Chapter VIII

CHAPTER VIII "1 HAVEN'T got a souvenir for Jimmy yet," said Pauline, in the hopeless tone she reserved for trifles. She had had one of her white nights. Waking too early, with the impressionof Cathy on her arm.••. Her eyes were dry and shining, and she packed the wrong things absently and lifted them out of her suit case again as if she didn't know what they were. "It is difficult,when a boy is too old for airguns and roller skates and too young to smoke," Marta said. "What is he interested in?" Pauline answered: "MaChinery, and the stock-market. He reads the financial page and spends his spare time at the corner garage. I wish I had bought him one of those music boxes in Paris, with the enamelled bird singing, though they were so expensive. He has a pet canary, and he loves it." "He'll be pleased with whatever you bring him," Marta said, trying to construct a personality out of a canary, a garage, and the financial page. Everyone was made up of such incongruous bits, and yet the sum was an individual, unique and whole. "He thinks I'm a fool anyhow," Pauline said rather cheerfully.

92 N E. V ERA S K THE END "When David sends me flowers, or Clint Charles invites me to play golf, I shrivel under Jimmy's contempt. At my age .••What I need is a keeper. He reminds me to put on my rubbers, and he caught a bad cold last winter, when the weather turned suddenly, be cause he got up and came in my room and laid his own blanket over me. I'm the last female on earth he'd have chosen for a mother." "Don't you realize," said Marta, in amazement, "that the poor kid adores you?" "Me?" said Pauline, even more amazed. "Sure he does," Marta insisted. She had seen them together. A square-jawed, well grown boy, keeping near Pauline unobtrusively and rather grimly, and asking for nothing more. He wasn't the asking kind. In no particular did he re semble Pauline; he was fair and serious and self-con tained. "How do you know he didn't choose you for a mother?" Perhaps we do find what we need, she thought, even if it isn't what we want. The profound discords of blood kinship so clearly discernible in America, where there was no inexorable pressure of class to stamp out differences) had always aroused her wonder. The biological law of remote inheritance was only the mathematical formula by which the com binations were produced, a general agency rather than a cause. "He adores your frivolity," she continued, "though he doesn't always see the point. His wife will be as near like you as he can find. And she will think he is glowering disapproval until he stuns her N EVE R ASK THE END 93 by. proposing." "He doesn't intend to marry," Pauline said. "He can't imaginewhat peopleget married for.

He avoids girls with great politeness." "Nobody in tends to marry," said Marta. "No more than they intend to be buried. He'll know what for soon enough . . . . 1 daresay he thinks you aren't particularly fond of him." Nat as you were of the others, she refrained from adding. "But I've always been afraid of him," Pauline pro tested. "From the minute he was born, he had a will like cast-iron. You won't believe me, but when I had to wean him he nearly starved himself to death rather than take the bottle. He would not. The .struggle lasted four days. I almost perished myself. He'd howl himself into complete exhaustion; he lost three pounds and was all thin and blue. When he dozed from weakness, I'd try again. He would take just one gulp and then wake with a shriek of rage and shove the bottle away_ I walked the floor for hours at a stretch with Jimmy limp over my shoulder, and my sister Florrie following, ready to pop the bottle in his mouth whenever he closed his eyes. It was perfectly insane, a procession marching around with that baby until we were all ready to drop. We should have had a brass band. Only it wasn't funny then. I sent for our doctor-you remember old Dr. Newland?" Marta said: "Yes. He headed ott pneumonia for me." A little dry grey man, as impersonal as God, but when he came into the room you felt safe. "If I'd had 94 NEVER ASK THE END pneumonia then I'd have turned my face to the wall and let go. I was about halfway through learning shorthand, and I couldn't afford to be sick. Dr. New land gave me a prescription that started rivers of per spiration. It was forty below zero that night, and of course nobody was sitting up with me. I didn't dare move a finger from under the blankets till morning.

My hair was wet and it froze. But I got better. Did Dr. Newland subdue Jimmy?" "No," said Pauline, "he laughed till he cried. He said he was sorry, but he had never heard of such a child, and then he doubled up and held his sides. The next day I took Jimmy to the hospital in Silverton; they tried to give him a sleeping draught and he fetched it up. So I brought him home again; honestly, 1 thought he'd die, and I was dead on my feet. Even George was scared." "But how did you manage him?" Marta asked. eel didn't," said Pauline. ""Our hired girl was a husky Swede. When I got back, she met me at the door and grabbed Jimmy. Yoost leave him to me, Missus, she said; and she shook him and set him in his high chair and brought a bowl of milk: That's enough of your nonsense, Mister Yimmy. He stopped in the middle of a yell, and drank the milk out of a spoon; Signe kept on dipping it for him. In a few days he was drinking from his mug. But not the bottle-never.

