Chapter XV

. •. And the moon is wilder every minute: Oh, Solomon, let us try again! She had spoken aloud. Russ turned to her. "What did you say?" ltNothing," she an swered inconsequently; "it was Yeats." Russ wouldn't have read it. (But he had heard) ... Time being one with chance at last • • • It never is, though. With Ernest added to the odds. . . . Because of Ernest, they would dine at the Grande Laboureur, instead of the apartment. "Does Ernest appear at every meal?" Marta asked. "Absolutely," Russ replied) taking a morose satisfaction in the com pleteness of his affliction. "Unless there's a club din ner. He started making engagements for me. I told him he could break them again; that I had to have my evenings clear. So he said he wouldn't invite guests for dinner more than two or three times a week. Berthe N EVE R ASK THE END 18S hates him. She carefully sorted out his laundry and handed him the bill." They meditated on Ernest, with a tinge of emotion approaching respect.

Russ dismissed Albert with thanks for choosing the interesting sideroads, off the tourist track; much the best way to see the country ... Russ is sweet, Marta thought. And he must have had a good time. Assur ing Albert that it was a brilliant idea to get lost! They secured a corner table. "What have you got?" Pauline scrutinized the ·dab of green selected by Marta from the vast tray of hors d'reuvres. Jellied eel with fennel sauce, Marta said. "Fennel sauce? how do you know?" Marta admitted meekly: "I'm just guessing." Pauline couldn't bear it. Probably it was fennel sauce! Though .Pauline had never heard of such a thing. At Fontainebleau Marta had corrected the guide on a point of history. What chance .•• Pauline exclaimed, in despair: "When does our boat sail tomorrow?" Seven, post meridian. "I shall have to spend the whole day buying presents!" Marta sug gested that she could get a present for Jimmy in Lon don. If it were only Jimmy, Pauline rejoined darkly.

The whole family.... How many? Marta enquired. Pauline began counting on her fingers. Her sisters, Florrie and Myrtle and Stella, her brother Jim, three aunts, seven cousins, five nephews and nieces, and half a dozen friends, especially Vi Charles. Her short upper lip lifted; oh, most especially Vi, whoever else she omitted . . . These last cogitations she kept to her186 N EVE R ASK THE END self, while piling up numbers in wilful exaggeration. But you couldn't exaggerate the essential numerousness of a family ... Marta chimed with these conclusions. "A mere handful. I have thousands of relatives. How about you, Russ?" Not so many, Russ replied vaguely; it made no dif ference. Marta agreed. It was The Family, belong ing to it, that signified. You did, irrevocably, belong to it. Mysteriously, fatally, you were bound to people with whom you had no other tie, no common tastes or sympathies. There was almost a conviction of original sin in such complicity. Why?..

Russ added that he had one brother and one sister, now widowed. "She married a preacher)" he said, with apparent irrelevance. He had in mind that the family name was said to be of French derivation-another rea son why he had learned French-and there was an un documented tradition of kinship with the founder of Girard College, who stipulated that no cleric might ever pass its gates! His father used this as a pretext to evade churchgoing. His mother had an angry sort of piety, strictly literal. Golden streets, heavenly man sions . . . With bow windows and Brussels carpets? his father asked. His mother said such blasphemy was enough to bring a judgment on them. And before the innocent children. . . . Russ "took after" his father in features; and his mother used to whip him, innocent or not. For disobedience: loitering after school, forN EVE R A S ({ THE END lSi getting the chores. Excuses aggravated the fault; that was "answeringback."As he grew older, the whippings did not hurt severely; but when he wouldn't cry, she ended in tears; and that was worse. I've given up my life to my children, she said. What rooted injury, what deep resentment, made her take such pains to cross the pleasure of others? You couldn't know much about your parents; in a way you didn't want to. His mother was born in Kansas, of Abolitionist, temperance stock.

But he was amazed, bewildered, when, after he was grown, he learned that his father and mother had made a runaway match. She had come "East," to Ohio, to attend a sectarian seminary; she graduated out of a window to a midnight marriage ... Dear knows, there wasn't any particular need, his indiscreet Aunt Lorena explained. But she married your father to reform him. She was studying to be a missionary to the heathen Chinese. They've been spared a good deal ... And he was in Shanghai when his mother died in a small town in Illinois. The cable came in the middle of the morning. He read it repeatedly as if it were a code to which he had lost the key. Then he put it in his pocket and went on verifying a trial balance. At four o'clock his second assistant, a young Chinese who had learned his excellent English in a mission school and went to Yale on the Boxer indemnities, re minded him that it was mail-day; had Russ anything else for the bag? Russ said, wait, and began to write a letter: Dear mother-. Automatically, as he had writ188 N EVE R ASK THE END ten her for twenty years. Twice a week, until he came to China; then by every boat. One page, according to a formula designed to avoid commitment or offence.

