring, isn’t it? You left another man to come here with me and make
believe before a waiter that we’re friends. Friends! Let’s be honest.
We’ve failed at a great undertaking. We ought to be down on our knees
praying for a chance to make good! I’ll take my half of the blame.
Neither of us tried. I loved you. I still love you. I thought I didn’t.
I told Grace Fuller that I didn’t. But she’d be the first to welcome
us, if we were to go back together.”
He paused, his hands, with the fingers interlocked, pressed violently
together. “There’s such a thing as moral insensibility.... You’ve had
your fling. What has it proven?”
Before she could answer he went on: “What does that sort of thing prove
to any one? No one will profit by our separation, not even Grace,
because I love you, and she’ll know it.”
“Happiness--”
“A chimera of childhood! I’d like to blot the word out of the
language. You were after something for yourself--something ready-made,
something you didn’t have to work for. What you had--me-- Well--I want
you to come back. Try again.”
“Did Grace Fuller know that you intended to invite me, after what has
happened, to go back where I will always be on suffrance--an object of
suspicion, perhaps of amusement?”
“I don’t understand,” Robert said impatiently, “why you harp on Grace
Fuller. The issue is between you and me.”
“But if you promised her--”
“I sometimes wonder whether you have forgotten that you are married to
me--you behave as if you considered the whole thing an episode, both of
us absolved--I haven’t promised anything.”
Lilah got up. There was a divan near the fire, upholstered in shabby
yellow sateen. Lilah’s cloak lay across the end, Robert’s overcoat,
his muffler and gloves beside it. She thought: “How domesticated.
Like Robert’s imagination. How can I make him understand when I don’t
understand myself? She felt suddenly tired. The bubble of gayety had
burst, was gone. She had a passing, a poignant regret at the inevitable
bursting of all such pretty bubbles....
“If I fail with you,” Robert was saying, “the whole past has been
wasted. You can’t erase marriage by simply running away from it. Or,
like the magician, by exchanging one marriage for another ... a sort of
social legerdemain ... dangerous, because I believe once married always
married.... I may be old-fashioned. I dare say I am making myself
ridiculous.... These things go deeper than words. If I could make you
see what I’ve seen....”
Lilah wanted to say: “But I don’t love you.” She didn’t dare say it
because there was something she wanted to hold to, a thread, a fragile
link between herself and security. She recognized the ugly need of
security; her own weakness made it imperative that she should hold
Robert off until her own future was certain, until she had found the
strength to admit that other self or to close that self out forever. A
little time. If life only didn’t press you so....
Robert followed; he, too, seemed to press close, although he stood
some distance away, his hands still tightly pressed together in a
curious attitude of supplication and misery. “You’re afraid of public
opinion.... At the Point, you have nothing to fear. We can prove, by
the dignity”--he hesitated--“the decency of our lives that there is
such a thing as courage. Both of us will need it, but not because of
criticism; we were both born into a reckless society. You can’t tell
black from white, nowadays! And yet--we’re like ships without rudders,
drifting, drifting in the open sea, all pretending that we’re getting
somewhere. We call it revolt; we call it breaking chains; we call it by
a dozen high-sounding names, ‘reality’ among them. But none of us is
satisfied.” He suddenly pointed at her and raised his voice. “You’re
not!”
“I am,” she said. “I have love.”
Robert turned away. His face was drawn. He looked old. He went back to
the table and poured out another glass of champagne. The rattle of ice
in the bucket, the clink of glass against glass, summoned the waiter
who re-appeared, blinking, as if he had dozed off behind the screen.
“_M’sieur?_” At once he began to clear the table, his sleepy look
giving way to a half-smile, as if he were thinking of the embrace he
had probably interrupted. But he wanted to go home. It was ten o’clock
and his feet were tired.
“Let’s go somewhere,” Robert said angrily. “We can’t talk here. And
I’ve got to convince you--”
He did not glance at the bill but paid it with the indifference to
other people’s honesty which characterized him.
“I have convictions,” he said in the cab. “I’m not the flaccid fish
I appear to be. There was a time when I approved of men, and women,
too, smashing down every door that kept them from experience. It was
exciting to watch the new generation kicking convention in the face.
