“Well, you know what you can do with it,” snarled Wilfred.
Stanny flung himself into Wilfred’s big chair, and the bed remained without an occupant.
The firelight filled the room. The rows of books looked gravely down from the tall shelves. Bye and bye Wilfred had the satisfaction of seeing the bitter, down-drawn face in the chair begin to relax. Stanny took a more comfortable position, and his head dropped over against one of the wings. But he was not yet asleep. From the borderland he murmured:
“She has enslaved my senses. . . . I am besotted . . . !”
Wilfred murmured involuntarily: “You don’t know it, but you are lucky it is only your senses. If it was your imagination that was enslaved, there would be no satisfaction possible; no escape; ever!”
There was no reply, and Wilfred looked over apprehensively. To his relief he perceived that Stanny had not heard it; he was asleep.
Wilfred stretched himself out on the old rug, yielding to the luxury of pain. Real pain that bit like teeth. For an instant he beheld the truth with devastating clearness. There was no hope for him. Elaine’s instinct was sounder than his own. He and she could not possibly find happiness together. He was a better man than she would ever guess: but his worthier qualities were sealed to her, and must always be so. Impossible to reach an understanding. In another way, he was not man enough to be her mate. How that thought stabbed! But it was the truth. It must be faced out. Thank God! pain could be borne. He had his own kind of strength, not at all a showy kind, and Elaine would never perceive it; but he need not despise himself. Pain fortified him. He looked over towards Stanny with a feeling of gratitude. In some queer way it was due to the presence of that solid body in his chair, that he had been vouchsafed this moment of lucid pain, instead of being dragged as usual, helpless at the heels of the wild horses of Imagination.
Inthe winter twilight Elaine and Wilfred were sunk in easy chairs side by side before the fire in the Sturges sitting-room, the smoke of their cigarettes mounting lazily. In that serene atmosphere Wilfred was least serene. Whenever he sat there his heart beat too fast; and the clamorous thoughts jostled confusedly in his brain. The smiling servants had softly brought the tea things, and later, had carried them away. A lovely, gracious life! Should he ever be able to take it as if it were his by right? The Sturges house was almost exactly opposite Bella Billings; distant about three hundred yards; but social deeps rolled between.
Elaine was sliding down in the deep chair on the small of her back, her long legs inelegantly thrust out, her feet crossed. Elaine could yield to any common impulse without losing the quality of distinction, he thought. The firelight was strong in her resolute face. It was not beautiful in the ordinary sense. He despised the insipidity of pretty women. There was something much greater here; character; passion; and that divine assurance of herself. Whence arose Elaine’s magnificent air? It was because she held herself one of the elect of earth. Ordinary people were so far beneath her, she could afford to exhibit them every kindness. All wrong! thought Wilfred. A preposterous assumption! Yet there it was! And it beat him down!
They were good enough friends to be silent together when they felt like silence. But those silences! At a certain point Wilfred’s heart would begin to rise slowly into his throat. There she sat a yard away, and so remote! He ached for her intolerably. Was this love? More like an insanity. Suppose she were to cast herself suddenly into his arms, would he know what to do with her? Would he not turn clammy? Did he ever know what he wanted? An insanity! Being denied her, he ached and burned. Burned, while he sat still and answered her cool remarks, coolly. Why was he forced to go on thinking and thinking about her in her presence? Making figments of her while the reality was at his side!
Elaine herself never thought, though she liked to suppose that she did: all her acts, words were struck out of her, instant and bright as fire. How natural for her to despise one like him! Shediddespise him sub-consciously, though they were good friends; her speculative glance often confessed it. That high air of hers was a continual challenge to his masculinity, and he dared not take it up. Wilfred believed that she was just a little higher with him than with others. It suggested that she believed he was a coward in the presence of women. In other quarters he had not been considered so. What good was that to him here? By thinking him a coward she made him a coward inherpresence.
Yet she had singled him out, him, the insignificant scribbler, amongst a crowd of glittering young men who dangled after her. These hours that Wilfred spent alone with her had been specially contrived by her. Nothing happened by accident in Elaine’s busy life. In dealing with men, she enveloped herself in an atmosphere of high mystery. During Wilfred’s hour she never volunteered the least information as to how she had spent the other twenty-three. It tormented him unbearably. He knew that other men came to the house on other days. He had seen some of them springing eagerly up the steps. Well, and why not? He had nothing to reproach her with. She was always clear-eyed and candid. But she ordained how much of herself each was to have. An hour to Wilfred twice a week perhaps, leaving him to spend the others in torment. He suffered when he was with her; he suffered when he was away. His only moment of happiness came whenhewent springing up the steps. Things had come to such a pass with him, he could no longer do his work.
Why had she singled him out for even these infrequent hours? That he might talk to her. There was no secret about it. “Nobody talks to me like you,” she had said once, while her eyes flickered with unconscious contempt for the young man who was a talker. And Wilfred accepted it, hating himself. They sat in front of the fire talking like disembodied intelligences while Wilfred eyed her.
After such a silence, Elaine said: “The trouble with me is, I don’t know anything.”
“Hear! Hear!” said Wilfred.
“Oh, you needn’t get funny,” she retorted. “It’s something to know that you don’t know anything. . . . I mean. . . . What do I mean? I mean I don’t know anything in my head. I know lots of things by intuition. I think I know more than you do, that way. . . .”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Wilfred.
“But the voice of intuition is dumb,” Elaine went on. “I act as I act without knowing why. There is no residue. Intuition prompts you how to act at the moment; but it doesn’t help you to lay out a course.”
How exactly, sometimes, unconscious people can convey what is in their minds! thought Wilfred enviously. “What about books?” he suggested.
“Books! Pshaw! Books are a kind of dope!” said Elaine.
“You read only novels—and those, not the best.”
“Idoread the best!” she said indignantly.
“I don’t mean the latest best,” said Wilfred.
“I read poetry, too. . . . But poetry just lifts you up—and lets you drop again. Oh, I suppose it’s my fault. Really serious books bore me.”
“There are good novels,” said Wilfred.
“They get on so slowly!” said Elaine with a sigh. “And when you do disentangle the meaning, it’s only what you know already.”
“What is it, exactly, that you are after?” asked Wilfred.
“Knowledge of life,” she said promptly. “Old people pretend that they have all the knowledge. Ifeelthat they are wrong.”
