Her guests were getting along famously. _Gargoyles

They were chattering and laughing for hardly no reason at all. Mrs.

Basine had no liking for the people at her table. She despised Mrs.

Gilchrist, resented Aubrey. The judge gave her a faint feeling of

repulsion. Henrietta was a simpleton. Fanny irritated her with her

continual blushes and sensitive innocence. Doris was too silent and

always brooding. And even George--he somehow failed to convince her

although she desired to be convinced.

But all of them together were nice, like a pleasing combination of

colors. People belonged together. Alone they had faults. But when they

came together and forgot themselves they were nice. She felt proud of

having them at her table, because there were so many of them. They were

nice people when they were like this--just talking, not arguing or

saying things that convinced her somehow that they were wrong things.

Under the table the little comedies of the day were playing a furtive

sequel. Henrietta sitting next to Basine was shyly pressing her knee

against his. Fanny had reached out her foot until it rested against an

ankle she fancied belonged to Aubrey. For a few minutes she failed to

connect the attentiveness of Judge Smith, his paternal banter, with her

activity under the table. But the suspicion slowly arrived. Her eyes

calculated the position of the judge's legs and, blushing, she withdrew

her foot. She noticed that Aubrey sought her face when she wasn't

looking and that Keegan was talking with a blurred politeness to Mrs.

Gilchrist.

Doris sitting next to Mr. Ramsey felt annoyed. He was continually asking

her what she wanted, passing her salt-shakers and bread-plates and

conducting himself as if she were a helpless child under his care. Mrs.

Gilchrist, as the first conversational flush inspired by the food

subsided, launched into a detailed description of the plans for the

coming fete, talking in a precise, emotionless voice.

"I was saying," Basine's voice emerged in a silence that followed Mrs.

Gilchrist's talk, "I was saying that people are easy to get along with

if you understand them and they understand you. I had a case in court

the other day where a woman was suing a man for breach of promise. He

had proposed marriage to her and then without reason broke his pledge.

The woman was my client."

Murmurs of "how awful"; "that must have been interesting" arose. Basine

nodded sagely. He had without knowing why started improvising the

narrative, inventing its details with a creditable dramatic and legal

talent. There had been no such case, client or denouement but he

continued unconscious of this fact in his desire to tell the story. "The

man of course was a rascal. An unscrupulous rascal. The girl--my

client--a charming, innocent young thing--had believed him. He had

courted her passionately,--er, I should say--assiduously. I couldn't

understand how any man after giving his word and asking a girl to marry

him could possibly be rogue enough to do what he had done. So during a

recess in the case I sought the fellow out. His name was Jones. We had

quite a talk."

Basine paused.

"What happened?" Fanny exclaimed. "I wish you'd tell us more about your

work than you do, George. It's so interesting."

"Yes, go on," Mrs. Gilchrist commanded.

Basine hesitated. His improvisation seemed to have come to an end. He

was, mysteriously, at a loss as to how to make the lie turn out. But

inspired by the attention of the table he resumed:

"Well, of course a lawyer must be first of all faithful to his client."

He paused again. He had almost decided to end the fiction by explaining

that on investigation he had found the man to be right and that the

defense the man had given him privately of his actions had caused him to

withdraw from the case. But this would sound quixotic, unreal. There

would have to be explanations. Why had he started the lie? To give it

that ending so that.... He smiled a sudden appreciation of what he was

doing--trying to excuse his jilting of Henrietta--an event not far off

if she persisted in holding him to the thingumabob foolishness. But he

went on:

"This sometimes prejudices an attorney against his opponent. But I found

this time that all prejudice was warranted. The man was a thorough

rascal. It had been his practise to propose marriage to girls--innocent

girls of course, and he had several times managed to take advantage of

their faith in him and--ruin them."

Fanny averted her eyes. Mrs. Gilchrist stared with an uncomprehending

frown at the talker. The judge permitted a grimace of distaste to pass

over his face as he murmured, "The cad. Yes sir, men are cads."

"My client won," resumed Basine with modesty, "and was awarded five

thousand dollars by the jury. But the law could not give her back the

happiness this scoundrel had snatched from her...."

"Had he ... had he accomplished his purpose with her?" Aubrey inquired,

aloofly interested in the plot details of the narrative.

"No, fortunately," Basine answered. "But look at him now. Free, although

found guilty, free to continue his tactics."

He paused confused. Henrietta was beaming at him, her eyes wide with

admiration. He felt he should have given it the other ending and cursed

himself silently for what he had done. He had only made it worse when he

had meant to tell a story that would help matters and make her

understand....

Mrs. Basine regarded her son unhappily. She was convinced he was lying

because he usually mentioned the big cases he had and he had never

before referred to any Jones suit. But she was unable to understand why

anyone should lie without cause and after a moment of doubt her son's

stern face and positive manner managed to convince her again. He wasn't

lying.

Basine, as the others took up the discussion of the narrative, dropped

his hand to his side and furtively pressed it against Henrietta's knee.

At this sensation of physical contact a feeling of relief came to him.

In the sensual thrill this contact aroused he buried the discomfort of

the words running through his head--"she thinks I'm going to marry her.

Damn it ... damn it...."

He was startled when, glancing at her in the midst of his daring

excursion under the table, he noticed her smiling coolly and primly at

Aubrey who was talking.

"Will you have some of this?" Mr. Ramsey's voice protruded through the

silence. Several eyes turned toward him as if he were about to take up

the burden of the talk. Mrs. Basine interrupted quickly.

"What was that book you told me about, Mr. Gilchrist, last month?" she

asked. Aubrey looked up inquiringly. "I mean your father."

The elder Gilchrist blinked and seemed to peer into the depths of his

memory.

"I don't remember," he said clearing his throat. They were the first

words he had spoken since he had said, "Thank you ... thank you...." and

sat down in a corner of the Basine library. His wife stared at him as if

he were a phenomenon unexpectedly revealed to her gaze.

"It must have been," stammered Mr. Gilchrist, "Suetonius, I think. Or

... or the Chevalier de Boufflers...."

"I'm sure that was it," Mrs. Basine agreed. "I must get that to read."

The judge frowned disapprovingly upon the elder Gilchrist. He resented

readers. Culture was a state of soul acquired by being a gentleman, not

by reading books. He resented also the impression Aubrey had left during

the Annexation discussion.

As a matter of fact he felt sleepy, the result of the food he had eaten.

And he was automatically seeking for some occasion which would warrant

an expression of dignity or resentment or anything in which he might

hide his heaviness of spirit.

The sight of his daughter regarding Aubrey with a sweet, prim

attentiveness supplied him with what he desired. The idea of Henrietta

marrying that fool was annoying. Old Gilchrist was a sly dog and his

wife a difficult woman. He would forbid the thing. It might hurt

Henrietta for a time but he knew what was good for her. A mere story

writer had no real standing in the community, no future.

Whereas--Basine.... He lowered his eyes and glowered at his plate....

Nice young man. Honorable. And full of promise ... promise....

"Love the stars. Love people's faces. Buildings and faces. What do I

know about 'em? God knows. Rotten streets.... Life's a great harlot that

men keep chasing. That gives herself to men--all men, everybody. I want

her. I want her."

He walked angrily, a cap on his head, a pipe clenched between his teeth.

He was thinking as he walked. Emotions came out of his heart and burst

crests of words in his mind. Angry emotions. There was an anger in him.

He was overcoming a feeling of futility as he walked.

The street was a carnival fringe. Cheap burlesque theatres, arcades,

museums, saloons. This was blurred. He saw no lithographs. One side of

the street followed along at his elbow--a slant of pinwheel lights. On

the other side across the street, pin points. But he saw nothing. Things

passed unresistingly through his eyes.

He remembered now a mile of walking. The business section asleep on

Sunday evening. He had walked through that. Darkened windows, ghastly

inanimations. Why was he angry?

"Aw huh!" he snarled. He was cursing something. He asked questions and

answered them. This got him nowhere. Stars, buildings, faces--he wanted

to knock them over. That was inside him, a wish to knock 'em over. More

than a wish. A necessity. But he could only walk. The world scratched at

his elbow. He could bite on his pipe. This thing hurt him.

People, rotten people. Crazy jellyfish with jellyfish hearts, jellyfish

brains. He could swear at 'em like that. But why? He didn't know. Only

this thing in him made him blow up.

It was easier when he worked. His father calmed him. His father stood

over the bench planning the fine-grained wood. A great man because he

loved the wood he cut and carved into pieces of furniture. But jellyfish

sat in the chairs they made in his father's shop. Damn 'em.

"Love people. Say something. What? Say something. Get it out. Aw, the

dirty, filthy swine."

That was the way he thought as he walked. A long furious mumble in him,

this man walked and saw nothing but light slants, spinning windows. He

was young and he wore a cap.

He would get it out of him ... Show 'em! Ah, a nip to the air. Spring

blowing his heart up like a balloon. All they wanted was women. And all

women wanted was to be wanted. No. That was wrong. Damn! Always wrong!

His feet talked better than his head. Clap, clap on the pavement. Where

were the others going?

He didn't hate them. Someday it would all come out like swans swimming.

Very majestic. He would talk easy and smooth. But now people kept him

from putting it over. They wrapped him up. Ideas wrapped up his words

and killed them. Streets, buildings, stars chewed at him. He must knock

'em over and get himself free. Put his hands on things and knock Hell

out of 'em.

