“Which doesn’t mean a thing,” he said heatedly. “I don’t stop to
remember that she has sense. In fact, I often doubt that she has.”
“You don’t see that side of her?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. How can you fail to see it?”
He shrugged this off. “I was--I think, at any rate, that I was--going
to tell you how I came to my suspicion that she’s planning something in
the way of running off again, this summer. And I wanted to ask if you
couldn’t arrange to go to whatever place she selects?”
I replied promptly that this was impossible. I added, significantly,
that I had my own work to consider.
He looked at me with more sympathy than he had yet shown. “Exactly!
She’s a devastating influence on another’s work.”
“You’ve felt this?” With no right to ask, I still was determined to
find out.
Properly, he ignored my question. “She said that she was so crowded in
her life--she had so little room in which to work. This was, simply,
making excuses--laying the groundwork of her plan, whatever it may
be. She said that a man and his claims--his mere presence in the
house--held her down, cramping her spirit, injuring her work. If she
had wings, she said--and she acknowledged that possibly she hadn’t; she
said she hadn’t had a fair chance to see if they would grow--the claims
of a man would clip them. This was ingratitude, Dinah. I make myself
scarce around the house when she’s working. And besides, all day I’m at
my office. I called her attention to this.”
“Shouting?” I enquired, to ease a tension.
His laugh was a bark. “I did. She came back at me, however: she said
that I was in the air around her. That she knew I was in existence.
That this crowded her--that I was in existence!” His face was clouded
with masculine, perplexed resentment. “I said, to this, that I’d be
damned if I believed she knew what she wanted out of life. And I asked
her, point-blank, what she did want.” He cast at me a shame-faced
smile. “You know how she gets you when you’re angriest? With just one
little childlike word? She said ‘Wings!’ I assure you, I melted!”
In deciding to catechize him, I had not bargained for so much. I
was overwhelmed by these riches of confidence. His outburst, almost
popping from his lips as if a cork had been drawn from a soda bottle,
and incited by the titillation of the clicking typewriters across the
partition, came more easily to a comparative stranger. I only hoped
that he would not fly to the other extreme by the next occasion when
we should be thrown together. He had so shaken himself by his recital
of this scene with his wife that he now swept into a confession as
embarrassing for me as it would be for him when he came to think it
over. It was a queer state of affairs: both of them working, and
each doubting the power of accomplishment of the other. He had said
to her: “Suppose I came at you with a remark on the order of these
you’ve been throwing at my head?” And she had replied carelessly “Oh,
but, you know, you’d never feel this way because you aren’t made of
the same clay.” This was what she thought of him; this was how she
rated his ability. Nothing that he had accomplished had changed her
basic distrust, nothing he might in future achieve would make an
iota of difference. In this she was like a man, who can love a woman
and at the same time believe her to be a simpleton. It behooved him
to look into his mind, to weigh his imagination, in order to settle
the question of her estimate before the power of her cool conviction
undermined his self-confidence. Suppose he were wrong about himself?
But, by acknowledging the chance of this, he did not in the least admit
Eva’s conception of their relative standing: a man’s mind would be,
necessarily, a better mind than a woman’s. If he had been able to think
otherwise, the fabric of his life would have been at once unravelled.
He thought it fortunate that he could hold so firmly to this one truth,
for a suspicion of Eva’s superiority would have broken the image of
his love. He did not wish her to be more sensible; he wanted her to be
sweeter. He might shout at her to be sensible, but he wanted her to
be foolish. He said--for a moment sheepishly a boy in love--that with
her hair of so fine a gold that it was silvery, with her delicate skin
so faintly flushed with rose, she had always seemed to him a lovely
creature of the moonlight: no, she herself was the moon of his delight.
I said--cruelly, because Eva had accused him of sentimentality: “How
could you have forgotten that the moon wanes, and is cold and not to be
counted on to warm the house?” Before the eyes of his mind there should
have risen the unnatural moon--large, and artificial like a stage
setting--rising to look at the astounding city with a face of dead
stuff.
He soared above my objection. “She’s so untouchable,” he said with
admiration that did not now complain. Always when within his reach,
she stood straightly upright; if she had had a less plastic body she
would have given the impression of rigidity. But in her eyes he usually
discovered a beam of playful fondness. “Dear old Nick! You will be
foolish!” Even when telling me of it, he chid himself: so often he
forgot her fastidiousness. He knew that a man must be careful in his
treatment of Eva, ever bearing in mind her embarrassment in bodily
contact. This, I gathered, he attributed to purity. Her notions often
irritated him; but he acknowledged that he should make an effort to
comprehend that she was more sprite than woman. He had had, at times,
flashes of realization; he had seen with his conscience that if a man
fell in love with one of these creatures of the elements, withdrawn
into her life of the mind--if a mere man had plucked a star from the
heavenly host and tried to domesticate it--he must make concessions of
his own nature. Essentially cold and sparkling, starlight was not for
the common terrestrial day. He had confused his metaphors: it was lucky
that Eva had not heard.
I rose. “We are all as selfish as we can be,” I told him. “I’m so
selfish that, even after your appeal, I still refuse absolutely to go
with Eva this summer. And, if you are looking for a reason, what you’ve
just said will provide you with one. Eva, without meaning to do so,
tries that out on everyone.”
She came through the archway from beyond the hall of the typewriters.
She was breathing rapidly, and her step was hurried and irregular. She
said at once: “I forgot all about having asked you to come, Dinah. And
I’m not in the mood to talk. Do you mind if we put it off? Come on: I
feel like getting out of sight of this place.”
Fifth Avenue displayed the discreet gaiety of late afternoon. Florists
offered window displays of odd and prankish blossoms. “Goodbye,” I said
gladly.
But Nicholas took me by the arm. I suspected that he did this in order
to avoid my eyes. He wished, he said, to buy posies for us. He said to
his wife: “You look like a flower yourself. Your cheeks are red. If you
knew how much good it does me, to see you look so healthy.”
She smiled at him, her eyes narrowed although not unkindly. “You should
know that I can’t wear fresh flowers. They wither at once, if I wear
them.”
His own smile retained his ardent admiration of her. “But I must buy
you something? This beautiful day--and you knocking a man’s eye out
with your charms--I must buy you something. What shall it be? There’s
a dog shop around on Park Avenue; and on my way up to meet you I
noticed a good little pup in the window-cage. He took my fancy. Shan’t
we go and buy him for you?” He was kindness itself in the way he held
me grouped with them. He held me, and looked at her as if to say “We
are your staunch supporters, your ardent admirers, Eva.” But I felt
that in his determined insistence on her beauty of appearance he was
over emphasizing; architecturally she was perfect, and he believed in
decoration for its own sake, but he seemed to dwell on it because of
some other side that he wished to slur over.
“Don’t be so childish,” she said without rancour. She was a woman who
followed one idea to its conclusion. I saw that she had something on
her mind, and again I endeavoured to escape. But the traffic lights
changed, and he rushed us across the street and in the direction of the
window wherein pranced and yapped the good little pup. Late shoppers
hurried in at doors, scuttling to attain the haven of the showrooms
before closing time. Even now dusk was falling swiftly on the city. The
shrill cries of newsboys knocked against the roar of the traffic, and
from a phonograph shop we heard the sweeter shrillness of the “Peanut
Vender.”
“Goodbye,” I muttered; and dodged through the automobiles. Eva did not
notice my departure; she built a protection around her thought, hedging
it in safely from interruption.
[Illustration]