“In what, for instance?”
“Well, it’s a platitude amongst old people that love always dies.”
“I don’t know of any book that would assure you that it doesn’t,” said Wilfred, lowering his eyes.
“Never mind books. What do you think? Does love die?”
“What kind of love?” he asked with a sinking heart.
“What kind?” she repeated staring. “I mean love between a man and a woman, of course.”
“Passion burns itself out,” said Wilfred, “but I suppose something fine may come of it.”
“Oh, that’s just like an old person,” said Elaine. “The cooling-off process is hideous to me! I don’t want any left-overs!”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“It doesn’t help to be cynical!”
“What does your own heart tell you?”
“My heart tells me that love dies,” murmured Elaine unexpectedly. She was staring into the fire. “I was hoping for some reassurance.”
“I hope it does,” said Wilfred flippantly. He observed that his teeth were clenched together.
She ignored this. “Even though love is transitory, should we not stake everything on it, anyway?” she murmured.
“Everybody must decide that for themselves,” he said composedly, feeling like a little waxy-faced oracle.
“But what doyouthink?” she insisted.
“It’s too complicated!” he said with a burst of irritation. “I could not possibly give an answer to cover the whole question.”
Another silence.
“Do you believe in the devil?” asked Elaine.
“In my own individual devil, yes.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s a wet blanket!”
Elaine laughed. “How original! Mine is a more conventional sort of devil.”
“Yes, I know.”
“How do you know?” she asked quickly.
“Can’t I have intuitions too?”
“Well, you’re entirely wrong aboutme,” she said vivaciously. “You have been from the first. You have a ridiculous notion that I am a sort of cavewoman. Why, if I were, would I be talking to you like this now?”
Wilfred smiled into the fire.
“Oh well, if it amuses you . . . !” said Elaine, shrugging.
“You know that big statue of Barnard’s,” she presently went on; “I Feel Two Natures Struggling Within Me”?
“All rot!” he said rousing himself. “I imagine that is just a little joke of Barnard’s on the dear public. What he is really portraying is the Triumph of Youth Over Age! It was a favorite subject during the renaissance. . . . Two natures! Life is not so simple! That is merely a theological distinction. Body and soul arenotat war with each other. We can’t get anywhere without Body. In the complete life you would find Body and Soul pulling in double harness.”
“But is there ever a complete life?” asked Elaine.
“Well . . . no! I suppose not!” murmured Wilfred, falling through space. “It is only an ideal. . . .”
Their eyes were suddenly drawn together. They exchanged a startled, questioning glance like prisoners beholding each other from separate towers. Forever solitary and wistful. They knew each other then. They hastily looked away, laughing in an embarrassed way; each terrified lest the other might speak of what he had surprised. But neither spoke, and they secretly softened towards each other.
After awhile Elaine got up, and switched on the lamps. She glanced at the clock. “There’s a man coming directly,” she said.
Wilfred stood up.
“Don’t be silly!” said Elaine. “Suppose Iwasgiving you a hint to go, why be in such haste to take it? It’s not very flattering.”
“I’ve had my hour,” he said, trying to speak lightly.
“You said that just like an actor! Oh, I wish I could teach you how to deal with women!”
“Well, if it comes to that, why is it always up to the man?” demanded Wilfred.
Elaine opened her eyes. “Well, women have to be won, don’t they?”
He spread out his hands. All wrong! All wrong! But he could not dispute her. She had stolen his strength.
“Sit down again,” she said. “You ought to know by this time that I never deal in hints. What I have not yet had a chance to say is, I want you to meet this man. An unusual specimen!”
Wilfred discovered that he still had reserves of pain. Wasthatthe rôle he was to be called upon to play?
Far-off in the great house Wilfred heard the buzz of the door-bell. After an interval the front door opened and closed again with its opulent thud. He entered quickly, thought Wilfred. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs. Coming up two steps at a time. Wilfred’s heart beat suffocatingly. That treacherous heart of his!
“It’s Joe Kaplan,” said Elaine, shielding her face from the fire.
“Oh, Joe Kaplan,” said Wilfred with an air of interest. His belly suddenly failed him. Rising, he caught sight of the grinning, white-faced manikin in the mirror over the fireplace, and quickly lowered his eyes in disgust.
“You have heard of him?” asked Elaine.
“Who hasn’t?” said Wilfred.
Joe swept in. “Hello, Elaine!”
She had risen, and was helping herself to a fresh cigarette from the mantelpiece. “Hello, Joe,” she said, without looking around.
Having caught sight of Wilfred, Joe stopped short in his eager progress.
“This is Mr. Pell,” drawled Elaine. “. . . Mr. Kaplan.”
Joe jerked into motion again. “I know him,” he said. “Hello, Pell! What the devil are you doing here?”
It was said with a good-humored grin, though Joe’s eyes were snapping. To Wilfred’s relief, he did not put out his hand. Perceiving enmity, Wilfred had not sufficient self-command to match the feigned good humor. Inside him there was howling, black confusion. Yet the necessity of good form was strong upon him, too. All he could do was to stand grinning in a sickly way. How craven he must appear, knuckling under to Joe at the first word!
Joe wasted no time on him. Elaine had reseated herself, and he plumped into the chair that Wilfred had lately occupied. “I say, Elaine,” he said; “I saw that blue chow to-day. He’s a sweet-tempered little beast; but my man says if you want to show him, he’s not good enough. So I thought we had better wait until something first-class turned up.”
“But I liked him,” said Elaine. “And he liked me!”
“Oh, in that case, Princess, he shall be here to-morrow!”
So Joe has become a sporting gentleman, thought Wilfred with curling lip. Wilfred was left standing like a clown with a witless grin daubed on his face. What he ought to have done was to leave, he knew; but he was incapable of making a good exit; and he would not slink out like a whipped dog. So he stayed. He sat down on a straight-backed chair a little to one side of the fireplace, facing the other two. The faces of Elaine and Joe were strongly revealed in the firelight. It was nothing to them if Wilfred watched them.
