The foolish man thereat woxe wondrous blith
As if the word so spoken were half donne.
SO far René's success had come from his power to do what had been
expected of him. He had done it without delight or enthusiasm but with
the concentration which came from his lack of interest either in the
past or the future. From the interest of others in himself he had been
able to borrow a little excitement every now and then, but he could
never sustain it. It was not lack of energy, mental or physical, but
rather that, doing what was expected of him, he did it well enough to
lead to further expectation, and this gave him a constant surprise at
himself to keep his existence zestful. He was not altogether
indifferent, but he could accept. He accepted that Linda loved him,
and was equally prepared to accept that she loved him no longer,
subject, of course, to any incidental pain he might suffer. Believing
in everything that happened with no power of definition or
intellectual curiosity, he could never at any given moment realize his
position without reference to others, and therefore, when he found
himself embroiled in this tender, disturbing relationship with Linda
Brock, he needed to bring it to the test of all his other
relationships--with his father, his mother, his brother, M'Elroy,
Kurt, and Professor and Mrs. Smallman. He could not talk about it to
any of them, but he hoped to find in all some appreciation of the new
wonder that had come upon him, and he desired, for his comfort, to
find out what in this new development was expected of him. Here he was
baffled. Everybody was either tactful or insensible. Things inanimate
had changed enormously for him. Streets, houses, trees, had taken on a
new beauty, a friendliness that made room for his emotions; but people
lagged distressfully, and he often had an unhappy sense of leaving
them behind, or, as he talked and listened to them, they would
dwindle. And yet, at the same time, he found them so wonderful that,
in their failure to respond to his need, they seemed to him to be
untrue to their own wonder. He knew not the nature of his need, but he
was left subtly conscious of its being left unsatisfied. He ascribed
his discomfort to his love, and called it "being in love." It gave him
an insatiable desire for Linda's society, presence, contact; a harsh
sensibility to her beauty; an appreciation of her physical qualities
upon which he never dared to think, because it led him back in thought
to the moment of her colloquy with his father when he had felt so
strangely that he and his mother were not of their world. In this
distress his mind could find ease in the idea of marriage. That
settled the future and appointed an end to the force that urged him on
so mysteriously and powerfully; but, accustomed as he was to living
humbly in the present, he needed somehow to escape the isolation into
which the desire for Linda had cast him. He worked harder than he had
ever done, but when he was not working, and issued from the coolness
of that limited mental activity, he was visited by a craving that not
even Linda could slake. He found most comfort in children and the idea
of children. He would go and see Mrs. Smallman, and sit with her in
the garden and silently watch Martin and Bridget playing over the
meager lawn under the plum-tree. He would talk to Mrs. Smallman about
indifferent things, and go sick at heart as he saw how her eyes and
mind were upon the children, how little occupied with himself, and how
rigidly she kept him from that mystery which he desired to comprehend.
Again he would play with the children with an admirable success, so
that they would admit him as one of themselves, only as he emerged
from the game to be met with an applauding smile from the charming
lady, which made him feel that she admired his performance but could
not herself admit him. She was friendly and amiable, and would ask him
to come again; and he would hear from Linda how well Mrs. Smallman
thought of him--"Such a nice boy, and so fond of children"--but she
kept him separate. He tried once or twice to tell Mrs. Smallman about
Linda.
"She is such a clever girl," she would say. "A good musician, of
course. My husband says she could take a first easily in almost any
subject. I am sure she will make a good wife, just the kind of girl to
make a man successful. We have often been surprised that she has not
married before, but of course she is a girl who could only live
happily with a good brain. It does make such a difference."
Everything she said led back to her own bliss and exceptional fortune;
and while René gave her due homage for her motherhood, her wifedom,
her gracious happy home, yet he came almost to hate these things
without knowing that it was because they were securely barred in. Yet
he could not keep away nor refrain from his attempts to storm the
citadel.
He would try through Smallman, who was even more exasperating. He
seemed to divine that his pupil was groping after some reassurance of
human beauty, but he would hint darkly at the difficulties of married
life, generalize about the simplicity of human needs, whisper of the
revelation of fatherhood, and, just as he had René sitting forward in
excited anticipation of the longed-for marvel, he would double and
turn aside into the discussion of economic problems, or the
unsatisfactory nature of the academic life in Thrigsby. And then, with
the children, René would see that Smallman could never enter into
their games or their minds as thoroughly as himself.
