May went to see her Grandmother Farley. May dreaded the visit. When she
arrived there she sat in the dining room, smiling and listening to her
grandmother's talk, and feeling small and mindless as she had felt as a
child. In the old Farley home May was always like that, like something
asleep possessed by itself in a shining unbroken dream. She wanted to
get back to Aunt Julia, who took her life out of her and showed it to
her so that she knew the shape of its thoughts.
Old Mrs. Farley gave May cookies from the cake box, and Grandpapa
Farley, who did not go to his office any longer, took his granddaughter
into the back yard and showed her his vegetable garden. He was kindly
too, but, when this tall stooping elderly man with his handsome white
head looked with vague eyes at her, she fancied that he also was asleep
and could not see her. She was a little frightened of her silly thoughts
about him. Aunt Julia could have told her what she wanted to say.
"And how is your father?" Grandmama Farley asked in a dry voice. "We
can't expect him to come to see us very often. His wife is so busy with
clubs and movements she has no time for us and I suppose he can't leave
her."
May was cautious and timid in the presence of her grandmother. There was
something obscure and remote about the old woman's engrossed face, her
squinting eyes that gazed at one as from an infinitely projected
distance, her puckered lips with their self-righteous twist. May smiled
helplessly, not knowing how to reply.
"I suppose Mrs. Julia is bringing you up to have the wider interests she
talks about when she is here. You want to vote, I suppose, don't you?"
Mrs. Farley squinted a smile. Her humor had an acrid flavor.
May giggled apologetically. "I don't think I care much about voting,
Grandmother. I don't think Aunt Julia is trying to make me like anything
in particular."
"I'm making bread. Your grandfather has to have his bread just right,"
Mrs. Farley said. She went into the kitchen.
May hesitated, then followed her.
The clean room was full of sunlight. Mrs. Farley took down the bread
pans and began to work the stiff dough on a floured board. Her knotted
fingers sank tremulously into the bulging white stuff. The dough made a
snapping noise when she turned it and patted it. "I suppose it would be
a waste of time for you to learn to make bread, May."
Behind the old lady the stove was dazzling black with its brilliant
nickel ornaments. The tin flour sifter on the table beside her was
filled with fiery reflections. The stiff white muslin curtains before
the open windows made lisping, scraping noises as the wind folded them
over and brushed them along the lifted panes. Mrs. Farley glanced from
time to time at May, and, with dim hostility, noted the slight angular
little figure seated so ill-at-ease on the rush-bottomed chair, the
darkened eyes with their chronic expression of melancholy and elation,
the heavy braid of flaxen hair that hung with a curious soft weight
between the small stooping shoulders. Mrs. Farley found May's continual
smile, her sweet relaxed lips and the large uneven white teeth that
showed between, peculiarly irritating. "You want another cake, eh?" she
flung out at last with an amused resigned air. Going back into the
dining room, she brought a cake and presented it as though she were
feeding a hungry puppy.
May, trying to be grateful, munched the cake uncomfortably. She pulled
feebly at the hem of her skirt. Her grandmother made her ashamed of her
legs.
Grandpapa Farley came up the walk and halted in the back doorway,
bareheaded in the warm sunshine. He was in his shirt sleeves. Beads of
perspiration stood on his high blank brow which might have been called
noble. His big hands, smeared with the earth of the garden, hung in a
helpless manner at his sides. He smiled uncomfortably at May. "Shall we
send your step-mother some lettuce?"
May rose and walked out to where he waited. His expression had grown
suddenly ruminant, and, as he stared away from her over the back fence,
his eyes were cloudy and unseeing. "Well, May, I can't say she's done
her duty by your grandmother, but she's a fine woman--fine handsome
woman. Laurie was lucky to get her. She'll be able to do a lot for him."
He sighed as though he were relinquishing a vision, and, glancing once
more at May, became kindly aware of her again.
May had hoped that Aunt Alice would not come downstairs, but there she
was behind them. Grandpapa Farley was uncomfortable if Alice came into a
room when outsiders were present. He saw her now, and, with a guilty
smile, told May he would go to gather his little present. He shambled
down the walk. The sunshine made his bald head lustrous. There was a
glinting fringe of white hair at its base.
"So it's you, May, is it? How are you? Does Madame Julia think you are
safe with us now?" There was queer hostile pleasure in Aunt Alice's fat
face.
May's mouth bent with its usual smiling acceptance, but she could not
keep the solemn arrested look of wonder from her eyes. People said Aunt
Alice was odd. There was nothing so strange in what Aunt Alice said. It
was more in something she didn't say but seemed always to have meant.
"I'm well." May squeezed her fingers nervously together.
Aunt Alice laid her hand on her niece's head and tilted it back. May
shivered a little and her eyelids trembled against the light. "Suppose
you're living the larger life? Imbibing the fine flavor of contemporary
culture, are you?"
May giggled evasively and wagged her head under the heavy hand.
"Your step-mother can't stand this congenial atmosphere so she sends
you. She's strong for the true, the beautiful, and the good. Developing
your father's character. Teaching him to flower, is she?"
May grew bewildered and rather sick. When she opened her eyes she caught
such a cruel secret expression in Aunt Alice's face. Why does Aunt Alice
always hate me? She moved her head from Aunt Alice's hand and gazed at
the burnt grass rocking in the sunshine. She tried to be happy and
amused.
"Can't look at her, eh?" Aunt Alice said suddenly. "Don't wonder, May.
Ugly old bitch. Did you ever hear of the power and the glory without
end?"
There were tears trembling on May's lashes. She gave Aunt Alice a quick
stare and laughed.
Aunt Alice was examining her cautiously. "You're something of a milksop,
May. Keep on being a milksop. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. But your
legs are too thin. You'll never attain to joy without end with those
legs."
May did not want to understand what this meant. Something inside her
was trembling and lacerated. She stared directly at Aunt Alice now,
determined not to see her clearly. She could not bear to do so.
And Aunt Alice's face was calm and kind, resigned and humorous, her eyes
as steady as May's. "Your old aunt is an eccentric creature, May."
"I don't think so," May said with confused well-meaning.
Grandpapa Farley was calling from the garden. May was glad to run away
to him.
* * * * *
It was a long way home--almost to the other end of town. May felt the
distance interminable.
When she reached the house she rushed upstairs to Aunt Julia's room.
Aunt Julia was sitting there doing nothing at all. She glanced up with a
tired, distracted air as May came in. May smiled ecstatically, rushed
over to Aunt Julia, threw her arms about her, and in a moment was
weeping with her head in Aunt Julia's lap.
Julia's fingers moved through May's soft hair that was so thick and
beautiful. She pitied herself that May was so young. May's youth seemed
loathsome and repugnant to her. Because of her loathing, she made her
voice more gentle. "What's the matter, sweet? Did something unpleasant
happen at your grandmother's house?"
"N-no, nothing. Only I wanted to get away from there. I'm so glad to be
here!"
Aunt Julia's fingers moved stiffly through May's hair. Why should I
dislike this child! Oh, I'm dying of loneliness! Julia felt that she
could love no one and that she deserved endless commiseration for her
lovelessness. "Don't cry, darling!" Aunt Julia's voice was harsh. "I
should never have let you go there. I know how depressing it is. Your
Aunt Alice is such a pathetic person, isn't she? I know. I know. She
isn't precisely mad, but so dreadfully unhappy. Such a morbid, isolated
life."
"She makes me so--so--I don't know! Was she always like that? I used to
be afraid of her when I was small."
"Perhaps so. I don't know, dear. Some man she was in love with, they
say. We won't think about her. When I first married your father I tried
to get her interested in some of the things I was doing at the time, but
she imagines that every one dislikes her. Now don't cry any more, May,
child. You mustn't let your poor father see how your visit has upset
you. He never wants us to go there, but I think we ought. Old Mr. Farley
is such a kind old man and your grandmother was so good to the little
baby that died. Your father has often told me about it. He is grateful
to her for it, I'm sure, though she never understood him and when he was
there with you children he was very miserable. That's one reason I
wanted him to move so far away. I hate for him to have that atmosphere
about him. It makes him think of your poor little mother, too. You know
she was only a girl when she died. Not much more of a woman than you
are, May. I don't think she understood your father very well either, but
he loved her very much. It was such a pity she died. Seemed so useless."
Julia was pained by her own kind words. The malice in her heart hurt
her. She felt that if people were compassionate they could find the
apology for her emotion which she was not able to discover.
May was gazing up solemnly with tear smudges on her face. Aunt Julia's
beautiful long hand pushed the damp locks away from the girl's high
pearl-smooth forehead. "Oh, Aunt Julia, I love you! I love you! I love
you!"
