IV
In the winter twilight Elaine and Wilfred were sunk in easy chairs side by side before the fire in the Sturges sitting-room, the smoke of their cigarettes mounting lazily. In that serene atmosphere Wilfred was least serene. Whenever he sat there his heart beat too fast; and the clamorous thoughts jostled confusedly in his brain. The smiling servants had softly brought the tea things, and later, had carried them away. A lovely, gracious life! Should he ever be able to take it as if it were his by right? The Sturges house was almost exactly opposite Bella Billings; distant about three hundred yards; but social deeps rolled between.
Elaine was sliding down in the deep chair on the small of her back, her long legs inelegantly thrust out, her feet crossed. Elaine could yield to any common impulse without losing the quality of distinction, he thought. The firelight was strong in her resolute face. It was not beautiful in the ordinary sense. He despised the insipidity of pretty women. There was something much greater here; character; passion; and that divine assurance of herself. Whence arose Elaine’s magnificent air? It was because she held herself one of the elect of earth. Ordinary people were so far beneath her, she could afford to exhibit them every kindness. All wrong! thought Wilfred. A preposterous assumption! Yet there it was! And it beat him down!
They were good enough friends to be silent together when they felt like silence. But those silences! At a certain point Wilfred’s heart would begin to rise slowly into his throat. There she sat a yard away, and so remote! He ached for her intolerably. Was this love? More like an insanity. Suppose she were to cast herself suddenly into his arms, would he know what to do with her? Would he not turn clammy? Did he ever know what he wanted? An insanity! Being denied her, he ached and burned. Burned, while he sat still and answered her cool remarks, coolly. Why was he forced to go on thinking and thinking about her in her presence? Making figments of her while the reality was at his side!
Elaine herself never thought, though she liked to suppose that she did: all her acts, words were struck out of her, instant and bright as fire. How natural for her to despise one like him! She did despise him sub-consciously, though they were good friends; her speculative glance often confessed it. That high air of hers was a continual challenge to his masculinity, and he dared not take it up. Wilfred believed that she was just a little higher with him than with others. It suggested that she believed he was a coward in the presence of women. In other quarters he had not been considered so. What good was that to him here? By thinking him a coward she made him a coward in her presence.
Yet she had singled him out, him, the insignificant scribbler, amongst a crowd of glittering young men who dangled after her. These hours that Wilfred spent alone with her had been specially contrived by her. Nothing happened by accident in Elaine’s busy life. In dealing with men, she enveloped herself in an atmosphere of high mystery. During Wilfred’s hour she never volunteered the least information as to how she had spent the other twenty-three. It tormented him unbearably. He knew that other men came to the house on other days. He had seen some of them springing eagerly up the steps. Well, and why not? He had nothing to reproach her with. She was always clear-eyed and candid. But she ordained how much of herself each was to have. An hour to Wilfred twice a week perhaps, leaving him to spend the others in torment. He suffered when he was with her; he suffered when he was away. His only moment of happiness came when he went springing up the steps. Things had come to such a pass with him, he could no longer do his work.
Why had she singled him out for even these infrequent hours? That he might talk to her. There was no secret about it. “Nobody talks to me like you,” she had said once, while her eyes flickered with unconscious contempt for the young man who was a talker. And Wilfred accepted it, hating himself. They sat in front of the fire talking like disembodied intelligences while Wilfred eyed her.
After such a silence, Elaine said: “The trouble with me is, I don’t know anything.”
“Hear! Hear!” said Wilfred.
“Oh, you needn’t get funny,” she retorted. “It’s something to know that you don’t know anything. . . . I mean. . . . What do I mean? I mean I don’t know anything in my head. I know lots of things by intuition. I think I know more than you do, that way. . . .”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Wilfred.
“But the voice of intuition is dumb,” Elaine went on. “I act as I act without knowing why. There is no residue. Intuition prompts you how to act at the moment; but it doesn’t help you to lay out a course.”
How exactly, sometimes, unconscious people can convey what is in their minds! thought Wilfred enviously. “What about books?” he suggested.
“Books! Pshaw! Books are a kind of dope!” said Elaine.
“You read only novels—and those, not the best.”
“I do read the best!” she said indignantly.
“I don’t mean the latest best,” said Wilfred.
“I read poetry, too. . . . But poetry just lifts you up—and lets you drop again. Oh, I suppose it’s my fault. Really serious books bore me.”
