Chapter XI

CHAPTER XI MARTA retrieved her manners. "1 mean, we were just wondering how come we're all here, simul taneously." At Liege, precisely, where none of them had any specific reason to be, or none that they could yet discern. As if they had been sent separately upon some mysterious pilgrimage under sealed orders. "Starting from where we were," she amplified, "and changing at waystations, to converge at a given point. If you look back it doesn't make sense. Do you ever?" "Often," said Russ. ((I wake up afraid I'm still in Rockford, that that's where I belong, and they've found me out." "My first chanceto go to New York I had to refuse," Marta pursued. "Partly, though, I held back because it didn't seem possiblethat o~e could go to New York that it existed." This was before she became acquainted with Pauline or Keith, before her second meeting with Chris.... Yet it may have been crucial; the suggestion took root in her mind. Perhaps it 'Was possible.•.• "Then I tried to persuade Pauline to come with me; I couldn't face it alone. She simply paid no attention to N EVE R ASK THE END 135 me." Pauline reflected grimly that she had been unable to contemplateleavingKeith.Withina year he had gone out of her life forever. "Finally I did," Marta con tinued, "and gosh, how I dreaded it. I had to go somewhere." Because·she had married Keith. Pulled down the roof. "And Pauline hasn't seen New York yet; but I dragged her along this trip, screaming.

Maybe it doesn't matter which corner you turn, you get to the same place in the end. Or maybe if on October tenth, nineteen hundred and four, you had caught the yellow street-car instead of the red, you'd now be foreign adviser to the King of Siam or manag ing a chain store in San Antonio. 1 doubt if I'd have had the moral energy to buy my steamer ticket if Nonie hadn't delivered an invitation to look you up when I got here. Twice. So you brought it on yourself. If you did tell Nonie • . ." "Sure I did," said Russ. "Several times. Mira Hunt heard me. She asked why I was so set on it. Nonie said: 'Oh, Russ and Marta always liked each other.' " He had answered her question unasked. She wasn't even fishing for it, but talking at random. And if she had asked, she couldn't have been certain how far po liteness constrained him.... Nonie must have broken off-or at least, Nonie and Russ must have lapsed into placid friendship ... They couldn't be still engaged ....

The riddle of events was insoluble. Whether or' not they moved inevitably, however deviously, to an ap136 N EVE R ASK THE END pointed end••.•The law of chance governing the toss of a coin has no sequence. But neither has a. coin any illusion of choice •.. The solitary sentry disregarded their departure. He was unarmed, and taking his ease. They lingered again by the unhewn granite boulder beside the road, trans lating awkwardly the plain inscription. It recorded that those of the Belgian garrison who were entombed by the bombardment had been left undisturbed. The green hill was their grave and their memorial. They IJrB forgiven IJS they forgive all those dark wounds and deep; their beds are made on the lap of time and they lie do'Wn and sleep. Marta thought, I suppose they had their troubles, too•••. Albert threw away his cigarette to open the car-door respectfully. He fought through the war on this front, Marta thought. So he could escort tourists over the battlefields afterward. He can't make sense of it either.

It stunned him. That's what's strange about his eyes, they're empty, only half conscious. Noise must be his nightmare. The strangest thing is that in every other respect he is just what he would have been if the war hadn't touched him; a chauffeur in Belgium instead of in England. But if he has children, they'll be Belgian; and they wouldn't have existed, not those children it's enough to ~ake you dizzy to think at all. .. The back of Albert's head, narrow and pathetic, seemed to her to contain Albert's destiny. Yet since he was a link in an endless chain, the consequences of shifting him arbiN EVE R A S ({ THE END 137 trarily were incalculable ... She leaned out for a fare well glimpse of the fortress, diminishing into a serene memory as the car glided away ... Why the fortress should have been raised precisely there rather than anywhere else on the plain, why an army might not march around it, was beyond the grasp of the nonmilitary intelligence .. ~ . But we do the same in everything, Marta thought. We start at random and come on trouble; then we smash ourselves against it. The obstacle, the desire, is fixed in our minds. Our families, our jobs, the places we hate and go on living in; I hate New York and I stay there. I tried to go back, though; that was a mistake; the past is past. . . .

Out of a million men, I set my heart on one; nobody else would do. So did Pauline. And Russ-I suppose it was his wife until he got her, and then she was the obstacle, he wanted Nonie. By the time he was free, Nonie must have changed her mind. Perhaps she only promised to marry him because it was impossible. There must be some insuperable aversion to marriage, deep down in her mind, that she is unaware of; anyone who really wants to marry does; Nonie has had plenty of chances. She is attractive to men, she plays with the idea, but stops short of marrying. Or anything. . . . It's in your blood and bones, maybe not exactly what you'll do, but how you'll do it. Nonie is domestic and Pauline isn't; neither is innately conventional but both are virtuous; Pauline married and Nonie didn't. "You gave me such good advice when you wrote to 138 N EVE R ASK THE END me in China," Russ was saying. ((Advice?" Marta ex claimed. "Great heavens, did I? I would! ·Well, as long as you didn't take it ..." But he had, Russ said.