"I'm glad, dear." Aunt Julia looked consciously sad and stared at the
carpet. Her fingers continued their half-mechanical caress.
Suddenly May sprang to her feet, clapped her palms together, and began
to pirouette. Then she ran to Aunt Julia and kissed her again. "I'm so
happy!" In herself she was still recalling Paul's kisses, and in them
escaping the old terror that had possessed her again in her
grandmother's house.
Julia, convicted of her own brutality, regarded May pityingly.
* * * * *
The last semester was over. Paul, carrying his books under his arm,
slouched out of the High School yard, his cap pulled over his face.
Hell! Those kids! What if he had flunked in several things! He had just
left a group who were betting on next year's football eleven. Next year
by mid-season it would be a college or a business school for him. When
he talked to those boys he tried to joke as they did about life and
"smut". He was only really interested in what they said when they talked
"smut". Then he looked at them curiously and wanted to be like them.
Like them! Good Lord! They were donkeys. Even the ones who sailed beyond
him in their classes. He wanted them to know what he was--that his
views were outrageous. But there was Felix, a short brown little monkey,
a Russian Jew with excited far-seeing eyes, who enjoyed debating. He
said Paul's vision was warped by his personal problem. Paul tried to
make Felix talk about women. Felix blushed slightly, while his eyes,
bright and remote, remained fixed unwaveringly on Paul's face. Felix
said he respected women as the mothers of the race. He thought the boys
at school had cheap ideas about sexual laxity. That he never was so
utterly strong and possessed of himself as when he put women out of his
mind. Then he could give his whole soul to humanity.
Paul blushed, yet sneered. Felix! Women! That brat! "Is your father a
tailor or an undertaker, Felix?" Afterward it hurt Paul to remember the
wrong idea of himself which he had been at such pains to impart. It
would be nice to belong somewhere!
Away from the deserted schoolhouse, Paul strolled into the park. Against
the gleaming afternoon sky that was a dim milky blue, the trees were
shivering. He watched whirling oak leaves that looked black on the high
branches. Stretched on the grass tops, silver spider threads twitched
with reflections. The bright grass, bending, seemed to rush before him
like a blown cloud. Deep blots of shadow were on the lake, where, here
and there, taut strands of light sparkled and broke through the shaken
surface.
May's step-mother. He kept trying to push that woman away, crowding up
to him with her sanctimonious face. He wanted to do violence to
something. He hated himself.
When he sat down on the grass and closed his eyes he thought again of
going away. Already he could feel himself inwardly small, like a speck
in distance. The harshly coruscated sea made a boiling sound on the
stern of the ship. Beyond the blue-black strip of water that made his
eyes ache there was a long thin beach with tiny houses on it. He could
hear the dry rustle of leaves and cocoanut fronds. There was rain in the
air and huge masses of plum-colored cloud made a strange darkness far
off over the aching earth. A man in a red shirt ran along the shore,
following, waving something. Then all in a moment it had become night
and there was nothing but the hiss of the sea in the quietness. The glow
from a lamp made a yellow stain on the mist and showed a half-naked
sailor asleep on his side with his head thrown back.
When Paul saw things like this he was never certain where the vision
came from. He wondered if he had made it himself, or if it were only
something he had read about. The sharpness of his dream pleased and
frightened him.
He slung his books to one side and buried his face in his hands. He was
miserably conscious of his big grotesque body which he wanted to forget.
Saving the world. Karl Marx. Men that go down to the sea in ships.
Shipped away from here. Shipped as a sailor. He shook himself without
lifting his face. He did not want to hate May, so he hated Aunt Julia
instead.
White moon blown across his face. It was there when he glanced up. It
floated down through the park trees. Why was it when he thought of May
he saw beautiful full breasts like moons in flower! They floated before
him like lilies. They were in him like the vision of the ship.
A brown barefooted girl walked toward a hilltop, a water jar poised on
her head. The sky into which she went was like a dove's wing. Sunset
already. And the girl with the water jar kept mounting and going down,
down, down into him, into darkness. He could hear the quiet grass
parting against her feet. He could hear her going into the moon, into
darkness, into the vacant sky beyond the trees.
He took his hands away from his face and gathered up his books.
I must instinctively feel something rotten about that step-mother of
May's or I wouldn't have this unreasoning antagonism. The brown girl
passed out of sight on the imaginary meadow. He stared at an overturned
park bench, and at the lake water that made a stabbing spot of emptiness
in the glowing twilight among the trees.
* * * * *
Julia's depression continued during the evening meal and Laurence
noticed her silence. In the hallway, as they went up to her sitting room
after dinner, he surprised her by slipping his arm about her shoulders.
Julia glanced toward him swiftly. Her mouth was strained. She smiled and
lowered her lids.
"Being married to me isn't a thrilling experience, Julia."
Julia tried to answer him, bit her lips, and said, "Dear!" in a choked
voice.
He held her against him uneasily as they walked. Julia wished he would
not touch her as if he were afraid.
When they mounted the stairs they found her room dark. Laurence released
her and she went ahead of him to find the light. The moon made a long
blue shadow that lay alive on the floor. The bright windows of the
houses opposite seemed to flicker with the moving branches of the trees
that came between. The night air of the city flowed cold into the room
and had a dead smell. They heard the horn of a motor car and children
were laughing in the street. Julia was shivering, fumbling for the
electric lamp.
Laurence, though he barely saw the outline of her figure, was suddenly
aware of something confused and ominous in her delay. "What's the
matter, Julia? Do you need my help?" His tone was very casual but
gentle. He startled himself. She's unhappy. I need to be kind. He had
been restless, feeling something between them. She must come to me. He
had a quick sense of relief and tenderness.
The light rushed out and bathed the indistinct walls. The carpet was
bleached with it. There was a circle of radiance low about the desk
where the lamp stood. Julia had not answered. Her shoulders, turned to
him, resisted him. Her head was bent forward, away. She was moving some
papers under a book. Her bare hand and arm appeared startlingly alive,
saffron-colored in the glow, trembling out of the dim blackness of her
sleeve. There were blanched reflections in the lighted folds of her silk
skirt.
Laurence was all at once afraid, as if he had never seen her before.
"Julia!" He moved a step toward her.
She turned to him, her hands behind her, palms downward on the desk
against which she braced herself. Her face was old. Her eyes, staring at
him, seemed blind.
Laurence frowned while his lips twitched in a queer smile. He tried to
speak, but could not. Without knowing why, he wanted to keep her from
speaking.
She buried her face in her hands. "I have something horrible to tell
you, Laurence."
Her voice, unexpectedly calm, disconcerted him. Neither had she intended
to speak like that. She wanted her emotions to release her. She wanted
to be confused. The clearness of the instant terrified her.
Laurence could not ask her what it was. Something hurt him at that
moment more than she could ever hurt him afterward. He wanted the
silence, unendurable as it was, to go on forever.
Silence.
He came to her and took her hands from her eyes. It was hard for him to
touch her. Her lids closed. She turned her head aside.
"What's the matter, Julia? What's happened? Have I done anything to hurt
you? Tell me."
He seemed to her so far away that she felt it useless to answer him.
Everything that had happened was deep inside her. Neither Laurence nor
Dudley had any relation to it. She knew herself too deeply. It was the
unknown self from which gods were made. There was nothing to turn to.
There was nothing more to know. She watched Laurence now and felt a
foolish smile on her lips. Her hard, concentrated gaze noted nothing
about him. "I've behaved disgustingly, Laurence."
Laurence watched her. He let his hands fall away. He wanted never to
know what she was going to say. His eyes were on the soft hair against
her cheek. He had the impulse to kiss her there. He hated her already
for the pain of what she was taking away from him. Some helpless thing
in him wanted her and she was killing it cruelly and senselessly. It was
monstrous to take her soft hair and her cheek away from him.
"I've deceived you, Laurence. I've been carrying on an intrigue without
telling you." Her brows were painfully drawn above her blind hard gaze.
Her smile suggested a sneer at its own agony. "I've had a lover."
Laurence flushed slowly and regarded her with a dim stare of suffering
and dislike. He could not conquer the impression that her manner was
victorious. He felt that he must ask who her lover was. He thought that
she was degrading him when she made him ask it. "Yes?" His voice sounded
excited, yet calm, almost elated. The voice came from a strange mouth.
"Dudley Allen," Julia said, and kept the same unhappy, irrational smile.
"How long did this go on before you made up your mind to tell me? I can
forgive you everything but that, Julia. Why didn't you tell me? You're a
free agent. I have nothing to say about your actions, but I don't think
you had any right to lie to me, Julia." He tried to keep his mind on the
point of justice. He was utterly vanquished and weak. To touch her! To
be near to her! He felt her putting things between them so that he could
never touch her. His mouth was sweet. His suffused eyes had an
expression of stupidity and anguish.