“There are good novels,” said Wilfred.
“They get on so slowly!” said Elaine with a sigh. “And when you do disentangle the meaning, it’s only what you know already.”
“What is it, exactly, that you are after?” asked Wilfred.
“Knowledge of life,” she said promptly. “Old people pretend that they have all the knowledge. I feel that they are wrong.”
“In what, for instance?”
“Well, it’s a platitude amongst old people that love always dies.”
“I don’t know of any book that would assure you that it doesn’t,” said Wilfred, lowering his eyes.
“Never mind books. What do you think? Does love die?”
“What kind of love?” he asked with a sinking heart.
“What kind?” she repeated staring. “I mean love between a man and a woman, of course.”
“Passion burns itself out,” said Wilfred, “but I suppose something fine may come of it.”
“Oh, that’s just like an old person,” said Elaine. “The cooling-off process is hideous to me! I don’t want any left-overs!”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“It doesn’t help to be cynical!”
“What does your own heart tell you?”
“My heart tells me that love dies,” murmured Elaine unexpectedly. She was staring into the fire. “I was hoping for some reassurance.”
“I hope it does,” said Wilfred flippantly. He observed that his teeth were clenched together.
She ignored this. “Even though love is transitory, should we not stake everything on it, anyway?” she murmured.
“Everybody must decide that for themselves,” he said composedly, feeling like a little waxy-faced oracle.
“But what do you think?” she insisted.
“It’s too complicated!” he said with a burst of irritation. “I could not possibly give an answer to cover the whole question.”
Another silence.
“Do you believe in the devil?” asked Elaine.
“In my own individual devil, yes.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s a wet blanket!”
Elaine laughed. “How original! Mine is a more conventional sort of devil.”
“Yes, I know.”
“How do you know?” she asked quickly.
“Can’t I have intuitions too?”
“Well, you’re entirely wrong about me,” she said vivaciously. “You have been from the first. You have a ridiculous notion that I am a sort of cavewoman. Why, if I were, would I be talking to you like this now?”
Wilfred smiled into the fire.
“Oh well, if it amuses you . . . !” said Elaine, shrugging.
“You know that big statue of Barnard’s,” she presently went on; “I Feel Two Natures Struggling Within Me”?
“All rot!” he said rousing himself. “I imagine that is just a little joke of Barnard’s on the dear public. What he is really portraying is the Triumph of Youth Over Age! It was a favorite subject during the renaissance. . . . Two natures! Life is not so simple! That is merely a theological distinction. Body and soul are not at war with each other. We can’t get anywhere without Body. In the complete life you would find Body and Soul pulling in double harness.”
“But is there ever a complete life?” asked Elaine.
“Well . . . no! I suppose not!” murmured Wilfred, falling through space. “It is only an ideal. . . .”
Their eyes were suddenly drawn together. They exchanged a startled, questioning glance like prisoners beholding each other from separate towers. Forever solitary and wistful. They knew each other then. They hastily looked away, laughing in an embarrassed way; each terrified lest the other might speak of what he had surprised. But neither spoke, and they secretly softened towards each other.
After awhile Elaine got up, and switched on the lamps. She glanced at the clock. “There’s a man coming directly,” she said.
Wilfred stood up.
“Don’t be silly!” said Elaine. “Suppose I was giving you a hint to go, why be in such haste to take it? It’s not very flattering.”
“I’ve had my hour,” he said, trying to speak lightly.
“You said that just like an actor! Oh, I wish I could teach you how to deal with women!”
“Well, if it comes to that, why is it always up to the man?” demanded Wilfred.
Elaine opened her eyes. “Well, women have to be won, don’t they?”
He spread out his hands. All wrong! All wrong! But he could not dispute her. She had stolen his strength.
“Sit down again,” she said. “You ought to know by this time that I never deal in hints. What I have not yet had a chance to say is, I want you to meet this man. An unusual specimen!”
Wilfred discovered that he still had reserves of pain. Was that the rôle he was to be called upon to play?
Far-off in the great house Wilfred heard the buzz of the door-bell. After an interval the front door opened and closed again with its opulent thud. He entered quickly, thought Wilfred. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs. Coming up two steps at a time. Wilfred’s heart beat suffocatingly. That treacherous heart of his!
