The first news of Easter came over the cables. She made her début at a concert in Berlin under the powerful wing of Lilli Lehmann and achieved a remarkable success. Her brilliant beauty was a factor, but it was her voice, luscious as an August sunset and her emotional temperament that caused the furore. (A press-agent's fiction. There are no "furores" in concert rooms, or at the opera. A lot of noise-loving imbeciles stamp their feet and shout. The claque is always busy. Hysterical criticism does the rest.) Certain exalted personages in the royal-box condescended to express their approval of Fraülein Esther Brandès, who was at once offered huge sums to sign a contract for future European appearances. (These offers are always announced in cablegrams.) Easter must have been ubiquitous for in the foreign dispatches next day was a sensational account of a duel she fought with Mary Garden in the Bois at Paris with Johnstone Bennett—dear old sporting "Johnny" as referee. Sybil Sanderson and Augusta Holmès sat in a balcony and compared scandals. Mary, lithe, elastic, and younger than Easter, pinked her antagonist. The duellists clasped hands and the party, chiefly composed of Parisian newspaper men, adjourned to Pré au Catalan there to drink fresh milk and stale gossip. Rumour had it that the two girls were in love with the same man, no less than the fascinating barytone at the Opera, Maurice Renaud. When Allie Wentworth, who was Easter's second, read this in "Le Soir" she burst into laughter and showed the story to "Johnny", who only lighted a fresh cigarette repeating the classic, "cinq lettres, le mot de Cambronne."
At the fifth gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the girdle that encompasses her waist....
Alfred Stone as he stood on the boardwalk opposite the Marlborough-Blenheim asked himself why some bold thinker had not elucidated the psychology of Atlantic City. It has no moral landscape, he told himself, though it boasts the finest of seascapes. If there had been invented, as there will be some day, a psychic cinematograph, then, perhaps, a complete picture might be presented of this vulgar and fascinating resort—for vulgar in the sense of popularity it unquestionably is; monumentally vulgar, epically vulgar—epical, that is the precise word. There is a sweep of colour, a breeziness of space, a riot of sound and a chaos of movement that appal because of their amplitude. All creation seems out-of-doors. You jostle elbows with the man from Hindustan, the man from Newark, the man from London, and the man from California. Black, white, red, yellow, brown and nondescript races mingle on the boardwalk in that never-ending promenade from the Inlet to Chelsea. Between the Pickle and the Million Dollar Piers the course of humanity takes its way. In that section it is thickest. At every other step you use the short-arm jolt. In ten minutes you long for the comparative ease of the rush-hour at Brooklyn Bridge.
Atlantic City is a queer Cosmopolis, and a Cosmopolis that could easily perish in a giant inundation, so closely does it hug the rim of the sea. It is ugly, with the attractive ugliness of modern life. It is also many other things. Not Ostend, Dieppe, Brighton in England, Trouville, Scheveningen, Boulogne, nor yet Etretat, Naples, nor the Riviera rival the infinite variety of Atlantic City. It is not a retreat for those introspectively inclined. It is all on the surface; it is hard, glittering, unspeakably cacaphonous, and it never sleeps. If you long to loaf and invite your nerves, Cape May is preferable.
The medley of life, the roaring of megaphones, the frantic rush and gabble of a babel-like chorus, the dazzling single line of booths, divans, stores, holes-in-the-wall hotels, cafés, carrousels, soda-fountains, side-shows, the buzzing of children, the shouting newsboys, the appeals of fakirs, the swift glance of eyes feminine, the scowl of beach-hawks and the innocent mien of bucolics—a Walt Whitman catalogue would not exhaust this metropolis of the sea, this paradise of "powerful uneducated persons," patricians, billionaires and shabby folk. And the piers—a second city on steel and wooden stilts, extending a half mile across the water, containing a hundred diversions. These piers recall the evolution from the lake-dwellers of Central Europe, whose lacustrine deposits we marvel over, just as huge structures reared skyward, modern hotels, are the highly developed habitat of the cliff-dwellers. Doubtless thousands of years hence ardent archeologists will rummage into the deposits of ancient Atlantic City and weave a philosophic system from the strange shapes discovered; combs, coprolites, corsets, hairpins, shovels, flasks, and other "kitchen midden" of the present time.
If the Coleridge of Kubla Khan, or the Poe of the Domain of Arnheim could see the fantastic structures on the beach, those poets would sigh with satisfaction. In our chilly aesthetic air, ruminated Alfred, where utility leads beauty by the nose, the spectacle of an architect giving reign to his fancy and conceiving such an exotic pile as the hyphenated-hotel is a refreshing one. The author of Vathek, William Beckford, could have wished for nothing richer. This architecture might be Byzantine. It suggests St. Marco at Venice, St. Sophia at Constantinople, also a Hindoo palace, with its crouching dome, operatic façade, and its dominating monoliths with the blunt tops of concrete; the exterior decoration is a luxurious exfoliation in hues; turquoise and fawn. It is a dream-architecture, this, with its evocations of Asiatic color and music.
But Atlantic City at night. Alfred recalled it as a picture for such different painters as Whistler or Toulouse-Lautrec. A sight not to be duplicated. Miles of electric lamps light up the boardwalk. Even the darker spaces above the Pickle-Pier are festooned with lace-like fire. It is a carnival of flame. You may start from the Inlet with an open book, walk for miles, perusing it all the while, until you reach the lower end of the promenade and touch the last wooden rail. The enormous amount of electricity consumed seems to make the air vital. Through those garlands of light moves a mob of well-behaved humans. The women are more mysterious than during the day time. If you are still youthful you encounter magnetic glances. Dazzling glances. Sumptuous evening toilettes assault your nerves. Wealth envelopes you. Apparently there is no poverty, no sickness, no unhappiness in existence. The optimistic exuberance of the American is seen here at its most depressing. Mark Tapley run to seed. There is a suggestion of the overblown, of the snobbish, in this al-fresco display; yet if you are not seeking the fly in the ointment you may enjoy as you would enjoy the gorgeous tableaux of Aida or Salammbô. It is all as unreal. How vulgar, how damnably vulgar! exclaimed Alfred, and he remembered the women he had seen at his hotel, their fingers hooped with opals, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and holding green corn on the cob to their sensual lips. A dozen mouths simultaneously opened, pink and pearly traps; there was a snapping of dentals, a gnashing of corn. The diamonds flashed, the emeralds blazed with murky green fire, and the sinister opalescence of the unlucky stone matched the colour of the succulent slaughtered vegetable. Surely no other vegetable but corn could enjoy such a scintillating death at the teeth of those pretty, overdressed matrons and silly maids. Alfred shuddered at the memory. Then he saw something that gave him a start and caused him to whistle, interrogatively. Coming toward him was Mona Milton keeping in tow a blond youth in flannels. Evidently she had spied Alfred first. She made a friendly signal, then turning on her escort, she spoke words that acted as would a magical formula for disappearance. He faded into the crowd and Mona was soon shaking hands with the critic.
"You! What good wind blew you down here"? "You of course, how can you ask"? He spoke in his accustomed cynical strain. She passed it over. Something distracted her. "Did you see Milt recently"? she asked, but she did not look him in the eye. She means Ulick, was Alfred's interior comment. "Why yes", he briskly replied. "Yes, Milt was with us the other night at the Arena." "At the Arena"? she faintly echoed. There was a pause. He proposed that they should walk toward the Inlet. The air is fresher there. He told her that he had felt his feed, hence his unexpected appearance and he politely inquired as to the state of her mother's health. "You see," she said, "Hot Springs proved too enervating for mamma, and I proposed a spell of salt air. We shan't stay longer than a week or two. Poor papa—alone with his metaphysics and his eternal chess at the Century. I don't mean to say that he can't get along without us, vous autres, you men are always more self-centred than the women. You have your clubs, your games, and as a final resort your library. Still, papa must miss mamma. So home we go by the beginning of July——" "And to the most heated time in the season." "Oh, I don't much mind the heat. I read. I play a little. There is the park a block away and...." "And Ulick?" "Ulick? Mr. Invern? What in the world makes you drag in his name?" She was cool, unblushing, but her eyes glowed expressively.
