1
Yes, Lewis was getting stouter. He stood before the glass that hung
in his room, examining his face with chin thrust forward. "I _am_
getting stouter," he said to himself, and lightly touched the flesh
over his cheek-bones. The fact struck him as curious. Since the day
he had left the hospital, since that brief and futile reckoning with
his anger in Levine's office, nothing in the way of good fortune had
befallen him. He had returned unwillingly to Ruth, and taken up the
work at Lustbader's as if still under the spell of that first moment
when Lustbader engaged him. In all this he felt there was nothing to
make him happy ... and yet it was certain that he was getting
stouter. He thrust his face closer to the mirror and pinched his
cheeks with an angry panic motion. In sudden terror he remembered
Biondi, and the loathing that had filled him at the thought of
Biondi's flesh ...
Yet it was true, he admitted, that his life at the moment had a
sufficiently pleasant rhythm. The work at Lustbader's was not
difficult ... he liked the quiet and isolation of the house to which
they had moved on the outskirts of the city. He could rise in the
morning when he pleased, and stroll through the tidy streets before
going to work. Then there was the long trip in the subway with the
certainty of the dark and cool theatre at the end. And if he came
early enough, there were the few hours when he was alone and played
only for himself. With Lustbader, moreover, he was on the best of
terms. For one night when the lights of the theatre were out and the
building empty, Lustbader, more drunk than usual, had called him into
his office, intending, as he said, to give Lewis his most intimate
confidences. In the course of their conversation it had developed
that Lustbader was the victim of a grave misconception. "You see in
me, Antonini," he had said, resting his head on his hand and speaking
as though he were about to cry, "a man who has never been taken
seriously. And why? Because my hair is red, and my eyelashes are
red, and my moustache is red. Yet what's so peculiar about that?
Wasn't all the hair on the body meant to match? And suppose it is
peculiar ... tell me, does it make me any the less real? Ah, believe
me, Antonini, you don't know what it is to be so perfectly matched.
It's too much for people. Wherever I go they smile. And the women
... _they_ certainly don't know how to take it." He had lapsed into
mournful contemplation, from which he roused himself to beg Lewis to
take a more enlightened view. Lewis had reassured him, and after
that night Lustbader treated him with special consideration, even
suggesting that he organize a quartet in order that he might draw a
larger salary. But Lewis had been content with things as they were
... he had desired only that the routine of things continue. Even
the thought of Poldy came to him less and less. Tonight, the first
time that he stopped to take stock of himself, as if emerging from
the shock which had come with his leaving the hospital ... tonight he
did not think of Poldy at all.
But it was hot in the room, and he turned away from the mirror and
went to the window to look out ... across the level land and
low-lying lights, to the place where the buildings of the city were
faintly visible ... to the searchlights playing over the river in a
perpetual crossing and re-crossing, lifting themselves like the
snouts of huge primeval animals lying somewhere below the horizon.
He heard faintly a distant murmur from the city, and near at hand the
sound of Ruth's footsteps going rhythmically back and forth in the
yard.
Sharply and suddenly, as if he were seeing it for the first time, the
scene came to him ... he glimpsed it as a vast and quietly-colored
canvas, of which he saw the abstract arrangement and balance ... his
own dark figure at the window ... Ruth walking alone and thoughtfully
below it ... the level field of lights and the far-away fanwise
motion of the searchlights. And with this poignant momentary sense
of how the whole earth was spread out beneath him, and the masses of
things balanced on it, there came the feeling that it was good to be
on the earth's surface ... good to be alive and poised on the broad
plane of earth; a feeling that he had not known since boyhood, that
he thought could never visit him again. In that moment he wished
that Ruth would speak to him with some old reassuring word, breaking
the silence which had come between them since he returned from the
hospital. In his heart he called to her ... understanding that in
some way she was part of the moment, of the longing and pleasure that
was in it. But she continued to walk back and forth unaware of him,
and at last baffled and a little angry because she did not notice
him, he turned away from the window and sat down at the piano. He
tried a few notes and stopped, and put his elbows softly on the black
keys, resting his head in his hands.
