INTIMACY

By hunger sharply sped

To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use.

SOON René found himself engaged upon an intimacy with Linda

Brock--that is to say, he was ever at her command, her constant

escort, her listener. She talked of everything, seemed to empty her

mind for him. Everything she discussed--the relation of the individual

to the race, the race's rights in the individual, childbirth, the

upbringing of children, and the position of women. He had not her

reading, and was at first fogged by her discourse, her voluble

juggling with topics and ideas that could not enter his mind without

engendering a certain heat and releasing some emotion. It was not

long, however, before he found himself master of her jargon, not long

either before she found out how to use it to bring him to a confusion

from which there was no issue but by kisses and embraces, and because

he kissed and embraced he loved, or believed that he loved. All his

unhappiness he ascribed to their necessary separations, and he was

persuaded that his soreness could be healed, his dissatisfactions

repaired in a future possession. The force of old habit kept his

working life intact, and there he was happy and proud to think that in

his love there should be so noble a coolness. He tried to explain this

to her, and she said:

"Yes, of course. You must keep your work separate. Love and fine

thinking, you know."

He liked the phrase, not knowing it for a quotation; but he never

observed that she always set herself to disturb his coolness, and

never let him go from her till it was drowned in a flood of warmth.

She took him in hand, made him buy clothes, gloves, spats, chose his

ties for him and his shirts; discovered that he only wore one shirt a

week, and tacitly informed him that two was the irreducible minimum;

persuaded him to abolish the parting in his hair and to brush it back;

to abandon his straight for winged collars; presented him with

gaily-colored socks; lent him books, modern works of fiction and

fashionable philosophy; induced him to become a member of the Union,

though she could never get him to speak at debates. On her instigation

he joined a tennis club in the summer term, proved rather skillful,

and was invited by M'Elroy to play for the University second team.

Linda was ambitious for him, but she could not make him ambitious, and

she failed to develop opinions in him; but always, just as she was

despairing of him and on the point of dismissing him from her mind as

dull, he would come out with some simple comment that delighted her

with its directness and force. Then she would go to Professor Smallman

and talk about René, and the Professor would say:

"A good sound brain. Nothing unusual except that one feels in him

things unroused. No passion."

"Ah! Passion!"

"Yes," he said, purring, "I put it rather neatly, I think, the other

day. The temperament of a clerk with a brain too good for that kind of

work. He has a conscience."

"But do you think he will do anything?"

"He will do what he thinks right."

"Then you do agree that he is a force? I feel that so strongly about

him."

Professor Smallman smiled in his charming, uninterested way.

"Not much good being a force if you are an economist. That's

specialist's work. Even business would be better."

And Linda began to map out a career for René--business, the city

council, Parliament, and thereafter--who knows?

René was very docile. His friendship for Linda made life more

gracious, more full, and he was shedding the awkwardness that had

grown on him during his two years of solitude. He was able to go to

Professor Smallman's whenever he liked, and other houses had been

thrown open to him.

At first he had endeavored to bring the new spirit that he had won

into his life at home, but his father had become merely ribald, and in

his mother the spark of feeling that had been struck out of her on his

return from Scotland had died away and would not come again. What she

felt and thought she concealed with chatter, and too many of her notes

were now exasperatingly echoes of her husband's. For a short while

René went through an agony of shame when he felt his parents as a drag

on him, and he could never return home without an acute feeling of

sadness. To counteract this he used to talk to Linda of his mother as

she had been before his father's return, brave, humorous, quick to see

and to understand. In such talk Linda delighted, and she made him

promise to introduce her to his household.

It was arranged.

"Afternoon tea, I suppose," said Mrs. Fourmy. "Thin bread and butter

in the parlor."

"I think she'd like what we always have. She particularly said you

weren't to make any fuss."

"But I'd like to wear my black silk. I don't often, now."

"You can wear what you like, mother. Only let us have tea as we always

have it. I'm sure she'd like it better. Not sardines or tinned salmon

or any of those things. They only have light tea because they have

dinner afterward. It would be silly of us to pretend to be anything

but what we are."

"But they'll think----"

"I don't care what they think."

Mrs. Fourmy stole a quick glance at him and said:

"No. You never do."

Her tone roused him to a hope that the old mother had come again, and

he turned to her, only to see the quick light die down in her eyes and

into them come the querulous questioning expression that seemed to

forbid him to pass beyond the empty words and looks she gave him. He

realized then how false an idea he must have given to Linda, and he

wished she were not coming.

When the day arrived, just before he went to fetch Linda he sought out

his mother, and found her dressing in her room with his father lying

on his bed smoking and reading.

"I'm going now," said René. "I shan't be more than half an hour."

