Chapter VI

CHAPTER VI IF the rain held off, Russ suggested, they had just time to visit Waterloo before dark. Pauline and Marta were agreed beforehand to whatever he pro posed. They were to dine in Brussels. "I thought Ernest might go out this evening, but he didn't," Russ said. "Ernest is a home body," said. Marta. ((Never so happy as when he can spend a quiet evening among his books. He telephones his wife once a day from the office, too. That's why she went to New York." "He really does," said Russ, chuckling at the accuracy of her light malice. "This is the longest time they've ever been separated. Ernest and Caroline went to school together, and were engaged at sixteen." "One of those ideal marriages," said Marta. "It makes your blood run cold. They have no secrets from each other, and trust each other absolutely. Neither of them has ever looked at anyone else." Russ could not hold out. "That's true. Ernest told me he wouldn't associatewith a man who had-had-"

(CHad been around," Marta supplied irrepressibly. The phrase was an authentic classic of slang.

N EVE R ASK THE END 67 "Yes," Russ accepted the gloss. "He meant it-said it seriously?" Marta enquired, waiting open mouthed for the reply. "Ernest says everything seriously." Marta was overcome. (Then what-well, isn't he in the wrong flat?" "That's what I told him." "And he stayed? Have you undermined his morals already?" "He took it as a joke. Nobody he associates with could be that sort of person." "Then there's no hope; he'll think the best of us," Marta sighed. Pauline remarked as if to herself: "Be lieve it or not, I am waiting for a street-car." ((Certainly; he was very keen to meet you," Russ said. '(To meet me? What for?" "Oh, he knows who you are. He's seen your pic ture in the paper." Marta was irrationally discomfited. "The poor fish-as if I'd let a picture go out that resembled me in the least! It ought to be a lesson to him." Pauline said: "It won't be.. He was quite smitten, never took his eyes off you." ... She saw again Keith lounging on the red corduroy sofa, his sleepy dark gaze fixed on Marta in her chair by the piano, where Joe Warner, his curly head shining under the shaded lamp, was ragging the Spring Song . . • "Cat!" Marta protested.

'(He said you two were the most interesting women 68 N EVE R ASK THE END he had ever met," Russ amplified. "1 don't doubt it," Marta jeered. So she had spent years of drudgery, racked her poor wits to the utmost, to win the admira tion of Ernest. They were incomprehensible, the people who wanted to meet you because they had seen your name in the papers. The very ones who were horrified if you revealed the least opinion that was not banal, sticky with conventional sentiment. Her insignificant, ephemeral ray of the spotlight had shown her that. They were pathetic, too. What they sought was obviously what they dared not venture, a vicarious bite of the apple. So they devised a protective obfusca tion; they could take a joke. Oh, you don't mean that., they said ••.Still, if Ernest knows who I am, it's more than I do, Marta reflected. Who am I? The stenog rapher at the Great Western Land Office,or the waitress at the Commercial Hotel-Ernest wouldn't have been delighted to meet her; though there was more reason.

She was young and cheerful; she took people on trust. And who is Ernest? He's somebody, something we recognize him at sight, though we can't put a label to it.... And we want to duck...• "Aren't these woods gorgeous?" said Pauline. "So perfectly manicured .." The undergrowth was cleared, and the lower branches neatly pruned; leaves put forth at the knots, close to the bark, suffusing the interspaces with a mist of green; Corat didn't invent that effect. Europe took its character from a thousand such slight differences, another scale of beauty, tamed and ordered.

N EVE R ASK THE END 69 You felt that this forest had its decorous limits, that you would presently come out on the other side. Ex quisitely restful and breathing assurance; only if you had the wilderness in your blood, you would wake and long for it sometimes, long to break bounds..••Driv ing in the dark across the prairie, on her last visit West, Marta had roused to attention, like a deer when it is down wind. This is wild land-it has never been plowed or fenced. The scent was unmistakable, finer and fresher than any capturable essence, as pure as the taste of water, a smell of grass and tiny, pale flowers and immense spaces of clean earth and air, washed by rain and sun. Her native air • . •She thought, we be long to a sunken continent; lost Atlantis, submerged under the westward tide of the peoples of the world. Our little towns are drowned, too. One used to come to the end of a board sidewalk and step off upon virgin sod. . • . After us, nobody will know what it was like.

