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| author | www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> | 2026-05-30 03:36:01 -0700 |
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| committer | www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> | 2026-05-30 03:36:01 -0700 |
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| -rw-r--r-- | 78785-0.txt | 7830 | ||||
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| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/78785-0.txt b/78785-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6c79ca --- /dev/null +++ b/78785-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7830 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78785 *** + + + I THOUGHT OF + DAISY + + BY + EDMUND WILSON + + + NEW YORK + CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS + 1929 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS + + Printed in the United States of America + + + + + I + + +It was a low red-brick house with a white door, a brass knob and brass +name-plates, and new green-and-white awnings and green window-boxes: +the sort of place which, in those days, downtown, seemed particularly +smart. We rang, and, after a moment, the electric clicking began--with +its quick and ready profusion, plucking distinctly the string of +excitement which was still capable of vibrating in my breast at the +prospect of meeting new people in Greenwich Village. + +They were Hugo Bamman’s friends: I had never met them. Rita Cavanagh, +the poet, was to be there--and other persons reputed to possess genius +or to whom I vaguely attributed romance. The stairs were soft-carpeted +in green. The host, tall and smiling, in a dinner-jacket, met us at the +door. The rooms were very bright and well kept: I saw lettuce-green +cocktail glasses, a bruised-mulberry batik behind a divan and, on the +wall, a set of framed designs for the costumes of some ballet, vivid +tinselly golds, blues and purples. And there were girls, like the +colored sketches, in the brightest make-ups and clothes, with red silk +roses of Cuban shawls, and silver turbans, and red hair, and black +arching Russian eyebrows, beautifully pencilled on. + +The host waylaid the hostess, who had a cocktail glass in each hand and +appeared preoccupied. I thought her adorable--she was quite short and +had very small gold slippers and Buster Brown blond bobbed hair. “Oh, +how do you do!” she said, stopping. “How about putting down the glasses +and shaking hands?” said Ray Coleman. “Here, you take this, then,” she +said, making him hold one of the glasses: I thought he looked a little +severe as he stood with the cocktail in his hand. “There’s so much +traffic,” she remarked, “that it’s hard to receive people right.” She +smiled charmingly with a little mauve-rouged, moist and lovely American +mouth. Her hand, which she gave me now, was fragile and small, and, +with her thin round bare arm, seemed like some soft little tentacle. +“What a nice apartment!” I said. “It’s the apple of our eye,” she +replied. That wasn’t quite right either, but, as it evidently was the +apple of Coleman’s, he smiled with satisfaction as he demurred that +they were “a little cramped for space.” + +A bulky woman in green--the one with the silver turban--blazed upon +my vision. She recognized me and we shook hands. She was one of those +plain elderly ladies who do something or other and whom we meet at +parties, but whose names we have difficulty in remembering. I had a +drink which Mrs. Coleman had given me and I asked the lady with the +silver turban whether I couldn’t get her one. She said: “A little of +that Scotch--straight,” and we sat down, at her suggestion, on a large +ottoman in front of the fireplace. She had the hearty manners and +broad speech of an old _vivandière_--an old _vivandière_ of the social +revolution, I thought, and approached her with a special respect. + +“What we have in America,” she declared--we had arrived, through +Prohibition, at politics--“is government by headlines! What’s the +actual explanation of these booms for Cox and Wood? Neither one has the +brains of a rabbit. But their names are one-syllable words. They’re +one-syllable words! I’m a newspaper woman and I know!” “So is Debs,” I +suggested. “Yes,” she replied, “but he’s out.” I felt that I had said +something stupid. I had let her see that I was only an outsider. + +My whole point of view at this period was still largely taken over from +my old school-friend, Hugo Bamman: he had come, after the War, to live +in Greenwich Village, and I had been brought there by his example. It +was Hugo who had taken me around and who had told me what to think of +what I saw; and I had seen through Hugo’s eyes. The people whom Hugo +thought important seemed important to me, too: he and they, I believed, +were leaders, leaders of the true social idealism which cut under +capitalistic politics. To them the social revolution seemed as real as +their love affairs; and I had often a guilty consciousness that it was +not quite real enough to me. This plain-spoken woman, for example, to +whom I presumed to talk of politics, might, for all I knew, have just +returned from Russia--might have fought on the barricades. Her bad +language and her great bare chest might represent the heroic braveries +of some heart-breaking campaign--the devotion to some anarchist lover, +deported or put in prison; the shouldering of some burden of poverty; +or perhaps some point-blank vindication of basic human rights in the +teeth of the mounted police and the mob. + +In that company I had always felt humble: beyond publishing a few +satiric verses in a radical magazine, I had never myself struck +any blow in the war for humanity (Hugo Bamman was a freelance and +a communist, whereas I professed no political faith and had a tame +and respectable job in a publisher’s office); but, like Hugo, I had +served in the other war, and had served as an enlisted man, and after +seeing all the nations of the West temporarily scrambled together +and the social order turned upside down, I had come away with a new +conviction of the necessity of human solidarity. “Ten Days That Shook +the World”--they had given me pause when I had read about them one +morning, among the inanities of the Paris _Herald_, after a night spent +sleeping in a puddle. In college, I had read of the Russia of the +Czars as one reads about the Middle Ages; but now I had been forced to +recognize, even among Americans, and as one of the strongest instincts +of society, that horrifying contempt of a dominating class for the +lives of those they dominate. So that, by the time I had got out of +the Army, I had acquired a scorn for the pursuit of money, position or +rank: the people who cared for such things seemed now to me sinister +or childish. It appeared impossible ever again to accept conventional +values complacently, to acquiesce in the prosperous inertia and the +provincial ignorance of America. One could never go back again now to +living indifferently or trivially; one was afraid of lending oneself to +some offense against that unhappy humanity which one shared with other +men. + +“Yes, of course,” I replied, “he’s out.--And Wood is such a gentlemanly +fellow!--he hasn’t any of the Regular Army mannerisms--he’s surprising +in that way. You think he’s going to be awful, and then he turns out +to be quite a relief after listening to the regular West Point line. +You can perfectly see why Roosevelt got on with him. Neither one was +an ordinary ruffian. Yet both, at bottom, were stupid men. Roosevelt +was only just civilized enough to know and remember more facts than his +neighbors. But all his imagination was good for was habitually to make +a melodrama out of the most serious affairs of the world--a melodrama +with himself as hero.” + +Her eye had strayed, she hailed a young man with a slit-eyed impassive +gaze, who, his hands in his trousers-pockets, had stationed himself +near us. I felt abashed--what I had said had betrayed me as a young +bourgeois trying to play up to her: it had given me away as never +having been at the barricades!--“Oh, Bobby!” she exclaimed, “your +ballet was marvellous! Those divine Chinese whites!” The young man +accepted the compliment, with no attempt to turn it off or to pretend +embarrassment. He seemed serious and complacent: I wondered whether he +were Jewish--he was blond, but had a hooked nose. He replied without +change of expression and bending over with his hands in his pockets: +“It’s the first time, so far as I know, that Chinese white has been +used in the theatre. I have two different kinds of white contrasted.” +“How did you ever do it?” said Sue Borglum (that, it turned out, +was my companion’s name). “I was experimenting for two years,” he +replied. I could tell from his accent that he was Scotch: besides, his +eyes remained narrow and solemn, and a Jew, no matter how serious, no +matter how relentlessly preoccupied with the importance of his own +activities, would have veiled with some irony of politeness his human +and earth-bound ambitions in this Valley of the Shadow under the eye +of a Jealous God. “I don’t see,” she protested, emphatically, “how +people ever have the patience to go on experimenting for effects they +may never be able to get! In the newspaper game, it’s different: we +never experiment: we know how to get our effects and we get them right +off, the same day.--And they’re forgotten the same day!” He answered, +without smiling: “There’s going to be a photograph of my set in Bradley +Foster’s book on the ballet.” He looked around as some one grasped his +arm. + +Daisy Coleman was talking in a corner with an anomalous slight little +man; they were drinking the cocktails she had been carrying. She +seemed appetizing in her lobster-bisque dress, her paler flesh-colored +stockings and her little gold slippers. She was talking over the back +of a chair, with one knee on the seat and with both hands clasping +the top, like a little girl at school, chatting between classes: the +conversation was accompanied with sympathetic movements of the elevated +foot. As I watched her, I saw Ray Coleman, smiling in a curious fixed +way at nobody in particular, go over, interrupt the conversation, +detach Daisy from the little tadpole and launch her again on the +company at large. She came forward rather blankly and, it seemed to +me, a little sullenly. + +Ray Coleman had left Hugo Bamman standing huddled against the +mantelpiece and staring out through his thick myopic lenses; and it +occurred to me at once that he could talk better than I to Sue Borglum. +He would be sure to have the right tone--and besides, he never seemed +to care whether women were young or old, attractive or plain. “Ah, +there he is!” I cried--I disloyally used to kid him--“Bamman: The +People’s Friend!” He looked about, smiling vaguely, then, locating +us, craned forward, and bubbled and beamed over Sue.--I got up and +intercepted Daisy. + +She began by making an earnest effort to discharge her obligations as a +hostess, but I could see that her heart wasn’t in it. “Don’t you want +another cocktail?” she suggested. “I’m afraid the one you got was all +water. Ray has just made some new ones.” + +“You were in _Patsy_, weren’t you?” I asked: I knew that she had been a +chorus-girl. “I think that that was about the best musical show that I +ever saw--I went to see it four times!” “Well, we couldn’t complain,” +she said (it had had a phenomenal run). “Which one were you? I don’t +recognize you.” “Oh, I was just in the chorus,” she said. “And then +I was one of the pages that came down the steps with the candles in +the _Honeymoon Moon_ number.” “Oh, were you one of those pages?” I +exclaimed. “You were awfully cute! I remember you well!--and that +set with the lavender drop and the orange moon was marvellous!--Do +you ever miss the stage?” “I’m beginning to now. Of course, it’s an +awful lot of work--so you don’t get very much fun out of it.” With +the intention of documenting myself--in those days I shared Hugo’s +enthusiasm for sociological documentation--I questioned her about the +theatre. I was delighted by her candor. “By the time the show opens,” +she told me, “everybody is groggy. When we were rehearsing for _Patsy_, +I drank so much to keep myself going that I finally got some kind of +d.t.’s: I saw a horse sitting beside my bed.” I expressed interest. +“It was sitting by my bed with its hoofs on its knees--this way: like +hands--its hoofs were painted blue. It was sitting there leering at +me.” “Were you able to go on?” “Yes, the doctor gave me a great big +drink of something bitter and I went to sleep and slept it off.” “It +must be a terrific thing to rehearse one of those shows!” “It’s a lot +of work to be beautiful--especially when you aren’t,” she added. “Oh, +come!” I replied, “I was just thinking that you were one of the very +few actresses I had seen who were as pretty on the stage as off!” She +made a gesture of burlesque demureness, putting a finger to her mouth. +I inquired about the hardships of the stage. “Once, at the Winter +Garden,” she told me, “I was in one of those living curtains: they left +us up there for an hour and we nearly got roasted with the lights. When +they let us down again, half the girls fainted.--Oh, yes; us girls,” +she concluded, parodying us girls, “us girls has our trials!” I found +her interesting, attractive, amusing, and profoundly sympathetic. “What +a lovely color your hair is!” I told her. “Just the color of honey!” +“Mm-Mm!” said Daisy. “More! I eat that stuff up!” + +Ray Coleman, smiling, came up behind her and put his arms about her, +with his hands over her breasts. “Don’t you think he looks like Ned +Grover?” Daisy inquired of her husband. “No: not a bit,” replied +Coleman. He explained to me humorously: “She always has these insane +ideas about people looking like each other--and there’s never the +faintest resemblance!” I seemed to make out that Ned Grover raised an +issue. + +“Won’t you let me fill your glass?” he suggested. “I’ve got some real +bonded rye over here that I’ve only just opened. I thought at first +I wouldn’t open it to-night, because when you have a lot of people +like this, anything special is lost on them--you might just as well +give them plain bootlegger’s stuff.” “I thought your cocktails were +splendid!” “Well, I know you’ll appreciate this rye: it’s the real Old +Overholt, bottled in bond.” + +“Is Rita Cavanagh here?” I asked over the glass-topped drinking-caddy. +“Yes: she’s here somewhere”--it gave him pleasure to feel himself +master of a company among whom distinguished names might be casually +mislaid. “Haven’t you seen her?” “I’ve never met her.” “I’ll introduce +you to her.” He lifted his tall amber glass with an air: I saw that his +dark eyebrows, which he was always raising in conversation with the air +of a man of the world, nearly met above his nose. + +He led me over to the divan. Rita Cavanagh was a sharp-nosed little +thing with mousey bobbed hair; she wore a shabby black dress. She was +so small that I hadn’t noticed her. But, as I shook hands with her, +she gave me from eyes of a greenish uncertain color, a curious alert +intent look, as of a fox peering out from covert. She was curled up in +the middle of the divan and evidently the centre of its company. I told +her how much I had liked her poems. + +Ray Coleman, with smiling politeness, requested her to recite. “Did +you know I’d been asked to read in public?” she said. She spoke in +rather a dry staccato voice, and with something like an English accent, +which seemed to me artificial.--“Where is that?” inquired Ray Coleman. +“At the Poets’ League.”--“Well, you’re going to do it, aren’t you?” +said a young man who looked like a baseball player. “Well, would you? +Do you think it’s the thing to do?” She took a brief puff at her +cigarette--staccato and precise. “Do they offer you money?” asked the +man. “Yes.” “Then do it!” “But they come up and talk to you afterwards, +and you’re supposed to answer their questions. What would you _say_ to +them?” “Say to them?” said the young man. “What did Shakespeare say to +the horses? _Whoa! Get over there! Back up!_” She laughed, puckering +her eyes, and again raised the cigarette. + +This young man, I felt, was a good fellow--his hulking frame, his +jutting brow and his prognathous jaw seemed to mask some gentleness +and modesty--but I had the impression that he was jealously straining +toward Rita with a maximum of nervous effort, was almost, in fact, on +the point of seizing her; and I felt that all the three other men about +her were bent in the same direction; and that I myself, though I had +only just met her, was about to become involved in the competition. +And, since I had told her that I liked her poems and since she had +turned to me, acknowledging my compliments, as if they had gratified +her especially, I began to find myself resenting the other men almost +as rivals. + +She laughed--on distinct, impish, economized notes: “I might take an +apple with me,” she said, “or a lump of sugar.” “Couldn’t you rehearse +a little for us?” Ray Coleman suggested, inclining and smiling again. +“You’ll find us an appreciative audience!”--“This is one that I +wrote to-day,” she said, taking a last puff at her cigarette--“This +very day!” And, sitting back against the wall behind the couch, +straightening her neck and throwing up her head, she began to recite. + +The effect was, at first, to embarrass me: it was a little as if a +Shakespearian actor were suddenly, off the stage, to begin expressing +private emotions with the intonations of the play. The only girl I had +ever known who had been able to write respectable poetry had been in +the habit of reading aloud--when she read aloud at all--as if her poems +had been compositions which she had never seen before, poems written by +some other person and by some one of whom she disapproved. But in the +gradual silence of the room, amid the respect with which all seemed to +turn toward her, those deep sonorities of sorrow and wonder began to +move me as much as a play. I had admired, in reading her lyrics, the +uncounterfeitable force of sincerity which, in dealing with classic +themes--themes in other hands commonplace--the longing for home, the +shortness of life, the passing of love--with an effect both of boldness +and austerity, had not hesitated to clothe them in an imagery drawn +directly from ordinary life. But I had not known, till I heard her +recite, to what music these things had been tuned: all her art was in +her ear; her words had little color for the eye. Now, in the poem which +she had told us she had just written, she described a bonfire built on +the beach, which shut out for those around it the empty weight of the +waters and the desolate litter of the shore, where a poor disfeatured +corpse lay, worried by unresting waves, among the seaweed, bleached +boards and dead dogfish--as the joy which we know to be doomed may seem +yet to overflow the moment. And in a second poem, the sight of two +children--one blotted from birth in face and mind, the other creeping +on wry spider legs--yet dressed and fed and sent out every morning +by the mothers of wretched streets to play with the other children, +was made to shake us with that despair--the dammed anguish of our own +frustration--which, in the presence of some pitiful human failure may +overcome us with the sudden conviction that no satisfactions can be +real beside the humiliations of life. And on her lips, the barrenness +of the shore, the dingy images of the streets, were a kind of song. + +In the pause after the second poem, dramatically tense and distinct as +every syllable she had spoken, a smooth-faced and girlish boy whom, if +my attitude toward all the company had not been so much one of respect, +I should certainly have considered a fool, said, “That _does_ something +to me--that last one!” The baseball player shook his head and said: +“Gosh! that’s a knockout!” Rita said, “Yes: I’ve written that one since +I’ve seen you! You haven’t heard that one! I’m _so glad_ that you like +it!” + +Somebody suddenly turned on the phonograph, which began jigging a +popular fox-trot. Ray Coleman went over and stopped it, and I saw him +engaged with his wife in what looked like a restrained altercation. +Then he returned to us, bringing Daisy. “I’m sorry,” he explained, +smiling--his smile was beginning to get on my nerves. “Daisy has the +phonograph habit: it’s like a drug--she can’t keep away from it! It was +unpardonable to jar on those lovely poems!” + +“Yes,” said Daisy, “I hope you’ll forgive me, but I thought you were +all through.” “We had hoped that you weren’t,” insisted Ray. “I wish +you’d let us hear some more!” Rita replied, puckering up her eyes, “Oh, +I think that’s quite enough of me for one evening!” + +“How sweet she looks in pink!” said Sue Borglum: Daisy had been +standing by like a bad little child reproved. “She looks like one of +those big pink bonbons on the top of a box of candy.” “Melt in your +mouth,” said Daisy, with her frank and charming grin.--“Speaking of +clothes,” said Rita, “has anybody seen Myra Busch since she got back +from Paris?” “_Have_ I?” returned Sue Borglum. “She says she bought it +all with what she got from writing for _McMoony’s_, but if she did, +_McMoony’s_ must pay her a damn sight more than they ever paid me. +She’s so wide-eyed about it, too! I asked her if she hadn’t been able +to find a night to go with that lace nightgown.” “Oh, Myra Busch is a +push-over!” said Daisy, a little snappishly. “She’s got round heels!” + +Sue Borglum’s pleasantry had been in the vein of the Village; Daisy’s +was in the taste of Broadway--I do not know which, at that period, +enchanted me the more. Since I had come back to America from France, I +had been noticing with a new attention the way the Americans talked: +I had read, with astonished gratification, the first books of those +American writers who seemed making a new kind of literature out of +that sprawling square-syllabled speech where the words had been like +colorless frame-houses on the outskirts of an American town, a language +fit only, it had seemed, for the uses of a prosaic trade or of a +plebeian extravagance and irony. And I noted American slang with an +interest self-conscious and pedantic. + +I felt, however, that Daisy’s husband disapproved of her coarseness and +sharpness, and I resented his failure to appreciate her. + +“I understand you caught a thief,” said Sue Borglum, addressing Ray. +“Yes,” said Ray, with satisfaction. “Caught him, convicted him, and +sent him where he’ll do no more thieving.” “Burglar or sneak-thief?” +asked Sue Borglum. “All kinds of a thief!” replied Ray. “He got into +the house in broad daylight. Somebody rang the bell last Sunday +afternoon, and I pressed the button to open the door, but nobody came +up. Now, I always make it a rule, whenever that happens, to go down and +find out what’s up!” + +I had often in my own apartment responded to these false alarms, but +checking up on them, I reflected, was like Crainquebille’s prison +stool chained to the leg of the bed--an idea which would never have +occurred to me. + +“I went down,” Ray Coleman continued, following Daisy with his eyes, +as she quietly detached herself from the group and went back in the +direction of the phonograph, “but there was nobody in the hall--and +nobody on the floor below. Then I went to all the other apartments and +asked whether anybody had just come in, and they all said that nobody +had. Then I went back and got a gun and a flashlight, and I went down +into the basement. I held the flashlight out to one side, so that if he +fired he wouldn’t hit me. And lo and behold! there was Mr. Thief hiding +in the coalbin! I covered him with the gun and asked him what he was +up to, and he began telling me a long sob-story about how he hadn’t +any place to sleep and had just come in to spend the night.” Smiling +steadily, he gazed at Daisy, who had gone back to the corner again to +talk to the anomalous little man with the dark amusing eyes, the natty +blue suit and the belling sailor’s trousers. “I said, ‘Well, you just +wait here awhile till we find out a little more about that story,’ +and I locked him in the basement and telephoned the police. When we +searched him we found all the jewelry hidden away in his shoes!--two +stick-pins, a ring and a wrist-watch, and five dollars in bills and +change. He’d stolen them from a man in Eleventh Street!” “Oh, they +weren’t your things, then!” said Rita, who had been listening with +that odd tension which she seemed to apply to everything, whether of +absorbing interest or not. + +“Oh, no,” Ray heartily reassured her. “He didn’t get anything of +ours. He didn’t get the chance! I’ve got some etchings and some +valuable firsts--so I can’t afford to take risks. And Daisy has an +ostrich-feather evening wrap that’s worth three hundred dollars. The +fellow on Eleventh Street had missed a lot of other things, too; but +they couldn’t get the little bastard to tell them what had become of +them. They beat him up at the station, but they couldn’t get him to +tell--he was just sullen. A West Indian boy. We ought to have some way +of keeping such scum out of the country. If they’d only do with all +the criminals”--he spoke with a sort of exaltation and his eyes were +rapt away to Daisy--“if they’d only do with all the criminals what +they do with the regular gunmen! They’re not supposed to beat a man +up more than just so much, you know--but the way that they get around +that in the case of the big thugs is to send them around from one +police station to the other. As soon as they get done with them in one +place, they just send them along to another--so that the men in any one +station can always say they haven’t beaten ’em up more than just so +much, and yet they can give ’em all they want. If they’d been able to +do that with my West Indian friend, we might have found out about the +silk bathrobe that he’d stolen from the man on Eleventh Street.” + +“Yes,” said Hugo, whose eyes, behind his spectacles, I had felt +beginning to glow with antagonism. “They might even have made him +confess to stealing the towers of Notre Dame!” “What do you mean?” +asked Ray. “I mean, if you torture anybody long enough, you can make +them confess to anything. That was what the Inquisition did, wasn’t it?” + +I perceived that, although Ray Coleman enjoyed entertaining poets and +radical journalists, he was far from sharing the humanitarian feeling +which at that epoch pervaded the Village. I had thought, when I first +came in, that his dinner-jacket struck for the Village an unfamiliar +and incongruous note; and I was growing more and more sympathetic with +Daisy. I began to concoct an ironic short story, something rather +in the vein of _Crainquebille_ or of Maupassant’s _Boule de Suif_, +in which a vulgar but charming little wife was to be patronized and +bullied by her husband--who would be editor of a popular newspaper: +one day when the husband had gone out, the wife was to find in the +basement a poor starving tailor’s boy, who would tell her of the petty +tyrannies of the presser for whom he had worked. And, remembering her +life on the stage--the cruelties of the living curtain; remembering the +harshness of her husband--all that money-grubbing anti-human world in +which she had always found her own life so harassed--she would listen +to the boy with sympathy, and would be just on the point of offering +him some clothes and something to eat, when the husband would return +with the police; the boy would turn out to be a thief whom the husband +had caught and locked up!--There would have to be something more to it, +though--I would think about it later. + +In the meantime, Hugo’s skirmish with Ray had ended in an emphatically +disguised evasion on the latter’s part as he had become aware that +his attitude toward criminals might be considered intellectual bad +form. I inquired of Hugo, aside, where Daisy Coleman came from. “From +Pittsburgh, I think,” he replied--then still chafing with repressed +resentment over his argument with Ray, he added: “You never seem to be +able to take people for granted!--you always want to know where they +come from!” I answered that those things interested me. + +And I brooded a little on Pittsburgh--I had been there as a boy--my +mother had had a school-friend who had married and gone to live +there, and we had visited them once. They had lived in a massive and +formidable house, with dingy Ionic pillars, and with blue and green +stained-glass windows which, far from adorning the interior, had seemed +to me at the time merely sombre, forbidding and blind--there had been a +boy about my age called Junior, and he had had a great many expensive +toys; an Indian costume and a military costume (which I had thought +a good deal of a bore) and the most elaborate toy railroad that I +had ever seen outside a toy-store--a labyrinth of signals, switches, +turntables and tunnels; it had covered the floors of several rooms and +rendered them uninhabitable. This boy had also had fencing foils; a +real rifle; a thing that he told you to look through but which squirted +water into your eye; and a device of rubber tubes and bulbs, which +made plates jump up and down on the table. These luxuries had strongly +impressed me and they now presented themselves to my mind--as well +as Junior’s egoism and arrogance, the arrogance of an over-indulged +child, which had kept me from quite getting on with him. Now, as I +remembered it for the first time in years, I found that I detested that +household. There had been a Pennsylvania Dutch father, who had made +money in the coke business and whose domineering silences had oppressed +the dining-table; and there had been a mother who had been always +playing the piano, and singing, with inexhaustible vivacity, the scores +of old musical comedies--from the _Sultan of Sulu_ to _Forty-five +Minutes from Broadway_--which she had heard in New York. I had, at +the time I came to live in the Village, developed something of that +inverted snobbishness which, in Hugo’s case, had impelled him to go to +all the garment-workers’ balls at the same time that he would grimly +decline a dinner where he knew he would be expected to dress; and I had +at that moment the kind of emotions which I thought Hugo would probably +have in connection with a large heavy house inhabited by a Pittsburgh +capitalist. Thank heaven! I said to myself, spurred no doubt by Hugo’s +rebuke, if I ever go to Pittsburgh again, I shan’t have to be visiting +there! Here, in Daisy, is the real vital Pittsburgh: frank, vulgar, +humorous, human! + +“She married some fellow from Pittsburgh, I think, before she married +Ray Coleman,” added Hugo, after a moment during which he had gulped his +drink, self-consciously and hurriedly--he was excessively sensitive +and so haunted by the fear of hurting people’s feelings that his +sharpness was invariably followed by a spasm of special affability. +“They made a honeymoon trip on a motor-cycle from Pittsburgh to +Atlantic City. They had all kinds of fantastic accidents. She told me +about it once. It must have been awfully fine!” I, too, thought that +it must have been fine. That was the real, the live America--where our +bravery and freedom lay! I drank my highball up. I saw them, skidding +breathtakingly in the ditches--skinned, bruised and mud-beplastered! +Dodging motors and trucks, shaking off towns and cities, like twigs +that had been caught in their wheels and had scraped the mud-guard +a little, and had then been whipped away!--masters of that new and +American and almost super-human sense--the sense of motor traffic! +Till, at last, after boiling hot baths, they had lain clean in Atlantic +City, in their clean-sheeted hotel bed, with the ice-water in the +pitcher and the room as warm as a hothouse. In the morning, they would +have breakfast in bed! + +Hugo had turned away to bubble, giggle, and gasp to a radical +journalist with a harsh western accent and extraordinary personal +charm: I rose to talk to the theatrical designer, who, with deep-lodged +slit-eyed self-satisfaction, stood near me, his arms folded, unmoved +by what went on about him. “Are you doing any shows,” I asked, “this +spring?” “Just the ballet in the _Merry-Go-Round_” he answered. “Next +year,” he went on to explain, “I want to stage the Iliad and the +Odyssey.” “The Iliad and the Odyssey?” I repeated a little blankly. +“I want to do them in a cycle,” he said--“something like Wagner’s +Ring.” “How long would it take?” I inquired. “Not more than a week,” +he replied. “I shan’t try to have everything, of course. I’ll have +to leave out a good many incidents--though I believe that, when the +public have been interested, I’ll be able to put it on in an outdoor +stadium and do it on a bigger scale--there would be a week for each. My +production next fall would be an experiment with that in view.” “That +would be awfully interesting,” I said: the air then, especially in +the theatre, was so full of high novelty and striving that no project +seemed impossible. “What sort of text are you going to use?” “Fritz +Fishbein is making an adaptation of Butcher and Lang--it’s in a sort of +free verse, that will be chanted to music. Boulomé is working out the +old Greek modes, so that we’ll have music that will be really Greek.” +“That sounds extremely interesting,” I repeated.--“Come in here,” he +said, “and I’ll show you the drawings.” + +He led me into a little study with a desk, a window-seat and some +bookcases, and opened on the desk a large portfolio--I don’t know how +he happened to have it there. “How,” I asked, “are you going to do the +clangor of Apollo’s silver bow?” “I’m not going to do it,” he said, +“that is, I’m not going to make the attempt to reproduce the sound. +I’m not going to do anything realistically. There’ll be no sound at +all. You’ll just see Apollo off on a hill--just a little silhouette, +perfectly black, but awful, you know--with a bow in his hands. And +then every one will cover their ears and sink down to the ground, and +the stage will turn green-black, and then everything will be black.” +I turned over the water-color drawings, so beautifully and lovingly +covered with large clinging sheets of tissue-paper. “What’s this one?” +I asked. “That’s the slaying of the suitors in the Odyssey.” “They look +a little like white rats,” I commented. “Yes: I meant to give that +suggestion--those are masks that they’re to wear throughout the play.” +I had never heard before of using masks. + +Rita Cavanagh had come up behind us, and I made room for her to look at +the drawings. I had been aware of her voice in the next room saying: +“Oh, Bobby McIlvaine’s showing his Homer designs!--I want to see them!” + +“Oh, what a beautiful Pallas Athena!” she cried, as she stood over the +portfolio beside me. I noticed again how shabby her black dress was: +she must be very poor, I thought. “Almost like a man!” she continued. +It was a figure all in silver-gray, spare, upstanding and clean, like +some male heroic woman of the Village--with a helmet that shaded its +eyes and with an owl perched on its shoulder--rather an odd-looking +owl, I thought: thin and long, like Athena herself, but like her, +austere and impressive. And I found myself delighted--especially now +that Rita Cavanagh was admiring them--with McIlvaine’s designs for +Homer. I seemed to see that, for all their eccentricity, they were +closer to the spirit of the poems than the sobriety and smoothness of +conventional representations: they had something of the unclassical +stiffness of archaic Greek sculpture. Rita Cavanagh smiled, and I +smiled, at Venus caught in the net with Mars, her little rose-dotted +breasts a charming pink behind the gold meshes. + +Hugo suddenly blundered into the room in his purblind big-booted +way and took down his old felt hat from the bookcase--where he had +carefully put it, I realized, in order to get at it quickly and without +searching among the other hats. I wondered how he could bring himself +to leave so enchanting a party so soon. He signalled to me a friendly, +but detached and remote, farewell--stooping, stuttered and bubbled +good-nights over Rita and Bobby McIlvaine--and abruptly was gone. I +heard him ask in the next room: “Where’s Daisy?” and the host reply, as +if with humorous frankness: “I don’t know where she is!” + +“Oh, what _lovely_ browns and grays!” breathed Rita, before the +autumnal smock of Eumæus. “I never saw such lovely browns!” Her +italicized “lovely” was not gushing, but had a sort of disinterested +and passionate conviction. That was the sort of thing that impressed +me about her. She seemed to feast upon the color, eating it with her +eyes. I should myself have stopped at something brighter, and I felt +guiltily that I should have been wrong. But she lingered over Eumæus: +“Like the leaves in October!” she went on. “Like the leaves in the +autumn mud! Such delicacy and such color standing out against something +neutral--and common!” + +The baseball player, or whatever he was, whom I had noticed on the +divan, was now standing in the doorway, with his hat in his hand. “I’m +going along, Rita,” he said, “take you over if you’re ready to go!” I +saw that he was unsure and self-conscious. “I’m not going for a long +time yet,” she replied--her voice had the tautness, the distinctness +and the metallic quality of wire--though of a wire which twanged with +the vibrations of some strong and superior temper; yet she tried at +the same time to smile at him with a definite effect of good-will, at +once elfin and sharply registered, as she added for his consolation: “I +don’t want to be taken home to-night, anyway. I came alone, and I want +to go home alone! I’m an independent woman, I am!” “Well, go ahead and +have your old single standard!” he met her, putting humorously his best +face on it, and disappeared from the doorway. + +She turned over to a group of nymphs, the wild girls of some northern +loch. “Some people think they’re not graceful enough for nymphs,” said +McIlvaine, without expression. “People who say they’re not graceful,” +said Rita, “don’t know anything about grace!” She spoke with a +passionate vehemence which seemed to me rather excessive--yet I felt +something of the awe of the infidel who overhears the prayer of the +believer. “They think that grace has something to do with round bodies +and Greek dancing! These nymphs of yours _are_ beautiful!--they have +the natural beauty of country girls--they’re graceful even when they’re +gawky and awkward!” + +The pretty boy--the one who had asserted that Rita’s poem had “done +something” to him--glided behind her in a sinuous newtish way and +slid one arm about her waist. His hair was glossy and parted in the +middle and he was scarcely taller than she: his tapering and shapely +hand, which I saw--and saw with distaste--lying against her black +dress, would have seemed too small for a man’s, if her own hands had +not been so tiny--not with the American thinness of Daisy’s, but with +a miniature complete beauty, at once childlike and mature, as of +some muse or magic being. He did not speak at once, but looked with +her.--The next picture represented Penelope, who had an unexpected +proud angularity. + +“Won’t Ulysses get hell,” said the boy, “when he comes back home from +his trip!” “No,” said Rita, “she’s noble!” “Yes,” the boy acquiesced at +once, “she’s beautifully done! Great austerity! Great restraint!” + +She had come to the blank cover at the back and slowly turned it over, +almost as if with reverence. “I think they’re _beautiful!_” she said, +“_beautiful!_” I had heard people say that the flowers were beautiful, +or that the front room was beautiful, or even that the view of the +Hudson or the painting of Renoir was beautiful--but I had never before +heard it said with such authority and such simple intensity. Though +still shy of her unconvincing accent and suspicious of a pose, I was, +in regions just beneath the surface, excited by this authority and +intensity--I found myself heated, too, by the fire which the drawings +had seemed so to kindle in her. Bobby McIlvaine accepted her tribute in +silence distended by pride and tied up the strings of the portfolio. I +said: “I must go to see your ballet!” “It’s not much,” he replied, “but +the white is something to see.” + +“Well, Princess,” said Rita’s friend, the boy with the insinuating +hands, “are you ready to sail away?” I realized that her rôle of +princess was a part of some romance which they had spun together, and +I divined, in another moment, that it was a romance of which she was +tired. “No,” she said, “I want to stay a little longer,” and added, +with her elfin smile: “Send the boatman back at twelve!”--He swept low +an invisible plumed hat.--“Leave the outside bolts open: I can push the +door myself!”--He bowed again and backed away, and, as he retreated, +she became more amusing, entering more willingly into the spirit of +the legend which they had evidently elaborated, which they had perhaps +lived, together.--“But shut the watchdogs in their kennels, so that +they won’t bay at me when I come. Tell the old woman who makes the +fires that she shall have her snuff on Thursday, and that I shan’t wake +her from sleep to-night, when she’s dreaming of the little stony river +of her girlhood in the North.--Tell her to mind the fire, though,” she +added, giving good measure to her friend, who now impressed me rather +disconcertingly as perhaps not a boy at all, but a man of mature years +whose coquetry was wearing stale.--“Though sleep is sweet, the sparks +are always flying, even after the faggot is dead!” + +Some originality I felt in her having so entered into the old woman, +who seemed to have nothing to do with the plumed hat which her partner +was pretending to doff, interested me and made me like her, just when I +was beginning to be rather sickened by this business about the Princess +and the boatman. + +I could hear the voice of her admirer, as he left, just outside the +study door, saying good-night to Ray Coleman and asking him where +Daisy was, and Coleman’s voice replying, as if in frank humorous +confession, disclaiming all responsibility: “I don’t know! I haven’t +the slightest idea!”--Bobby McIlvaine, who had put away his drawings, +and, having finished his own performance, was not disposed to be +interested in the comedy which Rita and her friend were acting, had +also gone out of the room. + +“That river your old woman dreams about,” I began, hoping to keep Rita +there, “sounds like something in up-state New York.” She looked up at +me in her unaccountable, quick, nervous, searching way: “Do you come +from there?” she asked. “No,” I said, “but I’ve been there a good +deal.” She had a way of scrupulously following, of checking up with a +special exactitude which suggested anxious conscious effort, all the +moves of social intercourse, at the same time that she seemed always +preoccupied with something different and more absorbing; she now nodded +and lifted a moment a brief interested stare. + +“Let’s sit down here, shall we?” she proposed, moving toward the +window-seat. She curled up in one of the corners. “Do turn away that +light--it’s so bright!” I turned aside the adjustable desk-light which +was the only illumination in the room so that it lit only the farther +wall: then I sat down on the window-seat, leaning up against the +opposite corner. + +Below the window lay Washington Square: it was still smooth and +gleaming with wet. When I had come home before dinner to dress, idle, +happy, and vaguely expectant, breathing in the rainy sidewalks of +the last day of May, I had seen the sky, above the bulk of office +buildings, high-piled with white banks of solid light, and in the +Square, had found the pavements swimming with milky pallors and +freshened by tenderest green. When I had gone to meet Hugo at the +Brevoort, I had seen a pale peach-silver sun dissolving the light +tree-fringes at the corner of the Avenue. Now these wonders had +sprung from that delight--so long and so varied the days were! It was +dark--there were the lamps and the taxis with their impudent brisk +honking--spinning away through rainy May in the wet relieved fresh +freedom. + +Rita was looking out the window with her same strange trancèd +seriousness. I asked: “Don’t you like the city just after it’s been +raining? Hear how happy the taxis sound!” She smiled and said simply, +“Yes.” I wondered whether she were still thinking of the drawings, +of which I was almost becoming jealous. “Don’t you feel a little, +though,” I ventured, “that it robs Homer of his own kind of subtlety +to deliberately make him exotic by translating him into terms of +the Russian ballet?” “Why--I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I +hadn’t thought of the Russian ballet. I thought those drawings were +beautiful in themselves--quite apart from Homer perhaps.” Then she +added, after a pause: “That figure of Pallas Athena--so slender--so +strong--so grave--so lightly built--as strong and yet as light as her +spear! No _man_ could ever combine that power and that lightness!” +“Yes,” I said, “that’s true, isn’t it?” “And then they talk,” she went +on, “about women never having done anything really important! When +the Greeks made the goddess of wisdom a woman! And just as important +a woman goddess as the goddess of love!” I tried to assure her that +I understood: “Yes, I know,” I replied, “men are always expecting +the wrong things of women, aren’t they?”--while before my mind there +aligned themselves, in the guise of long slender javelins, the long +slender sentences of John Stuart Mill on the Subjection of Women. +“It’s so _false_ of them,” she went on. “You know, some people who +pretend to admire independence in women really want to prevent them +from doing things! They think that a woman’s work is something she can +put aside, as if she were laying down her knitting--or her embroidery! +Whatever they may say, they can’t really believe in their hearts that +her work is the thing she lives for, that she puts above everything and +everybody!” + +I assented briefly, but with earnest emphasis: the generous flow of +my feeling had been perhaps a moment impeded by the “above everything +and everybody”: my mounting moral exaltation lapsed for a space +into a brooding happiness which hovered outside the window over the +rain-freshened square--those romantic lamps that burned all night, +while all night the speeding taxis, plying in happy privacy to a +thousand dark addresses, took people, took lovers, home. To that part +of my mind, however--the part which had been talking to Rita--from +which my attention had been withdrawn, there presented itself a stupid +remark: “I have read John Stuart Mill on the Subjection of Women!” + +But it was Rita who, after a silence, went on with the conversation: +“I’m so _tired_ of people,”--she spoke with violence--“who pretend to +understand what women feel about things!--and then behave like any +stupid stock-broker, who keeps a wife just as he keeps a car!--The +stock-broker would really be more sensible, because he’d expect to give +his wife certain things in return for what she gave him--she’d at least +be paid in comfort and money for what she lost in independence!” The +figure of the baseball player rose in my imagination: a good fellow, no +doubt, but dull and boorish, with no subtlety and no high honor in his +relations with women; quite unworthy of Rita! I was all on Rita’s side +now: how I could share her fierceness against fools!--“I don’t believe +_any_ man can understand!” But this seemed to shut me out again, and +again I gazed out into the Square. + +I was, however, after a moment, on the point of attempting to convince +her that she might find that _I_ understood, when of a sudden, so +peremptory and clear that we looked at each other startled, we heard +from the next room, which we now became aware had been silent, the +voice of Ray Coleman demanding: “Well, what have you got to say?”--and +then Daisy Coleman, replying in a voice which sounded constrained, +“Where’s all the party gone to?” “You can see for yourself they’ve all +gone home: I suppose they saw that the hostess had left and decided +that they didn’t want to stay!” “We weren’t gone so long, were we?” +said Daisy. “I just went around the corner with Pete to get a glass of +beer.” “You’ve been gone for an hour and a half!--And you!” he went on +vehemently, evidently addressing Daisy’s late companion--the little +man with the large eyes, I imagined. “You weren’t invited here to-night +and you can leave right away!” “I invited him,” said Daisy. “Well, I +asked you not to invite him!--Now, get out of here right away!--No: +your things are not in there!--There’s your coat in the fireplace!--and +there’s your stick in pieces over there!--and I threw your hat out the +window! Maybe you can find it in the street!--Now, don’t stand there +staring at me like that, but get out!” We heard him slam the door. + +Rita and I got up quickly from the window-seat, but the tirade which +followed checked us. “You humiliate me in my house!”--now that Ray +Coleman had Daisy alone, he opened upon her his fiercest fire. “You +drive my friends away! You send C. O. D. packages home!” “I had to have +some stockings for to-night!” “Well, why didn’t you ask me for them? I +won’t have you running up bills!” “Well, I can’t see what’s the idea of +this big third act!” “I told you not to bring that little rat here!” +“Well, you have all _your_ friends--I don’t see why I shouldn’t have +mine!” “You sat in there on the window-seat and let him see your legs!” +“We were just telling jokes in there--Gus Dunbar was in there, too.” +“I don’t mind having Gus see your legs--he’s a friend of the family, +but--” “Well, will you just let me have a list of all the family +friends that you’re willing to have see my legs?” “Don’t be vulgar!” he +replied. + +Rita determinedly and swiftly broke into the lighted room, and +I followed her. “I must really go,” she said. “It’s been such a +marvellous party!--I’ve been having such a marvellous time that I’ve +stayed much too late!” I made my apologies, also, and got Rita’s coat +out of the bedroom and helped her on with it. “Why, it’s not late at +all,” said Ray Coleman. “I’m afraid it’s we who haven’t been very +entertaining!” When we said good-by to Daisy, she merely met us with a +pale drunken gaze, and remarked: “Well, I opened cold!” + +Outside, I caught a taxi and asked Rita where she lived. “Oh, dear,” +she demurred, “I don’t think I want to go home. I think I’ll go to +somebody’s house--let’s see, whose house shall I go to?” I asked her if +she wouldn’t come to my house. “But you want to go to bed, don’t you?” +I assured her that I didn’t, for hours. + +“Pretty painful scene that was!” I remarked when we had started in the +taxi. “I shouldn’t think she’d stay with him.” “No,” said Rita, but +assenting, it struck me, from some different point of view than mine. +“She’s such a dear, isn’t she?” I went on. “Yes,” she said. “She’s so +beautifully made, isn’t she?--her ankles and wrists.” I thought of +Daisy under the guise of Bobby McIlvaine’s little blond Venus caught +in the net with Mars. “What do you make of him?” I asked. “He’s pretty +poisonous, isn’t he?” She looked up at me with a little appreciative +smile, as if my saying that Coleman was poisonous had been an original +deliberate joke, instead of a familiar cliché. Then, “He’s very jealous +of her,” she said; and then: “Yes, he is _poisonous!_” Her way of +agreeing that he was poisonous made it neither a cliché nor a joke, +but something convinced and bitter. “All jealousy is poisonous: it +poisons the woman as well as the man--it makes both of them suspicious +of all that has ever been between them--and even when they want to be +nice, they sound hateful to each other!” I remembered some novel of +Wells in which the hero had overcome jealousy along with a number of +other ignoble and anti-social emotions: I reflected that it was very +foolish and very base to be jealous. However: “I suppose,” I said, +“that working for the _Telegram-Dispatch_ makes him hate himself, and +so makes him awfully irritable. How can people who are really sensitive +and intelligent--as I have no doubt he is--but who are obliged to +spend all their working hours feeding the public libels and lies--how +can they possibly be amiable at home?” “Yes,” she said, “such lies +they print!--such cowardly lies! And even if the facts are true, they +cheapen the emotions behind them--and to cheapen human passion, human +suffering, is to lie! Like poor Lina Lemberg’s letters.” (Lina Lemberg +was a young Polish girl, who had recently murdered her husband, and +been much on the front page.) “They may have been illiterate and +clumsy, but they meant something real.--To tear people’s hearts to +pieces for all the grinning crowd to see--and pick up a bit of it and +finger it, and perhaps wish they had one, too, and hate the people who +have--and then throw it back in the gutter again!” Her passion had +not ceased to surprise me. She still seemed a little theatrical, but +I had never heard a woman speak so eloquently. “Yes: that’s just what +happens,” I said--it was all that I could say: I felt that I could +never express myself so well nor feel what I said so intensely. + +I lived in Bank Street then, and the taxi had stopped at my door. Rita +waited for me on the sidewalk while I was paying the driver: her little +face seemed narrow and thin--almost nunlike. + +When we had climbed to my apartment, and I had turned on the light, +I was ashamed of the prospect disclosed. There were a large and +comfortable couch, sets of books in glass-doored bookcases, Whistler’s +“Battersea Bridge,” and a drawing by Leonardo, which I had brought +up with me from college, a small mahogany desk, a green carpet and +a French clock. Besides, the maid had been there that morning and +everything was swept and neat. I was afraid that she would see at +once--if she had not already guessed--that I was really not one of +them, that I had never paid their price. The luxurious couch seemed +vulgar; the sets in the bookcases pedantic; the pictures unbearably +banal; and the little mahogany desk appropriate kindling-wood for the +social revolution. I attempted to call attention to the only feature of +the place which might be considered Bohemian and raffish: “That’s not +the right time,” I pointed out. “That clock hasn’t gone for years!” + +“Oh, isn’t this nice!” she exclaimed, looking quickly and interestedly +about her. There was a little alcove off the sitting-room which I used +as a study, and she stood looking into it, as if entranced. “Do you +work in there?” she exclaimed. “What a _wonderful_ place to work!” She +came back and sat down on the couch: “Oh, it’s so _nice_ here!--so +_nice!_” she smiled in an ecstatic childlike way. + +I felt, at any rate, that she meant it, and that I possessed an +unexpected advantage. None the less, I was a little diffident about +producing a bottle of peach brandy, as I had seen her drinking whiskey +straight at the Colemans’ party: I brought out both liqueur and Scotch, +and deprecatingly remarked that I didn’t suppose she’d care for the +former. “I’d love some!” she said.--“What a lovely label! It looks like +lace, doesn’t it?--like lace made out of wire!” + +“You know,” she went on, “I have no place of my own to work in now--and +I miss it so! I’m living with my mother and sister, and the apartment +is so small! I have to write with the sewing-machine going in the next +room.” “Oh, what a pity!” I said, “I should think it would drive you +crazy. I know how nervous it makes you to have something going on to +a different kind of rhythm from the one you’re writing to!” “Do you +write?” she asked. “I try to write poetry--but I’m not any good.” “I’d +like to hear your poems,” she said, looking up with an intent gaze +which seemed to pierce the politeness of her remark. “No,” I replied. +“After hearing yours to-night, I wouldn’t have the nerve to show you +mine.--I don’t suppose you’d recite again the ones that you recited at +the party.” “I’m so glad that you liked them,” she said, again with +that incongruous intensity which gave sincerity and significance to +even her formulas of courtesy. “I just wrote them, and I like them +myself,” she smiled with her funny grin, which left her as serious +and as strangely pressing as before. She sat back against the couch, +dropped her cigarette to her lap and recited the poems again--more +beautifully, it seemed to me, than the first time: her voice, in the +silent room, sounded lonely, and I was stirred and awed to be alone +with this living voice of poetry. + +All to me was a wonder then--her old dress, her mother’s +sewing-machine, her wide gamine’s grin, her formidable dignity and her +feverish preoccupation with some unexplained disturbing reality which I +was coming more and more to feel underlay everything she did. It was, +I came to see, as she recited, the same thing--a kind of moral agony, +unremitting and exalted--which made it possible for her, in her poetry, +to deal with commonplace ideas--as she worked often with the tritest +figures, the old debased currency of verse, which poets had then begun +to pride themselves on ceasing to try to pass--making them carry +whatever passion and whatever strangeness she chose. + +Her cheeks were fiery now--all her face was suffused with fierce pink, +and I saw that there was red in her hair. I saw now for the first +time that she was beautiful. Her brow was very high and wide, and the +resonant voice with which she recited--so different from her quick +dry speech, a mere pizzicato of those strings--seemed the full-toned +and proper music of what I saw now also for the first time was a long +and lovely throat of a solidity and complexity of symmetry, like some +harmoniously swollen musical instrument, almost incongruous with her +tiny body--and through which now the lonely beach, beyond the meagre +moment of fire, and the futile devotion of the mother to the blemished +and dim-witted child, sounded the chords of some mode of feeling more +profound than our human sadness, some ground-tone where human emotion +becomes merely the process of life, of life in its labor through the +universe. I knew, what I had never really felt in my intercourse with +friends who had written, that literature could be reality--as natural +as conversation, yet as deep as life itself. + +For I have not, in speaking of these poems, in any adequate way +described them: they were poems about love, and in them what was true +of love was true not of love only. And even now, in this part of what +I write, which deals with feelings and thoughts most remote from me, +least real to the mind that writes--at the memory of that music, I halt +and lose my way. + +In another poem, which I had never seen, and which she had also +recently written, she had some image of a swift up-country river +lacerated by rapids, where a smooth and lovely flock of stones forever +tumbled and crashed into splinters the black-silver mirror of its +deeps, dismissing it, fiercer at first, then thin, querulous and +shredded, divided in the threads of feebler streams that drip at last +over slimy mossy banks among the last orange drops of the jewel-weed, +and lose themselves in the fields. I have turned it all into ordinary +literature, over-animating the water, describing the jewel-weed too +exactly (it is I who supply the drops: she had only named the flower). +I have used too many adjectives: she had only the barest verbs and +nouns; but she woke through them the resonant ache of the throaty sound +of the river, so noble in its dwindled fall. And I, knowing enough of +literature to enjoy the consummate art, but not yet enough of life, +to assent with my heart to the terror, the terror mastered by the +mind, and clutched and wrenched into beauty, which I could only half +divine, but which troubled me and made me solemn, could only tell her +how wonderful I thought it, as if it had been merely a dress she had +been wearing or a garden she had grown. And I sounded even sillier and +lamer when I added: “I’ve seen those up-state rivers: I know exactly +what you mean!” “Yes, I knew you did,” she replied, “when you said that +something I said this evening sounded like a New York State river. I +come from up there, you know, and I’ve been getting homesick lately. +That was why I was talking about rivers--and why I wrote that poem.” + +I was silent, and she looked beyond the lamp, through the little dark +study, to where the moon seemed imbedded in the pane like a flaw of +pearl in dark blue glass. “How lovely the moon is!” she exclaimed in +her nervous, alert way. I looked out and answered: “Yes: it looks like +a bubble in the glass.” She noted the accuracy of this, checking it +up: “Yes, it does exactly!”--so emphatically that I felt pleased at +having said something clever. We stared at the moon without speaking--I +thinking, a little dazedly, of the perfect felicity of the moment, full +of brightness and freedom and peace--of the beauty of stony rivers, of +the pearly moon in the pane, of intoxicating coldness and poetry--of +stones, of lovely globes of a lunar fluidity of yolks, lodged unbroken +below the translucence of a limpid vitreous stream. + +Then I recalled my wandering senses and suggested another drink. +“Oh, if I have another drink, I’ll be drunk!” she said, screwing +herself down in her corner and with a sudden rictus of her grin which +transmogrified her grossly in a strange tense glee. + +But I could talk to her only of poetry--of those terrific images of the +commonplace by which the greatest poets can move us and which her own +poems had brought to my mind--the Roman street-corners of Catullus, the +prison-window of Verlaine, the race for the green flag at Verona which +Dante remembers in Hell. She had read extraordinarily widely for a +woman, and she talked about the poets as only a master can talk of the +masters of his craft and with the fierceness with which only a woman, +when woman’s narrow concentration has been displaced from its ordinary +objects, can concern itself with art--isolating in familiar poems +phrases I had never thought of: some armor-joint of a preposition which +rang with a solid sound or some unobtrusive adjective which troubled +the whole line. + +It was cold: she put on her cloak and I wrapped her legs in a +blanket--but still we talked, and drank the peach brandy sip by sip. At +last, as I was gazing toward the window, I became aware of an indigo +deepness which deeply delighted me, like some full and triumphant +staining of emotion and thought. It was the blue of dawning June, +through which presently, as brooding I watched it, green and red began +darkly to deepen. The blue brightened and now was translucent, now +limpid, now dissolved. And, still talking of poetry, still quoting, +still eager and glowing with the images of that life of literature +which rejects or suppresses nothing that goes to make our common life, +but where all is passionate, noble and rich, I saw, as it were with +incredulity, that the brightening green and red were the rain-revived +trees and brick walls of my own backyards in Bank Street. Now even the +poor soiled yellows of the downtown tenement houses, the leaves of the +flaccid ailanthus swaying their fingery clusters in the stir of morning +air, through that first distinct light of day were seen washed with +libations of light--till it seemed to me that I had waked--or rather +that, without sleeping, I had passed--to the happier, more living hues +of a different world. And I knew, and knew with amazement, that we had +talked the night through, and only sunk deeper in spring. + +“Good gracious! it’s morning!” she cried.--“Oh, no: it’s not so late,” +I assured her. “The nights are getting shorter.” She laughed and put +out a cigarette. “I must go home!” she said, springing up. + +We found a taxi in Greenwich Avenue. She gave the directions to the +driver in her precise and compelling fashion. I invited her, in the +taxi, to come with me to see McIlvaine’s ballet. “I’d love to!” she +replied. We made an engagement for Tuesday (it was Sunday morning). +Then, with hesitation, I explained that I was never at home in +the daytime, and that if she needed a place to work, I should be +glad to have her use my apartment. She demurred, but I thought not +unpersuadably. + +I left her at an incredible address beyond the Ninth Avenue +Elevated--on Twelfth Street, almost at the docks--one of two or three +red-brick houses among warehouses and sordid saloons. We parted, she +quite tired and pale, but with a queer tense final vibration even as I +left her in the doorway, just before, quickly closing the door, she +seemed to disappear in a flash. + +It was day. I walked home through a little open square--Abingdon +Square, I saw with surprise: I had never heard of it before, though +it lay almost around the corner from where I lived. I gazed vaguely +at a statue of a man in a little triangular park and wondered who it +was--some legislator or some patriot, perhaps--some patriot in the old +style, like Garibaldi in Washington Square--some great man I had never +heard of in that region I had never discovered. Farther on, I became +aware of a kind of monumental stone pergola--it seemed to me then to +be in marble--which I didn’t understand--and which in my weariness, my +happy weariness, I didn’t try to. Some downtown equivalent of Grant’s +Tomb--but who was buried in it? It was almost like a temple. I was +still moving in that strange daytime world into which, by staying up +all night, I seemed to have been translated. Now the Village was at +last revealed to me; it had that day come alive about me, and I felt +myself part of its life. I, like them, had turned my back on all that +world of mediocre aims and prosaic compromises; and at that price--what +brave spirit would not pay it?--I had been set free to follow poetry! + +In Bank Street, as I passed a presser’s shop, it occurred to me that it +would be, after all, a difficulty about the story which I had had the +idea of writing when I had heard about Ray Coleman’s thief, that the +presser’s boy would probably have escaped as soon as the wife opened +the door. + +When I came back to my rooms again, they seemed no longer, through the +drowsy eyes of day, my own familiar husk: there was the couch where she +had sat--there was the ash-tray full of ashes--there were the glasses +from which we had drunk. I poured out the last sweet dregs of peach +brandy. + +It was Sunday--I did not have to work. I dumped the Sunday paper on +the couch. I pulled down the shades in my bedroom--the sun made them +glow dull orange. I pulled Dante out and read the lines about the green +flag at Verona--and the scene with Beatrice that began, “_Dante, perchè +Virgilio se ne vada--grieve not, thou needst must grieve for another +wound!_”--but scarcely paying attention to the words, I pushed the book +back to the table and turned over on my cheek. Something or other I had +come for, I had found. + + * * * * * + +It was characteristic of Hugo Bamman--with whom I had gone to prep +school (though we had afterwards gone to different colleges), and +whose point of view, up to the night I met Rita, had, as I say, so +much influenced my own--that, at the height of a convivial evening, +he should take a sudden and determined departure. Even at parties +in Greenwich Village, with which he was in principle more nearly +sympathetic than with parties anywhere else, he would carefully isolate +his hat or hang it up in some specially conspicuous place. He was never +sure, even in the Village, when he might not feel that it was urgently +needed, as had been the case on the evening I have described, after his +argument with Ray Coleman. And when he once had his hat in his hands, +it was impossible to keep him. It was at the same time as if he had +suddenly become frightened, and as if he were under some obligation of +reporting for duty elsewhere. + +And it was true that he did become frightened, and that he was, in a +certain sense, at the orders of a higher obligation. Hugo’s father +had been a well-to-do lawyer of a Philadelphia Quaker family; his +mother, a Bostonian. The elder Bamman, after serving with distinction +through three administrations at Washington as Solicitor General, +had been dislodged by the advent of the Democrats; and had thereupon +retired from public life and occupied himself with writing books. He +knew Shakespeare and Milton by heart and was given to quoting them +in conversation, and he already had a reputation for unconventional +political views; but nobody had been quite prepared for the +opinions which he now made public. His first book, which was called +_Representative Government, and the Way and the Light_, began with an +extremely realistic, and even cynical, discussion of American public +life and ended, with quotations from Isaiah, on an unexpected note of +religious clairvoyance. + +It was said sometimes that Mr. Bamman had been embittered by his +enforced retirement; sometimes, that he was insane. It was not that he +had prophesied good of the Democrats: on the contrary, he had predicted +the worst; but he had appeared also to repudiate the Republicans. He +had asserted that, between the two parties, there was not a pin to +choose--that both were lost in corruption and error; and, what was +worse, that one could hope for nothing better from the society which +accepted their leadership and from the religion which allowed them to +survive. The book excited a certain amount of interest, was made the +subject of editorials; then was completely forgotten by everybody. +If I had not happened to know Hugo, I should never have looked it up +and read it. Thereafter--his wife having died and his sons gone away +to school--Mr. Bamman left Washington altogether and secluded himself +on a lonely island in an Adirondack lake, where he lived on fish and +game, cooked all his own meals and struck off another book even more +realistically pungent and even more apocalyptic than the first. He had +vowed to stay the winter out in his cabin, but in February he caught a +bad cold which developed into pneumonia, and, despite his protests, he +had to be removed to a town where he could have medical attention. His +sons were telegraphed at their school; and Hugo, blinking at his sudden +release from the agonizing life of prep school, where the boys made fun +of his ebullient stuttering, his inability to pronounce _r_, his stiff +intractable black hair, and his clothes, which were bought for him by +an aunt and which always looked too young for him, lifted his goggles +from the frozen ground and gazed about him with singular relief at the +ice-ponds and white houses of the North; read nervously half a chapter +of Meredith; and, at last, heard his father, dying, mingle texts from +Isaiah and Ezekiel with anxious queries about the pump at his camp, +which he seemed to fear was irremediably frozen, and with the names of +his sisters and his wife. + +Hugo Bamman, after his father’s death, had spent his vacations with +the aunt in Philadelphia who had selected his neckties and suits, and +he had rebelled against her so violently, that he soon found himself +under suspicion of having inherited his father’s “queerness.” But the +more the aunt, who was an admirable person and felt her responsibility +acutely, tried to inculcate sound principles in Hugo, the more +resentfully did he shy away from them. Save for an occasional peevish +outbreak, however, he remained generally docile; and his own docility +increased his resentment. While he was still at school and college, his +heresies were mostly confined to matters of literature and of minor +social convention. But during the third year of the War, though he was +to graduate the following spring, he suddenly left college and enlisted +in the American Ambulance. In spite of his Quaker tradition, he was at +that time full of romantic enthusiasm for the cause of the Allies, and +had composed, for the college magazine, an eloquent editorial which +began with Joan of Arc and ended with Villiers de L’Isle-Adam. When +America joined the Allies, he went over to an American medical unit. +Hugo served throughout the War; but he came out with different emotions +from those which had carried him in. He never told me much about his +adventures, and never indeed, at this time, talked much about himself, +so that my account of his experience in the Army is derived largely +from the well-known novel which he afterward wrote on the subject +and which seemed such a striking contrast to the rather precious and +exotic little poems, reminiscent of the eighteen-nineties, which he had +published in the college magazine. + +From Hugo’s novel, then, it would appear that during the first months +of his ambulance-driving, he was still sustained by his romantic faith +and preoccupied with proving to himself his own capacity for endurance +and courage. He tells us of the hero of his novel, that though most +of the wounded men he had been carrying turned out to have died on +the way, he had never felt so happy in his life as after successfully +bringing his ambulance through the craters and geysers of a +bombardment. At that time, after his first physical sinkings of nausea +and fear, he had been able to line up corpses on the floor of the field +hospital with less emotion than he had once arranged books on the +shelves of his bookcases at college, and had incinerated amputated legs +with less of real regret than he had once burnt discarded manuscripts. + +But after America had entered the War, Hugo enlisted in the American +army and found himself posted, with the rank of sergeant, during the +dull and disheartened winter of 1917, at an American base hospital in +the Vosges, some distance behind the lines. One afternoon, he had gone +for a walk in the hills, and come out finally in the public square +of a tiny mountain village. A circle of people were standing about +the body of a wild sow which had been killed by a hunter and which, +bristled like the piny ridges of her northern forests and with her jaws +asnarl in death, lay flat, her belly ripped open and her little ones, +brightly striped and in a day or two to have been farrowed, stretched +out limp beside her on the ground, while the hunter bargained over the +carcasses and the dogs sniffed at the blood. A deep tenderness and +sadness overwhelmed him for the little wild pigs; and he watched with +horror the nonchalance of the hunter: he began to rage within himself +against the violators of life. Then he was chilled with self-contempt. +He took refuge in a little café and fortified himself with brandy. Then +he went back to the base hospital. + +There was a major of the medical corps who kicked and cuffed his +patients, and who was in the habit of amusing himself, on his evening +rounds of the wards, by tearing the zinc-oxide bandages off the raw and +running wounds of the gas cases. Hugo complained of this major to the +commanding officer of the unit: he had always feared his superiors more +than any amount of shell-fire. + +Soon thereafter, returning in the morning, just before reveille, from +the local château, where he often went to dinner and sometimes, by +private understanding with the other sergeants and the guards, was able +to spend the night, he was, to his surprise, picked up by the Military +Police, put under arrest, court-martialled and convicted, and sent off +under guard to a prison-camp. As a sergeant he had been lax with his +men; and, at the court-martial, he was accused of having abetted all +their misdeeds: of these misdeeds he had never even known, but when +he tried to explain this to the court-martial, the effect was equally +unhappy. + +On his arrival in the prison-camp, all his belongings, including +private letters, his money and his watch, were taken from him. He saw +the photograph of another man’s sweetheart torn up before his face. +The first morning, when he was led out in lockstep with the other +prisoners, the ranks fell into disorder, and the sergeants set upon the +men and clubbed them with what were known as “dizzy-sticks,” while the +officers looked on. This was repeated every morning, and Hugo learned +that the confusion in the ranks was brought about by the sergeants +themselves: the sergeant at the head of the line would order the +prisoners to hurry up while the sergeant at the end would order them to +slow down. Hugo was struck in the mouth one day and two of his teeth +knocked out (he had the scar across his lips all his life). After this +ceremony, which the sergeants called “morning exercise,” the prisoners +were drilled before machine-guns. + +The food was scant bread and thin soup; and on the third day of Hugo’s +imprisonment, two colored boys got into the kitchen and tried to steal +something to eat. One of the boys was caught, blackjacked, beaten and +dragged bleeding to solitary confinement. When he had sufficiently +recovered, an attempt was made, by order of the officer in command, to +induce him to reveal the name of his accomplice: the boy was chained +for four hours to a wall, while the sergeants threatened and cursed +him, beat him on the soles of his feet and singed off most of his hair. +In the meantime, however, the accomplice had cut his own throat with a +razor-blade. Two days afterwards, a big Texan, who had tried to strike +one of the guards when the latter had assailed him with a blackjack, +was shot down, in the presence of the men, by the commanding officer. +At the end of three weeks, however, Hugo was finally released through +the intervention of his elder brother, who was already a major in the +Adjutant-General’s department and to whom Hugo had managed to send a +letter before he had left his unit. + +Hugo’s further participation in the War was of rather a half-hearted +character. Now, it was no longer the Germans who were the enemy, but +the governing classes of the world. + +By the time he had been discharged from the service, he had become +a social revolutionist; and his reaction against the complacent and +conventional, the capitalistic, world from which he came, reached +lengths almost grotesque. He hated this world because he feared it, and +he feared it because he knew how much of it there was still left in +himself. He was haunted by veritable hobgoblins which wore the aspect +of doubles of himself. A visit to any of the members of his family +was enough to throw him into a panic. He would afterwards describe it +in terms which would almost have been excessive on the part of one +resuscitated from drowning. “On a Sunday afternoon in Washington,” he +would gasp, “you go out into the stweet--and you see all those little +bwick houses--and the weather is suffocating--and you look at the +people on the stweet and they don’t seem to be going anywhere--and you +think that, if you stayed there long yourself, you’d probably get like +that, too--and yet you haven’t got the mowal stwength to leave!” Or, +“I was staying with a cousin of mine at Cambwidge--my cousin is being +gwoomed for some big job at Harvard, and it weduced me to such a state +of depwession!--Did you ever know any of these young men who are being +gwoomed for big jobs?--Well, first their hair falls out--then they have +to buy glasses--then they have to appear at certain times and places +wearing a silk hat--then their teeth go and they get false teeth--false +teeth are almost as important as a silk hat, and it isn’t everybody who +can make his teeth drop out just by auto-suggestion--if they can do +that, they’ve got the stuff!--I’d said I was coming back to Cambwidge, +one night after I’d gone in to have dinner in Boston, but I couldn’t +face it!--I couldn’t get a berth at the station, so I sat up all night +in the day-coach!” (This sort of thing was possible for Hugo, because +he purposely never travelled with a suit-case, but only with an old +musette-bag, which he had brought back from France.) Yet I have heard +him, when Boston was disparaged, unexpectedly come to its defense with +a eulogy of Thoreau and Garrison. + +Whenever he introduced into his novels representatives of the +“cultivated” class to which he himself belonged, he would never allow +them to figure save in hideous caricature--the result of his having +discerned, seized upon and isolated in them, those ignoble middle-class +qualities which they shared with the families of the _nouveaux riches_ +manufacturers and railroad magnates whom they ridiculed. And, on these +occasions of visiting his relatives, by the very force of his fixed +intense belief in their incurable perversity and prejudice, he had +a faculty for trapping them into absurdities which did not at all +represent their real views. These Hugo would make careful note of, as +he returned to New York on the train, leaving the cousins and uncles +a little blank. His aunt in Philadelphia, for example, with whom Hugo +had spent so much of his boyhood, had been, by reason of her Quaker +tradition, strongly disposed to admire his war book, though she was +offended by the bad language of the characters: it always appeared, +however, when she attempted to talk to him about it, that, in deploring +this particular feature, she was damning the whole book. + +Hugo’s elder brother, especially, though, unlike the other members of +the family, he did himself profess progressive views, affected Hugo in +a fatal way. This elder brother had studied for the ministry, but had +found himself unable to accept the doctrines of the Episcopal Church +save in a highly rationalized form: as a consequence, he had gone in +for sociology, and, after the War, had become a professor of sociology +in a small New England college. When Hugo went to visit his brother, +the latter would remonstrate with him severely and unremittingly. +He would, for example, point out to Hugo the serious impropriety of +the latter’s having published certain scurrilous verses in a radical +magazine. He would argue along lines of social responsibility: the +real purport of the objectionable metaphors would be understood by +very few readers, whereas the rest would see only obscenity and +unpatriotic sentiments; this would hurt Hugo’s reputation and weaken +his influence as a publicist, etc., etc. Such discussions infuriated +Hugo all the more because his brother always went on the assumption +that he recognized the same evils with which Hugo was so passionately +preoccupied and that he had it as much at heart to discover the proper +way of remedying them: Hugo’s brother’s social ideas and Hugo’s, when +stated in a certain way by the former, appeared indistinguishable. +These visits were further embarrassed by the apprehensions of Hugo’s +sister-in-law: she seemed always on edge for fear Hugo, whose manners +were excellent, might advance, in the presence of the Dean’s or the +President’s wife, with whom she was closely allied, some subversive +opinion. + +Another bugaboo which pursued Hugo--another monster which he lived in +terror of allowing to swallow him up--was the college dilettante--that +is to say, the superior undergraduate who takes tea with the snobbish +Latin professor, plays Debussy at the club after the girls from the +house-party have left, and goes about with a small group of friends +who gossip over the politics of the dramatic club and giggle over the +mustache of the brunette who waits on the counter at the pastry shop +where they buy cinnamon buns. These friends, like Hugo himself, had +been affected by their experience in the War: but, in their case, it +had had usually the effect of leaving them merely demoralized and +dispirited, writing fragmentary learned poetry, full of gall and +resignation, in imitation of T. S. Eliot. These friends used to make +fun of Hugo for the obstinate persistence with which--inordinately +fastidious and shy--he had trained himself to speak in public +(overcoming his tendency to stutter, though not his inability to +pronounce _r_), and had even attained a certain reputation as an orator +at strikers’ meetings and demonstrations for civil liberty. Hugo’s +friends, as a rule, disparaged the admirable literary gifts--the logic, +the solid imagination and the feeling for pungent language--which were +disguised by the deliberate plainness and the colloquial carelessness +of Hugo’s novels, pamphlets and appeals. + +And Hugo himself would have been the last person to call their +attention to his merits. Since the War, the discussion of literature +had affected him like his memories of college, and the spectre of the +modern literary man, whom he had encountered at New York parties and +in Paris cafés, came to accompany, and to merge with, the spectre +of the æsthetic undergraduate. Though he had in his youth been +full of literary enthusiasms, he now habitually treated the great +writers--including those whom he most admired, from Plato to James +Joyce--in a manner cavalier almost to the point of hysteria. It +was partly, I suppose, that Hugo had never forgotten young country +boys from Arkansas and Georgia who could neither read nor write, +bewilderedly drafted into the army and pitted against young Germans +who had studied Goethe in the gymnasia--the accumulated masterpieces +of literature having apparently not in any way affected the fates +of either. But it was also that he continually tended, by some +natural gravitation which enraged him, to find himself comfortably at +home among the sallow-faced reviewers and the review-writing poets +and novelists who relieved the mediocrity of their days by the +gin-drinking and ribaldry of their evenings. At these gatherings, they +were able to convince themselves that they were not merely dreary +book-worms and hacks, but men of taste and wit, citizens of the world; +and it was partly this anti-academic pose which made Hugo--himself +violently anti-academic--eager at first to attend their parties. But +he soon divined the pit of ashes at the bottom of the gin-bottle, and +shied off as he had done from his family and from the companions of +his college days; and literary society was soon added to his index of +phobias. + +When Hugo put himself into a novel, it was always in caricature--as +the little Johnny Boston-Beans of the comic papers of his youth, or +as some incredibly fatuous and inept young college intellectual who +died of tuberculosis or fell into a subway construction. I have seen +him shudder at the sight of a handful of volumes of Max Beerbohm, whom +he had himself enjoyed reading at college, which I was unpacking in a +new apartment; and I have rarely heard him use bad language (though he +admired it on the part of others) save when the name of Henry James was +mentioned. This continual shying away made Hugo a little difficult, +since he was constantly objecting, not merely to what you had said, +but to what he thought you were going to say. Thus, if you remarked +to him of W. Z. Foster that Foster had the barren rigid strength of +a piston in a steel-mill, he would interrupt you with, “Well, I’d +rather see an effective and hard-hitting machine like Foster than a +jerry-built ornamental bank-building in a phony classical style, +like Harding!”--and so plunge into a spirited tirade against the +industrial system, which you vainly tried to avert with explanations +that you did not admire Harding, that you did admire Foster, etc. +Or if you were going out to dinner with him and complained that the +sentimental Yiddish soloist at Zincovitz’s restaurant was beginning to +get on your nerves, he would be off with, “Well, I can’t stand those +little tea-rooms where they have copies of _Town and Country_ lying +around!”--little tea-rooms of whose existence you had never even known. + +He was rather afraid of women, and seemed never to fall in love. I +suppose he regarded women as the most dangerous representatives of +those forces of conservatism and inertia against which his whole life +was a protest: but I am convinced that he cherished, in his heart, the +most romantic expectations. I believe that he was always hoping for +some straight, dark, spare, realistic girl revolutionist, who would be +to him a comrade and a partner; but that in fact, he was invariably +alienated from the types of emancipated women whom he encountered +in the Village, by an unconfessed but ineradicable instinct which +rejected them as not being ladies. He would, of course, shy away from +this instinct and overwhelm them with politeness, with sympathy, with +determined good-fellowship; but this effusion masked a retreat. I think +he was affected, in this connection, by the same peculiar and incurable +isolation which had made him seem to himself, during the War, almost +indifferent to the sufferings of the soldiers till he found himself +brimming with tears at the sight of a slaughtered sow. So he would flee +from even parties in the Village, when an appropriate situation arose +for playing a rôle in some woman’s life, and go home to write with +passion, almost with amorous feeling, of some girl bandit who had been +harshly sentenced and brutally denounced by a stupid judge--of whom he +had read in his evening paper. + +For Hugo was really on close terms with no one. As soon as he had +sampled the conversation and caught the social flavor of a household +or a group, he would simply go straight away and bottle a specimen for +his books, where he would assign it to its proper place in the economic +structure. He distrusted his family and his early associates, because +he believed that they had sold their souls to capitalist institutions; +but though he chose to live exclusively with outlaws, in whom he was +always discovering qualities heroic and picturesque to the point of +allegory, he never managed really to be one of them and perhaps never +trusted them, either. So tough remained the insulation between himself +and the rest of humanity--the insulation of his Puritan temperament and +his genteel American breeding, reinforced by his artist’s detachment +and his special situation. Hugo once told me of an illiterate Arkansas +boy, lying wounded in a field hospital, who, thinking Hugo a superior +person, had been unwilling to ask him to write a letter, and who had +finally had to beg the favor of another wounded man nearly as helpless +as himself. + +And so he walked among us like a human penance for the shortcomings +of a whole class and culture--of the society which, in America, had +paralyzed in his friends and himself half the normal responses to +life; which had sterilized its women with refinement; which had lived +on industrial investments and washed its hands of the corruption of +politics; which had outlawed its men of genius or intimidated them with +taboos; which so strangely had driven his father to his Adirondack lake +and, on the rare and brief occasions when he returned for a wedding or +a funeral, had seemed to Hugo’s eyes to sadden him, as, to the latter’s +heartiness and wit, the other members of the family had returned only +so much that was energetically arid, so much that was self-confidently +timid and so much that was cheerfully cold; and which had desolated +Hugo’s own soul, when, through empty afternoons of boyhood, he had +wondered why he seemed so impotent to break the spell of his tutoring +in the morning, his aunt’s nap after lunch, the people for tea in the +afternoon and his late luxurious reading in bed, to work on a paper, +to ship on a whaler or to live on a ranch in the West; and which had +finally inflicted on him the shame of that day when he had found the +crippled Arkansan dictating his letter to his wife to a man half-flayed +with mustard-gas--the shame of knowing that a fellow sufferer and one +who had suffered more than he, had been afraid to ask him to render +what was perhaps the only service for which his education had fitted +him. + +I have said, a whole class and culture; but Hugo had one other memory +of his father, which was afterwards, he told me once, to take on for +him a special significance. They had been lunching at the New York +club of the university from which his father had graduated and to +which Hugo was soon to go, and the elder Bamman had commented during +lunch with humorous disapproval and with imperturbable surprise on +the inferior quality of the men whom he observed in the dining-room +about him: on their way out, as Mr. Bamman was getting into his coat, +he had been violently jostled by a young man in a blue suit and +bone-rimmed spectacles, who was in a great hurry, but who hurriedly +apologized. Mr. Bamman was broad-shouldered and well set-up, and he +still wore a fine Olympian beard and one of those flat-crowned derbies +which were fashionable in the eighties (he remained something of a +dandy even after he had become a recluse); but, at the moment of the +impact, as Mr. Bamman looked dazedly around, Hugo had caught on his +father’s face the shadow of feebleness and pain. And he had realized +then for the first time that his father had no longer the prestige of +an acknowledged leader of the community, nor even of a distinguished +person: he was a figure of isolation, bewilderment and fatigue. + +In the America where Hugo came to manhood, there was, in a sense, only +a single class and a single culture; one found it behind every façade, +one felt it through every uniform--and not merely among those members +of society whom it had already become fashionable to ridicule: the +small business man, the hired reformer, the windbag politician--but in +the cramped mind of the clever lawyer, for whom intellectual dignity +and freedom had been forbidden by the interests which he served; +in the grandeur of the medical specialist’s waiting-room and the +impoverishment of science which it masked; in the educated clergyman +turned evangelist and vying with the mountebanks of Methodism; alike +in the silk hat of the labor leader and in the homely and hollow +plain-spokenness of the self-made industrial master; and even in the +universities, with their presidents held in subjection by millionaire +trustees, with their middle-class timidity about raising, in class +or conversation, the real political, moral or æsthetic problems of +the time; even in the best of the theatre, where incompetence and +indifference almost invariably betrayed the beauty of the noblest text; +even in literature, where an ignorant criticism was ready to declare +every apprentice a master; in that whole machine of interrelated +interests, which kept literature, theatre, learning, church, +medicine, politics and law, all fixed in their mediocre functions, +all constrained by the fear of their neighbors, all intent on their +bank accounts--all that appalling susceptibility to regimentation +by “business” and that incapacity for discipline of self, all that +voracity for physical comfort, all that pervading commonness of mind, +which, even in those sections of society from which Hugo’s father had +come and which had at least produced a few men like him, now debased +their distinction to luxury and made cowards of their leaders. It was, +perhaps, after all, hardly necessary to find special explanations +for Hugo’s fear of committing himself, of giving hostages to any +group--which moved beside him like Pascal’s abyss. It was, perhaps, +after all, not unnatural that there should come a moment, in every +company, when Hugo would want to snatch his hat, to say good-by and get +away. + + + + + II + + +We worked in silence, dismantling the walls and packing Rita’s +belongings. + +Rita herself had left us: some one had knocked at the door, and she had +gone into the front room. We had heard her receive a male caller and +carry on a decisive, rapid conversation. And she had now been away so +long that, deprived of her peremptory commands and made uneasy by the +presence of the visitor, we no longer spoke to each other. Duff Burdan, +the young man whom at Ray Coleman’s I had taken for a baseball player, +but who had turned out to be actually a painter, was laboring over +Rita’s suit-case, in the broken strap of which, with a great air of +masculine effectiveness, he was gouging extra holes with a nail-file. +The young Jew was taking down the pictures and wrapping them carefully +in newspapers: we had only rarely seen him at Rita’s and had not +expected to see him to-day: he was very quiet, polite and well-dressed, +and we resented as complacency his modest amiability. But Duff Burdan +and I were also resenting each other. + +And in the stillness which had ensued on hammering down the last +boards of a packing-case, I heard the moaning of boat-whistles from +the harbor; and my heart horribly sank. So we had used to hear them +in summer--their sobbing, melodious and remote--in the late afternoon +shadow; or at night, when the rumorous hum of summer came in through +the open windows, when the summer world, which had already been +sleeping gently by day, seemed scarcely to slumber at night: their +trombone and oboe notes--so one night she had imagined Stokowski +conducting a symphony of river-noises from the top of the Singer +Building. + +I stood up and tried not to hear them--tried to level on the objects +about me a prosaic disenchanted gaze, as if by force of will I could +insulate them and, impervious to the aromatic smell of perfume and +cigarettes--the odor of her hair--so put myself out of reach of that +current which had charged them with feeling and which still gave them +the power to shock me. They were meagre and battered, it was true; the +damaged electric heater; the little wooden cot, with the strip of batik +above it; the sewing-machine; the potted cactus; the water-color of an +Indian corn-dance, with its delicate red-and-black figures distinct +against egg-shell white (it had been sent her, like the cactus, I +never failed to remember, by an unforgotten admirer who had gone for +his health to New Mexico and who was always on the point of coming +back); the purple abstract painting of an eggplant taking shape amid +a maelstrom of female membranes (which had been given her by another +admirer about whom I had always wondered, but whose identity she had +never revealed); the bookcase, with its rubbed and broken volumes, so +fantastically miscellaneous, in which one could read, as in geological +strata, the so various interests and tastes of the men whom Rita had +known. + +I looked away, and my eyes involuntarily sought the half-open door to +the sitting-room. There I could see them standing at last by the door +which led out to the staircase: Rita was half turned away, but I had a +glimpse of the face of her companion: he was an undistinguished, thin +and dingy-eyed young man, commonly dressed. I saw him take some bills +from Rita and put them away in his pocket. + +When she came back, she gave a sharp look round. “Where’s my little +Buddha?” she demanded. I told her I had packed it in the box. “Well, +you just get it right out again! I didn’t want it packed! It will be +smashed to bits!” I assured her I had packed it carefully. “No: it’ll +be broken in that box, just as sure as sure! I think I’ll take it with +me--I’ll carry it myself.” + +“I’ll carry it over separately, when the other things go, if you +want me to,” Duff Burdan volunteered. “Will you promise not to break +it?--No, I think I’d better take it myself.” “What do you think I am--a +smasher of images?” She laughed on her precise little notes: “You +promise not to let it get broken?--promise!--If I come back and find +that Buddha broken, I’ll never speak to you again!--Oh, don’t pack +that Indian corn-dance with the other pictures!” she interrupted young +Kaufmann. “I _do_ want to take that with me!--Can you get it in the +suit-case, Duff?--or couldn’t you strap it some way on the outside?” + +Duff Burdan dealt with this problem. “Everything here is to go, is it?” +he asked, looking round. “Yes, everything,” she replied. “Are you sure +you’ll have room for it all?” “Sure: I’m throwing out a whole lot of +my own junk.” “It’s so sweet of you to offer to keep it for me!--Don’t +let anybody borrow my books!” she admonished him, the moment after. + +I looked at my watch and announced that it was time to get a taxi--Duff +Burdan was storing her furniture, but I was to see her off. + +Those stairs which I had climbed so many times to find, at the top, +her little figure, intense and sharp even standing in the doorway and +dark against the light of the door, so that it seemed sometimes like a +knife on which I was running--those stairs where too often lately I had +felt that, in answering the doorbell, she had been hoping for some one +else--as I descended them this afternoon, it was not without relief at +the thought that I should never have to climb them after to-day. + +And was that he, that sloppily dressed reporter, that fellow from some +insurance office, to whom Rita had been giving money--was that the +visitor she had been always expecting, whom she would rather have seen +than myself? I was glad of a new reason for disgust, of a new pretext +for hating those stairs--and yet that hatred, as I knew, was only fear, +the fear of remembering how much I had loved them. And such bitterness +was ignoble, I knew--for houses were things to put away, like worn-out +clothes, with the phases of our life, with the emotions with which life +was clothed. And was not emotion here worn out?--on my side as well as +on Rita’s--had I not come myself to dislike the cold house, the sordid +staircase, the saloon with its hanging blinds, the oppressive tunnel of +the El, the bleak stony waste of the docks, where late one night I had +walked so leadenly, not finding Rita at home? Had I not said to myself +that afternoon, on my way to Rita’s house for the last time: “Well, +thank God, I’ll never have to come back to this damned address again! +I’ll be out of prison at last!” + +And now I could see that the winter sun was bright on a colored +cigarette-poster, and that the school-girls returning from school +were prettier than any school-girls had seemed to me for many +months. I compared one of them with Rita, to the advantage of the +school-girl--Rita had lately been looking rather badly. I should be +free to love another girl now! I thought of Daisy, whom I had seen the +night before and who had seemed to me unexpectedly desirable. If I +could only keep up my spirit--if I could only play the game according +to the sportsman’s code which Rita had been trying to teach me so +gravely and so sweetly--if I could only, I told myself, do that, then +in the long run, all might be right between us--because I had not +nagged her or wearied her, because I had proved myself her peer, as +prompt to offer all for love and as brave to bear its passing. If I +could only remember that the days were not bricks to be laid row on +row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety +and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart, the fires which +keep the poet alive as the citizen never lives, but which burn all the +roofs of security! Be glad, be proud, to end so well--before that music +of the harbor--I could hear it now again, as I came back to Rita’s with +the taxi--before that music had lost its beauty--for so one could hear +it as beautiful forever! + +Back in the apartment, I found that a new visitor had arrived to +say good-by to Rita. It was a young man from Columbus, Ohio, whom +I remembered having met with Rita one evening when we had gone to +the theatre. He was one of those curious Westerners who dress like +Westerners, but who speak like Philadelphians. The night Rita had +recognized him at the theatre, she had seemed disquietingly glad to see +him, and my first instinct had been to identify him as the admirer in +Santa Fé who had sent her the corn-dance and the cactus, and of whose +arrival I lived in dread. When he had turned out not to be this person, +I had been exceedingly relieved, and as Rita had never afterward +mentioned him, I had forgotten him completely. Now, however, his +presence seemed ominous: it was evident that Rita had been seeing him. +I remembered that, when we had met him at the theatre, he had said that +he was soon going West, and that, I calculated now, had been at least a +month ago. It had, it seemed to me, been just about a month that things +had been going particularly badly between Rita and me. + +She was hurried but gay with the partings--I thought that she had +become more good-natured since the arrival of the new admirer. Just +before she got into the taxi, she kissed everybody good-by. The +Westerner, with unctuous heartiness, was all for seeing her off, but +she explained that that was my prerogative--and she kissed him a second +time. I felt suddenly that it was an impudence for her to have divided +with such scrupulous fairness, between Duff Burdan and me, the honor of +seeing her off and the honor of storing her furniture.--Yes: she had +certainly got out of an engagement with me a very short time after +that night when we had met the Ohioan at the theatre! + +I saw, as I helped her into the taxi, that she was carrying the little +potted cactus, to which I had taken an intense dislike: it had a stubby +and prickled stalk, and it had with time come to wear to my eyes a +significance all too plainly phallic. + +In the taxi, I at first said nothing: we had both become, together, so +tense. But when we had turned into Seventh Avenue, I looked at her and +smiled and said, “Well!” She puckered her eyes and mouth in one of her +ecstatic grins and spasmodically threw back her head in the movement +which had once made me feel that she was lifting me into her ecstasy, +but which now seemed to draw her away from me: “Oh, it’s so _wonderful_ +to be going away where I won’t have to see any more people!” + +Yes: she had left me already--long ago. She would not let me come +with her to that world. I must return to the common world--and what +should I do there now? Those qualities of desperate independence and of +intellectual passion which had once exalted me so, could make me now so +glum! + +Rita had decided overnight to leave New York. One of her aunts, who +still lived in the little up-state town where Rita had been born, had +lately fallen ill, and Rita’s mother, with whom Rita shared her rooms, +had gone to stay with her sister. One evening, when I came to get +Rita to take her out to the opera, I had found her, not even dressed +for dinner, sitting amidst packets of old letters on the day-bed, and +passionately preoccupied with the idea of returning to her native +place, sustaining the old age of her aunt, and consecrating herself in +solitude to the composition of a play in verse. I saw, to my annoyance, +that she had been crying. And at the _Rosenkavalier_ she had relapsed +into that punctual responsiveness, with its effect of deliberate +polite effort, which I had noted in her the night I had first met +her, but which she had dropped when I had got to know her better. She +had intimated, on the way home in the taxi, that she considered the +_Rosenkavalier_ a little cheap. And I had expected her to like it so +much! + +I had hoped then that her intention to leave town, which I had +applauded with insincerity, would evaporate like any other of those +suddenly excited desires--to go West, to go to Paris, to return to the +stage again--which she would as suddenly forget; and I was dismayed +when I found that she persisted in it. She had sat down and written +half-a-dozen stories for a popular magazine, and had succeeded in +getting an advance from the editor (who was also wildly in love with +her), on the strength of a promise of more stories. She had then paid +her arrears of rent and had persuaded the Italian landlord to allow her +to break her lease. + +I had made to Rita’s sigh of relief, in the taxi on our way to +the station, some appropriate reply, conscientious and devoid of +conviction; but I saw now that we were already at the Waldorf, where, +with the traffic cut across us, we stopped. + +I looked toward her and saw that her face, with her old fur collar +close about her neck, was pale and demoralized and ill, staring and +pinched. For the first time since that night in Bank Street, when her +cheeks had flushed a hot pink and, leaning back against my couch, she +had revealed her long Muse’s throat, her face seemed sharp-featured +and tarnished. And though I knew well enough, even then, that, if all +I had once adored in that face--passion, intelligence, daring--seemed +now to have disappeared, it was strained nerves and hard living which +had killed them--her poverty which had put her at the mercy of all +that importunate pack--myself among them--who had been forever ringing +her doorbell, and all that alien life of the city which had taxed her +almost to dementia (the crosstown traffic stopped; our own commenced +to move: she had told me once that the traffic terrified her)--though +all my conscious feelings were of horror that some one I so honored +should be injured, that I should ever come to find unlovely a being I +had once so loved; yet that savagery of the human animal which makes us +fall upon our wounded fellows, especially those whom we have feared, +impelled me to say cuttingly and abruptly: “You have no faith!” + +“What do you mean--religious faith?” she asked, as if she had been +talking to a stranger--but I cut her short with, “No: the other +kind--good faith, I mean!” + +“You know very well,” she replied, suddenly speaking to me directly, +“you know very well that I know what sort of person I am--but if I +wasn’t that sort of person, I shouldn’t be the sort of person who would +do what I did with you.... I was cruel to other people then.” + +“Yes,” I said, “I know: but when I see some of the people you care +about, you can’t blame me if I take it a little hard!” + +“What do you mean?” she demanded. + +“I was thinking of this afternoon.” + +“Duff Burdan and Max Kaufmann are both nice boys--I thought you liked +them. And I’m not in love with either of them, if that’s what you mean!” + +“I wasn’t thinking about them--I think they’re all right.” + +“I hadn’t seen Max Kaufmann for months,” she went on. “He came around +to see me just because he heard that I was going away. It was nice of +him to come.” + +“Who was that fellow that needed a shave?” + +“Who do you mean?” Her wonder made me angry.--“You don’t mean my +brother?” she added, after a moment. + +“Was that your brother?” I pretended to be amused by my own jealous +suspicions. I had forgotten she had a brother, though she had told me +about him once. + +“Yes,” she answered. “My brother came in this afternoon.” + +“What does your brother do?” I inquired. + +“He drinks,” she said bitterly, without humor. + +As I remembered the visitor’s face, dim-eyed and devoid of personality, +I could see now in it Rita’s sharp nose and her eyes of indefinite +color. And my first feeling was one of relief that the shabby nonentity +I had seen, to whom Rita had given money, was merely Rita’s brother. +But the discovery, as I found in a moment, had the effect of increasing +my resentment: if my worst suspicions had been justified, I could +at least, to that extent, have despised her, could even perhaps have +washed my hands of her. But now I knew that if it was not the unknown +visitor, as unconsciously I must have hoped, with whom Rita had been +lately preoccupied, it must have been the young man from Columbus, who +was obviously attractive and eligible. + +“At least,” I brought out after a pause, “this big-hearted guy from the +West isn’t a relation of yours?” + +She was silent. Then she began, with her effect of dramatic sincerity +which I had come to resent and dread: “It’s so false of you to nag me +and scold me like this. You ought to understand how I feel! You ought +to be able to see what I’ve been going through. If you really loved me, +you wouldn’t want to say hateful things to me!--But I don’t care now--I +don’t care about any of you!” + +“I know: I do understand,” I replied. “I hope that you get a lot of +work done.” But I wanted to say, “That’s nonsense, and disingenuous +besides, to say that my being jealous means that I don’t love you +enough. And then you accuse me of being ‘false’!” + +I stared out at the motor-cars and taxis which were mounting the +enormous driveway of the viaduct that girds the Grand Central. They had +still, I found, the power to stir in me, like those taxis I had heard +from the window the night I had first met Rita, the excitement and +hope of the city. They were urgent and expectant now, crowding up-town +along their private gallery, to dinners in apartments and hotels, where +romances and adventures were beginning, where people were drinking +cocktails and becoming amusing and gay (as I had not been able to be +for so long)--to parties, to night-clubs, to plays, to the theatrical +iridescent Forties, which I had never properly explored and where I +knew that Daisy was living. + +“Did you know Daisy had left Ray Coleman and gone back to the stage?” I +asked. + +“No,” said Rita. I could see that her hands were quivering with +tenseness. + +“I think it’s probably a darn good thing, don’t you?” By approving of +Daisy’s vagaries, I perhaps hoped to make reparation for my harshness +about her own. + +“Yes,” she answered, “I suppose it is.” + +“I like her so much,” I continued. “I saw her at Sue Borglum’s last +night. She has a wonderful sort of good-natured frankness. I really +think, in fact, that she’s one of the girls I know that I like best.” + +I hoped, no doubt, to make Rita believe that I had been happy the night +before without her. She had told me--what seemed to me improbable--that +she wanted to be left alone, that it always made her nervous to have +people around while she was packing. I tried to fix my mind on Daisy +as I had seen her at Sue Borglum’s party: with bare arms in a girlish +black evening-gown--with her candid American smile and her continual +spark of wisecracks. And it occurred to me now in the taxi that, as +soon as I had seen Rita off--I had never hitherto been able to think +beyond that event--I should be free to cultivate Daisy. I could go at +once to her place on Forty-fourth Street--I could ask her to dinner +to-night! And this realization sustained me. + +We had been silent, but now Rita began again: “It’s so _false_ of you +to talk to me like that! You used to understand things so well! You +know that the first time I met you, you said that Ray Coleman was +bitter because he hated his newspaper work, and that that had made +him harsh with Daisy. Well, don’t you think that _my_ life makes _me_ +bitter? Don’t you think _I_ hate the way I’ve been living?” + +“I know: I’m sorry,” I replied, and I took her hand and pressed it, +without tenderness or warmth. + +We had stopped at the station door. I gave Rita’s suit-case to a porter. + +“Don’t you want him to carry that?” I asked, nodding toward the cactus. + +“Oh, no!” she guarded it, grinning. “I wouldn’t trust it to +anybody--I’m afraid that something might happen to it!” + +All the rest was mechanical--when we kissed good-by, most of all. I sat +down in the train for a moment, and told her what an excellent thing I +thought it for her to go away alone and write: I hoped that she would +accomplish a great deal. “You must produce a masterpiece,” I said. “Let +me see it when it’s done, won’t you?” + +I plunged out into the hurrying concourse and made straight for the +door to Forty-fourth Street. + +On my way--as I was passing a news-stand--at the sight of a bright red +magazine-cover, I found myself shocked by that terrible current of +which the furniture and pictures of Twelfth Street, of which everything +connected with Rita, had for so long been such active conductors. It +was the second-rate fiction magazine for which Rita had written the +stories that had enabled her to leave New York. She had never been +willing to sign them--I remembered that now--though they were really +not at all discreditable: she was incapable of writing badly. But as +she had never taken them seriously, as she had written them merely to +make money, she had always hated them, and had insisted on signing them +with a pseudonym, though she could have gotten a far better price for +them by publishing them over her own name. + +I turned suddenly back toward the train, as if I could still have +redeemed our farewell from the memory of my bitterness and spite--but +the man was taking down the sign. + + * * * * * + +The news of her aunt’s illness had deeply affected Rita; and though I +was sceptical and suspicious at the time, I see now that it had really +preoccupied her to the exclusion of everything else. Aunt Sarah, who +was always called “Aunt Sadie,” had been the artistic member of the +family; and Rita had originally been named for her. But when Rita +had first come to New York, and had acted for a short time on the +stage, she had substituted “Rita” for her real name, and she had never +afterwards been able to bring herself to be known as Sarah again. +Her first poems had been published over her stage name. And now she +tortured herself with the fear that this might have hurt Aunt Sadie’s +feelings. With her passionate concentration, she had talked to me of +that extraordinary little woman with the birdlike nose and neck, and +the square enormous brow (which Rita had inherited). + +Aunt Sadie had, in her youth, been the organist in the church and the +gay getter-up of church “sociables”; she had wanted to go to Paris to +study music, and had nearly succeeded. But the men of Aunt Sadie’s +family--like Rita’s brother--had not made life easy for the women: +some drank; some had broken down; some had simply disappeared. When +she had found she could not go to Paris, Aunt Sadie had decided to +move to Watertown and teach music; but a last brother, who kept the +general store in the little town where they lived, had been disabled +by a paralytic stroke, and Aunt Sadie had had to take care of him and +help with the store, for which she presently found herself assuming +the whole responsibility. But as she had always been hopelessly +perplexed by the local problems of supply and demand, she was gradually +deprived of her trade by a newer and more modern store, which had a +soda-fountain with tables. Now she had come down with a bad case of +pleurisy, and was unable to work at all. + +And Rita, brooding on the slow extinction of Aunt Sadie’s personality, +tragically reproached herself for having suppressed Aunt Sadie’s name. +She talked to me about Aunt Sadie till I could see the chipped and +yellow keys of her little upright piano, and the elegantly engrossed +scrolleries of the old-fashioned black-and-white music-covers, more +clearly than the objects in the room in which we were, and could +hear those other scrolleries, both elegant and noble, of the voices +of the fugue, weaving an indelible watermark of beauty in the air of +the cramped little parlor behind the general store. Aunt Sadie had +taught Rita to play; and Rita still remembered some fragments of Handel +and Bach, which sometimes tumbled out without warning when she found +herself beside a piano, all rumpled, as it were, but still fresh, from +the disordered wardrobe of her mind. These gusts of music surprised +me at first: they were so spontaneous, light-hearted and lovely--so +different from the sometimes tight, and always sober, style of her +poetry; and I have thought since that they were perhaps the only thing +which I ever knew of Rita as she had been in her girlhood. + +For Rita, too, had spent long years in the little up-state town; had +sung in the church choir and known all the hymns by heart; had studied +French from the book, where there was no one to teach her to speak it, +and had read Baudelaire and Gautier when she could not pronounce their +names. And before she had finally gone to college on the scholarship +which she had won by fierce solitary effort, she had almost, she told +me, abandoned the hope of ever sloughing off that life of the small +American town, which she put on when she woke every morning, like some +cursed indestructible dress of girlhood, too worn, too soiled, too +small. + +Yet, I never heard her speak with resentment of her early environment: +it was herself, and not the place or its people, which, when she told +me of her youth, she made me see. When Sinclair Lewis wrote his famous +novel, in its own way so intense, he made one feel that the American +small town had rendered the whole of American life unpalatable, had +flavored it with a rank flat taste, like some minute organism which +spoils the drinking-water. But my impression of the town from which +Rita had come was made up merely of those moments in Rita’s life +which she had told me of passing there and which seemed to me, like +everything else about her, to have taken place outside the common +world. She had described to me once, for example, how, lying late awake +at night, she had heard some drunkard, returning from the town, singing +clearly in the empty country road, dark-and-clear with the autumn moon: + + “I wooed her in the summer-time + And in the winter, too; + And all night long I held her in my arms, + Just to shield her from the foggy, foggy dew!” + +To-day, when I can sort out the drunkard, the song which every one +knows, the little New-York-State town, the girl who wants to get +away--though I summon all the drunkards, all the bawdy songs, all the +discontented girls, all the towns, that I have ever known--I can see +nothing but that moment of Rita’s girlhood, of her girlhood too long +detained, which seemed to hang half clear black and half a turbid +crystal, in the radiant-dark country night, like a drop of foggy dew--I +see all through the eyes of the poet, to whom our social history is +invisible. + +_I_ made differences between New York and Paris; between New Orleans +and New York. _I_ had wondered, at Ray Coleman’s party, whether +McIlvaine were a Scotchman or a Jew; I had insisted on finding out from +Hugo in what city Daisy was born. And though I did not, like Hugo, +compute incomes nor peg out the people I encountered in the economic +web, I marked degrees of education and was always trying to identify +accents. I had noted, in this way, in Rita, the Irish fickle-mindedness +and sharpness; the traces of the superior person in the small +provincial community; of the bold and original personality in the +community of college girls, who had, however, learned the language of +the rest--that savorless language of young segregated women constantly +dosed by older women with the highest feminine ideals; the intonations +of the American actress of English light comedy; and, finally, +dominating all, her rôle of princess and rake of the Village. But it +made no difference how she talked, where she had been, what she wore, +where she lived, what boors she caught up in her life, what threadbare +images she used--the being who filled my mind had little relation +to all this. I first learned from Rita that the importance, the +significance, of what we see, is supplied by the mind which perceives +them--that the power which creates, through imagination and passion, +never stops to appraise the value of the materials with which it works, +but itself assigns them value. + +And just as, despite the fact that Aunt Sadie presented herself as an +obstacle to my happiness, that I was by no means, at the time of which +I write, in a mood to share Rita’s anguish for the muted and dying +vibrations of that steel-silver and tight-strung soul--so she had +compelled me, against my taste and interest, to accept all her friends +and admirers at the value she put upon them herself. These friends, +when I came to meet them, almost always impressed me at first as quite +unlike what I had heard about them from Rita--as insipid, ineffective, +or underbred. And I used at first to find my jealousy allayed at +discovering that Rita’s swans were geese--(though I suppose that I +still felt, in the case of the Greenwich Villagers proper, a sort of +jealousy at their having participated with Rita in the braver exploits +of an earlier day--a day which I myself had come too late for: I had +the sense that even the worst of Rita’s friends had at least “fired one +ringing shot and passed”). But young journalists cheapened by their +work; pottering young writers, like myself; debauched or epicene young +poets, with neither genius nor self-respect; mediocre middle-aged +literary men, with bald heads and stale reputations; and all that odd +mixed company of lawyers, contractors and brokers--I was obliged to +grant even to these each his gift or his special distinction--and, even +then, I could never be sure how far they were distinctions or gifts +which Rita herself had lent them. So constant and so acute was her need +to intensify experience that, just as she would cherish the timbre of +certain boat-whistles which she heard from her apartment in Twelfth +Street, just as she would sometimes keep for days a tangerine or an +apple which she had bought at the grocer’s on the corner, but of which, +when she had brought it home, she had become fascinated by the color +or the shape--so she had the faculty of endowing her admirers with +qualities which they themselves may hardly have hoped to possess. With +Rita, the vagabond poet would prove to have an interesting temperament; +the journalist, an honest conviction; the obsolete editor or essayist, +something of the grace of a man of the world; and those bewitched +business men and brokers, who so furiously pursued her, seemed to +have caught from Rita’s own imagination some disturbing conception +of themselves which they were straining to realize--she told me once +how a man who had seen her on but a single occasion, and whom she +had afterwards succeeded in evading, had recognized her again, after +years, merely from hearing her voice over the telephone, when he had by +mistake been connected with a wire on which Rita was talking to some +one else. + +But it was not merely that Rita disregarded all those social and moral +considerations which occupy so large a place in the minds of ordinary +people. It was not merely that she was free from prejudices; but that +character itself, in the sense in which it may amuse us, stimulate +our curiosity or appear to us picturesque, did not interest her. She +was not at all the sort of woman who enjoys collecting celebrities or +types: gossip did not entertain her; she had little taste for novels. +In her own stories and plays, there were no characters, but merely +situations and emotions. And so, not seeing at all in her friends what +most of them saw in each other, she made it possible for them, in +their relation to her, to play rôles for which the world would never +have cast them. It was as if, in their contacts with Rita, they had +become somehow facets of herself, their longings given body by Rita’s +imagination and their vitality doubled by her force. They had become +aspects of her own personality; and so wear for me even to-day--the +middle-western journalist with the Abraham-Lincoln voice, the snow and +quiet of the diamond winter night when she had spoken to me, after he +had left, of the purity and peace of his spirit of which she suggested +that the longings were yet so poignant--the international vagabond, the +muffled vagueness of the August dusk when we had carried him part way +up Fifth Avenue in the victoria in which we were riding, and she had +afterwards, in Central Park, among the asphalt windings and dark walls, +where the lovers embraced mute on their benches, sung some Spanish +songs he had taught her--and the man in New Mexico, alas! the sweet +pathos of the short days she had known him and which she had described +to me with her brief telling eloquence on the very afternoon in Bank +Street when I had counted on finding eloquence myself to persuade her +to marry me--the bare two days and a half she had spent with that +tubercular landscape painter whom she had loved, she said, the best of +all! + +I myself had good cause to be grateful: when I had read Rita my +indifferent verses, she would always afterwards take them from me and +go through them intently herself, repeating aloud the lines which +pleased her, so that they had the sound, brought to life by her voice, +of being a great deal better than they were; and, at the time, I +never remembered that she had also a knack of reading certain poems +by Coventry Patmore and Arthur Henry Clough, poets whom I detested, +so that they sounded as if she had written them herself.