"Oh, nothing in particular," he hastened. "Henrietta is the same as
ever."
Doris laughed.
"An ideal wife for a future public hero," she exclaimed. Basine frowned.
"I'd rather you didn't make a joke about such things, Doris."
"I'm not joking. But to be a great leader a man must have only one
love--the love of being a great leader."
"That's wrong," Basine blurted out. "A woman can help a man forward if
he loves her and she's clever and loves him."
"She can't," Doris said softly. "Because she doesn't want to. If she
loves him, she doesn't want him to be great. She may inspire him but
just as soon as she sees his inspiration takes him away from her, she
turns around and tries to ruin him. So she can have him to herself."
Basine listened impatiently. This was a child prattling. Doris was
laughing. He looked at her questioningly. Her laughter continued and
grew harsh.
"You fool," she sighed, controlling herself. "Oh you fool."
Basine shook his head. He was serious. There were hidden facts in his
mind. He knew something about what a woman might do to help a man
forward. These facts seemed to him allies--secret allies, as he
contradicted his sister.
"I insist you're wrong," he said. He was determined to prove her wrong.
But she went on, ignoring his intensity.
"Your wife is ideal, George. Colorless, stupid. Dead. Without desires or
egoism. An ideal wife for a man of ambition. The kind that will let you
alone."
"Nonsense. You're utterly wrong," he cried. He must prove to her how
utterly wrong she was. There was Ruth.
"Men owe most of their success to the impulse the right woman can give
them. Henrietta's all right. But she's so damn dead. She's interested in
nothing. Just a child with a child's mind and outlook. And she gets more
so every year. Good God, if I had somebody with life in her. Keen and
... who loved me. So that I wanted to be great in her eyes. It would be
easier. Somebody ... like you, Doris."
He paused, confused. "I mean," he added, "your type. The intellectual
and female combined."
He had long ago told her of his courtship, of the curious way he had
tricked himself into matrimony and she had always laughed at his
unhappiness and said this--only a fool tricked himself as he had done.
Nevertheless his marriage was ideal.
"Men instinctively pick out what they need," she would say. "And a man
like you needs a nonentity like Henrietta. You wait and see. Your
happiness isn't coming from emotion inside but from emotion outside--the
noise of praise the public will someday give you."
But there were facts now hidden in his head to disprove this. He started
as Doris announced casually,
"Ruth Davis may drop in this afternoon."
They finished their tea. A knock on the door frightened him. The girl!
No. Doris called, "Come in," and Levine entered. Basine nodded to him.
"I'll have to be going," he said as Levine sat down. He disliked the
man. Doris nodded. She appeared to have lost interest in him and, her
tea finished, she was sitting back in her chair with her eyes half shut
and her hands listless in her lap. Levine was talking quietly.... "You
look tired, Doris. Like to go hear Lindstrum lecture tonight? No? Very
well. I just dropped in to see if you would. Come on."
"No," she frowned at him.
"I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"I think it would be better for you to...."
Her eyes shut him off. They were blazing.
"Please," she cried. Then with a sigh she turned toward the window.
Basine stood up. He pretended a leisureliness, opening a few books and
staring with apparent interest at passages in them. Levine and his
sister were a strange pair. Doris queer and moody and going into
impossible tantrums. And this man with brown negro eyes and a
loose-lipped mouth that reeked with sarcasms. There were secrets between
them. Nothing wrong, but secrets. He remembered the girl was coming and
grew frightened.
"Well, good-bye," he said aloud. "And calm down, Doris."
He waited uncomfortably for her to say something. But she was silent. He
looked at his watch and exclaimed in a surprised, matter-of-fact voice,
"Oh my! It's almost four. Good-bye. I must run."
He hurried away as if some logical necessity were spurring him on. The
make-believe had been unnecessary for Doris had paid no attention to the
manner of his departure.
Outside he paused and looked up and down the street. He felt relieved.
He had left in time. Crossing from an opposite corner was Ruth Davis. He
would pretend he hadn't seen her and walk on in an opposite direction.
He knew she was watching him as she approached. He was frightened. A
sense of suffocation. He desired to run away.
She was young. Her eyes had a way of remaining in his thought. When he
talked to people, her eyes came before him and looked at him. They asked
questions.
The last time he had sat with her in his sister's studio he had gone
away with a feeling of panic. He was used to women. Invariably he
disliked them. They seemed to him variants of his wife. They reminded
him of Henrietta and he was able to say to himself, "They look
attractive and mysterious. But underneath, they're all alike."
He meant they were all like Henrietta. In this way his distaste for his
wife had kept him faithful to her because his imagination balked at the
idea of embracing another Henrietta.
But Ruth Davis after he had met her a few times, always in his sister's
presence, had impressed him differently. Perhaps it was because he had
always seen her with his sister. In many ways she reminded him of Doris.
She was dark like Doris and had many of her mannerisms.
He had not thought of her as a variant of Henrietta. Rather as a variant
of Doris. He had never tested his immunity to her by imagining an
embrace. When he talked to her he grew eager to impress her. He wanted
her to understand him, not quite as Doris understood him. She was
cynical but not in the way Doris was. Her mind was kindlier.
Because he felt frightened now at her approach and a desire to run away
without speaking to her, he held himself to the spot. He would get the
better of this thing, he told himself quickly, by facing whatever it was
and fighting it down. He would overcome the curious effect she had on
him by confronting her. In this way, a very high-minded way, he
persuaded himself to wait for her and to talk to her. Which was what he
wanted to do above everything else.