Julia, observing him, all at once relaxed, and, with a bewildered air,
began to weep, hiding her face again. He envied the sobs which shook her
with relief. She sank into a chair.
"Don't, Julia. You mustn't do this, Julia. Don't!" He came up to her,
and, with an effort, touched her drooped head. The contact was grateful
to him. Her warm shuddering body reassured him against the dark they
were in. They were both in the same darkness. He wanted to know her in
it where her bright empty words had pierced and gone.
"How can you bear to touch me?" Julia said. She demanded nothing.
Helpless and waiting, she was clinging to him. Her legs were warm and
weak and tired. She was glad of the chair, and only in terror that
Laurence might go. "Don't leave me, Laurence! Please don't leave me!"
"I won't leave you, Julia." For a moment he pitied her, but suddenly he
knew how much outside her he was. She was taking no account of him at
all. He needed to resist her as if she were some awful weight. He was so
tired. She was crushing him. He wanted to live. He wanted to be away
from her. "I want to go--not far--out somewhere. I want to be alone for
a while. I have to think things out."
"I know, Laurence! You can't bear me! I've killed what you had for me!"
He was annoyed by her unthinking phrases, and that she showed no
knowledge of the new emotion which pain had created in him. It was hard
to leave her in distress, but he felt that he must go to save himself.
He left the room quietly, and went downstairs and into his study. The
house was still, perhaps empty, but he closed the door after him and
locked it. He was afraid of his own room with its unfamiliar walls.
He sat down awkwardly in the darkness, aware of his own movements as of
the gestures of some one else. He conceived a peculiar disgust for the
short heavy man who was humped soddenly in the arm-chair. He disliked
the man's clothes, expensive ill-fitting clothes draping a massive body.
Most of all he hated the man's small delicate hands, ridiculous below
his big sleeves.
Laurence, out of his own fatigue, had abandoned the moral idea, and he
pleased himself now with the bitter lenience of his judgment. He had
known for a long time that Julia was dissatisfied and had even sensed
the pathos in her passing enthusiasms with their glamour of profundity.
He had seen her young and lovely, futile except to him, and, when he had
pitied her passion for the sublime, it had only added a paternal quality
to his feeling for her, so that he loved her more inwardly and quietly.
His unshaken pessimism regarding life had made him more and more gentle
of her when he saw that she yet clung to the things which, for him, had
failed. He perceived now that his very disbelief had been the symbol of
a too complete faith which she had made grotesque. If he had been able
to condemn her, the moral justification would have afforded him an
emotional outlet. He was helpless with a hurt that was his alone.
Who was he, he said ironically to himself, that he should refuse the lie
with which humanity sustains itself.
* * * * *
Dudley wrote Julia that he was grieved that she excluded him from her
confidence. He was suffering deeply and he wanted to be a friend to both
her and Laurence. He had not anticipated anything like her silence.
When his vanity was wounded he made a fetish of his isolation. He told
himself that he had no place in the superficiality of modern life. He
took a train away from the city and walked along the beach under the hot
gray sky beneath clouds like glaring water. He wanted to avoid his
artist friends. He wished to imagine that they could never understand
him. He was acute in his perception of their weaknesses and was always
defending himself inwardly against discovering their defects in himself.
He tired himself out and, taking off his coat, sat down on some
driftwood to rest. His black hair clung in sweated curls to his flushed
forehead. The pine boughs above him rocked secretly against the glowing
blindness of the clouds. The bunches of needles, lustrous on the tips of
the branches, were like black stars. The sea was a moving hill going up
against the horizon. It made a slow heavy sound. The small waves sidled
along the shore, opened their fluted edges a little, fan-wise, then
flattened themselves and sank away with lisping noises.
Dudley was more and more depressed by the constant terrible fear of
having made himself ludicrous. He said to himself that neither Julia nor
her husband would understand him, and he must suffer the
miscomprehension of his motives which would inevitably result from their
lesser experience. The most disconcerting thing was the sudden
retrospective vividness of his physical intimacy with Julia. She seemed
to have become a part of all the abhorrent elements that were
commonplace in his past, elements against which his romantic conception
of his destiny led him to rebel.
His full lips pouted despairingly beneath his neat mustache shining in
the glare, and there was an aggrieved expression in his small sparkling
eyes. His plump, pretty body made him unhappy. He tried to exclude it.
It was terrible for him to realize ugliness or physical deficiency of
any sort. He never associated this with his weak childhood and the
semi-invalidism which he but vaguely remembered. He had begun so early
to detach his experiences from those of other beings, that it never
occurred to him. Yet if he came in contact with disease in another
creature it left him mentally ill. He never made any attempt to analyze
the violence of his reaction against the sight of sickness. At any rate,
his theory was of a Golden Age and a primitive man who had fallen
through admitting weakness into his psychical life.
Dudley did not explain the fact to himself, but he knew that his dignity
survived only in his capacity for pain of the spirit. When he was in
agony of mind he never really doubted that his condition was a superior
one, the travail in which the great soul gave birth to its perfection.
At twenty-seven his hair was turning gray and there were lines of
exhaustion and disillusionment about his eyes and mouth. He demanded so
much of himself that it allowed him no spiritual quiet.
To avoid recognizing the platitudinous details of his love affairs he
submitted himself to mystical tortures. He wanted to leave each incident
of his existence finished and perfect as he passed through it. As much
as he craved admiration, he needed gentleness, but he could not ask for
it.
He remained on the beach until nightfall. He could not discover in
himself enough grief to release him from the cold misery and absurdity
of everyday human affairs.
* * * * *
Between Julia and Laurence, the reflex of their emotional fatigue
expressed itself in a mutual inertia. Except that Laurence showed his
desire to be alone by moving his bed into a small isolated room at the
back of the house, nothing in the order of existence was changed.
Before the children, Julia spoke to him gently, almost pathetically, and
only now and then dared look at his face. He tried to avoid her guilty
and demanding gaze. If she caught his eyes he would glance quickly and
defensively away with a contraction of his features that he could not
control.
School was over. "You and the children might go for a month on the
beach," Laurence said.
And Julia said, "Yes." But she did not make any definite plans. She was
waiting for something which she had never named to herself.
When she was away from him in her room she went over and over the
succession of events, and wondered if she should leave the house to go
out and earn her living, since she had betrayed Laurence's confidence
and no longer deserved anything at his hands. She sustained the ideas of
conscience to the point of applying for employment with the City Board
of Health, and, some weeks after, a position was given her. But it
seemed an irrelevant incident which resolved nothing.
If Laurence had imposed difficulties on her she would have justified
herself in facing them. What seemed most horrible now was that
everything was in suspense, and she was cheated of the emotional
cleansing which relieved her in a crisis even where there were ominous
consequences to follow.
Laurence made a constant effort to escape the atmosphere of anticipation
which her manner created. When he was not with her he fancied he saw
everything clearly. She had always been searching for something apart
from him and she had found it. He decided that it was the clearness and
finality of his vision of her and of himself that left him unable to
create a future. Laurence thought, in language different from Julia's,
that a man comes to the end of his life when he knows himself entirely.
Emotion can only build on the vagueness of expectation. His complete
awareness of the causes of his state allowed him no resentments. He
imagined that he could no longer feel anything toward Julia. He was
conscious of the broken thing in himself. He could not feel himself
going on. There was nothing but annihilating space around him. He
reflected that Julia could intoxicate herself with death, and that he
had no such autoerotic sense.
* * * * *
One evening, after an early dinner, May and Bobby ran out, bent on their
own affairs, and left Julia and Laurence in the dining room alone.
Without looking at Julia, Laurence rose. She recognized, beneath his
quiet manner, the furtive haste with which she had become so painfully
familiar.
She touched his coat. "Laurence?" She picked up some embroidery which
lay on a chair near the table and began to thrust the needle, which had
lain on it, in and out of the coarse-woven brown cloth. She stared down
at her trembling fingers--at the long third finger where the thimble
should be.
Laurence waited without speaking. When she touched him like that he
could scarcely bear it. Her long hands and her aching, drooping
shoulders were a part of him. Even the sound of her voice was something
that she dragged out of him that he found it hard to endure. He kept his
head bent away from her. His mouth contorted. Frowning, he passed his
fingers slowly across his face and covered his lips.
"Dudley Allen and I have separated. Everything between us seems to have
been a mistake. I didn't know whether I had made you understand that."
Her voice was weak, almost whispering. As she watched her needle she
pricked herself and a drop of blood welled, slowly crimson, from the
hand that held the cloth. She went on pushing the needle jerkily through
some yellow cotton flowers. The late sunshine was pale in the room.