--Even during +our last conversation when I had scolded and complained in the taxi, +she had appealed to a generosity for which I was really by no means +remarkable by reminding me of those excuses, perfunctory and largely +hypocritical, which I had made long ago for Ray Coleman. + +In any case, we swarmed to her apartment, devoured her time and her +force, and finally, at the period of which I write, had rendered her +life intolerable. I had told her once of something that Hugo had said +of literary people together, as one saw them in New York or Paris--that +they were like the leeches in a druggist’s jar: dependent for +nourishment on blood, but reduced to the desperate extremity of preying +on one another. Rita had added: “Yes, and I’m the druggist, when he +puts his hand in the jar!” + +So I had learned in half a year from Rita that from another point of +view than Hugo’s, the world may present quite different values, and +give rise to quite different problems. But I had learned something +else from Rita, which it had cost me more pain to learn. When I had +taken her to task in the taxi, reproaching her for lack of “faith,” +she had forced me to confront a principle which, since I had known +her, had haunted and tormented me, but which I had hitherto tried to +evade; and even she, who must have lived with it so long, was reluctant +to confess it to me: she had pretended for a moment to mistake what +I meant. As Hugo had learned from his weeks in the prison-camp that +men who are beaten become brutalized and that poor men starve; so +I had been obliged to learn from Rita that any great strength or +excellence of character must be, by its very nature, incompatible +with qualities of other kinds--that it carries with it weaknesses and +ignominies inseparable from excellence and strength. I should, I dare +say, like every one else, always have been willing to admit both these +truths: they would, in fact, have seemed to me platitudes. But I had +had to learn them both from experience, and once I had felt their +reality, it had seemed to me that all our social and moral conventions +had been based on the opposite assumptions--that a person who had +had either revelation (either Rita’s revelation or Hugo’s), and who +uncompromisingly met life on that basis, must, like Hugo or Rita, be a +rebel, and in consequence, an enemy of society. + +For Rita, who exalted every impulse and made dramatic every relation, +neither happiness nor drama could endure. I taunted her once, in +those later days, with Wilde’s saying that, “_He who lives more lives +than one, more deaths than one must die_.” But it was not deaths of +the body that she suffered: it was the deaths of all those human +relations--it was her rejection, day after day and year after year, +of all the natural bonds and understandings which make up the greater +part of human life--comfort, security, children, the protection and +devotion of a husband, even simple comradeship and affection--so that +she was still, at the time of which I write, an outlaw living from +hand to mouth, always poor and often ill, bedevilled day and night +by all the persons she no longer had the energy to excite to her own +pitch of incandescence. And even at the time I had taunted her, even +at the time I had denounced her in the cab, it was my consciousness +of this strength which had continued to keep me in subjection. For I +knew now, in spite of all my pain, in spite of all my complaints and +indignation, that if we have the instinct to admire what is admirable, +we must also have the courage, and must not rage against--nor even try +to minimize--that which makes it possible and mars it. + + * * * * * + +Outside, the light had grown cold; but the white and orange power of +the lamps was beginning to dominate the town. The day seemed hardly now +to have been serious: it was withdrawing, by arrangement with the city, +which had so much to do at night. The taxis on Vanderbilt Avenue were +wedging, honking and hitching, in their efforts to turn and to pass; +but I dodged energetically through them and headed west. + +If I could only find Daisy home! If only she were free to-night! I had +refrained from telephoning on purpose: I wanted so desperately to see +her, even if she were going out. + +I could still feel the thrill of Fifth Avenue--I scarcely glanced a +second time at a face which looked a little like Rita’s. And that +fascinating region of the Forties, where I had lately gone so rarely--I +found that I could still peer with interest at the photographs in front +of the theatres and at the faces of the passing women, who seemed +sometimes, with their theatrical make-ups, as miraculously, ideally +pretty as women on the stage. + +The apartment-house where Daisy lived was narrow and very plain: there +was merely a bare hall, with a telephone man, who also opened the door +and ran the elevator. + +He took me up to her floor, and I knocked at her room, but no one +answered; then, as the door had been left half-open, I went inside. +The lights had also been left on, and the chairs and the floor were +littered with a débris of stockings and chemises, as surprisingly +slight and as sordid as the shreds of exploded balloons. On the table +stood an empty spaghetti can, two plates gummed with cold tomato +sauce, several tumblers with the stale remains of drinks, and an empty +gin-bottle. It seemed to me from the contents of the tumblers, that +they had begun by drinking gin and ginger-ale, fallen back on gin and +bathroom water, and probably ended up with raw gin. + +It would be hours now, no doubt, before her rehearsal was over: I had +come far too early, had better go away and come back. I looked about +the room, and then searched in my pockets, for paper to write her a +note, but could find nothing except a letter from a distinguished +professor of philosophy whom I had greatly admired at college and to +whom I had sent a book of Rita’s poems: he had written me, thanking +me for the poems and inviting me to come to see him. I had thrown the +envelope away, but my respect for the professor had been so strong that +I had never destroyed his letter, though my preoccupation with Rita had +prevented my answering it. + +But now, as I could find nothing else--finally reflecting that +colleges, after all, were places where poets were put to sleep--I tore +off part of the back page of the letter, just below the signature, and +sitting down in a mission morris-chair, I wrote a note to Daisy. + +When I had finished the note, however, I turned over the pages of the +magazine--it was a movie magazine called _Photo-Life_--which I had +picked up to hold the paper on. Suddenly becalmed in that abandoned +apartment, high aloft on that inaccessible floor, with the elevator +between me and the street, I found that I had dropped into a pocket +of inertia and lassitude. When I had exhausted _Photo-Life_, I looked +carefully, with the same serious interest, through _Zit’s Weekly_, +the _Cosmopolitan_ and a tabloid of two days before. Then, with the +magazines in my lap, I remained blank and incapable of rising: I +apprehended the onset of despair. What motive had I for moving? I could +no longer go to see Rita, and was there any one else in New York whom I +really desired to see? It was as if the emptiness of Daisy’s room had +represented the emptiness of the world where I had been left by Rita’s +departure. I had not slept much for several nights, and I felt that my +joints were heavy. The telephone rang: I did not answer it. + +There was a phonograph beside me on the table: it was a small cheap +portable one. I regarded it with hebetude. Without Daisy, it seemed +as depressing as the glasses, as the garments, as the magazines. But +involuntarily grasping at a last resource against despair, I picked up +the heap of phonograph records, lying half-shuffled, like a battered +pack of cards. Scrupulously I pushed them even and ran through them, +reading all the titles: _With You in Paradise_, from _Pretty Kitty_, +sung by Bee Brewster; _Ben Bolt_, by John McCormack; _Chanson +Hindoue_, Saxophone solo; _So’s Your Old Man_, Fox Trot, by Fred Casey +and His Burglar-Alarm Boys; _La Forza del Destino_, Red Seal, Duet by +Caruso and Scotti; _Mamie Rose_, Fox Trot, by Jake King and His Eight +Kentucky Mocking-Birds. I remembered that _Mamie Rose_ was the fox-trot +which Daisy had so offended by playing, the night of Ray Coleman’s +party, when Rita had been reciting her poems. I got up and put it on +the machine. + +The record, I noted, as I wound the crank, had been made by the +American Melody Company: it was a pale and unpleasant brown and seemed +to have been moulded in river mud. Remembering the handsome victrola +which I had seen at Ray Coleman’s apartment, I pitied Daisy a little; +yet she had had the right sort of bravery, the bravery to go free when +love had passed! The only needles I could find were in an ash-tray, +under the débris of cigarette-butts and burnt matches, and it was +impossible to tell the used from the new: the first I tried began with +a blurt, a hideous stuttering blur. Still dominated by Rita’s tastes, +I began to feel that turning on the phonograph would be like applying +to myself a dental engine: Rita had not cared for popular music--had +thought lightly of even the _Rosenkavalier!_ + +The second needle turned out no better, but I let it go; and presently +_Mamie Rose_ emerged as a kind of fiendish jig, running itself off at +impossible speed: too fast, too nasal, too shrill. I made an effort +to regulate it and only effected a harrowing descent of pitch, like +the gasping and discordant howl of some demon inside the machine +crying out in intolerable agony at being compressed from one tempo to +another. I listened for the first night I had met Daisy, but merely +succeeded in having my heart wrung by the first night I had heard +Rita’s poems. The spring of the little phonograph held only for a +single winding, so that the record began too fast and was already +running down before it came to the end; but, what was worse, it had +no horn, so that the demon inside the box, beating in its cramped +black prison like a panic-stricken bat, had to squeeze out, as it +were, through a crack--the little aperture at the base of the “arm.” +No wonder it chittered and squealed so thinly, like an unwinding wire +of sound, like a wire, rusted, wry and eaten, worn away so that it +seemed almost snapping, or so rough that it would stick and stammer +over some echolaliac phrase! So completely had the music been robbed +of resonance that it seemed a mere memorandum of music, as if some +writer in sound had scribbled down the skeleton of an orchestration, +with the brasses brief tin-whistle blasts and raspings, the strings +a jotted jingle of cicada-chirpings, and the tympani scored as tiny +explosions and echoless crashes of glass. And the “vocal refrain,” +when it suddenly began, had as little in common with the human voice +as the noises of the instruments had with music: it gave the effect of +some mere momentary modulation in the quick mechanical jigging of a +railroad train--it was simply a sharper shrillness, a more insistent +iteration: _There she goes--Mamie Rose--She--loves--me!--Don’t seem +to show it!--How do I know it?--It’s A. B. C.!--She’s_ a crackle of +high-pitched syllables ending with _aggravatin’. But when I want a +little lovin’ she don’t keep me waitin’!--She’s proud and snooty--But +she’s my cutie!--She tells me_ a second slip of dulled and driven +cogs--_That’s how I knows--Mamie Rose!--She--loves--me!_ The jazz +departed, with redoubled violence and complexities of deformation, into +a last frantic charivari--then, after a brief unpleasing flourish, was +bitten off as abruptly as it began. + +I lifted the needle, clicked the little catch and went over to the +window. Outside, gaped a blank abyss: several buildings had just +been demolished and the vacuum of vacancy they had left seemed to be +sucking with its blind raw walls for some structure to rush in and +fill it. I felt again the horrible imminence of despair, and I tried +to summon against that blank outlook and against the mechanical voice +of the phonograph--those negations of flesh and blood--an intensified +vision of Daisy: her alert little yellow head, with its deep stainings +of Irish rust, her lips still moist through carnation rouge, and the +robust little organism of her body, which made its home among those +stone and metal cells, not merely resilient to their surface, but +making their grindings quicken and feed it.--Then a sudden voice said, +“Hello!” and with a start I turned round and saw her. + +I asked her to come to dinner with me. She had on a dark blue street +dress, and she looked tired; I had been imagining her animated and +hearty, but it seemed to me now that she was frail: her eyes, a lighter +green than Rita’s, looked colorless and dim.--“Why--I’d like to,” she +demurred, “but I’ve got a sort of a date.” + +The telephone rang again and she answered it: I heard her begging +off with her little-girl-like “Well, I don’t think I will--I’m so +tired--I just got back from rehearsal--I think I’ll go to bed--well, I +don’t think I will--you go--well, I don’t want to--all right, see you +to-morrow!” + +And I felt, not merely flattered, but also reassured, to find that +Daisy seemed to think it natural to set aside her previous engagements +in favor of those higher obligations--of which I had learned the +importance from Rita--of following one’s own inclination. + +“I’m glad you came,” she explained. “I didn’t want to go to that party +and if you hadn’t come, I would have gone.” “Where was it?” I asked. +“At Myra Busch’s.” “Are her parties any fun?” She shook her head +contemptuously: “No: she just has a lot of twirps.--I can’t stand ’em!” + +“How cute you sounded talking over the telephone!” “Yes: strong men +weep!” “No, really: you’re awfully cute!” “You don’t mean it really, +do you? It’s a panic, isn’t it?” “No: I do mean it! You sounded cute.” +(Now that I had to renew my assurances, I began to feel insincere--I +had so long praised no one but Rita, and had praised her with such +passionate conviction, that I found now that it cost me an effort to +compliment any one else.) “Ray Coleman used to say that I had the +world’s worst voice on the telephone--he said I sounded like some awful +whining cash-girl.” Another proof of Ray’s stupidity! I could see what +he meant, but there was about Daisy’s speech something finely chiselled +like her features, so that I had scarcely been aware of her voice; and +my resentment at Ray’s stupid taste imparted to my compliments a new +fervor. + +“Shall I go out and get a drink?” I suggested. “That would be fine!” +said Daisy, brightening, and with the humorous consciousness of +brightening, that irony of the city I so liked in her. “As the English +actor said, when the girl said, ‘How about twenty-five dollars?’--‘That +would be a godsend!’--I’ll be getting dressed while you’re gone.” + +When I came back, she was still in the bathroom, and called out to me: +“You might pass me a drink in here, if you don’t mind.” I poured the +dregs out of one of the glasses and handed in some gin and ginger-ale: +her little naked arm, reached out from behind the door, had the +prettiness of a child’s.--“Now, you turn on the phonograph,” she called +to me, “so you won’t hear me use the what-not!” I started _Mamie Rose_ +again and poured out a drink for myself: the music seemed almost gay +and, when the record had come to an end, I put on another record. + +When she came out, she looked a good deal rosier and extremely clean: +she was dressed in a light blue dress, with a blue scarf dappled with +white, and wore straw-colored stockings. “How nice you look in your +blond clothes!” I told her. “Oh, this is just an old rag!” she squeaked +in a burlesque hen’s voice. “Well,” I insisted, “you look sweet!” +“I probably look like the Collapse of Western Civilization!” she +replied--but with a particularly charming smile. + +She turned off the phonograph, which had been gibbering like an +imbecile over a single unintelligible phrase. “That phonograph’s a +delight, isn’t it?” she said. “I took it with me when I left Ray, +because it was one of the only things I had left that had belonged to +me before I lived withum. Phil gave it to me on our honeymoon. Some of +those records are Ray’s, though, I guess.” I remembered Rita’s bookcase. + +“Phil was your first husband, was he?” “Yes: he’s my ex,” she +said.--She went on, after a moment: “Did you think I was really married +to Ray?” “Yes,” I said, “I did.” “I guess a good many people really +did. But we weren’t. It was a lucky thing, too: if I’d marriedum, it +would have been harder to leavum.” “Did you have a pretty trying time?” +I asked. “He wouldn’t let me do anything or go any place. If I went +out with anybody else, he’d burn up one of my dresses--he was great on +burning things up--I used to tellum that if he’d lived a little longer +ago, he’d have been burning witches.--He’d say that he didn’t buy me +clothes to have me go out with other men. And then when I did stay home +withum, I’d just have to listen to-um read to me out of the _Oxford +Book of English Verse_.--Finally, one night I got reckless and stayed +out for two days with Pete Bird”--(Pete Bird was the little man with +whom I had seen her talking at Ray Coleman’s and in whose company I had +found her the night before)--“and when I came back, he wouldn’t let me +in, so there was nothing to do but go looping again--I was plastered +for a week. Finally Gus Dunbar offered to let me stay here--it was +awfully decent ofum and he just did it out of friendliness. He helped +me get a job, too. I understand that Myra Busch is telling it around +the Village that I’m having a love-affair with Gus--but that’s +just absurd--he’s my oldest friend in New York: I knew him back in +Pittsburgh. He’s just my yes-man. He lets me sleep in the bed and he +sleeps on the couch. And besides, he’s sick!--He’s gone out of town and +I’m going to get a good rest. Oh, how I’m going to rest!” + +We continued the conversation in a chop-house, with red-and-white +checked table-cloths and the smell of a butcher-shop, where very large +sour pickles were served with every order, on the side. + +“What sort of a fellow is Pete Bird?” I inquired. “Isn’t he more or +less of a twirp?” “Well,” she said, “he did pretty well the other +night: he spent about a hundred and thirty dollars.” Even allowing +for the tremendous prestige which always attached in New York to the +spending of large sums of money, I felt a little that she was evading +my question, but I didn’t pursue the matter further: I seemed to divine +that Pete Bird was the man with whom she had broken her engagement to +go to Myra Busch’s that night. + +I asked Daisy how she had ever happened to run away with Ray. “I +metum in the Ritz Bar in Paris,” she explained. “Phil and I didn’t +care anything about each other, by that time--Phil was in love with +a French girl. I didn’t resent his having affairs with other women, +but he used to give her my clothes.--Besides, I didn’t want to have +people saying: ‘That poor little Mrs. Meissner, sitting around crying +her eyes out, while her husband goes with other women!’ Besides, Phil +and I had just been thrown out of our hotel. Phil had a lot of money +when I marriedum, but we spent it all. Ray came along and he seemed +to be pretty affluent at that time, and I was so tired of not paying +any bills.--I will say about Phil, though, that he did everything with +a grand air. Ray would get worried if a bill ran for as much as a +week--whereas Phil never thought of paying a bill, even if he had the +money. It was funny: when you were with Phil, you felt that you were +swell, even though you didn’t have a cent--but when you were with Ray, +even though everything was paid for and all the bellboys and everybody +tipped, you felt you were only trying to be swell.” + +I asked what Phil did. “He was a photographer,” she replied. “Not an +ordinary photographer, but one of these super-photographers. He only +took a picture about once every two months--he’d charge a hundred and +fifty dollars for a sitting. At least that’s what he did when he did +anything. He had money--at least, he did till his family wouldn’t +givum any more--so he didn’t really have to do anything.--He composed +songs, too.--But what he really worked hardest at was getting up +practical jokes. He’d spend hours sending out invitations to all the +worst bums in Paris, asking them to come to dinner at the house of +one of the social leaders of the American colony.” “What happened?” I +asked. “Well, they all showed up--all the dope-fiends and deadbeats, +and all the old drunken bozos that hang around the bars--all the most +undesirable Americans in Paris--and Mrs. Tilford was furious and almost +gottum arrested. Then another time, when he had to have lunch with +some friends of his family’s from Pittsburgh, he put camphorated oil on +the seats of all their chairs--well, camphorated oil makes you feel as +if you were freezing--so they all had to sit there at the table with +their fannies freezing and not knowing what was the trouble.” + +I laughed. “Well, that sort of thing,” she explained, “can get to be +pretty tiresome, if you live with it all the time. And I was his wife, +so I felt partly responsible. When some guest almost broke his back +on a chair that flattened out when you sat in it, I’d feel pretty +humiliated.--And then he’d work his gags on me. One day he left a note +for me, saying that he’d committed suicide. And I suppose he thought it +was a joke when he took half my clothes away and told me that he was +sending them to the devastated regions, and then gave ’em to-uz little +French twirp!” + +We had ordered ginger-ale, and had had some more gin: “You really look +marvellous in blue!” I said. She knocked herself under the chin: “That +sets me all up,” she said, meeting my gaze without blinking. Then she +dropped her eyes and added: “Phil really had a lot of charm, though.” + +“What shall we do after dinner?” I asked. “Take me to the movies!” she +said, smiling. “I’ve had a yen to see some movies all day: I want to do +something restful.--Take me to something funny.--I’m so glad you came +to-night! I’ve been beginning to feel like a twirp. If I keep getting +plastered like I have been, I’ll lose my job.--It’s so long since I’ve +been alone or had any place where I could go and be by myself. It +seems to me I haven’t done anything for weeks but sit around and be +funny for people I didn’t really care about.--Gee, I don’t know what +to do! When I begin to get paid, I can live on what I make. But I’ve +been afraid to sober up, because then I’d have to face the future.” +(She always gave to all her clichés--“facing the future,” etc.--a +special ironic emphasis.) “I can’t think of anybody I care about--I +haven’t even got a girl-friend any more: all the ones that I had are +off me now because Ray wouldn’t let me have ’em around. So I haven’t +even got anybody to laugh about things with.--Business of twisting +handkerchief.--Let’s go, before I have you in tears!” + +We had a reckless taxi-driver; but to me, strong with accelerations +of gin and with my normal masculine self-assurance, which Rita had +done so much to demoralize, now gratifyingly re-enforced by Daisy’s +feminine confession of helplessness and distress--it seemed to me at +that moment that I occupied a position of unchallengeable supremacy--it +seemed to me now that it had become possible for our taxi, at its +exhilarating giddy speed, to plunge through every opposition, to make +every obstruction give way. I marked with intensest vision the objects +which we seemed to ride down: an American Railway Express truck; a +woman with a German police dog; other scuttling and inferior taxis. +Rita had always been nervous about El posts; but, as we ripped our way +through the traffic, Daisy merely remarked: “Madcap Joe: the Demon +Driver!”--and as we erupted into Broadway: “You better stop him or +he’ll drive into the lobby!” + +I thought scornfully of Duff Burdan, who had been barking so long +on Rita’s doorstep, and who, for the privilege of storing Rita’s +furniture, for the certainty of seeing her again, had been willing to +render his studio uninhabitable. + +In the darkened moving-picture house, we found the news-reel passing +before us like a gray inconsecutive dream, and its images, as I +watched them, seemed to swell with the significance of dreams.--A +handsome buxom Sixteen-Year-Old Girl winning a Florida yacht-race in +a bathing-suit to the blaring triumphant pace of a red-white-and-blue +Sousa march. “She’s cute,” whispered Daisy, “isn’t she?” Yes: there +was the real native American poetry!--my spirit flashed again at the +thought of it--it had the daring and excitement of a poem!--and such +a spirit, which abandoned itself to the water and the wind, to the +speed of the flying yacht, would she not give herself also to love +beneath the nights of southern waters!--Mayor Hylan--_East Side, West +Side_--making a speech in New York: the flat-faced official visage, +the senseless savorless words of the American public figure--while the +brave filled the air with words of fire or slashed with white sails +and tanned arms the deep blue of Florida seas!--free America that flew +above those drones, that never paused for a thought of Mayor Hylan and +his imbecile servile speeches; in our eagerness, our taut attention, +stimulated more by the drinks than the film, Daisy and I were sitting +forward and our arms were pressing each other.--An aeroplane wafted +by a waltz--I had missed the title, my mind ablaze with the beauty of +poetry and sportsmanship--below, the city, flat as a map, a plane +shifted, not haphazardly, but with some underlying harmony and balance, +to a jerky succession of angles.--Laddy Boy’s Rival, a husky brought +to Washington, to the gallop of some lolloping dog music, by one of +Harding’s Secret Service Men--I whispered, “I believe that that husky +would make good presidential timber!” I glanced aside at Daisy and +saw her profile pale and clear as porcelain in the pale light from +the film, in which her pert little nose and chin showed a fineness +and purity of outline--an outline prolonged by the frail hand which, +with the fingertips lifted to the chin, received also, along fingers +and wrist, a pale porcelain border of light.--Members of the Municipal +Council at Baka, Japan, to the tune of _We’re Gentlemen of Japan_, +visit the city’s reservoir; they jump in and catch carp with their +hands: “I should think it would be bad enough,” whispered Daisy, “to +have to drink the carp, without drinking the municipal councillors,” +and I so threw myself forward in laughing at this that Daisy became +self-conscious about the pressure of our arms on the seat, and drew +a little away.--A slow-motion diving picture of champion woman +swimmers--they turned along the sweet lengthened rhythms of _All Alone +with the Telephone_, curving wonderfully through the air in moulded +recumbent postures and sending up, when they had slipped into the +water, a slowly condensing cloud of spray--how Rita would have loved +those slow parabolas, stripped clean of the flashiness of speed, as +tight-strung as the curve of a bow--she would have exclaimed of the +cloud of spray, “It’s like some lovely sort of punctuation--as if you +could punctuate a statue with some solid effect of light!”--The Prince +of Wales--_It’s a Long Way to Tipperary_--joking with a paralyzed +soldier--I wondered whether Rita would find the Prince of Wales +attractive, then reflected that, on the contrary, she would probably be +just perverse enough to prefer the paralyzed soldier: it occurred to me +now to consider that I was becoming too much preoccupied with Rita and +not paying enough attention to Daisy, so I moved my arm back against +hers.--Jo LeBlanc, Head of the New Central Ticket Office, playing +tennis to the jigging tune of _Tea for Two and Two for Tea_, to decide +who shall pay the religious expenses of one hundred Jewish children +to aid the Jewish Education Association Drive--“I bet the other man +loses, don’t you?” Daisy remarked. I wondered whether perhaps, after +all, I hadn’t been unfair to Max Kaufman--whether, perhaps, what I +had taken for complacency hadn’t been, after all, merely modesty--I +had a pang as I was revisited by the feeling that I had behaved badly +with Rita in the taxi.--Bishop Manning, to the firm exaltation of the +_Pilgrim’s Chorus_, receiving an emblematic pastoral staff, a huge +encrusted crozier, from the Chaplain of the House of Commons--Daisy and +I thought that Bishop Manning had the look of a priggish baby being +handed an enormous rattle: I put my hand gently over Daisy’s, which +lay beneath it cool and friendly.--A Chimpanzee Chauffeur: roguish +monkey music: _Yes, We Have No Bananas_; but I had fallen to reflecting +that, like some hero of a mediæval legend--the _Pilgrim’s Chorus_ and +the pastoral staff had made me see myself in that image--I had, for +a dreamlike space escaping measure, been shut away with Venus under +the hill, or, like Oisin, with some goddess of fairyland--that I had +been gone from the world of men, and only now, still blinking from the +Venusberg, still with the music of fairyland in my ears, still knowing +how the ache for the ideal may torture us like the ache for a drug of +which we have been deprived, beheld with joy, with bewildered relief, +the vision of Senator Oscar W. Underwood, who--to the rousing music +of _Dixie_--was making a speech at a Monster Barbecue in Montgomery, +Alabama--and found myself almost safe again in that familiar American +world, heterogeneous and absurd, which had ceased for so long to +seem real to me, of which I had never for so long been aware save to +repudiate it with scorn and impatience. The Oldest Human Remains, a +Skeleton of the Stone Age Discovered in an Oyster Bed: black bones +embedded in oysters: dull sombre chords--Rita could have done something +with this--something bitter about the fatuity of the twentieth-century +traveller who was pointing at the bones with his stick--or better--what +I could never have done: it was I who would have made easy capital out +of the traveller with the spectacles and the stick!--something simple, +troubling and hard about the bare black bones themselves. + +And the smoothly revolving globe, supported by a kneeling goddess and +scrolling suddenly and rapidly out--as if in the burst of an exciting +revelation--the title of the comedy that followed--affected me, in +a drop equally sudden, as idiotic and insupportable: now that I had +been brooding on those blackened bones, I had become impatient with +everything again--and I crushed my way across to the aisle, over +overcoats, seats, and knees. I got some waxed-paper cups from the +smoking-room, and Daisy and I, in the half-darkness, had a drink of +water and gin. The paper cups leaked, and we had to get it down at a +draft. + +On the screen, a dough-faced comedian with goggling horn-rimmed +glasses was enlisting in a fire-brigade.--An alarm!--he is the first +to respond--he rushes headlong for the fire-house pole, slides down it +head-first and remains at the bottom stunned: the firemen who follow +fall over him and pile up like a football scrimmage. We laughed at +this; and, on the way to the fire, the long hook-and-ladder truck, +whisking briskly around a corner with impossible nimbleness, caused +Daisy to laugh so violently that I thought again, as I had done on +the night when I had heard about her motor-cycle honeymoon, of that +American sense of motor-traffic which we had developed to such an +extraordinary degree--and which was now further played upon, in the +film, when the hero, in goggling innocence, allowed his hook-and-ladder +attachment to swing around at right-angles to the truck, so that +it swept the boulevard like a scythe, mowing the tops off all the +Fords, and never failing at every disaster to make Daisy laugh with +delight.--On the scene of the burning building, the hero was contending +with the hose, which enmeshed him like a boa-constrictor. The owner +of the building appeared, a pompous and imposing dignitary, in a +frock-coat and silk hat. “Oh, I hope he turns the hose on his hat, +don’t you?” whispered Daisy. And in a moment, just as the dignitary was +denouncing the clumsiness of the hero, an unexpected leak in the hose +cleanly squirted off the silk hat, which landed on an organ-grinder’s +monkey and gave rise to a fantastic chase. + +Such was our wild exhilaration over this that I reflected, as the chase +began to flag, how, only half a year ago, if I had gone to the same +film with Hugo, I should, in laughing at the ruin of the hat, have been +moved by something more than the impulse, the mischievous impulse of a +child, which I shared to-night with Daisy: I should have laughed with +both savagery and zeal. I should, like Hugo, have taken the silk hat as +a symbol; I should have made of its destruction an issue. And now at +last I became aware how completely my point of view had changed since +I had fallen in love with Rita and ceased to see much of Hugo. Had I +not myself, only a few days before, taken out my own silk hat to go +with Rita to the _Rosenkavalier_? I knew now that I no longer cared to +imitate Hugo’s intransigeance in matters of this kind: his rejection of +all the amenities of that civilized life of which he was himself the +product; his fixed belief that society was divided into two mutually +hostile classes, a proletariat and a bourgeoisie; his unquestioning +acceptance of the catchwords of the social revolution, and his hostile +and suspicious unwillingness to arrive at a human understanding with +people who lived by different catchwords--all this seemed to me +to-night the product of a superficial point of view, or, almost, of an +arrested development. For Rita, despite the revolt against conventions +which all her life implied, despite her long association with radicals, +had had really but little interest in politics: her revolt was a revolt +of the individual--and I had discovered to my surprise, when I had come +to discuss with her the personalities of the Village, her complete +lack of interest in, and, in some cases, her positive contempt for, +certain of the radical leaders who most generally commanded admiration; +and that, despite the atmosphere in which she lived, it was actually +possible to strike fire from her mind by reactionary or conventional +views, if they were delivered with the right ring of bravery. And I had +myself, oblivious of the film, taken to meditating so exaltedly on the +vanity of people’s opinions beside the deeper realities of character, +the insignificance of politics compared to clairvoyance and passion, +that I began to laugh only belatedly when I had already become aware +that Daisy was roaring over one of the captions. The hero with the +horn-rimmed spectacles had just been bitten by a small bull-terrier, +and had picked it up and bitten it back: the caption read, “See how you +like it yourself!” + +“Oh, I’m so glad you took me!” said Daisy. “I think it’s swell! I +just wanted to see something funny!” I slipped my hand over hers +again with sympathetic affection, and watched the rest of the comedy +leaning toward her and paying closer attention. We followed the picture +together, with a lively interchange of comment. + +“Well, I suppose you want to go to bed,” I said to Daisy as we +walked out into Broadway. I suggested that we might stop at a +restaurant and finish up the gin. “No,” she said, “I’m too tired for a +restaurant.--Why don’t you come up to my place and we can drink it up +there?--‘Should she ask him in?’ If he’s got anything to drink: Yes!” + +When we reached the room, the telephone was ringing. Daisy answered it, +speaking with some vehemence: “No: I don’t want to come--I’m tired, +I’ve gone to bed--well, I went out to get something to eat.--No, I +_don’t want_ to come!” + +She lay down upon the bed, propping her head on the pillow and crossing +her feet: she was wearing lizard-skin shoes, light brown and very +small, but quite different-looking, I reflected, from any shoes that +Rita wore: Rita’s feet, like everything about her, seemed to manage +to be attractive in a curious personal way quite apart from current +fashions of prettiness, whereas Daisy’s feet were pretty in an almost +perfect ideal way, like the small feet of the girls with slim ankles in +the drawings in magazines. + +“Well,” yawned Daisy, “this is where Mother takes a long refreshing +rest!” I handed her her gin and ginger-ale and sat down beside her, +drinking mine. “But I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to,” she added, +after a moment. “That’s why I want a drink.” + +“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you worried?” “No,” she replied. +“I’ve just got the heeby-jeebies!” “What’s the matter?” “I think +everybody’s a twirp!” “Are you in love?” “No; that’s the trouble.” +“You ought to be glad you’re not,” I said. “You have been, haven’t +you?” she asked. “Yes.” “You still are, aren’t you?” “No,” I +answered--“not any more.” She was trying to kick out of her shoes +without unbuttoning the straps, and I undid them and lifted them off. +“Thanks,” she said. “As soon as I lie down, I’m dead!” + +I held her firm little insteps for a moment in my hands: in pale +stockings, her tired and sweaty feet were like two little moist +cream-cheeses encased in covers of cloth: her body, which seemed now so +slight in its pale blue dress, lay as limp as a lettuce-leaf soaked by +the summer rain. + +“No,” I said. “You oughtn’t to be sorry if you’re not in love.” “I +know: that’s what I keep saying to myself when I think what damn fools +people make of themselves. But sometimes you feel the old aching in the +arm-pits--and it’s not just because you want to sleep with somebody +either.--You know the real reason that I asked you to come up here? It +was because I knew it would give me the willies to come back alone. As +soon as I get alone, everything seems so empty--I begin to get panicky. +Of course, it’s just the heeby-jeebies, though--after I’ve had a good +night’s sleep, I’ll be all right again.” + +A deep tenderness of sympathy seemed to flush my very mind, and I +almost felt she must feel its warmth as it brimmed from my soul and +bathed her. I put one arm about her shoulders and with the other hand +covered her breast--it was low and lapsed a little--Rita, for all her +small head, her small hands and feet, had had the bosom of some divine +being--and from Ray Coleman’s gesture at the party, when he had put his +arms about Daisy, and from McIlvaine’s plump little Venus, I had been +imagining Daisy’s breasts as little firm globes. I kissed her on the +neck--which was round and short and had no sculptural contours like +Rita’s--and she kissed me back on the cheek: it was like the kiss of a +little girl, some cousin or playmate from next door, whom, at ten, one +decides to marry, and the relief of that human kiss, that embrace of +simple comradeship, soothed the strain with which my spirit, with which +my body itself, had ached. + +I stretched myself beside her. If I had ever had any idea--playing the +part I had learned from Rita--of making love to Daisy that night. I +knew now that it had never been real, I could not now even conceive +it--it was so long since I had heard the boats as they moaned from +the harbor in Twelfth Street and the thought of them no longer moved +me, yet to try to love another woman on the day one had parted from +Rita!... And there began to take music in my weary, in my half-drunken, +mind the falling rhythm of a poem, the beginning of a sonnet of which, +the night before in my wakefulness, I had with obstinacy fixed in their +target the accurate shafts of the end. It took the form of an answer +to Daisy, and I found now that what had then been unbearable, because +written of myself for myself, now that I could write from the point of +departure of another’s fate than mine, now that I could dramatize my +fate for another--dignifying, or rather creating, for another person’s +mind--another’s mind which I merely imagined, since Daisy, it seemed, +hated poetry--a romance which should somehow console me for the wreck +and defilement of romance--now I could bear to return to the poem, and +to the pain which had stamped its images, putting another between them +and me--“_Ah, never sigh for love, for love is death!_”... + +She was asleep--I could hear her breath: it seemed so slight to supply +the fuel for that warm body I felt against my arm, that engine of +activity and desire!--I turned off the electric light, covered Daisy +over with a blanket, and lay down myself on the couch--and with the +silence of the mind, love was still. + + + + + III + + +I had made a dinner engagement with Daisy for the next evening but one +after the night when I had taken her to the movies; but the sudden +death of one of my aunts, who had for many years lived with my mother, +prevented my keeping it. I was obliged to go down to the country, and +for several weeks I commuted between my mother’s house and my work. +Sustained by the vision of Rita renouncing the vanities of passion and +vowed in solitude to her play, I applied myself to reading Sophocles, +who at college had always bored me, but of whom I had so often heard +it said that he saw life steadily and saw it whole that I wondered +whether, in my present situation, I mightn’t perhaps be able to benefit +by his wisdom. Rather, however, than risk a first evening alone in my +Bank Street apartment, where for so long I had seen no one but Rita, I +had asked Daisy to have dinner with me the night of my return to town. + +When I dropped my suit-case in the darkened sitting-room, with its +drawn blinds and its frigid radiator, I felt for a moment, with a +shudder, the shock of that current of emotion which I had hoped had +been for ever disconnected when Rita had moved out of Twelfth Street, +but which I found now that my own possessions, themselves saturated +with Rita, had also the power of conducting. At the sight of the couch, +the Leonardo (which Rita had admired), the Pernod peach-brandy bottle +on the little marble mantelpiece (I had kept it there ever since the +night when Rita had spoken of the label)--my heart sank as it had +done in Twelfth Street the day when I had heard the boat-whistles. +But I resolutely thought of Daisy--and as gaily as I had ever done, +it seemed to me, I took my bath, changed my clothes, picked out an +appropriate tie. I threw away the peach-brandy bottle, which the last +time I had looked at it on the mantel on the occasion of a ghastly +scene with Rita, I had had a violent impulse to smash as an outlet for +my exacerbated passion: it fell in the waste-basket with a thud which +astounded and routed my nerves. I was throwing in, as if to cover and +conceal it, all the circulars which had accumulated during my absence +when, on the tightened silence of the room, the telephone suddenly +blazed. + +It was somebody speaking for Daisy; I was to meet her now, not at Gus +Dunbar’s, but somewhere else--I couldn’t make out where: the voice--it +was a man’s--kept instructing me just to walk right in and to ask +for Mr. Somebody’s--he was at once so indistinct and so admirably +polite that I concluded he must be drunk. I asked if I could speak to +Daisy, and her voice was presently heard through the receiver--she +seemed faraway, facetious and vague. I tried to find out whether the +place I was to go to were a speakeasy or a private apartment--but she +only answered, “Yes,” and laughed, and then insisted that I should +walk right in and go right up to Somebody-or-other’s. I begged her +to spell out the name--and she began with loud-vibrating emphasis: +“M for mother--I for ’ighball--C for seasick--K for--Oh, you know +K!--L for laryngitis”--She began to laugh again, evidently at some +suggestion from somebody else in the room. I tried to check up on +the letters which I had already heard, but she broke in: “Just put +them all together and they spell love!”--then, with no relation to my +further questions: “Yes, ‘Mick’--just ask for Mick!--All right!--hurry +up!--Good-by!” She hung the receiver up: I had, however, got the +address. + +The taxi carried me far, too far--beyond Lexington Avenue--along East +Thirty-fourth Street: the neighborhood seemed to me sordid. I had hoped +to find Daisy, clean from her bath and with her lovely candid smile, as +on the night when I had taken her to the movies: I had looked forward +to watching her in the light of the little pink table-lamp, over the +white cloth and yellow wine of a brisk and bright French restaurant. + +We drew up at a narrow entrance which the driver located with +difficulty between a manufacturer of nasal syphons and a merchant of +rebuilt typewriters. It was the meagrest pretense of a doorway: a layer +of livid imitation marble, a length of blue-and-white rubber tiles. +I looked above the bells in vain for a name which began with Mick; +but then, in some of the grimy little frames, there were not even any +cards. I rang one of the nameless bells--but it awakened no responsive +click, and I rang another. + +A man was coming out of the hallway, and I asked him whether he knew +of a Mr. Mickle. I looked into dim and evasive eyes: I was appalled +to see that he had no chin, that his nose was an almost elephantine +proboscis and that his ears stood out from his head like those of an +elephant listening; he wore an old shabby overcoat and a curious gray +felt hat, which tended to be conical; his hands were non-prehensile, +and trembled. He shook his head without a word, in answer to my +question--and passed on like an apparition. I thought: He must live +alone!--he must have lived alone for so long that he is numb and can no +longer feel loneliness, can no longer feel even irritation at strangers +who are looking for friends and who hurriedly break in on his solitude. +And I resented such an existence, solitary, dismal, and uncouth, +resigned to drop out of the world, hoping only to be noticed by no +one; and I was repelled by his strange trunklike snout: my own nose, +I remembered, was bulbous, and, as I mounted the narrow staircase, it +seemed to me more bulbous than ever. + +The stairs turned above the typewriter shop, and I was confronted +by the cramped and crowded doors of cheap dentists and real-estate +offices. I explored the corridor, and found another staircase, and +climbed to another and darker hall, where there were no longer, as +below, any names painted on the doors. That was evidently where +people lived: it was as if the occupants had made their homes in the +chinks left by petty business: they seemed as narrowly confined, as +discouragingly inaccessible, as the inhabitants of a jail--and they +lacked even that common bond, that limited intercommunication; each +had stowed himself dumbly away at the bottom of his little slot, in +oblivion of the others: each asked only to be let alone at the end +of the herded day--behind the locked and anonymous door, presenting a +blank to all the rest, as they presented blanks to him. + +At random, I rang a bell--and, as if in confutation of my vision of +benumbed and sullen recluses, after shuffling precipitate noises +within, the door was suddenly flung open and there appeared a lady with +bright dyed red hair and a lacy dowdy dressing-gown who, at the barest +suggestion of a name which began with M-i-c-k, seemed transported by +enthusiasm. Yes: they lived just across the hall--just opposite her own +apartment. “Yes: they’re just in now,” she ran on, slopping over with +friendly helpfulness and with a simpering ladylike smile. “If you’d +come a little later, I don’t think you’d have found them home, because +they most always go out to dinner about seven o’clock!” She eagerly +crossed the hall in her voluminous negligé and rang the bell herself. +I thanked her, but she did not withdraw. She waited, repeating herself +and beaming. I thought her a little insane--from loneliness, I supposed. + +Some one was hastening from the depths within. Then Pete Bird opened +the door and confronted me with a goggling stare. The red-haired +woman still lingered in the hall as if she hoped for a little general +conversation, but Pete Bird merely asked me in, and shut the door +behind us. + +We passed through a little dark hallway and emerged into a narrow +sitting-room. I saw Daisy in a morris chair with her legs dangling +over one arm and her back against the other: she greeted me with an +odd unsmiling daze. And, still charmed by the memory of her paleness +when she had lain along the bed like a moonbeam the night that I had +taken her to the movies, I was horrified to find her now with touzled, +muddy hair and a sallow, puffy visage, in which the nose was an ignoble +little knob, blobbed in candle wax, and the eyes were two protruding +gooseberries, scored about with discolored skin: she was wearing a +greenish-blackish plaid. I took her hand: it was a cold little claw. + +I remarked that she looked quite different, that having her hair done +differently had transformed her: I saw now that the ragged effect had +been originally intentional. She said: “Yes, and I suppose you’re +going to tell me that it looks terrible, too.” “You look like a French +whore!” said Pete. “Well, you know what you look like?” said Daisy. +“You look like some kind of a goblin that’s been drowned at the bottom +of a well!” And it was true: with his gargoyle gaze, his haggard, +greenish cheeks, the deep furrows in his forehead and the ape-like +lines to his wide mouth, he had an aspect half immature and half +prematurely old, at once disaffected and aghast. There seemed to have +occurred, since I had talked to them on the telephone, some abysmal +lapse of hilarity. Yet Pete Bird’s double-breasted jacket, his spats, +the handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, and the collar of his blue +shirt fastened together by a small gold pin, gave to his appearance +and to the whole situation an odd indestructible note of urbanity and +smartness. + +In that atmosphere clouded by drunkenness, I glanced instinctively +about for a drink, and saw nothing but empty bottles and a débris of +the enormous thick crusts of delicatessen sandwiches, with the oiled +paper in which they had been wrapped. “There’s nothing to drink,” +declared Daisy with what I thought was a note of asperity. “What is +this place, anyway?” I asked. “Listen to-um!” said Daisy, indignantly. +“He expects us to tend bar for-um!” + +“No,” I explained, “I just meant, who lives here?” “It belongs to Larry +Mickler,” she replied, as if she had already, over the telephone, made +all this quite clear enough. “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Mickler,” said +Pete, with the invincible gentlemanly instinct to be informative and +agreeable from his grave at the bottom of the well. + +I inquired where the host and hostess were. “Well,” said Pete, as +if his own extinction, though powerless to impair his politeness, +had rendered him uncannily detached toward the catastrophic fates +of others, “Mr. Mickler’s in the bathroom, probably unconscious, +and Mrs. Mickler’s in the bedroom, sore as a crab.” “I insulted the +hostess,” said Daisy. “Well, anyway,” concluded Pete, “that leaves the +drawing-room to us!” + +The drawing-room, like everything else in that place, cooped one up +and made one uncomfortable: I saw, at the other end, a contracted +fireplace, like a large square-cornered rat-hole, with, above it, on +the shallow mantelpiece, a plaster cast of the Winged Victory; and +between two narrow windows, which looked down on the Thirty-fourth +Street car-tracks, a bookcase containing, I noted, volumes of D. H. +Lawrence, Cabell, Dunsany, and Shaw; George Moore’s _Memoirs of My +Dead Life_; Freud’s _Interpretation of Dreams_; Frank Harris’s _Oscar +Wilde_; several volumes of Levy’s _Nietzsche_ and a whole shelf’s array +of Dostoevsky. + +“Come on,” exclaimed Daisy abruptly, swinging out of the morris chair. +“Let’s get out of here right away!” I asked her where she wanted to +dine, in the hope that we might now be able to effect a separation from +Pete. “I don’t want any dinner!” she replied, as if nothing could have +seemed more revolting. “I’ve just had some sandwiches.--What I want is +a dirty big drink!” + +“I’d better say good-by to Larry,” suggested Pete Bird. “I wouldn’t say +good-by to-um,” said Daisy, “after the way he acted with us.” + +Pete went into the little corridor and knocked on the bathroom door. +“We had a fight,” Daisy explained. “We would have left before, if we +hadn’t been waiting for you. Larry sent Pete out to the delicatessen’s +to get some sandwiches for supper and gave him a ten-dollar bill--and +Pete brought back six sandwiches and Larry didn’t think that Pete had +given-um back enough change and accused Pete of keeping the money--when +they’d actually cost that much!” We could hear the voice of Pete +in the bathroom, pleading with the host on a tone of gentlemanly +reasonableness. I asked how the _Frolics_ were going. “Oh, I got +canned!” she replied, sullenly and shortly. “I stayed away from too +many rehearsals.” + +Pete returned with Larry Mickler. He was a young man with dingy skin, a +round head and a small dark mustache, very smartly and cockily waxed: +he bent forward from the waist when he shook hands with me, and I took +an almost immediate dislike to him: he was taller than Pete Bird, but +not so tall as I. + +Pete was urging Larry Mickler to come out with us, and I seconded him +insincerely. “Get Alice out,” Pete insisted, “and make her come along, +too!” “Oh, she’s tired,” Larry Mickler perfunctorily assured him--“she +doesn’t want to come!” + +“I’m not out for any looping,” said Daisy, with what I thought--with +what I hoped--was an intention of discouraging this idea. “I think I’ll +go home and go to bed.” “You’re not going home yet, little woman,” +Pete asserted, with a firm, though humorous, accent of masculine +domination. “You’re not going home to bed till you’ve had a little +insomnia-medicine, a little touch of the magic elixir that causes +the lame to see and the tongue-tied to run like rabbits! The old +miracle-scattering scamper-juice!--Am I right?” he appealed to me. + +“Let’s go to Tony Scallopino’s,” suggested Larry Mickler. “Let’s not!” +said Daisy promptly. “You see,” Pete Bird explained, with dignity, +irony and ease, “Tony raised a check of mine once and I’ve never felt +quite the same about him since.” I proposed Harry Heinz’s. “Well, Harry +Heinz and I are not quite the best of friends either,” Pete casually +replied. “In my opinion, a restaurant is a place where the patrons +are supposed to drink while the man who runs the place stays sober: +when the guests have to take care of the proprietor and put him under +the pump, I consider that the time has arrived to seek recreation +elsewhere!” + +“Let’s go to Sue Borglum’s!” said Daisy, with a sudden inspiration. +“To-night is Thursday night, and she has a party every Thursday. I saw +her the other day and I promised that I’d come.--Oh, I’m so glad I +thought of that!” she added, smiling for the first time. “I want to see +Sue Borglum!” + +“All right: Sue Borglum’s it is!” Pete approved, with rollicking +decisiveness. “Come: snap into your coats, ladies and gents! Let’s be +off to some place where there’s stimulants!” + +I helped Daisy on with her coat, and as I caught a momentary glimpse +of her pale watery-yolked poached eyes, it seemed to me--(Rita and I +had read some scientific books together: the vision of human futility +which she derived from scientific ideas exercised upon her a strong +fascination, and threw her back with an exacerbated appetite on the +gratification of the moment--and to-night it was these scientific +images which rose to my own imagination at the expense of both +Sophocles and Rita’s poems themselves)--it seemed to me as if the Daisy +whose profile had appeared to me in the theatre, so fragile, pale and +chaste, whom almost with the tenderness of tears I had covered with a +blanket in Forty-fourth Street--as if that Daisy had been merely the +spray of which I had happened to catch a glimpse for a moment on a wave +of common human colloids, the unstable fluids of the body, continually +gluing and ungluing--or a cloud which had for a moment taken symmetry +from those atoms of carbon and the other things, but which to-night +had been blown awry. I turned Daisy’s collar down carefully. + +Larry Mickler had been getting into his coat, a garish rust-red ulster, +and Pete Bird had been helping him on with it. Now Mickler pulled up +his collar, which completely covered his ears, and slapped on a rakish +felt hat, pulling the brim down over his eyes. + +“You know, that damn statue annoys me!”--he indicated the Winged +Victory: I saw that he was drunk. “Alice’s had that goddam thing ever +since we were married: she acquired it at college. It always reminds me +of a chicken running around with its head cut off!” + +He produced a revolver from his pocket and, almost before we had seen +it, had fired before him point-blank at the little plaster cast: it +fell from the mantel, and lay shattered in chalky fragments and flakes. + +“Well,” said Mickler, “so much for Nikky! Alice may miss her at +first, but I’m sure it’ll be a splendid thing for her to have to get +along without her.--I feel almost,” he added, grinning at us, “as +if I’d committed a murder, though! ‘Ad Writer Slays Phi Beta Kappa +Girl!’--Well, let’s go! The neighbors may be coming in to find out +who’s been shot!” + +He turned to me, grinning, and explained, as if in friendly +humorous confidence: “No disrespect to the Greeks!--I’m a Dionysian +myself!--sometimes a Dionysian and sometimes an Apollonian!--it all +depends on metabolism!” He began to sing, parodying the popular song: + + “Sometimes I’m Dionysian!--sometimes I’m Apollonian! + My disposition depends on metabolism!” + +Then, finding me a little unresponsive, he changed his tone and +addressed me more earnestly: “I just wanted you to know,” he insisted, +“that I don’t mean any disrespect to the Greeks. The Greeks knew what +it was all about: they danced with arms and legs--but we lock ourselves +up in the bathroom because we’re afraid to face life!” + +“Say, listen,” declared Daisy, “if you’re going to go out with us, +you’ve got to leave that thing behind! I can face life without it.” +“Take it along to protect you!” said Mickler. “Never know who’s going +to stick you up nowadays!” “Don’t be a fool,” said Daisy. “I won’t, +sweetheart,” he retorted. “Never you worry about that!” + +“I’m going to say good-by to Alice!” said Daisy, as if with a sudden +resurgence of sympathy. She went out into the little hallway and +knocked at the bedroom door, but there was no reply. “Oh, she’s +all right!” insisted Larry Mickler. “She probably thinks I’ve shot +myself--let her enjoy a few moments’ happiness!” Pete and Mickler put +their arms around Daisy, propelled her along the little hallway and +pushed her out through the apartment door. + +Outside, we found the lady in the dressing-gown, who giggled +ingratiatingly: “I thought I heard a shot.” “I was just shooting a +cat,” said Larry Mickler. “It was keeping my wife awake!” + +I finally, standing in the slush, succeeded in capturing a taxi; it +couldn’t draw up to the curb, and Daisy got her feet wet. She seemed +worried and morose. + +“That old hag’ll lie awake all night,” remarked Larry Mickler, with +a chuckle, “thinking that I’ve killed Alice!” “Well,” said Pete, “it +will doubtless afford her a great deal of entertainment. I’m sure her +life is far too tame!” “Yes,” said Mickler, “how they lick their chops +in vicarious enjoyment over other people’s murders! How all the world +loves a murderer!” “It would take more than that,” said Daisy, “to make +me love you!” + +“I hear,” said Larry Mickler, changing the subject and evidently +attempting to talk more soberly--“I hear that Bobby McIlvaine has given +Sue Borglum the air.--Is that true?” he inquired of Daisy. “Guess so,” +said Daisy. “I don’t know.” “I guess he decided that she’d done all +she could for him,” Larry Mickler continued, “and that it was time +to move farther up-town!” (Sue Borglum, who knew every one, more or +less, had taken Bobby McIlvaine up soon after the night that I had met +them at Ray Coleman’s, and had smoothed his way among the managers +and dramatists.) I remarked that I considered Bobby McIlvaine a very +gifted fellow, none the less, and that I admired his designs for Homer. +“Yes,” said Mickler, “but why not make designs for Wells’s _Outline +of History_? Why not try to produce the _World Almanac_?--Bobby +McIlvaine’s all right on paper, but did you ever see a show that he’d +staged that was worth its space in the storehouse? Look at _April +Showers_, for instance: Fritz Fishbein, Al Leiper’s publicity man, +blames Bobby for the show being a flop. It seems that Bobby insisted on +putting in a trick ballet, where the chorus had to wear papier-mâché +bodies. Al Leiper wanted to throw it out at dress rehearsal, because +the papier-mâché bodies took up too much room behind--they could hardly +change the scenery. But Bobby hit on the brilliant idea of sending +them downstairs in an elevator--it seems they use elevators in Berlin. +The first night, the elevator got stuck just before the second act and +they couldn’t ring the curtain up--they had to hold it twenty minutes. +Finally, Al Leiper sent some stage-hands down with great big mallets +and--zongo! zongo! zongo!--they just smashed in the elevator doors +and threw all the papier-mâché bodies out in the alley--and then, +when that was full, they threw them into Beattie’s drug-store. There +were all those pop-eyed dummies which Bobby had been working on for +God knows how long lying around Beattie’s--though I don’t suppose you +could have told them from the customers!--What a civilization, eh?” he +turned to me again. “Bring slavery back, I say--it never should have +been abolished! Bring slavery back and make nine-tenths of the people +slaves! Then the superior man would be free to live life like it ought +to be lived! As it is, the civilized man has got to black the peasant’s +boots!” + +We had come to the end of Fifth Avenue, and Daisy, sliding back the +glass panel that opened in the front of the cab, directed the driver to +turn to the right. + +Among those tangled irregular streets to the west of Washington +Square, I caught occasionally, from the taxi, a glimpse, almost +eighteenth-century, of a lampless black-windowed street-end where the +street-urchins, shrieking in the silence, were stacking up bonfires +in the snow--those lost corners of the old provincial city, where the +traffic of the upper metropolis no longer gnashed iron teeth, no longer +oppressed the pavements with its grindings and its groans--where those +soft moans and hoots of the shipping washed the island from the western +shore. There they had come, those heroes of my youth, the artists and +the prophets of the Village, from the American factories and farms, +from the farthest towns and prairies--there they had found it possible +to leave behind them the constraints and self-consciousness of their +homes, the shame of not making money--there they had lived with their +own imaginations and followed their own thought. I did not know that, +with the coming of a second race, of which Ray Coleman, without my +divining it, had already appeared as one of the forerunners--a mere +miscellaneous hiving of New Yorkers like those in any other part +of town, with no leisure and no beliefs--I did not know that I was +soon to see the whole quarter fall a victim to the landlords and the +real-estate speculators, who would raise the rents and wreck the old +houses--till the sooty peeling fronts of the south side of Washington +Square, to whose mysterious studios, when I had first come to live in +the Village, I had so much longed some day to be admitted, should be +replaced by fresh arty pinks--till the very guardian façades of the +north side should be gutted of their ancient grandeurs and crammed +tight with economized cells--till the very configuration of the streets +should be wiped out, during a few summer months when I had been out +of New York on vacation, by the obliteration of whole blocks, whole +familiar neighborhoods--and till finally the beauty of the Square, +the pattern of the park and the arch, the proportions of everything, +should be spoiled by the first peaks of a mountain-range of modern +apartment-houses (with electric refrigerators, uniformed elevator boys +and, on the street-level, those smartly furnished restaurants in which +Hugo was soon to be horrified at finding copies of _Town and Country_), +dominating and crushing the Village, so that at last it seemed merely +to survive as a base for those gigantic featureless mounds, swollen, +clumsy, blunt, bleaching dismally with sandy yellow walls that sunlight +which once, in the autumn, on the old fronts of the northern side, +still the masters of their open plaza--when the shadows of the leafless +trees seemed to drift across them like clouds--had warmed their roses +to red. + +Sue Borglum, at any rate, at the time of which I am writing, had rented +the whole of a large old house (of which she sub-let the top floor +and the basement) in one of the oldest obscurest streets, where the +children, deserting their bonfire, came clamoring to open our door, and +where the lights and sounds of the party seemed incongruously bright +and loud amid the darkness and silence about. There were dark double +ogival outer doors and, inside them, another pair of doors, with a +design in frosted glass of sphinx-heads and vine-leaf scrolleries. + +We pulled a bell, and a Jap let us in. Sue Borglum rushed up +boisterously to greet us: she seemed high-keyed and overwrought, and +embraced Daisy with cries of “_Darling!_” In her blatant green evening +gown, with a rhinestone aigrette in her hair and on her fingers a large +scarab and some diamonds, she seemed to me uglier than ever: her cheeks +were beginning to hang in jowls, her wide mouth was a grotesque gash +of lipstick, and the pouches under her eyes were as distinctly shaded +off from her cheeks as if they had been drawn by a caricaturist. Behind +her, rose the hubbub of the party: the hallway and the rooms were full +of people. + +We had started up-stairs to put our things away when Sue Borglum, +gesticulating frantically toward a water-cooler in the hall near +the staircase, shouted after us: “Cocktails!--Cocktails!--That +water-cooler’s full of cocktails.--Yes! Isn’t it a grand idea?” + +Pete and Daisy came down first, and Sue had already swept them off by +the time Larry Mickler and I had arrived at the foot of the stairs: we +stopped at the water-cooler and drew drinks. Larry Mickler swallowed +his at a gulp. “That little bastard, Pete Bird!” he complained. “I +gave him ten dollars at my house to get some sandwiches for supper +and what do you think he did? He went out and got liverwurst--the +cheapest kind there is!--and then had the Christ-Almighty nerve to +bring me back four dollars change--six dollars for six sandwiches!” +I asked whether he thought that Daisy was pretty fond of Pete. “She +hasn’t got the capacity for love,” he replied, shaking his head with +a sneer and turning the spigot for another cocktail. “But they’re two +of a kind--out for what they can do you for! She’s a cold little +proposition that calculates every kiss--and he owes money, or he’s +passed bad checks, in every joint below Fourteenth Street. It’s +wonderful how he’s able to get away with it even where they’re cagy! +He’s got this soft-spoken wide-eyed way with him.--Well, _he_ can have +her!” + +We moved on to the door of the front room. Sue Borglum’s front room +was spacious and not without a certain grandeur: I could see, above a +marble fireplace, the wide sheet of a gilt-framed mirror, which doubled +the high white mouldings and the sombre maroon wall-paper.--Such a +house as I had once imagined for Rita and myself to live in! Ah, I +should have asked nothing better of life than to have fitted up such +a house, to have passed my days alone with Rita in those high quiet +rooms, hidden away among those crooked streets, with poetry and +love!--But these fancies now seemed to me naïve, and I was ashamed +of ever having had them. I stoically dismissed them from my mind, +and could still, I found, feel hope and excitement amid the variety +and gaiety of the Village, so densely intermingling, so vivaciously +chattering about me: the Italian and Russian painters; the intelligent +amateur actors; the mad baroness who kept a restaurant; the radical +journalists and agitators, who, despite the homely forthright style +of their writings, not infrequently turned out, when one met them, +to be engagingly shy, and sometimes to possess personal charm to a +degree almost cloying; the pretty Jewesses with thick red lips and +glossy black bobbed hair; the austere and handsome woman managers of +theatres and magazines, with their dignity of Mother Superiors; and +the megalomaniac lunatics whom it was the thing rather to like. + +Larry Mickler and I, in the doorway, did not at first encounter any one +we knew. “Well,” said Mickler, lifting his cocktail, “here’s to the +Seven Deadly Sins! May they never perish from the earth!--Let’s drink +to the memory of Dostoevsky--the only goddam genius,” he added, “who +ever understood the human soul!” I drank with him to Dostoevsky. “The +Seven Deadly Sins!” said Larry Mickler scornfully. “What chance have +they got to-day when everybody wears these horn-rimmed glasses!” + +I wondered whether it mightn’t be true that a novelist like Dostoevsky +was greater than any lyric poet, even so great a one as Rita--but +suppose the play on which Rita was working should turn out to reveal +wider gifts?--And, stimulated by my cocktail, I asked myself whether, +in spite of everything, I shouldn’t go to see her again, when she +eventually came back from her aunt’s: I had behaved so horribly when we +had parted, and we had exchanged no letters since she left. + +A man who had been leaning over the back of a couch that faced the +marble fireplace moved away and let me see the head and neck of a woman +who was sitting on the couch and whose bobbed and coppery hair reminded +me of Rita’s.--What a comfort that it could not be she! Then the +woman, turning her head with a staccato birdlike movement, in some gay +interchange with the man sitting next to her, revealed her profile and +I saw that it was Rita. I could see also that the man was Ray Coleman. + +My companion recognized him at the same time: “There’s Ray Coleman +over there!” he exclaimed. “He’s just got a new job on the _Sketch!_” +Larry Mickler made his way across the room. I followed him, and spoke +to Rita over the back of the couch, taking care to betray no surprise. + +“How long have you been back?” I inquired. “Since last Friday--last +Friday night,” she replied, as if by frankness and accuracy to fend off +my disapproval. + +I asked about her aunt: “She’s much better,” she assured me, smoothing +out the creases of her smile and making her eyes, which looked to me +now like little hard green pebbles of glass, serious and blank. “The +doctor said that she was simply tired out, that all she needed was to +rest. My mother is still up there with her.--Do come around and sit +down!” I sat down, not beside her on the couch, but on a stool at one +side of the fireplace. + +“You know, I was thinking about you,” she said, “just before I +left!” “What made you do that?” I asked. “I went wading in Stony +River one day--in the cold, and everything!--and I thought about you +then--because you liked the poem, you know!--You know, it was freezing +cold: I almost froze my feet off--but somehow I wanted to do it!” + +I asked how she’d got on with her play. She dropped her eyes, which had +girlishly puckered over her wading in Stony River: “Well, I haven’t +actually _written_ very much, but I’ve thought about it a lot. I know +just what I _want_ to write--I’ve got it all blocked out, you know!” +And sustained by this triumphant phrase, she lifted earnest eyes to +mine. + +I said that she looked awfully well--and it was true: she had already +been flushed by the excitement of conversation, and when I spoke to +her, she had flushed more deeply, so that she burned like a little +furnace, as she had done that first night in Bank Street when she and +I had talked about poetry. She had brought back from the country a +complexion refreshed from the tarnish of the city, and the contours +of her face had filled out again: again she could challenge the world +from the tower of her lovely throat, which gave to her little figure a +dignity almost extra-human, like the dignity of a great work of art. +“And I _feel_ so well,” she replied. “I went tramping and sleighing +and skating!--I did all the things that I hadn’t done since I was a +little girl! And I tell you, I went _wading!_--you don’t seem impressed +by that, but I assure you it was no tame experience: the water was so +cold that it burned! The snow is still on the ground up there, two +feet deep--the river-banks were all crusted with ice--in some places +there were little fragile translucent ledges of ice that came out over +the water--just like blades of swords made of ice!--You know, I’m +going to have a sword that’s made of ice in my play--don’t you think +that’s a wonderful idea?” “I should think it would break easily,” I +replied. “Not if it was sharp enough!” “Perhaps not.” “Mine will be!” +she held her own, grinning briefly. “Well, anyway, I went wading--and +it was so _thrilling!_ You haven’t any idea how beautiful a river +is in winter till you get right out in the middle of it and see the +water still alive like quicksilver in the midst of the dead frozen +landscape--running away between the wicked jagged edges! It’s as if +the tighter other things froze, the faster the river ran--like a live +vein in a paralyzed body!” + +Her feeling for Stony River, which had once so completely enchanted +me, now irritated me profoundly. I could see plainly in imagination +some tall young country boy, panting with desire and only too happy to +accompany her on her uncomfortable escapade: he would have carried her, +of course, over the bad spots--would, in fact, probably have carried +her most of the time--he had ended no doubt by chafing her feet. + +“It must have been wonderful,” I replied, and turned away to listen to +Ray Coleman. Lina Lemberg, the young Polish girl who had been convicted +of murdering her husband, had just been sentenced to death; and Ray was +describing with enthusiasm how he had pursued the car which was taking +her to Sing Sing, and had succeeded in having her photographed from the +taxi. (He had just left the _Telegram-Despatch_ for the city desk of +the _Daily Sketch_, the most important of the new tabloids.) “I see,” +said Larry Mickler, showing small white even teeth, “that she says she +wishes Nicky were back with her.” “She’s going to get half her wish,” +said Ray--“She’s going to get it fifty-fifty: she’s not going to get +Nicky back, but she’s going to go to join him!” Larry Mickler laughed +with loud appreciation. “Well,” he remarked, “the murderer has his fun, +and he ought to be willing to pay for it! True, he has to pay dearer +than most people--but then he has more fun!” + +Ray presented Larry Mickler to Rita: he did so with obvious +pride--with, it seemed to my jealous eye, something akin to an air of +proprietorship. Rita invited Larry Mickler to sit down, and he took +the stool on the other side of the fireplace. Ray Coleman inquired +affably how Mickler’s own work was going. “It’s just the same old +hick-diddling game!” he replied, leaning forward, his hands clasped +between his knees. “We still manage to land the suckers!” I thought +that he was ashamed of the advertising business, and was being +contemptuous about it for Rita’s benefit. “Our latest masterpiece was +putting over Marona--‘Makes the Mouth Safe for Teeth!’ was a product of +our fly-paper factory.” “You don’t say!” Ray Coleman exclaimed, raising +his almost continuous eyebrows, as if this feat commanded respect. +“Is that so?” “You know what it’s made of, don’t you?” “No,” admitted +Ray Coleman, “what?” “Horse-chestnuts! Nothing but horse-chestnuts! +Just nothing in the world but plain old buckeyes! Can you beat it? A +million and a-half people every morning, sitting down to a breakfast +of buckeyes, with sugar and cream!” “Don’t you do anything to them?” +asked Ray. “Not a blessed thing!--just chop ’em up. We’ve struck such +terror into the hearts of the boobs by telling them that ordinary food +was soft and ruined their teeth, and that in a few more generations the +human race would be toothless, that now there are a million and a half +people breaking their jaws every morning over horse-chestnuts! ‘Makes +the Mouth Safe for Teeth!’--they find it irresistible!” + +“Say,” said Coleman, humorously, “isn’t it about time that the Osage +orange got a break?” “You might sell them for their perfume,” said +Rita. “They have a marvellous smell, you know!” “By Jove, that’s a +good idea!” said Coleman. “You might have all the women carrying +them around!” I doubted whether on ordinary occasions he would have +considered this a particularly good idea--it seemed to me all too +plain that he had fallen under the spell of Rita and that he thought +only of playing up to her. I remembered the night when I had first met +them and when Rita had agreed with me that Ray was poisonous. “They’d +be a little heavy, I’m afraid, to carry around,” said Rita. “And they +wouldn’t be becoming to many people. I might wear one, though--a very +little one--on account of the color of my eyes!” + +She was gay, and seemed to me so pleased with herself, so sufficient +to herself, so remote from me; and I reflected that, while she had +been speaking, I had been aware, for the first time since the earliest +days of our acquaintance, of her acquired English accent. Not that +she always spoke in this way: she had the accent in which she recited +her poems and the accent of the Village gamine--nor did she hesitate +to bite down on a hard up-country r, when some special situation--a +sundae at the soda-fountain or a hammock on a porch--had suggested to +her versatile spirit the rôle of a girl in a small town; but, coming +in contact with English actresses during the days when she had been on +the stage, her natural disposition toward brittleness and briskness +had found their accent a congenial modification, and it was this +accent which usually predominated on occasions when she was meeting +strangers. Yet how many times since that first night I must have heard +her drop into this manner, without ever having been aware of it! And I +was sharply forced to take account of the distance between the present +and the days when I had first known Rita. Then, I had been in love--and +that was what it meant to be in love: so to surround, so to devour, +another human being with tenderness, passion, admiration, that their +very absurdities and perversities had been fused with the rest in +the furnace till there was nothing but a white molten glow--till one +resented, not merely the hostility, but even the critical detachment +of others, because the point of view of a critic was unimaginable from +one’s own. But that critical detachment, to-day it was I who exercised +it--and at the thought that I could now meet Rita with a mind which had +become so cold that I could note her little affectations, I was filled, +not with the relief I hoped for and in which I tried to believe, but +with horror and fear. She had gone, the creature who had summoned my +love--or whom my love itself had created, I hardly now knew which--the +being, who had commanded the allegiance of mind, imagination and +desire--and could I never now rejoin her again? Was it true that my +love had been destroyed? Could I never retrace my way? Could I never +get back across that chasm? + +“I declare,” Larry Mickler was saying, “I don’t know where a civilized +man can find more hilarious entertainment than in the advertising game. +You’d never believe what the boobs will consume till you actually +commence to feed ’em! You can make ’em do anything, buy anything! All +you need is a gaudy picture and an idiotic phrase and you can make them +do themselves an actual injury! Now, of course, in the case of Marona, +for example, horse-chestnuts are indigestible--they make the mouth safe +for teeth but they ruin the digestion. But that doesn’t discourage +the suckers for a minute. If they get sick, it would never occur to +them to blame it on the Marona, because Marona, according to the ads, +has been endorsed by eminent dentists. Nothing was said about stomach +specialists.--But then I suppose it’s a desirable thing to provide the +peritonitis surgeons with work--they’re usually civilized fellows, the +surgeons, and, if they prosper at the expense of the peasantry, that’s +quite as it ought to be.--You must have a lot of fun yourself”--he +addressed himself to Ray Coleman--“in the newspaper game.” + +“Yes,” said Ray. “It’s amazing really. You can’t lay it on too +thick--the more maudlin and preposterous it is, the better they seem +to like it. Have you been reading Lina Lemberg’s confessions in the +_Sketch_? They’re written by Ted Mahony in the office--you know Ted, a +big husky Irishman who’s always half-stewed. You know that installment +where she tells about the birth of little Annie--well, when he read +that aloud in the office just after he’d written it, the other day, he +almost broke up the shop!” + +I asked Rita where she was living. “Well, I’m not living anywhere +exactly,” she answered. “I’ve just been visiting around.” She lifted +her eyes quickly. “I’ll let you know when I’m settled.” “You must let +me see your play, when it’s finished,” I said. + +“Don’t you think it’s going to be fine?” Ray Coleman demanded eagerly. +“Have you heard about the idea?” I assured him that I had. He turned to +Larry Mickler: “She’s got the swellest idea. It’s about this old woman +who lives in a tower----” + +Larry Mickler leaned forward to listen, with a polite appreciative +leer; and Ray Coleman described Rita’s play with an enthusiasm even +more emphatic than he had brought to his previous account of the +photographing of Lina Lemberg. And it seemed to me that Rita herself +was gratified by this enthusiasm. + +It had already occurred to me that Coleman must be in love with Rita: +everybody, more or less, was. But now, with horror, I remembered that, +since Daisy had left him, he must be living alone in his apartment, +and that Rita, when I had asked her where she was staying, had seemed +evasive about her address. I watched Ray Coleman telling the plot of +Rita’s play, and Rita herself, following intently and occasionally +prompting or checking up--lifting her eyes briefly to smile or to +put in a quick supplementary word when Larry Mickler expressed +appreciation, and punctuating the pauses with puffs at her cigarette. + +I felt an urgent need to get away, and, looking up, I saw Hugo Bamman, +standing alone like a heron, just back of Rita’s couch, his head thrust +forward, his shoulders hunched up, his long arms hugged to his sides +and his hands in his trousers pockets, staring out, as I supposed, +half-blindly at the people moving about him. + +I got up and went around to speak to him: I was glad of a pretext for +leaving in the middle of Ray Coleman’s recital. + +When Hugo turned at my greeting, I was astounded to find his appearance +completely transformed. Instead of regarding me at first for a moment +with dubious unrecognizing goggles, he fixed upon me a naked gaze of +deep-sunken but piercing black eyes. I asked him what had become of +his spectacles, and he explained to me that he had been going to a new +oculist, who had discovered a revolutionary method of treating myopic +vision: this oculist made his patients go without glasses and had them +exercise the muscles of their eyes. Hugo’s father, to his dying hour, +when he had lain sick in his Adirondack camp, had refused to summon +a doctor; and Hugo himself was suspicious of doctors, as of all the +respectable professions. But in this case, the doctor was himself a +heretic and an outlaw: the fact that his methods had been denounced +by all the other oculists was enough to convince Hugo of their value. +The immediate effects of the treatment were in appearance certainly +remarkable: Hugo had unsheathed from behind his mild round blinders a +darkly burning and eagle-like glance, beneath a steep and sharp-jutting +brow which reminded me for the first time of his father’s. + +And despite my present scornful point of view toward Hugo’s political +opinions, despite the fact that it was so many months since I had +made any effort to look him up, I had never been so glad to see him. +For one thing, without his glasses, he seemed to have become a more +interesting person and a person with whom it was easier to communicate: +but for another, I found it somehow a relief to be talking again with +some one whom I had known before I had come to Greenwich Village. +As there was no place to sit down where we were, and as the back +room, where we found a large table with a punch-bowl and sandwiches, +was crowded even more densely, we made our way on through into the +kitchen--which, by one of those freaks of old houses renovated and +rented out for apartments, had been installed in a former hallway and +was thus located between the dining-room and a bathroom (Sue Borglum +had sub-let the basement, where the original kitchen had been), so +that, in the absence of any other hallway, it had become a thoroughfare +for people passing back and forth between the two. + +In the kitchen, I was surprised to find Pete Bird, who so short a time +before had been displaying so invincible an _élan_, sitting alone, with +his elbow on the sink and his hand propping up his head, his visage +chopfallen and greenish almost with the mask of death, and his eyelids +sealed. + +Our entrance did not disturb him, and we perched on the drawers +of a china-cupboard on the other side of the long narrow room. I +spoke to Hugo of a school-friend of ours who had just produced a +successful play; and though Hugo’s friendly interest was largely +superficial--since he disapproved on principle both of everything +connected with his school-days and of everything connected with +Broadway success--I found an unexpected pleasure in returning thus +for a moment to that world of our early years upon which we had both +turned our backs, a world where, for all its limitations, the ordinary +contacts of life had been easier and more agreeable than one usually +found them in New York: that world had been conventional, but a +common understanding had at least meant a mutual confidence. In the +Village, I had felt less and less confidence in the people with whom +I came into contact and, what was worse, since my difficulties with +Rita, less confidence in myself. And I found now that--despite Hugo’s +stern rejection of everything he had been taught in his youth--I was +aware to-night principally of his good manners, his integrity and his +cultivated intelligence. He had been the first of the boys I had known +at school who had really interested me, and he had remained almost the +only one. + +I remembered now how, on one occasion in our school-days, Hugo’s father +had come to see him and had sat down on the bed and talked. I had heard +something about Mr. Bamman and, although Hugo rarely spoke of him, I +had always been conscious of him, in the background of Hugo’s life, +as an important and formidable person. But Mr. Bamman, though his +dignity was regal and his Olympian brow and beard almost those of the +schoolroom Zeus, had turned out unexpectedly agreeable. He had asked +me questions about my studies and my reading quite as if I had been a +grown-up person, and had listened to my opinions with a deference to +which I was entirely unaccustomed. When he had learned that, in our +English course, we had been studying _Julius Cæsar_, he had embarked +upon a discussion of Shakespeare very different from any I had heard +in my English classes: what especially impressed me was the respectful +but urbane familiarity with which he dealt with that great name--as +if Shakespeare were a man like himself, as if he were, in some sense, +Shakespeare’s equal. He spoke of Shakespeare’s amazing comprehension of +political life, of the eternal universal types of his historical plays; +to my surprise, he compared Coriolanus to Benedict Arnold; then in a +manner both ironic and serious went on to speak of the Senate and the +White House, as he had known them in his time. I had never heard any +one talk so before: it was as if the world of Benedict Arnold had for +him the same sort of reality as the world of McKinley and Cleveland; +and what was more surprising still, as if Shakespeare belonged to +the same world as the United States; as if he, Hugo Bamman’s father, +belonged to the world of history and of literature, and as if he took +it for granted that we, since he talked to us as to equals, might hope +to belong to it, too; as if, in fact, that world were our world! For +the first time, I had had the sense of that reality--soon, at that age, +to coagulate from what we see, what we read of or are told, and what we +experience within ourselves--which finally supplies so astonishing a +connection between the private emotions and thoughts, and the names and +legends, of youth. + +I reminded Hugo now of this incident, and was going on to tell him of +my great admiration for his father, when he broke in: “Yes, Shakespeare +and Milton: he used to read them to us every night till I got so I +hated them like poison! I never really got to like Shakespeare till I +read him during the War--and I can’t stand Milton to this day! I dare +say it’s not Milton’s fault: it’s probably simply due to the fact that +Father and I antagonized each other so.” + +This frankness on Hugo’s part surprised me: I had always found him +rather reticent both about his family and himself. Whenever he had +happened to mention his father since the days when we had been at +school together, it had been always with affection and respect, and +even sometimes as if with a sense of failure at having fallen short of +his father’s standard. Now it was as if Hugo’s liberated gaze had been +accompanied by some new freedom of expression. But I was sorry, and a +little shocked, to hear that his relations with his father had been +difficult, and I asked him what had been the matter. + +“I don’t know exactly,” he replied, “but we never got along. He was +pretty impossible at home, and I suppose I sided with Mother against +him. He was nervous and hypochondriacal, and used to shut himself +up for days in his room, and refuse to see anybody. Then, he would +suddenly appear in his dressing-gown, and freeze us with wild prophetic +looks, and announce that the household was ‘hurtling to ruin!’ because +he’d just gotten a caterer’s bill or something. He finally had the +whole household so that it was just like some kind of sanitarium--the +doors were all muffled with felt, and he couldn’t stand to have a +light burning or to hear a sound after he’d gone to bed himself. He +was never rude or domineering about it, but he used to nag us to go +to bed in an insincerely amiable way that used to make me furious. +Of course, he could be charming and sympathetic when any emergency +or crisis arose, and he was able to embarrass us and disarm us so by +having recourse to sympathy and charm, just when we’d been resenting +him at our bitterest, that when it actually came to a show-down, we +were never able to stand up to him. In any case, he had the effect on +me of making me adopt the opposite opinion to whatever his opinion was. +We used to have furious arguments about Socrates and Christ: I used +to back Socrates.--I must have been an unbearable little kid myself. +I never really liked him or appreciated him until after he was dead. +The trouble was, I suppose, that he’d identified the household with +everything that was stodgy and deadly that he’d been coming to loathe +more and more as the years went on. + +“He’d had a sort of a crush on Adelina Patti, before he married Mother, +and I think that somehow all his life, in spite of the fact that he +enjoyed Washington for a while, he was worried by the feeling that he’d +really left the great world behind. I remember he got a phonograph +record made by Adelina Patti just about the time she was passing out, +and when he heard it, he flew into a rage and said it wasn’t like her +at all, that it was outrageous to allow such a record to be sold--and +then he shut himself up in his room and wrote at something or other for +days. + +“I think that he’d really wanted to be an artist--he had a very fine +voice, you know, and loved to sing--but the 1880’s got him--and then, +when he found himself snowed under by American respectability, he +tried to be a saint. Even before Mother died and he went to live in +the Adirondacks, he wanted to carry us all away to the wilderness with +him--but Mother wouldn’t let him.” + +I had drawn Hugo out about his father with an interest all the more +intent because I was trying to keep my mind closed to Rita: but Mr. +Bamman and Adelina Patti had opened the fatal abyss, and as Hugo saw +me becoming abstracted, he stopped talking and, looking around with +eyes which could now see so much farther, he remarked that Pete Bird, +who had not moved but was still posed against the sink, looked exactly +like a waxwork. “Who is he, anyway?” I inquired. “What does he do?” +“Why, I don’t think he does anything,” said Hugo. “He’s just a bum like +another.--He writes some wather nice little poems occasionally!” + +“Yes,” said Pete, not opening his eyes, but speaking with perfect +self-possession: “A bum like another--but a poet, nevertheless!” “Have +you witten anything lately?” asked Hugo, with one of those veritable +hemorrhages of kindliness which, when he feared he had hurt some one’s +feelings, often followed his bitterest strictures. “I thought that +some of your things in _Sedition_ were weally awfully nice!” “I’m not +a poet!” said Pete Bird, still without opening his eyes. “Ask Giovanni +Squarcillupi!--ask Mike Kraus!--ask Miriam Fotherwell Finck!” + +“You haven’t any manuscripts about you at this moment, have you?” +inquired Hugo, who, despite his harsh and contemptuous judgments, +had a secret sympathetic instinct for the vanities and aspirations of +others. “I feel that I could read a little poetry. These parties seem +to be getting less and less stimulating--Sue is getting to be more and +more like a wegular Philadelphia hostess!” + +Pete fumbled with one hand in his pocket, partially opening his eyes, +but still supporting his head on his hand. He finally produced a +cough-drop: “Here’s a cough-drop,” he announced, “if that would do +just as well.--Eases irritation, just like a poem. Of course, the +cough-drop’s a little bit fuzzy, but then the poems are a little bit +lousy!” “I know,” said Hugo sympathetically, “when you try to find +anything in your pocket, you always fish up cough-drops and unpaid +bills and things!” “Bills!” said Pete Bird. “They don’t even send +me bills any more!--I’ve gotten long past that stage!--Here’s a +villanelle,”--he said at length--“a little toy of a villanelle!--and +here’s an experimental poem--an experiment in multiple metaphors--all +of my metaphors are multiple--they have an infinite number of +facets--like the eye of a fly!” + +He handed the verses to Hugo: “You read them yourself,” he said--“My +eyes are not very good to-night,”--and lapsed back into immobility. + +The poems were on creased and dog-eared paper, typed in very small type +with rather a wavering touch, but, to my surprise, they had a certain +charm, in a rose-petally, snow-flaky way. I could not, to be sure, +distinguish very much difference between the sonnets and villanelles, +on the one hand, and the “experimental” poems, on the other: Pete +Bird’s “multiple metaphors” turned out to be quite easy and mild--his +description, for example, of his mistress’s hands as “little surprising +moonbeam violins.” + +The door into the dining-room opened, and Larry Mickler and Daisy +appeared. + +“Come on, yuh dope!” said Daisy to Pete Bird. “What d’ye think yuh +are, brooding around the kitchen?--a cockroach?” “Get away, yuh dumb +cluck!” replied Pete, reluctantly opening his eyes, “and leave me to my +meditations!” + +“Let’s leave him to his slumbers,” said Larry Mickler, who was +evidently drunker than ever. “The boy-friend’s passed out! Too many of +those rich liverwurst sandwiches!” + +“Come on, Mr. Zilch,” said Daisy, still addressing Pete. “The little +woman wants to go home!” “Leave me alone for three minutes!” said Pete +Bird,--“only three minutes!--and I’ll rejoin you in the drawing-room!” +Though he talked quietly and sensibly, he was evidently incapable of +moving. “Well, all right,” she replied, with some bitterness. “But if +you don’t make it pretty snappy, you’ll find me gone!” + +“Come on back and let him have his sleep out,” Larry Mickler pressed +her, pulling at her arm. + +But Daisy, ignoring Mickler’s importunities as well as Pete’s mildly +aggrieved remonstrances, turned to me: “Take me in,” she demanded, +“and get me a drink and dance with me!” She had made up again since +I had seen her: her eyebrows had been heavily pencilled to an effect +of moth’s antennæ and her mouth had been heavily rouged, so that her +sallow and waxen complexion merely contributed a morbid paleness to an +effect of provocative luridity; and as I found myself responding to her +make-up, after my indifference of the earlier evening, I reflected, +with dismay rather than cynicism, upon the purely biological basis of +the interest which we feel in women, simple animals like ourselves, +produced upon a similar model, monotonous and banal, to which only the +recurrent brimming over of accumulating spermatozoa imparts a recurrent +attraction. + +“Very good!” assented Larry Mickler, with a playfulness distinctly +malignant. “Then I’ll just practise a little marksmanship!” He +retreated to the end of the kitchen and, taking up a stand near the +bathroom door, he aimed his revolver at a row of plates: “I wonder if I +could pick those off in order!” + +“Why don’t you break them with the butt of the gun?” asked Daisy. “This +long-range marksmanship of yours burns me up! You’ve already won the +barbed-wire garters for shooting plaster statues at two yards!” + +“Listen, Pete,” insisted Larry Mickler, disregarding Daisy, “you go +over to the far end of the room and throw up the plates one by one--and +we’ll see how many I can pot!--like clay pigeons!” “All right!” +responded Pete, not moving or opening his eyes. “Oh, don’t be _dull!_” +cried Daisy with disgust. + +Sue Borglum burst in with the Jap butler, who produced, at her +direction, from the ice-box, a glass gallon-container of cocktails. She +threw her arm around Daisy’s shoulder, and exclaimed in a strained +excited shriek which she seemed to have become incapable of moderating: +“Oh, you _dear_ child! You were an angel to come! Everybody’s deserted +me! Bobby said he’d be here at ten, and it’s almost midnight now. I +suppose he’s gone out with his little cutie. I don’t mind his keeping +a girl--if he’d only get one that was intelligent, or attractive, or +something!--but she’s just a dumb little wench out of the chorus--she +can’t even dance!” “I think all chorus girls are dumb,” said Daisy. +“I’ve just lost my job, that’s why.” “Stand ’em on their heads and +they’re all alike!” said Pete Bird, without opening his eyes. Sue +squawked with delighted laughter. + +Larry Mickler, since Sue’s arrival had been amusing himself at a +distance by drawing his revolver on an imaginary foe: he would whip +it out, declaring loudly: “I’ll teach those damn goldfish to snap at +me!”--then leer humorously in our direction; but as nobody paid any +attention to him, he finally came over to the group and poured himself +a drink of Scotch from a bottle standing on the table. “No wonder +there are so many hold-ups!” he contemptuously remarked to me. “These +dubs that we live among are just asking to be knocked on the head and +have their pennies taken away from them!” He proposed drinking to +Dostoevsky. “We’ve done that already,” I said. “Let’s do it again,” +he insisted, with a suggestion of becoming quarrelsome. “Drinking +to Dostoevsky is always in order!” bubbled Hugo, with a tiresome +recrudescence of his gushing undergraduate enthusiasm. + +“Are you going to take me in to dance or aren’t you?” demanded Daisy, +turning to me, as Sue Borglum plunged toward the bathroom to greet with +effusion another guest who was just emerging from there and whom she +seemed not previously to have seen. + +Daisy and I left the kitchen together. As we went, Larry Mickler called +after me: “So twice is too many times to drink to Dostoevsky, is it?” +Pete Bird was still sitting as before, his eyelids dropped in their +death-mask and his head propped upon his hand--which, I observed, now +that I had read his verses, was finely articulated and long. + +“Isn’t it wonderful,” Daisy observed, as we made our way through the +dining-room, “how clean Sue Borglum keeps her kitchen! Most kitchens +would have an awful hangover after a party like this--but I bet hers +will be neat as a pin!” + +I avoided the large front room and led Daisy around by way of the hall, +through a door that opened out of the dining-room, to the room on the +other side of the house where people were dancing to the phonograph. + +Daisy danced well: she was light; and the responsive alacrity of her +straight little legs walking backward in the fox-trot had the same +prosaic charm as her speech. + +“Say, just do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t leave me with Larry +Mickler. If he tries to cut in on you, don’t letum--I’ll just tellum, +no soap!” I asked her what sort of a fellow Larry Mickler was. “Oh, +he’s just a fool,” she replied. + +“I’m sorry about to-night,” she went on. “I wanted to have dinner with +you, but a whole lot of things happened. I’m awfully sorry.” I told +her that her touzled hoodlum hair-cut went beautifully with her plaid +dress, and that the green in the plaid dress went beautifully with +the green of her eyes. She said, “Yes, and the green of my eyes goes +beautifully with the green of my complexion!” + +I held her close: her lips were slightly open, her eyes partly +closed: I wondered whether she were really lapsing into a voluptuous, +languorous dream or whether she were merely very tired. It occurred to +me, as I looked at Daisy’s fingers, pale, brittle-looking and thin, +that her hands, which I had never considered among her prettiest +features, must be the “little surprising moonbeam violins” of Pete +Bird’s poem. + +But now I could stave it off no longer; I could talk no longer against +time: I had to think about Rita and Ray! My first feeling had been one +of horror that Rita should have been capable of betraying, not another, +not me--but herself; then I had made, in my mind, as I quitted the +group, a movement of repudiation which passed even beyond anger; and, +at the time I had been talking to Hugo and after, this had lifted me +to a sudden elation of lucidity and freedom. But now my need to love +and believe in Rita, even stronger than my impulse to reject her, +reasserted itself. She must have found, I saw now, in Ray Coleman, +with her confounded perverse generosity, some fineness, some crippled +aspiration, which she had been able to cherish and feed. Was there not +in his persistent desire to meet and entertain artists the inveterate +ungratified longing to think and to feel like them? Had I not noted +in him an unexpected deference, even in his face something gentle and +abashed, when, after he had advanced with his usual assurance some +opinion on art or literature, a critic or artist present had expressed +contradictory views? And as I had watched him just now, in front of the +fire, describing Rita’s play, he had seemed to me more nearly amiable +than I had ever known him before. He was happy because he felt himself +on intimate terms with Rita--because she had told him about her play, +and had allowed him to tell others. That was his destiny, perhaps--his +salvation: to praise her, to care for her, to soothe her, to guard her +from the pack of suitors who came baying after her like dogs--and so, +at last, he might become useful and happy--even likable, perhaps! So +he might finally justify his calling: he could buy Rita security and +comfort! + +As we danced past the door into the hall, I glanced across to the +couch where I had left Rita, and the sight of the group which thronged +about it irritated me suddenly in the same way as the pathetic and +exasperating obstinacy of phototropic bugs. “Well,” I remarked to +Daisy, smiling, “Ray seems to be having himself a time with Rita +Cavanagh!” “Yes,” she replied; “I noticed that! He was trying to tell +me last week that he was all to pieces about my leavingum--but it +doesn’t look much like it!” + +I remembered how Daisy had complained of Ray Coleman’s making her +stay home and listen to his reading aloud from the _Oxford Book of +English Verse_; and I imagined what a sympathetic audience he must now +be finding in Rita: I could see how she would take the book from him +and begin to read herself, and how she would presently recite her own +poems--poems, no doubt, which she had written lately, and which I had +never heard. He would flatter her without discrimination: I scorned her +for accepting such praise! + +“I suppose he’s pleased with his new job,” I remarked, “but a promotion +from the _Dispatch_ to the _Sketch_ seems almost like a promotion from +the morgue to the pound!” “If the boys on the _Sketch_,” replied Daisy, +“are any worse than the boys on the _Dispatch_, I’m glad I made my +getaway in time!” + +“Let’s go up-stairs for a minute, shall we?” Daisy suggested, as a +record ended. “I want to give the old cuckoo’s-nest a comb.” + +On the stairs, I took her arm and steered her up toward the sombre +upper reaches, through the couples who were sitting on the steps: +I gripped her firmly in my preoccupation, as if I had been guiding +a child. “The trouble about having your hair done this way,” she +remarked, as if talking for other ears, “is that you have to keep +fixing it all the time or people think it’s just mussed up!” As we +arrived at the top of the stairs, I found that I had gone suddenly +hollow, and I remembered that I had eaten no dinner. + +Instead of heading, as I expected, for the bedroom where the coats and +hats had been left, Daisy went on along the dark up-stairs hallway--she +seemed to know the house well--to a door at the further end. + +It was dark inside: by the light that came in through a single window +from the house across the scanty back yard, I could see a cot and a +simple bureau--the Jap servant’s room, no doubt. I clawed the air for +the chain of a shadeless electric bulb which was hanging above our +heads. “Why don’t you try the bathroom?” I suggested. “I don’t see any +comb on that bureau.” “Never mind about the comb!” she replied. + +I embraced her and pasted my lips on her half-opened mouth. I thought +about the mouth and moth’s eyebrows which had aroused me for a moment +in the kitchen, but which I could not see now in the dark--and I tried +to make up for my stupidity and tardiness by holding Daisy against me +very tightly and kissing her again and again--but it was an assault +of which I found myself conscious chiefly as a determined physical +pressure and a deliberate application of the lips: I felt my arms +crushing cartilage and flesh, and my mouth missing its goal against +her teeth. It occurred to me that Daisy’s lips were really, despite +her make-up, not particularly well-adapted to passionate kissing of +this kind: I still thought of them as cool-looking and childlike, as +they had seemed to me the night of the movies. And I became aware +of the succession of my kisses as something tediously mechanical +and repetitive. Fearing Daisy might notice this, too, I broke it up +by making her sit down on the bed.--I had desired her, and there we +were at last! I found myself representing the long stupefied embrace +of passion by sheer immobility and weight. I was all too far from +being stupefied, I reflected, during the moments when I relaxed my +ministrations: some obstinate unconscious loyalty, in spite of all my +efforts, kept me cold. And I was distracted by a variety of ideas. I +had a vision of the pilloried frog of a behaviorist moving-picture +which I had gone to see with Rita: the frog, even with its brain +removed, had responded with an automatic kick when an acidulated pad +had been applied to one of its legs.--And the consciousness that the +little bedroom belonged to the Japanese servant reminded me that the +Japs did not kiss, that they did not know what kissing was--and I +wondered whether they tried to learn kissing when they set out to +become Americanized, and whether it took long.--I murmured, “Daisy +darling!” in a low and secret voice. + +We became aware that the door was open: I looked around and saw a small +spare figure: his face was half in shadow, and I could not see his +eyes. I quickly sat up on the cot, and he suddenly withdrew and slammed +the door. + +“Who was it?” Daisy asked in a whisper. “It was Pete!” I replied. + +She got up. “I don’t care,” she said. “A great help _he_ turned out +to be!” She pulled on the electric bulb, went over to the mirror on +the bureau, and applied her powder and rouge. When she had finished, +she said, without looking at me, putting her powder away in the +vanity-case, “Take me home, will you?” + +We went out and extricated our coats--it was a little like a search in +a bad dream--from the avalanche of wraps on the beds; and in silence +descended the stairs, looking solemn and matter-of-fact, as we threaded +our way among the couples. + +So, I told myself, I had not hesitated to wound Pete in his love for +Daisy, even after he had shown me his poems, such poems as I had +written to Rita, in which his tenderness and his longing had, as it +were, been confessed and entrusted to me--to me, another poet! In +my glimpse of his face in the doorway, dimly lit by the light from +the hall, his pale cheeks and his eyes large with shadow had seemed +sensitive and even handsome. Was it Daisy’s indifference, I asked +myself, was it jealous suspicions like my own, which had given him that +gargoyle’s mask? Yet one had to be hard about these things: love and +poetry, as I myself knew, were paid for with danger and pain! + +Sue Borglum protested wildly and loudly against Daisy’s leaving so +early, and begged me, at any rate, to come back when I had taken Daisy +home: she had evidently a morbid fear that her parties were becoming +less popular.--I felt the cold taste of winter in the vestibule. + +After splashing about in the slush of the dark and deserted streets, +I finally brought back a taxi. Hugo Bamman came down the steps with +Daisy. He was wearing his old limp felt hat, but no overcoat; and he +was carrying over his shoulder the musette-bag he had had in the Army. + +We invited him to come with us in the taxi. When I got in after Hugo +and Daisy, I found Hugo planted on one of the little turn-down seats, +and it was only with considerable difficulty that Daisy persuaded him +to sit beside her. + +“The tone of Sue Borglum’s parties,” Hugo began at once to complain, +“is certainly getting more and more respectable!--she’ll soon be +sending out engwaved invitations!” I asked him what he meant. “Why, you +just go and meet people now, and talk to them a little, politely--just +like a Washington reception. Things used to be so much fwanker and +fweer at Sue Borglum’s! I remember one night when Leo Shatov got up +and did a Cossack dance on the dining-room table--and the Baroness von +Samstag-Solferino always used to appear wearing a coal-scuttle on her +head!--And she has these little thin sandwiches, now, made of chopped +olives and spiced ham and things. There used to be just a great big +cheese, and you gouged out what you wanted with your pocket-knife!” + +We were about to drop Hugo off at his house, only a block or two from +Sue Borglum’s, but he announced that he was sailing at midnight and +would, therefore, go further up-town. I forbore to show surprise, but +asked him where he was bound for. He explained, with his self-conscious +giggle, that he was sailing for Smyrna on a fruit steamer: his ultimate +goal was Afghanistan. + +We asked why he was going to Afghanistan. “Well, I think that it must +really be an awfully fine place!” he replied. “You know, it’s one of +the only places in the world that hasn’t been Europeanized--it’s all +a European can do to get into Cabul at all. Not a trace of a business +man or a missionary or a newspaper! The Amir has electric lighting and +European plumbing in his palace, but, instead of sending for European +plumbers and electricians to put them in for him, he sends Afghans to +Europe to learn how to do it themselves. When they come back, they’re +searched for Bibles.