"Love 'em. Love 'em. How the Hell ... why the Hell? Lindstrum!

Lindstrum! That's my name.... I got a name. I'm the greatest man in the

world. The world's greatest all-around individual on two legs walking,

smoking. Damn...."

But what could he do? Saw wood, smear varnish on wood, monkey around

with wood. That didn't get it out. When he wrote it came out. But

rotten. He wrote rotten, crazy rotten. If he was the greatest man why in

God's name! He'd show 'em.

A long breath brought the night into him like a sponge. It drained

something out of him. He could grin. A very evil grin at a saloon

window. He could look around and notice. That's what eyes were for.

Look--people walking. Poor, sad, broken people. So sad.... Ah, tired

eyes in the street that looked for lights outside themselves.

"I'm going nuts. That's what--nuts."

But the mumble went on. Questions and answers in a circle, biting their

own tails. God forgive them, all these people. He must do something.

Arms around them whispering to their hearts something that would say,

"Yes, yes. I know it all about you. How you think one way and feel

another. And how everything ends. How everything ends in a little cry

that goes up."

Love their faces. Damn it! Love 'em.... He'd show 'em. He'd talk to the

lights in the street. Why not?

"Do you know what? Do you know? It's all a humpty dumpty. Egg-heads

falling off a wall and smashing. But I know what. I got your number.

Wait...."

There was something to say. Why? Damn it ... not that way. Hit poor, sad

ones on the head. Better the dirty swine in the City Hall. Aw huh! Wring

their necks. What for? Wrong. Something else. They were like him.

Brothers, everybody. You could kill the whole of them and there would be

something left behind that was good--Life. But a better way than

that.... Don't hit. Arms around them, lips to their hearts and talk like

that. Make the hyenas sigh. Make the jellyfish weep softly. Make the

stars dance in their idiot thoughts. Sing them songs. If only the songs

came out.

It was evening, spring evening in a dirty lighted street, and he walked

biting his pipe. He said to himself, "What's there to this thing? Let us

study it. Many people in many houses and many streets. And each of them

a known thing. But when you take all of them together, that's an unknown

thing. If you know me, if you know one--what then? Nothing. It remains

only one known. There is still everything else to know. One man

multiplied by a million isn't a million men but an infinitude of

millions."

He would get the hang of them all though, all the millions. He would

think it out, get his fingers on something that didn't exist for fingers

to touch. That was art. It was easy when you figured it that way.

He walked along often figuring it that way and understanding something

that had no words, living with something that was like a strange phantom

in a great dark deep. This phantom was a stranger inside him. A phantom

like an insane companion that had a way of putting its arms around him,

inside him, and a way of holding him like a horrible mother. Then when

it did, he stopped calling himself nuts ... nuts. He became silent then

and vanished.

The phantom devoured him. All there was of him that everybody knew, that

even he knew, all that vanished. The phantom devoured him and it was

easy then. But the phantom let him go, took its arms off him, and he

came back, out of the deep. Then he felt himself leaping up with a choke

in his lungs, leaping through layers and layers with no surface to

reach. He must go up, up from the easy embrace of the phantom and keep

on raging, yelling out to himself that something had sent him shooting

up.

Now he walked and it was easy. The night blotted out his eyes and he

lived with himself down deep where the easy embrace waited. Such moments

came when he walked and he must be careful. That was writing, being

careful and watching the little words that danced high up and that he

could watch when he raised his eyes from the embrace. Skyrockets far

away, he watched them breaking in crazy spatters of light against the

top of things where the sky came to an end.

He was thinking like that now. Lucid thoughts that he later stared back

upon and wondered, "What the hell were they? I had something, what was

it?" Now he was thinking them with this deceptive lucidity as if they

were something. He was thinking how when he was younger, when he was a

boy, he used to run down country roads. Apples trees and rivers and

growing fields that sang at night were there. And yet, there was

nothing. What did that mean? That was easy to answer. There was nothing

because it was all outside him in a marvelous way. When he was a boy

long ago, so long ago, and he lay on his back and looked at the night

and the night was nothing in his head, the night was a song that chanted

itself to him. The stars were something he had spoken. Darkness was a

sentence echoing off his lips. And the world was marvelously outside and

it gave itself to him. The boy lying on his back handed the world to

himself as a gift. There was nothing to want, everything to have. Long

ago when he was a boy watching the day and night without thinking.

But it all went away. Now what was it? That was easy to answer. The

night that had been a song chanting itself, the stars that had been his

words dancing, the darkness, clouds, trees, river and roads, the fields

and the people crawling with tiny steps under the cornfield sky--these

went away all together and he couldn't find them any more. These things

he had said without speaking, these all went away. Beautiful familiars,

they misunderstood something in him and vanished from him.

That was long ago. Now he could remember them and his remembering them

was like hearing them again. That's what made him angry. He could hear

them as if they were calling, "Find us ... find us...." And he said

back, "All right, I'll find you. Wait. I'll come after you somehow.

You're my old friends. I'll get you back. Christ knows how--but,

wait...."

But this made him think he was laughing at himself, kidding himself. He

knew better. The things that had gone away were in the faces of people,

in buildings, in lights, in streets under his feet. Christ! why

couldn't he lay hands on them again since they came so close they choked

him and made him howl inside with choking.

He was letting go now again. The easy embrace was shooting him up and he

began to know again he was nuts. He hung on to himself a little by

saying words.... "Easy boy.... Easy...."

He stopped walking for a second and a happy smile came to his set mouth.

The smile said it was over. He was Lief Lindstrum again and nobody else.

He could become calm like this. It was like blowing a fire out with a

grin. His head was clear and he was happy. The street was like a

merry-go-round. The night had a smell of life in it. That came from the

lake. Whatever living might be and whatever the choke inside him was, a

man was a fool to forget this other--the calm, grinning strength of

muscles and the way his nose buzzed when he drew his breath in.

Now he was Lief Lindstrum walking to call on his girl. And he could

think of others, the poor little others, the superfluous others. Only he

didn't have to get angry at them. Or he didn't have to fall in love with

them. It was just thinking straight. Well, the way men talked to each

other was funny. The way they swapped lies was funny. Poor, rich, happy,

sad, broken, bawling ones--they all made the same lies to each other.

The government was a lie. God was a lie. And all the gabble about good

and bad and what-not-to-do and what-to-do, and all the laws and

everything beginning from the beginning and going ahead as far as you

wanted, it was all lies. So many of them that all the philosophers had

never been able to begin straightening things out. And if somebody

found out something true, what then? Well, they grabbed it and made it

into a lie, pronto! used it as a lie. The poor little crawling ones on

the earth made up lies to explain things but most of all they made up

lies to keep alive. If they didn't lie to each other they would all fall

apart and vanish because nature would have it that way. So they must go

contrary to nature and keep on surviving. Nature demanded the

elimination of the unfit. But it was the unfit that desired most to

live. So the unfit made laws and rules and institutions, and inside

them, protected by them, kept alive. So the will to live was the thing

that created lies.

But the worst lie the little people told was when they called themselves

life. That was the chief lie, the Grand Sachem and High God of all lies.

Because they were not life. They were part of something inexplicable

that altogether might be called life. But each of them separately was a

dead one, a dead one buried deep in life. That was the difference about

him, Lindstrum. He wasn't buried in life. There were moments when he

shot up like a man shooting through layers of graves. The others let the

thing called life pile up on them and it became a mystery of graves that

reached to the farthest star. But with him there was no piling up. He

would keep on shooting out of it till he had lifted himself up where

there were no graves.

"Shh, shh," he murmured to himself, "let's not be nuts tonight. Plenty

of nights for that. Let's talk about other things. About her."

Her face was beautiful. Dark eyes, dark hair, silent, that was like she

was. The thought of her made him grimace inside with pain. He wanted

her as much as that. But what did he want her for? God knows. What does

one want for? In order to get rid of wanting. Nothing else. Kiss her?

Bah! She was a victory. He wanted her like that.

When he was near her they didn't have to talk or hold hands. They came

together in a different way. She was so beautiful....

"I love her," he said quietly. He wanted to be quiet so he spoke

quietly. She was marvelous. He would like to cut himself up into bits

and give himself that way to her. He would like to die a thousand

different ways and say, "Here, I destroy everything I am in order to

become a gift for you." That was like placing oneself on a burning

altar--the ecstacy of the sacrificed one. That was it.

Some nights like this the world became too small to live in. The city

swept away from his senses and everything in the city seemed like a room

full of cheap little broken toys he had outgrown. He would sit in a room

within this bigger room, a lamp on his table and write. Or he would

strike out like this time and walk to her--miles across streets.

"I want her," he said. His thought paused. "But what do I want of her?"

he asked. "I don't know. But I want to give myself to something."

And he began thinking over how many ways there were to die as a gift.

This lighted window was her house. The curtains were down but light

spurted through the sides. The sight of the house with its light-fringed

windows depressed him. It was a disillusionment. She wasn't a woman then

like he was a man but she was a part of things. He saw her as he walked

up the stone steps, saw her talking to people. She had parents. In his

mind she lived as an entity. A beautiful one without background or

lighted windows or stone steps. Someone for him. Nobody else.

He rang. The door opened. A man like himself stood blinking in the

lighted hall.