Nellie was singing in the kitchen.
Laurence saw the blood spread on the embroidery and make a stain. He was
all at once insanely amused. What she was saying seemed an absurd
revelation of their distance from each other. She never considered him
as distinct from herself. He found it ludicrous.
His finger tips moved along the edge of the table. He picked up a dish
and set it down. In his heart he knew that Dudley was her only lover,
but he was jealous of his right to suspect that it was otherwise. It
made him cruel toward her when he realized how seldom it occurred to her
that he might disbelieve what she said. "That is your affair--between
you and him, Julia. I'm not interested in it."
She watched him helplessly. "Laurence, why is it always like this?"
He saw her hands shaking. He wanted them to shake. All grew dim before
his eyes. He turned quickly from her and walked out of the room. He
could not hurt her. It was terrible not to be able to hurt her. He
fancied that he hated her more because he was so unable to revenge
himself for her manner of ignoring him.
He went on through the hall into the street. He knew that Julia was
robbing him of the detachment in which he had taken refuge from earlier
suffering. He no longer possessed himself. Not even his own pain
belonged to him.
He's cast her off so she comes to me. He did not think so, but he wanted
to indulge himself in this belief. He had hitherto controlled a loathing
for Dudley which was unreasoning. Now he resented Dudley for Julia's
sake and could despise her through this very resentment.
Julia's isolation was pathetic, yet Laurence had only to recall the
physical nature of his emotion when they were together to know that he
could not express his pity for her. He tried to force all intimate sense
of her out of his mind. When he actually considered himself rid of her
he was conscious of being bright and blank like a mirror from which the
reflections are withdrawn, and there was a crazy stirring of laughter
through the emptiness in him.
He passed along the neat sidewalks, his head bowed. His air of
abstraction was ostentatious. He wanted to enjoy uninterruptedly the
relaxation of self-loathing. There were deep, violet-red shadows on the
newly-washed asphalt street. The treetops were still and glistening
against the line of faintly gilded roofs. The grass blades on the
ordered lawns were green glass along which the quiet light trickled.
Well-dressed children played under the eyes of nurse maids. A limousine
was drawn up in the shrubbery that surrounded a Georgian portico.
Laurence decided that he was relieved by the failure which separated him
from the pretensions of success.
He recalled the unhappiness of his first marriage, and the depression
he had experienced with his baby's death. It pleased him that he seemed
doomed to fail in every relationship.
Alice and I are strangely alike after all. He took a grandiose
satisfaction in the delayed admittance that he and Alice were alike.
Wondering if Julia would ultimately leave him, he told himself that he
was the one who ought to go away to save Bobby from the contamination of
such bitterness.
Of May he somehow did not wish to think.
* * * * *
When Dudley communicated with Julia over the telephone her manner was
strained and resentful, and when he wrote her notes she replied to him
with a reserve that showed her antagonism. His curiosity concerning her
and Laurence was becoming painful. He guessed that she was in spiritual
turmoil and he could not bear to be excluded from the consequences of a
situation which he himself had brought about. If he could imagine
himself dictating the course of her life, and of her husband's, it would
not be so hard to forego that physical pleasure in her which had made
him resentful of her, as of all other women. At the same time he fought
off relinquishing any of himself to her necessities. She needed to
grow. She did not belong in her bourgeois environment but she must
escape it alone. He told himself that later she would thank him that he
had been strong for both of them.
Dudley was utterly miserable in his exclusion. He needed to appear noble
in his own eyes, and to assert his superiority with all those with whom
he came in contact. And this in a world which he knew had become too
sophisticated to believe any longer in the sincerity of the noble
gesture. In a letter to Julia he said, "Spiritually, I too am not well.
My life is not yet right. I can no longer avoid the conviction that I
should live alone. I am meant to have friends, but not to live with any
of them. And against this hold the numberless ways in which my life is
linked with the lives of others. I am in conflict and here goes much of
the energy which should pour into my projected and incompleted works.
"I find that in several countries of Europe there are conscious groups
of men who feel that I am doing an important work, and that there is
significance in my life and thought. Is that not strange? Is it so, or
is it a freak of the pathos of distance?
"If I could only resolve this endless conflict within myself! This
rending and spilling of myself in the battle of my wills to be alone and
to live as others do: to be out of the world, and to be normally in it!
It is a classic conflict, but no less mortal for that."
After he had sent the letter he was uncomfortable because he had written
only of himself, but he dared not consider Julia's attitude. She must
accept his own definition of himself and his acts.
* * * * *
Dudley was ashamed of the strength of his interest in the Farleys. When
he was most in love with Julia he did not admit to his friends that she
had any part in his life. Now he was determined to initiate her and
Laurence into his environment. As a protest against their
misunderstanding, he must force them to live through his experiences.
Dudley even decided that when Julia became a part of his world it would
do no harm if it became known that she had been his mistress. Before he
let her go he wished the world to see her with some ineradicable mark
of himself upon her. She must accept his permanent significance in her
life without wanting to be paid for it by some symbol of sexual
possession. He insisted on a meeting with her. They saw each other again
in the park.
The park on this damp day looked vast and abandoned. The tall buildings,
visible beyond the trees, were far off, strange with mist, as if in
another world. A few drops of rain fell occasionally on the heavy
surface of the lake and the water flickered like gray light. The grass
and the bushes around were vividly still.
Dudley walked about nervously waiting for Julia to come. He would admit
no fault in his view of her and he could not explain his uneasiness. At
a recent exhibition his pictures had been unfavorably criticized. He
decided that he had not yet accepted the inevitableness of a life of
isolation.
When he saw Julia coming along the path his eyes filled with tears. It
was cruel that a woman to whom he had opened his heart had closed
herself against him in enmity. He loved her as he loved everything which
had been a part of himself. She was yet a part of him, though she
refused to understand it. She wounded him unmercifully. When she halted
before him and looked at him he tried to forgive her. He fought back too
much consciousness of his small undignified body. "Julia! Aren't you
glad to see me?"
She allowed him to press her hand. They went on together, side by side.
Dudley was afraid of her cold face. It made him the more determined to
be generous to her and rise above what she was feeling. Psychically he
wanted to touch her with himself. There was a kind of pagan chastity in
her reserved suffering. Such a thing he had never been able to achieve
and he could not bear it in others. "How does your husband feel about
what you have told him, Julia?" His voice shook.
Julia said, "I think he's too big for both of us. He understands things
that neither of us know."
Dudley would not allow himself to be jealous. He knew that he must
embrace Laurence's experience in order to rise above it. "If he had the
narrow outlook of the average man of his class he would condemn us both.
Does he condemn me?"
"I'm sure he condemns neither of us in the sense you mean."
"I want to see him and talk to him," Dudley said. "I want to be the
friend of both of you, Julia, in a deep true sense. Will he meet me?
Will he talk to me?"
With a curious shock of astonishment Julia found herself ignored again.
"I don't know. Yes, I think he'll talk to you." Her white throat
strained so that it was corded with tension. She bit her lips.
Dudley observed this and became elated. He told himself that sympathy
drew him to her, and he wanted to kiss her. But he withheld the kiss. He
could not accept the burden of Julia's deficiencies. If he made a friend
of Laurence Farley it would frustrate her in her undeveloped impulses.
Dudley tried to admire himself for being strong enough to resist her for
the sake of something she did not comprehend and might never appreciate.
He placed his hand on her arm. "Julia, how do you feel--now--about
him--about you and me?" When she met his eyes, she noted in them the old
expression of impersonal intimacy which ignored all of her but what he
wanted for himself. He could endure everything but her reserve. He knew
that she despised him for not allowing her to suffer alone. He had to
risk that. It was preferable to being excluded from a life which had
belonged to him entirely. He could not bear to return the privacy of
emotion to any one who had appeared to him in spiritual nakedness.
Julia shivered under his touch. "Why do you oblige me to go through the
humiliation of telling you things about myself that you already see?"
"You do love me a little, Julia?"
Julia would not look at him. "You know I love you."
He was disconcerted for the moment, resenting the mysterious implication
of obligation which he always found in such words. "Sister. Julia. In
the environment where I met you, I never expected to meet a woman who
had your deep reality. We must all go through terrible things to come to
a true understanding of ourselves in the universe. I have been through
just what you are passing through now, Julia. Let me be your friend and
your husband's friend as no one else has ever been?"
Julia clasped her hands and pressed the palms together. "Of course you
are my friend." She wondered if her feeling of amusement were insane.
Dudley was unhappy with himself but her visible misery stimulated him in
a way he dared not explain.
