A husband who has a wife that faints is in the grasp of the great It.
Full of fear, pity, remorse, and self-hatred, Charles-Norton danced about
helplessly for several minutes, sprinkling water upon Dolly's brow (much
of it went down her neck); trying to pour bad whiskey between her pearly
teeth; calling himself names; chafing her hands, promising to be good, to
do always what she wanted; loosening her garments; proclaiming the fact
that he was a brute, she an angel--while the wings, loose down his back,
flapped after him in long, mournful gestures. And when finally, from the
couch upon which he had drawn her, Dolly opened upon him her blue eyes,
humid as twin stars at dawn, he placed her little scissors in her hand,
and with head bowed low, in an ecstatic agony of self-renunciation bade
her do her duty. The little scissors could not do it this time, though.
It took the shears.
After which there were a mingling of tears, murmurings, embraces, and
Dolly said that the bad, bad times were all over now, and he agreed that
they could never come again; and she said they would be happy ever
afterward, and he agreed they should be happy always. Then Dolly, still a
bit languid, in a voice still a bit doleful, drove him off to the office.
Where he arrived very late, and had to pass the gauntlet of his chiefs
frigid ignoring of the dereliction.
When Charles-Norton had gone, Dolly suddenly sat up with a click of small
heels upon the floor. She remained thus some time, a frown between her
eyes. She was not triumphant, she was worried. She seemed to recognize
danger; her transparent nostrils dilated to the smell of powder; and
plainly, you could see her steel her being. After a while she nodded to
herself, curtly and very decidedly, and went on about her work.
She met Charles-Norton at the door when he returned in the evening. He
was somewhat limp after a day of _mea culpas_! and she, a quarter of an
hour before the time for his reappearance, had powdered her nose--which,
she knew, gave her an expression half amusing, half piteous, just like
that of the clown who is playing his tricks at the circus while his
little daughter is dying at home. "Hello, Goosie," she said breathlessly
(also she had rubbed a trace of rouge under her eyes); "hello, just in
time for dinner! Made a fine chocolate cake. Poor dear, you look so
tired!"
And after supper, which in spite of Dolly's very ostensible effort at
exuberance, was rather silent, for Charles-Norton, with a man's
detestation of "scenes," still felt somewhat embarrassed at the
happenings of the morning, she drew up the Morris chair to the lamp, sat
Charles-Norton in it, and filled his pipe for him. When thus "fixed up
comfy," he felt a soft breath upon his neck, and two little hands at his
neck-tie. Off came tie and collar, and then the coat, and then the shirt,
and then--zip-zip.
"Say, Dolly," he remonstrated mildly; "couldn't you wait till morning?"
"There," she said; "it's almost all done. Just a wee bit more here.
There! Now here is a kiss! It didn't hurt, Goosie, did it?"
And Charles-Norton had to concede that it did not hurt. How could he have
explained the subtle feeling within him, that sort of swooping descent of
his inwards that came with, and the dullness of all things which followed
always his shearings?
"No, it didn't hurt," he repeated. But a vague dissatisfaction like a
yeast stirred within him, and a flicker,--beaten down immediately, it is
true, trampled, smothered,--of revolt.
Calmly, coolly, efficiently, though, Dolly had taken the upper hand. The
next morning she sent him sheared to the office; she sent him sheared the
same night to bed.
And thus day after day for many days. Every morning Charles-Norton went
out to his work full of emptiness (if that phrase is permissible), empty
of heart, empty of mind, without a desire, without an anger. The warm
June days had come; he had changed his underwear. He felt the season only
as a discomfort. The emerald explosions visible at the end of each street
as the L train passed along Central Park did not stir him; the tepid airs
drifting lazily from the sea, the fragrant whiffs from the depths of the
germinating land, passed over him as though he were made of asbestos. An
insulation was about him, removing him from all things that thrill, all
things that distend; there was no color, no vibration in the world;
iridescences had ceased; the chamber of his soul had been painted a dull
drab.
He had regained, though, the esteem of his fellows. The subtle and
unerring instinct which had made them suspicious in the days of
his--misfortune, now in the same inexplicable way told them that he was
normal again. They looked at him no longer askance. In fact, they did not
look at him at all. They accepted him without question in crush of street
and L; gave him his rightful space (nine and a half inches in diameter);
trod on his feet only when forced to (by the impulse to obtain a more
comfortable position); poked their elbows into his stomach only when
necessary (that is, when they had to get out or in ahead of him); and on
the whole surrounded him with that indifference which at the bottom is a
sort of regard, which means that one conforms, that one's derby,
sack-suits, socks and shoes, habits, ideas, morals and religion are just
exactly like the derbies, sack-suits, socks and shoes, habits, ideas,
morals and religion of everyone else, and hence right. At the office he
had regained the appreciation of his chiefs; his salary had been raised
to twenty-two dollars and a half a week and his working hours from eight
to nine hours. His home life was the standard ideal one. That is, he got
up at the same time every morning, left punctually at the same hour, took
the L, arrived at the office on the minute, worked with his nose close to
the ruled pages, steadily, without a distraction, till 12.30, had his
macaroon tart and cup of coffee at Konrad's Bakery, smoked his five-cent
cigar in the nearby square till 1.30, worked again till 5.30, returned
home on the L, pressed tight like a lamb on the way to the packing-house,
had a cozy little dinner upon which Dolly had spent all her ingenuity,
smoked his pipe in the Morris chair, and then read the paper till the
sudden contact of his chin with his chest and Dolly's amused warning sent
him off to bed. A very moral, regular, exemplary existence. Dolly was
very happy.
