Chapter XVI

CHAPTER XVI WHO was it called sleep the little death, Marta won dered; it should have been parting ... Since this was their last day, Russ took time off for lunch. They sat near the window, in a booth with low partitions. Sev eral men nodded to Russ as they passed by to further tables, men from the office, he said, offering them no encouragement, much less an invitation, to stop. His obstinate intention of keeping his two women to him self was flattering. Marta thought, he couldn't give me away today with coupons. No takers. She propped her chin on her palms, to support her heavy head. A distant glance at the mirror had horrified her. As a final touch of irony, she had been the one to spend a wakeful night. For no reason, except that she was not sleepy. If it had been practicable to get outdoors, out of the town, and wander through the fields till morning, she would have been less exhausted. She wanted to lose herself in the dark, to be part of the night, listen ing to the soft sounds of harmless creatures in the hedges, feeling the coolness of the dew on her hair, till dawn and sleep overtook her. In the half hour .

N EVE R ASK THE END 199 when the world is composed of grey light, not yet re solved into its daily substance, peace would come, and her mind cease ranging abroad on its Luciferian errand. For it was her mind that demanded all satisfactions, insisted on its pound of flesh from next the heart) would have her "taste any drink once." It was during such hours, when cut off from action, that she knew what had more than once compelled her to pull down the pillars of her life, for if there had been anything to do, she must have done it. . . . When she was worn to a rag, it stopped. Everything about her had stopped. Russ was the better for his holiday; Pauline had visibly recovered. She had managed to sleep till six. She always woke at six, she said, if not earlier, for spiritual examination. Four was best, but between six and eight she could touch upon the main points, the important boners. "If I had sold my house when prop erty was high, if [ hadn't bought TNT at 75, and so on," she ticked them off on her fingers airily. "And if David ever finds out about the TNT after having warned me.... " No need to mention, Keith, George, the children . . .

"1 stayed awake," Marta said, "inventing a patent noodle-strainer, to be attached to the waistcoat or shirt front. I'll bet Ernest's repose was broken, while I was wandering around falling over the furniture. Or hadn't he come in yet?" "Oh, yes, he was in. This morning, he said that if he had expected us, he would have waited up."

200 N EVE R ASK THE END ('0 God, 0 Montreal! He didn't, honestly, say that?" Be still, sad heart, and cease repining, Marta commanded herself. You can't win. In the beginning was Ernest. . . . "There's a man coming over to speak to you, Russ," she noticed. But, she thought, it seems to be me he isFacing the window, she could not see very well, except the blank glitter of eyeglasses-and who of her acquaint ance would be lunching in Antwerp? "My God," she exclaimed, "it's Ernest!" Russ and Pauline regarded her with alarm as she wilted against the wall, open-eyed and open-mouthed, with Ernest bowing across the table, reaching for her limp paw, which she yielded automatically. Their confusion was dissembled by the usual inanities of salutation ... Ernest unconsciously verified Russ; he was sorry he had turned in early last night. "We were afraid we might disturb you," said Pau line, with sweetly poisonous candor. "Marta did almost go in and wake you.."

"I wish she had," Ernest assured her. ('Didn't I?" said Marta. "Then who was it? I got into somebody's room." She felt like a dying fish. Ernest was even more sorry they were sailing at seven. He hoped to see them again; wasn't Brownie return ing to Paris later? Russ had said so. . . . Marta thought, then Russ wasn't merely being polite, he meant it. He had asked her if she wouldn't come back from England after Pauline's departure. . . . He cerN EVE R ASK THE END 201 tainly did not mean to ask Ernest to lunch; and pres ently Ernest removed himself. Marta pressed her hand to her side. "He called me Brownie," she-muttered. "He be lieved it was a cry of joy when I shouted his name! Where did he spring from? He didn't come through the door, he was here ahead of us. He couldn't-he couldn't have been in the next booth, and heard us?" "No, he couldn't,') Pauline glanced over her shoul der apprehensively. "Wasn't it terrible? After we had strewed him in fragments along every back road in Belgium."