They rattled on. It appeared that they shared a hundred small interests. Joe had achieved the precise tone of Elaine’s world. The rattle was all a blind, Wilfred suspected. The fact that they never looked at each other, gave the game away. He imagined that he heard a rich quality in their laughter, having nothing to do with the trifles they discussed. Hidden things escaped in their laughter. Elaine’s superb nonchalance might very well be a sham. She could get away with anything. Such a woman recognized only one truth; the truth of her emotions. Color had stolen into her cheeks; it was an effort to keep her lips decorous. Secrets! secrets! between these two! Diana was only a woman of the flesh! What a handsome male Joe was, damn him! Wilfred felt as if he would die with the beating of his heart, and the pressure of blood against his temples.
Knowing himself, he strove desperately to make a stand against this madness. You are imagining it all! You cannot honestly say that Elaine has changed in the slightest degree. She treats Joe precisely the same as she treated you. . . .
Elaine sought to draw Wilfred into the talk. “Funny you two should be acquainted,” she said.
“Oh yes,” said Joe with a mocking laugh in Wilfred’s direction. “It’s ten years since we first laid eyes on each other. Remember that night, Pell?”
“I remember,” said Wilfred, seeking Joe’s eyes in wonder. Joe’s eyes skated laughingly away. Clever and daring as Satan! thought Wilfred.
Joe went on to give a humorous account of the psychical evening at the house of Wilfred’s Aunts long ago. Elaine was to infer that this was the occasion of their first meeting. In telling the story, Joe allowed his own soullessness to appear quite nakedly. He didn’t care; nor, apparently, did Elaine. It was a good joke.
Meanwhile Wilfred was working himself up to the point of going. He finally stood up with a jerk. “Well, I must trot along,” he said in a thin voice.
“So long, Wilfred,” said Elaine in her boyish way.
“Ta-ta, old man,” said Joe ironically.
You be damned! thought Wilfred, looking straight ahead of him.
He went out stiffly. Silence in the room behind him. Already! Already! What if he should go back? . . . Why go back? He knew without going back. And it wouldn’t shamethem! . . . Elaine . . . and that soulless blackguard! All her brave colors hauled down! Abandoning herself . . . his practised embraces! Oh, Christ! . . .
He hurried out of the house with a shrieking in his ears.
Afterhaving resisted the temptation for many days, Wilfred pushed a button at the door of one of the little flats in the Manhanset Building on Fifty-Ninth street. He was ashamed to drag his dead and alive self there for succor; nevertheless a feeling of thankfulness sprang up in his breast like water in dusty earth. What a blessing it was to have a place where you could drop in without an appointment, and be sure of your welcome. Perhaps he could conceal from Frances Mary how far gone he was.
She opened the door. His eyes were gratified by the sight of her bland and dusky fairness; her calm. Frances Mary was always the same. “Hello!” she said with her ironical smile, while her eyes beamed with friendliness. She had a quality of voice that worked magic with refractory nerves. “Come in!”
She walked away from the door, leaving Wilfred to close it and follow. If she had read anything in his face she gave no sign of it.
“Hope I’m not interrupting your work,” he said, trying not to sound perfunctory. He knew he was interrupting.
“I was ripe for an interruption.”
At the end of a tiny hall was her general room, a mellow retreat highly characteristic of its owner. It had two windows looking northward over the flat roofs of dwellings below. The effect was of green and brown and gold. Wilfred looked around him thirstily; it provided just what he needed then.
“This room is as right as a natural thing,” he said grinning. “Nothing sticks out. It doesn’t ask to be admired, but to be flopped in. Demoralizing I call it. Makes me feel tearful.”
Frances Mary looked most ironical when she was flattered. “Want a hanky?” she asked.
There was a hard coal fire burning in the grate. She put a plump brass kettle on the trivet and swung it in.
“Don’t bother about tea,” said Wilfred; “at least not for me.”
“I want it,” she said. They always carried through this little fiction.
She moved about the room, bringing out the tea things. She had the gift of getting things done without any fuss. A tall woman, of an essentially feminine tenderness of flesh, her glance was not tender but level. The leaf-colored room was a fit setting for her. Wilfred’s frantic feeling passed away. How restful! How blessedly restful! Her unexpressed sympathy was like sleep stealing on.
He could always count on her sympathy, he reflected, though she rarely agreed with him. There was a wholesome astringent quality in her nature. She was not generally popular he had observed with surprise. People complained that she seemed to mock at everything. They would not see that her mockery was only a thin shield for her heavenly kindness of heart. He felt that he alone understood Frances Mary. She had a slightly invidious smile; and her gentle glance was generally veiled. In particular, stupid women hated her for her smile. Yet she was what is known as a woman’s woman; she had devoted friends amongst the best sort of women. On the other hand she seemed to know but few men, and they not the best sort of men; women’s men.
Frances Mary was predestined to die single, Wilfred supposed, watching her. And she so splendidly made; what a pity! Loved babies, too. But she lacked any disturbing quality for men. Well, she was one of the rare women who could do without a man. There would be no souring here. Not with that serene mind. The happiest person he knew. Noble. If one had only had the luck to fall in love with a woman like that instead of . . . well, it would be just the difference between life and death! But you couldn’t fall in love with Frances Mary. She was too intelligent. A hollow laugh sounded inside Wilfred. What would be said of a man who uttered such a sentiment in a story?—But it was true just the same. Nature disregarded intelligence in the business of mating. Perhaps intelligence was too modern for Nature. It was a truism that a man’s man and a woman’s woman were the best types of each sex. What a ghastly joke anyhow, the whole damned business of sex! The peach-like Frances Mary doomed to shrivel, ungathered; and he to his Hell of base jealousy!
She did not look at him while she moved about, nevertheless Wilfred felt that he was being explored with a faculty other than sight—that withdrawn glance of hers; that hint of a smile. In haste he said, still in the tone of one determined not to be perfunctory—he could hear it!
“How is your work going?”
At the tone, her smile deepened; but she answered simply: “I’ve been working at the ‘Æolian Harp.’ I’d like you to read part of it later.”
“I expect I shan’t like it,” he said. “A little bird tells me you have been niggling at it. I warned you to leave it alone. It was all right as it was.”
An adorable look of anxiety came into Frances Mary’s face. It gave Wilfred a pleasant sense of power. She came to a stop; looking at him; biting her lip. “I . . . I thought I had improved it,” she faltered.
“Your vice is, never knowing when to leave a thing alone,” he said severely. “You lose sight of the whole in the parts.”
“I expect I do,” she said with a disarming humility. “Your criticism is awfully good for me. . . . What are you doing?”