It cleared things up, for a while. I foresaw a new race of straight
thinkers, purged of fear. What you did didn’t shock me. It seemed
necessary--”
He turned to her, trying to read her face in the uneven flow of light.
“Where’ll we go? We can’t ride around Paris all night.”
“Let’s dance,” she said.
“Dance?”
After a hesitation, a silence she could not read, he rapped on the
window and ordered the driver to take them to a club in the Bois. Lilah
thought: “This will give me time.”
At the club, a smart restaurant given over to a jazz orchestra and
a dancing floor, food had taken second place. Lilah was stimulated
by the rush of waiters, the whirl of dancers, the cascading crystal
chandeliers, the monotonous and passionate rhythm of the music.
Florence, the “Villino Sans-Souci” were part of a dream. She had
dreamed of the melancholy weeks of rain, the somber, suggestive call of
birds in the cypress groves. This was being awake. Her body came alive.
She felt herself swaying to the provocative melody as Robert frowned at
a card. “What’ll you have, Lilah?” “Anything!” While he ordered, she
let her cloak slip away from her bare shoulders; instinctively, she
fell into the attitude of fashionable unconcern. “Anything.” The rite
of dining was lost in the need to dance. People came here to indulge
their senses in the barbaric measures of a simple people unknown to
them; the negroes, perspiring, hysterical, carried beyond themselves by
their success, swayed, jerked, stamped, shouted. Their leader, holding
a violin at arm’s length, played a melody; the voice of the instrument,
thin, sweet and penetrating, rose above the relentless tom-toming of
the drums, the frantic unceasing blare of horns, an accompaniment
soulless and exciting.... In a pool of light, revolving, the dancers
seemed beyond themselves. Other dancers, revolving, moved in the
mirrors, silent, remote, like a company of ghosts....
Robert said politely: “Will you?”
They rose. He clasped her with a sort of shiver, almost a reluctance,
and they were caught by the tide, whirled and buffeted. Lilah’s face
was pressed against Robert’s shoulder. He noticed again the faint and
seductive odor of sandalwood; he sensed the peculiar flexibility of
her body--she had always seemed to be both fragile and powerful. He
saw her eyes, wide with excitement, lifted to his face, scrutinizing
him--did she love or hate him, or was she only trying to decide whether
she could, after all, live with him again? “Wonderful music.” Robert’s
clasp tightened. And he felt a deep pity, for her, for himself, for all
these foolish, fatuous, bewildered people twirling around a polished
floor in each other’s arms. “Yes, wonderful,” he said.
* * * * *
At their table again, confronted by a chafing dish in which chicken
and cream and mushrooms bubbled energetically, Robert remarked that he
hadn’t any appetite. But Lilah had. “I haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t
seen any one, or done anything, for six months.... I’m really enjoying
myself. Am I wicked?” And she held out her plate. “I’m starved.
Wolfish! What’s that they’re playing? We never hear anything in Italy
except Neapolitan love songs and the ‘Merry Widow’ waltz. Jazz ...
after all ... it’s my native music. It goes to my head.... You dance
better than you used to, Robert....”
She glanced up. Her expression changed; a look of panic flashed across
her eyes. “People I know--”
A flurry of women, slim, bare-armed, in the simple gowns of the
period.... Aureoles of hair, short, frizzed.... Make-up.... The
fashionable drawl of the young New Yorker....
“Lilah! Robert! Of all the cool ones! Honeymooning in Paris.... What’s
the plot? We thought you two had parted forever! Lilah, where’s the
villain? Did you park him in Florence? What a lovely dress.... Poiret?”
Chairs were brought. Three amiable and vivacious Frenchmen were
presented to Lilah, to Robert. Bare shoulders, long white arms,
manicured finger tips, a medley of perfumes, cigarette smoke.... “Have
you been to--” “Have you seen--?” Talk crossed talk. Lilah, on her
guard, but eager, eager, as if she were again drinking champagne,
tasting the little golden bubbles of gayety. Poor Lilah! Robert pitied
her and understood her; but more than ever he wanted her, because he
divined, beneath the fixed and purposeful animation of her face, her
profound confusion.
