IV

From her attic of dreams, from her Tower of Ebony and spleen, Mona

Milton in one of her rare morose moments, saw unrolled beneath her a

double line of light. Tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either

side of the nocturnal Avenue, and casting patches of metalic blue

upon the glistening pave--veritable-fragments of shivering luminosity;

saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt, stippled by notes of

dull crimson, the exigent lanterns of citizen-contractors. Occasional

trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts of canary color into the mist,

traversed with vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the dreary roadway.

It was midnight. On both sides of the street were buttresses of

granite; at unrhythmic intervals gloomy apartment houses reared to

the clouds their oblong ugliness magnetically attracting the vagrom

winds which tease, agitate and buffet unfortunate people afoot in

this melancholy canyon of marble, steel and speed. A belated bug-like

motor-car, its antennæ vibrating with fire tremulously slipped

through the casual pools of shadowed cross-lights; swam and hummed

so softly that it might have been taken for a timorous amphibian, a

monster neither boat nor machine. To the faded nerves of Mona, aloft

in her cage, this undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty white,

these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy palaces, and the shimmering

wet night, did but evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified

Venice. A Venice overtaken by a drought eternal. Venice ærial, with

cliff-dwellers in lieu of harmonious gondolas; a Venice of tarnished

twilights, in which canals were transposed to the key of stone; across

which trailed and dripped superficial rain from dusk and implacable

skies; rain, upright and scowling. And the soul of the poetic Mona

posed ironically its acid pessimism in the presence of this salty,

chill and cruel city; a Venice of receded seas, a spun-steel Venice,

sans hope, sans faith, sans vision.

Mona held in her hand a book of musical sketches by an author unknown

to her. It was entitled Melomaniacs. It had been given to her by

Ulick Invern. But her attention had strayed from its pages to the

spectacle of the night. She was not happy. Nor was she unhappy. A sense

of emptiness oppressed her, the futility of matters mundane, love

included, oppressed her consciousness. If she could but pin her faith

to something tangible, concrete, make a definite act of affirmation

before the veil of life, behind which was hidden the accomplices of

her destiny. Know thyself! is wisdom, but if you are sick unto death

with yourself and its petty, insistent claims upon your volitions, then

forget thyself! might be a sounder motto. Mona had not the temperament

dynamic; nor yet was she lymphatic. In the company of Ulick she had

let herself go, as will some women in the more masterful grip of

the male, without relinquishing the captaincy of her inner citadel.

And now she had mentally dismissed her lover, realizing in a sudden

illumination that his instability, as unstable as an anchor that

drags, would be a bar to their happiness. She had tartly contradicted

Alfred when he laboriously hauled out, as if from a secret place, the

chief defects in Ulick's character. Yet, she recognized the justice

of the impeachment. Ulick was too fond of his pleasures, and girls

were no doubt the stencil of his cardinal sin. Impotent to change his

volatile nature--volatile, at least, where women were concerned--she

had resolved on hearing of the Dora episode to break their friendship.

She felt the wrench, especially this evening. She had returned from

the seashore promising herself that she would be strong. Instead, she

felt uneasy, full of barren desire, giddiness in her head and a sort

of green-sickness in her stomach. She recognized the symptoms, as

would any full-blooded girl of normal instincts; she also recognized

the necessity of suppressing certain emotions. So she resumed reading

The Rim of Finer Issues. She didn't like it as far as she had gone.

The writer, evidently unformed, floundered between Henry James and

the new French symbolists; psychological analysis was intermingled

with symbolical prose, the admixture proving rather confusing to her

tormented spirit. She longed for clarity. Still she continued to read

in a cursory manner.... Then her attention was caught by a subtitle:

Frustrate. No doubt the prose-poem threatened by the heroine with the

iron-colored eyes, or was it rust-colored hair? She read on and with

increasing interest this rhapsody of the sex-cells.

"O the misty plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal incuriousness of

the monad! The faint swarming toward the light and the rending of the

sphere of hope, frustrate, inutile. I am the seed called Life. I am he,

I am she. We walk, swim, totter and blend. Throughout the ages I dwelt

in the vast basin of time. I am called by Fate into the Now. On pulsing

terraces, under a noon blood-red, I dreamed of the mighty confluence.

About me were my kinsfolk. Full of dumb pain we pleasured our centuries

with anticipation; we watched as we gamed away the hours. From Asiatic

plateaux we swept to Nilotic slime. We roamed primeval forests,

arboreally sublime, or sported with the Behemoth as we listened to

the serpents' sinuous irony. We chattered with the sacred apes or

mouthed at the moon; and in the Long Ago wore the carapace and danced

forthright figures on coprolitic sands; sands stretching into the bosom

of earth, sands woven of windy reaches, hemming the sun.... We lay in

Egyptian granaries with the grains of corn, and saw them fructify under

the smile of the sphinx; we buzzed in the ambient atmosphere, gaudy

dragon-flies, or as whirling motes in full cry chased by humming-birds.

