Julia and Laurence were to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Of late
Laurence had shown an unusual measure of social punctiliousness. Julia
realized that his new determination to see and be with people was a part
of his resistance to suffering. She thought bitterly that his regard for
the opinions of others was greater than his regard for her.
Julia put on a thin summer gown, very simply made, a light green sash,
and a large black hat. Her misery had pride in itself, but when she
looked in the glass she was pleased, and it was difficult to preserve
the purity of her unhappiness. As she descended the stairs at Laurence's
side she felt guiltily the trivial effect of her becoming dress. She
wanted him to notice her. "I'm afraid we are late."
His fine eyes, with their sharp far-away expression, rested on her
without seeming to take cognizance of her. "I hope not. Mrs. Hurst is a
hostess who demands punctuality." He spoke to her as to a child. There
was something cruel in his kindness. For fear of exposing himself he
refused her equality.
If he would only love her--that is to say, desire her--Julia knew that
she would be willing to make herself even more abject than she had been,
and that it would hurt her less than his considerate obliviousness.
Laurence had ordered a taxi-cab. The driver waited at the curbstone in
the twilight. He turned to open the door for the two as they came out.
Julia was avidly, yet resentfully, aware of his surreptitious
admiration. She told herself that her sex was so beggared that she
accepted without pride its recognition by a strange menial.
It was a beautiful cool evening. The glass in the taxi-cab was down. The
cold stale smell of the city, blowing in their faces, was mingled with
the perfume of the fading flowers in the park through which they passed.
The trees rose strangely from the long dim drives. Here and there
lights, surrounded by trembling auras, burst from the foliage. Far off
were tall illuminated buildings, and, about them, in the deep sky, the
reflection was like a glowing silence. The wall of buildings had the
appearance of retreating continually while the cab approached, as if the
huge blank bulks of hotels and apartment houses, withdrawing, held an
escaping mystery.
Laurence scarcely spoke. Julia's sick nerves responded, with a feeling
of expectation, to the vagueness of her surroundings. Her heart, beating
terrifically in her breast, seemed to exist apart from her, unaffected
by her depression and fatigue. It was too alive. She cried inwardly for
mercy from it.
Mrs. Hurst's home was a narrow, semi-detached house with a brown-stone
front and a bow window. From the upper floor it had a view of the park.
When Julia and Laurence arrived, a limousine and Mr. Hurst's racer were
already drawn up before the place. There were lights in one of the rooms
at the right, and, between the heavy hangings that shrouded its windows,
one had glimpses of figures.
Laurence said sneeringly, "Hurst has arrived, hasn't he! Affluent
simplicity in a brown-stone front. You are honored that Mrs. Hurst is
carrying you to glory with her."
Julia said, "But they really are quite helpless with their money,
Laurence. Mrs. Hurst has a genuine instinct for something better."
"How ceremonious is this occasion anyway? I don't know whether I am
equal to the frame of mind that should accompany evening dress."
"There will only be one or two people. Mrs. Hurst knows how we dislike
formal parties."
Mr. Hurst, waving the servant back, opened the front door himself. He
was a tall, narrow-shouldered man with a thin florid face. His pale
humorous blue eyes had a furtive expression of defense. His mouth was
thin and weak. His manner suggested a mixture of braggadocio and
self-distrust. He dressed very expensively and correctly, but there was
that in his air which somehow deprecated the success of his appearance.
His sandy hair, growing thin on top, was brushed carefully away from his
high hollow temples. The hand he held out, with its carefully manicured
nails, was stubby-fingered and shapeless. "Well, well, Farley! How goes
it? I've been trying to get hold of you. Want to go for a little fishing
trip?" He was confused because he had not spoken to Julia first. "How
d'ye do, Mrs. Farley? Think you could spare him for a few days?" Mr.
Hurst's greeting of Laurence was a combination of bluff familiarity and
resentful respect. When he looked at Julia his eyes held hers in
bullying admiration.
Julia had never been able to say just where his elusive intimacy verged
on presumption. Feeling irritated and helpless and sweetly sorry for
herself, she lowered her lids.
"My--dear!" Mrs. Hurst kissed Julia. "How sweet you look! How do you do,
Mr. Farley? It was nice of you to let Julia persuade you to come to us.
We really feel you are showing your confidence in us. Julia, dear girl,
tells me you have as much of an aversion to parties as Charles and I
have. This will be a homely evening. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are here, and
there is a young Hindoo who has been giving some charming talks at the
Settlement House. He speaks very poor English but he's so interested in
America. He's only become acquainted with a few American women. I want
him to meet Julia. I think he'll amuse her too." Mrs. Hurst's short
little person was draped in a black lace robe embroidered with jet. She
squinted when she smiled. Minute creases appeared about her bright eyes.
Her expression was gentle and deceitful. Her arms, protruding from her
sleeve draperies, were thin, and their movements weak. Her wedding ring
and one large diamond-encircled turquoise hung loosely on the third
finger of her left hand. Her hands were meager and showed that her
bones were very small and delicate. About her hollow throat she wore a
black velvet band, and her cheeks, no longer firm, were, nevertheless,
childishly full above it. Though she said nothing that justified it, one
felt in her a sort of affectionate malice toward those with whom she
spoke. In her flattering acknowledgment of Julia's appearance there was
something insidiously contemptuous. "Come away with me, child, and we'll
dispose of that hat. Williams!" She turned to the Negro servant whom Mr.
Hurst had intercepted at the door. She nodded toward Mr. Farley. The
Negro went forward obsequiously.
"Yes, Williams, take Mr. Farley's hat," Mr. Hurst said. Then, in
humorous confidence, _sotto voce,_ "How about a drink, Farley? My wife
has that young Hindoo here. This is likely to be a dry intellectual
evening. That may suit you, but I have to resort to first aid. Want to
talk to you about that fishing trip. Come on to my den with me."
Shortly after this, Julia, descending the stairs with her hostess, found
Laurence and Mr. Hurst in the hall again. Laurence, his lips twisted
disagreeably, was listening with polite but irritating quiescence to
Mr. Hurst's incessant high-pitched talk. Mr. Hurst, who had been
surreptitiously glancing toward the shadowy staircase that hung above
his guest's head, was quick to observe the approach of the women. He had
always found fault with what he considered to be Julia's coldness, but
he admired her tall figure and her fine shoulders. "Hello, hello! Here
they are!"
"Charles!" Mrs. Hurst was whimsically disapproving. "Why haven't you
taken Mr. Farley in to meet our guests? You are an erratic host."
Mr. Hurst moved forward. "That's all right! That's all right! Farley and
I had some strategic confidences. You take him off and show him your
Hindoo. I want Mrs. Farley to come out and see my rose garden, out in
the court. I'm going to have a few minutes alone with her before you
conduct her to the higher spheres and leave me struggling in my natural
earthly environment. I won't be robbed of a little tête-à-tête with a
pretty woman, just because there's an Oriental gentleman in the house
who can tell her all about her astral body. Did you ever see your astral
body, Mrs. Farley?"
"Boo!" Mrs. Hurst waved him off and pushed Julia toward him. "Go on, if
she has patience with you. But mind you only keep her there a moment.
I've told Mr. Vakanda she was coming and I'm sure he's already uneasy.
Rose garden, indeed! It's quite dark, Charles! Come, Mr. Farley. Put
this scarf about you, dear." She took a scarf up and threw it around
Julia's shoulders.
