Chapter VII

CHAPTER VII "AM I seeing things," Marta asked, e'or has that woman over there got a diamond stud in her nose?" ((No, I see her too," Pauline affirmed. "She must be a Hindoo, and the man with her." The pair were other wise inconspicuously smart in their attire; the bronze tone of their skins no deeper than a Lido tan. "Egyp tians, most likely," Russ suggested. ('In pursuit of the Children of Israel," Marta conjeetured, after a mo ment of incredulity. "Once on the New York subway, Lida Deacon and I heard two girls talking some lan guage we couldn't identify. They had a gypsy look, but they were dressed American style. Finally we were so curious we asked them. They were polite, and said they were speaking Syrian; they came from Tyre. I mean Tyre in the Bible, purple and fine linen-where King Hiram loaded ships for Solomon with ivory and apes and peacocks. They'd been educated in an American mission school, so they spoke perfectly good English, too. Fancy meeting Tyrian damsels on the subway, going to Brooklyn. Not that it's any queerer than you comiQg from Illinois to install radios or refrigerators N EVE R ASK THE END 81 in the Vatican. Aren't you from Illinois?" "Mostly,"

said Russ.. "1 was born in Ohio, but we lived in Rock ford.. My father travelled a good deal, and parked us there.." When his father was at home, there were scenes, and painful, injured silences. In his absence, Russ's mother wept frequently, and enforced obedience with the obscurely wounding prediction, you're growing up just like your father.. "He made money several times, speculating, and lost it again; he happened to be broke when he died. I was fifteen, and we had hardly anything but the house we lived in." A gaunt wooden house on the edge of town) much in need of paint, dated by a meager cupola and fretsaw work around the porch railing. The apple trees in the back yard were lovely ip. spring.. Out of mistaken kindness, he once assisted his two-year-old brother into the upper branches, incidentally alarming his mother into hys terics. She came to herself effectively with a strap in her hand. His father never whipped him. "My grandfather had a big farm in Ohio; we used to visit him. It went to my uncle; he'd worked it for grand father, so he had the best right~ If I'd inherited it, I'd probably be there yet; I've always wanted a farm."

"You wouldn't have stayed," Marta said. "Wouldn't I? Why not?" Russ seemed open to argument. The farm had been a fixed value in his boyhood.. Security, standing ground. Reverses came at the age when a child begins to grasp the social meaning of money. The knowledge of past prosperity made him feel unplaced.

82 N EVE R ASK THE END And there was something equivocal and humiliating about the position of a woman and children when the man was vaguely "away" for indefinite periods. It was one of those things nobody spoke of . . . What hurt most was that he had been secretly and strongly attached to his father, while forced to hear him judged, take sides. The last summer, when he was fourteen, was the happiest. His father had taken him to Cali fornia; they spent a month in the high Sierras, cruising a tract of redwood, on a speculative option.•.. If they had owned the farm, he would have had his father •.. "I dunno why not," said Marta. "You just couldn't. None of us could. We're crazy. Intermittently. What for did you dive off the Van Camp's houseboat? Alma told me about it." Russ uttered a sound of protest, with that indescribable gesture of repudiation which is addressed to oneself, a shrug, a scowl, a rueful lower ing of the crest. Marta pursued: "Alma drove Russ over to calIon some people she ·knew-he hadn't met them before-they had a houseboat. And lots of hard liquor. Russ took a powerful scunner against his host, tried to start a fight. He wasn't allowed to, so he gloomed at the dark end of the deck. Next thing they heard a splash ; he'd pulled off his clothes and leaped into the Sound. Wanted to Get Away From It All.

They fished him out, but he got loose and took another header. They hauled him up once more; 1 forget how Alma managed to tow him ashore. You wouldn't sus pect it, to see him clothed and in his right mind. But N EVE R ASK THE END 83 that's why . . . The boiler blows up. When it occurs to us suddenly that today is Friday and yesterday was Thursday and tomorrow will be Saturday. Pauline, too, for all she's a perfect lady." Russ admitted: "When those things come back to me, 1 groan and wonder: did I do that? ..• But Van Camp was an awful pill. Anybodywould have wanted to sock him." ('I threw a potted geranium at George once," Pauline said. "1 never liked geraniums. Missed him, of course." If it had been a knife she held in her hand . . • Marta said; "You should have practised regularly. Mere amateur dabbling gets you nowhere ... This will do me no good, but I cannot tolerate waste." She reached for the glass Russ had left untouched, in which the last bubbles were expiring languidly ... His doctor's orders must have been peremptory, she thought. Russ used to be able to drink with the next man; not that he had been a souse, or given to protracted sprees Hke Pauline's husband, but on the week-end parties he kept up with the crowd ..• I wonder how much he'd had that night, she thought . . . The wild times, she had not shared more than once or twice. Wild within the bounds of an understood group decorum; simply they drank, danced, and made a sufficientnoise. She did not, as a rule, drink at all. My constitution, she reflected hazily, wasn't framed to admit amendments • • • "I'm sur prised," she said at a tangent, "that Ernest drinks.