How strange, he thought, how strange that this feeling of happiness
had come to him ... that for a while he had been able to forget his
anger and resentment. There was in it the same pleasure and
discomfort that might come from interrupting a habitual motion ... as
if a certain gesture of his hands that went on unceasingly had been
arrested for a moment. Strange too, this longing for Ruth, a longing
which he had just felt so urgently and profoundly that it terrified
him. A moment before he had not suspected it was there ... he had
thought himself secure from her in his isolation of pain, and the
feeling that there was something to be ashamed of. But now for the
first time since his return he had glimpsed the chaos in his soul, it
had been flashed out from his calm like a complicated landscape
flashed out from the sky at night. And now that it was over he was
left more bewildered, with the same feeling of terror at what was
happening to him that he had felt before, when he stood before the
mirror remembering Biondi's flesh.
But why didn't she speak to him? Why was there this silence between
them, in which their few words rang out with a cruel and terrible
distinctness? He remembered that they had loved each other in the
past. In the past their love had been a place where they were
intimately together ... yet now they were strangers, often he had the
painful feeling that his eyes could not see her clearly. Now they
were like two people who have walked by each other on the road, and
then look back and find that the road has curved in such a way that
they can no longer see each other. Which of them, then, had turned
the corner? Whose fault was it ... whose fault, he questioned
bitterly, that they could no longer see one another? Yours,
something reproached him ... because he had come back to her
unwillingly, because he thought she would be ashamed of him, and had
countered in his heart with anger and hatred. Yet he knew that
secretly he had wanted Ruth to comfort him ... secretly he had hoped
that on the first day she would take him to her and say comforting
words. If this had not happened ... if the first night had passed
and the first day, and all the days after, and she had not spoken,
then it was really, true that she was ashamed of him. She had even
denied him her body, and it was this that especially confused and
humiliated him. For if she repelled him whenever he tried to touch
her, how very great must be her shame of him, how loathsome he had
become. And at the thought of it Lewis felt his breath come more
quickly, he felt his throat tightening again with hatred for her.
In a curious desire to see her, to study her out of his anger, he
went to the window and looked out. She was walking near the wall of
the house, her head thrust forward, her eyes fixed thoughtfully on
the ground. For a moment as he listened her footsteps seemed to be
speaking sadly to him ... to be the symbolic language of the thoughts
that came to her as she walked alone. And again he wanted to call to
her, lifting from his eyes the painful feeling that they could not
see her clearly. And the burden of his call, the words of it ...
what would that be? "Where are you, Ruth..." he could call to her,
"where are you..." And she would hear him and know that he longed
for her. But when he waited and she did not look up at him, he
remembered that he had come to study her objectively, to put her at a
distance by watching. His cue now was to watch her all the time ...
as she went about her work in the house ... when she walked in the
yard, when she spoke to him. Always to be watching her, and so keep
her at a distance ...
But how tall she looked and unreal, pacing back and forth in her long
skirt, like a woman out of an old and sad legend. When she passed
under the window he could see the glistening blackness of her
straight hair, parted in the center and drawn back in a knot.
"Italian hair," he said to himself, unexpectedly and dispassionately,
as if he were examining a picture. She walked slowly, with a certain
queer hesitation, as though the ground might not be firm beneath her
feet. He had the curious feeling that she was walking barefoot. And
sometimes she was startled by a slight noise, and looked around,
seeming bewildered to find herself pacing back and forth.
It did not seem possible that she could be walking so close to him
and not feel his presence at the window; yet when he caught a glimpse
of her face he saw in it an expression completely turned in on itself
... a strange and brooding look, as if one thought came continually
to her mind, which she could not understand at all, yet which had to
be turned this way and that and examined again and again, calling for
perpetual wonder. In this one thought she seemed to be spellbound,
caught in its terrifying strangeness, trying to shake it from her
with this trance-like pacing back and forth. And because of it she
could forget his presence and everything around her, she was even
unaware of the expression on her face ... the strange beauty that it
had of something completely absorbed and unconscious of itself. He
stood at the window watching, feeling almost afraid of her, of this
new wonder of her face. And when she stopped at the far end of her
walk and rested with her hand to the wall, he was startled almost to
outcry by the intent glance with which she gazed before her ... the
intraverted look of a statue whose features have grown to one
expression for centuries...