--At the same time, they go in for witchcraft and +all kinds of entertaining magic!” + +He was bubbling now just as he had done at college over the little +pastry-shop in the side-street where he and his friends had bought +cinnamon buns. + +“Is that where the afghans come from?” asked Daisy. “Yes: I suppose +so,” chortled Hugo. “I suppose that, even though it’s forbidden to +bring in any modern textile machinery, a smart Europeanized Afghan +might be able to do a little profitable sweating in the afghan +business!” + +I asked Hugo what his literary plans were and he explained that, when +he came back from Afghanistan, he was going out to the American West to +write a novel about one of the big Western cities, either Pittsburgh or +Detroit. (He had already done Boston and New York, though he refused +to pay Philadelphia even the compliment of exposing it.) “Oh, God!” +Daisy exclaimed. “What do you want to go to Pittsburgh for? I spent +the best years of my life trying to get away from there!” “Why, I’ve +always wanted to see a Pittsburgh millionaire,” Hugo explained, gaily, +mildly, sweetly. “Wasn’t it you who were telling me about the man from +Pittsburgh who bought ten thousand dollars worth of fireworks and set +them off in the Bois de Boulogne, and then committed suicide?” “Yes,” +said Daisy, “that was Phil Meissner’s uncle.” “I think Detroit must be +awfully fine, too!” Hugo continued. “I’ve always wanted to see a Ford +put together.--I’ve always thought it must be wather like one of those +things in the movies, don’t you know, where the man draws a cat, stwoke +by stwoke, and then it suddenly comes alive!” + +As I listened to Hugo’s prattle, it occurred to me to suspect for +the first time that he was allowing himself to prattle on purpose. +His spectacles had had the effect of making him look owlish and +juvenile; but now that he no longer wore them, his intent deep-sunken +gaze betrayed the silliness of what he said--betrayed, I mean, that +he himself was not silly. I became aware that the undergraduate +patter from which, formerly and while still an undergraduate, he +had so desperately strained to escape by harsh paradoxes and flat +contradictions, was now a habit which he had accepted, partly no doubt +because it was difficult to break, but also partly because he found it +useful as a screen for his real purposes and ideas. His real purposes +and ideas, it seemed to me, as I watched him in the taxi to-night, had +by this time completely matured and stood firmly on their own feet; and +a certain amount of success, which he had never aimed at or expected, +had given him a new assurance. Hugo’s novels on the American cities had +become almost best-sellers; and he was no longer spurred by the painful +necessity of asserting his views in ordinary conversation, but was +content to chatter on like a school-boy: it saved tedious contentious +explanations. + +There was no chatter about what he wrote: Hugo’s novels were +sober, even morose, and were built with a solidity of cement. +They were comprehensive reports on human society, industriously +and conscientiously drawn up. And as I thought to-night of Hugo’s +assiduity, his independence and his sense of responsibility, I seemed +to recognize in them those qualities which had for so many years made +his father a respected public servant. The son had cut himself off +from his family; had even sold, piece by piece, all the furniture and +family silver which he had inherited from his mother, and, set by set, +his father’s library; and he had done this--to the great consternation +of his cousins and his aunts, to whom the sale of mahogany and silver +was like a massacre of kin--all in order that he might live poorly +in Patchin Place, writing appeals for political prisoners, making +speeches for striking garment-workers and composing those encyclopædic +novels from which he had never hoped to make money. Yet, by the +sacrifice of property and family, he had saved the honor of a family +tradition which was otherwise largely moribund: he had truly assumed +the responsibilities of leadership and shown the disinterestedness of +public spirit, in the only fields where, in our generation, he had +found it possible for him to work. + +I seemed to see that, behind the mask of the outlaw, he had finally +gravitated to a position exactly similar to his father’s, before his +father, in his later erratic years, had withdrawn from public life. For +Hugo had applied himself to literature as to one of the old-fashioned +professions, Medicine, Law or the Church; and, despite his rôle of +eccentric and rebel, had taken on--what set him off at that time from +most of the other literary men of the Village--the solid and honorable +character of a first-rate professional man. Through the late escapades +of the father and the early extravagances of the son, the curve had +come round again. + +And I envied Hugo to-night: I could think only of his established +position as a writer, of the security and the freedom of movement +which his royalties had finally brought him, at the same time that he +had earned the satisfaction of serious work well done. I myself felt +disgusted and gloomy over the aimlessness and uselessness of my life. +I had seen clearly, at the funeral of my aunt, that my relations did +not think me a success: I was still an underling in a publisher’s +office, with no great enthusiasm for my work and with no particular +hopes of advancement. And, on the other hand, I was not a writer: I +had not made Hugo’s sacrifice and effort. No wonder I had never been +able to persuade Rita Cavanagh to marry me! I had offered her merely +the meagre resources and the questionable future of a young man with +vague literary ambitions; and she had already known many such young +men--had already, on one or two occasions, embarked on such lives of +cramped space and small comfort, without finding them magic carpets. +What wonder that she should now prefer Ray Coleman, with his apartment +that overlooked the Square, his lettuce-green cocktail glasses, his +water-colors of the Russian ballet, and his rye whiskey bottled in bond? + +Hugo asked us to let him out at the corner of Seventh Avenue and one +of the upper Twenties. I asked him where his baggage was. “I’ve got +it all here!” he replied, indicating the musette-bag on his shoulder. +“Haven’t you even got an overcoat?” asked Daisy. “Why, you know, I +don’t know why it is,” he replied, with the bogus naïveté with which +he masked his stubbornest manias, “but I can’t seem to stand to wear +overcoats. They always make me feel so loaded down and sewed up--and +they always make me too hot! I always feel, when I get into them, that +there isn’t a pin to choose between the modern winter-overcoat and +the Iron Maiden at Nuremberg.” “I should think you’d get your death!” +protested Daisy. “If the people in New York,” he replied, “didn’t wear +so many overcoats, they probably wouldn’t catch so many colds! They +bundle themselves up in winter-overcoats and lower the resistance of +their bodies so that the least little change in temperature brings them +down with the grippe or the ‘flu’!” + +“Gee,” said Daisy, with admiration, rather to my surprise, “I wish I +was going to Afghanistan! Take me along with you, won’t you?” “I’d +love to!” said Hugo. “Come on!”--but he began looking out anxiously +for the street. “Oh, _will_ you?” cried Daisy. “_Take me!_ I’m so fed +up with it here! I haven’t got any belongings either! I left most of +what I had at Ray’s. I could walk right on the boat now and sacrifice +practically nothing!--You couldn’t really take me, could you?” “Why, +yes--come along!” said Hugo, smiling but, I could see, with some +uneasiness: he shrank from the possibility of committing himself to a +woman--even in gallantry, even in jest--and was nervously watching the +street numbers--“if you wouldn’t mind a few tarantulas and scorpions +and things that go with the date and fig trade!” “Well, the fruit’s +all unloaded here, isn’t it?” Daisy determinedly objected, with a +strong grasp of commercial realities. “We don’t export it over there, +do we?” “No: of course--it’s all unloaded on us--but the animals may +stay behind! I suppose some of them are regular passengers!” “Well,” +said Daisy, “I’ve fought fleas and rats and bedbugs in my time--and +Greenwich Village bar-flies--so I guess I could cope with a tarantula!” + +Hugo stopped the cab. We were all for taking him to his steamer and +seeing him off; but he refused to let us. I think that he was honestly +afraid that Daisy would insist upon sailing with him--for he leapt out +almost before the taxi had stopped, and his leave-taking was abrupt and +expeditious. He opened the door again a moment afterwards and tried to +give me some money for the fare, but I pulled his hat down over his +ears. He waved at us once with a long spasmodic arm, then marched off +in the direction of the docks. + +“Gee,” said Daisy, as we drove away, “I’d like to go to Afghanistan!” + +We fell silent: Yes, I reflected, Daisy admired Hugo, just as Rita +admired Ray--because he had made himself a place in the world, because +he was successful and independent! + +I was on the point of taking Daisy’s hand when she suddenly snatched +the driver’s license out of its isinglass frame opposite her and, +without a word of explanation, tore it up, photograph and all. “What +made you do that?” I demanded. “I can’t stand his face!” she said +tartly. “I’ve been looking at it all the way, and if I had to look at +it any more, I’d begin to go half-witted myself!” + +I was irritated by Daisy’s gesture: it jarred upon my mood of +enthusiasm for Hugo’s sense of social responsibility and I felt against +it the same sort of resentment as against Rita’s perversities and +caprices. But I laughed--with a certain harshness, as if to mock at +the respecters of property, and at the poets who succumbed to their +bribes--as if Daisy and I alone, now, still stood together against Ray. + +Yet, I was thinking the moment after, one couldn’t really blame Ray +Coleman for becoming infuriated with Daisy: hadn’t she squandered all +his money and then kept having C. O. D. packages sent home? Hadn’t she +even complained to me, the night that I had taken her to the movies, of +Ray’s too conscientious practice of paying all his bills? I thought of +Daisy the night of the party, when I had first met her and Rita. Hadn’t +she behaved like a little fiend?--Hadn’t she turned on a phonograph +record in the middle of Rita’s poems? Hadn’t she humiliated Ray by +leaving the party with Pete Bird? I found that I forgave Ray more +easily for his violent scene with Daisy, which Rita and I had overheard. + +But, when I remembered that detestable scene, it was no longer as +it had seemed to me that evening. That night I had been a spectator +looking on at a melodrama, at a melodramatic tableau of jealousy: Ray +pointing at Pete’s broken cane; Daisy abashed among the ruins of +the party; and I complacently and gallantly helping Rita on with her +wrap. Now I myself had played Ray Coleman’s part. I remembered that +spiteful scene which I myself had provoked with Rita, in the taxi, and +the scenes which for weeks had preceded it. Now it was as if the rôles +had been reversed: now it was I who was the jealous blackguard and Ray +Coleman who was the solid decent citizen! And now those memories must +perhaps always stand as a barrier between Rita and me, as they had done +to-night when I had tried to talk to her--a barrier of coldness and +resentment which could never be forgotten now and whose shadow must +lie, also, behind on all that had been beautiful before. If I could +only just now have said the word which would have caused it to fall +away! + +“I don’t want to go home!” said Daisy, as we were crossing Forty-second +Street. I suggested that we might go to a night-club. I did not, as I +say, at that moment, particularly care about Daisy, but then, there was +nobody else that I liked better--least of all did I like myself or want +to be alone with myself. “All right. I can’t go in this plaid dress, +though. I tell you: you go and get something to drink, and I’ll go and +change my clothes.” “I’ll go and change, too,” I said. + +The moment after, she had some sort of qualm: “Give me a piece of +paper,” she said, “any kind of piece of paper will do.” The only paper +I had in my pocket was the letter from H. M. Grosbeake, the professor +of philosophy at college to whom I had sent Rita’s poems and who +had invited me to come to see him, but to whose letter I had never +replied, though I had been carrying it around ever since: I had torn +the blank part off in Daisy’s room, the day I had written her the note, +and now I gave her what was left, the page with the letter itself. She +stuck it into the driver’s-license frame behind the isinglass. + +I left Daisy at her door. + + * * * * * + +Larry Mickler, with his revolver and his passion for Dostoevsky, had +made upon me an unpleasant impression. I had come to connect him +obscurely with my impulse to smash the peach-brandy bottle, when I +had felt myself so helpless with Rita, and I found that I disliked +Dostoevsky, because Larry Mickler admired him. I remembered--as I went +back in the taxi to my own apartment in Bank Street--Dostoevsky’s +sadistic manias, his complaisance in self-degradation, his extravagant +vanity; I began to feel, after meeting Mickler, that the masterpieces +of such a man of genius were a doubtful compensation on paper for +the moral bankruptcy of a life. Were not the purity of Dostoevsky’s +tenderness, the flights of his Christian idealism, to be measured +precisely by his perversity, the sub-human depths of his indifference? +Were not the Svidrigailovs and the Stavrogins--those malignant growths +which seemed to sprout and, almost without the author’s intention, to +swell to such monstrous proportions, in Dostoevsky’s novels--were they +not the price which one had to pay for the Myshkins and the Alyoshas? + +True, it was quite unfair to Dostoevsky to identify him with Larry +Mickler; it was the triumph, at least, of the great artist that, by +dint of terrific effort, he had, if only in the world of his novels, +succeeded in restoring a moral balance to that universe which he had +once felt reeling with the world of his own soul; whereas, in the case +of Larry Mickler, who had merely to read Dostoevsky’s books, all that +desperate idealism, that victory of moral passion, would, it seemed +to me at that moment, go principally to give him a good conscience in +licking his chops over the cruelties and perversities, and to leave him +with the gratified conviction that there was no kind of discreditable +behavior which imagination might not redeem. + +And Pete Bird, with his charming wistful verses and his swindle of the +liverwurst sandwiches! And Rita--without that _mêlée_ in which her +varying passions had involved her, that possession by all the devils of +all the human desires at once, all that panic and anarchy and anguish +and deceit of her daily life, would she ever without all this have been +compelled to the noble severity, the firm and harmonious form, the +bravery of candor, of her verse? + +And those poets of whom Rita and I had talked the first night I had +known her in Bank Street! To-night, the curses and groans of Catullus +only filled me with the same disgust for his abasement at the feet +of Lesbia as did my own preoccupation with Rita.--And Verlaine, +in his prison cell, with his imbecile alternations between piety +and pornography--if he had published his religious poems, as he +had originally intended to do, sandwiched in between his poems of +lechery, he would have furnished a perfect example, an example forever +ludicrous, of the disorder of the poet’s mind. + +Even Dante, of whom I had once thought, of whom I thought still, as the +supreme poet of Europe, who had possessed together the fiercest passion +and the most powerful intellect, who had been able to apply to one work +all man’s highest faculties at once--what stiff-necked, what stupid +obstinacy, what fanatic self-confidence, going against all common +sense, must have lain back of all that subtlety and feeling! Had not +Dante’s indignation with his neighbors, as Professor Grosbeake had once +suggested, been based upon an utter incapacity for understanding the +realities of his time? Yet he had been spurred by such a passion to be +_right_, that, balked and exiled in the real world, he had gone to live +in the world of his poem, where, passing over both Emperor and Pope, he +had sat in the place of God himself! + +And even the philosopher and the saint! When I thought now of Professor +Grosbeake, it was with a certain sentiment of scorn for the domesticity +in which he seemed buried, and with misgivings as to whether his +metaphysics were not merely a monstrous hypertrophy, arising, first, +from a certain ineptitude at dealing with the affairs of the practical +world, and fostered, later, by his practical wife, who had taken +possession of him and securely immured him in a life where nothing but +contemplation was possible. And had I not just learned that Hugo’s +father, from whom I had caught for the first time in my boyhood the +sense of the unity of life--had I not just heard that he had fed his +vision with the dead wood of some area of his nature of which he had +never ceased to feel the lack, and that his ringing arraignment of the +Congressmen for their failure to search their hearts in a spirit of +Christian humility had been purchased at the expense of the tyrannic +subjection of his household! And in the case of Hugo himself, it now +appeared to me--what I had never understood before--that his ideas had +been given their direction by his early revolt against his father, +which had made him, not, as his father had been, the prophet of a new +moral discipline, but primarily a champion of the oppressed who still +resented and feared the oppressor. + +But these reflections began to sicken me (I was at once hungry, nervous +and weary): I had succeeded in accounting for all these people, +who were precisely the people I most admired, as the victims of +deficiencies and derangements; and I now felt that I had been deriving +an ignoble satisfaction from knowing the secret of every one’s disease. +While I was changing my clothes in Bank Street, I began to remember +Dostoevsky’s miseries: the neurotic family given over to its manias and +collapsing after the mother’s death; the boy neglected by the drunken +father and left without money at his school; the elder Dostoevsky +murdered by his peasants; Dostoevsky sentenced to death for plotting +against the Czar,--taken out and tied to a stake to be shot, and +reprieved only at the last moment; his four years of imprisonment in +Siberia, wearing the fetters with murderers and thieves, hauling bricks +and pounding alabaster; his later years of servitude as a soldier; +his persecution by his brother’s creditors; and the epilepsy which had +accompanied all from that first day, when, a boy at school, he had +heard the news of the murder of his father. Where was there place for +ironic patronage in the contemplation of such a life or of the writings +which had been its products? + +And I remembered how Hugo, too, had suffered in his prison-camp in +France. No wonder he hated discipline and authority! It was true that +prison had made of Hugo an uncompromising revolutionist, whereas it had +made of Dostoevsky an equally uncompromising conservative: Hugo himself +was naturally good, and it seemed to him, in consequence, that all the +evil which he encountered must be the product of institutions somehow +imposed on humanity against their wish; whereas, in Dostoevsky’s case, +his inescapable sense of his own guilt, of the evil in his own heart, +seemed at last to have reduced him to feeling that, though he had +been punished for a political offense only, his punishment had been +somehow deserved, and that he had actually been expiating crimes of +which he had never been accused. He had come to believe in the badness +of humanity; and mere political readjustments, in consequence, no +longer appeared to him important. Yet the effect of the ordeal in each +case--in Hugo’s and in Dostoevsky’s--had been essentially the same: as +Dostoevsky’s years in Siberia had caused him so deeply to distrust even +the liberalism of educated Russians, so Hugo’s weeks in the prison-camp +had made it impossible for him to accept, even in their most genial +guise, the complacency and comfort of America. Both had been forced to +live at close quarters with the basic contentions and discords, the +basic horrifying anomalies, of our common life. And both were always +afterwards to look with the eyes of strangers and exiles upon even the +most conscientious, even the most intelligent, even the most amiable of +their fellows who had never recognized those realities. + +Hugo and Dostoevsky alike had attempted to explain them, to resolve +them, those contentions, anomalies and discords.--And were not these +the prime provokers of literature?--not encountered in prisons only, +but in all treachery, violence, frustration, all the outbreaks of our +barbarous nature and the unlooked-for disasters which befell us at +the mercy of unknown forces. Such disasters and outbreaks alone could +rouse us from our normal existence of non-thinking and non-feeling, +the laziness of bodily processes inertly fulfilling their functions, +of the consciousness inertly drifting among random and meaningless +images--memories and anticipations--with unconscious but cunning +instinct steering clear of problems and tasks. What were literature and +art but the by-products of these collisions with the uncomprehended +reality--collisions whose repercussions, when we had withdrawn into +the shelter of ourselves, we attempted to palliate, to harmonize, to +account for, to subdue to a smoother rhythm in the current of our +thought, now resuming, which for a moment had been troubled or torn? +And was it not true that the individual artist--the greatest master +even: Dante himself--no matter how detached his intelligence, how +rich his imagination, how comprehensive his range, was never able to +escape from the instinct which made him justify his own life? If the +poet wrote about himself, or identified himself with his hero, the hero +must emerge victorious; or if the hero were allowed to be beaten, he +must at least be made to triumph morally; or if the writer confessed to +sin or ignominy, the confession itself must be a merit; or if he wrote +neither of himself nor of a hero, the historian, the economist or the +philosopher, in defending certain values, made them play the hero’s +rôle. Like the instinct which made us blink our eyes when anything was +brought near them, the instinct to produce a work of art (so I somberly +reflected to-night in that room where, so short a time before, as I had +heard Rita reciting her poems, the language of literature had seemed +to me something at once natural and noble)--the instinct to produce +a work of art was merely a self-protective reflex like another. Were +not imagination and reason like the phagocytes of our physical nature, +which, as soon as an infection occurs, rush to mass themselves at the +breach, where they ingest the disturbing intruders and put a stop to +the progress of the disease?--with this difference, that the work of +art, unlike the dead and discharged phagocytes, for some time and under +certain conditions, may retain a certain efficacy for others. + +For the harmony, the justification, provided by a successful piece of +literature was accepted by the reader as valid. Yet the writer had +falsified life, because he had pretended to harmonize something of +which he was conscious chiefly as chaos, and to explain what he was +aware, all too well, he could not fully understand. So, when I had +written a sequence of sonnets about the night of my first meeting with +Rita, I had not mentioned, as I have not mentioned in my description +of that evening, the drunken friend who had kept calling me up and +interrupting our conversation; the agonized cries of cats; the howling +and sobbing of a baby; the sore throat which, toward the end of the +evening, I had begun to find very uncomfortable and which, afterwards, +during the days when I had been falling in love with Rita, had +developed into a bad cold. So I had also deliberately left out all that +uncertain and egoistic side of Rita’s character, of which I had already +become aware and which was already making me anxious. + +A work of art was, then, an imposture. But the reader, himself balked +and bewildered, received naïvely the artist’s picture as a true diagram +of the world. The artist, who had been disconcerted and spurred to +compose a work of art by his failure to discover in the universe +either harmony or logic, supplied the logic and harmony himself; and +the reader, who had also been hungering for harmony or logic, accepted +with joyful reassurance what the artist gave him, and assumed that +the artist’s makeshift was a certified revelation, and the artist an +oracle. The reader leaned upon the writer: what for the latter was a +vague, a confused, or an approximate form of expression, the former +applied literally. All that part of literature which dealt directly +with current events--editorial-writing, pamphleteering, history, much +novel and play-writing--was but the painting of the thinnest varnish of +a comforting reason and art over earthquakes which actually took place, +not in the world of art and reason, but in the barbarous animal world, +bloody, uncontrollable, ignoble--and all the writer could hope for, +at best, was to divert the attention of his fellows, like a bystander +at a street accident who, when the rest of the crowd are only gaping, +insists upon the removal of the body, or like an actor in a burning +theatre who, by eloquence or jest, tries to avert a panic and stampede. +Yet the public, remembering the catchwords, the incantations, of their +leaders, attempted to enforce them as laws; and a flourish of rhetoric, +under pressure of a desperate crisis, would be imposed as a practical +programme or developed as a philosophic system. + +Or the public got to the point of behaving as if every feature of the +artist’s work were something premeditated--writing, for example, after +the author was dead, “It was about this period that X, in his attempt +to understand his own time, decided that it would first be necessary to +understand the career of James G. Blaine, and, finding no satisfactory +book on the subject, he set out to write one himself,” or, “It was +in the course of his travels in the tropics that the necessity first +appeared to Y of a new and chaster form of expression,”--when the truth +was that the life of Blaine had been merely a piece of hackwork for a +publisher, suggested by the publisher himself, and that the baldness +of Y’s prose had been simply the result of enervation caused by the +tropical heat. Or some work, which had represented for the writer a +furious effort at completeness of understanding, at impersonality +of projection--an effort obstructed, to the writer’s dismay, by his +personal obsessions and mannerisms, his family habits, his organic +defects, the limitations of his nation and race, which pursued and +exasperated him, like a can tied to a dog’s tail--to the public, who +knew nothing of his aim, it was precisely the writer’s personality +which they savored and glorified, descending with gratified complacency +those very lines of least resistance against which the artist had +struggled to mount, and delighting in those very stigmata which the +artist had strained to efface. So posterity would piously cherish a +distinguished writer’s roughest notes, though these might be merely +irrelevant excretions, under the pressure of emotions and interests +not commemorated in them at all--productions which derived their only +vividness from the acuteness of the writer’s need to turn his mind away +from his troubles of the body, the heart or the purse, toward something +indifferent and remote--or they might be meaningless mechanical notes, +the merest rudimentary twitchings of the literary temperament, made in +moments of drunkenness or fatigue, but hungrily saved by the writer’s +admirers for their infinitesimal drops of some peculiar personal color, +no more significant or precious in itself than the color of his hair +or his eyes. From these notes, the writer’s disciples might end by +constructing a system which would have filled the writer with horror, +but which now carried the credit of his name--just as in the case of +ancient poetry, where the text was corrupt or fragmentary, Æschylus +seemed to us all the more awful and all the more oracular because, not +knowing precisely what he wrote, we did not know precisely what he +meant; and Sappho all the more a goddess because there was so little of +her left. + +Nor were the public readers merely: they were also writers who imitated +the author. One had had a vision of movements in literature sweeping +over the minds of humanity like the wind that makes waves in the wheat; +but would it not, I now reflected, be more accurate to liken such +movements simply to the collapse of a row of dominoes, of which only +the first has felt the shock, the shock from the unknown reality, and +the others have merely toppled over, receiving it at second-hand? Till, +at last, the original composer of the symphony, the original inventor +of the system, would catch back from the minds of the public themselves +(who had merely taken it from him), a new belief in the all-embracing, +the all-satisfying character of that pattern, in the finality of those +conclusions, which, at the time he had first conceived them, he had +never himself regarded as complete.--Some day, like a fool, I should +myself read those poems I had written about Rita, and I should be +convinced that it had really been like that! Not content with deceiving +others, I should finally deceive myself! + +But, in the long run, if my sonnets had become famous, the public would +have found them out. When the readers had got used to a writer--when +our first delight in his peculiar color, his peculiar music or flavor, +had commenced to wear thin--then the familiar malaise assailed us: +we began fatally to detect once again, beneath the novel or alluring +surface, the presence of all those grievances, those diseases and +insane preoccupations of the straining, incomplete human being--all +those anomalies, discords, and contentions from which, in seeking the +support of literature, we had hoped to be set free. And in the end, the +public of readers, when they had found out the weaknesses and falsities +of the system which it had once accepted--when they had perhaps tried +to put into practice some vision, like the morality of Nietzsche +(another favorite of Larry Mickler’s), which the writer had imagined in +his bed--they would turn against the writer and repudiate him. + +Yet beyond the work of the individual artist, there was the concerted +general effort, the gigantic universal imposture, of literature itself! + +I remembered the big volumes of Jebb in which, with the hope of +tranquillizing my spirit, I had lately been reading Sophocles. _There_ +was perhaps the supreme achievement of the organized imposture of +literature! How many times had one seen the calmness and the sobriety +of Sophocles played off against the harshness or the cynicism of some +modern tragic writer! These plays had become the unchallenged example +of classic moderation and wisdom, the touchstone for modern turbulence. +Yet in what work of a modern dramatist had the harshness of Sophocles +been surpassed? I remembered the unruly tempers of the family of +Œdipus: the foolish quarrel of Œdipus with his father over a casual +encounter on the road; his harshness with Tiresias; the passionate +directness of all his gestures. Did one find even in the Œdipus of +Colonus that spirit of peace and resignation with which Victorian +critics sometimes credited it? Was the exiled and embittered king a +figure of mellow clemency? Surely his final cursing of his sons was +one of the most shocking scenes in literature!--nor did the species +of divine electrocution with which Sophocles finally disposed of him +strike precisely a note of tranquillity. And those sons who quarrel for +the kingdom and who finally slaughter each other! And the passionate +obstinacy of Creon, so like the passionate obstinacy of Œdipus--and +the passionate obstinacy of Antigone! The mother and daughter, in +_Electra_, bandying the most brutal abuse! These people were, in +their way, and even on the occasions when they were animated by some +passionate fanatical loyalty, as narrowly egoistic as the characters of +Ibsen, but more quarrelsome and more virulent! + +Was there, indeed, I suddenly asked myself, from the point of view +of barbarous behavior, very much to choose between Sophocles and +Dostoevsky himself? There they were, the old hideous discords--Œdipus +killing his father, the old Karamazov murdered by his sons--that cruel +inevitable turning upon the beings who have given us life! I remembered +how Hugo had just told me that, rebelling against his father, he had +come to hate even those poets whom his father had loved--and how Rita, +in leaving behind her all that dull and homely life which for so long +had hobbled her youth, had discarded the name of Aunt Sadie, who +had taught her to play Handel and Bach.--And were not the horrors of +Dostoevsky--Myshkin’s epilepsy, Zossima’s putrefaction and Stavrogin’s +rape--quite matched by Philoctetes’s ulcer, by the unburied corpse of +Polyneices and by the incest of Œdipus? If even the form of Sophocles +were more chastened than the form of Dostoevsky, his spirit was more +astringent! + +I remembered the story about Sophocles in Plato--how he had been asked +whether old age had made him impotent, and how he had replied that +growing old was like deliverance from a mad and cruel master. Was this +the saying of a calm and gentle nature? And what of the tranquillity +of even those later years?--I remembered in the second _Œdipus_, the +terrible description of old age--“unfriended, feeble, chided, unfit for +company, the crowning ill of all--not to be born is best, but once we +have seen the light it is better to go soon!” How did Matthew Arnold +know that “from first youth tested up to extreme old age,” “passion” +had never made Sophocles “wild”? + +Yet so great was the need of humanity to believe in a human intellect +all-self-controlled and all-wise that there had been superimposed on +the plays of that great master of hatred and horror a legend which now +disguised them--and the solemn impassive don, laboring day after day +at his desk, explaining, interpreting, translating, every word of the +poet’s text--sometimes altering his words--had pared Sophocles down, +had sapped his power, ironing out to marmoreal smoothness a style +rather nodulous and tough, congealing angry cataracts of consonants +to colorless pediments of prose, and reducing the weighty rhythm, with +its urgent pulse of blood, tiding along from one line to another the +contractions of swift-spoken speech, to a tongue which could never +have been spoken--the British don, after centuries of critics, had +supplied us with what men of letters, what all mankind, had desired: +a writer super-human and humanly impossible, a writer who could never +have existed--a Master, of impeccable technique and imperturbable moral +balance, a writer who could never be supplanted and never be outgrown, +a writer unassailable, a classic! + +So we had established the myth of the classics: from the written +remains of humanity, of beings outraged and wondering like ourselves, +we had created the illusion of a fortress of absolute beauty and +wisdom, into which educated men might retreat, upon whose invulnerable +strength they might rely. + +And I thought, also, of those other efforts, those efforts more +characteristic of our time, which aimed, also, at an absolute +beauty, at an art wholly independent of the appetites and agonies of +men--paintings which represented nothing, “pure poetry” devoid of +ideas: both, in reality, mere assimilations on the part of literature +and painting to the pattern and rhythm of music--which itself had been +piously striving--in those composers who named their productions after +trigonometrical figures and the integral calculus--to assimilate itself +to mathematics. + +How senseless such attempts seemed to-night! How could there be +anything absolute or pure about such exercises as the arts, which +were but pleasing arrangements of sensations, and which, therefore, +were inextricably dependent on the senses we had clumsily evolved to +meet our needs and to find our way through the jungle of nature! And +if the art which derived from our hearing seemed to us purer than the +others, it was merely because we experienced, in the region of sound +divorced from speech, sensations less complex and complete than through +images or words. These crude games, so much the play of our bodies, +of our primary animal life, that neither stories, visions, drama, nor +music--not argumentation even, not Euclid’s geometry itself, which +comes to a climax, like a Greek play, with the proposition of the +square on the hypotenuse--had been able to liberate themselves from the +type of our reproductive processes--so that one had always either, as +in Greek plays, to work up to a climax toward the end and then gently +and briefly subside, or, as in our modern ones, to reach a climax and +then abruptly cease. I thought of the heat of Catullus and Keats, of +the mounting excitement of Dante; of the even unimpassioned glow of +purely homosexual writers like Plato and André Gide; of the blank +stretches where the climaxes should be, in the novels of Henry James. + +And I reflected, also, that between the sexes--Rita’s poetry and +Catullus’s--there was no real common norm of judgment in matters of +literature or art--men and women were each tied to their stakes: they +could only turn in circles about them. What critic could really +pretend to judge the work of men and women side by side?--or, for that +matter, the work of different races, or even of different nations--of +different periods, generations, each with its own adjustment to make to +the world which pursued and pressed it, each with its own particular +disasters, its own particular discords and conflicts, which, to be +easy, it must resolve? Or even of different individuals! + +What a discrepancy--worst of all--what a gulf between the self which +experiences and the self which writes! What was the sense, I asked +myself, in that room where I had once brought Rita and where we had +talked the night through and seen the blue of June on the glass--what +was the comfort of “moments of emotion recollected in tranquillity”? +As if there could ever be a common denominator, as if there could ever +be a fusion or union, between those moments of tranquillity and our +moments of pain! + + * * * * * + +As I went out to buy a bottle of gin at a near-by Italian restaurant, I +resolved to disgorge all these ideas in a gigantic destructive essay. +But I found now that I was getting a headache: my mind was still going +on at a furious fatiguing rate--with slashed and deflated tires, +running rackingly on its rims--and I wanted now to make it stop. I +had been feeling rather faint with hunger, and, while the waiter was +wrapping up the bottle, I ate some bread and drank a highball. + +I tried to shift my thoughts to Daisy, as I expected to find her when +I should call for her--in her pretty black evening-gown, and much +beautified and refreshed.--After the highball, and a second highball, +I found myself full of enthusiasm for the night-club. + +When I arrived at Forty-fourth Street, however, the door of Daisy’s +apartment was opened by Pete Bird, and I saw Daisy sitting on the +edge of the bed, with the same old rowdy plaid dress and the same +demoralized countenance, now unnaturally pale. Pete said, “Oh, hello!” +and both stared at me. I saw that Daisy had been crying: she had a +bandage around her wrist. + +I inquired what had happened. “Daisy cut her wrist,” said Pete. “I was +trying to open a spaghetti can,” said Daisy, without expression. “Good +Heavens!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you think you ought to have a doctor?” +“We’ve had one,” said Pete. “He’s just gone.” Daisy continued to stare +up at me, without speaking, with watery, swollen eyes. + +I felt a deep disgust with them both. I protested that she should have +waited, that I had planned to get dinner at the night-club. “Just +didn’t want to wait,” she replied--then added, after a moment’s pause: +“I had some spaghetti here, and I thought I might as well eat it!” + +“I don’t suppose you want to do any more looping, then,” I said. She +answered shortly: “Not to-night.” + +Pete Bird had sat down on the bed beside her, and put one arm around +her: he looked like a faithful dog. She looked like a wounded owlet: +I was astonished to observe that her nose, in the centre of her pale +round face, could appear like a little beak. She had through suffering +and fatigue reached one of those moments when women seem completely +dispossessed of their sex, and it occurs to us as a surprise that they +probably resemble their fathers. + +I asked whether she wouldn’t like a drink. “You might leave some here,” +said Daisy. I felt that Pete regarded me with coldness, that he had +assumed complete proprietorship of Daisy, so I gave them the bottle +and took my leave. “I’m sorry,” said Daisy, without feeling, “that I +couldn’t go out.” + +I directed the taxi-driver to take me to Sue Borglum’s.--I was +irritated by Daisy’s clumsiness in cutting her wrist on the spaghetti +can; and I resented the presence of Pete Bird. I did not particularly +want to see any more of Sue Borglum’s party--in fact, the thought +of returning was repugnant to me. But I had got to the bottom of +everything--nothing really mattered to-night. Going back to my +apartment alone was the most intolerable prospect of all. + +In the cab, I fell to wondering, in my discouragement with art and +literature, whether it might not perhaps be possible to find a deeper, +more austere satisfaction in scientific writing and research: my mind +had been haunted that evening by ideas from my recent scientific +reading. In the sciences, at least, one was dealing with ruthless +reality itself: _there_ one did not pretend to justify; _there_ one’s +work was accomplished in indifference as to whether it solaced men’s +minds. I regretted now that I had never had the foresight to study +physics and biology at college. And in an attempt to exercise, at +least, that gift of scientific observation upon which I had rather +prided myself, I asked the taxi-driver, as I was paying him, whether +he had not been born in Alabama. But he replied that he had been born +in New York, and had lived there all his life. + +I was struck, when I re-entered Sue Borglum’s, by a certain +demoralization which seemed to have taken place since I left. In the +room where people were dancing, a little baldish man with spectacles +was playing on a set of trap-drums: he was apparently under the +impression that he was contributing to the pleasure of the dancers; but +as his drumming made the phonograph inaudible, they were endeavoring +to restrain him. He was complacently smiling to himself, and when any +one remonstrated with him, only glanced up and smiled more happily, +deafened by his own drums. From time to time, he blew a kazoo. + +On the couch in the room across the hall--the couch on which Rita had +been sitting--there lay a man (though he might almost have been a +woman of the taller more aquiline type) in a green and orange kimono, +from which protruded lean bare shanks and feet. He made me pause in +horror when I first saw him: his eyes, which had mascara on them, were +cadaverously closed, and his unnaturally narrow face had almost the +pinched look of the dead. + +In the room where the refreshments had been served, there was nothing +left now but a sandwich which some one had bitten into, and the +purplish dregs of the punch. Bobby McIlvaine was leaning against the +mantel: his straight mouth and his narrow eyes seemed to have shut up, +at the intimation of danger, like a turtle’s shell. Sue Borglum was +vehemently haranguing him, while a girl with lustreless complexion +and lips painted a heavy magenta was expostulating tearfully with Sue +in an endeavor to justify herself for having just thrown a punch glass +at another girl, who, in her turn, feminine and frail in a fashion +rather wispy and washy, was half-hiding, like a frightened chick, +behind a species of woman doctor. This last person, who was broad +and well-tailored, with white cuffs and a black masculine dress, was +herself defying and deriding the first girl--the one who was appealing +to Sue Borglum--with robustious male taunts and chuckles, which served +to convey female malice. + +Sue received me with a violent gust of welcome, evidently forgetting +that she had seen me before--no doubt my changing my clothes had misled +her--and immediately called me as a witness against Bobby McIlvaine: +“Now, tell him--tell him frankly!” she shouted. “I want him to know +what people really think of his sets! Did you ever see anything more +terrible in your life than the first act of _April Showers_? I tell +him that as a snug little cottage, it would make a good annex to the +Public Library!” I said that it was a great pity that the scene hadn’t +taken place in a palace, because Bobby was so good at palaces. “It’ll +take place in Cain’s palace soon!” Sue Borglum breathlessly went on. +“Palace! The trouble with him is that his style has gotten vulgar! It’s +vulgar, that’s what it is! Palace! It looks like a movie palace! It +looks like some movie man’s idea of a palatial ladies’ lavatory!” + +I drifted on, after a little, to the kitchen: perhaps I wanted to be +sure that Rita had really gone--perhaps I still hoped to speak to her +alone and to break down that constraint between us of which I carried +the consciousness everywhere, like an ache at the back of my head. + +In the kitchen, I found a little group waiting around the bathroom +door. One of the men was remonstrating with the others. In those +days, in Greenwich Village, there was always a man in a dinner-jacket +who was present on all major social occasions: he was some sort of a +bond-salesman or broker who took an interest in the arts. When, as in +the case of Sue Borglum’s Thursday evenings, these occasions became a +little more formal and many people wore dinner-jackets, he began to +appear in a dress-suit. Thus costumed, he was now leaning against the +sink, with his hands in his trousers pockets--his regular equine face +expressionless and almost distinguished--protesting with good-humored +gentlemanliness against the vigorous measures proposed by certain other +members of the group for inducing the occupants of the bathroom, who, +it appeared, had been in there a long time, to give somebody else a +chance. It was also suggested that the people inside might actually +be ill, that they might even have committed suicide, and that one +really ought to find out. “No,” said the gentleman in the dress-suit. +“I don’t think they’ve bumped themselves off. A little while ago I +heard somebody laughing.” “Maybe one of them’s bumped the other off,” +suggested somebody in the group, “and it’s the one that’s alive that’s +laughing.” “I don’t think so,” replied the arbiter. “I know them +both.--I want to get in,” he added, “just as badly as you do, but I +think we ought to be discreet.” + +“Well, I’m damned if I do!” declared emphatically a little chunky +Hungarian, one of the editors of a communist paper. “Whatever they’ve +been doing in there, they’ve been doing it long enough!” “Yes,” said a +furtive-eyed poet, who wore a khaki shirt. “It’s time the workers got +a break!” The Hungarian’s companion, a chunky and pretty young Jewess, +smiled a little uneasily, in awe of the communist, but impressed by the +man in the dress-suit. + +The Hungarian marched to the door and knocked resolutely and clearly. +“Look here, old chap!” said the man in the dress-suit, going forward +and taking him by the shoulder, though without violence or heat. +“Better lay off! Let’s be tactful!” “Get away, you animal cracker!” +the communist retorted. “Don’t try to high-hat me! There are other +gentlemen and ladies in the world besides you and your friends in the +bathroom!” + +The door opened suddenly and widely, and Larry Mickler came out. He +was followed by a tall plain blonde, very much flushed and evidently +angry. They made their way through the group about the door, looking +fixedly straight ahead of them. But when Mickler came up to me--I was +the farthest from the bathroom--he stopped and let the girl leave the +kitchen alone. + +“Well, old-timer!” he greeted me genially--with the exaggerated +heartiness of one who has failed to commend himself elsewhere. I +asked him whether Rita had gone. “I don’t know,” he replied, reaching +for the bottle of Scotch. “She was in the other room a little while +ago.--_There’s_ a woman who’s not afraid to be herself!--These +women are all afraid of themselves--they’re afraid to say _Yea_ to +life! Village and college girls, one’s just as bad as the other in +this goddam country of ours!--Like that rope-haired blonde girl, for +instance--she wants it and yet she’s afraid of it--when it comes to the +point, she’s afraid! She pretends to be scandalized, when she’s really +only sore at herself!--Well, let’s drink to Rita Cavanagh, the woman +who’s not afraid!” + +“I’m all for Rita Cavanagh,” I said, “but I’ve drunk enough toasts +to-night!” “That’s right!” replied Larry Mickler, immediately directing +his resentment at me. “Say _Nay_, like all the rest! I’m not surprised +you’re in the publishing business. The publishers are all _Nay_-sayers! +I wouldn’t be writing ads, instead of novels, if the publishers +said _Yea_ to life!--Why, if the whole tribe of publishers--and +editors!--and critics!--were combined in one attack, they wouldn’t be +enough to make a Dostoevsky scratch the bite!” I repressed an impulse +to answer, “To hell with Dostoevsky!”--but replied, “I never heard that +Dostoevsky had any trouble getting published.” I left him glaring, +before he had retorted, and went back into the dining-room. + +In the dining-room, the girl with the lustreless skin had broken down +and was weeping on a chair, while Sue Borglum, her own eyes leaking +tears, was making an effort to console her. Sue was saying: “Never +mind, Claudette--you can’t win! you can’t win!” Bobby McIlvaine, who +was standing alone, his face locked against the scene which confronted +him, produced two theatre-ticket stubs from his pocket and dropped them +into the dregs of the punch. He remarked to me: “That’s a combination +that I’ve always wanted to try in the theatre--mauve and blue!” + +In the front room, to which I immediately returned, I was just in +time to witness an arrival which made upon me a curious impression. I +could hardly at first believe my eyes: there had appeared suddenly, +under the escort of Tony Scallopino, the proprietor of one of those +Greenwich Village restaurants which were beginning, at that period, +to be transformed into small but increasingly expensive night-clubs, +two young women who, even among that company where one was not +ordinarily surprised at anything, astonished and jarred upon me, like +some incongruous image of a dream, remembered after we wake, some +image which owes its strangeness, its power obscurely to worry us, to +the fact that it has been transferred from its surroundings in the +waking world to surroundings which do not fit it. They were strangely +conspicuous, these girls--more conspicuous, even, in their way, than +the man in the orange kimono or the woman with the stiff white cuffs. +In the first place, they were very brightly dressed, one in blue, the +other in red--and I saw, at a second glance, that their dresses, though +gay and even smart, were flimsy and cheap. Neither was bad-looking; and +when they first came in, I thought they were attractive. The small one, +the one in blue, had blue eyes and looked a little like a fish; but the +other, the one in red, was quite handsome; she had rich brown hair, +large brown eyes, full cheeks, fleshy lips, rather a creamy complexion +and a nice thick nose. But their cheeks glowed with a heightening +of color, and their eyes were starred with a black radiation, which, +among all the varied make-ups of the party, seemed improper and out of +place; such faces were not meant for the lighting of ordinary private +houses, but for the pink-shaded lights-in-darkness of Tony Scallopino’s +night-club. And in their eyes I saw that public stare, the stare of the +prostitute, which, like the jockey’s bowed legs, the tailor’s peering +eyes, the courtroom intonations of the lawyer, the military officer’s +curtness, is the universal sign of the profession--that stare which +must be always watching, which must meet all the world without winking, +without demurring or veiling itself--that stare which sometimes looks +amazed, sometimes panic-stricken, sometimes resentful and sullen, and +sometimes insane, but which seems always to have robbed the face of +some essential element of personality, and therefore of humanity itself. + +I gazed at these girls, and, in an instant, the brunette had become +aware of my gaze and was welcoming it, with smiling eyes. I approached +her, and she began at once, before I had even spoken: “I think this +is the most delightful old house! What a lovely old mirror over the +mantel!” We discussed the house, the weather, the theatre: she had +opinions about the plays that were being given in the little Village +theatres: I was surprised to hear her make conversation so cleverly +and with such a good manner, but I was shocked to see her ply her +trade--she made no pretense of anything else--so brazenly and so +promptly. + +I was made uneasy, as we talked of other things, to meet nothing in +her large fine eyes but a look of sly, humorous complicity. Those +eyes, for all their intelligence, had been glazed against the warmth +of frankness, the expression of personal feeling, as much as those of +any streetwalker’s who makes off to the streets again the moment her +transaction is finished. And this troubled me--I hated and resented it: +to-night I had felt myself estranged, first, from Rita, and then, from +Daisy--I had felt cut off beyond even communication. And I now exerted +myself to make a contact with the brown-eyed girl in red--to force her +to meet my friendliness. + +But as she saw that I was refusing to do business, she soon passed on +to the man in the dress-suit, who happened to be standing near us. +Without excuse or explanation, without hesitation or resentment, like +some salesman of carpet-sweepers, who, rejected at one door where he +has knocked, immediately passes on to the next, she assailed him with +her shameless patter. + +I wondered how Tony Scallopino had ever dared to bring these women +here, and I was aroused to disgusted anger. (I found out afterwards +that Sue herself, in her morbid and hysterical fear lest her party +should be ill-attended, had telephoned to Tony to bring any one still +at his place--meaning, of course, any of his regular patrons.) I +remembered how Tony Scallopino, in the days before his advent to the +Village, had been an I. W. W. agitator and how, in the course of the +long Italian dinners, in his former and cheaper restaurant, he had +often sat down at our table and talked about politics with us; I had +at that time always rather liked him, but it seemed to me to-night +that Tony had become Manhattanized and cynical. It did not occur to me +that, from Tony’s point of view, the girls were working-people like +himself, and that in bringing them to Sue Borglum’s party he might be +merely endeavoring to make it up to them for a night of bad business at +his night-club; I might have guessed, from their technique of hungry +wolves, that they were desperately badly off. But I only felt that Tony +had somehow become a traitor. + +The fish-faced blonde approached me in her turn, hoping to succeed +where the other had failed, but I let her see that I was disaffected. +She passed on to the creature on the couch, the man in the orange +kimono, and by some playful overture, awoke him. But he, nervously +starting up, regarded her with surprise and indignation, and exclaimed, +in a high peevish voice: “I want to lie down here, please! I’ve got a +perfectly terrible headache!” + +Sue Borglum and Bobby McIlvaine had, in the meantime, appeared from the +dining-room; and Sue, beholding the girl in red, who had not long been +detained by the dress-suit, address herself immediately to Bobby as if +she already knew him, had concluded at once that she was some flame of +his, whom Bobby had invited without consulting her. And, in a moment, +learning that Sue was the hostess, the newcomer had turned to her +enthusiastically, exclaiming over the beauty of the old house, the old +mirror, the quiet charm of the neighborhood, the delightfulness of the +occasion: “But I’m so sorry to miss seeing Rita Cavanagh: I admire her +poetry so much! I was so excited when Tony told me she was going to be +here to-night, and then we missed her--she left before we came!” + +I made my way to the hall again, where, in the manner of Larry Mickler, +I drew and drank rapidly several cocktails from the lemon-cloudy lees +of the water-cooler. Then, feeling that these drinks were weak--they +consisted principally of melted ice--with a vision of a den of drug +addicts gathered together, with gruesome merriment, to dose themselves +with alcohol, I drank what was left of a bottle of whiskey, which +turned out to be excessively bad, stinging my tongue and constricting +my gullet. + +Now I began to ask myself whether it were the revolver Larry Mickler +was carrying which had made me break off with him so quickly and leave +the room without waiting for his reply. + +Through a door which led into the dining-room and which opened +behind me from the hall, I could hear Sue, who had left the +sitting-room--retreating, as was by no means characteristic of her, at +the advance of the outrageous guests, whom she still believed to be +friends of Bobby’s--pouring out, to the equally unfortunate Claudette, +in a shrill, strained, and grating voice, her grievances against Bobby: +“It isn’t as if I’d ever been anything to him--I never was! I never +wanted to do anything but help him. Some women would have tried to +get a hold on him!”--etc., etc. At that moment, it seemed to me that +Sue--whom I found that I now somehow identified with the woman with +the dyed red hair and the slatternly lacy dressing-gown, whom I had +seen at the beginning of the evening in the house where Larry Mickler +lived--that Sue Borglum was the ugliest and most odious woman whom I +had ever known, and that she possessed the most horrible voice. Yet it +was not really her voice which made me hate her, but the fact that she +was lonely and in pain. + +In the room where the phonograph was playing, the dancers had abandoned +the floor, driven off by the man with the drums, who, however, still +sat trancedly drumming. They sat or lay on the couches and chairs, +which had been moved back against the sides of the room--as if washed +up, I said to myself, in what I thought was a felicitous fancy, like +driftwood, dead fish, and seaweed left behind by the tide on the shore. +Then I remembered Rita’s poem, the poem about the beach-fire and the +darkness: it seemed to me that my own image had been caught from it, +and I felt that I had been travestying it foolishly. + +With an impulse of irritation, I broke in upon the imbecile with the +drums, interrupting him in a loud clear voice and inquiring whether he +knew the time. “I don’t know the time,” he replied, with his abstracted +fatuous smile--“but,” he added, after a moment, when he had come to +the end of a spasm of drumming, “I’ve got something else that’s just +as good!” He produced a pint flask from his back pocket: “And a darn +sight better!” he added. He offered me a drink, which I accepted. I sat +down on a chair beside him. “This is something,” he further observed, +after taking a swig himself, “which makes time unnecessary!” He had +the conviction of quiet humor of a very stupid person. “If you carry a +little flask,” he continued, after a brief pause--he had begun softly +drumming again--“you don’t need to carry a watch!” + +I asked him whether he knew Larry Mickler, and when he shook his head, +always smiling, I expressed the extreme distaste I felt for the admirer +of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. “Why, he’s a fellow,” I protested, “who +smashes the statue of the Winged Victory that his wife brings home from +college--a perfectly nice little college girl! He tries to neck other +girls in the Jap’s room--in the bathroom!--He threatens them with a +gun! He’s the most objectionable man I’ve ever known!” + +And I reflected to the tune of the fox-trot and to the subdued +rat-a-tat of the drum, that what I had said was literally true: Larry +Mickler was, without any question, the most obnoxious man I had ever +known--and I had failed to put him properly in his place! I had been +afraid of his damned revolver! Here there had come to me an opportunity +to stand up to Evil itself: it might be that such a moment as this, +such a moment that tested a man, came but once to a man in his life! +And I had quailed at the thought of a gun! Yet to stand up to Larry +Mickler would be finally to vindicate one’s honor against the horror, +the shame, the despair, of that terrible house! They themselves, I felt +sure, would thank me for it! + +I decided to seek him out. I should find him slinking about the +rooms--I remembered his dirty complexion and his furtive, ill-natured +eye, his cockily waxed mustache. He would ask me to drink to +Dostoevsky, and I should reply: “To hell with Dostoevsky! What’s the +good of a Dostoevsky to nourish such worms as you? The world would be +more decent without him!--the world would be better off if it were rid +of all the cripples and defectives who find their only justification in +reading and writing books!” + +And I was steadied with a deep satisfaction, a perfect self-assurance: +I took on a new authority. With the most affable friendliness, I +complimented the man with the spectacles on his mastery of the traps, +and asked him whether he had taken lessons. He said, no: that he +had just picked it up, and added some quiet pleasantry, at which I +uproariously laughed, but to which I had paid no attention, as I had +been thinking of the classical statue which Larry Mickler had smashed +on the mantelpiece and which now presented itself to my mind in the +guise of a silver-gray Athena as slender as her spear--and this vision, +in the glimpse of a second, had dragged with it all the fresh bright +beauty of the portfolio of drawings for Homer which Bobby McIlvaine had +shown Rita and me that May night in University Place. + +I arose and thanked the drummer for his drink, which I extravagantly +commended with a condescension almost regal. He offered me another, +which I took. + +Walking composedly from room to room, I began scouring the house for +Larry Mickler: with a keen and arrogant glance, I scrutinized the +groups one by one.--I told myself that, once Mickler was disposed of, +I should carry off the pretty brunette, who had come to seem to me +very desirable--I should meet her at first on her professional basis, +and then I should compel her to be human with me--she should drop that +horrible manner and mask, she should share with me her feelings and her +thoughts!--She should become my companion--she should love me! + +But I could find Larry Mickler nowhere, and when at last I began to +inquire, nobody seemed to know what had become of him. In the front +room, I was taken aback to discover that the girl with the brown +eyes had already reached an understanding with a clownish-looking +elderly man, who wore a heavy black ribbon on his eye-glasses. He was +pressing her to leave with him at once; and she was explaining that +she would have to wait until her “girl-friend” was ready to go. The +little fish-faced blonde, for her part, had, in the meantime, been +taken in the toils of one of the licensed Greenwich Village lunatics, +who, without a penny in his pocket, was exerting the active and ironic +intelligence of which his derangement had never deprived him to +convince her of the seriousness of his intentions. + +I went up to Tony Scallopino, who greeted me with a broad, sunny smile, +and asked him whether he had seen Larry Mickler. “I just see him go,” +he replied. + +I stood for a moment without speaking. Then, “What’s the idea,” I +began, “of bringing these girls here to-night?” “They’re just two +little girls,” he explained, “who come to my place to dance. They’ve +had hard luck and they have to earn a little money. They’re two very +nice girls.” He had said this with a smiling eye in which I thought I +detected insolence: I found myself glaring at him. “Well, I think that +it was a great mistake to bring them here to-night!” I declared. + +His grin was for a second obscured by a blink, like the shutter +of a camera: he began to say something more, I don’t know what. +I only stared into his face: his eyes were wide open but shrewd; +he still smiled--he had the habitual tactfulness of the Italian +restaurant-proprietor, but his obsequiousness was gone: he was raising +his heavy black eyebrows, as if in protest and surprise. I felt that +he thought me drunk, that he considered my objections tactless: was +Tony Scallopino not himself an independent Villager? had he not been +invited to the party? had he not sometimes loaned money to the lunatic +who was attempting to impose on the blond girl? had he not talked like +a brother to Hugo of the trials and aspirations of the workers? had he +not cashed my checks? + +My lips opened, without my having planned it, and, despite the gummy +tongue of drunkenness, I heard myself suddenly interrupt him: “You used +to be a Wobbly! You used to talk about justice to the workers! Well, +it seems to me that now you’re betraying the workers! You’re trying +to give the Greenwich Villagers a taste for leisure-class luxuries! +You’ve turned your old Italian restaurant into an expensive up-town +night-club!--and you charge us high prices for bad liquor! And you have +the nerve to bring these girls--” He tried to slip away, but I seized +him by the arms and pinioned him against the wall: “You used to talk +about the social revolution--well, if there’s ever a social revolution, +you proletarians who run night-clubs will be the first to get the +axe!--When I first came down to Greenwich Village----” + +He was angry and tried to pull away--I thought I heard him say, “You +must be drunk!” and saw him give me a black malign look. With a +powerful movement of his arms, he lifted them and pushed me away with +such force that I staggered backward and almost fell.--I struck him in +the jaw with my fist--and the next moment was looking at the room from +a different point of view, and knew that I was lying on the floor. + + + + + IV + + +In the bright warm room, so alive inside the bleak November dark, +before the fire burning briskly and stoutly, Professor Grosbeake’s +three beautiful daughters gave me tea, in their parents’ absence. Among +the elegant and slender spindles of the legs and rungs of the English +furniture, which seemed blacker and stronger-sinewed, as if they had +been brought to a sharper focus, than American mahogany--which, as in +the case of the Queen Anne secretary, with its narrow shape, its dark +dense grain, its close-laid shelves above, hooded with a double-loaf +top, and its close-packed drawers below, diminishing in thickness +toward the bottom, its air of having always contained sealed letters +and legal papers, all safely and neatly locked away, seemed designed +for a tighter, compacter, and more downright civilization; among the +late pale autumnal flowers, the roses and the bowl of white cosmos; the +white ruffle-bordered curtains against the black of the winter panes +and the patches of confused pink and green made by the modest modernist +paintings--Magda, Frieda, and Rosamond, themselves in fresh light +frocks like the flowers, enchanted me with their loveliness and candor. + +They were all very smooth and blond; they had never bobbed their hair, +and Frieda and Magda wore theirs brushed abundantly down their backs, +like Alice in the Alice books. Rosamond, who was older than the twins, +had hers up: it was parted in the middle and tightly wound behind in a +blond and young-womanly knot, so that, if one thought only of her hair, +she seemed like a young German fräulein (Mrs. Grosbeake was German), +whereas, if one thought of her blue eyes, her straight nose, her long +oval face and her long and graceful neck, she seemed like an English +girl. She served the tea with nice shy manners. Rosamond was dressed in +pale blue; and one of the twins, Magda, wore white, and Frieda, a kind +of lilac, with stockings a kind of lavender, lighter than the frock. +The twins seemed rather German than English: they had plump round +cheeks and round noses, and were maturely developed for fourteen. + +Frieda had golden-red hair, which gave a singular effect of richness as +it came down over her purple dress; Magda was more heavily built and +slower-moving and slower-thinking than her sister: she was the blondest +of all--her hair was the palest, purest flaxen I had ever seen. And her +blondness made me think of Daisy, whom I expected to see the next day. + +(I had lately come back from abroad. My aunt had left me a small +legacy, and very soon after the night at Sue Borglum’s, I had gone to +Europe and had stayed there till fall. When I had returned, I had been +eager to see Grosbeake, one of whose books I had bought in England and +had been reading on the boat, and in whom I now felt a new interest. I +had also planned to visit Daisy and Pete Bird, who had left New York, +even before I had, and were now living together in the country, not far +out of my way back to town. Since I had been back, I had written to +Daisy, and she had invited me to come to see them.) + +I liked the English voices of the young Grosbeakes: they had a soft +flurried way of speaking, and a maidenly innocence of timbre, quite +unlike young American girls (though the twins were beginning already +to acquire American slang). “I don’t like this kind of crackers,” said +Magda. “We couldn’t get the regular biscuits,” Rosamond explained. +“The grocer’s all out of them.--I’m sorry,” she went on seriously to +me. “I’m afraid they’re not very good!” “You always say ‘biscuits,’” +said Frieda, “and Magda always says ‘crackers.’ I think we all ought +to say the same thing!” “What do you say?” queried Magda. “Sometimes +I say one,” said Frieda, “and sometimes I say the other. But I like +‘biscuits’ best!” “I think these are really crackers,” said Rosamond, +who did not want my feelings hurt by a discrimination in favor of +‘biscuits,’ “because they crackle so when you break them.” “That’s why +I think ‘biscuits’ is better,” insisted Frieda, “--because ‘crackers’ +sounds as if they _all_ crackled--but _some_ biscuits just bend, you +know!” “They’re not biscuits,” said Rosamond. “They’re cakes.--Won’t +you have some more tea?” she urged me. “No,” said Frieda, “you know +those little soft ones that we had in the country last summer, that you +can almost bend in two!” “They were little cakes,” said Rosamond.--We +heard some one come in at the front door. “There’s Father,” Magda +announced. + +I could see Grosbeake taking off his black coat and his low-crowned +black hat and setting his stick in the stand, before he appeared in the +doorway. He had the rounded back of the scholar, a back, indeed, almost +humped--of which I always used to feel that the exceptional extent +to which it was bowed was an index to the degree of the difficulty +of his researches. But Grosbeake, beyond this, had nothing of the +physical deficiency--the weak eyes or the feeble figure--ordinarily +attributed to the scholar. On the contrary, he seemed to have sprung +from some tough ruddy-cheeked English stock which not even a lifetime +of universities could enervate or fade. Despite the fineness of his +features, he had something of Mr. Pickwick and even something of +Mr. Punch. And upon an American who had been living in New York, he +produced a curious and gratifying impression: it was as if one were +surprised and rejoiced, after seeing a horde of depersonalized masks, +at finding some one who possessed a face. With his fair cheeks flushed +rosy by the cold, his salient nose and chin, his slanting Henry VIII +eyes and his look of having been carved by hand out of some very sound +kind of wood by a wood-carver of the days before machinery, he gave +the impression of being a product, by way of the generations which had +preceded him, of a constant hand-to-hand encounter with the turbulence +of the elements and with the occasions of human life. He wore black +English clothes and his stiff white cuffs were very white: his collar +and his cravat, and his white locks which came down over his collar, +seemed to me very old-fashioned. He always carried a thickish dark +stick, with a brass top of interlocked apes, which a brother had +brought him from India. + +He greeted me with his charming courtesy and peered up at me with +wise and subtle bird-lidded eyes. “I’m sorry,” he explained, “not to +have been able to be here for tea. But there was a meeting of the +examination committee at precisely a quarter to five--something which +would be unthinkable in England, you know.” He lifted sparse old +eyebrows in a smile. “Rather than make the dons miss their tea, they’d +allow the examination to be prepared without adequate consultation!--I +had proposed holding the meeting in a tea-room, but they didn’t seem +to care for the suggestion--or to take the hint!” He spoke slowly and +very deliberately, and his voice had fine up-and-down inflections of +sweetness and irony: his nostrils had inflections, too, and vibrated +while he spoke. + +“I’m afraid the tea’s cold,” said Rosamond. “I’ll have some fresh +made.” “No: never mind!” said Grosbeake. He stood before the fire, his +hands clasped just above his stomach. “I think we shall have snow,” +he announced. “I think we shall have snow!--The Dean was very sure we +shouldn’t--but I believe that we shall!” I remarked that we had had no +frost and that the afternoon had been warm. “That was what the Dean +pointed out,” he replied. “He even insisted on making a bet with me. +He bet me a bottle of Scotch whiskey against a bottle of my sherry. I +think he’ll get the better of the bargain: the sherry is very good: +it was given me by a friend in the Embassy, who had the privilege of +bringing it in!” + +He took the cup of tepid tea from Rosamond and sat down in an arm-chair +before the fire. He asked me about myself and what I had been writing. +I was ashamed to be obliged to tell him that, even while I had been +abroad, I had really not written anything--I said that my literary +morale had been low, or something equally silly. + +“I was just thinking,” he replied, “in the Dean’s room, in looking +at the portraits of the college presidents there--that it may be +from certain points of view as much of a misfortune to have too much +character, too well-sustained a morale, as to have too little. When +I looked at the early presidents, especially the seventeenth-century +ones, I said to myself, ‘There are men whose character has been +overdeveloped!’ It’s a very special combination of qualities, you know, +that’s required for a mind capable of original work. A man mustn’t have +his character too vigorously developed, because he must be able to +experiment with ideas. It’s like going to buy a hat, you know--first +you try one on and wear it for a bit to see how it goes, and then you +try on another. But a man with a strongly developed character is unable +to do that.--But, on the other hand, of course, he must still have +character enough not simply to drift about without preferring one idea +to another.” + +Grosbeake had a curious irony, which was always at the same time +benign. It was the irony--one sees it seldom--of a mind which is at +once innocent and subtle, and which has, in consequence, something +divine about it: an irony without malice. He had a touch perhaps of +the vanity, or rather, of the dandyism, of the modern mathematical +philosopher, who finds himself provided with paradoxes at once so +surprising, so attractive and so sound. I have heard him comment with +his calm amusement on the mistakes of unmathematical philosophers when +they attempted to invoke mathematics: “It’s curious,” he would say, +“how peculiarly unfortunate they are in their choice of mathematical +examples! They always seem to hit upon something which isn’t +necessarily true at all--which might quite as well be the other way, +you know! Bradley, for example, in his _Logic_, when he wants to give +an illustration of a particularly indisputable truth--something we must +accept as self-evident--that, if B is to the left of C, and if A is to +the left of B, then A must be to the left of C, also--when, of course, +that’s not true at all!--if you prolong a straight line indefinitely, +you come back on the other side!” Though, when Bradley’s _Logic_ was +written, non-Euclidean geometry could hardly have been widely known. +(There may have entered, also, into Grosbeake’s attitude, in this +particular instance, some traditional opposition between the points of +view of Cambridge and Oxford.) + +But no one could have been farther than Grosbeake from the essential +triviality of mind which academic arrogance or complacency so often +tries to disguise. For if Hugo Bamman and his father were the modern +type of saints, Grosbeake was a modern type of sage, who taught wisdom +in casual conversation and virtue only by example. I had felt his +influence even in college, at a time when I as yet knew nothing of his +philosophical ideas. For Grosbeake had the most comprehensive mind, +at home in the most varied fields, with which I had ever come into +contact. For him, philosophy was an attempt to take account of all the +aspects of the universe, and to find in them coherence and a meaning; +so that Grosbeake’s comment on any subject had a special significance +and value, and, despite the fact that he never made an effort to +expostulate or convert, was likely to present itself long afterwards +as something to be seriously considered in making up one’s own mind on +the subject. And though he detested every sort of preaching (Mr. Bamman +had been a born preacher), and though even the study of Ethics was +inconceivable to him, he had the effect, more than any one else I had +known, of making moral distinction attractive. I remember his saying +once of some student, a student of whose abilities he thought well, but +who, as punishment for some escapade, had had his chapel cuts taken +away from him, so that he couldn’t go out of town over Sundays, that it +would “do him good,” because he would now work during the week-ends. +“So you do believe in doing people good!” some one present had caught +him up. “I thought you didn’t believe in that!” “That’s an object,” +Grosbeake had replied, a little taken aback, “which I believe is best +promoted indirectly.” + +Mrs. Grosbeake came in before dinner: she was a broad, handsome, placid +German woman, very thoroughly educated and very practical. One always +felt that she was a kind of base upon which Grosbeake’s metaphysics +rested; for he was more sensitive and nervous than he appeared, and, +although intellectually imperturbable, was in other ways easily +disorganized. + +We had dinner in the white-walled dining-room--it was a solid and +attractive Colonial house. The Grosbeakes had brought over their own +silver, as well as their own furniture, and the pieces had always +seemed to me to possess plainly discernible personalities, even +physiognomies: there was a squarish silver tea-pot which squatted +flat upon the table and had a very sharp emphatic spout that jutted +straight out from the base and was balanced on the other side by a long +straight high-cocked handle. And the cream-pitcher, the sauce-boat, and +even the little salt-cellars straddled sturdily on three tiny legs, +like some sort of blunt-beaked beetles, or rather, it occurred to me +to-night, like the snouted and potbellied demons of Bruegel or Callot. +Even the color and substance of the food seemed to have a special +richness and density, as if they had been painted in a still-life: the +bread and the boiled potatoes looked particularly white and firm, the +mound of currant jelly particularly lucent and red, and the beefsteak +particularly vivid in its contrasts of red and brown. The Ambassador’s +sherry was delicious. In spite, however, of the satisfaction which +Grosbeake had seemed to feel in it, his epicurean tastes were really +indulged almost exclusively in the things of the intellect, so that I +have heard him relish a page of Hume as if it had been a wine, whereas +food and drink themselves, as well as other material comforts, he +usually disregarded. Now he dominated the table, talking tranquilly +and blandly; and in the presence of their father and mother, the three +lovely Grosbeake girls--unlike young American girls, who usually +dominate their parents--were entirely in abeyance, with only an +occasional low rapid interchange between the twins, who were sitting +together. + +“I’ve been reading Sinclair Lewis’s _Babbitt_,” Grosbeake remarked. I +asked him what he thought of it. “Oh, very good,” he replied. “Though +a little unfair to Babbitt, I think. Of course, I know very little +about the American cities of the Middle West--I can’t pretend to speak. +But from the students from the West whom I’ve had in my courses, I +get rather a different impression. They’re very alert, you know--very +eager to learn. And they do well: they grasp things very quickly. So I +don’t think that the families they come from can be quite so uniformly +benighted as Lewis represents them in _Babbitt_.--And I feel, in +reading your friend Hugo Bamman, that he paints a little too sombre a +picture of the business men and their families in much the same way. + +“It seems to me rather a mistake, you know, to hold the business men up +to ridicule for their Rotary Clubs and their fraternal organizations. +Under conditions of that kind, where the city is quite new and +the people have no institutions, they have to create some sort of +institutions in order to hold the community together. Rotary Clubs +and societies of that sort, imperfect as they may be, fulfil a very +necessary function. + +“It seems to me that, from some points of view, the most unfortunate +feature of American business is its failure to provide real leaders. +Professor Pittinger, who has been making a study of the subject, tells +me that it has become impossible, for example, for the president or one +of the directors of a large corporation to leave a controlling interest +to his son. He can only leave him an investment, and the son can spend +the money as he pleases; but he inherits no responsibility and no +power, and the surviving officers of the company don’t recognize his +right to any. That seems to me unfortunate, because where the father +has to make his own way, largely without advantages, to a position of +importance, the son, who has had the advantages, finds himself with no +power. You often find in England that the squire who has lived in the +country, and has had to deal at first-hand with his tenants, and with +his animals and land, has a far stronger sense of realities than the +more enlightened Londoner.” + +“But he sometimes mistreats his tenants and mismanages his estate +abominably,” Mrs. Grosbeake interjected. + +“If he does,” continued Grosbeake, “he knows better what he’s doing, +nevertheless, than the average Liberal member of Parliament, say, who +has the best intentions in the world, but who lives between his club, +and certain houses to which he goes, and the House of Commons--always +seeing the same people, who are all people of precisely his way of +thinking, who are living in precisely the same way--so that he never +at any point really comes into contact with realities--and so never +really knows what he is talking about. Even Morley was a little like +that. + +“I wonder whether it mightn’t be an advantage, both to the sons of +business men and to the businesses themselves, if the second generation +could take over some responsibility in connection with their fathers’ +work. They seem to me very intelligent--so far as I’ve been able to +judge from those I meet in my classes--and the effect on trade and +industry of even one generation of such men might, I should think, be +enormous. In that event, the Rotary Clubs might become very important +institutions--they might provide the moral leadership for business.” + +I had so long been taking it for granted that no good could come out of +business, that this idea of Grosbeake’s seemed to me a very queer and +foreign one; but I reflected on what he had said. + +I always listened with interest and respect to Grosbeake’s opinions +on American matters. He had studied American affairs with the +attention, at once sympathetic and detached, which he applied to +everything, and he often succeeded in illumining them with that +uncanny divination which he displayed in all sorts of fields quite +outside his special province. At that time, it had become the custom +for Englishmen who visited America--we encouraged it, of course, +ourselves--to edify us with generalizations about American life and +institutions--generalizations often based on a round of cocktail +parties in New York, or, at most, on a lecture tour. So many of the +prizes in America always went to the third and second-rate, that +we had become, especially since the War, a paradise for British +mediocrities--poets, novelists, and universal critics, who had often +great success as lecturers. They went about patronizing the Americans +with a gusto and a giddy elation which suggested that they might +themselves have been patronized at home; and they would sometimes +tour the country from coast to coast and return again and again. It +was, therefore, peculiarly gratifying for an American to discover in +Grosbeake those qualities of toughness, richness, eccentricity, and +independence which one had admired in English literature and history, +but of which one had so often been disappointed in the English +celebrities who visited us. + +After dinner, we sat before the fire. Mrs. Grosbeake seemed to +contribute a ground-tone of infinite repose: she made one feel that the +body of humanity was invulnerably solid and sound, and that it was deep +and contained many treasures which had never been brought to birth. She +sat with her feet side by side, resting squarely on the floor, and she +wore some sort of leather sandals, with very wide blunt toes. These +sandals, like the modernist paintings (which Grosbeake had bought from +a former student, in financial difficulties), were one of the odd notes +of unconventionality in the tranquil conventional household; and they +surprised me in the same unwarranted way as when one found Grosbeake, +in certain of his writings, carrying his philosophical principles +through morals into the field of political criticism and bringing in an +indictment against nationalism or capitalism. + +I had never, as an undergraduate, read anything which Grosbeake had +written, and I had never taken any of his courses. I had, however, in +my senior year, sometimes gone to his house. After meeting him once +or twice at teas, I had run into him one day in the hallway of one of +the recitation buildings: he had recognized me and had talked to me +about an article which I had just written for the college magazine, +and which had aroused a certain amount of controversy. I had attacked +wholesale, as a sinister conspiracy against freedom of action and +thought, the policy of the English Department, the administration of +the Dean’s office, football mass-meetings, compulsory chapel, and the +custom of compelling freshmen to wear little black caps; and I was +surprised and rather embarrassed by Grosbeake’s expression of friendly +interest. I replied almost apologetically--I had been dismayed by +the rumpus I had roused--that I seemed to have laid myself open to a +good deal of adverse criticism. “Ah, well,” Grosbeake had reassured +me, “one can’t take up any position, can one? without doing that.” My +complaints had been made in resentment, and they had been answered +with resentment by the faculty, the alumni, the editors of the college +daily, the officers of the athletic association, and some of the more +ardent and articulate freshmen, who insisted that they asked nothing +better than to pay homage to the college tradition by continuing to +wear their little black caps: it had never occurred to me, at the +time, that I was engaged in doing anything so dignified as taking up +a position, and I had felt that I must be careful, in the future, to +conduct the controversy with more scrupulousness and sobriety, that I +must remember my intellectual responsibilities. And half my bitterness +and indignation against the college authorities was gone at finding an +elderly and important professor willing to consider without heat what I +had said. + +He had invited me then to his house, and I used to go there on Sunday +evenings, when the Grosbeakes received faculty and students. I rarely +heard him talk about his subject, and did not understand him when +he did: I had only the vaguest notion what it was. I figured him as +eternally occupied with solving the same sort of problems with which +I had struggled in Trigonometry and Permutations and Combinations. +I did not know that those strings of puzzles were not the whole +of mathematics, but merely multiplied illustrations of general +mathematical laws, in which no one had attempted to interest us. And +still less did I realize that Grosbeake had passed beyond Mathematics +proper to Symbolic Logic (it was principally the fact that we had in +our faculty another of the small but infatuated band of the students +of Symbolic Logic--a man with whom he wished to collaborate--which +had brought him to the United States and which had kept him there so +long). I did not know that Symbolic Logic was an attempt to provide +a universal language for all the branches of science, and that this +attempt to formulate relations common to different departments of +thought was itself a deeper expression of the same genius which had +given rise to Grosbeake’s interest in such varied fields of human +activity, and of his extraordinary instinct for tracing their +inter-relations. Aside from his personal distinction and charm, it was +this gift which had fascinated me: he had usually talked to me about +literature, but, aside from his appreciation of poetry, plays, and +novels as such--which was in itself remarkable--he had also a brilliant +faculty for reading into them social and moral history and revealing +their philosophic implications. He was the first person, since Hugo’s +father, who had helped me toward the kind of education which I had +begun when Mr. Bamman had talked to me at school about Shakespeare. + +I had, however, never guessed at Grosbeake’s real importance--and +indeed his importance outside his special field had never really +appeared until a year or two before the War, when he had turned +from mathematics to philosophy. When I came to read his books, I +was astonished. First of all, Grosbeake’s tone and style, in his +philosophical writings, were not at all what I should have expected. +His manner in conversation was rather urbane, dispassionate, and +dry: he seemed, as I have said, to approach ideas with a certain +epicureanism of the intellect. But his writing had a close tough grain: +it was crystalline, in the sense that it gave an effect of the hardness +and clarity of crystals rather than of the limpidity of crystal; it +had a peculiar earnestness and intensity, and a kind of incandescence. +But what had surprised me most--I had already had some idea of the +universal scope of his mind--were the power of his imagination and the +boldness and stoutness of his spirit. + +Grosbeake was one of the first modern philosophers, really competent to +understand the new physics of relativity and quantum theory, who had +made an attempt, on the full scale, to trace the consequences of these +discoveries for the concepts of general philosophy, and to construct +a system which should admit them. This had brought him to a drastic +rejection of the philosophical assumptions of old-fashioned mechanistic +science. + +Since my recent encounters with the world in New York, which had made +me feel my own weakness and baseness, I had myself been haunted and +oppressed, as on the night of Sue Borglum’s party, by the thought that +humanity, after all, was merely another race of animals, whose behavior +was fixed by their environment, and by the cells which they had had +from their parents, and that the earth and all its creatures was only +a complicated interaction of hard little particles like bullets. I now +learned that it had lately become possible, in the light of scientific +research--that it had even become inevitable (though I was far from +being able to follow all Grosbeake’s arguments) to regard the universe, +not as a machine, which had once been wound up and was still running, +but as an organism in course of development. The unit was no longer +a bullet, but something called an event; and the world was a flux of +events. The relativity of time and space and the anomalous behavior +of electrons, in undermining the “iron laws” of nature, had opened +flood-gates of speculation which the ordinary reasonable mind, the kind +of mind which respected science without examining its assumptions or +attempting to force them to their consequences, had long tended to +regard as closed. And despite the surprise and disapproval of other +mathematicians who, capable of practising only one trade, prided +themselves on sticking to their lasts, Professor Grosbeake had late in +his career emerged as a metaphysician. + +I wanted to make him talk on this subject, and I inquired vaguely +about the congress of a scientific association which he had attended +the summer before. He told me briefly of some of its proceedings, then +added, after a pause, with his bland and serious irony: “If you want +to see the sort of men that the mediæval church must have been made +up of, you should study an assemblage of modern scientists. I thought +about them last summer that they must be very like the mediæval +doctors. They’re all more or less internationally minded, you know, +and they’re men of strong character and conviction--and they’re all +authoritarians: they subscribe to a body of dogma and they won’t +countenance any heresy. If a scientist has evolved an hypothesis +which runs counter to the established hypothesis, they won’t give it +a serious hearing--if he’s performed an experiment, you know, which +conflicts with accepted experiments, they refuse to look at it!”---- + +At this point in the conversation, Magda and Frieda, who had to go +to bed, came in to say good-night. They kissed their mother, who +spoke to them in a low voice, but they hesitated about kissing their +father--in the midst of solemn discourse and with a visitor present. +Magda hung back by her mother’s couch, but Frieda cut the knot by +dashing forward, diving for his bald brow--I saw her own beautiful +hair over her shoulders, like some spilling of gold by the gods--and +running abruptly out of the room. “Oh, good-night, my dear!” said +Grosbeake.--“They have never executed any one,” he continued--Magda +kissed him on the cheek, more diffidently: “Good-night, my dear!--But +there are other methods of suppression even more expedient and +effective; for burning calls attention to the victim.” + +His criticism of contemporary science soon led him into +metaphysics.--The entrance of those gold and white girls--the +offspring, so late in life, of that old bald round-shouldered man who +had spent long years in the obstinate plumbing (by means of formulas so +difficult and abstract that they excluded even ideas of number, so far +beyond the ordinary reaches of even scientific minds that they dismayed +even mathematicians) of that mysterious reality which is at once +what we find outside us and what we think about it--the entrance of +Grosbeake’s lovely daughters had had the effect on me of a revelation +of the human vitality, the creative force of flesh and blood, which is +embodied in abstract thought. It was as if my imagination had fully +conceived for the first time that the logician’s chain of propositions, +no less than the astronomer’s systems and the physicist’s analysis of +the invisible, was as much the ripened fruit of rich natures as the +poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, or as those beautiful long-limbed +children, the breed of the Kentish seas and of the forests of the +Rhineland, who had brusquely embraced their father. + +He talked to me about the book he was writing. All that I had ever +learned at college of philosophy had been a conception of the external +world as a colorless and soundless wilderness whose true nature one +could never know, which one could not even imagine--but which I did, +none the less, imagine as a vast landscape of polar spaces in whose +eternal twilight one wandered, preoccupied and deluded by a flicker +of magic-lantern pictures which danced inside one’s mind and forever +remained private to oneself. I had now learned, however, from Grosbeake +that since, for example, the high flush of Rita’s cheeks and the sound +of her voice reciting poetry had so radically affected my behavior, +they must belong as much to reality, to that Nature which was no +longer outside one, as the blood corpuscles and the light-waves, the +sound-waves and the vocal organs which were assumed to have produced +them. And it now appeared that Grosbeake admitted as belonging, also, +to reality those æsthetic values which, for example, had made Rita, +when she wrote her poems, feel that the pavements of the Village were +harsh and the sound of the river musical. And so, finally, he told me, +moral values, which he identified with æsthetic values, must be equally +a part of that reality which he found it impossible to split into two +divisions of mind and matter, body and soul. Those moral judgments, +then, I reflected, which had given rise to my disgust and despair the +night of Sue Borghum’s party had been, after all, as real, as much to +be taken seriously, as the biological and neurological processes to +which I had tended to reduce them. + +What astonished me most, however, was that Grosbeake now crowned his +system with a new conception of God: he brought God back into the +universe of science, under what appeared to me at first an unfamiliar +form. For Grosbeake’s God was as different as possible from the +tolerant and moderate Great Spirit, the enlightened parliamentary +monarch, of the modern liberal theologian. God, for Grosbeake, was the +ultimate harmony implied by the æsthetic and moral values of which +men were aware in the universe; and our moments of divine revelation +were simply those when we realized most indubitably the necessity +of this harmony and order, when we became most acutely conscious of +this creative purpose of God. And it was, then, this creative purpose +which, in the interest of the ultimate harmony, determined which +possibilities, among the infinite possibilities of the constant flux +of events--the development of the universal organism--should make +themselves actual. + +I listened to Grosbeake with excitement. He seemed to me at that moment +to justify to me those instincts and those beliefs which--suspicious of +all the world and uncertain of myself most of all--I had lately come to +doubt. And I was moved by what seemed to me the greatness of his mind +and the boldness of his spirit amidst the modesty and mildness of his +home.--I mustn’t keep him up, then, and tire him: Mrs. Grosbeake had +already gone to bed. + +I said that I must go, and he got up and brought a bowl of nuts, which +we cracked in front of the fire. He told me some Victorian anecdote +about Gladstone and Disraeli, whom he always called “Dizzy.” + +As I finally came out of the warm house into the white-framed +glass-sided porch which enclosed the front door, I felt a tinge of +crispness in the air, as when the first ice-splinters web a pond, and +I caught the chilly fragrance of the roses and the white and daisylike +cosmos, which had been set out in vases for the night--and as I took +leave of Grosbeake--gazing out through the glass at the pavement +lightly dappled with leaves and the dark grass glittering with wet--my +mind bemused with a vision of God as a vast crystal fixing its symmetry +from a liquefied universe--I felt a delicious delicacy of iciness, +glossy fall-leaf slivers and black rain-glinting glass. + +“It’s beginning to snow,” said Grosbeake. It was true: it was not +raining, but snowing. A great flake alighted on my sleeve. “So I win +my bet with the Dean,” he said. “I shall have his Scotch whiskey and +not he my sherry!--You know, the weather’s the only subject on which +I really regard myself as infallible. It comes from being bred on the +Kentish coast--learning about one’s weather from the narrow seas! What +does Dean Mosely know of the weather?--coming from an inland city like +Indianapolis!” + +Grosbeake stood in the outside door and regarded the large flakes with +satisfaction. “Dean Mosely kept insisting,” he continued, “that there +were none of the signs of snow--and when he came to enumerate them, I +saw that it was true: there were none of the signs. But I knew it was +going to snow!” + + * * * * * + +It was a heavy snowstorm for November. It had snowed, and then rained, +and then frozen: on the train, the next afternoon, when I scraped a +peep-hole in the frost-glazed window, I disclosed a vignette of fences, +strung with wires of ice, and tree-branches decked with crystals, like +glittering chandeliers. + +But it was late when I arrived at my station: the falling darkness and +the cold lay heavy on the little town. I finally succeeded in getting +a taxi, which had no cushions on the seat and which bucked over the +frozen ruts. There were nice white houses on the road and all the +people seemed to be inside them: the windows were orange against the +snow, which was bluing and graying with the night. + +To the east, when we had left behind the town, an army of corn-stacks +in the grayness were frozen to their posts; and to the west, the skies +were split across with the tragic gold and black of a late November +sunset. The grandeur of the winter landscape--since Grosbeake had +predicted the snowfall--had associated itself in my mind with the +grandeur of the philosophic mind; and as I gazed at those last gigantic +cracks of a light beyond human skies, I remembered the fiery walls of +the world of which Lucretius had said that the thinker, in sending his +intellect beyond them, had broken Nature’s locks and won the freedom of +the universe: they seemed to speak to me of bold and lonely thought. + +The house, when we finally pulled in to it, was so low that it seemed +sunk in the snow--deep-embedded in the winter ground, which held it +fast: there was a single yellow square of light. + +Pete Bird hurried cordially out--I could see Daisy standing in the +doorway. Pete insisted on my not paying for the taxi: “Just put it on +my bill!” he told the man. + +Inside, I found Daisy transformed: she greeted me with her frank +American smile, but it was this time unmistakably the smile of the +young American girls of my boyhood, who had never used lipstick or +rouge. I was surprised to see her wholly without make-up: her lips were +a pale coral-pink and her hair, which at Sue Borglum’s party had been +mongrel, muddy and dull, was now an even flaxen yellow. She was wearing +a neat white apron over a pretty blue dress, and looked exactly like +some model little housewife in a bright-colored American advertisement, +smiling sunnily over the lightness of a new kind of pancake-flour or +the flavor of a can of baked beans. + +She apologized for the apron--she was just getting dinner, she +said--and I thought that she knew she looked well in it. I told her +how healthy and lovely she looked. “Just feel this!” she invited me, +hooking up her little short-sleeved elbow: I found it studded with +solid bulging muscles. “Good Heavens!” I exclaimed. “How did you ever +get like that?” “Just working!” Daisy explained. “We fixed the place +all up ourselves. When we came, it was just a dump!” + +Pete himself, to my surprise, with his slight erect figure, seemed +wiry, effective and hardy. He wore a khaki shirt with a smartly tied +navy-blue tie, which gave to his old gray trousers and his old Norfolk +jacket which did not match them, a gentlemanly air of roughing it. + +Daisy amiably excused herself and went to attend to the dinner on the +stove. Pete Bird--a casual and cordial host--invited me in before the +fire. + +The hall had been a little nondescript, a cross between a work-shed +and a hall-closet; but the living-room was orderly and cheerful. There +was a bright rag-rug on the floor, and there were bright prints and +maps on the walls--Pete was a great hand at making maps--and lamps with +warmly glowing lampshades, also the work of Pete. And there was a large +old-fashioned fireplace, where big logs were roaring and snapping on +tall black old-fashioned andirons, still stiff-necked, though lame and +leaning crooked. + +I expressed my enthusiasm for the fire, and admired the fireplace and +the room. Pete received my compliments with the easy nod and brief word +of the owner of an Adirondack camp: he made one feel that the spacious +fireplace was something he had had specially built, and evoked a vision +of moose-horns and bear-heads under heavy darkling rafters. + +“That black log’s not burning well,” he announced. “Either it’s frozen +in the cracks or it’s cranky!” He hooked it and wrenched it with a +poker and an old rickety pair of tongs which did not come together: he +had a master’s way with the logs. “Get over there, you old alligator!” +he commanded. “You _will_ be hard-boiled, _will_ you!” + +“I’m sorry,” he remarked, as he stood up in front of the mantelpiece, +which was almost as high as his head, and invited me to sit down before +the fire--“I’m sorry that I can’t offer you a drink--but the only +things you can get around here are apple and alcohol, and both of them +are vile. We’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s really more +considerate to the guests not to offer them anything at all!”--“We +hoped you might bring something with you,” said Daisy, looking up with +her sweet candid smile: she was dealing out white plates around a table +in the middle of the room. I apologized for not having thought of it. +“We never think of it ourselves--if you can believe me,” Pete insisted. +“It’s almost impossible now to get any kind of decent liquor, in New +York or anywhere else--and the kind of drinks that you _can_ get just +don’t interest me!” I agreed with him heartily, and added that the +trouble with New York was that everybody there drank far too much bad +liquor. “That’s why we came to the country,” said Daisy. “We decided +that it was that or the drunkard’s home!” + +“Now, good people!” Daisy invited us, mimicking the kind of women who +say, “Now good people!”--“The dinner is all ready!--if you’ll just sit +down and fly at it!” + +The dinner was an admirable pot-roast, with onions, potatoes and +carrots. We all ate a great deal and did very little talking while we +ate. + +The table was thick-legged and long: it seemed that Pete had made it +himself--and that he had also made or made over most of the other +pieces of furniture. When they had moved in, the place had been +desolate--full of rubbish, mould and rats. It had taken them all +summer to make it habitable: Pete had rummaged in old barns and houses +and unearthed many mutilated antiques, which he had then, with great +patience, repaired. He seemed to know a great deal about antiques. +The principal prize was a comb-backed rocking-chair, for which Pete +had himself supplied new rockers; but they warned me not to try to sit +in it, because it always went over backwards. I told Pete about the +Grosbeakes’ furniture, and he remembered that there was a Queen Anne +secretary something like the one I was describing, in the Metropolitan +Museum. + +For dessert, we ate golden canned peaches, and we drank a great deal of +black coffee. “Now, don’t worry about the dishes,” said Pete to Daisy. +“Just stack them in the kitchen, and I’ll do them later myself!” “If +that doesn’t mean,” replied Daisy, “that _I_’ll have to do them in the +morning, when they’re all greasy and cold.” “Don’t be silly!” said +Pete, indignantly. + +After dinner, we sat around the fire. I asked them what they did in the +evenings. “We just do this!” said Pete. “We read aloud,” supplemented +Daisy. “We’ve read Bulwer-Lytton’s novels almost entirely through.” +“Is he any good?” I inquired. “Fine,” said Daisy. “Besides, he’s the +only novelist that they’ve got in the village library.” I was amazed +at the idea of Daisy spending long winter evenings over Bulwer-Lytton; +but as I had talked to her, I soon discovered that she had always been +addicted to novel-reading and had excellent sense and taste--it had +apparently been only Ray Coleman’s reading aloud to her out of the +_Oxford Book of English Verse_ that she hadn’t been able to stand. + +I saw now that her ordinary vocabulary was partly literary, and that it +was the combination of literary words with slang which gave her speech +its peculiar charm--as when she had said, at the time I had first +talked to her, that the horse she had seen in her delirium had been +“leering” at her, or when she had told me that Ray Coleman in Paris had +seemed “pretty affluent.” + +I asked her what writers she liked best. “Well,” she said, “when I +was a girl at school, I used to think that Compton Mackenzie was the +swellest thing in the world--I thought that that was what life ought to +be like--that was what I thought Phil and I were like, when we ran away +from Pittsburgh. But I soon found out that the old racket was more like +a Russian novel!” + +Russian novels reminded me of Larry Mickler, and I asked Pete and +Daisy about him. I had never seen him before or since the night of +Sue Borglum’s party, and I had never been able to explain him: he +had come to seem to me--like the elephantine creature whom I had +encountered in the doorway on Thirty-fourth Street--a sort of demon who +had fleetingly materialized out of the infernal fumes of the evening. +“Oh,” said Daisy, “he’s perfectly harmless--he’s just a fool, that’s +all. He’s usually controlled by Alice, his wife. He was just acting up +that night because Alice wasn’t along. He’s always threatening to do +something desperate, but he usually ends up with Alice administering +triple-bromides.” I asked what Alice was like. “She’s just a clean +stalwart college girl,” said Daisy. “She doesn’t know quite what a +genius is,” Pete Bird contributed, “but she thinks that Larry is a +genius. He wrote a novel once which he was never able to get published, +and he’s always threatening to write another. In the meantime, he’s in +the advertising business, which he says he can never respect.” + +“I don’t like Larry Mickler,” Pete added, after a pause. “He cheats at +limericks!” I asked him what he meant. “Why, he gets you to play this +game where you both have to take the same first line and make up a +limerick to fit it. But he’s got the limericks all made up beforehand. +When I finally got wise and supplied the first line myself, he couldn’t +do a thing--he got sullen and wouldn’t play. Our relations have never +been cordial since.--That’s why he tried to make out that I gypped him +on those liverwurst sandwiches.” + +I had been watching Daisy follow the talk with a childlike seriousness +and candor. Though it was cold, she wore no stockings--for reasons +of economy, she said--and she shifted her slim and pretty legs, with +their straw-colored sharp-toed slippers, in the movements of a good +little girl listening restlessly but attentively to the conversation +of her elders. As we spoke humorously or gravely, told limericks or +deplored the demoralizing effects of the city, she would respond with +gravity or humor, turning her eyes from one speaker to the other. She +seemed sober-minded, shy and nice: I felt that some of the limericks +embarrassed her: I came to think of her almost as a _jeune fille_ +and vaguely confused her in my mind with Grosbeake’s golden-haired +daughters. + +Like all people who live in the country, they commenced about ten to +yawn: when I suggested that they must be tired they confessed it with +little protestation. + +“Now,” said Pete, “we have a guest-room which is always at the disposal +of the guests--but it’s as cold as a fiddler’s bitch to-night, and if +you really want to keep warm, you’d better sleep here on the couch.” +“But what about you?” I asked. “If you can stand the cold, I can.” +“Oh, we sleep in here!” replied Pete--and opening the door into the +next room, which had the aspect of a store-room--barren as an attic +and littered with all kinds of junk--he produced a gigantic set of +bed-springs, which he manœuvred through the door with nonchalance and +set out on a pair of trestles. + +I explored the regions beyond: there was a bedroom behind the +living-room, like a plunge into a cold black lake. Through the little +low square-paned window, I saw the moon, cut in brightest coldest +silver over the lonely and frozen fields. There had been something +almost miraculous about Grosbeake’s predicting the snowfall--as if +Nature had admitted him to her secrets! + +I returned to the smell of wood-smoke and the yellow-shaded lamps of +the living-room, and announced that I would sleep on the couch. + +How jolly it was, I reflected, back amid the warmth again, to go to bed +in front of a fire, in the country, in the winter-time, in the house of +friends! And as I undressed in the dark and grisly store-room, which +evidently represented the house as they had originally found it--before +they had taken it in hand--I was moved by admiration for what seemed +to me their pioneering heroism. They had established, with no help and +little money, in the midst of that hard rural wilderness--if but in a +single room--these amenities and decencies--this core of civilization! + +And they were right! Who should know it by this time--all the more +since my visit to Grosbeake!--better than I? All that dignified +mankind, all that kept them from the brawling and the squalor which, +the night of Sue Borglum’s party, had seemed to me the universal fate, +had been built up through endurance and patience, through steadiness +of purpose and good faith, through property well administered, through +families standing together, through lovers true to their pledges! +How had I ever been taken in by that foolish and shallow philosophy +of living only for the moment?--that philosophy I had learned from a +woman, which was possible only for a woman, given up, by her woman’s +nature, to her impulses, passions and moods! I remembered how I had +once used to wonder at Rita’s constant preoccupation with death, both +in her poetry and in conversation, and I could see now how such a life +as Rita’s, looking always upon the image of itself, must be ridden by +the terror of death, because death meant for it the end of the world. + +When Daisy was in bed, Pete Bird summoned me back into the living-room, +and I wrapped myself up in blankets and lay down before the fire on the +couch. But the coffee had made us wakeful and we went on talking in +bed. At first, we told funny stories, till we had obviously exhausted +our best and had begun to fall back on second-rate ones. Then Pete +regaled me with reminiscences of eccentric Greenwich Village characters +who had flourished before my day--there had been one uncompromising +prophet, who had made a practice of robbing fur-stores: he would hide +himself among the furs at the back, till the shop had been closed for +the night, then climb out with his booty, through a window: he had, +however, never profited by these activities, but had given everything +he stole to the poor, and had lived himself in the direst privation. + +We agreed that the great days were passing. I tried to remember some +of the songs which Bobby Edwards had used to sing in the restaurants. +Pete, it turned out, knew them all by heart and could sing them from +beginning to end. We agreed that there had been something remarkable +about Bobby Edwards. I said it was the curious prestige which very +clever people sometimes acquire by pretending to be stupid. Pete said +that this was not quite it, because Bobby Edwards did not look stupid: +the thing was that he never changed his face and consequently had +everybody buffaloed. + +These songs led to other songs: Pete and I finally got to the point +of singing _My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean_ and _There Is a Tavern in +the Town_. “I suppose this burns you up,” I said to Daisy, who had for +some time been lying silent. “I suppose you want to go to sleep.” “Oh, +I guess I can bear it!” she answered--then added, after a pause: “_My +Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean_ always reminds me of when I was a girl in +Yarmouth--in Canada. My uncle used to sing it.--And he used to sing +_The Girl I Left Behind Me_, too. I used to love to hearum sing that!” +Her voice, as she lay in the darkness, divested of the emphasis of day, +had almost the timbre of a child’s--and it moved me with the charming +pathos of young girls’ voices, the pathos of frailness and freshness. +“Did you come from Canada?” I asked. “I thought you came from +Pittsburgh!” “My mother came from there,” she explained. “My aunt still +lives up there. I used to be up there a lot when I was a kid.--Yes, I’m +really just a country girl!” she said, burlesquing herself. “That’s why +I take so easily to living out here. My other aunt,” she went on, after +a moment’s recollection, “married some kind of a nobleman.--I always +thought there must have been something wrong withum--he must have had +syphilis or something. But he was a real nobleman, it seemed!” + +When we were tired of singing ballads, we experimented with hymns: I +rendered, with what I felt at the time was an impressive solemnity and +resonance, _Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past_, and _The Starry Firmament +on High_.--But the second of these was met by silence--I received +no response from the bed. And when Pete and Daisy replied to my +good-night, it was plain they had been asleep. + +Those magnificent hymns! I went on thinking. What a first-rate poet +Watts had been! And that grandeur of the universe, of the moral +principle it implied--did one not feel it, also, even, in the calm +complacent firmament of Addison? + +Perhaps the effect on my imagination of Grosbeake’s religious ideas +had been, in recreating my conception of God, to revive for me a +vision of the Devil; but at any rate, my recent image of Larry Mickler +as a species of hobgoblin combined itself with my assimilation of +the gravy-boat and cream-pitcher at the Grosbeakes’ to the demons of +Bruegel and Callot, to inspire me with the idea of a satire in which +I should ascribe to a race of demons all those anti-social views and +habits which had come lately to seem to me so sinister. + +My mind, laying hold upon this, worked for a time with great clarity +and speed: I even framed sentences and paragraphs: “The attitude of +the demons toward each other is entirely devoid of the amenity and +dignity characteristic of human behavior. In their amorous relations, +they are neither romantic nor faithful. Many of the demons do not +function sexually, but among those that do--notably the succubæ and +incubi--their matings are wholly physical and transient, and involve +neither responsibility nor affection. A human being who has seen +the demons at close range is not perhaps disposed to consider this +unnatural. The more hideous and monstrous types have died out, like the +larger and more powerful: the bat’s ears, pig’s snout and ape’s mug +appear only in modified forms; and such a bestial and complex mask as +that worn, for example, by Dürer’s Satan would probably be impossible +to-day. Yet the devils which have endured to our own time are still +sufficiently unsightly and grotesque, and in a sufficient variety of +ways, to appear repulsive to human taste as objects of amorous desire, +and impracticable even for each other. We do not wonder when a female +demon, coming straight from the embraces of a male, makes no scruple of +spitting and jeering at him in the presence of other female demons, or +in the presence of another male; or when a male, who has been mating +with a female, makes her the victim of one of those practical jokes to +which the devils are so inveterately addicted--impaling her in a public +place or hacking off her arms and legs and leaving her on a crowded +thoroughfare. We should, however, be quite wrong in supposing that the +devils resent each other’s ugliness: being entirely without ideas of +beauty, they are, in consequence, impervious to ugliness, and do not +even, as has sometimes been supposed, esteem it for its own sake. The +demons exchange, in their amorous intercourse, in a manner not unlike +ours, pledges of lasting affection and epithets of tender endearment; +but these expressions are simple reflexes involved in the physical +process itself and as involuntary as it; they attach no significance +to them and we should wrong them in supposing they do. The devils are +sterile, and unable, or unwilling, to reproduce their kind. + +“The fiends have a highly developed literature, which reflects their +habits and ideas. It is mostly printed on crude loose sheets which are +passed around from hand to hand; and it consists chiefly of obscene +anecdotes and stories of atrocious crime. We must, however, bear in +mind, in connection with this literature, that to the demons, whose +point of view is so incomprehensible from our own, a scandal is not a +scandal, nor a crime, a crime: the former they enjoy as a farce, and +the latter as a practical joke. They have an interesting school of +poetry, of which the leader is Blashtalatshk. I have met Blashtalatshk +and found him a devil of high intelligence. His horns are rudimentary +and his lower jaw is lacking: but his enormous dark eyes are among +the most sensitive and glowing that I have ever seen. His poetry and +that of his fellows is, of course, devoid of the moral ideas and of +the ennobling emotions which distinguish human poetry to-day: it is +exclusively occupied with the mere representation of sights, sounds, +smells and other sensations, which the demons have a genius for +recreating with vividness and precision, though occasionally with so +much complexity as to produce an effect of incoherence.”