The music began again after a pause no longer than a heart beat, and
Lilah whirled away in the arms of one of the Frenchmen. Robert rose
politely and claimed the girl at his right, a slim, arrogant young
thing with sharp shoulder-blades and shingled hair; she had the misty,
brushed-in eyes of an Oriental, the lips of an odalisque. “You don’t
remember me, do you? I’m Marian Forsythe--I live near the inlet; we can
see your house on clear days. I know your grandfather. Wonderful music,
isn’t it? I’m over here with the Careys. Isn’t Paris awful in winter?
We’re going to Algiers next week. I like to run away from things, don’t
you? I get bored so easily.” She twisted a little in his arms. He felt
her hand, sharp, nervous, against his shoulder. “I must say I think
Lilah’s a sport. She tried it out, anyway. I suppose she liked you
best, after all. If more people were sensible about such things....”
Robert interrupted sharply: “You don’t know anything about it.”
He had an hysterical desire to shake her. If men didn’t protect girls
like this against their own ignorance, the world would be better off.
“I’m getting to be a damned reactionary,” he thought. “It may be
progress, it may be transition--whatever it is, I’m out of it.”
He was too angry to dance, but Marian Forsythe was inexhaustible.
“Don’t be a grouch,” she advised him sweetly. “Lilah’s perfectly happy
with Captain Romain. Let’s waltz.”
* * * * *
It was past three o’clock when he succeeded in getting Lilah away. The
little group waited beneath the glass and bronze porte-cochère of the
restaurant while a carriage-man in a white rubber overcoat pursued
taxicabs, shrieking upon a tin whistle, vanishing and reappearing like
an energetic ghost. A thin drizzle fell aslant the somber shadows of
massed chestnut trees, tiny, broken splinters, glass-like, shivering
out of a black sky. The women huddled in their wraps, their faces
covered, their feet, in delicate slippers, exposed to the rain, to the
sharp wind that whipped their floating chiffons about their ankles.
The men were still fresh. Only Robert was tired, tired and childishly
disappointed. Everything--Lilah’s eight months away from him, his rage,
his love, his idealism, all of it was stupid, futile, because of these
people and their casual worldliness; as if suffering and loneliness and
pride and longing were inconsiderable, as if nothing were real but the
things he had grown to despise. How on earth could he make it clear to
her that there could be no satisfaction for either of them until they
had discharged their duty.... And, suddenly, he was too tired to try....
That ghost of a carriage-man came panting back with a taxicab, and
Robert selfishly took it for himself and Lilah. The others would have
to wait. He hated them.... Lilah leaned against him. “I’ve had such a
good time, Bobsie. I didn’t realize how starved I’ve been.”
“You forget--you haven’t told me anything about yourself.”
“Must I? Now? It’s so late.” She yawned. “I’m so sleepy!”
Away down the boulevard, like a pale new moon, Robert saw the Arc du
Triomphe. An irrelevant thought came to him. Even heroism was futile.
Great gestures. Wasted. That soldier, unknown, who was buried there,
wouldn’t he have been better off in his orchard, his shop, his palace?
But this had nothing to do with Lilah, with himself. He pulled himself
together. “What do you want me to do? I’ve got to know.”
“Can’t we talk to-morrow?”
“One thing I promise: If you decide to come back, I’ll never question
you. I’m not magnanimous. I realize that you would hate me if I made
you feel that I had forgiven you.... We’ll consider the past eight
months erased.”
“Not erased! Mine!”
“As you please.”
They sat very stiffly, scarcely breathing, not looking at each other.
* * * * *
“Telegram for you, madam.”
“For me?”
Lilah took the thin envelope. Yes. “Mrs. Robert Peabody.” She got into
the elevator. Two men and a woman stood there, laughing, while the car
soared up--one, two, three--_Troisième_!
“Madame.”
She did not open the telegram until she had lighted the light by the
bed and had thrown aside her wrap. She kept assuring herself that Flagg
had answered her wire. Some such message as: “All well.” Or: “I miss
you.”
“Advise your immediate return. Major Flagg seriously ill.
“BACCI.”
Bacci! Who on earth was Bacci? Her heart contracted, expanded again.
The doctor. That man who had come out to the Ponte a Mensola in a hired
cab.... She sat down, trembling. Her hands shook so that the thin paper
envelope rattled.
“Seriously ill.”
Dying. “Immediate return.”
She thought: “While I was dancing.”
She began to undress. She tore the fragile tissue because she hated it.