Wilfred relapsed into the depths. “Nothing,” he said. The blackness was real enough; but he equivocated respecting its cause. For days past he had not even tried to write. “I’m still stuck in the middle of my restaurant story.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“Too damn sentimental!”
Frances Mary was silent.
Wilfred found he was not so deadened, but that he could still feel the pin-pricks of wounded self-love. “You don’t say anything,” he said bitterly. “You think it’s tripe, too.”
“Oh, not as bad as that!” she said. “The sentimentality was implicit in the original design. . . .”
“Why didn’t you tell me so then?”
“I tried to, but you wouldn’t have it so. . . . Why not finish it now, frankly in a sentimental vein; and go on to something else.”
“Why not advise me to tear it up?”
“But it has charm. It will sell readily.”
“You think that’s all I’m good for!”
She shook her head. “You can be as brutal as you like, next time. Your Rivington street story wasn’t sentimental.”
“Ah! don’t throw that up to me! I’ve never been able to equal it!”
“Every artist knows that feeling!”
“You manage to maintain the level of your stuff. It makes me sore, you write so much better than I do!”
Frances Mary smiled somewhat dryly. “I’ve been at it longer than you.”
“That hasn’t got anything to do with it. You have an instinct for perfection, while I’m all over the place!”
“Perfect stories of perfect ladies to adorn the chaste pages of our leading family magazine!” she said, smiling still.
“It doesn’t matter what they’re about, they’re well done!” said Wilfred.
“I suppose I do write better than you do now,” she said, ceasing to smile. “But my work is much the same as it was ten years ago when I began. There is more hope in your unevenness than in my dead level.”
“I truckle to the editors,” said Wilfred glooming.
“So you do,” admitted Frances Mary—and laughed when he looked up resentfully. “But as long as you know it, the case is not hopeless.”
“I’m no good!” said Wilfred, touching bottom.
“Have it your own way,” she said. “You are in one of your self-accusatory moods to-day, and to argue with you only strengthens your obstinacy. I’ll wait until you come out of it.”
“It’s not only to-day!” Wilfred burst out. “I shall never write again! I’ve utterly lost the knack. I can’t put together an intelligible sentence! I have gone dead inside!”
Frances Mary looked at him levelly before answering. Wilfred knew that look. It was to enable her to decide if this was the mere froth that he sometimes gave off, or if there was really something in it. He couldn’t tell which she decided. She said:
“Why not drop work for a while? Take a day or two off to walk in the country. There is snow on the Connecticut roads.”
He shook his head. “Can’t leave town just now,” he said, looking down.
She made no comment. The tea was made. Extending a cup she said: “Try hot tea.”
Wilfred forgot his guard for a moment. Raising his eyes to hers, he broke out laughing. “What a fool you must think me!” he said.
For an instant, the veil was lifted from her glance too. By his laughter she knew that he was in real pain. She laughed too. “Perfect!” she said.
Her laughter; her warm glance made Wilfred feel that existence was a little less like a vacuum.
He allowed himself to be persuaded to stay for dinner. Dinner in Frances Mary’s flat had the effect of a miracle. Without any heat or fuss or noise, a little table appeared in the center of the room, and was dressed in snow and silver. She wafted in and out of the room, keeping up the conversation from the kitchenette. An enticing odor gradually got itself recognized, and in a surprisingly short space of time, behold! there was the dinner on the table, an exactly right meal, never quite the same as anybody else’s dinner. Like her room, and like her stories, it revealed the Frances Mary touch. There was even a little bottle of wine to grace the board. At the last moment she had made an opportunity to go change her dress. Wilfred, who knew something about housekeeping, always marvelled how it was done.
He suddenly discovered a renewed zest for food. “Oh, this is good!” he said continually; and Frances Mary trying in vain to look ironical, smiled all over like a little girl. A tinge of color had come into her magnolia-petal cheeks and her eyes were bright. Feeding herself abstractedly, she eagerly watched every mouthful he took, and filled his glass before it was half emptied. They talked shop, and Wilfred experienced a precarious happiness. Outside of that enchanted haven the beast might be waiting to rend him—let it wait!
When the table was cleared they gave themselves up to talk. Frances Mary had an insatiable curiosity concerning Wilfred’s friends, whom she had never seen, and his daily doings. He enjoyed feeding it of course; but was sometimes troubled by the feeling that he was inflicting himself unduly on his friend. When he remembered to try to draw her out, she was generally too many for him.
“What have you been doing lately, Frances Mary?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me about your friends.”
“I can’t make them sound as interesting as you do yours.”
“What do you do with yourself? You can’t write all the time.”
“I ruminate,” said Frances Mary flippantly.
Wilfred laughed. “I can see you!” he said unguardedly. “I know you so well!”
She looked at him quickly, started to speak, and thinking better of it, pulled down the corners of her mouth mockingly.
“Oh, sure, that was a fatuous thing to say,” muttered Wilfred, blushing.
“It’s what everybody says to everybody,” she said.
“But I ought to have known better. Nobody knows anybody, really.”
“I don’t know,” said Frances Mary, “when two people live together they may. Because then they have a chance to watch each other in the company of others. But you and I travel in entirely separate orbits. The only point of intersection is your coming here to see me. And you don’t come very often. And if you find anybody else here you clear out immediately.”
“But surely we get more out of it. . . .”
“Surely! The point I was making is that all you see is your own facet of me.”
“Do you mean you show a different facet to everybody?”
“Oh, nothing so exciting. Alas! I am not different from other girls. I am always the same—at least I think I am. What I mean is, that you only see in me what you wish to see, and there is never anybody else around to upset your self-pleasing notions.”
“Oh, come!” said Wilfred.
“It’s just as well,” said Frances Mary with her mocking smile—she was mocking herself now. “Who wants the truth to be known about oneself? Especially a woman. Mystery is her existence. No matter how clever she is, she cannot escape the common fate of woman. Her own concerns are so unreal to her! . . . Mercy, what nonsense I am talking!”
A note of real bitterness had crept into Frances Mary’s voice, and Wilfred felt that he was on the brink of a disclosure. But while he was still trying to puzzle out her meaning in his mind, he discovered that he had been hurried on to something else. It was a trick of hers. She was now asking him about his experiences in society.