* * * * *
The windows of Dudley's studio were open against the hot purplish night.
Large, fixed stars shuddered above the factory roofs and the confusion
of tenements. The still room seemed a vortex for the distant noises of
the street. A fire gong clanged alarmingly. Some one whistled. Somewhere
feet were shuffling and the rhythm of a bass viol marked jazz time with
the savage monotony of a tom-tom's beat. There was a sinister harmony in
the discordant blending of sound.
Dudley, when he opened his door to Laurence, was relieved by a sudden
sense of intimate affection for the man before him.
Laurence said, "I lost my way. Have I disturbed you by coming so late?"
He held out his hand with a slight air of reluctance.
Dudley was pained and rebuffed by the pleasant casual manner of his
guest. He would have held Laurence's hand but that Laurence withdrew it.
"I had nothing to do but wait for you," Dudley said. He took Laurence's
hat and stick and drew forward a chair.
Laurence seated himself with strained ease, and scrutinized a
half-finished picture that leaned on the mantel shelf opposite. "I've
been reading some references to your work lately." As he glanced away
from the study, his mouth twitched slightly and his hard smiling eyes
were full of an instinctive defiance.
Dudley's inquisitive imagination was fired by the recognition of the
secret voluptuous relationship between them. He held Laurence's gaze
with a passionate expression of understanding which to Laurence was
peculiarly offensive and disturbing. "Inspired idiocy," Dudley said. "I
hope you won't judge me by the banal standards which govern my other
critics." His light tone, as usual, was awkwardly assumed.
"My unfailing refuge." Laurence reached in his pocket and took out his
pipe. Dudley observed the tension of Laurence's hands that were too
steady.
A pause.
Laurence said, "Well--your pictures are interesting. I like them. I
won't subject you to my bromidic attempts at analysis. My appreciation
of art is limited by my training. I'm too factual in my approach to
follow the ebullitions of the modern consciousness." He glanced about
the room again.
Dudley was disappointed in him, and unhappy in the way a child may be.
It wounded him, that Laurence, like Julia, persisted in excluding him
by means of a false pride. "It is a great deal to me that you are ready
to be my friend. Julia told me." Dudley's eyes were oppressively gentle.
Laurence did not reply at once. He looked about the room. His glance was
bright with uneasiness. He pressed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.
His knuckles were white. This visit was an ordeal which the bitterness
of his pride had forced him to accept. He wondered what he must do to
prevent talk of Julia which he could not endure.
"It seems to me it would have been very absurd if I had refused to be
your friend." He made his gaze steady as he turned to watch Dudley.
Dudley's negligee shirt was open over his chest which was beaded with
sweat. His face was flushed and his hair clung darkly to his moist
temples. His lips pouted slightly beneath his small glistening mustache.
The expression of his eyes suggested a domineering desire for openness.
He felt that already through Julia's body he knew Laurence's life. The
same virginal pagan quality of pride that had to be overcome in Julia
was in Laurence too. Dudley wanted to perpetrate an outrage of
compassion upon it. "I realized before Julia told me that there was a
side to you altogether different from the one you show to the world."
Without knowing how to put an end to his humiliation, Laurence said, "I
suppose there is in all of us. You artists have a peculiar advantage in
being able to express yourselves." He put a light to his pipe, blew the
smoke out, and stared at the ceiling. Whenever Dudley mentioned Julia's
name Laurence wanted to repudiate the significance which it held in
common for Dudley and himself. Rather than be included here, he
preferred to think of Dudley and Julia together and himself as separate.
Dudley was wrapt in the conviction of a dark, almost fleshly, knowledge
of Laurence, and his determination to love was as ruthless as any
hatred. He never had the intimate experience of a personality without
wanting, in a sense, to defile it by drawing it utterly to himself. He
smiled apologetically. "We should never refuse any experience."
Laurence felt as if he were a woman whose body was being taken. He
sucked at his dry pipe which was extinguished. "Perhaps it is my
limitation which makes it impossible for me to receive everything so
unquestioningly."
"But you do accept things."
"Not emotionally. Not in the way you mean."
Dudley realized that Julia had gone from him. His sense of loss was not
merely in the loss of physical domination. Laurence was as precious as
Julia had been. What was needed was a spiritual possession. Dudley's
method of self-enlargement was through the absorption of others, but he
had a theory of equality. His tyrannous impulses rarely persisted when
equality was disproven. Without admitting it himself, he wanted to
reduce his peers through his understanding of them. Then, too, on this
occasion, his superior comprehension of Laurence might be proof to
himself of Julia's inadequacy.
Laurence felt nothing but blind proud protest against invasion, and,
when Dudley attempted to discuss their mutual interests, was furtive and
adroit in defense.
* * * * *
May told Paul that she believed Aunt Julia was unhappy. He had to
confess to himself that he disapproved of Aunt Julia too much to keep
away from her. He wanted to go to the house where she was. But he had
forgotten her work with the Board of Health, and arrived on an afternoon
when she was not at home.
May took him to Aunt Julia's sitting room. He loathed the place. He
disliked May when he saw her in it. And when he disliked May it made him
despair. He thought that he had never in his life been so depressed.
"Aunt Julia's things are so lovely I'm always afraid of spoiling them."
May sat down on the couch among the batik pillows and made a place for
him beside her. Her face was blanched by the bright colors. Her short
skirts drew up and showed her thin legs above her untidy shoes.
Paul seated himself at the other end and rested his head uncomfortably
against the wall. "I suppose your Aunt Julia calls all these gew-gaws
art." Whenever he tried to be superior some external force of evil
seemed to frustrate his effort.
"Now, Paul, they're lovely!"
"I wonder how Aunt Julia relates this fol-de-rol to her soulful interest
in the working class."
"But some of it's only tie dye, Paul. She did it herself out of an old
dress."
Paul was baffled, but he preserved the sneer on his lips. Humming under
his breath, he tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling.
"I hope you've decided not to go 'way, Paul, like you told me last
time. If you go away without telling them--your uncle and aunt--you're
only eighteen--it will hurt them so." She could not look at him, for her
eyes were full of tears.
Paul knew that she was suffering. Silly little thing! He went on
humming, but interrupted himself to say, "Nothing but their vanity has
ever been hurt by anything I've done. They want me to go on and study
medicine--or law. What for? I don't care what becomes of me."
May bit her lips and twisted her fingers together. When Paul talked
recklessly she knew that it was wicked because it hurt so much. It made
her unhappy to be told that one needed to explain what one felt. She
could not understand the thing that was good if it did not make one
glad. It never occurred to her to try to justify herself before some
obscure principle. Yet others had convinced her of her lack and she was
in a continual state of apology toward them because so much was beyond
her. She loved Aunt Julia. She wanted Paul to love her.
May wondered if Paul despised her because she never resented it when he
kissed her. But the suspicion of his contempt, while it confused her,
did no more than emphasize her conviction of helplessness.
Suddenly Paul ceased humming. He leaned toward her and took her hand.
She pretended not to notice, but she was happy. Her fingers in his grew
cold and covered with sweat. "I think you're unkind to them, Paul." Her
voice shook. There was a waiting feeling in her when he touched her.
She made him sick of himself. Silly little thing! He dropped her hand as
if he had forgotten it. He was hunched forward now with his knees
crossed. He watched the floor where, in the bright afternoon light, dark
patches were moving. There was a curious evil expression in his furtive
eyes. His hair was rumpled in a colorless thatch across his head. His
mouth was babyish. "That reminds me of a story--" Paul began. He paused
a moment with a flickering sneer on his lips. Aunt Julia, damn her! All
of him was against May. In spite of his ugly look, his rumpled hair and
childish mouth were disarming.
May was uncomfortable. She did not understand why he hesitated. "Go on."
He glanced at her and was irritated by the air of uneasiness which came
to her whenever she was uncertain. Why couldn't she laugh! Aunt Julia's
brat! He wanted to punish her. She saw his uneven blush of defiance.
He began to speak quickly. "Oh, a story--about a woman and a monkey." He
went on. His eyes were wicked and amused. When he had finished he
whistled and gazed at the ceiling again.
May did not understand the story, but she felt that he told it to
embarrass her and make her sad.
There was silence when he had done, until, with white face and strained
lips, he resumed his whistling. In his irritation with her he wanted to
cry. "Why don't you laugh?" he asked finally.
May blushed. Her lashes were still wet, her lips tremulous. She
stuttered, "I--I can't."
He jumped to his feet and jerked up the cap he had thrown aside.
"Good-by."
"Why, Paul, what's the matter? You're not going? What for?" He was
halfway to the door before May recovered herself and stood up.
"I was going to meet a fellow this afternoon. I'll let you pursue your
juvenile way undefiled." He hesitated, sneering, not seeing her.