"Come, come, Mona, you can't pull the wool over the eyes of this citizen. I know all about your promenades, your luncheons in darkest Martin's, your park rides and presumable holding hands in three languages. I will be frank with you. I don't approve of the intrigue." "Intrigue!" she cried, visibly moved. He noticed it and continued, rather elated: "Yes, that's what the affair is, Mona, understand me, I don't mean intrigue with vulgar connations. That Master Ulick reserves for his mistress Dora Anonymous. I beg your pardon, Mona, I didn't mean to startle you." She had relinquished his arm, abruptly turned to the rail of the boardwalk and gazed seaward. Alfred was furious with himself. He knew that he shouldn't have so awkwardly blurted out the facts of another man's private peccadilloes, but he couldn't help himself and now he had hurt the one woman in the world that he thoroughly respected. He meditated. Her back didn't invite conversation; worse still, she was humming. That he knew was a storm-warning. A schoolmate of Milt's, he had been a visitor in the family for a decade and more. He threw away his cigarette. Then he grasped Mona's left arm. She did not repulse him. She still hummed a tune, one that he recognized. Carmen's song of defiance. "Mona, I humbly apologize for my imprudence. I didn't mean to give Ulick away, but I hate to see you throw yourself at his feet." She turned; he noted that while her eyes were wet—such lovely, appealing eyes—she was smiling. "You dear stupid old Alfred. With all your clairvoyance, can't you see that I don't care whether Mr. Invern has one or ten mistresses? I'm annoyed only because you venture to scold me because I dare go about with him. Pray, since when are you become the keeper of my conscience? You—of all men? I'll keep company with Ulick—with Mr. Invern as much as I please. Yes, and hold hands with him if I care to." She was amused. "I suppose you will tell Milt." He was confused and murmured: "I've told him already. Don't go away Mona—he took it quite calmly, I assure you." But she was aroused. He had never seen this charming girl with the placid temper in a rage. She stamped her foot crying: "Go away, go away from me at once, and please don't come to our house while Milt is away. I shall refuse to see you." Then she cut into one of the side streets and Alfred found himself in turn looking at the sea and watching with vague eyes the chugging motor-boats. He went over to Atlantic Avenue, to the "Extra-Dry Café" and drank whisky cocktails.
That same evening, undaunted, he called at the St. Charles and asked for Mrs. Milton. She received him with her accustomed undemonstrative cordiality; she possessed to an unusual degree the tact of omission. Mona on her return—long after the dinner-hour—hinted that Alfred and she had indulged in an absurd quarrel. But she did not divulge the cause. Alfred is always Alfred, she explained and went upstairs to change her walking attire for evening clothes. From the corner of her eye she saw him talking to her mother. She had her youthful cavalier of the afternoon at her side and, as if to show Alfred that there was more than one man on the globe besides Ulick, she flirted and gossiped to such effect that the young man lost his head and squeezed her hand, blushing as he did so. She did not move for she saw that Alfred had witnessed the scene. He nodded in her direction, lifting ironical eyebrows. That decided her. She beckoned to him much to the disgust of her infatuated companion. She again waved her magic wand of dismissal. He evaporated into thin air; he was hardly more substantial himself. "Come here Alfred if mamma will spare you. I have something to tell you." Her mother, pleased to see that the best friend of her beloved son was to be taken again into the good graces of her daughter, moved indoors, giving sleepiness as an excuse. "Don't you young people stay up too late. The salt air is very damp. Good night Alfred. I hope to see you in the morning."
"Listen, Alfred. Sit down and listen. I don't wish you to think I'm such a ninny as to fancy a young man like Ulick is without his distractions. Only keep your Doras to yourself——" "Which Ulick can't accomplish. He shares her with Paul Godard," eagerly broke in Alfred. "No scandal please," she remonstrated. "His private affairs—the private affairs of the mercurial Paul—I confess I like Paul, he is at least well-bred—do not concern me, but what does interest me is your honest opinion of Ulick Invern's character. As he is your closest friend you are bound in honour to give him a bad black eye for my special benefit. But I shall discount your abuse. So go ahead and get rid of your venom." He was hurt by the flippant manner of this invitation. He didn't mind the imputation, for he prided himself on his sharp tongue and epigrammatic slashing at other people's good names, but like most cynics he feared critical guns trained on his own sensitive self. She laughed all the more. In a cold sullen irritation he spoke his little piece with Ulick as thesis.
"You greatly mistake me Mona if you think I underestimate the splendid qualities of Invern. He is a good friend, a friend in need. Generosity of spirit he abounds in. It is his strong point, also his weakest. He is too receptive. He may write well some day, yet I don't believe the man will go far. Again his procrastination, his receptivity, his money, will all militate against his achieving what he calls artistic success, what I call blithering nonsense. Why, if he had a genuine personality, I mean, of course, an artistic personality, he would not talk so much about evolving one—which he does about a dozen times daily. That's number one. Number two is his weakness concerning your sex." She lifted a deprecating hand. "I shan't bother you with any stories about the way he shoots off his young fireworks. That is only a liberation of his surplus energy. If he didn't pursue the Eternal Feminine, if he didn't go in quest of the elusive girl, he might be drinking or gambling—like myself. Mind you, I don't give him any credit for not indulging in the sports of the average male. He saw too much of dissipation when he was young. The old man drank himself to death, and would have gambled away his wife's fortune if it had not been tied up so securely by her father, Bartlett the banker. No, I don't take any stock in Ulick's negative virtues. If he didn't hate the taste of alcohol and the smell of tobacco, he would be like the rest of us; perhaps worse. I only hope he won't take to booze when he is mature; no hope for him if he does. Late boozers never reform. My chief criticism, my dear Mona, is directed against his instability of character. Ulick is true to any wind that blows. He is an emotional weathercock. Any petticoat that crosses his vision attracts him and the last becomes the Eternal She who must be obeyed. In speaking for your good, Mona, just remember his infatuation for Easter, and now—she is only a year gone and it's out of sight, out of mind with him."
Mona attentively listened. At the casual reference to Easter she asked: "What sort of a girl is this Easter—what's her real name?" "Esther Brandès. No. She isn't a Jewess, though I shouldn't be surprised to learn that her mysterious father—she seldom refers to his existence—was of the tribe. Danish, they say, a countryman of Georg Brandes. What sort? A very good sort, I assure you, altogether apart from her musical and dramatic gifts. Now, there's a woman who will go far, because she possesses what Ulick lacks; singleness of purpose. She only sees artistic success, and she goes straight for it. She will get there with both feet, as the saying is. Esther Brandès in ten years may be treading in the august footsteps of Lilli Lehmann. Who knows! Why did she fight a duel with Mary Garden? you ask. Probably because she saw a chance to get into the cable news. Mary is canny. Esther is cannier. She would fight with Frida Ash if she thought it would bring forth a newspaper paragraph. She knows the ropes. Publicity. Notoriety. Anything scandalous, so that she is not forgotten. That's why I believe she will win out. Ulick—never. He hasn't the staying power. He won't take punishment. He is a dreamer and an egotist. He fondly believes that he is becoming a good American when he is only a deracinated cosmopolitan. His place is Paris, not New York. In the end he will be only a spoiled Parisian."
"He complains that everyone advises him to return to Paris," interjected Mona, who seemed sleepy. "And jolly good advice it is. I'm telling you nothing novel, Mona; your brother Milt has discoursed Ulick, his talents—he has more than one. Did you ever hear him play Chopin?—his personality; a chameleon, I tell you, a charming chameleon, intellectually inconstant, and always to be watched. I hope you haven't fallen too deeply in love with him not to pull out when you understand his real character—or want of it. He is quite capable of passing the night with two or three women if the mood is upon him, and physical circumstances favourable. Pardon me, Mona, if I speak plainly. I am concerned for your welfare, else"——She rose, rubbed her eyes, and held out her hand.
"That's the consecrated phrase, Alfred. The most interesting part of your highly moral discourse was your description of Easter. She intrigues my curiosity. Do you suppose that Ulick will tumble over when she returns"? Alfred was surly. "I dare say. But I'm not his keeper. Good-night, and good-bye, Mona. I go up in the morning. May I run in on your return"? Mona nodded. "You may. Milt will be with us for his annual vacation, and you ought to sleep well tonight after demolishing two reputations." Alfred grunted a farewell.