"Oh, worse than that," Marta said. They knew what she meant. They should never, never have seen Ernest again. They hadn't left him a rag to cover himself. "1 nearly perished," Marta said. "I'd sooner have had a sock on the jaw. Like Russ handed me when 1 wanted to snoop around the apartment." "But you said you didn't want to," Russ took her up. "What do you mean I said I didn't want to?" Marta echoed blankly. "You said: 'Not that I want to,' " Russ repeated. "And I put out my arm to stop you, because I didn't want you to if you didn't want to." "This," said Marta, "must be a rehearsal by Moran and Mack. [asked Pauline if she wanted to come along, and said: 'Not that I want you.'" He hadn't known! Well, he knows now! "I'm sure you wouldn't 202 N EVE R ASK THE END strike a woman except in self-defence," she conceded. "1 thought-" said Russ, and let it go at that. She couldn't tell what he thought.

He expected to join them in London on Thursday or Friday night. They had that to anticipate. The report should be finished by then. Before his recent promotion, he could have managed a week off, and would have. When he was twenty, and getting fifty dollars a month, sending fifteen dollars of it home to his mother, he supposed that if you reached the top you could do as you pleased. You could, in fact, do anything but •••He couldn't even remove Ernest from his spare bedroom, have his apartment to himself, or choose his own guests. • . . And on fifty dollars a month, what could you do? His whole life, every body's he supposed, had been conditioned by money. You certainly didn't get twenty thousand a year for nothing. People will hardly speak of money because it means so much; and when they do, they daren't tell the truth. Money is the mathematical formula of both physical power and emotional relations. Like the technical problems worked out in his report. He got a severe pleasure from the practical difficulties, given the authority to handle them his own way. But that was the least of it. On paper, it came out in figures; there were·men behindthe figures; and what each man would do singly was quite another matter from what you could get them to do by playing them with and against each other •••And beyond that, the job had an ultiN EVE R ASK THE END 203 mate importance to him. It wouldn't only justify him with Goodwin, it would give him a. cert~inty a.bour: himself. He'd have that, if it were the last ...

Goodwin needed the report a few days before the end of the month to give him time to go over it. "There's a conference on the first, on the international debt settlements," Russ said aloud. "What has your report to do with-" Marta began, and broke off. After a cogent pause she said: "They used to do it with three shells and a pea, didn't they?" "Oh, I wouldn't say that," Russ replied, with appre ciative good humor." UN0, it's not a nice way to say it," Marta agreed. l'Stabilization is more refined. Or the Jones Plan. Anyhow, what is the taxpayer for?" Pauline was not paying strict attention; she enquired: "What are you talking about?" "1 don't know," Marta decided. "Then eat your damn bun and keep quiet," said Pauline. "¥ou've got the idea," Marta agreed. Russ hadn't expected Marta to catch him out; but she usually did when you didn't expect it, he thought. He was undisturbed • • . Brownie and Alma were the silent ones, not literally, but they didn't tell. They must have talked to each other; of course they did, since it was Alma prevented Brownie keeping her one appointment with him. (Why?) Just as he remem bered that untasted breakfast, so he had known how 204 N EVE R ASK THE END close Brownie and Alma were because he had once seen them saying nothing at all. He was there when Brownie sidled into Alma's apartment and found a chair for herself while J.L\.lma went on mixing a cock tail. He had always wondered about Alma, too; prob ably Brownie was the only person who knew •.• They had lapsed into silence; they didn't want to dwell on the imminence of seven o'clock. ((My boat sails on the twenty-second," Pauline exclaimed sud denly, tragically. If Russ didn't come over this week end there would be no other for her. "1 wish you had taken a later reservation," Marta said. Impossible, Pauline replied; she had to be home when Jimmy's school term began; and besides, the Schaefers had made the arrangement for her to sail on the same boat.