She was pleased. They shook hands. The confusion left him. He was quite
master of himself. Her dark eyes were not dangerous like his sister's.
She was a bright, pretty girl.
"I'm sorry I can't visit with you and Doris," he said. "But I have an
engagement."
"Oh." She seemed disappointed. Her eyes betrayed almost a hurt. This
made him even more master of himself. He had been foolishly worried
about the girl. Just a bright, pretty girl and a friend of his sister.
"By the way," he said, "you were saying the other day that you'd like a
job in the state attorney's office. My secretary's quit. Would you like
that?"
"Oh, Mr. Basine. That's awfully kind of you. But I ... I don't know
shorthand and I suppose that...."
"That makes no difference," he smiled tolerantly. "I need somebody able
to look after things in general. If you want the job, why come down and
see me tomorrow morning about ten and we'll start work."
"I'd be delighted," she answered. She was about to say more but he grew
curt.
"You'll excuse me, won't you. I have to run," he said. "See you at ten
tomorrow, eh?" He wanted to make the thing certain because otherwise he
would have to hire someone else. "At ten then," he repeated.
"If you really want me."
"I think you'll get along all right. And I need somebody at once."
He walked away with a feeling of mastery. He had overcome the confusion
the sight of her had started in him. He was sincerely glad of that. He
disliked the idea of entanglements. Politics was a glass house and
entanglements were dangerous. Then besides, there was Henrietta.
His fidelity to his wife was a habit that had become almost an
obsession. His distaste and frequent revulsion toward her made him
concentrate excitedly upon the idea of fidelity.
By assuring himself of the nobility of faithfulness and of its necessity
as a matter of high decency, he vindicated in a measure the fact that he
seemed too cowardly to philander. He had felt this cowardliness and was
continually trying to distort it into more self-ennobling emotions. This
was what made him so excited a champion of domestic felicity, marital
fidelity and kindred ideas. He was able to convert himself into a man
whose ideals prevented him from succumbing to his lower instincts. Thus
instead of feeling ashamed of the cowardliness which kept him from doing
what he desired, he felt on the contrary, proud of his capacity for
living up to his high ideals, which meant--of doing what he didn't want
to do.
This cowardliness was an involved emotion. It was inspired by a fear of
detection, if he philandered, a fear of physical and social
consequences. But more than that and too curious for his thought to
unravel, it was inspired by a fear of hurting Henrietta. This fear was
the predominant factor in his life.
He sought at times to understand it but its understanding eluded him. He
had been tempted at times to talk to Doris about it. But as yet it was a
confession withheld.
The greater his distaste for his wife became and the more the thought of
her grew obnoxious, the deeper did this fear of hurting her take form in
him. Often when driven to anger by her increasing stupidity he would
lie awake at night by her side thinking of her in accidents which might
kill her. He would lie awake picturing her brought home dying--and going
over in his fancy the details of her death scene.
And then as if the thing were too sweet to relinquish, he would go over
in his mind the details of the funeral, picturing himself beside the
grave weeping, picturing her father and the numerous mourners; giving
them words to say and assigning them little parts in the drama of the
burial. The thing would become a completely worked out scene--like a
careful description in a novel.
Then he would picture himself returning home with his children. He would
close his eyes and play with the fancy impersonally, as if he were
dictating it for writing. Back from the grave with his children.... The
house empty of Henrietta. The chair in which she always sat and sewed,
empty. And she would never sit there again. The chair would always be
empty.
At this point his fancy would grow sad. At first the sadness would be as
if it were part of the make-believe--as if this fiction figure of
himself were mourning the death of his wife. But gradually the sadness
would change and become real. It would become a sadness inspired by the
thought of her dying ... sometime. Someday she would be dead and he
would be alone. And this idea would grow unbearable. Just as it had been
deliciously desirable a few minutes before.
The sadness that came to him then was no more than a remorse he felt for
having in his fancy planned and executed her death. A remorse inspired
by his feeling of guilt. But to Basine it seemed a sadness inspired by
some inner love for his wife. It would surprise him, that there was an
inner love, and he would lie and think, "Oh, I don't want her dead. I
love her. Poor, dear Henrietta." And he would reach over and caress her
tenderly, tears filling his eyes.
It was at such moments while doing penance for the imaginative murder of
his wife, that a physical passion for her would come to him. His
caresses would grow warmer and in the possession of her which followed,
he would be able to blot out of his memory the unbearable
self-accusation aroused by his desire for her death. Thus his fear of
hurting her, even of contradicting her in any way which would make her
unhappy, was a device which guarded him against contemplating the
impulse concealed in him--to get rid of her even by murdering her.
His fidelity to his wife, inspired more by this fear of hurting her than
by the social cowardice which involved the idea of detection, had become
a fetish with him. The less he desired her and the more repugnant she
grew for him, the more desperately he defended to himself and to others
the virtues of marital faithfulness.
He had advanced in eight years into an intolerant champion of morality.
Even his political orations bristled with panegyrics on the sanctity of
the home and the high duty men owed their wives. The thing repeated
itself over and over in his day, haunted his night and filtered through
all his public and private actions. It had formed the basis of a new
Basine--the moral champion. It had colored his ambitions and determined
his direction of thought. It hammered--a hidden psychological refrain
through the fibers of his thought.... In order to reconcile himself to
the distasteful role he had foisted upon himself by accidentally
embracing Henrietta in his mother's kitchen nine years ago, he must
eulogize his predicament and convince himself and others that all
deviations were a vicious and dishonorable matter. Held by neither love
nor desire to the side of a woman he had tricked himself into marrying,
he managed to bind himself to her by the stern worship of a code which
proclaimed fidelity the highest manifestation of the soul.