"Ta-ta!" Mr. Hurst came confidently to Julia, and they walked out
together across a glass-enclosed veranda that was brilliantly lit.
Descending a few steps they were among the roses. "Autumn roses," said
Mr. Hurst. The bushes drooped in vague masses about them. Here and there
a blossom made a pale spot among the obscure leaves. Where the glow from
the veranda stretched along the paths, the grass showed like a blue mist
over the earth, and clusters of foliage had a carven look. The dark wall
of the next house, in which the lighted windows were like wounds,
towered above them. Over it hung the black sky covered with an infinite
flashing dust of stars. Julia's face was in shadow, but her hair
glistened on the white nape of her neck where the black lace scarf had
fallen away.
Mr. Hurst had made a large sum of money from small beginnings. He would
have enjoyed in peace the sense of power it gave him, and the
indulgence in fine wines and foods and expensive surroundings for which
he lived, but his wife prevented it. He had married her when they were
both young and impecunious. She had been a school teacher in a
mid-western city. She had managed to convince him that in marrying him
she conferred an honor upon him, and she succeeded now in making him
feel out of place and absurd in the environment which his efforts had
created, which she, however, turned to her own use. Instead of flaunting
his success in boastful generosity, according to his inclination, he
found himself compelled to deprecate it. He had a secret conviction that
he was a man to be reckoned with, but openly, and especially before his
wife's friends, he ridiculed himself, perpetrating laborious and
repetitious jokes at his own expense, just as she ridiculed him when
they were alone.
Mrs. Hurst was chiefly interested in what she considered culture, and in
welfare work, and among her acquaintances referred to her husband
affectionately as if he were a child. She had no connection which would
give her the _entrée_ to socially exclusive circles, and she was wise
enough not to attempt pretenses which it would have been impossible for
her to sustain. Her husband's friends were mostly selfmade and newly
rich. She was affable to them but maintained toward them a mild but
superior reserve. She expressed tolerantly her contempt of social
ostentation and suggested that among Mr. Hurst's play-fellows she was
condescending from her more vital and intellectual pursuits. Men who
drank and played golf or poker between the hours of business considered
her "brainy," but "a damned nice woman". She was generous to impecunious
celebrities of whom she had been told to expect success. On one occasion
when she and Mr. Hurst were sailing for England she was photographed on
shipboard in the company of a popular novelist. The picture of the
novelist, showing Mrs. Hurst beside him in expensive furs, appeared in a
woman's magazine. She had never seen the man since, but she always
referred to him as "a charming person". She was frequently called upon
to conduct "drives" for charity funds. At masquerade balls organized for
similar purposes her name appeared with others better known and she
could honestly claim acquaintance with women whose frivolous occupations
she professed to despise. She was an assiduous attendant at concerts and
the public lectures which were given from time to time by men of letters
or exponents of the arts. References to sex annoyed her. The vagueness
of her aspirations sometimes led her into fits of depression and
discouragement, but she had a small crabbed pride that prevented her
from allowing any one--least of all, perhaps, her husband--to see what
she felt. She was conscientiously attentive to children, but actually
bored by them. She seldom thought of her own childhood, and she
sentimentalized her past only when she reflected on her early girlhood
and the instinctive longing for withheld refinements which had led her
away from a sordid uncultured home into the profession of a teacher.
Often her husband irritated her almost uncontrollably, but she never
admitted that the moods he aroused in her had any significance. She was
ashamed of him and called the feeling by other names.
Mr. Hurst's frustrated vanity consoled itself somewhat when he was alone
before his mirror, for even his wife admitted that he was distinguished
looking. He consumed bottle after bottle of a prescription which, so a
specialist assured him, would make his hair come back. Always gay and
affectionate and generally liked, he had a secret sensitiveness that he
himself was but half aware of, and which no one who knew him suspected.
He had never abandoned the romantic hope that some day he would meet a
woman who would understand him. It was his unacknowledged desire to have
his wife's opinion of him repudiated that made him perpetually
unfaithful to her. Years ago he had been astonished to discover that
even the women whom his wife introduced him to, who looked down on his
absence of culture, and whose intellectual earnestness really seemed to
him grotesque, were quite willing to take him seriously when he made
love to them. He was bewildered but elated in perceiving the
vulnerability of those he was invited to revere. Once he learned this it
awakened something subtle and feminine in his nature and tempted him to
unpremeditated cruelties. Though his sex entanglements were, as a rule,
gross and banal enough, and quickly succeeded one another, he treasured
at intervals a plaintive conviction that some day he would meet the
woman who had, as he expressed it, "the guts to love him". Musing on
this, he found in it the excuse for all the unpleasing episodes in which
he took part. Outwardly cynical, he was sentimental to the point of
bathos. He had one fear that obsessed him, the fear of growing old, so
that _the_ woman, when she met him, might not be able to recognize him.
He had always been a little afraid of Julia and had a secret desire, on
the rare occasions when they met, to hurt her in some way that might
force her to concede their equality. He called himself a mixture of pig
and child and when he met any of his wife's "high-brow" friends he
envied them and wanted to trick them into exhibiting something of the
pig also. Julia was young and pretty. He sighed and wished her more
"human". He had never found her so charming as she seemed to-night.
Under the accustomed stimulus of alcohol he relaxed most easily into a
mood of affectionate self-pity. Without being drunk in any perceptible
way, he loved himself and he loved every one, and his conviction of
human pathos was strong. Julia's tense yet curiously subdued manner
showed him that she was no longer oblivious to him. He fancied that
there was already between them that sudden _rapport_ which came between
him and women who were sexually sensible of his personality. "You aren't
angry with me for taking you away like this?"
Julia said, "How could I be? I wish all social gatherings were in the
open. It seems terrible to shut one's self indoors on these beautiful
nights."
Charles Hurst was impelled to talk about himself. He did not know how to
begin, and coughed embarrassedly. He imagined that Julia was ready to
hear, and already he was grateful for the regard he anticipated. "Don't
mind if I light a cigar?"
"I should like it."
"Don't smoke cigarettes, do you? Some of the ladies who come here
shedding sweetness and light are hard smokers."
Julia shook her head negatively. "I don't. But you surely can't object,
as a principle, to women smoking?"
"No. I think my objections are chiefly--chiefly what my wife--what
Catherine would call esthetic. I'm not strong on principles of any sort.
Don't take myself seriously enough."
Julia could make out his nonchalant angular pose as he stood looking
down at her. As he held a match to his cigar the glow on his face showed
his narrow regular features, his humorously ridiculing mouth, and his
pale eyes caught in an unconscious expression of fright.
Julia said, "I'm afraid you take yourself very seriously indeed, or you
wouldn't be so perpetually on the defensive." Poor Mr. Hurst! This
evening she could not bear to be isolated by conventional reserves, even
with him. It flattered her unhappiness to feel that he was a child. And
this evening it seemed to her desperately necessary that she touch
something living which would respond involuntarily to the contact.
Mr. Hurst was disconcerted. He took the cigar out of his mouth and
examined the glowing tip which dilated in the dark as he stared at it.
Tears had all at once come to his eyes. He wondered if he were drunker
than he had imagined. The moment he suspected any one of a serious
interest in him it robbed him of his aplomb. "Don't read me too well,
Mrs. Farley. You know I'm not really much of a person. Coarse-fibered
American type. No interests beyond business and all that. Good poker
player. Hell of a good friend--when you let him. But commonplace. Damn
commonplace. Nothing worth while at all from your point of view."