Europeans think Americans are young; we're two thousand years older than they. In our own lives, we go back to-to Julius Caesar. He landed somewhere hereabouts when it was a primitive forest. Sitting Bull was Vercingetorix ... They've read their history. We've been through it all ourselves ... Henri turned and addressed a question to Russ, who replied in French. He spoke slowly but without hesita tion. Marta listened, marvelling. She didn't need to understand French to perceive that his accent was uniquely bad., so remote from any approximation of 70 N EVE R ASK THE END the· Gallic inflection that it became authoritative, ma jestic. The French Academy would not have ven tured to correct him, at a loss where to begin.... "Shall we go on?" Russ left the choiceto Marta and Pauline. "This is Quatre Bras." The rain had begun and the light was failing; they would hardly be able to see the actual field of Waterloo, which was some distance fur ther. "Whatever you say." They were still displaying an unexampled docility. Quatre Bras was a crossroad in the woods; Marta tried to imagine red-coated regi ments filing by, and could not. Why an army was better off in one place than another, more effective, was incomprehensible to her.... "Must have been some where here that Wellington used to go riding with Lady Frances Webster." Under the trees, the uniforms and velvet habits and plumed hats would make a gay show. "Wellington?" "He was a great squire of dames, ran after anything in petticoats. But he said no woman had loved him-not one. Told Harriette Wilson so. He never loved a woman, either; that was why. I don't believe any of the famous men of action ever did-really." Marta was thinking aloud.

The little dry nutcracker soldier must have wished he could, guessed that the rest was not worth winning with out it, or why did he say that? Another such victory and 'We are lost • •. Harriet . . . Russ thought, was that the price of suc cess? You couldn't go all out for it unless you wanted it more than you wanted any woman ... That cut your N EVE R ASK THE END 71 comb for you ••.Harriet-Nonie-Louise perhaps if he hadn't gone away . • . And all the others, taken to gether. Women .•. Well, he was out of the running. Fini. Not that he gave a damn for the doctors .... He wanted to wind up this job, that was all. Then it would be pleasant to have a few years to rest, talk to your friends • • • "Who was Harriette Wilson?" Pauline enquired in cautiously. Marta informed her: "I'm sorry to say Harriette was a hussy. An abandoned female." "Why not?" said Pauline. "1 should love to be abandoned.

And go into a convent occasionally for a retreat." Funny, thought Marta, that's just what they used to do. "wouldn't it be better to reside in the convent, and climb out of the window once in a while?" Pauline held her ground: "I'd rather be a hussy, with time off for good behavior." "When you decide, let me know," said Russ. "Oh, if you want-to know, I am one," Marta said, and was vexed at herself. Leave it alone. He doesn't want to know. The poor dear is tired. I've been there myself. It rests him to let us do the talking, and have Pauline hold his hand, and no consequences. . . . We'll KO no more a-roving, so laIc into the night. But 1 want to know, her impulsive self protested. I've got to find out.... Nonsense. They ain't nothin' 1 GOT to do except die. What for do I have to find out? Sheer vanity. Devilment. No, not wholly; it was the mixture of motives which distracted her. Peo ple want to be good because they think that it would 72 N EVE R ASK THE END make life simple and clear. But they want it that way so they could start fresh complications.... Ten to one Russ had no recollection of that night. He's been on hundreds of parties, she thought. Thousands. Mil lions ... Well, if I knew that, then I'd know what for. It would be settled. Or not . . . If we'd never met again-but we did. At vast expense and trouble .••What of soul was left, I wonder, ·when the kissing had to stop? ••.

In the Grande Place, the peaked fronts of the old Guild Halls, as rich as wedding cake with tier on tier of sculptured figures, seemed asleep. The rain had lifted. They descended from the motor, walking softly on the wet grey flagstones, as in a cloister.. The buildings enclosed their period and atmosphere inviolate, locking the ranks against any modern intrusion. 1£ one went, the rest would crumble, betrayed to the time spirit. "This is where the Spaniards used to burn heretics," Russ pointed to a small memorial set in the pavement. Marta averted her mind. If you let yourself contem plate the monstrous sum of deliberate cruelty in known history, the fact that it is a part of human nature, you wanted to creep into some hiding place and cease to be. She said: "Handy for postcards in those days. X marks the spot. Wish you were here. The Belgians have a lot of old scores. But I suppose they've washed out' the Spaniards, after three hundred years, except for the formal record."