As he walked toward a street car he was proud of his self-conquest. He
was thinking about the girl, Ruth. He had taken himself in hand and
overcome the dangerous confusion that the sight of her started. His
sense of honor preened itself on the victory. That was the way to handle
oneself--always face the facts. It was better than hiding one's head in
the sand. Look, it had happened this way. By being matter-of-fact, by
converting the girl from a luring, enigmatic figure into an employee, he
had established an immunity in himself. Was he certain of this? Yes, she
would be merely another of the young women employed in his office. And
he was in love with none of them. Or even interested. So their relation
would be that of employee and employer. Which was harmless and
honorable.
He walked along, piling up assurances. As he entered the car he was
going over in his mind with an imaginative eagerness the details of the
situation he had created. He would be very stern, aloof. He would
acquaint her with his secret files and gradually educate her into an
efficient assistant. She was a university girl. Of course her running
around with freaks, the way she did--artists and talky women, was a
handicap. But she would get over that and become entirely sensible.
It was a pleasant day dream that wiled away the tedium of the ride home.
An unaccountable happiness played around the fancies in his mind. He
gave himself to its warmth with a certain defiance--as if he were
denying unbidden doubts underlying his dreams.
He had hired Ruth Davis in order that he might be near her. And
underlying the enthusiastic assurances which he crowded into his mind as
a stop gap for the elation this fact inspired, was the knowledge that,
as his secretary, she would come to perceive what a great man he was.
His files, his secret memoranda, his intricate activities all of which
she would come to know as his private secretary--would be a boast.
Yes, his very curtness, sternness, preoccupation would all be part of
this boast. She would see him as a man of importance, a man of rising
power. He would have to ignore her in order to confer with well-known
men-politicians, police officials, party leaders. And this ignoring of
her would be a boast--all a boast of his prestige and of the fact that
he was a man of fascinating activities and that these activities made it
impossible for him to devote himself as other lesser men might, to
paying her any attention.
Yes, the thought of her being in his office where he might look at her,
but more especially where she might look at him--for he did not intend
to pay any attention to her--thrilled him. And gradually the cause of
his elation protruded and he was forced to face it. He alighted from
the car thinking as he walked toward his apartment.
"I'll have to be careful though. I don't want her to fall in love. That
would be embarassing. Girls are susceptible. I'll not encourage her in
anything like that. Be businesslike and aloof. Treat her absolutely as a
stranger."
This idea thrilled him further. It would be sweet to ignore her, even to
be strict with her and carping at times, to scold for some error. Yes,
that was the right way to handle the situation.
And he walked on with a childish smile over his face. He had determined
upon a high-minded course which absolved him from all blame in anything
that might happen. Aloofness, sternness. Now that they were going to be
together every day, he already looked upon her position as his secretary
as an inevitable predicament not brought on by any action of his; now
that they were to be that close, he would rigorously observe all the
conventions.
At the same time he was inwardly aware that such a course as he had
mapped for himself would unquestionably have a certain effect upon the
girl. It must. It would cause her to respect and admire him and finally
to fall in love with him. Tremendously in love since there would be no
outlet for her passion. Oh yes, that would certainly happen. But it
wouldn't be his fault and nothing would come of it. Because he would
remain sternly aloof.
The thought of being worshipped from afar, of being looked upon all day
by eyes that adored him, brought an excitement into his step. And he ran
up the stairs to his apartment. He was eager to enter his home and greet
his wife. She had become suddenly a tolerable person, one whose
presence he might even enjoy. He felt happy and he wanted her to share
his happiness.
14
Fanny listened carelessly to her husband. After eight years, listening
to what Aubrey had to say had become unnecessary. Because his talk never
changed. What he said yesterday he would say tomorrow. He prided himself
on this. He explained that it revealed him a man of unswerving
principles. Fanny, who had become a rather sarcastic person, kept her
answer to herself. A man of unswerving principles was a great asset to
the community. But a terrible bore to his home.
She sat watching Henrietta sew. There was a placidity about Henrietta
that always irritated her. Henrietta was still pretty although beginning
to fade. Her eyes were colorless and her lips were getting thinner. But
she seemed happy and Fanny wondered about this.
Mr. Mackay seemed very attentive to Henrietta. Of course, Mr. Mackay was
Aubrey's partner and a friend of her brother, George. But it was odd to
call on Henrietta unexpectedly and find her talking alone to a man in
her library. Even to Mr. Mackay.
Fanny was suspicious about such things. She had been utterly faithful to
Aubrey during their married life and this fidelity, somehow, had
developed in her an attitude of chronic suspicion concerning the
fidelity of other women. It was her habit when visiting her friends to
sit and speculate upon their possible immoralities. She had frequently
got herself into trouble by setting scandalous rumors afloat.
"Henry Thorpe and Gwendolyn see quite a great deal of each other," she
would say. "More than we know, I think. I wonder what Mrs. Thorpe thinks
about it. You know Gwendolyn, for all her pretenses, is an out and out
sensual type."
No one was immune from Fanny's speculations. In fact the more
incongruous the idea of any one's sinfulness seemed, the more
enthusiastically Fanny embraced it.
She was more than half aware that thinking about others in immoral
situations seemed to excite herself. She would endeavor to introduce a
note of indignation into her speculations. But the note was too forced
to deceive her, although it deceived others. And she finally abandoned
herself to the thrill which thinking evilly of others stirred in her.
