That telephone conversation with Noel was in September, 1927.
On a November afternoon in 1928, I was having tea and muffins with him,
in front of his fireplace.
The Republicans had run Hoover against Al Smith, and the old-fashioned
Americans who had been troubled by the possibility that Al might invite
the Pope to Sunday morning breakfast in the White House, were sleeping
again at night.
When we finished tea, Noel put on his overcoat. He said: “I shall be
back in two hours or so. I have two or three rapid ‘good-byes’ to say to
people. Then we’ll go to dinner wherever you like.”
“You have finished packing, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Yes. When you take the papers in the desk to my safe deposit vault, be
sure to take that tin box on the bookcase with them. It has all your
letters in it. When I come back, I shall need them to comfort my
declining years.”
We smiled at each other. “Do you mind if I put your letters to me in the
same vault, darling darling,” I said. “It is as near as we are likely to
come to sharing the same grave.”
“Don’t, Patricia,” he said. He was not talking about the letters.
“I’m sorry, Noel. It’s all right. After all, we have had so much more
than most people ever dream of having.”
“Sit by the fire, until I come back, Pat—and look over your letters.
They won’t distress you.”
(Dear Noel—he knew the letters would remind me of gay evenings we had
shared, and that was the best he could do for me, at the moment.)
He reconsidered, just before he went out. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Perhaps you had better read the ‘Mercury.’”
“No,” I said. “I want to find out if I ever managed to write you that
you were the nicest person in the world.”
He went to say “good-bye” to people, and I made myself fresh tea. Before
I looked at my letters to Noel I went upstairs and got his from a drawer
in my dressing table. Noel and I had had apartments in the same house
for nearly a year.
My suggestion that I store his letters with mine had been made on
impulse, but I felt that it was sensible enough. I did not want to
destroy his letters—neither did I want to keep them about to read and
re-read when I was lonely—to find, possibly, in each re-reading, a
little warmth gone from them.
I was twenty-seven. More than a thousand crowded days intervened between
myself and that younger woman who believed she could not live without
Peter. When, rarely, now, I was reminded of the Peter I had known, I
thought of him kindly, as someone with whom I had shared a painful
post-adolescence, someone who no doubt had been as bewildered as I about
most things. He and I were married and had a child and separated, before
either of us grew up.
I had lived to discover that after First Love one can love again—as
much—more, for one knows more. I believed that I would love Noel for
ever, perhaps. But I knew also that I could live without Noel; and that,
as Time changed me, I should not even miss him, often, or very badly.
* * * * *
I opened the box that held my letters to him. There were a good many,
for I had written him daily, whenever he was on out-of-town stories.
He had all the letters packed neatly, in the order in which I had
written them—and I found that infinitely touching, because Noel was the
sort of man who had to search through four drawers to discover shirt
studs or handkerchiefs or a fountain pen or collar buttons.
* * * * *
The first letter was to his New York address.
“NOEL DEAR,
“I remember telling you, some weeks ago, that I never stayed
with the same man twice, in the years since Peter, because I
never liked any of them after I had stayed with them. Therefore
this—to state specifically that I liked you twenty times as
much this morning at breakfast, as last night at dinner-time.”
I wrote that letter two months after the late September evening when
Noel telephoned. In those two months I decided that his hair was the
shade of burnished bronze (and complained to him that he kept it clipped
too closely—but never, to the last day that I knew him, did he wear it
any longer.) I decided that I loved his voice and his smile, and the
shape of his eyebrows (they exactly matched his hair) and the things he
said, and the way he laughed, and the fact that he believed in taking
exercise.
I knew that he was supposed to be brilliant. I heard a story about him:
that several city editors, dining together, made separate lists of the
five best newspapermen in New York and that his was the only name that
appeared on all the lists. But I had known so many people who were
supposed to be brilliant. I liked Noel better because he was so
obviously sane, and stable, and well-balanced. It gave me a feeling of
great steadiness to be with him.
And I had found someone to whom I could talk, after years when I had
just made conversation.
I saw him nearly every evening, and saw no one else—except Nathaniel
and Bill. I knew them well enough to say, “I shall be able to have
dinner, but I must get home by quarter to ten. Is that all right?”
Noel worked on a morning newspaper, and got through at ten or eleven at
night. We walked, danced, went to supper. We talked about politics,
disarmament, the War (he had a combat decoration, but he did not tell me
that, someone else did), newspapers, advertising, books, operas. We
talked about his childhood, my childhood, people he had known, people I
had known. We flung the patterns of our lives at each other.
I was worried, at the beginning, lest someone tell him I was supposed to
be promiscuous. I thought he would not like me any more. I was sure that
I loved him, when I had seen him three times, but I saw no reason that
he should ever love me. I was just a woman whose own husband had found
her impossible. With other men, I had not felt as humble, but that was
because I did not care whether they ever loved me or not.
I decided to tell Noel, myself. If the knowledge that I had been
promiscuous was to make him stop seeing me, that would hurt less,
immediately, than later. So, one October evening, when we were walking
along lower Fifth Avenue, I said abruptly:
“Look here. Don’t have any illusions about me. I have slept with more
men than I can remember.” That was exaggeration, but I had to
exaggerate, lest I should understate.
He did not look disgusted or shocked or even surprised. He said, “That’s
interesting. What were you doing—trying to use sex as an anaesthetic
for something-or-other? That can’t be managed, usually.”
I said, “You needn’t be polite about it. If you think I am an awful
person, say so.”
He said, “You darling imbecile—I think you are the nicest person I have
ever known. Whatever happened to you has made you poised and tolerant,
and comprehending, and anyone who knows you should be grateful for
whatever produced the result.”
I said, “Oh.” I said, “Do you mean it—you aren’t just being sorry for
me?”
He said, “God, no. I mean it.”
Something in me that had hurt horribly at odd moments, for a long, long
time, stopped hurting for ever.
I slipped my arm through his. “I am glad you don’t mind, but anyway I
stopped.”
He laughed at me. He was so friendly that I laughed, too. “There must be
thousands of bitterly disappointed men in New York, Pat. You don’t mind
being ragged about it, do you? . . . I promise never to ask you to stay
with me, if I can help it.” The tone of his voice changed. “For various
reasons, I don’t stay with women for whom I would be likely to care. It
seems somewhat unfair.”
He had never referred to his marriage before.
“I know about your marriage, Noel,” I said. “Kenneth told me.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Noel, let’s stop at Childs and have coffee and buttercakes. I am
hungry.”
Afterwards, we talked about our marriages too, as just among the things
that had happened to us.
Noel did not kiss me for another month. Once, in the interval, he did
put his arms ’round me—as we were crossing Madison Square Park—because
I said that, given the choice of staying with Gene Tunney or Jack
Dempsey, I would choose Dempsey, joyously.
Then, on an evening when we had talked, before his fire, for hours and
hours, I said, reluctantly, that I supposed it was five in the morning,
or some-such hour, and he had better get my coat. He went to get it
instantly. He held it for me to put on. Then suddenly he put both arms
around my shoulders, and I turned and put my arms around his neck, and
held up my face to be kissed.