... + +At this point, however, I dropped it: I found that my satire was boring +me, and that it also went against my conscience. My portrait of the +demon poet had been a caricature of Pete Bird, and I had no desire to +caricature Pete: on the contrary, I liked him. I found that I did not +want to write a satire: to satirize humanity was to slander it, and +I no longer thought so ill of humanity. Pete and Daisy and the rest, +after all--even Larry Mickler himself--were not really base: they had +disliked their lives as much as I had. If I had disliked them and found +them base, it was because I myself had been tarred with the same stick. +Moral problems, I now saw, were too complicated, and human nature too +delicate a matter, to be hacked by the axe of satire. So, regretting +the emphatic prose style with which a simple moral conviction may +supply us and which I now found myself obliged to sacrifice, I decided +to be scrupulous of the truth. + +Still I could not sleep: I sat up against the arm of the couch, and +saw the round cold winter moon, of which I had before had a glimpse +on the other side of the house, now studding with its white blinding +pearl the pane of the room where I lay. When had I seen it before, +setting so, but the moon of summer then, embedded in the morning +glass? I thought of Rita, in Paris now. I had been wrong about her +and Ray Coleman: Rita had merely, at the time when I had seen her and +she had seemed to me evasive about her address, gone to stay at Duff +Burdan’s studio--all the rest had been a gruesome fantasy of my jealous +imagination and my shaken self-confidence. She had gone abroad for +the first time, by herself, at just about the time I was returning, +and I had had a letter from her the day before: it had come just as I +was leaving town for the country. She was staying, she wrote me, in +a little Left Bank hotel, and had as yet seen nobody. But the early +morning market-trucks, she said, which rumbled through the Rue du Four +and made the walls of her bedroom vibrate, though they kept her awake +after midnight, made her feel that she was “really a part of Paris.” I +seemed to divine behind her letter an aching loneliness--the loneliness +of all Americans when they first try to live in Europe; and I imagined +about her, as she wrote, the dark brownish walls of the room, the +dispiriting wash-basin and slop-jar, the stuffy and musty French bed. +It was partly the fact that I could pity Rita, and that at last she +had written to me, as well as the spectacle of Grosbeake’s equanimity, +which made it possible for me to think well of humanity. + +Not that her letter was plaintive or effusive: it was, on the contrary, +dry and brief; but the fact that she had written me at all--she very +rarely wrote letters--seemed to me to imply, on her part, an unusual +degree of desolation; and the two poems which she enclosed in her +letter--she told me she had composed them at night when she could not +sleep on account of the trucks--were the palest things of hers I had +seen. The first was meagre, terse and wistful: it ticked off, in three +brief stanzas, three images from that countryside of her youth--a lone +elm, a gray stone fence, a pond athrob with frogs at nightfall--and I +recognized in their phantom faintness--so unlike the stinging actuality +which she usually gave to such things--that dim aspect which, to the +traveller abroad, even the best loved and known sights of home come to +wear in alien places, as if they had perhaps never existed, but were +the receding images of a dream. + +The other poem was a sonnet; and when I first saw it, I did not know +what to make of it. It seemed very unlike Rita: in the first place, +she never wrote sonnets; and my first thought, when I commenced to +read it, was one of solicitude: I felt distressed that her isolation +should so disastrously have affected her poetry. Then it dawned on +me, after I had finished it, that it was supposed to be addressed to +myself. I reread it with attention: it was the first time she had ever +written me a poem. Then I became aware of the true situation: the +trouble here with Rita’s style was simply that, for the moment, she +had become infected with mine. It was I who was addicted to sonnets; +and I could recognize in this one of Rita’s, my own forcible-feeble +rhetoric and my adjectives in monotonous pairs--all those unavailing +devices with which I had muffed the kind of effects that she would +clinch with a single short verb or a commonplace idiom. I had never +thought myself much of a poet, but now that Rita seemed to be talking +my jargon, seemed to be trying to reply to me in the language in which +I had been apostrophizing her, I found that I was sickened by it. And +I was horrified to observe that even the banal imagery with which Rita +could usually perform miracles remained, in this ill-inspired sonnet, +irredeemably banal. + +My first feeling had been one of depression, the result partly of +wounded _amour-propre_--because Rita, having written me a poem, +should have written me such an indifferent one--and partly of pained +concern that she should have sacrificed a poem for my sake. I had been +embarrassed as to what I should write her: I wanted to urge her to +suppress the poem, but, as it had been written in an effort to be nice +to me, it was impossible to be so ungracious. + +Now, as I lay staring into the fire, I thought of the sonnet again, +and ran over it in my mind. It had been a memory of our first days +together, when we had talked about poetry; and now suddenly, for the +first time, I was touched that she should have remembered those days +and should have tried to let me know it. I had thought only of the +artistic sincerity which she had sacrificed for her subject! Now I +was able to take account of the sincerity of some personal sort which +must, after all, have come into play to induce her to sacrifice it. +In her dismal Paris hotel--so cold and dark in November--had she been +trying to recall, to reaffirm, in spite of all our quarrels and +failures (and she had known then, as I had not known, how life undoes +the soundest of our reasons and depreciates the dearest of our hopes), +those moments of common understanding and common enthusiasm of the days +when we had first talked freely together--when we had both, for that +moment, found a language for those deepest unspoken convictions, for +those deepest realities, of such different lives!--And I began even to +wonder at last--a possibility I had never admitted--whether, that night +at Sue Borglum’s house, when I had met Rita with my freezing, blank +looks and my tiresome disapproval and when, reminding me of the poem +which I had so loved when I had been in love with her, she had tried +to describe to me the river all lined with sword-blades of ice,--and +when I had listened only with contempt--I wondered now whether, after +all, she had not herself been glad to think of the hours--how rare in +the world they must be!--when poetry had burned with love. Had not the +river itself been the symbol of the breaking and fraying of passion, +of the dispersal of the torrents of the heart?--and had she not, when +she had told me, at Sue Borglum’s, of the river alive in winter, for +all the frozen countryside about it and though cramped by the ice of +its banks--had she not tried to tell me something more, to speak again +to the old comrade and admirer, over the head of the angry lover--to +establish again that contact--which I now chose to make impossible--but +which had brought once, if only for those moments, that common light +into a world which, for her as well as for me--it occurred to me now +for the first time--must be chiefly a world of darkness? + +The last log had a comforting beauty--all woody, rosy luminosity--but +I saw that it must soon crumble. I put on another log, trying not to +wake Pete and Daisy. I glanced over toward their bed--they had turned +to each other in sleep. The log smoked, and then caught fire: it sent +up little tongues of flame. What a pity that I couldn’t write a satire, +making use of my wide knowledge of demonology, for lack of misanthropic +conviction! The log began to crackle and blaze. + +I looked for the moon, but it was gone: I craned around the side of the +couch and saw it low, vaporish and gray, as if dissolving in the ichor +of dawn. So I had watched it set so many times, on guard at night, in +France--in that terrible, dull, dead hour when night is over and day +not begun, when one must either make verses or be dull, be dead, as the +earth and sky, as the soldiers in their deepest sleep--I had run into +Hugo in Toul--I had not seen him since the beginning of the War and we +had only had a chance for half an hour’s talk in a café--he had been +so funny about his unit, so funny and so good-natured, that unit which +was soon to condemn him to the horrors of the prison-camp--what a great +fellow he really was, in spite of the fact that, as Grosbeake said, he +did caricature American business men too grimly--how few there were +like him!--that France where Rita had never been till she arrived in +that dreary hotel, where the market-trucks kept her awake!--I rolled +over and went to sleep. + +But I had scarcely closed my eyes, it seemed, when persistent coughs, +steps, and bumpings compelled me to open them again: it was Pete, in +the gray, early light, getting into his pants and khaki shirt; he was +rolling up his sleeves before the window. + +I tore myself out of my blanket-cocoon and--though he begged me not to +get up--I blinkingly pulled on my clothes, and followed him out into +the cold undersea of the early morning ocean. He had gone into the +shed to chop some wood: I had used up the last log during the night, +and he wanted to make the room warm for Daisy. He begged me again not +to bother; but with eager, if incompetent, helpfulness, I hacked up a +large crooked limb, as well as several of the planks of the floor. + +After this, we went in and had some coffee--Daisy was still asleep. We +talked about literature and drinks: Pete had volumes of Shelley and +Keats, and a treatise on French wines, which he said were the only +books he had not sold when he had come away to the country. Sitting +close against the stove, I examined the wine book with interest. “Never +buy 1916 Burgundy,” Pete admonished me, with an air of independent +knowledge. “From 1910 to 1914 are all good years--and 1915 is fair. But +you have to go back to 1904 to get really A-1 Burgundy!” + +I had to leave before noon--it was a long way into the town and a +long way back to New York. We talked a little about a taxi; but as it +was already growing late and as the nearest telephone was at a farm +some distance away, I decided that I would undertake to walk, and +Daisy offered to go with me. Pete had promised to call on a farmer +and examine his grandfather’s clock--putting clocks in order, it +appeared, was one of his curious useless aptitudes--in return for which +service, he explained to us, he hoped to be able to induce the farmer +to make him a present of a crippled lowboy which was being used as a +kitchen-table. + +“I can supply the handles,” he assured us. “Nothing easier in the +world! Just take them off that old bureau in the store-room. But I +_don’t_ see how I can supply that missing leg without a lathe.--But, +after all, why not have a lathe?” he went on, with the liberal +enthusiasm of a thoroughly practical man. “Think of all we could +do with one! We could make regular tables and chairs!--Why, I’d be +turning out table-legs so voluptuous that all the local oafs would be +trampling over one another to buy them!” “I suppose,” said Daisy, “that +you’re going to buy the lathe with the money we owe the grocer.” “My +dear child,” Pete retorted, like a millionaire who takes pleasure in +explaining that he always saves money on his clothes by having them +made when he is in London, “you can get a lathe from Sears Roebuck for +ten dollars! You simply say that you want to buy it on instalments, and +they send you the lathe. Then you don’t pay them anything more--and +by the time they’ve sent a man for the money and he’s gotten way out +here, you’ve had time to turn out a whole dining-room set, enough legs +and rungs for several dining-room sets, and you’ve sold the sets and +ordered another lathe from another mail-order company, paying the first +instalment out of what you get for the sets--so that by the time the +first lathe is taken away, another one is just arriving, and the work +goes merrily on!” + +We set out--Daisy and I--on a hard crust of frozen snow, which broke +through at every step and let us down into powdered depths. Daisy +was dressed in high laced leather boots, a white sweater under a tan +leather jacket and a round knitted white cap. I had never liked her so +much: a certain strength and independence of character, which I had +felt in her even at the period when she had seemed most demoralized, +had now fully come into its own. Her frankness and her common-sense +jokes, which I had once thought the typical products of Pittsburgh and +New York, now seemed to me the wisdom of the country, which the false +values of the city couldn’t fool.--I began to think--it had already +occurred to me--how delightful it would be to live with Daisy in a +solitary farmhouse in the country, to chop wood to keep her warm, to +sit with her at night before the fire, to read Bulwer-Lytton’s novels +aloud. I thought wistfully of Bulwer Lytton, whom it seemed to me I +should like to read. + +I congratulated her on leaving New York: “I began to feel before I +left,” I said, “as if the Village were a cage of wild animals--I began +to feel that it might be just as well to make good your escape in +time.” “I certainly felt that way,” said Daisy, “but I didn’t know +anybody else did.--I thought everybody ate it up but me.--I got so I +felt that I couldn’t trust anybody!” + +We strode, plodding, through the snow. “You know, Pete and I,” she went +on, “just after that last time I saw you--we got on a train with our +last money”--(the money, no doubt, from Pete’s books)--“and got off +at the first town that looked good to us out of the train-window. We +went to the real-estate office and asked for the cheapest thing there +was--and we finally got this old hell-hole. The owner said that, if +we’d fix it up, they’d give it to us free.” The idea of this exploit +enchanted me, and I envied Pete more than ever. + +I told Daisy how much I liked Pete--what a relief I thought she must +find him after living with Ray Coleman. “To tell the truth,” she +replied, “I don’t notice much difference. The only thing is that I +get along much better with Pete. We can sit around and wisecrack for +hours.--The time that we had that party--the first time that I ever +met you--I’d only seenum a few times, but I said to-um, ‘I get along +with you better than with anybody else I know.’” “What did he say?” I +inquired. “He just grinned,” said Daisy. I remembered how I had felt +myself when it had first burst upon me that Rita, instead of scorning +my apartment, enjoyed it. “So,” Daisy continued, “we went out and went +to Julius’s bar together--and here we are now!” + +I told her how wise I thought them to have left New York for the +country--how glad I had been to go abroad--what a fool I had made of +myself the night of Sue Borglum’s party. “As far as I’m concerned,” +she replied, “that night was about the worst I remember--about the +worst sunk I’ve ever been.” + +“You know,” she added, after a pause, “I cut my wrist that night--you +knew that, didn’t you?” “Good Heavens!” I exclaimed, “Why did you do +that?” “Why, because I’d lost my job, I suppose,” she said, “--and +because I got tired of the traffic going in and out of Gus Dunbar’s +rooms--and I’d been drinking so much that I didn’t know what I was +doing anyway.--I felt like such a tramp--that I’d been so inconsiderate +of other people, and just gotten myself into a worse mess than +before.--I cut my wrist,” she went on, “with Gus Dunbar’s razor-blade. +I never saw anything spurt the way the blood did--it seemed as if all +the blood in my body must be just in my wrist--it spurted clear across +the bathroom. I just stood there and looked at it--the only thing I +could think of was the leak in the hose, in that movie that you and I +went to--don’t you remember?--a little while before. If Pete hadn’t +come in just then, I’d probably have bled to death. But he arrived and +called a doctor and put a tourniquet on my wrist: he certainly stopped +it in short order--it seems he knows all about tourniquets.” + +“Oh, my dear,” I said, “did you do that?--Is it really all right now?” +“Yes,” she said. “The doctor said that I really ought to have an +operation, but I’m almost all right again now without one.” + +I made her take off her gauntlet: I saw that she could hardly move +the fingers of that hand which Pete had once described as a “little +surprising moonbeam violin”--they were as stiff as the fingers of a +doll which a child tries to make hold a broom.--“Why don’t you get them +operated on?” I asked. “It probably isn’t a very serious operation.” +“Can’t afford to,” she replied. + +“What had happened, anyway,” I asked, “before I came to get you that +night?” “Oh, it was horrible!” said Daisy. “I’d gone around to Larry +Mickler’s to see Larry about getting Pete a job--he was a friend of +Gus Dunbar’s.--When I’d called him up on the telephone and suggested +sending Pete around, he’d said for me to come--but I told Pete to drop +in after I’d been there a while. I could see what Larry wanted, but I +thought that I’d jolly him along a little if Pete could get anything +out of it. I thought that I could fix it all up and get back in time to +have dinner with you. Well, when I got there, he made me drink and then +he tried to grab me. And then before Pete arrived, his wife came in. It +was awful: that was really one reason that I cut my wrist, I guess--I +was so disgusted with everybody!” + +I thought with pitying superiority of Larry Mickler. I felt to-day that +I myself was so very far from being capable of behaving in such a way +as to make a young girl lose faith in life! + +We marched on--we were in wagon-ruts now: there was a long, rising road +before us, with a straight row of trees on each side. We climbed the +hill--there was a farmhouse at the top--we started down the slope of +snow. + +“Our favorite yokels live in there,” she said. “You ought to see me +giving parties for the yokels--I have the time of my life--and so do +they: they think I’m swell--they never saw anything like me before!” +“It must be nice to live in the country,” I said--I felt envious +of the yokels. “It must be nice to know your neighbors--which you +never do in New York.” “Yes,” said Daisy, “I get to take positive +pride in competing with the other housewives to see who can have the +best-looking kitchen. You know how sloppy Gus Dunbar’s looked?--I think +it was that as much as anything that discouraged me with life that +time--well, when I came down here to the country, the first farmhouse +kitchen that I saw brought out a suppressed housewife’s complex,”--I +remembered her remark, at Sue Borglum’s, on the neatness of Sue +Borglum’s kitchen--“and I used to feel ashamed unless our kitchen was +just shining!” + +There was still a stretch at the bottom of the hill. What a marvellous +walker she was!--And she had felt as I had done, that life without +honor was horrible! But where Rita could save her self-respect with a +poem, where even I could imagine a satire, Daisy could only cut her +wrist! + +We walked on for a time in silence. I could be so happy with Daisy, I +thought--taking long walks in the snow in silence! + +“I was in a pretty bad way myself,” I presently remarked. “That night +that we went to the movies, you really saved my life! You don’t know +how sweet you were!” “Well,” she replied with amiability, “you weren’t +so sour yourself!” + +We were coming now into the town: we had reached the first white +houses. I was cheered by a sudden inspiration: “Look,” I said, “we +couldn’t get a drink, could we?--Isn’t there some kind of a bootlegger +in town?--I’ve got plenty of time before the train.” “We might go to +Ned Lovejoy’s,” she said thoughtfully. + +It was just a room in a private house: there was an oil-cloth-covered +table; a stove--which was pleasant after the cold; some “cabinet-size” +photographs of members of the family, paralyzed in family groups; +and an old-fashioned tinted picture of a little beribboned girl, +smiling innocently and sweetly upon a sweet-natured cat and dog who +ate amicably out of the same bowl. I don’t know which was worse--the +gin or the ginger-ale. Ned Lovejoy was inclined to converse, but we +discouraged him and he left. + +“You don’t think that Pete and I are getting to look alike, do you?” +asked Daisy: I assured her that they weren’t in the least. “That’s what +Gus Dunbar said when he was out here a couple of weeks ago: he said we +were getting alike. They say that people who live together do get to +look alike.” + +I began to tell her again how much I approved of her course; how I +had come to detest New York. I explained that I was going away, and +intended to stay away as long as I possibly could. When I had returned +in the fall from abroad, I hadn’t been able to get back my job; and I +had decided that, before looking for another, I might as well go on +squandering my legacy, to the extent of a trip to New Orleans: I wanted +to be there for the Mardi Gras. + +Against the cold, sunny light of the window, her sharp nose, pale eyes, +and blond hair looked almost Scandinavian. I told her how much I had +enjoyed myself--how fine it was to have seen her again--how much I +wished I were living in the country. “Why do you go to New Orleans, +then?” she asked. I replied, not without a touch of wistfulness, that +I had nowhere in the country to go. I tried to summon another drink; +but Ned Lovejoy was absorbed by his radio, of which we could hear the +sepulchral buzzing--and there was a long, rather stupid silence. I went +and found him, and got him to bring us some more ginger-ale and gin, of +which I had almost ceased to notice the taste. + +I told her how splendid she looked with her outdoor complexion and +clothes; and how much I liked and admired her.--She said suddenly: +“Take me to New Orleans!” “Come along!” I replied. “I’m sailing +just after Christmas.” “Take me away from all this!” she went on, +burlesquing a woman in a play saying “Take me away from all this!”--but +it seemed to me, and shocked me a little, that she was partly in +earnest. “Pete can’t go on like this!” she said. “He’ll have to go +back to the city and get some kind of a job. We owe everybody in town! +I get panicky about it sometimes. Living with Pete like this is just +like living with another woman--you just live on your wits from day to +day--you don’t dare to think ahead.--You know: you can keep yourself on +the go and keep using your vitality up, just so you won’t mind things +so much--but every now and then I begin to think about the situation +and then I don’t know what to do!--I never thought I’d be living like +this--I never thought I’d be with anybody the way I’ve been with Pete +and Ray!”... + +I remembered how, suddenly one night, she had left Ray Coleman for +Pete, and had never come back--and I remembered how she had begged Hugo +to take her to Afghanistan. What if I could really get her away from +Pete! I wanted a mistress now, and I liked Daisy so much--I desired her +so much. But I couldn’t flatter myself that she cared about me, she +merely wanted to get away--and all that treachery, that promiscuity, +that stealing of other men’s girls, had come by this time to seem to me +detestable: I had known Pete Bird through his poems, and had stayed in +his house and read his books, drunk his coffee and eaten his food--and +I remembered how bitter _I_ had been when Rita had not scrupled to +betray me, poetry, devotion and all, for that fellow from Columbus (or +whoever it had been: I never knew; if it was not merely some image of +herself, that self which could not mate with others, because it had +already, in one body, made a union of female with male).--Pete Bird +had, as it were, built his house with his own hands, and he possessed +no legacy.--I did not even doubt now that he had, as he said, been +slandered by Larry Mickler in the matter of the liverwurst sandwiches. + +The cold light on the cold road where I was looking, early as it was +in the day, was already beginning to darken; and I had a consciousness +of stoic fortitude at the thought that, if the sun was short, I could +endure the closing-down of night.--I spoke to Daisy of the sad +imperfection inherent in all human relations, and of the necessity for +loyalty and faith in a world where love was sure to fail us. “But,” I +warmly and earnestly broke off, “you know all about that better than +anybody! You know all about everything better than anybody! You’re one +of the most intelligent girls I know!” And I told her again how much I +liked her and how well she deserved of life.--It was time for me to go. + +At the station, I tried to get some gum for her out of a solitary +slot-machine, but it was apparently frozen up. There were some country +people standing about, and I was a little shy of kissing her good-by; +but we kissed, as I was getting on the train: I touched her coral lips +for an instant. It was deliciously cold, moist and light, like that +moment of ice and winter flowers inside the glass of Grosbeake’s porch. + + + + + V + + +In that asphalt sky of August, the summer sun burnt a blunt point of +light, like the blinding violet-livid torch with which a worker on city +mains gashes through a tough piece of pipe. A gray haze blurred the +vistas of Fifth Avenue and dulled the too full-blown bushes and trees +which one saw beyond Washington Arch, as if the buildings and pavements +themselves, under the action of the terrible heat, were vaporizing and +fogging the air. + +Down a side-street, an old white truck-horse stood sleeping and +stupefied, its head lowered like a lizard’s and its eyelids closed, +while the driver, sluggish and sweating, piled a mountain of boxes on +the dray. And farther over, on Seventh Avenue, I saw a barefoot ragged +boy, who had flung himself down on his stomach above the grating that +ventilates the subway, and whose coat was blown up violently behind +him, like the streamers of an electric fan, by the warm, sudden gust +from the trains. + +My handkerchief was sopped with sweat, and I was refreshed by an +unexpected breeze which washed over the butt of the island the hot, +bilgy river-smell, as if, now that the people of the Village had +abandoned the Village for the summer, the waterside were invading the +town. I saw nobody anywhere that I knew. On the corner of Twelfth +Street, where Rita had lived, the obsolete beer-saloon still bore its +discolored blue Pilsener sign. + +It occurred to me to examine, as I passed them, those landmarks of +Abingdon Square which, the morning of my first meeting with Rita, +when I had been drunk with peach-brandy and poetry, had seemed to me +impressive and romantic, but which I had afterward passed so many times +without ever observing them closely. I now found that what I had taken +for a statue of some interesting celebrity of the quarter was merely a +monument to the soldiers of the ward who had died in the European War; +and that the object which had figured to my fancy as a temple or a tomb +was simply a disused band-stand. + +Daisy and Pete had come recently to town. Gus Dunbar, who was now in +Boston, had, at Daisy’s instigation, taken steps toward getting Pete a +job there; and Pete had gone on to see about it, leaving Daisy for a +few days in New York. She had called me up the day before, and, with +the idea of getting away from the heat, I had suggested our going to +Coney Island. + +She was to meet me at the pier. I had not been to Coney Island since my +childhood, and for some reason, I supposed that the boat left from the +foot of Christopher Street. At the docks, I learned otherwise, and took +a taxi down to the Battery, along the wide cobbled avenue that runs +along beside the wharves. + +There was the funny high yellow façade, built of wood but with an +aspect of pasteboard: it had precisely, I remembered, the quality of +the amusement-places of my boyhood, and it looked faded and flimsy now. + +Daisy was waiting in the cavernous anteroom. In a corner of the high, +darkish space, she showed charmingly neat, small and clear. In spite +of the roundness of her hips and the smartness of her clothes--her +white dress and her tight _cloche_ hat--she might almost have been +mistaken for a child. How cute and how chic she looked in those short, +tight skirts that cut off her slim legs just above the knees! “Well,” +she greeted me with her unblinking smile, “the first twenty years of +my life I spent waiting for the Coney Island boat!” I apologized and +explained. “But why didn’t you find out first?” she protested. “It’s +a good thing you didn’t think it left from the foot of Forty-second +Street!” + +“Well, how do you feel?” I inquired, as we climbed the flight of steps. +“I feel pretty sassy!” she said. + +I had of course missed the four-o’clock boat, and now we should have to +wait for the five-o’clock one. But up-stairs, the gray-timbered shadow +of the low-roofed leaving-place was tranquillizing and cool: through a +low narrow opening that ran along the side, one had a glimpse of the +crude, unshadowed blocks of the enormous downtown buildings, where only +one sheer green roof and a steep crane, on a float that was green, +broke the cliffs of colorlessness. + +I had brought some gin, and I bought some ginger-ale at the refreshment +stand. “I must tell you my joke,” she said, as we drank that impossible +concoction--at once too bitter and too sickeningly sweet--for which I +had acquired a certain affection, because I had come to associate it +with Daisy. “I’ve made up an idea for a joke. There’ll be a caption +that says ‘Striking a Happy Medium’--and then there’ll be a picture +of a medium--you know, a spiritualistic medium--with a big piece of +bogus ectoplasm coming out of her mouth and a grin of satisfaction on +her face, and a man with his arm all raised, just ready to smack her +down.--Don’t you think that’s pretty good?” I told her that I thought +it was terrible. + +There was a large, old, slot-machine phonograph standing against the +wall: it was lyre-shaped and had a mirror in its belly, and seemed +stationed as an outpost and siren for the frivolities and gaieties +beyond. We put a nickel in and started it playing an antiquated +xylophone record of the _American Patrol_: its patriotic gallop, +half-stifled behind the glass and losing itself in the wide, gray +waiting-room, woke in my heart a happy response as if to Fourth-of-July +bands of my boyhood. + +Then the boat was in; the doors were opened; we went down and stepped +over the side. Assailed by the sunlight, we were dazed: in the +brightness, we seemed merely to enter a smell of white boat-paint and +to ascend to a brisk and merry tinkling of some pretty antique tune. + +I pulled camp-stools beside a rail on an upper deck.--Sea and shore +were rawest gray and the sky a raw, pale blue--it was not that the blue +was pale, but rather that blue was lacking. The sun streaked the water +to the west with a bright glaze of zinc.--I got some more ginger-ale +and a couple of paper cups from the little soft-drink bar below. + +On one side, as we left the dock, we looked out at the Statue of +Liberty, a solid, dull slug of gray against a colorless, burning sky; +and on the other, at the old red fort, round and full of holes like a +mouse-trap, with its rusty and abandoned barracks. + +The thin strains of linkéd sweetness, with now and then a note frailly +sour, of the harp and violin--some old musical-comedy tune I remembered +from my college days--seemed to me even in this false and elfin echo +to keep more that was human and charming than the pace of the newer +dance-music had ever allowed it to possess; and as I glanced at Daisy, +gazing out like a charming, good-natured child, at the sights of the +passing shore, I was touched with sentimental revery. + +Then the music was blotted out by the vehement snoring of a steamer and +the pert sput-sputtering of a tug. + +She seemed unusually carefree to-day, and I saw that her lips were +rouged an unusually pretty mauve. I told her how pretty she looked, and +she replied by complimenting me on the harmony of my clothes: “With +most people,” she said, “their socks, for instance, haven’t anything +to do with the rest of their clothes--but your socks match your suit.” +My socks, which were a grayish blue, had been given me as a Christmas +present and I had worn them only by accident on the same day as a gray +summer suit. “But you have the worst-looking nails I ever saw!” she +went on. “They look just like mechanics’ nails, except that mechanics’ +nails are dirty.” I explained that I always cut them with a pair of +library shears, implying that I regarded any other method as effeminate. + +I now decided to speak to Daisy of a matter which had been worrying me +since I had met her at the pier. I said, “I think you’ve got some egg +or something on this cheek.” She took out her little mirror: “That’s +just a streak of cold-cream,” she replied. “It always does that when +I leave some on and the powder sticks.” She rubbed it off. In the +stunning sun of that windless, unshaded day, we were dumb for a time. + +Governor’s Island, the harbor in summer, the old patriotic tune, the +statue of the soldier in the park, had brought back to me another +vision which for some moments loomed bright in my mind. + +Once--it seemed to me long ago--on a morning in early July, I had +come back to Governor’s Island when it had been green with trees and +grass, and when the barracks had been low, white houses: there had been +soldiers in khaki grooming horses or standing at the water’s edge, in +white shirts. + +I remembered how, the afternoon before, though we had not yet been in +sight of land, the empty horizons of those waters had held already the +presence of home. The hours had seemed to run more smoothly with the +homing ship--and in that calm summer evening, the sea had scarcely +breathed. The silver sun had dipped, had sent its silver path along the +blue, and had sunk at the end of its path--spreading yellows and reds, +which the night took. + +Then at last the yellow star of a lighthouse had been winking in the +black--it did not seem like the play of a machine, but a deliberate +human signal; and then a lightship spangled with stars. A quarantine +tug had presently come out to us from the still invisible shore, and +sent out some men in a boat: they transacted their business quickly, +rowed quickly back to the launch and were pulled up in their boat with +such promptness that it seemed to leap over the side. One had heard +American voices: that was the American way of doing things! + +Then a bed of lights on the water: after nearly two years of France, +Coney Island had seemed incredible! + +Then land on either side: there had been trees and lawns on the shore, +and large, white American houses, with here and there a lighted window, +set along on a little hill that sloped down to the water--and each of +the houses had its boathouse and its little pier. Now soon one was to +walk in such houses!--to play one’s part again in that life hidden +there behind those lighted windows, in that life grown now so strange +and yet the life of home! + +There had come to us a sudden sweet smell through the quiet summer +night: trees and flowers; the summer grass; the luxuriance and rankness +of America. And then, as the ship passed on, a smell even more +unmistakable, a smell even more of home, surrounded and saturated us: +it was the rotten smell of the river, which, when to-day I had smelt it +again in the Greenwich Village streets, had made me think of the salt +bilge-water of the harbor, but which had breathed then the grease, the +sour heat and the smoke of the factories, of the city. Dark chimneys +were disturbing the darkness with their noiseless eruptions of red. +That evening, on Riverside Drive, the benches would be full of couples, +and all would be soaked from the Jersey bank by the glue-factories’ +hot, heavy fumes. + +Then suddenly I had almost caught my breath--I had been curiously +moved by the sight of a single, solitary street-lamp on the Staten +Island shore. It had merely shed a loose and whitish radiance over +a few feet of the baldish road of some dark, thinly settled suburb. +Above it, there had loomed an abundant and disorderly tree. But there +was America, I had felt with emotion--there under that lonely suburban +street-lamp, there in that raw and livid light! + +Then, from somewhere behind those shadowy lawns, one heard the moan of +an American train, and then its faint bell, and the swift, shuffling +sounds of its progress. It was speeding away with eagerness and +sureness to American cities at night--far, perhaps--to the farthest +reaches of a continent without frontiers! There had been a petulance +and a sadness in the piping of the French locomotives--they had spoken +always of the dead hours of dawn and the carloads of wounded men. But +these trains were bringing soldiers home--and far away from Europe--at +night! + +In the morning, off South Brooklyn, at anchor, we had seen the smoky +rose of dawn come up over the black roofs of the city, and we had +listened to the river-traffic waking with soft puffs and toots. The +colors had begun to come out on the vermilion smoke-stacks of steamers. +The gray sides of a battle-ship were clear: it was soon trimmed with +live figures in white suits. We had put down a motor-boat, which +sprang away, when it touched the water, as if the water had given +it life: a blue sailor, standing at the tiller, and negligently and +gracefully leaning to balance the tilt of the boat, was guiding it in +bold easy curves. + +Now the varied craft of the harbor were coughing and sneezing all +about us, fully waked-up for the day: squat shouldering ferry-boats +and tugs; a tiny motor-boat darting like a waterbug; railroad barges, +floating freight-cars--Delaware and Lackawanna; New York, New Haven and +Hartford--all those dear, square names of home! + +Then the shore was moving: to the left, the docks had begun to bristle +with the first thickets of the forest of masts. In a moment, the +sky would be crowded, and one would behold, above the docks and the +shipping, the tremendous towers of the town! + +At that moment, on our way to Coney Island, the freshness of that other +summer day, when I had come back to the United States with what seemed +infinite freedom before me, was recreated in my mind so vividly that +I tried to describe it to Daisy. But for Daisy, the things which had +delighted me--the boat leaping into the tug, the sound of the train in +the dark, the sailor guiding the boat, had no special significance or +point, because they were things which she took for granted, and which +seemed perfectly commonplace. I felt that she kept waiting for these +incidents to develop into anecdotes, in which something entertaining +should happen. + +When I had finally given it up, she put her hand over the middle of my +face and regarded me attentively. “You’d be very good-looking,” she +said, “if it wasn’t for your nose.” I said, “I know I’ve got a terrible +nose!” “No,” she reassured me. “It’s cute. But it interferes with any +Adonis-like beauty that you might otherwise have had.” + +In the harbor, the harbor of the August day which was actually about +us, the lowering of the zinc-bright colorless sun had made of the water +to the west a gleaming sheet of zinc; and to the east, it had begun +to blue. A bell-buoy clanged and bathed. Before us, we could see the +steamers moving out toward the open sea, their smoke trailing back +from seaward. A fresh, easier, breezy sea-smell reached us--it was a +lightening of the load of life. + +“Doesn’t that feel nice, though!” said Daisy. “I think I’m going to +enjoy this trip!” + +I asked her about Pete and his job. “I’m so glad we’re going to +Boston,” she said. “I’m tired of the country, but I don’t want to live +in New York! I think New York is terrible!” + +Sea Gate--and beaches rank with bathers; little brummagen summer +bungalows with green or red roofs. + +Then a monumental buff hotel with a blunt obelisk tower rose alone +from a level shore--where, however, we could presently make out the +skeletons of roller-coasters and the squirrel-cages of ferris-wheels. + +Now, more quickly than in our bemusement we had expected, the boat +was pulling in toward the boardwalk: we could see a row of improbable +objects--the sails of a bright-red Dutch windmill; the teeth of a +gigantic grinning mask; a rocking full-size Noah’s Ark, with animals +sticking their heads out the windows and with curious half-clownlike +figures, which made the spasmodic movements of automata and which +seemed the true unearthly inhabitants of that city of enormous toys. + +When the boat stopped, as we stood on deck, waiting to get off, we +suddenly again felt the heat. “The sun makes me reel!” said Daisy. We +walked, dazed, up a little gang-plank and down a very long white pier. +The hotel, which rose now to our left, against the dazzling zinc of the +sky, was a dull and solid slug, as the Statue of Liberty had been. The +sea was now quite blue. + +I was enchanted by the Noah’s Ark: there were an ostrich, a giraffe, +and an elephant, wagging their heads out the portholes; a Noah, who, +at regular intervals, threw back his Uncle Josh beard and took a swig +from a bottle of whiskey; and a fisherman who, at similar intervals, +jerked up an old shoe on his hook. There was also a mysterious monster, +labelled “Hank,” half human and half brute, who in paroxysms shook his +window-bars. An urgent and ominous fog-horn sounded at the same short +intervals. I was all for going inside. + +“Let’s go in swimming first,” said Daisy, “while we’ve still got the +sun--then we’ll feel fine--then we’ll have another drink. Then we can +go and do things, huh?” She squeezed my arm: she seemed happy. + +We floated, on our way, through warm currents: the balm of hot buttered +pop-corn; the fragrance of burnt molasses; the sweet-acrid odor of +orange-peels. + +And then, after the close, musky smell, human and marine, of the +damp-and-dry gray boards of the bath-house, I met Daisy in my hired +bathing-suit, and we walked out under the boardwalk to the beach. + +She had brought an old bathing-suit of Pete’s which had enormous brown +and white stripes and which was in places much too tight for her. With +her fair skin among the tanned bathers and her hair tucked behind her +ears, she looked like one of the Mack Sennett bathing girls, in the +old-fashioned movie comedies. “I know it looks awful,” she said, when +I kidded her about this, “but I thought it didn’t matter at Coney +Island--and I couldn’t afford to get a new one.” + +There were tiny children playing in the surf, in tiny slips of +bathing-suits of yellow, pale green, and red, like the variously +flavored fruit-drops--orange, raspberry, and lime--in the glass jars +we had passed on a candy counter; or like the bottles of colored +soft-drinks--cherry, orange, and lemon soda--which we had seen at a +soft-drink stand--they were splashing in wild delight or fleeing from +the sea with squeals. + +Daisy worked, for a few minutes, squinting, in an ineffective +under-water side-stroke. I, still partly bemused by my drinks, flung +myself with abandon to the waves, and swam around a small stone +breakwater in what--although I unexpectedly ran into the breakwater--I +thought was pretty good order. + +“That was a marvellous wallow of yours!” said Daisy. “I thought you +were trying to push the breakwater over! I was just going to yell out +and tell you to stop, it was built there on purpose!” + +She had brought out of the surf, about her shoulders, a great strip +of glossy gold-brown seaweed, and she wore it as a boa: it went +beautifully with her hair and with the taffy-colored stripes of Pete’s +bathing-suit, both darkened by the wet. Her slim legs below her full +hips looked almost like the legs of a bird. + +We lay on the sand for awhile. “Your hair seems a different color,” +I said. “In fact--I don’t know whether it’s just my imagination or +not--but it always seems a different color every time that I see +you.” “It is, I guess,” she replied. “They put white henna on it when +they bleached it for the _Gambols_--and I always used to put peroxide +and lemon-juice on it every so often, but I haven’t been able to +lately. That’s why it’s pink, I guess.” I asked what color it had +originally been. “Oh, Gee: I don’t know,” she said. “It’s so long +ago!--Mouse-color, I guess!” + +I inquired about a system of vivid blue veins on her thigh. “That’s +my charley-horse,” she explained; “I got it in the first _Gambols_.” +I asked her why she didn’t go back on the stage. “I’m too short,” she +replied, “and my feet are too small for me to dance well--and I don’t +like it, anyway: I always get independent and cut too many rehearsals. +That was why I got fired the last time.” + +Beside us, a brown young man had his arm about the shoulders of a +young woman in an old-rose bathing-suit, with large carpet-like +flower-patterns, which richly harmonized with the purple tan of her +skin: she presently slipped a hand beneath the top of her companion’s +bathing-suit and affectionately rubbed his back. A handsome blond girl +in blue, who seemed to have two men in attendance, was pawing the sand +with one foot. Another girl, in a turquoise costume, had stretched out +on her back on the sand, with her shoulders between a man’s knees: he +was passionately stroking her arm. + +I watched one really beautiful woman, very blond and rather Germanic: +she wore a pair of red bathing-trunks with an orange stripe down the +side, belted and athletically faded, and a plain white bathing-shirt. +She lay voluptuously, one knee elevated and her head on the knees of +a barrel-shaped man, who wore horn-rimmed spectacles. Her skin was +extremely white, only toasted a little about the shoulders; and she had +smiling darkish brown eyes. I watched her as, presently, she got up +and walked over to the water, and--while her companion bobbed in the +surf--with an easy and graceful crawl, lay voluptuously along the swell. + +“This is all artificial sand, you know,” said Daisy,--“Oh, yes: they +spent half a million dollars fixing up this beach. There didn’t used to +be any beach at all. That was the same time they put up the hotel. I +wonder if they’re making money.” + +Gray steamers were passing quite close along the gray line of the +water--they made me think of summers in Europe, of coming back from +abroad in the fall--at the age when I had been last to Coney Island, +there had always been uncles and aunts sailing to or from France--there +had been an uncle who brought home from Paris silk stockings for my +cousins and aunts--he had had a bluff and ironical way of retorting, +“You don’t say!” which was precisely the way Daisy said things--it was +the American way.--The Americans went to Paris, and then they came +back again with silk stockings and things they had bought, and that +frank American smile, and that straightforward way of speaking.--The +people who interested me most were, almost all, I reflected, now +abroad: Grosbeake was in England for the summer; Hugo, in spite of +his enthusiasm for the American Middle Western cities, was still in +Afghanistan; and Rita was still in Paris--yet I did not at the moment +seem to miss them and did not want to go abroad myself. What fun we +had had together after all--Rita and I--though we had never been easy +and friendly together, as Daisy and I were to-day: there had been one +evening--we had been drinking raw gin--Rita would never have drunk +the gin and ginger-ale to which Daisy was addicted--when we had told +each other things about ourselves which had seemed at the time to +mean a great deal--I couldn’t quite remember what they were--she had +told me something about her girlhood, it was that night she had sung +me the song about _the foggy, foggy dew_--and I had told her how my +father had died of tuberculosis--and what a rotten time I had had at +boarding-school, and how I intended to write a novel about it. Those +nocturnal drunken conversations which seemed to mean so much!--which +did, no doubt, mean so much. All literature, perhaps--and not poetry +alone, but even the systematized facts of Hugo’s documented novels, +even the formulas of Grosbeake’s logic--was in the nature of a drunken +language, expressing, by certain symbols, sensations and emotions +merely--the readjustments, that would be, of our little corner of +nature to the universe of which we were part--which was forever passing +into new phases and where each phase meant a new adjustment for every +part--where, then, a new art or idea was something more than the mere +compensation for an individual weakness or disaster, it was a necessity +of universal development--I would think it all out some time--the sun +was hot on the sand. + +“Well,” said Daisy, “now that we’ve earned that other drink, how about +going in?” + +Hot dogs were being roasted twenty at a time, on wide polished iron +slabs: they were crisp, with a delicious stink. At an oilcloth-covered +table, Daisy and I ate one apiece, dabbing them gamboge with a little +long-handled wooden spoon from the common mustard pot. + +“I’m ravenous!” said Daisy, biting into the pulp of her roll. + +Dim and languid from the swim, I was watching the reflections of girls, +in wide hats and bright summer colors, shine briefly in the silver high +myriad-paned mirror, in the sun that bleached whites whiter and blues +and yellows white. + +“Do you want another?” I asked, when she had bolted the last morsel. +“Not now; maybe later,” she replied. + +We did the shooting-galleries after this, and the ring-throwing and +ball-rolling games. We were both quite good: we knocked over any number +of moving ducks, which was what we had decided to concentrate on; +and we won a baby-doll in a chemise, a miniature roulette-wheel, an +harmonica, an atomizer and a trick pistol which shot off a snake. Daisy +was so delighted with the snake that she kept shooting it down the +ball-rolling table, so that the Jap had to find it and bring it back. +Every time, with oriental patience, he would stuff it into the pistol, +hand it back to Daisy, and caution her politely with a smile, as he +indicated the trigger: “Now don’t put your finger on that!”--whereupon +Daisy would shoot it off again. I was somehow obscurely reminded of +that horrible night at Sue Borglum’s, and I took a dislike to the Jap +and made Daisy move on. + +“Let’s send some goofy post-cards,” said Daisy, in front of a post-card +store. We went inside and selected several with fastidious care. I +sent cards to Hugo and Rita; and Daisy sent cards to Gus Dunbar and +Sue Borglum. “I’m going to be dirty,” she said, putting a cross on a +bathing beauty, and writing, “X marks my room.” + +I asked her if she would care for a pin-cushion heavily encrusted +with sea-shells and inscribed, “Souvenir of Coney Island,” or if +there were anything else she would like. “I’d like some moccasins,” +she said. “Very well,” I replied. “Will you really buy me some?” she +asked eagerly. “You great big munificent old thing!--I haven’t got any +slippers now, and I used to keep getting my feet full of splinters and +thumb-tacks in the country.” + +It turned out that her feet were so small that the man had to get a +special size out of the stockroom at the back. The woman in the shop, +fat and sharp-eyed, became very friendly with Daisy and, while the man +was looking for the moccasins, tried to engage her in conversation. “Do +you mind my asking what kind of lipstick that is?” the woman inquired +with interest. Rather to my surprise, this seemed to embarrass Daisy: +she explained that it was called “carnation,” but when the woman +asked her how much it cost, Daisy said that she had forgotten, and +became markedly unresponsive. “If they can’t find the right size,” +she presently remarked to me pointedly, “we might as well go!” The +moccasins, however, were forthcoming: they were moccasins for a child +and I did not suppose they could fit her; but they did. She looked down +at her little blunt-toed foot with its border, at the throat, of gray +fur: “That’s all right,” she said shortly. + +“That woman certainly took a friendly interest,” I remarked, when we +were out on the boardwalk. “Yes,” said Daisy. “I never know what to do +when people like that get chummy.” + +I had been surprised at Daisy’s shrinking from the familiarity of the +woman in the shop, and I was now to be surprised again. I had lingered +in front of a side-show, where there were posters of a Hula-Hula +Dancer, a Dog-faced Boy, a Mermaid, an Hermaphrodite and a Magician, +and I suggested going in. But Daisy evidently did not care to. “My +mother would never let me see any freaks,” she said. “They’re all +fakes, aren’t they?” she asked, a little timidly. + +As we walked on, she shot the snake off again, and I had to go and get +it out of an umbrella-stand bristling with pennants and canes. + +Then I discovered the Eden Musée--I had forgotten that it had moved +to Coney Island and had thought of it as having perished. I had not +visited it since my childhood, when, coming up to New York with my +father, he had used to take me to see it in the days when it had +still been on Twenty-third Street: there I had seen for the first +time moving-pictures, along with the automatic chess-player and the +manipulator of liquid air. And now here was the same old policeman in +his high obsolete helmet; the same refined widow in black, with the +tight waist of the early nineteen-hundreds; the same old hayseed with +his spectacles, his flopping wide-brimmed straw hat and his flaccid +carpet-bag--but now no longer posed inside, where they could no longer +be mistaken for real people, but set out in front as a guarantee of the +authentic antiquity of the show. + +I induced Daisy to go in.--There they were, that awful group of my +youth, though it seemed to me their number was diminished: Jenny Lind, +Mary Queen of Scots, Anna Held, Oliver Cromwell, Beethoven, Brigham +Young, General Grant, Napoleon and Booker T. Washington: I was sorry to +see that Marshall P. Wilder no longer had a place among them. + +I did not examine them closely, however, for Daisy, who seemed never to +have seen wax-works before, hurried on to the more dramatic tableaux +set back in compartments along the side. She passed before them, gazing +in silence. The groups were not particularly interesting, but they +presently led us to the “Crypt.” We entered a darkened curving passage. +I was delighted: it was the old “Chamber of Horrors,” which in the +Twenty-third Street days had used to be downstairs in the basement. +We gazed at the Opium Den; the Execution of a Burmese Criminal (it +seemed to me now that the elephant who steps on the criminal’s head +had shrunk since I was a boy); the Cannibal Feast; the Whipping Post, +“still in use in the State of Delaware”; and, the electrocution of poor +Lina Lemberg, who had finally, a few weeks before, been executed for +the murder of her husband. The witnesses, in the Death Chamber, were +regarding the proceedings with simpers, and I wondered whether they +had not been borrowed from an old tableau of a lobster-and-champagne +supper, with Mephistopheles in the background, of which the personnel +of revellers seemed to me, like the Burmese elephant, to have dwindled +since the Twenty-third Street days. I suggested this to Daisy. “I +don’t think this is very exciting,” she replied. She seemed to look at +everything so perfunctorily that I was afraid she was being bored: as +she had never seen the Musée in her childhood, I could not expect her +to share my interest in it. + +Several tableaux farther on, I found that I had turned a corner and +left Daisy behind--still staring, no doubt, at Lina Lemberg. I was +before a group of the Spanish Inquisition, and I had a sudden happy +inspiration for enlivening the entertainment for Daisy. I climbed +quickly over the railing, put my straw hat on the head of the presiding +inquisitor--he had a lean and sallow face, and the hat came down over +his eyes--and, with my back to the railing, struck an energetic pose +among the torturers with red-hot irons, myself applying to the victim’s +blood-streaked shoulder the cork-screw I had brought for the gin. In +a moment, I heard distinct light steps, which stopped--then, after an +instant’s pause: “Come on out of there, you old cut-up!” I climbed back +over the railing. “I thought you were real at first,” she said, as we +reached the exit. “You gave me quite a turn!” + +On our way out, I caught a glimpse of Roosevelt, the Teddy Roosevelt +of San Juan Hill, who, with his handkerchief knotted about his neck, +his Rough-Rider puttees, his felt hat, his mustache, his glaring teeth +and his eye-glasses, made me think of that younger America which I had +assumed we had forever left behind, but which to-day seemed quite close +to me again. It had been a boy’s America--and not merely because it had +been the America of my boyhood. Roosevelt, who had been so charming +with his children, had become the idol of the Americans of that time +for very much the same reasons--he had been everything that a boy +could imagine: Dan Beard, Old and Young King Brady, Frank Merriwell, +and Stanley in Africa, all rolled into one. I asked Daisy whether she +remembered the time when Roosevelt had been a great hero. She said, +“No,”--and showed so little interest that for a time I relapsed into +silence. Then she let me see what she had been thinking about: “I’ve +never seen a dead person,” she said, “except an aunt of mine that died.” + +“By the way,” I asked, after a moment, “what became of that thief that +Ray Coleman caught--the one that didn’t steal anything of yours, but +stole the bathrobe of the man next door, or something?” She was silent. +“Don’t you remember?” “Yes, I remember,” she replied. “But I don’t know +what became of him. I was thinking too much about myself at that time +to pay much attention to anything else.” + +“Would you mind taking me to dinner?” she said presently. “I’m +absolutely starved!” I asked her where she wanted to go. “I’d like to +go to the old Seaview, if you don’t mind. I don’t know how the food +there is now--but I’d just like to see the place.--I went there with +Phil Meissner,” she added, “when we first came on from Pittsburgh.” + +The Seaview was quite remote--beyond a kind of grassy common, +criss-crossed with bald paths. It was an old-fashioned summer hotel, +of the cupolaed and pillared design of the days before concrete and +brick: like all wooden hotels by the shore, it had a flimsy discolored +look, and seemed peculiarly desolate and dry. The dining-room was +entirely empty: only a few of the tables were set. One side was all +high narrow windows, separated by thin wooden frames, which looked out +on the boardwalk and the sea; and on the other, an old closed piano +stood against the wall, and space had been left for a dance-floor; slim +pillars from floor to roof at intervals threaded the room. We waited, +but no one came. I finally hallo’d; and a waiter appeared from the +pantry. He came forward without inspiration, as if he expected to be +asked for cigarettes or to be asked to direct us to Luna Park. When he +learned that we wanted dinner, his eagerness to serve us was extreme. + +“Well,” said Daisy, as we sat down, “the table linen’s nice and clean, +anyway.” It was true: very white large napkins had been folded into +angles and stuck into large clear goblets. + +“I’m going to have clams,” said Daisy. “They used to have the most +wonderful clam-cocktails here.” I ordered a melon for myself, and +bluefish for both of us afterwards. I also ordered some ginger-ale and +poured out what was left of the gin. “I don’t think I’ll have any,” +said Daisy, “until after I’ve had something to eat.” She looked a +little pale and was silent for some time, and I hoped that the Chamber +of Horrors hadn’t upset her. She smiled broadly, however, at last, and +proclaimed: “Look out, Food: I’m coming!” + +I asked her how she and Phil had ever happened to come to the Seaview. +“Phil knew the manager,” she explained. “The manager gave a party in +my honor--just some of his men friends. We had champagne, and I’d +never had anything to drink before--I was awfully young--I was only +seventeen. I thought it was swell, and I got lit. They kept filling up +my glass with champagne. You know how men are when they’ve got a girl +that’s young and kind of cute, and they’re trying to get her tight. I +had on a little black dress like they wore then, that buttoned up the +back, and the bottom buttons got unbuttoned--and then every man that +danced with me would unbutton another button--so that pretty soon it +was unbuttoned all the way up to the waist. I didn’t know anything +about it and just went on smiling and dancing, and thinking I was +cutting quite a figure, with my legs hanging out all the time!” + +I laughed about this. + +“I certainly enjoyed those clams!” she said, when all the little +hollows in her plate were empty around the red-splashed glass of sauce. +She smiled: “After all,” she declared, “say what you please--there’s +nothing like a good plate of food!” I asked her if she would like some +more clams. “Yes,” she answered, after a moment’s thought, “I believe +that I would.” I ordered another clam-cocktail. + +I asked if it weren’t true, as I had heard from Hugo Bamman, the night +of Ray Coleman’s party, that she and her husband, on their honeymoon, +had ridden on a motor-cycle all the way from Pittsburgh to Atlantic +City: this had seemed to me tremendously romantic. “It wasn’t Atlantic +City,” Daisy explained. “It was here.” + +“What was Phil Meissner like?” I inquired. “He had a lot of charm,” +said Daisy, “and a lot of brains, too--but he never did anything with +them except perfectly foolish things. For instance, he’d spend days +inventing something that worked by electricity to make the blinds open +in the morning--he could lie in bed and press a button and make the +water-basin fill, and when it was full, the faucet would turn itself +off, and everything!” + +“Were you very much in love with him?” I asked. She shook her head, +as if in scorn. “I didn’t know anything about anything then. He was +the first regular beau I’d ever had: my father wouldn’t let me go with +the boys. I was all excited aboutum at first.--I was so much impressed +withum when I first marriedum that it was just ridiculous! I couldn’t +even go to the drug-store to get a tube of tooth-paste without askingum +what kind to buy. But I wasn’t really in love withum--I didn’t know +what it was all about--and then, by the time I might have been in love, +everything was pretty well wrecked.--My father followed us here and +burst in on us with a detective at four o’clock in the morning. He made +us get up and get married then and there--we hadn’t gotten married +before we left because Phil didn’t want to attract attention. Dad said +I’d either have to marry Phil or go back to Pittsburgh. So we got up +and got married at four o’clock in the morning--it was the night after +the champagne party and we both felt like nobody’s business. Phil was +sore as a crab, because Dad had a Catholic priest marry us, and Phil +wasn’t a Catholic--but Dad threatened to havum arrested for abducting a +minor, and he had the detective right there. + +“Things were never quite the same after that. I don’t blame Phil +for being sore: nobody likes to be forced into a thing like +that--especially with a hangover, at four o’clock in the morning!” + +I had been thinking: her father from Pittsburgh--why had they named her +Daisy?--I remembered that old song of my boyhood, + + _“Daisy! Daisy! + Give me your answer true-- + I’m half-crazy! + All for the love of you! + It won’t be a stylish marriage-- + I can’t afford a carriage! + But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat + Of a bicycle built for two!”_ + +--that old song of an earlier time to which Daisy’s name seemed to +relate her--and her large hips, too--I had never been aware how round +they were till I had seen her in her bathing-suit--they were the kind +that had been admired at the time when the song had been new--they went +in for slender hips to-day--but I liked Daisy’s none the less--how +bicycles had gone out, too--but she and Phil, appropriately enough, had +spent their honeymoon on a motor-cycle. + +“Are you happy now with Pete?” I asked. She shook her head: “I don’t +know if I’ve really ever been happy--but I’ve sworn to go through with +this with Pete: I’m tired of leaving people.” “Are you and Pete married +now?” She shook her head again and grunted negatively, “uh-uh!” + +“I know I’m not happy now,” she went on, “because I keep having these +dreams where some kind of a great piece of good fortune is just about +to befall me--and they’re the goofiest dreams!--When Prince Charming +comes along, he’s always just a great, big, strong, clean-limbed +American who gathers me up in his arms. It’s so silly! I feel ashamed +of myself after I wake up.--And I’m always dressed in the costume that +I wore in the first _Gambols_, when I came out in a white old-fashioned +dress, with curls and pantalettes and everything. I loved it--Gus +Dunbar used to say that I looked so sweet and dewy that he wanted to +smack me down. But you know one night the boys from Notre Dame came +and stole my picture in that costume that was on show in front of the +theatre--and they published it in the college paper. They sent me a +copy of the paper: I was tickled to death. That was the only one they +stole!” + +I had been watching, through the tall, open windows, the double, white, +pearly globes of the boardwalk lamps, so pale, so chaste and so bright, +hanging gracefully, like lilies-of-the-valley, from their straight, +slender stalks, against the background of the paler blue, now the +cooler blue, of the sea, where a buoy shone ruby-red. + +When we came down the steps of the hotel, all was in deep blue dusk, +with the lamps a double rope of moons. “Have you noticed this?” I +asked, waving my hand toward the lamps.--“I suppose the last time I was +happy,” she said, “was back there in the old Seaview dining-room!” + +We were confronted, when we turned back toward the amusements, by a +large and very garish electric sign in the form of a gigantic human +foot, on which a red Mephistopheles was standing: by means of alternate +systems of bulbs, the arm of the Mephistopheles was made to jerk back +and forth, prodding energetically with a spear an illuminated corn on +the big toe, which at each jab changed the color of its light, first +blue, then purple, then green. The legend, which flashed on and off, +proclaimed, in contorted, striking letters: “Take a Walk with Clancy’s +Corn Fix. Knocks the Devil Out of Sore Feet.” + +“Oh, do you see that sign?” said Daisy. “That was Larry Mickler’s +idea. He’s making a lot of money out of it: they’ve got them all over +the country.” I was glad to know that Larry Mickler, through a truly +Dostoevskian device, had constrained his sadistic instincts to serve +this beneficent end. + +“I hope we get somewhere soon!” said Daisy presently. “I’ve got to +go to about eighteen ladies’-rooms!” We had been walking along the +boardwalk and were only just reaching the shops again. Daisy presently +disappeared in a small and rather sordid-looking restaurant. + +There was a penny-in-the-slot place next door, and as I walked back +and forth in front of the restaurant, I stopped and looked in. I saw, +standing before me in the doorway, a tall, young man with a stoop, +who had a darkish tooth-brush mustache, which I considered a little +silly, and rather large brown eyes of the kind usually described as +spaniel-like: he was wearing, like everybody else, a straw hat with a +black band, which, it seemed to me, he had pulled too far down on his +forehead. I had a feeling of mild irritation that he should be standing +and staring so innocently, so well-meaningly, and so lackadaisically, +square in the middle of the doorway, where he made it difficult for +people to pass. He was laden down, I saw, with packages: no doubt some +woman had made him carry them.--Then sharply I pulled myself up from +that vague and absent moment: the man was my own reflection in a mirror +opposite the door. On either side were other mirrors which distorted +people’s shapes. + +I continued to gaze at myself: how had I ever failed to +recognize--especially after Daisy had remarked on it--my ridiculous +bulbous nose? My eyes, which I had hoped were intelligent, had only +appeared to me canine--and my mustache was unsuccessful. My pockets +were bulging with the atomizer, the mouth-organ, the baby-doll, and the +pistol with the snake; and I was carrying the roulette-wheel and the +moccasins, which had been wrapped up in pasteboard boxes. I seemed to +myself a figure from the funny-papers: Mr. Suburban American, at the +sea-side, with packages and a straw hat. + +I went back to the door of the restaurant: Daisy had not yet emerged. +There was a radio playing outside, and for some reason the programme +included some vaudeville or night-club woman soloist singing _Mamie +Rose_, that popular song of several years ago which Daisy had started +on the phonograph when Rita had been reading her poems and which had +desolated me so on the day when I had seen Rita off at the station and +had been waiting for Daisy in her rooms. Now I listened idly for the +words, parts of which, on that horrible record, I had never been able +to catch. The contralto, whose voice was rich and deep, delivered them +with a masterly casual emphasis, in that nondescript dialect--perhaps +the result of Irish actors learning from Jewish comedians how to sing +Negro songs--which has become the language of American jazz: + + _“There she goes, + Mamie Rose + She--loves--me! + Don’t seem to show it! + How do I know it? + It’s ABC! + She’s smart as Satan-- + She’s aggravatin’-- + But when I want a little lovin’, + She don’t keep me waitin’-- + She’s proud and snooty, + But she’s my cutie-- + She tells me, Fireman, do your duty!”_ + +_That_ was the line that I’d never been able to hear!--That song, but +a few years old, seemed already to belong to the past, like _Daisy_ +and the _American Patrol_, and the old musical-comedy tune which the +musicians had played on the boat, and I found that I had at last come +to feel for it a certain familiar affection. Furthermore, I now thought +it quite good: there was something rather unexpected, something even +quite original about the manipulation of the tune: what was original +and unexpected was the repetition, in some sort of minor, of the +pattern which had just gone before--recommencing, with _She’s proud and +snooty_, what one had thought was entirely finished--and recommencing +it agreeably and queerly, so that for a moment one always paused to +listen. I wondered how the composer had arrived at it. He was a man +named Harry Hirsch, I remembered: I imagined him: a small, young Jew +with very large, intense, black eyes, like motor headlights; after the +success of the musical comedy in which _Mamie Rose_ had been sung, he +had probably taken to wearing spats. He was no doubt the son of a Rabbi +or of the Cantor in a Synagogue: the base of his music was German, and +I imagined some dark room of a stifling apartment on the East Side, +in which his youth had been fed on Schubert and on the light opera of +Vienna and Berlin, cities which his eyes had never seen. But what had +he done to this music?--what had made him repeat those bars of the +sweet German melody with which he had begun, but transforming them +abruptly, by daring what any hack worker in the field would have told +him _a priori_ was impossible, what would have lasted in commonplace +hands impossibly too long? By carrying us beyond expectation, by +breaking into that new accent, half agonized and half thrilling, he had +enchanted the public so completely that not merely had _Mamie Rose_ +turned out to be one of the principal factors in the success of the +musical comedy in which it had first appeared (and where, as a matter +of fact, the director had been afraid to feature it), but it had been +heard on every radio and phonograph; at every college prom, at every +Greenwich Village ball; from the most perfunctory chirpings of the +orchestras of restaurants to the jazz-bands de luxe of roof-gardens; +on the vaudeville circuits of small towns and in the scores of feature +moving-pictures; worked up for the Elks summer fair; struck up, with +the words thrown on a screen, during the intermissions of burlesque +shows; ground out at “dancing academies” where, from New York to Los +Angeles, clumsy and inarticulate young men pushed wary and inarticulate +girls about a crowded, monotonous floor--and as I had heard it once, +late at night, sung strangely from a summer street by a child’s voice, +nasal and shrill, following subtly and with marvellous accuracy the +deviating minor strain, and repeating it again and again! + +Where had he got it?--from the sounds of the streets? the taxis +creaking to a stop? the interrogatory squeak of a street-car? some +distant and obscure city-sound in which a plaintive high note, bitten +sharp, follows a lower note, strongly clanged and solidly based? Or +had he got it from Schoenberg or Stravinsky?--or simply from his own +nostalgia, among the dark cells and the raspings of New York, for those +orchestras and open squares which his parents had left behind?--or +for the cadence, half-chanted and despairing, of the tongue which the +father had known, but which the child had forgotten and was never to +know again? + +But the relations between Schoenberg, the taxi-brakes, and the +Synagogue, baffled further speculation.--And, in any case, what +charmed and surprised one, in this as in all works of art, was no +mere combination of elements, however picturesque or novel, but some +distinctive individual quality which the artist himself supplied. Of +all the young Jews in New York who had listened to the service in +the Synagogue or who had been kept awake at night by taxis, how many +had written good music, even good popular music? I thought of that +personal color or rhythm which, the night when I had been dressing in +Bank Street to take Daisy out to a night-club, had seemed to me, in +the work of an artist, as little important or interesting as the color +of his hair or eyes, or his way of mispronouncing certain words; but I +could recognize now that it was precious. And as I recalled my gloomy +meditations of the night of Sue Borglum’s party, I remembered how the +Greeks had given Sophocles the name of “the Attic Bee.” + +Yes: I saw it: there it was: it was acrid, but still honey; and it was +something more than beauty of verse. The Greeks’ idea of sweetness had +been as different as possible from Stevenson and the “honey-dripping +style.” I saw it now, not merely in the nightingales and the ivy of +that chorus at Colonus for which the jury had applauded Sophocles, when +his competence to dispose of his property had been called in question +by his son; but in the passionate frankness of Antigone, even in the +asperity of Œdipus, even in the guile of Odysseus. I thought now of +the exquisite proportion, of the style with its unique combination of +modulation and pith, of the strong and sensitive hand placing with so +firm and light an emphasis those culminating scenes where the nobler +instincts of humanity reassert or declare themselves: Electra when she +speaks to the urn which she believes contains her brother’s ashes, +Neoptolemus confessing at last that he cannot act against his nature +to deceive even an outcast who has trusted him--as, in the case of +Dostoevsky, I remembered, no longer the contention and the horror, +but the brightness of the high comic sense which interpenetrates all +that is turbid, which flowers constantly in such charming passages +as that in _The Idiot_, for example, where the young girl buys the +hedgehog from the boys and sends it to the Prince for a peace-offering, +and which makes even of _Crime and Punishment_ a comedy rather than +a tragedy. It was not that the Athenian jury had merely demonstrated +their gratitude for--that the crowds at Dostoevsky’s funeral had +merely regretted being deprived of--a sedative to which they had +become addicted; but that both had been ravished by the taste--and +by it had been partly repaid for the harshness of the common life--of +that miraculous secretion of the mind which there was only one man to +supply. And so every sort of good literature, so every sort of good +art, provided an aliment, a stimulant, as natural and necessary as food +and drink themselves! Even the tannic tincture of Poe, which seemed +to turn the throat to leather and to petrify the taste, had its own +peculiar tonic value, and even from the coarse, used mash of Byron it +was possible to extract a strong brandy--even the writer of popular +music--The radio was hawking and halting; I had already been waiting a +long time--much too long, I began to think. And I suddenly remembered +how Daisy had slit her wrist on the night when I had left her at Gus +Dunbar’s apartment. + +I was on the point of going in to look for her when she finally +appeared: I was so much relieved to see her that I did not at first +notice how pale she was. She said that she was sorry to have kept me +waiting, and we walked on for a moment in silence: then I asked her +whether she had been ill. “No: I’m all right,” she replied. “You were +such a long time in there,” I said.--“Are you sure that you’re all +right?” “Yes, I’m all right,” she said again. “You were sick in there,” +I challenged her, stopping. “Did you throw up?” “I’m all right!” she +repeated. “It was just the smell of that place, I guess!” + +I made her sit down on a bench: she wouldn’t let me get her anything, +and neither of us spoke for a time. A fresh, fishy breeze was blowing +in: I hoped that it would make her feel better. A lighthouse was +winking punctually; the ocean was grayest blue, and the low waves were +pale as porcelain on the sands of palest buff: the late bathers were +coral limbs. Some children, still playing on the beach, were holding +out into the ocean and the night the brass-bristling frost-crystals of +sparklers. + +I asked Daisy presently how she felt. “All right: fine!” she +replied.--I tried to find out whether there were anything seriously +wrong with her. “No,” she said. “To tell the truth, we haven’t had +very much to eat out in the country lately: the grocer and the butcher +in the village wouldn’t give us any more credit, and we had to live +on the things that we already had in the house--which were mostly +corn-flakes--corn-flakes without cream or anything--that was about all +we’d had for a week before we came in. I guess I overdid it with those +clams.” + +I said I thought that the gin had been rotten and that the ginger-ale +had been inferior. I began to produce the toys from my pockets. She +took a sudden interest in the harmonica and amused herself by working +out tunes on it: her most conspicuous success, from which she seemed +to derive a good deal of satisfaction, was _Nearer My God to Thee_. +After a while, she said: “Well, let’s go on!” I asked her whether she +wanted to go home. “No,” she declared, “not yet: I want to do some more +things!--don’t you?” + +We explored Luna Park--all bright minarets and festoons of white +imitation pearls. I offered to take her on the “Thunderbolt”; the +“Shoot-the-Chutes”; the “Dragon’s Gorge”; but she did not seem very +eager. “Why don’t we try that Noah’s Ark thing?” she suggested, as we +were wandering a little aimlessly, “that thing that you wanted to go +into when we first came.” + +We went back to the steamboat pier and found the Noah’s Ark still +rocking and sounding its sombre fog-horn; it was lighted up now with +green ship’s lanterns, which revealed the elephant, the ostrich, and +the giraffe, the fisherman pulling up the shoe, the old patriarch +hitting his bottle, and the monster shaking his bars. “Do you think you +can stand it?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” insisted Daisy, smiling. “I want to +go in, don’t you?” + +We bought tickets and mounted the gang-plank. Inside, the Ark was +rather a sell, as there was nothing amusing to see--the animals and the +monster turned out to have been constructed so as to be visible merely +from the outside. We found that we had been let in for an assortment +of banal and disconcerting sensations. We had to walk on a shifting +platform--pass along a wobbly corridor--climb a flight of quaking +stairs. Our hats were almost blown off by a violent blast of air and +when we tried to catch hold of the railing, we received an electric +shock. I was afraid that it might make Daisy sick again, and asked her +whether she wanted to go back: “No, I’m all right,” she replied. We +went through with it to the end, in silence and rather solemnly. I felt +protective and tender toward Daisy, and contrite at having brought her +in: I was only just beginning fully to realize that she had probably, +when we first started out, been faint for lack of food; that she had +been drinking on an empty stomach; that she had been sickened by the +Eden Musée and upset by my stupid joke; and that revisiting the Seaview +Hotel, which had brought back her first days with Phil Meissner, had +finally overcome her. I became acutely aware, too late, that if she had +insisted on going in for the Noah’s Ark, it had been entirely because +she thought I wanted to.--The last stunt was a spiral slide which +landed us on a whirling platform: in my efforts to rescue Daisy, I fell +on the roulette-wheel and broke it. + +It was now time to go home, we decided--but as it turned out that the +last boat had left, we were obliged to go back by the bus. + +On our way to the place where the buses stopped, we passed the poster +of a spiritualist fortuneteller. “Did I tell you my joke?” asked Daisy. +“About ‘Striking a Happy Medium’?” “Yes,” I said. “I think it’s fine!” + +As the bus left Coney Island behind, a cluster of bright, pearly globes +among the vivid red pumps of a filling-station repeated the pearls of +Luna Park and the drooping white lamps of the boardwalk. + +Along the boulevard to New York, were aligned little sections of shops, +bright-windowed and built in new concrete: drug-stores; grocery-stores; +automobile show-rooms; a bank. + +There were girls in summer dresses, hatless, with bobbed heads and +pink or tan stockings, strolling out, alone or in couples. Down +side-streets, I could see little houses with compact and screened +porches giving way to the wastes of building-lots, where a lonely and +random street-lamp would light untidy bushes and trees. That was +the America to which I had returned when, coming back after the War +from France, I had been greeted by that other suburban street-lamp +on the Staten Island shore! That was the America to which to-night I +felt myself returning again--those neat and new little shops, those +girls wandering out in the evening between the drug-store and the +building-lots--hardly knowing what they expected but half hoping for +some new turn to their lives! Had not Daisy been once such a girl, +walking out in the streets of Pittsburgh--had not Rita, in her up-state +town? + +I asked Daisy about her father, of whom she had told me at dinner that +he had not let her go out with boys. “He was Irish,” she explained. +“He lost all his money when we were just kids. But he was determined +that the fact that he’d lost his money shouldn’t make any difference +about our being well brought up--I guess it did all right, though.” +She smiled her candid smile. “That’s one reason they used to send me +to my aunt’s in Nova Scotia so much.” I remembered her timidity about +the freaks, her “independence” about rehearsals, and her coldness with +the woman in the store. “That was one trouble about Phil and me,” she +went on. “Phil’s father and my father had known each other very well +when they first came to Pittsburgh. We used to live next door to the +Meissners, before they made money and moved. And in those days, Dad +had a much more important position than Mr. Meissner: he was one of +the principal men in the Billings Company and Mr. Meissner was just a +clerk in a bank. Then when the Meissners made money and Dad was down +and out, they got snooty about us--and Dad didn’t want me to go with +Phil--Phil had the reputation of being the wildest boy in Pittsburgh. +Dad was fit to be tied when I ran away withum!” + +I marked another filling-station: a crowd of great white stars, which +seemed uttered by a rocket’s detonation. + +Now we were passing a row of small houses with tapestry-brick façades +and, in front of them, little green lawns enclosed by little hedges. + +“Dad was really a bright man, though,” Daisy presently went on. “He +was one of the first people in the country to design certain kinds of +trucks.--He invented all kinds of things--he invented a kind of siren.” + +A filling-station where the lights were dimmer and the pumps a duller +red was outshone by the lunar beauty of the radiant white pergola which +followed it. + +“Did you ever hear them talk about auto-horns--in a store or +anywhere, I mean?” she asked. “It’s a shout. There’s a _toot-toot_, +and a _beep-beep_--and an _oorah_--and a _blah-blah_, and a +_blurp-blurp_.--Dad’s was a kind of a _oorah_--and it was a humdinger, +too!--it had an authoritative sound and it wasn’t ugly like most +sirens.” + +In the show-rooms on either side appeared the present-day glories +of the motor industry: the Lancerd was celebrating its “Silver +Anniversary” with a new model in “distinctive” apple-green, posed with +dignity behind its plate-glass pane, in a white-balconied Colonial +salon. + +“It was getting indicted for manslaughter,” Daisy went on, “that really +ruined Dad: he and another man ran into each other as Dad was coming +out of a garage. It was really both’s fault--but the man was killed and +they indicted Dad--though he’d been a month in the hospital himself. +They made him pay a big fine and he lost his job--and he never could +get back after that.--He used to come home drunk and sit down on the +edge of my bed and hold directors’ meetings all by himself--I used to +think it was funny, but my mother used to be so worried!” + +I had been brooding on the name of Meissner, which seemed to raise for +me vague associations. “Did they ever call Phil Meissner, ‘Junior’?” +I finally asked. “The family always calledum that,” she answered. +“Why?--did you ever knowum?” “Did they live in a great big house with +green and blue stained-glass windows?” “Yes,” said Daisy. “Why? Did you +ever knowum? They lived on Aylesworth Avenue. That was where they moved +to after they lived next door to us.” + +Phil and his family were the people, then, whom I had visited as a +child, when I had gone to Pittsburgh with my mother, and who had +come back into my mind, when Hugo, at Ray Coleman’s party, had said +that Daisy came from Pittsburgh! I told Daisy how much I had envied +Phil Meissner’s elaborate toy railroad and his device for making +dinner-plates jump, but how obnoxious, on the whole, I had thought him. +“He was spoiled to death,” said Daisy. “That was what was the trouble +withum, I guess.” + +And this discovery that Daisy had married a boy I had myself known +in my childhood had an effect out of all proportion to its apparent +importance or interest. Hitherto, I now fully took account, I had +regarded Daisy as an alien--first, as a denizen of Broadway, and +afterwards, as a product of the Village. But she seemed now to have +taken her place in the world which I had always known. She was no +longer of a different race--of an exotic glamor or guile: she was +simply an American girl, who had grown up in an American town like +other American towns, lived in a house like other houses, gone to a +school like other schools. I seemed to have been given a new vision +of the fluidity of manners in America, the plasticity of social +position--of the swiftness and adventitiousness of the way in which +such things changed. If Daisy’s family had gone down in the world, the +Meissners had obviously come up. But the human material was the same; +and in the face of its constant fluctuations, attempts to fix social +differences became ludicrous and futile. Americans might turn into +anything! + +What, for example, might not be made of Daisy? On each of the occasions +when I had met her, I had seen in her something different, as my own +mind had been differently disposed by my personal situation at the +time and by the influences by which I had been affected--by Hugo, +first; then, by Rita; then, by my disgust and disillusion the night +of Sue Borglum’s party; then, by my evening with the Grosbeakes. And +I could see how she herself had taken the color of each of the men +with whom she had lived since she left Pittsburgh: Phil Meissner’s +extravagant tastes; Ray Coleman’s constrained correctitude; and Pete +Bird’s engaging humor. She had even, I noted, begun lately to talk +exactly like Pete. She had been eager to accept whatever they gave, and +how little they had had to give her! Phil with his inherited money, +his egoism, and his silly jokes; Ray with his substantial salary, his +ignoble employment and his meanness; and Pete with his pennilessness +and uselessness, his gentlemanly hobbies and his charm--they seemed now +to me like figures of comedy for familiar American types.--But what +hope was there for Daisy with any of them? + +“I declare,” I said finally aloud, “I don’t see why you haven’t been +able to do better than Pete and Ray! Haven’t you ever found anybody +in the Village that really amounted to something and that you liked +at the same time?” She shook her head, not turning from the window. +Then, after a moment, she turned: “You know the only person,” she +said, “that I ever thought I could get a real crush on was your friend +Hugo Bamman. I actually got all hopped up, that night he was sailing +for Egypt, or wherever it was, about the idea of going away withum. I +think he’s good-looking, too--especially since he’s stopped wearing +spectacles. Some people think that scar spoils his face, but I think +it’s smart-looking.--But he’s certainly cagy about women--Myra Busch +was crazy aboutum, you know.--Either that or he’s afraid of them.--He’s +so sure of himself, too--he knows what he wants to do.--None of the +men I’ve ever lived with were sure of themselves.--You know what you +told me out in the country, about my knowing about everything better +than anybody--well, I wanted to say at the time that that isn’t true at +all. That’s just the trouble: I don’t know what it’s all about. I want +somebody to tell me!” + +Daisy’s mentioning Hugo reminded me of the world as I had seen it +through his eyes when I had first come down to Greenwich Village: then, +like him, I had thought myself a rebel against the standards of a +bourgeoisie--that is, in a country like America, where there was really +only one class, or rather, as I had just been reflecting, no classes, +properly speaking, at all, against an abstraction of all the worst +qualities attributable to respectable Americans; then later, when I had +been in love with Rita, all the interests and occupations of the common +life had seemed to me on so low a plane and of so lax an impulse, that +I could feel for them nothing but contempt. Now my trip to Europe since +the War had had the effect of making me more content with America, even +at her worst; and my conversation with Grosbeake _à propos_ of Lewis’s +_Babbitt_, though Grosbeake’s opinions had surprised me at the time, +had in the long run had the effect of helping me to approach America +from a different point of view than the point of view which, at the +time when I had thought like Hugo, had allowed me to take account only +of American mediocrity and timidity. To-day I seemed to have re-entered +that world and to find myself perfectly at home there: now I found that +it no longer inspired either hatred, apprehension, or scorn. + +“By the way,” I presently asked, “where did you get that line about +‘the downfall of western civilization’?--You know, that night I took +you to the movies, you said that you probably looked like the downfall +of western civilization.” “Oh,” she said, “that was just something I +picked up at the Ritz Bar in Paris!” + +The little tapestry-brick houses had been supplanted by +apartment-buildings, also in tapestry-brick, and with attractive green +or brown awnings at the doorways and windows; but now the awnings came +closer together and the crowded house-fronts were laced by zigzagging +fire-escapes: they got dingier, balder, denser. We were in Brooklyn, +and now Brooklyn Bridge repeated the fire-escape zigzags. + +Delancey Street, with its car-tracks and hooded subway entrances; the +Bowery, with its El. + +We got out at Astor Place. I asked Daisy what she wanted to do. “I +think I’d like a drink,” she said. “It’s so long since I’ve been +absolutely free, without any housework or anything, that I feel like +making the most of it!” “Have you gotten over your sinking-spell?” I +asked. “Sure,” she replied with conviction. “I feel fine!” + +The oppression of summer, again, hung over and hushed the city-streets: +the very taxi horns seemed muted. The greenery in Washington Square, +behind the arc-lights, looked heavy and dark; and the benches +overflowed with Italians, dirty and sweaty, swarming to the air, giving +out the sounds of life, but heavy-footed, slowed down and subdued. + +My rooms in Bank Street were stuffy and messy: the colored woman who +took care of them had abandoned me without warning and they had not +been cleaned for a week. I threw open all the windows. In the house +across the court, the people were sitting on the fire-escape in their +undershirts. A baby was howling and sobbing. + +I had brought in some ice from a drug-store, and this time we had +Scotch instead of gin. It was pretty good Scotch, as it went, and we +had highballs with mineral water. It was pleasant to relax on the +couch, with the cold misted glasses in our hands, alone, with nowhere +to go, with no buses or boats to catch. + +“Who did you say you were staying with?” I asked. + +“Sue Borglum,” Daisy replied--and added: “I think she’s going nuts. +Have you seen her lately? She’s turned green!--She’s turned absolutely +green!--But I can’t worry about her!--I’ve got all the worrying I can +do with Pete and myself!” + +“Did you ever know Peter Kester?” I asked. “No,” said Daisy, “Who is +he?” “He’s a great friend of Rita Cavanagh’s--she always used to be +telling me about him. I met him yesterday for the first time--he’s +just come back from New Mexico.--He’s just a nice old bozo, who paints +rather mediocre landscapes. He’s just like all the American painters +of that generation that you meet at the Washington Irving Club.--He +wears tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses with a big black ribbon--and he +thinks that Picasso is a clown!” + +The electric lights were hot, and I got up to turn one out. “Why don’t +you turn them all out,” said Daisy, “and just turn on that lamp in the +alcove? It would be a lot cooler.” I turned on the table-lamp in my +study and put the others out. I was glad that the things in the room +were obscured by the shadow now: I had been feeling that that Leonardo +was not a particularly suitable picture for New York in the summer time. + +When I came back, she had stretched out along the couch, with her head +propped up on a pillow against the arm and her highball clasped in her +hand. “I hope you don’t mind my lying down,” she said. I sat down on +the edge of the couch beside her. + +The voice of a radio, dimly muttering or hoarsely warbling, came in to +us from across the back yard. I was reminded of my recent meditations +while I had been waiting for Daisy in front of the restaurant, and I +told her now about looking in the mirror and mistaking myself for some +one else. + +“You’re not so bad!” said Daisy. “I think your mustache is all right. +In fact, I’ve always liked the way you look.” I replied, “Well, I’ve +often told you how much I like the way _you_ look!” + +Encouraged, I began to describe to her my consoling æsthetic +revelations in connection with the popular song.--I had always thought +of her, I told her, also, ever since that first night I had met her, +whenever I had heard _Mamie Rose_.--I talked on, and even got as far as +the Attic Bee. + +But all the time that I was talking, she was looking at me, serious and +flushed, as if I had been making love to her. At last I stopped and +said, “You’re such a darling!” and kissed her. We said little after +that.... + +When, from the profuse delight of that love, hot, moist, mucilaginous +and melting, I found my thoughts springing up again, they seemed +unfolding like fresh new leaves in an atmosphere of gentleness and +peace. + +I thought of Daisy under her different aspects, as she had seemed to me +at different times--and I remembered the literary productions which at +one time or another she had inspired--all so different from my present +vision of her, from our present reality: first, the night that I had +met her at Ray Coleman’s, the cool Gallic short story I had imagined, +with its humanitarian irony--then, the night that we had gone to the +movies, the romantic apostrophe of the sonnet--then, the night that +I was to take her to a night-club, when my alienation from Rita had +had the effect of thrusting away from me all the rest of the world as +well--Daisy along with the others--the desperate exposure of literature +itself, on which my mind had run so furiously and interminably--then, +when I had visited Pete and Daisy in the country, the savage moralistic +satire which the letter I had received from Rita and the spectacle +of Grosbeake’s equanimity had prevented me from writing. I had, in +fact, rejected all these projects--as I had outgrown those phases of +myself of which my successive conceptions of Daisy had been merely the +reflections in another. + +And now I felt that I should be content if I could only make some +sketches of Daisy, as I remembered her at different times and +places--if I could only hit off, in prose, her attitudes, her +gestures, her expressions, the intonations of her voice--preserve +them so they should not vanish, as Degas had done for his dancers--as +Toulouse-Lautrec had done for the women of cabarets.... I dreamed a +whole series of Daisy.... + +So I should perhaps save myself at last from that dreadful isolation +of the artist which had appalled me in Hugo and Rita--both forever, it +seemed to me now, occupying impregnable solitudes with the creation +of impossible worlds--so, by the way of literature itself, I should +break through into the real world--as to-night I had seemed at last, +with Daisy, as if by a simple mutual transfusion, to come so naturally +into contact with life.... Such pictures as I imagined of Daisy would +grow directly and freshly from life. And it seemed to me to-night that +literature was as amiable as writing ballads, as necessary as making +tables--and indeed that, when one came right down to it, there was +really no difference in kind between carpentry and literature. + +I bent over Daisy--her head on the pillow had that look--the little +soft round chin and the soft bare throat--of women in those moments +when they have dropped off, along with their garments, all the ruses +and resolutions with which they meet the world--when we see them just +awakened or lying thinking at night, with wide eyes and anxious mouth, +and we realize how gentle they are, how much they wonder, and how +tender toward them we must be.... I wondered whether she would leave +Pete for me.... + +“Let’s run away together!” I suggested. + +“Oh, I couldn’t--now,” she replied. “I told Pete that if he got a job, +I’d stay withum.” + +It seemed to me now that I wanted above everything to go away somewhere +with Daisy. + +“I’ll take you on a motor-cycle!” I proposed. + +“No, you won’t!” she promptly replied. “I’ve done my last motor-cycle +elopement!” + +“Still you must have had a lot of fun!” + +“I didn’t know whether I was ever going to get there alive. We had +about six accidents.... The real reason for the motor-cycle, I found +out afterwards, was that I was afraid I was pregnant and Phil wanted to +bring me around. He thought that a motor-cycle trip would be just the +thing.... There! I’d told you that we weren’t married! Oh, well--never +mind!” She was silent a moment, then went on: “That’s something that +nobody but Phil would think of--taking a girl on a motor-cycle trip to +bring her around!... He wouldn’t even let me ride in a side-car--he +carried me all the way on the handle-bars!” + +I made her turn and embraced her anew, kissing her with pleasure and +compassion. When she told me of the rejection and death of her love, +I recognized the fate of my own. And it was so sweet to include in my +arms that warmth, that solidity, that slenderness--and to feel that she +followed me!... + +In the peace and silence again, I could hear that poor child still +crying, and I remembered how once, as a child, I myself had lain awake +with the heat, and suffered and complained.--Then, in a moment, I +remembered, also, how those same children of the Village had figured +in the poem which Rita had recited the night of Ray Coleman’s party +and which she told us she had written that day. On that very day when +she had filled my imagination with the splendor of her genius and her +beauty, when she had seemed to me a goddess or a muse--on that day, her +own mind had been haunted by visions of imbecility and deformity--she +had seen only, among those children of the streets, the most wretched +and the most afflicted, and she had seen in them only the crippling of +the spirit and the clouding of the mind by love.... + +What relief and what a rebirth, our only real birth into this world, +when from the fears and snobberies of youth, from all our preconceived +ideas, from all those foolish abstractions we learn, all those things +that we think we think, we find at last in these beings who have +crowded, offended, disgusted or fought us, that interest and that value +which we have found only in a few or in one--when, youth’s passion and +anguish spent, we see rising about us that reality of those we have +looked on as strangers, and know that it is our reality--that what is +strange to us is strange to them, that what hurts them hurts us, that +what is good for them is good for us--when we no longer dread the fool +nor hate the one who wounds us, but can sleep in our beds in peace and +in peace face the waking world!... + +I kept telling Daisy how smooth her skin was, and she was finally moved +to retort: “Are you used to women with scales?” + +“I suppose I ought to go,” she said presently. “I don’t want Sue +Borglum to have it on me that I stayed out all night.” + +“I’ve been so happy with you to-day,” I said, “and I’m afraid that you +haven’t been happy.” + +“Oh, yes, I have,” she replied. “But I’ve been depressed about the +Boston business. I don’t want to go to Boston, damn it!” + +She sat up on the edge of the bed. “Now you go into the other room +while I put on my dress!” + +When she came back, her dress wasn’t hung very well, and her lipstick, +newly applied, had a look of fresh paint. + +“I don’t care about any of those things,” she said, “except the +mouth-organ and the pistol.” + +I couldn’t find the mouth-organ: I looked for it all over in vain. +“Confound it!” I exclaimed, “I must have left the mouth-organ in the +taxi!” “Oh,” she said, “I wanted to show Pete how I could play _Nearer +My God to Thee!_ But I guess that the snake will amuse him!” + + [The End] + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78785 *** diff --git a/78785-h/78785-h.htm b/78785-h/78785-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e8263a --- /dev/null +++ b/78785-h/78785-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,11095 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no,date=no,address=no,email=no,url=no"> + <title> + I Thought of Daisy | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 7%; + margin-right: 7%; +} + +h1,h2 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +a {text-decoration: none;} +a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} + +p.noindent { + text-indent: 0; +} + + +p { + text-indent: 1.3em; + margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; +} + +hr.chap { + border: none; + position: relative; + text-align: center; + margin: 3em 0; + page-break-after: avoid + } +hr.chap::before { + content: "ꕥ"; + position: relative; + padding: 0 1em; + background: white; + color: #777; + z-index: 1 + } +hr.chap::after { + content: ""; + position: absolute; + top: 50%; + left: 0; + width: 100%; + border-top: 2px solid #ddd; + z-index: 0 + } +hr.front { + width: 10%; + margin: 1.5em 45%; + border: 0; + border-top: 1px solid #777; + page-break-after: avoid + } + +hr.tb { + border: none; + text-align: center; + margin: 2em 0; + page-break-after: avoid +} + +hr.tb::before { + content: "❧"; + color: #777; + font-size: 1.2em; +} + +.pagenum { + right: 1%; + font-size: x-small; + color: #333; + text-indent: 0; + text-align: right; + position: absolute; + border: thin solid silver; + padding: 0.1em 0.2em; +} + +blockquote { + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 5%; +} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} + +/* Poetry */ + +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +/* .poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} */ +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + + +.smaller {font-size:smaller;} +.larger {font-size:larger;} + +.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2.0em;} + + </style> +</head> + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78785 ***</div> + + + +<h1> +I THOUGHT OF<br> +DAISY +</h1> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="smaller">BY</span><br> +<span class="larger">EDMUND WILSON</span><br> +<br><br><br> +NEW YORK<br> +CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br> +1929 +</p> + +<hr class="front"> +<p class="center smaller"> +COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY<br> +CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br> +<br> +Printed in the United States of America +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I"> + I + </h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span></p> + +<p>It was a low red-brick house with a white door, +a brass knob and brass name-plates, and new +green-and-white awnings and green window-boxes: +the sort of place which, in those days, +downtown, seemed particularly smart. We rang, +and, after a moment, the electric clicking began—with +its quick and ready profusion, plucking distinctly +the string of excitement which was still +capable of vibrating in my breast at the prospect +of meeting new people in Greenwich Village.</p> + +<p>They were Hugo Bamman’s friends: I had +never met them. Rita Cavanagh, the poet, was to +be there—and other persons reputed to possess +genius or to whom I vaguely attributed romance. +The stairs were soft-carpeted in green. The host, +tall and smiling, in a dinner-jacket, met us at the +door. The rooms were very bright and well kept: +I saw lettuce-green cocktail glasses, a bruised-mulberry +batik behind a divan and, on the wall, a set +of framed designs for the costumes of some ballet, +vivid tinselly golds, blues and purples. And +there were girls, like the colored sketches, in the +brightest make-ups and clothes, with red silk roses +of Cuban shawls, and silver turbans, and red hair, +and black arching Russian eyebrows, beautifully +pencilled on.</p> + +<p>The host waylaid the hostess, who had a cocktail +glass in each hand and appeared preoccupied. +I thought her adorable—she was quite short and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span>had very small gold slippers and Buster Brown +blond bobbed hair. “Oh, how do you do!” she +said, stopping. “How about putting down the +glasses and shaking hands?” said Ray Coleman. +“Here, you take this, then,” she said, making him +hold one of the glasses: I thought he looked a +little severe as he stood with the cocktail in his +hand. “There’s so much traffic,” she remarked, +“that it’s hard to receive people right.” She +smiled charmingly with a little mauve-rouged, +moist and lovely American mouth. Her hand, +which she gave me now, was fragile and small, +and, with her thin round bare arm, seemed like +some soft little tentacle. “What a nice apartment!” +I said. “It’s the apple of our eye,” she +replied. That wasn’t quite right either, but, as it +evidently was the apple of Coleman’s, he smiled +with satisfaction as he demurred that they were +“a little cramped for space.”</p> + +<p>A bulky woman in green—the one with the silver +turban—blazed upon my vision. She recognized +me and we shook hands. She was one of +those plain elderly ladies who do something or +other and whom we meet at parties, but whose +names we have difficulty in remembering. I had +a drink which Mrs. Coleman had given me and +I asked the lady with the silver turban whether +I couldn’t get her one. She said: “A little of that +Scotch—straight,” and we sat down, at her suggestion, +on a large ottoman in front of the fireplace. +She had the hearty manners and broad +speech of an old <i lang="fr">vivandière</i>—an old <i lang="fr">vivandière</i> +of the social revolution, I thought, and approached +her with a special respect.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span></p> + +<p>“What we have in America,” she declared—we +had arrived, through Prohibition, at politics—“is +government by headlines! What’s the actual +explanation of these booms for Cox and +Wood? Neither one has the brains of a rabbit. +But their names are one-syllable words. They’re +one-syllable words! I’m a newspaper woman and +I know!” “So is Debs,” I suggested. “Yes,” she +replied, “but he’s out.” I felt that I had said +something stupid. I had let her see that I was +only an outsider.</p> + +<p>My whole point of view at this period was still +largely taken over from my old school-friend, +Hugo Bamman: he had come, after the War, to +live in Greenwich Village, and I had been brought +there by his example. It was Hugo who had +taken me around and who had told me what to +think of what I saw; and I had seen through +Hugo’s eyes. The people whom Hugo thought important +seemed important to me, too: he and they, +I believed, were leaders, leaders of the true social +idealism which cut under capitalistic politics. To +them the social revolution seemed as real as their +love affairs; and I had often a guilty consciousness +that it was not quite real enough to me. This +plain-spoken woman, for example, to whom I +presumed to talk of politics, might, for all I knew, +have just returned from Russia—might have +fought on the barricades. Her bad language and +her great bare chest might represent the heroic +braveries of some heart-breaking campaign—the +devotion to some anarchist lover, deported or put +in prison; the shouldering of some burden of poverty; +or perhaps some point-blank vindication of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span>basic human rights in the teeth of the mounted +police and the mob.</p> + +<p>In that company I had always felt humble: beyond +publishing a few satiric verses in a radical +magazine, I had never myself struck any blow in +the war for humanity (Hugo Bamman was a freelance +and a communist, whereas I professed no +political faith and had a tame and respectable job +in a publisher’s office); but, like Hugo, I had +served in the other war, and had served as an enlisted +man, and after seeing all the nations of the +West temporarily scrambled together and the social +order turned upside down, I had come away +with a new conviction of the necessity of human +solidarity. “Ten Days That Shook the World”—they +had given me pause when I had read +about them one morning, among the inanities of +the Paris <i>Herald</i>, after a night spent sleeping in a +puddle. In college, I had read of the Russia of +the Czars as one reads about the Middle Ages; +but now I had been forced to recognize, even +among Americans, and as one of the strongest +instincts of society, that horrifying contempt of a +dominating class for the lives of those they dominate. +So that, by the time I had got out of the +Army, I had acquired a scorn for the pursuit of +money, position or rank: the people who cared for +such things seemed now to me sinister or childish. +It appeared impossible ever again to accept conventional +values complacently, to acquiesce in the +prosperous inertia and the provincial ignorance of +America. One could never go back again now +to living indifferently or trivially; one was afraid +of lending oneself to some offense against that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span>unhappy humanity which one shared with other +men.</p> + +<p>“Yes, of course,” I replied, “he’s out.—And +Wood is such a gentlemanly fellow!—he hasn’t +any of the Regular Army mannerisms—he’s surprising +in that way. You think he’s going to be +awful, and then he turns out to be quite a relief +after listening to the regular West Point line. +You can perfectly see why Roosevelt got on with +him. Neither one was an ordinary ruffian. Yet +both, at bottom, were stupid men. Roosevelt was +only just civilized enough to know and remember +more facts than his neighbors. But all his +imagination was good for was habitually to make +a melodrama out of the most serious affairs of +the world—a melodrama with himself as hero.”</p> + +<p>Her eye had strayed, she hailed a young man +with a slit-eyed impassive gaze, who, his hands in +his trousers-pockets, had stationed himself near +us. I felt abashed—what I had said had betrayed +me as a young bourgeois trying to play up to her: +it had given me away as never having been at the +barricades!—“Oh, Bobby!” she exclaimed, “your +ballet was marvellous! Those divine Chinese +whites!” The young man accepted the compliment, +with no attempt to turn it off or to pretend embarrassment. +He seemed serious and complacent: +I wondered whether he were Jewish—he was +blond, but had a hooked nose. He replied without +change of expression and bending over with his +hands in his pockets: “It’s the first time, so far as +I know, that Chinese white has been used in the +theatre. I have two different kinds of white contrasted.” +“How did you ever do it?” said Sue +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span>Borglum (that, it turned out, was my companion’s +name). “I was experimenting for two years,” +he replied. I could tell from his accent that he was +Scotch: besides, his eyes remained narrow and +solemn, and a Jew, no matter how serious, no +matter how relentlessly preoccupied with the importance +of his own activities, would have veiled +with some irony of politeness his human and +earth-bound ambitions in this Valley of the +Shadow under the eye of a Jealous God. “I don’t +see,” she protested, emphatically, “how people +ever have the patience to go on experimenting for +effects they may never be able to get! In the newspaper +game, it’s different: we never experiment: +we know how to get our effects and we get them +right off, the same day.—And they’re forgotten +the same day!” He answered, without smiling: +“There’s going to be a photograph of my set in +Bradley Foster’s book on the ballet.” He looked +around as some one grasped his arm.</p> + +<p>Daisy Coleman was talking in a corner with an +anomalous slight little man; they were drinking +the cocktails she had been carrying. She seemed +appetizing in her lobster-bisque dress, her paler +flesh-colored stockings and her little gold slippers. +She was talking over the back of a chair, with one +knee on the seat and with both hands clasping the +top, like a little girl at school, chatting between +classes: the conversation was accompanied with +sympathetic movements of the elevated foot. As +I watched her, I saw Ray Coleman, smiling in a +curious fixed way at nobody in particular, go over, +interrupt the conversation, detach Daisy from the +little tadpole and launch her again on the company +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span>at large. She came forward rather blankly +and, it seemed to me, a little sullenly.</p> + +<p>Ray Coleman had left Hugo Bamman standing +huddled against the mantelpiece and staring +out through his thick myopic lenses; and it occurred +to me at once that he could talk better than +I to Sue Borglum. He would be sure to have the +right tone—and besides, he never seemed to care +whether women were young or old, attractive or +plain. “Ah, there he is!” I cried—I disloyally used +to kid him—“Bamman: The People’s Friend!” +He looked about, smiling vaguely, then, locating +us, craned forward, and bubbled and beamed over +Sue.—I got up and intercepted Daisy.</p> + +<p>She began by making an earnest effort to discharge +her obligations as a hostess, but I could see +that her heart wasn’t in it. “Don’t you want another +cocktail?” she suggested. “I’m afraid the +one you got was all water. Ray has just made +some new ones.”</p> + +<p>“You were in <i>Patsy</i>, weren’t you?” I asked: +I knew that she had been a chorus-girl. “I think +that that was about the best musical show that I +ever saw—I went to see it four times!” “Well, +we couldn’t complain,” she said (it had had a +phenomenal run). “Which one were you? I don’t +recognize you.” “Oh, I was just in the chorus,” +she said. “And then I was one of the pages that +came down the steps with the candles in the <i>Honeymoon +Moon</i> number.” “Oh, were you one of +those pages?” I exclaimed. “You were awfully +cute! I remember you well!—and that set with +the lavender drop and the orange moon was marvellous!—Do +you ever miss the stage?” “I’m beginning +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span>to now. Of course, it’s an awful lot of +work—so you don’t get very much fun out of it.” +With the intention of documenting myself—in +those days I shared Hugo’s enthusiasm for sociological +documentation—I questioned her about +the theatre. I was delighted by her candor. “By +the time the show opens,” she told me, “everybody +is groggy. When we were rehearsing for <i>Patsy</i>, +I drank so much to keep myself going that I finally +got some kind of d.t.’s: I saw a horse sitting +beside my bed.” I expressed interest. “It +was sitting by my bed with its hoofs on its knees—this +way: like hands—its hoofs were painted +blue. It was sitting there leering at me.” “Were +you able to go on?” “Yes, the doctor gave me a +great big drink of something bitter and I went to +sleep and slept it off.” “It must be a terrific thing +to rehearse one of those shows!” “It’s a lot of +work to be beautiful—especially when you aren’t,” +she added. “Oh, come!” I replied, “I was just +thinking that you were one of the very few actresses +I had seen who were as pretty on the stage +as off!” She made a gesture of burlesque demureness, +putting a finger to her mouth. I inquired +about the hardships of the stage. “Once, +at the Winter Garden,” she told me, “I was in one +of those living curtains: they left us up there for +an hour and we nearly got roasted with the lights. +When they let us down again, half the girls +fainted.