She wanted to destroy the fact, to blot out the visible evidence, strip
naked. She heard herself sobbing.... A curious, unfamiliar sound, as if
some one else were sobbing in another room. Her eyes were dry. She took
her hair down and placed the pins in a neat pile. She must start at
once; she must get to him. “Because,” she said aloud to her reflection,
“I love him.” Now, she knew, Flagg wouldn’t believe her. If she got
there; if she was in time--something about her would show him that she
had forgotten, that she had betrayed herself, and he would say: “I
never believed.” And he would go away, without her. That seemed the
most terrible possibility of all--that at the end his eyes might shut
her out....
She glanced at her watch, wound it carefully. “I’ll bathe, dress. By
that time it will be daylight and I can make arrangements.”
But when she was dressed, her veil adjusted, everything packed, it was
still dark. She threw the window wide open and leaned on the sill,
conscious of a cool current of air, a dampness rising from the wet
pavements. A single pedestrian down there crossed the street at an
angle, wavering, as if uncertain of a destination, and she thought: “I
am like that.” The night is so intimate. She was alone with the night.
Paris seemed a little place, all the lives gathered under that roof
of darkness, all the lives helpless, pathetic in sleep, their defenses
down. “I am alone.” Not since her father died had she been so alone.
And she was afraid, afraid of death, of what she might be going to see,
of the way that doctor would look at her, of Flagg, struggling with his
enemy, alone. Every one was alone. Alone and afraid. She felt suddenly
that she could not go to Florence. She would tear up the telegram,
pretend she hadn’t heard, and they would wire her that it was over,
Flagg was dead....
* * * * *
But even then the sky seemed to deepen, to become more dense, blacker.
And a shaft of light sprang to the apex, opened, like a fan. Dawn.
Immediately there was a stir in the city. A stir of sparrows in the
eaves. A stir of little, skulking people in the alleys. A stir of smoke
from innumerable chimneys.
Lilah got to her feet. She was shivering. Because she saw that if she
kept Robert off, prevaricated, perhaps promised him that she would
return, there would be a way back, out of that other darkness, later....
But Flagg was in Florence, alone. She saw him, lying on his right side,
with his arm under his head, struggling silently, not saying a word--as
if he and his heart crashed together, like two dark, insane men on
horses, tilting, splintering against each other, again and again.
She ought to go to Flagg, because she loved him. Why had God made her
afraid of ugliness? Flagg was ugly because he was suffering. If she
could only be spared! If only she didn’t have to go!
She went to the telephone. “What time is it?”
She had meant to ask about trains. “_Cinq heures et demie, madame._”
She put the instrument down again and sat on the bed, rocking back and
forth with her arms folded, as if she were trying to put her thoughts
to sleep. The room was still dark. The windows were gray. A hum rose
from the streets, a silvery clink of chains along the wet asphalt....
She was envious of any one going anywhere.... Only not to be herself.
For an instant she was in Florence; she could smell the damp plastered
walls of the house; the odor of wet stone and moss and verbena from the
garden; Flagg’s pipe. A pang of memory. Herself, dragging Flagg down to
her. The feel of his hair, furry, cool.
“I love him so!” she said again, aloud.
But to be poor. To be back where she had started, only weaker. A woman
who couldn’t do anything, a fool, a pretty fool.
If Flagg died, he would never know that she had promised Robert....
Then why not lie?
Because she couldn’t.
She was afraid of life itself. She wanted to hide behind pretenses,
behind beauty, behind her own charm, behind what Robert offered her.
But she would have to go to Florence and watch Flagg die. Something new
and wonderful was being born in her--that other self was thrusting
up, like a plant, like the beginnings of a great tree, through the
frightened Lilah that crouched on the bed.
There was no use in going back to the Point, to the warmth of that
fireside, because she had never believed in it; it had never, from the
beginning, been hers.
The only thing that had ever happened to her that belonged wholly to
her was that moment in the dark when Flagg had sighed against her
breast and the cats had frisked over her feet. That moment was hers.
She had made it. She had created it out of pain and longing and honesty.
It was time that she stopped pretending.
* * * * *
She wrote hurriedly to Robert:
“MY DEAR ROBERT:
“Thank you. But I must go back to Florence. You have been very kind.
