DILUTING THE NEEDS OF MAN
_“Knowledge is not our proper Happiness. Whoever will in the least
attend to the thing will see that it is the gaining, not the having,
of it, which is the entertainment of the mind.”_
BISHOP BUTLER--(_Sermon XV_)
1
A friendly morning. Howard’s apartment looked its warmest in the
copious diffused light that flowed all around and through the quiet
rooms. The over-restraint was less emphasized in the soft intimate
radiance that seemed specially made for human use and comfort. In the
living-room the subdued exquisite colors of the two Japanese prints
glowed gently against the gray that was no longer somber but silvery
and alive, and the beautiful simplified exaggerations of the figure in
the Matisse etching were more familiar and believable.
Howard, in a dark dressing-gown, moved silently about the flat. Without
warning he opened the door to Em’s room and thrust in his head. Em was
awake. He came and sat on the edge of her bed. She lay prone, her
slender arms above the bed-clothes, her thick gleaming hair spread out
over the pillow like a rich tapestry. Her high small breasts stood hard
and round under the covers.
She did not resist the reality of his approach. A soft pink tinged her
cheeks, grateful for his seeking. Clutching at life, loving surprise,
her eyes sought his and her lips parted. He bent over her and covered
her mouth with his own. She forgot that his belief was only in
self-expression. He had come. Joy in being needed. She wanted to be
destroyed for his need. She gave, obliterated in being.
Howard always left her psychically unappeased. The opposition of his
egotism summoned her, only to retreat within itself. Now he raised
himself on his elbow and scanned her face. She was yet breathing
rapidly from emotion and her eyes were wide and still. He avoided her
drinking eyes.
“Em, you’re a beautiful object when you’re aroused,” he said
reflectively. His thin features and light green-brown eyes glowed with
esthetic satisfaction. “Love is an artistic discovery.” He tried to
think of her only as this. He wanted to escape what seemed to him the
moral distortion of life.
At times she felt that his gaze saw through her clothes, and at such
times she became happy for a moment; but now his obliviousness to the
personal element in their experience degraded her to herself.
“_Don’t_ look at me without seeing me,” she whispered.
Howard frowned. He wished her desire fixed on _him_, resented her
private emotions and responses. When she spoke like this she seemed
less beautiful to him. He could not bear any ugliness in others. Their
defects made him think of his own inadequacies. As a man who was
primarily an artist, he refused to be responsible for himself.
“I’m analyzing love.” His detachment prevailed. “Men and women should
come together for a perfect moment and then part forever. That would be
the only poetical love affair.”
“Howard!” Em frowned also.
“The memory might endure. The love won’t--that’s an illusion. Only
something completed is beautiful.”
Em drew slightly away from him and he sat up.
“Nothing completed is ever beautiful. It’s dead,” she said quickly.
“You’re afraid of everything that’s alive.” Her cheeks glowed.
Howard studied her unmoved. He tried to convince himself that Em was
too much the woman ever to achieve the artist’s detachment. He enjoyed
his implacableness toward her, the severity of his moral contempt for
himself. Em was alone. When _I_ feel, he’s only curious, she thought
bitterly.
“Cowardice is admirable in the lover,” he returned slowly. “Moral
courage becomes the solitary. Your artistic perceptions all go into
painting, Em.”
“I don’t see how you can simplify life like that, Howard.” Emotionally
formulated, she thought, just as Les is intellectually. “Physical
intimacy is too big. It’s weakness--so it’s moral. It’s by touching
that we exist.”
Howard hated Em’s concrete personalness because it intruded into
his own type of sensual mood. He needed her for a chorus to his own
sensations, not to be occupied at the same time with _her_ excitement.
He had never allowed himself to face any conception of human
obligations. Life aside from art was distasteful to him. When Em was
most the woman he despised her, but there was a hardness and courage
in her painting that he envied. He attempted to disassociate her
personality from her work. It left him confused. He rose and lighted a
cigarette.
“Both of us care only for ourselves,” he returned irritably. “Why blur
things? That’s the trouble with you moderns, even in art.”
Em was sitting up in bed now, her chin in her hands. Her hair fell in a
cloud about her.
“There’s something more--” she began earnestly.
“Pooh! Romantic twaddle--woman a burnt offering on the altar of man’s
lust!”
Em’s eyes flashed.
“Howard, you’re unjust--”
His hawk face hardened.
“It’s a crime to be just to you,” he said. I don’t count, she thought,
sick and angry. Always showing desire for me, and then this--Les at
least--“You’ve been spoiled by Drane’s incense-burning,” Howard added
mercilessly.
2
Howard was away two days. Em had now no money of her own, and ate
insufficiently. She was nervous. Intellectually she did not blame him,
but something deep down in her did. About seven o’clock in the evening
the latch clicked and he let himself into the apartment. Em was sitting
silent in the soft dusk. Amid the imperfect obscurity of the twilight
objects were vague and unsubstantial. Howard’s movements were rapid and
decisive.
“Hello, disembodied spirit! What about dinner?” He wanted to forget the
tensions and unpleasantnesses which had separated them.
“I’ve had something,” she replied.
“You look like a picture by Bonnard.” Howard approached and seized
her in his arms. There was about him an air of aliveness and
satisfaction that compelled. His unmoved artistic analyses of Em’s
states of suffering or pleasure never extended to himself. When he
was undergoing pain he was oblivious to everybody, enwrapped in an
emotional preoccupation that admitted no possibility of examination.