She would often allow her suspicions to become detailed. Merely to
suspect a woman of being immoral was not as satisfying as to figure the
manner of her sin, the play by play, word by word drama of her
seduction. She relished such fancied details. Suspecting others of
immorality enabled Fanny to enjoy vicariously situations which she had
as a matter of course denied herself.
Her love for Aubrey had not changed. It had, in fact, grown or at least
become inflated by habit. At the beginning of their union she had
suspected him of being a hypocrite. She had immediately resented his
virtue. Then for a short time she had figured out that he must be
unfaithful to her, that this accounted for his virtue.
But her resentment had remained mute. The years had proved to her, as
much as proof was possible, that Aubrey was no hypocrite and that his
attitude toward such things was due to his being a high-minded, decent
man. He loved her. But in his own way. He explained to her, "Most
marriages are ruined because people are lead astray by sex. Sex is a
duty. I don't think it's any more moral for married people to wallow in
sex than it is for unmarried people. Sex has an object beyond itself
which people ignore. It is a means to an end--children." And they had
gone on for eight years living up to these standards. But they had no
children. Fanny was willing to acquiesce in her husband's ideals, since
she had to, in everything except about children. She didn't want any.
Fanny had accepted his version of the thing and lived by it. There were
some rewards. She managed to derive a dubious satisfaction during their
infrequent hours of passion from the knowledge that he was a famous man.
She also found a source of secret excitement in his austerity and
virtue. The fact that he was so high-minded and aloof from any thought
of sex offered a piquant contrast to occasions when he condescended to
be her lover. Such occasions were for Fanny far from austere and
high-minded. She allowed the keen sensuality of her nature free reign.
Aubrey's noble attitude served to inspire her with a sense of guilt, as
if their relations were really as indecent and immoral as he contended
sex to be. And the idea of their being indecent and immoral heightened
her enjoyment of them.
She wondered at many things about Aubrey. Despite his aversion to sex,
(she did not think of it as an aversion but as a high-mindedness,) he
was yet very attentive to women. Not in the way that most men were
attentive. But chivalrously. He had become during their married life a
veritable Chesterfield and Sir Raleigh. It was not only his manner--his
observation of little rules of conduct such as rising when a woman
entered or helping her on with her wraps, or assisting her to pull up
her chair at the table or opening doors or any of the thousand
niceties--that marked his attitude toward women. It was also his ideas.
He frequently discussed women and his point of view was more chivalrous
than most men's. He said that he believed in the fineness of women. That
a woman was a pure, beautiful soul. And he was quick to resent insults
to women, even general insults which sought to reflect upon woman's
purity as a whole or to make her out a scheming sexual animal.
Fanny was proud of his chivalrous tone. It distinguished him and she did
not resent the fact that it interested women. She had never been jealous
of Aubrey. And she had gradually accustomed herself to his
high-mindedness. She would have liked abandoned caresses and embraces.
But these had never been forthcoming, even on their honeymoon long ago.
And she had given up dreaming of them--for herself. She dreamed about
them now in connection with others and her mind, colored by unsatisfied
desires, indulged itself in the luxurious and lascivious details of her
suspicions of others.
She sat watching Henrietta as Mr. Mackay talked to her and despite an
effort to control her thought, she began to wonder what they had been
doing alone in the apartment before she and Aubrey came. He had probably
taken her hand and pulled her to him, put his arms around her and
Henrietta, overcome with a sudden passion, had probably flung her arms
about his shoulders and given him her lips wildly. And just as they were
standing deliriously embraced like that, the bell had probably rung and
Henrietta had jumped away and grabbed her sewing. She had come to the
door with her sewing in her hand and....
Fanny smiled at the colorless and unsuspecting Henrietta. Her sense of
humor had done for her what her sense of justice had failed to do. It
controlled her fancies. To imagine Henrietta giving her lips wildly to
anybody, particularly the red-faced Mr. Mackay, was ludicrous. Poor
Henrietta with her two noisy children and her interminable sewing. She
didn't envy her the children. Thank Heaven, despite Aubrey's high-minded
attitude toward sex as a distasteful mechanism through which the race
continued itself, they had had no children.
There was something pitiful about Henrietta. She was so dumb. And even
when she dressed up and powdered and frilled, she always seemed tired. A
stranger might think she was an invalid just recovered from some serious
illness.... Henrietta was probably like Aubrey about "those things".
Very high-minded and aloof.
Mr. Mackay and Aubrey were talking about advertising now. They always
did this soon or late. And they usually quarreled because Aubrey was
inclined to insist that his end of the business--the preparation of copy
and ad. material--was as important as Mr. Mackay's end. Mr. Mackay was
in charge of the salesmen.
She hadn't wanted to call on her brother. But Aubrey insisted. There was
a deal on. The city was going to do a lot of advertising and the firm of
Mackay-Gilchrist wanted the job. Basine could help them pull wires.
The bell rang and interrupted their talk.
"That must be George," Henrietta exclaimed. She grew nervous and began
to flutter. The maid was out for the afternoon and she went to the door
herself. A strange voice came from the hall as the door opened.
"Oh, come right in. George isn't home but I expect him any minute,"
Henrietta greeted the arrival. Paul Schroder, one of the attorneys who
worked in the mysterious place called the state attorney's office with
her husband, entered.
He was younger than her husband and of a type she disliked. She
didn't like George to have him as a friend. He was too brutal looking.