Then from some cold crag we launched with wings of firebreathing

pestilence and fell fathoms under sea to war with lizard-fish and

narwhal, for us the supreme surrender, the joy of the expected.... With

cynical glance we saw the Buddha give way to Christ. Protoplasmically

we noted the birth of planets and the confusion of creation. We saw

hornéd monsters become gentle ruminants and heard from the tree-tops

the scream of the pterodactyl dwindle to child's laughter. We heard,

we saw, we felt, we knew. Yet we hoped on. Every monad has its day....

One by one the inchoate billions disintegrated as they floated into

formal life. And we watched and waited. Our evolution had been the

latest, until heartsick with longing many of my brethren wished for

annihilation.... Save one I was at last alone. The time of my fruition

was not far. O for the moment when I should realize my dreams!...

I saw my companion swept away, swept down to the vistas of life,

the thunderous surge of passion singing in her ears. O that my time

would come! After vague alarms I was summoned.... My hour had struck.

Eternity was behind me, eternity loomed ahead, implacable, furrowed

by the scars of Time. I heard the voice of my foreordained mate in

the Cosmos. I tarried not as I ran the race. Moments were priceless;

a second meant aeons; and then leaping into the light--Alas! I was

too late.... Of what use now my travail, my countless preparations?

O Chance! O Fate! I am become one of the silent multitude of the

Frustrate...."

That's an ambitious attempt to compress the evolutionary processes into

a page, she reflected. On the shelf devoted to her beloved Frenchmen

she took down A Rebours and read what Huysmans wrote of the poem in

prose of Mallarmé's in particular ... "the adjective placed in such an

ingenious and definite way that it ... would open up such perspectives

that the reader would dream whole weeks together on its meaning at once

precise and multiple, affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine

the future of the characters revealed by the light of the unique

epithet ... a spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior

persons scattered through the universe...." "I confess I'm not one of

the ten," said Mona aloud, for she often wedded her interior dialogue

to the exterior. "I should die of mental starvation on such a condensed

literary diet; it may be poetic, but it is too peptonic, and my soul

can't be fed with prose pemmican. Yet Frustrate is a strange panorama

of sex and evolution. 'Every monad has its day.' True, I wonder if

this orchestra of cells that I call 'Moi' will ever have its day? The

time of my fruition is afar. Who is the Siegfried that will release

this Brunnhilde from her bed of fire? That's a question which every

girl puts to herself in a thousand different forms. I should like to

be married. I love children. There is no other adequate method to lure

them into this chilly life but the mating of men and women. Really,

Mona, does the man matter much? Eugenics, a fine word for an impossible

thing! I like Ulick. He wouldn't make me happy, I know. But what's the

difference if I can hold his baby and mine to my breast? Nothing else

counts. I'm in a nice depressed mood tonight. I musn't forget to take a

pill. It's usually the liver, and calomel is the last resource of the

virtuously bilious. Oh! dear, I wonder what he is doing now? With that

horrid woman? Not that I care. Why should I? Ulick is nothing to me.

Young men must observe the laws of hygiene or else be ill, so he says.

I believe him. What about women? Are they so differently constructed?

Saints? I don't believe it. If we were frank, we should tell the whole

truth--women are much more amorous than men, although the emotion with

us is more massive, yet more diffused. There! I've told my mirror the

truth. Polichinelle's secret. Because of our excessive temperament

we have been put behind bars for ages. Heavens! Every household is a

harem with one lawful wife; the concubines live elsewhere. Some day

women will go on a sex-strike. Then the men will crawl. If it's right

for the men to go philandering, why isn't it right for the women? I

wonder what Milt would say if he could peep into my brain at this

moment? Horrified he would surely be. That Dora! Alfred Stone says she

is very pretty. Pooh! I know what his 'pretty' means. A lascivious

kitten. But she serves the purpose. I don't mind the physical facts;

men have strong stomachs, but how can a superior young man like Ulick

stand the vulgarity, the stupidity of such a girl! Maybe she isn't

stupid or vulgar. That singer, Esther Brandès is a law unto herself; no

doubt has a regular flock of lovers ... artistic women are privileged

... I wish I was an artistic woman. I've never had a real affair. If

these monads of mine are to have their day it's high time they began.

Only to think of it, I was once spoony over Alfred. I can't endure

his presence now. They say we always return to our first loves. What

nonsense. We usually turn down a side street when we see an old beau

approaching. I know I do. I wonder whether Ulick really was in earnest

about our dream-children? Our monads must have been mighty lively when

we held hands at the Casino and at Martin's. What were their names,

those children? Shamus, Tenth Earl, or is it Marquis of Thingamajig

somewhere in Ireland? Shamus and----? Wasn't there a horse or a mare

in the dream? Yes, yes, I have it, Brunnhilde's white horse, or was it

one of the white horses of 'Rosmersholm'? No, it wasn't Ibsen at all,

it was Wagner. Grane! Aha! That's it. Grane and Shamus. What darlings

they must be, and their mother who conceived and bore them never saw

them except in her dreams. But they are more real than flesh and blood

children. Our dream children. I'm beginning to think I love Ulick....

