That winter they met nearly every day. But she didn't invite him to
call at her home. He couldn't ask a reason for this strange omission.
My intentions are perfectly honourable. I've told her I wouldn't marry
the best woman even though she were the last of her sex on the globe.
I've also told her that a man should never live under the same roof
with his mistress; in that case what would be the difference between
marriage and concubinage; one would be as stupid as the other. Poor
Emma Bovary found out from experience that men and women bound by
any bond live in the land of platitudes. I told her--heaven forgive
my candor!--that I changed mistresses every three months, that the
instant I found myself falling in love with one I got a new one.
Boasts by a boaster. What is it that interests nice girls in irregular
lives? I wonder. The inside of a brothel is not so interesting as an
abatoir, where as Huysmans used to say--love is slain at a stroke,
and the stroke usually costs the man a twenty-franc piece. But these
girls don't realize the crudeness of such lives. Mystery. That's the
attraction. The unknown. Silly, miserable women who go to bed the same
night with a half dozen men--is that romantic! Demi-vierges, Marcel
Prévost called the American girls, for some reason best known to
himself. Yet I've met respectable married women who went to Paris crazy
to see the sights, that is, certain sights. The puberty of adultery?
Maxim's soon bored them. From the organized obscenities of Montmartre
they went to the "peep-holes" only to see another show staged for
imbeciles with a filthy curiosity. What is it? Mona, dear decent child,
agrees with me that promiscuous married life is the most deadly blow
of all to romance. She simply won't recognize evil as evil, only as
vulgarity--worse, as stupidity. I absolutely agree with her in that
matter.
But it was not such plain sailing for Mona through this unfamiliar and
uncharted land of emotion. She had a hard time with that temperament
of hers. I'm glad they give it such a name as temperament, she
said. Robert Louis Stevenson calls love a mixture of pruriency and
curiosity, which suggests a horrid itch. Young men have an easier
time than girls, who must sit and sizzle while down in some sub-cellar
of their being they hear the faint growlings of the untamed animal.
Once unleashed it jumps all barriers, and then--well, then, the
fat's in the fire. Mona shivered, a pleasing shiver of anticipation.
Why not bravely go to her parents and confess that she loved Ulick?
He was a presentable young man, of social standing, with abundant
means--evidently; for outside of his critical work he seems to do
little except to spend money, not a negligible quantity, with her--and,
finally, he was liked, and liked very much by Milt. Some perverse
devil lurking in the depths of her being bade her stay silent. Was it
romance, sloppy, slimy sentimentality, after all? She couldn't say.
She only knew that she wanted to keep her secret, that she didn't wish
to marry, that she loved to be near the big, good-hearted young chap
with the blue eyes; yes, why not tell the truth--she was wild to be
loved by him. Everything. A young woman brought up in the practice of
all the proprieties--save church going--by a mother who idolized her!
Nevertheless, she was ready to throw her bonnet over the windmill like
the veriest street slut. Where her maidenly reserve! She had none when
self-confessing. Ulick had said to her, I think you were brought up on
the wrong kind of reading. Do you force me to stick to Hannah More or
Self-Help? she had impertinently demanded. You might do worse. Bernard
Shaw is poor nourishment for a girl with too much imagination, he
retorted. Wrong again, she said, I've absolutely no imagination. I'm
only enthusiastic. And you have said that without enthusiasms life
would be unsupportable.
Thus far the outward expression of their mutual affection had been
conventional. They went to picture exhibitions, the horse-show at the
Garden saw them many times, and also opera and theatre matinées; but,
strictly speaking, they were never alone. He always left her at her
house door. There were no twilit corridors, darkened vestibules, no
sudden corners in entries where they might embrace. He did smuggle
her hand into his at the theatre when the lights were lowered;
during entr'actes they were a well-bred couple. Opportunity, which
is the thief of virtue--sometimes--hadn't appeared on the scene.
Occasionally, when walking after a copious luncheon, she would complain
of enervation and her eyes would swim with mystic languour. He, fearing
that she might think him virtuous, boasted of laborious nights of
vice. She seemed to believe him and secretly applauded his conduct.
No wonder young men can bob up with such smug faces when they call
on nice girls. Oh, yes, they are quite virtuous. No fear of their
misbehaving themselves. Their other "lady" friends have made them
safe--housebroken, she added with a smile over the phrase. I believe
grim law causes more suffering than license. When she communicated this
original idea to Ulick he frankly asked her:
"See here, Mona, do you ever expect to have a child?" "I'm crazy for
one, for two"--and she related the story of Dolly. He was at once
sympathetic, slightly to her surprise. "It reminds me," he said, "of
two French friends of mine. Married, but no children, though they
were much desired. For several years they played at parenthood, they
pretended they had a boy and a girl, very young, very troublesome, but
beloved by them. They played this strange little comedy for several
years. They never went out in the daytime without the "children." They
held long conversations with them. They reproved, praised, admired,
caressed them. At night when they visited the theatre or had a dinner
they left their precious imaginary offspring in the care of an equally
shadowy nurse, burdening her with all manner of instructions. And
now comes the funny part of my story. A real child was born, a few
years later, a second followed, and for all I know they may have
had half a dozen since then. But those children of flesh and blood
were not treated with the same sort of love the dream-children had
received"--"Dream-children?" she repeated her eyes insistently seeking
his, "what a pretty expression. Did you make it up?" "Certainly not.