Surely Caroline doesn't?"

84-N EVE R ASK THE END "Oh, doesn't she?" Russ said. "They believe it's not wrong as long as they drink together. Ernest's sister-in-law is the best two-handed drinker I've come across for a good while. She was here in the spring, and ran us ragged. Every night was a party. Ernest says she's so broad-minded that she doesn't realize how narrow other people are; one mustn't judge byappear ances." "A simple, childlike nature," Pauline said. "She must have money." ((Quite a lot," Russ smiled. "How do they get it?" Marta asked sadly. "Is she Caroline's sister!" "N0, she is Ernest's brother's wife's sister; and she married some rich old duffer, divorced him, and col lected a big settlement. " "Is it possible that Ernest countenances divorce?" They were beginning to gloat over Ernest, enumerating his points with the solemn joy of a collector. ((It was her husband's fault. I don't know how; Ernest asked us to be careful to avoid the subject; it was a great shock to her." Marta suggested: "Prob ably he drank." She tipped the bottle wistfully, not desiring more, but regretting that the evening was spent. The last glass had made her sleepy. LTnbecom ing, but it did not matter. In the car, returning, she resisted an inclination, compounded of friendliness and fatigue, to lean on Russ's shoulder. Pauline needed his attention. Her nerves are all shot, Marta reN EVE R ASK THE END 85 fleeted; the wine hasn't helped her much tonight. Some times it doesn't, when your mind runs away with you.

People drank for different reasons, which were at bottom the same, a fantastic assertion' of freewill, in the teeth of the gods. The timorous took Dutch cour age, the inhibited babbled confidences. They denied foreknowledge by blanking out the logical processes of the brain, the cognition of cause and effect. She found it sedative rather than a stimulant. Her follies had been committed in a very desperation of sobriety. At her highest pitch, there was no virtue in wine for her ... When Chris said: ('We must drink to the brides maids." ... She had been in love with him for a year, or if one counted from the very beginning, for over two years. He remained unaware of the beginning. He could hardly have guessed, and she let it go unspoken to the last. How strange, she thought; it was because I felt he knew everything. Neither did she ever learn whether he had been drawn by a like attraction; or if it had been chance and idleness made him claim ac quaintance. That the little girl recognized and spoke of her was a sufficient pretext, not a motive. She could count up almost exactly the number of their meetings.

Hardly a dozen, and none of her contriving. What harm is there in a kiss, he said ... No harm ... She was sure he had intended none. He wanted to kiss her, perhaps he was curious to discover why he wanted to. For she was not-she recognized it then-the type of girl he readily admired. Singular, that was equally 86 N EVE R ASK THE END true of Keith ..• It was as if Chris had set about tam ing a bird, because it was wild, coaxing it to perch on his shoulder. He alone divined that she was farouch8, savagely shy, adopting as a defense the saucy air that duller men took for an invitation. He possessed an extreme degree of physical sensitiveness, that delicacy of tact in the literal meaning which, combining instinct and intelligence, becomes a specialized intuition. I t was when he took her hand in his that she felt he knew everything . . . But he's married, he's married, she used to say to herself. You can't have him; he be longs to her. It does not mean anything to him; he said a kiss was nothing . . • She was glad his wife was absent. Evidently they were accustomed to protracted separations. They had been married ten years, and his was a roving profession. Marta did not know what his wife meant to him either. He had the grace of reticence. . . . You're wicked, you're bad, she accused herself, with childish honesty. It serves you right if it hurts. When you are with him you don't care. It would be the same whatever he asked. So you're just as bad, it's only because he doesn't ... If he called you, you would go through fire to him. Literally. Like a sleepwalker •.. Not only that he counted for more than anything else; nothing else counted at all. A passion of the mind, by which the body was ignored. And since such things were of no importance, she performed her work comoetentlv, quite important work; she went here and there and was merry, had beaux ... If she N EVE R ASK THE END 87 met Chris, they never spoke of the last time, or the next time. They had to remain outside of time . • .