"After the lies I've told them, dodging them' over here," she said, "Mrs. Schaefer would be furious. She never forgives people who won't let her be kind to them! And I'd rather not lose my job for awhile." Marta did not grasp the connection. Pauline's job was semi-political, in the office of the state film censor. "It's· one of those things," Pauline sparkled wanly. ((Herman Schaefer owns several theatres, and has some influence; but one time when his side was out, George did him a good turn in a local row. Saved his launch from being confiscated. The sheriff seized it at the dock, with a load of booze-the launch, not the sheriff. George's partner was the son-in-law of the state prose cuting attorney, so Schaefer came to him. George was N EVE R ASK THE END 205 glad to oblige, because Schaefer would place the in surance on his theatres through him. Neither of them suspected that it was J. K. Hayden who really fixed it; I went to ]. K. myself. George would have hit the ceiling. J. K. thought it was a great joke, George being jealous of him. But then when ] needed it, Schaefer used his pull for me; and so did his wife. She belongs to ~ Good Government League, and the Women Voters, all the women's clubs. An uplifter. She believes her husband was framed; he told her it was the engineer of the launch had smuggled the liquor aboard. Prob ably he believes it himself by now. So you see ..."

"How do you censor movies?" Marta asked. "What part of a movie is more horrible than any other part?" "I don't," said Pauline. "I'm the office manager. But sometimes I sit in when one of the regular censors is on vacation. You do it with a stop-watch. Any-er anything that lasts longer than five seconds is im moral. And everybody has got to be married. 1 hope," she said radiantly, "that Mrs. Schaefer is seasick clear across the Atlantic. If she isn't I shall be." Pauline got them through lunch. Her tact was worthy of much greater scope than her circumstances afforded. David must be a fathead, Marta thought. Men are, about women. They let nearly all the beauty and wit go to waste, behind department store counters, in kitchens . . . The afternoon was dismally destroyed by packing, and Russ came with the car at six. He went aboard 206 N EVE R ASK THE END with them on a pass and they leaned on the rail watch ing later arrivals embark, for distraction. A drunken man engaged the second purser at the gangplank in an argument that verged on a quarrel, in loud inco herent Dutch or Flemish; they couldn't fathom what it was about. Two or three friends took sides, or attempted to pacify, him. People pushed by, with growls of annoyance. Pauline whispered suddenly: "It's a trick; one of them slipped his ticket back over the rail to another." .•. A bugle sounded, all ashore.

They did not say goodbye. On the quay, Russ turned twice, and waved his hand, the last time as he stood framed in the dark ening entrance to the baggage shed. He went to the left, and was obscured by a truck; his feet remained visible, by the clearance of the wheels. He walked slowly. An archway afforded them another momentary view, with the street beyond. He had his hands in his pockets and his soft hat pulled down a trifle. He was gone. Pauline and Marta moved to a bench on deck and sat down. Passengers continued to press forward, in the wake of burdened stewards. The evening was overcast, with a distant threat of rain. The ScheIdt flowed smooth as cool lead under a misty sky. The spire of the cathedral rose lonely in the distance. It's only till Thursday, Marta thought.. But there must be a last time, and once you've learned that. .. .. .. Her farewell to Chris had been spoken on the street, N EVE R ASK THE END 207 a chance encounter. Chris was with another man.

They stopped a moment, exchanged light common places; they laughed. She remembered the parasol she was carrying, green pongee with a tassel on the handle; she tipped it forward precisely in time, and went on with tears sliding down her lashes ..• Moved by an associativeimpulse, she said to Pau line: "I wonder if I'd recognize Keith if I met him again. I think so, if he were walking or dancing; did you ever notice that he walked like an Indian?') "I'd recognize the sound of his step," said Pauline. "I ought to--the hours I spent listening for it on the porch, ready to spring to the door. Fool!" "When she heard we were separated," said Marta, "his mother wrote me to read Isaiah four eleven forty four; I mean, I lost the letter and forgot the number of the text; and what on earth do you suppose Isaiah prophesied about Keith?" They giggled in spite of themselves. A light breeze chilled them through their t,hin crepe dresses, and drove them below.

So they did not see Russ, as they might have, once more.