May could not speak at once. "Please don't go."
When at last he glanced at her there was mist in his eyes. "Why not?" He
saw that she was smiling as if across the fear that was in her look. He
resented her fear and he loved her for it. Oh, little May! He loved her.
"Because--because! You were angry with me when I didn't laugh." She
accused him. Why did he watch her so intently yet unseeingly? She felt
his look as something which drew her inward, into herself, too deep.
"I'm not angry with you, May. Honestly, I'm not." In a dream he came
near her: her thin small figure, her pointed face, her bright blank
eyes, frightened and sweet. He came near her pale thick hair where it
was caught away from her temples. As she turned to him he could see the
end of her braid swinging below her waist. He was aware of her legs,
with the straight calves that showed below her skirt, and of her breasts
pointed separately through her sailor blouse. Everything that he saw was
a part of something that was killing him. That was why he did not love
her. She was too young. Because of this he hated her. She was like
himself. He had to hate her. To save himself from the sense of dying
and being utterly lost, he had to hate her. Though it was Aunt Julia's
fault. He knew that.
All those books! He had tormented himself trying to understand them. Two
years ago he hid under the mattress the picture of the fat woman.
Childish. He abhorred the picture of the naked woman as he abhorred his
Aunt with her filthy priggishness. He remembered that long ago when he
asked her something he wanted to know she called him a dirty little boy.
Poor kid! He was sorry for himself. It was all a part of Julia and the
world and something that was killing him because there was no truth or
beauty in life. They went on smiling in their ugliness, torturing the
beautiful things and making them ugly like themselves. He would kill
himself. He did not belong in this ugly cruel world.
White little May, white like a moon. Like snow and silence under the
trees. Snow and silence and rest forever and ever. Forever and ever.
Rest! Rest!
May let him touch her. For a moment she was happy in a bright blank
eternal happiness that was an instant only. Then she was cold and alone
and afraid of him: of his face so hot and close, the queer look in his
eyes, and of his hands that she could not stop.
"Oh, Paul," she kept saying, half sobbing. "Please, Paul! Don't. Oh,
don't, don't! Please, Paul, don't!"
When he drew her down beside him and they rested together on the couch
she felt the hot nap of the cloth cover, stiff against her cheek. It
seemed to her that the afternoon light was terrible in the still room.
Bobby had a new canary bird and Aunt Julia had hung the cage inside the
window. The bird hopped from the perch to the cage floor, from the floor
to the perch, and the thud of its descent was monotonously reiterated.
Occasionally seeds fell in a series of ticks against the polished
wainscot. Beyond Paul's head, May looked into the pane above the bird
cage, and the glass was like a melted sun. On either side of the glowing
transparent squares, the yellow curtains were slack. May fancied that
Bobby was on the stairs and that she could hear old Nellie moving about
in the kitchen below.
The heat in the room made May cold. Paul's hot face against her cheek
burnt like ice. She was dead already, shriveled in the cold heat. She
pushed at him feebly. She could scarcely hear her own words that told
him to stop. They were just a low buzzing from her cold dead lips. Paul
was making her aware of herself, of her body that she did not know, that
now she could never forget.
He was crying. It astonished her that he was crying, but she felt
nothing except a cold burning sensation that came from the warmth of his
tears slipping across her face. She was surprised that he cried so
silently. Now he lay still against her with his face in her hair. His
stillness was too deep. She could not bear it. Her body was cramped and
stiff. She felt his heart beating against her like an echo of her own,
and above it she heard the clicking of the traveling clock on Aunt
Julia's desk, and the creaks of the woodwork on the stairway and in the
hall.
If somebody came she would lie there forever. She was dead. She wanted
to think she was dead.
But nobody came.
She shut her eyes again, and after what seemed a long time she knew that
Paul was getting up and going away from her. She closed her eyes tighter
so that she might not see him.
When he tip-toed across the room he made the floor shake. May's shut
eyes with the sun on them were sightless flaming lead under her lids.
She turned a little and hid her face in a pillow, wondering where Paul
was, waiting for him to go so that she could bear it. All at once she
knew that he had come out of somewhere and was standing beside her in
the light looking down.
He leaned over and whispered, "Get up, May! Somebody 'ull come in and
find you lying there!"
His voice was frightened. She wondered why he was afraid. It made her
sick with his fright. He added, "I love you."
When he said, "I love you," she was, without explaining it to herself,
ashamed for him. She did not answer. She was conscious of his
stealthiness. It oppressed her. She would not let him see her face. When
the floor shook again she knew he was going out. She waited to hear his
footsteps on the stairs and the slam of the front door. Then she pushed
herself to her elbow and glanced about. In her new body she was strange
with herself. She stood up and smoothed her rumpled dress quickly and
guiltily. Then she ran out of the room and upstairs to her own garret.
When the door was locked she threw herself on the bed on her face. The
darkness of the pillow was cool to her eyes and to her whole soul. She
wanted her throbbing body to lie still in the cool dark. She felt that
she was ugly and terrible in her disgrace. She wanted to ask Paul to
forgive her because she had behaved as she had. Sobbing into the
bedclothes, she kept murmuring to herself, "I love him! I love him! Oh,
I love him!"
* * * * *
To defend his vanity, Paul thought of himself as outcast and desperate.
He wanted to invite the sense of tragedy in himself. He felt numb and
despoiled. In the intensity of his misery earlier in the day there had
been, after all, a kind of promise. Now May had gone away from him as if
she were dead. The thought of Aunt Julia gave him only dull repugnance.
He hoped doggedly that no one had known about it when he was with May.
Beyond that he could not care.
When he reached home he went up to his room and, though it was yet
afternoon, he fell asleep soddenly without a dream. Before, his fatigue
had been sharp and hungry. Now he was only tired of his own emptiness
and stupidity.
At the dinner hour he was called downstairs. Blaming his aunt and uncle
for his own fears, he entered the dining room with a hang-dog air. His
food was tasteless. There seemed nothing to think about until his uncle
glanced at him. Guilt permeated Paul. He was hot and angry.
After the meal he went upstairs and hid himself in the dark. He wondered
if any of the beautiful things he had dreamed about existed. Everywhere
was inflated dullness. He dwelt on this until he astonished himself by
finding a faint pleasure in his reflections. He decided that the stars
he saw through the window were burning nettles, and that they pricked
his glance when he looked at them. Suddenly there was something
substantial and satisfying in his very self-contempt. He decided that he
was no better than Julia, and that he detested her and himself for the
same reason. It was peculiarly soothing to perceive his own courage in
self-condemnation. In despising himself he unclothed himself and he was
with her in spiritual nakedness, which somehow took on a fleshly image
so that he dared not think of it too clearly.
* * * * *
Laurence forced himself to be alone with Julia. He went into her sitting
room casually and took up a book, but when he was seated he did not
read. His elbow rested on the arm of the chair and he held his head to
one side with his brow laid against his palm.
It was Sunday. Dry hot air blew into the room from the almost deserted
street. Now and then the window curtains swelled slightly with the
breeze. The canary's cage hung in the light near the ceiling. The
sunshine slipped in wavering lines across the gilded bars. The bird
tapped with its beak on the sides of the cage which oscillated with its
quick motions. Sometimes it flew to its swing that moved with a jerk,
and a shower of seeds rattled lightly against the sill below.
Julia had drawn a chair up to her desk and spread before her the
materials for letter writing. The pen lay idle in her relaxed fingers.
Laurence tried to be unaware that she was watching him. "Laurence."
He stirred a little. It was hard to look at her. "Yes?" His smile was
cold and uneasy. He was not ready to talk with her about himself.
Julia rose and came toward him. He glanced away.
When she stood by him she placed her hand on his. He made an effort not
to withdraw his fingers. When he lifted his face to her his expression
was kind and obscure. He seemed to draw a veil across himself.
"I can't bear it, Laurence!" She knelt down beside him. She wanted him
to hurt her against his will. If she could rouse him against her she
could endure it.
Laurence cleared his throat. He knew that he cringed when she touched
his sleeve. He thought her voice sounded rich and strong with pain.
Women were like that. "Can't bear what?" He realized that his subterfuge
was absurd, but he smiled at her again.
She did not answer. Her eyes were steady with reproach. Her throat
swelled with repressed sobs. "Why can't we be frank about things,
Laurence? We can't go on like this always. I know I have no right here.
I ought to go away! I know I ought. Somehow I haven't the courage."
He moved his arm away and stared out of the window. The smile went from
his eyes. His gaze was vacant and fixed. "I don't ask you to go, Julia."
His face twitched. His whole body showed his breaking resistance. Yet
she knew that he would not relent.