When he came into her office and said he was going East for awhile, maybe a month or so, he did not give any reason, nor touch her, though they were alone to gether. For public occasionsthey had preserved intact the manner of casual acquaintances. She did not ques tion him . . . After he was gone she walked up and down, wringing her hands. People do wring their hands, she thought, dimly astonished. I must get over this, I must. When I don't see him for a long time, weeks, I can make up my mind to it. I can't stand being pulled to pieces again . . . Hugh Evans told her, three days later. On pur pose) to watch how she would take it. So there must have been some faint rumor around the office. Hugh was the head salesman, a good sort, fond of the girls but experienced enough to realize when he had no chance, and too amiable to bear a grudge. Did you hear that Chris ]ackling's wife died yesterday? He stared hard at her, inquisitive without malice.... She said no, she had not heard. Hugh said: He had a wire on Wednesday. She was dangerously ill. He took the next train, but he couldn't have got there in time. Another wire came this morning .••.Now, Marta thought, ] shall never see him again. It's over. Her expression was unaltered; it was her nature to be still under shock. She said: I'm sorry.

He'll have a sad journey. The little girl, too ••• 88 N EVE R ASK THE END Hugh was obliged to go back to his desk no wiser. And this passive acquiescence lasted three weeks, until Chris walked in, without warning. He had just got off the train. There was a band of crape on his sleeve. Because of it, she remembered that his suit was of grey tweed. Can you have dinner with me, he asked. She ran all the way home, to put on her best frock. The restaurant had private booths, another thing that reminded her. And Chris ordered champagne . • . He must have needed it. . • . She had no idea what they ate, nor what they talked about. Not about themselves, nor of his absence. When they went out he drew her arm through his, and'she did not enquire where they were going. The street was almost empty of people. • . • If 'You tross 'Your heart you love me, And you promise honest Injun hope to die, Swear by all the stars ahove me, Lots of foolish reasons why • .. He was humming a half forgotten popular song, to himself; she could just overhear the words.... And begin all o'Ver at the start, Then I'll let you kiss me, maybe, Honest if you cross your heart . . . In hi~z apartment, he exchanged glasses with her; that was when he toasted the bridesmaids.

She had laid off her hat; they were standing beside a round table in the middle of the room, opposite a mantel mirror-a girl in a white serge tailleur, her hair slightly ruBled; she had turned toward him, not her head only but on a dead center, as if in obedience to a sense of direction. • • •His brown eyes smiled at N EVE R ASK THE END 89 her over the rim of the glass" Sparklets of gold streamed upward in the hollow crystal stem. She tasted them when he kissed her and said: You know I've been in love with you for a long time. She said: I didn't know. He had never said it before, nor had she. You're going to marry me, he said. Am I? ••• They would have to wait a year .•• He slipped her jacket from her shoulders, and she shivered. Are you cold? She shook her head. What is it then-I won't ... oh! He guessedquicklyenough. The other door, he said·•••She did not mind that he laughed; it was funny, if humiliating, this complete abdication of the despised flesh. She shut the door tight. At least she was neither faint nor physically distressed, only light and unreal. A rejection of ma terial phenomena. She had not wanted dinner, nor needed it. She washed her face and mouth, and smoothed her hair, and went back .••Better now?

Chris asked; and when she finished her glass: Good girl. That was funny, too; she glanced at him sidelong •.. Her brain was intensely clear and she was perfectly happy. Of course she was damned. They would never be married. This was all. It was enough. To have had him say it • . • Thou hast committed-Fornication, But that was in another c:ountry. And besides, the· wench is dead.

90 N EVE R ASK THE END Well, she hadn't. She wished she had. Now, twenty years later, she still wished it. But it was in another country. And the wench was dead. The one who remembered, the only one who remembered that girl, was the third Marta, half asleep, on the way from Brussels to Antwerp. I suppose, she thought, that the idea of being damned was invented as the only equivalent, by opposites. ' The least you can pay is your soul. And there is a kind of truth in it; you will not get it back, not the same ... I know now that Chris was quite ordinary, except for his good looks, and his light touch. But when you ,know that, you've lost the rest . . . . I wonder which of his women really got I~uss ... We shouldn't have stayed so late at that restaurant. Russ has put in a hard day's work, and with Ernest already quartered on him •.. She said as much to Pauline, as they went to their rooms. uN0, we're a relief to him," Pauline said.

"When I went down, ahead of you, Russ was talking to those men from Vienna, at the desk. He shook them, didn't bring them over to introduce them; and he said to me: 'They'd be glad to join the party, but I'm not going to share you girls.' Wasn't that sweet of him?" "Especially to call us girls," Marta agreed.