Milt was punctual and the friends ate one; of Madame Felicé's excellent luncheons in a receptive mood. The conversation ranged from food to metaphysics. "Ah, Ulick"! cried Milt, who was unusually expansive, "if you would only make up your mind as to your future." "But I have," asserted Ulick. "I have. I mean to become a good American citizen and write artistic books." "I doubt if you will ever become one or accomplish the other," was the unexpected criticism of this young theological student, who saw life steadily. "The foreign virus is in your blood, Ulick. You are one-half Frenchman, the other half cosmopolitan; both are fatal to true Americanism. You should have remained in Paris——" "Another"! groaned Ulick-"and married some nice girl, any nationality so she would be nice, raise a family and settle down." "What a dear old philistine you are, Milt. Why don't you?" Milt slightly coloured. "Because I've chosen the better part like Mary in the gospel. The highest function permitted man is that of the priest. Many are called, few chosen. I tremble before the responsibility of my vocation. I can only pray in all humility that I shall not be an unworthy servant of the Lord." Ulick suddenly changed the subject by asking: "Milt, what is your first name? I've never heard you called anything but Milt, except when Alfred calls you Mel." Milt solemnly envisaged his questioner. "My first name is a secret. Alfred happens to know because we were at college for years in the same classes. It is a name sacred to me, my mother's idea, yet a name that I fear to use because it excites mirth. "Good heavens! what an awful name it must be. Melodeon or molasses"? "I said sacred, Ulick. Let's drop the question." Milt was so grave that his companion shrugged in despair.
"Why do you think I'll never write artistic books"? he demanded. "It's not the artistic I'm fearing, it's the fact that unless you develop character your books will not even fill the belly with the east wind." "Precisely what Huysmans said. Without personality, no talent in a writer." "Your Huysmans left out morality in his schedule." "What's morality got to do with art?" "Only this," earnestly continued Milt, "it must be at least implicit in every book a man or woman writes, else the book will rot. Don't forget—decayed souls stink. The books of your predilection are such that he who reads must run away, or imperil his soul's salvation. Vanitas! Ulick. I speak without picking amiable words. Yours is a case that demands radical treatment." "Wait a bit. I'm not religious. Your God is too remote for me. From the frosty altitude where he reigns he makes no sign of granting our prayers. Does he even love his grovelling earth-creatures"? Milt was not shocked at these impetuous questions. "Baruch Spinoza has said: 'That whoso loveth God truly, must not expect to be loved by God in return.'" "But Spinoza was a Jew and an atheist. Neither his synagogue nor the Christian Church would have aught of him." "True," answered Milt, "I only quoted him to prove my contention. Finite creatures must love their creator. The act of worship constitutes their salvation." Again Ulick groaned. "What has your religion to do with my projected books"? He was getting impatient at the airs of amateur omniscience assumed by the other. They went to Ulick's chamber.
Milt's eye roved over the books on a dozen shelves. "Ah! Here are your gods. Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Maurice Barrès—how I loathe that metaphysical dandy!—Nietzsche, unfortunate madman, Ibsen, Max Stirner, William Blake, another lunatic—a nice gang of mind-poisoners. With exception of Huysmans they are corrupters of youth. Listen to this——" and he opened on the last page of "À Rebours" 'Take pity, O Lord, on the Christian who doubts, on the sceptic who seeks to believe, on the convict of life, who embarks alone, in the night, beneath a sky no longer lit by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.' For me, that is the saddest sentence in all the music of your prose-men. Great artists? Yes. But guides to damnation. Moral anarchs, their teaching will lead to the anarchy of physical violence. Mark my words. All Europe will suffer sometime from their doctrines. As for your Barrès, while he is no longer the anarch of his Enemy of the Laws and is going in for nationalism nowadays, nevertheless his is a dilettante preciosity whose gift of assimilation is his prime quality. Also to be labelled 'dangerous', though only for the intellectual. He possesses a barren imagination. I grant you he writes supple, harmonious prose, though he is a mere neophyte compared with those charming princes of corruption, Ernest Renan and Anatole France. All your modern heroes, whom you resemble, Ulick, I am sorry to say, derive from that abominable Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Red and Black. The admirable antidote to that criminal, free-man, individualist, is Robert Greslou in Paul Bourget's Disciple. Therein you may see where unbridled indulgence, whether in thought or act, will lead a young man. What are you writing just now, Ulick?" Milt took up some sheets from the desk.
"Oh, this a very bad. What next? 'Ideas and Images of Evil.' That's simply a Baudelairian title, and while that wonderful poet—yes, I won't deny that I have read him with more interest than the atheist Victor Hugo—recognized the existence of evil, of a personal devil, Satan or Lucifer, he didn't fall down and worship him." "How about the Litany of Satan"? interrupted Ulick. "It is to be read in a Manichean sense. It is objective" "And how about Carducci's Hymn to Satan? ('Inno a Satana')
Salute, O SatanaO ribellioneO forza vindiceDella ragione."
"Simply Italianate Baudelaire," cried Milt, and in a rage he exclaimed: "You actually memorize such vile blasphemers. But I'm very sure you can't repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Confiteor, or recite the Litany of our Blessed Virgin." Ulick stood in the middle of the room, his hands clasped, his eyes closed, and recited the prayer, the Confiteor and the Litany, adding in a low voice, "A pure heart pierceth heaven and hell." Milt was overjoyed. He shook Ulick's hand, crying: "You know Thomas à Kempis, too? Come, there is hope for your immortal soul. Oh, Ulick! Why don't you forswear your evil ways of living! Give over your inveterate concupiscence." Ulick answered by quoting: "Tandem ergo discubuimus pueris Alexandrinis...." "Stop, Ulick! How dare you quote that vilest of pagans, Petronius Arbiter, almost in the same breath with the divine à Kempis?" For answer Ulick drew from his pocket a tiny book entitled "The Christian's Pattern, by Thomas à Kempis, edited by John Wesley A. M." bearing the date 1832 and published in New York, by Charles Wells. "My mother's copy," he curtly said. Milt saw a feminine signature in the battered little copy. He was much touched by the image of Ulick's filial piety prompting him to carry about him his mother's favorite prayers—for what else are those meditations of the practically unknown mediaeval monk but sighs of suffering wafted on high by a burning soul! Ulick added: "I read Petronius every day." Milt sketched a gesture of despair. He could make no answer to a man who blew hot and cold in the same breath. À Kempis and Petronius. Ormuzd and Ahriman! Apollo and Marsyas. Lucifer, when he was Prince of the Morning, and Satan Mekatrig. Milt switched the conversation.
"Among the subjects discussed the other night at the Arena you spoke of something your friend Remy de Gourmont told you. You remember? It was to this effect: that mankind, all organic life, is the slave of its reproductive organs; that those ancient cults were justified in worshipping the phallus, and the female sex-principle. Do you know, Ulick, that the teaching of our Church doesn't widely differ from that horrible idea. Sexuality is our master—if we let it rule; from that to the worship of those organs, in a word, devil worship, is only a step. I wonder you haven't noticed the grimly brief distance between the highest type of intellect, if not guided by faith, and the beasts of the field. The most depraved of degenerates sometimes have been men of lofty genius and in their fall they grovelled in filth. Gods become gorillas. De Maupassant on all fours eating his excrements, as did Voltaire; poor Nietzsche, a victim of drugs and like Stendhal slain by syphilis; Baudelaire wallowing in nastiness at his end; Heine, a victim to sexual over-indulgence, dying from tabes dorsalis; Huysmans, punished for his early blasphemies and his self-confessed degeneracies, dies of cancer in the throat; Ibsen gone mad, and the religious degenerate, Tolstoy, too; Oscar Wilde——"
"What a preacher you will make, Milt," enthusiastically exclaimed Ulick. "But while you are dragging in those awful examples, why not adduce the names of abnormally normal genius: Plato, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Napoleon, Beethoven, Thackeray and their specific maladies mental and moral...." Milt shook his head. "I'm only thinking of you, Ulick." "Thanks for the compliment. Nice company you put me in. No wonder you recommend a course of conjugal calisthenics...." He laughed aloud. "No joke, my boy. You don't drink or smoke. Good. But you are living in a bog of slimy voluptuousness. As Odo of Cluny has written of man's connection with woman: 'Quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus,' and for this 'sack of dung'—don't wince, those monks had the unpleasant habit of calling things by their right names—for this vain, skin-deep beauty, harboring all manners of impurities, you are risking your hopes of heaven"! "How unfair you fanatics are! Why throw muck at the very source of life! We are conceived in corruption, in sin, according to the Church. But how could the Church get souls were it not for this same fornication, despised and berated? Don't speak of sanctification by the sacraments. Fornication is fornication, and were it not for the 'sin' we wouldn't be sitting here. That's what I can't understand; the divorce of theory and practice. Don't start in Milt, let me finish first. Havelock Ellis writes: 'When we find it assumed that there are things good to do and not good to justify we may strongly suspect that we have come across a mental muddle.' And that's gospel truth. Hypocrisy rules the world. In fact, life without hypocrisy is unthinkable. They are inseparable. My friend Jules de Gaultier's philosophy is sound. Bovarysme, or the desire of man to appear other than he is. The eternal illusion. The divine humbuggery." "Hypocrisy is, as you say, necessary to screen certain unpleasant realities, Ulick. It is a pia fraus; painted veils! painted lies. People who will persist in crudely naming unmentionable matters usually end in jail or in the lunatic asylum. Back to 'our mutton'. Why don't you marry? Believe me, the humdrum life of a bourgeois will give you the proper atmosphere for your studies. Think of your Flaubert and his labourious life, with its colourless background. He urged the young writer to be ascetic in his life, that he could be all the more violent in his art. Vance Thompson's advice is sound: Artists should marry women with the feather-bed temperament. Why are you looking like that at me, Ulick?" Ulick only smiled, but there was a covert sneer in the smile that caused Milt to blush.