How could you cope with a son like that?" "He was defending his dignity," Marta said. "1 N EVE R ASK THE END 95 was a fiendish child, too. Worse than Jimmy. I howled incessantly,for nothing. My mother ruined my basal metabolism permanently, letting me have the sugar-bowl to shut me up. They didn't understand about diet in those days. I guess they'd have let me anyhow, and hoped I'd choke. Those psychologists who say that babies are exactly alike until they are 'conditioned) are fatheads. They don't know a baby from a pink-eyed fruitfly. I stopped howling when I learned to talk, and I learned at fourteen months. After 1 could read I wasn't much trouble. I'm cer tain that what ailed me was that I was bored into fits, having to be a baby. I was bored most of my child hood." And miserable. A dull fog of depression crept over her whenever her mind reverted to those meager, anxious years of waiting to grow up, to learn, to do something. "It's awful to be a child. The other boys, his friends, bore Jimmy, don't they? " "Yes, of course. He leads a crowd, but whenever he's fed up with them he stalks off, or tells them to go home."

"Well, you don't bore him," said Marta. "Don't I? n Pauline remained doubtful. Marta thought, he bores her a little; he is at the inarticulate age, neither a child nor a man, and they are so close to one an other, left to themselves, they are embarrassed by their affection, because they cannot express it. When they lost Cathy and Donald, their means of contact was broken. Parents cannot converse with their children, 96 N EVE R ASK THE END they can only overhear and arbitrate among them. The only child is terribly isolated. There is nobody on his side. . . . It's comical that with all the talk of the Younger Generation about how tiresome their parents are, how they are bored, it doesn't occur to them that they bore older people. Pauline said: "But Jimmy can't grasp the idea that I earned my own living-that I earn it now. He must assume that my employers are half-witted. And I 'Was capable. When I went to Silverton, ] had ten dollars left after paying my fare, and I'd brought Florrie with me. She was fourteen and I was nineteen. I couldn't leave her on the ranch; she had bronchitis every winter; she was never very strong. And I wanted her to go to school. I sat up all night with her in the tourist sleeper, she was coughing so. When we got there I found a boarding-house and put her to bed, and went out to look for work. I walked into Welsh & Hayden's, straight into J. K.. 's office. He said, good morning, my dear, who the hell are you? I said I wanted a job. He said, what can you do! And I said, anything. I could, too. He said, can you take dictation with one hand? I said, don't be silly) your desk is a sight. He said, if you touch a paper on my desk, I'll fire you. When can you begin? And I said, now, and took off my hat and sat down to the typewriter."

"He's a queer fish," said Marta. "I suppose he did try to paw yOU!" "Of course," said Pauline. ((But as if it were a habit, or showing off. So vulgar and N EVE R ASK THE END 97 ridiculous that I couldn't get mad, only disgusted. When I snubbed him he'd grin, and talk sense. We insulted each other every hour, and I resigned once a month. Whenever he saw that I meant it, he raised my pay, and I had to earn enough to keep Florrie and myself. The odd part of it is that he's really a first class lawyer, and straight; he never gouged his clients, nor was in any graft." Marta said: "I daresay the Sin against the Holy Ghost is bad taste. I half liked him. Or I liked half of him. He offered me a position, sug gested I should study law/' Pauline said: "He liked both you and me, separately, and was furious when he saw us together. He thought we were making fun of him." "So we were," said Marta. "He's 50 incon sistent. When he sets up as a stuffed shirt, his sense of humor trips him. In the middle of a burst of oratory, he'd catch himself up. That's why he got the governorship only by a fluke, and he'll never be Senator.

I couldn't make out if-but what woman would have him? Ida Ritchie slapped his face, and he apologized. Then he discovered she hadn't slapped Floyd Jernegan, and he tried to get her fired. It was the most imbecile affair." "There was usually a peroxide blonde in the background,') Pauline said scornfully. "Men are im beciles. George suspected the worst. When we were married he ordered me not to speak to J. K. What good would it do then, after I)d been in his office four years, and out of it for two years? And besides ... me! . . . But if I told Jimmy that I did the work of a 98 N EVE R ASK THE END junior partner-I was articled) you know-and really ran J. K.'s officewhenever he was away, why, I plastered the state with mortgages, and I drew up briefs-Jimmy would think I was raving." Why wouldn't he, Marta thought. Pauline is Jimmy's mother, a being who exists only in relation to him. It is not the function of a mother to match insults with a future governor, nor to execute legal documents.