"Good evening," said Lindstrum. His voice was deep for his age. He spoke

in a drawl that seemed edged with anger. "Is Doris in?"

"Oh, hello," Basine exclaimed. "Yes, she's in. Come right in."

People were talking in the next room.

"Company?" said Lindstrum. He didn't want to go in. But Basine was

leading the way. The supper had ended ten minutes ago. The company

looked up at him. They were all dressed well. Their faces were dressed

well, too. They wore carefully tailored satisfactions in their eyes.

When they smiled their mouths postured like ballet dancers in a finale.

They were rich people. Their hands were soft.

The room blurred before Lindstrum. There was no reason for it now

because he wasn't thinking or caring but a rage crept into his senses.

He breathed in deep with his mouth opened and the feel of the air on his

teeth and tongue made his jaw set. Because he would have to be careful

what he said. Because he was saying inside to himself, "Damn 'em. The

scum!"

His eyes brought pictures into his anger. They stared with deliberation

into other eyes and brought back messages. He was being introduced. He

was saying to himself deep down, "They're all alike. Like peas in a pod.

They smirk and talk alike. And they're all stuck on themselves alike.

And they're all liars--damn liars, all alike."

He would have to take care and not argue. He would sit down. Doris was

upstairs and she would appear in a minute. Then they would go for a walk

and shake this room out of their eyes.

They chattered like monkeys. Satisfied with themselves. Yes,

know-it-alls, tickled to death with themselves. An old man with a heavy

pink face and sleepy eyes, a well dressed old man they called Judge--if

he could punch this guy in the face, let his fist smash into his

jellyface, God! what a thrill! A flushed girl, Doris' sister, wiggling

her body in a chair. What she needed was somebody to grab hold of her

and say, "Come on kid." A square, hard-faced old woman talking of

society. What she needed was someone to walk up behind her and kick her

hard. And when she raised her glasses to look, laugh like Hell and spit

in her eye. That would make her human! And this smart-aleck Basine....

Hm! What he needed was somebody to tie him to a stake in a dark prairie

and let the wind and rain go over him till he got hungry and began to

whine. That's what they all needed--wind and rain to bring them back to

life.

But he must be careful and say nothing. There was Doris' mother. She

wasn't so bad. But this other guy, this writing guy, talking about

books! God! Why didn't somebody choke the life out of him! What did he

know about books? And he talked about writing! What was good writing? He

asked that, this guy did! He would have to be careful what he said to

this guy and keep himself from jumping up and murdering him. Hell take

all of them and make 'em burn. That's what they needed. He hated all of

them. They were rich. Damn 'em! He must sit and grin at them, these

jellyfish who wiggled in their graves and called their wiggles by great

names, who were dead ... dead.... How dead they were! And happy about

it! Happy.... Didn't they know how dead they were?

Doris was like them. He was a fool for coming to see her. As if she were

any different from them. She belonged with this filthy crew. She was a

filthy little tart like the rest of them. Let her go to Hell. He'd tell

her to go to Hell when he saw her. She was one he could talk to.

Uh huh, they were giving him the up and down. His shoes were dirty. His

collar soiled. His clothes weren't pressed. That was the way with these

dead ones, they made standards of their clothes because clothes were all

they had. And their idea was to make people feel inferior who were

inferior to their clothes or to their manners or to their other

artificialities. But he didn't have to feel inferior if he didn't want

to. He was the kind who could stand up in a graveyard like this and say

"Go to Hell" to the pack of them and grin and walk away and forget all

about it.

He noticed they looked at him not quite as they looked at each other.

That was right. They knew he had their number. Mrs. Basine, too, was

looking. She asked:

"I understand you write, Mr. Lindstrum?"

Books all bound and pretty standing in a row with your name in the

papers as a young writer of note and invitations to speak at women's

clubs--was what she meant. That was what writing was to people, to

jellyfish.

"I try to write," he answered, making the correction softly so that his

words purred.

"You should know Aubrey Gilchrist," said Basine. "Do you know his work?"

"I do not," said Lindstrum still purring. "What does he write?"

Basine chuckled inside. His unaccountable aversion for Aubrey was

growing.

"Novels," said Basine.

"Oh," said Lindstrum dragging the syllable out and placing a huge

granite period after it.

"What writers do you like?" Fanny inquired with a successful attempt at

social artlessness. She was looking for something in this friend of

Doris'. She was in awe of him because he was dirty looking and because

he swayed as he sat in his chair. He kept swaying as if he were on

secret springs and would jump up any minute. He frightened Fanny.

"I read good books," said Lindstrum, "books written by men."

Mrs. Gilchrist sat up stiffly. Her husband peered out of his glasses. He

liked Lindstrum. He wanted to talk to him. But he got no further than

clearing his throat several times. The judge interrupted with a glower.

He was given the floor, eyes turning to him. A defender. But he merely

glowered. That was his decision, that settled it. If he glowered this

moujik was done for. He glowered Lindstrum off the face of the earth.

But Lindstrum turned full on him and thrust his face forward as if he

were going to come closer.

"What kind of books do you read?" he asked the glowerer. The snap in his

voice startled Henrietta. She was afraid for a minute this strange

looking creature waiting for Doris would do something and she turned

appealingly to Basine.

"All kinds, sir," the judge answered in his most effective baritone.

Lindstrum nodded his head slowly and a grin came into his eyes. He kept

looking at the judge and grinning and nodding his head and just as the

judge was going to say something Lindstrum abandoned him. He had turned

to Aubrey. Aubrey had grown eager. A confusion inspired by an impulse

toward garrulity was in his eyes. He wanted to talk to this Lindstrum

and discuss things beyond everybody in the room. Lindstrum thought he

was a soda-water clerk. One of those radicals with unbalanced ideas. But

he wanted to talk to him. Perhaps they had something in common? Aubrey

felt himself growing angry. But it was not an anger of silences. An

anger of words. He wanted to talk, to reason with Lindstrum and put

himself over with Lindstrum. Lindstrum was like a conscience.

"Hello!" The arrival stood up and looked at Doris. He forgot about

calling her names. She was smiling at him like a fresh wind blowing

through his heart. The roomful dropped out of sight.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" he asked slowly. "It's nice and cold

outside."

She nodded and Lindstrum, with a long, deliberate stare at the company

spoke to them.

"Good night," he said. When he had said it he continued to stare as if

he were weighing the matter over carefully and should say something

more. The pause grew embarassing but not to him. Without nodding his

head he repeated the result of his deliberations.

"Good night," he said in the same voice. That was enough.

He left them sitting in their chairs--a general calmly marching off the

field of victory. He left behind a silence. The company was

uncomfortable.

Mrs. Gilchrist and the judge stared hard at the doorway through which

Lindstrum had passed. They wanted to insult the doorway. Lindstrum's

visit had had a curious effect upon Ramsey. He had sat silent and

avoided the young man's eyes. But he had felt himself becoming animated

as if something were exciting him. When the young man had glanced at him

for a moment he had blushed and an odd nervousness had made his thin

body tremble. Now that Lindstrum was gone he felt the room had become

empty and entirely lacking in interest.

"How do you like him?" Mrs. Basine whispered at his side. She was

worried.

"Him? Oh yes, the young man," Ramsey muttered. "He ... he has nice

eyes."

In the park Lindstrum sat on a bench with Doris and talked.

"All this," he said, "all this night and trees and things we feel more

than we see, are like what you're like. But why should we call that

love. Because love means to hold a woman in your arms. I don't care

about holding a woman. I want to hold something else. If you hold

something in your arms you haven't got it. It's what you can't get your

fingers on that you own most. Because you dream about it. It's what you

dream about that you own most."

He spoke disconnectedly. There were pauses during which he allowed the

night to punctuate his thoughts.

"Have you written any more things since last time?" Doris asked.

"No. I didn't bring anything with me."

He was silent. Doris wished he would sit closer to her. His silence

excited her. She could feel things moving in him. She became nervous.

Her dark eyes looked fully at his profile and a pride elated her. Other

men didn't stare like that into the night. They had fussy little eyes

and fussy little bodies. They fidgeted around. But Lief sat as if he

were turned to granite.

There was something ominous about him. The glint of his straight eyes

and the leather color of his face were ominous. She felt that he was

powerful, more powerful than the spaces he stared into. He could stand

up and swing the park around their heads. She wanted to come close to

him.

"Lief," she whispered, "why don't you come oftener. I get lonely for

you. I hardly talk to anybody else."

He nodded as if agreeing with her and saying silently, "That's right.

Don't talk to anybody else." But he said nothing aloud.

She wanted to be the thing he swung around his head. If he would take

her up and destroy her it would make her crazy with happiness. She

closed her fingers around his hand and trembled. Her body felt weak.

Her arms were as if she no longer directed them. They were being drawn.

"I'm so proud of you. You're so different from all of them, Lief. I

can't stand them sometimes. They're terrible."

He nodded his head with a ponderous air of sagacity.

"They make me sick," she went on. "All of them. They're not like people

but like something else. Like parts of people."

He nodded his head again. She was all right--this girl. She didn't

belong with the pack in the room he had left. She wasn't a little slut

... one of those lying, filthy ones. But he was afraid of her. He wanted

to keep things like they were. If you let down to a woman she started

climbing all over you and asking for this and for that. Anyway it was

time to walk back now. There was a lot of work in the shop. He got up at

six.