And too noisy. Her submission to George had developed a keen set of
prejudices in her. She liked only people who reminded her of her
husband--normal-sized, thin men with aristocratic manners, and quick
nervous eyes. And what she liked in such people was only the parts of
them that seemed like George. All other kinds of men annoyed her.
Particularly the kind Schroder was--rough, coarse and laughing too
loudly always. She thought of him as a vulgar animal and once or twice
hinted to George that she didn't like to have him visit the house.
Schroder entered, his blond, well shaped head tossing dramatically. The
exuberance of his manner gave him the air of being larger than he was.
Aubrey Gilchrist when he straightened up was taller than Schroder and
Mr. Mackay's shoulders were broader. But somehow the blond-headed man
dwarfed them both as he shook hands with them. He sat down next to
Fanny.
"Well," he said to her, "how you been? Bright-eyed as ever." He laughed
and Fanny smiled. "What's the matter with friend husband," he turned to
Henrietta. "Can't you keep His Nobs home like a God-fearing man on
Sundays?"
Henrietta winced.
"He went to see his sister who is ill," she said. "He'll be back any
minute."
"Oh, that's all right;" Schroder answered, as if Henrietta had
apologized and he was forgiving her. Then to Aubrey he added, "What are
you two pirates after from Basine?"
Aubrey raised his eyebrows. He was subject to quick dislikes. Schroder
was one of them. Schroder was the kind of person who had no respect for
merit or his superiors. The world, unfortunately, was full of such
people--boors lacking the intelligence to perceive their betters. Aubrey
always felt ill at ease in their presence.
Although he had written no novels for five years, in his own mind he was
still a literary figure of importance. He had gone into the advertising
business, but not permanently. He had intended at first remaining in it
only for a year and then returning to his writing. He wanted to do a
different sort of writing and a vacation was necessary. He wanted to do
something real. He had, as a matter of fact, lost interest in the
business of turning out narratives. Worried at the time by this loss of
interest in his work he had explained it as "an ambition for better
things."
But five years had passed and he was still an advertising man. The firm
of Mackay and Gilchrist had grown. He flattered himself that its success
had been due to his personal prestige. People said, "Oh, that's Aubrey
Gilchrist, the writer. Well, that's quite an asset for an advertising
concern." And so they brought their business to Mackay-Gilchrist.
He disliked Schroder because on the few occasions they had met, the man
had exuberantly ignored the fact he was Aubrey Gilchrist. Schroder was a
man who had no interest in anything outside himself--a noisy,
self-satisfied creature with no reason to be noisy or self-satisfied. He
had never done anything.
"I don't understand what you mean, Mr. Schroder," Aubrey answered
stiffly.
"Ho ho," Schroder exclaimed, "your husband is insulted, Mrs. Gilchrist.
Well, I apologize. There's George, I'll lay you dollars to doughnuts."
The bell had rung. Basine entered. Aubrey looked significantly at his
partner. The significance was due to the fact that Schroder seemed
likely to ruin the visit. Aubrey announced aloud after the greetings:
"Thought we'd drop in for a private discussion, George."
Henrietta was smiling tenderly at her husband.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
"Well, I've got great news for you," Basine exclaimed. The company
looked hopefully at him.
"What, dear?"
"Oh, I'll tell you tonight, little girl."
"If it's good news we'd all like to hear it," Fanny insisted.
Schroder regarded his friend askance. He suspected something. He had
left Basine yesterday night and there had been no hint of anything
happening. And today being Sunday.... He smiled to himself. "Covering
up," he thought. "Husbands are comical." He decided not to press Basine.
He had evidently been up to something ... "playing a matinee." He
noticed that his friend was trying to change the subject.
"Is it something personal?" Henrietta asked with a frown. "You frighten
me, George, when you don't tell me things."
Basine, sitting down, beamed with enthusiasm on the group, on his home.
"Where are the children?" he asked.
"Over at the Harveys," Henrietta answered.
"Well," said her husband with an explosive intonation, "I've made up my
mind to go after the circuit court. There's a chance next April."
"Going to run for Judge, eh?" Schroder asked with interest.
"Yes sir," Basine laughed. "I just had a session with some of the boys
this afternoon and we discussed it."
"Oh, I thought you were at Doris'," Henrietta interrupted.
"I did see her," Basine answered, "but only for a few seconds. I spent
most of the afternoon in conference."
"Congratulations," Aubrey spoke. "Mac and I were going to...."
Schroder stood up.
"What do you say if we take a walk, Mrs. Gilchrist," he whispered
loudly. "Your husband insists that I get out. And I won't unless you
come along."
He laughed good-naturedly until Aubrey smiled, and nodded to his wife.
"If you wish, Fanny."
"It's awfully nice outside," Fanny agreed after a pause during which she
looked carefully out of the window. Basine reached for his wife's hand
and drew her toward his chair.
"You're looking very well," he smiled at her. A pleasant light came to
her eyes. For a moment the youthfulness that people had once admired
when they had called her "such an enthusiastic girl" returned to her
manner.
"Oh now George!" she exclaimed. Basine felt a catch in his heart. A
remorse, as if he had done something, came over him. He patted her hand
tenderly. Henrietta repeated but in an almost colorless voice, "Oh,
George."
Schroder followed Fanny down the steps. As the door of the Basine
apartment closed behind them, his fingers clutched her elbow and he
leaned against her in a straightforward, jovial manner.