On the whole he preferred George's gross swaggering over his
paternity, and there was a sure satisfaction in watching his
sister-in-law suckle her baby. But there again George and his wife
took upon themselves an excessive credit for the achievement, hoarded
it, invested it in everybody whom they could get to take it, seeming
to use the child as a means of gaining admiration for themselves. They
seemed to be incapable of recovering from the astonishment of anything
so natural happening to themselves, and they too, a little more
exuberantly and less charmingly, barred René out.
"By Jove!" George would say, "there is nothing like it. It's wonderful
what you can do without when you've got that. And, as I was saying to
Elsie, I can't make out what swells do who have a nurse. I can't tell
you how jolly glad I was when the monthly went and we could have it
all to ourselves."
To René George was so horrible when he talked so, that he would forget
the sentimental satisfaction he had had in the contemplation of the
change wrought in the household by the advent of his nephew.
"And imagine," George said once, "that one never thinks of it. You get
making love and all that. Just a bit o' fun, as likely as not, and it
leads to this. By God, it's a big thing. Hark at the little beggar. I
tell you, René, my heart sometimes stops with fright when a long time
goes by and he doesn't howl. Oh, well, your day will come. It'll come,
all right. Don't you worry!"
In desperation René led the conversation elsewhere.
And at home things were hardly better. He felt that his mother did not
like Linda, though she showed no reluctance to talk of her, or indeed
to praise her. Perhaps Linda had frightened her. And sometimes René
would feel that his mother had a real horror of love and marriage and
all but the most superficial and sentimental relations of the sexes.
He would wonder how that could be reconciled with her reception of his
father or her excited business before the coming of Elsie's baby. She
was often disconcertingly silent when he came home from some
employment with Linda, and he learned that he must not tell her what
he had been doing.
Sometimes she would begin of her own accord to talk of Linda:
"She has such eyes. She sees everything. You feel she knows every
stitch of clothing you have on. And the things she wears herself--
Well! But she's very pleasant and she's got a pretty smile. Girls were
very different in my day."
"How were they different?" René would ask.
"I don't know. Different. I can't say. We were more patient. There
were some things we didn't talk of. But, of course, she's not English.
That would account for a good deal. If you weren't so set on her I
should say she was making a fool of herself. Girls often do, you know,
with a sort of man they've not been used to. But I will say this for
you, René, you're not one not to take a girl seriously."
René looked puzzled. His mother laughed.
"Go on, you great gaby; don't tell me you don't know what you can do
with those eyes of yours."
This annoyed him with its suggestion of a deliberate manipulation on
his part of the springs of affection.
"Oh, mother," he said, "you've been so different since my father came
back, and I'm different, and everything seems to be changing so
swiftly that it is hard to tell--hard to tell where we are. We seem so
far away from the old life, just you and I together."
Mrs. Fourmy looked at him and replied:
"You remind me of the times when you were a little boy and used to sit
with an ashen face, very thin, with the tears rolling down your
cheeks. And when I asked you what was the matter you used to say: 'I'm
heavy.' You weren't like an ordinary boy. You seemed to feel things."
"I seem to feel things now," he said miserably; "but I don't know what
things they are." Then, encouraged by the warm interest he felt in
her, he added: "But I can't want not to feel." And, daring a stroke
against the new baleful influence at work in the house, he told her of
his recollection of the scene in the bedroom when she had spanked his
father.
"Well now," she said, "to think of your remembering that."
"It made all the difference," said he, "all the difference in the
world."
"Oh, you poor mite," cried his mother; "and you couldn't see it was in
fun?"
"Fun!" He looked incredulous.
"Yes. We were very happy then."
He pounced eagerly on that.
"Happy? Were you happy? And now? And now?"
That was coming to closer quarters than she had courage for. She sank
into indifference.
"We're old now," she said, and he felt that she too had barred him
out. She also may have felt it, for she shifted uncomfortably and led
the talk away from herself and presently to praise of his father.
"He was too clever," she said, "and I couldn't see how clever he was.
I wanted him to beat his brothers in their own line, and I wanted him
to love you two boys in my way instead of his. Of course I'm not
clever, René, and I can't say where things got wrong. It's wonderful
how he's settled down now. I never thought he would. And I want you to
be nice to him, René, for my sake. Even if you're not going to be here
much longer, I would like you to do that. He feels his position so."
