At three o'clock in the afternoon Julia put on her hat. Her dressing
table with its triple mirror stood in an alcove. It was a very fine
severe little table. It was Julia's vanity to be very fine and dainty in
her toilet. Here was no powder box, but lotions and expensive scents.
When she sat before the glass she enjoyed the defiant delicacy which she
saw in the lines of her lifted head, and there was a thrill which she
could not analyze in the sight of her long white hands lying useless in
her lap. They made her in love with herself.
Her hat was of bright brown straw and when she slipped on her fur coat
she was pleased with the luxurious incongruity of the effect.
Nellie, the old Negro servant, was away, and Julia's step-children, May
and Bobby, were at school. As Julia descended the stairway to the lower
hall, her silk dress, brushing the carpet, made a cool hissing sound in
the quiet passageway.
She opened the front door softly and passed into the long street which
appeared sad and deserted in the spring sunshine. Under the cold trees,
that were budding here and there, were small blurred shadows. In the
tall yellow apartment house across the way windows were open and white
curtains shook mysteriously against the light. Above a cornice smoke
from a hidden chimney rushed in opaque volumes to dissolve against the
cold glow of the remote sky.
Julia walked along, feeling as though she were the one point in which
the big silent city in the chill wind grew conscious of itself. It was
only when she reached Dudley Allen's doorstep that her mood changed, and
she felt that when she went in she would be robbed of her new glorious
indifference about her life.
She rang the bell above the small brass plate, and when the white door
had opened and she was mounting the soft green-carpeted stairs up the
long corridor, it seemed to her that she was going back into herself.
In the passage before Dudley's rooms he came to meet her as he had done
before. His hard eyes as they looked at her had a sort of bloom of
triumph.
"I was sure you'd come." He grasped both her hands and drew her through
the tall doorway. "Dear!"
"I suppose you were." She smiled at him with a clear look, knowing that
in his discomfort before her he was condemning himself.
"Won't you kiss me?" They were in his studio. He pouted his lips under
his mustache. His eyes shone with uneasy brilliance.
She kissed him. She understood that the simpler she was in her abandon
the more disconcerted he became.
When she had taken off her hat and laid it upon his drawing-board, he
held her against him and caressed her hair. Because he was afraid of his
own silence, he kept repeating, "Dear! My dear!"
"Aren't we lovers, Julia?" he insisted at last, childishly. He was
embarrassed and wanted to make a joke of his own mood, but she saw that
he was trembling. His mouth smiled. His eyes were clouded and watchful
with resentment.
"How deeply are we lovers, Dudley?" She leaned her cheek against his
breast. She did not wish to look at him. Suddenly she was terrified that
a lover was able to give her nothing of what other women received.
"You love me. Look at me, Julia. Say you love me."
Her lids fluttered, but she kept her eyes fixed upon his small plump
hand, white through its black down. The hand was all at once a pitiful
trembling thing which belonged to neither of them. It had a poor
detached involuntary life.
Because of the hand she felt sorry for him, and she said, warmly and
abruptly, "I love you." Her eyes, when they met his, were filled with
tears. Yet she knew the love she gave him was not the thing for which he
asked.
He was suspicious. His hands fell away from her. "Was I mistaken
yesterday?" His voice sounded bitter and tired.
She was pained and her fear of losing him made her ardent. "No, Dudley!
No!" Her face flushed, and her eyes, lifted to his, were dim with
emotion.
"Did you understand what I hoped--how much I hoped for when I asked you
to come here to-day, Julia?"
"Yes," she said. All the time she felt that she loved him because they
were both suffering and in a kind of danger from each other which he was
unable to see. She loved him because she was the only person who could
protect him from herself. She was oppressed by her accurate awareness of
him: of his hot flushed face close to hers, the shape of his nose, the
pores of his skin, the beard in his cheeks, the irregular contour of his
head matted with dark curls, his ears that she thought ugly with the
tufts of hair that grew above their lobes, his neck which was short and
white and a little thick, and his hands, hairy and at the same time
womanish. Already she knew him so intimately that it gave her a sense of
guilt toward him. Her recognition of him was so cruel, and he seemed
unmindful of it.
When she had reassured him that she loved him, he drew her down beside
him on the couch with the black and gold cover. He wanted to make tea
for her and to show her some drawings that had been sent to him for his
judgment.
She knew that while he talked he was on his guard before her. It seemed
ugly to her that they were afraid of each other.
The drawings, by an unknown artist, were very delicate, indicated by a
few lines on what appeared to her a vast page. It humiliated her to
recognize that she did not understand the things he was interested in.
To admit, even inwardly, that something fine was beyond her awoke in
her an arrogance of self-contempt. I'm only fit for one need, she said
to herself. Then, aloud, "They are very subtle and wonderful, Dudley.
Much too fine, I think, for me to appreciate. I really don't want any
tea." And she gazed at him hatefully as though he had hurt her.
Feeling herself so much less than he, even in this one thing, made her
hard again. She stretched her hands up to him. "Kiss me!" The frankness
and kindness were gone out of her eyes.
He was startled by the ugly unexpected look, and his own eyes grew
sensual and moist as he sank beside her on his knees.
She drew his head against her breast and between her palms she could
feel his pulses, heavy and labored. Each found at the moment something
loathsome in caressing the other; but it was only when they despised
each other that their emotions were completely released.
* * * * *
It was growing dusk. The cold pale day outside became suddenly hectic
with color. Through the windows at the back of the room Julia could see
the black roof of the factory across the courtyard and the shell-pink
stain that came into the sky above it. The heavy masses of buildings
were glowing shadows. The room was filled with pearl-colored
reflections.
Dudley watched her as she lifted her hair in a long coil and pinned it
against her head.
She glanced at his small highly colored face with its little mustache
above the full smiling lips. Again she was ashamed of seeing him so
plainly. She wished that she were exalted out of so definite a physical
perception of him.
"Julia. Julia." He repeated her name ruminatively. "You did come to care
for me. What do you feel, Julia? What has this made you feel?" He could
not bear the sense of her separateness from him. He was obsessed by
curiosity about her and a lustful desire to outrage her mental
integrity. He could not bear the feeling that the body which had
possessed him so completely yet belonged to itself. His eyes, intimate
without tenderness, smiled with a guilty look into hers.
She gazed at him as if she wanted to escape. For a moment she wished
that they could have disappeared from each other's lives in the instant
which culminated their embrace. Their talk made her feel herself
grotesque. "I don't know," she said. "How can I say? I don't know."
Though he would not admit it to himself, her air of timidity and
bewilderment pleased him. "How many lovers have you had, Julia?"
She thought, He only asked that to hurt me. She could not answer him.
She smiled. Her lips quivered. She looked at her hands.
She saw him only as something which contributed to her experience of
herself. She had her experience of him before she gave herself to him.
What happened between them happened to her alone.
"What do you feel? Tell me? How deeply do you love me, Julia?" He knew
that he was making her resentful toward him, but it was only when women
felt nothing at all in regard to him that he found it hard to bear. He
grasped her hands and held them.
"Of course I love you deeply." Her voice trembled. She turned her head
aside.
"What do you feel about your husband, Julia?"
In spite of the pressure of his hands she felt Dudley far away,
dissolving from her.
When she did not answer him at once he was afraid again and began to
kiss her. "You love me. You love me very much."
"Oh, you know I love you," Julia said. She wanted to cry out and to go
away. He hurt her too much. Everything about him hurt her. She had a
drunken sense of his disregard of her. She could no longer comprehend
why she had come there and given herself to him. It was terrible to
discover that one did irrevocable things for no articulate reason. She
was less interested in Dudley now than in this new and terrible
astonishment about herself. She could not believe that she had taken a
lover out of boredom and discontent with herself, so she was forced to a
mystical conviction of the inevitability of her act.
"I must leave you, Dudley. I can't bear to go. I love you. I love you."
She kept reiterating, I love you, and felt that she was trying to
convince herself against an uncertainty.
He regarded her curiously with the same uneasiness. "I may be going away
soon, Julia. The French painter I told you about--the friend I had when
I was in Paris. He's through with America now and wants me to go to
Japan with him. Do you want me to go? I can't bear to be away from
you."