Her experience as a married woman had brought a directness into Fanny's
mind. She no longer found it necessary to conceal her thoughts from
herself. She was still inclined to be publicly innocent but her mental
life had taken on the proportions of an endless debauch. Marriage not
only legalized sex but removed the barriers to thinking about it. She
felt herself blushing childishly as Schroder, squeezing her arm, opened
the door with a flourish.
15
The Gilchrist home on Lake Shore drive was crowded with friends and
relatives. They had come to the funeral of William Gilchrist. Mr.
Gilchrist lay in a coffin in the drawing room, a waxen-faced figure
under a glass cover. Flowers filled the large room with a damp, sweet
odor.
It was a spring morning. The air was colored with rain. A sulphurous
glow lay on the pavements. It was chilly. Automobiles lined the curb
outside the Gilchrist stone house. Polite, sober-faced people arrived in
couples and groups and walked seriously up the stone steps of the
residence, a swarm of mummers striving awkwardly to register grief.
Dignitaries from different strata were assembling. The Gilchrists were a
family whose prestige was ramified by varied contacts. Celebrities of
the society columns arrived--famous tea pourers, tiara wearers, charity
patronesses. Professional men ranging from retired fuddy-duddies,
applying their waning financial talents to the diversion of
philanthropy, to corporation heads, prominent legal advisors and medical
geniuses renowned for their taciturnity--these came for Mrs. Gilchrist.
Bankers, merchants, industrial captains, hospital bigwigs--these came as
husbands and also as contemporaries of Mr. Gilchrist.
The leaders of the city's arts--a sprinkling of painters aping the
manners of dapper business men, of authors vastly superior to the
Bohemian nature of their calling, of advertising Napoleons, opera
followers, national advertisers--these came for Aubrey. Fanny, through
her brother who had a month before been elected a judge, drew a
formidable group of names--political factotums, powers behind thrones,
mystic local Cromwells. Also the Younger Set. Added to these were
relatives, business associates and finally the Press.
There was a dead man under a glass cover in the house and the
distinguished company, crowding the large somber rooms of the Gilchrist
home, eyed each other gravely and addressed each other in whispers. The
dead man could not hear, yet they spoke in whispers. Even the most
renowned of the dignitaries whose lives were a round of formalities
almost as impressive as this, spoke in whispers and seemed ill at ease.
They drifted about like nervous butlers and took up positions against
the walls, striking uncertain attitudes. They exchanged polite and sober
greetings and felt slightly strengthened in spirit at the sight of
people as distinguished as themselves. The camaraderie of prestige--the
social caress which celebrities alone are able to bestow upon each other
by basking in a mutual feeling of superiority--ran like an undercurrent
through the scene.
Yet this camaraderie which usually heightened the poise of such
gatherings was unable to remove the embarrassment of the company. They
spoke in whispers and remained outsiders, as if the Gilchrists were a
family of intimidating superiors in whose presence one didn't quite know
what to do with one's arms or feet or what to say or just how to make
one's features look.
The intimidating superiority was the body under the glass cover of the
coffin. It would have been easier in a church. Funerals were much less
of a strain in a church and there were several whispers to this effect.
Why had Mrs. Gilchrist insisted upon a home funeral? Wasn't it rather
old fashioned?
Here in a house death seemed uncomfortably personal. The stage was too
small and the mourners were too near something. A curious sympathy that
had nothing to do with Mr. Gilchrist took possession of them.
The damp, sweet odor of the flowers, the glimpse of the black coffin,
the sound of softly moving feet and whispering tongues were a
distressing ensemble. The mourners drifted around and nodded nervously
at each other as if they were doing all they could to make the best of a
faux pas. Death was a faux pas. A reality without adjectives. A stark,
mannerless lie. The family had done its best also. Flowers had been
heaped, furniture arranged, the body dressed, a luxurious coffin
purchased, great people invited. Nevertheless the waxen-faced one under
the glass cover refused to yield its reality. It lay stark and
mannerless in the large room--the immemorial skeleton at the
feast--repeating the dreadful word "death" with an almost humorous
persistency amid the heaped flowers, the carved furniture, the mourners
with raised eyebrows. They stood about nervously.
Gilchrist had been a man alive, one of those whose names were known to
the world. The name Gilchrist had meant a large building stored with
rugs, period furniture, innumerable clerks, departments, delivery
trucks, advertisements in newspapers and on fences. The man Gilchrist
had been one with whom the dignitaries of the city had shared the
intimacy of prestige.
They had said Gilchrist's was a fine store, Gilchrist's was marvelous
furniture, Gilchrist was a highly successful business man. Gilchrist was
this and that and the other. And here lay Gilchrist, waxen and
unscrupulously silent, under a glass cover--a little man with pale
sideburns that were now doubly useless, in a black suit and his hands
folded over his chest. Here lay Gilchrist dead, and yet the things that
had been called Gilchrist still lived. As if immortality was an
artifice, superior to life. The furniture store, the furniture, the
clerks, trucks, advertisements, the highly successful business--all
these still lived. And this was an uncomfortable fact. It embarrassed
the mourners. They drifted about with uncertainty.
Like Gilchrist they were men and women whose names were synonymous with
great activities. Like Gilchrist, they were considered as the
inspiration of these activities. In fact the activities were an
artificial symbol of themselves--a sort of photograph of themselves. Yet
like Gilchrist, all of them would lie under a glass cover some day and
nothing would be changed. The activities that everybody called by their
names would still live. As if they had had nothing to do with them. As
if these symbols were the life of the city and not the men and women
whom they symbolized. Yes, as if these activities which represented
their prestige were independent individualities--masks which loaned
themselves for a few years to them to wear. And which they took off when
they lay stretched under a glass cover. Which they would take off and
become anonymous.