Later, if you want a divorce, I will do everything to help you. I am
leaving your grandmother’s emerald crown, the bracelet and some money
in the care of the hotel management, with the understanding that you
will call for them and identify yourself. The money I got for the
pearls. I was foolish and wrong. But I can’t buy them back for you.
I’m sorry.
“LILAH.”
She addressed the envelope and sealed it. She felt very small and
unimportant, burned out, dry; she must look, at last, definitely old.
She went to the telephone again, and, this time, she asked about trains.
The compartment was crowded. People kept popping in and out, asking
questions, shouting, losing their heads, kissing noisily. “_Au ’voir!
Au ’voir maman!” “Mignon!_” “Here’s your bag. And the fruit. I’ll
put them here.” “Take care of yourself.” Anxious faces, detached,
drifting along the platform, looking in or looking ahead, eagerly,
as if everything counted on their getting somewhere. Here was life
again--so terribly important and silly! Lilah sat by the window, her
veil thrown back, staring out. She half expected to see Robert, pale,
distraught, determined, searching for her in the crowd. “Here you are!”
And it would be taken out of her hands. He would make her turn back; he
would make her see that what she had intended to do was wrong. Robert
didn’t come. An Englishman in a trench coat with shabby shoes searched
and searched for some one. His eyes were like a dog’s and his pinched,
brown face was puckered with longing. At last he saw whoever it was.
“_There you are! Hallo! Just in time!_” And he leaped into one of the
compartments with a bound.... Life was such fun for the living, for
those who believed in it....
The train was moving. A telegraph boy rushed past, shouting: “_Madame
de Lattre!_” But no one paid any attention to him. The Englishman
leaped down again, his face very red, his eyes afire, and snatched off
his hat. “_Good-by! Good-by!_” Steam. A flood of sunlight. Darkness
again.
“Would madame object?”
And the little Frenchman in the corner of the compartment got up,
stepped politely but firmly over every body and closed the window.
* * * * *
It was raining when the train drew into the Santa Maria Novella Station
at Florence. Dusk was shutting down, blotting out the towers, as if
snuffing lighted candles; one by one they disappeared. Lilah had been
closed in a compartment with four soldiers, noisy, self-conscious
_bersaglieri_ who had angled for her attention all the way down from
Bologna. She had sat like a stone, with her eyes lowered. One of the
soldiers had kept looking at himself in a little mirror; he combed his
hair with a small, steel comb and smoothed his eyebrows. He wanted her
to admire him. Whenever he said anything, his black, polished eyes
rolled in her direction....
The train seemed to disgorge its passengers; it was like a long, spiney
dragon vomiting people. People spilled from the open doors, mingled
on the platform, crashed together--and through it all porters bawled
“_facchino_!” One of them snatched at Lilah’s bag, her coat, her
umbrella, angrily, with determination, and rushed toward the cab-stand,
shoving his way through the crowd. Lilah cried, “Don’t hurry!” But
he paid no attention, because, if he hurried, he knew he could get
other customers and more pennies. A row of cabbies had backed into the
square; they snapped their whips and shrieked at Lilah as she hurried
after the implacable porter through the rain. Everyone was conspiring
to get her to the Ponte a Mensola ... if only there hadn’t been any
cabs, a delay, somehow....
She tipped the angry porter and the cab jerked forward, bouncing over
the cobbles, bouncing, bouncing. The cabman’s umbrella dripped on
Lilah’s feet. Had it been raining for five days? The rain frightened
her; it was sullen and unkind, a purposeful torment. Puddles bubbled,
the sidewalks were covered with tiny silver explosions and the great
eaves poured out amber floods that gurgled in the gutters. And now it
was dark.
“Seriously ill.”
Was Bacci with him? Who was with him? What should she do? She asked
herself suddenly and sharply what she should do if she found him dying?
And at the thought, she wanted the cabman to say that he couldn’t go
on. She wanted some one to keep her from what she must see and do. But
the cab jolted forward, turning corners recklessly, clattering over
car-tracks, rolling smoothly, unexpectedly, on stretches of asphalt.
Lilah stared out at the people and the lights, at faces caught and
fixed in a brief immobility. She tried not to remember what was so
precious and terrible. Yet her thoughts were unconquerable, rapacious;
they fastened on her consciousness, and at last she sank back, defeated.
Love.