The sting of indignation pricked René into brutality. He had made his
effort to reclaim his mother from his father, and failed. He cried:
"What did he do?"
"What do men do when dullness creeps over them and they are mortified
with failure?"
There was a note of vengeance in her tone, exasperation perhaps, a
savage determination to set abominations before the fatuous innocence
of her son. She succeeded. He was beset with horrors and a sick
repulsion from his mother who could allow, accept, and seem to rejoice
in such contamination.
Drearily he said:
"He's a dirty man," and upon that expression of opinion he left her.
However he did attempt to be more amiable with his father, and even
went so far as to accompany him to the Denmark of an evening, and was
there astonished to find how the old fellow by sheer wit and masterful
presence lorded it over the company of clerks, shopkeepers, theater
musicians, agents, brokers, bagmen, school teachers, the odd
characters, the small talents of the neighborhood. René noticed that
Mr. Sherman plied his father with drink to keep him lively, and that
there seemed no question of payment for it. Mr. Fourmy paid in talk,
yarns, jests, jokes, impromptu fantasies, with sly hits at the
eccentrics of the assembly. And although René hated the atmosphere,
the smoke, the drink, the greedy lapping up of gross laughter, the
pouncing on scraps of filth and equivocal utterances, he could not
escape some admiration of his father. This grew as they left the place
and Mr. Fourmy shook off his air of large geniality and took his son
by the arm and asked if they might go for a walk together.
"To think," he said, "of your remembering a thing like that. And it
did make a change too. You used to come running down the road to meet
me when I came back from town. You stopped doing that. I noticed it
once or twice, and then I gave no more heed to it. I never was much of
a one to give heed to things. Can't stand things dull. Never could. I
couldn't do what you're doing now, plodding away with those fat books
of yours. It seems wonderful to me. I looked into one of them the
other day. No. I never had the mind for it."
"Father," said René solemnly, "when I was born, what did you feel
like?"
"Lord love a duck! What a question! I'd been expecting it, you know.
And George was there, you know. But I'll tell you this, my lad. A
child's wonderfully separate at once, and no amount of clucking will
ever make it anything else. It's got its own separate life like the
rest of us. We're all separate, and it's just as well not to forget
it. We're never allowed to forget it for long. I forgot it. I thought
we were a nice little happy family with no individuals in it at
all--except myself. And then----"
"What then?"
"Then, my son, there was a nasty mess."
"Oh!"
"There always is a nasty mess. Marriage knocks a man to pieces and
leaves him to put himself together again. Women are more brutal. They
don't mind if marriage turns out to be no more than a pool of mud.
Lord, Lord! a woman will bear a child almost every year of her bearing
life and be no more than a little girl at the end of it, a prying,
stealthy-minded little girl."
René was enraged and shocked, but excited too, intellectually. He
turned to his father and said:
"Father, I want to know, I must know, how you could come back to my
mother."
"That," said Mr. Fourmy, "is what I am still asking myself."
René swung round and struck his father full on the mouth, thrilled
sickeningly to the impact and raised his hand to strike again. Mr.
Fourmy caught him by the wrist and dragged him up so that their faces
were close together, both breathing heavily:
"Steady," whispered the older man, "steady! steady on, boy. It's the
women bitching at you got into your blood. You're a good boy, a
virtuous boy. Things are hard for virtue. Listen to me. Do you hear?"
René nodded. "Very well then. Life's a damn dirty business, and it
grows damneder and damneder as time goes on. It got so damned for me
that I cleared out. See?" René nodded. "I cleared out till I could see
that it was damn funny. Then I came back. It was grinding me as it is
grinding you."
He patted his son's arm so affectionately that René choked and the
tears ran down his cheeks.
They walked on, René lurching, until his father took his arm again and
led him. There was a moon over them, and as he led, Mr. Fourmy said:
"On a night like this even Thrigsby is beautiful. Lord! How I used to
hate the place. But when I had seen things I came to know that it is
like any other. There are good men in it and good things, and over all
the same slime of meanness and fear that only very few can penetrate.
We live in a world of women, boy, and we must make the best of it."
René hardly heard him, but he could feel the pressure of his hand and
was glad that here, at last, was one nature that did not bar him out.
It was so astonishing as to be repellent, but he was so hungry for
comfort that he could not withdraw.
X