What was she thinking of? What thought was it, he wondered, that
held her spellbound, and was so strange and bewildering that since
the first moment it occurred to her, all her days had been passed in
a stupor of trying to understand it. He remembered times when he
came upon her brooding alone, and she would lower her eyes
secretively, fix them for a moment in mysterious somnolence ... then
lift them with a swift glance of reproach, as if it lay in his power
to free her. There would be a bittersweet tumult in his heart at the
thought that she brooded over him, and was puzzled and unhappy for
the ending of their love. Yet in the next instant he would question
it ... why did she not speak to him if this was true ... why was
there only question and answer between them, her answers always
simple and courteous, like echoes of his question ... and if he did
not seek her out with questioning, why was there only silence? And
though he recalled from the past the sort of person she was ... one
to whom words did not come easily ... yet now there seemed to him a
treacherous quality in her silence. In it he heard many things ...
her scorn, her censure, her shame. It terrified him now with its
infinite meanings...
But now she became aware of him, and stopped under the window and
looked up inquiringly. He was irritated because she had spied him
too late, after the moment of his longing was over. "Why don't you
go to bed?" he said sharply. She answered in a low voice that it was
too hot, and stood near the wall with one hand lifted, letting her
finger-tips play lightly along the part of her hair. Lewis waited
for her to speak further, and when she remained silent he turned away
from the window with a gesture of weary finality. The room seemed
suddenly too small for his anger. He fled from the room and the
house, walking in a trance of speed until he came out of the dark
road to the main street. There the number of people made him slacken
his pace. He permitted himself to be caught up into the rhythm of
their march, losing for a while all the torturing sense of his own
identity and the anger that had driven him forth.
On each side as he walked people caught up with him and passed him.
He could feel their bodies flowing by with the bobbing motion of
debris on a swift stream. But after a few blocks he felt wearied
with the constant motion of people passing him and their endless
number. There were too many people in the world, he told himself ...
too many noises also. Day after day the noises in his head to listen
to ... by now he had learned how cunningly they could adjust
themselves ... weak and timid when it was quiet, proportioned to the
silence. But at other times trying to out-scream the sounds around
him, as if they could hear them and felt a hysterical contagion. He
longed for only a moment's freedom from them, for only one moment of
absolute silence. And it was true after all, he resumed, that his
life was hateful to him, and the fact that he was growing stouter was
only a trick of his flesh. It was true that he hated the work at
Lustbader's ... that he was nauseated with the necessity to sit and
play for people who weren't listening, and felt infinitely humiliated
each day at the indifferent going of the audience. It would be
better to give up the work at Lustbader's and find something else to
do, not so intimately associated with his past. Better also to leave
Ruth, rather than continue their living together as strangers. For a
while he tried to plan this seriously; but the feeling of dizziness
that overcame him made him stop short in his thoughts and warn
himself ... that these paroxysms were dangerous, that he could not
afford to let himself grow discontented. These were the dangerous
moments, he warned himself ... when, because of his discontent, he
began to desire something more than his life could give him, to long
wildly for a new and undefined fulfillment. Then he could see how
precarious was the stillness of his mind ... that it was only the
apparent stillness of something whirling so fast that no drop could
spill ... but if once the motion slackened, if it eased for only a
moment, then everything that had been held in balance by it would fly
apart. He knew that he must never permit any let-down in this
excitement of his mind ... there must always be something, something
to keep up its swift motion.
But what would that be, he asked himself? What was there left for
him now, exiled from Ruth's love, unable to play any more, unable to
hear things clearly? What was there left save to hold fast to the
routine of his life, letting the rhythm of it, accumulating from day
to day, convince him at last that he was living. It was so for
everyone else ... for all these bodies that bobbed past him. They
moved in an insect activity, and repeated it in time and repeated it
in each other, so that they might feel doubly sure of themselves.
They moved daily in an insect migration, and everything they did was
automatic, and their love was unclean ... men and women living
together, and with too long familiarity and handling of each other's
bodies their love became incestuous. He too should be content to
live as they did, he should not slacken his pace and be thoughtful on
the street ... but even while he hastened his step his throat
tightened with hatred for them, for that air of urgency which they
always had, which was so skilful an imitation on their part of insect
importance. No, he told himself ... it was not so easy for him ...
he knew the trick that had been played on him. And his anger seemed
to deafen him, so that he heard for a moment the absolute silence
that he craved ... and he stopped bewildered, fearing that it was the
end of the whirling, the sudden jar of silence that comes when the
machinery stops. At first he wanted to shout to them for help, he
wanted to lay hold of someone and cry out what had happened. But in
that interlude of silence he heard a thought speaking clearly to him
... that he must begin to work on a symphony, and that he would be
famous through this work, that through it he would express all that
had happened to him, and it would lift him out of the incognito in
which he now lived. An incredible lightness of heart came over him,
a desire to laugh and embrace the people who passed him ... for it
seemed that now he heard the music of his own life again, and could
conduct it once more to a triumphant conclusion. He had found too a
further recess from Ruth, where she could watch him, puzzled and shut
out in her turn. Strange that it had not occurred to him before,
that something so obvious should be so slow in coming to him...