The word challenged her. She struck it away. She beat it back. It
seemed to her that from the beginning she had been a prisoner, a woman
too conscious of herself, tormented by herself, fascinated by herself,
like that coxcomb of a _bersagliere_. If she could escape from herself,
she might find what she craved, the freedom she must have or--But when
you needed to know these things, you were too selfish, too happy to
know them! When you were happy, the debt piled up and you were asked to
pay it when you no longer cared.
The rain, incessant, indifferent, slanted out of a black sky.... A
tram, brilliantly lighted, passed with a rumble, and Lilah glimpsed
a row of people, unconscious of her, laughing and talking. A baby
pressed its nose against the window spangled with big, white drops,
like quicksilver, and the baby’s nose was flattened, pressed out of
shape ... the tram passed, and Lilah was alone again in the darkness of
the cab. She began to listen, attentively, to the clop of the horse’s
hoofs on the wet pavement, as if, absorbed in that rhythmic, hollow
sound, time would stretch out, and she would never, never arrive at her
destination....
* * * * *
The cab lurched. They were on the dirt road, turning across the bridge,
beginning the sharp climb ... a light in the window!
“Hurry!” she cried out.
She stood in the rain, her hands shaking, to pay the cab man. He swung
himself down, grunting. It was a long drive out from the city on such
a night, and his horse was tired.... He struck a match and scrutinized
the coins Lilah gave him. What on earth was one supposed to tip;
he looked disgusted--she gave him an extra five lire and he thanked
her, as if he had been cheated and taken advantage of by a foreigner.
“Good-night.”
Lilah opened the gate and stumbled up the path between the cypresses.
The great pointed trees, so old, so quiet, so superior to the brief and
unimportant tragedies of men, shook down a heavy splattering of rain....
The door opened. A strange silhouette against the light....
“I have been expecting you.”
“Can I see him?”
“Yes.”
She searched this man’s face. Behind glasses, his eyes were curious
and tender. “I’ll take off my things. I’m wet and cold.” He seemed
to be bowing, standing aside to let her pass. She went upstairs and
the doctor followed, quietly, as if there were no hurry. No hurry at
all. This struck her as ominous. But she did not dare to ask how Flagg
was. Something prevented her from questioning the doctor, from, even,
looking at him. At the top of the stairs she paused, stricken with
fear. “Which--which room?”
He pointed. “In there.”
In his own room! She turned to her door, opened it, went in and faced
her mirror. It seemed necessary to remove her hat, to go in to Flagg
hatless....
She powdered, rouged, touched her lips with a perfumed stick of carmine
paste.
In the hall, the doctor was waiting, his hands in his pockets.
“_Signora_,” he began.
Lilah threw out her hands. “No. Don’t tell me. I can’t bear any more. I
want to see him.”
She pushed him aside and went in.
How tall he was. She had forgotten, in five days, how tall he was. His
head, dark, round, rumpled, was deep in the pillow. Some one had put a
newspaper over the light.
For no reason, with a rush of feeling, she was proud to be coming back
to him. It was all right. She was safe. She had been decent. She had
done what he expected of her. Now, perhaps, he would let her into his
eyes....
She tiptoed. She stood over him.... Asleep.
She touched his hand.
He was mischievous in sleep, a satyr again, smiling....
“Signora.”
Suddenly she turned and ran back, away from the bed. Her legs moved
strangely; her arms jerked. “I can’t bear it.” Yet he was beautiful,
beautiful in death....
“He died an hour ago, _Signora_. I am terribly sorry. I did
everything--possible.”
Through a burst of tears, uncontrollable, humiliating, an agony of
tears, Lilah cried: “I’ll go back to-morrow and look at him.... Not
now! Don’t ask me to, now! Is he dead?”
The doctor nodded. “An hour ago,” he repeated.
Lilah went downstairs. The doctor had been sitting in Flagg’s chair
by the desk and a cigarette still burned in an ash-tray. He had been
reading some of those scattered sheets of manuscript, Flagg’s last
work. Now he stooped and gathered them up, without self-consciousness
or apology. “A remarkable mind,” he said.