"Go. Of course you must go." She felt hysterical. She took up her hat.
He could not endure the cold reserved look that came over her face.
"Julia." Hating her, he put his arms about her, and when her body
suddenly relaxed he resented its unexpected pliancy.
I don't know her, he repeated to himself with a kind of despair against
her.
* * * * *
Julia unlocked the front door and stepped into the still hall. A neat
mirror was set in the wall of the white-paneled vestibule. Here she saw
herself reflected dimly. Everything about her was rich-colored in the
afterglow that came golden through the long glass in the niches on
either side of the entrance. The polished floor was like a pool. Julia
felt that she had never seen her house before and this was a moment
which would never come again.
When she went into the dining room she found the table laid, and the
knives and forks on the vague white cloth were rich with the purplish
luster of the twilight. The white plates looked secret with reflections.
Beyond the table, through the French windows, she could see the darkness
that was in the back yard close to the earth, but above the high wall
at the end was the brilliant empty sky. The base of the elm tree was in
the shadow. The top, with its new buds, glistened stiffly.
She passed into the clean narrow kitchen. She had planned white sinks
and cupboards when she and her husband, Laurence Farley, were directing
the renovation of the place. Julia loved the annihilating quality of
whiteness.
Old Nellie, standing before the stove, glanced impassively at her
mistress.
"Dinner time, Nellie?" Julia wondered what was in the old woman's mind,
what made her so strong in her reticence that everything about her
seemed carved from her own will. The long strong arms moved stiffly in
the black sleeves. The ungainly hands moved heavily and surely.
"Reckon 'tis, Miss Julia." Nellie mumbled with her cracked purplish
lips. When she smiled her brown face remained cold. She wore a wig of
straight black hair, but baldish patches of gray wool showed under the
edges against the rich dry color of her neck. Her shoulders were rounded
as if by the weight of her arms. Her breasts fell forward. When she
moved, her spine remained rigid above the sunken hips of a thin old
savage woman. Her buttocks dragged. She was bent with strength.
Julia was all at once afraid of her servant. "I must find my children."
She moved toward the door, smiling over her shoulder. Nellie's reserve
seemed to demand a recognition. Julia wanted to get away from it.
She went on to her sitting room. The door was ajar. Fifteen-year-old May
was there with her boy friend, Paul. As Julia entered Paul rose clumsily
and May leaned forward in her chair.
Paul, irritated by the sight of Julia's radiance, was gloomy. He was
aware of May, young and awkward, a part of his own youth. May's presence
exposed a part of him and made him feel cowed and soiled.
"Paul's still talking about Bernard Shaw, Aunt Julia." May was glad
"Aunt" Julia had come. When May was alone with Paul he expected things
of her that she could not give. He would not allow her to be close to
him. He required that she pass a test of mental understanding. She liked
him best when others were present. Then she could warm herself timidly
and secretly in a knowledge of him that she could never utter.
Julia laughed affectionately. "Aren't you weary of such serious
subjects, Paul?" She felt that she saw the two from some distance inside
herself. She saw herself, beautiful and remote before Paul, and him
loving her. They loved the same thing. It filled her with tenderness.
He's a child! She felt guilty in her recognition of his youth.
"Is that a serious subject?" Paul was wary. Being serious always made
one ridiculous. Without waiting for her reply, he said, "I'm boring May
with my company. I must go." As he glanced toward Julia his eyes had the
sad malicious look of a monkey's. A little color passed over his pale
narrow face with its expression of precocious childishness.
Julia's long arms reached up to her hat. Paul's gaze made her feel her
body beautiful and strong, but her heart felt utterly lost in
wickedness. I'm Dudley Allen's mistress, she said to herself. She had
expected the reassurance of pain in her sense of sin; but the meaning of
what she had done was so utterly vacant that it frightened her. "Why not
have dinner with us? I want to hear more of your discussion."
Paul resented everything about her, her strongness and poise and the
impression she gave him of having passed from something in which he was
still held. He moved his shoulders grotesquely. "Oh, Shaw's too facile.
He's only a bag of tricks." He could not bear to be with May any longer.
She's a silly little girl. "Good-night." He went out quickly. She's
laughing at me! She's trying to make me rude. They heard the front door
slam.
Paul's accusing air had given Julia a feeling of self-condemnation. She
could not look at May at once.
"I am stupid with Paul," May said. "I don't see why he likes to talk to
me. He's so grown-up and intellectual and I never know what to say to
him." She smiled unhappily. Her thin little hands moved awkwardly in her
lap. She wanted Aunt Julia to like her.
Julia found in May's eagerness an inference of reproach, and was kind
with an effort. "Nonsense, May. Paul finds you a very interesting little
companion. He enjoys talking to you very much."
May's mouth quivered. Her eyes were soft and appeared dark in her small
pale face. "But he's eighteen," she said.
There were slow footsteps, ponderous on the stairs. Julia knew that
Laurence had come. Her heart beats quickened almost happily. She wanted
to experience the reproach of his face. Without naming what she waited
for, as a saint looks forward to his crucifixion, she looked forward to
the moment when he should condemn her.
Laurence stood in the doorway. "Well, Julie, girl, how are you
to-night?" His brows contracted momentarily when he noticed May. "How
are you, May?" But his gaze returned to Julia and he smiled at her
steadily. His lips were harsh and at the same time sweet.
"You're tired, dear. Come sit by our fire." Julia could not meet his
eyes. She watched his heavy slouched shoulders and observed the loose
bulge of his coat as he sank deeply in the high-backed chair which she
offered him. His hands were wonderful. Small white hesitating hands. She
remembered Dudley's hands passing over her, repulsive to her, hungry
hands with a kind of lascivious innocence that hurt.
Dudley's bright secretive eyes seemed close to her, between her and her
husband, giving out a harsh warmth that suffocated her. She identified
herself so with her imaginings that it was as if she had become
invisible to Laurence.
"Yes. I've had an interesting day at the laboratory. Even the commercial
side of science has its diversions."
On the hearth the delicate drifting ash took a lilac tinge from some
fallen bits of stick in which a crimson glow trembled like a diffused
respiration. The room was strange with firelight. Bronze flames burst
suddenly from the logs in torrents of rushing silk.
Laurence began to tell about the experiment in anaphylaxis which he had
been making in the laboratory that he had charge of at a medical
manufacturing establishment. He put the tips of his fingers together
while his elbows rested on the arms of his chair. His heavy
distinguished face was brown-red from the fire. The gray hair on his
temples was animate as with a life unrelated to him. In his ungainly
repose there was a dignity of acceptance which Julia recognized, though
she could not state it.
Julia felt annihilated by his trust. When he talked on, unaware of her
secret misery, it was as though he had willed her out of being. She and
her pain had ceased to be.
She had a vision of herself in Dudley's arms. That person in Dudley's
arms was alive. She was conscious of herself and Laurence as a double
deadness on either side of the living unrelated vision. Then it passed
and there was nothing but Laurie's dead voice.
* * * * *
After dinner, while Julia was hearing Bobby's lessons downstairs,
Laurence went up to her sitting room to rest and wait for her. He sat
down by the Adams desk. The glow from the blue pottery lamp with its
orange shade shone along his thick gray-sprinkled hair and lighted one
side of his strongly lined face, his deep-set eyes with their crinkled
lids, his large well-shaped nose with its bitter nostrils, and his
rather small mouth with its hard-sweet expression.
When he heard Julia's step he lifted his head and glanced expectantly
toward the door.
Julia's hair was in a loose knot against her neck. She was dressed in a
long plain smock of a curious green. Laurence wondered what genius had
taught her to select her clothes. While his first wife was alive he
despised the mere vainness of dress, but since marrying Julia he had
come to feel that clothes provided the art of individualization. It was
marvelous that a woman who had previously expended most of her industry
as a laboratory assistant had lost none of the knack of enhancing her
feminine attributes.
"Bobby has the most indefatigable determination to have his own way. He
hasn't any respect for our educational system. I felt he simply must
finish his history before he succumbed to the charms of Jack Wilson's
new motor cycle."
Laurence found in her voice a peculiar emotional timbre which never
failed to stir him, and when she sat down near him he was caught as
always by the helplessness of her large hands lying in her lap.