. . . He couldn't write interesting letters to anyone, couldn't put anything in a letter. Something hap pened, shut down on him, when he confronted the blank paper •••.He crumpled the page, said: Never mind. It was over. He had been tired for some time, but then he really felt it... His mother was buried be side his father, after thirty years. He looked like his father, except that his eyes were hlue-green, Marta said-like his mother's. . . • The Chinese, he thought, put up an ancestral tablet, and make offerings. They know what they have to do . . . "My grandfather Lindsay," said Pauline, "was a Scotch atheist--can you imagine? But he used to keep the Sabbath by wearing his kilts." She stopped on the verge of telling that her mother took exception to the sporran, and insisted that grandfather Lindsay wear it on the side! She pondered again why she had not loved her mother. Her mother's favorite phrase was, "1 always say," and it was true. You knew in ad vance what she would say, because she always said it.

. There was a Bat positiveness about her which overrode rejoinder. Her highest praise was: They don't put on airs, they're just as common as you or me. Pauline hated the word; why should anyone wish to be com mon? She hated being poor, the drabness, the dead level. • . . Her father used to sit a trifle sideways at N EVE R ASK THE END 189 table, looking out of the window, while her mother talked. Then he would rise quietly, reach for his hat, and go out. He had a light step, for all the heavy work he had done. "There was no religion in our family, but some of them could see ghosts," Marta contributed . . . We're all talking like Mr. F.'s ...'\.unt, she thought cheerfully. As between themselves, it was of no consequence what they said; the words were counters expressing a value quite other than their intrinsic content. But why did they seize upon such detached trifles when they ap proached that tremendous subject? Partly because one item had no more importance than another out of the aggregate; and even if you produced every fact in your possession, they would not make a whole, would not carry the emotional and private weight under which one's spirit fainted. . . . Literally, her kindred within the second degree of consanguinity must number nearly two hundred. Remember the pit whence ye were Jigged and the rock whence ye were hewn. Perhaps the simple arithmetic of it brought home how inescapably one was involved in a universal doom. . .. But no, it was more than that, more definite and personal. ...

A pain multiplied, blunted with use into a perrn~nent ache. So one chose to remember only jackdaw glean ings, which conveyed nothing except--except unrelated ness. True that grandmother Cooke did see ghosts, or believed she did, and could charm beasts, bridle a savage stallion the men dared not approach. Grand190 N EVE R ASK. THE END mother Fletcher was illiterate, an Irish peasant girl. Grandfather Fletcher used to recite Homer, an English version, of course, it must have been either Pope or Chapman, while he followed the plough .... And Jaw, in the farmer's wagons, the chariots hurled on Troy ... Uncle John was a drummer boy in the Civil War; Uncle Richard had three wives, and rested under a negative suspicion of bigamy; Aunt Sarah was no less than five times married, in a dubious succession of di vorces; Uncle Daniel at fifty went to the Klondike and was not heard from again; Aunt Anne died des perately seeking to evade the curse of Eve and her husband thereupon hanged himself in the barn; Aunt Nettie possessed the exotic accomplishment of making flowers of hair; Aunt Martha left home at sixteen, went to Denver in the early days, when it was a boom town ... To this most legendary aunt, who died of cholera in Mexico City before her namesake was born, Marta owed a vague assurance that had sustained her through childhood. Girls could) they could escape) and she would. Like Aunt Martha, who had worn silver heels to her tiny slippers, and had made her own money by running a store (a Fancy Bazaar It -was called), and a hotel • • . She would and she did, at seventeen .•.