But here somebody jostled him, and Lewis realized that he had been
standing still and staring at the sidewalk. Informally, then, the
noises resumed, and he started to walk again, but still with the
feeling of lightness in his heart.
2
It did not leave him for many days ... days in which cloud-sweeps of
music played about him ... endless panoramas of music that kept
merging and separating, folding and unfolding, with the prodigality,
the ceaselessness of insanity. Days when he heard terrific and
intricate harmonies ... the accompaniment for profound dancing, for
the courteous minuet of the worlds. When the noises in his head
opened up new vistas, arranging and rearranging themselves in
kaleidoscopes of sound, from which he caught an occasional pattern of
rhythm and melody, at the undreamed exquisiteness of which he held
his breath. When everything was saturated with music, and every
object that he looked at gave off musical sound like a property of
its matter ... and all the motions of his hand gave off music, as
simply as the motion of a whip gives off the swishing sound. All day
and even through the thin wall of his sleep he listened, and the
meaning of what he heard comprehended all words, was the infinite
meaning of things that lies beyond any word that has ever been
spoken. Meanwhile he went about pale and absorbed, going through his
work with the mechanical gestures of a sleep-walker. People stared
at him, who had the expression of someone lost in the nightmare of
his own ecstasy. But the end came at last. He sat down one evening
to recall what he had heard, his pencil finely-sharpened and poised
over the staff.
3
And at times they would come back to him ... themes that moved so
inevitably from phrase to phrase, in which he heard so clearly the
implicit harmonies, that to record them was only the labor of putting
down the notes on the staff. At other times he was baffled, working
for days without adding anything ... humming over and over in his
mind the parts that were already written, until they grew sterile
with the repetition and he could not hear them any more. Then in a
sudden impotence he would sit and stare at the notes, believing that
they might begin to move around on the page, or that in some
mysterious way he could conjure them, as if they were round black
symbols on a chart of magic. But when nothing happened and the whole
work seemed futile, his nostrils whitened with suppressed fury, he
would take his work in his hands with a furious desire to tear it ...
or when Ruth was in the room he would turn on her, as if it was her
quiet presence in the room or some casual movement of hers that
caused his failure. And on nights when this happened sleep was not
for either of them, but with careful and crafty questioning he sought
to call her to account ... why had she removed the picture of herself
that hung in his room ... why had she re-arranged things? And she
would answer him obediently, a suggestion of weariness in her slow
obedient answers. All night they lay in bed exhausting their words
... until it seemed to Ruth as if their words had become a symbolic
intercourse, more exacting and insatiable than the intercourse of
their bodies ... and she would lie still and thoughtful in the long
interval between his questions, like someone not entirely absorbed by
her passion, with much leisure to think in the midst of it. Why had
she removed the picture of herself that hung in his room ... and she
answered him obediently: how she had noticed that he looked angrily
about him when he worked, and she had not wished him to look at her
picture in that way. But in that slow obedience of all her answers
there was great weariness and indifference, as if it was only a way
of disguising her words, the way she had found at last of speaking to
him and yet guarding the secrecy of her thoughts. These, now, were
more important to her. All day to whatever she did her thoughts were
an insistent accompaniment, and in bed they had to be counted again,
told over every night like prayers before she could fall asleep....
First, she remembered, there were the days just after his return.