When his desire was aroused Em’s impulses were unnoticed. Now she was
far away. He kissed her passionately and unknowingly. When she allowed
him, he experienced her as an impersonal beauty, and his eyes were dim
and bright with an almost religious intensity. “What were you thinking
about, Em?”
“You.”
Howard felt concretely, but was carried by generalities. At this moment
he was lost in himself. His hands were upon her.
“You’d better think about me!”
She shrank from his breath on her face. I’m forgotten, she thought. A
shiver ran through her body.
“Don’t, Howard.” She pushed him away. In the deepening darkness she
could distinguish the greenish glitter of his eyes, the bitterness of
his lips. Her unwillingness aroused him. He crushed her in his arms.
Her flesh hurt. I will not be snatched. She thrust out with all her
strength and struggled free. They stood up, facing each other in the
gloom.
“You’re becoming very sophisticated, Em,” he protested, vexation in
his tone. “You would delight a voluptuary.”
The appraisal humiliated her more than his disregard. She stood erect,
voice opposing.
“I’m human at least.”
Howard’s raptness had passed.
“I’d rather be sophisticated,” he gibed.
“Sophistication is like breeding,” she said coldly. “You’ve got to
forget it to have it.”
He always felt that her emotional nakedness was vulnerable, but her
infrequent mental flashes put him on the defensive. He shrank where he
could not invade.
“And so I haven’t any?”
“You can see others cruelly enough, Howard, but you never see yourself.”
“Are you going to dinner?”
“No,” she rejoined. She turned on the light and picked up a book.
He took up his hat and stick and went out.
3
Howard returned almost at once. Em looked up in surprise as he unlocked
and swung the door open. He was manifestly changed in mien, and she
gazed at him curiously. In his hand was a letter with a Paris postmark.
“I forgot a portfolio I want,” he said defensively. He stood more
upright than usual but turned his hat over and over in his hands, and
his glance was placating.
Em was disarmed by his awkwardness. The fact of his coming back meant
something to her. He looks like a little boy!
“Is it this one?” She held up a leather case.
He stretched out a hand without looking.
“Thank you.” Their eyes met. “I found a letter from Algeria in the
mail-box.”
“Yes?” Em smiled slightly.
“She says that--”
“What does she say?” Em asked with frank interest.
Howard drew a long breath.
“Well, that--I might as well read it, I suppose--” His hat fell
unnoticed from his hand.
“Please do,” said Em excitedly.
Howard sank into a chair and drew the letter from its envelope. Em drew
her own chair nearer and leaned her elbows on the table between them.
“‘O Dearestie--’ You know she talks like that,” Howard interpolated
glibly. “‘I’ve just had a _tea_ (for _artists_ and others) and
Félicien Le Gros brought WIEGAND (!) and _of course_ I showed him your
_etchings_, and he said _quite_ spontaneously that they were not only
MASTERLY (_définitif_) as to technique but showed CHARMING mood as
well. So now go and _crow_ over unfriendly New York. I _hope_ to--’
That’s all about me--my things.” He looked up quickly at Em, his eyes
exultant and his pale cheeks slightly flushed.
The pathos in his elation over a word of praise made Em warm. His
poor etchings! That’s what makes him so cruel. Any little scrap of
commendation from Europe. This was really nothing. She thought of her
own elation over Lepelletier’s telegram. She looked at Howard almost
compassionately.
“Won’t you take me to dinner after all, Howard?”
“Sure,” he agreed comfortably.
On the way to a familiar restaurant they met Pierre Gouvain. Howard
greeted him warmly.
“Won’t you go to dinner with us?”
“Wiz plaisir.” Gouvain’s eyes drank Em’s profile. She turned to him as
Howard led the way into the restaurant.
“Who is Wiegand?” she asked.
Gouvain smiled charmingly.
“Oh, he iss one French etcher, fery good of ze sécond rang, and much
amateur, of weemen.”
A cheerful waiter bustled forward. Their favorite table was empty.
Howard was gay during dinner.
“I heard from Algeria today, Gouvain.”
“You haf? What does she do?”
“Why, she seems to spend her time boring people with my stuff.”
“Read what she says, Howard,” begged Em kindly.
“Oh--”
“I am fery interest,” vowed Gouvain earnestly. Howard read the extract.
“It iss verité, ze etchings of technique are wonder, and haf ze mood,”
agreed Gouvain generously.
Howard smiled contentedly. He did not notice Gouvain’s ardent eyes
seeking Em’s. Neither did Em. I understand him, she thought. He’s
only an artist, and he can’t be one. She felt that Howard had been
made little and dear to her again. At the restaurant door they said a
cordial good-by to Gouvain.
Howard looked down at Em.
“Shall we go back to the apartment?”
“Yes,” she whispered, putting her arm through his.
Her look of longing revived his contempt. He was in the mood which
his timidity seldom allowed him, and believed in himself. For the
instant _he_ was the great artist and Em, primarily woman, was outside
his life. He encouraged the profoundness of his momentary illusion,
knowing unadmittedly that it could not last. He wanted the sweetness
of condescending to Em. His gentleness did not spare her. She was one
of many. Em felt something vaguely unpleasant in his amorousness. She
had come no nearer success with Howard--not so near as with Les. I must
have someone, she thought. Em was discouraged. I’m frightened.