—Oh, yes; us girls,” she concluded, parodying +us girls, “us girls has our trials!” I found +her interesting, attractive, amusing, and profoundly +sympathetic. “What a lovely color your +hair is!” I told her. “Just the color of honey!” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span>“Mm-Mm!” said Daisy. “More! I eat that stuff +up!”</p> + +<p>Ray Coleman, smiling, came up behind her and +put his arms about her, with his hands over her +breasts. “Don’t you think he looks like Ned +Grover?” Daisy inquired of her husband. “No: +not a bit,” replied Coleman. He explained to me +humorously: “She always has these insane ideas +about people looking like each other—and there’s +never the faintest resemblance!” I seemed to make +out that Ned Grover raised an issue.</p> + +<p>“Won’t you let me fill your glass?” he suggested. +“I’ve got some real bonded rye over here +that I’ve only just opened. I thought at first I +wouldn’t open it to-night, because when you have +a lot of people like this, anything special is lost on +them—you might just as well give them plain +bootlegger’s stuff.” “I thought your cocktails +were splendid!” “Well, I know you’ll appreciate +this rye: it’s the real Old Overholt, bottled in +bond.”</p> + +<p>“Is Rita Cavanagh here?” I asked over the +glass-topped drinking-caddy. “Yes: she’s here +somewhere”—it gave him pleasure to feel himself +master of a company among whom distinguished +names might be casually mislaid. “Haven’t you +seen her?” “I’ve never met her.” “I’ll introduce +you to her.” He lifted his tall amber glass with +an air: I saw that his dark eyebrows, which he +was always raising in conversation with the air of +a man of the world, nearly met above his nose.</p> + +<p>He led me over to the divan. Rita Cavanagh +was a sharp-nosed little thing with mousey bobbed +hair; she wore a shabby black dress. She was so +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>small that I hadn’t noticed her. But, as I shook +hands with her, she gave me from eyes of a +greenish uncertain color, a curious alert intent +look, as of a fox peering out from covert. She +was curled up in the middle of the divan and evidently +the centre of its company. I told her how +much I had liked her poems.</p> + +<p>Ray Coleman, with smiling politeness, requested +her to recite. “Did you know I’d been asked to +read in public?” she said. She spoke in rather a +dry staccato voice, and with something like an +English accent, which seemed to me artificial.—“Where +is that?” inquired Ray Coleman. “At the +Poets’ League.”—“Well, you’re going to do it, +aren’t you?” said a young man who looked like a +baseball player. “Well, would you? Do you think +it’s the thing to do?” She took a brief puff at her +cigarette—staccato and precise. “Do they offer +you money?” asked the man. “Yes.” “Then do +it!” “But they come up and talk to you afterwards, +and you’re supposed to answer their questions. +What would you <em>say</em> to them?” “Say to +them?” said the young man. “What did Shakespeare +say to the horses? <em>Whoa! Get over there! +Back up!</em>” She laughed, puckering her eyes, and +again raised the cigarette.</p> + +<p>This young man, I felt, was a good fellow—his +hulking frame, his jutting brow and his prognathous +jaw seemed to mask some gentleness and +modesty—but I had the impression that he was +jealously straining toward Rita with a maximum +of nervous effort, was almost, in fact, on the point +of seizing her; and I felt that all the three other +men about her were bent in the same direction; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span>and that I myself, though I had only just met her, +was about to become involved in the competition. +And, since I had told her that I liked her poems +and since she had turned to me, acknowledging +my compliments, as if they had gratified her especially, +I began to find myself resenting the other +men almost as rivals.</p> + +<p>She laughed—on distinct, impish, economized +notes: “I might take an apple with me,” she said, +“or a lump of sugar.” “Couldn’t you rehearse a +little for us?” Ray Coleman suggested, inclining +and smiling again. “You’ll find us an appreciative +audience!”—“This is one that I wrote to-day,” +she said, taking a last puff at her cigarette—“This +very day!” And, sitting back against the wall behind +the couch, straightening her neck and throwing +up her head, she began to recite.</p> + +<p>The effect was, at first, to embarrass me: it +was a little as if a Shakespearian actor were suddenly, +off the stage, to begin expressing private +emotions with the intonations of the play. The +only girl I had ever known who had been able to +write respectable poetry had been in the habit of +reading aloud—when she read aloud at all—as if +her poems had been compositions which she had +never seen before, poems written by some other +person and by some one of whom she disapproved. +But in the gradual silence of the room, amid the +respect with which all seemed to turn toward her, +those deep sonorities of sorrow and wonder began +to move me as much as a play. I had admired, in +reading her lyrics, the uncounterfeitable force of +sincerity which, in dealing with classic themes—themes +in other hands commonplace—the longing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span>for home, the shortness of life, the passing of +love—with an effect both of boldness and austerity, +had not hesitated to clothe them in an imagery +drawn directly from ordinary life. But I had not +known, till I heard her recite, to what music these +things had been tuned: all her art was in her ear; +her words had little color for the eye. Now, in +the poem which she had told us she had just written, +she described a bonfire built on the beach, +which shut out for those around it the empty +weight of the waters and the desolate litter of the +shore, where a poor disfeatured corpse lay, worried +by unresting waves, among the seaweed, +bleached boards and dead dogfish—as the joy +which we know to be doomed may seem yet to +overflow the moment. And in a second poem, the +sight of two children—one blotted from birth in +face and mind, the other creeping on wry spider +legs—yet dressed and fed and sent out every +morning by the mothers of wretched streets to +play with the other children, was made to shake +us with that despair—the dammed anguish of our +own frustration—which, in the presence of some +pitiful human failure may overcome us with the +sudden conviction that no satisfactions can be real +beside the humiliations of life. And on her lips, +the barrenness of the shore, the dingy images of +the streets, were a kind of song.</p> + +<p>In the pause after the second poem, dramatically +tense and distinct as every syllable she had spoken, +a smooth-faced and girlish boy whom, if my attitude +toward all the company had not been so much +one of respect, I should certainly have considered a +fool, said, “That <em>does</em> something to me—that last +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span>one!” The baseball player shook his head and said: +“Gosh! that’s a knockout!” Rita said, “Yes: I’ve +written that one since I’ve seen you! You haven’t +heard that one! I’m <em>so glad</em> that you like it!”</p> + +<p>Somebody suddenly turned on the phonograph, +which began jigging a popular fox-trot. Ray +Coleman went over and stopped it, and I saw him +engaged with his wife in what looked like a restrained +altercation. Then he returned to us, +bringing Daisy. “I’m sorry,” he explained, smiling—his +smile was beginning to get on my nerves. +“Daisy has the phonograph habit: it’s like a drug—she +can’t keep away from it! It was unpardonable +to jar on those lovely poems!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Daisy, “I hope you’ll forgive me, +but I thought you were all through.” “We had +hoped that you weren’t,” insisted Ray. “I wish +you’d let us hear some more!” Rita replied, puckering +up her eyes, “Oh, I think that’s quite enough +of me for one evening!”</p> + +<p>“How sweet she looks in pink!” said Sue Borglum: +Daisy had been standing by like a bad little +child reproved. “She looks like one of those big +pink bonbons on the top of a box of candy.” +“Melt in your mouth,” said Daisy, with her frank +and charming grin.—“Speaking of clothes,” said +Rita, “has anybody seen Myra Busch since she +got back from Paris?” “<em>Have</em> I?” returned Sue +Borglum. “She says she bought it all with what +she got from writing for <i>McMoony’s</i>, but if she +did, <i>McMoony’s</i> must pay her a damn sight more +than they ever paid me. She’s so wide-eyed about +it, too! I asked her if she hadn’t been able to find +a night to go with that lace nightgown.” “Oh, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span>Myra Busch is a push-over!” said Daisy, a little +snappishly. “She’s got round heels!”</p> + +<p>Sue Borglum’s pleasantry had been in the vein +of the Village; Daisy’s was in the taste of Broadway—I +do not know which, at that period, enchanted +me the more. Since I had come back to +America from France, I had been noticing with +a new attention the way the Americans talked: I +had read, with astonished gratification, the first +books of those American writers who seemed +making a new kind of literature out of that +sprawling square-syllabled speech where the words +had been like colorless frame-houses on the outskirts +of an American town, a language fit only, +it had seemed, for the uses of a prosaic trade or +of a plebeian extravagance and irony. And I +noted American slang with an interest self-conscious +and pedantic.</p> + +<p>I felt, however, that Daisy’s husband disapproved +of her coarseness and sharpness, and I resented +his failure to appreciate her.</p> + +<p>“I understand you caught a thief,” said Sue +Borglum, addressing Ray. “Yes,” said Ray, with +satisfaction. “Caught him, convicted him, and +sent him where he’ll do no more thieving.” “Burglar +or sneak-thief?” asked Sue Borglum. “All +kinds of a thief!” replied Ray. “He got into the +house in broad daylight. Somebody rang the +bell last Sunday afternoon, and I pressed the button +to open the door, but nobody came up. Now, +I always make it a rule, whenever that happens, to +go down and find out what’s up!”</p> + +<p>I had often in my own apartment responded to +these false alarms, but checking up on them, I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>reflected, was like Crainquebille’s prison stool +chained to the leg of the bed—an idea which would +never have occurred to me.</p> + +<p>“I went down,” Ray Coleman continued, following +Daisy with his eyes, as she quietly detached +herself from the group and went back in +the direction of the phonograph, “but there was +nobody in the hall—and nobody on the floor below. +Then I went to all the other apartments and +asked whether anybody had just come in, and +they all said that nobody had. Then I went back +and got a gun and a flashlight, and I went down +into the basement. I held the flashlight out to one +side, so that if he fired he wouldn’t hit me. And +lo and behold! there was Mr. Thief hiding in the +coalbin! I covered him with the gun and asked +him what he was up to, and he began telling me +a long sob-story about how he hadn’t any place to +sleep and had just come in to spend the night.” +Smiling steadily, he gazed at Daisy, who had gone +back to the corner again to talk to the anomalous +little man with the dark amusing eyes, the natty +blue suit and the belling sailor’s trousers. “I said, +‘Well, you just wait here awhile till we find out +a little more about that story,’ and I locked him +in the basement and telephoned the police. When +we searched him we found all the jewelry hidden +away in his shoes!—two stick-pins, a ring and a +wrist-watch, and five dollars in bills and change. +He’d stolen them from a man in Eleventh Street!” +“Oh, they weren’t your things, then!” said Rita, +who had been listening with that odd tension +which she seemed to apply to everything, whether +of absorbing interest or not.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span></p> + +<p>“Oh, no,” Ray heartily reassured her. “He +didn’t get anything of ours. He didn’t get the +chance! I’ve got some etchings and some valuable +firsts—so I can’t afford to take risks. And +Daisy has an ostrich-feather evening wrap that’s +worth three hundred dollars. The fellow on Eleventh +Street had missed a lot of other things, too; +but they couldn’t get the little bastard to tell them +what had become of them. They beat him up at +the station, but they couldn’t get him to tell—he +was just sullen. A West Indian boy. We ought +to have some way of keeping such scum out of the +country. If they’d only do with all the criminals”—he +spoke with a sort of exaltation and his eyes +were rapt away to Daisy—“if they’d only do with +all the criminals what they do with the regular +gunmen! They’re not supposed to beat a man up +more than just so much, you know—but the way +that they get around that in the case of the big +thugs is to send them around from one police station +to the other. As soon as they get done with +them in one place, they just send them along to +another—so that the men in any one station can +always say they haven’t beaten ’em up more than +just so much, and yet they can give ’em all they +want. If they’d been able to do that with my +West Indian friend, we might have found out +about the silk bathrobe that he’d stolen from the +man on Eleventh Street.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Hugo, whose eyes, behind his spectacles, +I had felt beginning to glow with antagonism. +“They might even have made him confess +to stealing the towers of Notre Dame!” “What +do you mean?” asked Ray. “I mean, if you torture +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>anybody long enough, you can make them +confess to anything. That was what the Inquisition +did, wasn’t it?”</p> + +<p>I perceived that, although Ray Coleman enjoyed +entertaining poets and radical journalists, +he was far from sharing the humanitarian feeling +which at that epoch pervaded the Village. I had +thought, when I first came in, that his dinner-jacket +struck for the Village an unfamiliar and +incongruous note; and I was growing more and +more sympathetic with Daisy. I began to concoct +an ironic short story, something rather in the vein +of <i lang="fr">Crainquebille</i> or of Maupassant’s <i lang="fr">Boule de +Suif</i>, in which a vulgar but charming little wife +was to be patronized and bullied by her husband—who +would be editor of a popular newspaper: +one day when the husband had gone out, the wife +was to find in the basement a poor starving tailor’s +boy, who would tell her of the petty tyrannies of +the presser for whom he had worked. And, remembering +her life on the stage—the cruelties of +the living curtain; remembering the harshness of +her husband—all that money-grubbing anti-human +world in which she had always found her own +life so harassed—she would listen to the boy with +sympathy, and would be just on the point of offering +him some clothes and something to eat, +when the husband would return with the police; +the boy would turn out to be a thief whom the husband +had caught and locked up!—There would +have to be something more to it, though—I would +think about it later.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, Hugo’s skirmish with Ray +had ended in an emphatically disguised evasion on +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span>the latter’s part as he had become aware that his +attitude toward criminals might be considered intellectual +bad form. I inquired of Hugo, aside, +where Daisy Coleman came from. “From Pittsburgh, +I think,” he replied—then still chafing with +repressed resentment over his argument with Ray, +he added: “You never seem to be able to take people +for granted!—you always want to know where +they come from!” I answered that those things +interested me.</p> + +<p>And I brooded a little on Pittsburgh—I had +been there as a boy—my mother had had a school-friend +who had married and gone to live there, +and we had visited them once. They had lived in +a massive and formidable house, with dingy Ionic +pillars, and with blue and green stained-glass windows +which, far from adorning the interior, had +seemed to me at the time merely sombre, forbidding +and blind—there had been a boy about my +age called Junior, and he had had a great many +expensive toys; an Indian costume and a military +costume (which I had thought a good deal of a +bore) and the most elaborate toy railroad that I +had ever seen outside a toy-store—a labyrinth of +signals, switches, turntables and tunnels; it had +covered the floors of several rooms and rendered +them uninhabitable. This boy had also had fencing +foils; a real rifle; a thing that he told you to +look through but which squirted water into your +eye; and a device of rubber tubes and bulbs, which +made plates jump up and down on the table. +These luxuries had strongly impressed me and +they now presented themselves to my mind—as +well as Junior’s egoism and arrogance, the arrogance +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>of an over-indulged child, which had kept +me from quite getting on with him. Now, as I +remembered it for the first time in years, I found +that I detested that household. There had been a +Pennsylvania Dutch father, who had made money +in the coke business and whose domineering silences +had oppressed the dining-table; and there +had been a mother who had been always playing +the piano, and singing, with inexhaustible vivacity, +the scores of old musical comedies—from the +<i>Sultan of Sulu</i> to <i>Forty-five Minutes from Broadway</i>—which +she had heard in New York. I had, +at the time I came to live in the Village, developed +something of that inverted snobbishness which, in +Hugo’s case, had impelled him to go to all the +garment-workers’ balls at the same time that he +would grimly decline a dinner where he knew he +would be expected to dress; and I had at that moment +the kind of emotions which I thought Hugo +would probably have in connection with a large +heavy house inhabited by a Pittsburgh capitalist. +Thank heaven! I said to myself, spurred no doubt +by Hugo’s rebuke, if I ever go to Pittsburgh +again, I shan’t have to be visiting there! Here, +in Daisy, is the real vital Pittsburgh: frank, vulgar, +humorous, human!</p> + +<p>“She married some fellow from Pittsburgh, I +think, before she married Ray Coleman,” added +Hugo, after a moment during which he had gulped +his drink, self-consciously and hurriedly—he was +excessively sensitive and so haunted by the fear +of hurting people’s feelings that his sharpness was +invariably followed by a spasm of special affability. +“They made a honeymoon trip on a motor-cycle +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>from Pittsburgh to Atlantic City. They had +all kinds of fantastic accidents. She told me about +it once. It must have been awfully fine!” I, too, +thought that it must have been fine. That was the +real, the live America—where our bravery and +freedom lay! I drank my highball up. I saw +them, skidding breathtakingly in the ditches—skinned, +bruised and mud-beplastered! Dodging +motors and trucks, shaking off towns and cities, +like twigs that had been caught in their wheels +and had scraped the mud-guard a little, and had +then been whipped away!—masters of that new +and American and almost super-human sense—the +sense of motor traffic! Till, at last, after boiling +hot baths, they had lain clean in Atlantic City, +in their clean-sheeted hotel bed, with the ice-water +in the pitcher and the room as warm as a hothouse. +In the morning, they would have breakfast +in bed!</p> + +<p>Hugo had turned away to bubble, giggle, and +gasp to a radical journalist with a harsh western +accent and extraordinary personal charm: I rose +to talk to the theatrical designer, who, with deep-lodged +slit-eyed self-satisfaction, stood near me, +his arms folded, unmoved by what went on about +him. “Are you doing any shows,” I asked, “this +spring?” “Just the ballet in the <i>Merry-Go-Round</i>” +he answered. “Next year,” he went on +to explain, “I want to stage the Iliad and the Odyssey.” +“The Iliad and the Odyssey?” I repeated +a little blankly. “I want to do them in a cycle,” +he said—“something like Wagner’s Ring.” “How +long would it take?” I inquired. “Not more than +a week,” he replied. “I shan’t try to have everything, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>of course. I’ll have to leave out a good +many incidents—though I believe that, when the +public have been interested, I’ll be able to put it +on in an outdoor stadium and do it on a bigger +scale—there would be a week for each. My production +next fall would be an experiment with +that in view.” “That would be awfully interesting,” +I said: the air then, especially in the theatre, +was so full of high novelty and striving that no +project seemed impossible. “What sort of text are +you going to use?” “Fritz Fishbein is making an +adaptation of Butcher and Lang—it’s in a sort +of free verse, that will be chanted to music. Boulomé +is working out the old Greek modes, so that +we’ll have music that will be really Greek.” “That +sounds extremely interesting,” I repeated.—“Come +in here,” he said, “and I’ll show you the +drawings.”</p> + +<p>He led me into a little study with a desk, a +window-seat and some bookcases, and opened on +the desk a large portfolio—I don’t know how he +happened to have it there. “How,” I asked, “are +you going to do the clangor of Apollo’s silver +bow?” “I’m not going to do it,” he said, “that +is, I’m not going to make the attempt to reproduce +the sound. I’m not going to do anything +realistically. There’ll be no sound at all. You’ll just +see Apollo off on a hill—just a little silhouette, +perfectly black, but awful, you know—with a bow +in his hands. And then every one will cover their +ears and sink down to the ground, and the stage +will turn green-black, and then everything will be +black.” I turned over the water-color drawings, +so beautifully and lovingly covered with large +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>clinging sheets of tissue-paper. “What’s this +one?” I asked. “That’s the slaying of the suitors +in the Odyssey.” “They look a little like white +rats,” I commented. “Yes: I meant to give that +suggestion—those are masks that they’re to wear +throughout the play.” I had never heard before +of using masks.</p> + +<p>Rita Cavanagh had come up behind us, and I +made room for her to look at the drawings. I +had been aware of her voice in the next room saying: +“Oh, Bobby McIlvaine’s showing his Homer +designs!—I want to see them!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, what a beautiful Pallas Athena!” she +cried, as she stood over the portfolio beside me. +I noticed again how shabby her black dress was: +she must be very poor, I thought. “Almost like +a man!” she continued. It was a figure all in silver-gray, +spare, upstanding and clean, like some +male heroic woman of the Village—with a helmet +that shaded its eyes and with an owl perched +on its shoulder—rather an odd-looking owl, I +thought: thin and long, like Athena herself, but +like her, austere and impressive. And I found myself +delighted—especially now that Rita Cavanagh +was admiring them—with McIlvaine’s designs +for Homer. I seemed to see that, for all +their eccentricity, they were closer to the spirit of +the poems than the sobriety and smoothness of +conventional representations: they had something +of the unclassical stiffness of archaic Greek sculpture. +Rita Cavanagh smiled, and I smiled, at +Venus caught in the net with Mars, her little rose-dotted +breasts a charming pink behind the gold +meshes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span></p> + +<p>Hugo suddenly blundered into the room in his +purblind big-booted way and took down his old +felt hat from the bookcase—where he had carefully +put it, I realized, in order to get at it quickly +and without searching among the other hats. I +wondered how he could bring himself to leave so +enchanting a party so soon. He signalled to me +a friendly, but detached and remote, farewell—stooping, +stuttered and bubbled good-nights over +Rita and Bobby McIlvaine—and abruptly was +gone. I heard him ask in the next room: +“Where’s Daisy?” and the host reply, as if with +humorous frankness: “I don’t know where she +is!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, what <em>lovely</em> browns and grays!” breathed +Rita, before the autumnal smock of Eumæus. “I +never saw such lovely browns!” Her italicized +“lovely” was not gushing, but had a sort of disinterested +and passionate conviction. That was the +sort of thing that impressed me about her. She +seemed to feast upon the color, eating it with her +eyes. I should myself have stopped at something +brighter, and I felt guiltily that I should have been +wrong. But she lingered over Eumæus: “Like +the leaves in October!” she went on. “Like the +leaves in the autumn mud! Such delicacy and +such color standing out against something neutral—and +common!”</p> + +<p>The baseball player, or whatever he was, whom +I had noticed on the divan, was now standing in +the doorway, with his hat in his hand. “I’m going +along, Rita,” he said, “take you over if you’re +ready to go!” I saw that he was unsure and self-conscious. +“I’m not going for a long time yet,” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>she replied—her voice had the tautness, the distinctness +and the metallic quality of wire—though +of a wire which twanged with the vibrations of +some strong and superior temper; yet she tried at +the same time to smile at him with a definite effect +of good-will, at once elfin and sharply registered, +as she added for his consolation: “I don’t +want to be taken home to-night, anyway. I came +alone, and I want to go home alone! I’m an independent +woman, I am!” “Well, go ahead and +have your old single standard!” he met her, putting +humorously his best face on it, and disappeared +from the doorway.</p> + +<p>She turned over to a group of nymphs, the wild +girls of some northern loch. “Some people think +they’re not graceful enough for nymphs,” said +McIlvaine, without expression. “People who say +they’re not graceful,” said Rita, “don’t know anything +about grace!” She spoke with a passionate +vehemence which seemed to me rather excessive—yet +I felt something of the awe of the infidel +who overhears the prayer of the believer. “They +think that grace has something to do with round +bodies and Greek dancing! These nymphs of +yours <em>are</em> beautiful!—they have the natural beauty +of country girls—they’re graceful even when +they’re gawky and awkward!”</p> + +<p>The pretty boy—the one who had asserted that +Rita’s poem had “done something” to him—glided +behind her in a sinuous newtish way and slid one +arm about her waist. His hair was glossy and +parted in the middle and he was scarcely taller +than she: his tapering and shapely hand, which I +saw—and saw with distaste—lying against her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>black dress, would have seemed too small for a +man’s, if her own hands had not been so tiny—not +with the American thinness of Daisy’s, but with a +miniature complete beauty, at once childlike and +mature, as of some muse or magic being. He +did not speak at once, but looked with her.—The +next picture represented Penelope, who had an +unexpected proud angularity.</p> + +<p>“Won’t Ulysses get hell,” said the boy, “when +he comes back home from his trip!” “No,” said +Rita, “she’s noble!” “Yes,” the boy acquiesced at +once, “she’s beautifully done! Great austerity! +Great restraint!”</p> + +<p>She had come to the blank cover at the back +and slowly turned it over, almost as if with reverence. +“I think they’re <em>beautiful!</em>” she said, “<em>beautiful!</em>” +I had heard people say that the flowers +were beautiful, or that the front room was beautiful, +or even that the view of the Hudson or the +painting of Renoir was beautiful—but I had +never before heard it said with such authority +and such simple intensity. Though still shy of +her unconvincing accent and suspicious of a pose, +I was, in regions just beneath the surface, +excited by this authority and intensity—I found +myself heated, too, by the fire which the drawings +had seemed so to kindle in her. Bobby McIlvaine +accepted her tribute in silence distended by pride +and tied up the strings of the portfolio. I said: +“I must go to see your ballet!” “It’s not much,” +he replied, “but the white is something to see.”</p> + +<p>“Well, Princess,” said Rita’s friend, the boy +with the insinuating hands, “are you ready to sail +away?” I realized that her rôle of princess was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>a part of some romance which they had spun together, +and I divined, in another moment, that +it was a romance of which she was tired. “No,” +she said, “I want to stay a little longer,” and +added, with her elfin smile: “Send the boatman +back at twelve!”—He swept low an invisible +plumed hat.—“Leave the outside bolts open: I can +push the door myself!”—He bowed again and +backed away, and, as he retreated, she became +more amusing, entering more willingly into the +spirit of the legend which they had evidently elaborated, +which they had perhaps lived, together.—“But +shut the watchdogs in their kennels, so that +they won’t bay at me when I come. Tell the old +woman who makes the fires that she shall have +her snuff on Thursday, and that I shan’t wake her +from sleep to-night, when she’s dreaming of the +little stony river of her girlhood in the North.—Tell +her to mind the fire, though,” she added, giving +good measure to her friend, who now impressed +me rather disconcertingly as perhaps not +a boy at all, but a man of mature years whose +coquetry was wearing stale.—“Though sleep is +sweet, the sparks are always flying, even after the +faggot is dead!”</p> + +<p>Some originality I felt in her having so entered +into the old woman, who seemed to have nothing +to do with the plumed hat which her partner was +pretending to doff, interested me and made me +like her, just when I was beginning to be rather +sickened by this business about the Princess and +the boatman.</p> + +<p>I could hear the voice of her admirer, as he +left, just outside the study door, saying good-night +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span>to Ray Coleman and asking him where +Daisy was, and Coleman’s voice replying, as if in +frank humorous confession, disclaiming all responsibility: +“I don’t know! I haven’t the slightest +idea!”—Bobby McIlvaine, who had put away +his drawings, and, having finished his own performance, +was not disposed to be interested in the +comedy which Rita and her friend were acting, +had also gone out of the room.</p> + +<p>“That river your old woman dreams about,” I +began, hoping to keep Rita there, “sounds like +something in up-state New York.” She looked +up at me in her unaccountable, quick, nervous, +searching way: “Do you come from there?” she +asked. “No,” I said, “but I’ve been there a good +deal.” She had a way of scrupulously following, +of checking up with a special exactitude which +suggested anxious conscious effort, all the moves +of social intercourse, at the same time that she +seemed always preoccupied with something different +and more absorbing; she now nodded and +lifted a moment a brief interested stare.</p> + +<p>“Let’s sit down here, shall we?” she proposed, +moving toward the window-seat. She curled up +in one of the corners. “Do turn away that light—it’s +so bright!” I turned aside the adjustable +desk-light which was the only illumination in the +room so that it lit only the farther wall: then I +sat down on the window-seat, leaning up against +the opposite corner.</p> + +<p>Below the window lay Washington Square: it +was still smooth and gleaming with wet. When I +had come home before dinner to dress, idle, happy, +and vaguely expectant, breathing in the rainy sidewalks +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span>of the last day of May, I had seen the sky, +above the bulk of office buildings, high-piled with +white banks of solid light, and in the Square, had +found the pavements swimming with milky pallors +and freshened by tenderest green. When I +had gone to meet Hugo at the Brevoort, I had +seen a pale peach-silver sun dissolving the light +tree-fringes at the corner of the Avenue. Now +these wonders had sprung from that delight—so +long and so varied the days were! It was dark—there +were the lamps and the taxis with their +impudent brisk honking—spinning away through +rainy May in the wet relieved fresh freedom.</p> + +<p>Rita was looking out the window with her same +strange trancèd seriousness. I asked: “Don’t you +like the city just after it’s been raining? Hear +how happy the taxis sound!” She smiled and said +simply, “Yes.” I wondered whether she were still +thinking of the drawings, of which I was almost +becoming jealous. “Don’t you feel a little, +though,” I ventured, “that it robs Homer of his +own kind of subtlety to deliberately make him exotic +by translating him into terms of the Russian +ballet?” “Why—I hadn’t thought of that,” she +said. “I hadn’t thought of the Russian ballet. I +thought those drawings were beautiful in themselves—quite +apart from Homer perhaps.” Then +she added, after a pause: “That figure of Pallas +Athena—so slender—so strong—so grave—so +lightly built—as strong and yet as light as her +spear! No <em>man</em> could ever combine that power +and that lightness!” “Yes,” I said, “that’s true, +isn’t it?” “And then they talk,” she went on, +“about women never having done anything really +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span>important! When the Greeks made the goddess +of wisdom a woman! And just as important a woman +goddess as the goddess of love!” I tried to +assure her that I understood: “Yes, I know,” I +replied, “men are always expecting the wrong +things of women, aren’t they?”—while before my +mind there aligned themselves, in the guise of +long slender javelins, the long slender sentences +of John Stuart Mill on the Subjection of Women. +“It’s so <em>false</em> of them,” she went on. “You +know, some people who pretend to admire independence +in women really want to prevent them +from doing things! They think that a woman’s +work is something she can put aside, as if she were +laying down her knitting—or her embroidery! +Whatever they may say, they can’t really believe in +their hearts that her work is the thing she lives for, +that she puts above everything and everybody!”</p> + +<p>I assented briefly, but with earnest emphasis: +the generous flow of my feeling had been perhaps +a moment impeded by the “above everything +and everybody”: my mounting moral exaltation +lapsed for a space into a brooding happiness +which hovered outside the window over the rain-freshened +square—those romantic lamps that +burned all night, while all night the speeding +taxis, plying in happy privacy to a thousand dark +addresses, took people, took lovers, home. To that +part of my mind, however—the part which had +been talking to Rita—from which my attention +had been withdrawn, there presented itself a stupid +remark: “I have read John Stuart Mill on the +Subjection of Women!”</p> + +<p>But it was Rita who, after a silence, went on +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>with the conversation: “I’m so <em>tired</em> of people,”—she +spoke with violence—“who pretend to understand +what women feel about things!—and +then behave like any stupid stock-broker, who +keeps a wife just as he keeps a car!—The stock-broker +would really be more sensible, because +he’d expect to give his wife certain things in return +for what she gave him—she’d at least be +paid in comfort and money for what she lost in +independence!” The figure of the baseball player +rose in my imagination: a good fellow, no doubt, +but dull and boorish, with no subtlety and no high +honor in his relations with women; quite unworthy +of Rita! I was all on Rita’s side now: +how I could share her fierceness against fools!—“I +don’t believe <em>any</em> man can understand!” But +this seemed to shut me out again, and again I +gazed out into the Square.</p> + +<p>I was, however, after a moment, on the point +of attempting to convince her that she might find +that <em>I</em> understood, when of a sudden, so peremptory +and clear that we looked at each other startled, +we heard from the next room, which we now became +aware had been silent, the voice of Ray Coleman +demanding: “Well, what have you got to +say?”—and then Daisy Coleman, replying in a +voice which sounded constrained, “Where’s all the +party gone to?” “You can see for yourself they’ve +all gone home: I suppose they saw that the hostess +had left and decided that they didn’t want to stay!” +“We weren’t gone so long, were we?” said Daisy. +“I just went around the corner with Pete to get a +glass of beer.” “You’ve been gone for an hour +and a half!—And you!” he went on vehemently, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span>evidently addressing Daisy’s late companion—the +little man with the large eyes, I imagined. “You +weren’t invited here to-night and you can leave +right away!” “I invited him,” said Daisy. “Well, +I asked you not to invite him!—Now, get out of +here right away!—No: your things are not in +there!—There’s your coat in the fireplace!—and +there’s your stick in pieces over there!—and I +threw your hat out the window! Maybe you can +find it in the street!—Now, don’t stand there staring +at me like that, but get out!” We heard him +slam the door.</p> + +<p>Rita and I got up quickly from the window-seat, +but the tirade which followed checked us. +“You humiliate me in my house!”—now that Ray +Coleman had Daisy alone, he opened upon her his +fiercest fire. “You drive my friends away! You +send C. O. D. packages home!” “I had to have +some stockings for to-night!” “Well, why didn’t +you ask me for them? I won’t have you running +up bills!” “Well, I can’t see what’s the idea of +this big third act!” “I told you not to bring that +little rat here!” “Well, you have all <em>your</em> friends—I +don’t see why I shouldn’t have mine!” “You +sat in there on the window-seat and let him see +your legs!” “We were just telling jokes in there—Gus +Dunbar was in there, too.” “I don’t mind +having Gus see your legs—he’s a friend of the +family, but—” “Well, will you just let me have a +list of all the family friends that you’re willing to +have see my legs?” “Don’t be vulgar!” he replied.</p> + +<p>Rita determinedly and swiftly broke into the +lighted room, and I followed her. “I must really +go,” she said. “It’s been such a marvellous party!—I’ve +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span>been having such a marvellous time that +I’ve stayed much too late!” I made my apologies, +also, and got Rita’s coat out of the bedroom and +helped her on with it. “Why, it’s not late at all,” +said Ray Coleman. “I’m afraid it’s we who haven’t +been very entertaining!” When we said good-by +to Daisy, she merely met us with a pale drunken +gaze, and remarked: “Well, I opened cold!”</p> + +<p>Outside, I caught a taxi and asked Rita where +she lived. “Oh, dear,” she demurred, “I don’t +think I want to go home. I think I’ll go to somebody’s +house—let’s see, whose house shall I go +to?” I asked her if she wouldn’t come to my +house. “But you want to go to bed, don’t you?” +I assured her that I didn’t, for hours.</p> + +<p>“Pretty painful scene that was!” I remarked +when we had started in the taxi. “I shouldn’t think +she’d stay with him.” “No,” said Rita, but assenting, +it struck me, from some different point of +view than mine. “She’s such a dear, isn’t she?” +I went on. “Yes,” she said. “She’s so beautifully +made, isn’t she?—her ankles and wrists.” +I thought of Daisy under the guise of Bobby +McIlvaine’s little blond Venus caught in the net +with Mars. “What do you make of him?” I +asked. “He’s pretty poisonous, isn’t he?” She +looked up at me with a little appreciative smile, +as if my saying that Coleman was poisonous had +been an original deliberate joke, instead of a familiar +cliché. Then, “He’s very jealous of her,” +she said; and then: “Yes, he is <em>poisonous!</em>” Her +way of agreeing that he was poisonous made it +neither a cliché nor a joke, but something convinced +and bitter. “All jealousy is poisonous: it +poisons the woman as well as the man—it makes +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span>both of them suspicious of all that has ever been +between them—and even when they want to be +nice, they sound hateful to each other!” I remembered +some novel of Wells in which the hero +had overcome jealousy along with a number of +other ignoble and anti-social emotions: I reflected +that it was very foolish and very base to be +jealous. However: “I suppose,” I said, “that +working for the <i>Telegram-Dispatch</i> makes him +hate himself, and so makes him awfully irritable. +How can people who are really sensitive and intelligent—as +I have no doubt he is—but who are +obliged to spend all their working hours feeding +the public libels and lies—how can they possibly +be amiable at home?” “Yes,” she said, “such lies +they print!—such cowardly lies! And even if the +facts are true, they cheapen the emotions behind +them—and to cheapen human passion, human suffering, +is to lie! Like poor Lina Lemberg’s letters.” +(Lina Lemberg was a young Polish girl, who had +recently murdered her husband, and been much on +the front page.) “They may have been illiterate +and clumsy, but they meant something real.—To +tear people’s hearts to pieces for all the grinning +crowd to see—and pick up a bit of it and finger +it, and perhaps wish they had one, too, and hate +the people who have—and then throw it back in +the gutter again!” Her passion had not ceased +to surprise me. She still seemed a little theatrical, +but I had never heard a woman speak so eloquently. +“Yes: that’s just what happens,” I said—it +was all that I could say: I felt that I could +never express myself so well nor feel what I said +so intensely.</p> + +<p>I lived in Bank Street then, and the taxi had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>stopped at my door. Rita waited for me on the +sidewalk while I was paying the driver: her little +face seemed narrow and thin—almost nunlike.</p> + +<p>When we had climbed to my apartment, and I +had turned on the light, I was ashamed of the +prospect disclosed. There were a large and comfortable +couch, sets of books in glass-doored bookcases, +Whistler’s “Battersea Bridge,” and a drawing +by Leonardo, which I had brought up with me +from college, a small mahogany desk, a green carpet +and a French clock. Besides, the maid had +been there that morning and everything was swept +and neat. I was afraid that she would see at once—if +she had not already guessed—that I was really +not one of them, that I had never paid their +price. The luxurious couch seemed vulgar; the +sets in the bookcases pedantic; the pictures unbearably +banal; and the little mahogany desk appropriate +kindling-wood for the social revolution. I attempted +to call attention to the only feature of the +place which might be considered Bohemian and +raffish: “That’s not the right time,” I pointed out. +“That clock hasn’t gone for years!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, isn’t this nice!” she exclaimed, looking +quickly and interestedly about her. There was a +little alcove off the sitting-room which I used as a +study, and she stood looking into it, as if entranced. +“Do you work in there?” she exclaimed. +“What a <em>wonderful</em> place to work!” She came +back and sat down on the couch: “Oh, it’s so <em>nice</em> +here!—so <em>nice!</em>” she smiled in an ecstatic childlike +way.</p> + +<p>I felt, at any rate, that she meant it, and that I +possessed an unexpected advantage. None the less, +I was a little diffident about producing a bottle of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span>peach brandy, as I had seen her drinking whiskey +straight at the Colemans’ party: I brought out +both liqueur and Scotch, and deprecatingly remarked +that I didn’t suppose she’d care for the +former. “I’d love some!” she said.—“What a +lovely label! It looks like lace, doesn’t it?—like +lace made out of wire!”</p> + +<p>“You know,” she went on, “I have no place of +my own to work in now—and I miss it so! I’m +living with my mother and sister, and the apartment +is so small! I have to write with the sewing-machine +going in the next room.” “Oh, what a +pity!” I said, “I should think it would drive you +crazy. I know how nervous it makes you to have +something going on to a different kind of rhythm +from the one you’re writing to!” “Do you write?” +she asked. “I try to write poetry—but I’m not any +good.” “I’d like to hear your poems,” she said, +looking up with an intent gaze which seemed to +pierce the politeness of her remark. “No,” I replied. +“After hearing yours to-night, I wouldn’t +have the nerve to show you mine.—I don’t suppose +you’d recite again the ones that you recited at the +party.” “I’m so glad that you liked them,” she +said, again with that incongruous intensity which +gave sincerity and significance to even her formulas +of courtesy. “I just wrote them, and I like +them myself,” she smiled with her funny grin, +which left her as serious and as strangely pressing +as before. She sat back against the couch, dropped +her cigarette to her lap and recited the poems again—more +beautifully, it seemed to me, than the first +time: her voice, in the silent room, sounded lonely, +and I was stirred and awed to be alone with this +living voice of poetry.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span></p> + +<p>All to me was a wonder then—her old dress, +her mother’s sewing-machine, her wide gamine’s +grin, her formidable dignity and her feverish preoccupation +with some unexplained disturbing reality +which I was coming more and more to feel +underlay everything she did. It was, I came to see, +as she recited, the same thing—a kind of moral +agony, unremitting and exalted—which made it +possible for her, in her poetry, to deal with commonplace +ideas—as she worked often with the +tritest figures, the old debased currency of verse, +which poets had then begun to pride themselves +on ceasing to try to pass—making them carry +whatever passion and whatever strangeness she +chose.</p> + +<p>Her cheeks were fiery now—all her face was +suffused with fierce pink, and I saw that there +was red in her hair. I saw now for the first time +that she was beautiful. Her brow was very high +and wide, and the resonant voice with which she +recited—so different from her quick dry speech, a +mere pizzicato of those strings—seemed the full-toned +and proper music of what I saw now also for +the first time was a long and lovely throat of a solidity +and complexity of symmetry, like some harmoniously +swollen musical instrument, almost incongruous +with her tiny body—and through +which now the lonely beach, beyond the meagre +moment of fire, and the futile devotion of the +mother to the blemished and dim-witted child, +sounded the chords of some mode of feeling more +profound than our human sadness, some ground-tone +where human emotion becomes merely the +process of life, of life in its labor through the +universe. I knew, what I had never really felt +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span>in my intercourse with friends who had written, +that literature could be reality—as natural as conversation, +yet as deep as life itself.</p> + +<p>For I have not, in speaking of these poems, +in any adequate way described them: they were +poems about love, and in them what was true of +love was true not of love only. And even now, +in this part of what I write, which deals with feelings +and thoughts most remote from me, least +real to the mind that writes—at the memory of +that music, I halt and lose my way.</p> + +<p>In another poem, which I had never seen, and +which she had also recently written, she had some +image of a swift up-country river lacerated by +rapids, where a smooth and lovely flock of stones +forever tumbled and crashed into splinters the +black-silver mirror of its deeps, dismissing it, +fiercer at first, then thin, querulous and shredded, +divided in the threads of feebler streams that +drip at last over slimy mossy banks among the +last orange drops of the jewel-weed, and lose +themselves in the fields. I have turned it all into +ordinary literature, over-animating the water, describing +the jewel-weed too exactly (it is I who +supply the drops: she had only named the flower). +I have used too many adjectives: she had only the +barest verbs and nouns; but she woke through +them the resonant ache of the throaty sound of the +river, so noble in its dwindled fall. And I, knowing +enough of literature to enjoy the consummate +art, but not yet enough of life, to assent with +my heart to the terror, the terror mastered by the +mind, and clutched and wrenched into beauty, +which I could only half divine, but which troubled +me and made me solemn, could only tell her how +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span>wonderful I thought it, as if it had been merely a +dress she had been wearing or a garden she had +grown. And I sounded even sillier and lamer +when I added: “I’ve seen those up-state rivers: +I know exactly what you mean!” “Yes, I knew +you did,” she replied, “when you said that something +I said this evening sounded like a New York +State river. I come from up there, you know, and +I’ve been getting homesick lately. That was why +I was talking about rivers—and why I wrote that +poem.”</p> + +<p>I was silent, and she looked beyond the lamp, +through the little dark study, to where the moon +seemed imbedded in the pane like a flaw of pearl +in dark blue glass. “How lovely the moon is!” +she exclaimed in her nervous, alert way. I looked +out and answered: “Yes: it looks like a bubble in +the glass.” She noted the accuracy of this, checking +it up: “Yes, it does exactly!”—so emphatically +that I felt pleased at having said something +clever. We stared at the moon without speaking—I +thinking, a little dazedly, of the perfect felicity +of the moment, full of brightness and freedom +and peace—of the beauty of stony rivers, of the +pearly moon in the pane, of intoxicating coldness +and poetry—of stones, of lovely globes of a lunar +fluidity of yolks, lodged unbroken below the +translucence of a limpid vitreous stream.</p> + +<p>Then I recalled my wandering senses and suggested +another drink. “Oh, if I have another +drink, I’ll be drunk!” she said, screwing herself +down in her corner and with a sudden rictus of +her grin which transmogrified her grossly in a +strange tense glee.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span></p> + +<p>But I could talk to her only of poetry—of those +terrific images of the commonplace by which the +greatest poets can move us and which her own +poems had brought to my mind—the Roman +street-corners of Catullus, the prison-window of +Verlaine, the race for the green flag at Verona +which Dante remembers in Hell. She had read +extraordinarily widely for a woman, and she +talked about the poets as only a master can talk of +the masters of his craft and with the fierceness +with which only a woman, when woman’s narrow +concentration has been displaced from its ordinary +objects, can concern itself with art—isolating +in familiar poems phrases I had never thought +of: some armor-joint of a preposition which rang +with a solid sound or some unobtrusive adjective +which troubled the whole line.</p> + +<p>It was cold: she put on her cloak and I wrapped +her legs in a blanket—but still we talked, and +drank the peach brandy sip by sip. At last, as I +was gazing toward the window, I became aware +of an indigo deepness which deeply delighted me, +like some full and triumphant staining of emotion +and thought. It was the blue of dawning June, +through which presently, as brooding I watched +it, green and red began darkly to deepen. The +blue brightened and now was translucent, now +limpid, now dissolved. And, still talking of poetry, +still quoting, still eager and glowing with the +images of that life of literature which rejects or +suppresses nothing that goes to make our common +life, but where all is passionate, noble and rich, I +saw, as it were with incredulity, that the brightening +green and red were the rain-revived trees +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span>and brick walls of my own backyards in Bank +Street. Now even the poor soiled yellows of the +downtown tenement houses, the leaves of the flaccid +ailanthus swaying their fingery clusters in the +stir of morning air, through that first distinct +light of day were seen washed with libations of +light—till it seemed to me that I had waked—or +rather that, without sleeping, I had passed—to the +happier, more living hues of a different world. And +I knew, and knew with amazement, that we had +talked the night through, and only sunk deeper in +spring.</p> + +<p>“Good gracious! it’s morning!” she cried.—“Oh, +no: it’s not so late,” I assured her. “The +nights are getting shorter.” She laughed and put +out a cigarette. “I must go home!” she said, +springing up.</p> + +<p>We found a taxi in Greenwich Avenue. She +gave the directions to the driver in her precise +and compelling fashion. I invited her, in the +taxi, to come with me to see McIlvaine’s ballet. +“I’d love to!” she replied. We made an engagement +for Tuesday (it was Sunday morning). +Then, with hesitation, I explained that I was +never at home in the daytime, and that if she +needed a place to work, I should be glad to have +her use my apartment. She demurred, but I +thought not unpersuadably.</p> + +<p>I left her at an incredible address beyond the +Ninth Avenue Elevated—on Twelfth Street, almost +at the docks—one of two or three red-brick +houses among warehouses and sordid saloons. +We parted, she quite tired and pale, but with a +queer tense final vibration even as I left her in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span>doorway, just before, quickly closing the door, +she seemed to disappear in a flash.</p> + +<p>It was day. I walked home through a little +open square—Abingdon Square, I saw with surprise: +I had never heard of it before, though it lay +almost around the corner from where I lived. I +gazed vaguely at a statue of a man in a little triangular +park and wondered who it was—some +legislator or some patriot, perhaps—some patriot +in the old style, like Garibaldi in Washington +Square—some great man I had never heard of in +that region I had never discovered. Farther on, I +became aware of a kind of monumental stone pergola—it +seemed to me then to be in marble—which +I didn’t understand—and which in my +weariness, my happy weariness, I didn’t try to. +Some downtown equivalent of Grant’s Tomb—but +who was buried in it? It was almost like a +temple. I was still moving in that strange daytime +world into which, by staying up all night, I +seemed to have been translated. Now the Village +was at last revealed to me; it had that day come +alive about me, and I felt myself part of its life. +I, like them, had turned my back on all that world +of mediocre aims and prosaic compromises; and +at that price—what brave spirit would not pay it?—I +had been set free to follow poetry!</p> + +<p>In Bank Street, as I passed a presser’s shop, it +occurred to me that it would be, after all, a difficulty +about the story which I had had the idea of +writing when I had heard about Ray Coleman’s +thief, that the presser’s boy would probably have +escaped as soon as the wife opened the door.</p> + +<p>When I came back to my rooms again, they +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span>seemed no longer, through the drowsy eyes of +day, my own familiar husk: there was the couch +where she had sat—there was the ash-tray full of +ashes—there were the glasses from which we had +drunk. I poured out the last sweet dregs of peach +brandy.</p> + +<p>It was Sunday—I did not have to work. I +dumped the Sunday paper on the couch. I pulled +down the shades in my bedroom—the sun made +them glow dull orange. I pulled Dante out and +read the lines about the green flag at Verona—and +the scene with Beatrice that began, “<i><span lang="it">Dante, perchè +Virgilio se ne vada</span>—grieve not, thou needst must +grieve for another wound!</i>”—but scarcely paying +attention to the words, I pushed the book back to +the table and turned over on my cheek. Something +or other I had come for, I had found.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>It was characteristic of Hugo Bamman—with +whom I had gone to prep school (though we had +afterwards gone to different colleges), and whose +point of view, up to the night I met Rita, had, as +I say, so much influenced my own—that, at the +height of a convivial evening, he should take a +sudden and determined departure. Even at parties +in Greenwich Village, with which he was in +principle more nearly sympathetic than with parties +anywhere else, he would carefully isolate his +hat or hang it up in some specially conspicuous +place. He was never sure, even in the Village, +when he might not feel that it was urgently +needed, as had been the case on the evening I have +described, after his argument with Ray Coleman. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span>And when he once had his hat in his hands, it was +impossible to keep him. It was at the same time +as if he had suddenly become frightened, and as +if he were under some obligation of reporting +for duty elsewhere.</p> + +<p>And it was true that he did become frightened, +and that he was, in a certain sense, at the orders +of a higher obligation. Hugo’s father had been a +well-to-do lawyer of a Philadelphia Quaker family; +his mother, a Bostonian. The elder Bamman, +after serving with distinction through three administrations +at Washington as Solicitor General, +had been dislodged by the advent of the Democrats; +and had thereupon retired from public life +and occupied himself with writing books. He +knew Shakespeare and Milton by heart and was +given to quoting them in conversation, and he already +had a reputation for unconventional political +views; but nobody had been quite prepared for +the opinions which he now made public. His first +book, which was called <i>Representative Government, +and the Way and the Light</i>, began with an +extremely realistic, and even cynical, discussion +of American public life and ended, with quotations +from Isaiah, on an unexpected note of religious +clairvoyance.</p> + +<p>It was said sometimes that Mr. Bamman had +been embittered by his enforced retirement; +sometimes, that he was insane. It was not that +he had prophesied good of the Democrats: on the +contrary, he had predicted the worst; but he had +appeared also to repudiate the Republicans. He +had asserted that, between the two parties, there +was not a pin to choose—that both were lost in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span>corruption and error; and, what was worse, that +one could hope for nothing better from the society +which accepted their leadership and from +the religion which allowed them to survive. The +book excited a certain amount of interest, was +made the subject of editorials; then was completely +forgotten by everybody. If I had not +happened to know Hugo, I should never have +looked it up and read it. Thereafter—his wife +having died and his sons gone away to school—Mr. +Bamman left Washington altogether and +secluded himself on a lonely island in an Adirondack +lake, where he lived on fish and game, +cooked all his own meals and struck off another +book even more realistically pungent and even +more apocalyptic than the first. He had vowed to +stay the winter out in his cabin, but in February +he caught a bad cold which developed into pneumonia, +and, despite his protests, he had to be removed +to a town where he could have medical +attention. His sons were telegraphed at their +school; and Hugo, blinking at his sudden release +from the agonizing life of prep school, where the +boys made fun of his ebullient stuttering, his inability +to pronounce <i>r</i>, his stiff intractable black +hair, and his clothes, which were bought for him +by an aunt and which always looked too young for +him, lifted his goggles from the frozen ground +and gazed about him with singular relief at the +ice-ponds and white houses of the North; read +nervously half a chapter of Meredith; and, at +last, heard his father, dying, mingle texts from +Isaiah and Ezekiel with anxious queries about the +pump at his camp, which he seemed to fear was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span>irremediably frozen, and with the names of his +sisters and his wife.</p> + +<p>Hugo Bamman, after his father’s death, had +spent his vacations with the aunt in Philadelphia +who had selected his neckties and suits, and he had +rebelled against her so violently, that he soon +found himself under suspicion of having inherited +his father’s “queerness.” But the more the +aunt, who was an admirable person and felt her +responsibility acutely, tried to inculcate sound +principles in Hugo, the more resentfully did he +shy away from them. Save for an occasional +peevish outbreak, however, he remained generally +docile; and his own docility increased his resentment. +While he was still at school and college, his +heresies were mostly confined to matters of literature +and of minor social convention. But during +the third year of the War, though he was to graduate +the following spring, he suddenly left college +and enlisted in the American Ambulance. In +spite of his Quaker tradition, he was at that time +full of romantic enthusiasm for the cause of the +Allies, and had composed, for the college magazine, +an eloquent editorial which began with Joan +of Arc and ended with Villiers de L’Isle-Adam. +When America joined the Allies, he went over +to an American medical unit. Hugo served +throughout the War; but he came out with different +emotions from those which had carried him +in. He never told me much about his adventures, +and never indeed, at this time, talked much about +himself, so that my account of his experience in +the Army is derived largely from the well-known +novel which he afterward wrote on the subject +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span>and which seemed such a striking contrast to the +rather precious and exotic little poems, reminiscent +of the eighteen-nineties, which he had published +in the college magazine.</p> + +<p>From Hugo’s novel, then, it would appear that +during the first months of his ambulance-driving, +he was still sustained by his romantic faith and +preoccupied with proving to himself his own capacity +for endurance and courage. He tells us of +the hero of his novel, that though most of the +wounded men he had been carrying turned out to +have died on the way, he had never felt so happy +in his life as after successfully bringing his ambulance +through the craters and geysers of a +bombardment. At that time, after his first physical +sinkings of nausea and fear, he had been able +to line up corpses on the floor of the field hospital +with less emotion than he had once arranged +books on the shelves of his bookcases at college, +and had incinerated amputated legs with less of +real regret than he had once burnt discarded +manuscripts.</p> + +<p>But after America had entered the War, Hugo +enlisted in the American army and found himself +posted, with the rank of sergeant, during the dull +and disheartened winter of 1917, at an American +base hospital in the Vosges, some distance behind +the lines. One afternoon, he had gone for a walk +in the hills, and come out finally in the public +square of a tiny mountain village. A circle of +people were standing about the body of a wild sow +which had been killed by a hunter and which, bristled +like the piny ridges of her northern forests +and with her jaws asnarl in death, lay flat, her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span>belly ripped open and her little ones, brightly +striped and in a day or two to have been farrowed, +stretched out limp beside her on the +ground, while the hunter bargained over the carcasses +and the dogs sniffed at the blood. A deep +tenderness and sadness overwhelmed him for the +little wild pigs; and he watched with horror the +nonchalance of the hunter: he began to rage +within himself against the violators of life. Then +he was chilled with self-contempt. He took refuge +in a little café and fortified himself with +brandy. Then he went back to the base hospital.</p> + +<p>There was a major of the medical corps who +kicked and cuffed his patients, and who was in the +habit of amusing himself, on his evening rounds +of the wards, by tearing the zinc-oxide bandages +off the raw and running wounds of the gas cases. +Hugo complained of this major to the commanding +officer of the unit: he had always feared his +superiors more than any amount of shell-fire.</p> + +<p>Soon thereafter, returning in the morning, just +before reveille, from the local château, where he +often went to dinner and sometimes, by private +understanding with the other sergeants and the +guards, was able to spend the night, he was, to his +surprise, picked up by the Military Police, put under +arrest, court-martialled and convicted, and +sent off under guard to a prison-camp. As a sergeant +he had been lax with his men; and, at the +court-martial, he was accused of having abetted +all their misdeeds: of these misdeeds he had +never even known, but when he tried to explain +this to the court-martial, the effect was equally +unhappy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span></p> + +<p>On his arrival in the prison-camp, all his belongings, +including private letters, his money and +his watch, were taken from him. He saw the +photograph of another man’s sweetheart torn up +before his face. The first morning, when he was +led out in lockstep with the other prisoners, the +ranks fell into disorder, and the sergeants set +upon the men and clubbed them with what were +known as “dizzy-sticks,” while the officers looked +on. This was repeated every morning, and Hugo +learned that the confusion in the ranks was +brought about by the sergeants themselves: the +sergeant at the head of the line would order the +prisoners to hurry up while the sergeant at the +end would order them to slow down. Hugo was +struck in the mouth one day and two of his teeth +knocked out (he had the scar across his lips all his +life). After this ceremony, which the sergeants +called “morning exercise,” the prisoners were +drilled before machine-guns.</p> + +<p>The food was scant bread and thin soup; and +on the third day of Hugo’s imprisonment, two +colored boys got into the kitchen and tried to steal +something to eat. One of the boys was caught, +blackjacked, beaten and dragged bleeding to solitary +confinement. When he had sufficiently recovered, +an attempt was made, by order of the officer +in command, to induce him to reveal the name of +his accomplice: the boy was chained for four +hours to a wall, while the sergeants threatened and +cursed him, beat him on the soles of his feet and +singed off most of his hair. In the meantime, +however, the accomplice had cut his own throat +with a razor-blade. Two days afterwards, a big +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span>Texan, who had tried to strike one of the guards +when the latter had assailed him with a blackjack, +was shot down, in the presence of the men, by the +commanding officer. At the end of three weeks, +however, Hugo was finally released through the +intervention of his elder brother, who was already +a major in the Adjutant-General’s department +and to whom Hugo had managed to send a letter +before he had left his unit.</p> + +<p>Hugo’s further participation in the War was +of rather a half-hearted character. Now, it was +no longer the Germans who were the enemy, but +the governing classes of the world.</p> + +<p>By the time he had been discharged from the +service, he had become a social revolutionist; and +his reaction against the complacent and conventional, +the capitalistic, world from which he came, +reached lengths almost grotesque. He hated this +world because he feared it, and he feared it because +he knew how much of it there was still left +in himself. He was haunted by veritable hobgoblins +which wore the aspect of doubles of himself. +A visit to any of the members of his family +was enough to throw him into a panic. He would +afterwards describe it in terms which would almost +have been excessive on the part of one resuscitated +from drowning. “On a Sunday afternoon +in Washington,” he would gasp, “you go out into +the stweet—and you see all those little bwick +houses—and the weather is suffocating—and you +look at the people on the stweet and they don’t +seem to be going anywhere—and you think that, +if you stayed there long yourself, you’d probably +get like that, too—and yet you haven’t got the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span>mowal stwength to leave!” Or, “I was staying +with a cousin of mine at Cambwidge—my cousin +is being gwoomed for some big job at Harvard, +and it weduced me to such a state of depwession!—Did +you ever know any of these young men who +are being gwoomed for big jobs?—Well, first +their hair falls out—then they have to buy glasses—then +they have to appear at certain times and +places wearing a silk hat—then their teeth go and +they get false teeth—false teeth are almost as important +as a silk hat, and it isn’t everybody who +can make his teeth drop out just by auto-suggestion—if +they can do that, they’ve got the stuff!—I’d +said I was coming back to Cambwidge, one +night after I’d gone in to have dinner in Boston, +but I couldn’t face it!—I couldn’t get a berth at +the station, so I sat up all night in the day-coach!” +(This sort of thing was possible for Hugo, because +he purposely never travelled with a suit-case, +but only with an old musette-bag, which he +had brought back from France.) Yet I have +heard him, when Boston was disparaged, unexpectedly +come to its defense with a eulogy of +Thoreau and Garrison.</p> + +<p>Whenever he introduced into his novels representatives +of the “cultivated” class to which he +himself belonged, he would never allow them to +figure save in hideous caricature—the result of his +having discerned, seized upon and isolated in them, +those ignoble middle-class qualities which they +shared with the families of the <i lang="fr">nouveaux riches</i> +manufacturers and railroad magnates whom they +ridiculed. And, on these occasions of visiting his +relatives, by the very force of his fixed intense belief +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span>in their incurable perversity and prejudice, he +had a faculty for trapping them into absurdities +which did not at all represent their real views. +These Hugo would make careful note of, as he returned +to New York on the train, leaving the +cousins and uncles a little blank. His aunt in +Philadelphia, for example, with whom Hugo had +spent so much of his boyhood, had been, by reason +of her Quaker tradition, strongly disposed to +admire his war book, though she was offended by +the bad language of the characters: it always appeared, +however, when she attempted to talk to +him about it, that, in deploring this particular feature, +she was damning the whole book.</p> + +<p>Hugo’s elder brother, especially, though, unlike +the other members of the family, he did himself +profess progressive views, affected Hugo in a +fatal way. This elder brother had studied for the +ministry, but had found himself unable to accept +the doctrines of the Episcopal Church save in a +highly rationalized form: as a consequence, he had +gone in for sociology, and, after the War, had become +a professor of sociology in a small New +England college. When Hugo went to visit his +brother, the latter would remonstrate with him severely +and unremittingly. He would, for example, +point out to Hugo the serious impropriety of +the latter’s having published certain scurrilous +verses in a radical magazine. He would argue +along lines of social responsibility: the real purport +of the objectionable metaphors would be understood +by very few readers, whereas the rest +would see only obscenity and unpatriotic sentiments; +this would hurt Hugo’s reputation and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span>weaken his influence as a publicist, etc., etc. Such +discussions infuriated Hugo all the more because +his brother always went on the assumption that he +recognized the same evils with which Hugo was +so passionately preoccupied and that he had it as +much at heart to discover the proper way of remedying +them: Hugo’s brother’s social ideas and +Hugo’s, when stated in a certain way by the +former, appeared indistinguishable. These visits +were further embarrassed by the apprehensions +of Hugo’s sister-in-law: she seemed always on +edge for fear Hugo, whose manners were excellent, +might advance, in the presence of the Dean’s +or the President’s wife, with whom she was +closely allied, some subversive opinion.</p> + +<p>Another bugaboo which pursued Hugo—another +monster which he lived in terror of allowing +to swallow him up—was the college dilettante—that +is to say, the superior undergraduate who +takes tea with the snobbish Latin professor, plays +Debussy at the club after the girls from the house-party +have left, and goes about with a small group +of friends who gossip over the politics of the dramatic +club and giggle over the mustache of the +brunette who waits on the counter at the pastry +shop where they buy cinnamon buns. These +friends, like Hugo himself, had been affected by +their experience in the War: but, in their case, it +had had usually the effect of leaving them merely +demoralized and dispirited, writing fragmentary +learned poetry, full of gall and resignation, in imitation +of T. S. Eliot. These friends used to make +fun of Hugo for the obstinate persistence with +which—inordinately fastidious and shy—he had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span>trained himself to speak in public (overcoming +his tendency to stutter, though not his inability to +pronounce <i>r</i>), and had even attained a certain +reputation as an orator at strikers’ meetings and +demonstrations for civil liberty. Hugo’s friends, +as a rule, disparaged the admirable literary gifts—the +logic, the solid imagination and the feeling +for pungent language—which were disguised by +the deliberate plainness and the colloquial carelessness +of Hugo’s novels, pamphlets and appeals.</p> + +<p>And Hugo himself would have been the last +person to call their attention to his merits. Since +the War, the discussion of literature had affected +him like his memories of college, and the spectre +of the modern literary man, whom he had encountered +at New York parties and in Paris cafés, +came to accompany, and to merge with, the spectre +of the æsthetic undergraduate. Though he +had in his youth been full of literary enthusiasms, +he now habitually treated the great writers—including +those whom he most admired, from Plato +to James Joyce—in a manner cavalier almost to +the point of hysteria. It was partly, I suppose, +that Hugo had never forgotten young country +boys from Arkansas and Georgia who could +neither read nor write, bewilderedly drafted into +the army and pitted against young Germans who +had studied Goethe in the gymnasia—the accumulated +masterpieces of literature having apparently +not in any way affected the fates of either. But it +was also that he continually tended, by some natural +gravitation which enraged him, to find himself +comfortably at home among the sallow-faced +reviewers and the review-writing poets and novelists +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span>who relieved the mediocrity of their days by +the gin-drinking and ribaldry of their evenings. +At these gatherings, they were able to convince +themselves that they were not merely dreary +book-worms and hacks, but men of taste and wit, +citizens of the world; and it was partly this anti-academic +pose which made Hugo—himself violently +anti-academic—eager at first to attend their +parties. But he soon divined the pit of ashes at +the bottom of the gin-bottle, and shied off as he +had done from his family and from the companions +of his college days; and literary society was +soon added to his index of phobias.</p> + +<p>When Hugo put himself into a novel, it was +always in caricature—as the little Johnny Boston-Beans +of the comic papers of his youth, or as +some incredibly fatuous and inept young college +intellectual who died of tuberculosis or fell into a +subway construction. I have seen him shudder at +the sight of a handful of volumes of Max Beerbohm, +whom he had himself enjoyed reading at +college, which I was unpacking in a new apartment; +and I have rarely heard him use bad language +(though he admired it on the part of others) +save when the name of Henry James was +mentioned. This continual shying away made +Hugo a little difficult, since he was constantly objecting, +not merely to what you had said, but to +what he thought you were going to say. Thus, if +you remarked to him of W. Z. Foster that Foster +had the barren rigid strength of a piston in a steel-mill, +he would interrupt you with, “Well, I’d +rather see an effective and hard-hitting machine +like Foster than a jerry-built ornamental bank-building +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span>in a phony classical style, like Harding!”—and +so plunge into a spirited tirade against the +industrial system, which you vainly tried to avert +with explanations that you did not admire Harding, +that you did admire Foster, etc. Or if you +were going out to dinner with him and complained +that the sentimental Yiddish soloist at +Zincovitz’s restaurant was beginning to get on +your nerves, he would be off with, “Well, I can’t +stand those little tea-rooms where they have copies +of <i>Town and Country</i> lying around!”—little +tea-rooms of whose existence you had never even +known.</p> + +<p>He was rather afraid of women, and seemed +never to fall in love. I suppose he regarded +women as the most dangerous representatives of +those forces of conservatism and inertia against +which his whole life was a protest: but I am convinced +that he cherished, in his heart, the most +romantic expectations. I believe that he was always +hoping for some straight, dark, spare, realistic +girl revolutionist, who would be to him a +comrade and a partner; but that in fact, he was +invariably alienated from the types of emancipated +women whom he encountered in the Village, +by an unconfessed but ineradicable instinct +which rejected them as not being ladies. He +would, of course, shy away from this instinct and +overwhelm them with politeness, with sympathy, +with determined good-fellowship; but this effusion +masked a retreat. I think he was affected, in +this connection, by the same peculiar and incurable +isolation which had made him seem to himself, +during the War, almost indifferent to the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span>sufferings of the soldiers till he found himself +brimming with tears at the sight of a slaughtered +sow. So he would flee from even parties in the +Village, when an appropriate situation arose for +playing a rôle in some woman’s life, and go home +to write with passion, almost with amorous feeling, +of some girl bandit who had been harshly +sentenced and brutally denounced by a stupid +judge—of whom he had read in his evening paper.</p> + +<p>For Hugo was really on close terms with no +one. As soon as he had sampled the conversation +and caught the social flavor of a household or a +group, he would simply go straight away and bottle +a specimen for his books, where he would assign +it to its proper place in the economic structure. +He distrusted his family and his early associates, +because he believed that they had sold their +souls to capitalist institutions; but though he chose +to live exclusively with outlaws, in whom he was +always discovering qualities heroic and picturesque +to the point of allegory, he never managed really +to be one of them and perhaps never trusted them, +either. So tough remained the insulation between +himself and the rest of humanity—the insulation +of his Puritan temperament and his genteel American +breeding, reinforced by his artist’s detachment +and his special situation. Hugo once told me +of an illiterate Arkansas boy, lying wounded in +a field hospital, who, thinking Hugo a superior +person, had been unwilling to ask him to write a +letter, and who had finally had to beg the favor +of another wounded man nearly as helpless as +himself.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span></p> + +<p>And so he walked among us like a human penance +for the shortcomings of a whole class and +culture—of the society which, in America, had +paralyzed in his friends and himself half the normal +responses to life; which had sterilized its women +with refinement; which had lived on industrial +investments and washed its hands of the corruption +of politics; which had outlawed its men +of genius or intimidated them with taboos; which +so strangely had driven his father to his Adirondack +lake and, on the rare and brief occasions +when he returned for a wedding or a funeral, had +seemed to Hugo’s eyes to sadden him, as, to the +latter’s heartiness and wit, the other members of +the family had returned only so much that was +energetically arid, so much that was self-confidently +timid and so much that was cheerfully +cold; and which had desolated Hugo’s own soul, +when, through empty afternoons of boyhood, he +had wondered why he seemed so impotent to +break the spell of his tutoring in the morning, his +aunt’s nap after lunch, the people for tea in the +afternoon and his late luxurious reading in bed, to +work on a paper, to ship on a whaler or to live on +a ranch in the West; and which had finally inflicted +on him the shame of that day when he had +found the crippled Arkansan dictating his letter +to his wife to a man half-flayed with mustard-gas—the +shame of knowing that a fellow sufferer +and one who had suffered more than he, had been +afraid to ask him to render what was perhaps the +only service for which his education had fitted +him.</p> + +<p>I have said, a whole class and culture; but +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span>Hugo had one other memory of his father, which +was afterwards, he told me once, to take on for +him a special significance. They had been lunching +at the New York club of the university from +which his father had graduated and to which +Hugo was soon to go, and the elder Bamman had +commented during lunch with humorous disapproval +and with imperturbable surprise on the inferior +quality of the men whom he observed in +the dining-room about him: on their way out, as +Mr. Bamman was getting into his coat, he had +been violently jostled by a young man in a blue +suit and bone-rimmed spectacles, who was in a +great hurry, but who hurriedly apologized. Mr. +Bamman was broad-shouldered and well set-up, +and he still wore a fine Olympian beard and one +of those flat-crowned derbies which were fashionable +in the eighties (he remained something of a +dandy even after he had become a recluse); but, +at the moment of the impact, as Mr. Bamman +looked dazedly around, Hugo had caught on his +father’s face the shadow of feebleness and pain. +And he had realized then for the first time that +his father had no longer the prestige of an acknowledged +leader of the community, nor even of +a distinguished person: he was a figure of isolation, +bewilderment and fatigue.</p> + +<p>In the America where Hugo came to manhood, +there was, in a sense, only a single class and a single +culture; one found it behind every façade, one +felt it through every uniform—and not merely +among those members of society whom it had already +become fashionable to ridicule: the small +business man, the hired reformer, the windbag +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span>politician—but in the cramped mind of the clever +lawyer, for whom intellectual dignity and freedom +had been forbidden by the interests which +he served; in the grandeur of the medical specialist’s +waiting-room and the impoverishment of +science which it masked; in the educated clergyman +turned evangelist and vying with the mountebanks +of Methodism; alike in the silk hat of the +labor leader and in the homely and hollow plain-spokenness +of the self-made industrial master; +and even in the universities, with their presidents +held in subjection by millionaire trustees, with +their middle-class timidity about raising, in class +or conversation, the real political, moral or æsthetic +problems of the time; even in the best of +the theatre, where incompetence and indifference +almost invariably betrayed the beauty of the noblest +text; even in literature, where an ignorant +criticism was ready to declare every apprentice a +master; in that whole machine of interrelated interests, +which kept literature, theatre, learning, +church, medicine, politics and law, all fixed in +their mediocre functions, all constrained by the +fear of their neighbors, all intent on their bank +accounts—all that appalling susceptibility to regimentation +by “business” and that incapacity for +discipline of self, all that voracity for physical +comfort, all that pervading commonness of mind, +which, even in those sections of society from +which Hugo’s father had come and which had at +least produced a few men like him, now debased +their distinction to luxury and made cowards of +their leaders. It was, perhaps, after all, hardly +necessary to find special explanations for Hugo’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span>fear of committing himself, of giving hostages to +any group—which moved beside him like Pascal’s +abyss. It was, perhaps, after all, not unnatural +that there should come a moment, in every company, +when Hugo would want to snatch his hat, to +say good-by and get away.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II"> + II + </h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a><a id="Page_65"></a>65</span></p> + +<p>We worked in silence, dismantling the walls +and packing Rita’s belongings.</p> + +<p>Rita herself had left us: some one had knocked +at the door, and she had gone into the front room. +We had heard her receive a male caller and carry +on a decisive, rapid conversation. And she had +now been away so long that, deprived of her peremptory +commands and made uneasy by the presence +of the visitor, we no longer spoke to each +other. Duff Burdan, the young man whom at +Ray Coleman’s I had taken for a baseball player, +but who had turned out to be actually a painter, +was laboring over Rita’s suit-case, in the broken +strap of which, with a great air of masculine effectiveness, +he was gouging extra holes with a +nail-file. The young Jew was taking down the +pictures and wrapping them carefully in newspapers: +we had only rarely seen him at Rita’s and +had not expected to see him to-day: he was very +quiet, polite and well-dressed, and we resented as +complacency his modest amiability. But Duff +Burdan and I were also resenting each other.</p> + +<p>And in the stillness which had ensued on hammering +down the last boards of a packing-case, I +heard the moaning of boat-whistles from the harbor; +and my heart horribly sank. So we had used +to hear them in summer—their sobbing, melodious +and remote—in the late afternoon shadow; or +at night, when the rumorous hum of summer +came in through the open windows, when the +summer world, which had already been sleeping +gently by day, seemed scarcely to slumber at +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span>night: their trombone and oboe notes—so one +night she had imagined Stokowski conducting a +symphony of river-noises from the top of the +Singer Building.</p> + +<p>I stood up and tried not to hear them—tried to +level on the objects about me a prosaic disenchanted +gaze, as if by force of will I could insulate +them and, impervious to the aromatic smell of +perfume and cigarettes—the odor of her hair—so +put myself out of reach of that current which had +charged them with feeling and which still gave +them the power to shock me. They were meagre +and battered, it was true; the damaged electric +heater; the little wooden cot, with the strip of +batik above it; the sewing-machine; the potted +cactus; the water-color of an Indian corn-dance, +with its delicate red-and-black figures distinct +against egg-shell white (it had been sent her, like +the cactus, I never failed to remember, by an unforgotten +admirer who had gone for his health to +New Mexico and who was always on the point of +coming back); the purple abstract painting of an +eggplant taking shape amid a maelstrom of female +membranes (which had been given her by +another admirer about whom I had always wondered, +but whose identity she had never revealed); +the bookcase, with its rubbed and +broken volumes, so fantastically miscellaneous, in +which one could read, as in geological strata, the +so various interests and tastes of the men whom +Rita had known.</p> + +<p>I looked away, and my eyes involuntarily +sought the half-open door to the sitting-room. +There I could see them standing at last by the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span>door which led out to the staircase: Rita was half +turned away, but I had a glimpse of the face of +her companion: he was an undistinguished, thin +and dingy-eyed young man, commonly dressed. I +saw him take some bills from Rita and put them +away in his pocket.</p> + +<p>When she came back, she gave a sharp look +round. “Where’s my little Buddha?” she demanded. +I told her I had packed it in the box. +“Well, you just get it right out again! I didn’t +want it packed! It will be smashed to bits!” I +assured her I had packed it carefully. “No: it’ll +be broken in that box, just as sure as sure! I +think I’ll take it with me—I’ll carry it myself.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll carry it over separately, when the other +things go, if you want me to,” Duff Burdan volunteered. +“Will you promise not to break it?—No, +I think I’d better take it myself.” “What do +you think I am—a smasher of images?” She +laughed on her precise little notes: “You promise +not to let it get broken?—promise!—If I come +back and find that Buddha broken, I’ll never +speak to you again!—Oh, don’t pack that Indian +corn-dance with the other pictures!” she interrupted +young Kaufmann. “I <em>do</em> want to take that +with me!—Can you get it in the suit-case, Duff?—or +couldn’t you strap it some way on the outside?”</p> + +<p>Duff Burdan dealt with this problem. “Everything +here is to go, is it?” he asked, looking +round. “Yes, everything,” she replied. “Are you +sure you’ll have room for it all?” “Sure: I’m +throwing out a whole lot of my own junk.” “It’s +so sweet of you to offer to keep it for me!—Don’t +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span>let anybody borrow my books!” she admonished +him, the moment after.</p> + +<p>I looked at my watch and announced that it was +time to get a taxi—Duff Burdan was storing her +furniture, but I was to see her off.</p> + +<p>Those stairs which I had climbed so many +times to find, at the top, her little figure, intense +and sharp even standing in the doorway and dark +against the light of the door, so that it seemed +sometimes like a knife on which I was running—those +stairs where too often lately I had felt that, +in answering the doorbell, she had been hoping +for some one else—as I descended them this afternoon, +it was not without relief at the thought that +I should never have to climb them after to-day.</p> + +<p>And was that he, that sloppily dressed reporter, +that fellow from some insurance office, to whom +Rita had been giving money—was that the visitor +she had been always expecting, whom she would +rather have seen than myself? I was glad of a +new reason for disgust, of a new pretext for hating +those stairs—and yet that hatred, as I knew, +was only fear, the fear of remembering how much +I had loved them. And such bitterness was ignoble, +I knew—for houses were things to put +away, like worn-out clothes, with the phases of +our life, with the emotions with which life was +clothed. And was not emotion here worn out?—on +my side as well as on Rita’s—had I not come +myself to dislike the cold house, the sordid staircase, +the saloon with its hanging blinds, the oppressive +tunnel of the El, the bleak stony waste +of the docks, where late one night I had walked +so leadenly, not finding Rita at home? Had I not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span>said to myself that afternoon, on my way to Rita’s +house for the last time: “Well, thank God, I’ll +never have to come back to this damned address +again! I’ll be out of prison at last!”</p> + +<p>And now I could see that the winter sun was +bright on a colored cigarette-poster, and that the +school-girls returning from school were prettier +than any school-girls had seemed to me for many +months. I compared one of them with Rita, to +the advantage of the school-girl—Rita had lately +been looking rather badly. I should be free to +love another girl now! I thought of Daisy, whom +I had seen the night before and who had seemed +to me unexpectedly desirable. If I could only +keep up my spirit—if I could only play the game +according to the sportsman’s code which Rita had +been trying to teach me so gravely and so sweetly—if +I could only, I told myself, do that, then in +the long run, all might be right between us—because +I had not nagged her or wearied her, because +I had proved myself her peer, as prompt to +offer all for love and as brave to bear its passing. +If I could only remember that the days were not +bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a +solid house, where one might dwell in safety and +peace, but only food for the fires of the heart, the +fires which keep the poet alive as the citizen never +lives, but which burn all the roofs of security! +Be glad, be proud, to end so well—before that +music of the harbor—I could hear it now again, +as I came back to Rita’s with the taxi—before +that music had lost its beauty—for so one could +hear it as beautiful forever!</p> + +<p>Back in the apartment, I found that a new visitor +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span>had arrived to say good-by to Rita. It was a +young man from Columbus, Ohio, whom I remembered +having met with Rita one evening when +we had gone to the theatre. He was one of those +curious Westerners who dress like Westerners, +but who speak like Philadelphians. The night Rita +had recognized him at the theatre, she had seemed +disquietingly glad to see him, and my first instinct +had been to identify him as the admirer in Santa +Fé who had sent her the corn-dance and the cactus, +and of whose arrival I lived in dread. When he +had turned out not to be this person, I had been +exceedingly relieved, and as Rita had never afterward +mentioned him, I had forgotten him completely. +Now, however, his presence seemed ominous: +it was evident that Rita had been seeing +him. I remembered that, when we had met him +at the theatre, he had said that he was soon going +West, and that, I calculated now, had been at least +a month ago. It had, it seemed to me, been just +about a month that things had been going particularly +badly between Rita and me.</p> + +<p>She was hurried but gay with the partings—I +thought that she had become more good-natured +since the arrival of the new admirer. Just before +she got into the taxi, she kissed everybody good-by. +The Westerner, with unctuous heartiness, was +all for seeing her off, but she explained that that +was my prerogative—and she kissed him a second +time. I felt suddenly that it was an impudence for +her to have divided with such scrupulous fairness, +between Duff Burdan and me, the honor of seeing +her off and the honor of storing her furniture.—Yes: +she had certainly got out of an engagement +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span>with me a very short time after that night +when we had met the Ohioan at the theatre!</p> + +<p>I saw, as I helped her into the taxi, that she was +carrying the little potted cactus, to which I had +taken an intense dislike: it had a stubby and prickled +stalk, and it had with time come to wear to my +eyes a significance all too plainly phallic.</p> + +<p>In the taxi, I at first said nothing: we had both +become, together, so tense. But when we had +turned into Seventh Avenue, I looked at her and +smiled and said, “Well!” She puckered her eyes +and mouth in one of her ecstatic grins and spasmodically +threw back her head in the movement +which had once made me feel that she was lifting +me into her ecstasy, but which now seemed to +draw her away from me: “Oh, it’s so <em>wonderful</em> +to be going away where I won’t have to see any +more people!”</p> + +<p>Yes: she had left me already—long ago. She +would not let me come with her to that world. I +must return to the common world—and what +should I do there now? Those qualities of desperate +independence and of intellectual passion +which had once exalted me so, could make me +now so glum!</p> + +<p>Rita had decided overnight to leave New York. +One of her aunts, who still lived in the little up-state +town where Rita had been born, had lately +fallen ill, and Rita’s mother, with whom Rita +shared her rooms, had gone to stay with her sister. +One evening, when I came to get Rita to take her +out to the opera, I had found her, not even dressed +for dinner, sitting amidst packets of old letters on +the day-bed, and passionately preoccupied with the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span>idea of returning to her native place, sustaining +the old age of her aunt, and consecrating herself +in solitude to the composition of a play in verse. I +saw, to my annoyance, that she had been crying. +And at the <i>Rosenkavalier</i> she had relapsed into +that punctual responsiveness, with its effect of +deliberate polite effort, which I had noted in her +the night I had first met her, but which she had +dropped when I had got to know her better. She +had intimated, on the way home in the taxi, that +she considered the <i>Rosenkavalier</i> a little cheap. +And I had expected her to like it so much!</p> + +<p>I had hoped then that her intention to leave +town, which I had applauded with insincerity, +would evaporate like any other of those suddenly +excited desires—to go West, to go to Paris, to return +to the stage again—which she would as suddenly +forget; and I was dismayed when I found +that she persisted in it. She had sat down and +written half-a-dozen stories for a popular magazine, +and had succeeded in getting an advance from +the editor (who was also wildly in love with her), +on the strength of a promise of more stories. She +had then paid her arrears of rent and had persuaded +the Italian landlord to allow her to break +her lease.</p> + +<p>I had made to Rita’s sigh of relief, in the taxi +on our way to the station, some appropriate reply, +conscientious and devoid of conviction; but I saw +now that we were already at the Waldorf, where, +with the traffic cut across us, we stopped.</p> + +<p>I looked toward her and saw that her face, with +her old fur collar close about her neck, was pale +and demoralized and ill, staring and pinched. For +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span>the first time since that night in Bank Street, when +her cheeks had flushed a hot pink and, leaning +back against my couch, she had revealed her long +Muse’s throat, her face seemed sharp-featured and +tarnished. And though I knew well enough, even +then, that, if all I had once adored in that face—passion, +intelligence, daring—seemed now to have +disappeared, it was strained nerves and hard living +which had killed them—her poverty which had put +her at the mercy of all that importunate pack—myself +among them—who had been forever ringing +her doorbell, and all that alien life of the city +which had taxed her almost to dementia (the +crosstown traffic stopped; our own commenced to +move: she had told me once that the traffic terrified +her)—though all my conscious feelings were +of horror that some one I so honored should be +injured, that I should ever come to find unlovely +a being I had once so loved; yet that savagery of +the human animal which makes us fall upon our +wounded fellows, especially those whom we have +feared, impelled me to say cuttingly and abruptly: +“You have no faith!”</p> + +<p>“What do you mean—religious faith?” she +asked, as if she had been talking to a stranger—but +I cut her short with, “No: the other kind—good +faith, I mean!”</p> + +<p>“You know very well,” she replied, suddenly +speaking to me directly, “you know very well that +I know what sort of person I am—but if I wasn’t +that sort of person, I shouldn’t be the sort of person +who would do what I did with you.... I +was cruel to other people then.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” I said, “I know: but when I see some +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span>of the people you care about, you can’t blame me +if I take it a little hard!”</p> + +<p>“What do you mean?” she demanded.</p> + +<p>“I was thinking of this afternoon.”</p> + +<p>“Duff Burdan and Max Kaufmann are both +nice boys—I thought you liked them. And I’m +not in love with either of them, if that’s what you +mean!”</p> + +<p>“I wasn’t thinking about them—I think they’re +all right.”</p> + +<p>“I hadn’t seen Max Kaufmann for months,” +she went on. “He came around to see me just because +he heard that I was going away. It was nice +of him to come.”</p> + +<p>“Who was that fellow that needed a shave?”</p> + +<p>“Who do you mean?” Her wonder made me +angry.—“You don’t mean my brother?” she added, +after a moment.</p> + +<p>“Was that your brother?” I pretended to be +amused by my own jealous suspicions. I had forgotten +she had a brother, though she had told me +about him once.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she answered. “My brother came in +this afternoon.”</p> + +<p>“What does your brother do?” I inquired.</p> + +<p>“He drinks,” she said bitterly, without humor.</p> + +<p>As I remembered the visitor’s face, dim-eyed +and devoid of personality, I could see now in it +Rita’s sharp nose and her eyes of indefinite color. +And my first feeling was one of relief that the +shabby nonentity I had seen, to whom Rita had +given money, was merely Rita’s brother. But the +discovery, as I found in a moment, had the effect +of increasing my resentment: if my worst suspicions +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span>had been justified, I could at least, to that +extent, have despised her, could even perhaps have +washed my hands of her. But now I knew that +if it was not the unknown visitor, as unconsciously +I must have hoped, with whom Rita had been lately +preoccupied, it must have been the young man +from Columbus, who was obviously attractive and +eligible.</p> + +<p>“At least,” I brought out after a pause, “this +big-hearted guy from the West isn’t a relation of +yours?”</p> + +<p>She was silent. Then she began, with her effect +of dramatic sincerity which I had come to resent +and dread: “It’s so false of you to nag me and +scold me like this. You ought to understand how +I feel! You ought to be able to see what I’ve been +going through. If you really loved me, you +wouldn’t want to say hateful things to me!—But +I don’t care now—I don’t care about any of you!”</p> + +<p>“I know: I do understand,” I replied. “I hope +that you get a lot of work done.” But I wanted +to say, “That’s nonsense, and disingenuous besides, +to say that my being jealous means that I don’t +love you enough. And then you accuse me of +being ‘false’!”</p> + +<p>I stared out at the motor-cars and taxis which +were mounting the enormous driveway of the viaduct +that girds the Grand Central. They had still, +I found, the power to stir in me, like those taxis +I had heard from the window the night I had +first met Rita, the excitement and hope of the city. +They were urgent and expectant now, crowding +up-town along their private gallery, to dinners in +apartments and hotels, where romances and adventures +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span>were beginning, where people were +drinking cocktails and becoming amusing and gay +(as I had not been able to be for so long)—to +parties, to night-clubs, to plays, to the theatrical iridescent +Forties, which I had never properly explored +and where I knew that Daisy was living.</p> + +<p>“Did you know Daisy had left Ray Coleman +and gone back to the stage?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“No,” said Rita. I could see that her hands +were quivering with tenseness.</p> + +<p>“I think it’s probably a darn good thing, don’t +you?” By approving of Daisy’s vagaries, I perhaps +hoped to make reparation for my harshness +about her own.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she answered, “I suppose it is.”</p> + +<p>“I like her so much,” I continued. “I saw her +at Sue Borglum’s last night. She has a wonderful +sort of good-natured frankness. I really think, +in fact, that she’s one of the girls I know that I +like best.”</p> + +<p>I hoped, no doubt, to make Rita believe that I +had been happy the night before without her. She +had told me—what seemed to me improbable—that +she wanted to be left alone, that it always +made her nervous to have people around while she +was packing. I tried to fix my mind on Daisy as +I had seen her at Sue Borglum’s party: with bare +arms in a girlish black evening-gown—with her +candid American smile and her continual spark +of wisecracks. And it occurred to me now in the +taxi that, as soon as I had seen Rita off—I had +never hitherto been able to think beyond that +event—I should be free to cultivate Daisy. I +could go at once to her place on Forty-fourth +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span>Street—I could ask her to dinner to-night! And +this realization sustained me.</p> + +<p>We had been silent, but now Rita began again: +“It’s so <em>false</em> of you to talk to me like that! You +used to understand things so well! You know that +the first time I met you, you said that Ray Coleman +was bitter because he hated his newspaper +work, and that that had made him harsh with +Daisy. Well, don’t you think that <em>my</em> life makes +<em>me</em> bitter? Don’t you think <em>I</em> hate the way I’ve +been living?”</p> + +<p>“I know: I’m sorry,” I replied, and I took her +hand and pressed it, without tenderness or warmth.</p> + +<p>We had stopped at the station door. I gave +Rita’s suit-case to a porter.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you want him to carry that?” I asked, +nodding toward the cactus.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no!” she guarded it, grinning. “I wouldn’t +trust it to anybody—I’m afraid that something +might happen to it!”</p> + +<p>All the rest was mechanical—when we kissed +good-by, most of all. I sat down in the train for +a moment, and told her what an excellent thing I +thought it for her to go away alone and write: +I hoped that she would accomplish a great deal. +“You must produce a masterpiece,” I said. “Let +me see it when it’s done, won’t you?”</p> + +<p>I plunged out into the hurrying concourse and +made straight for the door to Forty-fourth Street.</p> + +<p>On my way—as I was passing a news-stand—at +the sight of a bright red magazine-cover, I +found myself shocked by that terrible current of +which the furniture and pictures of Twelfth +Street, of which everything connected with Rita, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span>had for so long been such active conductors. It +was the second-rate fiction magazine for which +Rita had written the stories that had enabled her +to leave New York. She had never been willing +to sign them—I remembered that now—though +they were really not at all discreditable: she was +incapable of writing badly. But as she had never +taken them seriously, as she had written them +merely to make money, she had always hated them, +and had insisted on signing them with a pseudonym, +though she could have gotten a far better +price for them by publishing them over her own +name.</p> + +<p>I turned suddenly back toward the train, as if I +could still have redeemed our farewell from the +memory of my bitterness and spite—but the man +was taking down the sign.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The news of her aunt’s illness had deeply affected +Rita; and though I was sceptical and suspicious +at the time, I see now that it had really +preoccupied her to the exclusion of everything +else. Aunt Sarah, who was always called “Aunt +Sadie,” had been the artistic member of the family; +and Rita had originally been named for her. +But when Rita had first come to New York, and +had acted for a short time on the stage, she had +substituted “Rita” for her real name, and she had +never afterwards been able to bring herself to be +known as Sarah again. Her first poems had been +published over her stage name. And now she tortured +herself with the fear that this might have +hurt Aunt Sadie’s feelings. With her passionate +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span>concentration, she had talked to me of that extraordinary +little woman with the birdlike nose +and neck, and the square enormous brow (which +Rita had inherited).</p> + +<p>Aunt Sadie had, in her youth, been the organist +in the church and the gay getter-up of +church “sociables”; she had wanted to go to Paris +to study music, and had nearly succeeded. But +the men of Aunt Sadie’s family—like Rita’s +brother—had not made life easy for the women: +some drank; some had broken down; some had +simply disappeared. When she had found she +could not go to Paris, Aunt Sadie had decided +to move to Watertown and teach music; but a +last brother, who kept the general store in the +little town where they lived, had been disabled +by a paralytic stroke, and Aunt Sadie had had +to take care of him and help with the store, for +which she presently found herself assuming the +whole responsibility. But as she had always been +hopelessly perplexed by the local problems of supply +and demand, she was gradually deprived of her +trade by a newer and more modern store, which +had a soda-fountain with tables. Now she had +come down with a bad case of pleurisy, and was +unable to work at all.</p> + +<p>And Rita, brooding on the slow extinction of +Aunt Sadie’s personality, tragically reproached +herself for having suppressed Aunt Sadie’s name. +She talked to me about Aunt Sadie till I could see +the chipped and yellow keys of her little upright +piano, and the elegantly engrossed scrolleries of +the old-fashioned black-and-white music-covers, +more clearly than the objects in the room in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span>which we were, and could hear those other scrolleries, +both elegant and noble, of the voices of +the fugue, weaving an indelible watermark of +beauty in the air of the cramped little parlor behind +the general store. Aunt Sadie had taught +Rita to play; and Rita still remembered some +fragments of Handel and Bach, which sometimes +tumbled out without warning when she found herself +beside a piano, all rumpled, as it were, but +still fresh, from the disordered wardrobe of her +mind. These gusts of music surprised me at first: +they were so spontaneous, light-hearted and +lovely—so different from the sometimes tight, +and always sober, style of her poetry; and I have +thought since that they were perhaps the only +thing which I ever knew of Rita as she had been +in her girlhood.</p> + +<p>For Rita, too, had spent long years in the little +up-state town; had sung in the church choir and +known all the hymns by heart; had studied French +from the book, where there was no one to teach +her to speak it, and had read Baudelaire and Gautier +when she could not pronounce their names. +And before she had finally gone to college on the +scholarship which she had won by fierce solitary +effort, she had almost, she told me, abandoned the +hope of ever sloughing off that life of the small +American town, which she put on when she woke +every morning, like some cursed indestructible +dress of girlhood, too worn, too soiled, too small.</p> + +<p>Yet, I never heard her speak with resentment +of her early environment: it was herself, and not +the place or its people, which, when she told me +of her youth, she made me see. When Sinclair +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span>Lewis wrote his famous novel, in its own way so +intense, he made one feel that the American small +town had rendered the whole of American life +unpalatable, had flavored it with a rank flat taste, +like some minute organism which spoils the drinking-water. +But my impression of the town from +which Rita had come was made up merely of those +moments in Rita’s life which she had told me of +passing there and which seemed to me, like everything +else about her, to have taken place outside +the common world. She had described to me once, +for example, how, lying late awake at night, she +had heard some drunkard, returning from the +town, singing clearly in the empty country road, +dark-and-clear with the autumn moon:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“I wooed her in the summer-time</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And in the winter, too;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all night long I held her in my arms,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Just to shield her from the foggy, foggy dew!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">To-day, when I can sort out the drunkard, the +song which every one knows, the little New-York-State +town, the girl who wants to get away—though +I summon all the drunkards, all the bawdy +songs, all the discontented girls, all the towns, +that I have ever known—I can see nothing but +that moment of Rita’s girlhood, of her girlhood +too long detained, which seemed to hang half +clear black and half a turbid crystal, in the radiant-dark +country night, like a drop of foggy dew—I +see all through the eyes of the poet, to whom +our social history is invisible.</p> + +<p><em>I</em> made differences between New York and +Paris; between New Orleans and New York. <em>I</em> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span>had wondered, at Ray Coleman’s party, whether +McIlvaine were a Scotchman or a Jew; I had insisted +on finding out from Hugo in what city +Daisy was born. And though I did not, like Hugo, +compute incomes nor peg out the people I encountered +in the economic web, I marked degrees of +education and was always trying to identify accents. +I had noted, in this way, in Rita, the Irish +fickle-mindedness and sharpness; the traces of the +superior person in the small provincial community; +of the bold and original personality in the +community of college girls, who had, however, +learned the language of the rest—that savorless +language of young segregated women constantly +dosed by older women with the highest feminine +ideals; the intonations of the American actress of +English light comedy; and, finally, dominating all, +her rôle of princess and rake of the Village. But +it made no difference how she talked, where she +had been, what she wore, where she lived, what +boors she caught up in her life, what threadbare +images she used—the being who filled my mind +had little relation to all this. I first learned from +Rita that the importance, the significance, of what +we see, is supplied by the mind which perceives +them—that the power which creates, through imagination +and passion, never stops to appraise the +value of the materials with which it works, but +itself assigns them value.</p> + +<p>And just as, despite the fact that Aunt Sadie +presented herself as an obstacle to my happiness, +that I was by no means, at the time of which I +write, in a mood to share Rita’s anguish for the +muted and dying vibrations of that steel-silver and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span>tight-strung soul—so she had compelled me, +against my taste and interest, to accept all her +friends and admirers at the value she put upon +them herself. These friends, when I came to meet +them, almost always impressed me at first as quite +unlike what I had heard about them from Rita—as +insipid, ineffective, or underbred. And I used +at first to find my jealousy allayed at discovering +that Rita’s swans were geese—(though I suppose +that I still felt, in the case of the Greenwich Villagers +proper, a sort of jealousy at their having +participated with Rita in the braver exploits of an +earlier day—a day which I myself had come too +late for: I had the sense that even the worst of +Rita’s friends had at least “fired one ringing shot +and passed”). But young journalists cheapened +by their work; pottering young writers, like myself; +debauched or epicene young poets, with neither +genius nor self-respect; mediocre middle-aged +literary men, with bald heads and stale +reputations; and all that odd mixed company of +lawyers, contractors and brokers—I was obliged to +grant even to these each his gift or his special distinction—and, +even then, I could never be sure +how far they were distinctions or gifts which Rita +herself had lent them. So constant and so acute +was her need to intensify experience that, just as +she would cherish the timbre of certain boat-whistles +which she heard from her apartment in +Twelfth Street, just as she would sometimes keep +for days a tangerine or an apple which she had +bought at the grocer’s on the corner, but of which, +when she had brought it home, she had become +fascinated by the color or the shape—so she had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span>the faculty of endowing her admirers with qualities +which they themselves may hardly have hoped +to possess. With Rita, the vagabond poet would +prove to have an interesting temperament; the +journalist, an honest conviction; the obsolete editor +or essayist, something of the grace of a man of +the world; and those bewitched business men and +brokers, who so furiously pursued her, seemed to +have caught from Rita’s own imagination some +disturbing conception of themselves which they +were straining to realize—she told me once how a +man who had seen her on but a single occasion, +and whom she had afterwards succeeded in evading, +had recognized her again, after years, merely +from hearing her voice over the telephone, when +he had by mistake been connected with a wire on +which Rita was talking to some one else.</p> + +<p>But it was not merely that Rita disregarded all +those social and moral considerations which occupy +so large a place in the minds of ordinary +people. It was not merely that she was free from +prejudices; but that character itself, in the sense +in which it may amuse us, stimulate our curiosity +or appear to us picturesque, did not interest her. +She was not at all the sort of woman who enjoys +collecting celebrities or types: gossip did not entertain +her; she had little taste for novels. In her +own stories and plays, there were no characters, +but merely situations and emotions. And so, not +seeing at all in her friends what most of them saw +in each other, she made it possible for them, in +their relation to her, to play rôles for which the +world would never have cast them. It was as if, +in their contacts with Rita, they had become somehow +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span>facets of herself, their longings given body +by Rita’s imagination and their vitality doubled +by her force. They had become aspects of her own +personality; and so wear for me even to-day—the +middle-western journalist with the Abraham-Lincoln +voice, the snow and quiet of the diamond +winter night when she had spoken to me, after he +had left, of the purity and peace of his spirit of +which she suggested that the longings were yet so +poignant—the international vagabond, the muffled +vagueness of the August dusk when we had +carried him part way up Fifth Avenue in the victoria +in which we were riding, and she had afterwards, +in Central Park, among the asphalt windings +and dark walls, where the lovers embraced +mute on their benches, sung some Spanish songs +he had taught her—and the man in New Mexico, +alas! the sweet pathos of the short days she had +known him and which she had described to me +with her brief telling eloquence on the very afternoon +in Bank Street when I had counted on finding +eloquence myself to persuade her to marry me—the +bare two days and a half she had spent with +that tubercular landscape painter whom she had +loved, she said, the best of all!