What staggered Marta was the picture of Pauline anxiously presenting feeding bottles to be rejected by her contumaciousoffspring. Pauline detested domestic tasks. When she did her share of the dishwashing, in the sketchy flat she had shared with Marta, she dabbed at them with the tips of her fingers. Neither would she sew, and she had no facile sentiment about children. Yet she was intensely feminine. Men worship th.e mother goddess. The feminine divinities are neither maternal nor hearth-tenders. They are Artemis the unpossessed, Athena who is pure intellect, and Aphro dite, whose virtue is passionate delight. They are proud and free. The quality of Pauline's young beauty was classic, with her lovely long legs, her flying glance, the flute notes of her voice. An, for their sakes) so trapped and taken, For theirs forgotten and forsaken, Watch, sleep not, gUIJrd thyself with prayer• ..• But all of us • . • Marta knit her brows, tracing through the confusion of her experience a thread of pattern . . . An army of girls, without banners, in NEVER ASK THE END 99 mutiny .... Going out of the home, each alone, but multitudesat once. We didn't intend to go back, to be caught; we were leaving it behind forever. Child bearing and drudgery and dependence. • . . Just as we grew up, the door was open. Our mothers hadn't had the chance. But they told us to run for it. And we did ...

That was historic) l.Vlarta thought. Not the next generation, the spoiled adolescents who took it out in talk. Drinking their pap from pocket flasks, gin paid for by indulgent parents. Smarmy infants • • • Dis covering "sex." Did they actually believe they were found in a cabbage patch? •.. We are not amused, thought Marta, detecting the mark of middle age in her disapproval. Maybe that was all a literary con vention; but as such it had bored her to intolerance. Hiyu cultus wawa--too much talk no good. You don't stop to talk when you're making your getaway. Once we were earning our own living, the rest was argument after the fact. It's a definite mental stage. Like walk ing instead of being carried. Or having hands. You couldn't think without hands, you can't think of being without hands. You have to take hold of things before you can begin to think about them. They may tell us now it was a delusion, that we went to a more precarious dependence. They don't know what it used to be like for women. And anyhow, it worked for us. We had our adventure. It was fun ••.

The traders, she thought, searching for an analogy, went everywhere before the professed explorers, but 100 N EVE R ASK THE END they didn't want any trouble, so their names are lost. They must have known one another, had their private agreements, exchanged information cautiously, maps and soundings, as much as it was safe to tell. Not too much • • • She remembered Ida Ritchie coming in at six in the morning; Marta woke at the sound of the key in the lock, and between her lashes watched Ida taking off her coat and hat, brushing her hair with long angry strokes, offering not a word of explanation. Ida had gone out with Floyd Jernegan. Marta knew the answer. Wherever they had been, they spent the whole night quarreling, nothing else. Ida was proud as Lucifer, with a blazing temper. Floyd can't get a divorce, Marta cogitated; he'd not be worth having if he forced his wife to it. And Ida-they can't go on like this. So it had proved. Well, it was Ida's busi ness, not hers.

The girls in novels before the war were all pink and white paper dolls, nothing to do with her or Ida Ritchie or Pauline or Trix O'Neill.. Probably there's an opposite discrepancy now, Marta thought. The girls I see look rather jolly. So nice and brown, and-yes, innocent. They don't know their luck, but they were born free. They seem to be growing prettier year by year, too. Flocks of pretty girls in their light draperies, like a procession on a Greek frieze. Marta envied them without resentment. Our adventure, she thought, was a little more exciting, opening doors when you don't know what's on the other side ...

N EVE R ASK THE END 101 J. K. Hayden was historic. He'd be surprised to hear it. Men were extraordinarily oblivious to the tacit conspiracy of the mothers and daughters. They dis missed it with fatuous allusions to strong-minded women, presumably admiring only the feeble-minded; and when confronted by the accomplished fact, they didn't recognize it. Good morning, my dear, who the hell are you? J. K. was intelligent enough to ask; that was why Marta remembered him so minutely, though he was difficult to describe. He was so muddled by tempera ment and training, with his deposit of early piety, his raffish streak, his lively mind, all at odds. He was a vestryman, made addresses to the Y. M. C. A.; he didn't drink or smoke; he was vulgar and outrageous; he paid his staff generously, and took his snubbing hand somely. He chewed gum while dictating to Pauline sonorous legal phrases that had come down from the Middle Ages. He looked comical in a silk hat and cheap in a checked waistcoat. His height gave him no presence and his lofty brow was discountenanced by an insignificant nose. He scowled and pursed his lips like a second-rate actor playing Napoleon, unable however to disguise the mockery in his eyes, round and opaque as agate marbles, watchful for the impression he was making. His sudden grin was that of a street arab sure of getting out of reach of reprisals .•• Personallyhe did not enter into her life, or Pauline's; because of the accident of taste, or distaste; so she was 102 N EVE R ASK THE END unbiased in appraising his abstract significance. He was a condition, a composite of everything they had to take into account, in the men's world where they had in truded. He was both for and against them •.•The two of them, J. K. and Pauline, or herself and Win throp Shelby, or innumerable others, seated decorously on opposite sides of a flat-topped desk, sliding letters back and forth with the abstracted air of cardplayers, grave and intent .... It was like a game, in which they did not know if they were playing for points or stakes.