They strolled along the path further into the shadows. Julia was
astonished by the ill-concealed emotion in Mr. Hurst's humorous voice.
His transparency momentarily assuaged the tortures of her
self-distrust. "How can you say that? My human predilections are not
narrowed down to any particular type, I hope."
"Oh, well, I know--you and Catherine--miles over my head, all of it.
Lectures on the Fourth Dimension. Some girl with adenoids here the other
night been studying 'Einstein'. Damned if it had done her any good. Yes,
what that gal needed was somebody to hug her." Julia was conscious that
he was turning toward her. "Crass outlook, eh?" He laughed
apologetically.
"She probably did," Julia said. They laughed together.
Mr. Hurst felt all at once unreasoningly depressed. He wanted to touch
her as a child wants to touch the person who pleases it. But the
sophisticated element in his nature intervened. He despised his own
simplicity. "Do you find yourself getting anywhere in the pursuit of the
good, the true, and the beautiful? Honestly now, Mrs. Farley. I've had
the whole program shoved at me--not that Catherine isn't the best of
women, bless her little soul. You know the life we tired business men
lead pretty much resembles that of the good old steady pack horse that
does the work. We dream about green pastures and all that, but never
get much closer to it. And when you get to the end of things you begin
to wonder if your plodding did anybody any good--if anything ever did
anybody any good. I've got no use for cynicism--consider it damn cheap.
Wish some time I was a little bit more of a cynic. But I'm lost.
Hopelessly lost. I take a highball every now and then because my--I
think my mind hurts." He halted suddenly and they were looking into each
other's vague faces. "This talk getting too damn serious, eh? Something
about you to-night that invites a fellow to make a fool of himself."
"I hope not," Julia said. "I like you for talking frankly."
"Oh, I'm not too damn frank. We can't afford it in this world of hard
knocks. Now to you, now, I'm not saying all that I'd like to, by a
jugful."
"Then you don't make as much of a distinction between me and the crowd
as I hoped."
Charles had let his cigar go out. He kept turning it over and over in
his stiff fingers that she could not see. He felt that only when he held
a woman in his arms and she was robbed of her conventional defenses
could he speak openly to her. With other attractive women he had come
quickly to a point like this where he wanted to talk of his inner life.
He imagined it would give him relief if he could touch Julia's dress and
put his head in her lap. The terrible fear of revealing himself before
his wife and her friends had stimulated his imagination toward abandon.
When he was a child his mother had not loved him. She was a defiant
person. She was ashamed of him because he allowed himself to be
victimized by all the things against which she had futilely rebelled. He
had felt himself despised though he had never understood the reason. His
mother found continual fault with him and never petted him. One day a
girl cousin much older than he had discovered him in a corner crying and
had comforted him, and had allowed him to put his head in her lap. As he
had never gotten over considering himself from a child's standpoint, his
adult visions always culminated in a similar moment of release. Whenever
he became sentimental about a woman he imagined that he would some day
put his head in her lap. He had been, in his own mind, so thoroughly
convicted of weakness that the development of strength no longer
appealed to him as a means of self-fulfilment. He abandoned himself to
an incurable dependence for which he had not as yet found a permanent
object. It eased him when he could evoke the maternal in a mistress.
"Aren't we all--somewhat on the defensive toward each other?" he said
after a minute.
Julia was reminded again of what she thought to be her own tragedy. She
felt reckless and wanted some one into whom to pour herself. She
imagined herself lost in the dark garden, crushed between the walls and
bright windows of the houses. In some indefinable way she identified
herself with the million stars, flashing and remote in the black
distance of the sky that showed narrowly above the roofs. "Yes," she
said. "And so uselessly. People are so pathetic in their determination
not to recognize what they are. If we ever had the courage to stop
defending ourselves for a moment--But none of us have, I'm afraid." She
carried the pity which she had for herself over to him. She had noticed
how thin his face was, that the bold gaze with which he looked at her
was only an expression of concealment, and that there were strained
lines at the corners of his good-tempered mouth. Yes, in the depths of
his pale eyes with their conscious glint of humor there was undoubtedly
something eager and almost blankly disconcerted.
Charles could not answer her at once. He threw his cigar aside. His hand
trembled a little. I wonder how drunk I am, he said to himself. He
decided that he was helpless in the clutch of his own impulses. He
thought, A damn fool now as always. Have I got this woman sized up
wrong? She's a dear. Here goes. Poor little thing! Gosh, I know she
can't be happy with that self-engrossed ass she's married to! In his
more secret nature he was proud of his own temerity. "Damn it all, Mrs.
Farley--Julia--" He hesitated. "I've queered myself right off by calling
you Julia, haven't I?" His laugh was forced and unhappy. He glanced over
his shoulder toward the house.
Julia was alarmed by the unexpected immanence of something she was
trying to ignore. She kept repeating to herself, He's a child! Her
thoughts grew more disconnected each instant. She wanted to go away, yet
she half knew that she was demanding of Charles the very thing that
terrified her. "Of course not. Mrs. Hurst calls me Julia, why shouldn't
you?" Her tone was intended to lift their talk to a plane of unsexed
naturalness.
"Yes, by George, why shouldn't I! She calls you that a good deal as if
she were your mother." He paused. "Did you know I'd reached the ripe
old age of forty-one?" (He was really forty-two.)
"It doesn't shock me."
"Well, I wish it did. I don't like to be taken so damn much for
granted." (He wanted to tell her that Catherine was three years older
than he, but his sense of fair play withheld him.) "An old man of my age
has no right to go around looking for some one to understand him, has
he?"
"Why not? I'm afraid we do that to the end of time, Mr. Hurst."
"Say, now, honestly, Mrs. Farley--Julia--I can't lay myself wide open to
anybody who insists on calling me Mr. Hurst. I feel as if I were a
hundred and seven." He tried to ingratiate himself with his boyishness.
"I haven't any objection to calling you Charles." (Julia thought
uncomfortably of Mrs. Hurst and, remembering her, was embarrassed.)
"Don't feel hurt if I'm not able to do it at once. Certain habits of
thought are very hard to get rid of."
"And I suppose you've been in the habit of considering me in the sexless
antediluvian class!"
"You've forgotten that Laurence--that my husband is as old as you are."
When Julia mentioned her husband, Charles's impetuosity was dampened. It
upset him and made him unhappy. However, he was determined to sustain
his impulses. "Yes, I had."
Silence.
Charles wanted to cry. "You know I appreciate it awfully that you are
willing to enter into the holy state of friendship with an obvious
creature like myself. Catherine says you're a wonderful woman, and she's
a damned good judge--of her own kind, that is."
"I'm afraid she's flattered me. I wish you weren't so humble about our
friendship. I am as grateful as you are for anything genuine."
"Yes, I'm too confounded humble. I know I am. Always was. You know I'm
not really lacking in self-respect, Miss Julia."
"Of course you aren't. You seem to me one of the most self-respecting
people I know."
Charles was silent a long time. He knew that he was being carried away
on a familiar current. By God, she means it! he said to himself. He
would refuse to regard anything but the present moment. "How does it
happen you and I never came together like this before? I'd got into the
habit of thinking you were one of these icy Dianas that had an almighty
contempt for any one as well rooted in Mother Earth as I am."