</p> + +<p>I myself had good cause to be grateful: when I +had read Rita my indifferent verses, she would +always afterwards take them from me and go +through them intently herself, repeating aloud the +lines which pleased her, so that they had the sound, +brought to life by her voice, of being a great deal +better than they were; and, at the time, I never remembered +that she had also a knack of reading +certain poems by Coventry Patmore and Arthur +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span>Henry Clough, poets whom I detested, so that +they sounded as if she had written them herself.—Even +during our last conversation when I had +scolded and complained in the taxi, she had appealed +to a generosity for which I was really by +no means remarkable by reminding me of those +excuses, perfunctory and largely hypocritical, +which I had made long ago for Ray Coleman.</p> + +<p>In any case, we swarmed to her apartment, devoured +her time and her force, and finally, at the +period of which I write, had rendered her life +intolerable. I had told her once of something that +Hugo had said of literary people together, as one +saw them in New York or Paris—that they were +like the leeches in a druggist’s jar: dependent for +nourishment on blood, but reduced to the desperate +extremity of preying on one another. Rita +had added: “Yes, and I’m the druggist, when he +puts his hand in the jar!”</p> + +<p>So I had learned in half a year from Rita that +from another point of view than Hugo’s, the +world may present quite different values, and give +rise to quite different problems. But I had learned +something else from Rita, which it had cost me +more pain to learn. When I had taken her to task +in the taxi, reproaching her for lack of “faith,” +she had forced me to confront a principle which, +since I had known her, had haunted and tormented +me, but which I had hitherto tried to evade; and +even she, who must have lived with it so long, was +reluctant to confess it to me: she had pretended +for a moment to mistake what I meant. As Hugo +had learned from his weeks in the prison-camp +that men who are beaten become brutalized and +that poor men starve; so I had been obliged to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span>learn from Rita that any great strength or excellence +of character must be, by its very nature, +incompatible with qualities of other kinds—that +it carries with it weaknesses and ignominies inseparable +from excellence and strength. I should, +I dare say, like every one else, always have been +willing to admit both these truths: they would, +in fact, have seemed to me platitudes. But I had +had to learn them both from experience, and once +I had felt their reality, it had seemed to me that +all our social and moral conventions had been +based on the opposite assumptions—that a person +who had had either revelation (either Rita’s revelation +or Hugo’s), and who uncompromisingly +met life on that basis, must, like Hugo or Rita, +be a rebel, and in consequence, an enemy of society.</p> + +<p>For Rita, who exalted every impulse and made +dramatic every relation, neither happiness nor +drama could endure. I taunted her once, in those +later days, with Wilde’s saying that, “<i>He who +lives more lives than one, more deaths than one +must die</i>.” But it was not deaths of the body that +she suffered: it was the deaths of all those human +relations—it was her rejection, day after day and +year after year, of all the natural bonds and understandings +which make up the greater part of +human life—comfort, security, children, the protection +and devotion of a husband, even simple +comradeship and affection—so that she was still, +at the time of which I write, an outlaw living from +hand to mouth, always poor and often ill, bedevilled +day and night by all the persons she no +longer had the energy to excite to her own pitch +of incandescence. And even at the time I had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span>taunted her, even at the time I had denounced her +in the cab, it was my consciousness of this strength +which had continued to keep me in subjection. +For I knew now, in spite of all my pain, in spite +of all my complaints and indignation, that if we +have the instinct to admire what is admirable, we +must also have the courage, and must not rage +against—nor even try to minimize—that which +makes it possible and mars it.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Outside, the light had grown cold; but the +white and orange power of the lamps was beginning +to dominate the town. The day seemed +hardly now to have been serious: it was withdrawing, +by arrangement with the city, which had +so much to do at night. The taxis on Vanderbilt +Avenue were wedging, honking and hitching, in +their efforts to turn and to pass; but I dodged +energetically through them and headed west.</p> + +<p>If I could only find Daisy home! If only she +were free to-night! I had refrained from telephoning +on purpose: I wanted so desperately to see +her, even if she were going out.</p> + +<p>I could still feel the thrill of Fifth Avenue—I +scarcely glanced a second time at a face which +looked a little like Rita’s. And that fascinating +region of the Forties, where I had lately gone so +rarely—I found that I could still peer with interest +at the photographs in front of the theatres and +at the faces of the passing women, who seemed +sometimes, with their theatrical make-ups, as miraculously, +ideally pretty as women on the stage.</p> + +<p>The apartment-house where Daisy lived was +narrow and very plain: there was merely a bare +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span>hall, with a telephone man, who also opened the +door and ran the elevator.</p> + +<p>He took me up to her floor, and I knocked at +her room, but no one answered; then, as the door +had been left half-open, I went inside. The lights +had also been left on, and the chairs and the floor +were littered with a débris of stockings and chemises, +as surprisingly slight and as sordid as the +shreds of exploded balloons. On the table stood +an empty spaghetti can, two plates gummed with +cold tomato sauce, several tumblers with the stale +remains of drinks, and an empty gin-bottle. It +seemed to me from the contents of the tumblers, +that they had begun by drinking gin and ginger-ale, +fallen back on gin and bathroom water, and +probably ended up with raw gin.</p> + +<p>It would be hours now, no doubt, before her +rehearsal was over: I had come far too early, had +better go away and come back. I looked about the +room, and then searched in my pockets, for paper +to write her a note, but could find nothing except +a letter from a distinguished professor of philosophy +whom I had greatly admired at college and +to whom I had sent a book of Rita’s poems: he +had written me, thanking me for the poems and +inviting me to come to see him. I had thrown the +envelope away, but my respect for the professor +had been so strong that I had never destroyed his +letter, though my preoccupation with Rita had +prevented my answering it.</p> + +<p>But now, as I could find nothing else—finally +reflecting that colleges, after all, were places where +poets were put to sleep—I tore off part of the +back page of the letter, just below the signature, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span>and sitting down in a mission morris-chair, I +wrote a note to Daisy.</p> + +<p>When I had finished the note, however, I turned +over the pages of the magazine—it was a movie +magazine called <i>Photo-Life</i>—which I had picked +up to hold the paper on. Suddenly becalmed in +that abandoned apartment, high aloft on that inaccessible +floor, with the elevator between me and +the street, I found that I had dropped into a pocket +of inertia and lassitude. When I had exhausted +<i>Photo-Life</i>, I looked carefully, with the same serious +interest, through <i>Zit’s Weekly</i>, the <i>Cosmopolitan</i> +and a tabloid of two days before. Then, with the +magazines in my lap, I remained blank and incapable +of rising: I apprehended the onset of +despair. What motive had I for moving? I could +no longer go to see Rita, and was there any one +else in New York whom I really desired to see? +It was as if the emptiness of Daisy’s room had +represented the emptiness of the world where I +had been left by Rita’s departure. I had not slept +much for several nights, and I felt that my joints +were heavy. The telephone rang: I did not answer +it.</p> + +<p>There was a phonograph beside me on the table: +it was a small cheap portable one. I regarded it +with hebetude. Without Daisy, it seemed as depressing +as the glasses, as the garments, as the +magazines. But involuntarily grasping at a last +resource against despair, I picked up the heap of +phonograph records, lying half-shuffled, like a battered +pack of cards. Scrupulously I pushed them +even and ran through them, reading all the titles: +<i>With You in Paradise</i>, from <i>Pretty Kitty</i>, sung +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span>by Bee Brewster; <i>Ben Bolt</i>, by John McCormack; +<i>Chanson Hindoue</i>, Saxophone solo; <i>So’s Your +Old Man</i>, Fox Trot, by Fred Casey and His Burglar-Alarm +Boys; <i lang="it">La Forza del Destino</i>, Red +Seal, Duet by Caruso and Scotti; <i>Mamie Rose</i>, +Fox Trot, by Jake King and His Eight Kentucky +Mocking-Birds. I remembered that <i>Mamie Rose</i> +was the fox-trot which Daisy had so offended by +playing, the night of Ray Coleman’s party, when +Rita had been reciting her poems. I got up and +put it on the machine.</p> + +<p>The record, I noted, as I wound the crank, had +been made by the American Melody Company: it +was a pale and unpleasant brown and seemed to +have been moulded in river mud. Remembering +the handsome victrola which I had seen at Ray +Coleman’s apartment, I pitied Daisy a little; yet +she had had the right sort of bravery, the bravery +to go free when love had passed! The only needles +I could find were in an ash-tray, under the +débris of cigarette-butts and burnt matches, and +it was impossible to tell the used from the new: +the first I tried began with a blurt, a hideous stuttering +blur. Still dominated by Rita’s tastes, I +began to feel that turning on the phonograph +would be like applying to myself a dental engine: +Rita had not cared for popular music—had +thought lightly of even the <i>Rosenkavalier!</i></p> + +<p>The second needle turned out no better, but I +let it go; and presently <i>Mamie Rose</i> emerged as a +kind of fiendish jig, running itself off at impossible +speed: too fast, too nasal, too shrill. I made +an effort to regulate it and only effected a harrowing +descent of pitch, like the gasping and discordant +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span>howl of some demon inside the machine crying +out in intolerable agony at being compressed +from one tempo to another. I listened for the first +night I had met Daisy, but merely succeeded in +having my heart wrung by the first night I had +heard Rita’s poems. The spring of the little +phonograph held only for a single winding, so +that the record began too fast and was already +running down before it came to the end; but, what +was worse, it had no horn, so that the demon inside +the box, beating in its cramped black prison like +a panic-stricken bat, had to squeeze out, as it were, +through a crack—the little aperture at the base of +the “arm.” No wonder it chittered and squealed +so thinly, like an unwinding wire of sound, like a +wire, rusted, wry and eaten, worn away so that it +seemed almost snapping, or so rough that it +would stick and stammer over some echolaliac +phrase! So completely had the music been robbed +of resonance that it seemed a mere memorandum +of music, as if some writer in sound had scribbled +down the skeleton of an orchestration, with the +brasses brief tin-whistle blasts and raspings, the +strings a jotted jingle of cicada-chirpings, and the +tympani scored as tiny explosions and echoless +crashes of glass. And the “vocal refrain,” when it +suddenly began, had as little in common with the human +voice as the noises of the instruments had with +music: it gave the effect of some mere momentary +modulation in the quick mechanical jigging of a +railroad train—it was simply a sharper shrillness, +a more insistent iteration: <em>There she goes—Mamie +Rose—She—loves—me!—Don’t seem to +show it!—How do I know it?—It’s A. B. C.!—She’s</em> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span>a crackle of high-pitched syllables ending +with <em>aggravatin’. But when I want a little lovin’ +she don’t keep me waitin’!—She’s proud and +snooty—But she’s my cutie!—She tells me</em> a second +slip of dulled and driven cogs—<em>That’s how +I knows—Mamie Rose!—She—loves—me!</em> The +jazz departed, with redoubled violence and complexities +of deformation, into a last frantic charivari—then, +after a brief unpleasing flourish, was +bitten off as abruptly as it began.</p> + +<p>I lifted the needle, clicked the little catch and +went over to the window. Outside, gaped a blank +abyss: several buildings had just been demolished +and the vacuum of vacancy they had left seemed +to be sucking with its blind raw walls for some +structure to rush in and fill it. I felt again the +horrible imminence of despair, and I tried to summon +against that blank outlook and against the +mechanical voice of the phonograph—those negations +of flesh and blood—an intensified vision +of Daisy: her alert little yellow head, with its +deep stainings of Irish rust, her lips still moist +through carnation rouge, and the robust little organism +of her body, which made its home among +those stone and metal cells, not merely resilient to +their surface, but making their grindings quicken +and feed it.—Then a sudden voice said, “Hello!” +and with a start I turned round and saw her.</p> + +<p>I asked her to come to dinner with me. She +had on a dark blue street dress, and she looked +tired; I had been imagining her animated and +hearty, but it seemed to me now that she was frail: +her eyes, a lighter green than Rita’s, looked colorless +and dim.—“Why—I’d like to,” she demurred, +“but I’ve got a sort of a date.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span></p> + +<p>The telephone rang again and she answered it: +I heard her begging off with her little-girl-like +“Well, I don’t think I will—I’m so tired—I just +got back from rehearsal—I think I’ll go to bed—well, +I don’t think I will—you go—well, I don’t +want to—all right, see you to-morrow!”</p> + +<p>And I felt, not merely flattered, but also reassured, +to find that Daisy seemed to think it natural +to set aside her previous engagements in favor of +those higher obligations—of which I had learned +the importance from Rita—of following one’s +own inclination.</p> + +<p>“I’m glad you came,” she explained. “I didn’t +want to go to that party and if you hadn’t come, +I would have gone.” “Where was it?” I asked. +“At Myra Busch’s.” “Are her parties any fun?” +She shook her head contemptuously: “No: she +just has a lot of twirps.—I can’t stand ’em!”</p> + +<p>“How cute you sounded talking over the telephone!” +“Yes: strong men weep!” “No, really: +you’re awfully cute!” “You don’t mean it really, +do you? It’s a panic, isn’t it?” “No: I do mean +it! You sounded cute.” (Now that I had to renew +my assurances, I began to feel insincere—I +had so long praised no one but Rita, and had +praised her with such passionate conviction, that +I found now that it cost me an effort to compliment +any one else.) “Ray Coleman used to say +that I had the world’s worst voice on the telephone—he +said I sounded like some awful whining +cash-girl.” Another proof of Ray’s stupidity! I +could see what he meant, but there was about +Daisy’s speech something finely chiselled like her +features, so that I had scarcely been aware of her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span>voice; and my resentment at Ray’s stupid taste +imparted to my compliments a new fervor.</p> + +<p>“Shall I go out and get a drink?” I suggested. +“That would be fine!” said Daisy, brightening, +and with the humorous consciousness of brightening, +that irony of the city I so liked in her. “As +the English actor said, when the girl said, ‘How +about twenty-five dollars?’—‘That would be a +godsend!’—I’ll be getting dressed while you’re +gone.”</p> + +<p>When I came back, she was still in the bathroom, +and called out to me: “You might pass me +a drink in here, if you don’t mind.” I poured the +dregs out of one of the glasses and handed in +some gin and ginger-ale: her little naked arm, +reached out from behind the door, had the prettiness +of a child’s.—“Now, you turn on the phonograph,” +she called to me, “so you won’t hear me +use the what-not!” I started <i>Mamie Rose</i> again +and poured out a drink for myself: the music +seemed almost gay and, when the record had +come to an end, I put on another record.</p> + +<p>When she came out, she looked a good deal +rosier and extremely clean: she was dressed in a +light blue dress, with a blue scarf dappled with +white, and wore straw-colored stockings. “How +nice you look in your blond clothes!” I told her. +“Oh, this is just an old rag!” she squeaked in a +burlesque hen’s voice. “Well,” I insisted, “you +look sweet!” “I probably look like the Collapse +of Western Civilization!” she replied—but with +a particularly charming smile.</p> + +<p>She turned off the phonograph, which had been +gibbering like an imbecile over a single unintelligible +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span>phrase. “That phonograph’s a delight, isn’t +it?” she said. “I took it with me when I left Ray, +because it was one of the only things I had left +that had belonged to me before I lived withum. +Phil gave it to me on our honeymoon. Some of +those records are Ray’s, though, I guess.” I remembered +Rita’s bookcase.</p> + +<p>“Phil was your first husband, was he?” “Yes: +he’s my ex,” she said.—She went on, after a moment: +“Did you think I was really married to +Ray?” “Yes,” I said, “I did.” “I guess a good +many people really did. But we weren’t. It was a +lucky thing, too: if I’d marriedum, it would have +been harder to leavum.” “Did you have a pretty +trying time?” I asked. “He wouldn’t let me do +anything or go any place. If I went out with anybody +else, he’d burn up one of my dresses—he +was great on burning things up—I used to tellum +that if he’d lived a little longer ago, he’d have +been burning witches.—He’d say that he didn’t +buy me clothes to have me go out with other +men. And then when I did stay home withum, +I’d just have to listen to-um read to me out of the +<i>Oxford Book of English Verse</i>.—Finally, one +night I got reckless and stayed out for two days +with Pete Bird”—(Pete Bird was the little man +with whom I had seen her talking at Ray Coleman’s +and in whose company I had found her the +night before)—“and when I came back, he +wouldn’t let me in, so there was nothing to do but +go looping again—I was plastered for a week. +Finally Gus Dunbar offered to let me stay here—it +was awfully decent ofum and he just did it out +of friendliness. He helped me get a job, too. I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span>understand that Myra Busch is telling it around +the Village that I’m having a love-affair with Gus—but +that’s just absurd—he’s my oldest friend in +New York: I knew him back in Pittsburgh. He’s +just my yes-man. He lets me sleep in the bed and +he sleeps on the couch. And besides, he’s sick!—He’s +gone out of town and I’m going to get a +good rest. Oh, how I’m going to rest!”</p> + +<p>We continued the conversation in a chop-house, +with red-and-white checked table-cloths and the +smell of a butcher-shop, where very large sour +pickles were served with every order, on the side.</p> + +<p>“What sort of a fellow is Pete Bird?” I inquired. +“Isn’t he more or less of a twirp?” +“Well,” she said, “he did pretty well the other +night: he spent about a hundred and thirty dollars.” +Even allowing for the tremendous prestige +which always attached in New York to the +spending of large sums of money, I felt a little +that she was evading my question, but I didn’t +pursue the matter further: I seemed to divine that +Pete Bird was the man with whom she had broken +her engagement to go to Myra Busch’s that night.</p> + +<p>I asked Daisy how she had ever happened to +run away with Ray. “I metum in the Ritz Bar in +Paris,” she explained. “Phil and I didn’t care +anything about each other, by that time—Phil +was in love with a French girl. I didn’t resent +his having affairs with other women, but he used +to give her my clothes.—Besides, I didn’t want to +have people saying: ‘That poor little Mrs. Meissner, +sitting around crying her eyes out, while her +husband goes with other women!’ Besides, Phil +and I had just been thrown out of our hotel. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span>Phil had a lot of money when I marriedum, but +we spent it all. Ray came along and he seemed +to be pretty affluent at that time, and I was so +tired of not paying any bills.—I will say about +Phil, though, that he did everything with a +grand air. Ray would get worried if a bill ran +for as much as a week—whereas Phil never +thought of paying a bill, even if he had the money. +It was funny: when you were with Phil, you +felt that you were swell, even though you didn’t +have a cent—but when you were with Ray, even +though everything was paid for and all the bellboys +and everybody tipped, you felt you were +only trying to be swell.”</p> + +<p>I asked what Phil did. “He was a photographer,” +she replied. “Not an ordinary photographer, +but one of these super-photographers. He +only took a picture about once every two months—he’d +charge a hundred and fifty dollars for a +sitting. At least that’s what he did when he did +anything. He had money—at least, he did till +his family wouldn’t givum any more—so he +didn’t really have to do anything.—He composed +songs, too.—But what he really worked hardest +at was getting up practical jokes. He’d spend +hours sending out invitations to all the worst +bums in Paris, asking them to come to dinner at +the house of one of the social leaders of the American +colony.” “What happened?” I asked. “Well, +they all showed up—all the dope-fiends and deadbeats, +and all the old drunken bozos that hang +around the bars—all the most undesirable Americans +in Paris—and Mrs. Tilford was furious and +almost gottum arrested. Then another time, when +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span>he had to have lunch with some friends of his +family’s from Pittsburgh, he put camphorated oil +on the seats of all their chairs—well, camphorated +oil makes you feel as if you were freezing—so +they all had to sit there at the table with their +fannies freezing and not knowing what was the +trouble.”</p> + +<p>I laughed. “Well, that sort of thing,” she explained, +“can get to be pretty tiresome, if you live +with it all the time. And I was his wife, so I felt +partly responsible. When some guest almost broke +his back on a chair that flattened out when you +sat in it, I’d feel pretty humiliated.—And then +he’d work his gags on me. One day he left a note +for me, saying that he’d committed suicide. And +I suppose he thought it was a joke when he took +half my clothes away and told me that he was +sending them to the devastated regions, and then +gave ’em to-uz little French twirp!”</p> + +<p>We had ordered ginger-ale, and had had some +more gin: “You really look marvellous in blue!” +I said. She knocked herself under the chin: +“That sets me all up,” she said, meeting my gaze +without blinking. Then she dropped her eyes and +added: “Phil really had a lot of charm, though.”</p> + +<p>“What shall we do after dinner?” I asked. +“Take me to the movies!” she said, smiling. “I’ve +had a yen to see some movies all day: I want to do +something restful.—Take me to something funny.—I’m +so glad you came to-night! I’ve been beginning +to feel like a twirp. If I keep getting +plastered like I have been, I’ll lose my job.—It’s +so long since I’ve been alone or had any place +where I could go and be by myself. It seems to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span>me I haven’t done anything for weeks but sit +around and be funny for people I didn’t really care +about.—Gee, I don’t know what to do! When I +begin to get paid, I can live on what I make. But +I’ve been afraid to sober up, because then I’d have +to face the future.” (She always gave to all her +clichés—“facing the future,” etc.—a special ironic +emphasis.) “I can’t think of anybody I care about—I +haven’t even got a girl-friend any more: all +the ones that I had are off me now because Ray +wouldn’t let me have ’em around. So I haven’t +even got anybody to laugh about things with.—Business +of twisting handkerchief.—Let’s go, before +I have you in tears!”</p> + +<p>We had a reckless taxi-driver; but to me, +strong with accelerations of gin and with my normal +masculine self-assurance, which Rita had +done so much to demoralize, now gratifyingly +re-enforced by Daisy’s feminine confession of +helplessness and distress—it seemed to me at that +moment that I occupied a position of unchallengeable +supremacy—it seemed to me now that it had +become possible for our taxi, at its exhilarating +giddy speed, to plunge through every opposition, +to make every obstruction give way. I marked +with intensest vision the objects which we seemed +to ride down: an American Railway Express +truck; a woman with a German police dog; other +scuttling and inferior taxis. Rita had always +been nervous about El posts; but, as we ripped +our way through the traffic, Daisy merely remarked: +“Madcap Joe: the Demon Driver!”—and +as we erupted into Broadway: “You better +stop him or he’ll drive into the lobby!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span></p> + +<p>I thought scornfully of Duff Burdan, who had +been barking so long on Rita’s doorstep, and who, +for the privilege of storing Rita’s furniture, for +the certainty of seeing her again, had been willing +to render his studio uninhabitable.</p> + +<p>In the darkened moving-picture house, we +found the news-reel passing before us like a gray +inconsecutive dream, and its images, as I watched +them, seemed to swell with the significance of +dreams.—A handsome buxom Sixteen-Year-Old +Girl winning a Florida yacht-race in a bathing-suit +to the blaring triumphant pace of a red-white-and-blue +Sousa march. “She’s cute,” whispered +Daisy, “isn’t she?” Yes: there was the real +native American poetry!—my spirit flashed again +at the thought of it—it had the daring and excitement +of a poem!—and such a spirit, which +abandoned itself to the water and the wind, to the +speed of the flying yacht, would she not give herself +also to love beneath the nights of southern +waters!—Mayor Hylan—<i>East Side, West Side</i>—making +a speech in New York: the flat-faced +official visage, the senseless savorless words of +the American public figure—while the brave filled +the air with words of fire or slashed with white +sails and tanned arms the deep blue of Florida +seas!—free America that flew above those drones, +that never paused for a thought of Mayor Hylan +and his imbecile servile speeches; in our eagerness, +our taut attention, stimulated more by the +drinks than the film, Daisy and I were sitting forward +and our arms were pressing each other.—An +aeroplane wafted by a waltz—I had missed the +title, my mind ablaze with the beauty of poetry +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span>and sportsmanship—below, the city, flat as a map, +a plane shifted, not haphazardly, but with some +underlying harmony and balance, to a jerky succession +of angles.—Laddy Boy’s Rival, a husky +brought to Washington, to the gallop of some lolloping +dog music, by one of Harding’s Secret +Service Men—I whispered, “I believe that that +husky would make good presidential timber!” I +glanced aside at Daisy and saw her profile pale +and clear as porcelain in the pale light from the +film, in which her pert little nose and chin showed +a fineness and purity of outline—an outline prolonged +by the frail hand which, with the fingertips +lifted to the chin, received also, along fingers +and wrist, a pale porcelain border of light.—Members +of the Municipal Council at Baka, Japan, +to the tune of <i>We’re Gentlemen of Japan</i>, +visit the city’s reservoir; they jump in and catch +carp with their hands: “I should think it would +be bad enough,” whispered Daisy, “to have to +drink the carp, without drinking the municipal +councillors,” and I so threw myself forward in +laughing at this that Daisy became self-conscious +about the pressure of our arms on the seat, and +drew a little away.—A slow-motion diving picture +of champion woman swimmers—they turned +along the sweet lengthened rhythms of <i>All Alone +with the Telephone</i>, curving wonderfully through +the air in moulded recumbent postures and sending +up, when they had slipped into the water, a +slowly condensing cloud of spray—how Rita +would have loved those slow parabolas, stripped +clean of the flashiness of speed, as tight-strung as +the curve of a bow—she would have exclaimed of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span>the cloud of spray, “It’s like some lovely sort of +punctuation—as if you could punctuate a statue +with some solid effect of light!”—The Prince of +Wales—<i>It’s a Long Way to Tipperary</i>—joking +with a paralyzed soldier—I wondered whether +Rita would find the Prince of Wales attractive, +then reflected that, on the contrary, she would +probably be just perverse enough to prefer the +paralyzed soldier: it occurred to me now to consider +that I was becoming too much preoccupied +with Rita and not paying enough attention to +Daisy, so I moved my arm back against hers.—Jo +LeBlanc, Head of the New Central Ticket Office, +playing tennis to the jigging tune of <i>Tea for Two +and Two for Tea</i>, to decide who shall pay the religious +expenses of one hundred Jewish children +to aid the Jewish Education Association Drive—“I +bet the other man loses, don’t you?” Daisy remarked. +I wondered whether perhaps, after all, I +hadn’t been unfair to Max Kaufman—whether, +perhaps, what I had taken for complacency hadn’t +been, after all, merely modesty—I had a pang as +I was revisited by the feeling that I had behaved +badly with Rita in the taxi.—Bishop Manning, to +the firm exaltation of the <i>Pilgrim’s Chorus</i>, receiving +an emblematic pastoral staff, a huge encrusted +crozier, from the Chaplain of the House +of Commons—Daisy and I thought that Bishop +Manning had the look of a priggish baby being +handed an enormous rattle: I put my hand +gently over Daisy’s, which lay beneath it cool +and friendly.—A Chimpanzee Chauffeur: roguish +monkey music: <i>Yes, We Have No Bananas</i>; but +I had fallen to reflecting that, like some hero of a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span>mediæval legend—the <i>Pilgrim’s Chorus</i> and the +pastoral staff had made me see myself in that +image—I had, for a dreamlike space escaping +measure, been shut away with Venus under the +hill, or, like Oisin, with some goddess of fairyland—that +I had been gone from the world of +men, and only now, still blinking from the Venusberg, +still with the music of fairyland in my ears, +still knowing how the ache for the ideal may torture +us like the ache for a drug of which we have +been deprived, beheld with joy, with bewildered +relief, the vision of Senator Oscar W. Underwood, +who—to the rousing music of <i>Dixie</i>—was +making a speech at a Monster Barbecue in Montgomery, +Alabama—and found myself almost safe +again in that familiar American world, heterogeneous +and absurd, which had ceased for so long +to seem real to me, of which I had never for so +long been aware save to repudiate it with scorn +and impatience. The Oldest Human Remains, a +Skeleton of the Stone Age Discovered in an Oyster +Bed: black bones embedded in oysters: dull +sombre chords—Rita could have done something +with this—something bitter about the fatuity of +the twentieth-century traveller who was pointing +at the bones with his stick—or better—what I +could never have done: it was I who would have +made easy capital out of the traveller with the +spectacles and the stick!—something simple, troubling +and hard about the bare black bones themselves.</p> + +<p>And the smoothly revolving globe, supported +by a kneeling goddess and scrolling suddenly and +rapidly out—as if in the burst of an exciting revelation—the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span>title of the comedy that followed—affected +me, in a drop equally sudden, as idiotic +and insupportable: now that I had been brooding +on those blackened bones, I had become impatient +with everything again—and I crushed my way +across to the aisle, over overcoats, seats, and +knees. I got some waxed-paper cups from the +smoking-room, and Daisy and I, in the half-darkness, +had a drink of water and gin. The paper +cups leaked, and we had to get it down at a draft.</p> + +<p>On the screen, a dough-faced comedian with +goggling horn-rimmed glasses was enlisting in a +fire-brigade.—An alarm!—he is the first to respond—he +rushes headlong for the fire-house +pole, slides down it head-first and remains at the +bottom stunned: the firemen who follow fall over +him and pile up like a football scrimmage. We +laughed at this; and, on the way to the fire, the +long hook-and-ladder truck, whisking briskly +around a corner with impossible nimbleness, +caused Daisy to laugh so violently that I thought +again, as I had done on the night when I had +heard about her motor-cycle honeymoon, of that +American sense of motor-traffic which we had developed +to such an extraordinary degree—and +which was now further played upon, in the film, +when the hero, in goggling innocence, allowed his +hook-and-ladder attachment to swing around at +right-angles to the truck, so that it swept the +boulevard like a scythe, mowing the tops off all +the Fords, and never failing at every disaster to +make Daisy laugh with delight.—On the scene of +the burning building, the hero was contending +with the hose, which enmeshed him like a boa-constrictor. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span>The owner of the building appeared, +a pompous and imposing dignitary, in a frock-coat +and silk hat. “Oh, I hope he turns the hose +on his hat, don’t you?” whispered Daisy. And in +a moment, just as the dignitary was denouncing +the clumsiness of the hero, an unexpected leak in +the hose cleanly squirted off the silk hat, which +landed on an organ-grinder’s monkey and gave +rise to a fantastic chase.</p> + +<p>Such was our wild exhilaration over this that I +reflected, as the chase began to flag, how, only +half a year ago, if I had gone to the same film +with Hugo, I should, in laughing at the ruin of +the hat, have been moved by something more than +the impulse, the mischievous impulse of a child, +which I shared to-night with Daisy: I should +have laughed with both savagery and zeal. I +should, like Hugo, have taken the silk hat as a +symbol; I should have made of its destruction an +issue. And now at last I became aware how completely +my point of view had changed since I had +fallen in love with Rita and ceased to see much of +Hugo. Had I not myself, only a few days before, +taken out my own silk hat to go with Rita to +the <i>Rosenkavalier</i>? I knew now that I no longer +cared to imitate Hugo’s intransigeance in matters +of this kind: his rejection of all the amenities of +that civilized life of which he was himself the +product; his fixed belief that society was divided +into two mutually hostile classes, a proletariat and +a bourgeoisie; his unquestioning acceptance of the +catchwords of the social revolution, and his hostile +and suspicious unwillingness to arrive at a human +understanding with people who lived by different +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span>catchwords—all this seemed to me to-night +the product of a superficial point of view, or, almost, +of an arrested development. For Rita, despite +the revolt against conventions which all her +life implied, despite her long association with radicals, +had had really but little interest in politics: +her revolt was a revolt of the individual—and I +had discovered to my surprise, when I had come +to discuss with her the personalities of the Village, +her complete lack of interest in, and, in some +cases, her positive contempt for, certain of the +radical leaders who most generally commanded +admiration; and that, despite the atmosphere in +which she lived, it was actually possible to strike +fire from her mind by reactionary or conventional +views, if they were delivered with the right ring +of bravery. And I had myself, oblivious of the +film, taken to meditating so exaltedly on the vanity +of people’s opinions beside the deeper realities +of character, the insignificance of politics compared +to clairvoyance and passion, that I began +to laugh only belatedly when I had already become +aware that Daisy was roaring over one of +the captions. The hero with the horn-rimmed +spectacles had just been bitten by a small bull-terrier, +and had picked it up and bitten it back: +the caption read, “See how you like it yourself!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m so glad you took me!” said Daisy. +“I think it’s swell! I just wanted to see something +funny!” I slipped my hand over hers again +with sympathetic affection, and watched the rest +of the comedy leaning toward her and paying +closer attention. We followed the picture together, +with a lively interchange of comment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span></p> + +<p>“Well, I suppose you want to go to bed,” I said +to Daisy as we walked out into Broadway. I suggested +that we might stop at a restaurant and finish +up the gin. “No,” she said, “I’m too tired for +a restaurant.—Why don’t you come up to my +place and we can drink it up there?—‘Should she +ask him in?’ If he’s got anything to drink: +Yes!”</p> + +<p>When we reached the room, the telephone was +ringing. Daisy answered it, speaking with some +vehemence: “No: I don’t want to come—I’m +tired, I’ve gone to bed—well, I went out to get +something to eat.—No, I <em>don’t want</em> to come!”</p> + +<p>She lay down upon the bed, propping her head +on the pillow and crossing her feet: she was wearing +lizard-skin shoes, light brown and very small, +but quite different-looking, I reflected, from any +shoes that Rita wore: Rita’s feet, like everything +about her, seemed to manage to be attractive in a +curious personal way quite apart from current +fashions of prettiness, whereas Daisy’s feet were +pretty in an almost perfect ideal way, like the +small feet of the girls with slim ankles in the +drawings in magazines.</p> + +<p>“Well,” yawned Daisy, “this is where Mother +takes a long refreshing rest!” I handed her her +gin and ginger-ale and sat down beside her, +drinking mine. “But I’m afraid I’m not going to +be able to,” she added, after a moment. “That’s +why I want a drink.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you worried?” +“No,” she replied. “I’ve just got the +heeby-jeebies!” “What’s the matter?” “I think +everybody’s a twirp!” “Are you in love?” “No; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span>that’s the trouble.” “You ought to be glad you’re +not,” I said. “You have been, haven’t you?” +she asked. “Yes.” “You still are, aren’t you?” +“No,” I answered—“not any more.” She was +trying to kick out of her shoes without unbuttoning +the straps, and I undid them and lifted them +off. “Thanks,” she said. “As soon as I lie down, +I’m dead!”</p> + +<p>I held her firm little insteps for a moment in +my hands: in pale stockings, her tired and sweaty +feet were like two little moist cream-cheeses encased +in covers of cloth: her body, which seemed +now so slight in its pale blue dress, lay as limp as a +lettuce-leaf soaked by the summer rain.</p> + +<p>“No,” I said. “You oughtn’t to be sorry if +you’re not in love.” “I know: that’s what I keep +saying to myself when I think what damn fools +people make of themselves. But sometimes you +feel the old aching in the arm-pits—and it’s not +just because you want to sleep with somebody +either.—You know the real reason that I asked +you to come up here? It was because I knew it +would give me the willies to come back alone. As +soon as I get alone, everything seems so empty—I +begin to get panicky. Of course, it’s just the +heeby-jeebies, though—after I’ve had a good +night’s sleep, I’ll be all right again.”</p> + +<p>A deep tenderness of sympathy seemed to flush +my very mind, and I almost felt she must feel +its warmth as it brimmed from my soul and +bathed her. I put one arm about her shoulders +and with the other hand covered her breast—it +was low and lapsed a little—Rita, for all her small +head, her small hands and feet, had had the bosom +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span>of some divine being—and from Ray Coleman’s +gesture at the party, when he had put his arms +about Daisy, and from McIlvaine’s plump little +Venus, I had been imagining Daisy’s breasts as +little firm globes. I kissed her on the neck—which +was round and short and had no sculptural +contours like Rita’s—and she kissed me back on +the cheek: it was like the kiss of a little girl, some +cousin or playmate from next door, whom, at +ten, one decides to marry, and the relief of that +human kiss, that embrace of simple comradeship, +soothed the strain with which my spirit, with +which my body itself, had ached.</p> + +<p>I stretched myself beside her. If I had ever +had any idea—playing the part I had learned +from Rita—of making love to Daisy that night. +I knew now that it had never been real, I could +not now even conceive it—it was so long since I +had heard the boats as they moaned from the +harbor in Twelfth Street and the thought of them +no longer moved me, yet to try to love another +woman on the day one had parted from Rita!... +And there began to take music in my weary, in +my half-drunken, mind the falling rhythm of a +poem, the beginning of a sonnet of which, the +night before in my wakefulness, I had with obstinacy +fixed in their target the accurate shafts +of the end. It took the form of an answer to +Daisy, and I found now that what had then been +unbearable, because written of myself for myself, +now that I could write from the point of departure +of another’s fate than mine, now that I could +dramatize my fate for another—dignifying, or +rather creating, for another person’s mind—another’s +mind which I merely imagined, since +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span>Daisy, it seemed, hated poetry—a romance which +should somehow console me for the wreck and +defilement of romance—now I could bear to return +to the poem, and to the pain which had +stamped its images, putting another between them +and me—“<em>Ah, never sigh for love, for love is +death!</em>”...</p> + +<p>She was asleep—I could hear her breath: it +seemed so slight to supply the fuel for that warm +body I felt against my arm, that engine of activity +and desire!—I turned off the electric light, +covered Daisy over with a blanket, and lay down +myself on the couch—and with the silence of the +mind, love was still.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a><a id="Page_113"></a>113</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III"> + III + </h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a><a id="Page_115"></a>115</span></p> + +<p>I had made a dinner engagement with Daisy +for the next evening but one after the night +when I had taken her to the movies; but the sudden +death of one of my aunts, who had for many +years lived with my mother, prevented my keeping +it. I was obliged to go down to the country, +and for several weeks I commuted between my +mother’s house and my work. Sustained by the +vision of Rita renouncing the vanities of passion +and vowed in solitude to her play, I applied myself +to reading Sophocles, who at college had always +bored me, but of whom I had so often heard +it said that he saw life steadily and saw it whole +that I wondered whether, in my present situation, +I mightn’t perhaps be able to benefit by his wisdom. +Rather, however, than risk a first evening +alone in my Bank Street apartment, where for so +long I had seen no one but Rita, I had asked +Daisy to have dinner with me the night of my return +to town.</p> + +<p>When I dropped my suit-case in the darkened +sitting-room, with its drawn blinds and its frigid +radiator, I felt for a moment, with a shudder, the +shock of that current of emotion which I had +hoped had been for ever disconnected when Rita +had moved out of Twelfth Street, but which I +found now that my own possessions, themselves +saturated with Rita, had also the power of conducting. +At the sight of the couch, the Leonardo +(which Rita had admired), the Pernod peach-brandy +bottle on the little marble mantelpiece (I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span>had kept it there ever since the night when Rita +had spoken of the label)—my heart sank as it had +done in Twelfth Street the day when I had heard +the boat-whistles. But I resolutely thought of +Daisy—and as gaily as I had ever done, it seemed +to me, I took my bath, changed my clothes, picked +out an appropriate tie. I threw away the peach-brandy +bottle, which the last time I had looked at +it on the mantel on the occasion of a ghastly scene +with Rita, I had had a violent impulse to smash +as an outlet for my exacerbated passion: it fell in +the waste-basket with a thud which astounded +and routed my nerves. I was throwing in, as if to +cover and conceal it, all the circulars which had +accumulated during my absence when, on the +tightened silence of the room, the telephone suddenly +blazed.</p> + +<p>It was somebody speaking for Daisy; I was to +meet her now, not at Gus Dunbar’s, but somewhere +else—I couldn’t make out where: the voice—it +was a man’s—kept instructing me just to +walk right in and to ask for Mr. Somebody’s—he +was at once so indistinct and so admirably polite +that I concluded he must be drunk. I asked if I +could speak to Daisy, and her voice was presently +heard through the receiver—she seemed faraway, +facetious and vague. I tried to find out +whether the place I was to go to were a speakeasy +or a private apartment—but she only answered, +“Yes,” and laughed, and then insisted that I +should walk right in and go right up to Somebody-or-other’s. +I begged her to spell out the +name—and she began with loud-vibrating emphasis: +“M for mother—I for ’ighball—C for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span>seasick—K for—Oh, you know K!—L for laryngitis”—She +began to laugh again, evidently +at some suggestion from somebody else in the +room. I tried to check up on the letters which I +had already heard, but she broke in: “Just put +them all together and they spell love!”—then, +with no relation to my further questions: “Yes, +‘Mick’—just ask for Mick!—All right!—hurry +up!—Good-by!” She hung the receiver up: I +had, however, got the address.</p> + +<p>The taxi carried me far, too far—beyond +Lexington Avenue—along East Thirty-fourth +Street: the neighborhood seemed to me sordid. +I had hoped to find Daisy, clean from her bath +and with her lovely candid smile, as on the night +when I had taken her to the movies: I had looked +forward to watching her in the light of the little +pink table-lamp, over the white cloth and yellow +wine of a brisk and bright French restaurant.</p> + +<p>We drew up at a narrow entrance which the +driver located with difficulty between a manufacturer +of nasal syphons and a merchant of rebuilt +typewriters. It was the meagrest pretense of a +doorway: a layer of livid imitation marble, a +length of blue-and-white rubber tiles. I looked +above the bells in vain for a name which began +with Mick; but then, in some of the grimy little +frames, there were not even any cards. I rang +one of the nameless bells—but it awakened no responsive +click, and I rang another.</p> + +<p>A man was coming out of the hallway, and I +asked him whether he knew of a Mr. Mickle. I +looked into dim and evasive eyes: I was appalled +to see that he had no chin, that his nose was an +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span>almost elephantine proboscis and that his ears +stood out from his head like those of an elephant +listening; he wore an old shabby overcoat and a +curious gray felt hat, which tended to be conical; +his hands were non-prehensile, and trembled. He +shook his head without a word, in answer to my +question—and passed on like an apparition. I +thought: He must live alone!—he must have lived +alone for so long that he is numb and can no +longer feel loneliness, can no longer feel even irritation +at strangers who are looking for friends +and who hurriedly break in on his solitude. And +I resented such an existence, solitary, dismal, and +uncouth, resigned to drop out of the world, hoping +only to be noticed by no one; and I was repelled +by his strange trunklike snout: my own +nose, I remembered, was bulbous, and, as I +mounted the narrow staircase, it seemed to me +more bulbous than ever.</p> + +<p>The stairs turned above the typewriter shop, +and I was confronted by the cramped and +crowded doors of cheap dentists and real-estate +offices. I explored the corridor, and found another +staircase, and climbed to another and darker +hall, where there were no longer, as below, any +names painted on the doors. That was evidently +where people lived: it was as if the occupants had +made their homes in the chinks left by petty business: +they seemed as narrowly confined, as discouragingly +inaccessible, as the inhabitants of a +jail—and they lacked even that common bond, +that limited intercommunication; each had stowed +himself dumbly away at the bottom of his little +slot, in oblivion of the others: each asked only to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span>be let alone at the end of the herded day—behind +the locked and anonymous door, presenting a +blank to all the rest, as they presented blanks to +him.</p> + +<p>At random, I rang a bell—and, as if in confutation +of my vision of benumbed and sullen recluses, +after shuffling precipitate noises within, +the door was suddenly flung open and there appeared +a lady with bright dyed red hair and a lacy +dowdy dressing-gown who, at the barest suggestion +of a name which began with M-i-c-k, seemed +transported by enthusiasm. Yes: they lived just +across the hall—just opposite her own apartment. +“Yes: they’re just in now,” she ran on, slopping +over with friendly helpfulness and with a simpering +ladylike smile. “If you’d come a little later, +I don’t think you’d have found them home, because +they most always go out to dinner about +seven o’clock!” She eagerly crossed the hall in +her voluminous negligé and rang the bell herself. +I thanked her, but she did not withdraw. She +waited, repeating herself and beaming. I thought +her a little insane—from loneliness, I supposed.</p> + +<p>Some one was hastening from the depths +within. Then Pete Bird opened the door and confronted +me with a goggling stare. The red-haired +woman still lingered in the hall as if she hoped +for a little general conversation, but Pete Bird +merely asked me in, and shut the door behind us.</p> + +<p>We passed through a little dark hallway and +emerged into a narrow sitting-room. I saw +Daisy in a morris chair with her legs dangling +over one arm and her back against the other: she +greeted me with an odd unsmiling daze. And, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span>still charmed by the memory of her paleness when +she had lain along the bed like a moonbeam the +night that I had taken her to the movies, I was +horrified to find her now with touzled, muddy +hair and a sallow, puffy visage, in which the nose +was an ignoble little knob, blobbed in candle wax, +and the eyes were two protruding gooseberries, +scored about with discolored skin: she was wearing +a greenish-blackish plaid. I took her hand: +it was a cold little claw.</p> + +<p>I remarked that she looked quite different, that +having her hair done differently had transformed +her: I saw now that the ragged effect had been +originally intentional. She said: “Yes, and I +suppose you’re going to tell me that it looks terrible, +too.” “You look like a French whore!” said +Pete. “Well, you know what you look like?” said +Daisy. “You look like some kind of a goblin +that’s been drowned at the bottom of a well!” +And it was true: with his gargoyle gaze, his haggard, +greenish cheeks, the deep furrows in his +forehead and the ape-like lines to his wide mouth, +he had an aspect half immature and half prematurely +old, at once disaffected and aghast. There +seemed to have occurred, since I had talked to +them on the telephone, some abysmal lapse of hilarity. +Yet Pete Bird’s double-breasted jacket, his +spats, the handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, +and the collar of his blue shirt fastened together +by a small gold pin, gave to his appearance and to +the whole situation an odd indestructible note of +urbanity and smartness.</p> + +<p>In that atmosphere clouded by drunkenness, I +glanced instinctively about for a drink, and saw +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span>nothing but empty bottles and a débris of the +enormous thick crusts of delicatessen sandwiches, +with the oiled paper in which they had been +wrapped. “There’s nothing to drink,” declared +Daisy with what I thought was a note of asperity. +“What is this place, anyway?” I asked. “Listen +to-um!” said Daisy, indignantly. “He expects us +to tend bar for-um!”</p> + +<p>“No,” I explained, “I just meant, who lives +here?” “It belongs to Larry Mickler,” she replied, +as if she had already, over the telephone, +made all this quite clear enough. “Mr. and Mrs. +Lawrence Mickler,” said Pete, with the invincible +gentlemanly instinct to be informative and agreeable +from his grave at the bottom of the well.</p> + +<p>I inquired where the host and hostess were. +“Well,” said Pete, as if his own extinction, +though powerless to impair his politeness, had +rendered him uncannily detached toward the catastrophic +fates of others, “Mr. Mickler’s in the +bathroom, probably unconscious, and Mrs. Mickler’s +in the bedroom, sore as a crab.” “I insulted +the hostess,” said Daisy. “Well, anyway,” concluded +Pete, “that leaves the drawing-room to +us!”</p> + +<p>The drawing-room, like everything else in that +place, cooped one up and made one uncomfortable: +I saw, at the other end, a contracted fireplace, +like a large square-cornered rat-hole, with, +above it, on the shallow mantelpiece, a plaster cast +of the Winged Victory; and between two narrow +windows, which looked down on the Thirty-fourth +Street car-tracks, a bookcase containing, I +noted, volumes of D. H. Lawrence, Cabell, Dunsany, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span>and Shaw; George Moore’s <i>Memoirs of My +Dead Life</i>; Freud’s <i>Interpretation of Dreams</i>; +Frank Harris’s <i>Oscar Wilde</i>; several volumes of +Levy’s <i>Nietzsche</i> and a whole shelf’s array of +Dostoevsky.</p> + +<p>“Come on,” exclaimed Daisy abruptly, swinging +out of the morris chair. “Let’s get out of +here right away!” I asked her where she wanted +to dine, in the hope that we might now be able to +effect a separation from Pete. “I don’t want any +dinner!” she replied, as if nothing could have +seemed more revolting. “I’ve just had some +sandwiches.—What I want is a dirty big drink!”</p> + +<p>“I’d better say good-by to Larry,” suggested +Pete Bird. “I wouldn’t say good-by to-um,” said +Daisy, “after the way he acted with us.”</p> + +<p>Pete went into the little corridor and knocked +on the bathroom door. “We had a fight,” Daisy +explained. “We would have left before, if we +hadn’t been waiting for you. Larry sent Pete out +to the delicatessen’s to get some sandwiches for +supper and gave him a ten-dollar bill—and Pete +brought back six sandwiches and Larry didn’t +think that Pete had given-um back enough change +and accused Pete of keeping the money—when +they’d actually cost that much!” We could hear +the voice of Pete in the bathroom, pleading with +the host on a tone of gentlemanly reasonableness. +I asked how the <i>Frolics</i> were going. “Oh, I got +canned!” she replied, sullenly and shortly. “I +stayed away from too many rehearsals.”</p> + +<p>Pete returned with Larry Mickler. He was a +young man with dingy skin, a round head and a +small dark mustache, very smartly and cockily +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">123</span>waxed: he bent forward from the waist when he +shook hands with me, and I took an almost immediate +dislike to him: he was taller than Pete Bird, +but not so tall as I.</p> + +<p>Pete was urging Larry Mickler to come out +with us, and I seconded him insincerely. “Get +Alice out,” Pete insisted, “and make her come +along, too!” “Oh, she’s tired,” Larry Mickler +perfunctorily assured him—“she doesn’t want to +come!”</p> + +<p>“I’m not out for any looping,” said Daisy, with +what I thought—with what I hoped—was an intention +of discouraging this idea. “I think I’ll go +home and go to bed.” “You’re not going home +yet, little woman,” Pete asserted, with a firm, +though humorous, accent of masculine domination. +“You’re not going home to bed till you’ve +had a little insomnia-medicine, a little touch of +the magic elixir that causes the lame to see and +the tongue-tied to run like rabbits! The old miracle-scattering +scamper-juice!—Am I right?” he +appealed to me.</p> + +<p>“Let’s go to Tony Scallopino’s,” suggested +Larry Mickler. “Let’s not!” said Daisy promptly. +“You see,” Pete Bird explained, with dignity, +irony and ease, “Tony raised a check of mine +once and I’ve never felt quite the same about +him since.” I proposed Harry Heinz’s. “Well, +Harry Heinz and I are not quite the best of +friends either,” Pete casually replied. “In my +opinion, a restaurant is a place where the patrons +are supposed to drink while the man who runs the +place stays sober: when the guests have to take +care of the proprietor and put him under the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">124</span>pump, I consider that the time has arrived to seek +recreation elsewhere!”</p> + +<p>“Let’s go to Sue Borglum’s!” said Daisy, with +a sudden inspiration. “To-night is Thursday +night, and she has a party every Thursday. I +saw her the other day and I promised that I’d +come.—Oh, I’m so glad I thought of that!” she +added, smiling for the first time. “I want to see +Sue Borglum!”</p> + +<p>“All right: Sue Borglum’s it is!” Pete approved, +with rollicking decisiveness. “Come: snap +into your coats, ladies and gents! Let’s be off to +some place where there’s stimulants!”</p> + +<p>I helped Daisy on with her coat, and as I caught +a momentary glimpse of her pale watery-yolked +poached eyes, it seemed to me—(Rita and I had +read some scientific books together: the vision +of human futility which she derived from scientific +ideas exercised upon her a strong fascination, +and threw her back with an exacerbated +appetite on the gratification of the moment—and +to-night it was these scientific images which rose +to my own imagination at the expense of both +Sophocles and Rita’s poems themselves)—it +seemed to me as if the Daisy whose profile had +appeared to me in the theatre, so fragile, pale and +chaste, whom almost with the tenderness of tears +I had covered with a blanket in Forty-fourth Street—as +if that Daisy had been merely the spray of +which I had happened to catch a glimpse for a +moment on a wave of common human colloids, the +unstable fluids of the body, continually gluing and +ungluing—or a cloud which had for a moment +taken symmetry from those atoms of carbon and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span>the other things, but which to-night had been +blown awry. I turned Daisy’s collar down +carefully.</p> + +<p>Larry Mickler had been getting into his coat, a +garish rust-red ulster, and Pete Bird had been +helping him on with it. Now Mickler pulled up +his collar, which completely covered his ears, and +slapped on a rakish felt hat, pulling the brim down +over his eyes.</p> + +<p>“You know, that damn statue annoys me!”—he +indicated the Winged Victory: I saw that he +was drunk. “Alice’s had that goddam thing ever +since we were married: she acquired it at college. +It always reminds me of a chicken running around +with its head cut off!”</p> + +<p>He produced a revolver from his pocket and, +almost before we had seen it, had fired before him +point-blank at the little plaster cast: it fell from +the mantel, and lay shattered in chalky fragments +and flakes.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Mickler, “so much for Nikky! +Alice may miss her at first, but I’m sure it’ll be a +splendid thing for her to have to get along without +her.—I feel almost,” he added, grinning at +us, “as if I’d committed a murder, though! ‘Ad +Writer Slays Phi Beta Kappa Girl!’—Well, let’s +go! The neighbors may be coming in to find out +who’s been shot!”</p> + +<p>He turned to me, grinning, and explained, as if +in friendly humorous confidence: “No disrespect +to the Greeks!—I’m a Dionysian myself!—sometimes +a Dionysian and sometimes an Apollonian!—it +all depends on metabolism!” He began to sing, +parodying the popular song:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Sometimes I’m Dionysian!—sometimes I’m Apollonian!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My disposition depends on metabolism!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Then, finding me a little unresponsive, he changed +his tone and addressed me more earnestly: “I just +wanted you to know,” he insisted, “that I don’t +mean any disrespect to the Greeks. The Greeks +knew what it was all about: they danced with +arms and legs—but we lock ourselves up in the +bathroom because we’re afraid to face life!”</p> + +<p>“Say, listen,” declared Daisy, “if you’re going +to go out with us, you’ve got to leave that thing +behind! I can face life without it.” “Take it +along to protect you!” said Mickler. “Never know +who’s going to stick you up nowadays!” “Don’t +be a fool,” said Daisy. “I won’t, sweetheart,” he +retorted. “Never you worry about that!”</p> + +<p>“I’m going to say good-by to Alice!” said +Daisy, as if with a sudden resurgence of sympathy. +She went out into the little hallway and +knocked at the bedroom door, but there was no +reply. “Oh, she’s all right!” insisted Larry Mickler. +“She probably thinks I’ve shot myself—let +her enjoy a few moments’ happiness!” Pete and +Mickler put their arms around Daisy, propelled +her along the little hallway and pushed her out +through the apartment door.</p> + +<p>Outside, we found the lady in the dressing-gown, +who giggled ingratiatingly: “I thought I +heard a shot.” “I was just shooting a cat,” said +Larry Mickler. “It was keeping my wife awake!”</p> + +<p>I finally, standing in the slush, succeeded in +capturing a taxi; it couldn’t draw up to the curb, +and Daisy got her feet wet. She seemed worried +and morose.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span></p> + +<p>“That old hag’ll lie awake all night,” remarked +Larry Mickler, with a chuckle, “thinking that I’ve +killed Alice!” “Well,” said Pete, “it will doubtless +afford her a great deal of entertainment. I’m +sure her life is far too tame!” “Yes,” said Mickler, +“how they lick their chops in vicarious enjoyment +over other people’s murders! How all the +world loves a murderer!” “It would take more +than that,” said Daisy, “to make me love you!”</p> + +<p>“I hear,” said Larry Mickler, changing the subject +and evidently attempting to talk more soberly—“I +hear that Bobby McIlvaine has given Sue +Borglum the air.—Is that true?” he inquired of +Daisy. “Guess so,” said Daisy. “I don’t know.” +“I guess he decided that she’d done all she could +for him,” Larry Mickler continued, “and that it +was time to move farther up-town!” (Sue Borglum, +who knew every one, more or less, had taken +Bobby McIlvaine up soon after the night that I +had met them at Ray Coleman’s, and had smoothed +his way among the managers and dramatists.) I +remarked that I considered Bobby McIlvaine a +very gifted fellow, none the less, and that I admired +his designs for Homer. “Yes,” said Mickler, +“but why not make designs for Wells’s <i>Outline +of History</i>? Why not try to produce the +<i>World Almanac</i>?—Bobby McIlvaine’s all right +on paper, but did you ever see a show that he’d +staged that was worth its space in the storehouse? +Look at <i>April Showers</i>, for instance: Fritz Fishbein, +Al Leiper’s publicity man, blames Bobby for +the show being a flop. It seems that Bobby insisted +on putting in a trick ballet, where the chorus +had to wear papier-mâché bodies. Al Leiper wanted +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">128</span>to throw it out at dress rehearsal, because the +papier-mâché bodies took up too much room behind—they +could hardly change the scenery. But +Bobby hit on the brilliant idea of sending them +downstairs in an elevator—it seems they use elevators +in Berlin. The first night, the elevator got +stuck just before the second act and they couldn’t +ring the curtain up—they had to hold it twenty +minutes. Finally, Al Leiper sent some stage-hands +down with great big mallets and—zongo! zongo! +zongo!—they just smashed in the elevator doors +and threw all the papier-mâché bodies out in the +alley—and then, when that was full, they threw +them into Beattie’s drug-store. There were all +those pop-eyed dummies which Bobby had been +working on for God knows how long lying around +Beattie’s—though I don’t suppose you could have +told them from the customers!—What a civilization, +eh?” he turned to me again. “Bring slavery +back, I say—it never should have been abolished! +Bring slavery back and make nine-tenths of the +people slaves! Then the superior man would be +free to live life like it ought to be lived! As it is, +the civilized man has got to black the peasant’s +boots!”</p> + +<p>We had come to the end of Fifth Avenue, and +Daisy, sliding back the glass panel that opened in +the front of the cab, directed the driver to turn to +the right.</p> + +<p>Among those tangled irregular streets to the +west of Washington Square, I caught occasionally, +from the taxi, a glimpse, almost eighteenth-century, +of a lampless black-windowed street-end +where the street-urchins, shrieking in the silence, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span>were stacking up bonfires in the snow—those lost +corners of the old provincial city, where the traffic +of the upper metropolis no longer gnashed iron +teeth, no longer oppressed the pavements with its +grindings and its groans—where those soft moans +and hoots of the shipping washed the island from +the western shore. There they had come, those +heroes of my youth, the artists and the prophets +of the Village, from the American factories and +farms, from the farthest towns and prairies—there +they had found it possible to leave behind +them the constraints and self-consciousness of +their homes, the shame of not making money—there +they had lived with their own imaginations +and followed their own thought. I did not know +that, with the coming of a second race, of which +Ray Coleman, without my divining it, had already +appeared as one of the forerunners—a mere miscellaneous +hiving of New Yorkers like those in +any other part of town, with no leisure and no beliefs—I +did not know that I was soon to see the +whole quarter fall a victim to the landlords and +the real-estate speculators, who would raise the +rents and wreck the old houses—till the sooty +peeling fronts of the south side of Washington +Square, to whose mysterious studios, when I had +first come to live in the Village, I had so much +longed some day to be admitted, should be replaced +by fresh arty pinks—till the very guardian +façades of the north side should be gutted of their +ancient grandeurs and crammed tight with economized +cells—till the very configuration of the +streets should be wiped out, during a few summer +months when I had been out of New York +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span>on vacation, by the obliteration of whole blocks, +whole familiar neighborhoods—and till finally the +beauty of the Square, the pattern of the park and +the arch, the proportions of everything, should be +spoiled by the first peaks of a mountain-range of +modern apartment-houses (with electric refrigerators, +uniformed elevator boys and, on the street-level, +those smartly furnished restaurants in which +Hugo was soon to be horrified at finding copies +of <i>Town and Country</i>), dominating and crushing +the Village, so that at last it seemed merely to +survive as a base for those gigantic featureless +mounds, swollen, clumsy, blunt, bleaching dismally +with sandy yellow walls that sunlight which +once, in the autumn, on the old fronts of the +northern side, still the masters of their open plaza—when +the shadows of the leafless trees seemed +to drift across them like clouds—had warmed +their roses to red.</p> + +<p>Sue Borglum, at any rate, at the time of which +I am writing, had rented the whole of a large +old house (of which she sub-let the top floor and +the basement) in one of the oldest obscurest +streets, where the children, deserting their bonfire, +came clamoring to open our door, and where +the lights and sounds of the party seemed incongruously +bright and loud amid the darkness and +silence about. There were dark double ogival +outer doors and, inside them, another pair of +doors, with a design in frosted glass of sphinx-heads +and vine-leaf scrolleries.</p> + +<p>We pulled a bell, and a Jap let us in. Sue Borglum +rushed up boisterously to greet us: she seemed +high-keyed and overwrought, and embraced Daisy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span>with cries of “<em>Darling!</em>” In her blatant green +evening gown, with a rhinestone aigrette in her +hair and on her fingers a large scarab and some +diamonds, she seemed to me uglier than ever: her +cheeks were beginning to hang in jowls, her wide +mouth was a grotesque gash of lipstick, and the +pouches under her eyes were as distinctly shaded +off from her cheeks as if they had been drawn by +a caricaturist. Behind her, rose the hubbub of +the party: the hallway and the rooms were full of +people.</p> + +<p>We had started up-stairs to put our things away +when Sue Borglum, gesticulating frantically toward +a water-cooler in the hall near the staircase, +shouted after us: “Cocktails!—Cocktails!—That +water-cooler’s full of cocktails.—Yes! Isn’t it a +grand idea?”</p> + +<p>Pete and Daisy came down first, and Sue had +already swept them off by the time Larry Mickler +and I had arrived at the foot of the stairs: we +stopped at the water-cooler and drew drinks. +Larry Mickler swallowed his at a gulp. “That +little bastard, Pete Bird!” he complained. “I gave +him ten dollars at my house to get some sandwiches +for supper and what do you think he did? +He went out and got liverwurst—the cheapest +kind there is!—and then had the Christ-Almighty +nerve to bring me back four dollars change—six +dollars for six sandwiches!” I asked whether he +thought that Daisy was pretty fond of Pete. “She +hasn’t got the capacity for love,” he replied, shaking +his head with a sneer and turning the spigot +for another cocktail. “But they’re two of a kind—out +for what they can do you for! She’s a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span>cold little proposition that calculates every kiss—and +he owes money, or he’s passed bad checks, in +every joint below Fourteenth Street. It’s wonderful +how he’s able to get away with it even +where they’re cagy! He’s got this soft-spoken +wide-eyed way with him.—Well, <em>he</em> can have +her!”</p> + +<p>We moved on to the door of the front room. +Sue Borglum’s front room was spacious and not +without a certain grandeur: I could see, above a +marble fireplace, the wide sheet of a gilt-framed +mirror, which doubled the high white mouldings +and the sombre maroon wall-paper.—Such a house +as I had once imagined for Rita and myself to +live in! Ah, I should have asked nothing better +of life than to have fitted up such a house, to have +passed my days alone with Rita in those high +quiet rooms, hidden away among those crooked +streets, with poetry and love!—But these fancies +now seemed to me naïve, and I was ashamed of +ever having had them. I stoically dismissed them +from my mind, and could still, I found, feel hope +and excitement amid the variety and gaiety of the +Village, so densely intermingling, so vivaciously +chattering about me: the Italian and Russian +painters; the intelligent amateur actors; the mad +baroness who kept a restaurant; the radical journalists +and agitators, who, despite the homely +forthright style of their writings, not infrequently +turned out, when one met them, to be engagingly +shy, and sometimes to possess personal charm to +a degree almost cloying; the pretty Jewesses with +thick red lips and glossy black bobbed hair; the +austere and handsome woman managers of theatres +and magazines, with their dignity of Mother +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span>Superiors; and the megalomaniac lunatics whom +it was the thing rather to like.</p> + +<p>Larry Mickler and I, in the doorway, did not +at first encounter any one we knew. “Well,” said +Mickler, lifting his cocktail, “here’s to the Seven +Deadly Sins! May they never perish from the +earth!—Let’s drink to the memory of Dostoevsky—the +only goddam genius,” he added, “who ever +understood the human soul!” I drank with him to +Dostoevsky. “The Seven Deadly Sins!” said +Larry Mickler scornfully. “What chance have +they got to-day when everybody wears these horn-rimmed +glasses!”</p> + +<p>I wondered whether it mightn’t be true that a +novelist like Dostoevsky was greater than any +lyric poet, even so great a one as Rita—but suppose +the play on which Rita was working should +turn out to reveal wider gifts?—And, stimulated +by my cocktail, I asked myself whether, in spite +of everything, I shouldn’t go to see her again, +when she eventually came back from her aunt’s: +I had behaved so horribly when we had parted, +and we had exchanged no letters since she left.</p> + +<p>A man who had been leaning over the back of +a couch that faced the marble fireplace moved +away and let me see the head and neck of a woman +who was sitting on the couch and whose bobbed +and coppery hair reminded me of Rita’s.—What +a comfort that it could not be she! Then the woman, +turning her head with a staccato birdlike +movement, in some gay interchange with the man +sitting next to her, revealed her profile and I saw +that it was Rita. I could see also that the man +was Ray Coleman.</p> + +<p>My companion recognized him at the same +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span>time: “There’s Ray Coleman over there!” he exclaimed. +“He’s just got a new job on the <i>Sketch!</i>” +Larry Mickler made his way across the room. I +followed him, and spoke to Rita over the back of +the couch, taking care to betray no surprise.</p> + +<p>“How long have you been back?” I inquired. +“Since last Friday—last Friday night,” she replied, +as if by frankness and accuracy to fend off +my disapproval.</p> + +<p>I asked about her aunt: “She’s much better,” +she assured me, smoothing out the creases of her +smile and making her eyes, which looked to me +now like little hard green pebbles of glass, serious +and blank. “The doctor said that she was simply +tired out, that all she needed was to rest. My +mother is still up there with her.—Do come around +and sit down!” I sat down, not beside her on the +couch, but on a stool at one side of the fireplace.</p> + +<p>“You know, I was thinking about you,” she +said, “just before I left!” “What made you do +that?” I asked. “I went wading in Stony River +one day—in the cold, and everything!—and I +thought about you then—because you liked the +poem, you know!—You know, it was freezing +cold: I almost froze my feet off—but somehow I +wanted to do it!”</p> + +<p>I asked how she’d got on with her play. She +dropped her eyes, which had girlishly puckered +over her wading in Stony River: “Well, I haven’t +actually <em>written</em> very much, but I’ve thought about +it a lot. I know just what I <em>want</em> to write—I’ve +got it all blocked out, you know!” And sustained +by this triumphant phrase, she lifted earnest eyes +to mine.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span></p> + +<p>I said that she looked awfully well—and it was +true: she had already been flushed by the excitement +of conversation, and when I spoke to her, +she had flushed more deeply, so that she burned +like a little furnace, as she had done that first +night in Bank Street when she and I had talked +about poetry. She had brought back from the +country a complexion refreshed from the tarnish +of the city, and the contours of her face had filled +out again: again she could challenge the world +from the tower of her lovely throat, which gave +to her little figure a dignity almost extra-human, +like the dignity of a great work of art. “And I +<em>feel</em> so well,” she replied. “I went tramping and +sleighing and skating!—I did all the things that +I hadn’t done since I was a little girl! And I tell +you, I went <em>wading!</em>—you don’t seem impressed +by that, but I assure you it was no tame experience: +the water was so cold that it burned! The +snow is still on the ground up there, two feet deep—the +river-banks were all crusted with ice—in +some places there were little fragile translucent +ledges of ice that came out over the water—just +like blades of swords made of ice!—You know, +I’m going to have a sword that’s made of ice in +my play—don’t you think that’s a wonderful +idea?” “I should think it would break easily,” I +replied. “Not if it was sharp enough!” “Perhaps +not.” “Mine will be!” she held her own, grinning +briefly. “Well, anyway, I went wading—and it +was so <em>thrilling!</em> You haven’t any idea how beautiful +a river is in winter till you get right out in +the middle of it and see the water still alive like +quicksilver in the midst of the dead frozen landscape—running +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span>away between the wicked jagged +edges! It’s as if the tighter other things froze, +the faster the river ran—like a live vein in a paralyzed +body!”</p> + +<p>Her feeling for Stony River, which had once +so completely enchanted me, now irritated me profoundly. +I could see plainly in imagination some +tall young country boy, panting with desire and +only too happy to accompany her on her uncomfortable +escapade: he would have carried her, of +course, over the bad spots—would, in fact, probably +have carried her most of the time—he had +ended no doubt by chafing her feet.</p> + +<p>“It must have been wonderful,” I replied, and +turned away to listen to Ray Coleman. Lina Lemberg, +the young Polish girl who had been convicted +of murdering her husband, had just been +sentenced to death; and Ray was describing with +enthusiasm how he had pursued the car which was +taking her to Sing Sing, and had succeeded in +having her photographed from the taxi. (He had +just left the <i>Telegram-Despatch</i> for the city desk +of the <i>Daily Sketch</i>, the most important of the +new tabloids.) “I see,” said Larry Mickler, showing +small white even teeth, “that she says she +wishes Nicky were back with her.” “She’s going +to get half her wish,” said Ray—“She’s going +to get it fifty-fifty: she’s not going to get Nicky +back, but she’s going to go to join him!” Larry +Mickler laughed with loud appreciation. “Well,” +he remarked, “the murderer has his fun, and he +ought to be willing to pay for it! True, he has to +pay dearer than most people—but then he has +more fun!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span></p> + +<p>Ray presented Larry Mickler to Rita: he did +so with obvious pride—with, it seemed to my +jealous eye, something akin to an air of proprietorship. +Rita invited Larry Mickler to sit down, +and he took the stool on the other side of the fireplace. +Ray Coleman inquired affably how Mickler’s +own work was going. “It’s just the same old +hick-diddling game!” he replied, leaning forward, +his hands clasped between his knees. “We still +manage to land the suckers!” I thought that he +was ashamed of the advertising business, and was +being contemptuous about it for Rita’s benefit. +“Our latest masterpiece was putting over Marona—‘Makes +the Mouth Safe for Teeth!’ was a product +of our fly-paper factory.” “You don’t say!” +Ray Coleman exclaimed, raising his almost continuous +eyebrows, as if this feat commanded respect. +“Is that so?” “You know what it’s made +of, don’t you?” “No,” admitted Ray Coleman, +“what?” “Horse-chestnuts! Nothing but horse-chestnuts! +Just nothing in the world but plain old +buckeyes! Can you beat it? A million and a-half +people every morning, sitting down to a breakfast +of buckeyes, with sugar and cream!” “Don’t you +do anything to them?” asked Ray. “Not a blessed +thing!—just chop ’em up. We’ve struck such +terror into the hearts of the boobs by telling them +that ordinary food was soft and ruined their +teeth, and that in a few more generations the human +race would be toothless, that now there are a +million and a half people breaking their jaws +every morning over horse-chestnuts! ‘Makes the +Mouth Safe for Teeth!’—they find it irresistible!”</p> + +<p>“Say,” said Coleman, humorously, “isn’t it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span>about time that the Osage orange got a break?” +“You might sell them for their perfume,” said +Rita. “They have a marvellous smell, you know!” +“By Jove, that’s a good idea!” said Coleman. +“You might have all the women carrying them +around!” I doubted whether on ordinary occasions +he would have considered this a particularly +good idea—it seemed to me all too plain that he +had fallen under the spell of Rita and that he +thought only of playing up to her. I remembered +the night when I had first met them and when +Rita had agreed with me that Ray was poisonous. +“They’d be a little heavy, I’m afraid, to carry +around,” said Rita. “And they wouldn’t be becoming +to many people. I might wear one, though—a +very little one—on account of the color of +my eyes!”</p> + +<p>She was gay, and seemed to me so pleased with +herself, so sufficient to herself, so remote from +me; and I reflected that, while she had been speaking, +I had been aware, for the first time since the +earliest days of our acquaintance, of her acquired +English accent. Not that she always spoke in this +way: she had the accent in which she recited her +poems and the accent of the Village gamine—nor +did she hesitate to bite down on a hard up-country +r, when some special situation—a sundae at +the soda-fountain or a hammock on a porch—had +suggested to her versatile spirit the rôle of a girl +in a small town; but, coming in contact with English +actresses during the days when she had been +on the stage, her natural disposition toward brittleness +and briskness had found their accent a congenial +modification, and it was this accent which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span>usually predominated on occasions when she was +meeting strangers. Yet how many times since that +first night I must have heard her drop into this +manner, without ever having been aware of it! +And I was sharply forced to take account of the +distance between the present and the days when I +had first known Rita. Then, I had been in love—and +that was what it meant to be in love: so to +surround, so to devour, another human being +with tenderness, passion, admiration, that their +very absurdities and perversities had been fused +with the rest in the furnace till there was nothing +but a white molten glow—till one resented, not +merely the hostility, but even the critical detachment +of others, because the point of view of a +critic was unimaginable from one’s own. But +that critical detachment, to-day it was I who exercised +it—and at the thought that I could now +meet Rita with a mind which had become so cold +that I could note her little affectations, I was +filled, not with the relief I hoped for and in which I +tried to believe, but with horror and fear. She had +gone, the creature who had summoned my love—or +whom my love itself had created, I hardly now +knew which—the being, who had commanded the +allegiance of mind, imagination and desire—and +could I never now rejoin her again? Was it true +that my love had been destroyed? Could I never +retrace my way? Could I never get back across +that chasm?</p> + +<p>“I declare,” Larry Mickler was saying, “I don’t +know where a civilized man can find more hilarious +entertainment than in the advertising game. +You’d never believe what the boobs will consume +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span>till you actually commence to feed ’em! You can +make ’em do anything, buy anything! All you +need is a gaudy picture and an idiotic phrase and +you can make them do themselves an actual injury! +Now, of course, in the case of Marona, +for example, horse-chestnuts are indigestible—they +make the mouth safe for teeth but they ruin +the digestion. But that doesn’t discourage the +suckers for a minute. If they get sick, it would +never occur to them to blame it on the Marona, +because Marona, according to the ads, has been +endorsed by eminent dentists. Nothing was said +about stomach specialists.—But then I suppose +it’s a desirable thing to provide the peritonitis +surgeons with work—they’re usually civilized fellows, +the surgeons, and, if they prosper at the expense +of the peasantry, that’s quite as it ought to +be.—You must have a lot of fun yourself”—he +addressed himself to Ray Coleman—“in the newspaper +game.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Ray. “It’s amazing really. You +can’t lay it on too thick—the more maudlin and +preposterous it is, the better they seem to like it. +Have you been reading Lina Lemberg’s confessions +in the <i>Sketch</i>? They’re written by Ted Mahony +in the office—you know Ted, a big husky +Irishman who’s always half-stewed. You know +that installment where she tells about the birth of +little Annie—well, when he read that aloud in the +office just after he’d written it, the other day, he +almost broke up the shop!”</p> + +<p>I asked Rita where she was living. “Well, I’m +not living anywhere exactly,” she answered. “I’ve +just been visiting around.” She lifted her eyes +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span>quickly. “I’ll let you know when I’m settled.” +“You must let me see your play, when it’s finished,” +I said.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you think it’s going to be fine?” Ray +Coleman demanded eagerly. “Have you heard +about the idea?” I assured him that I had. He +turned to Larry Mickler: “She’s got the swellest +idea. It’s about this old woman who lives in a +tower——”</p> + +<p>Larry Mickler leaned forward to listen, with a +polite appreciative leer; and Ray Coleman described +Rita’s play with an enthusiasm even more +emphatic than he had brought to his previous account +of the photographing of Lina Lemberg. And +it seemed to me that Rita herself was gratified by +this enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>It had already occurred to me that Coleman +must be in love with Rita: everybody, more or +less, was. But now, with horror, I remembered +that, since Daisy had left him, he must be living +alone in his apartment, and that Rita, when I had +asked her where she was staying, had seemed +evasive about her address. I watched Ray Coleman +telling the plot of Rita’s play, and Rita herself, +following intently and occasionally prompting +or checking up—lifting her eyes briefly to +smile or to put in a quick supplementary word +when Larry Mickler expressed appreciation, and +punctuating the pauses with puffs at her cigarette.</p> + +<p>I felt an urgent need to get away, and, looking +up, I saw Hugo Bamman, standing alone like a +heron, just back of Rita’s couch, his head thrust +forward, his shoulders hunched up, his long arms +hugged to his sides and his hands in his trousers +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span>pockets, staring out, as I supposed, half-blindly +at the people moving about him.</p> + +<p>I got up and went around to speak to him: I +was glad of a pretext for leaving in the middle of +Ray Coleman’s recital.</p> + +<p>When Hugo turned at my greeting, I was astounded +to find his appearance completely transformed. +Instead of regarding me at first for a +moment with dubious unrecognizing goggles, he +fixed upon me a naked gaze of deep-sunken but +piercing black eyes. I asked him what had become +of his spectacles, and he explained to me that +he had been going to a new oculist, who had discovered +a revolutionary method of treating myopic +vision: this oculist made his patients go without +glasses and had them exercise the muscles of +their eyes. Hugo’s father, to his dying hour, +when he had lain sick in his Adirondack camp, +had refused to summon a doctor; and Hugo himself +was suspicious of doctors, as of all the respectable +professions. But in this case, the doctor +was himself a heretic and an outlaw: the fact +that his methods had been denounced by all the +other oculists was enough to convince Hugo of +their value. The immediate effects of the treatment +were in appearance certainly remarkable: +Hugo had unsheathed from behind his mild round +blinders a darkly burning and eagle-like glance, +beneath a steep and sharp-jutting brow which reminded +me for the first time of his father’s.</p> + +<p>And despite my present scornful point of view +toward Hugo’s political opinions, despite the fact +that it was so many months since I had made any +effort to look him up, I had never been so glad to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span>see him. For one thing, without his glasses, he +seemed to have become a more interesting person +and a person with whom it was easier to communicate: +but for another, I found it somehow +a relief to be talking again with some one whom +I had known before I had come to Greenwich Village. +As there was no place to sit down where +we were, and as the back room, where we found +a large table with a punch-bowl and sandwiches, +was crowded even more densely, we made our +way on through into the kitchen—which, by one +of those freaks of old houses renovated and rented +out for apartments, had been installed in a former +hallway and was thus located between the dining-room +and a bathroom (Sue Borglum had sub-let +the basement, where the original kitchen had been), +so that, in the absence of any other hallway, it +had become a thoroughfare for people passing +back and forth between the two.</p> + +<p>In the kitchen, I was surprised to find Pete +Bird, who so short a time before had been displaying +so invincible an <i>élan</i>, sitting alone, with his +elbow on the sink and his hand propping up his +head, his visage chopfallen and greenish almost +with the mask of death, and his eyelids sealed.</p> + +<p>Our entrance did not disturb him, and we +perched on the drawers of a china-cupboard on +the other side of the long narrow room. I spoke +to Hugo of a school-friend of ours who had just +produced a successful play; and though Hugo’s +friendly interest was largely superficial—since he +disapproved on principle both of everything connected +with his school-days and of everything connected +with Broadway success—I found an unexpected +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span>pleasure in returning thus for a moment +to that world of our early years upon which we +had both turned our backs, a world where, for all +its limitations, the ordinary contacts of life had +been easier and more agreeable than one usually +found them in New York: that world had been +conventional, but a common understanding had at +least meant a mutual confidence. In the Village, +I had felt less and less confidence in the people +with whom I came into contact and, what was +worse, since my difficulties with Rita, less confidence +in myself. And I found now that—despite +Hugo’s stern rejection of everything he had been +taught in his youth—I was aware to-night principally +of his good manners, his integrity and his +cultivated intelligence. He had been the first of +the boys I had known at school who had really +interested me, and he had remained almost the +only one.</p> + +<p>I remembered now how, on one occasion in our +school-days, Hugo’s father had come to see him +and had sat down on the bed and talked. I had +heard something about Mr. Bamman and, although +Hugo rarely spoke of him, I had always +been conscious of him, in the background of Hugo’s +life, as an important and formidable person. +But Mr. Bamman, though his dignity was regal +and his Olympian brow and beard almost those +of the schoolroom Zeus, had turned out unexpectedly +agreeable. He had asked me questions about +my studies and my reading quite as if I had been +a grown-up person, and had listened to my opinions +with a deference to which I was entirely unaccustomed. +When he had learned that, in our +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span>English course, we had been studying <i>Julius Cæsar</i>, +he had embarked upon a discussion of Shakespeare +very different from any I had heard in my +English classes: what especially impressed me was +the respectful but urbane familiarity with which +he dealt with that great name—as if Shakespeare +were a man like himself, as if he were, in some +sense, Shakespeare’s equal. He spoke of Shakespeare’s +amazing comprehension of political life, +of the eternal universal types of his historical +plays; to my surprise, he compared Coriolanus to +Benedict Arnold; then in a manner both ironic +and serious went on to speak of the Senate and +the White House, as he had known them in his +time. I had never heard any one talk so before: +it was as if the world of Benedict Arnold had for +him the same sort of reality as the world of McKinley +and Cleveland; and what was more surprising +still, as if Shakespeare belonged to the +same world as the United States; as if he, Hugo +Bamman’s father, belonged to the world of history +and of literature, and as if he took it for +granted that we, since he talked to us as to equals, +might hope to belong to it, too; as if, in fact, that +world were our world! For the first time, I had +had the sense of that reality—soon, at that age, +to coagulate from what we see, what we read of or +are told, and what we experience within ourselves—which +finally supplies so astonishing a connection +between the private emotions and thoughts, +and the names and legends, of youth.</p> + +<p>I reminded Hugo now of this incident, and was +going on to tell him of my great admiration for +his father, when he broke in: “Yes, Shakespeare +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span>and Milton: he used to read them to us every +night till I got so I hated them like poison! I +never really got to like Shakespeare till I read him +during the War—and I can’t stand Milton to this +day! I dare say it’s not Milton’s fault: it’s probably +simply due to the fact that Father and I antagonized +each other so.”</p> + +<p>This frankness on Hugo’s part surprised me: +I had always found him rather reticent both about +his family and himself. Whenever he had happened +to mention his father since the days when +we had been at school together, it had been always +with affection and respect, and even sometimes as +if with a sense of failure at having fallen short +of his father’s standard. Now it was as if Hugo’s +liberated gaze had been accompanied by some new +freedom of expression. But I was sorry, and a +little shocked, to hear that his relations with his +father had been difficult, and I asked him what +had been the matter.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know exactly,” he replied, “but we +never got along. He was pretty impossible at +home, and I suppose I sided with Mother against +him. He was nervous and hypochondriacal, and +used to shut himself up for days in his room, and +refuse to see anybody. Then, he would suddenly +appear in his dressing-gown, and freeze us with +wild prophetic looks, and announce that the household +was ‘hurtling to ruin!’ because he’d just gotten +a caterer’s bill or something. He finally had +the whole household so that it was just like some +kind of sanitarium—the doors were all muffled +with felt, and he couldn’t stand to have a light +burning or to hear a sound after he’d gone to bed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span>himself. He was never rude or domineering +about it, but he used to nag us to go to bed in +an insincerely amiable way that used to make me +furious. Of course, he could be charming and +sympathetic when any emergency or crisis arose, +and he was able to embarrass us and disarm us so +by having recourse to sympathy and charm, just +when we’d been resenting him at our bitterest, +that when it actually came to a show-down, we +were never able to stand up to him. In any case, +he had the effect on me of making me adopt the +opposite opinion to whatever his opinion was. We +used to have furious arguments about Socrates +and Christ: I used to back Socrates.—I must +have been an unbearable little kid myself. I never +really liked him or appreciated him until after he +was dead. The trouble was, I suppose, that he’d +identified the household with everything that was +stodgy and deadly that he’d been coming to loathe +more and more as the years went on.</p> + +<p>“He’d had a sort of a crush on Adelina Patti, +before he married Mother, and I think that somehow +all his life, in spite of the fact that he enjoyed +Washington for a while, he was worried +by the feeling that he’d really left the great world +behind. I remember he got a phonograph record +made by Adelina Patti just about the time she +was passing out, and when he heard it, he flew +into a rage and said it wasn’t like her at all, that +it was outrageous to allow such a record to be +sold—and then he shut himself up in his room +and wrote at something or other for days.</p> + +<p>“I think that he’d really wanted to be an artist—he +had a very fine voice, you know, and loved to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span>sing—but the 1880’s got him—and then, when he +found himself snowed under by American respectability, +he tried to be a saint. Even before +Mother died and he went to live in the Adirondacks, +he wanted to carry us all away to the wilderness +with him—but Mother wouldn’t let him.”</p> + +<p>I had drawn Hugo out about his father with +an interest all the more intent because I was trying +to keep my mind closed to Rita: but Mr. +Bamman and Adelina Patti had opened the fatal +abyss, and as Hugo saw me becoming abstracted, +he stopped talking and, looking around with eyes +which could now see so much farther, he remarked +that Pete Bird, who had not moved but +was still posed against the sink, looked exactly +like a waxwork. “Who is he, anyway?” I inquired. +“What does he do?” “Why, I don’t +think he does anything,” said Hugo. “He’s just +a bum like another.—He writes some wather nice +little poems occasionally!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Pete, not opening his eyes, but +speaking with perfect self-possession: “A bum +like another—but a poet, nevertheless!” “Have +you witten anything lately?” asked Hugo, with +one of those veritable hemorrhages of kindliness +which, when he feared he had hurt some one’s +feelings, often followed his bitterest strictures. +“I thought that some of your things in <i>Sedition</i> +were weally awfully nice!” “I’m not a poet!” +said Pete Bird, still without opening his eyes. +“Ask Giovanni Squarcillupi!—ask Mike Kraus!—ask +Miriam Fotherwell Finck!”</p> + +<p>“You haven’t any manuscripts about you at +this moment, have you?” inquired Hugo, who, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span>despite his harsh and contemptuous judgments, +had a secret sympathetic instinct for the vanities +and aspirations of others. “I feel that I could +read a little poetry. These parties seem to be +getting less and less stimulating—Sue is getting +to be more and more like a wegular Philadelphia +hostess!”</p> + +<p>Pete fumbled with one hand in his pocket, partially +opening his eyes, but still supporting his +head on his hand. He finally produced a cough-drop: +“Here’s a cough-drop,” he announced, “if +that would do just as well.—Eases irritation, just +like a poem. Of course, the cough-drop’s a little +bit fuzzy, but then the poems are a little bit +lousy!” “I know,” said Hugo sympathetically, +“when you try to find anything in your pocket, +you always fish up cough-drops and unpaid bills +and things!” “Bills!” said Pete Bird. “They +don’t even send me bills any more!—I’ve gotten +long past that stage!—Here’s a villanelle,”—he +said at length—“a little toy of a villanelle!—and +here’s an experimental poem—an experiment in +multiple metaphors—all of my metaphors are +multiple—they have an infinite number of facets—like +the eye of a fly!”</p> + +<p>He handed the verses to Hugo: “You read +them yourself,” he said—“My eyes are not very +good to-night,”—and lapsed back into immobility.</p> + +<p>The poems were on creased and dog-eared paper, +typed in very small type with rather a wavering +touch, but, to my surprise, they had a certain +charm, in a rose-petally, snow-flaky way. I could +not, to be sure, distinguish very much difference +between the sonnets and villanelles, on the one +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span>hand, and the “experimental” poems, on the +other: Pete Bird’s “multiple metaphors” turned +out to be quite easy and mild—his description, +for example, of his mistress’s hands as “little surprising +moonbeam violins.”</p> + +<p>The door into the dining-room opened, and +Larry Mickler and Daisy appeared.</p> + +<p>“Come on, yuh dope!” said Daisy to Pete Bird. +“What d’ye think yuh are, brooding around the +kitchen?—a cockroach?” “Get away, yuh dumb +cluck!” replied Pete, reluctantly opening his eyes, +“and leave me to my meditations!”</p> + +<p>“Let’s leave him to his slumbers,” said Larry +Mickler, who was evidently drunker than ever. +“The boy-friend’s passed out! Too many of +those rich liverwurst sandwiches!”</p> + +<p>“Come on, Mr. Zilch,” said Daisy, still addressing +Pete. “The little woman wants to go +home!” “Leave me alone for three minutes!” +said Pete Bird,—“only three minutes!—and I’ll +rejoin you in the drawing-room!” Though he +talked quietly and sensibly, he was evidently incapable +of moving. “Well, all right,” she replied, +with some bitterness. “But if you don’t make it +pretty snappy, you’ll find me gone!”</p> + +<p>“Come on back and let him have his sleep out,” +Larry Mickler pressed her, pulling at her arm.</p> + +<p>But Daisy, ignoring Mickler’s importunities as +well as Pete’s mildly aggrieved remonstrances, +turned to me: “Take me in,” she demanded, +“and get me a drink and dance with me!” She +had made up again since I had seen her: her eyebrows +had been heavily pencilled to an effect of +moth’s antennæ and her mouth had been heavily +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span>rouged, so that her sallow and waxen complexion +merely contributed a morbid paleness to an +effect of provocative luridity; and as I found myself +responding to her make-up, after my indifference +of the earlier evening, I reflected, with +dismay rather than cynicism, upon the purely +biological basis of the interest which we feel in +women, simple animals like ourselves, produced +upon a similar model, monotonous and banal, to +which only the recurrent brimming over of accumulating +spermatozoa imparts a recurrent attraction.</p> + +<p>“Very good!” assented Larry Mickler, with a +playfulness distinctly malignant. “Then I’ll just +practise a little marksmanship!” He retreated to +the end of the kitchen and, taking up a stand near +the bathroom door, he aimed his revolver at a +row of plates: “I wonder if I could pick those +off in order!”</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you break them with the butt of +the gun?” asked Daisy. “This long-range marksmanship +of yours burns me up! You’ve already +won the barbed-wire garters for shooting plaster +statues at two yards!”</p> + +<p>“Listen, Pete,” insisted Larry Mickler, disregarding +Daisy, “you go over to the far end of the +room and throw up the plates one by one—and +we’ll see how many I can pot!—like clay pigeons!” +“All right!” responded Pete, not moving +or opening his eyes. “Oh, don’t be <em>dull!</em>” cried +Daisy with disgust.</p> + +<p>Sue Borglum burst in with the Jap butler, who +produced, at her direction, from the ice-box, a +glass gallon-container of cocktails. She threw +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span>her arm around Daisy’s shoulder, and exclaimed +in a strained excited shriek which she seemed to +have become incapable of moderating: “Oh, you +<em>dear</em> child! You were an angel to come! Everybody’s +deserted me! Bobby said he’d be here at +ten, and it’s almost midnight now. I suppose he’s +gone out with his little cutie. I don’t mind his +keeping a girl—if he’d only get one that was intelligent, +or attractive, or something!—but she’s +just a dumb little wench out of the chorus—she +can’t even dance!” “I think all chorus girls are +dumb,” said Daisy. “I’ve just lost my job, +that’s why.” “Stand ’em on their heads and +they’re all alike!” said Pete Bird, without opening +his eyes. Sue squawked with delighted laughter.</p> + +<p>Larry Mickler, since Sue’s arrival had been +amusing himself at a distance by drawing his revolver +on an imaginary foe: he would whip it +out, declaring loudly: “I’ll teach those damn +goldfish to snap at me!”—then leer humorously +in our direction; but as nobody paid any attention +to him, he finally came over to the group and +poured himself a drink of Scotch from a bottle +standing on the table. “No wonder there are so +many hold-ups!” he contemptuously remarked to +me. “These dubs that we live among are just asking +to be knocked on the head and have their pennies +taken away from them!” He proposed +drinking to Dostoevsky. “We’ve done that already,” +I said. “Let’s do it again,” he insisted, +with a suggestion of becoming quarrelsome. +“Drinking to Dostoevsky is always in order!” +bubbled Hugo, with a tiresome recrudescence of +his gushing undergraduate enthusiasm.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span></p> + +<p>“Are you going to take me in to dance or aren’t +you?” demanded Daisy, turning to me, as Sue +Borglum plunged toward the bathroom to greet +with effusion another guest who was just emerging +from there and whom she seemed not previously +to have seen.</p> + +<p>Daisy and I left the kitchen together. As we +went, Larry Mickler called after me: “So twice +is too many times to drink to Dostoevsky, is it?” +Pete Bird was still sitting as before, his eyelids +dropped in their death-mask and his head propped +upon his hand—which, I observed, now that I +had read his verses, was finely articulated and +long.</p> + +<p>“Isn’t it wonderful,” Daisy observed, as we +made our way through the dining-room, “how +clean Sue Borglum keeps her kitchen! Most +kitchens would have an awful hangover after a +party like this—but I bet hers will be neat as a +pin!”</p> + +<p>I avoided the large front room and led Daisy +around by way of the hall, through a door that +opened out of the dining-room, to the room on +the other side of the house where people were +dancing to the phonograph.</p> + +<p>Daisy danced well: she was light; and the responsive +alacrity of her straight little legs walking +backward in the fox-trot had the same prosaic +charm as her speech.</p> + +<p>“Say, just do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t +leave me with Larry Mickler. If he tries to cut +in on you, don’t letum—I’ll just tellum, no soap!” +I asked her what sort of a fellow Larry Mickler +was. “Oh, he’s just a fool,” she replied.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span></p> + +<p>“I’m sorry about to-night,” she went on. “I +wanted to have dinner with you, but a whole lot +of things happened. I’m awfully sorry.” I told +her that her touzled hoodlum hair-cut went beautifully +with her plaid dress, and that the green in +the plaid dress went beautifully with the green of +her eyes. She said, “Yes, and the green of my +eyes goes beautifully with the green of my complexion!”</p> + +<p>I held her close: her lips were slightly open, her +eyes partly closed: I wondered whether she were +really lapsing into a voluptuous, languorous +dream or whether she were merely very tired. It +occurred to me, as I looked at Daisy’s fingers, +pale, brittle-looking and thin, that her hands, +which I had never considered among her prettiest +features, must be the “little surprising moonbeam +violins” of Pete Bird’s poem.</p> + +<p>But now I could stave it off no longer; I could +talk no longer against time: I had to think about +Rita and Ray! My first feeling had been one of +horror that Rita should have been capable of betraying, +not another, not me—but herself; then I +had made, in my mind, as I quitted the group, a +movement of repudiation which passed even beyond +anger; and, at the time I had been talking +to Hugo and after, this had lifted me to a sudden +elation of lucidity and freedom. But now my +need to love and believe in Rita, even stronger +than my impulse to reject her, reasserted itself. +She must have found, I saw now, in Ray Coleman, +with her confounded perverse generosity, +some fineness, some crippled aspiration, which +she had been able to cherish and feed. Was there +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span>not in his persistent desire to meet and entertain +artists the inveterate ungratified longing to think +and to feel like them? Had I not noted in him an +unexpected deference, even in his face something +gentle and abashed, when, after he had advanced +with his usual assurance some opinion on art or +literature, a critic or artist present had expressed +contradictory views? And as I had watched him +just now, in front of the fire, describing Rita’s +play, he had seemed to me more nearly amiable +than I had ever known him before. He was +happy because he felt himself on intimate terms +with Rita—because she had told him about her +play, and had allowed him to tell others. That +was his destiny, perhaps—his salvation: to praise +her, to care for her, to soothe her, to guard her +from the pack of suitors who came baying after +her like dogs—and so, at last, he might become +useful and happy—even likable, perhaps! So he +might finally justify his calling: he could buy Rita +security and comfort!</p> + +<p>As we danced past the door into the hall, I +glanced across to the couch where I had left Rita, +and the sight of the group which thronged about +it irritated me suddenly in the same way as the +pathetic and exasperating obstinacy of phototropic +bugs. “Well,” I remarked to Daisy, smiling, +“Ray seems to be having himself a time with +Rita Cavanagh!” “Yes,” she replied; “I noticed +that! He was trying to tell me last week that he +was all to pieces about my leavingum—but it +doesn’t look much like it!”</p> + +<p>I remembered how Daisy had complained of +Ray Coleman’s making her stay home and listen +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span>to his reading aloud from the <i>Oxford Book of +English Verse</i>; and I imagined what a sympathetic +audience he must now be finding in Rita: I +could see how she would take the book from him +and begin to read herself, and how she would +presently recite her own poems—poems, no doubt, +which she had written lately, and which I had +never heard. He would flatter her without discrimination: +I scorned her for accepting such +praise!</p> + +<p>“I suppose he’s pleased with his new job,” I remarked, +“but a promotion from the <i>Dispatch</i> to +the <i>Sketch</i> seems almost like a promotion from +the morgue to the pound!” “If the boys on the +<i>Sketch</i>,” replied Daisy, “are any worse than the +boys on the <i>Dispatch</i>, I’m glad I made my getaway +in time!”</p> + +<p>“Let’s go up-stairs for a minute, shall we?” +Daisy suggested, as a record ended. “I want to +give the old cuckoo’s-nest a comb.”</p> + +<p>On the stairs, I took her arm and steered her +up toward the sombre upper reaches, through the +couples who were sitting on the steps: I gripped +her firmly in my preoccupation, as if I had been +guiding a child. “The trouble about having your +hair done this way,” she remarked, as if talking +for other ears, “is that you have to keep fixing it +all the time or people think it’s just mussed up!” +As we arrived at the top of the stairs, I found +that I had gone suddenly hollow, and I remembered +that I had eaten no dinner.</p> + +<p>Instead of heading, as I expected, for the bedroom +where the coats and hats had been left, +Daisy went on along the dark up-stairs hallway—she +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span>seemed to know the house well—to a door at +the further end.</p> + +<p>It was dark inside: by the light that came in +through a single window from the house across +the scanty back yard, I could see a cot and a simple +bureau—the Jap servant’s room, no doubt. I +clawed the air for the chain of a shadeless electric +bulb which was hanging above our heads. “Why +don’t you try the bathroom?” I suggested. “I +don’t see any comb on that bureau.” “Never +mind about the comb!” she replied.</p> + +<p>I embraced her and pasted my lips on her half-opened +mouth. I thought about the mouth and +moth’s eyebrows which had aroused me for a moment +in the kitchen, but which I could not see +now in the dark—and I tried to make up for my +stupidity and tardiness by holding Daisy against +me very tightly and kissing her again and again—but +it was an assault of which I found myself +conscious chiefly as a determined physical pressure +and a deliberate application of the lips: I felt +my arms crushing cartilage and flesh, and my +mouth missing its goal against her teeth. It occurred +to me that Daisy’s lips were really, despite +her make-up, not particularly well-adapted to passionate +kissing of this kind: I still thought of +them as cool-looking and childlike, as they had +seemed to me the night of the movies. And I became +aware of the succession of my kisses as +something tediously mechanical and repetitive. +Fearing Daisy might notice this, too, I broke it +up by making her sit down on the bed.—I had desired +her, and there we were at last! I found myself +representing the long stupefied embrace of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span>passion by sheer immobility and weight. I was +all too far from being stupefied, I reflected, during +the moments when I relaxed my ministrations: +some obstinate unconscious loyalty, in spite +of all my efforts, kept me cold. And I was distracted +by a variety of ideas. I had a vision of +the pilloried frog of a behaviorist moving-picture +which I had gone to see with Rita: the frog, even +with its brain removed, had responded with an +automatic kick when an acidulated pad had been +applied to one of its legs.—And the consciousness +that the little bedroom belonged to the Japanese +servant reminded me that the Japs did not kiss, +that they did not know what kissing was—and I +wondered whether they tried to learn kissing +when they set out to become Americanized, and +whether it took long.—I murmured, “Daisy darling!” +in a low and secret voice.</p> + +<p>We became aware that the door was open: I +looked around and saw a small spare figure: his +face was half in shadow, and I could not see his +eyes. I quickly sat up on the cot, and he suddenly +withdrew and slammed the door.</p> + +<p>“Who was it?” Daisy asked in a whisper. “It +was Pete!” I replied.</p> + +<p>She got up. “I don’t care,” she said. “A great +help <em>he</em> turned out to be!” She pulled on the electric +bulb, went over to the mirror on the bureau, +and applied her powder and rouge. When she had +finished, she said, without looking at me, putting +her powder away in the vanity-case, “Take me +home, will you?”</p> + +<p>We went out and extricated our coats—it was +a little like a search in a bad dream—from the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span>avalanche of wraps on the beds; and in silence descended +the stairs, looking solemn and matter-of-fact, +as we threaded our way among the couples.</p> + +<p>So, I told myself, I had not hesitated to wound +Pete in his love for Daisy, even after he had +shown me his poems, such poems as I had written +to Rita, in which his tenderness and his longing +had, as it were, been confessed and entrusted to +me—to me, another poet! In my glimpse of his +face in the doorway, dimly lit by the light from +the hall, his pale cheeks and his eyes large with +shadow had seemed sensitive and even handsome. +Was it Daisy’s indifference, I asked myself, was +it jealous suspicions like my own, which had +given him that gargoyle’s mask? Yet one had to +be hard about these things: love and poetry, as I +myself knew, were paid for with danger and +pain!</p> + +<p>Sue Borglum protested wildly and loudly +against Daisy’s leaving so early, and begged me, +at any rate, to come back when I had taken Daisy +home: she had evidently a morbid fear that her +parties were becoming less popular.—I felt the +cold taste of winter in the vestibule.</p> + +<p>After splashing about in the slush of the dark +and deserted streets, I finally brought back a taxi. +Hugo Bamman came down the steps with Daisy. +He was wearing his old limp felt hat, but no overcoat; +and he was carrying over his shoulder the +musette-bag he had had in the Army.</p> + +<p>We invited him to come with us in the taxi. +When I got in after Hugo and Daisy, I found +Hugo planted on one of the little turn-down seats, +and it was only with considerable difficulty that +Daisy persuaded him to sit beside her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">160</span></p> + +<p>“The tone of Sue Borglum’s parties,” Hugo +began at once to complain, “is certainly getting +more and more respectable!—she’ll soon be sending +out engwaved invitations!” I asked him +what he meant. “Why, you just go and meet people +now, and talk to them a little, politely—just +like a Washington reception. Things used to be +so much fwanker and fweer at Sue Borglum’s! +I remember one night when Leo Shatov got up +and did a Cossack dance on the dining-room table—and +the Baroness von Samstag-Solferino always +used to appear wearing a coal-scuttle on her +head!—And she has these little thin sandwiches, +now, made of chopped olives and spiced ham and +things. There used to be just a great big cheese, +and you gouged out what you wanted with your +pocket-knife!”</p> + +<p>We were about to drop Hugo off at his house, +only a block or two from Sue Borglum’s, but he +announced that he was sailing at midnight and +would, therefore, go further up-town. I forbore +to show surprise, but asked him where he was +bound for. He explained, with his self-conscious +giggle, that he was sailing for Smyrna on a fruit +steamer: his ultimate goal was Afghanistan.</p> + +<p>We asked why he was going to Afghanistan. +“Well, I think that it must really be an awfully +fine place!” he replied. “You know, it’s one of +the only places in the world that hasn’t been Europeanized—it’s +all a European can do to get into +Cabul at all. Not a trace of a business man or a +missionary or a newspaper! The Amir has electric +lighting and European plumbing in his palace, +but, instead of sending for European plumbers +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span>and electricians to put them in for him, he +sends Afghans to Europe to learn how to do +it themselves. When they come back, they’re +searched for Bibles.—At the same time, they go +in for witchcraft and all kinds of entertaining +magic!”</p> + +<p>He was bubbling now just as he had done at +college over the little pastry-shop in the side-street +where he and his friends had bought cinnamon +buns.