From the beginning he had been strange to her, and yet she had not
suspected anything, she had been willing to wait. When the newness
of things wore off, she had told herself, he would look around once
more and remember her. And at first it had been easy to find
reasons: it was moving to the new house that pre-occupied him, or the
work at Lustbader's ... but when time passed and he did not change
she saw how excuses could multiply themselves, how she was put off
indefinitely. Then had come a period of panic, when she felt the
strangeness settling between them like a stealthy gathering of mist,
and was powerless to stop it. When she had tried to snare his
attention ... foolishly, in ways that made her ashamed to remember
... placing something new where he would see it ... a vase of green
glass or a bright square of silk for the wall. There had been for a
moment a magic in everything she bought, a belief that everything
must change because this or that was brought into the house. And
when these had failed she thought the fault must be in herself. Then
what do I need? she had asked, standing in front of the mirror and
examining herself. "I am too dark ... too sombre-looking...." and
this discovery had filled her with a sense of guilt, she was ashamed
because she was not light-hearted...
So everything had ended in shame and confusion. And now that all her
thoughts were over, now that she had counted them like prayer beads,
what was there left to do save to lie rigid and wait for sleep?
Though each night she was conscious of her body and its sweetness
going to waste, she knew it was better to lie alone. In the
loneliness of her body there was, somehow, a little cause for pride
... there was also hope, an element in their relations that was still
in solution. Each night when they lay in bed she felt the
separateness of their bodies as a question, and she feared that if
she gave herself to him the question would be answered, and there
would be no longer any hope for her ... only complete humiliation.
Better, then, to lie with her fantasy ... to feel her body as if it
were a statue, immobile yet conscious. So in some ancient evil court
women were used ... arranged naked as adornments for the corners of
the palace, on their knees and under a towering headdress, so that
they might be more rigid and unreal. So she thought of herself, a
slave-woman whose body was turning into stone, while near her a long
and dispassionate intercourse was occurring.
She would lie so long without moving that Lewis would raise himself
on his elbow and turn to look at her ... seeing her face white
between the lines of its Gothic hair, and her eyes staring upward,
gleaming like black stones. Angrily he would repeat his question...
4
But she had put back the picture and arranged everything as it was
before. Yet one afternoon when she entered his room, she found Lewis
sitting disconsolately over his work, resting his head on his hands
and staring before him. He turned on her with unexpected ferocity.
"Why did you change things around? Everything is going wrong since
then."
Ruth hesitated whether to speak, and then asked indifferently, "Why,
what is wrong..."
"You should never have meddled," Lewis insisted petulantly. "Did I
ask you to come in and arrange things? Did I ask you to spy on me?"
Ruth sat down, her arm on the back of the chair, her fingers musingly
feeling the part in her hair. At her feet was a pile of papers torn
into deliberate tiny scraps. These she stared at and then touched
with the tip of her foot. The action infuriated Lewis. He went over
to her and caught her wrist, so that she drew away from him with a
cry of pain.
"I tell you we can't go on this way," he said bitterly. "It must
end. We can't go on with this crime."
"What is the crime?" she asked, with weary automatic curiosity.
"Tell me what crime you mean. Have _I_ committed it?"
She fixed her dark eyes on him for a moment, and then turned her
attention again to the papers on the floor, shifting them about with
the tip of her foot, trying to arrange them into a circle. In this
occupation she was profoundly absorbed, hardly aware of him. Only
once she frowned. When he said, "It would be better for me to be
alone," she frowned as if she could not understand the words, but had
caught them between her eyebrows, and would hold them that way to be
considered in the future. Meanwhile, with delicate and intent
movements of her foot she perfected the circle of papers.
Then she rose and went into the bedroom. For the colloquy that she
was going to have it seemed necessary to let down her hair first, and
lay the hair-pins carefully away. She leaned forward and stared at
herself in the glass, still frowning. "What was my crime?" she asked
softly, and lowered her eyes in thought. "Why no, it wasn't that,"
she reasoned. "Something went wrong with the music. My crime was
only to be present." She smiled at this and looked at her reflection
triumphantly. "Yes, my crime was that I was present." But
immediately she leaned closer, and looked into her eyes that were now
large and startled. "But suppose that is a crime," she whispered.
Because she did not know what to say ... because there was a terrible
finality in that question, she turned away from the glass, and a wave
of dizziness and terror swept over her. One thought came to her mind
... flight ... to go away from him instantly, to make the house
suddenly empty of her presence. In a moment this became so urgent
that she did not stop to do more than comb her hair and brush the
dust from her dress. Softly she opened the door, and reassuring
herself that she was unobserved, she went lightly down the stairs.