Julia laughed uncomfortably. "That's a mixed metaphor." Then she said
seriously, "I want to understand things--not to try to escape. It seems
to me we must all go back to Mother Earth if we try to do that." She
added, "I'm afraid we are making ourselves delinquent. We mustn't
abandon Mrs. Hurst and her guests altogether."
They turned toward the veranda. They were walking side by side and
inadvertently Charles's hand brushed Julia's. He caught her fingers. She
made a slight gesture of repulsion which he scarcely observed. Then her
hand was relinquished to him. "Confound these social amenities! I
thought you were going to be my mother-confessor, Miss Julia." Until he
touched her hand he had been conscious of their human separateness and
his sensuous impulses had been in abeyance. With the feel of her flesh,
she became simply the woman he wanted to kiss, the possessor of a
beautiful throat, and of mysterious breasts that compelled him
familiarly through the dim folds of her white dress. His acquisitive
emotion was savage and childlike. Here was a strange thing which
menaced and invited him. He wanted to know it, to tear it apart so that
he need no longer be afraid of it. Already he annihilated it and loved
it for being subject to him. He leaned toward her and when she lifted
her face to him he kissed her. He felt the shudder of surprise that
passed over her. "Julia--don't hate me. Child, I'm going to fall in love
with you! I know it!" His voice was smothered in her hair. He kissed her
eyes and her mouth again. Trembling, Julia was silent. He wondered
recklessly if she despised him, but while he wondered he could not leave
her. He felt embittered toward her because she awakened his dormant
sensuality and he supposed that women like her were superior to the
necessities that left him helpless.
"Please!" Julia said. When his mouth was pressed against hers she was
suffocated by the same thrill of astonishment and despair which she had
experienced when she first allowed Dudley Allen to take her. When she
was able to speak she said, "Oh, we are so pathetic and absurd--both of
us! It's so hopelessly meaningless."
He was excited and elated. In a broken voice, he said, "So you think I
am pathetic and absurd? I am, child. I don't care! I don't care!" He
thought that she was referring to the general opinion of him. He
hardened toward her, while, at the same moment, a wave of physical
tenderness enveloped him. Stealthily, he exulted in the capacity he
possessed for sexual ruthlessness. He knew she could not suspect it. He
would be honest with her only when it became impossible for her to evade
him.
They heard footsteps and turned from each other with a common instinct
of defense. Mrs. Hurst was descending the steps from the lighted porch.
"I have a bone to pick with that spouse of mine," she called pleasantly
when she could see them. Charles had taken out a fresh cigar and was
lighting a match.
"Hello, hello! Am I in trouble again?" Charles fumbled for Julia's hand,
and gave it a squeeze, but dropped it as his wife drew near.
Mrs. Hurst's figure was in silhouette before them. "You'll spoil my
dinner party, Charles! Julia, child, I'm afraid you need reprimanding
too. You have to be stern with Charles." Her tone was truly vexed, but
so frankly so that it was evident she suspected nothing amiss.
"I'm sorry if I am in disfavor." Julia's voice was cold. In her
nihilistic frame of mind she wished that her hostess had discovered the
compromising situation.
Julia's reply was irritating and Mrs. Hurst's displeasure inwardly
deepened. She felt stirring in her a chronic distrust and animosity
toward other women, but would give no credence to her own emotion.
"Come, child, don't be ridiculous! I suppose I can't blame Charles for
trying to steal you from me. I'm sure he wanted to talk to you about
himself. It's the one thing he cannot resist." She laughed, a forced
pleasant little laugh, and caught Julia's arm in a determined caressing
pressure. "Come. We're all going to be good. Mr. Vakanda is waiting to
take you in to dinner." Julia followed her toward the house. "Come,
Charles!" Mrs. Hurst commanded him abruptly over her shoulder. The
manner in which she spoke to him suggested strained tolerance.
Charles's immediate relief at not having been seen was succeeded by
complacency. To deceive his wife was for him to experience a naïve sense
of triumph. Poor little Kate! He could even be sorry for her.
Julia more than ever wanted to feel that Laurence's refusal of her was
forcing upon her a promiscuous and degrading attitude toward sex. She
said, "I'm sure the fault is mine. I couldn't resist the night and the
roses."
"Now don't try to defend him. The roses were his excuse, not yours."
Mrs. Hurst wondered how they had been able to see anything of the roses
in such a light. She wished to forget about it. "Mollie Wilson has been
telling us how difficult the role of a mother is these days. She says
she envies you May with her amenability. Lucy has some of the most
startlingly advanced conceptions of what her mother should let her do."
Charles, walking almost on their heels, interrupted them. "It would be
an insult to Ju--to Mrs. Farley if I needed an excuse for carrying her
off for a minute." He cleared his throat. "Say, Kate, damn it all, will
you and she be upset if I call her Julia? I like her as well as you do."
Again Mrs. Hurst was irritated and inexplicably disturbed. It was
Charles--not Julia--of course. Any woman. He's always like that! "Then I
shall expect to begin calling Mr. Farley Laurence," she said acidly. She
spoke confidentially to Julia. "He can't resist them, dear--any of them.
Pretty women. You'll have to put up with his admiration. All my nicest
friends do."
"The dickens they do!" Charles grumbled jocosely. His wife's tone made
him nervous. He was suspicious of her.
When they came up on the lighted veranda a maid passed them, a neat
good-looking young woman in black with inquisitive eyes. Julia caught on
the servant's face what seemed an expression of inquiry and amusement.
Charles, who had often tried to flirt with the girl, glanced at her
shamefacedly and immediately lowered his gaze. Damn these women! Julia,
feeling guilty and antagonistic, observed Mrs. Hurst, but found that she
appeared as usual, sweet and negatively self-contained, yet suggesting
faintly a hidden malice.
They walked through a long over-furnished hall and entered the drawing
room. The men rose: the Hindoo, good-looking but with a softness that
would inevitably repel the Anglo-Saxon; Mr. Wilson, stout and jovial,
his small eyes twinkling between creases of flesh, the bosom of his
shirt bulging over his low-cut vest; Laurence, clumsy in gesture, kind,
but almost insulting in his composure.
During the evening Julia could not bring herself to meet Laurence's
regard, nor did she again look directly at Mr. Hurst. Charles, after
some initial moments of readjustment when he found it difficult to join
in the general talk, recovered himself with peculiar ease. Indeed his
later manner showed such pronounced elation that Julia wondered if it
were not eliciting some unspoken comment. When he turned toward her she
was aware of the furtive daring of his expression, though she refused to
make any acknowledgment of it. He laughed a great deal, made boisterous
jokes uttered in the falsetto voice he affected when he was inclined to
comicality, and, when his jests were turned upon himself, chuckled
immoderately in appreciation of his own discomfiture. The Hindoo, whose
bearing displayed extraordinary breeding, had opaque eyes full of
distrust. His good nature under Charles's jibes was assumed with obvious
effort and did not conceal his polite contempt. During dinner and
afterward Charles plied every one, and particularly the men, with drink.
Mrs. Hurst had always been divided between the attractions of the
elegance which demanded a fine taste in wines and liqueurs, and her
moral aversion to alcohol. She never served wines when she and Charles
were alone, and to-night she was provoked by his ill-bred insistence
that the glasses of her guests be refilled.