"Honestly, entre-nous, Milt, you know more than a specialist in psychopathy. Now tell me, I'll keep it secret, how do you contrive to stay clear of the petticoats? It's a personal question, but I dare put it because you are so frank with me as to my own soul-hygiene. You are such an old soul-sniffer!" Milt didn't hesitate. "I pray. Prayer, naught else. Lead us not into temptation. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. All the talk of psychologists about transposing the nervous fluid to the brain would be mere wind, were it not for prayer. Faith moves mountains. Volition is born of humility and prayer. That's my secret, and it's the secret of every priest. But just to show you, Ulick, that we do not necessarily violate the laws of nature, let me quote two phrases which I copied in my note book concerning sex. In his 'L'Egoisme, base de toute Société' Felix Le Dantec makes rather astonishing statements, and what's more, proves their validity. The first is this: 'lacte sexual n'est pas un phénomène vital,' in a word, this act so often sung of by the poets, this act which assures the continuity of life, is a drama in which the living are not the chief actors; the spermatazoa and the ova are. The second proposition is: 'Les éléments sexuels sont morts.' Neither one can live by itself. Nature, prompted by the divine design brings them together in the inexpressible act, an act that even the lowest of humans always seeks the darkness to consummate. Which is a salutary hypocrisy." Ulick calmly took a book down and remarked: "Here is Le Dantec himself. But you don't quote what he says of the 'gamète' the unfecundated sexual cells, poisoning a man swifter than does absinthe. In a word, Milt, the sexes separated are unnatural, and joined, whether in wedlock or concubinage—bedlock is the ultimate outcome—they are natural, healthy. Waldstein, Ekler and other biologists have proved that the sperma of the male actually enters into the veinal circulation of the woman. 'Bone of my bone'! You, because you lead a so-called pure life, are continually haunted by impure images."
Milt demurred, then said rather maliciously: "Ulick, who is this Dora that you and Paul Godard share so happily? Modern polyandry"? "Who told you about her"? rudely demanded Ulick, visibly annoyed. "Little birds fly up the state even to our college. Alfred, if it will relieve you to know, was my informant." "I thought so," muttered Ulick. "Another busybody. I don't mind telling you that the psychology of Dora is as simple as a single-cell structure. She is of the genus prostitute, a superior prostitute. As false as your Hell, and as pretty as a June rose. Wouldn't you like to meet her, Milt?" "Don't talk rot, lad. Now there is another person I should like to speak of—Miss Brandès. What about her? Are you still smitten?" Ulick shook his head. "Where did you get that notion? Alfred, I suppose. Guess again. Isn't the old Adam stirring in you, Milt? Easter is a very seductive girl." This time Ulick scored a bull's eye. His bolt made a palpable hit. From crimson Milt turned ghastly white. Irritably he took up his hat, strode to the door, but halted, controlled himself, and returned to Ulick. Putting a hand on his shoulder and peering into the young's man's eyes, he said, and in affectionate tones:
"Don't worry about my condition, Ulick. God, I pray, will give me strength to fight carnal temptation. Those subtle sophists, your daily intellectual pabulum, deny the potency of prayer, yet it is one of the certitudes of our otherwise miserable existence. Once you cast on the vast current of prayer your harassed soul you are at peace with man and God. No adversity can pierce the cuirass of your soul. But Ulick—my dear Ulick Invern, I can't leave you without speaking to you of something that is very dear and near to me...." (He knows all, thought Ulick, tightly holding the back of a chair) "and that is my sister Mona. Are you behaving honourably towards her, Ulick? If not, if you are indulging in one of your numerous masculine caprices, for God's sake remember that she is my sister, the only daughter of her mother and father, who adore the girl. She is read in the 'modernity' you admire, too deeply for her spiritual repose. She is a sceptic. I am a convert. My parents are easy-going, though my mother is naturally pious. But their religion is invertebrate. Without dogma a religion is like a body without skeleton. It can't stand. It won't endure. So Mona leads too free a life. Now, Ulick, I conjure you by your friendship, don't poison that girl's mind, don't tempt her young heart." Milt's manner was cordial, even tender. He loved his friend, but he loved his sister more than a thousand friends. Ulick was moved. "I swear Milt. I am afraid I already care too much. I'd better go back to Paris, after all." Milt took his hand. "If you love Mona, why not tell her so? She has a beautiful soul. Don't torture her any longer. She is very unhappy just now. Write her frankly, confessing your faults. She knows. She will forgive, I'm sure."
"She knows," too, cried Ulick. "Who told her? Alfred again? I think Master Alfred is riding for a fall, as far as I'm concerned ... he is due for a good hiding." "Now, don't judge too hastily, Ulick. Remember that Alfred has been a close friend of my family for years. Naturally he is interested in Mona, and doesn't wish harm to come to her." "That's why Mona went away without telling me, without saying good-bye, without writing," pondered Ulick. "That's why," answered the brother, guessing the reason of his embarrassment. "Write Mona, Ulick. Play fairly with her. I can't speak plainer. Give up your loose living. You are intended for better things. You are gifted, independent, young, above all, young. I don't advise marriage—not immediately. But don't let happiness slip through your fingers. It may offer itself but once, and you are very careless. A woman's heart contains treasures of affection. Don't waste them; cynicism is worse than corrosive-sublimate. It poisons, kills your higher brain-centres. Pardon my brotherly solicitude, Ulick. I'm a bore, but right is sometimes on the side of the stupid, and victory doesn't always perch on the banners of the intellectually elect. Write Mona, Ulick, and may God bless you." He was gone, his kind face happy with the idea of having accomplished good, before Ulick could gather his wits. The ending of this afternoon seance had been a great shock to the young man. Nor had his not particularly sensitive conscience escaped troubling. He was a Roman Catholic. He was what the world has agreed to call a gentleman; the inward monitor, out of those multiple egos, reproved him for his manner of living, for his behaviour to that sweet, if not precisely, innocent, young woman. A virgin? Yes. How long would she remain one in his corrupting company? This question he quickly buried. What a lot of psychologic palaver over a girl, he mused. Perhaps Milt wished to marry his sister to a good parti. Dismissing this mean suggestion, he posed the naked question: "Shall or shan't I write to Mona? And if I do write, where shall I send the letter? And what shall I say to her? Go to confession, get down on my marrow-bones and say 'mea culpa'? No, decided Ulick, as he sat down to his desk, I'll send her a fairy-tale instead of a history of my wicked life." Ulick took up his pen and began to write.