"I don't fancy his playing with motor cycles."
They were silent a moment.
"Julie?" He smiled apologetically. He noticed that her eyes evaded him
and it made him unhappy. "Not much company for you. I'm a typical
American man of business--engrossed in my profession. Wasn't it to-night
that you were going to that meeting on Foreign Relief?"
"You've discouraged my philanthropies," Julia said. "Besides, they won't
miss me." She lowered her gaze, and made a wry deprecating mouth.
He felt that she was shutting him out from something--from her cold
youth. He had not intended to discourage her enthusiasms, but it would
have relieved him to enfold her in the warmth of his inertia. He said
inwardly that he must keep himself until she needed him. He wondered if
he were merely jealous of her youngness which went on beyond him
discovering itself.
There was a pastel on the desk beside him. "I see Allen has done another
portrait of you."
Julia flushed as she turned to him. In her open look he found something
concealed. He was ashamed of his thought. He stared at his own hands and
hated their sensitiveness.
"I can't pretend to see myself in it. It looks grotesque to us with our
Victorian conceptions of art, doesn't it?" She smiled, gazing at him
with a harassed but eager air of demand.
He did not wish to see her eyes that asked to be defended against
themselves. He stared at the picture a moment in silence. It irritated
him to feel that the artist had observed something in Julia which was
hidden from her husband. When he finally glanced with hard amused eyes
at her, he felt himself weak. "My mentality is not equal to an
appreciation of your friend's stuff. I'm hopelessly bourgeois, Julia."
He would not admit his hardening against each of Julia's interests as
they came to her. He put his pain with the transience of her youth and
condescended to her so that he need not take note of himself. "Did you
arrange for the lecture courses at the settlement house?" he asked. He
missed her former feverish engrossment in the projected lecture series
and wanted to bring her back to it.
Julia made a pathetic grimace. "You've laughed at me so, Laurie. I
realize all that was absurd--terribly futile."
"Did I? I thought I agreed with you that it was a fine thing to
inoculate the struggling masses with the culture bug." He could not
control his sarcasms, though he uttered them lightly. He wanted her to
be as tired as he was--to rest with him. There was sweat on his wrists
as he took his pipe from his pocket and pushed some tobacco into the dry
charred bowl. When he laughed at her the pupils of his gray eyes were
small and sharp and defensive, as though they had been pricked by his
pain. Beautiful, he thought. She doesn't need me.
"I have a very middle-aged feeling about the welfare of humanity."
She came over and knelt by his side. "Am I too ridiculous? Can't you
take me seriously, Laurie?" She wondered why it was that when he looked
at her she always found suffering in his face. He held himself away from
what she wanted to give. She wanted an abandon in which she would be
glorified. She imagined eyes finding her wonderful. She smiled at him,
her sweet humorless smile.
Laurence stroked her hair. "I take you too seriously," he said. "I
sometimes feel that a husband is a very casual affair to you modern
women."
She was tender to his ignorance of her and vain of her secret terror of
herself. Watching him, she thought of the day when his youngest child
died and he had allowed her to see his suffering. Because she had never
wished to hurt him she resented it that he had never again been helpless
before her. She wondered if he had been strong like this to his other
wife, or if he gave more of his suffering to the dead than to the
living. Suffering filled Julia with tenderness, so she could not think
herself cruel. "Dear!" She kissed him gently, maternally, and climbed to
her feet.
He saw her reproachful eyes. Youth, so free with itself. Rapacious for
emotion. He felt bitterly his necessity more final than hers. "Where's
my last _Journal of American Science?_" He dismissed her intensity.
Lifting his thick brows, he took out spectacles and put them on. He
watched her over the rims.
She handed him his paper. He was a child to her. Her secret sense of sin
made her strong and superior. She wanted to be gentle. She did not know
why the sense of wrongdoing made her so confident of herself. While he
read the journal she seated herself on the opposite side of the
fireplace with her embroidery. When he lowered the paper for an instant
and she had a glimpse of his oldish oblivious face, she loved its
unawareness and tears came to her eyes again.
* * * * *
On Saturday morning Julia attended the meeting of a club in which the
problems of business women were reviewed. The members gathered in a
hotel auditorium where musicales were sometimes given. The long windows
of the room opened above an alleyway and its gold rococo gloom was
relieved of the obscure sunshine by electric lights. The women sat in
little groups here and there, only half filling the place, and the
murmur of voices went on indistinguishably until the president, Mrs.
Hurst, a pale self-confident little woman with a whimsical smile,
stepped to the platform, below the garlanded reliefs of Beethoven and
Mozart, and struck her gavel on the desk. Then an unfinished silence
crept over the scattered assemblage. A stout intellectual-looking Jewess
came forward ponderously, adjusted her nose glasses, and read the
minutes of the previous meeting, while those before her listened with
forced attention, or frankly considered the interesting design of green
and black embroidery which ornamented her dark blue dress.
But once the subjects of the day were under discussion the concentration
of the audience was natural and intense. Then the president, with demure
severity, rapped with her gavel and reminded too ardent debaters that
they were out of order.
Julia could not resist the sense of importance that it gave her to state
her serious opinion upon certain problems which affected her sex. When
she rose to express herself her exposition was so succinct that she was
invited to the platform where what she said could be better
appreciated.
The repetition of her speech was uncomfortably self-conscious. Her
cheeks grew faintly pink. There were several women in the audience whom
she disliked, and when she talked in this manner she felt that she was
beating them down with her righteousness. She observed in the faces of
many a virtuous and deliberate stupidity that was a part of their
determination not to understand her.
Her speech intoxicated her a little. When she stepped to the floor
amidst small volleys of applause, the room about her grew slightly dim.
For an hour the discussion went on, back and forth, one woman rising and
the next interrupting her statement. After Julia herself had spoken,
nothing further seemed to her of consequence. The other women were
hopelessly verbose, or, if they argued against her, ridiculously
unseeing. Their past applause rang irritatingly in her mind. She
recalled Dudley Allen's contempt for this feeble utilitarian
consideration of eternal things. She was proud of comprehending the
unmorality--the moral cynicism--of art. She felt that her broad capacity
for understanding men like Dudley Allen liberated her from the narrow
ethical confines of the lives that surrounded her, which took their
color from social usage.
Yet she resented Dudley's attitude toward her slight attempts at
self-expression. It reminded her of Laurence's protective air when she
first took a position under him at the laboratory. It was part of the
conspiracy against her attempt at achieving significance beyond the
limits of her personal problem. It hurt her as much as it pleased her
when either Dudley or her husband complimented her dress or commented on
the grace of her hands when she was pouring tea. Her feeling was the
same when she thought of having a child. She wanted the child in
everything but the sense of accepting the inevitable in maternity. She
sometimes imagined that if she could bear a child that was hers alone
she could be glad of it. In order to avoid being stifled by a conviction
of inferiority, she was constantly demanding some assurance of
dependence on her from those she was associated with.
* * * * *
Since childhood Dudley Allen had looked to himself to achieve greatness.
He had been a pretty child, but effeminate, undersized, and not noted
for cleverness. His father was a Unitarian minister in a New England
town; his mother, an ambitious woman absorbed in the pursuit of culture.
Her esthetic conceptions were of an intellectual order, but she sang in
the choir of her husband's church and thought of herself as frustrated
in the expression of a naturally artistic temperament.
Dudley remembered her with vexation. She had been ambitious for him, and
he had resented her efforts to use him for vicarious self-fulfilment.
She had him taught to play the violin and developed his taste for music.
It was chiefly in contradiction to her suggestions that he early
interested himself in paint. Now he played the violin occasionally, but
never in public.
His father was a man repressed and made severe by his sense of justice.
As a child Dudley knew that this parent was ashamed of his son's
physical weakness and emotional explosiveness. His father wanted him to
be a lawyer. His mother wished him to become a man of letters or a
musician of distinction.
Dudley was reared in the sterile atmosphere of a religion which confined
itself to ethical adherences. However, he absorbed Biblical lore and
adapted it to his more poetic needs. His father's contempt pained him,
but in no wise diminished the boy's vaguely acquired conviction that he
was himself one of the chosen few. Dudley identified himself with the
singers of Israel who spoke with God. As he was unable to cope with
bullying playmates of his own age, his exalted isolation was his
defense.