When the meal was over and the men had returned to the drawing room,
Charles seemed to be in a state of fidgets. His face and even his
helpless-looking hands were flushed. He walked about continually, and
was perpetually smoothing his carefully combed hair over the baldish
spot on the top of his head. Mrs. Wilson, who was florid and coarsely
good-looking, with her iron-gray hair, admired his distinguished figure
in its well-cut clothes. His flattering manner when he talked to her
made her feel self-satisfied. Julia, though she had honestly protested
to Charles that she did not smoke, indulged in a cigarette. Mrs. Wilson
also lit one and expelled the smoke from her pursed mouth in jerky
unaccustomed puffs. Mrs. Hurst's dislike of tobacco was equal to her
repugnance to alcohol. She refused to smoke but was careful to show that
her distaste for cigarettes was a personal idiosyncrasy. She made little
amused grimaces at the smokers and treated them as if they were
irresponsible children. Mrs. Wilson, in talking to Mr. Vakanda,
contrived many casual and contemptuous references to her recent
experiences in Europe. She was divided between her genuine boredom with
European culture and her pride in her acquaintance with it.
Charles, observing Julia in this group, appreciated the distinction of
her simpler, more aristocratic manner; and the clarity and frankness of
her statements seemed to him to place her as a being from another world.
Damn me, she's a thoroughbred! Makes me ashamed of myself, bless her
soul! His emotions were too much for him. He went into his "den," which
was across the hall, and poured himself a drink. Fragments of the
evening's conversation buzzed in his head. Julia and Mr. Wilson had
disagreed as to the validity of certain phases of the newer movements in
art. Mr. Wilson scoffed blatantly at all of them. Mr. Vakanda was more
reserved, but one suspected that he looked upon Westerners as adolescent
and treated their art accordingly. Charles, without knowing what he was
talking about, had come jestingly to Julia's rescue. When he remembered
how often he had joined Mr. Wilson in ribald comment on subjects which
she treated as serious, he felt he had been a traitor to her. Damn my
soul, I'm hard hit! I never half appreciated that girl until to-night!
Don't know what the hell's been the matter with me! Overcome by his
reflections, he walked to a window and stared out into the quiet dimly
lit street. His suddenly aroused sensual longing for Julia returned and
made him embarrassed and unhappy. He set his glass down on the window
ledge and passed a hand across each eye as if he were wiping something
away. Damn it all, I'm in love with her all right.
* * * * *
When the time for the Farleys' departure arrived Charles was talkative
and uneasy. He clapped his hand on Laurence's shoulder. "You're one of
the few men who's fit to fish with, Farley. Most of 'em are too damned
loud for the fish. We'll fix that little trip up yet. I suspect you of
being the philosopher of this bunch anyway."
"I can furnish the requisite of silence, but I'm afraid it requires some
peculiar psychic influence to attract fish. I haven't got it."
Charles's manner was self-conscious to a degree. He spoke rapidly and
unnecessarily lifted his voice. His wife watched him with a cold kind
little smile of disgust. She wanted to create the impression that she
understood him, but her resentment of him rose chiefly from the fact
that he was incomprehensible to her. "That's all right. I'll catch the
fish. I'll catch the fish. Damned if I haven't enjoyed the evening. Say,
Farley, Kate and I are coming over some evening and I'm going to talk
to your wife. I believe she's just plain folks even if she can chant
Schopenhauer and the rest of those cranks. You know I admire your
brains, Miss Julia. By Jove, I do. You can give me some of the line of
patter I've missed. Kate, now--Kate's got it all at her finger tips, but
she's given me up long ago. Have a drink before you go, Farley? No! You
know I'm a great admirer of Omar Khayyám's, Miss Julia. The rest of you
high-brows seem to have put the kibosh on the old boy. He's the fellow
that had some bowels of compassion in him. Knew what it was like to want
a drink and be dry." Charles smoothed back his hair. His hand was
trembling slightly. He looked at Julia now and then but allowed no one
else to catch his eyes.
Laurence, holding his silk hat stiffly in his fingers, moved
determinedly toward the front door. His smile was enigmatic but his
desire for escape was evident.
Julia said, "I'll talk to you about Schopenhauer, Mr. Hurst, and
convince you that he was very far from a crank." She smiled.
"Yep? Well, guess I'm jealous of him. I'm willing to be taught. This
business grind I'm in is converting me into pretty poor company. Not
much use for a meditative mind in the stock market. Eh, Farley? The
women have got it all over us when it comes to refining life."
Laurence said, "I imagine I know as little of the stock market as my
wife, Hurst."
"And you must remember I'm a business woman, too."
"So you are. Working in that confounded laboratory. Well, I've got no
excuse then."
"Know thyself, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst shook her finger playfully.
"Yep. Constitutional aversion to knowing myself--knowing anything else.
Looks to me as if you had picked a lemon, Kate."
"We must really go." Julia held out her hand.
Mrs. Hurst shook hands with Julia. "So delightful to have had you. I'm
glad you impressed Mr. Vakanda with the significance of America in the
world of art, dear." Mrs. Hurst, at that instant, disliked her guest
intensely, but she preserved her smile and her delicate tactful air.
Laurence shook hands with her also. His reserve appealed to her. She
could be more frankly gracious with him.
Charles pressed Julia's fingers lingeringly, in spite of her efforts to
withdraw them. He was suddenly depressed and gazed at her with an open
almost despairingly interrogative expression. "Yep, damn me, Kate's
right. You put the Far East in its place, Miss Julia. Did me good to see
it." He giggled nervously, but his face immediately grew serious. Seeing
her go away into her own strange world depleted the confidence he
experienced while with her. He was oppressed by the company of his wife,
and his pathetic feeling about himself returned. For the moment the hope
that Julia would understand him--like him and exculpate his
deficiencies, even see in him that which was admirable--was more
poignant than the passing desire to touch and dominate her body. There
was a helpless unreserve in his eyes.
Julia could see the tired lines in his face all at once peculiarly
emphasized. His lips quivered. She thought he looked old but for some
reason all the more childlike. She could not resist his need for her.
It was with an acute sense of disgust that Laurence left the house.
* * * * *
Mr. Hurst did not communicate with Laurence in regard to the fishing
trip, but one morning soon after the dinner party Mrs. Hurst called
Julia on the telephone and invited her to come with Laurence to an
all-day picnic in the country. "This is just the sort of thing Charles
delights in," Mrs. Hurst explained, in her hard pleasant light-timbred
voice. Julia heard her polite laugh over the wire. "I shan't blame you
if you refuse us. It's really too absurd. We shall probably be consumed
by mosquitoes."
"Why, I'm afraid we can't go," Julia said. "Laurence is very busy and
you know I have my work, too."
"I suppose you can't get off for a day--either of you? Charles is quite
determined to see you and your husband again."
"It wouldn't be possible. It's nice of you. I really would enjoy it but
it wouldn't be possible for either of us."
Again Mrs. Hurst's confidential amusement. "Well, I'm sorry. Though for
your own sake I'm glad. Charles has rather a boy's idea of fun.
Well--don't be surprised if we arrive at your front door some evening in
the near future."
"I shall be very glad," Julia said.
On a Monday evening while the Farley family were at an early dinner they
heard a laboring motor in the street. Bobby, who could not be restrained
when the prospect of diversion was at hand, ran out to see what it was
and, on his return, reported that Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were at the front
door.
Laurence laid his napkin wearily aside. "To what do we owe the honor?
Have you been to see them since the other night?"
Julia said she had not.
When Julia arrived in the hallway Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were already there,
having been admitted by Bobby. Julia could not look at Charles's face.