They walked out of the park together. The spring night called for

endings. The darkness hinted. The day with its houses and noises

lingered like an unnatural memory in the shadows. What were people for?

The darkness hinted. Doris felt a mist in her blood. So curious, the

day. Unreal, empty. Noises that circled, faces that went on forever.

People had been moving forever. They kept walking and walking. There was

no ending to people. The years passed under their feet like a treadmill

and they kept moving on.

Now it was quiet. Beside this man she felt there was no more moving on.

Her heart filled with impatience. It was hard to breathe. Her arms were

heavy, overcrowded. "Oh," she whispered to herself, "I'll die. I'll

die."

But they continued to walk. The man's silences, his ominous reserves,

his sagacious noddings had excited her. She felt angry with him. He had

called for her a half dozen times in the last two months. They had met

by accident in a book store. A clerk had introduced them. He called and

they went for walks. But he said nothing. Once he had told her she was

beautiful. Another time he had mentioned, as if it were a casual thing,

that she was the sort of girl to whom he would like to make a gift. But

of what, he didn't know. Some gift worthy, he said. She had been

frightened of him at first. But gradually as she grew accustomed to his

strange manners, his bristling silences, she became impatient, angry.

He stopped.

"I'll go this way," he announced. "Good-night."

He stood looking at her for a long minute and then turning, walked away.

She watched him but he didn't look back. She walked to the house alone.

Her thoughts now were clear. He was a man who didn't want her but was

looking for something of which she was a part. He never tried to touch

her. He never said, "I love you," to her. But he did love. She knew

that. He called it by other names and misunderstood himself. And he

might go on that way till he died, misunderstanding himself. To be near

her thrilled him. She remembered how he became taut, immobile, sitting

on the bench. His arms quivered. Yet he never tried to embrace her.

She thought about this as she walked to her home. Would he ever embrace

her? She knew about his silences. She could even feel how he suffered

inside because something was urging him that had no direction. It was

this life in him that lured her. It stirred her senses.

Nothing before had interested her. Days had passed with no difference in

them. Now he made a difference. When she remembered him a pain that was

like anger filled her.

She would go to bed and lie in the dark dreaming of him with her eyes

open. A languor made it difficult to walk. She smiled to herself. It was

pleasant, sweet to think of him. For a moment the image of his face

transfixed her. She whispered aloud, "Talk to me. Oh, please ...

please...."

Then images that disgusted her crowded her thought. They came of their

own volition. Her sister Fanny kissing men. Her brother George kissing

women. Keegan, the judge, Ramsey, Aubrey and Henrietta--they disgusted

her with their continual love-making, kissing, dirtiness. People like

that didn't understand anything else. Their bodies searched each other

out and clung to each other. Bodies clenched together--she began to rage

in silence against them. He called them the pack. They were like that--a

pack of animals with nothing else but animal bodies to live with. She

paused in her hating, a chill coming between her silent words. The

company of images in her mind had dissolved. Their faces came together

and blurred into a single face and she saw Lief Lindstrum holding her

wildly against him, his lips open and hot against her mouth....

The company had gone. Her family was left in the library. She had

intended going upstairs without speaking. But she came into the room and

sat down. Fanny looked at her with a questioning innocence that said,

"Dear me, I wonder what people do who walk in the park at night?" Her

brother was talking. He looked at her with a smile and went on.

"You mustn't think I'm a blockhead, mother, about these people here

tonight, for instance. Just because I get along with them. I'll give you

my theory of people. We were discussing our guests," he explained

turning to Doris. She nodded. "Never believe them," he grinned. "They're

all liars. The thing to do is to lie better than they. Honesty, purity,

nobility--bah! I know what I'm talking about. That's what people tell

each other they are. And they are, of course. Till they're found out.

You said a little while ago I was lying. Of course I was. But not the

way you mean. That breach of promise case really happened. I wasn't

lying about that. You wait, you'll understand what I mean after a few

years. I'm going to do things."

He stood up and yawned. Mrs. Basine smiled happily at him. The day had

tired her. She felt pleasantly responsible for her three children. Three

human beings that belonged to her. At least she could pretend they did.

And sometimes it was almost as nice dreaming of what they had in their

minds as planning her own tomorrows. Basine went to his bedroom.

He undressed and lay down. Sounds continued in the house. Doris coming

upstairs. Fanny chattering to his mother. Water running in the bathroom.

He turned the gas out and lay with his face toward the window.

His body was weary. But he felt young. He thought of the many years

ahead of him. Everything was new. Even the century had just begun. A new

century. Life was a gay unknown. He thought about things. Things filled

the future. They could not be seen or understood but their presence

could be felt. Unlived years stretched ahead, like a track without end.

He must be careful not to grow too serious. Lying was easy but he must

avoid getting tangled up. Say anything you want to, but look out how

hard you say it. People were easy. It would all come out beautifully.

Success, power, fame, money, happiness--they were all easy. They would

all come to him. People were fools and you could get ahead of them. He

yawned. He almost fell asleep. His mind mumbled with words. His day

dreams, his memories, his weariness jumbled dim pictures. Phantoms

drifted without outline over his head.

He fell asleep and dreamed he was in a brightly lighted hall. Men were

cheering. Music played and people were yelling his name. In the dream he

was going to make a speech. The brightly lighted hall grew larger and

the crowd reached as far as he could see. But he didn't come out to make

the speech. Instead a woman in a gaudy dress came out. Her face was

white with powder and heavily painted. Her eyes were sunken. In the

dream he shuddered because the great crowd would rave indignantly at the

substitute who had come out to make the speech for him. But instead, a

tremendous cheer went up at the sight of this woman and everybody

yelled, "Basine ... Basine.... There he is. Hooray for Basine!" They

mistook the woman for him. The woman began to make his speech. The one

he had prepared. She spoke in a tired, hollow voice but the crowd

continued to cheer. Where was he in the dream? There was no Basine in

the dream. He kept wondering about this. There was no Basine but the

crowd thought this woman in the gaudy dress with the painted face was

Basine and they cheered her for him, calling her, "Basine...." while he,

hiding somewhere, the dream didn't say where, listened to the woman and

the cheers and the shouts of his name. He was saying to himself with a

feeling of horror, "I know that woman they think is me. It's that woman

Keegan and I met once. Keegan and I met her, by God!" He was going to

stop something but the dream went away.

The city grows and keeps on growing. People vanish. Buildings spring up

to take their places. The streets become full of vast, intricate

activities. People have vanished but these activities keep on growing.

The city shakes with noises. A cloud of noises rises from the street and

bursts slowly into names. Everywhere one turns, doors and windows

chatter with names. Names run up and down the faces of buildings. Gilt

names slant downward, porcelain names curve like lopsided grins. Names

fly from banners, hang from long wires, lean down from rooftops.

The city is plastered with names. Tired men stop and blink. They mutter

to themselves in the street, "Lets see, where am I?" Their eyes stare at

an inanimate dance of names. Names fall out of the sky. An alphabet

face with eyebrows, nose, lips and hair made of names winks and sticks

out its tongue.

These are not the names of people but of activities. As the city grows

the names pile up and reach higher. Names of things to eat, wear, see,

feel, smell, dream of and die for--they become too many to see and far

too many to read. They drift up and down the faces of the buildings and

scamper over the pavements like a lunatic writing.

The vanished people no longer look at them. But the names continue to

pile up and spread out. They are a city apart. They no longer offer

clews to people. They are no longer advertisements yelping vividly out

of the air, but a decoration. Inscrutable hieroglyphs that salute each

other in the grave confusion of windows. They grimace with secret

meanings at each other and keep each other company in the night sky.

Like the people they too have become too many. As the city grows their

meanings and purposes also vanish, leaving behind a comet's tail and a

deaf and dumb good-bye.

The city grows and devours itself and ceases to become articulate in

names. It shakes and howls senselessly. No one understands where the

noises come from or why. Windows become too many to count. Activities

double on themselves and tangle themselves up in other activities until

each activity becomes a mystery to itself. Business men buried in

business pause to blink at their desks and mutter, "Let's see, where am

I?"

Underneath the activities and the comet's tail of names, the vanished

ones crawl about their business of destinations. They have remained

sedately unaware of their disappearance. They have barricaded themselves

behind activities and for the most part they are silent. Their

activities talk for them in a language easy to hear but difficult to

understand. Furnaces, engines, factories, traffic--these talk. Their

talk is very important. It is curious that for the simple business of

keeping alive there should be so many activities necessary. It is also

incomprehensible.

Among themselves people offer each other informations and

interpretations. But these informations and interpretations are not of

their souls but of their activities which have nothing to do with them

except to hide them. They talk of business enterprise, of success,

progress, civic development, industrial achievement, political ideals;

of money made and money spent. This talk sounds very important. It

becomes an important part of the confusion of activities.

Faces uncoiling in the streets, legs slanting against dark walls, suits

of clothes--these are the vanished people. Masses of rich and poor

moving on, everlastingly moving on through the whirl of years. Age like

a tenacious pestilence shovels them off a treadmill. Yet they remain and

increase and become hidden from each other by their too many selves,

hidden from themselves by their too many activities. They grow confused

and stop staring at each other. They walk listening to the shake of the

city, blinking at the alphabet face above them.

The city is a great bubble they have blown. It floats over their heads

and grows greater and more dazzling. Slowly it sinks down and engulfs

them.