From her attic of dreams, from her Tower of Ebony and spleen, Mona Milton in one of her rare morose moments, saw unrolled beneath her a double line of light. Tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either side of the nocturnal Avenue, and casting patches of metalic blue upon the glistening pave—veritable-fragments of shivering luminosity; saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt, stippled by notes of dull crimson, the exigent lanterns of citizen-contractors. Occasional trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts of canary color into the mist, traversed with vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the dreary roadway. It was midnight. On both sides of the street were buttresses of granite; at unrhythmic intervals gloomy apartment houses reared to the clouds their oblong ugliness magnetically attracting the vagrom winds which tease, agitate and buffet unfortunate people afoot in this melancholy canyon of marble, steel and speed. A belated bug-like motor-car, its antennæ vibrating with fire tremulously slipped through the casual pools of shadowed cross-lights; swam and hummed so softly that it might have been taken for a timorous amphibian, a monster neither boat nor machine. To the faded nerves of Mona, aloft in her cage, this undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty white, these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy palaces, and the shimmering wet night, did but evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified Venice. A Venice overtaken by a drought eternal. Venice ærial, with cliff-dwellers in lieu of harmonious gondolas; a Venice of tarnished twilights, in which canals were transposed to the key of stone; across which trailed and dripped superficial rain from dusk and implacable skies; rain, upright and scowling. And the soul of the poetic Mona posed ironically its acid pessimism in the presence of this salty, chill and cruel city; a Venice of receded seas, a spun-steel Venice, sans hope, sans faith, sans vision.
Mona held in her hand a book of musical sketches by an author unknown to her. It was entitled Melomaniacs. It had been given to her by Ulick Invern. But her attention had strayed from its pages to the spectacle of the night. She was not happy. Nor was she unhappy. A sense of emptiness oppressed her, the futility of matters mundane, love included, oppressed her consciousness. If she could but pin her faith to something tangible, concrete, make a definite act of affirmation before the veil of life, behind which was hidden the accomplices of her destiny. Know thyself! is wisdom, but if you are sick unto death with yourself and its petty, insistent claims upon your volitions, then forget thyself! might be a sounder motto. Mona had not the temperament dynamic; nor yet was she lymphatic. In the company of Ulick she had let herself go, as will some women in the more masterful grip of the male, without relinquishing the captaincy of her inner citadel. And now she had mentally dismissed her lover, realizing in a sudden illumination that his instability, as unstable as an anchor that drags, would be a bar to their happiness. She had tartly contradicted Alfred when he laboriously hauled out, as if from a secret place, the chief defects in Ulick's character. Yet, she recognized the justice of the impeachment. Ulick was too fond of his pleasures, and girls were no doubt the stencil of his cardinal sin. Impotent to change his volatile nature—volatile, at least, where women were concerned—she had resolved on hearing of the Dora episode to break their friendship. She felt the wrench, especially this evening. She had returned from the seashore promising herself that she would be strong. Instead, she felt uneasy, full of barren desire, giddiness in her head and a sort of green-sickness in her stomach. She recognized the symptoms, as would any full-blooded girl of normal instincts; she also recognized the necessity of suppressing certain emotions. So she resumed reading The Rim of Finer Issues. She didn't like it as far as she had gone. The writer, evidently unformed, floundered between Henry James and the new French symbolists; psychological analysis was intermingled with symbolical prose, the admixture proving rather confusing to her tormented spirit. She longed for clarity. Still she continued to read in a cursory manner.... Then her attention was caught by a subtitle: Frustrate. No doubt the prose-poem threatened by the heroine with the iron-colored eyes, or was it rust-colored hair? She read on and with increasing interest this rhapsody of the sex-cells.
"O the misty plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal incuriousness of the monad! The faint swarming toward the light and the rending of the sphere of hope, frustrate, inutile. I am the seed called Life. I am he, I am she. We walk, swim, totter and blend. Throughout the ages I dwelt in the vast basin of time. I am called by Fate into the Now. On pulsing terraces, under a noon blood-red, I dreamed of the mighty confluence. About me were my kinsfolk. Full of dumb pain we pleasured our centuries with anticipation; we watched as we gamed away the hours. From Asiatic plateaux we swept to Nilotic slime. We roamed primeval forests, arboreally sublime, or sported with the Behemoth as we listened to the serpents' sinuous irony. We chattered with the sacred apes or mouthed at the moon; and in the Long Ago wore the carapace and danced forthright figures on coprolitic sands; sands stretching into the bosom of earth, sands woven of windy reaches, hemming the sun.... We lay in Egyptian granaries with the grains of corn, and saw them fructify under the smile of the sphinx; we buzzed in the ambient atmosphere, gaudy dragon-flies, or as whirling motes in full cry chased by humming-birds. Then from some cold crag we launched with wings of firebreathing pestilence and fell fathoms under sea to war with lizard-fish and narwhal, for us the supreme surrender, the joy of the expected.... With cynical glance we saw the Buddha give way to Christ. Protoplasmically we noted the birth of planets and the confusion of creation. We saw hornéd monsters become gentle ruminants and heard from the tree-tops the scream of the pterodactyl dwindle to child's laughter. We heard, we saw, we felt, we knew. Yet we hoped on. Every monad has its day.... One by one the inchoate billions disintegrated as they floated into formal life. And we watched and waited. Our evolution had been the latest, until heartsick with longing many of my brethren wished for annihilation.... Save one I was at last alone. The time of my fruition was not far. O for the moment when I should realize my dreams!... I saw my companion swept away, swept down to the vistas of life, the thunderous surge of passion singing in her ears. O that my time would come! After vague alarms I was summoned.... My hour had struck. Eternity was behind me, eternity loomed ahead, implacable, furrowed by the scars of Time. I heard the voice of my foreordained mate in the Cosmos. I tarried not as I ran the race. Moments were priceless; a second meant aeons; and then leaping into the light—Alas! I was too late.... Of what use now my travail, my countless preparations? O Chance! O Fate! I am become one of the silent multitude of the Frustrate...."
That's an ambitious attempt to compress the evolutionary processes into a page, she reflected. On the shelf devoted to her beloved Frenchmen she took down A Rebours and read what Huysmans wrote of the poem in prose of Mallarmé's in particular ... "the adjective placed in such an ingenious and definite way that it ... would open up such perspectives that the reader would dream whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet ... a spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons scattered through the universe...." "I confess I'm not one of the ten," said Mona aloud, for she often wedded her interior dialogue to the exterior. "I should die of mental starvation on such a condensed literary diet; it may be poetic, but it is too peptonic, and my soul can't be fed with prose pemmican. Yet Frustrate is a strange panorama of sex and evolution. 'Every monad has its day.' True, I wonder if this orchestra of cells that I call 'Moi' will ever have its day? The time of my fruition is afar. Who is the Siegfried that will release this Brunnhilde from her bed of fire? That's a question which every girl puts to herself in a thousand different forms. I should like to be married. I love children. There is no other adequate method to lure them into this chilly life but the mating of men and women. Really, Mona, does the man matter much? Eugenics, a fine word for an impossible thing! I like Ulick. He wouldn't make me happy, I know. But what's the difference if I can hold his baby and mine to my breast? Nothing else counts. I'm in a nice depressed mood tonight. I musn't forget to take a pill. It's usually the liver, and calomel is the last resource of the virtuously bilious. Oh! dear, I wonder what he is doing now? With that horrid woman? Not that I care. Why should I? Ulick is nothing to me. Young men must observe the laws of hygiene or else be ill, so he says. I believe him. What about women? Are they so differently constructed? Saints? I don't believe it. If we were frank, we should tell the whole truth—women are much more amorous than men, although the emotion with us is more massive, yet more diffused. There! I've told my mirror the truth. Polichinelle's secret. Because of our excessive temperament we have been put behind bars for ages. Heavens! Every household is a harem with one lawful wife; the concubines live elsewhere. Some day women will go on a sex-strike. Then the men will crawl. If it's right for the men to go philandering, why isn't it right for the women? I wonder what Milt would say if he could peep into my brain at this moment? Horrified he would surely be. That Dora! Alfred Stone says she is very pretty. Pooh! I know what his 'pretty' means. A lascivious kitten. But she serves the purpose. I don't mind the physical facts; men have strong stomachs, but how can a superior young man like Ulick stand the vulgarity, the stupidity of such a girl! Maybe she isn't stupid or vulgar. That singer, Esther Brandès is a law unto herself; no doubt has a regular flock of lovers ... artistic women are privileged ... I wish I was an artistic woman. I've never had a real affair. If these monads of mine are to have their day it's high time they began. Only to think of it, I was once spoony over Alfred. I can't endure his presence now. They say we always return to our first loves. What nonsense. We usually turn down a side street when we see an old beau approaching. I know I do. I wonder whether Ulick really was in earnest about our dream-children? Our monads must have been mighty lively when we held hands at the Casino and at Martin's. What were their names, those children? Shamus, Tenth Earl, or is it Marquis of Thingamajig somewhere in Ireland? Shamus and——? Wasn't there a horse or a mare in the dream? Yes, yes, I have it, Brunnhilde's white horse, or was it one of the white horses of 'Rosmersholm'? No, it wasn't Ibsen at all, it was Wagner. Grane! Aha! That's it. Grane and Shamus. What darlings they must be, and their mother who conceived and bore them never saw them except in her dreams. But they are more real than flesh and blood children. Our dream children. I'm beginning to think I love Ulick.... Oh! he is a dear. I'd better go to bed or I'll end a lunatic. When a woman ceases to be mistress of herself she is likely to become the mistress of a man. Dreams. Heigho! Now for my bed of tormenting fire not on Brunnhilde's fire-begirt rock, but between my sheets. But the fire is there just the same ... the fire ... the lovely, teasing fire that brings dreams ... and Ulick ... and our dream-children, Shamus and Grane ... Shamus...."
