So the picture came. And other pictures like it. And since the living
that had made them was past for a little they were both fainter and in
a measure brighter with more elfin colors than even that living had been
which had made them glow at first. White memory had taken them into her
long house of silence where everything is cool with the silver of Spring
rain on leaves, she had washed from them the human pettiness, the human
separateness, the human insufficiency to express the best that must come
in any mortal relationship that lasts longer than the hour. They
were not better in memory than they had been when lived, for the best
remembrance makes only brilliant ghosts, but they were in their dim
measure nearer the soul's perfection, for the tricks of the sounding
board of the mind and the feckless instrument of the body had been put
away. “We've had infinites already--infinites,” thought Oliver, and
didn't care about the ludicrous ineptness of the words. He smiled,
turning back to the unwritten letter. If they hadn't had infinites
already--he supposed they wouldn't want more so badly right now. He
smiled, but this time without humor. It had all seemed so easy at first.
Nancy had been in Paris at fourteen before “business reverses” of the
kind that mild, capable-looking men like Mr. Ellicott seem to attract,
as a gingerbread man draws wasps, when they are about fifty, had reduced
him to a position as chief bookkeeper and taken Nancy out of her
first year in Farmington. Oliver had spent nine months on a graduate
scholarship in Paris and Provence in 1919. Both had friends there and
argued long playful hours planning just what sort of a magnificently
cheap apartment on the _Rive Gauche_ they would have when they went
back.
For they were going back--they had been brilliantly sure of it--Oliver
had only to finish his novel that was so much better already than any
novel Nancy had ever read--sell a number of copies of it that seemed
absurdly small in proportion to the population of America--and then they
could live where they pleased and Oliver could compose Great Works
and Nancy get ahead with her very real and delicate talent for etching
instead of having to do fashion-drawings of slinky simperers in Lucile
dresses or appetite-arousing paintings of great cans of tomato soup.
But that had been eight months ago. Vanamee and Company's--the neat
vice-president talking to Oliver--“a young hustler has every chance in
the world of getting ahead here, Mr. Crowe. You speak French? Well,
we have been thinking for some time of establishing branch-offices in
Europe.” The chance of a stop-gap job in St. Louis for Nancy, where she
could be with her family for a while--she really ought to be with them a
couple of months at least, if she and Oliver were to be married so soon.
The hopeful parting in the Grand Central--“But, Nancy, you're sure you
wouldn't mind going across second-class?”
“Why Ollie, dear, how silly! Why, what would it matter?” “All right,
then, and remember, I'll wire _just_ as soon as things really start to
break--”
And then for eight months, nothing at all but letters and letters,
except two times, once in New York, once in St. Louis, when both had
spent painful savings because they simply had to see each other again,
since even the best letters were only doll-house food you could look
at and wish you could eat--and both had tried so hard to make each
disappearing minute perfect before they had to catch trains again that
the effort left them tired as jugglers who have been balancing too
many plates and edgy at each other for no cause in the world except the
unfairness that they could only have each other now for so short a time.
And the people, the vast unescapable horde of the dull-but-nice or
the merely dull who saw in their meetings nothing either particularly
spectacular or pitiful or worth applause.
And always after the parting, a little crippled doubt tapping its
crutches along the alleys of either mind. “Do I _really?_ Because if I
do, how can I be so tired sometimes with her, with him? And why can't I
say more and do more and be more when he, when she? And everybody says.
And they're older than we are--mightn't it be true? And--” And then,
remorsefully, the next day, all doubt burnt out by the clear hurt of
absence. “Oh how could I! When it is real--when it is like that--when it
is the only thing worth while in the world!”
But absence and meetings of this sort told on them inescapably, and both
being, unfortunately, of a rather high-strung intelligence and youth,
recognized it, no matter how much consciousness might deny it, and
wondered sometimes, rather pitiably, why they couldn't be always at one
temperature, like lovers in poetry, and why either should ever worry
or hurt the other when they loved. Any middle-aged person could and
did tell them that they were now really learning something about
love--omitting the small fact that Pain, though he comes with the
highest literary recommendations is really not the wisest teacher of
all in such matters--all of which helped the constant nervous and
psychological strain on both as little as a Latin exorcism would help
a fever. For the very reason that they wished to be true in their love,
they said things in their letters that a spoken word or a gesture would
have explained in an instant but that no printed alphabet could; and
so they often hurt each other while meaning and trying to help all they
could.
Not quite as easy as it had seemed at first--oh, not on your life not,
thought Oliver, rousing out of a gloomy muse. And then there was the
writing he wanted to do--and Nancy's etching--“our damn careers” they
had called them--but those _were_ the things they did best--and neither
had had even tolerable working conditions recently--
Well, sufficient to the day was the evil thereof--that was one of those
safe Bible-texts you seemed to find more and more use for the older you
grew. Bible-texts. It was lucky tomorrow was Sunday when slaves of the
alarm-clock had peace. Oliver straightened his shoulders unconsciously
and turned back to the blank paper. He did love Nancy. He did love
Nancy. That was all that counted.
“Oh, felicitous Nancy!
Your letter was--”