But what were all these people to her, who had never seen them? They were a roving, marrying, rather shift less breed, poor and indifferent honest. Tvpical, per haps, at their level. None,unless Aunt Martha) had N EVE R A 5 [{ THE END 191 risen above it; none had gone to jailor the poorhouse. They didn't seem to try to do or be anything, except to go on from day to day. Their drift and dispersal was typical. That, she thought, was the American way, in their time, in ours. Suddenly the family as a social unit dissolved. Its economic function ceased as soon as the children were grown to maturity. The indi vidual could exist as such, moving about in safety, pick ing up a living anywhere. There was nothing to stop them, exceptinertia. But the direction was pure chance. As against the class and clan tradition of Europe, it was anarchy. Actually an equally natural law oper ated, a centrifugal instinct, such as bursts a seed-pod violently that the seed may scatter. The result was an enormous release of energy, a flowering of talent; and also that secret grief, that sense of guilt, as of an undischarged obligation, springipg from the in herited moral sentiment of family solidarity, with no fixed duties to acquit it. • . . Did I ask to be born? the children protested, with genuine anguish. Well, thought Marta fairly, maybe you did; who knows? ...

How much worse then to have that deep source muddied and poisoned . • • She couldn't think of her father without terror. Not physicalfear, for unlike the others she had never been afraid of him, but "the dark night of the soul," describedby mysticswho have lost the presence of God. Her confidence in the goodness of the universe had been destroyed. For her mother was good, was innocent and gentle; and everything 192 N EVE R ASK THE END was against her. I ought to have-but what should I have done? Marta asked herself, for the ten thou sandth time. She had no right to drag her mother away, or even persuade her away, from the rest of the family . . . Marta didn't understand them; how could one not' try? • . . Generations of women had endured the intolerable, for the sake of their children. They were wrong, Marta thought, with cold conviction. Better drown them in the rain-barrel. Better for the children.

A woman had that right. Just as a man had a right to die fighting rather than be a slave. A duty, in deed...• But you couldn't help people, you could only hurt them, it seemed. And when you went away your self, there was that weight pulling at you forever ..... Her father was in himself the whole inscrutable prob lem of morality and conduct. He had not broken any of the commandments; he had merely blighted the happiness of ten souls, himself included, by an inces sant tyranny, in ways too petty to describe, a grudging, futile egotism. He did not even take liquor ... While Russ had been drunk, and waked in the wrong bed, and probably, like Jurgen's unregenerate parent, wor shipped a stone image in Porutsa! And was decent, kind) and sensitive . . . And he ducked his head-she hadn't missed the gesture-when he was reminded of his' family . . . Marta recalled that her mother had been fond of Mrs. Hamilton. Probably Marta owed something to Mrs. Hamilton, too . . .

N EVE R ASK THE END 193 UWas it your grandfather Lindsay who took mor phine?" Marta asked Pauline politely. "No," said Pauline, "that was grandfather Norcutt. It did won ders for him; he lived to eighty-nine. His mind wan dered; but why not? I think I shall try it myself. You haven't a shot about you, by luck?" Russ said he was sorry J he had" left his in his other suit. Marta refilled Pauline's glass. She perceived it wasn't altogether a joke. The waiter offered the menu. Dessert? Pauline pushed back her chair. Her throat contracted; she was dizzy. It would pass, but she didn't want to break down here, lay her head on her arms and give up. Or on Russ's shoulder ..•. If she could do that . . . For two nights, or was it three, she had not slept except by snatches, and sleep is the last refuge. Tomorrow they were going away. Always, everything came to an end; and then there was nothing.

She must get to her room quickly, take aspirin, a wet towel on her forehead, wear through one more night; usually it did not last more than four days at most. "I have got a headache," she said, with that gaiety in her voice which nothing could quench. "You won't mind if l run out on you? Finish your dinner." No, Marta thought, anything but that. It will be very bad for her, leaving us here. They were standing, anxiously. "We'll all go, if you'd rather," Marta said. "But we can't let you go alone. We'd just sit here worrying." "Certainly not," said Russ, and took her hand. Warmth and comfort flowed back to her. "I've 194 N EVE R ASK THE END changed my mind," she said. "I'll finish my own dinner." But they had no inclination to linger in the restaurant. It was too public for their mood; they were a little sad. Marta proposed walking to the hotel; possibly it would benefit Pauline. The apartment, Russ mentioned, was nearer. Maybe Ernest would have gone to bed.

Marta went a pace ahead, sniffing at the green cool dark smell of the chestnut leaves. Now aren't you thankful you didn't go to Berlin? she asked Pauline. You'd have loathed it anyhow. It's the sort of place Ernest ought to live. uThen you go," said Pauline. ,(And take Ernest." Sacred blue, said Marta, the jack-in-the-box answer ing for her, this is too much. (It was wholly comic now, the toy devil roseto the joke.) "In New York," Marta protested, "for years, the entire population of seven millions rose in masses to prevent me ever speak ing to Russ. Alma stopped me going to breakfast with him. At the Waldorf. They wouldn't even allow me to elope to China with him, a simple thing like that. But I can be pushed just so far. And Ernest is the limit." She was petrified by the echo of her own words. Shut up! You've had too much ... Oh, well! After last night, what's the use of saving the pieces?