Mentally refreshed after her monologue and physically buoyant because of a dreamless night Mona ate a hearty breakfast. No lilies and languour for her in the golden morning hours. She read a newspaper. Her appetite for the realities we call "life" was fresh; in the evening she couldn't bear the sight of printed news. The post brought her two letters. One told her that her subscription to a musical publication had expired; a glance at the superscription of the other sent her scurrying upstairs to her Ebony Tower, as she fantastically named her study. It was from him, the father of her dream-children, the one man in the world for her. As if dazzled by an unexpected flash of lightning she saw the truth; she loved Ulick Invern. She must make him her husband,—or?... She read his letter. It began thus:
"Grane and Shamus stood near the big tree in the cool park listening to the song of the leaves. This tree had been nice to them, no branches had harshly croaked: 'Go away. I hate little boys and girls.' This tree they heard saying nice things about them to the cross, crooked crab-apple tree next to it.... They loved the singing trees. They loved to be under the 'few large stars', their faces buffeted by sudden little winds from the lazy white clouds in the sky. They were not keeping faith with their mamma. They had promised to be home before dusk and yet they lingered in the twilight park as if they were birds that perched and slept in the hollow night. Their mother longed for them and sent Nursie to fetch them home. But the voices of the leaves held them captive; they overheard the strange secrets and sorrows of the trees. 'O, if only we could run about like those queer human children! Moving plants. If only our branches, which are our arms, could become free and fly through the air instead of cowardly waving to the prompting of every vagrant breeze. Alas! we are rooted in the soil. What crime did our arboreal ancestors commit that we must so suffer and atone for it? In what faraway forest is buried the sinister evidence of the trees fall from grace?' Shamus nudged Grane. 'Do you hear what the trees are telling us?' 'Of course I do, Shamus,' pertly answered Grane, 'but I don't understand them any more than you do.' 'Grane, I'm afraid, let's go back to the house.' 'Cry-baby' retorted his sister, 'I'm not a bit afraid.' They lingered on. The trees still babbled. Then the clear voice of Nursie reached their ears. 'Grane! Shamus! Your mamma wants you to come in right away. Papa is asking for you.' Hand in hand they traversed the field; it didn't seem so big now. They saw a sickle of silver fire floating over the tree tops. It was the new moon. Elated, they both wished that their mamma would reveal the secret of the trees. She gently smiled at their insistent questioning. 'The trees,' she explained, 'were naughty once upon a time in the long-ago. They disobeyed their parents and left their cabin in the woods. Soon they were lost and begged to be shown the way back in the black darkness. Alarmed by their lamentings, the moon appeared and pointed the path of light to their house. They promised never to leave their roots any more.' She looked at Grane and Shamus, and at their papa. He bowed his head. He, too, had wandered in the dark forest and had been lost like the little trees. Then the mama took her darlings to her bosom and over their tiny golden heads she smiled—a smile of tender pity and forgiveness."
Her eyes swimming with unshed tears Mona threw herself on the bed her burning cheeks buried in a pillow. This whimsical letter profoundly moved her. Every fibre of longing, of sweet desires, of craving motherhood tugged at her heart, knocked at the door of her soul and unbidden entered and took possession.... Milt would have told her that seven evil ones possessed her; but she knew better. She was, at last, a woman, with a woman's complex passion, and also a woman's stern purpose. Every monad has its day, she sobbed, but remained dry-eyed. I mean to have mine. Now or never.... It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Mona passed her mother in the doorway. "Where in the world are you off to so late, Mona? It's surely going to rain and you haven't your unbrella. Dear, dear, what a forgetful girl you are." "I'm only going across the park, mamma, and if it threatens, I'll run home," she explained; but her mother shook her head. "You will get wet, and then it will be too late to return." Mona went her way but said naught of her secret errand.
Ulick was reading Le Jardin de Bérénice in his music-room. He had not enjoyed his luncheon, and fearing sleep, for he detested afternoon naps, he took refuge in the pages of the subtle Barrès. It was beginning to darken, though it couldn't have been more than four o'clock, but rain had set in and he was about to turn on the lights when he heard taps on his glass door; this tapping was immediately followed by the entrance of Mona, veiled, and mysterious. He couldn't refrain from frowning, and then he hoped she hadn't noticed his dissatisfaction. She went to him and kissed him. Ulick, surprised, kept his head. "You darling Mona, and I had never expected to see you again." And with that he grasped her and the lovers embraced. Mona made no pretence of coyness. She hugged Ulick as if for the last time. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He was greatly touched, also alarmed by her fervour. But he asked no explanation of her conduct in running away from him; she vouchsafed none. They were happy to be together. What the use of words! He finally begged of her, seeing that she was pale from emotion, to remove her hat and wraps, and he made her sit on the couch close to him. After a pause, she said:
"Ulick, our children, our dream-children, they are born at last, and they are loved by their parents, are they not?" He smiled, though he felt uncomfortable at this putting of the horses behind the cart; in fact, his conscience was beginning to toll warning bells. He had solemnly promised Milt, had he not, and in this very room, that he would respect his sister! And here she was, that adorable sister, in his arms, only a few days after the interview with her brother. Ulick resolved on stern conduct. He gently drew away from Mona and looked at her as steadily as his beating arteries would permit him. She sat up and asked: "Ulick, you have something on your mind. What is it, dearie?" He winced. The same depressing word that Dora always used. He loathed it. It was so commonplace; worse, it had such a "professional" ring. Hearing it now gave him a mental excuse for reaction. He rose, pressed a button, and the apartment became cruelly illuminated. Mona blinked, shaded her eyes with her veil. She didn't like such a glare, she told him, She was irritated. Her current had been turned off that electric current of the sexes. Ulick sat down before his study table. He was already bored; she recognized the symptoms. He drummed with his fingers, his glance went over her head. Evidently he wished her away. She regretted the generous élan that had propelled her into his arms. But she didn't stir from the couch. Another pause, long, distressing to both. Ulick yawned. This was the culminating insult. Her pride pricked, she sat rigid as a candle and regarded the man she loved, the man who fathered her dream-children. Then, "Ulick," she whispered, "Ulick, my love, come to me. Don't let silly reasons keep us apart any longer. Ulick, I say, come at once to your mamma, your little mamma. Oh! Ulick don't forget Grane and Shamus." She stamped her foot. She was growing excited, and Ulick wished himself a thousand miles away. He knew where this would lead. He didn't trust his nerves, which always played him false with women. He knew that his promises to Milt were as naught if this enchanting girl opened her arms. And now she was opening those seductive arms. He felt lost. He didn't think of the future, of marriage; the vivid moment overwhelmed him, swept him down to disaster, a disaster that would be shared—Oh! how bitterly shared—by this imprudent girl. Imprudent? Better say, crazy girl.
He paced the floor. He made up his mind to vanish altogether rather than fall into the burning pit. Milt's phrases came to his memory. Suddenly he resolved on a plan of action. He turned to her. "Mona," he said, "it's getting late. It's raining. Hadn't we better be going?" She didn't budge. He felt ashamed at the crudity of his speech. He had ardently longed for this meeting, and now he was acting like a cowardly eunuch. Mona grasped his hand as he irresolutely stood before her. "Ulick, don't let us waste our happiness. Jewel, love, I'm here. I came to you. I am the suitor. Take me, Jewel, take me. Tomorrow it may be too late." The rising storm was ominously hysterical. She was become uncontrollable. She tried to drag him down to her. He resisted her tumultuous onset blushing like a virgin. Obstinately she tugged at his arm, sitting all the while. For an instant "nymphomaniac" flashed across his consciousness. He dragged his arm from her grasp.