Not advice, exactly ... He did not enlarge upon the topic, finding it too complicated. It led to Louise James. .. He had slipped Marta's lette.r in his pocket when he dressed for dinner. Four nights that week he had dined out; five of the six women at table he had met at one or more of the other dinners; he was paired with the wife of the manager from his own office; all the men he had done business with during the day or met at the club. Louise was the sixth woman, on his left; she and Wallie were new arrivals; Wallie was with one of the mining companies. The manager's wife was telling him about her cook; they all told stories about their servants, pidgin humor, and how of course the number one boy takes a commission on all supplies. When he turned to Louise she invited him to dinner, next week. He said involuntarily: I'm not going to any more dinners. In the course of his apology, he showed her Marta's letter. And the three of them, Louise, Wallie and himself, made up a party for the following Sunday, to ride out to a Chinese temple in the country, see something of China itself.

«(When this Rome contract is put through, that the report I'm working on is for, I'm due for a long leave," Russ said at a tangent. "I think I'll go around the world, come back by way of China." He would keep his promise to Louise.

N EVE R ASK THE END 139 "We all wrote you," Marta cut back. "Alma told me to. YOU never answered." He hadn't answered anybody. How could he, if he didn't write to Nonie? "Wasn't Ernest in Shanghai?" Marta asked. "You had somebody quartered on you, some phenomenal bore, a pure young man like Ernest; Nonie said so. A Christian Scientist or something. . .." ((New Thought. He used to sit and rock, in a rocking chair, for hours, holding the thought. He was like Ernest." "Ernest," Marta pronounced judicially, "is like the Catholic Church, omnibus and ubiquitous and forever. From China to Peru. He regards the French as a frivolous people, fond of dancing and light wines. I consider him a public menace. He rouses one's worst instincts, makes one want to roll in the gutter. A nice wide gutter with plenty of fresh mud and running water. I really don't know why-it)s not anything he does-" Russ said : "Yes, it is," and yielded another anecdotal pearl for their collection. "In their home town, Ernest and Caroline owned a double house and let half of it to another couple. When the husband was away, the wife used to go to the movies. Ernest and Caroline watched and saw her kiss her escort goodnight in the porch. Next day Ernest gave her notice to move. It was his duty to indicate disapproval of such goings-on.

He asked me if he ought to have informed the hus band." "You mean to say Ernest told you this himself?"

140 N EVE R ASK THE END Marta demanded incredulously. Russ said: "That's when I took a scunner against him." The ensuing pause was fraught with moral indignation. It was funny, and it was how they felt. . . . Marta thought, you have to worry about the rent and wash the dishes and get the children to school and rush to work in the morn ing, and soon you'll be old and tired and all the moon light and the roses will be gone to waste; and if you lean out of the window, pick a flower, wish on a star there is Ernest peering obscenely through the curtain yah, I saw you! That's why even the injured husband seems some how in the wrong. None but the participants can know with what quality of emotion they have invested their fault. N troertheless you, 0 Sit Gauwaine, lie. W hat troer may have happened these long years, God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie . . • Russ and his wife probably got thrown out of court on their divorce suit because they couldn't bring themselves to give away what they had shared. . . .

"If you go around the world," Pauline was struck by an agreeable contingency, "you'll land on the Pacific Coast." San Francisco, Russ said, to which Pauline rejoined: "Why not Seattle? And stop over a few days-it's lovely, isn't it, Marta?" In every way superior, Marta affirmed positively. "And Pauline would meet your boat at the dock, with banners." Russ received this amendment to his itinerary with flattering readiness. He didn't, now it occurred to him, ever want N EVE R ASK THE END l41 to see San Francisco again. He'd been there. The company sent him while he and Harriet were on the edge of their separation. She remained in New York; they conducted a hopeless correspondence, compact of misunderstandings and unresolved difficulties; and in the middle of it, of all humiliating absurdities, he caught the measles-that hadn't done him any good either, left him with his eyes bothering him and his heart missing a beat occasionally-and in the hospital he could not write. He forbade the office to let Harriet know, on the pretext that it would worry her; but really because he couldn't cope with the situation while he was running a temperature, with occasional mild de lirium. The first letter they gave him when he was well enough told him that Harriet had accepted his silence as meaning there was no more to say ; she had given up the apartment and was going abroad. She expected to fill a concert engagement in London. Part of his salary was being paid to her account anyhow, and she sold the furniture. Saturday night after his discharge from the hospital he went on a bust, passed out, and a girl he had picked up took him in charge.