This bubble talks for them. Activities talk for them. It is easier that

way. Activities say, "We, the people." This suffices. The vanished ones

point with relief to the glitter of activities and repeat, "There are

we."

But activities grow too fast and too intricate to understand. The burst

of names becomes too violent to grasp. Then the people lost in their

bubble become an insupportable mystery to themselves.

Buried beneath activities that grow by themselves, that seem to pulse

with mathematical passions and to multiply like a devouring fungus, the

vanished ones send up a clamor for whys and wherefores. An official

clamor. Life has become an enigma deeper than death. The cry is no

longer "Who is God? And where does He live?" But, "Who are We and what

are We?"

Surveying themselves they see nothing and demand explanations of this

phenomenon. Baffled by their anonymity they demand identifications. They

want to be assured that things are all right, that their burial is O. K.

And thus new explainers and identifiers leap daily into existence. These

are the bombinators, the dexterous geniuses able to translate the

insupportable mystery of life. Life is a mumble mumble, a pointless

delirium. People feel this and grow very serious. They feel life is a

little breath, a whimsical zephyr capering for a moment through space.

But these are insupportable feelings. It is easy for the fish in the sea

to feel like that but in people there is a mania for direction. Out of

this mania is born the necessity of illusion--the illusion of direction.

There must be illusion. Life is not a mumble mumble but a clear voice

teeming with precisions. Not a pointless delirium but a vast, orderly

activity that has names--too many names to count.

As children demand lights in the darkness, grown older they demand

illusions in life. Their reasoning is simple. "We are so puny," they

think. "There is hardly anything to us. We dare not dream or even think.

Look what would happen if we allowed ourselves to dream. We would begin

asking impossible questions of ourselves. Why are we? What lies under

our senses? So we must put away dreams and thought. They're dangerous.

But without them we become insufficient to ourselves. We become

incomplete. So make us a part of something outside ourselves that we may

remain unaware of our insufficiency. Make us a part of laws and ideas,

Gods, systems and activities. We are frightened by what we do not know.

And above the highest names on our buildings is a circle of unknowns.

Dispel this circle so that we may be rid of our fear. Give us paths to

traverse, goals to struggle toward and make these paths and goals

outside ourselves. We dare not adventure inside ourselves because that

way is inimical. Inspire us with great outward purposes so that the

inward purposelessness of our lives that would devour us in enigmas will

be obscured."

The illusion-bringers arise--dexterous craftsmen able to fashion

purposes, Gods, ideals. Their work is to create heroic destinations, to

invent objectivity. These are the geniuses. They provide the sanities

which are the vital solace for terror. They invent masters because

masters are necessary since to have a master is to have an

objective--servitude. The instinct for servitude is an old, unfailing

friend. It represents the clamor for an outward purpose to conceal the

inner purposelessness of the vanished ones. And the geniuses are those

in whom the instinct for servitude inspires new visions of lovelier

masters. Thus is progress made--by increasing and making more definite

the demands of masters.

Once the geniuses found their task simple. Now it grows difficult.

Famous masters, famous illusions, famous objectives lose their value.

Their capacity for solace dwindles. The illusion of God grows dim. The

illusions that bore the names Zeus, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohamet are

fading. The knees of the race have stiffened with vanity and prayer

grows difficult. The great Heavens overladen with their angel choirs and

hierarchies tumble about the ears of people. Slowly the reservoirs of

faith in consoling myths dry up. Epigrams have almost sponged away one

of the immemorial deeps of the soul.

The geniuses cast about inventing new masters, masters who will reward

and punish and establish paths to traverse and goals to achieve. As the

activities increase and as people vanish deeper under the self-growing

fungus of finance, industry, government, they develop a paradoxical

vanity. A vanity by which they seek to preserve themselves. A vanity

becomes necessary that will save them from the knowledge of their

inferiority to life.... Their age-old illusion of Gods on High drifts

away. The new illusion slowly unfolds. Again the reasoning is simple.

The race speaks.... "There is no longer a God or a Heaven of futures.

The words eternity and infinity are bottomless and no longer hold us or

guide us. But we must have a master, one who will enable us to dream of

His recompense since we still dare not adventure in dreams of our own.

And this master must assure us as our old master did--that there are

great purposes in life, great rewards. We will make a minor change in

our theology. Once it was our desire to think of ourselves as having

been created in the image of God--a Superior. This was when we were

strong, when we walked the earth and wore our destinies like gay

feathers in our caps. Now we have grown diffused and weak. The world is

no longer simple enough for us to understand and ignore. We dare not

ignore our disappearance from life. Therefore in order to compensate for

this disappearance we will create a God in our image and worship Him.

The deeper we sink, the further we vanish, the higher, nobler and more

powerful will we make our new God. Come, illusion mongers, we desire a

new God. We desire a new Heaven. Make us a Heaven of quicksilver in

which we may see not Jehovah who is a myth but our own image glorified,

which is closer to reality, and which our dawning intelligence may more

easily swallow. In this heaven let us see our civic virtues magnified.

We want for a master an idealization of ourselves, whom we may serve in

hope of rewards."

Thus the vanished ones stare aloft and slowly the heavenly mirror

spreads itself for them--a mirror of identifications and explanations.

It is all clear--or at least it grows clear--in this mirror; who we are

and what we are.... A beautiful image marches across its face. It is the

image of the vanished ones, ennobled and deified--become a new illusion,

become a God-like creature with flashing eyes. A marvelous,

unsurpassable creature whose every gesture is perfection, whose every

grimace is unsurpassable perfection. A reassuring God. Whatever their

moods, their despairs, their manias--they have only to look up and see

them ennobled and deified in the mirror-heaven.

Gazing aloft the vanished ones raise their voices in a cheer of triumph.

"We are confused. We have disappeared. Our activities have devoured us.

But we are not afraid. For behold, whatever we do, we remain God. See

our reflection. We are always and consistently perfect. Our stupidities,

hysterias, bewilderments shine back at us out of this new Heaven as

God-like attributes. Wisdom and victory smile at us eternally out of our

mirror. Let the city devour itself and become a jungle of names. Let

life lose itself in the labyrinth of activities. Let the buildings

devour life until it becomes less than a tiny warmth under huge ribs of

steel. These things are no longer insupportable. There is an answer

always to 'Who are we and what are we?' We are God. By worshipping

ourselves we may now dispel the dawning knowledge of our insufficiency.

The old God is dead. He was an illusion. The new God alone now has the

power to punish and reward. We will kneel with fanatical servitude

before the image of our virtues and punish ourselves with a terrible

justice in order to appear God-like in our own eyes."

Slowly the new heaven above the city grows and the vanished ones with

the eyes of Narcissus stare enchanted into its quicksilver depths.

In the days that followed her walk with Lindstrum in the park, Doris

Basine abandoned herself to her passion for the man. Her body desired

him. She dreamed of their coming together as of some transcendental

climax.

But the months passed and Lindstrum held himself aloof. She felt certain

of herself though. It was only necessary to wait. She could go on

dreaming of him and waiting too. To think of him, to remember he was

alive, this for the time was happiness enough.

After a number of months they saw each other oftener. He seemed to grow

more dependent on the fanatical admiration of her eyes and words. Her

flattery stirred an excitement in him that he was learning to utilize in

writing. The fact that he was loved made it easier to write. The memory

of the things she said, of the desire in her eyes was like music. It was

easier to write with music playing in his head. But the more he wrote

and dreamed of writing the less he desired her. So her passion became an

applause urging him from her.

He would listen trembling to her gradually shameless avowals.

"You're so wonderful. So remarkable. You're the only man in the world

that's alive. Your genius is something I can't even talk about. It must

be worshipped. I love you."

In the midst of such monologues she would suddenly vanish from

Lindstrum's thought. Her beauty and desire were powerless to hold his

attention. Her enfevered praise would become a lash that drove him into

himself. And, trembling with a passion that her love had aroused, he

would leave her. But it would be a passion which demanded possession not

of her but of himself.

He would walk excitedly to his room over his father's shop and sit down

to write.

After many months Doris began to understand. He brought her poems he had

written; poems like night music and passion music. She felt his heart

throbbing among their words. Even his body was in them. What she wanted

of him he gave to the poems he wrote.

She announced herself at home as tired of her surroundings and

dependence. Through the aid of a friend she secured a job as clerk in a

large bookstore. One evening she came home to tell her mother she was

going to move.

Basine entered the argument that followed. To her surprise he took her

side, agreeing with her that a modern young woman had a better chance of

realizing herself if she lived alone and made her own way.

Mrs. Basine refused to be convinced. Not about the theories, she

explained, but about Doris. When her two children argued with her she

felt herself the victim of a conspiracy. Why did Doris want to leave her

home? And why did George want her to? The answers didn't lie in the

arguments they gave. But because she was unable to determine what the

answers were, she assented. Later she thought,

"If I hadn't given my consent she would have done it anyway. This way

I've saved her from being disobedient."

Doris took up her life in a two-room apartment on the near north side of

the city. The district was alive with rooming-houses, little stores,

lovers who walked hand in hand at night, artists who tried to paint,

writers who worked as clerks and tried to write, workingmen, artisans,

derelicts. Everyone seemed alone in this district and on warm evenings

groups of strangers sat stiffly on the stone steps of the houses and

stared at the sky.