"I don't mind betting," chuckled his father, "that you'll be more than

that. There's no end to it when these women get to dressing up for

each other. Look at your mother; she's been brushing her hair this

half-hour past."

"I thought you were out," said René, cold with an almost hatred.

"Me? Tea-partying's my line. Always has been."

"Don't tease him," said Mrs. Fourmy. "Don't tease him."

Mr. Fourmy had his waistcoat unbuttoned, so that to René he seemed all

fat stomach bulging through coarse shirting. He turned away in

disgust. As he closed the door he heard his mother say:

"It isn't fair when the boy's in love."

He held the door open, and heard his father turn on the creaking bed

and laugh and say:

"Love? A gawk like that? Statues are his line, not women."

Upon that René so lost himself in a sick dread that he was hardly

conscious as he walked, and seemed to have been marvelously propelled

from Hog Lane to Galt's Park.

Linda was ready for him in a light muslin frock and an adorable little

tip-tilted hat. He had never seen her so pretty.

They decided to walk by way of Potter's Park to see the flowers. René

could hardly get his words out, but he felt that he must do something

to explain.

"You may be disappointed, you know. It mayn't be all that you think it

is."

"Oh, but I have seen the outside of the house, and one knows what to

expect. I mean, if you saw the outside of our house you'd know the

inside was pretty much the same as hundreds of others. The curtains

always give you away. And nearly all the houses on this side of

Thrigsby are like yours. When I was at school I knew a girl who lived

next door to you. And, of course, I'm excited because it is--don't you

think--reassuring when you are fond of people to know that they have

relations like the rest of the world."

René's shyness, the delicacy of his feelings had forced upon her the

use of the phrase, "fond of each other." For all the excitement she

had roused in him he had never become possessive nor made any attempt

to assert a monopoly. And one evening when she had flirted with

M'Elroy at the tennis club he had left her to it, apparently not at

all distressed, and subsequently he visited on her none of the

jealousy she had expected. With M'Elroy her relationship had become

nothing but jealousy, and she preferred René's diffidence to that. And

also, as she had shaped René outwardly, so inwardly she hoped to mold

him to her liking. M'Elroy was too conceited for that.

"I promise you I shan't be disappointed," she said.

"I want to ask you not to mind anything my father may say. He does

talk so. I hoped he would not be in."

"You dear silly, I shan't mind anything. I shall like it. I want to

see how you live, and if I don't like anything it will only be the

more wonderful that you are you."

He gripped her arm very tight. She laughed though he hurt her. It was

the first uninvited caress he had given her.

"You are so strong," she said, and she took his arm and did not

relinquish it until they came to the gate of 166.

To his dismay René found Elsie with his father and mother. She

declared that she had only dropped in, but she was arrayed in her most

garish best and had put on her primmest and most artificial manner,

talking mincingly like a chorus girl. And she patronized Linda,

swaggered over her as the married woman, chattered about her darling

baby, and made the party so uncomfortable that Linda could not hold

her own, and a gloom would have descended on them had not Mr. Fourmy

come to the rescue and told droll stories, spiced and hot, of the

doings of women in various parts of the world. He cut into Elsie's

gushing stories with the story of the marine and the admiral's French

governess, and wound up:

"In Brazil the women eat men. No half measures. Eat you they do. Look

to the right or the left and they knife you. What I can't make out,

Miss Brock, is why any men stay in England."

Linda laughed merrily.

"Hardly complimentary to us! But you came back, you know."

"So I did, for my old age. England's an old man's country."

"You won't get me to believe that, or René either."

"Ah, but René can't see things as they are. Short-sighted René is. And

George is blind; isn't he, Elsie?"

Elsie giggled. She had been wanting to giggle for some time, and the

appeal to her set her off. She could not stop herself.

"Oh! Lor'!" she gasped, "you are funny, Mr. Fourmy. You ought to be in

a pantomime. I never laugh like I do with you."

And once more Elsie dominated the party. René wilted. Linda drank the

many cups of tea pressed on her by Mrs. Fourmy in her nervous anxiety.

Conversation flagged, sputtered, and Mr. Fourmy in desperation kept

Elsie giggling with familiar jokes. Linda laughed at them too, and

René sank into gloom and his mother watched him anxiously.

At five o'clock Elsie gave a little scream and said she must hurry

away to see that the servant (she had no servant) had made George's

tea. She hurried away, and then, relieved of the oppression of her

presence, René was just beginning to hope for better things when

Linda, to escape from the table, asked if she might see the picture on

the easel in the corner of the room. Delighted, Mr. Fourmy turned the

picture to the light. Linda bit her lip and a dimple came in her

cheek.

"Not bad for an amateur," said Mr. Fourmy. "Just the lid of a

cigar-box and a little paint. I never did care about anything but the

figure."