Where she was going or what she would do was not clear to her ... she
only knew that it was urgent that he be left alone, that Lewis should
feel the emptiness of the house at once. She struck out in the
direction of open country, unconsciously turning from the street that
would lead her among people. Walking so swiftly that she seemed to
be moving in a dream, she came to the state road, and not until she
had gone far into the country did she stop. Then as if awakening she
looked around her. Suddenly tired, she turned back a few paces to
the ending of a stone fence, and sat down there, surveying the scene
around her with a listless interest in its details.
She saw a field in which the gathered and tented wheat lay in a quiet
encampment, and in the stillness she heard the dry rustling of bugs
through the stalks. A row of little pines stood near the edge of the
field, their trunks no bigger than branches. She looked at them and
thought of children standing in a row, stretching on thin legs to see
which was tallest. Across the road and a little beyond the place
where she sat there was a white farmhouse under dark trees, and she
heard the voices of men shouting in the distance. She sat there
looking indifferently at the field, or letting her eye travel
listlessly over the tall grass and flowers at her feet. For a long
time she followed the movements of a white butterfly that caromed
against her knees, she sat so still; or noted how, in the least wind,
the tall grasses bent toward each other. A loud humming of some
insect, sounding near her like a man's voice, made her start. She
jumped up hastily and looked around, then seeing what it was she sat
down again, smiling self-consciously at her fright. Now she
remembered things she had passed on the road. At one house two
children had been standing in a doorway, regarding her curiously; and
when she looked back the children in the doorway had strangely
multiplied themselves into a group of all sizes, all staring at her
with one expression of astonishment. Another time she had followed a
road that led unexpectedly to a house, and she had turned and walked
away quickly, while two old women on the porch called to her, each
one holding an egg in her hand, arrested in the act of counting.
These details came back to her now, with the strange overtone of
something she might have read about in a fairy-tale. And the field
of wheat before her and the young pines stretching to see which was
tallest seemed unreal as the picture in a child's book. She felt
rather foolish now. She had achieved that sudden emptiness of the
house which had seemed at the moment of her flight so urgent and
precious to her ... but now what to do? Return? No ... she must
stay away longer. She bestirred herself and walked on more slowly.
But now she felt faint and exhausted and sat down to rest wherever
she could find a little shade. At length she came to the end of the
state road and faced a country lane, unshaded and desolate-looking.
Here a man was working in the fields, and when he saw her he rested
on his hoe, watching her as she stood uncertainly at the cross-roads.
"Where are you going?" he called. Ruth went over to him. "I don't
know..." she began confusedly, feeling the blood mount in her cheeks.
"What's off that way?"
"Up there," he said, and seemed to be figuring it out, "up there's
the lake, but it's so hot on that road, you'll get cooked."
She considered a moment, thanked him and turned back. One time she
stopped and leaned against a tree, laughing and crying at the same
time. "You'll get cooked..." she repeated to herself.
It seemed to her as she retraced her steps that there was an eternity
of time before she would reach the place where she had rested.
Things she had noticed on her way seemed to have moved farther apart,
the sky was overcast, and behind her there was a constant rumbling of
thunder ... when she reached the white farmhouse heavy drops were
falling. In terror of the storm she stood in front of the house,
wishing that someone would call to her. But only a huge dog came
bounding out, and when she lifted her arms he leaped at her. For a
long time she tried to ward him off, standing there in the center of
his leaping, swishing her arms back and forth, fearing that at any
moment the grotesque duel between them would end. Her breath came in
short gasps, she tried to call for help, but her terror prevented
her. At last she raised her voice. "Call off your dog," she cried
hoarsely, and blushed at the boldness of shouting that way. Two
young girls appeared on the porch and called to the dog, and then,
after a short consultation with each other, invited her in. The
storm broke as they entered the kitchen. There the shades were drawn
and the lights turned on, giving the effect of night.
They permitted her to sit alone on a low stool near the window. When
the rain slackened and it grew lighter, the girls raised the shades
and turned off the lights, and busied themselves once more with their
sewing. Infinitely pleasant to Ruth was the tidy kitchen and the
sound of the clock ticking and the rain outside ... a quiet interlude
in which she lived for the time the calm house-bound life of the two
girls, in which her own unhappiness did not exist. In a desultory
manner the girls talked while they sewed.
"Do you think they are coming back here to live?"
"It's hard to say," the taller one answered. "They wrote that they
were selling the place."
"And didn't say what they would do after?"