And at intervals, still half abstracted., they looked at one another; perhaps when the day's work was done, and they became dimly aware that themselves remained, unfinished business. • • . She remembered sitting at Wint Shelby's elbow, waiting for him to think through some clause in a merger offer; she grew mischievously impatient, and when he looked up, with a sentence framed for utterance, she thought silently: You can't remember what you were going to say. You can't, can't, can't. He began twice, broke off) and then said, to her own complete surprise: "Oh, you go to hell," and reached for his hat and went out. When he re turned half an hour later, she could tell he had had a drink-he wasn't a drinking man-and they finished the task, and made no reference, then or later, to his remark. What do men want, what do women want, of each other and of life? If we could arrive at even terms, Marta thought, nothing to weigh the scales on either N EVE R ASK THE END 103 side .•. But you can't; I did try. Not to have to bar gain••••It was no good..•. Paulinemade a kind of bargain in marrying; not so good either. J. K. never married; Marta couldn't imagine he had got much out of his shabby makeshifts, not.even with his millions and a governorship thrown in. Wint Shelby-Marta frowned again, and snapped the lock of her suitcase.

Damn, she said to herself comprehensively, and to Pauline: "You use rouge?" They had been reared in the conviction that cos metics were immoral. Since rouge was unbecoming to her, Marta perceived that she had retained a trace of that simple faith, in spite of-everything. It had a special association, too, with Mrs. Hamilton, also im moral, and of unforgettable charm . . . A list of the things that shocked her still would be funny, Marta thought. Vestigial beliefs, like J. K. 's ineradicable fear of hell-fire. Frazer should have written a sup plementary chapter to the Golden Bough.... "1 have to," said Pauline. For decency, not to show the naked face of grief. The telephone buzzed. "You answer it," she said in a panic. "I can't work those silly things," the hand-phone. Marta applied the wrong end to her ear, and turned it about hastily, sput tering with laughter. "What are you up to now?"

Russ's voice enquired. He had the car waiting out in front. Pauline explained when they joined him. "I was telling Marta how clever I used to be. Now I don't even know how to use a telephone. Are you a 104-N EVE R ASK THE END handy man-ean you make a radio out of last year's bedspring and the insides of an alarm clock?" He could not, ~e confessed, drive a car. He had never owned one. "So they made you chief engineerr" Marta deduced. Exactly, said Russ, somebody had to do the work, and there would be no sense in wasting a good practical man in what was politely called an executive position. The technical director's duty was to see that the work was done. . • •And he is the right man, Marta thought, listening to him suggest their route to the chauffeur. He hates taking orders, so he doesn't give them. . r • We want to get to Spa about dinner-time; which would be the best road, to see something on the way? Yes, by Liege, that would be fine . . . He's never had his own way before, and it suits him. He doesn't fuss, so they want to please him •.• "You've got another chauffeur," said Pauline. She felt better already; the motion of the car relieved the tension in her head. Russ said the company employed two chauffeurs; and the business manager, Owen, had taken Henri for the day. Albert was English, a cockney, with the nervous underfed look of his kind. "Albert married a Belgian girl, and stayed here after the war," said Russ; and added casually, lowering his voice: "1 think he's mad."

"What about?" Marta asked; "how do you mean?" teA little off," said Russ. "On the edge, anyhow. He's got mad eyes. AleckOwen is an irritable cuss; he N EVE R ASK THE END 105 fights with his wife, and takes it out on Albert. I shouldn't be surprised if Albert drove head-on into a stone wall some day, shot the works, with Owen and himself." Marta said: "There's a thought to hold. He may practice on us.." "Oh, I guess not," said Russ. They both spoke plac idly. We're all cuckoo,thought Marta, careering off to parts unknown with a mad chauffeur; we would! An appropriately inconsequent finish, since taken by itself her life appeared to her a series of accidents, it might well end against a stone wall, in a country she had never intended to visit, because a man she had never seen had quarreled with his wife. "1 don't care," said Pauline. She was holding Russ's hand firmly.