</p> + +<p>“Is that where the afghans come from?” asked +Daisy. “Yes: I suppose so,” chortled Hugo. “I +suppose that, even though it’s forbidden to bring +in any modern textile machinery, a smart Europeanized +Afghan might be able to do a little +profitable sweating in the afghan business!”</p> + +<p>I asked Hugo what his literary plans were and +he explained that, when he came back from Afghanistan, +he was going out to the American +West to write a novel about one of the big Western +cities, either Pittsburgh or Detroit. (He had +already done Boston and New York, though he +refused to pay Philadelphia even the compliment +of exposing it.) “Oh, God!” Daisy exclaimed. +“What do you want to go to Pittsburgh for? I +spent the best years of my life trying to get away +from there!” “Why, I’ve always wanted to see a +Pittsburgh millionaire,” Hugo explained, gaily, +mildly, sweetly. “Wasn’t it you who were telling +me about the man from Pittsburgh who bought +ten thousand dollars worth of fireworks and set +them off in the Bois de Boulogne, and then committed +suicide?” “Yes,” said Daisy, “that was +Phil Meissner’s uncle.” “I think Detroit must be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span>awfully fine, too!” Hugo continued. “I’ve always +wanted to see a Ford put together.—I’ve always +thought it must be wather like one of those +things in the movies, don’t you know, where the +man draws a cat, stwoke by stwoke, and then it +suddenly comes alive!”</p> + +<p>As I listened to Hugo’s prattle, it occurred to +me to suspect for the first time that he was allowing +himself to prattle on purpose. His spectacles +had had the effect of making him look owlish and +juvenile; but now that he no longer wore them, +his intent deep-sunken gaze betrayed the silliness +of what he said—betrayed, I mean, that he himself +was not silly. I became aware that the undergraduate +patter from which, formerly and +while still an undergraduate, he had so desperately +strained to escape by harsh paradoxes and +flat contradictions, was now a habit which he had +accepted, partly no doubt because it was difficult +to break, but also partly because he found it useful +as a screen for his real purposes and ideas. +His real purposes and ideas, it seemed to me, as I +watched him in the taxi to-night, had by this time +completely matured and stood firmly on their own +feet; and a certain amount of success, which he +had never aimed at or expected, had given him a +new assurance. Hugo’s novels on the American +cities had become almost best-sellers; and he was +no longer spurred by the painful necessity of asserting +his views in ordinary conversation, but +was content to chatter on like a school-boy: it +saved tedious contentious explanations.</p> + +<p>There was no chatter about what he wrote: +Hugo’s novels were sober, even morose, and were +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span>built with a solidity of cement. They were comprehensive +reports on human society, industriously +and conscientiously drawn up. And as I +thought to-night of Hugo’s assiduity, his independence +and his sense of responsibility, I seemed +to recognize in them those qualities which had for +so many years made his father a respected public +servant. The son had cut himself off from his +family; had even sold, piece by piece, all the furniture +and family silver which he had inherited +from his mother, and, set by set, his father’s +library; and he had done this—to the great consternation +of his cousins and his aunts, to whom +the sale of mahogany and silver was like a massacre +of kin—all in order that he might live +poorly in Patchin Place, writing appeals for political +prisoners, making speeches for striking garment-workers +and composing those encyclopædic +novels from which he had never hoped to make +money. Yet, by the sacrifice of property and family, +he had saved the honor of a family tradition +which was otherwise largely moribund: he had +truly assumed the responsibilities of leadership +and shown the disinterestedness of public spirit, +in the only fields where, in our generation, he had +found it possible for him to work.</p> + +<p>I seemed to see that, behind the mask of the +outlaw, he had finally gravitated to a position exactly +similar to his father’s, before his father, in +his later erratic years, had withdrawn from public +life. For Hugo had applied himself to literature +as to one of the old-fashioned professions, +Medicine, Law or the Church; and, despite his +rôle of eccentric and rebel, had taken on—what +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span>set him off at that time from most of the other +literary men of the Village—the solid and honorable +character of a first-rate professional man. +Through the late escapades of the father and the +early extravagances of the son, the curve had +come round again.</p> + +<p>And I envied Hugo to-night: I could think +only of his established position as a writer, of the +security and the freedom of movement which his +royalties had finally brought him, at the same +time that he had earned the satisfaction of serious +work well done. I myself felt disgusted and +gloomy over the aimlessness and uselessness of +my life. I had seen clearly, at the funeral of my +aunt, that my relations did not think me a success: +I was still an underling in a publisher’s office, +with no great enthusiasm for my work and +with no particular hopes of advancement. And, +on the other hand, I was not a writer: I had not +made Hugo’s sacrifice and effort. No wonder +I had never been able to persuade Rita Cavanagh +to marry me! I had offered her merely the +meagre resources and the questionable future of +a young man with vague literary ambitions; and +she had already known many such young men—had +already, on one or two occasions, embarked +on such lives of cramped space and small comfort, +without finding them magic carpets. What +wonder that she should now prefer Ray Coleman, +with his apartment that overlooked the +Square, his lettuce-green cocktail glasses, his +water-colors of the Russian ballet, and his rye whiskey +bottled in bond?</p> + +<p>Hugo asked us to let him out at the corner of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span>Seventh Avenue and one of the upper Twenties. +I asked him where his baggage was. “I’ve got it +all here!” he replied, indicating the musette-bag +on his shoulder. “Haven’t you even got an overcoat?” +asked Daisy. “Why, you know, I don’t +know why it is,” he replied, with the bogus +naïveté with which he masked his stubbornest +manias, “but I can’t seem to stand to wear overcoats. +They always make me feel so loaded down +and sewed up—and they always make me too +hot! I always feel, when I get into them, that +there isn’t a pin to choose between the modern +winter-overcoat and the Iron Maiden at Nuremberg.” +“I should think you’d get your death!” +protested Daisy. “If the people in New York,” +he replied, “didn’t wear so many overcoats, they +probably wouldn’t catch so many colds! They +bundle themselves up in winter-overcoats and +lower the resistance of their bodies so that the +least little change in temperature brings them +down with the grippe or the ‘flu’!”</p> + +<p>“Gee,” said Daisy, with admiration, rather to +my surprise, “I wish I was going to Afghanistan! +Take me along with you, won’t you?” “I’d love +to!” said Hugo. “Come on!”—but he began +looking out anxiously for the street. “Oh, <em>will</em> +you?” cried Daisy. “<em>Take me!</em> I’m so fed up +with it here! I haven’t got any belongings +either! I left most of what I had at Ray’s. I +could walk right on the boat now and sacrifice +practically nothing!—You couldn’t really take +me, could you?” “Why, yes—come along!” said +Hugo, smiling but, I could see, with some uneasiness: +he shrank from the possibility of committing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span>himself to a woman—even in gallantry, even +in jest—and was nervously watching the street +numbers—“if you wouldn’t mind a few tarantulas +and scorpions and things that go with the +date and fig trade!” “Well, the fruit’s all unloaded +here, isn’t it?” Daisy determinedly objected, +with a strong grasp of commercial realities. +“We don’t export it over there, do we?” +“No: of course—it’s all unloaded on us—but +the animals may stay behind! I suppose some +of them are regular passengers!” “Well,” said +Daisy, “I’ve fought fleas and rats and bedbugs in +my time—and Greenwich Village bar-flies—so I +guess I could cope with a tarantula!”</p> + +<p>Hugo stopped the cab. We were all for taking +him to his steamer and seeing him off; but he refused +to let us. I think that he was honestly +afraid that Daisy would insist upon sailing with +him—for he leapt out almost before the taxi had +stopped, and his leave-taking was abrupt and expeditious. +He opened the door again a moment +afterwards and tried to give me some money for +the fare, but I pulled his hat down over his ears. +He waved at us once with a long spasmodic arm, +then marched off in the direction of the docks.</p> + +<p>“Gee,” said Daisy, as we drove away, “I’d like +to go to Afghanistan!”</p> + +<p>We fell silent: Yes, I reflected, Daisy admired +Hugo, just as Rita admired Ray—because he had +made himself a place in the world, because he was +successful and independent!</p> + +<p>I was on the point of taking Daisy’s hand when +she suddenly snatched the driver’s license out of +its isinglass frame opposite her and, without a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span>word of explanation, tore it up, photograph and +all. “What made you do that?” I demanded. “I +can’t stand his face!” she said tartly. “I’ve been +looking at it all the way, and if I had to look at it +any more, I’d begin to go half-witted myself!”</p> + +<p>I was irritated by Daisy’s gesture: it jarred +upon my mood of enthusiasm for Hugo’s sense +of social responsibility and I felt against it the +same sort of resentment as against Rita’s perversities +and caprices. But I laughed—with a +certain harshness, as if to mock at the respecters +of property, and at the poets who succumbed to +their bribes—as if Daisy and I alone, now, still +stood together against Ray.</p> + +<p>Yet, I was thinking the moment after, one +couldn’t really blame Ray Coleman for becoming +infuriated with Daisy: hadn’t she squandered all +his money and then kept having C. O. D. packages +sent home? Hadn’t she even complained to +me, the night that I had taken her to the movies, +of Ray’s too conscientious practice of paying all +his bills? I thought of Daisy the night of the +party, when I had first met her and Rita. Hadn’t +she behaved like a little fiend?—Hadn’t she +turned on a phonograph record in the middle of +Rita’s poems? Hadn’t she humiliated Ray by +leaving the party with Pete Bird? I found that +I forgave Ray more easily for his violent scene +with Daisy, which Rita and I had overheard.</p> + +<p>But, when I remembered that detestable scene, +it was no longer as it had seemed to me that evening. +That night I had been a spectator looking +on at a melodrama, at a melodramatic tableau of +jealousy: Ray pointing at Pete’s broken cane; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span>Daisy abashed among the ruins of the party; and +I complacently and gallantly helping Rita on with +her wrap. Now I myself had played Ray Coleman’s +part. I remembered that spiteful scene +which I myself had provoked with Rita, in the +taxi, and the scenes which for weeks had preceded +it. Now it was as if the rôles had been reversed: +now it was I who was the jealous blackguard +and Ray Coleman who was the solid decent +citizen! And now those memories must perhaps +always stand as a barrier between Rita and me, as +they had done to-night when I had tried to talk to +her—a barrier of coldness and resentment which +could never be forgotten now and whose shadow +must lie, also, behind on all that had been beautiful +before. If I could only just now have said +the word which would have caused it to fall away!</p> + +<p>“I don’t want to go home!” said Daisy, as we +were crossing Forty-second Street. I suggested +that we might go to a night-club. I did not, as I +say, at that moment, particularly care about +Daisy, but then, there was nobody else that I liked +better—least of all did I like myself or want to be +alone with myself. “All right. I can’t go in this +plaid dress, though. I tell you: you go and get +something to drink, and I’ll go and change my +clothes.” “I’ll go and change, too,” I said.</p> + +<p>The moment after, she had some sort of +qualm: “Give me a piece of paper,” she said, +“any kind of piece of paper will do.” The only +paper I had in my pocket was the letter from H. +M. Grosbeake, the professor of philosophy at college +to whom I had sent Rita’s poems and who +had invited me to come to see him, but to whose +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span>letter I had never replied, though I had been carrying +it around ever since: I had torn the blank +part off in Daisy’s room, the day I had written +her the note, and now I gave her what was left, +the page with the letter itself. She stuck it into +the driver’s-license frame behind the isinglass.</p> + +<p>I left Daisy at her door.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Larry Mickler, with his revolver and his passion +for Dostoevsky, had made upon me an unpleasant +impression. I had come to connect him +obscurely with my impulse to smash the peach-brandy +bottle, when I had felt myself so helpless +with Rita, and I found that I disliked Dostoevsky, +because Larry Mickler admired him. I remembered—as +I went back in the taxi to my own +apartment in Bank Street—Dostoevsky’s sadistic +manias, his complaisance in self-degradation, his +extravagant vanity; I began to feel, after meeting +Mickler, that the masterpieces of such a man of +genius were a doubtful compensation on paper +for the moral bankruptcy of a life. Were not the +purity of Dostoevsky’s tenderness, the flights of +his Christian idealism, to be measured precisely +by his perversity, the sub-human depths of his indifference? +Were not the Svidrigailovs and +the Stavrogins—those malignant growths which +seemed to sprout and, almost without the author’s +intention, to swell to such monstrous proportions, +in Dostoevsky’s novels—were they not the price +which one had to pay for the Myshkins and the +Alyoshas?</p> + +<p>True, it was quite unfair to Dostoevsky to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span>identify him with Larry Mickler; it was the triumph, +at least, of the great artist that, by dint of +terrific effort, he had, if only in the world of his +novels, succeeded in restoring a moral balance to +that universe which he had once felt reeling with +the world of his own soul; whereas, in the case of +Larry Mickler, who had merely to read Dostoevsky’s +books, all that desperate idealism, that victory +of moral passion, would, it seemed to me at +that moment, go principally to give him a good +conscience in licking his chops over the cruelties +and perversities, and to leave him with the gratified +conviction that there was no kind of discreditable +behavior which imagination might not redeem.</p> + +<p>And Pete Bird, with his charming wistful +verses and his swindle of the liverwurst sandwiches! +And Rita—without that <i>mêlée</i> in which +her varying passions had involved her, that possession +by all the devils of all the human desires +at once, all that panic and anarchy and anguish +and deceit of her daily life, would she ever without +all this have been compelled to the noble severity, +the firm and harmonious form, the bravery +of candor, of her verse?</p> + +<p>And those poets of whom Rita and I had talked +the first night I had known her in Bank Street! +To-night, the curses and groans of Catullus only +filled me with the same disgust for his abasement +at the feet of Lesbia as did my own preoccupation +with Rita.—And Verlaine, in his prison cell, with +his imbecile alternations between piety and pornography—if +he had published his religious poems, +as he had originally intended to do, sandwiched +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span>in between his poems of lechery, he would have +furnished a perfect example, an example forever +ludicrous, of the disorder of the poet’s mind.</p> + +<p>Even Dante, of whom I had once thought, of +whom I thought still, as the supreme poet of Europe, +who had possessed together the fiercest passion +and the most powerful intellect, who had +been able to apply to one work all man’s highest +faculties at once—what stiff-necked, what +stupid obstinacy, what fanatic self-confidence, going +against all common sense, must have lain back +of all that subtlety and feeling! Had not Dante’s +indignation with his neighbors, as Professor +Grosbeake had once suggested, been based upon +an utter incapacity for understanding the realities +of his time? Yet he had been spurred by such a +passion to be <em>right</em>, that, balked and exiled in the +real world, he had gone to live in the world of his +poem, where, passing over both Emperor and +Pope, he had sat in the place of God himself!</p> + +<p>And even the philosopher and the saint! When +I thought now of Professor Grosbeake, it was +with a certain sentiment of scorn for the domesticity +in which he seemed buried, and with misgivings +as to whether his metaphysics were not +merely a monstrous hypertrophy, arising, first, +from a certain ineptitude at dealing with the affairs +of the practical world, and fostered, later, +by his practical wife, who had taken possession of +him and securely immured him in a life where +nothing but contemplation was possible. And had +I not just learned that Hugo’s father, from whom +I had caught for the first time in my boyhood the +sense of the unity of life—had I not just heard +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span>that he had fed his vision with the dead wood of +some area of his nature of which he had never +ceased to feel the lack, and that his ringing arraignment +of the Congressmen for their failure +to search their hearts in a spirit of Christian humility +had been purchased at the expense of the +tyrannic subjection of his household! And in the +case of Hugo himself, it now appeared to me—what +I had never understood before—that his +ideas had been given their direction by his early +revolt against his father, which had made him, +not, as his father had been, the prophet of a new +moral discipline, but primarily a champion of the +oppressed who still resented and feared the oppressor.</p> + +<p>But these reflections began to sicken me (I was +at once hungry, nervous and weary): I had succeeded +in accounting for all these people, who +were precisely the people I most admired, as the +victims of deficiencies and derangements; and I +now felt that I had been deriving an ignoble satisfaction +from knowing the secret of every one’s +disease. While I was changing my clothes in Bank +Street, I began to remember Dostoevsky’s miseries: +the neurotic family given over to its manias +and collapsing after the mother’s death; the boy +neglected by the drunken father and left without +money at his school; the elder Dostoevsky murdered +by his peasants; Dostoevsky sentenced to +death for plotting against the Czar,—taken out +and tied to a stake to be shot, and reprieved only +at the last moment; his four years of imprisonment +in Siberia, wearing the fetters with murderers +and thieves, hauling bricks and pounding alabaster; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span>his later years of servitude as a soldier; +his persecution by his brother’s creditors; and the +epilepsy which had accompanied all from that first +day, when, a boy at school, he had heard the news +of the murder of his father. Where was there +place for ironic patronage in the contemplation +of such a life or of the writings which had been +its products?</p> + +<p>And I remembered how Hugo, too, had suffered +in his prison-camp in France. No wonder +he hated discipline and authority! It was true +that prison had made of Hugo an uncompromising +revolutionist, whereas it had made of Dostoevsky +an equally uncompromising conservative: +Hugo himself was naturally good, and it seemed +to him, in consequence, that all the evil which he +encountered must be the product of institutions +somehow imposed on humanity against their wish; +whereas, in Dostoevsky’s case, his inescapable +sense of his own guilt, of the evil in his own heart, +seemed at last to have reduced him to feeling that, +though he had been punished for a political offense +only, his punishment had been somehow deserved, +and that he had actually been expiating +crimes of which he had never been accused. He +had come to believe in the badness of humanity; +and mere political readjustments, in consequence, +no longer appeared to him important. Yet the +effect of the ordeal in each case—in Hugo’s and +in Dostoevsky’s—had been essentially the same: +as Dostoevsky’s years in Siberia had caused him +so deeply to distrust even the liberalism of educated +Russians, so Hugo’s weeks in the prison-camp +had made it impossible for him to accept, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">174</span>even in their most genial guise, the complacency +and comfort of America. Both had been forced +to live at close quarters with the basic contentions +and discords, the basic horrifying anomalies, of +our common life. And both were always afterwards +to look with the eyes of strangers and exiles +upon even the most conscientious, even the +most intelligent, even the most amiable of their +fellows who had never recognized those realities.</p> + +<p>Hugo and Dostoevsky alike had attempted to +explain them, to resolve them, those contentions, +anomalies and discords.—And were not these the +prime provokers of literature?—not encountered +in prisons only, but in all treachery, violence, frustration, +all the outbreaks of our barbarous nature +and the unlooked-for disasters which befell us at +the mercy of unknown forces. Such disasters and +outbreaks alone could rouse us from our normal +existence of non-thinking and non-feeling, the laziness +of bodily processes inertly fulfilling their +functions, of the consciousness inertly drifting +among random and meaningless images—memories +and anticipations—with unconscious but cunning +instinct steering clear of problems and tasks. +What were literature and art but the by-products +of these collisions with the uncomprehended reality—collisions +whose repercussions, when we +had withdrawn into the shelter of ourselves, we +attempted to palliate, to harmonize, to account for, +to subdue to a smoother rhythm in the current of +our thought, now resuming, which for a moment +had been troubled or torn? And was it not true +that the individual artist—the greatest master +even: Dante himself—no matter how detached his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">175</span>intelligence, how rich his imagination, how comprehensive +his range, was never able to escape +from the instinct which made him justify his own +life? If the poet wrote about himself, or identified +himself with his hero, the hero must emerge +victorious; or if the hero were allowed to be +beaten, he must at least be made to triumph morally; +or if the writer confessed to sin or ignominy, +the confession itself must be a merit; or if he +wrote neither of himself nor of a hero, the historian, +the economist or the philosopher, in defending +certain values, made them play the hero’s +rôle. Like the instinct which made us blink our +eyes when anything was brought near them, the +instinct to produce a work of art (so I somberly +reflected to-night in that room where, so short a +time before, as I had heard Rita reciting her +poems, the language of literature had seemed to +me something at once natural and noble)—the instinct +to produce a work of art was merely a self-protective +reflex like another. Were not imagination +and reason like the phagocytes of our physical +nature, which, as soon as an infection occurs, +rush to mass themselves at the breach, where they +ingest the disturbing intruders and put a stop to +the progress of the disease?—with this difference, +that the work of art, unlike the dead and discharged +phagocytes, for some time and under certain +conditions, may retain a certain efficacy for +others.</p> + +<p>For the harmony, the justification, provided by +a successful piece of literature was accepted by the +reader as valid. Yet the writer had falsified life, +because he had pretended to harmonize something +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">176</span>of which he was conscious chiefly as chaos, and +to explain what he was aware, all too well, he +could not fully understand. So, when I had written +a sequence of sonnets about the night of my +first meeting with Rita, I had not mentioned, as +I have not mentioned in my description of that +evening, the drunken friend who had kept calling +me up and interrupting our conversation; the +agonized cries of cats; the howling and sobbing +of a baby; the sore throat which, toward the end +of the evening, I had begun to find very uncomfortable +and which, afterwards, during the days +when I had been falling in love with Rita, had +developed into a bad cold. So I had also deliberately +left out all that uncertain and egoistic side +of Rita’s character, of which I had already become +aware and which was already making me +anxious.</p> + +<p>A work of art was, then, an imposture. But +the reader, himself balked and bewildered, received +naïvely the artist’s picture as a true diagram +of the world. The artist, who had been disconcerted +and spurred to compose a work of art +by his failure to discover in the universe either +harmony or logic, supplied the logic and harmony +himself; and the reader, who had also been hungering +for harmony or logic, accepted with joyful +reassurance what the artist gave him, and assumed +that the artist’s makeshift was a certified +revelation, and the artist an oracle. The reader +leaned upon the writer: what for the latter was a +vague, a confused, or an approximate form of +expression, the former applied literally. All that +part of literature which dealt directly with current +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span>events—editorial-writing, pamphleteering, +history, much novel and play-writing—was but +the painting of the thinnest varnish of a comforting +reason and art over earthquakes which actually +took place, not in the world of art and reason, +but in the barbarous animal world, bloody, +uncontrollable, ignoble—and all the writer could +hope for, at best, was to divert the attention of +his fellows, like a bystander at a street accident +who, when the rest of the crowd are only gaping, +insists upon the removal of the body, or like +an actor in a burning theatre who, by eloquence +or jest, tries to avert a panic and stampede. Yet +the public, remembering the catchwords, the incantations, +of their leaders, attempted to enforce +them as laws; and a flourish of rhetoric, under +pressure of a desperate crisis, would be imposed +as a practical programme or developed as a +philosophic system.</p> + +<p>Or the public got to the point of behaving as +if every feature of the artist’s work were something +premeditated—writing, for example, after +the author was dead, “It was about this period +that X, in his attempt to understand his own +time, decided that it would first be necessary to +understand the career of James G. Blaine, and, +finding no satisfactory book on the subject, he set +out to write one himself,” or, “It was in the course +of his travels in the tropics that the necessity first +appeared to Y of a new and chaster form of expression,”—when +the truth was that the life of +Blaine had been merely a piece of hackwork for a +publisher, suggested by the publisher himself, and +that the baldness of Y’s prose had been simply the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span>result of enervation caused by the tropical heat. Or +some work, which had represented for the writer a +furious effort at completeness of understanding, +at impersonality of projection—an effort obstructed, +to the writer’s dismay, by his personal +obsessions and mannerisms, his family habits, his +organic defects, the limitations of his nation and +race, which pursued and exasperated him, like a +can tied to a dog’s tail—to the public, who knew +nothing of his aim, it was precisely the writer’s +personality which they savored and glorified, descending +with gratified complacency those very +lines of least resistance against which the artist +had struggled to mount, and delighting in those +very stigmata which the artist had strained to efface. +So posterity would piously cherish a distinguished +writer’s roughest notes, though these +might be merely irrelevant excretions, under the +pressure of emotions and interests not commemorated +in them at all—productions which derived +their only vividness from the acuteness of the +writer’s need to turn his mind away from his +troubles of the body, the heart or the purse, toward +something indifferent and remote—or they +might be meaningless mechanical notes, the merest +rudimentary twitchings of the literary temperament, +made in moments of drunkenness or +fatigue, but hungrily saved by the writer’s admirers +for their infinitesimal drops of some peculiar +personal color, no more significant or precious +in itself than the color of his hair or his eyes. From +these notes, the writer’s disciples might end by +constructing a system which would have filled the +writer with horror, but which now carried the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span>credit of his name—just as in the case of ancient +poetry, where the text was corrupt or fragmentary, +Æschylus seemed to us all the more awful and all +the more oracular because, not knowing precisely +what he wrote, we did not know precisely what +he meant; and Sappho all the more a goddess because +there was so little of her left.</p> + +<p>Nor were the public readers merely: they were +also writers who imitated the author. One had +had a vision of movements in literature sweeping +over the minds of humanity like the wind +that makes waves in the wheat; but would it not, +I now reflected, be more accurate to liken such +movements simply to the collapse of a row of +dominoes, of which only the first has felt the +shock, the shock from the unknown reality, and +the others have merely toppled over, receiving it +at second-hand? Till, at last, the original composer +of the symphony, the original inventor of +the system, would catch back from the minds of +the public themselves (who had merely taken it +from him), a new belief in the all-embracing, the +all-satisfying character of that pattern, in the +finality of those conclusions, which, at the time he +had first conceived them, he had never himself +regarded as complete.—Some day, like a fool, I +should myself read those poems I had written +about Rita, and I should be convinced that it had +really been like that! Not content with deceiving +others, I should finally deceive myself!</p> + +<p>But, in the long run, if my sonnets had become +famous, the public would have found them out. +When the readers had got used to a writer—when +our first delight in his peculiar color, his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span>peculiar music or flavor, had commenced to wear +thin—then the familiar malaise assailed us: we +began fatally to detect once again, beneath the +novel or alluring surface, the presence of all those +grievances, those diseases and insane preoccupations +of the straining, incomplete human being—all +those anomalies, discords, and contentions from +which, in seeking the support of literature, we had +hoped to be set free. And in the end, the public of +readers, when they had found out the weaknesses +and falsities of the system which it had once accepted—when +they had perhaps tried to put into +practice some vision, like the morality of Nietzsche +(another favorite of Larry Mickler’s), which the +writer had imagined in his bed—they would turn +against the writer and repudiate him.</p> + +<p>Yet beyond the work of the individual artist, +there was the concerted general effort, the gigantic +universal imposture, of literature itself!</p> + +<p>I remembered the big volumes of Jebb in which, +with the hope of tranquillizing my spirit, I had +lately been reading Sophocles. <em>There</em> was perhaps +the supreme achievement of the organized imposture +of literature! How many times had one seen +the calmness and the sobriety of Sophocles played +off against the harshness or the cynicism of some +modern tragic writer! These plays had become +the unchallenged example of classic moderation +and wisdom, the touchstone for modern turbulence. +Yet in what work of a modern dramatist +had the harshness of Sophocles been surpassed? +I remembered the unruly tempers of the family +of Œdipus: the foolish quarrel of Œdipus with +his father over a casual encounter on the road; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">181</span>his harshness with Tiresias; the passionate directness +of all his gestures. Did one find even in the +Œdipus of Colonus that spirit of peace and resignation +with which Victorian critics sometimes +credited it? Was the exiled and embittered king a +figure of mellow clemency? Surely his final cursing +of his sons was one of the most shocking +scenes in literature!—nor did the species of divine +electrocution with which Sophocles finally disposed +of him strike precisely a note of tranquillity. +And those sons who quarrel for the kingdom and +who finally slaughter each other! And the passionate +obstinacy of Creon, so like the passionate +obstinacy of Œdipus—and the passionate obstinacy +of Antigone! The mother and daughter, in +<i>Electra</i>, bandying the most brutal abuse! These +people were, in their way, and even on the occasions +when they were animated by some passionate +fanatical loyalty, as narrowly egoistic as the +characters of Ibsen, but more quarrelsome and +more virulent!</p> + +<p>Was there, indeed, I suddenly asked myself, +from the point of view of barbarous behavior, +very much to choose between Sophocles and Dostoevsky +himself? There they were, the old hideous +discords—Œdipus killing his father, the old +Karamazov murdered by his sons—that cruel inevitable +turning upon the beings who have given +us life! I remembered how Hugo had just told +me that, rebelling against his father, he had come +to hate even those poets whom his father had +loved—and how Rita, in leaving behind her all +that dull and homely life which for so long had +hobbled her youth, had discarded the name of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">182</span>Aunt Sadie, who had taught her to play Handel +and Bach.—And were not the horrors of Dostoevsky—Myshkin’s +epilepsy, Zossima’s putrefaction +and Stavrogin’s rape—quite matched by Philoctetes’s +ulcer, by the unburied corpse of Polyneices +and by the incest of Œdipus? If even the +form of Sophocles were more chastened than the +form of Dostoevsky, his spirit was more astringent!</p> + +<p>I remembered the story about Sophocles in +Plato—how he had been asked whether old age +had made him impotent, and how he had replied +that growing old was like deliverance from a mad +and cruel master. Was this the saying of a calm +and gentle nature? And what of the tranquillity +of even those later years?—I remembered in the +second <i>Œdipus</i>, the terrible description of old age—“unfriended, +feeble, chided, unfit for company, +the crowning ill of all—not to be born is best, +but once we have seen the light it is better to go +soon!” How did Matthew Arnold know that +“from first youth tested up to extreme old age,” +“passion” had never made Sophocles “wild”?</p> + +<p>Yet so great was the need of humanity to believe +in a human intellect all-self-controlled and +all-wise that there had been superimposed on the +plays of that great master of hatred and horror +a legend which now disguised them—and the +solemn impassive don, laboring day after day at +his desk, explaining, interpreting, translating, +every word of the poet’s text—sometimes altering +his words—had pared Sophocles down, had +sapped his power, ironing out to marmoreal +smoothness a style rather nodulous and tough, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">183</span>congealing angry cataracts of consonants to colorless +pediments of prose, and reducing the weighty +rhythm, with its urgent pulse of blood, tiding +along from one line to another the contractions +of swift-spoken speech, to a tongue which could +never have been spoken—the British don, after +centuries of critics, had supplied us with what +men of letters, what all mankind, had desired: a +writer super-human and humanly impossible, a +writer who could never have existed—a Master, +of impeccable technique and imperturbable moral +balance, a writer who could never be supplanted +and never be outgrown, a writer unassailable, a +classic!</p> + +<p>So we had established the myth of the classics: +from the written remains of humanity, of beings +outraged and wondering like ourselves, we had +created the illusion of a fortress of absolute +beauty and wisdom, into which educated men +might retreat, upon whose invulnerable strength +they might rely.</p> + +<p>And I thought, also, of those other efforts, +those efforts more characteristic of our time, +which aimed, also, at an absolute beauty, at an +art wholly independent of the appetites and +agonies of men—paintings which represented +nothing, “pure poetry” devoid of ideas: both, in +reality, mere assimilations on the part of literature +and painting to the pattern and rhythm of +music—which itself had been piously striving—in +those composers who named their productions +after trigonometrical figures and the integral calculus—to +assimilate itself to mathematics.</p> + +<p>How senseless such attempts seemed to-night! +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">184</span>How could there be anything absolute or pure +about such exercises as the arts, which were but +pleasing arrangements of sensations, and which, +therefore, were inextricably dependent on the senses +we had clumsily evolved to meet our needs and to +find our way through the jungle of nature! And +if the art which derived from our hearing seemed +to us purer than the others, it was merely because +we experienced, in the region of sound +divorced from speech, sensations less complex +and complete than through images or words. +These crude games, so much the play of our +bodies, of our primary animal life, that neither +stories, visions, drama, nor music—not argumentation +even, not Euclid’s geometry itself, +which comes to a climax, like a Greek play, with +the proposition of the square on the hypotenuse—had +been able to liberate themselves from the +type of our reproductive processes—so that one +had always either, as in Greek plays, to work up +to a climax toward the end and then gently and +briefly subside, or, as in our modern ones, to +reach a climax and then abruptly cease. I thought +of the heat of Catullus and Keats, of the mounting +excitement of Dante; of the even unimpassioned +glow of purely homosexual writers like +Plato and André Gide; of the blank stretches +where the climaxes should be, in the novels of +Henry James.</p> + +<p>And I reflected, also, that between the sexes—Rita’s +poetry and Catullus’s—there was no real +common norm of judgment in matters of literature +or art—men and women were each tied to +their stakes: they could only turn in circles about +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">185</span>them. What critic could really pretend to judge +the work of men and women side by side?—or, +for that matter, the work of different races, or +even of different nations—of different periods, +generations, each with its own adjustment to +make to the world which pursued and pressed it, +each with its own particular disasters, its own +particular discords and conflicts, which, to be easy, +it must resolve? Or even of different individuals!</p> + +<p>What a discrepancy—worst of all—what a +gulf between the self which experiences and the +self which writes! What was the sense, I asked +myself, in that room where I had once brought +Rita and where we had talked the night through +and seen the blue of June on the glass—what was +the comfort of “moments of emotion recollected +in tranquillity”? As if there could ever be a common +denominator, as if there could ever be a +fusion or union, between those moments of tranquillity +and our moments of pain!</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>As I went out to buy a bottle of gin at a near-by +Italian restaurant, I resolved to disgorge all these +ideas in a gigantic destructive essay. But I found +now that I was getting a headache: my mind was +still going on at a furious fatiguing rate—with +slashed and deflated tires, running rackingly on +its rims—and I wanted now to make it stop. I +had been feeling rather faint with hunger, and, +while the waiter was wrapping up the bottle, I ate +some bread and drank a highball.</p> + +<p>I tried to shift my thoughts to Daisy, as I expected +to find her when I should call for her—in +her pretty black evening-gown, and much beautified +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">186</span>and refreshed.—After the highball, and a +second highball, I found myself full of enthusiasm +for the night-club.</p> + +<p>When I arrived at Forty-fourth Street, however, +the door of Daisy’s apartment was opened +by Pete Bird, and I saw Daisy sitting on the edge +of the bed, with the same old rowdy plaid dress +and the same demoralized countenance, now unnaturally +pale. Pete said, “Oh, hello!” and both +stared at me. I saw that Daisy had been crying: +she had a bandage around her wrist.</p> + +<p>I inquired what had happened. “Daisy cut her +wrist,” said Pete. “I was trying to open a spaghetti +can,” said Daisy, without expression. +“Good Heavens!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you think +you ought to have a doctor?” “We’ve had one,” +said Pete. “He’s just gone.” Daisy continued to +stare up at me, without speaking, with watery, +swollen eyes.</p> + +<p>I felt a deep disgust with them both. I protested +that she should have waited, that I had +planned to get dinner at the night-club. “Just +didn’t want to wait,” she replied—then added, +after a moment’s pause: “I had some spaghetti +here, and I thought I might as well eat it!”</p> + +<p>“I don’t suppose you want to do any more looping, +then,” I said. She answered shortly: “Not +to-night.”</p> + +<p>Pete Bird had sat down on the bed beside her, +and put one arm around her: he looked like a +faithful dog. She looked like a wounded owlet: +I was astonished to observe that her nose, in the +centre of her pale round face, could appear like a +little beak. She had through suffering and fatigue +reached one of those moments when women +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">187</span>seem completely dispossessed of their sex, and it +occurs to us as a surprise that they probably resemble +their fathers.</p> + +<p>I asked whether she wouldn’t like a drink. +“You might leave some here,” said Daisy. I felt +that Pete regarded me with coldness, that he had +assumed complete proprietorship of Daisy, so I +gave them the bottle and took my leave. “I’m +sorry,” said Daisy, without feeling, “that I +couldn’t go out.”</p> + +<p>I directed the taxi-driver to take me to Sue +Borglum’s.—I was irritated by Daisy’s clumsiness +in cutting her wrist on the spaghetti can; +and I resented the presence of Pete Bird. I did +not particularly want to see any more of Sue +Borglum’s party—in fact, the thought of returning +was repugnant to me. But I had got to the +bottom of everything—nothing really mattered +to-night. Going back to my apartment alone was +the most intolerable prospect of all.</p> + +<p>In the cab, I fell to wondering, in my discouragement +with art and literature, whether it might +not perhaps be possible to find a deeper, more +austere satisfaction in scientific writing and research: +my mind had been haunted that evening +by ideas from my recent scientific reading. In the +sciences, at least, one was dealing with ruthless +reality itself: <em>there</em> one did not pretend to justify; +<em>there</em> one’s work was accomplished in indifference +as to whether it solaced men’s minds. I regretted +now that I had never had the foresight to study +physics and biology at college. And in an attempt +to exercise, at least, that gift of scientific observation +upon which I had rather prided myself, I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">188</span>asked the taxi-driver, as I was paying him, +whether he had not been born in Alabama. But +he replied that he had been born in New York, +and had lived there all his life.</p> + +<p>I was struck, when I re-entered Sue Borglum’s, +by a certain demoralization which seemed to have +taken place since I left. In the room where +people were dancing, a little baldish man with +spectacles was playing on a set of trap-drums: he +was apparently under the impression that he was +contributing to the pleasure of the dancers; but +as his drumming made the phonograph inaudible, +they were endeavoring to restrain him. He was +complacently smiling to himself, and when any +one remonstrated with him, only glanced up and +smiled more happily, deafened by his own drums. +From time to time, he blew a kazoo.</p> + +<p>On the couch in the room across the hall—the +couch on which Rita had been sitting—there lay +a man (though he might almost have been a woman +of the taller more aquiline type) in a green +and orange kimono, from which protruded lean +bare shanks and feet. He made me pause in horror +when I first saw him: his eyes, which had +mascara on them, were cadaverously closed, and +his unnaturally narrow face had almost the +pinched look of the dead.</p> + +<p>In the room where the refreshments had been +served, there was nothing left now but a sandwich +which some one had bitten into, and the +purplish dregs of the punch. Bobby McIlvaine +was leaning against the mantel: his straight +mouth and his narrow eyes seemed to have shut +up, at the intimation of danger, like a turtle’s +shell. Sue Borglum was vehemently haranguing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">189</span>him, while a girl with lustreless complexion and +lips painted a heavy magenta was expostulating +tearfully with Sue in an endeavor to justify herself +for having just thrown a punch glass at another +girl, who, in her turn, feminine and frail +in a fashion rather wispy and washy, was half-hiding, +like a frightened chick, behind a species of +woman doctor. This last person, who was broad +and well-tailored, with white cuffs and a black +masculine dress, was herself defying and deriding +the first girl—the one who was appealing to +Sue Borglum—with robustious male taunts and +chuckles, which served to convey female malice.</p> + +<p>Sue received me with a violent gust of welcome, +evidently forgetting that she had seen me +before—no doubt my changing my clothes had +misled her—and immediately called me as a witness +against Bobby McIlvaine: “Now, tell him—tell +him frankly!” she shouted. “I want him to +know what people really think of his sets! Did +you ever see anything more terrible in your life +than the first act of <i>April Showers</i>? I tell him +that as a snug little cottage, it would make a good +annex to the Public Library!” I said that it was a +great pity that the scene hadn’t taken place in a +palace, because Bobby was so good at palaces. +“It’ll take place in Cain’s palace soon!” Sue Borglum +breathlessly went on. “Palace! The trouble +with him is that his style has gotten vulgar! It’s +vulgar, that’s what it is! Palace! It looks like a +movie palace! It looks like some movie man’s +idea of a palatial ladies’ lavatory!”</p> + +<p>I drifted on, after a little, to the kitchen: perhaps +I wanted to be sure that Rita had really gone—perhaps +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">190</span>I still hoped to speak to her alone and +to break down that constraint between us of which +I carried the consciousness everywhere, like an +ache at the back of my head.</p> + +<p>In the kitchen, I found a little group waiting +around the bathroom door. One of the men was +remonstrating with the others. In those days, in +Greenwich Village, there was always a man in a +dinner-jacket who was present on all major social +occasions: he was some sort of a bond-salesman +or broker who took an interest in the arts. +When, as in the case of Sue Borglum’s Thursday +evenings, these occasions became a little more +formal and many people wore dinner-jackets, he +began to appear in a dress-suit. Thus costumed, +he was now leaning against the sink, with his +hands in his trousers pockets—his regular equine +face expressionless and almost distinguished—protesting +with good-humored gentlemanliness +against the vigorous measures proposed by certain +other members of the group for inducing the +occupants of the bathroom, who, it appeared, had +been in there a long time, to give somebody else a +chance. It was also suggested that the people +inside might actually be ill, that they might even +have committed suicide, and that one really ought +to find out. “No,” said the gentleman in the dress-suit. +“I don’t think they’ve bumped themselves +off. A little while ago I heard somebody laughing.” +“Maybe one of them’s bumped the other +off,” suggested somebody in the group, “and it’s +the one that’s alive that’s laughing.” “I don’t +think so,” replied the arbiter. “I know them +both.—I want to get in,” he added, “just as badly +as you do, but I think we ought to be discreet.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">191</span></p> + +<p>“Well, I’m damned if I do!” declared emphatically +a little chunky Hungarian, one of the +editors of a communist paper. “Whatever they’ve +been doing in there, they’ve been doing it long +enough!” “Yes,” said a furtive-eyed poet, who +wore a khaki shirt. “It’s time the workers got +a break!” The Hungarian’s companion, a chunky +and pretty young Jewess, smiled a little uneasily, +in awe of the communist, but impressed by the +man in the dress-suit.</p> + +<p>The Hungarian marched to the door and +knocked resolutely and clearly. “Look here, old +chap!” said the man in the dress-suit, going forward +and taking him by the shoulder, though +without violence or heat. “Better lay off! Let’s +be tactful!” “Get away, you animal cracker!” +the communist retorted. “Don’t try to high-hat +me! There are other gentlemen and ladies in the +world besides you and your friends in the bathroom!”</p> + +<p>The door opened suddenly and widely, and +Larry Mickler came out. He was followed by a +tall plain blonde, very much flushed and evidently +angry. They made their way through the group +about the door, looking fixedly straight ahead of +them. But when Mickler came up to me—I was +the farthest from the bathroom—he stopped and +let the girl leave the kitchen alone.</p> + +<p>“Well, old-timer!” he greeted me genially—with +the exaggerated heartiness of one who has +failed to commend himself elsewhere. I asked +him whether Rita had gone. “I don’t know,” he +replied, reaching for the bottle of Scotch. “She +was in the other room a little while ago.—<em>There’s</em> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">192</span>a woman who’s not afraid to be herself!—These +women are all afraid of themselves—they’re afraid +to say <em>Yea</em> to life! Village and college girls, one’s +just as bad as the other in this goddam country +of ours!—Like that rope-haired blonde girl, for +instance—she wants it and yet she’s afraid of it—when +it comes to the point, she’s afraid! She +pretends to be scandalized, when she’s really only +sore at herself!—Well, let’s drink to Rita Cavanagh, +the woman who’s not afraid!”</p> + +<p>“I’m all for Rita Cavanagh,” I said, “but I’ve +drunk enough toasts to-night!” “That’s right!” +replied Larry Mickler, immediately directing his +resentment at me. “Say <em>Nay</em>, like all the rest! I’m +not surprised you’re in the publishing business. +The publishers are all <em>Nay</em>-sayers! I wouldn’t be +writing ads, instead of novels, if the publishers +said <em>Yea</em> to life!—Why, if the whole tribe of +publishers—and editors!—and critics!—were combined +in one attack, they wouldn’t be enough to +make a Dostoevsky scratch the bite!” I repressed +an impulse to answer, “To hell with Dostoevsky!”—but +replied, “I never heard that Dostoevsky had +any trouble getting published.” I left him glaring, +before he had retorted, and went back into +the dining-room.</p> + +<p>In the dining-room, the girl with the lustreless +skin had broken down and was weeping on a +chair, while Sue Borglum, her own eyes leaking +tears, was making an effort to console her. Sue +was saying: “Never mind, Claudette—you can’t +win! you can’t win!” Bobby McIlvaine, who was +standing alone, his face locked against the scene +which confronted him, produced two theatre-ticket +stubs from his pocket and dropped them +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">193</span>into the dregs of the punch. He remarked to me: +“That’s a combination that I’ve always wanted to +try in the theatre—mauve and blue!”</p> + +<p>In the front room, to which I immediately returned, +I was just in time to witness an arrival +which made upon me a curious impression. I +could hardly at first believe my eyes: there had +appeared suddenly, under the escort of Tony +Scallopino, the proprietor of one of those Greenwich +Village restaurants which were beginning, at +that period, to be transformed into small but +increasingly expensive night-clubs, two young +women who, even among that company where +one was not ordinarily surprised at anything, astonished +and jarred upon me, like some incongruous +image of a dream, remembered after we +wake, some image which owes its strangeness, +its power obscurely to worry us, to the fact that +it has been transferred from its surroundings in +the waking world to surroundings which do not +fit it. They were strangely conspicuous, these girls—more +conspicuous, even, in their way, than the +man in the orange kimono or the woman with the +stiff white cuffs. In the first place, they were +very brightly dressed, one in blue, the other in red—and +I saw, at a second glance, that their dresses, +though gay and even smart, were flimsy and +cheap. Neither was bad-looking; and when they +first came in, I thought they were attractive. The +small one, the one in blue, had blue eyes and +looked a little like a fish; but the other, the one in +red, was quite handsome; she had rich brown hair, +large brown eyes, full cheeks, fleshy lips, rather a +creamy complexion and a nice thick nose. But +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">194</span>their cheeks glowed with a heightening of color, +and their eyes were starred with a black radiation, +which, among all the varied make-ups of the party, +seemed improper and out of place; such faces +were not meant for the lighting of ordinary private +houses, but for the pink-shaded lights-in-darkness +of Tony Scallopino’s night-club. And +in their eyes I saw that public stare, the stare of +the prostitute, which, like the jockey’s bowed +legs, the tailor’s peering eyes, the courtroom intonations +of the lawyer, the military officer’s curtness, +is the universal sign of the profession—that +stare which must be always watching, which +must meet all the world without winking, without +demurring or veiling itself—that stare which +sometimes looks amazed, sometimes panic-stricken, +sometimes resentful and sullen, and sometimes +insane, but which seems always to have robbed +the face of some essential element of personality, +and therefore of humanity itself.</p> + +<p>I gazed at these girls, and, in an instant, the +brunette had become aware of my gaze and was +welcoming it, with smiling eyes. I approached +her, and she began at once, before I had even +spoken: “I think this is the most delightful old +house! What a lovely old mirror over the mantel!” +We discussed the house, the weather, the +theatre: she had opinions about the plays that +were being given in the little Village theatres: I +was surprised to hear her make conversation so +cleverly and with such a good manner, but I was +shocked to see her ply her trade—she made no +pretense of anything else—so brazenly and so +promptly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">195</span></p> + +<p>I was made uneasy, as we talked of other +things, to meet nothing in her large fine eyes but +a look of sly, humorous complicity. Those eyes, +for all their intelligence, had been glazed against +the warmth of frankness, the expression of personal +feeling, as much as those of any streetwalker’s +who makes off to the streets again the +moment her transaction is finished. And this +troubled me—I hated and resented it: to-night I +had felt myself estranged, first, from Rita, and +then, from Daisy—I had felt cut off beyond even +communication. And I now exerted myself to +make a contact with the brown-eyed girl in red—to +force her to meet my friendliness.</p> + +<p>But as she saw that I was refusing to do business, +she soon passed on to the man in the dress-suit, +who happened to be standing near us. Without +excuse or explanation, without hesitation or +resentment, like some salesman of carpet-sweepers, +who, rejected at one door where he has +knocked, immediately passes on to the next, she +assailed him with her shameless patter.</p> + +<p>I wondered how Tony Scallopino had ever dared +to bring these women here, and I was aroused +to disgusted anger. (I found out afterwards that +Sue herself, in her morbid and hysterical fear lest +her party should be ill-attended, had telephoned +to Tony to bring any one still at his place—meaning, +of course, any of his regular patrons.) I remembered +how Tony Scallopino, in the days before +his advent to the Village, had been an I. W. +W. agitator and how, in the course of the long +Italian dinners, in his former and cheaper restaurant, +he had often sat down at our table and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">196</span>talked about politics with us; I had at that time +always rather liked him, but it seemed to me to-night +that Tony had become Manhattanized and +cynical. It did not occur to me that, from Tony’s +point of view, the girls were working-people like +himself, and that in bringing them to Sue Borglum’s +party he might be merely endeavoring to make +it up to them for a night of bad business at his +night-club; I might have guessed, from their technique +of hungry wolves, that they were desperately +badly off. But I only felt that Tony had +somehow become a traitor.</p> + +<p>The fish-faced blonde approached me in her +turn, hoping to succeed where the other had failed, +but I let her see that I was disaffected. She +passed on to the creature on the couch, the man +in the orange kimono, and by some playful overture, +awoke him. But he, nervously starting up, +regarded her with surprise and indignation, and +exclaimed, in a high peevish voice: “I want to lie +down here, please! I’ve got a perfectly terrible +headache!”</p> + +<p>Sue Borglum and Bobby McIlvaine had, in the +meantime, appeared from the dining-room; and +Sue, beholding the girl in red, who had not long +been detained by the dress-suit, address herself +immediately to Bobby as if she already knew him, +had concluded at once that she was some flame of +his, whom Bobby had invited without consulting +her. And, in a moment, learning that Sue was +the hostess, the newcomer had turned to her enthusiastically, +exclaiming over the beauty of the old +house, the old mirror, the quiet charm of the +neighborhood, the delightfulness of the occasion: +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">197</span>“But I’m so sorry to miss seeing Rita Cavanagh: +I admire her poetry so much! I was so excited +when Tony told me she was going to be here to-night, +and then we missed her—she left before we +came!”</p> + +<p>I made my way to the hall again, where, in the +manner of Larry Mickler, I drew and drank rapidly +several cocktails from the lemon-cloudy lees +of the water-cooler. Then, feeling that these +drinks were weak—they consisted principally of +melted ice—with a vision of a den of drug addicts +gathered together, with gruesome merriment, to +dose themselves with alcohol, I drank what was +left of a bottle of whiskey, which turned out to +be excessively bad, stinging my tongue and constricting +my gullet.</p> + +<p>Now I began to ask myself whether it were the +revolver Larry Mickler was carrying which had +made me break off with him so quickly and leave +the room without waiting for his reply.</p> + +<p>Through a door which led into the dining-room +and which opened behind me from the hall, I +could hear Sue, who had left the sitting-room—retreating, +as was by no means characteristic of +her, at the advance of the outrageous guests, +whom she still believed to be friends of Bobby’s—pouring +out, to the equally unfortunate Claudette, +in a shrill, strained, and grating voice, her grievances +against Bobby: “It isn’t as if I’d ever been +anything to him—I never was! I never wanted +to do anything but help him. Some women would +have tried to get a hold on him!”—etc., etc. At +that moment, it seemed to me that Sue—whom I +found that I now somehow identified with the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">198</span>woman with the dyed red hair and the slatternly +lacy dressing-gown, whom I had seen at the beginning +of the evening in the house where Larry +Mickler lived—that Sue Borglum was the ugliest +and most odious woman whom I had ever known, +and that she possessed the most horrible voice. +Yet it was not really her voice which made me +hate her, but the fact that she was lonely and in +pain.</p> + +<p>In the room where the phonograph was playing, +the dancers had abandoned the floor, driven +off by the man with the drums, who, however, +still sat trancedly drumming. They sat or lay on +the couches and chairs, which had been moved +back against the sides of the room—as if washed +up, I said to myself, in what I thought was a felicitous +fancy, like driftwood, dead fish, and seaweed +left behind by the tide on the shore. Then +I remembered Rita’s poem, the poem about the +beach-fire and the darkness: it seemed to me that +my own image had been caught from it, and I +felt that I had been travestying it foolishly.</p> + +<p>With an impulse of irritation, I broke in upon +the imbecile with the drums, interrupting him in +a loud clear voice and inquiring whether he knew +the time. “I don’t know the time,” he replied, with +his abstracted fatuous smile—“but,” he added, +after a moment, when he had come to the end of +a spasm of drumming, “I’ve got something else +that’s just as good!” He produced a pint flask +from his back pocket: “And a darn sight better!” +he added. He offered me a drink, which I accepted. +I sat down on a chair beside him. “This +is something,” he further observed, after taking +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">199</span>a swig himself, “which makes time unnecessary!” +He had the conviction of quiet humor of a very +stupid person. “If you carry a little flask,” he continued, +after a brief pause—he had begun softly +drumming again—“you don’t need to carry a +watch!”</p> + +<p>I asked him whether he knew Larry Mickler, +and when he shook his head, always smiling, I +expressed the extreme distaste I felt for the admirer +of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. “Why, he’s a fellow,” +I protested, “who smashes the statue of the +Winged Victory that his wife brings home from +college—a perfectly nice little college girl! He +tries to neck other girls in the Jap’s room—in the +bathroom!—He threatens them with a gun! He’s +the most objectionable man I’ve ever known!”</p> + +<p>And I reflected to the tune of the fox-trot and +to the subdued rat-a-tat of the drum, that what I +had said was literally true: Larry Mickler was, +without any question, the most obnoxious man I +had ever known—and I had failed to put him +properly in his place! I had been afraid of his +damned revolver! Here there had come to me +an opportunity to stand up to Evil itself: it might +be that such a moment as this, such a moment +that tested a man, came but once to a man in his +life! And I had quailed at the thought of a gun! +Yet to stand up to Larry Mickler would be finally +to vindicate one’s honor against the horror, the +shame, the despair, of that terrible house! They +themselves, I felt sure, would thank me for it!</p> + +<p>I decided to seek him out. I should find him +slinking about the rooms—I remembered his dirty +complexion and his furtive, ill-natured eye, his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">200</span>cockily waxed mustache. He would ask me to +drink to Dostoevsky, and I should reply: “To hell +with Dostoevsky! What’s the good of a Dostoevsky +to nourish such worms as you? The world +would be more decent without him!—the world +would be better off if it were rid of all the cripples +and defectives who find their only justification +in reading and writing books!”</p> + +<p>And I was steadied with a deep satisfaction, a +perfect self-assurance: I took on a new authority. +With the most affable friendliness, I complimented +the man with the spectacles on his mastery +of the traps, and asked him whether he had +taken lessons. He said, no: that he had just +picked it up, and added some quiet pleasantry, at +which I uproariously laughed, but to which I had +paid no attention, as I had been thinking of the +classical statue which Larry Mickler had smashed +on the mantelpiece and which now presented itself +to my mind in the guise of a silver-gray +Athena as slender as her spear—and this vision, +in the glimpse of a second, had dragged with it all +the fresh bright beauty of the portfolio of drawings +for Homer which Bobby McIlvaine had +shown Rita and me that May night in University +Place.</p> + +<p>I arose and thanked the drummer for his drink, +which I extravagantly commended with a condescension +almost regal. He offered me another, +which I took.</p> + +<p>Walking composedly from room to room, I began +scouring the house for Larry Mickler: with a +keen and arrogant glance, I scrutinized the groups +one by one.—I told myself that, once Mickler was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">201</span>disposed of, I should carry off the pretty brunette, +who had come to seem to me very desirable—I +should meet her at first on her professional basis, +and then I should compel her to be human with +me—she should drop that horrible manner and +mask, she should share with me her feelings and +her thoughts!—She should become my companion—she +should love me!</p> + +<p>But I could find Larry Mickler nowhere, and +when at last I began to inquire, nobody seemed to +know what had become of him. In the front +room, I was taken aback to discover that the girl +with the brown eyes had already reached an understanding +with a clownish-looking elderly man, +who wore a heavy black ribbon on his eye-glasses. +He was pressing her to leave with him at once; +and she was explaining that she would have to +wait until her “girl-friend” was ready to go. The +little fish-faced blonde, for her part, had, in the +meantime, been taken in the toils of one of the +licensed Greenwich Village lunatics, who, without +a penny in his pocket, was exerting the active and +ironic intelligence of which his derangement had +never deprived him to convince her of the seriousness +of his intentions.</p> + +<p>I went up to Tony Scallopino, who greeted me +with a broad, sunny smile, and asked him whether +he had seen Larry Mickler. “I just see him go,” +he replied.</p> + +<p>I stood for a moment without speaking. Then, +“What’s the idea,” I began, “of bringing these +girls here to-night?” “They’re just two little +girls,” he explained, “who come to my place to +dance. They’ve had hard luck and they have to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">202</span>earn a little money. They’re two very nice girls.” +He had said this with a smiling eye in which I +thought I detected insolence: I found myself +glaring at him. “Well, I think that it was a great +mistake to bring them here to-night!” I declared.</p> + +<p>His grin was for a second obscured by a blink, +like the shutter of a camera: he began to say +something more, I don’t know what. I only +stared into his face: his eyes were wide open but +shrewd; he still smiled—he had the habitual +tactfulness of the Italian restaurant-proprietor, +but his obsequiousness was gone: he was raising +his heavy black eyebrows, as if in protest and +surprise. I felt that he thought me drunk, that +he considered my objections tactless: was Tony +Scallopino not himself an independent Villager? +had he not been invited to the party? had he not +sometimes loaned money to the lunatic who was +attempting to impose on the blond girl? had he +not talked like a brother to Hugo of the trials and +aspirations of the workers? had he not cashed my +checks?</p> + +<p>My lips opened, without my having planned it, +and, despite the gummy tongue of drunkenness, +I heard myself suddenly interrupt him: “You +used to be a Wobbly! You used to talk about +justice to the workers! Well, it seems to me that +now you’re betraying the workers! You’re trying +to give the Greenwich Villagers a taste for +leisure-class luxuries! You’ve turned your old +Italian restaurant into an expensive up-town +night-club!—and you charge us high prices for +bad liquor! And you have the nerve to bring +these girls—” He tried to slip away, but I seized +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">203</span>him by the arms and pinioned him against the +wall: “You used to talk about the social revolution—well, +if there’s ever a social revolution, +you proletarians who run night-clubs will be the +first to get the axe!—When I first came down to +Greenwich Village——”</p> + +<p>He was angry and tried to pull away—I thought +I heard him say, “You must be drunk!” and saw +him give me a black malign look. With a powerful +movement of his arms, he lifted them and pushed +me away with such force that I staggered backward +and almost fell.—I struck him in the jaw with +my fist—and the next moment was looking at the +room from a different point of view, and knew +that I was lying on the floor.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a><a id="Page_205"></a>205</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV"> + IV + </h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a><a id="Page_207"></a>207</span></p> + +<p>In the bright warm room, so alive inside the +bleak November dark, before the fire burning +briskly and stoutly, Professor Grosbeake’s +three beautiful daughters gave me tea, in their +parents’ absence. Among the elegant and slender +spindles of the legs and rungs of the English +furniture, which seemed blacker and stronger-sinewed, +as if they had been brought to a sharper +focus, than American mahogany—which, as in +the case of the Queen Anne secretary, with its +narrow shape, its dark dense grain, its close-laid +shelves above, hooded with a double-loaf top, and +its close-packed drawers below, diminishing in +thickness toward the bottom, its air of having always +contained sealed letters and legal papers, all +safely and neatly locked away, seemed designed +for a tighter, compacter, and more downright civilization; +among the late pale autumnal flowers, the +roses and the bowl of white cosmos; the white +ruffle-bordered curtains against the black of the +winter panes and the patches of confused pink and +green made by the modest modernist paintings—Magda, +Frieda, and Rosamond, themselves in +fresh light frocks like the flowers, enchanted me +with their loveliness and candor.</p> + +<p>They were all very smooth and blond; they +had never bobbed their hair, and Frieda and +Magda wore theirs brushed abundantly down their +backs, like Alice in the Alice books. Rosamond, +who was older than the twins, had hers up: it was +parted in the middle and tightly wound behind in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">208</span>a blond and young-womanly knot, so that, if one +thought only of her hair, she seemed like a young +German fräulein (Mrs. Grosbeake was German), +whereas, if one thought of her blue eyes, her +straight nose, her long oval face and her long and +graceful neck, she seemed like an English girl. +She served the tea with nice shy manners. Rosamond +was dressed in pale blue; and one of the +twins, Magda, wore white, and Frieda, a kind of +lilac, with stockings a kind of lavender, lighter +than the frock. The twins seemed rather German +than English: they had plump round cheeks and +round noses, and were maturely developed for +fourteen.</p> + +<p>Frieda had golden-red hair, which gave a singular +effect of richness as it came down over her +purple dress; Magda was more heavily built and +slower-moving and slower-thinking than her sister: +she was the blondest of all—her hair was the +palest, purest flaxen I had ever seen. And her +blondness made me think of Daisy, whom I expected +to see the next day.</p> + +<p>(I had lately come back from abroad. My +aunt had left me a small legacy, and very soon +after the night at Sue Borglum’s, I had gone to +Europe and had stayed there till fall. When I +had returned, I had been eager to see Grosbeake, +one of whose books I had bought in England and +had been reading on the boat, and in whom I +now felt a new interest. I had also planned to +visit Daisy and Pete Bird, who had left New +York, even before I had, and were now living together +in the country, not far out of my way +back to town. Since I had been back, I had written +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">209</span>to Daisy, and she had invited me to come to +see them.)</p> + +<p>I liked the English voices of the young Grosbeakes: +they had a soft flurried way of speaking, +and a maidenly innocence of timbre, quite +unlike young American girls (though the twins +were beginning already to acquire American +slang). “I don’t like this kind of crackers,” said +Magda. “We couldn’t get the regular biscuits,” +Rosamond explained. “The grocer’s all out of +them.—I’m sorry,” she went on seriously to me. +“I’m afraid they’re not very good!” “You always +say ‘biscuits,’” said Frieda, “and Magda +always says ‘crackers.’ I think we all ought to +say the same thing!” “What do you say?” +queried Magda. “Sometimes I say one,” said +Frieda, “and sometimes I say the other. But I +like ‘biscuits’ best!” “I think these are really +crackers,” said Rosamond, who did not want my +feelings hurt by a discrimination in favor of +‘biscuits,’ “because they crackle so when you +break them.” “That’s why I think ‘biscuits’ is +better,” insisted Frieda, “—because ‘crackers’ +sounds as if they <em>all</em> crackled—but <em>some</em> biscuits +just bend, you know!” “They’re not biscuits,” +said Rosamond. “They’re cakes.—Won’t you +have some more tea?” she urged me. “No,” said +Frieda, “you know those little soft ones that we +had in the country last summer, that you can +almost bend in two!” “They were little cakes,” +said Rosamond.—We heard some one come in at +the front door. “There’s Father,” Magda announced.</p> + +<p>I could see Grosbeake taking off his black coat +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">210</span>and his low-crowned black hat and setting his stick +in the stand, before he appeared in the doorway. +He had the rounded back of the scholar, a back, +indeed, almost humped—of which I always used +to feel that the exceptional extent to which it was +bowed was an index to the degree of the difficulty +of his researches. But Grosbeake, beyond this, +had nothing of the physical deficiency—the weak +eyes or the feeble figure—ordinarily attributed +to the scholar. On the contrary, he seemed to +have sprung from some tough ruddy-cheeked English +stock which not even a lifetime of universities +could enervate or fade. Despite the fineness +of his features, he had something of Mr. Pickwick +and even something of Mr. Punch. And upon an +American who had been living in New York, he +produced a curious and gratifying impression: it +was as if one were surprised and rejoiced, after +seeing a horde of depersonalized masks, at finding +some one who possessed a face. With his +fair cheeks flushed rosy by the cold, his salient +nose and chin, his slanting Henry VIII eyes and +his look of having been carved by hand out of +some very sound kind of wood by a wood-carver +of the days before machinery, he gave the impression +of being a product, by way of the generations +which had preceded him, of a constant hand-to-hand +encounter with the turbulence of the elements +and with the occasions of human life. He +wore black English clothes and his stiff white +cuffs were very white: his collar and his cravat, +and his white locks which came down over his +collar, seemed to me very old-fashioned. He always +carried a thickish dark stick, with a brass +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">211</span>top of interlocked apes, which a brother had +brought him from India.</p> + +<p>He greeted me with his charming courtesy and +peered up at me with wise and subtle bird-lidded +eyes. “I’m sorry,” he explained, “not to have +been able to be here for tea. But there was a +meeting of the examination committee at precisely +a quarter to five—something which would +be unthinkable in England, you know.” He lifted +sparse old eyebrows in a smile. “Rather than +make the dons miss their tea, they’d allow the +examination to be prepared without adequate +consultation!—I had proposed holding the meeting +in a tea-room, but they didn’t seem to care +for the suggestion—or to take the hint!” He +spoke slowly and very deliberately, and his voice +had fine up-and-down inflections of sweetness +and irony: his nostrils had inflections, too, and +vibrated while he spoke.</p> + +<p>“I’m afraid the tea’s cold,” said Rosamond. +“I’ll have some fresh made.” “No: never mind!” +said Grosbeake. He stood before the fire, his +hands clasped just above his stomach. “I think we +shall have snow,” he announced. “I think we shall +have snow!—The Dean was very sure we +shouldn’t—but I believe that we shall!” I remarked +that we had had no frost and that the +afternoon had been warm. “That was what the +Dean pointed out,” he replied. “He even insisted +on making a bet with me. He bet me a bottle of +Scotch whiskey against a bottle of my sherry. I +think he’ll get the better of the bargain: the +sherry is very good: it was given me by a friend +in the Embassy, who had the privilege of bringing +it in!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">212</span></p> + +<p>He took the cup of tepid tea from Rosamond +and sat down in an arm-chair before the fire. He +asked me about myself and what I had been writing. +I was ashamed to be obliged to tell him that, +even while I had been abroad, I had really not +written anything—I said that my literary morale +had been low, or something equally silly.</p> + +<p>“I was just thinking,” he replied, “in the +Dean’s room, in looking at the portraits of the +college presidents there—that it may be from certain +points of view as much of a misfortune to +have too much character, too well-sustained a +morale, as to have too little. When I looked at +the early presidents, especially the seventeenth-century +ones, I said to myself, ‘There are men +whose character has been overdeveloped!’ It’s a +very special combination of qualities, you know, +that’s required for a mind capable of original +work. A man mustn’t have his character too vigorously +developed, because he must be able to experiment +with ideas. It’s like going to buy a hat, +you know—first you try one on and wear it for a +bit to see how it goes, and then you try on another. +But a man with a strongly developed +character is unable to do that.—But, on the other +hand, of course, he must still have character +enough not simply to drift about without preferring +one idea to another.”</p> + +<p>Grosbeake had a curious irony, which was always +at the same time benign. It was the irony—one +sees it seldom—of a mind which is at once +innocent and subtle, and which has, in consequence, +something divine about it: an irony without +malice. He had a touch perhaps of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">213</span>vanity, or rather, of the dandyism, of the modern +mathematical philosopher, who finds himself provided +with paradoxes at once so surprising, so +attractive and so sound. I have heard him comment +with his calm amusement on the mistakes +of unmathematical philosophers when they attempted +to invoke mathematics: “It’s curious,” +he would say, “how peculiarly unfortunate they +are in their choice of mathematical examples! +They always seem to hit upon something which +isn’t necessarily true at all—which might quite +as well be the other way, you know! Bradley, +for example, in his <i>Logic</i>, when he wants to give +an illustration of a particularly indisputable truth—something +we must accept as self-evident—that, +if B is to the left of C, and if A is to the left +of B, then A must be to the left of C, also—when, +of course, that’s not true at all!—if you +prolong a straight line indefinitely, you come back +on the other side!” Though, when Bradley’s +<i>Logic</i> was written, non-Euclidean geometry could +hardly have been widely known. (There may have +entered, also, into Grosbeake’s attitude, in this particular +instance, some traditional opposition between +the points of view of Cambridge and Oxford.)</p> + +<p>But no one could have been farther than Grosbeake +from the essential triviality of mind which +academic arrogance or complacency so often tries +to disguise. For if Hugo Bamman and his father +were the modern type of saints, Grosbeake +was a modern type of sage, who taught wisdom in +casual conversation and virtue only by example. +I had felt his influence even in college, at a time +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">214</span>when I as yet knew nothing of his philosophical +ideas. For Grosbeake had the most comprehensive +mind, at home in the most varied fields, with +which I had ever come into contact. For him, +philosophy was an attempt to take account of all +the aspects of the universe, and to find in them +coherence and a meaning; so that Grosbeake’s +comment on any subject had a special significance +and value, and, despite the fact that he +never made an effort to expostulate or convert, +was likely to present itself long afterwards as +something to be seriously considered in making +up one’s own mind on the subject. And though +he detested every sort of preaching (Mr. Bamman +had been a born preacher), and though even +the study of Ethics was inconceivable to him, he +had the effect, more than any one else I had +known, of making moral distinction attractive. I +remember his saying once of some student, a student +of whose abilities he thought well, but who, +as punishment for some escapade, had had his +chapel cuts taken away from him, so that he +couldn’t go out of town over Sundays, that it +would “do him good,” because he would now +work during the week-ends. “So you do believe +in doing people good!” some one present had +caught him up. “I thought you didn’t believe in +that!” “That’s an object,” Grosbeake had replied, +a little taken aback, “which I believe is +best promoted indirectly.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Grosbeake came in before dinner: she +was a broad, handsome, placid German woman, +very thoroughly educated and very practical. One +always felt that she was a kind of base upon +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">215</span>which Grosbeake’s metaphysics rested; for he +was more sensitive and nervous than he appeared, +and, although intellectually imperturbable, was in +other ways easily disorganized.</p> + +<p>We had dinner in the white-walled dining-room—it +was a solid and attractive Colonial +house. The Grosbeakes had brought over their +own silver, as well as their own furniture, and +the pieces had always seemed to me to possess +plainly discernible personalities, even physiognomies: +there was a squarish silver tea-pot which +squatted flat upon the table and had a very sharp +emphatic spout that jutted straight out from the +base and was balanced on the other side by a long +straight high-cocked handle. And the cream-pitcher, +the sauce-boat, and even the little salt-cellars +straddled sturdily on three tiny legs, like +some sort of blunt-beaked beetles, or rather, it occurred +to me to-night, like the snouted and potbellied +demons of Bruegel or Callot. Even the +color and substance of the food seemed to have a +special richness and density, as if they had been +painted in a still-life: the bread and the boiled +potatoes looked particularly white and firm, the +mound of currant jelly particularly lucent and +red, and the beefsteak particularly vivid in its +contrasts of red and brown. The Ambassador’s +sherry was delicious. In spite, however, of the +satisfaction which Grosbeake had seemed to feel +in it, his epicurean tastes were really indulged almost +exclusively in the things of the intellect, so +that I have heard him relish a page of Hume as +if it had been a wine, whereas food and drink +themselves, as well as other material comforts, he +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">216</span>usually disregarded. Now he dominated the table, +talking tranquilly and blandly; and in the +presence of their father and mother, the three +lovely Grosbeake girls—unlike young American +girls, who usually dominate their parents—were +entirely in abeyance, with only an occasional low +rapid interchange between the twins, who were +sitting together.</p> + +<p>“I’ve been reading Sinclair Lewis’s <i>Babbitt</i>,” +Grosbeake remarked. I asked him what he +thought of it. “Oh, very good,” he replied. +“Though a little unfair to Babbitt, I think. Of +course, I know very little about the American +cities of the Middle West—I can’t pretend to +speak. But from the students from the West +whom I’ve had in my courses, I get rather a different +impression. They’re very alert, you know—very +eager to learn. And they do well: they +grasp things very quickly. So I don’t think that +the families they come from can be quite so uniformly +benighted as Lewis represents them in +<i>Babbitt</i>.—And I feel, in reading your friend +Hugo Bamman, that he paints a little too sombre +a picture of the business men and their families +in much the same way.</p> + +<p>“It seems to me rather a mistake, you know, to +hold the business men up to ridicule for their Rotary +Clubs and their fraternal organizations. +Under conditions of that kind, where the city is +quite new and the people have no institutions, +they have to create some sort of institutions in +order to hold the community together. Rotary +Clubs and societies of that sort, imperfect as they +may be, fulfil a very necessary function.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">217</span></p> + +<p>“It seems to me that, from some points of +view, the most unfortunate feature of American +business is its failure to provide real leaders. +Professor Pittinger, who has been making a +study of the subject, tells me that it has become +impossible, for example, for the president or one +of the directors of a large corporation to leave a +controlling interest to his son. He can only leave +him an investment, and the son can spend the +money as he pleases; but he inherits no responsibility +and no power, and the surviving officers of +the company don’t recognize his right to any. +That seems to me unfortunate, because where +the father has to make his own way, largely without +advantages, to a position of importance, the +son, who has had the advantages, finds himself +with no power. You often find in England that +the squire who has lived in the country, and has +had to deal at first-hand with his tenants, and +with his animals and land, has a far stronger +sense of realities than the more enlightened +Londoner.”</p> + +<p>“But he sometimes mistreats his tenants and +mismanages his estate abominably,” Mrs. Grosbeake +interjected.</p> + +<p>“If he does,” continued Grosbeake, “he knows +better what he’s doing, nevertheless, than the +average Liberal member of Parliament, say, who +has the best intentions in the world, but who lives +between his club, and certain houses to which he +goes, and the House of Commons—always seeing +the same people, who are all people of precisely +his way of thinking, who are living in precisely +the same way—so that he never at any +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">218</span>point really comes into contact with realities—and +so never really knows what he is talking +about. Even Morley was a little like that.</p> + +<p>“I wonder whether it mightn’t be an advantage, +both to the sons of business men and to the +businesses themselves, if the second generation +could take over some responsibility in connection +with their fathers’ work. They seem to me very +intelligent—so far as I’ve been able to judge +from those I meet in my classes—and the effect +on trade and industry of even one generation of +such men might, I should think, be enormous. +In that event, the Rotary Clubs might become +very important institutions—they might provide +the moral leadership for business.”</p> + +<p>I had so long been taking it for granted that no +good could come out of business, that this idea of +Grosbeake’s seemed to me a very queer and foreign +one; but I reflected on what he had said.</p> + +<p>I always listened with interest and respect to +Grosbeake’s opinions on American matters. He +had studied American affairs with the attention, +at once sympathetic and detached, which he applied +to everything, and he often succeeded in +illumining them with that uncanny divination +which he displayed in all sorts of fields quite outside +his special province. At that time, it had become +the custom for Englishmen who visited +America—we encouraged it, of course, ourselves—to +edify us with generalizations about American +life and institutions—generalizations often +based on a round of cocktail parties in New York, +or, at most, on a lecture tour. So many of the +prizes in America always went to the third and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">219</span>second-rate, that we had become, especially since +the War, a paradise for British mediocrities—poets, +novelists, and universal critics, who had +often great success as lecturers. They went about +patronizing the Americans with a gusto and a +giddy elation which suggested that they might +themselves have been patronized at home; and they +would sometimes tour the country from coast to +coast and return again and again. It was, therefore, +peculiarly gratifying for an American to +discover in Grosbeake those qualities of toughness, +richness, eccentricity, and independence +which one had admired in English literature and +history, but of which one had so often been +disappointed in the English celebrities who +visited us.</p> + +<p>After dinner, we sat before the fire. Mrs. +Grosbeake seemed to contribute a ground-tone of +infinite repose: she made one feel that the body +of humanity was invulnerably solid and sound, +and that it was deep and contained many treasures +which had never been brought to birth. +She sat with her feet side by side, resting squarely +on the floor, and she wore some sort of leather +sandals, with very wide blunt toes. These sandals, +like the modernist paintings (which Grosbeake +had bought from a former student, in +financial difficulties), were one of the odd notes +of unconventionality in the tranquil conventional +household; and they surprised me in the same unwarranted +way as when one found Grosbeake, in +certain of his writings, carrying his philosophical +principles through morals into the field of political +criticism and bringing in an indictment +against nationalism or capitalism.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">220</span></p> + +<p>I had never, as an undergraduate, read anything +which Grosbeake had written, and I had +never taken any of his courses. I had, however, +in my senior year, sometimes gone to his house. +After meeting him once or twice at teas, I had +run into him one day in the hallway of one of +the recitation buildings: he had recognized me +and had talked to me about an article which I +had just written for the college magazine, and +which had aroused a certain amount of controversy. +I had attacked wholesale, as a sinister conspiracy +against freedom of action and thought, +the policy of the English Department, the administration +of the Dean’s office, football mass-meetings, +compulsory chapel, and the custom of +compelling freshmen to wear little black caps; +and I was surprised and rather embarrassed by +Grosbeake’s expression of friendly interest. I +replied almost apologetically—I had been dismayed +by the rumpus I had roused—that I +seemed to have laid myself open to a good deal +of adverse criticism. “Ah, well,” Grosbeake had +reassured me, “one can’t take up any position, +can one? without doing that.” My complaints +had been made in resentment, and they had been +answered with resentment by the faculty, the +alumni, the editors of the college daily, the officers +of the athletic association, and some of the +more ardent and articulate freshmen, who insisted +that they asked nothing better than to pay +homage to the college tradition by continuing to +wear their little black caps: it had never occurred +to me, at the time, that I was engaged in doing +anything so dignified as taking up a position, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">221</span>I had felt that I must be careful, in the future, to +conduct the controversy with more scrupulousness +and sobriety, that I must remember my intellectual +responsibilities. And half my bitterness +and indignation against the college authorities was +gone at finding an elderly and important professor +willing to consider without heat what I had said.</p> + +<p>He had invited me then to his house, and I +used to go there on Sunday evenings, when the +Grosbeakes received faculty and students. I +rarely heard him talk about his subject, and did +not understand him when he did: I had only the +vaguest notion what it was. I figured him as +eternally occupied with solving the same sort of +problems with which I had struggled in Trigonometry +and Permutations and Combinations. I +did not know that those strings of puzzles were +not the whole of mathematics, but merely multiplied +illustrations of general mathematical laws, +in which no one had attempted to interest us. +And still less did I realize that Grosbeake had +passed beyond Mathematics proper to Symbolic +Logic (it was principally the fact that we had in +our faculty another of the small but infatuated +band of the students of Symbolic Logic—a man +with whom he wished to collaborate—which had +brought him to the United States and which had +kept him there so long). I did not know that +Symbolic Logic was an attempt to provide a universal +language for all the branches of science, +and that this attempt to formulate relations common +to different departments of thought was itself +a deeper expression of the same genius which +had given rise to Grosbeake’s interest in such varied +fields of human activity, and of his extraordinary +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">222</span>instinct for tracing their inter-relations. +Aside from his personal distinction and charm, it +was this gift which had fascinated me: he had +usually talked to me about literature, but, aside +from his appreciation of poetry, plays, and novels +as such—which was in itself remarkable—he had +also a brilliant faculty for reading into them social +and moral history and revealing their philosophic +implications. He was the first person, +since Hugo’s father, who had helped me toward +the kind of education which I had begun when +Mr. Bamman had talked to me at school about +Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>I had, however, never guessed at Grosbeake’s +real importance—and indeed his importance outside +his special field had never really appeared +until a year or two before the War, when he had +turned from mathematics to philosophy. When I +came to read his books, I was astonished. First +of all, Grosbeake’s tone and style, in his philosophical +writings, were not at all what I should +have expected. His manner in conversation was +rather urbane, dispassionate, and dry: he seemed, +as I have said, to approach ideas with a certain +epicureanism of the intellect. But his writing +had a close tough grain: it was crystalline, in the +sense that it gave an effect of the hardness and +clarity of crystals rather than of the limpidity of +crystal; it had a peculiar earnestness and intensity, +and a kind of incandescence. But what had +surprised me most—I had already had some idea +of the universal scope of his mind—were the +power of his imagination and the boldness and +stoutness of his spirit.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">223</span></p> + +<p>Grosbeake was one of the first modern philosophers, +really competent to understand the new +physics of relativity and quantum theory, who +had made an attempt, on the full scale, to trace +the consequences of these discoveries for the +concepts of general philosophy, and to construct +a system which should admit them. This had +brought him to a drastic rejection of the philosophical +assumptions of old-fashioned mechanistic +science.</p> + +<p>Since my recent encounters with the world +in New York, which had made me feel my +own weakness and baseness, I had myself been +haunted and oppressed, as on the night of Sue +Borglum’s party, by the thought that humanity, +after all, was merely another race of animals, +whose behavior was fixed by their environment, +and by the cells which they had had from their +parents, and that the earth and all its creatures +was only a complicated interaction of hard little +particles like bullets. I now learned that it had +lately become possible, in the light of scientific +research—that it had even become inevitable +(though I was far from being able to follow all +Grosbeake’s arguments) to regard the universe, +not as a machine, which had once been wound up +and was still running, but as an organism in +course of development. The unit was no longer a +bullet, but something called an event; and the +world was a flux of events. The relativity of time +and space and the anomalous behavior of electrons, +in undermining the “iron laws” of nature, +had opened flood-gates of speculation which the +ordinary reasonable mind, the kind of mind +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">224</span>which respected science without examining its assumptions +or attempting to force them to their +consequences, had long tended to regard as closed. +And despite the surprise and disapproval of other +mathematicians who, capable of practising only +one trade, prided themselves on sticking to their +lasts, Professor Grosbeake had late in his career +emerged as a metaphysician.</p> + +<p>I wanted to make him talk on this subject, and +I inquired vaguely about the congress of a scientific +association which he had attended the summer +before. He told me briefly of some of its +proceedings, then added, after a pause, with his +bland and serious irony: “If you want to see the +sort of men that the mediæval church must have +been made up of, you should study an assemblage +of modern scientists. I thought about them last +summer that they must be very like the mediæval +doctors. They’re all more or less internationally +minded, you know, and they’re men of strong +character and conviction—and they’re all authoritarians: +they subscribe to a body of dogma and +they won’t countenance any heresy. If a scientist +has evolved an hypothesis which runs counter to +the established hypothesis, they won’t give it a +serious hearing—if he’s performed an experiment, +you know, which conflicts with accepted experiments, +they refuse to look at it!”——</p> + +<p>At this point in the conversation, Magda and +Frieda, who had to go to bed, came in to say good-night. +They kissed their mother, who spoke to +them in a low voice, but they hesitated about kissing +their father—in the midst of solemn discourse +and with a visitor present. Magda hung back by +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">225</span>her mother’s couch, but Frieda cut the knot by +dashing forward, diving for his bald brow—I saw +her own beautiful hair over her shoulders, like +some spilling of gold by the gods—and running +abruptly out of the room. “Oh, good-night, my +dear!” said Grosbeake.—“They have never executed +any one,” he continued—Magda kissed him +on the cheek, more diffidently: “Good-night, my +dear!—But there are other methods of suppression +even more expedient and effective; for burning +calls attention to the victim.”</p> + +<p>His criticism of contemporary science soon led +him into metaphysics.—The entrance of those +gold and white girls—the offspring, so late in life, +of that old bald round-shouldered man who had +spent long years in the obstinate plumbing (by +means of formulas so difficult and abstract that +they excluded even ideas of number, so far beyond +the ordinary reaches of even scientific minds +that they dismayed even mathematicians) of that +mysterious reality which is at once what we find +outside us and what we think about it—the entrance +of Grosbeake’s lovely daughters had had +the effect on me of a revelation of the human vitality, +the creative force of flesh and blood, which +is embodied in abstract thought. It was as if my +imagination had fully conceived for the first time +that the logician’s chain of propositions, no less +than the astronomer’s systems and the physicist’s +analysis of the invisible, was as much the ripened +fruit of rich natures as the poetry of Shakespeare +and Dante, or as those beautiful long-limbed children, +the breed of the Kentish seas and of the +forests of the Rhineland, who had brusquely embraced +their father.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">226</span></p> + +<p>He talked to me about the book he was writing. +All that I had ever learned at college of philosophy +had been a conception of the external +world as a colorless and soundless wilderness +whose true nature one could never know, which +one could not even imagine—but which I did, none +the less, imagine as a vast landscape of polar +spaces in whose eternal twilight one wandered, +preoccupied and deluded by a flicker of magic-lantern +pictures which danced inside one’s mind +and forever remained private to oneself. I had +now learned, however, from Grosbeake that since, +for example, the high flush of Rita’s cheeks and +the sound of her voice reciting poetry had so radically +affected my behavior, they must belong as +much to reality, to that Nature which was no +longer outside one, as the blood corpuscles and the +light-waves, the sound-waves and the vocal organs +which were assumed to have produced them. And +it now appeared that Grosbeake admitted as belonging, +also, to reality those æsthetic values +which, for example, had made Rita, when she +wrote her poems, feel that the pavements of the +Village were harsh and the sound of the river musical. +And so, finally, he told me, moral values, +which he identified with æsthetic values, must be +equally a part of that reality which he found it +impossible to split into two divisions of mind and +matter, body and soul. Those moral judgments, +then, I reflected, which had given rise to my disgust +and despair the night of Sue Borghum’s +party had been, after all, as real, as much to be +taken seriously, as the biological and neurological +processes to which I had tended to reduce them.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">227</span></p> + +<p>What astonished me most, however, was that +Grosbeake now crowned his system with a new +conception of God: he brought God back into the +universe of science, under what appeared to me at +first an unfamiliar form. For Grosbeake’s God +was as different as possible from the tolerant and +moderate Great Spirit, the enlightened parliamentary +monarch, of the modern liberal theologian. +God, for Grosbeake, was the ultimate harmony +implied by the æsthetic and moral values of which +men were aware in the universe; and our moments +of divine revelation were simply those when we +realized most indubitably the necessity of this harmony +and order, when we became most acutely +conscious of this creative purpose of God. And +it was, then, this creative purpose which, in the +interest of the ultimate harmony, determined +which possibilities, among the infinite possibilities +of the constant flux of events—the development +of the universal organism—should make themselves +actual.</p> + +<p>I listened to Grosbeake with excitement. He +seemed to me at that moment to justify to me +those instincts and those beliefs which—suspicious +of all the world and uncertain of myself +most of all—I had lately come to doubt. And I +was moved by what seemed to me the greatness +of his mind and the boldness of his spirit +amidst the modesty and mildness of his home.—I +mustn’t keep him up, then, and tire him: Mrs. +Grosbeake had already gone to bed.</p> + +<p>I said that I must go, and he got up and brought +a bowl of nuts, which we cracked in front of the +fire. He told me some Victorian anecdote about +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">228</span>Gladstone and Disraeli, whom he always called +“Dizzy.”</p> + +<p>As I finally came out of the warm house into +the white-framed glass-sided porch which enclosed +the front door, I felt a tinge of crispness +in the air, as when the first ice-splinters web a +pond, and I caught the chilly fragrance of the roses +and the white and daisylike cosmos, which had +been set out in vases for the night—and as I took +leave of Grosbeake—gazing out through the glass +at the pavement lightly dappled with leaves and +the dark grass glittering with wet—my mind bemused +with a vision of God as a vast crystal fixing +its symmetry from a liquefied universe—I felt +a delicious delicacy of iciness, glossy fall-leaf slivers +and black rain-glinting glass.</p> + +<p>“It’s beginning to snow,” said Grosbeake. It +was true: it was not raining, but snowing. A +great flake alighted on my sleeve. “So I win my +bet with the Dean,” he said. “I shall have his +Scotch whiskey and not he my sherry!—You +know, the weather’s the only subject on which I +really regard myself as infallible. It comes from +being bred on the Kentish coast—learning about +one’s weather from the narrow seas! What does +Dean Mosely know of the weather?—coming +from an inland city like Indianapolis!”</p> + +<p>Grosbeake stood in the outside door and regarded +the large flakes with satisfaction. “Dean +Mosely kept insisting,” he continued, “that there +were none of the signs of snow—and when he +came to enumerate them, I saw that it was true: +there were none of the signs. But I knew it was +going to snow!”</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">229</span></p> + +<p>It was a heavy snowstorm for November. It +had snowed, and then rained, and then frozen: on +the train, the next afternoon, when I scraped a +peep-hole in the frost-glazed window, I disclosed +a vignette of fences, strung with wires of ice, and +tree-branches decked with crystals, like glittering +chandeliers.</p> + +<p>But it was late when I arrived at my station: +the falling darkness and the cold lay heavy on the +little town. I finally succeeded in getting a taxi, +which had no cushions on the seat and which +bucked over the frozen ruts. There were nice +white houses on the road and all the people seemed +to be inside them: the windows were orange +against the snow, which was bluing and graying +with the night.</p> + +<p>To the east, when we had left behind the town, +an army of corn-stacks in the grayness were frozen +to their posts; and to the west, the skies were +split across with the tragic gold and black of a late +November sunset. The grandeur of the winter +landscape—since Grosbeake had predicted the +snowfall—had associated itself in my mind with +the grandeur of the philosophic mind; and as I +gazed at those last gigantic cracks of a light beyond +human skies, I remembered the fiery walls +of the world of which Lucretius had said that the +thinker, in sending his intellect beyond them, had +broken Nature’s locks and won the freedom of +the universe: they seemed to speak to me of bold +and lonely thought.</p> + +<p>The house, when we finally pulled in to it, was +so low that it seemed sunk in the snow—deep-embedded +in the winter ground, which held it +fast: there was a single yellow square of light.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">230</span></p> + +<p>Pete Bird hurried cordially out—I could see +Daisy standing in the doorway. Pete insisted on +my not paying for the taxi: “Just put it on my +bill!” he told the man.</p> + +<p>Inside, I found Daisy transformed: she +greeted me with her frank American smile, but it +was this time unmistakably the smile of the young +American girls of my boyhood, who had never +used lipstick or rouge. I was surprised to see her +wholly without make-up: her lips were a pale +coral-pink and her hair, which at Sue Borglum’s +party had been mongrel, muddy and dull, was +now an even flaxen yellow. She was wearing a +neat white apron over a pretty blue dress, and +looked exactly like some model little housewife in +a bright-colored American advertisement, smiling +sunnily over the lightness of a new kind of pancake-flour +or the flavor of a can of baked beans.</p> + +<p>She apologized for the apron—she was just +getting dinner, she said—and I thought that she +knew she looked well in it. I told her how +healthy and lovely she looked. “Just feel this!” +she invited me, hooking up her little short-sleeved +elbow: I found it studded with solid bulging muscles. +“Good Heavens!” I exclaimed. “How did +you ever get like that?” “Just working!” Daisy +explained. “We fixed the place all up ourselves. +When we came, it was just a dump!”</p> + +<p>Pete himself, to my surprise, with his slight +erect figure, seemed wiry, effective and hardy. +He wore a khaki shirt with a smartly tied navy-blue +tie, which gave to his old gray trousers and +his old Norfolk jacket which did not match them, +a gentlemanly air of roughing it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">231</span></p> + +<p>Daisy amiably excused herself and went to attend +to the dinner on the stove. Pete Bird—a casual +and cordial host—invited me in before the fire.</p> + +<p>The hall had been a little nondescript, a cross +between a work-shed and a hall-closet; but the living-room +was orderly and cheerful. There was a +bright rag-rug on the floor, and there were bright +prints and maps on the walls—Pete was a great +hand at making maps—and lamps with warmly +glowing lampshades, also the work of Pete. And +there was a large old-fashioned fireplace, where +big logs were roaring and snapping on tall black +old-fashioned andirons, still stiff-necked, though +lame and leaning crooked.</p> + +<p>I expressed my enthusiasm for the fire, and admired +the fireplace and the room. Pete received +my compliments with the easy nod and brief word +of the owner of an Adirondack camp: he made +one feel that the spacious fireplace was something +he had had specially built, and evoked a vision of +moose-horns and bear-heads under heavy darkling +rafters.</p> + +<p>“That black log’s not burning well,” he announced. +“Either it’s frozen in the cracks or it’s +cranky!” He hooked it and wrenched it with a +poker and an old rickety pair of tongs which did +not come together: he had a master’s way with +the logs. “Get over there, you old alligator!” he +commanded. “You <em>will</em> be hard-boiled, <em>will</em> you!”</p> + +<p>“I’m sorry,” he remarked, as he stood up in +front of the mantelpiece, which was almost as +high as his head, and invited me to sit down before +the fire—“I’m sorry that I can’t offer you a +drink—but the only things you can get around +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">232</span>here are apple and alcohol, and both of them are +vile. We’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s +really more considerate to the guests not to offer +them anything at all!”—“We hoped you might +bring something with you,” said Daisy, looking +up with her sweet candid smile: she was dealing +out white plates around a table in the middle of +the room. I apologized for not having thought +of it. “We never think of it ourselves—if you +can believe me,” Pete insisted. “It’s almost impossible +now to get any kind of decent liquor, in +New York or anywhere else—and the kind of +drinks that you <em>can</em> get just don’t interest me!” +I agreed with him heartily, and added that the +trouble with New York was that everybody there +drank far too much bad liquor. “That’s why we +came to the country,” said Daisy. “We decided +that it was that or the drunkard’s home!”</p> + +<p>“Now, good people!” Daisy invited us, mimicking +the kind of women who say, “Now good +people!”—“The dinner is all ready!—if you’ll +just sit down and fly at it!”</p> + +<p>The dinner was an admirable pot-roast, with +onions, potatoes and carrots. We all ate a great +deal and did very little talking while we ate.</p> + +<p>The table was thick-legged and long: it seemed +that Pete had made it himself—and that he had +also made or made over most of the other pieces +of furniture. When they had moved in, the place +had been desolate—full of rubbish, mould and +rats. It had taken them all summer to make it +habitable: Pete had rummaged in old barns and +houses and unearthed many mutilated antiques, +which he had then, with great patience, repaired. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">233</span>He seemed to know a great deal about antiques. +The principal prize was a comb-backed rocking-chair, +for which Pete had himself supplied new +rockers; but they warned me not to try to sit in +it, because it always went over backwards. I told +Pete about the Grosbeakes’ furniture, and he remembered +that there was a Queen Anne secretary +something like the one I was describing, in +the Metropolitan Museum.</p> + +<p>For dessert, we ate golden canned peaches, and +we drank a great deal of black coffee. “Now, +don’t worry about the dishes,” said Pete to Daisy. +“Just stack them in the kitchen, and I’ll do them +later myself!” “If that doesn’t mean,” replied +Daisy, “that <em>I</em>’ll have to do them in the morning, +when they’re all greasy and cold.” “Don’t be +silly!” said Pete, indignantly.</p> + +<p>After dinner, we sat around the fire. I asked +them what they did in the evenings. “We just do +this!” said Pete. “We read aloud,” supplemented +Daisy. “We’ve read Bulwer-Lytton’s novels almost +entirely through.” “Is he any good?” I inquired. +“Fine,” said Daisy. “Besides, he’s the +only novelist that they’ve got in the village library.” +I was amazed at the idea of Daisy spending +long winter evenings over Bulwer-Lytton; but +as I had talked to her, I soon discovered that she +had always been addicted to novel-reading and +had excellent sense and taste—it had apparently +been only Ray Coleman’s reading aloud to her +out of the <i>Oxford Book of English Verse</i> that she +hadn’t been able to stand.</p> + +<p>I saw now that her ordinary vocabulary was +partly literary, and that it was the combination of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">234</span>literary words with slang which gave her speech +its peculiar charm—as when she had said, at the +time I had first talked to her, that the horse she +had seen in her delirium had been “leering” at +her, or when she had told me that Ray Coleman +in Paris had seemed “pretty affluent.”</p> + +<p>I asked her what writers she liked best. +“Well,” she said, “when I was a girl at school, I +used to think that Compton Mackenzie was the +swellest thing in the world—I thought that that +was what life ought to be like—that was what I +thought Phil and I were like, when we ran away +from Pittsburgh. But I soon found out that the +old racket was more like a Russian novel!”</p> + +<p>Russian novels reminded me of Larry Mickler, +and I asked Pete and Daisy about him. I had +never seen him before or since the night of Sue +Borglum’s party, and I had never been able to explain +him: he had come to seem to me—like the +elephantine creature whom I had encountered in +the doorway on Thirty-fourth Street—a sort of +demon who had fleetingly materialized out of the +infernal fumes of the evening. “Oh,” said Daisy, +“he’s perfectly harmless—he’s just a fool, that’s +all. He’s usually controlled by Alice, his wife. +He was just acting up that night because Alice +wasn’t along. He’s always threatening to do +something desperate, but he usually ends up with +Alice administering triple-bromides.” I asked +what Alice was like. “She’s just a clean stalwart +college girl,” said Daisy. “She doesn’t know +quite what a genius is,” Pete Bird contributed, +“but she thinks that Larry is a genius. He wrote +a novel once which he was never able to get published, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">235</span>and he’s always threatening to write another. +In the meantime, he’s in the advertising +business, which he says he can never respect.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t like Larry Mickler,” Pete added, after +a pause. “He cheats at limericks!” I asked him +what he meant. “Why, he gets you to play this +game where you both have to take the same first +line and make up a limerick to fit it. But he’s got +the limericks all made up beforehand. When I +finally got wise and supplied the first line myself, +he couldn’t do a thing—he got sullen and wouldn’t +play. Our relations have never been cordial since.—That’s +why he tried to make out that I gypped +him on those liverwurst sandwiches.”</p> + +<p>I had been watching Daisy follow the talk with +a childlike seriousness and candor. Though it was +cold, she wore no stockings—for reasons of economy, +she said—and she shifted her slim and pretty +legs, with their straw-colored sharp-toed slippers, +in the movements of a good little girl listening +restlessly but attentively to the conversation of +her elders. As we spoke humorously or gravely, +told limericks or deplored the demoralizing effects +of the city, she would respond with gravity or +humor, turning her eyes from one speaker to the +other. She seemed sober-minded, shy and nice: +I felt that some of the limericks embarrassed her: +I came to think of her almost as a <i lang="fr">jeune fille</i> and +vaguely confused her in my mind with Grosbeake’s +golden-haired daughters.</p> + +<p>Like all people who live in the country, they +commenced about ten to yawn: when I suggested +that they must be tired they confessed it with little +protestation.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">236</span></p> + +<p>“Now,” said Pete, “we have a guest-room +which is always at the disposal of the guests—but +it’s as cold as a fiddler’s bitch to-night, and if you +really want to keep warm, you’d better sleep here +on the couch.” “But what about you?” I asked. +“If you can stand the cold, I can.” “Oh, we sleep +in here!” replied Pete—and opening the door into +the next room, which had the aspect of a store-room—barren +as an attic and littered with all +kinds of junk—he produced a gigantic set of bed-springs, +which he manœuvred through the door +with nonchalance and set out on a pair of trestles.</p> + +<p>I explored the regions beyond: there was a +bedroom behind the living-room, like a plunge +into a cold black lake. Through the little low +square-paned window, I saw the moon, cut in +brightest coldest silver over the lonely and frozen +fields. There had been something almost miraculous +about Grosbeake’s predicting the snowfall—as +if Nature had admitted him to her secrets!</p> + +<p>I returned to the smell of wood-smoke and the +yellow-shaded lamps of the living-room, and announced +that I would sleep on the couch.</p> + +<p>How jolly it was, I reflected, back amid the +warmth again, to go to bed in front of a fire, in +the country, in the winter-time, in the house of +friends! And as I undressed in the dark and grisly +store-room, which evidently represented the +house as they had originally found it—before they +had taken it in hand—I was moved by admiration +for what seemed to me their pioneering heroism. +They had established, with no help and little +money, in the midst of that hard rural wilderness—if +but in a single room—these amenities and decencies—this +core of civilization!