Give Russ a laugh, he's got it coming to him. She marched on ahead, her elbows akimbo. If he was there, she would cope with Ernest, and let it be a lesson to he~ , N EVE R ASK THE END 195 The big room was lighted and empty, as they en tered with the stealth of mice. "He has gone to bed," Russ whispered, glancing down the hall. They closed the door. Two doors ought to protect them. "Will you have some more champagne?" "Yes," said Marta firmly. It would keep her occupied. "And I'll read a good book." She picked one from the table. Russ recognized it by the cover. He brought the cham pagne, and deftly eased out the cork with his thumbs. Yau used to put the champagne corks in your pocket. Tip Kearney did . . . "Caroline sampled that," he said. (She couldn't make out what the stories were about. What did Hills Like White Elephants mean? I told her she wouldn't like it if I told her. She insisted. Then she was in sulted, and took Ernest home." "She would. I see why you keep it on the table," Marta said. "Oh, here's a New York Tribune, good as new, only twelve days old."

She hid behind it, in the wing chair. Across the room, Pauline and Russ were whispering and laughing on the sofa. They broke off presently to call to her: "Any news?" "Amalgamated Haywire 13%; American Soup and Fish 792 ex dividend, partly extra, split four to one." "She's reading it upside down," said Russ. «(No, but 1 can," Marta replied with dignity. "1 can drink champagne upside down. You mind your own business. Steel rails are heavy, and large shipments of prime eggplant have arrived in the market. Coolidge 196 N EVE R ASK. THE END says Independence Day is the Fourth of July. Make mine the same." She retired again behind the out spread pages with a full glass, and considered how to manage a cigarette also. . . . Russ is looking at her knees, Pauline thought. She looks cute. Small women always do. . . . Marta read conscientiously an article on the Interstate Commerce Commission The rail roads aren't happy either, she thought. Nobody loves them. Russ and Pauline were kissing. With fervor.

Marta did not require ocular evidence. "You will come to Seattle next spring?" Pauline was saying. "You promise?" "Positively," Russ answered. Marta thought, it's your move. She tucked the book under her arm, slid around the table toward the door, and shut it softly behind her. The hall was dark, which was awkward. Theyal ways save on lights over here. If I crash in on Ernest by mistake) all will be lost. She had observed that the door of Russ's room stood open. Straight ahead. A crepuscular square .indicated the window, and gave her bearings. She set the glass on the bureau carefully. The light is over the head of the bed.••She stumbled over a low chair, and held her breath. This cord holy angels, it's the bell-cord! Suppose Berthe comes running, or the fire department. . • . This must be the light ••.It was. The celestial cloud of mosquito net sprang into be ing. The coverlet was turned down chastely, and Russ's pajamas, of white silk, lay across the foot ... No, you N EVE R ASK THE END 197 are not to be silly. But the mosquito net .••She re moved her jacket, stacked the pillows, and made her self comfortable, with the book. Through the mist of white, all the objects in the room became insubstantial as a vision. She was wistful, resigned, and rather noble, and she giggled at herself suddenly. But she hadn't spoiled the day .•. If Russ wants to kiss Pauline, that's their affair, not yours. . . . She began to read, and aft~r a page, became sufficiently absorbed. She read through one story and began another, being a rapid reader.

((Brownie, why did you-" Russ appeared in the doorway. He stood in the middle of the room, con sidering her with that steady shadowed look, under his brows. "You're a lovely liar," he said, offering no exegesis. Marta sat up and he came forward and caught both of her hands, pulled her to her feet, hold ing the net curtain aside. He let go her hands. . . . Why, he hadn't known! And he, too, wanted to know. She could not go back on what she had given away, and she didn't m.ind. She shook her head. "It was true." Though he was so near, so intent, he did not touch her again. She was glad he didn't. No fair. Call it a day ... "Gotta go home," she said, and returned to find Pauline waiting, flushed and faintly embarrassed. There was a cab-rank at the corner; and Russ said goodnight after putting them in a cab; they forbade him to escort them to their hotel.