And then, just as this couple could see the track clear ahead,
stretching smooth and nickel-plated to infinity, an ugly complication
began to worm itself into the serenity of their lives.
This complication arose from the fact that the suppressed wings of
Charles-Norton began to grow faster. Each day, now, Charles-Norton,
returning home, brought with him to Dolly a task more serious and
considerable. She had long ago discarded the little scissors and used
special shears made to cut heavy cardboard; and she finished off with a
safety razor.
The result of this increase in the rate of winged growth was that,
whereas Charles-Norton every morning left home placid and docile, his
character gradually changed during the day. Starting at his work in the
spirit of a blind horse at the mill, by ten o'clock he was apt to find
himself, pen-holder in mouth, nose up in the air, following the
evolutions of a buzzing flylet. By eleven o'clock, the cage had become
very stuffy; spasmodic intakes swelled his chest, ghost longings stirred
within him. When he got out at 12.30 the sun seemed to pour right through
his skin, into the drab chamber of his soul, gilding it. He hurried over
his macaroon tart and cup of coffee, and then had three-quarters of an
hour left to idle in the square.
He prepared for this gravely, as for a ceremony; first by buying a
Pippin. A slender, light-brown Pippin, scientifically sprinkled with
golden freckles, for five cents. (A daily Pippin was a recognized item of
the family budget; at one time Charles Norton had carried his pipe with
him, but Dolly, noticing the doubtful fragrance given by said pipe to the
clothes of Charles-Norton, had insisted upon the extravagance of the
daily Pippin). Having bought the Pippin, Charles-Norton did not light it
right away. Oh, no. He ambled first to the square. He selected his bench
carefully--one upon which the sun shone, but shone with a light filtered
by the leaves of a low-branching elm. He sat down; he stretched his legs
straight before him. Then slowly, with deliberation of movement, he
scratched a match. He brought the spluttering end near his nose. The
Pippin began to send forth effluvia, an exquisite vapor, faintly-blue.
Charles-Norton half closed his eyes; his soul began to purr.
Before him a fountain plashed; about the fountain were red blossoms; the
elms rustled gently against the blue sky; through the delicate lace of
their leaves the sun eddied down like a very light pollen; and all this,
through the Pippin's exquisite atmosphere, was enveloped and smoothed and
glazed into a picture--a slightly hazy dream-picture. Charles-Norton
stretched his legs still more; his shoulders rose along the sides of his
head. He was as at the bottom of the sea--a warm and quiet summer sea.
Down through its golden-dusty waters, a streak of sun, polished like a
rapier, diagonaled, striking him on the breast; and to its vivifying burn
he felt within him his heart expand, as though it would bloom, like the
red flowers about the fountain.
Upon the other benches sprawled some of the city's derelicts. The sun was
upon them also; they stirred uneasily to its caress, with sighs and
groans, their warped bodies, petrified with the winter's long cold,
distending slowly in pain. Pale children in their buggies slept with
mouths open, gasping like little fish; some played upon the asphalt.
Charles-Norton, by this time, was apt to be far away; far in another
land. He lay upon his back and watched a hawk on high.
The sparrows usually brought him back. They played about his feet; they
chirped, hopped, and tattled; they peered side-ways at him and gave him
jerky nods of greeting. At times one of them, to a sudden inspiration,
sprang into the air; with a whir he flashed up to the top of a tree. To
the movement, something within Charles-Norton leaped to his throat.
Across the park, gaunt behind the trees, rose the tall steel frame of a
new building; and away up at the top of it (which was higher every day) a
workingman, on a girder, ate his lunch. Charles-Norton liked this man; a
current of comradeship always ran from him to the little figure
silhouetted up against the blue. He should have liked to eat his lunch up
there, side by side with this man, his legs swinging next to his, with
the void beneath. And then, he thought, after lunching, he would like to
stand erect, away up there, at the tip edge of one of the projecting
beams; to stand there a bit, and then spring off; spring off lightly, and
whiz down; down, down, down with outspread arms.
Which was a very foolish thought for a man that worked in a cage to
dream. Very foolish, even if the cage were of glass. Just about that time
the Pippin went out in a black smolder, and from a nearby church, hidden
between great sky-scrapers, a big ding-dong bell said resonantly that it
was half-past one.
He returned to the office. Every afternoon, now, was a tingling trial. He
worked with head down, sweating with repression. An obsession tormented
him. He wanted to walk out of his glass cage. Out, not through the door,
but through the glass. Not gently, like Alice going into Wonderland, but
with ostentation and violence, with a heralding crash of shattered panes,
scandalously. Out of his cage, into the next; out of that, into the next;
from one end of the big room, in fact, to the other, crashingly, through
cage after cage--and then out upon the street through the plate front.
Half-past five finally freed him; and taking his place in a packed
herring-box on wheels, he was rolled back to Dolly--and the shearing.
Thus for a while did the young people live securely on a clown's
tissue-paper hoop. Then one evening, just as Charles-Norton, after
successfully resisting all day his anarchistic glass-smashing impulse,
was watching the hands of the clock approach the minute that was to free
him, his chief, raising his bald head at the end of his long, thin neck,
said casually, "We work all night, to-night, you know, Mr. Sims."