Doris was able to live on her salary. She made friends and her evenings

were devoted to conversations. But they were a curious type of friends.

They were men and women one got to know only by their ideas. One became

acquainted with their ideas, then familiar with them, then on terms of

intimacy with them.

It had been different at home. At home she knew men and women as they

were. They sat around and talked and if you listened to what they said

you came close to them. You understood them and when they said

good-night you knew where they were going. You knew all about them,

where they worked, their family, their homes. They grew into familiars

as uninteresting and unmysterious as your own relatives.

But here where Doris had come to live were men and women about whom you

never learned anything. They talked and talked but all the while you

wondered where they worked, what things were in their hearts. You

wondered how they lived and what they did all the time. But you never

found out. Such informations were not a part of the talk that went on.

It was all talk about outside things, about politics and women and art.

Everybody in the circle Doris entered became familiar in a short time.

But after they had become familiar there remained this mystery about

them. What sort of people were they under their poses and behind their

words?

The most curious change her freedom brought Doris was a garrulity that

surprised even herself. She became adept in arguments vindicating the

emancipation of her sex and proving that the ideals and standards by

which women lived were the rose-covered chains forged for their

enslavement by man.

But her garrulity did not deceive Doris. She grew more clearly aware of

herself. She knew that her entire upheaval, her taking up new ideas, her

repudiating conventions had been inspired by a single factor. She wanted

to live alone in a room so there would be no difficulty in giving

herself to Lindstrum when the opportunity came.

With this in mind she had deliberately converted herself into a "new

woman," since an expression of the new womanhood was independence of

family and since independence of family meant a room to herself. Of this

subterfuge Doris became tolerantly aware. Her hypocricies did not

concern her. In her desire for the man she loved the surfaces of her

life disappeared like straws in flame.

Lindstrum had visited her in her new quarters with misgivings. When he

was alone he often sat thinking of her and repeating her ardent phrases.

This helped him to make love to himself, to seduce the strange companion

who lived in the depths of his soul into embracing him. Out of this

embrace came words. Out of the ecstacy these hypnotisms induced, he was

able to create gigantic phrases, mystic sequences of words whose reading

often inspired people with an excitement similar to the emotion that had

produced them. Women in particular grew emotional at the contact of his

written words. When he read his poetry to some of them who were his

friends they closed their eyes and thought he was making love to them.

Lindstrum utilizing the adoration Doris gave him as a means of

self-seduction, remained aware of the danger this offered. The danger

was summed up in the word "marriage." At twenty-six his sexual impulses

found sublimated outlet in the orgies of self-seduction which he called

his creative work. Thus his physical nature clamored for no other mate

than his own genius, and the lure of marriage as a legalized debauch

failed to touch him. His egoism likewise found a more perfect surfeit in

his own self-admiration than in that of others. He saw in marriage

merely a forfeit of his privacy and an intruder upon his self-love.

Doris studying him carefully from behind her abandonment discovered the

barrier.

"I don't want ever to marry," she explained to him. This started talk in

which Lindstrum defended marriage as an institution. He grew eloquent on

the subject that society and civilization were dependent upon marriage

and that a man who sought to dispense with it was merely being

unfaithful to himself as a member of society.

Doris saw through the angry phrases of her friend that he was trying to

tell her how little he desired her. He was defending marriage and

proclaiming his belief in it, in order to excuse his physical

indifference toward her, both in his own eyes and hers. Since she had

said she thought marriage was an abomination, he could safely defend it

without compromising himself. He need have no fear that she would agree

with him. In this way his pose as a moralist was a convenient method of

concealing the fact that he had no impulse toward immorality. He could

even insist with impunity that she marry him and so use her rhetorical

stand against marriage in general as a personal refusal.

Doris allowed matters to drift through the year. One winter night

Lindstrum, invited innocently to occupy the sofa in the studio rather

than to tackle the storm-bound transportation outside, consented. He sat

reading things he had written until midnight came.

He did not see how it had happened but when he looked up after one of

his readings Doris was sitting before the small grate fire. Her face was

turned from him and he stared at her. She had undressed and slipped a

green silk robe over her body. Her black silk stockings gleamed like

exclamation points in the firelight. Her throat and breasts were visible

and the shadows mirrored themselves in her white arms.

As he looked at her the warmth of the room seemed to bring her closer.

He thought her beautiful and standing up went to her side. His hand

sought clumsily to caress the hair coiled on her head. He stood silent,

remembering how she loved him. Always the thought excited him. But now

he seemed to be thinking about it with a curious calm. There was

something about a woman who loved that was beyond words to figure out.

She looked up at him with a smile. A faint odor stirred from her. He

found himself drawing deep breaths and staring at her with a heavy pain

in his arms. The pain she had always brought to him and out of which he

had made his words. Now this was easier, simpler--to reach his arms

around her....

* * * * *

... "I belong to you now," she whispered as the dawn lighted the room.

The fire in the grate still burned feebly. They had kept it alive

during the night.

"You see," she went on, "I was right about not marrying. We can love

each other like this without marrying ever. Oh I love you so. You make

me so happy."

"Yes," he murmured sleepily, intent upon the whitening room. "Dawn--the

white shadow of night," whispered itself through his mind. But he said

nothing. After an interval he repeated as if delivering himself of

innumerable ideas--"Yes."

* * * * *

... Lindstrum slowly extricated himself from the lure of her passion.

For months her love, dissolving rapturously in his embrace, remained a

flattery too bewildering to resist. He allowed himself then to yield to

the slowly accumulating demands of his mistress. Nevertheless in a month

he had lost interest in his own sensations. The thought of impending

embraces in the studio failed to arouse him.... There was nothing Doris

had to give that was comparable to the delicious elation his own

self-seduction held for him.

But although the physiology of sex lost its attraction for him, he

remained interested in Doris' submission. Her delight in his caresses

and her exclamations of arduous love fascinated him as a species of

applause. He grew able to resist the contagion of her sensualism and to

make her happy, without essentially occupying himself.

In the second year of their association he gradually undermined her

passion. Aware of his complete coolness, Doris fought successfully to

suppress the ecstacies he was able to stir in her. Their relations by

degrees returned to a platonic basis.

Lindstrum was becoming known. His poetry printed in fugitive labor

gazettes was attracting a slight attention. He was being identified as a

poet of the masses. The masses, however, unable to understand, let alone

appreciate the mystic imagery and elusive passion of his vers libre

phrasings remained oblivious to him. They continued to read and swear by

the newspaper jinglers celebrating in rhyme the platitudes which kept

them in subjugation. His fame was beginning through the enthusiasm of a

few scattered dilletantes who abhorred the masses and saw in his work an

intense technique and high asthetic quality.

He remained loyal to Doris in one respect, still coming to her for the

adulation which somehow quickened his desire to write. But Doris, with

the repression of her own desires had grown silent. She appeared to

relapse into her former self--the enigmatic and disdainful virgin of the

Basine library.

But this simulation included only her mannerisms. As a girl of twenty

she had been without thought. Now a strange intellectualism preoccupied

her. It developed when she was twenty-three and when Lindstrum was

beginning to ignore her again. It began with the knowledge that there

were definite preoccupations luring her lover from her. Against one of

these she knew herself powerless. This was his desire to write. She had

understood this thing in Lindstrum from the first. It had been, in fact,

the lure of the man. But now it had taken entire possession of him and

had become her rival.

He had grown dumb. His grey eyes no longer smiled or roved. They gazed

without movement as if fixed on invisible objects. They seemed without

sight, yet there was life in them--an intensity like the anger of

blindness. He no longer looked at things. He avoided contact with the

visible and imposed a deliberate fog on his vision. He went through his

day unaware of details, yet absorbing them; unseeing, yet translating

the commonplaces around him into phenomena that tugged at the hearts of

his few readers.

Doris knew the futility of combating in her lover the habit of

self-seduction now became a vital necessity. She tried to establish a

harmony between them by turning to writing herself. The clarity of her

mind made poetry impossible. Her thoughts refused to dissolve into

magnificent blurs. Her emotions were too definite to find solacing

outline in ambiguous pirouettes.

She envied her lover his natural aptitude for poetry. It seemed to her a

comforting and satisfying evasion--to write poetry. There were no rules

of logic, coherence, technique. There was even no rule of

intelligibility.

There was a man named Levine with whom she discussed matters of this

sort, exchanging definitions with him of such things as life, love and

art. He was a Jew and worked on a newspaper. Lean, vicious-tongued and

unkempt, the fantastic skepticism of this man attracted her. He was a

man without principles, ideas, prejudices. His attitude toward life she

sensed to be a pose. But he had been completely consumed by this pose

and the pose was one of superiority. His brain was like a magician. It

waved words over ideas or problems and they turned inside out. Or they

vanished and reappeared again as their opposites. He appeared to devote

himself with a mysterious enthusiasm to proving everyone but himself in

the wrong. When he read editorials in the newspapers he would comment,

"They say this. But they mean this." And he grew elated explaining the

low, sordid motives which inspired the noble-phrased pronouncements in

the press and elsewhere.

When she talked to him about poetry one evening he knew her well enough

to understand she wanted to talk about Lindstrum. Doris had tried her

hand at poetry and the results had been in a measure satisfactory. Poems

had come out under her pencil. She compared them coldly with things Lief

had written. They were as good and better. She offered them to Levine to

read. He nodded after each one and smiled, "Very nice. Excellent.