With an effort she smiled at his wife.
Mrs. Hurst, with one of her pleasant, mildly reducing grimaces, said,
"How are you? You were dining? There! I told you so, Charles!"
Julia imagined that there was constraint in Mrs. Hurst's manner. Their
hands barely touched.
"How do you do? How do you do, Mrs. Hurst?" Laurence's expression was
polite but not agreeable. For some reason he spoke to Charles with more
cordiality.
"How d'ye do, Farley? How d'ye do, Miss Julia! Bless my soul, I'm glad
to see you! Kate couldn't keep me away from here. Yes, I confess it. All
my fault." He was uneasy as before, and adopted the falsetto tone of his
comic moods. He wrung Julia's hand for an instant and looked greedily
into her face. But he could not sustain the gaze. He turned to Laurence
and began to joke about the speed of his motor car.
"Please go on to your dinner. I'm really ashamed that I allowed Charles
to bring me here now." Mrs. Hurst, smiling, preserved the
inconsequential atmosphere of the group. At the same time she felt a
repugnance to Julia which she had never experienced until recently.
Julia, also, disliked the furtive intentness with which Mrs. Hurst,
continuing to smile, occasionally scrutinized her.
"We dine so much later."
"But we've quite finished--unless you will have a cup of coffee with
us?"
"Coffee? What say, coffee?" Charles could not keep from listening to
what Julia and his wife were saying, though he was trying, at the same
time, to talk to Laurence. Now he interrupted himself. "Shall we have
some coffee with them, Kate?" Just then he caught Julia's eyes and a
flush spread over his face. "I think we'd better forego the coffee and
take these people for a little ride. That's what we came for." He kept
on gazing steadily and sentimentally at Julia who was embarrassed by
this too open regard.
"Shall we? Perhaps we had. Our own dinner hour will come all too soon,"
Mrs. Hurst said.
"Won't you come in here?" Laurence motioned toward an open door.
Julia was vexed by her own mingled depression and agitation. Frowning
and smiling at the same time, she added abstractedly, "Yes. How
ridiculous we are--standing here in this chilly hall. Please come in
here. I will have Nellie make a fire for you."
"Who wants a fire this time of year!" Charles followed his wife, who
entered the half-darkened room with Julia. "Farley, you and Miss Julia
get your wraps and we'll wait for you. Don't waste your time making
yourself lovely, Miss Julia."
After Laurence had turned up the lights he and Julia went out. Charles
and his wife, who had seated themselves, waited in silence. Charles
stretched out his long legs in checked trousers and crossed them over
one another. He stared up at the ceiling and pursed his mouth in a
soundless whistle.
Catherine said, "We can't stay with these people long. You know the
Goodes are coming over after dinner."
Charles started. "What's that?" He sat bolt upright. "Goodes, eh? No.
All right. Plenty of time." He did not relax his posture again, but
drummed on the arm of his chair, tapped his feet, and for a few moments
half hid his face in the cupped palm of his hand.
Mrs. Hurst looked bored and tired. Her small sardonic mouth was very
precisely set. Her gaze was both humorous and weary. Now and then she
glanced at Charles and forced a twinkle to her eyes, while, at the same
moment, her features showed her repressed irritation. Mrs. Hurst had
suspected, after the previous meeting with the Farleys, that Charles was
interested in Julia. Suspicion sharpened her observation of him but her
policy toward him demanded of her that she be amused by all he did.
Otherwise the situation between them might long ago have precipitated a
crisis which she, at least, was not ready to face. In a moment of
impetuosity Charles would be capable of heaven-knows-what regrettable
and irretrievable resolution. He had so often shown the same kind of
frank admiration for a pretty woman that she made the best of things by
appearing to tolerate, if not to encourage, his folly. She was certain
that his infatuations were so illusory that a little enforced
acquaintance with the intimate personalities of her successive rivals
would dissipate his regard for them. In this case, too, she had no fear
that a woman of Julia's poise and enlightenment would make any serious
response to Charles's naïve overtures. If Mrs. Hurst could convince
herself that a situation was sufficiently grotesque (viewed, of course,
from the standpoint of manners) it became unreal to her, and she could
no longer believe that such a vague and ridiculous cause would produce
any effect in actuality.
Waiting for Laurence and Julia to appear, Charles, even when he was not
looking at her, was conscious of his wife's personality. Though he could
not analyze the impression, he was, as he had been repeatedly before,
disconcerted by the cold understanding which he saw in her small,
humorously lined face. He was startled by the boldness of her evasions.
All his mental attempts to capture a grievance were diverted when he
considered her demure gentleness and good breeding. He had, at the
outset, to accept the fact of his inferiority. Now his pale eyes, fixed
intermittently in an upward gaze, were startled and perturbed. His mouth
twitched. He felt boisterous, and suppressed his laughter, though he did
not know whether he should direct it against her or against himself. She
was so visually real to him: her withered small hands, the flesh under
her plump throat--flesh that fell away and somehow failed to soften the
contour of her little chin. At these moments when she connived, or so it
might almost seem, to further his betrayal of her he felt a sentimental
affection for her, and decided that it was only because of the physical
repulsion which her ageing gave him that he did not love her completely
and lead an ideal life. He was sorry for himself and for her too because
he could not conquer his aversion.
Catherine said, "Julia is particularly handsome to-night."
Charles, with the blank innocence of a self-conscious child, glanced at
his wife. "You're right. She is. You dare me to fall in love with her,
do you? Think when she gets a good dose of me--"
"Sh-h!"
Charles eyed the door. "Somebody 'ull hear me? Say, Kate, for a
manhandler I've never seen your equal." He jumped up, walked twice
around the room, and stopped, gazing down at Catherine with a vacant
deliberate amusement. Each felt the other the victor in some stealthy
unconfessed combat. "All the spice goes out of forbidden fruit when your
wife hands it to you on a gold platter with her compliments. That it?"
Charles asked. He was wondering if his presentment about Julia as the
great thing in his life had been an illusion. He would accept his wife's
joke recklessly but that did not prevent his timidity in regard to
himself from returning and influencing his acts.
* * * * *
Julia sat beside Charles while he drove. Laurence and Mrs. Hurst were on
the back seat. Julia listened to what Charles said, but half
understanding him. Nothing was real to her but the self from which she
wanted to escape, this self which she knew would always deceive her.
When the car veered at a corner Charles and she were thrown together so
that their shoulders touched. She knew that he leaned toward her to
prolong the contact. The warmth of his body gave her no clear
consciousness of him, and was a sustained reminder of inscrutable things
with which he was not concerned. She despised the humility of his
intellect. What attracted her was a kind of primitive cruelty which he
tried to hide. She wanted to be consumed by his weakness, to be left
nothing of herself. His lovemaking repelled her. She perceived his
sentimentality toward womankind. All that he said was false because
unrelated to his fundamental impulse which was to take without giving
anything equivalent. She had somehow arrived at the conviction that only
the things which hurt her were true. Charles's conception of beauty was
childish. But she would not be afraid to abandon herself to the things
in him he was ashamed of, which he could not control. When he was
conquered, as she was, by the desires his intellect sought to evade, he
would be caught in actuality. Neither of them could be deceived. She was
impatient with Charles's deference to what he considered her finer
feelings. There she found herself insulted by the shallowness of his
respect.
Charles made the drive as long as he could, though he knew that his
wife, with her prospect of guests at home, must be growing impatient.