Lilah huddled in a corner of the divan, dabbing at her eyes with a
handkerchief. She shivered. Her teeth knocked together. Yet behind the
atrocious confusion of her thoughts she was grateful that she had not
arrived two hours sooner. Another idea fought to the surface, seemed
to explode in her brain, to shatter her--she was alone. She had lost
love.... And she saw herself, night after night, endless, identical
nights, lying in her bed, her body rigid beneath the bed-covers.
She had so little to remember and so much time to remember in--her
experience reduced itself to that one victorious moment when Flagg had
loved her without question--and there was no comfort in remembering....
“I cannot offer my sympathy,” the doctor was saying, “in the usual
terms. I understand so well what it means to find oneself alone, the
physical self cheated of the comforting reality, the spiritual self
unaccustomed.... Later, a week, a month, a year, it will be more
difficult for you. Then, suddenly, you will find relief--in work, new
interests, another love.”
“Don’t!”
He spread out his hands. “Inevitable! This man has gone. But you
remain. You must progress. Your education, if you will permit me to
say so, is not complete. His, I dare say, was....”
He put the typewritten pages back on the desk. “Tell me about him.”
He leaned forward, offering a curious, leather cigarette case. “You
smoke?”
“Yes.”
She saw his hand as he held the match for her, a hand at once sensitive
and acquisitive; there was a large ring on one of the fingers, and
Lilah thought: “How Italian!”
“You’re shivering. Give me your hands. Steady now! You mustn’t let go,
_signora_. It’s devilish hard to pull oneself back.”
“You speak English very well.”
“My mother was English. But I was born in Persia and educated in
Germany. Ah. Your pulse is better. Breath. Deep. Deeper! That’s it.
Now, smoke? Later, I’ll get some coffee for you. I let the servant
go. But I have made myself very much at home here.... I used to know
your poet. Before his exile, he was an extravagant host. A charming,
innocent fellow who enjoys his evil reputation. He is, actually,
religious, but he is ashamed of his inclination and attempts to deceive
us with abominable clap-trap.... You’re all right. All right.”
“You’ll stay here to-night?”
“Of course.”
“It is very kind of you. I can’t help shivering. Something in me is
whirring--like a wheel--”
She had to try, at least. She was ashamed to shake and chatter before
this stranger. He drew up a chair and sat before her, with his elbows
on his knees. Then, for the first time, she looked at him. He was short
and had ginger-colored hair and a ginger-colored beard streaked with
gray. His face was lean; the skin was dry and tight, drawn over the
bones so that you saw the structure, the modeling, extraordinarily
precise and fine. His eyes were the color of moss agates, small,
brilliant and inquisitive.
“I think I can sleep,” she said abruptly.
Her lids were heavy. She stopped trembling and yawned. Her head fell
back against the cushions. She felt the doctor’s eyes, appraising her,
but she could not meet the attack. Nothing was left of her audacity.
This drowsiness was like a drug. And little by little consciousness
of what had happened slipped away. She would start, gasp, reach out
for that certainty, only to have it evade her, to have it submerged
in great waves of sleep.... She struggled to recall what it was that
needed remembering, what it was that was gone.... Nothing remained but
the face of the doctor, thrust forward, still and absorbed. Suddenly it
was jerked away and she sank down, down, into sleep ... for hours.
* * * * *
She woke again. It was dark. The windows showed, black squares, save
one, where the lamp was reflected, seeming to burn steadily and
brightly both within the house and without. The doctor had not moved.
“How long have I slept?”
“About three minutes.”
“Oh.”
Then she remembered. Flagg was gone. She would never again feel his arm
beneath her head, the tightening of the muscles in his shoulder, the
weight of his sleeping body against hers.
She sat up. And instantly the doctor got to his feet. “I’ll make
coffee. Wait. Don’t move.”
He was gone. What a strange man. What did he think of her? Whom did he
imagine her to be? Would he question her? What would happen, now?
She went to a mirror and stared at herself, surprised to discover that
she was the identical Lilah; again, she sensed a peculiar, penetrating
delight in the witty outlines of her nose....
Strange, that in moments of tremendous meaning, meaningless things
demanded attention. She was more aware of the things in the
room--chairs, tables, ornaments--than of the body upstairs. The
chairs were somehow strange and terrible at that hour--they were like
listening people, spying people, ready to say in sharp, unnatural
voices that it was late--turn out the lights ... let us sleep, let us
dream in the shadows, our dark, mysterious dreams....