“Oh, I couldn’t keep that up,” said Wilfred with his glib, surface mind. “It was useful to see a few interiors, and get a line on the way those people talk; but it’s deadly, really. You can’t let yourself go. It was cruel hard on a child of nature like me! And Mrs. Gore’s dinners weren’t as good as yours. Not by a damn sight.”
“I thought perhaps you might make a friend or two.”
“Hardly, in that milieu.”
“That brilliant girl you told me about; Elaine Sturges; she sounded promising.”
This name had the effect of a cave-in under Wilfred’s feet. He dropped sickeningly; the waters of wretchedness closed over his head. Just when he had succeeded in forgetting it, too. He carefully made his face a blank. The skin of it grew tight in the effort. “Oh, yes, she has character,” he said carelessly.
“Don’t you see her any more?”
“She leads a crowded life,” said Wilfred. “Occasionally she vouchsafes me an hour.”
“How picturesque, such a life!” murmured Frances Mary. “Has she got the imagination to conceive its picturesqueness?”
Wilfred attended closely to his pipe. His heart swelled and seemed to squeeze his lungs. He cautiously drew a long breath. He wondered if Frances Mary was doing this on purpose, but dared not look at her, for he suspected that she was looking at him. Her eyes were sharp.
“Hardly imaginative,” he said, after a pause, as if for consideration.
“If she isn’t imaginative, what on earth do you find to talk about?” asked Frances Mary.
Wilfred thought of venturing a laugh; decided against it. He shot a glance at Frances Mary through his lashes. She was no longer looking at him. The line of her averted face suggested the same agonized self-consciousness that he felt. Of course, he thought, I am giving everything away, and she feels for me. She has guessed everything. Why not be open with her? He trembled with a horrible internal weakness. No! he thought desperately. If I let a single word out, I should go completely to pieces. Make a disgusting exhibition of myself; this thing’s got to be clamped down. . . .
“Oh, she likes me to explain her to herself,” he said lightly.
Frances Mary let the subject drop.
“Thisonly drives me crazy!” said Joe, suddenly rising. “. . . It maddens me!”
Elaine huddled in the big chair, turned sideways and dropped her face on her outstretched arm. “You’re not so crazy but you’re able to stop!” she murmured resentfully.
Joe helped himself to a cigarette from the mantel. “The servants already suspect,” he said.
“What makes you think so?”
“They tap on the door before coming in.”
“Well, let them suspect! They’re devoted to me. Servants always are.”
“That may be; but it won’t prevent their talking. And talk spreads from servants.”
“I don’t care!”
“Ido. If you won’t take care of yourself, I must take care of you.”
Elaine smiled crookedly.
“Oh, I’m not taking a moral attitude,” said Joe. “It’s just that I don’t choose to have my wife talked about by servants.”
“I have not said that I would marry you,” she said quickly.
“But you will!”
Elaine was silent, looking into the grate. She was pale; her cheeks showed little shadowy hollows. It was a disagreeable mild day out-of-doors; indoors the fire sulked.
Her silence shook Joe a little. Darting an uneasy glance at her, he asked combatively: “Why don’t you want to marry me?”
Elaine closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Joe’s eyes fastened on the pulse in her wan throat. “Ah, don’t let’s begin that again,” she said in a lifeless voice. “It gets us nowhere. . . . I love you! Isn’t that enough?”
A spark returned to Joe’s eyes; his lips pushed out a little. “But where is it going to land us?” he said. “We’ve got to thresh the thing out.”
Elaine opened her eyes. “Oh for heaven’s sake give me a cigarette and let’s stop arguing about ourselves.”
He put the cigarette between her lips and lighted it. “Why don’t you want to marry me?” he persisted.
“If I marry, commonsense tells me it ought to be a man of my own sort. . . .”
“This is new!” put in Joe. “Where did you get it?”
“. . . This madness will pass. What would we have then?”
“You mean one of the slick young fellows I meet around here? How often have you told me that their smoothness made you sick? You said it was my commonness and coarseness and naturalness that attracted you in the beginning.”
“Sure, I said it; what good to remind me of it now.”
“I’m only trying to get at your meaning.”
“Well . . . marriage is an everyday affair—a matter of superficialities if you like; breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to live by little things when this passes. . . .”
“What makes you think this feeling we have for each other will pass?” demanded Joe. “That is not like you.”
“Well . . . everybody says it will pass . . .”
“Who is everybody . . . Wilfred Pell?”
Elaine straightened up in anger. She tossed the cigarette into the fire. “Don’t be common and tiresome!” she said. “Do you think I would allow Wilfred Pell to discuss my private affairs with me?—or any other man? . . . What on earth made you think of him?”
“I dunno,” said Joe indifferently. “I just had a hunch. . . . Just the same, itwasWilfred Pell.”
“Oh, very well!” said Elaine hotly. “Then I am a liar!”
There was a silence. Joe whistled softly between his teeth.
“Not that I give a damn,” he presently said, good-humoredly. “A man like Wilfred Pell couldn’t trouble my peace any. I know the white-faced, hungry-eyed breed. You will always find them in a woman’s room whispering with her. That’s as near as they get, poor devils! sympathetic and safe!”
“Wilfred Pell is a gentleman!” said Elaine. “He is intelligent and good-hearted and decent!”
“Sure!” cried Joe, grinning with an open brow. “He is all that; and I am none of it!—But what does it all signify really, between man and woman?”
Elaine was silent, still angry.
“This is just spinning words,” said Joe, his voice becoming warm. “Why fight against the inevitable, sweetheart? I am your man! You can’t resist me!”
“And you?” she asked.
“You are my woman!” he said with glittering eyes. “Look at me!”
She dragged her eyes up to him, where he stood by the mantelpiece, a tall, muscular figure, displaying himself. He was as finished in appearance as any young man she knew; and he had in addition, the zest which had always tormented her in the faces of vulgar young men. Her eyes grew irresponsible; her face seemed to sharpen.
“Do you doubt it?” he demanded.
She shook her head helplessly.
“Well, then?”
“I can’t argue with you,” she said, low.
“You’re the sort of woman that never loves but once,” said Joe. “If you were to let me go . . . !”
“Are you threatening to leave me?” she asked, with a bitter smile.
“Frankly, I can’t stand this,” said Joe. “I must either have you entirely, or Iwillleave you.”