"No, he likes it out there."
The first one who had spoken stooped to pick up a skein of silk from
the floor. "I think this red is too bright," she said, holding it up
to the light. "Tell me," she continued after a long silence. "Are
you ever lonesome here?"
The other hesitated. "No ... not really lonesome," she said
thoughtfully. "I have my moods of course, but I'm not lonesome for
any particular person, or any place either. It's just..." she sighed
and looked down at her work. "But it's very nice here," she added.
From time to time they glanced shyly at Ruth, and becoming conscious
of her presence they would be silent. She wished they would forget
her entirely, that she could lose her own identity and sit there
forever, listening to their quiet dialogue. For there seemed to be
something so impersonal in what they said, an indifference in their
manner of speaking, that gave her a strange sense of peace. She saw
them as beings still content with their world and secure in the
little details of it ... still untouched by desire, by the knowledge
that would make of the whole world a prison of one person. "Not for
any particular person..." the taller one had said. Ruth remembered
the words as if they had been spoken for her. There was only one
place in the world, she knew, where she could dare to exist, and that
was near Lewis. She was not strong enough to be without him ... she
would accept any terms, only to be near him. And having made this
confession she felt infinitely degraded, she felt that if the two
girls could have looked into her heart they would have recoiled with
horror. In all that they were yet to learn this would seem to them
most terrible ... that they should become so bound, that the whole
world should become a prison of one person. And could they not tell
what was in her heart? Wasn't it known to them already? Why was she
walking alone this way, if not because she was unhappy for someone?
Her cheeks flushed with shame at the thought that they understood her
... she wished she could hide from them, feeling too exposed when
they looked at her with their swift glances.
But now she realized that they wanted her to go. "It's cleared up,"
they urged gently. Ruth sighed and rose, and stood for a while
glancing around the room, lingering on its neatness, on the shining
clock and the pictures, which she saw through their eyes as dear
possessions. She looked out and saw that it was clearing, and over
the wheat field there was the reddish glow of sunset. "Yes, I'll be
going," she said reluctantly. They followed her courteously to the
door.
5
Ruth knew, as she walked down the road, that they were watching her
go, and while they could see her she kept her head up bravely. But
as soon as a turning of the road effaced the house, she sat down and
gave way to a passionate angry outburst of tears. There was not so
much sorrow in it as anger for all the things that had happened to
her, for everything that was yet to occur. She had thought to flee,
and had given herself the momentary satisfaction of making the house
empty of her presence. But that was all ... that was all she could
accomplish. She clenched her hands and beat them against the stone
... "I am not strong enough," she said aloud, with bitter anguish in
her voice. "It's true ... I am not strong enough...."
Lewis was standing outside, looking anxiously up and down the street.
"Where have you been?" he asked reproachfully. "I was looking for
you...."
She stood in the doorway resting, her hand to her heart. Of a sudden
an expression of pain crossed her face. "Lewis," she said faintly,
and looked at him, her eyes wide with fear. "Put your hand on my
heart. Isn't it beating too fast?" He obeyed her, but the feeling
of her heart beating under her wet dress was repulsive to him, as if
she had asked him to touch a wound. He forced himself to hold his
hand there and shook his head. "Where have you been?" he repeated.
"I've been looking for you...."
Upstairs in the bedroom she lay down, feeling her forehead burning
hot and the blood beating in it with imprisoned fury. She lay alone
for a long time, until the room grew dark and her eyes closed in
uneasy slumber. Lewis woke her, bending over and awkwardly touching
her forehead.
"Does your heart hurt any more?" he asked.
"No ... I'm all right..." and she turned away from him.
"You have fever, Ruth..."
"No, it's nothing," she repeated sharply. "Let me alone."
But after a while she turned to him, and he could see her face
bewildered and pale in the darkness.
"Tell me, Lewis," she said, her voice low and reluctant. "Why do you
torture me?"
He pondered her question. "Why no ... that's not true," he said
harshly. "We torture each other."
"But why ... why..." The word was repeated with dull insistence,
with the unhappy petulant tone of someone who has asked a question
too long. And it seemed natural that silence should follow her
question, having in it the quality of a profound answer.
Nothing could be more terrible to her than his caress on that night.
While there had been the separateness of their bodies, she had felt a
little cause for pride. But she knew this for the end of everything,
she knew, now, that her degradation was complete.