“It’s Joe Kaplan,” said Elaine, shielding her face from the fire.
“Oh, Joe Kaplan,” said Wilfred with an air of interest. His belly suddenly failed him. Rising, he caught sight of the grinning, white-faced manikin in the mirror over the fireplace, and quickly lowered his eyes in disgust.
“You have heard of him?” asked Elaine.
“Who hasn’t?” said Wilfred.
Joe swept in. “Hello, Elaine!”
She had risen, and was helping herself to a fresh cigarette from the mantelpiece. “Hello, Joe,” she said, without looking around.
Having caught sight of Wilfred, Joe stopped short in his eager progress.
“This is Mr. Pell,” drawled Elaine. “. . . Mr. Kaplan.”
Joe jerked into motion again. “I know him,” he said. “Hello, Pell! What the devil are you doing here?”
It was said with a good-humored grin, though Joe’s eyes were snapping. To Wilfred’s relief, he did not put out his hand. Perceiving enmity, Wilfred had not sufficient self-command to match the feigned good humor. Inside him there was howling, black confusion. Yet the necessity of good form was strong upon him, too. All he could do was to stand grinning in a sickly way. How craven he must appear, knuckling under to Joe at the first word!
Joe wasted no time on him. Elaine had reseated herself, and he plumped into the chair that Wilfred had lately occupied. “I say, Elaine,” he said; “I saw that blue chow to-day. He’s a sweet-tempered little beast; but my man says if you want to show him, he’s not good enough. So I thought we had better wait until something first-class turned up.”
“But I liked him,” said Elaine. “And he liked me!”
“Oh, in that case, Princess, he shall be here to-morrow!”
So Joe has become a sporting gentleman, thought Wilfred with curling lip. Wilfred was left standing like a clown with a witless grin daubed on his face. What he ought to have done was to leave, he knew; but he was incapable of making a good exit; and he would not slink out like a whipped dog. So he stayed. He sat down on a straight-backed chair a little to one side of the fireplace, facing the other two. The faces of Elaine and Joe were strongly revealed in the firelight. It was nothing to them if Wilfred watched them.
They rattled on. It appeared that they shared a hundred small interests. Joe had achieved the precise tone of Elaine’s world. The rattle was all a blind, Wilfred suspected. The fact that they never looked at each other, gave the game away. He imagined that he heard a rich quality in their laughter, having nothing to do with the trifles they discussed. Hidden things escaped in their laughter. Elaine’s superb nonchalance might very well be a sham. She could get away with anything. Such a woman recognized only one truth; the truth of her emotions. Color had stolen into her cheeks; it was an effort to keep her lips decorous. Secrets! secrets! between these two! Diana was only a woman of the flesh! What a handsome male Joe was, damn him! Wilfred felt as if he would die with the beating of his heart, and the pressure of blood against his temples.
Knowing himself, he strove desperately to make a stand against this madness. You are imagining it all! You cannot honestly say that Elaine has changed in the slightest degree. She treats Joe precisely the same as she treated you. . . .
Elaine sought to draw Wilfred into the talk. “Funny you two should be acquainted,” she said.
“Oh yes,” said Joe with a mocking laugh in Wilfred’s direction. “It’s ten years since we first laid eyes on each other. Remember that night, Pell?”
“I remember,” said Wilfred, seeking Joe’s eyes in wonder. Joe’s eyes skated laughingly away. Clever and daring as Satan! thought Wilfred.
Joe went on to give a humorous account of the psychical evening at the house of Wilfred’s Aunts long ago. Elaine was to infer that this was the occasion of their first meeting. In telling the story, Joe allowed his own soullessness to appear quite nakedly. He didn’t care; nor, apparently, did Elaine. It was a good joke.
Meanwhile Wilfred was working himself up to the point of going. He finally stood up with a jerk. “Well, I must trot along,” he said in a thin voice.
“So long, Wilfred,” said Elaine in her boyish way.
“Ta-ta, old man,” said Joe ironically.
You be damned! thought Wilfred, looking straight ahead of him.
He went out stiffly. Silence in the room behind him. Already! Already! What if he should go back? . . . Why go back? He knew without going back. And it wouldn’t shame them! . . . Elaine . . . and that soulless blackguard! All her brave colors hauled down! Abandoning herself . . . his practised embraces! Oh, Christ! . . .
He hurried out of the house with a shrieking in his ears.