He took the picture up and looked at it lovingly, and with pride and

in a queer confidential voice that startled René and stung Mrs. Fourmy

into a sudden attention, he said:

"You can understand an old man liking to do something with his hands,

and it's strange how, when I paint a little bit like that"--he pointed

to the hip--"it brings back wonderful moments I have had and rare

pleasures, not just in remembering, but as they were--wonderful!"

"I think so," said Linda with unwonted simplicity, and Mr. Fourmy took

her hand, stooped over it, and kissed it.

René looked at his mother, she at him, and Linda, turning to Mrs.

Fourmy, smiled and said:

"I am so glad to have come, Mrs. Fourmy. René and I are such friends.

We have such great hopes for him and I wanted to see you. Will you

take me home, René?"

Mr. Fourmy opened the door of the room for her, hurried ahead to open

the front door, and with a tremendous dignity, bowed again over

Linda's hand, thanked her for coming, and said:

"May life be good to you, and very amusing."

And Linda answered:

"I'd like to buy your picture, Mr. Fourmy. Will you send it to me when

it is finished?"

"I would rather give it to you."

René's horror sent him flying down to the gate. It was a minute or two

before Linda came. She was smiling, and Mr. Fourmy had come out on to

the doorstep to watch her walk down. René saw his eyes follow her and

appreciate her movements, and he became acutely, alarmingly conscious

that she also was a woman. He was frightened of her as she came up to

him, but he was also angry, and he let fly:

"Linda, you can't."

"Can't what?"

"You can't let my father give you his beastly picture. You didn't seem

to mind. I thought you would. I thought you would. He sits all day

doing those things over and over again."

"Oh, René, don't be silly. I'm older than you."

That was the first he had heard of it, and it dashed him. That a man

should love, could love a woman older than himself was in flat

contradiction to all his notions. He was furious. Linda went on:

"Two years older. Twenty years older in experience and knowledge. You

think like a silly little boy."

In a rage he turned on his heel and left her. But at once a fierce

hunger to be with her seized him, to clutch her by the arm as he had

clutched her before, and to hurt her more, to feel her soft flesh

yielding under his grip. That desire was stronger than his fury, and

he ran after her, and caught her up just at the gates of Potter's

Park.

"I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. I do beg your pardon. I can't

help it. I must be with you."

And he seized her arm and rushed her ahead for a few paces until she

cried out at the hurt:

"René! René! Quiet! Not now! Wait!"

She was as excited as he, but not, like him, absorbed in her

excitement. It was a delight to her.

He released her, and she led him to a seat opposite a bed of Darwin

tulips, red and mauve and yellow. He sat by her side trembling,

drowning in a flood of savage emotion, thinking not at all. Slowly he

became aware of the tulips in front of him, and he said:

"The flowers are very pretty."

That relaxed the tension he was in, and he stretched out his legs and

stared up into the sky, and presently he broke into words:

"And the summer sky is beautiful, but not so beautiful as you, and I

love you."

His arms were folded on his chest, and he seemed to be hardly

conscious of his words Then in a calmer voice he said:

"I never noticed before how the sky is always changing and moving and

alive. I would like to sit like this until it all grows dark and the

stars come out and the glow of the lights of the town goes up into it?

And, Linda, it has all become very different, hasn't it?"

She said:

"I knew it would come."

Then they laughed together, and René clapped his hand on her knee and

told her she was a wonderful darling.

Linda observed then that they had begun to attract attention, and she

rose and walked quickly away. He followed her slowly, thrilling to the

present, seeing nothing in the world but her brave little figure in

muslin with the tip-tilted hat. Her hair was golden in the sun, and

her neck was white and the lines of her shoulders were lovely. René

touched her lightly as he came up with her.

"We're going to be married," he said.

"Yes."

"Isn't it fun?"

Her answer struck him as amusing and he laughed. She asked:

"Is Elsie better in her own house?"

"Oh, she's a good sort, really, and George--that's my brother--George

couldn't have done better."

"I have an idea from the way you speak that I shall rather like

George."

"I didn't say anything to show I like him."

"No, darling." (René's heart leaped at the word.) "No. I think you

dislike him. You hate your father. He is impossible, but such a dear."

René, sensitive in his ecstasy, for the tulips and the sky and she had

brought him to nothing less, felt a malice in her that scratched at

his heart. But, loving her, worshiping the new radiant intimacy that

had sprung up between them, he loved even her malice.

They walked home slowly, laughing over the mischances, the absurdity

of the tea-party, and when they reached her house she made him come

in, played to him for an hour, and sent him home drunk with love. He

called it love, for he suspected not that it could have any other

name. She had promised to marry him as soon as he had his degree and a

position, and he was to write to her mother and make a formal

proposal, since Mrs. Brock was old-fashioned enough and German enough

to desire that much of formal ceremony.