When he was twelve years old his mother discovered a journal in which he
had set down some of his intimacies with the Creator. She admonished him
for his absurdities and burned the book. The incident helped to develop
his resistance to the opinions of those who would destroy his consoling
fancies. He noted precociously symptoms of his mother's weaknesses.
By the time he was sent away to college he had developed his secret
defense, and his timidity was no longer so apparent. His progress
through his courses, while erratic, was in part brilliant. When he
returned home after his first absence his father showed some pride in
the visit.
At eighteen Dudley had evolved a philosophy which permitted him to look
upon himself as a prophet. Praise irritated him as much as blame. When
people made him angry he retorted to them with waspish sarcasms. When he
was alone he worked himself into transports of despair which made him
happy. He thought of himself as the peculiar interpreter of universal
life. He liked to go out in the woods and fields alone, and under the
trees to take his clothes off and roll in the grass. He was recklessly
generous on occasion, in defiance of habits of penuriousness. He felt
most kindly toward Negroes, day laborers, and other people whose social
status was inferior to his own. Yet among his own kind he exacted every
recognition of social superiority.
After vexatious arguments with his father, he went to Paris to continue
the study of painting. His technical facility surprised every one. His
conversations were facile and worldly, he was impeccable in his dress,
while he thought of a trilogy in spirit which embraced David in Israel,
Spinoza, and himself. His greatest fear in life was the fear of
ridicule. The physical cowardice which had oppressed his childhood
remained with him, and his escape from it was still through his
religious belief in his inward significance. Men of the crasser type
despised him utterly, and he confuted them with stinging cleverness. A
few who were artists were attracted by the rich, almost feminine quality
of his emotions. He found these men, rather than the women he knew,
were the dominant figures in his life.
He was in terror of all women with whom he could not establish himself
on planes of physical intimacy. But after he had arrived at such a state
with them, they interested him very little. Their attraction for him was
curious, rarely compelling. In all of his affairs his condition was
complicated by his fear of relinquishing any influence he had once been
able to assert.
When he returned to America after two years abroad he felt stronger by
the intellectual distances which separated him from his former life. If
he had not rebelled against the tone of condescension in which his
fellow artists referred to his youthful success, he might have been
contented with the humbler friends who were waiting to lionize him. He
continued to cultivate an aloofness which sustained his pride as much
against inferior compliments as, in the past, it had protected him from
jibes.
He could not console himself with the praises of most of the women he
met, for he always fancied that they were attempting to flatter him into
entanglements. When he encountered Julia, however, the mixture of
egoism and humility which he sensed in her discontent intrigued his
vanity. He saw that she was isolated and unhappy, and he longed for an
admiration which his discrimination would not condemn. In her he
anticipated a disciple of whom he need not be ashamed; but until she
should be sexually disarmed he was frightened of her.
* * * * *
May and Paul were in the park, by the side of the lake. The water was
caught in meshes of hot rays as in a web. In the sky, above the trees,
the light, drawn inward from the vague horizon, glowed in a fathomless
spot where the sun was sinking. The grass was uncut in the field about
them and the little seeded tops floated in a red-lilac mist above the
green stems.
"I don't like your Aunt Julia, May!"
May's mouth half smiled, uneasy. "Why not?"
They sat down on a hillock and Paul began to tear up grass blades as if
he wanted to hurt them. When he thought of Julia it made him feel sorry
for himself, and he hated her. "She's so darn complacent and shallow."
"Why, Paul, Aunt Julia's always doing things for people. She's been
awfully good to you. After the way she helped you with your exams I
shouldn't think you'd talk like that." May gazed at him with wide soft
eyes of reproach.
He picked at the grass. "Oh, I'm joking. I suppose she felt very
virtuous when she helped me."
"But she does lots, Paul. She's always interested in some charity work."
"Pish! Charity! What does a woman like that know about life!"
May was timidly silent.
"Some of these days I'm going to cut loose from everything--all these
smug conventions."
"But where'll you go, Paul? I thought you wanted to study medicine."
"Well, I'd rather give up that than stand this atmosphere. Oh, hell!
What's the use!"
She liked it when he said hell. It made her feel intimate with a strange
thing. Afraid. "But what do you want to do, Paul?"
Looking away from her, he did not answer. It soothed him to be superior
to May, but he knew enough to be ashamed of such consolation. Too easy.
A kid like that! "It don't matter. I've got to get away. I don't fit
into the sort of life your Aunt Julia stands for. What's there here for
me anyway!" He added, "Of course you're too young to bother with my
troubles." He stared stubbornly at the twinkling tree tops across the
lake.
May was crushed by this accusation of youth. "You used to say you wanted
to stay here and help radicals. Some day there'll be a revolution--" Her
humility would not permit her to continue.
Paul was irritated by this reminder of his inconsistency. Still he felt
guilty and wanted to be kind. "Pshaw! A lot of chance for revolution in
America now. You must have been listening to your Aunt Julia talk parlor
socialism, child."
May was feebly indignant in defense. "You didn't think so when you used
to read Karl Marx. You know you didn't!"
The thin immature quality of her voice wounded him. He wanted to be
separate from it. He was aggrieved because all the world seemed to come
to conclusions ahead of him. He wanted to think something no one had
ever thought before. Now he had an unadmitted fear that what Julia had
said had diminished his interest in the struggles of the working class.
"I know a fellow who cut loose from home a couple of months ago and
shipped as a steward on a White Star boat. His sister got a letter from
him saying that when he got over he was fired, but he found another bunk
right away in a sailing vessel. He's going to West Africa. You remember
that kid that came and visited the Hursts?"
"Yes, but I don't see any reason for you to throw up everything you've
always planned."
Paul rubbed his chin. Beard. Of course it was childish to talk about
"seeing life". He didn't take pride in such absurdities as that. "What
are you going to do with _your_self, May?" He was gentle but light.
"Me?" She smiled with a startled air. She felt helpless when people
asked her about herself. Of course she understood he wasn't serious. "I
suppose I'm going to college where Aunt Julia went--and then--oh, I
don't know, Paul! I'm not clever like Aunt Julia. You know she put
herself through, and then earned her own living for a long time." Her
small face flushed.
As she turned a little he watched the thick pale braid of her hair swing
between her shoulders. "Yes, I know. Aunt Julia thinks the fact that she
once worked deserves special recognition." His sarcasm was laborious. He
knew that he was saying too much. He leaned forward and twitched May's
plait. "Why don't you do your hair up? You want to look grown-up."
She laughed. She was grateful when he teased her. That meant it didn't
matter what she answered. "I don't want to look grown-up."
"Aunt Julia doesn't want any grown-up step-daughters around." Something
had him, he thought. It was irresistible.
"Paul!" A catch of surprise and rebuke in her soft tone. "I don't know
what's got into you lately. I think it's horrid--always suggesting Aunt
Julia has some mean motive in everything she does! She's one of the
loveliest people on earth! She's too good for you. You just don't
understand her and you're jealous."
Paul was amused. "Jealous, am I!" He would not show the child his
vexation with her. All at once he was disconcerted to realize that he
had become very depressed. He pitied himself. He watched May's legs as
she stretched them stiffly before her, thin little legs. Her high shoes
were loosely laced and the tops bulged away from her ankles. Sweet. He
reached and took her hand. Cold little hand! May, too embarrassed to
take notice of his gesture, let him hold it. He thought she was sweet.
He might like to kiss her--maybe. Not now. He could not bear to be as
young as she was. While he held her hand it came over him that there was
something dark and sickly in himself. He was vain that she could not
understand it. Rotten. She's a kid. He tried not to recognize his pride
in finding himself impure. He was fed up with everything. Hell!
As the sun disappeared the world grew suddenly bright, and long red rays
striped the tree trunks and the grass, endless rays reaching softly out
of the gorgeous welter in the western sky. The water twinkled fixedly.
The green grass was like mist over the fields.
Paul became abruptly agitated. "Better go home, hadn't we?"
May glanced at him furtively. His eyes made her unhappy. "I suppose we
had."