"The open door, the open door to freedom, Jewel," she gasped, and arising she seized him with such passion that he was panic-stricken. He ran into his bedroom bolting the door. Mona, now quite beside herself reached the switchboard and the room was darkened. She went to the closed door and began beating upon its panels with her fists.
"The open door, Ulick, the open door!" she cried and her voice had the accents of a delirious woman. "Oh, please, for God's sake open the door, Jewel——" "It's surely maternal nymphomania," he muttered on the other side of the door. "What shall I do? If she keeps on shrieking she will alarm the house—perhaps the police—horrible!—an ambulance—the police-station—the scandal—her parents—Milt—my God! what shall I do?——" The pounding redoubled. She moaned.
"Make me a woman, Jewel, make me a woman! Open the door, make me a woman!" Perspiration almost blinded him. Make her a woman!... She was the stronger ... as strong as death....
The door slowly opened. Mona fell into his arms, still sobbing: "Make me a woman, Jewel, make me a woman"....
Mona on reaching her home didn't go into the dining-room; instead she rang for her maid and bade her bring tea and toast to the studio; she had a headache, and please let her mother and father know that she wouldn't come down to dinner. Then she went to her mirror and carefully searched as if she were seeking something. Her features were not discomposed, her expression as usual; perhaps she was a trifle paler than her wont, otherwise—rien! Yes, her eyes seemed as if they had been well-washed, as if a beneficent rain had carried away all the signs of discontent, rebellion, unhappiness. Mona tried to imagine herself supremely happy. She wasn't. Then impatiently snapping her fingers she looked at her doll on the bed: "It's frightfully over-advertised, Dolly, that's what love is." Dolly only stared, sphinx-wise.
One evening Ulick leaned over Dora's balcony. He had called unannounced, and found her in anything but an amiable mood. "It's you, is it?" was her reception. He had not been very attentive of late, and Dora, despite her kittenish airs, was strictly business in her methods. With her, one nail replaced another. The devil take the hindmost. If you haven't any money, you needn't come around. Time is money. What are you here for? When you're dead, you're dead a long time. She was fond of repeating this chaplet of pearly wisdom as she faced her favourite work of art, framed and hung on the alcove of her bedchamber: "Rock of Ages cleft for me" was the legend this lovely picture bore. Dora, who wasn't particularly imaginative, saw herself as the attudinizing female who so closely clung to the cross in a typhoon that would have sunk a fleet, but didn't disturb her chaste draperies. She impressed Dora. A vague notion nestled in the recesses of her conscience that she wasn't precisely leading a noble life, and that the necessary rock of ages for her was a comfortable bank account.
He was not disturbed by her cool phrase. It wasn't a novelty. He stared at the town and thought that when the softer and richer symphony of the night arrives, when the jarring of one's ego by the innumerable racking noises has ceased, when the city is preparing to forget the toilsome day, then the magic of New York begins to operate; its missing soul peeps forth in the nocturnal transfiguration. However, not on Broadway, with its thousand lights and lies, not in opera-houses, theatres, or cafés, but from some perch of vantage must the nocturnal scene with all its mysterious melancholy beauty be studied. He saw a cluster of blazing lights across at the West Side Circle, a ladder of fire the pivot. Further down theatre-land dazzled with its tongues of flame. Literally, a pit, white-hot. Across in the cool shadows of the east are level lines of twinkling points. The bridges. There is always the sense of waters not afar. The hotels are tier upon tier starry with illumination. The Avenues, long shafts of bluish-white electric globed fire. The monoliths burn as if to a fire-god their votive offerings. In the moonlight mansions on Fifth Avenue seemed snow-driven. The Synagogue opposite the park, half byzantine, half moresque, might have been mistaken for an Asiatic mosque as it lay sleeping in the moon-rays. The park, as if liquified, flowed in plastic rhythms, a lake of velvety foliage, a mezzotint dividing the east from the west. Sudden furnace bonfires leap up from the Brooklyn side; they are purely commercial; Ulick looked for Whistler's rockets. Battery Place and the Bay are operatic, the stage for a thrilling fairy spectacle. The dim, scattered plain of granite house-tops are like a petrified cemetery of immemorial Titans. At night, he mused, the city loses its New World aspect. It reveals the patina of Time. It is a city exotic, semi-barbaric, the fantasy of an oriental sorcerer who had been mad enough to evoke from unplumbed and forgotten seas the long lost Atlantis....
The buzzing of the annunciator, a man's voice aroused Ulick from his reverie. He hopped into the room where he found Paul. The greeting of the pair was cordial; there wasn't the slightest feeling of jealousy between them, and this was something Dora detested. Competition is the life of cocottes, she declared early and often. In her feline fashion she had tried to arouse the jealousy of Paul and Ulick, but vainly. Ulick was touchy when Easter's name was in the mouth of Paul, and he knew that if Paul ever dared to speak of Mona disrespectfully, he would smash him. But jealousy over Dora? Pas pour trois sous!
Dora was a safe port in emotional storms. When all fruit fails welcome haws, runs the adage. Ulick had been on the jagged edge of ennui ever since the visit of Mona. He hadn't the courage to look into his soul, black with a viler sin. To distract himself, like the man who drinks to forget, he had gone up to Dora's overlooking the fact that it was, for all he knew, Paul's "evening at home." Still, no bones were broken and he shook Paul's hand and said bienvenu! Dora glowered. She talked to herself. She went into the kitchen and raised her voice to the new cook. She noisily rattled dishes, pushed the furniture and behaved like a woman misunderstood. She, too, had her grievances. These fellows of hers weren't behaving on the square. Now, what did Ulick Invern mean by coming up when he knew he would run into Paul! Did he do it on purpose, just to annoy her? She whimpered in the pantry as she took down the decanter of whisky and put the glasses on a tray; whatever else might be criticised in her conduct no one ever would accuse her of inhospitality. This consoling idea struck her and to drive it home more securely in her self-esteem she helped herself to a generous drink. It was not the first "hooker" she had drunk that day; in fact, she was admirably intoxicated when Ulick arrived, and she knew that he noticed it. It was her standing grievance against him that he couldn't be persuaded to drink or smoke. It seemed to put him on a pedestal above her and she hated pedestals. Now there was Paul—always half-stewed.... She fetched in the liquor.
They played cards, that is, Dora and Paul wrangled over some game, Ulick interesting himself in a newspaper; there wasn't a book in the apartment fit to open. Dora's dissatisfaction grew apace. Slapping the cards down she called to Ulick: "You're the nice one I don't think. You don't drink or smoke, you can't even play poker. What are you good for anyhow?" Bored, Ulick went into the hall after his hat and stick. The hints of Dora were not cryptic. He felt that three is company, two none, and he determined to leave them to their desperate ennui à deux. But he had counted without Paul.
"Where are you off to, old top?" Paul asked. "Wait a bit and I'm with you." Dora revolted. "You make me tired, both of you. First Ulick, then you, Paul, and you're going to see the girls, I swear to that." "No," politely contradicted Paul, "no girls when we can have your company Dodo." "That's why you slip away and leave me to spend the evening alone within four walls. Well, that's where you'll get left. I'm going to ring for a taxi and I'll go across to Edie's. She always has company." She was again on the verge of tears. Paul's next speech precipitated the explosion, though from an unexpected quarter. Turning to Ulick he had banteringly remarked:
"Jewel, I'm off to Europe Saturday. I'm going to Paris on the fastest boat I can get, the 'Deutschland'. I hope to see Easter in Paris. Shall I give her your love?" He meant it innocently, but his manner proved the red rag to the bull. Ulick became pale, surest sign that he was angered. He didn't answer at once, then, as he stood in the doorway, he said in his chilliest voice: "I never discuss ladies with such men as you and particularly in such surroundings." This rude speech sent Paul up into the air; he, too, had been drinking far more than was good for him. He went over to Ulick and said: "What's the matter with you? Can't I mention Easter's name without you rearing on your hind legs? Perhaps I should have asked for Mona's permission"—He got no further. Ulick's reach was long, his attack swift—he hadn't studied for naught boxing with his father's old fencing-master, an Irishman, in Paris. He landed his "left" full on Paul's chest and Paul reached the floor amid a huge clatter of displaced chairs, the table, its glasses and decanter. He lay there, not so much stunned, as reflective. Decidedly he was not in the same class with this heroic Franco-American. Dora came to the rescue with screams of rage. Aroused by the scrimmage a coloured girl stood staring from the kitchen, the whites of her eyes like cream, thunder-curdled. She proved the lightning-rod that drew off the accumulated electricity of Dora, who was fearful that the row had been overheard in the eminently respectable house. She flew at the unfortunate cook.