For who was this waxen-faced man in the coffin? Nobody knew. They had
called him Gilchrist. But Gilchrist was clerks, advertisements,
furniture, and business. This man in the coffin was someone else, an
irritating impostor that reminded them they were all impostors. Death
was a confession everyone must make; an incongruous confession. An
ending to something that had no ending. Life and its activities, even
the activities that bore the name Gilchrist, went on. Yet Gilchrist had,
mysteriously, come to an end. He lay in a coffin while his name in large
letters talked to other names in the advertisements of the city.
The camaraderie of prestige was insufficient to remove this
embarrassment. A dead man under a glass cover spoke to them slyly.
Dinners, even very formal dinners with butlers; cliques, even powerful
cliques wielding financial destinies; ambitions, board of directors'
meetings, investments and reinvestments, hopes and successes--ah, these
were deceptive little excitements that were not a part of life--but an
artifice superior to life. For life ended and the little excitements
went on. They were the surface immortality in which one conveniently
forgot the underlying fact of death.
Alas, death. Alas, waxen-faced men lying silent and mannerless under
glass covers. A distasteful faux pas, death. Yet some of the company
must weep. Not friends who regretted the everlasting absence of William
Gilchrist, but men and women bewildered for a moment by the memory of
their own death. Death was a memory since it existed like a foregone
conclusion. It was sad to think of all the people who had died, laughing
ones, famous ones, adventurous ones whose laughter, fame and adventure
seemed somehow a lie now that they were dead.
It was so easy to be dead. Death had come to all who had been, even to
more dignified and celebrated ones than they. Alas, death. The sober men
and women in the Gilchrist home drifted about nervously. They must weep
because for the moment they lay in the coffin with Mr. Gilchrist and
because for the moment they walked sadly about mourning visions of their
own deaths. And for the moment their tears earned for themselves the
regard of their fellow mourners as kind-hearted, sensitive, unselfish
souls.
Yet there was something intimate among the company. Despite the
embarrassment, a curious spirit of friendliness underlay the scene. Men
and women who knew each other only as aloof symbols of prestige, stood
together and talked in whispers as if they were talking out of
character. Half strangers felt a familiarity toward each other.
Under the stamp of a common emotion and a common embarrassment, the
company became for the time a collection of intimates, looking at one
another and whispering among themselves as if the event were a truce.
This was a funeral. Here was reality. And it was polite to lay aside for
an hour the masks, the complexities of artifice by which they baffled
and impressed each other.
The Reverend Henry Peyton had arrived and the mourners moved into the
spacious library, grateful for a destination. The widow in black with
her son and daughter-in-law appeared. The company surveyed them with a
thrill of vicarious grief. Poor Mrs. Gilchrist, so strong and competent!
It seemed almost impossible that she should lose anything, even
something as mortal as a husband. She was so fixed and determined. Even
now there was something sternly competent about her grief. It was hidden
under a black veil. There was nothing to be seen of it but a black veil
and a black dress and a pair of wrinkled little hands fumbling with
themselves. Poor Mrs. Gilchrist. People had forgotten she was a woman.
They felt slightly ashamed as they glanced at her now, as if they were
intruding upon a secret. But she had invited them.
A suppressed "Ah!" of sympathy murmured through the room. The minister's
words began and a determined hush followed.
Basine sitting in a corner of the room with his mother had spent an
uncomfortable hour waiting for the services. He had looked at the body
and come away depressed. His quick eyes had observed the company and
noted with a concealed smile the manner in which lesser dignitaries were
making hay while the tears poured. They were utilizing the camaraderie
of prestige and the intimacy of a common emotion to impress themselves
upon the greater dignitaries. Women of dubious social standing
gravitated as if by general accident toward women of solid social
standing and exchanged whispered condolences with them. Men of lesser
financial ratings were edging toward leaders of finance and engaging
them in dolorous conversations.
Under the depression and gentle bewilderment, the everlasting business
of inferior pursuing superior and superior increasing his superiority by
resisting pursuit, was going on. The death of poor Gilchrist seemed to
Basine, for a few minutes, chiefly important as an opportunity by which
lesser mourners were introducing themselves to the attention of greater
mourners.
Basine's eyes noticed another undercurrent. He had himself influenced
Fanny to prevail upon Mrs. Gilchrist to invite a number of politicians
to the funeral. He had furnished the names carefully, telling Fanny that
these were men high in power who had been friends of Mr. Gilchrist. The
widow, through her secretary, had asked ten of the list to honor her
husband's funeral with their presence. She had chosen ten names most
familiar to her, among them men of wealth who were renowned as powers
behind the various political thrones of the day. The invitations had
served Basine to make a slight but important impression upon the
political party leaders.
He had at first felt nervous over Mrs. Gilchrist's selections from his
list. She had picked ten men, most of whom were engaged in tenacious
political antagonisms. He watched now with surprise as the antagonists
gravitated together forming, with a number of financiers, an amiable,
dignified group.
"In the presence of death they feel inclined to bury the hatchet," he
thought and the idea of large funerals as an asset for establishing
political harmony developed in his mind.
He noticed a change in his own attitude toward Aubrey. He had felt for
years a distaste for the man and although their relations had always
been amicable, this distaste had increased to a point where Basine would
have felt a relief at the man's death. He could never tell himself why
he disliked Aubrey. But the aversion was of long standing. "I don't like
his looks," he would grin to himself.