Russ said: "They have not. They hate the Spaniards N EVE R ASK THE END 73 yet.. It actually makes trouble when we have business with the Spanish branch, calls for considerable diplo macy in direct contacts." Yes, if you've been hurt, she thought, the fear is in your blood. She could not bear uncertainty, because of that long bewilderment which left her permanently dismayed ... She conceded: "The Duke of Alva would take considerable washing out .." She wondered if hell might not be an inescapable knowledge of what others think of you, after you are dead. Not so good for most of us. Then a mass would help, a kind thought, with music and candles. But Alva wouldn't be let go to his masses; they'd hold him here at the stake he built, by the strength of their hate. She was not a Catholic, had never been any thing, nor wished to be; but the forms of religion en gaged her intellect. Disbelief did not wash them out; the mysteries then became one mystery of the creative imagination: that all these gods and devils and visions of judgment should exist in the brain of man, if nowhere else. Like the idea of justice, of virtue, of mercy. Say it all began in the crude barbaric legend of a warrior chief or a wise matriarch, or in a child's trust in the omnipotence of its elders; and that it was passed on and magnified by untraceable degrees until it grew into the splendid and shining images of poetic myth, Athena with her golden spear, Saint Michael with the sword of the spirit: the process of transmuta tion .remained inexplicable and marvelous. If it were only the insubstantial shape of what men would be if i4-N EVE R ASK THE END they could, how came so pitiful a creature to desire so greatly? ... She checked herself, feeling that she was boring Pauline and Russ by such ponderous and futile fancies, though unuttered. They were not in the mood for history, nor was she; they wished to make the most of their own hour, of one another. Holding hands, for comfort ..• The restaurant alcove suited their modest demands better, a little space of which they could take possession.

Marta leaned her elbows on the table, opposite Russ as he read the menu to Pauline. "Why, you have green eyes," she announced irrelevantly. "Like goose berry jam." He gave her a full view, glancing up with good-natured astonishment, and she added: "I'm very fond of gooseberry jam. I never noticed before; the only time I ever gazed into your eyes it was dark. No, they're sort of turquoise colored, but green." The very light green turquoise which has only a faint wash of blue; she had been aware of their strangeness with out perceiving the material cause. Set between smut black lashes, they gave him a singularly ingenuous ex pression for a man of his age, a solemn stare, innocent and impenetrable. He made no reply except a smile, a flash through the mask. He thought: she's having me on again, the little devil, shufBing the cards. So he kept still. Not that he minded giving himself away to her; he'd done that completely once; but the sport was seeing how she would get at you next.

He went on ordering dinner) imposing his pronunciaN EVE R ASK THE END 75 cion on the waiter by force of gravity. "Do you study French?" Marta ventured. "I'll bet Ernest does-or anyhow, Caroline has a teacher in once a week. She thinks it's such an opportunity for the children." "She does. I ought to, at that, but I ·never get around to it." "You just picked it up?" It sounds) she thought, as if someone had dropped it, with a crash. "Dug it out of a French dictionary, twenty-odd years ago, in Chicago," he said. Extraordinary, thought Marta, what could have set him at it then, when he had no idea he would ever be here? It was for such surprises that she had always been interested in him; unexpected tastes) when to all appearances he was the tired business man. Reading Genji, or telling her not to miss ('Saint Joan"; or that he had been to hear Wanda Landowska-his wife being musical might account for the last, but not for the French dictionary in Chicago, which must have been before he was married. "How come?" she could not refrain from asking.