They got up awkwardly. When they were standing he let her hand drop as
if it had been nothing. She walked before him, a little girl in a short
dress with a soft braid of hair hanging under a red cap.
"You don't look fifteen, May."
"Don't I?"
He tried to catch up with her. He wondered what he was afraid of. Her
voice had a smothered sound, almost like a sob. She did not look back.
It was nearly night now. The sky without the sun was a dark burning
blue. A strange cloud floated white above the black trees.
Paul was suddenly happy and excited. When I get home--Uncle Alph--that
old fool. Aunt Susie. They were married. What did that ever mean!
Purification by fire is all that's good enough for people like that. A
sin to get married at all. If I thought people's bodies were like that!
Paul wondered to himself if he were mad. It hurt to think through
things. People went on living in their filthy world. Thick stockings
were ugly. May's legs. Thin little legs in ugly stockings. Why doesn't
she shine her shoes! Little rag picker! "Did you know that you were an
untidy person, May?" he called. As she looked back over her shoulder he
could feel her smile. Her vague face stared pale at him down the path.
The moon was floating out from the trees, pale moon like a face. Thin
light stole silver along the branches high up. Little moon, said Paul to
himself, staring at May's face and smiling. He felt ill, foolishly,
pleasantly ill.
When he came up with her it was as if he were his own shadow walking
beside her. "Little moon, I love you." He talked under his breath. He
scarcely wanted her to hear his absurdity. Then he placed his arm around
her. Her cold sweet thinness was like the shadow of the moon, thin and
still on the topmost branch of the strange tree. Her small breast
swelled against his hand and he could feel her heart beat. "Oh, May!" He
kissed her. He kissed the silence between them. "Gee, kid!" he said.
"Paul, dear."
They walked along together, happy; but less happy as they neared the
hedge that cut them off from the street and the glow from an arc lamp
began to fall across the grass.
When they stood under the light the absurdity had gone from Paul. He
wondered what had happened to him back there in the darkness. He had
taken his arm from her waist and now he pressed her hands, afraid that
she would observe the change in him. "Good night, May, child."
May was tremulous and bewildered. "Good night, Paul." She tried
laboriously to fit her tone to his brotherly kindliness.
* * * * *
Mrs. Hurst sat with Julia at tea in Julia's upstairs room. The late sun
stretched tired rays across the soft blue carpet. The yellow curtains
glowed before the open windows, and, fluttering apart, showed the thick
foliage of the trees that screened the houses opposite. The atmosphere
intensified the very immobility of the furniture. There was a voluptuous
finality in the liquid repose of light on the polished floor and the
glint of a glass vase, where needle rays of brightness were transfixed
among the stems of flowers.
Julia poured tea from a flat vermilion pot. The tea stood clear and dark
in the black cups. Over the two women hung a moist bitter odor, the
bruised sweetness of withering roses. The afternoon smells of dampened
dust and new-cut grass blew in from the street.
Mrs. Hurst took her cup in her small, slightly unsteady hand, and
sipped. The veins were growing large and hard and showed through the
delicately withered skin on which there were tiny brown spots like
stains. She wore a wedding ring rubbed thin. "My dear, you still have
that wonderful old Negress who used to be your maid? How do you manage
to keep her? I'm always struggling with some fresh domestic problem."
Mrs. Hurst smiled and with her free hand settled her trim glasses on her
neat nose. Her sweet little face, turned toward Julia, showed a
determined insistence on negative happiness. "I think we have a great
deal more to struggle with than our grandmothers did. We haven't only
our homes to look after, but our social responsibilities are so great."
Mrs. Hurst was beautifully and simply dressed in gray, and the soft
outline of her hat, with its tilt of roses at the back, gave an air of
gallantry to her faded features, which were those of a sophisticated
little girl--the face of a woman of forty-six whose sex life has passed
away without her knowing it.
"I'm afraid I've become a renegade as far as my social responsibilities
are concerned. I feel myself so inadequate to any real accomplishment,
Mrs. Hurst." Julia smiled guardedly and resentfully. Something in her
wanted to destroy the delicate aggressive repose of the woman opposite,
and felt helpless before it.
"Ah, you mustn't feel that, my dear. All of us feel it at times, but I
do believe that it depends on us women more than on our men folk,
perhaps, to allay the unrest of our day. Changing conditions of labor
have taken the homes away from so many. I think we should carry the
spirit of the home out into the world." Mrs. Hurst made a plaintive
little _moue_ of faded sauciness. As men were obliterated from her
personal interests, she reverted to a child's demure coquetry in
pleading her cause with her own sex.
"I can't look upon myself as the person for such a mission," Julia said.
Her eyes and lips were cold as she stared pleasantly at her visitor.
Julia felt a sudden sharp vanity in the thought of the sin against
society which initiated her into another life. She was confused by her
pride in adultery, and sought for an exalted ethical term which would
justify her sense of glorying in her act. Dudley--his hands upon me. I
couldn't be free. Eagles. The ethics of eagles. Julia knew that she was
absurd. She was humiliated and defiant. She was aware of her body under
her clothes as apart from her, and as though it were the only thing in
the world that lived. It was terrible to feel her body lost from her.
She fancied this was what people meant by the sense of nakedness. When
Dudley kissed her on the lips there was no nakedness, for she and her
body had the same existence. She despised Mrs. Hurst, who separated her
from her body. "You know I haven't a real genius for setting the world
right."
Mrs. Hurst was gentle and severe. "We can't afford to lose you! I shall
ask your delightful husband to influence you. As for genius--I imagine
each of us has his own definition of that. We all think you showed
something very much like genius in your conduct of the college campaign
fund last winter. You should hear Charles expatiate on your cleverness
as a business woman. We are practical people, Julia Farley, and we do
need money. It is the golden key which opens the door for most of our
ideals, I'm afraid."
Julia frowned slightly and tried to control her irritation. "Why can't
Mr. Hurst undertake some of the financial problems? He would reduce my
poor little efforts to such insignificance."
"But there you are, my dear! Charles lives in a man's world. He doesn't
understand these things. Women are the conscience of the race." Mrs.
Hurst smiled again and in her small mouth showed even rows of artificial
teeth.
* * * * *
When Julia woke in the night beside Laurence she perceived her body
lying there naked and apart, and hands moving over it--horrible and
secret hands. In the daytime in the street the body walked with her
outside her clothes. With strange men her consciousness of that horrible
impersonal flesh that was hers, though she knew nothing of it--though it
belonged to the whole world--was most acute.
* * * * *
The curtains moved and the spots of light on the floor opened and closed
like eyes. A fly had crept inside the screens and made a singing noise
against the window. A vase of flowers was on the table, and the shadow
of a blossom, rigid and delicate, fell in the bar of sunshine that
bleached the polished wood. There was pale sunshine on the chess board
at which May and Paul were playing. Light took the color from the
close-cropped hair at the nape of Paul's neck, and, when May glanced up
at him, filled her eyes with brilliant vacancy so that she looked
strange.
May bent forward again, her mouth loose in wonder.
Paul made a stupid move.
"Ah! You've lost him!" Aunt Julia said.
He did not answer her, but his shoulders took a resentful curve. He felt
as if the veins in his temples were bursting, pouring floods of darkness
before his eyes. He wished he might be rid of her, always there in the
room beside him and May. He pushed forward another piece.
Aunt Julia came and stood beside him. She leaned down. She leaned down
and laid her hand on his arm. "If only you hadn't lost that knight!"
The sound of her voice made everything dark again. He resented her more
than he had ever resented anything on earth.
"Let me move for you once, Paul, child."
"But that won't be fair, Aunt Julia!" May watched them with a sudden
brightening and dimming of the eyes. She was startled by the look of
Aunt Julia's faintly flushed face so close to Paul's. What makes him
look like that!
"I'll play for you, dear, too," Aunt Julia said. She was sorry for
herself because her loneliness made her want even the children. She was
tender of them. They could not understand her. She would not admit to
herself that Paul's response to her presence thrilled and strengthened
her. She wanted to be kind to the poor awkward boy. May was such a
baby. "Will you let me move your pawn there, May?"