He kept, for the most part, in the park where it was easier to imagine
that he and Julia were alone. In one place a hill cut off the city and
dry grass rushed up before them against the cloudy sunset. Then there
were masses of trees, green yet in the half darkness. The branches
stirred their blackish foliage, and the copse had a breathing look. The
last light broke through the shadowy clouds in metallic flames. When the
city came into view again Julia thought that the tall houses were like
the walls of a garden flowering with stars.
Every one but Charles was glad when the drive came to an end.
* * * * *
Under her large black hat the strange girl's eyes, deep with a shining
emptiness, gazed into Paul's. Paul, glancing at her cautiously, felt
that the eyes were filled with a velvet dust into which he sank without
finding anything. It was as if he were falling, leaden and meaningless,
through them.
She had a snub nose with coarse wide nostrils. Her mouth was
thick-lipped and over red. She was given to abrupt hilarity when she
showed her strong teeth in a peculiarly irrelevant laugh. Her voice was
hoarse. When she threw back her head her amusement made her broad white
throat quiver. Then her prominent breasts shook heavily. Her arms, bare
below the elbow, looked as though they were meant to be powerful but had
grown useless. Her insolence was stupid, but Paul envied it--even though
it irritated him that she was so bored with him. They had sat on the
same bench in a public square, and after they had fallen into
conversation he had asked her to go to dinner with him. Her name was
Carrie. She called him "son". She was "out for a good time," she said,
but she was "broke".
Paul invited her to the working men's restaurant where he was going
himself. To dramatize his isolation from his own group, he wore old
clothes, brogans, and his school cap. His appearance suggested a
mechanic's assistant. He was ashamed of his secret desire to admit his
disguise to her. His uncle was a corporation lawyer who was becoming
prominent. Paul had constantly to fight against an ingrained class
vanity. Petty bourgeois! Not even snobbishness of the first order! When
he had to face it in himself he wanted to die. No use! Hell of a world!
Any disillusionment with himself strengthened his bitterness toward
those of his own kind.
* * * * *
When Paul left Carrie he walked into the dark park and seated himself on
a bench. The city seemed miles away, sunk in light. There was an iron
stillness in the black trunks of the trees that rose about him. Over him
the thick foliage hung oppressively in dark arrested clouds.
Despair. He wanted Carrie to admire him. He saw himself strong and
bitter in the possession of all that Carries understand. He wanted to be
kind. He was a great man, alone, a little proud of his madness. Child!
He wanted to go far away--to die. Hate. I can't die! His heart beat
loudly and the memory of Carrie was remote again.
In the hidden street Salvationists were passing. He heard hymn tunes and
the beat of drums.
Dark angel. I want to save men. He thought of the women, strange in
their tight dark dresses. He wanted to save them. Emotionalism. Rot. He
tried to remember the working class and economic determinism. Facts.
They kept things out. There was a dramatic pride in being outcast, in
feeling himself definitely against his aunt and Uncle Archie. That kid,
May. Dead. He gave himself to a sense of loathing that was gorgeous and
absolute. His relaxation was drunken--like a dream.
Once more, when he could not but remember May, he recalled Julia
instead. He did not explain to himself why he hated her so. It was as
though she had done the world some terrible hurt and his was the
arrogance of justice in leaving to her nothing of the self she wanted
him to believe in. Whenever he saw falseness in women, he felt that he
was seeing Julia at last. He wanted his thoughts to destroy her, or at
least to leave her utterly beggared. He must prove to himself that it
was women like Julia, women of the upper classes, that he had to fight.
He could no longer bear the recollection of May going before him through
the park in her short dress with her hair a silver paleness over her
shoulders. Because of Julia, everything wounded him. He conceived a
physical image of Julia in her ultimate day of degradation. When he
thought of stripping everything away from her, it was to show a physical
ugliness to a deceived world. In anticipation he purged his own soul of
all that horrified and confused it. Then he saw her body--that he had
never seen--lie before him like a beaten thing with used maternal
breasts, and knew that he had destroyed forever the virginal falsehood
of her face. No woman who belonged to a man as Julia belonged to
Laurence had the right to a face like hers. He despised his aunt, but
she was frankly a part of the hideousness of sex and his contempt for
her was negative. Toward Julia he was positive, for he felt that when he
had proved everything against her he would not be burdened with May.
When he imagined Julia lean and hideous of body, the sense of intimacy
with her made him gentle. He was strong and liberated.
However, when actuality presented itself, and he realized that if he met
her she would be as he had always known her, kind and a little motherly
toward him, his heart grew sullen, and, again, he was helplessly
convicted of his youth. His defiance was so acute that he wanted to
write her an obscene letter and tell her of what he had done and the
women he knew. But he was trapped, as always, in the fear of appearing
ridiculous.
It was difficult for him to justify his certainty that she was so much
in need of the cleansing fire of truth; yet he would not abandon his
conviction. When he had not dared to hate her he had been at loss
before her. Now his hate permitted his imagination complete and unafraid
abandon. He dared to relax in the intimacy of dislike because he fancied
that he saw her clearly at last.
At times his hate grew too heavy for him, and he could have cried for
relief in admitting his childishness to some one. He was shut into
himself by that horrible laugh which surrounded him, which he seemed to
hear from all sides.
* * * * *
It was a cool afternoon in September. May walked through the park
between rows of flowering shrubs. Here the grass had died and the petals
of fallen blossoms were shriveled ivory on the black loam. Overhead the
treetops swung with a rotary motion against the rain-choked heavens. The
heat of the clouds gathered in a blank stain of brilliance where the
swollen sun half burst from its swathings of mist. The wind ceased for a
moment. A clump of still pine tops glinted with a black fire, and behind
them the sun became a chasm of glowing emptiness, like a hole in the
sky, from which the glare poured itself in a diffusing torrent.
For a long time May had not dared to walk in the park. When she did go,
at last, she told herself that she was sure Paul would not come. She
felt herself inwardly lost in still bright emptiness. Cold far-off heat.
She was a tiny frozen speck, hardly conscious of itself on the burnt
grass, walking toward the tall buildings that receded before her. Tall
roofs were like iron clouds in the low sky. She wanted to be lost, going
farther and farther into emptiness. Now when she said Paul it was no
longer Paul she meant. She would have been ashamed before him, tall,
looking down at her. Paul was something else, something in which one
went out of one's self into infinite distance. Where one went forever,
never afraid. Where one ceased to be.
She passed women and children. A child stumbled uncertainly toward her,
jam on its face, its dress torn. May was conscious of a part of herself
left behind that could see the child running to its mother, the white
dress brilliant, fluttering victorious. She knew how her own hair blew
out in separate strands from the loosened ends of her braid, and how
soft separate strands clung drily against her moist brow under her red
cap. Going out of herself, it was as if her blood flowed coldly out of
her into the cold sunlight, cold and away from her body. She was happy.
There were tears in her eyes. She wanted to go on forever saying Paul
and not thinking what it meant.
The sun went out of sight. The wind lifted the pine boughs and they
moved as if in terror against the torn clouds. The sound that went
through them died away in peace, in the happiness of being lost. May
felt as if something of her had gone forever into the wide still sky and
the dead shadowless park. She wanted to feel, not to think. When she
thought, she was caught in her body as in a net. The separate parts of
her were like pains where she thought Aunt Julia would loathe her.
