It appeared, then, that upon several occasions Eva had attempted what
amounted to explanations, or apologies, Florence reported. “She says,
in extenuation of her irritation with him, that her husband has a trick
of being verbally frolicsome, and it upsets her. Yet she was upset
when, in the days immediately following their marriage, he insisted on
making love to her whenever he caught sight of her. She told us, at the
time, that the love-making made her fractious because it got in the
way of her work. The truth is, she wants him to be always on tap, in a
way of speaking: ready to follow her lead, turning on the flow of his
adoration and turning it off as she indicates. But mainly, I believe,
she objects to his being mentally frolicsome about things that she has
said and done. She has a curious lack of all sense of proportion.” She
meditated, again staring into the fire. “Do you know, Dinah, I think
you won’t find her changed in any particular by this experiment.
He--Van Suydam--is himself doing all the changing.”
I said that I took this absence of change in Eva for granted. “She has,
absolutely, the correct objectiveness of the creative worker.”
“She has nothing of the sort. She worries all the time over her
association with her husband,” rejoined Florence.
Spencer Mapes was once more at the window, tapping on the panes in a
maddening way.
“Florence, dearest,” chuckled Pomeroy, “it’s so amazing that none of
you see it! She knows that she’s a personage. Her peculiar charm would
be spoiled if she were humorous about herself. She knows that her part
is to skim through life like a bird, or to hang on the wall like a
picture.”
Florence, however, was not light-hearted about it. “What Eva
needs--what we all need, and what Nicholas Van Suydam has--is the
feeling of family life, our own family life, just around the corner to
walk in on any minute we feel the need of its spiritual boost. Mark my
words: it won’t be Van Suydam who will smash in the end. He’ll change,
but he won’t smash up for once and all. He doesn’t have to take a train
to go home; he can put out his hand and touch it.”
This was disturbing: because I did not wish to believe those things
which I did believe. “You think, then, that we’d all be better off at
home?”
Her mouth stretched like a wound. “I don’t think it; I know it. But I
shall stay, as all of us will stay.”
We were soap-bubbles, blown forward by winds that reached New York: no
balance because we brought with us no weight of soil: no direction
beyond that of the winds blowing towards New York: “You think that,
too, Florence?”
Florence’s mirthless smile dominated us. “I think a lot of things,
and the trouble is that my point of view shifts. I think a different
thing each time I speak of it. What a crazy mess! No conviction
about any of us--except in the case of Eva. She, God knows, has the
supreme conviction--about herself. And she doesn’t let us forget it.
A conviction as strong as hers must be uncomfortable to live with.
Sometimes I’m taken by surprise to find myself sorry for the poor
wretch who married her.”
I sighed with exasperation. “I’d give a lot to know what you really
think. After all, I am trying to form a conclusion.”
Florence’s dead white face, which by right should have revealed no
emotion and which hung out like a flag every twinge of her heart, now
set into her noncommittal smile of a wry amusement that she would
share with no one. “Look out, Dinah! You are going to be let down. Eva
hasn’t a ‘story’ because her life has always been higgledy-piggledy.”
I realized that she had discovered something on me only to discount
it, and laughed. But for a moment, peering out from behind her powder,
there was her complete disillusionment. “Oh, yes, my dear! I did say
that she, of us all, has conviction and knows where she’s going; and
still I say that her life is higgledy-piggledy. Work it out, darling!”
[Illustration]