"But you don't ask me to stay. It is painful to you to have me here,
Laurence."
For a moment he compressed his lips without answering her. "I think you
must decide everything for yourself. Your life is your own. You have
told me that one of my mistakes in the past was in condescending to you
and attempting to impose my own negative views upon you."
"But, Laurence, how can I decide a thing like this as if it were
unrelated to you? If you would only talk to me! If you didn't consider
everything that happens between us as if it were irrevocable!"
Laurence's expression softened. He turned his head so that she could not
see his eyes. "I react slowly, Julia. I can't arrive at a set of
difficult conclusions and then upset them in a moment." He sat stiffly,
looking straight before him.
Julia got up and began to walk about, pressing the fingers of one hand
about the knuckles of the other. "It's killing me!" she said. "It's
killing me!"
Laurence suffered. He stood up like an old man. "In a few weeks the
children are going off to school. Don't you think it would be better for
their sakes if we waited until then to untangle our affairs?"
Julia came to him again. She saw that his eyes swam in a dull moist
light. Self-reproach made her giddy. In condemning herself she was
almost happy. She observed how, involuntarily, he drew away from her. "I
won't touch you, Laurence." She was aware of the injustice and cruelty
of what she said. No suffering but her own seemed of any consequence to
her.
"You have no right to say that, Julia."
"I know it. Kiss me, Laurence. Say that you forgive me."
"How can I? What is there to forgive?" He kissed her. His lips were hard
with repugnance. She welcomed the bitterness that was in his kiss. He
said, "I have to think of myself, Julia."
She did not know how to reply. He went out of the room, not looking at
her again.
She felt naked and outrageous. She wanted to fling away what she thought
he did not treasure. When the pulse pounded in her wrists and temples
she fancied that her horror could not burst free from itself.
Her sick mind found pleasure in destroying its own illusions. It seemed
absurd that, having rejected so many gods, she had made a god of
herself. When her reflections became most bitter she grew calm and
exalted. Her blood ran light. Having destroyed her world, her disbelief
somehow survived as if on an eminence.
However, her emotions rejected their own finality. She felt that she had
to go on somewhere outside herself.
* * * * *
May waited in vain for Paul to come back. She convinced herself that she
was not good. When she believed in her own humility she was not afraid
to admit that she wanted to see him. She was unhappy now with her own
body. As soon as she saw her little breasts uncovered she felt
frightened and ashamed and wanted to hide herself. When she was alone in
her room she cried miserably, but as soon as her tears ceased to flow
she lay on her bed in an empty waiting happiness, thinking of Paul. She
recalled all that related to him since she had first known him. It gave
her a beautiful happy sense of want to remember him so distinctly.
However, when her thoughts arrived at the memory of the last thing that
had occurred between them she imagined that she wished him to kill her
so that she need no longer be ashamed.
I want to be dead! I want to be dead! She said this over and over into
her pillow. Her beautiful pale braid of hair was in disorder. Her thin
legs protruded from her wrinkled skirts. She lifted her small
tear-smudged face with her eyes tight shut.
May wanted to tell Aunt Julia, but dared not. She knew Aunt Julia was
sad, though she did not know why. Aunt Julia, however, resisted
confidences. When she came in from work and found May waiting for her in
the hall or on the stairs Aunt Julia made herself look tired and kind.
"Well, May, dear, how are you? You seem to be a very bored young lady
these days. Your father is thinking of sending you away to school when
Bobby goes. How would you like that?" And she smiled in a perfunctory
far-away fashion.
May saw that Aunt Julia was in another world and did not want her. "I
don't care. Whatever you and Papa decide. I'm an awful ninny and should
be terribly homesick."
"That would be good for you. You must learn to be self-reliant." Without
glancing behind her, Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs and
disappeared into her room. The door shut.
To May it was as if Aunt Julia knew everything already and put her
aside because of what she had done. She was dead and corroded with
shame. Lonely, she wandered out into the back yard. The sky, in the late
sunshine, was covered with a pale haze like faint blue dust. A shining
wind blew May's hair about her face and swirled the long stems of uncut
grass. The seeded tops were like brown-violet feathers. Beyond the roofs
and fences the horizon towered, vast and cold looking.
May wanted it to be night so that she could hide herself. She knew
Nellie was in the kitchen doorway watching her. She wanted to avoid the
eyes of the old woman. Paul could not love her while she was despised.
White clothes on a line were stretched between the windows of the
apartment houses that overhung the alley. The bleached garments, soaked
with blue shadow, made a thick flapping sound as the wind jerked them
about. When the sun sank the grass was an ache of green in the empty
twilight. May thought it was like a painful dream coming out of the
earth. She was afraid of the fixity of the white sky that stared at her
like a madness. She knew herself small and ugly when she wanted to feel
beautiful. If she were only like Aunt Julia she would not be ashamed.
It grew dark. She loved the dark. There was a black glow through the
branches of the elm tree against the fence. The large stars, unfolding
like flowers, were warm and strange. In the enormous evening only a
little shiver of self-awareness was left to her. She tried to imagine
that, because she was ugly and impure, Paul had already killed her. The
strangeness and exaltation she felt came to her because she was dead.
She loved him for destroying her.
* * * * *
Dudley gave up the attempt to take Laurence into his life. Dudley had
insisted on seeing the Farleys several times, but the result of these
meetings was always disappointing. What he considered their small hard
pride erected about them a wall of impenetrable reserves. He pitied them
in their conventionality. They regard me, he thought, as a wrecker of
homes, and the fact that I have been Julia's lover prevents them from
recognizing me in any other guise.
He felt that he was learning a lesson. He must avoid destructive
intimacies. If he gave, even to small souls, he had to give everything.
In order to save himself for his art he must learn to refuse. He was in
terror of love, in terror of his own necessities, and afraid of meeting
acquaintances who, with the brutality of casual minds, could shake his
confidence in himself by uncomprehending statements regarding his work.
He grew morbid, shut himself up in his studio, and refused to admit any
validity in the art of painters of his own generation. He persuaded
himself that he was the successor of El Greco and that since El Greco no
painter had done anything which could be considered of significance to
the human race. He would not even admit that Cézanne (whom he had
formerly admired) was a man of the first order. He was a painter, to be
sure, but Dudley could ally himself only with those whose gifts were
prophetic.
His imaginings about himself assumed such grandiose proportions that he
scarcely dared to believe in them. To avoid any responsibility for his
conception of himself he was persuaded that there was a taint of madness
in him. Rather than awaken from a dream and find everything a delusion,
he would take his own life. He lay all day in his room and kept the
blinds drawn, and was tortured with pessimistic thoughts, until, by the
very blankness of his misery, he was able to overcome the critical
conclusions of his intelligence. He did not eat enough and his health
began to suffer. His absorption in death drew him to concrete visions of
what would follow his suicide. He was unable to close his eyes without
confronting the vision of his own putrid disintegrating flesh. In his
body he found infinite pathos. As much as he wanted to escape his
physical self, it was sickening to think of leaving it to the
indignities of burial at the hands of its enemies.
The idea of suicide, haunting him persistently, aroused a resistant
spirit in him. He exaggerated the envies of his contemporaries. He
fancied that they feared him far more than they actually did and were
longing for his annihilation. He decided that something occult which
originated outside him was impelling him toward self-destruction. In
refusing to kill himself he was combating evil suggestions rather than
succumbing to his own repugnance to suffering and ugliness.
While he was in this frame of mind some one sent him a German paper that
was the organ of an obscure artistic group. In this journal,
insignificantly printed, was a flattering reference to Dudley. He was
called one of the leaders of a new movement in America. He read the
article twice and was ashamed of the elation it afforded him. He could
not admit his deep satisfaction in such a remote triumph. With a sense
of release, he indulged to the full the vindictiveness of his emotions
toward his own countrymen--those who were fond of dismissing him as
merely one of the younger painters of misguided promise.
However, the praise from men as unrecognized as himself encouraged his
defiance to such a point that he resumed work on a canvas which he had
thrown aside. His own efforts intoxicated him. He refused to doubt
himself. Life once more had the inevitability of sleep. He knew that he
was living in a dream and only asked that he should not be disturbed.
He needed to run away from the suggestion of familiar things. He decided
to go abroad again and wrote to borrow money of his father. Dudley made
up his mind to avoid Paris where, as he expressed it, the professional
artist was rampant. He wanted to visit the birthplace of a Huguenot
ancestor who had suffered martyrdom for his religion. It stimulated him
to think of himself as the last of a line whose representatives had,
from time to time, been crucified for their beliefs.