Rather a jolly girl, but he had forgotten her name. San Francisco was a dimmish nightmare, altogether. If it hadn't been for his mother he'd have chucked his job there; one of the men in the office was leaving to go up to Seattle and start in business for himself, and wanted a partner. But he couldn't. Not with two women dependent on him. He'd always have to pro142 N EVE R ASK THE END vide for Harriet; she was too impulsive to take care of herself. And his mother, of course, while she lived -his brother was married, had only a small salary as city clerk, and a growing family ... So Russ had never been in Seattle ... Besides, he'd be glad to see Pauline again.•.• "When?" Pauline enquired, tenderly brushing a fresh deposit of fox-fur from his sleeve. Next Easter, Russ hoped, with the mental proviso, if he got this Rome job through, and if he could stick it till then. He'd have to. Then the holiday ought to tide him over another year. And after that, his farm. . . . In the morning, after a hard day, waking was like coming back from very far; the least bit beyond would have been too far. Some place of stillness and conclusion.

I.I.We could go up the Sound, or to a golf resort," Pauline planned; "you play golf?" ((There's noth ing else to call it," Russ conceded. ((Average around a hundred and twenty-five.." He took it asa pre scription for fresh air and exercise. Aleck Owen's exasperated passion for the game furnished Russ with mild diversion. Aleck wanted to make a million dol lars, and bring his score down to eighty something and then what? •.•"Splendid," said Pauline. "David won't play with me, I'm such a dub. I'm trying to break a hundred." She would do it or perish; it was a test. She played on the public links; David be longed to an exclusive club; he would have to offer to obtain a membership for her-or he wouldn't . . .

N EVE R ..'\ S K THE END 143 Her clear straight brows came together in a brooding line. Oh. David was a snob to the bone; she did not need a test; but if she gave him up, how should she cheat herself that there was something ahead? Use him for that, and despise him . . . This course presented obvious difficulties, for at mo ments she did despise him, appraised him with cold clarity as a cautious small-town time-server, grey and thin, grey-minded, thin-minded, with his grey moustache, thin grey hair, grey suit, white slip to his waistcoat-he seemed to diminish, fade, vanish. He ceased to be; and she might pass a week in this peace of apathy, which always followed after a revulsion of furious contempt for him. But when he telephoned, made a stiff apology for whatever his offence had been, sent flowers and other peace offerings, indifference soft-· ened to forgiveness; his hesitant voice brought him near, as when they dined together, with candles on the table, in their particular corner of the Rainier Grill, and his rather nice blue eyes lighted with a belated appreciation of her catpaw strokes. She could reach him slyly, through chinks in his habit of cliches. And it was a pleasant game, but to find him even entertain ing, she had to allow him some worth ... With George she had been on equal terms, paid her scot. So, at the last, had he. They were quits. . . .

('What is it?" she was waked to the present by the car stopping. Albert indicated a stretch of stone wall beside the road, protection against a marshy dip of the 144 N EVE R ASK THE END terrain. Albert's cockney accent frequently.eluded her unaccustomed ear. Oh, another historic spot-neither she nor Marta could recall later exactly which of these mournful places they had viewed, or in what order. Dinant-Tirlemont-no, that was earlier-no matter, each had the same story of unarmed hostages facing a German firing squad. Impossible to realize; the blood did not cry from the ground; it was just a stone wall, with houses beyond, a village of three or four farmsteads. They knew they ought to express some suitable emotion; Albert took on a certain pride, an air of belonging here. He had a right. Pauline thought strangely, what should we do with out death? Only that makes life tolerable, gives it dignity ... If you've honestly tried, you fail of course, but death balances the account. None the less she was afraid. She wondered why Marta wasn't. Or Russ he resents it when he thinks of it at all, but he isn't afraid .... Marta was thinking, there are other things so much worse. . . . Russ was thinking, they had their hands tied behind them, I suppose. He moved his own hands involuntarily; he had a sense of bonds, yet without straining; he clasped his fingers loosely on his knee.

Thought stopped there, against that stone wall. It wasn't in the least terrible; it was simply so. Rest ful, rather. It stood. The burghers must have felt it at their backs at the very last, solid and on the whole friendly.

N EVE R ASK THE END 145 Marta and Pauline made vague sounds, as a courtesy to Albert; and he drove on \Yith quiet satisfactioni or so Marta imagined. ~ CHAPTER XII HE should, Russ said, with no sign of contrition, have wired to the Chateau d'Ardennes for rooms, but he hadn't, and very likely there would be none, so late on a Saturday, at the height of the season. They could telephone from Spa and learn the worst. It came out as he expected. There was no accommodation to be had in Spa either, for the same reason. Citizens and tourists were stoutly barricaded behind beerglasses along the pavement cafes. Russ returned to the car to report his lack of success, adding as a duty theretofore overlooked that Spa had been headquarters of the German General Staff during the war. And the Kaiser abdicated here. They ac cepted this information in the spirit in which it was offered, saying yes with an intonation of remote beati tude and remaining placidly in their seats, waiting to be disposed of at Russ's pleasure. Spa would have done well enough-snug and merry under its trees-another would do equally well. There had been an earlier in tention of dining at a country hotel dedicated to golf, which existed at a negotiable distance from Spa, if they N EVE R ASK. THE END 147 could hnd it. Unless they were hungry and would rather dine immediately, Russ qualified. They said they weren't hungry and would leave the decision to him.