Oh! he is a dear. I'd better go to bed or I'll end a lunatic. When a

woman ceases to be mistress of herself she is likely to become the

mistress of a man. Dreams. Heigho! Now for my bed of tormenting fire

not on Brunnhilde's fire-begirt rock, but between my sheets. But the

fire is there just the same ... the fire ... the lovely, teasing fire

that brings dreams ... and Ulick ... and our dream-children, Shamus and

Grane ... Shamus...."

V

Mentally refreshed after her monologue and physically buoyant because

of a dreamless night Mona ate a hearty breakfast. No lilies and

languour for her in the golden morning hours. She read a newspaper. Her

appetite for the realities we call "life" was fresh; in the evening

she couldn't bear the sight of printed news. The post brought her two

letters. One told her that her subscription to a musical publication

had expired; a glance at the superscription of the other sent her

scurrying upstairs to her Ebony Tower, as she fantastically named her

study. It was from him, the father of her dream-children, the one man

in the world for her. As if dazzled by an unexpected flash of lightning

she saw the truth; she loved Ulick Invern. She must make him her

husband,--or?... She read his letter. It began thus:

"Grane and Shamus stood near the big tree in the cool park listening to

the song of the leaves. This tree had been nice to them, no branches

had harshly croaked: 'Go away. I hate little boys and girls.' This

tree they heard saying nice things about them to the cross, crooked

crab-apple tree next to it.... They loved the singing trees. They loved

to be under the 'few large stars', their faces buffeted by sudden

little winds from the lazy white clouds in the sky. They were not

keeping faith with their mamma. They had promised to be home before

dusk and yet they lingered in the twilight park as if they were birds

that perched and slept in the hollow night. Their mother longed for

them and sent Nursie to fetch them home. But the voices of the leaves

held them captive; they overheard the strange secrets and sorrows

of the trees. 'O, if only we could run about like those queer human

children! Moving plants. If only our branches, which are our arms,

could become free and fly through the air instead of cowardly waving to

the prompting of every vagrant breeze. Alas! we are rooted in the soil.

What crime did our arboreal ancestors commit that we must so suffer and

atone for it? In what faraway forest is buried the sinister evidence of

the trees fall from grace?' Shamus nudged Grane. 'Do you hear what the

trees are telling us?' 'Of course I do, Shamus,' pertly answered Grane,

'but I don't understand them any more than you do.' 'Grane, I'm afraid,

let's go back to the house.' 'Cry-baby' retorted his sister, 'I'm not a

bit afraid.' They lingered on. The trees still babbled. Then the clear

voice of Nursie reached their ears. 'Grane! Shamus! Your mamma wants

you to come in right away. Papa is asking for you.' Hand in hand they

traversed the field; it didn't seem so big now. They saw a sickle of

silver fire floating over the tree tops. It was the new moon. Elated,

they both wished that their mamma would reveal the secret of the

trees. She gently smiled at their insistent questioning. 'The trees,'

she explained, 'were naughty once upon a time in the long-ago. They

disobeyed their parents and left their cabin in the woods. Soon they

were lost and begged to be shown the way back in the black darkness.

Alarmed by their lamentings, the moon appeared and pointed the path of

light to their house. They promised never to leave their roots any

more.' She looked at Grane and Shamus, and at their papa. He bowed his

head. He, too, had wandered in the dark forest and had been lost like

the little trees. Then the mama took her darlings to her bosom and

over their tiny golden heads she smiled--a smile of tender pity and

forgiveness."

Her eyes swimming with unshed tears Mona threw herself on the bed her

burning cheeks buried in a pillow. This whimsical letter profoundly

moved her. Every fibre of longing, of sweet desires, of craving

motherhood tugged at her heart, knocked at the door of her soul and

unbidden entered and took possession.... Milt would have told her that

seven evil ones possessed her; but she knew better. She was, at last,

a woman, with a woman's complex passion, and also a woman's stern

purpose. Every monad has its day, she sobbed, but remained dry-eyed.

I mean to have mine. Now or never.... It was three o'clock in the

afternoon when Mona passed her mother in the doorway. "Where in the

world are you off to so late, Mona? It's surely going to rain and you

haven't your unbrella. Dear, dear, what a forgetful girl you are." "I'm

only going across the park, mamma, and if it threatens, I'll run home,"

she explained; but her mother shook her head. "You will get wet, and

then it will be too late to return." Mona went her way but said naught

of her secret errand.