"Get to hell out of here!" she shouted, then turned on her guests. Ulick, shamefaced, stammered an excuse as he helped Paul to his feet. This proved the acme of Dora's unhappiness. "As for you two, you clear out. I've no use for you. Always hanging around with your nasty messing ways. Clear out, both of you, or I'll call the police. Ruining my reputation with your scrapping. I won't have it here, I tell you. My lease says no fighting is allowed on the premises, and what have you fellows been doing? Get away. I won't hear any excuses. And fighting about two ladies"—she sarcastically lowered her voice at the mention of ladies—"Nice ladies they must be. Sly sluts, that's what they are. Don't tell me. Little Dora knows your fine society dames, your artistic ladies—whores the whole lot of them." With that she bundled her "gentlemen friends" out of the apartment. "Good-bye, Dodo," cried Paul. "I'll drop in to say a last good-bye before Saturday." But the door slammed for an answer and presently they were on the lift and soon in the street. Paul, his good temper reasserting itself passed his arm through the abashed Ulick's, and casually exclaimed: "I say, old man, you have a punch! Let's walk down to the Utopian. The fresh air will do me good. But am I thirsty!" The young men slowly moved down the Avenue arm in arm, apparently the best of friends.... Late that night Dora was brought home by two "lady-friends" in a shockingly intoxicated condition.
... Time fugued. Being no longer under the obligation of visiting Dora since the shindy he had made in her home, Ulick became truly intimate with Mona. They lived like sensible married people. They walked in the park. They went to the theatre, to concerts and the opera. They met every afternoon. At least three times a week Mona took luncheon at the Maison Felicé. She was not noticed there any more than the other ladies who came with their lovers. She would then go afterward to Ulick's rooms where he played Chopin for her, read to her, made love to her; passionate love. She had revised that first hasty judgment and now found the life sensual an entrancing experience. She had confessed to him her disappointments, and for answer he read aloud Stendhal's Lamiel that extraordinary unfinished fiction, with Lamiel's similar adventure. "Is that all?" asks this disconcerting heroine, after she had bribed with silver a stout peasant lad to induct her into the mystery of sex. This episode revolted Mona, who saw in love, but one object—children. Ulick realized now it was maternity suppressed that had sent her to him knocking at his closed door. Love with her was not only a sensation, but also a sentiment. She was not a sentimental girl. She loved Ulick, but she loved children more. "The sacred wound of maternity" was a phrase that appealed to her; it was thus she had heard called the semi-mysterious function of the lunar sex; that sex upon which the moon had impressed its rhythms. Mona, under the skin, was a matter-of-fact woman for whom Mother Nature could do no wrong. She loved children, and in default of them she delighted in the poetic fiction of dream-children. Ulick had only to pronounce the names of Grane and Shamus to see her face swept as if by joyful news. Temperamentally she was elected to happy motherhood. This idea caused him much disquietude.
With intense interest he read of Easter's début at Munich. She had sung Isolde with immense success. The cables were choked with stories of her brilliant singing, dramatic acting. The three Brunnhildes followed, and a few weeks later a royal command came from Baireuth; Queen Cosima graciously permitted the American girl to be a "guest" for a week. Again—Isolde, Brunnhilde, and most startling of all—Kundry. She would be the first American to sing in Parsifal at Baireuth. After that, offers from Paris, Berlin, London, and no doubt, from New York. But the Metropolitan House management was impenetrable. Easter had changed her name to Istar.... Istar the daughter of sin! chuckled Alfred Stone....
At the sixth gate, the warden stripped her; he took the rings from her feet, the rings from her hands....
Ulick earnestly pondered the character of Mona. Their long conversations about the world, the flesh, and the devil revealed, as in a mirror, her soul. She was essentially a pure girl, because she saw no evil in life. Nature was her sole standard. A pantheist in petticoats. She was as severe in her strictures upon prudish women as her mother was in her judgments upon the contemporaneous girl. Ulick called it an inverted dogmatism. But, then, he reflected, scratch any woman and you come on a squaw; only the squaw is truer to type than the modern woman. He noted, too, the gradual encroachment upon his time, his spirit, of Mona. Her tenacity alarmed him. She said nothing about marriage; that side of the question never obtruded. Mona was a free-thinker à outrance; a law unto herself. She seemed to be without the prejudices of her sex. She didn't interest herself in the woman-question, which she believed was purely an individual one. Let each woman agitate for herself. Let her revolt be within four walls. Let every tub stand on its own bottom. The most refractory male is always forced to lower his standard before the conquering arms of woman. Rabelais—or is it Balzac?—calls it by its true name: the glue-pot of love. Walt Whitman goes him one better. Nevertheless, Ulick detected signs of the tyrannical female in her perpetual hovering about him. Even of the most tender, flower-like women one might say: This is the shrew Shakespeare drew. Every woman is a potential shrew, he decided, and Ophelia would have been no exception if she had married Hamlet. All men are born to be henpecked. Celibates, whether priests or laymen, are not exempted from this primal curse. If it isn't a female relative then it's a housekeeper, a cook or a laundress. Down-trodden women are to blame for their supine attitude. Let them fly the flag of revolt. The men will soon surrender.
Finally, one spring afternoon in the park, they settled these burning problems of humanity and were strolling by the swan-boats when they were hailed by Dora, who, to the critical eye of Ulick, had never been prettier. She accosted the couple quite unabashed.
"Hello, Jewel!" she cried, as she smiled at Mona, who returned the smile, and thought that Ulick might have kept his pet name for her benefit. Ulick was embarrassed only a moment. He expected to see fur fly and when nothing happened he introduced the girls in formal fashion. Mlle. Dora, Mlle. Mona. Et voilà tout! As a foreigner their introduction revolted his taste. Some hazy idea born of the notion that here in America the social lines were not so rigidly marked, had forced him into a false position. He looked around him. He was fearful that acquaintances might see the absurd group: the harlot and the mistress. What to do now! Mona saved the situation by her aplomb. She chatted with Dora, who, as soon as she was put on a level with the other woman, began to exhibit signs of discomfort. Her native insouciance had prompted her to hold up Ulick merely to annoy Mona. This manoeuvre failing she had to fall back into her own rank, which she did, precipitately.
"Well, I must be goin'," she said. "Pleased to have met you Miss—Mademoiselle—I forget. Jewel's French names give me a grouch—Miss Mona." She made a little curtsey. "Ulick, I live in the same apartment. I'm a regular homebody. So run up, whenever you have a night free—that is if your sweetheart will let you. You don't mind me, Jewel and me are such old friends." She flitted away. Mona had smiled sweetly. Ulick was wrathful. It was Dora's method of revenge because of his prolonged absence; he hadn't seen her since the night of his tiff with Paul. He hastened to apologize for the contretemps. Mona didn't mind, so she told him. She only registered her feelings in an ironical aside: "Charming friend of yours, Miss Dora." Then they talked of other things.
Living as husband and wife, they pooled their intimacies and discussed life as if they spent it in domestic seclusion. They almost did. Only at dinner time did Mona go home. She had said nothing of Ulick to her parents, nor had she asked Ulick to call. That puzzled him. Certainly she was not ashamed of him. She paraded herself everywhere with him. They often met Alfred, who now took their friendship as a matter of course. He teased them, asking if the day had been announced, but he seldom visited the Maison Felicé. He told Ulick that he had finer fish to fry, and taunted him with being a sentimentalist.
"Not that Mona isn't a superior girl. She is wonderful. But you are more wonderful. You, of all men, to fall in so speedily. I'm afraid, Jewel, you will make a sorry husband. You should have remained in Paris. And what will our dear old Easter, the celebrated Wagner singer, Istar, say when she hears that her young man has deserted her?" At Easter's name Ulick's brow wrinkled. His only answer was "Qui sait?"