"I wanted to read French novels." Again that half defiant understanding subsisted between them. "Oh ... that kind?" she said tentatively. He nodded; she had cut the high card. "Yes. That kind." She felt that he trusted her to make something out of the ad mission beyond the obvious interpretation; or if not, he couldn't help it.... He wouldn't have gone to all that trouble just for a risquestory, she thought. Not his line; I've never heard him tell one. He was trying to 76 N EVE R ASK THE END find out something. Like me, years ago, going around asking questions. Asking them now • • . The French, Russ reflected, were supposed to have worked out the answer, arrived at a decent adjustment of the relations of men and women, a racial wisdom refined by wit and art. He didn't believe so any more; he wasn't sure there was any answer. Certainly the French were more candid. They admitted the existence of the problem, as fit for intelligent consideration; and it gave them to think furiously. That didn't prevent them getting into every kind of a jam, from broad farce to crimes passionel • •.. All you learned was rea soning after the fact. Whatever you did was wrong, so you deduced that you ought to have done something else, or nothing. Easy to say in cold blood; the next time would be the same. Well, he could think of it now; probably there wouldn't be any next time. He caught himself on the "probably," with an inward chuckle. The probabilities were against his having the time, the energy, or the chance. Given those, he would certainly go off the deep end again. And like it' ...

While you were hooked, you did what you must. His work supplied a comparison, the way the spark jumped, the kick of the live wire when the current caught it. Only that could be managed, checked in figures, even if no one knew what it was. But the wire, the spark, couldn't choose or refuse. With the right combination, it happened ... And love, or even passion on its lowest terms, was an emotion out of measure. It tO,ok everyN EVE R ASK THE END 77 thing, however briefly, and so left you somehow for sworn. That anyhow had been his own experience. He had always cared, a little at the least; it reached the core. Women seemed to have more control; they could twist the soul out of you, without involving them selves. Even so, they were in the coil; and when it got them, they risked more ..• Some men-he'd heard them say so-took it differently; cheap enough. Or didn't. But then-what did they get out of it? ...

The women he had been in love with still had a hold on him. i\.nd the others that he hadn't been in love with-not quite-- This was the best break he'd had for quite awhile. If you counted women out, it was pretty bleak, a lonely business. You wanted someone to tell things to . . . The French novels had filled a great many deadly evenings. They recalled the faded monotony of a furnished room, different rooms but indistinguishable in their sameness: a bed, a chair, a table with pages of figures laid out under an unshaded light, work brought from the office. And a ('golden oak" dresser where a yellow-backed book, open face downward, made a spot of color, doubled in the mirror. The work helped. He had enough of a natural bent for mathematics to find satisfaction in the steady, orderly reduction of a problem to a practicable plan. After two or three hours of absorbed attention, or when the pattern emerged, his mind would snap out of it . . . About eleven at night is the worst time, when you are young and quick.

78 N EVE R ASK THE END Especially if it's fair weather, maybe with a moon.. On a quiet street, the lamps bloom in long rows of little moons, leading toward the city, alight and alive •.. Or if there is a sound of water lapping on the beach; he'd had one room near the lake front. ,Makes you want to strip and swim out till you drown. You hear your own heartbeats, your blood rises in waves . • . Then he would set himself to picking out the knots of the foreign idiom, guessing at the implications, till the words blurred ..• Five or six nights a week ... And then there would be one night ..• Saturday afternoon, Tip Kearney and Heinie V\Teiss muller usually gave him the high sign as they shut their desks. They'd meet for dinner ... Let's go down to the Levee and give the girls a treat ••• He used to write his letter to his mother at noon on Saturdays, get it posted and out of the way. His clearance ...

Marta leaned back and her sandal grazed his foot. He pinned her ankle between his, and they both burst out laughing. She had never played that inane trick; the contact was an accident. But their amusement was intimate, acknowledging complicity in the instant re sponse, while disowning intention. "Pauline considers us very common," Marta said. But she thought, with concern, I can feel even through double silk-is that high blood pressure? Fever. You get that way when you're too tired to stop working, all in. I went on N EVE R ASK THE END 79 till I nearly killed myself, it's foolish. He does need a holiday ... "! can't get through by Monday," Russ said. He was finishing an important report, specifications and costs for a big contract the company had under negotia tion. "But we can drive out for the week-end to a hotel in the country-it's a. made-over chateau. I go there to play golf sometimes, in the Ardennes. If it suits you?" Nothing could have suited them better. "Then we'll go on over to England," said Marta firmly, "on Monday's boat," committing them. While he had the Vienna visitors to cope with, he simply would not have any more time; the least Marta and Pauline could do was not to tax his politeness by overstaying.