Haven't you read Charles Lamb's description of his dream-children,
the children he never fathered--only dreamed of?" She didn't thank
him for his explanation, but mused. "I should like to have some
dream-children." "How many, five or six?" "No, two would be enough,
a boy and a girl. I have already a real child, didn't I tell you?" He
pretended to be shocked. "A real baby you have?" "Yes, my Dolly. She's
a troublesome charge. If I could only have two dream-children"--"Who is
to be the father?" "You," she replied, and her naive gravity impressed
Ulick. "Won't you be the father of our twins?" Her voice was low,
pleading, almost intense. They were sitting in the park on an April
afternoon. He caught one of her wrists. "By God," he exclaimed, "if I
could only believe you meant it." "I do mean it, dear Ulick. We shall
never marry yet we may have children --dream-children, symbols of our
friendship." "And what in the world do you mean by saying that we shall
never marry?" His accent was one of astonishment and no little pique.
She gazed demurely at her well-shaped hands.
"Didn't you say that you had to change mistresses every three months?
And what about the obscene promiscuity of married life!" He went into
a bad humour at once and impatiently answered: "Yes, I did say it and
you know enough of life to know it was all brag. I've no mistresses--"
"What! no mistresses, not one?" she blankly inquired. He didn't
turn a hair. "Not one. I love only one woman in the world now. It's
Mona Milton. I needn't tell her that." "No," she replied without
affectation. "We do care for each other. Yet, Jewel, why harp on
marriage?" He endeavoured not to show his surprise. To atavism, and to
the Bartlett side of his ancestry, must be set down the reason for this
surprise, and a faint, though well-defined, feeling of dissent. Really,
a young girl should not say such things to a young man no matter how
modern, how advanced she is; no matter if she is fond of him; and the
curious part of the thing is that Mona does not boast being advanced or
modern, nor, indeed, anything but a real girl.
She noted his confusion and helped him over the stile of perplexity.
"Ulick, let's have dream-twins."
"I'll assume all the responsibility, all the cares, only let's have
them--now." He glanced superstitiously about him as if he feared her
speech would be overheard. And her home not ten minutes away! She
divined the cause of his embarrassment and grasping his hand in her
soothing clasp she asked with the naiveté of a childish mother: "What
shall we call them, our darlings?" "That's important," he declared,
humouring her. "Let me see. The boy? I have it. Shamus. My full name
in baptism is Ulick Shamus Fitzgibbon Desmond Invern. It's a mouthful.
I am the namesake of my uncle, my father's elder brother, now the head
of our house and present Marquis of Invern and Desmond. Yes, there's
a Marquis in the family, a poverty-stricken one at that, poor but
proud. But it will do me no good, for he has a quiverful of children.
My cousin, St. Alban, his heir, is my age, a regular prig. So, dear,
it will be Shamus, if you don't mind." She nodded. Shamus would do.
Now for the girl. He again made the nomination. "She is called Grane."
Mona rebelled. "Why such an unusual name?" "Don't you remember the
white horse of Brunnhilde in 'Siegfried'?" "Certainly, and I also
remember the white horses in Rosmersholm which foretold trouble."
"I like Grane, and you will like her, too." He was so firm that she
acceded. "All right, dear, and now what are you going to do with the
pair since they are born?" He took out his watch and started up. "Past
five, and I've a first-night on. Good-bye, darling Mona," and he
kissed her upon the mouth for the first time in the twilight and with
a moon like an effaced silver coin looking at them over the synagogue.
It was a consecration, she whispered; my first kiss. Then aloud:
"Good-bye--darling--I'll take Shamus and Grane home, the dears might
take cold. Good-bye Ulick, my husband and father of our children." As
he strode away, not daring to look back, he ruminated: That's a case of
suppressed maternal instinct. Mona ought to be married or--or--steady
boy! Else you are in it either way you jump.
X
The new Ibsen play enjoyed a stormy première. After he had sounded its
praise and expressed his personal opinion that critics who thought
to the contrary were imbeciles not worth the powder to blow them
hell ward, Ulick went to the Utopian Club there to relax. He ran into
Edgar Saltus as he entered. That writer was then at his brilliant
apogee. He had published The Anatomy of Negation, The Philosophy of
Disenchantment, The Truth About Tristram Varick and Mr. Incoul's
Misadventure, and was enjoying with his ironic humor the row raised
by the moral bell-boys of criticism over his incomparable style and
incomparable unmorality. Ulick had been his admirer in Paris and told
the aristocratic author so in no measured manner. Saltus liked the
young man and encouraged him. "Naturally, you should have remained in
Paris. Here you commit spiritual suicide. I don't care what De Gourmont
advised. You have the soul of a cosmopolitan. There is no nationality
in art any more than there is democratic art. Demos dislikes art as
much as he does a bathtub. Soap and social equality are akin. His
self-constituted champion, Walt Whitman, who wrote some stunning
head-lines, not to mention his catalogue of the human genitals, is not
welcome to Mr. & Mrs. Demos. Longfellow about fills their lyric cup
to overflowing. However, I was about to write you. I've an invitation
for you." Then he went into details. Ulick was delighted. "Of course,
I'll accept the invitation. It's very kind of you to think of me. What
a jolly party it will be. I'm getting staler and staler in this town
of my mother's. That party may bring back a whiff of dear old Paris."
They shook hands and parted. Ulick went to the Maison Felicé, across
Madison Square park, and after he had gone to bed he couldn't sleep;
yet the noise of poker-chips in the next room didn't keep him awake.
It's those damnable dream-brats, he irritably exclaimed and though it
was long past two he donned a dressing gown and sat down to his desk in
the music-room.