Superb." Then he handed them back to her and added, "I've always known

this. Anybody can write poetry. This poetry is quite good. But it

remains, you're no poet."

And he recited from memory a few lines of Lindstrum's work.

"You see the difference," he said. "His rings truer. Although yours is

much more lucid and beautifully written. The difference isn't between

your work and his but between your work and yourself and his work and

himself. When Lindstrum wrote that he felt a thrill of satisfaction. He

had for a minute completed himself in the poem. Therefore the thing

represented a certain perfection. When you wrote you felt nothing after

writing it. In an hour the whole thing seemed rather senseless and

unworthy of you. You felt no thrill of completion. This shows that no

matter if you write a dozen times better than Lindstrum the fact

remains that you're not a poet and he is.

"But why write poetry. I have a friend who says that poetry is an impish

attempt to paint the color of the wind. He hasn't written any himself

yet but he will. But I've warned him. He'll never succeed. Lindstrum

will because Lindstrum has the faculty of rising above logic. He can

recreate his emotions in words. Emotion is unintelligent, banal,

wordless. The trick of being a great poet is to make your mind

subservient to your emotion--the triumph of matter over mind, in other

words."

He noticed an inattentiveness and stopped. He hoped some day to make

love to her but as long as she remained interested in his verbal

jugglings he was content with that.

When she was alone Doris took a morbid interest in unravelling ideas and

attenuations of ideas. Morbid, because the process seemed to bring a

melancholy to her. But she persisted. There was an elation. Thinking was

like a game in which one surprised oneself with denouements.

One day while walking she reasoned silently about her situation. Her

love for Lindstrum had grown. At times it fell on her like a despair.

She would lie in the dark of her room repeating to herself that she

would go mad unless he came back to her, unless he loved her.

Walking swiftly she began to think of her plans. Her plans centered upon

bringing him back to her arms.

"If I'm going to do this I must first of all be clear about myself," she

thought. "I've become interested in lots of things. I must find out why

and what's started me."

The answer that came to her was one of the denouements of the game. It

repeated, but clearly, that she was chiefly concerned with bringing Lief

back to her and that one way to do this was to become keener than he,

become brilliant enough to deflate him, to confuse him. And this could

best be done by attacking his subject matter, by turning his conceptions

of life and people upside down and so throwing him out of gear.

When she got home she was still thinking.

"What I must do, is make him think. He doesn't think. The pictures he

sees pass like blurs through his eyes and come out like blurs under his

pencil. If I can make him think he'll have to open his eyes. He'll have

to defend what he accepts without defenses now--the nobility of the

masses, the beauty of life. And if he starts thinking and doubting he

won't be able to write because he's not built to write that way. He's

built to write out of passion."

The idea became cruelly apparent in her mind. She must destroy Lindstrum

in order to possess him. She must beat down the passionate certitude of

the man, puncture his blind, roaring egomania, take away from him his

genius and then he would turn to her.

Her thought at this point gave itself over to the passion in her. Anger

filled her and a strange viciousness as though she had something under

her hands to tear to pieces. Her clear-thinking mind was a weapon--a

thing she could use to destroy a rival with. And if it destroyed Lief

along with the rival, what matter? Slowly the morbidity of her position

grew. Levine was an ally. His talk gave her ideas--directions in which

to think. She disliked his attitude. The man was an insincerity. There

was also something unctuous and cowardly about him. He never stood up

for his notions in the face of conservatively indignant people. He

capitulated and even denied his beliefs or lack of beliefs. Yet in the

nihilism to which he pretended she found a background for her own

thinking. Nihilism to Levine was a conversational pastime. To Doris it

became a despairing hope for salvation. She poured over books, carefully

questioned the secrets of life, not like a philosopher seeking answers

but like a Messalina questing for poisons.

Her debates with Lindstrum were at first casual and good-natured. A

humility before his genius made her unable to assert herself. He could

hurl his mystic word sequences at her and their beauty made her

incapable of appreciating their lack of psychologic content.

But her determination grew. She must destroy--what? The somber ecstasy

which the spectacle of people awoke in him. People ... people ... the

word contained the shape and soul of her rival. People ... workers,

toilers, underdogs ... he sang of their bruised hearts and their little

gropings. Songs of unfulfilled dreams, of moods like ashen baskets that

broke under the weight of life. Coal miners, farmers, stevedores,

vagrants, desperadoes, drowsy clerks and fumbling factory hands--the

dull faces of the immemorial crowd sweating for its living, grunting

under its burdens--his phrases hymned their loneliness and their

defeats. Beautiful phrases that seemed almost the work of a fantastic

word weaver. But she knew better. The little images, the patterns of

street scenes, the aloof fragments of idea--these might be to some only

decorations. The curve of a pick going through the air, the shake of a

great trestle with an overland train thundering across, the glint of a

night torch under the eyes of a section gang--these might be only

abstractions outlining bits of rhythm and color. But then Lindstrum

would not have been a poet.

There was beneath them, buoying them higher and higher like some

mysterious, invisible force, a passion. It escaped now and then from

between the lines of his work, shaking itself like a fist, holding its

arms out like a lost woman. Threats crept out of the placid little

images in which fragments of street scenes postured vividly for the eye.

A fury loomed suddenly behind the mumble of a hurdy-gurdy piece; a snarl

offered itself as invisible punctuation for a fol de rol of city life.

It was a passion that identified itself with, and seemed to fatten upon,

the injustices of life. It sought to champion the war of the crowd

against man and nature.

"The humble ones ... the humble ones...." it sang, "they are God. The

ones life walks upon. The working ones, the cheated ones--here is their

song. The oppressed ones, listen to their hearts beating."

It was a passion out of which a great propagandist might have been born.

But Lindstrum's mind was too simple to utilize it, even to understand

it. He was aware only of a torment that seemed to twist at his heart and

bring words like soothing whispers into his thought. A craftsman

obsession moulded it slightly. But always the inarticulate excitements

that had started him writing remained fugitive among his written words

saying neither "I hate," nor "I love," but affirming with a monotonous

crescendo, "I am. I am!"

Doris caught by the fanatic lyricism of his songs yielded her intellect

to them for a time. The shoemaker Wotans and hobo Christs startled her

into an acquiesence. But she was determined. She knew that her praise of

his poetry was like an admiration of his infidelity. Yes, he loved

people as he might have loved her, blindly with his heart, with his arms

around their bodies and his grey eyes looking hungrily through them.

The debates grew less casual. There were abrupt climaxes during which he

stared at her with anger. Then it was no longer a debate of ideas but of

wills. Here she knew herself powerless and yielded at once, making use

of her apology to caress his face or seize his hand.

Alone again she would study the things she had said as she studied from

day to day the social, political and spiritual history of her own and

other times. Her mind grew to master the phrases which outlined the

illusions of the crowd, which revealed the lusts and errors of the

crowd. Her thought inspired by the single desire to destroy for her

lover the beauty of her rival, rallied continually from its defeats

before his anger. Her cynicism became a mystic thing--her adoration of

her lover turning into a hatred of life, a contempt of people.

At night she sat in the window of her room overlooking the thinly

crowded street. The obsession held her now, occupying her energies

entirely. In its excitement, in the mental twistings, she found rest

from the desires that burned.

Alone ... she was alone. She would play langorously with this sense of

loneliness. She would repeat quietly, "He'll never come to me again.

Never hold me in his arms. How beautiful he is. His lips are not like

any man's lips could be. But he doesn't love me any more. He loves this

in the street below. Men and women in the street."

And here her thinking would begin, a sequel to the preface of sorrow.

Below her moved the face of her rival--the crowd. She must study the

thing out carefully so as to be clear in her words when she talked to

him. So as to make her words a poison in him that would destroy the

passion for her rival.

The night lifted itself far away. Little lights ran a line of yellow at

the foot of buildings. Men and women. What were men and women? The blur

of faces in the street, moving along every night, what was that?

Something to idealize and give one's soul to? No.

Individuals racing toward their secret destinations and tumbling with a

sigh into an inexhaustible supply of graves--that was a phenomenon to be

studied separately. Out of that one could locate plots, dramas, humor,

tragedy. But here below the window was another story--was a great

character that had no name but that her lover worshipped. The crowd ...

this thing in the street he sang of as the crowd was a single creature.

Its face was one, its voice one. It had one soul--the soul of man. A

dark thing, alive with inscrutable desires.

"They're not people," she whispered, her eyes staring down, "but

traditions walking the street. Accumulations of desires and impulses

taking the night air."

She watched it move in silence, buried beneath names and buildings.

The crowd.... It was blind to itself. Its many eyes peered bewilderedly

about. Its many legs moved in a thousand directions. And yet it was

identical. Faces, different shaped bodies, different colored

suits--these were part of a mask. Sentences that drifted in the night,

laughters, sighs--these were part of a mask. Under the clothes, faces,

names, talk of people, was a real one--the crowd. It had no brain.

And yet this creature that moved in the street below, in all streets

everywhere, made laws, made wars, and mumbled eternally the dark secrets

of its soul. The crowd ... a monstrous idiot that devoured men, reason

and beauty. Now it moved with a purr through the street. It was going

somewhere, making love, making plans, diverting itself with little

hopes. Its passions and its secrets slept. It moved like a great

somnambulist below her window, with a fatuous complacency in its dead

eyes. Its many masks disported themselves in the night air. But let

hunger or fear, let one of the inscrutable impulses awake it, and see

what happened. Ah! Communes, terrors, rivers of blood, heads on spikes,

torture and savagery!