Elaine was silent. Her eyes were hidden. Suddenly she rose, and going to one of the windows, stood, twisting the cord of the window shade between thumb and finger, and looking down on the squalid panorama of soiled, half-melted snow. The old Square looked exhausted and leprous with the patches of scant dead grass and naked earth showing amidst the snow. Finally she murmured:
“I am not sure that you love me!”
“What more do you want?” cried Joe. “You know your power over me. You have felt my heart beat against yours. You know that when I come near you, I am lost.”
“A power over your body,” she murmured without looking around.
“That’s the only thing I know,” said Joe coolly. “I don’t go in for soul states. You’ve read too many novels. For God’s sake let’s be natural with each other. What else is there but this blind hunger we have for each other. The big thing that comes only once!”
“And passes!”
“Passes? Why do you keep harping on that? Do you doubt your own power? A woman like you! Are you afraid of common women? You will never lose me as long as you are sure of yourself!”
“Then I have lost you already!” she whispered to the glass.
“What’s that?” he asked irritably.
She would not repeat it. “I shouldn’t so much mind about you,” she said slowly, “if I was sure thatIcould stay mad. That’s what I most dread, coming to myself!”
“You needn’t fear,” said Joe smiling. “I’ll undertake to hold you.”
Elaine continued to look out of the window.
Presently he said: “I suspect the real reason is, you think I’m not good enough for you . . . not that I blame you. . . .”
“That’s not it,” she said quickly.
“I have never put on any pretences with you. . . .”
“Oh, no!” she said bitterly.
“I have told you the whole of my nefarious history. . . .”
“I wouldn’t care if you had committed a murder!”
“I suppose people warn you against me.”
“Oh, yes. Everybody. I don’t listen . . . I live only for the hours I spend with you.”
“Same here,” put in Joe.
Elaine looked at him involuntarily. The little hollows in her cheeks darkened; and her eyes became liquid with bitter mirth. She laughed shakily, unaware that she was laughing; paused as if startled by the sound; and resumed in her former toneless voice: “From the first moment that I saw you in the field at Piping Rock I was lost. It was your damned insolence. In half a glance you knew you had me.”
“Insolence was your line,” said Joe laughing.
“Then it was a kind of retribution,” she said darkly.
“You looked at me as if I was something dirty in the road.”
“You knew you had me!”
“Well, you had me, too.”
She shook her head. “There was triumph in your eyes.”
“All a bluff,” said Joe; “a man’s supposed to look like that. . . . Why, for weeks after that whenever we met, you went out of your way to insult me.”
“A fat lot you cared!” murmured Elaine.
“And the first night I tried to kiss you,” said Joe chuckling; “Gee! . . . Remember? Cave woman act. No man ever took worse punishment for a kiss.”
“You knew you had me,” murmured Elaine. “You laughed. . . . Oh, God! why does it have to be so one-sided!”
“Now who’s agonizing?” said Joe, going to her. “One-sided nothing! We’re both crazy. It’s just as it ought to be. We would be as happy as kids if it wasn’t for outside interference . . . I can see exactly what has happened. Your folks have been keeping after you about me, until you’re half hysterical. Well, it’s nobody’s business but our own. I am able to take care of you. Let’s steal away by ourselves and get married. We are free, white and twenty-one. That’s the way to stop the uproar. Nobody bothers about a thing once it’s done. To-morrow, Princess—or to-day! now! My car is at the door. Then good-bye to all worries. Nothing but happiness—Oh, my God! think of it. . . . Go get your hat and coat!”
Elaine shook her head.
Joe drew her back from the window. Holding her within one arm, he roughly pressed her hair back from her forehead, and kissed her eyelids. “You can’t fight against this thing, sweetheart,” he whispered. “It’s stronger than we are. The more you try to fight it, the stronger it gets!”
“Oh, don’t!” she whispered between his kisses. “I know it. . . . Oh, if I could stay like this forever! Oh, God! if I didn’t have to think!”
“Stop thinking, dearest dear. Come with me and stay with me forever. Come now! . . .”
She withdrew herself from his arm. “I will not,” she murmured.
Joe returned to the fireplace and flung himself into one of the big chairs. “Oh God! you do try a man’s patience!” he exclaimed. “You want me, and you don’t want me! Where is this going to end?”
“I’m afraid of you,” Elaine said suddenly. She had turned, and was looking at him somberly. The fear she spoke of was not evident in her glance.
Joe laughed softly. “That’s flattering,” he said: “for you’re the bravest woman I know.”
She went a step or two towards him. She seemed to speak by a power outside herself. “In our maddest moments your eyes are still measuring me. You never lose yourself. . . . You should not have forced me to speak of this. I see that all the things I ordinarily say are mere nonsense—like the noises made by savages to keep devils off. . . . You have roused a fever in me that is burning me up. . . . But . . . but . . . I don’t want to have a child. . . .”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Joe, startled, showing his teeth.
The jangling voice recalled her to herself, wincing. She walked unevenly up and down. “The nonsense that they teach girls!” she murmured. “It made a rebel of me. I had prudence and obedience and chastity thrust down my throat until I fell in love with everything that was reckless and bad. I understood the devil worshippers. That’s how you got me. . . .”
“I don’t care how I got you,” said Joe with a secret smile.
She came to a stop. Her eyes were widely distended and quite unseeing. She made vague passes with her hand in the effort to express the inexpressible. “But all that stuff I laughed at . . . religion . . . all that stuff . . . is getting back at me . . . I mean may be it is . . . all kinds of things are working inside me . . . maybe there’s something in it. . . .”
“You’re talking wildly!” said Joe.
She shook her head. “I never got so close to naming it before . . . the thing you don’t talk about . . .”
“Come here,” said Joe, half contemptuously.
She shook her head inattentively. “Let me be. . . .”
He stood up. “Come here!” he said, peremptorily.
She looked at him reluctantly—and lost herself. A deep blush overspread her pale skin; her face became irradiated with a confused and imploring smile. She went to him slowly; shamed and rapturous.
Joe had dropped back into the big chair. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he pressed her down to her knees at his feet. “Put your arms around my neck,” he commanded.
She obeyed. He pressed his lips to hers.
“Now . . .nowtell me if there is anything in life that matters beside this,” he said breathlessly.
“No! No! No!” she whispered passionately. “I want only you!”