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">237</span></p> + +<p>And they were right! Who should know it by +this time—all the more since my visit to Grosbeake!—better +than I? All that dignified mankind, +all that kept them from the brawling and +the squalor which, the night of Sue Borglum’s +party, had seemed to me the universal fate, had +been built up through endurance and patience, +through steadiness of purpose and good faith, +through property well administered, through families +standing together, through lovers true to their +pledges! How had I ever been taken in by that +foolish and shallow philosophy of living only for +the moment?—that philosophy I had learned +from a woman, which was possible only for a +woman, given up, by her woman’s nature, to her +impulses, passions and moods! I remembered +how I had once used to wonder at Rita’s constant +preoccupation with death, both in her poetry and +in conversation, and I could see now how such a +life as Rita’s, looking always upon the image of +itself, must be ridden by the terror of death, because +death meant for it the end of the world.</p> + +<p>When Daisy was in bed, Pete Bird summoned +me back into the living-room, and I wrapped myself +up in blankets and lay down before the fire on +the couch. But the coffee had made us wakeful +and we went on talking in bed. At first, we told +funny stories, till we had obviously exhausted our +best and had begun to fall back on second-rate +ones. Then Pete regaled me with reminiscences of +eccentric Greenwich Village characters who had +flourished before my day—there had been one uncompromising +prophet, who had made a practice +of robbing fur-stores: he would hide himself +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">238</span>among the furs at the back, till the shop had been +closed for the night, then climb out with his +booty, through a window: he had, however, never +profited by these activities, but had given everything +he stole to the poor, and had lived himself +in the direst privation.</p> + +<p>We agreed that the great days were passing. +I tried to remember some of the songs which +Bobby Edwards had used to sing in the restaurants. +Pete, it turned out, knew them all by heart +and could sing them from beginning to end. We +agreed that there had been something remarkable +about Bobby Edwards. I said it was the curious +prestige which very clever people sometimes acquire +by pretending to be stupid. Pete said that +this was not quite it, because Bobby Edwards did +not look stupid: the thing was that he never +changed his face and consequently had everybody +buffaloed.</p> + +<p>These songs led to other songs: Pete and I +finally got to the point of singing <i>My Bonnie Lies +Over the Ocean</i> and <i>There Is a Tavern in the +Town</i>. “I suppose this burns you up,” I said to +Daisy, who had for some time been lying silent. +“I suppose you want to go to sleep.” “Oh, I guess +I can bear it!” she answered—then added, after a +pause: “<i>My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean</i> always +reminds me of when I was a girl in Yarmouth—in +Canada. My uncle used to sing it.—And he +used to sing <i>The Girl I Left Behind Me</i>, too. I +used to love to hearum sing that!” Her voice, as +she lay in the darkness, divested of the emphasis +of day, had almost the timbre of a child’s—and it +moved me with the charming pathos of young +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">239</span>girls’ voices, the pathos of frailness and freshness. +“Did you come from Canada?” I asked. “I +thought you came from Pittsburgh!” “My mother +came from there,” she explained. “My aunt +still lives up there. I used to be up there a lot +when I was a kid.—Yes, I’m really just a country +girl!” she said, burlesquing herself. “That’s why +I take so easily to living out here. My other +aunt,” she went on, after a moment’s recollection, +“married some kind of a nobleman.—I always +thought there must have been something wrong +withum—he must have had syphilis or something. +But he was a real nobleman, it seemed!”</p> + +<p>When we were tired of singing ballads, we experimented +with hymns: I rendered, with what I +felt at the time was an impressive solemnity and +resonance, <i>Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past</i>, and +<i>The Starry Firmament on High</i>.—But the second +of these was met by silence—I received no response +from the bed. And when Pete and Daisy +replied to my good-night, it was plain they had +been asleep.</p> + +<p>Those magnificent hymns! I went on thinking. +What a first-rate poet Watts had been! And that +grandeur of the universe, of the moral principle +it implied—did one not feel it, also, even, in the +calm complacent firmament of Addison?</p> + +<p>Perhaps the effect on my imagination of Grosbeake’s +religious ideas had been, in recreating my +conception of God, to revive for me a vision of the +Devil; but at any rate, my recent image of Larry +Mickler as a species of hobgoblin combined itself +with my assimilation of the gravy-boat and cream-pitcher +at the Grosbeakes’ to the demons of Bruegel +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">240</span>and Callot, to inspire me with the idea of a +satire in which I should ascribe to a race of demons +all those anti-social views and habits which +had come lately to seem to me so sinister.</p> + +<p>My mind, laying hold upon this, worked for a +time with great clarity and speed: I even framed +sentences and paragraphs: “The attitude of the +demons toward each other is entirely devoid of +the amenity and dignity characteristic of human +behavior. In their amorous relations, they are +neither romantic nor faithful. Many of the demons +do not function sexually, but among those +that do—notably the succubæ and incubi—their +matings are wholly physical and transient, and involve +neither responsibility nor affection. A human +being who has seen the demons at close range +is not perhaps disposed to consider this unnatural. +The more hideous and monstrous types have died +out, like the larger and more powerful: the bat’s +ears, pig’s snout and ape’s mug appear only in +modified forms; and such a bestial and complex +mask as that worn, for example, by Dürer’s Satan +would probably be impossible to-day. Yet the devils +which have endured to our own time are still +sufficiently unsightly and grotesque, and in a sufficient +variety of ways, to appear repulsive to human +taste as objects of amorous desire, and impracticable +even for each other. We do not wonder +when a female demon, coming straight from +the embraces of a male, makes no scruple of spitting +and jeering at him in the presence of other +female demons, or in the presence of another +male; or when a male, who has been mating with +a female, makes her the victim of one of those +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">241</span>practical jokes to which the devils are so inveterately +addicted—impaling her in a public place or +hacking off her arms and legs and leaving her on +a crowded thoroughfare. We should, however, +be quite wrong in supposing that the devils resent +each other’s ugliness: being entirely without +ideas of beauty, they are, in consequence, impervious +to ugliness, and do not even, as has sometimes +been supposed, esteem it for its own sake. +The demons exchange, in their amorous intercourse, +in a manner not unlike ours, pledges of +lasting affection and epithets of tender endearment; +but these expressions are simple reflexes +involved in the physical process itself and as involuntary +as it; they attach no significance to +them and we should wrong them in supposing they +do. The devils are sterile, and unable, or unwilling, +to reproduce their kind.</p> + +<p>“The fiends have a highly developed literature, +which reflects their habits and ideas. It is mostly +printed on crude loose sheets which are passed +around from hand to hand; and it consists chiefly +of obscene anecdotes and stories of atrocious +crime. We must, however, bear in mind, in connection +with this literature, that to the demons, +whose point of view is so incomprehensible from +our own, a scandal is not a scandal, nor a crime, +a crime: the former they enjoy as a farce, and the +latter as a practical joke. They have an interesting +school of poetry, of which the leader is Blashtalatshk. +I have met Blashtalatshk and found +him a devil of high intelligence. His horns are +rudimentary and his lower jaw is lacking: but his +enormous dark eyes are among the most sensitive +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">242</span>and glowing that I have ever seen. His poetry +and that of his fellows is, of course, devoid of the +moral ideas and of the ennobling emotions which +distinguish human poetry to-day: it is exclusively +occupied with the mere representation of sights, +sounds, smells and other sensations, which the demons +have a genius for recreating with vividness +and precision, though occasionally with so much +complexity as to produce an effect of incoherence.”...</p> + +<p>At this point, however, I dropped it: I found +that my satire was boring me, and that it also went +against my conscience. My portrait of the demon +poet had been a caricature of Pete Bird, and I had +no desire to caricature Pete: on the contrary, I +liked him. I found that I did not want to write +a satire: to satirize humanity was to slander it, +and I no longer thought so ill of humanity. Pete +and Daisy and the rest, after all—even Larry +Mickler himself—were not really base: they had +disliked their lives as much as I had. If I had +disliked them and found them base, it was because +I myself had been tarred with the same +stick. Moral problems, I now saw, were too complicated, +and human nature too delicate a matter, +to be hacked by the axe of satire. So, regretting +the emphatic prose style with which a simple +moral conviction may supply us and which I now +found myself obliged to sacrifice, I decided to be +scrupulous of the truth.</p> + +<p>Still I could not sleep: I sat up against the arm +of the couch, and saw the round cold winter +moon, of which I had before had a glimpse on the +other side of the house, now studding with its +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">243</span>white blinding pearl the pane of the room where I +lay. When had I seen it before, setting so, but +the moon of summer then, embedded in the morning +glass? I thought of Rita, in Paris now. I +had been wrong about her and Ray Coleman: +Rita had merely, at the time when I had seen her +and she had seemed to me evasive about her address, +gone to stay at Duff Burdan’s studio—all +the rest had been a gruesome fantasy of my jealous +imagination and my shaken self-confidence. +She had gone abroad for the first time, by herself, +at just about the time I was returning, and +I had had a letter from her the day before: it had +come just as I was leaving town for the country. +She was staying, she wrote me, in a little Left +Bank hotel, and had as yet seen nobody. But the +early morning market-trucks, she said, which +rumbled through the Rue du Four and made the +walls of her bedroom vibrate, though they kept +her awake after midnight, made her feel that she +was “really a part of Paris.” I seemed to divine +behind her letter an aching loneliness—the loneliness +of all Americans when they first try to live +in Europe; and I imagined about her, as she +wrote, the dark brownish walls of the room, the +dispiriting wash-basin and slop-jar, the stuffy and +musty French bed. It was partly the fact that I +could pity Rita, and that at last she had written to +me, as well as the spectacle of Grosbeake’s equanimity, +which made it possible for me to think +well of humanity.</p> + +<p>Not that her letter was plaintive or effusive: it +was, on the contrary, dry and brief; but the fact +that she had written me at all—she very rarely +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">244</span>wrote letters—seemed to me to imply, on her part, +an unusual degree of desolation; and the two +poems which she enclosed in her letter—she told +me she had composed them at night when she +could not sleep on account of the trucks—were +the palest things of hers I had seen. The first was +meagre, terse and wistful: it ticked off, in three +brief stanzas, three images from that countryside +of her youth—a lone elm, a gray stone fence, a +pond athrob with frogs at nightfall—and I recognized +in their phantom faintness—so unlike the +stinging actuality which she usually gave to such +things—that dim aspect which, to the traveller +abroad, even the best loved and known sights of +home come to wear in alien places, as if they had +perhaps never existed, but were the receding +images of a dream.</p> + +<p>The other poem was a sonnet; and when I first +saw it, I did not know what to make of it. It +seemed very unlike Rita: in the first place, she +never wrote sonnets; and my first thought, when +I commenced to read it, was one of solicitude: I +felt distressed that her isolation should so disastrously +have affected her poetry. Then it dawned +on me, after I had finished it, that it was supposed +to be addressed to myself. I reread it with +attention: it was the first time she had ever written +me a poem. Then I became aware of the +true situation: the trouble here with Rita’s style +was simply that, for the moment, she had become +infected with mine. It was I who was addicted +to sonnets; and I could recognize in this one of +Rita’s, my own forcible-feeble rhetoric and my +adjectives in monotonous pairs—all those unavailing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">245</span>devices with which I had muffed the kind +of effects that she would clinch with a single short +verb or a commonplace idiom. I had never +thought myself much of a poet, but now that Rita +seemed to be talking my jargon, seemed to be +trying to reply to me in the language in which I +had been apostrophizing her, I found that I was +sickened by it. And I was horrified to observe +that even the banal imagery with which Rita +could usually perform miracles remained, in this +ill-inspired sonnet, irredeemably banal.</p> + +<p>My first feeling had been one of depression, the +result partly of wounded <i lang="fr">amour-propre</i>—because +Rita, having written me a poem, should have +written me such an indifferent one—and partly of +pained concern that she should have sacrificed a +poem for my sake. I had been embarrassed as to +what I should write her: I wanted to urge her to +suppress the poem, but, as it had been written in +an effort to be nice to me, it was impossible to be +so ungracious.</p> + +<p>Now, as I lay staring into the fire, I thought of +the sonnet again, and ran over it in my mind. It +had been a memory of our first days together, +when we had talked about poetry; and now suddenly, +for the first time, I was touched that she +should have remembered those days and should +have tried to let me know it. I had thought only +of the artistic sincerity which she had sacrificed +for her subject! Now I was able to take account +of the sincerity of some personal sort which must, +after all, have come into play to induce her to +sacrifice it. In her dismal Paris hotel—so cold +and dark in November—had she been trying to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">246</span>recall, to reaffirm, in spite of all our quarrels and +failures (and she had known then, as I had not +known, how life undoes the soundest of our reasons +and depreciates the dearest of our hopes), +those moments of common understanding and +common enthusiasm of the days when we had +first talked freely together—when we had both, +for that moment, found a language for those +deepest unspoken convictions, for those deepest +realities, of such different lives!—And I began +even to wonder at last—a possibility I had never +admitted—whether, that night at Sue Borglum’s +house, when I had met Rita with my freezing, +blank looks and my tiresome disapproval and +when, reminding me of the poem which I had so +loved when I had been in love with her, she +had tried to describe to me the river all lined with +sword-blades of ice,—and when I had listened +only with contempt—I wondered now whether, +after all, she had not herself been glad to think of +the hours—how rare in the world they must be!—when +poetry had burned with love. Had not +the river itself been the symbol of the breaking +and fraying of passion, of the dispersal of the +torrents of the heart?—and had she not, when she +had told me, at Sue Borglum’s, of the river alive +in winter, for all the frozen countryside about it +and though cramped by the ice of its banks—had +she not tried to tell me something more, to speak +again to the old comrade and admirer, over the +head of the angry lover—to establish again that +contact—which I now chose to make impossible—but +which had brought once, if only for those +moments, that common light into a world which, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">247</span>for her as well as for me—it occurred to me now +for the first time—must be chiefly a world of +darkness?</p> + +<p>The last log had a comforting beauty—all +woody, rosy luminosity—but I saw that it must +soon crumble. I put on another log, trying not to +wake Pete and Daisy. I glanced over toward +their bed—they had turned to each other in sleep. +The log smoked, and then caught fire: it sent up +little tongues of flame. What a pity that I +couldn’t write a satire, making use of my wide +knowledge of demonology, for lack of misanthropic +conviction! The log began to crackle and +blaze.</p> + +<p>I looked for the moon, but it was gone: I +craned around the side of the couch and saw it +low, vaporish and gray, as if dissolving in the +ichor of dawn. So I had watched it set so many +times, on guard at night, in France—in that terrible, +dull, dead hour when night is over and day +not begun, when one must either make verses or +be dull, be dead, as the earth and sky, as the soldiers +in their deepest sleep—I had run into Hugo +in Toul—I had not seen him since the beginning +of the War and we had only had a chance for half +an hour’s talk in a café—he had been so funny +about his unit, so funny and so good-natured, +that unit which was soon to condemn him to the +horrors of the prison-camp—what a great fellow +he really was, in spite of the fact that, as Grosbeake +said, he did caricature American business +men too grimly—how few there were like him!—that +France where Rita had never been till she +arrived in that dreary hotel, where the market-trucks +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">248</span>kept her awake!—I rolled over and went to +sleep.</p> + +<p>But I had scarcely closed my eyes, it seemed, +when persistent coughs, steps, and bumpings compelled +me to open them again: it was Pete, in the +gray, early light, getting into his pants and khaki +shirt; he was rolling up his sleeves before the +window.</p> + +<p>I tore myself out of my blanket-cocoon and—though +he begged me not to get up—I blinkingly +pulled on my clothes, and followed him out into +the cold undersea of the early morning ocean. +He had gone into the shed to chop some wood: I +had used up the last log during the night, and he +wanted to make the room warm for Daisy. He +begged me again not to bother; but with eager, if +incompetent, helpfulness, I hacked up a large +crooked limb, as well as several of the planks of +the floor.</p> + +<p>After this, we went in and had some coffee—Daisy +was still asleep. We talked about literature +and drinks: Pete had volumes of Shelley and +Keats, and a treatise on French wines, which he +said were the only books he had not sold when he +had come away to the country. Sitting close +against the stove, I examined the wine book with +interest. “Never buy 1916 Burgundy,” Pete admonished +me, with an air of independent knowledge. +“From 1910 to 1914 are all good years—and +1915 is fair. But you have to go back to +1904 to get really A-1 Burgundy!”</p> + +<p>I had to leave before noon—it was a long way +into the town and a long way back to New York. +We talked a little about a taxi; but as it was already +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">249</span>growing late and as the nearest telephone +was at a farm some distance away, I decided that +I would undertake to walk, and Daisy offered to +go with me. Pete had promised to call on a +farmer and examine his grandfather’s clock—putting +clocks in order, it appeared, was one of +his curious useless aptitudes—in return for which +service, he explained to us, he hoped to be able to +induce the farmer to make him a present of a +crippled lowboy which was being used as a +kitchen-table.</p> + +<p>“I can supply the handles,” he assured us. +“Nothing easier in the world! Just take them off +that old bureau in the store-room. But I <em>don’t</em> +see how I can supply that missing leg without a +lathe.—But, after all, why not have a lathe?” he +went on, with the liberal enthusiasm of a thoroughly +practical man. “Think of all we could do +with one! We could make regular tables and +chairs!—Why, I’d be turning out table-legs so +voluptuous that all the local oafs would be +trampling over one another to buy them!” “I suppose,” +said Daisy, “that you’re going to buy the +lathe with the money we owe the grocer.” “My +dear child,” Pete retorted, like a millionaire who +takes pleasure in explaining that he always saves +money on his clothes by having them made when +he is in London, “you can get a lathe from Sears +Roebuck for ten dollars! You simply say that +you want to buy it on instalments, and they send +you the lathe. Then you don’t pay them anything +more—and by the time they’ve sent a man for the +money and he’s gotten way out here, you’ve had +time to turn out a whole dining-room set, enough +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">250</span>legs and rungs for several dining-room sets, and +you’ve sold the sets and ordered another lathe +from another mail-order company, paying the first +instalment out of what you get for the sets—so +that by the time the first lathe is taken away, another +one is just arriving, and the work goes +merrily on!”</p> + +<p>We set out—Daisy and I—on a hard crust of +frozen snow, which broke through at every step +and let us down into powdered depths. Daisy +was dressed in high laced leather boots, a white +sweater under a tan leather jacket and a round +knitted white cap. I had never liked her so much: +a certain strength and independence of character, +which I had felt in her even at the period when +she had seemed most demoralized, had now fully +come into its own. Her frankness and her common-sense +jokes, which I had once thought the +typical products of Pittsburgh and New York, +now seemed to me the wisdom of the country, +which the false values of the city couldn’t fool.—I +began to think—it had already occurred to me—how +delightful it would be to live with Daisy +in a solitary farmhouse in the country, to chop +wood to keep her warm, to sit with her at night +before the fire, to read Bulwer-Lytton’s novels +aloud. I thought wistfully of Bulwer Lytton, +whom it seemed to me I should like to read.</p> + +<p>I congratulated her on leaving New York: “I +began to feel before I left,” I said, “as if the Village +were a cage of wild animals—I began to +feel that it might be just as well to make good +your escape in time.” “I certainly felt that way,” +said Daisy, “but I didn’t know anybody else did.—I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">251</span>thought everybody ate it up but me.—I got +so I felt that I couldn’t trust anybody!”</p> + +<p>We strode, plodding, through the snow. “You +know, Pete and I,” she went on, “just after that +last time I saw you—we got on a train with our +last money”—(the money, no doubt, from Pete’s +books)—“and got off at the first town that +looked good to us out of the train-window. We +went to the real-estate office and asked for the +cheapest thing there was—and we finally got this +old hell-hole. The owner said that, if we’d fix it +up, they’d give it to us free.” The idea of this +exploit enchanted me, and I envied Pete more +than ever.</p> + +<p>I told Daisy how much I liked Pete—what a +relief I thought she must find him after living +with Ray Coleman. “To tell the truth,” she replied, +“I don’t notice much difference. The only +thing is that I get along much better with Pete. +We can sit around and wisecrack for hours.—The +time that we had that party—the first time +that I ever met you—I’d only seenum a few +times, but I said to-um, ‘I get along with you better +than with anybody else I know.’” “What did +he say?” I inquired. “He just grinned,” said +Daisy. I remembered how I had felt myself +when it had first burst upon me that Rita, instead +of scorning my apartment, enjoyed it. “So,” +Daisy continued, “we went out and went to +Julius’s bar together—and here we are now!”</p> + +<p>I told her how wise I thought them to have +left New York for the country—how glad I had +been to go abroad—what a fool I had made of +myself the night of Sue Borglum’s party. “As +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">252</span>far as I’m concerned,” she replied, “that night +was about the worst I remember—about the worst +sunk I’ve ever been.”</p> + +<p>“You know,” she added, after a pause, “I cut +my wrist that night—you knew that, didn’t +you?” “Good Heavens!” I exclaimed, “Why did +you do that?” “Why, because I’d lost my job, I +suppose,” she said, “—and because I got tired of +the traffic going in and out of Gus Dunbar’s +rooms—and I’d been drinking so much that I +didn’t know what I was doing anyway.—I felt +like such a tramp—that I’d been so inconsiderate +of other people, and just gotten myself into a +worse mess than before.—I cut my wrist,” she +went on, “with Gus Dunbar’s razor-blade. I +never saw anything spurt the way the blood did—it +seemed as if all the blood in my body must +be just in my wrist—it spurted clear across the +bathroom. I just stood there and looked at it—the +only thing I could think of was the leak in the +hose, in that movie that you and I went to—don’t +you remember?—a little while before. If Pete +hadn’t come in just then, I’d probably have bled +to death. But he arrived and called a doctor and +put a tourniquet on my wrist: he certainly +stopped it in short order—it seems he knows all +about tourniquets.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, my dear,” I said, “did you do that?—Is +it really all right now?” “Yes,” she said. “The +doctor said that I really ought to have an operation, +but I’m almost all right again now without +one.”</p> + +<p>I made her take off her gauntlet: I saw that she +could hardly move the fingers of that hand which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">253</span>Pete had once described as a “little surprising +moonbeam violin”—they were as stiff as the fingers +of a doll which a child tries to make hold a +broom.—“Why don’t you get them operated on?” +I asked. “It probably isn’t a very serious operation.” +“Can’t afford to,” she replied.</p> + +<p>“What had happened, anyway,” I asked, “before +I came to get you that night?” “Oh, it +was horrible!” said Daisy. “I’d gone around to +Larry Mickler’s to see Larry about getting Pete +a job—he was a friend of Gus Dunbar’s.—When +I’d called him up on the telephone and suggested +sending Pete around, he’d said for me to come—but +I told Pete to drop in after I’d been there a +while. I could see what Larry wanted, but I +thought that I’d jolly him along a little if Pete +could get anything out of it. I thought that I +could fix it all up and get back in time to have +dinner with you. Well, when I got there, he made +me drink and then he tried to grab me. And then +before Pete arrived, his wife came in. It was +awful: that was really one reason that I cut my +wrist, I guess—I was so disgusted with everybody!”</p> + +<p>I thought with pitying superiority of Larry +Mickler. I felt to-day that I myself was so very +far from being capable of behaving in such a +way as to make a young girl lose faith in life!</p> + +<p>We marched on—we were in wagon-ruts now: +there was a long, rising road before us, with a +straight row of trees on each side. We climbed +the hill—there was a farmhouse at the top—we +started down the slope of snow.</p> + +<p>“Our favorite yokels live in there,” she said. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">254</span>“You ought to see me giving parties for the +yokels—I have the time of my life—and so do +they: they think I’m swell—they never saw anything +like me before!” “It must be nice to live +in the country,” I said—I felt envious of the +yokels. “It must be nice to know your neighbors—which +you never do in New York.” “Yes,” +said Daisy, “I get to take positive pride in competing +with the other housewives to see who can +have the best-looking kitchen. You know how +sloppy Gus Dunbar’s looked?—I think it was +that as much as anything that discouraged me +with life that time—well, when I came down here +to the country, the first farmhouse kitchen that +I saw brought out a suppressed housewife’s complex,”—I +remembered her remark, at Sue Borglum’s, +on the neatness of Sue Borglum’s kitchen—“and +I used to feel ashamed unless our kitchen +was just shining!”</p> + +<p>There was still a stretch at the bottom of the +hill. What a marvellous walker she was!—And +she had felt as I had done, that life without honor +was horrible! But where Rita could save her self-respect +with a poem, where even I could imagine +a satire, Daisy could only cut her wrist!</p> + +<p>We walked on for a time in silence. I could be +so happy with Daisy, I thought—taking long +walks in the snow in silence!</p> + +<p>“I was in a pretty bad way myself,” I presently +remarked. “That night that we went to the +movies, you really saved my life! You don’t +know how sweet you were!” “Well,” she replied +with amiability, “you weren’t so sour yourself!”</p> + +<p>We were coming now into the town: we had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">255</span>reached the first white houses. I was cheered +by a sudden inspiration: “Look,” I said, “we +couldn’t get a drink, could we?—Isn’t there some +kind of a bootlegger in town?—I’ve got plenty of +time before the train.” “We might go to Ned +Lovejoy’s,” she said thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>It was just a room in a private house: there +was an oil-cloth-covered table; a stove—which +was pleasant after the cold; some “cabinet-size” +photographs of members of the family, paralyzed +in family groups; and an old-fashioned tinted picture +of a little beribboned girl, smiling innocently +and sweetly upon a sweet-natured cat and dog +who ate amicably out of the same bowl. I don’t +know which was worse—the gin or the ginger-ale. +Ned Lovejoy was inclined to converse, but +we discouraged him and he left.</p> + +<p>“You don’t think that Pete and I are getting +to look alike, do you?” asked Daisy: I assured her +that they weren’t in the least. “That’s what Gus +Dunbar said when he was out here a couple of +weeks ago: he said we were getting alike. They +say that people who live together do get to look +alike.”</p> + +<p>I began to tell her again how much I approved +of her course; how I had come to detest New +York. I explained that I was going away, and +intended to stay away as long as I possibly could. +When I had returned in the fall from abroad, I +hadn’t been able to get back my job; and I had +decided that, before looking for another, I might +as well go on squandering my legacy, to the extent +of a trip to New Orleans: I wanted to be +there for the Mardi Gras.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">256</span></p> + +<p>Against the cold, sunny light of the window, +her sharp nose, pale eyes, and blond hair looked +almost Scandinavian. I told her how much I had +enjoyed myself—how fine it was to have seen her +again—how much I wished I were living in the +country. “Why do you go to New Orleans, +then?” she asked. I replied, not without a touch +of wistfulness, that I had nowhere in the country +to go. I tried to summon another drink; but Ned +Lovejoy was absorbed by his radio, of which we +could hear the sepulchral buzzing—and there was +a long, rather stupid silence. I went and found +him, and got him to bring us some more ginger-ale +and gin, of which I had almost ceased to +notice the taste.</p> + +<p>I told her how splendid she looked with her +outdoor complexion and clothes; and how much +I liked and admired her.—She said suddenly: +“Take me to New Orleans!” “Come along!” I +replied. “I’m sailing just after Christmas.” +“Take me away from all this!” she went on, burlesquing +a woman in a play saying “Take me +away from all this!”—but it seemed to me, and +shocked me a little, that she was partly in earnest. +“Pete can’t go on like this!” she said. “He’ll +have to go back to the city and get some kind of a +job. We owe everybody in town! I get panicky +about it sometimes. Living with Pete like this is +just like living with another woman—you just +live on your wits from day to day—you don’t +dare to think ahead.—You know: you can keep +yourself on the go and keep using your vitality +up, just so you won’t mind things so much—but +every now and then I begin to think about the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">257</span>situation and then I don’t know what to do!—I +never thought I’d be living like this—I never +thought I’d be with anybody the way I’ve been +with Pete and Ray!”...</p> + +<p>I remembered how, suddenly one night, she +had left Ray Coleman for Pete, and had never +come back—and I remembered how she had +begged Hugo to take her to Afghanistan. What +if I could really get her away from Pete! I +wanted a mistress now, and I liked Daisy so +much—I desired her so much. But I couldn’t +flatter myself that she cared about me, she merely +wanted to get away—and all that treachery, that +promiscuity, that stealing of other men’s girls, +had come by this time to seem to me detestable: +I had known Pete Bird through his poems, and +had stayed in his house and read his books, +drunk his coffee and eaten his food—and I remembered +how bitter <em>I</em> had been when Rita had +not scrupled to betray me, poetry, devotion and +all, for that fellow from Columbus (or whoever +it had been: I never knew; if it was not merely +some image of herself, that self which could not +mate with others, because it had already, in one +body, made a union of female with male).—Pete +Bird had, as it were, built his house with his own +hands, and he possessed no legacy.—I did not +even doubt now that he had, as he said, been slandered +by Larry Mickler in the matter of the liverwurst +sandwiches.</p> + +<p>The cold light on the cold road where I was +looking, early as it was in the day, was already beginning +to darken; and I had a consciousness of +stoic fortitude at the thought that, if the sun was +short, I could endure the closing-down of night.—I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">258</span>spoke to Daisy of the sad imperfection inherent +in all human relations, and of the necessity for +loyalty and faith in a world where love was sure +to fail us. “But,” I warmly and earnestly broke +off, “you know all about that better than anybody! +You know all about everything better than anybody! +You’re one of the most intelligent girls I +know!” And I told her again how much I liked +her and how well she deserved of life.—It was +time for me to go.</p> + +<p>At the station, I tried to get some gum for her +out of a solitary slot-machine, but it was apparently +frozen up. There were some country people +standing about, and I was a little shy of kissing +her good-by; but we kissed, as I was getting on +the train: I touched her coral lips for an instant. +It was deliciously cold, moist and light, like that +moment of ice and winter flowers inside the glass +of Grosbeake’s porch.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">259</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V"> + V + </h2> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a><a id="Page_261"></a>261</span></p> + +<p>In that asphalt sky of August, the summer sun +burnt a blunt point of light, like the blinding +violet-livid torch with which a worker on city mains +gashes through a tough piece of pipe. A gray +haze blurred the vistas of Fifth Avenue and dulled +the too full-blown bushes and trees which one saw +beyond Washington Arch, as if the buildings and +pavements themselves, under the action of the +terrible heat, were vaporizing and fogging the air.</p> + +<p>Down a side-street, an old white truck-horse +stood sleeping and stupefied, its head lowered like +a lizard’s and its eyelids closed, while the driver, +sluggish and sweating, piled a mountain of boxes +on the dray. And farther over, on Seventh Avenue, +I saw a barefoot ragged boy, who had flung +himself down on his stomach above the grating +that ventilates the subway, and whose coat was +blown up violently behind him, like the streamers +of an electric fan, by the warm, sudden gust from +the trains.</p> + +<p>My handkerchief was sopped with sweat, and I +was refreshed by an unexpected breeze which +washed over the butt of the island the hot, bilgy +river-smell, as if, now that the people of the Village +had abandoned the Village for the summer, +the waterside were invading the town. I saw nobody +anywhere that I knew. On the corner of +Twelfth Street, where Rita had lived, the obsolete +beer-saloon still bore its discolored blue Pilsener +sign.</p> + +<p>It occurred to me to examine, as I passed them, +those landmarks of Abingdon Square which, the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">262</span>morning of my first meeting with Rita, when I +had been drunk with peach-brandy and poetry, +had seemed to me impressive and romantic, but +which I had afterward passed so many times +without ever observing them closely. I now +found that what I had taken for a statue of some +interesting celebrity of the quarter was merely a +monument to the soldiers of the ward who had +died in the European War; and that the object +which had figured to my fancy as a temple or a +tomb was simply a disused band-stand.</p> + +<p>Daisy and Pete had come recently to town. +Gus Dunbar, who was now in Boston, had, at +Daisy’s instigation, taken steps toward getting +Pete a job there; and Pete had gone on to see +about it, leaving Daisy for a few days in New +York. She had called me up the day before, and, +with the idea of getting away from the heat, I +had suggested our going to Coney Island.</p> + +<p>She was to meet me at the pier. I had not been +to Coney Island since my childhood, and for +some reason, I supposed that the boat left from +the foot of Christopher Street. At the docks, I +learned otherwise, and took a taxi down to the +Battery, along the wide cobbled avenue that runs +along beside the wharves.</p> + +<p>There was the funny high yellow façade, built +of wood but with an aspect of pasteboard: it had +precisely, I remembered, the quality of the amusement-places +of my boyhood, and it looked faded +and flimsy now.</p> + +<p>Daisy was waiting in the cavernous anteroom. +In a corner of the high, darkish space, she +showed charmingly neat, small and clear. In +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">263</span>spite of the roundness of her hips and the smartness +of her clothes—her white dress and her +tight <i lang="fr">cloche</i> hat—she might almost have been +mistaken for a child. How cute and how chic +she looked in those short, tight skirts that cut off +her slim legs just above the knees! “Well,” she +greeted me with her unblinking smile, “the first +twenty years of my life I spent waiting for the +Coney Island boat!” I apologized and explained. +“But why didn’t you find out first?” she protested. +“It’s a good thing you didn’t think it +left from the foot of Forty-second Street!”</p> + +<p>“Well, how do you feel?” I inquired, as we +climbed the flight of steps. “I feel pretty sassy!” +she said.</p> + +<p>I had of course missed the four-o’clock boat, +and now we should have to wait for the five-o’clock +one. But up-stairs, the gray-timbered +shadow of the low-roofed leaving-place was tranquillizing +and cool: through a low narrow opening +that ran along the side, one had a glimpse of +the crude, unshadowed blocks of the enormous +downtown buildings, where only one sheer green +roof and a steep crane, on a float that was green, +broke the cliffs of colorlessness.</p> + +<p>I had brought some gin, and I bought some +ginger-ale at the refreshment stand. “I must tell +you my joke,” she said, as we drank that impossible +concoction—at once too bitter and too sickeningly +sweet—for which I had acquired a certain +affection, because I had come to associate it +with Daisy. “I’ve made up an idea for a joke. +There’ll be a caption that says ‘Striking a Happy +Medium’—and then there’ll be a picture of a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">264</span>medium—you know, a spiritualistic medium—with +a big piece of bogus ectoplasm coming out +of her mouth and a grin of satisfaction on her +face, and a man with his arm all raised, just +ready to smack her down.—Don’t you think +that’s pretty good?” I told her that I thought it +was terrible.</p> + +<p>There was a large, old, slot-machine phonograph +standing against the wall: it was lyre-shaped +and had a mirror in its belly, and seemed +stationed as an outpost and siren for the frivolities +and gaieties beyond. We put a nickel in and +started it playing an antiquated xylophone record +of the <i>American Patrol</i>: its patriotic gallop, +half-stifled behind the glass and losing itself in +the wide, gray waiting-room, woke in my heart a +happy response as if to Fourth-of-July bands of +my boyhood.</p> + +<p>Then the boat was in; the doors were opened; +we went down and stepped over the side. Assailed +by the sunlight, we were dazed: in the +brightness, we seemed merely to enter a smell +of white boat-paint and to ascend to a brisk and +merry tinkling of some pretty antique tune.</p> + +<p>I pulled camp-stools beside a rail on an upper +deck.—Sea and shore were rawest gray and the +sky a raw, pale blue—it was not that the blue +was pale, but rather that blue was lacking. The +sun streaked the water to the west with a bright +glaze of zinc.—I got some more ginger-ale and a +couple of paper cups from the little soft-drink +bar below.</p> + +<p>On one side, as we left the dock, we looked out +at the Statue of Liberty, a solid, dull slug of gray +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">265</span>against a colorless, burning sky; and on the other, +at the old red fort, round and full of holes +like a mouse-trap, with its rusty and abandoned +barracks.</p> + +<p>The thin strains of linkéd sweetness, with now +and then a note frailly sour, of the harp and violin—some +old musical-comedy tune I remembered +from my college days—seemed to me even in this +false and elfin echo to keep more that was human +and charming than the pace of the newer dance-music +had ever allowed it to possess; and as I +glanced at Daisy, gazing out like a charming, +good-natured child, at the sights of the passing +shore, I was touched with sentimental revery.</p> + +<p>Then the music was blotted out by the vehement +snoring of a steamer and the pert sput-sputtering +of a tug.</p> + +<p>She seemed unusually carefree to-day, and I +saw that her lips were rouged an unusually pretty +mauve. I told her how pretty she looked, and +she replied by complimenting me on the harmony +of my clothes: “With most people,” she said, +“their socks, for instance, haven’t anything to do +with the rest of their clothes—but your socks +match your suit.” My socks, which were a grayish +blue, had been given me as a Christmas present +and I had worn them only by accident on the +same day as a gray summer suit. “But you have +the worst-looking nails I ever saw!” she went on. +“They look just like mechanics’ nails, except that +mechanics’ nails are dirty.” I explained that I +always cut them with a pair of library shears, implying +that I regarded any other method as effeminate.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">266</span></p> + +<p>I now decided to speak to Daisy of a matter +which had been worrying me since I had met her +at the pier. I said, “I think you’ve got some egg +or something on this cheek.” She took out her +little mirror: “That’s just a streak of cold-cream,” +she replied. “It always does that when +I leave some on and the powder sticks.” She +rubbed it off. In the stunning sun of that windless, +unshaded day, we were dumb for a time.</p> + +<p>Governor’s Island, the harbor in summer, the +old patriotic tune, the statue of the soldier in the +park, had brought back to me another vision which +for some moments loomed bright in my mind.</p> + +<p>Once—it seemed to me long ago—on a morning +in early July, I had come back to Governor’s +Island when it had been green with trees and +grass, and when the barracks had been low, white +houses: there had been soldiers in khaki grooming +horses or standing at the water’s edge, in white +shirts.</p> + +<p>I remembered how, the afternoon before, +though we had not yet been in sight of land, the +empty horizons of those waters had held already +the presence of home. The hours had seemed to +run more smoothly with the homing ship—and +in that calm summer evening, the sea had scarcely +breathed. The silver sun had dipped, had sent its +silver path along the blue, and had sunk at the end +of its path—spreading yellows and reds, which +the night took.</p> + +<p>Then at last the yellow star of a lighthouse +had been winking in the black—it did not seem +like the play of a machine, but a deliberate human +signal; and then a lightship spangled with stars. A +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">267</span>quarantine tug had presently come out to us from +the still invisible shore, and sent out some men +in a boat: they transacted their business quickly, +rowed quickly back to the launch and were pulled +up in their boat with such promptness that it +seemed to leap over the side. One had heard +American voices: that was the American way of +doing things!</p> + +<p>Then a bed of lights on the water: after nearly +two years of France, Coney Island had seemed +incredible!</p> + +<p>Then land on either side: there had been trees +and lawns on the shore, and large, white American +houses, with here and there a lighted window, +set along on a little hill that sloped down to +the water—and each of the houses had its boathouse +and its little pier. Now soon one was to +walk in such houses!—to play one’s part again in +that life hidden there behind those lighted windows, +in that life grown now so strange and yet +the life of home!</p> + +<p>There had come to us a sudden sweet smell +through the quiet summer night: trees and +flowers; the summer grass; the luxuriance and +rankness of America. And then, as the ship +passed on, a smell even more unmistakable, a +smell even more of home, surrounded and saturated +us: it was the rotten smell of the river, +which, when to-day I had smelt it again in the +Greenwich Village streets, had made me think of +the salt bilge-water of the harbor, but which had +breathed then the grease, the sour heat and the +smoke of the factories, of the city. Dark chimneys +were disturbing the darkness with their +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">268</span>noiseless eruptions of red. That evening, on Riverside +Drive, the benches would be full of couples, +and all would be soaked from the Jersey bank by +the glue-factories’ hot, heavy fumes.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly I had almost caught my breath—I +had been curiously moved by the sight of a +single, solitary street-lamp on the Staten Island +shore. It had merely shed a loose and whitish +radiance over a few feet of the baldish road of +some dark, thinly settled suburb. Above it, there +had loomed an abundant and disorderly tree. But +there was America, I had felt with emotion—there +under that lonely suburban street-lamp, there in +that raw and livid light!</p> + +<p>Then, from somewhere behind those shadowy +lawns, one heard the moan of an American train, +and then its faint bell, and the swift, shuffling +sounds of its progress. It was speeding away +with eagerness and sureness to American cities at +night—far, perhaps—to the farthest reaches of a +continent without frontiers! There had been a +petulance and a sadness in the piping of the French +locomotives—they had spoken always of the dead +hours of dawn and the carloads of wounded men. +But these trains were bringing soldiers home—and +far away from Europe—at night!</p> + +<p>In the morning, off South Brooklyn, at anchor, +we had seen the smoky rose of dawn come up over +the black roofs of the city, and we had listened +to the river-traffic waking with soft puffs and +toots. The colors had begun to come out on the +vermilion smoke-stacks of steamers. The gray +sides of a battle-ship were clear: it was soon +trimmed with live figures in white suits. We had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">269</span>put down a motor-boat, which sprang away, when +it touched the water, as if the water had given it +life: a blue sailor, standing at the tiller, and negligently +and gracefully leaning to balance the tilt +of the boat, was guiding it in bold easy curves.</p> + +<p>Now the varied craft of the harbor were coughing +and sneezing all about us, fully waked-up for +the day: squat shouldering ferry-boats and tugs; +a tiny motor-boat darting like a waterbug; railroad +barges, floating freight-cars—Delaware and +Lackawanna; New York, New Haven and Hartford—all +those dear, square names of home!</p> + +<p>Then the shore was moving: to the left, the +docks had begun to bristle with the first thickets +of the forest of masts. In a moment, the sky +would be crowded, and one would behold, above +the docks and the shipping, the tremendous towers +of the town!</p> + +<p>At that moment, on our way to Coney Island, +the freshness of that other summer day, when I +had come back to the United States with what +seemed infinite freedom before me, was recreated +in my mind so vividly that I tried to describe it +to Daisy. But for Daisy, the things which had +delighted me—the boat leaping into the tug, the +sound of the train in the dark, the sailor guiding +the boat, had no special significance or point, because +they were things which she took for granted, +and which seemed perfectly commonplace. I felt +that she kept waiting for these incidents to develop +into anecdotes, in which something entertaining +should happen.</p> + +<p>When I had finally given it up, she put her +hand over the middle of my face and regarded me +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">270</span>attentively. “You’d be very good-looking,” she +said, “if it wasn’t for your nose.” I said, “I +know I’ve got a terrible nose!” “No,” she reassured +me. “It’s cute. But it interferes with any +Adonis-like beauty that you might otherwise have +had.”</p> + +<p>In the harbor, the harbor of the August day +which was actually about us, the lowering of the +zinc-bright colorless sun had made of the water to +the west a gleaming sheet of zinc; and to the +east, it had begun to blue. A bell-buoy clanged +and bathed. Before us, we could see the steamers +moving out toward the open sea, their smoke +trailing back from seaward. A fresh, easier, +breezy sea-smell reached us—it was a lightening +of the load of life.</p> + +<p>“Doesn’t that feel nice, though!” said Daisy. +“I think I’m going to enjoy this trip!”</p> + +<p>I asked her about Pete and his job. “I’m so +glad we’re going to Boston,” she said. “I’m tired +of the country, but I don’t want to live in New +York! I think New York is terrible!”</p> + +<p>Sea Gate—and beaches rank with bathers; little +brummagen summer bungalows with green or red +roofs.</p> + +<p>Then a monumental buff hotel with a blunt +obelisk tower rose alone from a level shore—where, +however, we could presently make out the +skeletons of roller-coasters and the squirrel-cages +of ferris-wheels.</p> + +<p>Now, more quickly than in our bemusement +we had expected, the boat was pulling in toward +the boardwalk: we could see a row of improbable +objects—the sails of a bright-red Dutch windmill; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">271</span>the teeth of a gigantic grinning mask; a +rocking full-size Noah’s Ark, with animals sticking +their heads out the windows and with curious +half-clownlike figures, which made the spasmodic +movements of automata and which seemed the +true unearthly inhabitants of that city of enormous +toys.</p> + +<p>When the boat stopped, as we stood on deck, +waiting to get off, we suddenly again felt the +heat. “The sun makes me reel!” said Daisy. We +walked, dazed, up a little gang-plank and down +a very long white pier. The hotel, which rose +now to our left, against the dazzling zinc of the +sky, was a dull and solid slug, as the Statue of +Liberty had been. The sea was now quite blue.</p> + +<p>I was enchanted by the Noah’s Ark: there were +an ostrich, a giraffe, and an elephant, wagging +their heads out the portholes; a Noah, who, at +regular intervals, threw back his Uncle Josh +beard and took a swig from a bottle of whiskey; +and a fisherman who, at similar intervals, jerked +up an old shoe on his hook. There was also a +mysterious monster, labelled “Hank,” half human +and half brute, who in paroxysms shook his +window-bars. An urgent and ominous fog-horn +sounded at the same short intervals. I was all for +going inside.</p> + +<p>“Let’s go in swimming first,” said Daisy, +“while we’ve still got the sun—then we’ll feel +fine—then we’ll have another drink. Then we can +go and do things, huh?” She squeezed my arm: +she seemed happy.</p> + +<p>We floated, on our way, through warm currents: +the balm of hot buttered pop-corn; the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">272</span>fragrance of burnt molasses; the sweet-acrid odor +of orange-peels.</p> + +<p>And then, after the close, musky smell, human +and marine, of the damp-and-dry gray boards of +the bath-house, I met Daisy in my hired bathing-suit, +and we walked out under the boardwalk to +the beach.</p> + +<p>She had brought an old bathing-suit of Pete’s +which had enormous brown and white stripes and +which was in places much too tight for her. With +her fair skin among the tanned bathers and her +hair tucked behind her ears, she looked like one +of the Mack Sennett bathing girls, in the old-fashioned +movie comedies. “I know it looks awful,” +she said, when I kidded her about this, “but +I thought it didn’t matter at Coney Island—and +I couldn’t afford to get a new one.”</p> + +<p>There were tiny children playing in the surf, +in tiny slips of bathing-suits of yellow, pale green, +and red, like the variously flavored fruit-drops—orange, +raspberry, and lime—in the glass jars we +had passed on a candy counter; or like the bottles +of colored soft-drinks—cherry, orange, and lemon +soda—which we had seen at a soft-drink stand—they +were splashing in wild delight or fleeing +from the sea with squeals.</p> + +<p>Daisy worked, for a few minutes, squinting, in +an ineffective under-water side-stroke. I, still +partly bemused by my drinks, flung myself with +abandon to the waves, and swam around a small +stone breakwater in what—although I unexpectedly +ran into the breakwater—I thought was +pretty good order.</p> + +<p>“That was a marvellous wallow of yours!” said +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">273</span>Daisy. “I thought you were trying to push the +breakwater over! I was just going to yell out and +tell you to stop, it was built there on purpose!”</p> + +<p>She had brought out of the surf, about her +shoulders, a great strip of glossy gold-brown seaweed, +and she wore it as a boa: it went beautifully +with her hair and with the taffy-colored +stripes of Pete’s bathing-suit, both darkened by +the wet. Her slim legs below her full hips looked +almost like the legs of a bird.</p> + +<p>We lay on the sand for awhile. “Your hair +seems a different color,” I said. “In fact—I don’t +know whether it’s just my imagination or not—but +it always seems a different color every time +that I see you.” “It is, I guess,” she replied. +“They put white henna on it when they bleached +it for the <i>Gambols</i>—and I always used to put +peroxide and lemon-juice on it every so often, but +I haven’t been able to lately. That’s why it’s pink, +I guess.” I asked what color it had originally +been. “Oh, Gee: I don’t know,” she said. “It’s +so long ago!—Mouse-color, I guess!”</p> + +<p>I inquired about a system of vivid blue veins +on her thigh. “That’s my charley-horse,” she explained; +“I got it in the first <i>Gambols</i>.” I asked +her why she didn’t go back on the stage. “I’m too +short,” she replied, “and my feet are too small for +me to dance well—and I don’t like it, anyway: I +always get independent and cut too many rehearsals. +That was why I got fired the last time.”</p> + +<p>Beside us, a brown young man had his arm +about the shoulders of a young woman in an old-rose +bathing-suit, with large carpet-like flower-patterns, +which richly harmonized with the purple +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">274</span>tan of her skin: she presently slipped a hand +beneath the top of her companion’s bathing-suit +and affectionately rubbed his back. A handsome +blond girl in blue, who seemed to have two men +in attendance, was pawing the sand with one foot. +Another girl, in a turquoise costume, had stretched +out on her back on the sand, with her shoulders +between a man’s knees: he was passionately stroking +her arm.</p> + +<p>I watched one really beautiful woman, very +blond and rather Germanic: she wore a pair of +red bathing-trunks with an orange stripe down +the side, belted and athletically faded, and a plain +white bathing-shirt. She lay voluptuously, one +knee elevated and her head on the knees of a barrel-shaped +man, who wore horn-rimmed spectacles. +Her skin was extremely white, only toasted +a little about the shoulders; and she had smiling +darkish brown eyes. I watched her as, presently, +she got up and walked over to the water, and—while +her companion bobbed in the surf—with an +easy and graceful crawl, lay voluptuously along +the swell.</p> + +<p>“This is all artificial sand, you know,” said +Daisy,—“Oh, yes: they spent half a million dollars +fixing up this beach. There didn’t used to be +any beach at all. That was the same time they put +up the hotel. I wonder if they’re making money.”</p> + +<p>Gray steamers were passing quite close along +the gray line of the water—they made me think +of summers in Europe, of coming back from +abroad in the fall—at the age when I had been +last to Coney Island, there had always been uncles +and aunts sailing to or from France—there had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">275</span>been an uncle who brought home from Paris silk +stockings for my cousins and aunts—he had had +a bluff and ironical way of retorting, “You don’t +say!” which was precisely the way Daisy said +things—it was the American way.—The Americans +went to Paris, and then they came back again +with silk stockings and things they had bought, +and that frank American smile, and that straightforward +way of speaking.—The people who interested +me most were, almost all, I reflected, +now abroad: Grosbeake was in England for the +summer; Hugo, in spite of his enthusiasm for the +American Middle Western cities, was still in Afghanistan; +and Rita was still in Paris—yet I did +not at the moment seem to miss them and did not +want to go abroad myself. What fun we had had +together after all—Rita and I—though we had +never been easy and friendly together, as Daisy +and I were to-day: there had been one evening—we +had been drinking raw gin—Rita would never +have drunk the gin and ginger-ale to which Daisy +was addicted—when we had told each other things +about ourselves which had seemed at the time to +mean a great deal—I couldn’t quite remember +what they were—she had told me something about +her girlhood, it was that night she had sung me +the song about <i>the foggy, foggy dew</i>—and I had +told her how my father had died of tuberculosis—and +what a rotten time I had had at boarding-school, +and how I intended to write a novel about +it. Those nocturnal drunken conversations which +seemed to mean so much!—which did, no doubt, +mean so much. All literature, perhaps—and not +poetry alone, but even the systematized facts of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">276</span>Hugo’s documented novels, even the formulas of +Grosbeake’s logic—was in the nature of a drunken +language, expressing, by certain symbols, sensations +and emotions merely—the readjustments, +that would be, of our little corner of nature to the +universe of which we were part—which was forever +passing into new phases and where each +phase meant a new adjustment for every part—where, +then, a new art or idea was something +more than the mere compensation for an individual +weakness or disaster, it was a necessity of universal +development—I would think it all out some +time—the sun was hot on the sand.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Daisy, “now that we’ve earned +that other drink, how about going in?”</p> + +<p>Hot dogs were being roasted twenty at a time, on +wide polished iron slabs: they were crisp, with a +delicious stink. At an oilcloth-covered table, Daisy +and I ate one apiece, dabbing them gamboge with +a little long-handled wooden spoon from the common +mustard pot.</p> + +<p>“I’m ravenous!” said Daisy, biting into the +pulp of her roll.</p> + +<p>Dim and languid from the swim, I was watching +the reflections of girls, in wide hats and bright +summer colors, shine briefly in the silver high +myriad-paned mirror, in the sun that bleached +whites whiter and blues and yellows white.</p> + +<p>“Do you want another?” I asked, when she had +bolted the last morsel. “Not now; maybe later,” +she replied.</p> + +<p>We did the shooting-galleries after this, and +the ring-throwing and ball-rolling games. We +were both quite good: we knocked over any number +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">277</span>of moving ducks, which was what we had decided +to concentrate on; and we won a baby-doll +in a chemise, a miniature roulette-wheel, an harmonica, +an atomizer and a trick pistol which shot +off a snake. Daisy was so delighted with the +snake that she kept shooting it down the ball-rolling +table, so that the Jap had to find it and +bring it back. Every time, with oriental patience, +he would stuff it into the pistol, hand it back to +Daisy, and caution her politely with a smile, as he +indicated the trigger: “Now don’t put your finger +on that!”—whereupon Daisy would shoot it off +again. I was somehow obscurely reminded of that +horrible night at Sue Borglum’s, and I took a +dislike to the Jap and made Daisy move on.</p> + +<p>“Let’s send some goofy post-cards,” said Daisy, +in front of a post-card store. We went inside and +selected several with fastidious care. I sent cards +to Hugo and Rita; and Daisy sent cards to Gus +Dunbar and Sue Borglum. “I’m going to be +dirty,” she said, putting a cross on a bathing beauty, +and writing, “X marks my room.”</p> + +<p>I asked her if she would care for a pin-cushion +heavily encrusted with sea-shells and inscribed, +“Souvenir of Coney Island,” or if there were +anything else she would like. “I’d like some +moccasins,” she said. “Very well,” I replied. +“Will you really buy me some?” she asked eagerly. +“You great big munificent old thing!—I +haven’t got any slippers now, and I used to keep +getting my feet full of splinters and thumb-tacks +in the country.”</p> + +<p>It turned out that her feet were so small that +the man had to get a special size out of the stockroom +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">278</span>at the back. The woman in the shop, fat +and sharp-eyed, became very friendly with Daisy +and, while the man was looking for the moccasins, +tried to engage her in conversation. “Do you +mind my asking what kind of lipstick that is?” +the woman inquired with interest. Rather to my +surprise, this seemed to embarrass Daisy: she explained +that it was called “carnation,” but when +the woman asked her how much it cost, Daisy said +that she had forgotten, and became markedly unresponsive. +“If they can’t find the right size,” she +presently remarked to me pointedly, “we might as +well go!” The moccasins, however, were forthcoming: +they were moccasins for a child and I +did not suppose they could fit her; but they did. +She looked down at her little blunt-toed foot with +its border, at the throat, of gray fur: “That’s all +right,” she said shortly.</p> + +<p>“That woman certainly took a friendly interest,” +I remarked, when we were out on the boardwalk. +“Yes,” said Daisy. “I never know what to +do when people like that get chummy.”</p> + +<p>I had been surprised at Daisy’s shrinking from +the familiarity of the woman in the shop, and I +was now to be surprised again. I had lingered in +front of a side-show, where there were posters of +a Hula-Hula Dancer, a Dog-faced Boy, a Mermaid, +an Hermaphrodite and a Magician, and I +suggested going in. But Daisy evidently did not +care to. “My mother would never let me see any +freaks,” she said. “They’re all fakes, aren’t they?” +she asked, a little timidly.</p> + +<p>As we walked on, she shot the snake off again, +and I had to go and get it out of an umbrella-stand +bristling with pennants and canes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">279</span></p> + +<p>Then I discovered the Eden Musée—I had forgotten +that it had moved to Coney Island and had +thought of it as having perished. I had not visited +it since my childhood, when, coming up to +New York with my father, he had used to take +me to see it in the days when it had still been on +Twenty-third Street: there I had seen for the +first time moving-pictures, along with the automatic +chess-player and the manipulator of liquid +air. And now here was the same old policeman +in his high obsolete helmet; the same refined +widow in black, with the tight waist of the early +nineteen-hundreds; the same old hayseed with his +spectacles, his flopping wide-brimmed straw hat +and his flaccid carpet-bag—but now no longer +posed inside, where they could no longer be mistaken +for real people, but set out in front as a +guarantee of the authentic antiquity of the show.</p> + +<p>I induced Daisy to go in.—There they were, that +awful group of my youth, though it seemed to +me their number was diminished: Jenny Lind, +Mary Queen of Scots, Anna Held, Oliver Cromwell, +Beethoven, Brigham Young, General Grant, +Napoleon and Booker T. Washington: I was +sorry to see that Marshall P. Wilder no longer +had a place among them.</p> + +<p>I did not examine them closely, however, for +Daisy, who seemed never to have seen wax-works +before, hurried on to the more dramatic tableaux +set back in compartments along the side. She +passed before them, gazing in silence. The groups +were not particularly interesting, but they presently +led us to the “Crypt.” We entered a darkened +curving passage. I was delighted: it was the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">280</span>old “Chamber of Horrors,” which in the Twenty-third +Street days had used to be downstairs in +the basement. We gazed at the Opium Den; the +Execution of a Burmese Criminal (it seemed to +me now that the elephant who steps on the criminal’s +head had shrunk since I was a boy); the +Cannibal Feast; the Whipping Post, “still in use +in the State of Delaware”; and, the electrocution +of poor Lina Lemberg, who had finally, a few +weeks before, been executed for the murder of +her husband. The witnesses, in the Death Chamber, +were regarding the proceedings with simpers, +and I wondered whether they had not been borrowed +from an old tableau of a lobster-and-champagne +supper, with Mephistopheles in the background, +of which the personnel of revellers seemed +to me, like the Burmese elephant, to have dwindled +since the Twenty-third Street days. I suggested +this to Daisy. “I don’t think this is very exciting,” +she replied. She seemed to look at everything +so perfunctorily that I was afraid she was +being bored: as she had never seen the Musée in +her childhood, I could not expect her to share my +interest in it.</p> + +<p>Several tableaux farther on, I found that I had +turned a corner and left Daisy behind—still staring, +no doubt, at Lina Lemberg. I was before a +group of the Spanish Inquisition, and I had a +sudden happy inspiration for enlivening the entertainment +for Daisy. I climbed quickly over +the railing, put my straw hat on the head of the +presiding inquisitor—he had a lean and sallow +face, and the hat came down over his eyes—and, +with my back to the railing, struck an energetic +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">281</span>pose among the torturers with red-hot irons, myself +applying to the victim’s blood-streaked shoulder +the cork-screw I had brought for the gin. In +a moment, I heard distinct light steps, which +stopped—then, after an instant’s pause: “Come +on out of there, you old cut-up!” I climbed back +over the railing. “I thought you were real at +first,” she said, as we reached the exit. “You gave +me quite a turn!”</p> + +<p>On our way out, I caught a glimpse of Roosevelt, +the Teddy Roosevelt of San Juan Hill, who, +with his handkerchief knotted about his neck, his +Rough-Rider puttees, his felt hat, his mustache, +his glaring teeth and his eye-glasses, made me +think of that younger America which I had assumed +we had forever left behind, but which to-day +seemed quite close to me again. It had been +a boy’s America—and not merely because it had +been the America of my boyhood. Roosevelt, +who had been so charming with his children, had +become the idol of the Americans of that time for +very much the same reasons—he had been everything +that a boy could imagine: Dan Beard, Old +and Young King Brady, Frank Merriwell, and +Stanley in Africa, all rolled into one. I asked +Daisy whether she remembered the time when +Roosevelt had been a great hero. She said, “No,”—and +showed so little interest that for a time I +relapsed into silence. Then she let me see what +she had been thinking about: “I’ve never seen a +dead person,” she said, “except an aunt of mine +that died.”</p> + +<p>“By the way,” I asked, after a moment, “what +became of that thief that Ray Coleman caught—the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">282</span>one that didn’t steal anything of yours, but +stole the bathrobe of the man next door, or something?” +She was silent. “Don’t you remember?” +“Yes, I remember,” she replied. “But I don’t +know what became of him. I was thinking too +much about myself at that time to pay much attention +to anything else.”</p> + +<p>“Would you mind taking me to dinner?” she +said presently. “I’m absolutely starved!” I asked +her where she wanted to go. “I’d like to go to the +old Seaview, if you don’t mind. I don’t know +how the food there is now—but I’d just like to +see the place.—I went there with Phil Meissner,” +she added, “when we first came on from Pittsburgh.”</p> + +<p>The Seaview was quite remote—beyond a kind +of grassy common, criss-crossed with bald paths. +It was an old-fashioned summer hotel, of the cupolaed +and pillared design of the days before concrete +and brick: like all wooden hotels by the +shore, it had a flimsy discolored look, and seemed +peculiarly desolate and dry. The dining-room was +entirely empty: only a few of the tables were set. +One side was all high narrow windows, separated +by thin wooden frames, which looked out on the +boardwalk and the sea; and on the other, an old +closed piano stood against the wall, and space had +been left for a dance-floor; slim pillars from floor +to roof at intervals threaded the room. We waited, +but no one came. I finally hallo’d; and a +waiter appeared from the pantry. He came forward +without inspiration, as if he expected to be +asked for cigarettes or to be asked to direct us to +Luna Park. When he learned that we wanted +dinner, his eagerness to serve us was extreme.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">283</span></p> + +<p>“Well,” said Daisy, as we sat down, “the table +linen’s nice and clean, anyway.” It was true: +very white large napkins had been folded into angles +and stuck into large clear goblets.</p> + +<p>“I’m going to have clams,” said Daisy. “They +used to have the most wonderful clam-cocktails +here.” I ordered a melon for myself, and bluefish +for both of us afterwards. I also ordered +some ginger-ale and poured out what was left of +the gin. “I don’t think I’ll have any,” said Daisy, +“until after I’ve had something to eat.” She +looked a little pale and was silent for some time, +and I hoped that the Chamber of Horrors hadn’t +upset her. She smiled broadly, however, at last, +and proclaimed: “Look out, Food: I’m coming!”</p> + +<p>I asked her how she and Phil had ever happened +to come to the Seaview. “Phil knew the manager,” +she explained. “The manager gave a party +in my honor—just some of his men friends. We +had champagne, and I’d never had anything to +drink before—I was awfully young—I was only +seventeen. I thought it was swell, and I got lit. +They kept filling up my glass with champagne. +You know how men are when they’ve got a girl +that’s young and kind of cute, and they’re trying +to get her tight. I had on a little black dress like +they wore then, that buttoned up the back, and +the bottom buttons got unbuttoned—and then +every man that danced with me would unbutton +another button—so that pretty soon it was unbuttoned +all the way up to the waist. I didn’t +know anything about it and just went on smiling +and dancing, and thinking I was cutting quite a +figure, with my legs hanging out all the time!”</p> + +<p>I laughed about this.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">284</span></p> + +<p>“I certainly enjoyed those clams!” she said, when +all the little hollows in her plate were empty around +the red-splashed glass of sauce. She smiled: “After +all,” she declared, “say what you please—there’s +nothing like a good plate of food!” I asked her +if she would like some more clams. “Yes,” she +answered, after a moment’s thought, “I believe +that I would.” I ordered another clam-cocktail.</p> + +<p>I asked if it weren’t true, as I had heard from +Hugo Bamman, the night of Ray Coleman’s party, +that she and her husband, on their honeymoon, +had ridden on a motor-cycle all the way from Pittsburgh +to Atlantic City: this had seemed to me +tremendously romantic. “It wasn’t Atlantic City,” +Daisy explained. “It was here.”</p> + +<p>“What was Phil Meissner like?” I inquired. +“He had a lot of charm,” said Daisy, “and a lot +of brains, too—but he never did anything with +them except perfectly foolish things. For instance, +he’d spend days inventing something that +worked by electricity to make the blinds open in +the morning—he could lie in bed and press a button +and make the water-basin fill, and when it was +full, the faucet would turn itself off, and everything!”</p> + +<p>“Were you very much in love with him?” I +asked. She shook her head, as if in scorn. “I +didn’t know anything about anything then. He +was the first regular beau I’d ever had: my father +wouldn’t let me go with the boys. I was all excited +aboutum at first.—I was so much impressed withum +when I first marriedum that it was just ridiculous! +I couldn’t even go to the drug-store to get a +tube of tooth-paste without askingum what kind to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">285</span>buy. But I wasn’t really in love withum—I didn’t +know what it was all about—and then, by the time +I might have been in love, everything was pretty +well wrecked.—My father followed us here and +burst in on us with a detective at four o’clock in +the morning. He made us get up and get married +then and there—we hadn’t gotten married +before we left because Phil didn’t want to attract +attention. Dad said I’d either have to marry Phil +or go back to Pittsburgh. So we got up and got +married at four o’clock in the morning—it was +the night after the champagne party and we both +felt like nobody’s business. Phil was sore as a +crab, because Dad had a Catholic priest marry us, +and Phil wasn’t a Catholic—but Dad threatened +to havum arrested for abducting a minor, and he +had the detective right there.</p> + +<p>“Things were never quite the same after that. +I don’t blame Phil for being sore: nobody likes to +be forced into a thing like that—especially with a +hangover, at four o’clock in the morning!”</p> + +<p>I had been thinking: her father from Pittsburgh—why +had they named her Daisy?—I remembered +that old song of my boyhood,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Daisy! Daisy!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Give me your answer true—</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’m half-crazy!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>All for the love of you!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>It won’t be a stylish marriage—</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>I can’t afford a carriage!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of a bicycle built for two!”</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent">—that old song of an earlier time to which +Daisy’s name seemed to relate her—and her large +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">286</span>hips, too—I had never been aware how round +they were till I had seen her in her bathing-suit—they +were the kind that had been admired at the +time when the song had been new—they went in +for slender hips to-day—but I liked Daisy’s none +the less—how bicycles had gone out, too—but she +and Phil, appropriately enough, had spent their +honeymoon on a motor-cycle.</p> + +<p>“Are you happy now with Pete?” I asked. She +shook her head: “I don’t know if I’ve really ever +been happy—but I’ve sworn to go through with +this with Pete: I’m tired of leaving people.” “Are +you and Pete married now?” She shook her +head again and grunted negatively, “uh-uh!”</p> + +<p>“I know I’m not happy now,” she went on, +“because I keep having these dreams where some +kind of a great piece of good fortune is just +about to befall me—and they’re the goofiest +dreams!—When Prince Charming comes along, +he’s always just a great, big, strong, clean-limbed +American who gathers me up in his arms. It’s +so silly! I feel ashamed of myself after I wake +up.—And I’m always dressed in the costume that +I wore in the first <i>Gambols</i>, when I came out in a +white old-fashioned dress, with curls and pantalettes +and everything. I loved it—Gus Dunbar +used to say that I looked so sweet and dewy that +he wanted to smack me down. But you know +one night the boys from Notre Dame came and +stole my picture in that costume that was on show +in front of the theatre—and they published it in +the college paper. They sent me a copy of the paper: +I was tickled to death. That was the only +one they stole!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">287</span></p> + +<p>I had been watching, through the tall, open +windows, the double, white, pearly globes of the +boardwalk lamps, so pale, so chaste and so bright, +hanging gracefully, like lilies-of-the-valley, from +their straight, slender stalks, against the background +of the paler blue, now the cooler blue, of +the sea, where a buoy shone ruby-red.</p> + +<p>When we came down the steps of the hotel, +all was in deep blue dusk, with the lamps a double +rope of moons. “Have you noticed this?” I +asked, waving my hand toward the lamps.—“I +suppose the last time I was happy,” she said, +“was back there in the old Seaview dining-room!”</p> + +<p>We were confronted, when we turned back toward +the amusements, by a large and very garish +electric sign in the form of a gigantic human +foot, on which a red Mephistopheles was standing: +by means of alternate systems of bulbs, the +arm of the Mephistopheles was made to jerk back +and forth, prodding energetically with a spear an +illuminated corn on the big toe, which at each +jab changed the color of its light, first blue, then +purple, then green. The legend, which flashed on +and off, proclaimed, in contorted, striking letters: +“Take a Walk with Clancy’s Corn Fix. Knocks +the Devil Out of Sore Feet.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, do you see that sign?” said Daisy. “That +was Larry Mickler’s idea. He’s making a lot of +money out of it: they’ve got them all over the +country.” I was glad to know that Larry Mickler, +through a truly Dostoevskian device, had +constrained his sadistic instincts to serve this beneficent +end.</p> + +<p>“I hope we get somewhere soon!” said Daisy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">288</span>presently. “I’ve got to go to about eighteen ladies’-rooms!” +We had been walking along the +boardwalk and were only just reaching the shops +again. Daisy presently disappeared in a small +and rather sordid-looking restaurant.</p> + +<p>There was a penny-in-the-slot place next door, +and as I walked back and forth in front of the +restaurant, I stopped and looked in. I saw, standing +before me in the doorway, a tall, young man +with a stoop, who had a darkish tooth-brush mustache, +which I considered a little silly, and rather +large brown eyes of the kind usually described as +spaniel-like: he was wearing, like everybody else, +a straw hat with a black band, which, it seemed +to me, he had pulled too far down on his forehead. +I had a feeling of mild irritation that he +should be standing and staring so innocently, so +well-meaningly, and so lackadaisically, square in +the middle of the doorway, where he made it +difficult for people to pass. He was laden down, +I saw, with packages: no doubt some woman had +made him carry them.—Then sharply I pulled +myself up from that vague and absent moment: +the man was my own reflection in a mirror opposite +the door. On either side were other mirrors +which distorted people’s shapes.</p> + +<p>I continued to gaze at myself: how had I ever +failed to recognize—especially after Daisy had +remarked on it—my ridiculous bulbous nose? My +eyes, which I had hoped were intelligent, had only +appeared to me canine—and my mustache was +unsuccessful. My pockets were bulging with the +atomizer, the mouth-organ, the baby-doll, and the +pistol with the snake; and I was carrying the roulette-wheel +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">289</span>and the moccasins, which had been +wrapped up in pasteboard boxes. I seemed to +myself a figure from the funny-papers: Mr. Suburban +American, at the sea-side, with packages +and a straw hat.</p> + +<p>I went back to the door of the restaurant: +Daisy had not yet emerged. There was a radio +playing outside, and for some reason the programme +included some vaudeville or night-club +woman soloist singing <i>Mamie Rose</i>, that popular +song of several years ago which Daisy had started +on the phonograph when Rita had been reading +her poems and which had desolated me so on the +day when I had seen Rita off at the station and +had been waiting for Daisy in her rooms. Now +I listened idly for the words, parts of which, on +that horrible record, I had never been able to +catch. The contralto, whose voice was rich and +deep, delivered them with a masterly casual emphasis, +in that nondescript dialect—perhaps the +result of Irish actors learning from Jewish comedians +how to sing Negro songs—which has become +the language of American jazz:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“There she goes,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mamie Rose</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>She—loves—me!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Don’t seem to show it!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>How do I know it?</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>It’s ABC!</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>She’s smart as Satan—</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>She’s aggravatin’—</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>But when I want a little lovin’,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>She don’t keep me waitin’—</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>She’s proud and snooty,</i></div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">290</span> <div class="verse indent0"><i>But she’s my cutie—</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>She tells me, Fireman, do your duty!”</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"><em>That</em> was the line that I’d never been able to hear!—That +song, but a few years old, seemed already +to belong to the past, like <i>Daisy</i> and the <i>American +Patrol</i>, and the old musical-comedy tune which +the musicians had played on the boat, and I found +that I had at last come to feel for it a certain familiar +affection. Furthermore, I now thought it +quite good: there was something rather unexpected, +something even quite original about the +manipulation of the tune: what was original and +unexpected was the repetition, in some sort of +minor, of the pattern which had just gone before—recommencing, +with <i>She’s proud and snooty</i>, +what one had thought was entirely finished—and +recommencing it agreeably and queerly, so that +for a moment one always paused to listen. I wondered +how the composer had arrived at it. He +was a man named Harry Hirsch, I remembered: +I imagined him: a small, young Jew with very +large, intense, black eyes, like motor headlights; +after the success of the musical comedy in which +<i>Mamie Rose</i> had been sung, he had probably taken +to wearing spats. He was no doubt the son of +a Rabbi or of the Cantor in a Synagogue: the +base of his music was German, and I imagined +some dark room of a stifling apartment on the +East Side, in which his youth had been fed on +Schubert and on the light opera of Vienna and +Berlin, cities which his eyes had never seen. But +what had he done to this music?—what had made +him repeat those bars of the sweet German melody +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">291</span>with which he had begun, but transforming +them abruptly, by daring what any hack worker in +the field would have told him <i lang="la">a priori</i> was impossible, +what would have lasted in commonplace +hands impossibly too long? By carrying us beyond +expectation, by breaking into that new accent, half +agonized and half thrilling, he had enchanted the +public so completely that not merely had <i>Mamie +Rose</i> turned out to be one of the principal factors +in the success of the musical comedy in which +it had first appeared (and where, as a matter of +fact, the director had been afraid to feature it), +but it had been heard on every radio and phonograph; +at every college prom, at every Greenwich +Village ball; from the most perfunctory chirpings +of the orchestras of restaurants to the jazz-bands +de luxe of roof-gardens; on the vaudeville +circuits of small towns and in the scores of feature +moving-pictures; worked up for the Elks +summer fair; struck up, with the words thrown +on a screen, during the intermissions of burlesque +shows; ground out at “dancing academies” where, +from New York to Los Angeles, clumsy and inarticulate +young men pushed wary and inarticulate +girls about a crowded, monotonous floor—and as +I had heard it once, late at night, sung strangely +from a summer street by a child’s voice, nasal +and shrill, following subtly and with marvellous +accuracy the deviating minor strain, and repeating +it again and again!</p> + +<p>Where had he got it?—from the sounds of the +streets? the taxis creaking to a stop? the interrogatory +squeak of a street-car? some distant and +obscure city-sound in which a plaintive high note, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">292</span>bitten sharp, follows a lower note, strongly +clanged and solidly based? Or had he got it from +Schoenberg or Stravinsky?—or simply from his +own nostalgia, among the dark cells and the raspings +of New York, for those orchestras and open +squares which his parents had left behind?—or +for the cadence, half-chanted and despairing, of +the tongue which the father had known, but +which the child had forgotten and was never to +know again?</p> + +<p>But the relations between Schoenberg, the +taxi-brakes, and the Synagogue, baffled further +speculation.—And, in any case, what charmed +and surprised one, in this as in all works of art, +was no mere combination of elements, however +picturesque or novel, but some distinctive individual +quality which the artist himself supplied. +Of all the young Jews in New York who had +listened to the service in the Synagogue or who +had been kept awake at night by taxis, how many +had written good music, even good popular music? +I thought of that personal color or rhythm +which, the night when I had been dressing in +Bank Street to take Daisy out to a night-club, had +seemed to me, in the work of an artist, as little +important or interesting as the color of his hair +or eyes, or his way of mispronouncing certain +words; but I could recognize now that it was +precious. And as I recalled my gloomy meditations +of the night of Sue Borglum’s party, I remembered +how the Greeks had given Sophocles +the name of “the Attic Bee.”</p> + +<p>Yes: I saw it: there it was: it was acrid, but +still honey; and it was something more than +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">293</span>beauty of verse. The Greeks’ idea of sweetness +had been as different as possible from Stevenson +and the “honey-dripping style.” I saw it now, +not merely in the nightingales and the ivy of that +chorus at Colonus for which the jury had applauded +Sophocles, when his competence to dispose +of his property had been called in question +by his son; but in the passionate frankness of +Antigone, even in the asperity of Œdipus, even +in the guile of Odysseus. I thought now of the +exquisite proportion, of the style with its unique +combination of modulation and pith, of the +strong and sensitive hand placing with so firm +and light an emphasis those culminating scenes +where the nobler instincts of humanity reassert or +declare themselves: Electra when she speaks to +the urn which she believes contains her brother’s +ashes, Neoptolemus confessing at last that he cannot +act against his nature to deceive even an outcast +who has trusted him—as, in the case of +Dostoevsky, I remembered, no longer the contention +and the horror, but the brightness of the +high comic sense which interpenetrates all that +is turbid, which flowers constantly in such charming +passages as that in <i>The Idiot</i>, for example, +where the young girl buys the hedgehog from +the boys and sends it to the Prince for a peace-offering, +and which makes even of <i>Crime and +Punishment</i> a comedy rather than a tragedy. It +was not that the Athenian jury had merely demonstrated +their gratitude for—that the crowds at +Dostoevsky’s funeral had merely regretted being +deprived of—a sedative to which they had become +addicted; but that both had been ravished +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">294</span>by the taste—and by it had been partly repaid for +the harshness of the common life—of that miraculous +secretion of the mind which there was only +one man to supply. And so every sort of good literature, +so every sort of good art, provided an aliment, +a stimulant, as natural and necessary as +food and drink themselves! Even the tannic tincture +of Poe, which seemed to turn the throat to +leather and to petrify the taste, had its own peculiar +tonic value, and even from the coarse, used +mash of Byron it was possible to extract a strong +brandy—even the writer of popular music—The +radio was hawking and halting; I had already +been waiting a long time—much too long, I began +to think. And I suddenly remembered how Daisy +had slit her wrist on the night when I had left +her at Gus Dunbar’s apartment.</p> + +<p>I was on the point of going in to look for her +when she finally appeared: I was so much relieved +to see her that I did not at first notice how pale +she was. She said that she was sorry to have +kept me waiting, and we walked on for a moment +in silence: then I asked her whether she had been +ill. “No: I’m all right,” she replied. “You were +such a long time in there,” I said.—“Are you sure +that you’re all right?” “Yes, I’m all right,” +she said again. “You were sick in there,” I +challenged her, stopping. “Did you throw up?” +“I’m all right!” she repeated. “It was just the +smell of that place, I guess!”</p> + +<p>I made her sit down on a bench: she wouldn’t +let me get her anything, and neither of us spoke +for a time. A fresh, fishy breeze was blowing in: +I hoped that it would make her feel better. A +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">295</span>lighthouse was winking punctually; the ocean +was grayest blue, and the low waves were pale +as porcelain on the sands of palest buff: the late +bathers were coral limbs. Some children, still +playing on the beach, were holding out into the +ocean and the night the brass-bristling frost-crystals +of sparklers.</p> + +<p>I asked Daisy presently how she felt. “All +right: fine!” she replied.—I tried to find out +whether there were anything seriously wrong with +her. “No,” she said. “To tell the truth, we +haven’t had very much to eat out in the country +lately: the grocer and the butcher in the village +wouldn’t give us any more credit, and we had +to live on the things that we already had in +the house—which were mostly corn-flakes—corn-flakes +without cream or anything—that was about +all we’d had for a week before we came in. I +guess I overdid it with those clams.”</p> + +<p>I said I thought that the gin had been rotten +and that the ginger-ale had been inferior. I began +to produce the toys from my pockets. She +took a sudden interest in the harmonica and +amused herself by working out tunes on it: her +most conspicuous success, from which she seemed +to derive a good deal of satisfaction, was <i>Nearer +My God to Thee</i>. After a while, she said: “Well, +let’s go on!” I asked her whether she wanted to +go home. “No,” she declared, “not yet: I want +to do some more things!—don’t you?”</p> + +<p>We explored Luna Park—all bright minarets +and festoons of white imitation pearls. I offered +to take her on the “Thunderbolt”; the “Shoot-the-Chutes”; +the “Dragon’s Gorge”; but she did +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">296</span>not seem very eager. “Why don’t we try that +Noah’s Ark thing?” she suggested, as we were +wandering a little aimlessly, “that thing that you +wanted to go into when we first came.”</p> + +<p>We went back to the steamboat pier and found +the Noah’s Ark still rocking and sounding its +sombre fog-horn; it was lighted up now with +green ship’s lanterns, which revealed the elephant, +the ostrich, and the giraffe, the fisherman pulling +up the shoe, the old patriarch hitting his bottle, +and the monster shaking his bars. “Do you +think you can stand it?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” insisted +Daisy, smiling. “I want to go in, don’t +you?”</p> + +<p>We bought tickets and mounted the gang-plank. +Inside, the Ark was rather a sell, as there +was nothing amusing to see—the animals and the +monster turned out to have been constructed so as +to be visible merely from the outside. We found +that we had been let in for an assortment of banal +and disconcerting sensations. We had to walk on +a shifting platform—pass along a wobbly corridor—climb +a flight of quaking stairs. Our hats +were almost blown off by a violent blast of air +and when we tried to catch hold of the railing, we +received an electric shock. I was afraid that it +might make Daisy sick again, and asked her +whether she wanted to go back: “No, I’m all +right,” she replied. We went through with it to +the end, in silence and rather solemnly. I felt +protective and tender toward Daisy, and contrite +at having brought her in: I was only just beginning +fully to realize that she had probably, when +we first started out, been faint for lack of food; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">297</span>that she had been drinking on an empty stomach; +that she had been sickened by the Eden Musée and +upset by my stupid joke; and that revisiting the +Seaview Hotel, which had brought back her first +days with Phil Meissner, had finally overcome her. +I became acutely aware, too late, that if she had +insisted on going in for the Noah’s Ark, it had +been entirely because she thought I wanted to.—The +last stunt was a spiral slide which landed us +on a whirling platform: in my efforts to rescue +Daisy, I fell on the roulette-wheel and broke it.</p> + +<p>It was now time to go home, we decided—but +as it turned out that the last boat had left, we +were obliged to go back by the bus.</p> + +<p>On our way to the place where the buses stopped, +we passed the poster of a spiritualist fortuneteller. +“Did I tell you my joke?” asked Daisy. +“About ‘Striking a Happy Medium’?” “Yes,” I +said. “I think it’s fine!”</p> + +<p>As the bus left Coney Island behind, a cluster +of bright, pearly globes among the vivid red +pumps of a filling-station repeated the pearls of +Luna Park and the drooping white lamps of the +boardwalk.</p> + +<p>Along the boulevard to New York, were +aligned little sections of shops, bright-windowed +and built in new concrete: drug-stores; grocery-stores; +automobile show-rooms; a bank.</p> + +<p>There were girls in summer dresses, hatless, +with bobbed heads and pink or tan stockings, +strolling out, alone or in couples. Down side-streets, +I could see little houses with compact and +screened porches giving way to the wastes of +building-lots, where a lonely and random street-lamp +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">298</span>would light untidy bushes and trees. That +was the America to which I had returned when, +coming back after the War from France, I had +been greeted by that other suburban street-lamp +on the Staten Island shore! That was the America +to which to-night I felt myself returning again—those +neat and new little shops, those girls wandering +out in the evening between the drug-store +and the building-lots—hardly knowing what they +expected but half hoping for some new turn to +their lives! Had not Daisy been once such a girl, +walking out in the streets of Pittsburgh—had not +Rita, in her up-state town?</p> + +<p>I asked Daisy about her father, of whom she +had told me at dinner that he had not let her go +out with boys. “He was Irish,” she explained. +“He lost all his money when we were just kids. +But he was determined that the fact that he’d +lost his money shouldn’t make any difference +about our being well brought up—I guess it did +all right, though.” She smiled her candid smile. +“That’s one reason they used to send me to my +aunt’s in Nova Scotia so much.” I remembered +her timidity about the freaks, her “independence” +about rehearsals, and her coldness with the woman +in the store. “That was one trouble about +Phil and me,” she went on. “Phil’s father and +my father had known each other very well when +they first came to Pittsburgh. We used to live +next door to the Meissners, before they made +money and moved. And in those days, Dad had +a much more important position than Mr. Meissner: +he was one of the principal men in the Billings +Company and Mr. Meissner was just a clerk +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">299</span>in a bank. Then when the Meissners made money +and Dad was down and out, they got snooty +about us—and Dad didn’t want me to go with +Phil—Phil had the reputation of being the wildest +boy in Pittsburgh. Dad was fit to be tied +when I ran away withum!”</p> + +<p>I marked another filling-station: a crowd of +great white stars, which seemed uttered by a +rocket’s detonation.</p> + +<p>Now we were passing a row of small houses +with tapestry-brick façades and, in front of them, +little green lawns enclosed by little hedges.</p> + +<p>“Dad was really a bright man, though,” Daisy +presently went on. “He was one of the first +people in the country to design certain kinds of +trucks.—He invented all kinds of things—he invented +a kind of siren.”</p> + +<p>A filling-station where the lights were dimmer +and the pumps a duller red was outshone by the +lunar beauty of the radiant white pergola which +followed it.</p> + +<p>“Did you ever hear them talk about auto-horns—in +a store or anywhere, I mean?” she asked. +“It’s a shout. There’s a <i>toot-toot</i>, and a <i>beep-beep</i>—and +an <i>oorah</i>—and a <i>blah-blah</i>, and a <i>blurp-blurp</i>.—Dad’s +was a kind of a <i>oorah</i>—and it was a +humdinger, too!—it had an authoritative sound +and it wasn’t ugly like most sirens.”</p> + +<p>In the show-rooms on either side appeared the +present-day glories of the motor industry: the +Lancerd was celebrating its “Silver Anniversary” +with a new model in “distinctive” apple-green, +posed with dignity behind its plate-glass pane, in +a white-balconied Colonial salon.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">300</span></p> + +<p>“It was getting indicted for manslaughter,” +Daisy went on, “that really ruined Dad: he and +another man ran into each other as Dad was +coming out of a garage. It was really both’s +fault—but the man was killed and they indicted +Dad—though he’d been a month in the hospital +himself. They made him pay a big fine and he +lost his job—and he never could get back after +that.—He used to come home drunk and sit down +on the edge of my bed and hold directors’ meetings +all by himself—I used to think it was funny, +but my mother used to be so worried!”</p> + +<p>I had been brooding on the name of Meissner, +which seemed to raise for me vague associations. +“Did they ever call Phil Meissner, ‘Junior’?” I +finally asked. “The family always calledum that,” +she answered. “Why?—did you ever knowum?” +“Did they live in a great big house with green +and blue stained-glass windows?” “Yes,” said +Daisy. “Why? Did you ever knowum? They +lived on Aylesworth Avenue. That was where +they moved to after they lived next door to us.”</p> + +<p>Phil and his family were the people, then, +whom I had visited as a child, when I had gone +to Pittsburgh with my mother, and who had come +back into my mind, when Hugo, at Ray Coleman’s +party, had said that Daisy came from +Pittsburgh! I told Daisy how much I had envied +Phil Meissner’s elaborate toy railroad and his device +for making dinner-plates jump, but how obnoxious, +on the whole, I had thought him. “He +was spoiled to death,” said Daisy. “That was +what was the trouble withum, I guess.”</p> + +<p>And this discovery that Daisy had married a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">301</span>boy I had myself known in my childhood had an +effect out of all proportion to its apparent importance +or interest. Hitherto, I now fully took +account, I had regarded Daisy as an alien—first, +as a denizen of Broadway, and afterwards, as a +product of the Village. But she seemed now to +have taken her place in the world which I had +always known. She was no longer of a different +race—of an exotic glamor or guile: she was +simply an American girl, who had grown up in an +American town like other American towns, lived +in a house like other houses, gone to a school like +other schools. I seemed to have been given a new +vision of the fluidity of manners in America, the +plasticity of social position—of the swiftness and +adventitiousness of the way in which such things +changed. If Daisy’s family had gone down in +the world, the Meissners had obviously come up. +But the human material was the same; and in the +face of its constant fluctuations, attempts to fix +social differences became ludicrous and futile. +Americans might turn into anything!</p> + +<p>What, for example, might not be made of +Daisy? On each of the occasions when I had met +her, I had seen in her something different, as my +own mind had been differently disposed by my +personal situation at the time and by the influences +by which I had been affected—by Hugo, +first; then, by Rita; then, by my disgust and disillusion +the night of Sue Borglum’s party; then, +by my evening with the Grosbeakes. And I +could see how she herself had taken the color +of each of the men with whom she had lived +since she left Pittsburgh: Phil Meissner’s extravagant +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">302</span>tastes; Ray Coleman’s constrained correctitude; +and Pete Bird’s engaging humor. She +had even, I noted, begun lately to talk exactly like +Pete. She had been eager to accept whatever they +gave, and how little they had had to give her! +Phil with his inherited money, his egoism, and +his silly jokes; Ray with his substantial salary, +his ignoble employment and his meanness; and +Pete with his pennilessness and uselessness, his +gentlemanly hobbies and his charm—they seemed +now to me like figures of comedy for familiar +American types.—But what hope was there for +Daisy with any of them?</p> + +<p>“I declare,” I said finally aloud, “I don’t see +why you haven’t been able to do better than Pete +and Ray! Haven’t you ever found anybody in +the Village that really amounted to something +and that you liked at the same time?” She shook +her head, not turning from the window. Then, +after a moment, she turned: “You know the only +person,” she said, “that I ever thought I could get +a real crush on was your friend Hugo Bamman. +I actually got all hopped up, that night he was +sailing for Egypt, or wherever it was, about the +idea of going away withum. I think he’s good-looking, +too—especially since he’s stopped wearing +spectacles. Some people think that scar spoils +his face, but I think it’s smart-looking.—But he’s +certainly cagy about women—Myra Busch was +crazy aboutum, you know.—Either that or he’s +afraid of them.—He’s so sure of himself, too—he +knows what he wants to do.—None of the +men I’ve ever lived with were sure of themselves.—You +know what you told me out in the country, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">303</span>about my knowing about everything better than +anybody—well, I wanted to say at the time that +that isn’t true at all. That’s just the trouble: I +don’t know what it’s all about. I want somebody +to tell me!”</p> + +<p>Daisy’s mentioning Hugo reminded me of the +world as I had seen it through his eyes when I +had first come down to Greenwich Village: then, +like him, I had thought myself a rebel against the +standards of a bourgeoisie—that is, in a country +like America, where there was really only one +class, or rather, as I had just been reflecting, no +classes, properly speaking, at all, against an abstraction +of all the worst qualities attributable to +respectable Americans; then later, when I had +been in love with Rita, all the interests and occupations +of the common life had seemed to me on +so low a plane and of so lax an impulse, that I +could feel for them nothing but contempt. Now +my trip to Europe since the War had had the effect +of making me more content with America, +even at her worst; and my conversation with +Grosbeake <i lang="fr">à propos</i> of Lewis’s <i>Babbitt</i>, though +Grosbeake’s opinions had surprised me at the +time, had in the long run had the effect of helping +me to approach America from a different +point of view than the point of view which, at +the time when I had thought like Hugo, had allowed +me to take account only of American mediocrity +and timidity. To-day I seemed to have re-entered +that world and to find myself perfectly +at home there: now I found that it no longer inspired +either hatred, apprehension, or scorn.</p> + +<p>“By the way,” I presently asked, “where did +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">304</span>you get that line about ‘the downfall of western +civilization’?—You know, that night I took you +to the movies, you said that you probably looked +like the downfall of western civilization.” “Oh,” +she said, “that was just something I picked up at +the Ritz Bar in Paris!”</p> + +<p>The little tapestry-brick houses had been supplanted +by apartment-buildings, also in tapestry-brick, +and with attractive green or brown awnings +at the doorways and windows; but now the +awnings came closer together and the crowded +house-fronts were laced by zigzagging fire-escapes: +they got dingier, balder, denser. We were +in Brooklyn, and now Brooklyn Bridge repeated +the fire-escape zigzags.</p> + +<p>Delancey Street, with its car-tracks and hooded +subway entrances; the Bowery, with its El.</p> + +<p>We got out at Astor Place. I asked Daisy +what she wanted to do. “I think I’d like a drink,” +she said. “It’s so long since I’ve been absolutely +free, without any housework or anything, that I +feel like making the most of it!” “Have you gotten +over your sinking-spell?” I asked. “Sure,” +she replied with conviction. “I feel fine!”</p> + +<p>The oppression of summer, again, hung over +and hushed the city-streets: the very taxi horns +seemed muted. The greenery in Washington +Square, behind the arc-lights, looked heavy and +dark; and the benches overflowed with Italians, +dirty and sweaty, swarming to the air, giving out +the sounds of life, but heavy-footed, slowed down +and subdued.</p> + +<p>My rooms in Bank Street were stuffy and +messy: the colored woman who took care of them +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">305</span>had abandoned me without warning and they had +not been cleaned for a week. I threw open all the +windows. In the house across the court, the people +were sitting on the fire-escape in their undershirts. +A baby was howling and sobbing.</p> + +<p>I had brought in some ice from a drug-store, +and this time we had Scotch instead of gin. It +was pretty good Scotch, as it went, and we had +highballs with mineral water. It was pleasant to +relax on the couch, with the cold misted glasses +in our hands, alone, with nowhere to go, with no +buses or boats to catch.</p> + +<p>“Who did you say you were staying with?” I +asked.</p> + +<p>“Sue Borglum,” Daisy replied—and added: +“I think she’s going nuts. Have you seen her +lately? She’s turned green!—She’s turned absolutely +green!—But I can’t worry about her!—I’ve +got all the worrying I can do with Pete and +myself!”</p> + +<p>“Did you ever know Peter Kester?” I asked. +“No,” said Daisy, “Who is he?” “He’s a great +friend of Rita Cavanagh’s—she always used to +be telling me about him. I met him yesterday for +the first time—he’s just come back from New +Mexico.—He’s just a nice old bozo, who paints +rather mediocre landscapes. He’s just like all the +American painters of that generation that you +meet at the Washington Irving Club.—He wears +tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses with a big black +ribbon—and he thinks that Picasso is a clown!”</p> + +<p>The electric lights were hot, and I got up to +turn one out. “Why don’t you turn them all out,” +said Daisy, “and just turn on that lamp in the alcove? +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">306</span>It would be a lot cooler.” I turned on the +table-lamp in my study and put the others out. I +was glad that the things in the room were obscured +by the shadow now: I had been feeling +that that Leonardo was not a particularly suitable +picture for New York in the summer time.</p> + +<p>When I came back, she had stretched out along +the couch, with her head propped up on a pillow +against the arm and her highball clasped in her +hand. “I hope you don’t mind my lying down,” +she said. I sat down on the edge of the couch beside +her.</p> + +<p>The voice of a radio, dimly muttering or +hoarsely warbling, came in to us from across the +back yard. I was reminded of my recent meditations +while I had been waiting for Daisy in front +of the restaurant, and I told her now about looking +in the mirror and mistaking myself for some +one else.</p> + +<p>“You’re not so bad!” said Daisy. “I think +your mustache is all right. In fact, I’ve always +liked the way you look.” I replied, “Well, I’ve +often told you how much I like the way <em>you</em> +look!”</p> + +<p>Encouraged, I began to describe to her my consoling +æsthetic revelations in connection with the +popular song.—I had always thought of her, I +told her, also, ever since that first night I had met +her, whenever I had heard <i>Mamie Rose</i>.—I talked +on, and even got as far as the Attic Bee.</p> + +<p>But all the time that I was talking, she was looking +at me, serious and flushed, as if I had been +making love to her. At last I stopped and said, +“You’re such a darling!” and kissed her. We said +little after that....</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">307</span></p> + +<p>When, from the profuse delight of that love, +hot, moist, mucilaginous and melting, I found my +thoughts springing up again, they seemed unfolding +like fresh new leaves in an atmosphere of +gentleness and peace.</p> + +<p>I thought of Daisy under her different aspects, +as she had seemed to me at different times—and I +remembered the literary productions which at one +time or another she had inspired—all so different +from my present vision of her, from our present +reality: first, the night that I had met her at Ray +Coleman’s, the cool Gallic short story I had +imagined, with its humanitarian irony—then, the +night that we had gone to the movies, the romantic +apostrophe of the sonnet—then, the night that +I was to take her to a night-club, when my alienation +from Rita had had the effect of thrusting +away from me all the rest of the world as well—Daisy +along with the others—the desperate exposure +of literature itself, on which my mind had +run so furiously and interminably—then, when I +had visited Pete and Daisy in the country, the savage +moralistic satire which the letter I had received +from Rita and the spectacle of Grosbeake’s equanimity +had prevented me from writing. I had, in +fact, rejected all these projects—as I had outgrown +those phases of myself of which my successive +conceptions of Daisy had been merely the +reflections in another.</p> + +<p>And now I felt that I should be content if I +could only make some sketches of Daisy, as I remembered +her at different times and places—if I +could only hit off, in prose, her attitudes, her gestures, +her expressions, the intonations of her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">308</span>voice—preserve them so they should not vanish, +as Degas had done for his dancers—as Toulouse-Lautrec +had done for the women of cabarets.... +I dreamed a whole series of Daisy....</p> + +<p>So I should perhaps save myself at last from +that dreadful isolation of the artist which had appalled +me in Hugo and Rita—both forever, it +seemed to me now, occupying impregnable solitudes +with the creation of impossible worlds—so, +by the way of literature itself, I should break +through into the real world—as to-night I had +seemed at last, with Daisy, as if by a simple mutual +transfusion, to come so naturally into contact +with life.... Such pictures as I imagined of +Daisy would grow directly and freshly from life. +And it seemed to me to-night that literature was +as amiable as writing ballads, as necessary as making +tables—and indeed that, when one came right +down to it, there was really no difference in kind +between carpentry and literature.</p> + +<p>I bent over Daisy—her head on the pillow had +that look—the little soft round chin and the soft +bare throat—of women in those moments when +they have dropped off, along with their garments, +all the ruses and resolutions with which they meet +the world—when we see them just awakened or +lying thinking at night, with wide eyes and anxious +mouth, and we realize how gentle they are, +how much they wonder, and how tender toward +them we must be.... I wondered whether she +would leave Pete for me....</p> + +<p>“Let’s run away together!” I suggested.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I couldn’t—now,” she replied. “I told +Pete that if he got a job, I’d stay withum.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">309</span></p> + +<p>It seemed to me now that I wanted above everything +to go away somewhere with Daisy.</p> + +<p>“I’ll take you on a motor-cycle!” I proposed.</p> + +<p>“No, you won’t!” she promptly replied. “I’ve +done my last motor-cycle elopement!”</p> + +<p>“Still you must have had a lot of fun!”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know whether I was ever going to get +there alive. We had about six accidents.... +The real reason for the motor-cycle, I found out +afterwards, was that I was afraid I was pregnant +and Phil wanted to bring me around. He thought +that a motor-cycle trip would be just the thing.... +There! I’d told you that we weren’t married! +Oh, well—never mind!” She was silent a moment, +then went on: “That’s something that nobody +but Phil would think of—taking a girl on a motor-cycle +trip to bring her around!... He wouldn’t +even let me ride in a side-car—he carried me all the +way on the handle-bars!”</p> + +<p>I made her turn and embraced her anew, kissing +her with pleasure and compassion. When she told +me of the rejection and death of her love, I recognized +the fate of my own. And it was so sweet +to include in my arms that warmth, that solidity, +that slenderness—and to feel that she followed +me!...</p> + +<p>In the peace and silence again, I could hear that +poor child still crying, and I remembered how +once, as a child, I myself had lain awake with the +heat, and suffered and complained.—Then, in a +moment, I remembered, also, how those same +children of the Village had figured in the poem +which Rita had recited the night of Ray Coleman’s +party and which she told us she had written that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">310</span>day. On that very day when she had filled my +imagination with the splendor of her genius and +her beauty, when she had seemed to me a goddess +or a muse—on that day, her own mind had been +haunted by visions of imbecility and deformity—she +had seen only, among those children of the +streets, the most wretched and the most afflicted, +and she had seen in them only the crippling of the +spirit and the clouding of the mind by love....</p> + +<p>What relief and what a rebirth, our only real +birth into this world, when from the fears and +snobberies of youth, from all our preconceived +ideas, from all those foolish abstractions we +learn, all those things that we think we think, +we find at last in these beings who have crowded, +offended, disgusted or fought us, that interest +and that value which we have found only in a few +or in one—when, youth’s passion and anguish +spent, we see rising about us that reality of those +we have looked on as strangers, and know that it +is our reality—that what is strange to us is +strange to them, that what hurts them hurts us, +that what is good for them is good for us—when +we no longer dread the fool nor hate the one who +wounds us, but can sleep in our beds in peace and in +peace face the waking world!...</p> + +<p>I kept telling Daisy how smooth her skin was, +and she was finally moved to retort: “Are you +used to women with scales?”</p> + +<p>“I suppose I ought to go,” she said presently. +“I don’t want Sue Borglum to have it on me that +I stayed out all night.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been so happy with you to-day,” I said, +“and I’m afraid that you haven’t been happy.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">311</span></p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, I have,” she replied. “But I’ve been +depressed about the Boston business. I don’t want +to go to Boston, damn it!”</p> + +<p>She sat up on the edge of the bed. “Now you +go into the other room while I put on my dress!”</p> + +<p>When she came back, her dress wasn’t hung +very well, and her lipstick, newly applied, had a +look of fresh paint.</p> + +<p>“I don’t care about any of those things,” she +said, “except the mouth-organ and the pistol.”</p> + +<p>I couldn’t find the mouth-organ: I looked for +it all over in vain. “Confound it!” I exclaimed, +“I must have left the mouth-organ in the taxi!” +“Oh,” she said, “I wanted to show Pete how +I could play <i>Nearer My God to Thee!</i> But I +guess that the snake will amuse him!”</p> + +<p class="p4 center">[The End]</p> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78785 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/78785-h/images/cover.jpg b/78785-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dba3765 --- /dev/null +++ b/78785-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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