* * * * *
When Laurence was apart from Julia and remembered her look of humility
that asked for something she dared not state, he experienced an almost
sickening pity for her. There was something in her suffering which he
identified with his own. Yet he did not feel nearer to her in
attributing their unhappiness in common to the futile and inevitable
circumstances of human life. The pain of each of them, he told himself,
was in realizing the isolation in which every human ultimately finds
himself when he recognizes that his inner life cannot be shared.
Laurence somehow exulted in seeing Julia forced to accept a condition of
existence which had been plain to him for a long time. His despair was
so complete that he imagined himself ready to abandon his defenses
before her. But when he was actually in her presence she was only the
thing that hurt him, and he was against her in spite of himself. Then
her cruelty seemed monstrous, because she appeared to understand so
little of what she had done. He knew that he bewildered her by showing
no resentment toward Dudley Allen. Laurence despised her when she could
not see the working of his pride that forced him to be superior to her
lover's influence.
Often he said to himself, I'll go away. I can't bear it! But, while he
believed in nothing outside himself, what was there to seek? He visited
his parents more frequently. To be with them was a fulfilment of his
humiliation. He would end where he was born, as every one else did.
Though he was certain that everything which developed through initiative
was foredoomed to failure, his pride in Bobby increased. He wanted to
keep his pessimism from contaminating his son. Bobby knew his power.
When he encountered his father coming in from the laboratory alone it
was a time to make a demand. "Hello, Dad! Say, Dad, _am_ I too much of a
kid to run a motor cycle? Jack Wilson says I can't run his motor cycle
because I'm too much of a kid! Say, Dad, I've got some money saved up.
Can't I buy me a motor cycle? I can run it. Honest, I can!" He had been
playing in the street, his face dirty and smeared with sweat, his shirt
torn in front, and his collar askew. His look was rapt and self-intent.
He had the air of pushing his father aside to reach some hidden
determination.
Laurence was self-conscious when talking to Bobby. He lowered his lids
to conceal the too lenient expression of his eyes. "You're not an
experienced mechanic, you know. Only have one life to lose. Better wait
a while before you risk it."
Bobby stared with an intentness that obliterated his father's pretense.
"Aw, say, Dad, honest, now! I've taken Jack Wilson's machine to pieces.
I can run a motor cycle all right. Go on and say I can get it!"
Laurence glanced up, and his smile was hard and cautious, but when his
face was averted his features softened immediately. "We'll see, son. I
don't think a brat like you could get a license. Time to talk about it
later." He put his hat on a hook and, turning aside, began to mount the
stairs.
Bobby, vexed and excited, gazed after his father, regarding Laurence's
hesitation as an annoying but inevitable formula which had to be gone
through before one could get what one wanted. "Oh, gol darn it!" he
said, and ran out into the street again. He tolerated his father.
Laurence wished that he had sent May away with Mr. and Mrs. Price, the
parents of his first wife. They had recently gone on a trip to Europe.
When they had asked to take Bobby with them, Laurence had resented it.
Julia met Laurence in the upper hall. "Did you tell Bobby to come in and
dress for dinner? Isn't he a ragamuffin!" She smiled, imagining that her
pleasure in Bobby pleased her husband.
Laurence smiled also, but coldly. He would have preferred to ignore her
relationship to Bobby. It had come over him strongly of late that he
must take Bobby away from the home environment. "I'm afraid I encourage
him in the spontaneity of bad manners." He walked past her with an
agreeable but remote expression that put her away from him.
Julia experienced a familiar pang which contracted her breast with an
almost physical surprise. It was as if a touch had made her guilty. Why,
she could not say. He doesn't want me to show an interest in Bobby! She
was robbed of another--almost her last--certainty.
At dinner she watched the father and son stealthily. Their attitude
toward each other seemed to confirm her unknown guilt.
"I've sent off your first quarter's tuition at Mount Harrod, young man.
You haven't much time left with us."
Bobby was secretly resigned but confident in his petulance. "Gee, Dad, I
don't want to go to that place!"
"It's about time you began your initiation in the subtler forms of
self-defense," Laurence said sardonically.
May, ignored by everybody, sat very straight in her chair and was over
dainty with her food, as if timid of her enjoyment of it. Julia,
withdrawing all attempt at contact with Laurence and Bobby, could not
bear to look at the girl.
Laurence was uncomfortably admitting to himself that, in some subtle
way, his desire to have Bobby out of the house was directed by a feeling
against Julia. He wondered how much of his motive she had perceived. The
sooner he gets away from the hoax of home, the better, Laurence told
himself. He tried to exculpate himself by a generalization. It was the
false ideal he wanted to destroy for Bobby. Julia was a part of the
myth, though she had not created it.
* * * * *
Julia was wounded without knowing just what her wound was. She said to
herself, unexpectedly, If I had a child! My God, if I had a child! The
thought, which had been strange to her for a long time, seemed to
illumine all of her being. It was as if something warm and secret were
already her own. She was on the point of weeping with terror of her
longing for the child that did not exist. It was something she wanted to
take away to herself which no one else should know of. She considered
how she might get herself with child without any one becoming aware of
it. She wanted a child that would be helpless with her, that she could
give everything to.
But she could not bear the thought of definite responsibilities
connected with a child. It was wrong to want a child like that. It was
like robbing a thing of its life to want it so completely. It had a
right to itself. She felt virtuously bereaved already, as if the child
that had never been born had grown to manhood and she had given it up.
There was no peace except in the abnegation of all positive desire. She
invited the peace of helplessness. When her emotions were formless she
felt immense and lost in a waking sleep. The whole world was her own
dream. She could feel her physical life fade out of her and imagined
that her hair was growing white.
* * * * *
Charles Hurst had not been so happy for a long time. To evoke one of his
moods of glowing pathos, he had only to gaze at himself in a mirror and
think of Julia. She had committed herself but very little, yet he was
mystical in his certainty of their future relationship. When he recalled
the way she looked at him as if asking him not to hurt her too much he
was confirmed in his belief that she had laid aside the subterfuges of
more commonplace and less courageous women. "Damned if I look as young
as I did!" He studied his reflection ruefully. He had a hazy perception
of his outward defects and regretted them. "Growing old's hell all
right! Poor little Kate!" He was ashamed of the comfort of seeming less
his age than she. His sense of advantage made him tenderly apologetic.
When he was near her he wanted to pet her. "Rum deal women get. Life
after forty-five not worth much." He almost wished it possible for her
to console herself as he did, but he could not quite bring himself to
accept the logic of his imagining. Catherine with a lover! Women not the
same as we are. Men are a lot of ---- donkeys. Pity the girl never had a
kid.
His pale eyes grew grave and retrospective again, and he seated himself
on the edge of his bed just as he was, in socks and trousers and
undershirt, burying his face in his curiously formless hands. "By God, I
love that girl!" He threw his head up and shrugged his shoulders with a
shivering motion, as if what he felt were almost too much for him. "She
may think I'm a senile idiot and a damn fool--all the things Catherine
does." He smiled, talking aloud. "But she loves me! She loves me! By
God, she loves me! She's got to!" He ended on a playfully emphatic note
as though he were disposing of an invisible argumentator. When he went
into his bathroom to shave he whistled Musetta's Waltz from La Boheme.
There was an expression of innocent complacency on his thin good-humored
face. For a time he was absorbed in his music and his sense of
completeness and well-being.
Julia Farley. Too good. That Goode family. Bills. Fellow runs a car
like--Fast. Fast women. I hold her fast. I--