May nodded. She was restive. She wanted to move for herself. When she
resumed the game her eyes became wide and engrossed. "Check! Check!" She
came out of her delight. She was clapping the palms of her thin hands
and they made a muffled sound. They fell apart abruptly. Once more Aunt
Julia was leaning close to Paul.
"You finished me all right, May."
May wondered if Paul were angry with her. What made his eyes so hard!
Julia was ashamed before May. That spineless little girl! Julia wanted
to leave them both. May and the boy hurt her. Her body was so alive that
her awareness of herself was very small. She was sure of her existence
only through this humiliating certainty of other being. Their youth
seemed disgusting to her and she wanted to leave them with it. She
smiled at them constrainedly. The two figures swam before her. "Good-by,
Paul. I must leave you children and attend to some humdrum duties below
stairs."
"Good-by," Paul said. He could not look at her. She went out. The stir
of her dress died away. He feared to hear it go and to be alone with
something in himself. "I'm sick of chess, May. I must be going too." He
rose.
"Must you?" May got up.
Paul went to the table and took his cap. He wondered why she was so
still, why he could not bring himself to see her. When he turned around
she was watching him with her silly timid air. It repelled him that she
smiled so much for nothing at all. His eyes were blank with distrust of
her. Why does she smile like that! She made him cruel. He hated her for
making him cruel. He wanted to be cruel. "You seem pretty glad to get
rid of me!"
"Why, Paul!" May flashed a glance at him. She stared at the floor, and
she was dying in the obscure impression of moonlight on trees near a
park gate.
Paul came up to her and, with the surreptitious movement of a sulky
child, pressed a hard kiss against her mouth.
Before she could respond to him he ran out, through the hall and down
the stairs and into the street. He was terrified lest he should see
Julia before he could leave the house. Anything but May! He didn't want
May. Aunt Julia always coming close to him, touching him, laying her
hand on his. He felt trapped in his loathing of her. Why was it he
could never forget her!
It was growing dusk. On either side of the infinite street the houses
were vague. The trees were like plumes of shadow waving above him. The
stars in the sky, that yet glowed with the passing of the sun, were
burning dust. He tried to think that he was mad. Beyond him under a
street lamp he saw a dimly illumined figure--big buttocks wagging before
him under a thin calico skirt. And the Negress passed out of sight.
By the time he reached home he was sick of himself, thoroughly dejected,
perceiving the vileness of his own mind. He crept up the back stairs
unseen, and in his small room lay face downward on his bed. He thought
he ought to kill himself to keep from thinking things like that. Uncle
Alph and his Aunt down in the dining room. He began to sob. God, all the
rottenness in the world! If I did that it would be outright in the
daytime. I wouldn't be ashamed. Naked bodies moved before him in a long
line. They were ugly because he wanted to keep them out. Aunt Julia was
there and even May. He would not see them, but they were ugly. Their
ugliness was the horror that enveloped him. He knew their ugliness
because it became a part of him without his having seen it.
There was something beautiful at last. It was nakedness that belonged to
no one. Nakedness without a face. It took him. He was asleep. There were
breasts in the darkness. He was afraid. He could not wake up. He was
fear and he was afraid of himself. He was against naked breasts that
held him, that he could not see.
* * * * *
May tip-toed down the dark stairs, her small hand sliding along the cold
mysterious rail.
When she reached the lower hall she saw the door of the study open and
Father sitting there with Bobby who was studying and very intent on the
book he held upon his knees. There was a green lamp on the desk and a
moth bumping against the shade and shattering its wings. The light,
falling on Father's back, made the strands of hair twinkle on his
drooped head, and his shoulders looked dusty in the black coat he wore.
The study windows were open. Beyond Father was the dark yard. A square
of the sky was like green silk. The moon, laid on it softly, was
breathing light like a sea thing, glowing and dying.
When May had reassured herself of this unchanged world she tip-toed up
to her room. She wanted to undress quickly so that she could be in bed
and forget everything but Paul's unexpected kiss and the new cruel feel
of his lips. Now that she was alone she wanted to forget about being
ashamed. She had a curious, almost frightening, intimacy with her own
sensations. She wanted to go on thinking of herself forever and ever.
* * * * *
Dudley's intuitions were capable of sensing what might be called the
psychological essences of those about him. He never became aware of the
elusive value of a personality without wishing to absorb it into himself
so that it became a part of his own experience. He could not bear to
lose his sense of identity with those from whom he had compelled such
contacts. For this reason, though he despised his parents, he maintained
toward them the attitude of a dutiful son.
It was the same with all the friends of other days. When he was
attracted by some one Dudley initiated him into a devastating intimacy.
The person, for a time, would yield to a flattering tyranny, but, in the
end, would rebel against the inequality of possession. Dudley refuted
all intellectual justifications of protest, and attributed the failure
of his friendships to the emotional inadequacies of his disciples.
When women abandoned their sexual defenses to him, however, he found
nothing left to achieve. They held a view of their relationships which
made the subtler kinds of personal pride unnecessary to them. If they
had received in life any spiritual disfigurements, they were only too
ready to expose these where it would buy them a little pity through
which they might insinuate themselves into another soul. Their spiritual
instincts were as promiscuous as the physical expressions of embryo
life. It was only as regarded their bodies that they showed anything
like reserve. Even here it was more a matter of vanity than anything
else, for in surrendering themselves in the flesh the thing they seemed
most to fear was that once they were revealed they would not be
sufficiently admired. It was irritating to feel that when they abandoned
everything to a man they but attained to a subtler possession.
Not long before meeting Julia, Dudley passed through an experience in
which he narrowly avoided matrimony. The girl had appeared to be
peculiarly submissive to his influence; but at a time when his
complacency had allowed him to feel most tender of her she had evaded
him. If she had been less precipitate he would have married her. He was
thankful for the circumstance which had saved him, and when he
corresponded with her he called her "my dear sister," or "my very dear
friend". Now that she had abandoned him he was more generous toward her
than he had ever been. He knew that one could give one's self in an
impersonal gesture. But it was very tricky to take from others. He wrote
her that he must learn to function alone, that it was the artist's life.
She could never explain to herself why it was that she resented so
deeply his condemnation of his own weakness and his reiteration of his
need of the isolation and suffering which would clarify his inner
vision.
Dudley hinted to all the women he met that Art was his mistress and that
he could not permit himself to approach them seriously without
subjecting them to the injustice of this rivalry. The physical terrors
of his childhood had aggravated his caution. His inward distress was
terrible when he was obliged to reconcile his resistance to the world
outside him with the ideal of the great artist which commanded him to
abandon himself to all that came. His desire, even as regarded material
things, was to hoard everything that contributed to the erection of a
barrier between him and the ruthless struggle of men. He longed for
commercial success, and he displayed an ostentatious indifference to the
salableness of his work. He had a physical attachment for his
possessions.
He hated gatherings of all sorts unless they were of friends who would
respond to all he had to say and whom he might insidiously dominate. Yet
he had encountered Julia first at the home of Mrs. Hurst, whose
bourgeois pretensions to esthetic interest he despised. These
heterogeneous assemblies gave him the cold impression of a mob. Anything
which affected him and at the same time evaded him was unadmittedly
alarming. He had not appeared at his best that night until he was able
to lead Julia aside and talk to her alone. Then he became suddenly at
ease. There was a slightly bitter humility about her confessions of
ignorance that made him feel her potentially appreciative in a genuine
sense.
Strangely enough the frankness of her self-depreciation disarmed him. He
felt that he must search for a hidden pretension that would show her
weak and allow him an approach. Wherever she displayed symptoms of
confidence he confronted her with her dependence on illusion. He told
himself that all that one individual owed another was the means to
truth. Believing in the dignity of self-responsibility, he could not
assume the burden of Julia's discouragement. He imagined her unhappy. If
he helped her to see herself he was aiding her to attain the only
ultimate values in life.
After he and Julia became lovers he was troubled not a little by the
necessity for concealment, for he had told her so frequently that her
relation to Laurence had been falsified by the accumulation of reserves.
* * * * *
Dudley had said so often that he considered Laurence a repressed and
misunderstood man that Julia, with an antagonism which she did not
confess to herself, asked her lover to dine at her home. Meeting Dudley
as Laurence's wife again put her on the offensive regarding everything
that concerned her house and the usual circumstances of her existence.