* * * * *
Two endless streams of people moved, particolored, in opposite
directions along the narrow street. The high stone buildings were tinged
with the red of the low sunshine. Hundreds of windows, far up, catching
the glare, twinkled with the harsh fixity of gorgon's eyes. Beyond
everything floated the pale brilliant September sky overcast by the
broad rays which stretched upward from the invisible sun.
Julia, returning from the laboratory, hesitated at a crowded corner and
found Dudley beside her.
"This is pleasant, Julia. I've been wanting to see you and Laurence
Farley. I'm sailing for Europe next week, and I should have been very
much disappointed if I had been obliged to go off without meeting you
again." He tried to speak easily while he looked at her with an
expression of reproach. Julia smiled and held out her hand. There was a
defensive light in her eyes which he interpreted as a symptom of
dislike. He wanted to convince himself that every one, even she, was
completely alienated from him. All that fed his pain strengthened his
vacillating egotism.
Julia noted the familiar details of his appearance: his short arms in
the sleeves of a perfectly fitting coat; the plump hairy white hand
which reached to hers a trifle unsteadily; his short well-made little
body that he held absurdly erect; the wide felt hat that he tried to
wear carelessly, which, in consequence, was slightly to one side on the
back of his head and showed his dark curls; the childishly fresh color
which glowed through the beard in his carefully shaven cheeks; his small
full mouth that sulked in repose but when he smiled displayed
exaggeratedly all of his little even teeth; his prettily modeled,
womanish nose; the silky reddish mustache on his short lip; and his
soft, ingratiating, long-lashed eyes. Everything in his appearance
disarmed her resentment of him. Yet she knew that if she expressed
anything of her state of mind he would take advantage of her
vulnerability. She was prepared to see his gaze harden toward her and
his demeanor, puerile now, become ruthless and commanding. She could not
analyze the thing in herself that made her so helpless before him. She
was able, she thought, to observe him coldly. She withdrew her hand
from his and said, "So you are going away again? I am glad for your
sake. I know how America must irk you. Even from my viewpoint I can see
that it is the last country for an artist." At the same moment her heart
contracted and she told herself that there was something false and
monstrous in Dudley which suppressed her natural impulse to be frank in
stating what she felt for him.
Dudley walked beside her. She wants me to go away! He insisted on
believing this. To know that she continued to suffer, however, comforted
him as much now as it had in the past. He sensed that she had, in some
remote way, remained subject to him. Because of this she was dear. When
he remembered that, but for this accidental meeting, he would not have
communicated his departure to her he was momentarily panic-stricken. He
no longer wished to detach himself from her.
"Tell me about your work. What are you doing now?"
He took her arm. "I can't talk about my work, Julia. Something goes out
of me that ought to go into the work when I talk about it too much.
That's my struggle--my fight. It's terrifying at times. I know all the
hounds are baying at my heels. When I go abroad this time I am going to
avoid Paris. I know dozens of cities. Paris is the only one which is a
work of art. That's why I am going to keep away. I am through with the
finality of that kind of art. I am going abroad to feel how much of an
American I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in me--a part of me. I
can't escape it. I must express it. That is my salvation--in belonging
to America." It was almost irresistible to tell her some of the
conclusions he had arrived at to comfort himself, but he knew that Julia
never approached a subject from a cosmic angle. She made him feel small
and unhappy and full of a homesickness for understanding. In her very
crudity she was the life he had to face. "I want to talk to you about
yourself, Julia. There are clouds of misunderstanding between us. We
mustn't leave things like this." He pressed her arm against his side.
She was ashamed before a stout woman who was passing who showed, by the
expression of dull attention in her eyes, that she had overheard his
remark. In this atmosphere of public intimacy Julia felt grotesque. "I
can't talk about myself, Dudley. Don't ask me. You've put me out of
your life. Why should you be interested?"
He was conscious of the stiffening of her body as she walked beside him
and observed the forced immobility of her face. Emerging from the
self-loathing which was an undercurrent to his vanity, he was grateful
to her for allowing him to hurt her. He began to wonder if he were not,
at this instant, realizing for the first time the significance of his
relationship to her--not its significance in her life, but its
significance in his own. He admitted to himself the cruelty of his
feeling for her. He wanted to torture her, to annihilate her even. It
pleased him to discover in himself enormous capacities for all things
that, to the timid-minded, constitute sin. He must embrace life without
moral limitations. "Julia, my dear--you must not misunderstand my
feeling for you. I want you--want you even physically--as much as I ever
did." His voice shook a little. "It is only because I understand now
that I must refuse myself much. I have found just this last month a
marvelous spiritual rest which makes living deeply more acceptable."
Julia had never felt more contemptuous of him. "What I have to say
would only convince you of my limitations."
"Don't be childish, Julia. You don't want to understand me. We can't
talk in the street. Come to my studio for half an hour." He could not
let her go away from him yet.
Julia's pride would not allow her to object.
On the way they passed an acquaintance of Dudley's. Dudley could not
explain to himself why he was ashamed of being seen with Julia. He
wanted to hurry her through the street.
In the oncoming twilight the brilliant shop fronts were vague with
glitter and color. Above the glowering tower of an office building a
blanched star twinkled among faded clouds. When they reached Dudley's
doorstep Julia began to feel morally ill and to wonder why she had come.
As Dudley watched her mount the long green-carpeted stairs before him he
was suddenly afraid of her.
They entered the studio. It was almost dark in the big room. The canvas
that Dudley was working on stood out conspicuously in the translucent
gloom that filtered through the skylight. He crossed the floor and
furtively threw an old dressing gown over the painting.
Julia found herself unable to speak. When she discerned the lounge she
sat down weakly upon it.
Dudley stumbled over the furniture. He wanted to evade the moment when
he must find the lamp. "Take off your wrap, Julia. I can't find matches.
I seem to have mislaid everything. I am a graceless host." His own voice
sounded strange to him.
When at last he struck a match, Julia said, "Don't!" and put her hands
to her eyes. The flame, which, for an instant, had blindly illumined his
face, went out. Dudley could not bring himself to move. The evening sky,
dim with color, was visible through the windows behind him, and above
the sombre roof of the factory that rose from the courtyard his figure
was thrown into relief. Objects over which there seemed to brood a
peculiar stillness loomed about the room.
The tension was intolerable to them both. They were experiencing the
same nausea and disgust of their emotions--emotions which seemed
inevitable for such a moment and so meaningless. Dudley said, "Where are
you? I'm afraid of stumbling over you."
Julia, a hysterical note in her voice, answered, "Here I am, Dudley."
She knew that he was coming toward her. She wanted to die to escape the
thing in herself which would yield to him. But at this instant the light
flashed on and everything that she was feeling appeared to her as
unjustifiable and ridiculous.
To Dudley, Julia's body represented all the darkness of self-distrust
and the coldness of his own worldly mind. He wished that her personality
were more bizarre so that he might regard his past acts as mad rather
than commonplace. He did not know why he had brought her to the studio
and was ashamed to look at her. There was nothing for it but to admit
the duality of his nature, and that half of it was weak. He longed to
hasten the time of sailing when he would begin completely his life alone
in which nothing but the artist in him would be permitted to survive. He
said, "Is it too late for me to make you some tea? Let me take your
wrap." When he approached her he averted his gaze.
"I can't stay long, Dudley. It is better that I shouldn't." She wanted
to force on him an admission of her defeat. If she could only reproach
him by showing him the destruction of her self-respect! Her eyes were
purposely open to him. He would not see her. She resented his
obliviousness. "You seem to me a master of evasion."
When he sat down near her, he said, "Let it suffice, Julia, that I take
the hard things you want to say to me as coming from a human being whom
I respect and care for enormously--and I still think everything fine
possible between us provided you accept in me what I have never doubted
in you--my absolute good faith, and my absolute desire, to the best of
my powers, to be honest and sincere in every moment of our relationship,
past and present."
Julia gave him a long look which he obliged himself to meet. Then she
got up. "I can't stay, Dudley. You won't understand." She turned her
head aside. Her voice trembled. "It's painful to me."
He rose also, helplessly. He wanted to wring a last response from her.
It was impossible. Everything seemed dark. He would not forgive her for
going away.
Julia took up her wrap from a chair and went out hastily without looking
back.
Dudley felt a swift pang of despair. Not because she was gone, but
because her going left him again with the problem of reviving the
hallucinations of greatness. It was not easy for him to deceive
himself. He could do so only in the throes of emotions which exhausted
him. In moments of unusual detachment he perceived the faults in himself
as apart from the real elements of genius that existed in his work. But
he was not strong enough to continue his efforts for the sake of an
imperfect loveliness. Only in spiritual drunkenness could he conquer his
susceptibility to the nihilistic suggestions of complacent and
unimaginative beings.