Now, watching him take his seat beside his mother, Aubrey became somehow
human and Basine felt he understood the man for the first time. Beneath
people whose looks you didn't like was always something human. People
were all alike, no matter how they strutted or posed. Underneath was a
loneliness--a little crippled likeness of themselves--that they carried
about with them all the time. Basine would have liked to talk to him and
say something like, "Sorry, old man. I didn't know. I'm sorry...."
The minister had begun. He stood beside the coffin that had been brought
in. His opening words startled Basine. A prayer! There was something
fantastic in the spectacle of this living man standing beside the dead
man and talking aloud to someone who was not in the room. Talking
solemnly, intensely to God. As if he had buttonholed Him.
Basine felt irritated by his own emotions. His face assumed a devout
air but the emotions and the thoughts which rose from them persisted
behind his determined piety. He wanted to immerse himself in the spirit
of the man praying. But his eyes played truant. They wandered furtively
and observed with uncomfortable precision the bowed head of Henrietta
and the spring hat on her head and the heavy-jowled face of her father,
belligerently reverent beside her.
The minister's voice shouted. "God, in Heaven ... his heavenly soul ...
his heavenly reward...."
Phrases like these detached themselves and lingered in Basine's ears. He
had heard them frequently in church. But for the moment they seemed
preposterously new. He found himself listening in surprise. Religion had
been always an accepted idea to him. Something you believed in as you
believed in the necessity of neckties. But though he accepted it and
felt a casual faith in an Episcopalian God, it remained an idea apart
from reality. He had never given either thought or emotion to religion.
Yet he had frequently expended a great deal of mental effort and emotion
denouncing people whom he sensed or observed were opposed to religion.
It struck him now as a childish farce--an absurd hocus-pocus. Poor
Gilchrist going to heaven and a long-faced man in a black coat speeding
his soul heavenward from the Gilchrist library! If there was a God, for
whom was all this necessary--the flowers, speeches, prayers? Not for
God. But for the people in the room, of course. People crowded in a tiny
room taking this opportunity to assure each other that the immensities
over their heads, the clouds, stars and spaces were their property.
His iconoclasm increased as if inspired by the length of the minister's
harangue. He grew angry with himself and thought of Doris and
immediately transferred his anger to her. It was she who was deriding
the solemnity of the scene. He had been paying too much attention to her
almost insane chatter and things were somewhat undermined in his own
soul. Her fault.
The prayer ended and four men came forward and began to sing. Their
voices, raised in a hymn, annoyed him instantly. This was too much. What
were they singing for? As if their songs would help poor Gilchrist mount
from the library into heaven. The entire scene, the bowed heads, sad
faces, elaborate coffin; the flowers, the worthy reverend and the
singers came to his mind as something terribly unconvincing. Futile,
that was it. Children making an unconvincing pretense.
He tried to blot out his thinking and fastened his will upon thoughts
that might make him sad, properly sad and believing. What if Henrietta
should die.... Henrietta dead. Henrietta gone forever. He seized the
thought eagerly. It was not what he wanted but there was a relish in
thinking it. Sad ... sad ... yes, if his mother should die or somebody
dear to him. Who? Ruth. Ah, what if it were Ruth in the coffin. Instead
of anybody else. He would feel differently then. Her beautiful face
white as Gilchrist's and her arms still. Her fingers rigid. Ruth
dead....
This made him sad but it took his mind entirely from the scene. He
forgot for moments that Gilchrist was dead and this was a funeral. The
reality returned, however, with an increased vividness to its absurdity.
The music of the hymn rose with embarrassing frankness.... Poor little
people gathered in a room going through a hocus-pocus to convince
themselves that there was a heaven where they would live forever after
the misfortune of death. Like children playing with dolls and
pretending.... But how did he happen to be thinking like that? Did he
believe there was no God, no heaven, no after life?
No, he believed in all that firmly. Of course, one must believe. The
self-questioning had shocked him back into a state of grace. Yes, he
believed firmly and bowed his head to the hymn that was ending.
During the rest of the services he was inwardly silent. The scene
appeared to have slipped into focus again. The minister seemed no longer
a symbol of some childish hocus-pocus but an ambassador of God--a stern
man, closely in touch with the Mysteries. And there was something
awesome in the room. There was something awesome about the coffin and
the flowers and the voices of the singers trailing into an Amen. It was
God. Yes, a great all powerful Being to whose hands mankind returned.
The discomfort of doubt left Basine and he felt himself again an
integral part of something vaster than himself. His thought re-entered
the idea of religion and a sense of peace filled him. He said Amen twice
and looked with mute, believing eyes at the black coffin.
The mourners were following the six silk-hatted pall bearers into the
street. A drizzle over the pavements. A long line of motors, chauffeurs
waiting, looking as aloof and aristocratic in their servitude as their
employers.
Basine found himself beside Milton Ware, one of the big traction
officials of the city. A grey-haired man with a well-preserved face
stamped with certainties and stern affabilities. Basine thought
casually that Ware had seemed rather friendly. He had come over to
exchange remarks several times while waiting for the services to begin.
On the curb Basine looked around for Henrietta. Judge Smith had brought
his machine and they were to drive to the cemetery together.
"Are you with anyone?" Ware asked quietly.
"Yes, I'm looking for my party," Basine answered. He spied the judge and
Henrietta crowded into their car. Several others had entered with them.
Ware followed his eye.
"That looks rather full," he suggested. "If you don't mind, would you
take a place in my machine."