She had never taken such care in composing a meal as she did for this
occasion, and she spent half an hour arranging the flowers in a low bowl
on the table.
When Dudley came he greeted Laurence with peculiar eagerness. Julia
found it hard to forgive her lover for making himself ridiculous.
During dinner the guest led the talk which was exclusively between the
two men. He insisted on discussing bacteriological subjects with
Laurence. Laurence deferred politely to Dudley's ignorance.
The large room in which they sat was lighted by the candles at either
end of the long table. The glow, like a bright shadow, was reflected in
the dark woodwork and against the obscure walls. Through the tall open
windows the wind brought the warm night in with a soft rush of
blackness. Then the pale candle flames flattened into fans and the wax
slipped with a hiss into the burnished holders.
Laurence was humped in his chair as usual, so that the rough collar of
his coat rose up behind against his neck. Most of the time as he talked
he stared straight before him; but occasionally he glanced with his
small pained eyes into Dudley's engrossed and persistent face.
Julia saw with unusual clearness everything that Laurence said and did.
She was possessively aware of his gestures, and when he spoke easily and
fluently of his work she had a proprietary satisfaction in it, and was
full of animosity toward Dudley's questioning.
She felt betrayed by Dudley, who approached Laurence by ignoring her
mediumship. She could not bear the admission of Dudley's power to
exclude her. They could only live in each other. She gave him life in
her, but he obliterated her from himself, and so condemned her to a sort
of death. And while she was dead he gave Laurence her life. She was dead
and alone with her body that was so alive. She felt her breasts swelling
loathsomely under her crisp green muslin dress, and her long hidden legs
stretched horribly from the darkness of her hips. Her live body
possessed her stupidly. If only he would take it from her! If only with
one glance he would admit her to himself!
As they passed from the dining room Julia touched Laurence despairingly.
He saw her worried smile. "You're warm, dear," she said. And she added,
"I wonder how our children fared upstairs, eating alone in state." She
wanted to compel Laurence into the atmosphere of domestic intimacies
where her guest had no part.
"I wonder." He returned her smile abstractedly and spoke to Dudley
again. "You know Weissman of Berlin--"
Julia looked unconsciously tragic and bit her lip. "Have you been able
to arrange for your exhibition, Dudley?" she interrupted demandingly.
Her voice was sharp.
"Why, no--" Dudley glanced at her with pleasant interrogation. "You were
saying--about Weissman?" He was naïve like a child unconscious of
rudeness.
When they came to the staircase Laurence went on ahead because of the
light. Dudley took Julia's arm, bare to the elbow. She shuddered away
from him. She was observing his strut, the way he walked, his weight
bearing on his heels. When the glow from the upper hall fell on them she
saw his short arms held stiffly at his sides, the black down clinging on
his wrists and the backs of his hands, the twinkle of his crisp reddish
mustache that appeared artificially imposed on his small, almost
womanish, face, and the thick black curls, soft and a little oily, that
clung about his ill-formed head. She disliked even the careful
carelessness of his dress.
But her loathing of him was after all only horror of herself. If he had
given her a look of acceptance she would have become one with him. Then
it would have been impossible to see him so separately. She wanted to
explain the horror to him. If he had known her thoughts he could not
have endured them, and he would have saved them both.
But he was separate and satisfied in himself. "Julia," he said in a low
voice, "Laurence Farley is a remarkable person. There is something in
the dignity of his reserve that puts us to shame. My God, what a tragedy
he is! He interests me tremendously. I'm grateful to you for letting me
know him."
Julia felt hateful that he presumed to tell her this. She had always
spoken gratefully of Laurence. She had much pride in her pain in never
finding excuses for herself.
"He isn't sophisticated in our sense," Dudley said, "but he makes me
feel that there is something puerile and immature in both of us."
Julia said, in a hard voice, "I don't think I have ever failed in
appreciation of Laurence." Suddenly she realized that both these men
were strangers to her, that she loved and wanted only herself. Her
despair was so complete that it relieved her, and she could scarcely
hold back the tears.
* * * * *
Dudley wanted to despise Laurence. There was something in the
personality of Julia's husband which defied contempt. If Laurence had
displayed any crass desire for recognition Dudley would have passed him
by with relief; but the artist wished to force all sensitive natures to
admit that their secrets could not be hidden.
Laurence's regard for Julia was full of the condescension of maturity.
He gave to her where it was impossible for him to take. Dudley had
always despised her a little, and now the fact that her husband excluded
her from his suffering was testimony of her inadequacy. Without
admitting it to himself, Dudley was beginning to resist being associated
with her. He reflected that it was grotesque to dream of finding
understanding in such a struggling and incomplete nature. Julia was
possessive. The heroic woman must rise above this instinct.
Her breasts were a little old, her body thin. He remembered the
angularity of her hips, the too long line of her back. He saw her eyes
uplifted to his with that pained, withheld look which annoyed him so
much. Her skin was very white, but a little coarse. When she put her
arms about him her hair, all disarranged, fell wild and heavy about her
strained throat. He did not wish to admit that he had discovered his
mistress to be less beautiful than, in the beginning, he had imagined
her. He revolted against these obvious judgments of the senses. It was
unpleasant to recall her so distinctly. He pitied her mental
incompleteness which made it impossible to give her the purer values
which he wanted to share with her.
Dudley congratulated himself on a curiously sensitive understanding of
what Laurence had endured. To escape the unpleasant vision of Julia's
body and the dumb gaze which fatigued him so much he concentrated all
his reflections on his magnanimous sympathy for the man.
He felt that face to face with Julia he would never be able to explain
to her what he perceived in regard to her husband, so he wrote her a
letter about it. "Laurence Farley is our equal, Julia," he wrote. "We
owe it to ourselves to treat him as such. Now that I have had the
opportunity to observe and appreciate his rare qualities I know that the
relation between you and me will never fulfil its deep promise while
this lie exists between you and him. The truth will be hard, but he is
big enough to bear it. He is a man who has suffered from the American
environment, and has been warped and drawn away from his true self. If
his scientific erudition had been fostered in an atmosphere which loved
learning for its own sake, he would have been able to express himself.
He has the ripe nature of a _savant_. I feel that meeting with you both
has a rare meaning for me. We must all suffer in this thing. Perhaps he
most, except that I must suffer alone. You and he are close--in spite of
everything you are close. Closer perhaps than even you and I have been.
But I must learn, Julia. I am struggling yet. I have farther to go than
he has, in spite of my superior knowledge of certain things, of worlds
of which he has never become cognizant. I have not yet learned as he has
to rise above myself. In my slow way I shall do so. I shall learn,
Julia, and you shall help me--you two people. I want him to be my
friend. I respect him. I love you both. Oh, Julia, how deeply, deeply I
have loved you."
When Dudley had dispatched this letter he found himself liberated from
many obscure depressions that had been hampering his spirit. The
important thing in Julia's life was her relation to Laurence. He,
Dudley, would accept the fact that he was only an incident in her
struggle to achieve herself.
Yet he was disconcerted by the premonition that her interpretation of
what he had done would not be his. He was in furtive terror of being
made ridiculous.
* * * * *
Through the tall, open windows of the dining room, Julia, seated with
some mending, could see the dull line of the roofs in the next street,
and the dreary sky shadowed with soiled milky-looking clouds. The grass
in the back yard was a bright dead green. It had grown tall. Flurries of
moist acrid wind swept across it, and it bent all at once with a long,
undulant motion that was like voluptuous despair. The table cloth rose
heavily and fell in a spent gesture against the legs under it. Julia's
black muslin dress beat gently about her ankles.
Then the wind passed. The grass blades were fixed and still. In the
silent room the ticking of a small clock on a _secrétaire_ sounded
labored and blatant. The odor of the cake that Nellie was baking filled
the warm air.
Julia heard the postman's whistle and Nellie's heavy step in the hall.
Julia thought of Nellie, of the old woman's sureness and silence--a lean
old savage woman of many lovers. In all the years that the old Negress
had been there she had never showed the need of a confidant. Her
children had abandoned her and she had no tie with any human creature
save the old man whom she supported who came sometimes to do odd chores.