“You see, you’ll have to marry me!”
“No, Joe!”
“But I say you shall!”
Ona mild, bright afternoon, Elaine and Wilfred ran down the steps of the Sturges house, and turned east. Wilfred had enjoined Elaine to dress plainly; and she was wearing a severe tweed coat, and an inconspicuous hat bound round with a veil. Thus clad, her brave air was more apparent than ever. Wilfred’s heart beat high. Leaving behind them the big house which typified Elaine’s crowded exotic life, he felt for the first time that he had her to himself. Looking at her, he thought: It is impossible that Joe could reach his grimy paw so high! As usual, I have been tormenting myself without reason.
“Now elucidate the mystery,” said Elaine. “Where are we going?”
“Into the East Side,” said Wilfred. “My stamping-ground.”
“Slumming?” she asked, running up her eyebrows.
“No, indeed!” said Wilfred quickly.
“Well, I’m thankful for that. I’m no slum angel. . . . But why should we go there then? It’s not done.”
“I haunt the East Side for my own benefit, not for the East-Siders’,” he said. “I want to show you something real for once.”
“You funny man!” said Elaine. “I suppose you think you are sincere in this nonsense.”
Wilfred laughed.
“I warn you it is useless to expect me to be born anew.”
“I don’t,” he said quickly. “This is no deep-laid plot. Your life suffocates me. I am never myself in it. I wanted to have you once where I could breathe: to drag you down to my level if you like. It’s only for an hour. It won’t injure you permanently.”
“I am not afraid of being injured,” she said a little affronted.
“You are afraid of being changed, though.”
“Not at all!” she said stiffly. . . . “Still, I don’t see why I have to be dragged through the slums. I shan’t like it.”
“Oh, your conventional nose will turn up at the smells, and your eyes avert themselves from the dirt,” said Wilfred; “but there is a grand streak of commonness in you if one could only get at it.”
Elaine looked at him a little startled.
“Instead of a young lady of fashion you ought to have been a camp follower of the Revolution,” he went on. “I can see you shaking the Tricolor and yelling for blood!”
She liked this picture, and showed her white teeth. “You have the silliest notions about me!” she said scornfully.
They made their way through St. Mark’s Place and East Tenth street to Tompkins Square. This neighborhood, still suggesting 1860, with its plain brick tenements of low height, and old-fashioned store-fronts was a favorite haunt of Wilfred’s. It was still Irish-American New York, with the descendants of the original be-Jasus bhoys standing on the corners. It had the appeal of something doomed; for the old stores here and there were erupting in showy modern fronts; and the Jews were creeping in from the South.
Elaine did not get the special character of the streets, but any comely individual interested her. There was a stalwart young teamster unloading his dray, who, confident of his manhood, glanced sideways at Elaine with daring, mirthful eyes.
“What charming, wicked eyes!” murmured Elaine, after they had passed.
Wilfred felt a little crushed. His eyes were not wicked.
Proceeding farther east, they turned up-town, following always the last street on the edge of the Island. Wilfred found these forgotten streets full of character; the utilitarian steam-roller had not flattened them out. Actually, in the summer-time, spears of grass could be seen pushing up between the cobble-stones. There was a group of deserted buildings falling into ruin; and a little general store whose aspect had not changed since the days when New York was pure American; there was a smithy, which, lacking only a spreading chestnut tree, might have been transported entire from up-state. There was a yard piled with junk, which would have been fascinating to pick over; and there were high board fences with padlocked gates concealing mysteries. The inhabitants of the scattered dwellings in these last streets stared at the intruders like mountain folk.
He tried enthusiastically to convey it all to Elaine.
Looking at him with a quizzical eye, she asked: “Would you like to live over here?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded Wilfred. “Isn’t it refreshing after the awful sameness of the other streets?”
Elaine peered dubiously through a filthy archway leading into a dank, paved court. “Well, I don’t know,” she said; “I like a place that I know.”
Farther up-town, they came to a wide waterside street which had lately been laid off on made ground. On the river side a row of big new piers had been built, sticking out into the river. As yet no sheds covered them; and it was one of the few places in the water-engirdled town Wilfred pointed out, where one could see the water from the street. The great shipping interests had still to take possession of the piers; consequently a confused throng of humble craft were tied up there; including canal-boats; sailing-lighters (which had once been called periguas); little old steam-boats laid up for the winter; and a rigged ship or two, waiting for a charter. Many of these vessels revealed family life on board. The open piers were heaped with rough cargo that would take no damage from the elements. The whole made a scene irresistibly entangling to the eye.
On the landward side a raw building or two had been run up alongside the new street to house the inevitable saloon with its colored glass and gingerbread work; but for the most part the vista was of coal-yards, and yards for the storage of wagons at night. These were backed by the side walls of the tall new tenements in the cross streets—not so new but that the white paint was scaling off the bricks, and the fire-escapes rusting. From every floor of the tenements extended lines of flapping clothes affixed to tall poles in the rear. Looking through between the backs of the houses, one beheld a very blizzard of linen. The sun was preparing to descend behind the tenement houses, and over across the wide river, the ugly factories of the Greenpoint shore (no longer green!) were sublimated by his horizontal rays.
Wilfred looked around him with a kindling eye. Elaine, glancing at him askance, said:
“Interesting if not beautiful.”
“Oh, I’ve quit worrying about what constitutes beauty!” said Wilfred. “All I know is, thisbitesme. It’s because it sums up my town; the flapping clothes; the collection of queer craft; they could be of no other town; it’s New York!”
Crossing one of the streets leading away from the river, they saw a crowd assembling before the gates of a coal-yard. Little boys appeared from nowhere, running and crying in an ecstacy:
“Somep’n t’ matteh! Somep’n t’ matteh!”
“The rallying cry of New York!” murmured Wilfred. Anticipating ugliness, he took hold of Elaine’s arm to draw her on; but she resisted.
“Let’s see what it is,” she said.
Wilfred had no recourse but to follow her into the side street.
Two burly young men out of the coal-yard were fighting. It was a serious affair. Greasy with coal-dust, their faces dehumanized, there was nevertheless a dignity in the fighting look; hard, wary and intent. One was a mere lad; a young bull, with round head sunk between his brawny shoulders, and a remarkable mane of crisping black hair. The other, some years older, was cooler and warier; not without grace. How vain this one’s efforts! Though he was no older than Wilfred, on the plane of savagery his day was already passing; it was marked under his eyes. He might beat the lad now; but the lad would beat him next year. They were well-matched; they sparred smartly; and broke away clean; just the same there was a savage fury behind their blows.