She must tell this all clearly to him, explain lucidly to him how the

hero-crowd of his singing was a gruesome and stupid criminal blind to

itself and afraid of itself and inventing laws to protect it from

itself. How it was a formless thing with hungers and desires moulded in

the beginning of Time. How it demanded proofs of itself that the

darkness of its brain and the savagery of its heart were the twin Gods

from whom all wisdom and justice flowed. How the workers, the defeated

ones, the under dogs he sang of and loved were like the others--lesser

masks envying superior masks. And how the idealisms, Gods and hopes they

all worshipped were lies the beast whispered to itself, fairy tales by

which the beast consoled itself. Yes, a monster that devoured men who

threatened its consolations, a wild fanged beast purring eternally in

the path of progress. Reason was a little cap the masks wore that every

wind blew off. Her loneliness faded. Seated by her window Doris no

longer desired the lips of her lover. There was another elation ... a

knowledge of the thing in the street, a certainty that she could make

Lief Lindstrum understand.

One evening when he had returned to her after an absence of a month she

decided to talk calmly to him of the things she had been thinking. He

came in with an air of caution, that frightened her for an instant. She

studied him as he took off his coat and hat and sat down. It was autumn

outside. Dark winds seemed to have followed him in. This was an old

trick of his that had once thrilled her. He seemed always to have come

from far-away places, to have risen out of depths with secrets in his

eyes. Her heart yielded as she watched him. There was the quality about

him she could never resist, the thing her senses clamored for. Not that

he wrote poetry--but that he was a poet.

It was almost useless to argue with him, to destroy him. No matter what

he said or what he was doing she could see him always as he really

was--a silent figure walking blindly over men and buildings, over days

and nights; walking with its eyes snarling and its mouth tightened;

walking over days and nights after a phantom--a silent figure walking

after a phantom. The phantom whispered, "Come" ... and the silent figure

nodded its head and followed. That was how she saw him when her heart

yielded, when she desired again to throw herself before him, make

herself the phantom he was following.

But the obsession in her changed the picture slowly. Not a phantom but a

face she knew--the face of the crowd. A wild fanged monster that had

cast a spell over her lover and he went walking blindly after it calling

words to it, singing lullabys to it, when all these things should have

been for her.

Their talk began as she wished it. He was ill at ease. Why had he come?

He was afraid to stay away? Why? She wondered questions as he sat

uncertainly in the chair and offered vague gossip and information to

explain his presence. Then she said abruptly:

"I'm writing a story. I've decided not to do any more poetry but write a

story--a book, maybe."

He nodded.

"What about?" he asked.

"People. About people," she smiled. She noticed his body stiffen and his

eyes grow hard.

"Yes, about people," he repeated slowly.

He was cautious when he came to see her now. She had reason to make

demands of him. She had given herself to him and he didn't trust her.

And she was always trying to do something to him. He knew this. It was

hard to understand her lately but one thing was easy--she was not to be

trusted.

"How they come together in crowds," she continued evenly, "and lose

themselves in a common identity. How they become a hideous, unreasoning

savage--a single savage. I'm going to write a book making this savage

the ... the hero."

She paused to look at him. He was inattentive but she knew better.

"You should be interested," she smiled.

"Why should I be interested?" he asked slowly.

"Because you write about people, too."

"Yes."

"Or think you do," she went on. "I'm going to write about people as a

crowd--as one savage without a brain. That's the crowd. And this savage

is the hero of my story. Without a brain to think he creates out of his

savagery the Gods, laws and illusions under which you and I live, Lief.

Do you understand that?"

He looked at her without answer. Her heart grew alive with strength. She

knew he was incapable of any answer but anger. His anger could usually

defeat her but this time she felt she could laugh at him when he began

to scowl. She stood up.

"You," she said softly, "are like they are. Like the crowd. You do not

think or reason. You only feel. Words are accidents to you ... crazy

hats that rain down on your head. You write out of a hatred for things

superior to the beast. You're mad at life because it isn't as beautiful

as you'd like it to be. So when you get maddest you begin to sing lies

about it."

She laughed at the scowl on his face.

"Yes, I've figured it out, Lief. You're a terrible liar. When you say

you love people, the crowd, you're a terrible liar then. You don't love

the crowd at all. What is your love of people but a blind infatuation

with yourself? You hate them. Whose humanity are you all the time

writing about and singing about? Your own. But you're ashamed to admit

that. Sometimes people are ashamed to boast of themselves so they boast

of something else they've created in their own image--of their Gods.

That's the way you boast of your crowd. You're ashamed to boast of

yourself so you fix it up for yourself by giving the virtues you think

you've got to people and then singing about them as if you were an

altruist and a sympathetic human observer. You're a great liar, Lief.

And the thing you love is a lie you make up. Because people are foul.

And you know it. They're not like you or me. They can't think even as

much as a rat thinks. They're as rattle-brained as chickens, as greedy

as vultures. And they lie all the time--good God, how they lie. You hate

them too. You know all this better than I do. But you keep feeling

things and you imagine they're things people feel. You...."

She stopped and looked at him with a smile. She had started to insult

him and had ended by pleading with him. His jaws were working as if he

were chewing. This was his anger. But she felt no defeat, nothing but a

slight confusion. She was disappointed in herself because she could not

recapture the thoughts that had filled her during the month. They had

been clear at their inception but now they were mixed up with desires

for Lief, with a fear of him. They were mixed up so that out of what she

was saying there arose no clear image of Lief and his relation to life

or of the crowd and its foulness.

"Why don't you answer what I say?" she asked. "Are you afraid to discuss

things you are absorbed in? If people are so wonderful let's talk about

them."

She felt a triumph. She had destroyed something. She could tell by his

eyes. They were becoming wild and unfixed. If she could be certain of

destroying it forever, of killing in him the love for her rival ...

then....

"The little finger of one intelligent man is worth the whole of the

French revolution," she was saying excitedly. "You're no different from

the other cowards who devote themselves to flattering the monster. You

know what I mean. The monster rewards liars and flatterers. All you have

to do to be great in the eyes of the world is to celebrate the glories

of the monster. To make a lickspittle of your genius. It's an old and

easy formula. Why don't you think? You stand up with your eyes closed

and sing about things that never existed--about the beauty of people and

... and...."

Lindstrum thrust his face close to her. She paused. A desire to laugh

came as she stared at the too familiar features of the man. This was the

face she had held in her hands and covered with kisses. Nights of

passion and adoration had been shared with this face. Now it held itself

savagely before her and grew blurred. Something had been destroyed in

it. It was no longer familiar. It was somebody else's face....

"People," it said as if it were going to spit at her. "Yes, like you

say. Think about them! God damn...."

"Lief," she murmured.

"Don't call me Lief...." He glowered closer.

"Oh! Then you're angry. Well, I didn't expect you to agree." She made

her voice tender now. She did not want his face unfamiliar like this as

if she had never held it in her hands and covered it with kisses.

But he continued to thrust himself unfamiliarly before her.

"Yes, I agree about the crowd," he answered, his eyes swinging over her

head, his jaws still working. "I agree. You got 'em right. Down in the

mud of themselves. And me with them, do you hear that! Me singing with

'em. Get me, now. I'm going to tell you."

She moved away from this unfamiliar face but it came closer again.

"I don't want any of your brains. Not for mine. I want to be like I am.

This beast you talk about.... That's me. He can't talk or reason.... All

right. He won't then. But he'll do something else. He'll live. He'll go

on living. Yes," he raised his voice to a shout, "I agree with you.

Because I'm the crowd. Do you get that ... you dirty ... you dirty fool

... you...."

The oath brought his passion into his head. His hand clenched and his

fist shot into her face. She staggered away from him, calling his name.

He watched her fall against a couch. A rage cried in him. He was a liar,

was he? And a coward? All right. He was. Look out for all liars and

cowards then. He walked toward the couch and stood above her. What did

she want of him? She wanted something. Tears filled him. People ...

people that sweated and grunted and crawled around like beasts and

raised their eyes at night to the stars.... This monster she gabbed

about, this thing without hands or eyes. That was it.

She was crying on the couch. All right. Let her. But she was crying

because she wanted something.... His hands grabbed her head and

straightened her face until their eyes were looking into each other.

"Listen," he said. He was shaking her. "I'm going away."

Eyes watched each other. She looked until the face she had once kissed

became entirely strange. There was no Lief, no lover. But a face staring

murderously into hers. But there was something else. Tears behind the

stare. Why was he weeping? The question like a tiny visitor sat down in

her mind.

He let her go and walked from the room, grabbing his hat and coat into

his hands as he went.

Doris listened. Down the stairs. Outside. He was gone. She went to the

window. Her eye had swelled and her cheek pained. She sat down and

looked into the street.

"He hit me," she was whispering to herself. She began to weep with

shame. But her tears seemed to soften her heart toward him. He had cried

too. She arose and went to the bed. Here she had lain with him. Warm,

familiar hours. Here her arms had held him. She threw herself down and

wept aloud.

Her guests were getting along famously. Everyone seemed pleased, happy.