Julia wondered what had poisoned the white race and given it the need of
sanction from some outside source. She wanted a justification of
herself, but did not know from what quarter she should demand it.
Nellie entered with a letter and Julia, recognizing the handwriting at
once, left it on the table without opening it. As long as the letter lay
on the table unknown she controlled its contents.
She turned her back to it and watched the branches of the elm tree,
which were stirring again, heavily and ceaselessly, against the fence.
Her needle pricked her finger and a rust-colored stain spread in the bit
of lace which she was mending. The sun burst through the clouds and the
room was filled with the shadowless glare, and with moist intense heat.
Julia suddenly took up the letter and tore it open with a nervous jerk.
She dropped her needle. Where it fell on the polished floor it made a
tinkling sound like a falling splinter of glass.
She did not question or analyze Dudley's statement of his mood. All she
knew was that he was flinging her away from him into herself. There was
something composed and final about the letter. When she reread it, it
overcame her with helplessness. The lie she had lived in had burdened
her, and she could not justify her resentment of the suggestion that she
tell the truth.
* * * * *
Later in the day Dudley called Julia on the telephone. He wanted to
arrange a meeting with her. He refused to admit to himself that the
strained note he observed in her voice caused him uneasiness. He had to
prove to himself his complete conviction of the righteousness of what he
demanded of her. He suggested a walk in the park, and Julia experienced
a resentful pang of exultance because she imagined that he was not
strong enough to have her come to his rooms. She contemplated, as a
means of defiance, taking him too much at his word.
* * * * *
White clouds filled with gray-brown stains flowed over the hidden sky.
Here and there the clouds broke and the aperture dilated until it
disclosed the deep angry blue behind it. In the center of the park the
lake, cold and lustrous like congealing oil, swelled heavily in the
wind, but now and again lapsed with the weight of a profound inertia.
The trees, with tossing limbs, had the same oppressed and resisting look
as they swung toward the water above their dying reflections.
Julia, seated on a bench away from the path, waited for Dudley to come.
When she saw him far off all of her rose against him. She could not hate
him enough. She subsided into herself like the cold lustrous water drawn
toward its own depths. She felt bitter and shriveled by desperation. She
was unhappy because she could not, at this moment, love herself.
Dudley was disconcerted by his own excitement as he approached her.
There was something spiritually _gauche_ in the exaggerated simplicity
of his manner. He knew that his affectionate smile was an attempt to
disarm her, and that his combative and questioning eyes showed his
uneasiness. It was hard for him to forgive her when she made him feel
absurd like this. A guilty sensation overpowered him. He considered the
emotion unwarranted, attributed it to her suggestion, and held it
against her as a grudge. At this instant he could allow her no equality
so he made himself feel kind. "Dear!" He took her cold fingers in his
moist plump hand. Their unresponsiveness pained him. He dropped them and
went on smiling at her interrogatively. "I had to talk to you," he said
at last. His voice was subdued. His smile disappeared. He recognized
that he was depressed and wounded.
Julia wanted to ask him what he expected her to do with her life after
she had told Laurence everything, and it was no longer possible for them
to live in the same house. She had greeted Dudley. Now her mouth took a
sarcastic twist and she found herself unable to speak. She stared
straight at the lake, which was beginning to twinkle with cold lights
under the gray luminous sky. She shivered when Dudley seated himself
beside her.
Before he could tell her what was in him, he had to harden himself. "I'm
suffering deeply, Julia. You are suffering. I see it. It is only the
little person who doesn't suffer. Why do you resent me? Life is always
making patterns. It has thrown us three--you and me, and your
husband--into a design--a relationship to each other. No matter what
happens we ought to be glad. We may come to mean terrific things to
each other, Julia--all three of us. This is a new experience. We mustn't
be afraid of it." When he noted her set profile he felt querulous toward
her, but he controlled himself and tried to take her hand again. If she
had protested in argument he might have talked to her about the strong
soul's right to truth, and made clearer to himself what, in the darkness
of his own spirit, he had to confess was still a little vague.
Julia glanced at him. Her gaze was steady and bewildered. "Of course I
owe it to Laurence. I want to talk to Laurence. I would have done this
of my own free will. I loathe the lie I've been living!" She spoke
coldly and vehemently. Tears came into her eyes and she averted her
face.
Dudley was silent a moment. He twisted his mustache and one of his small
bright eyes squinted nervously. He could not bear the pride of her
mouth. At the moment all pride seemed ugly to him. It was impossible to
call further attention to his pain in the contemplation of renouncing
her while she continued to maintain, almost vindictively, it appeared,
her readiness to abandon herself to him.
"I can't put what I feel into words, Julia, but it is something very
beautiful and deep. Come, sister, you're not angry with me?" Again he
took her stiff hand in his. She was humiliating him and he would not
forget it.
Julia wished that she could hurt him in a way which would make it
impossible for him to talk to her so kindly. She did not understand why
the recognition of his absurdity made her suffer so much.
Dudley had been floundering inwardly through the attempt to avoid facing
the ridiculous. Watching the harsh bitter line of her lips, he noticed
the pulse that swelled and fluttered in her throat. The sight of her
pain, for which he was responsible, made him feel all at once very sure
and complete. He accepted no burden from it, for he told himself it was
a part of her awakening to detached and perfect understanding. He was
grateful to himself that he had an ideal notion of what she might be
that held him cruelly and steadily against all that she was. He felt
voluptuously intimate with her emotions. He could not hurt her enough.
He tried to shut out the recollection of her beautiful gaunt body in its
almost tragic nakedness. "I don't expect you to understand me completely
yet, Julia. One's vision is so warped and tortured by one's desire. All
our terminology of good and bad we use in such a limited personal
sense. We have to get away from that before we can even begin to
function spiritually--to be spiritually at rest. I feel that there are
clouds between us, Julia, but behind them is the great sun of your
understanding. I believe in that. Say something to me!"
Julia withdrew her hand. "What can I say to you? I am in the habit of
viewing problems very concretely. Let me go. I must go." She stood up,
smiling at him desperately.
He wanted to destroy the smile behind which she was trying to hide, and
to explain to her that the torture he caused her was the price of his
very nearness. It had been almost a pleasure for him to feel her hand
twitch with repugnance. It was sad that she comprehended so little of
his nature. Yet he was sensible of the helplessness of hatred. Knowing
that she hated him, for the first time he ceased to fear her and could
give himself to uncalculated reactions toward her. He thought that if
she were to remain his mistress in a conventional relation he could not
love her like this. The artist was, after all, he told himself, like the
priest, the mediator between the life of mankind and its mystical
source.
But Julia moved away without looking at him. He watched her pass along
the edge of the lake, where threads of light as fine as hairs were drawn
hot and trembling across the colorless water.
Dudley continued to feel embarrassment in his own soul, for he could not
clearly explain to himself the impulses which were governing his acts.
He decided that only through his art would he be able to justify all
that he was when, at the moment of giving Julia back to herself, he was
conscious of possessing her most intensely. He was at his ease only in
the midst of powerful abstractions. There was something elephantine
about his nature that prevented him from being simple or casual in his
moods. If he ever indulged in expressions that were light or commonplace
he was suspicious of his own appearance. He was startled sometimes when
he had to admit the maliciousness of his reactions toward the smaller
souls around him. If he laughed in a gay group his laughter sounded
awkward and strained. Perhaps it was because of his small effeminate
stature that he felt it necessary to hurt people before he could command
their respect.
At this moment the conviction of his power filled him with an
intoxication of gentleness. He felt that he enveloped Laurence and Julia
as if in the same embrace. That he was beginning to have a peculiar
affection for Laurence proved to him the significance of his own unique
spirit. Realizing completely that neither Julia nor her husband could
approach his understanding, he loved them for their inferiority. As he
walked along the path toward the blank glare where the sun was setting
among black branches, he noticed a terrier puppy rolling in the polished
grass, and had for it something of the same emotion. He loved everything
in relation to which he found himself in a position of advantage.
Approaching thus he believed he could preserve a philosophic detachment
while perceiving what Spinoza called "the objective essence of
things."