Wilfred was a little sickened. Yet he had the envious feeling that these simple brutes possessed a key to life that had been taken from him, without any other being supplied. The younger man received a blow on the mouth that drew blood. He indifferently swept the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving a hideous smear. Had Wilfred been alone, he would have wished to see the affair to a conclusion, though he could not have borne to watch it continuously. His eyes would bolt, and have to be forced back. Now, with Elaine beside him, he was in distress, thinking of her womanhood exposed to such a sight.
“Come on! Come on!” he whispered urgently.
She turned a look of scorn on him. “You wanted me to see something real,” she said. “Can’t you stand it?”
“I was thinking of you,” he murmured.
She seemed to have increased in height; and her face wore a hard, bright look; in fact, a reflection of the look on the coal-blackened faces. She is of them; not of me! Wilfred thought sadly. She had not lost the simple key of life—the heroic key; and alas! he was no hero. He no longer saw the fight. Before his mind’s eye rose a picture of himself and Elaine yoked together and hopelessly opposed. Every advantage would be hers. It would be fatal for him to marry a woman with that strain in her, he thought; and at the same time his desire for her was increased tenfold, by reason of her savage, bright eyes.
There was no conclusion to the battle. A cry of “Cheese it, the cop!” was raised; and the two combatants, bolting through the ring that surrounded them, disappeared within the coal-yard. The spectators were left standing at a loss. A blue-coated officer approached with dignity from the river front.
“Hey! Move on there, youse!” he cried, disdaining to enquire into the cause of the gathering.
The people reluctantly made a pretence of moving this way and that; but scarcely left the spot. The bluecoat, with his Olympian air, went on a little way, and then came back again.
Still Elaine would not be drawn away. She saw a knot of people excitedly discussing the affair; and coolly elbowed her way in, leaving Wilfred to follow at her skirt.
“Hey! Move on! didn’t I tell yez!” commanded the officer, heading for the group; and dispersing it with strong outward thrusts of his forearms. The elegant Elaine was thrust aside with the rest. Up to this moment nobody had taken any particular notice of her; but the policeman, observing her dress, looked her up and down with amazement. He did not, however, address her. Wilfred suffered acutely. Elaine, ignoring the officer, fell into step beside a girl who seemed to be the source of information, and Wilfred walked beside Elaine, feeling as ineffective as a toddling child.
“What started it?” asked Elaine, avidly interested.
The girl was a meager little thing, not more than sixteen years old. Her thin jacket was mended crookedly; her shoes ran over at the heel. She wore a big black lace hat, which projected far beyond her pompadour like a fan. She was not at all averse to talking. It was her moment. Everybody was trying to walk alongside her, pressing close to hear; some in front walking with heads over their shoulders; all mouths open.
“T’at utter fella,” she said; “I mean t’ old fella; he’s too fresh, he is. He t’inks he’s t’ hull t’ing! Me guyl friend, she lives next door to t’ coal-yard, see? and he’s all a time flirtin’ wit’ her at t’ winda. Just to show off to t’ utter fellas in t’ yard what a hell of a fellahewas, understand?”
“Sure, I understand,” said Elaine.
“Well, it was all right until he begun to holler up at her,” the girl went on. “Then me friend’s old woman, she got sore, see? If he’d come up to her respectable in the street, like, she’d a gone out wit’ him, maybe—but to holler up at t’ winda like t’at!”
“No,” said Elaine; “it’s not done!”
“You’re right! It ain’t done! . . . So I says to my friend, I says, I’d stop by the yard when he was in on his cart, and I’d tell him real nice, to cut it out, see? And I did ast him just as polite, to cut it out, and he begun to get fresh wit’ me. An t’en t’ black-headed young fella he come in on his cart, and he up and tells t’ utter fella to cut it out. And t’ utter fella, I mean t’ old fella, he begins to cuyse. Such language! And me standin’ right t’ere all a time! T’en t’ black-headed young fella, he soaked him one, and t’ey went outside to settle it. . . . T’at old fella, he’s t’ bully of t’ hull yard. But he’d a got hisn to-day if t’ cop hadn’t a come. T’ black-headed boy’ll lay him out cold, yet!”
“He’s a handsome lad,” said Elaine.
“He is so, lady! And strong! My! He ain’t but nineteen year old, neit’er.”
“Shall you see him again?”
“Oh, he kin allus find me if he wants me,” she said with a toss of the lace hat. “I don’t live far.”
At the corner, the group broke up, and Wilfred was able to draw Elaine away at last. In his mind he was confused and bitter. Elaine scorned these people; yet she was able to talk to them without self-consciousness; he loved them, and could not. All his explorations on the East Side were conducted in silence. Not only was his tongue tied, but he knew he had an aloof air which prevented people from addressing him.
Elaine guessed what was passing in his mind. She said with a smile: “You see I am closer to them than you are.”
Wilfred said nothing.
“These people interest you, because they are strange to you,” she presently went on. “They are not strange to me. Just people. . . . All the same, I’m glad my great-great-grandfather made a lot of money! . . . Wilfred, if you lived over here, you’d spend your time walking up and down Fifth avenue, looking in the rich peoples’ windows, and dreaming abouttheirlives!”
It’s true! thought Wilfred. She has her own fire, and doesn’t have to bother; but I can only go about warming myself at the fires of others!
They reached one of the little terraces on the East River cliffs. Elaine swung herself up on the parapet that closed the end of a cross street; while Wilfred standing below her, leaned his elbows on the stone. Off to his left ran a little street of brownstone houses a block long, with back yards dropping over the cliff. Darkness was falling; no one was in sight. Elaine drew the tweed coat more closely around her.
“Light a cigarette for me,” she said. “If anybody comes, I’ll hand it back.”
Wilfred’s lips caressed the cigarette as it left them. Fascinated, he watched Elaine’s cool fresh lips close upon the same spot. How sweet that vicarious kiss! He ventured to move closer to her; and at the touch of her body, a momentary benediction descended on his agitated breast—momentary, because he had that to say which would destroy it forever.
“Well, has it been a success?” he asked.