Narcissus

by Evelyn Scott

Julia glanced at him. Her gaze was steady and bewildered. "Of course I owe it to Laurence. I want to talk to Laurence. I would have done this of my own free will. I loathe the lie I've been living!" She spoke coldly and vehemently. Tears came into her eyes and she averted her face.

Dudley was silent a moment. He twisted his mustache and one of his small bright eyes squinted nervously. He could not bear the pride of her mouth. At the moment all pride seemed ugly to him. It was impossible to call further attention to his pain in the contemplation of renouncing her while she continued to maintain, almost vindictively, it appeared, her readiness to abandon herself to him.

"I can't put what I feel into words, Julia, but it is something very beautiful and deep. Come, sister, you're not angry with me?" Again he took her stiff hand in his. She was humiliating him and he would not forget it.

Julia wished that she could hurt him in a way which would make it impossible for him to talk to her so kindly. She did not understand why the recognition of his absurdity made her suffer so much.

Dudley had been floundering inwardly through the attempt to avoid facing the ridiculous. Watching the harsh bitter line of her lips, he noticed the pulse that swelled and fluttered in her throat. The sight of her pain, for which he was responsible, made him feel all at once very sure and complete. He accepted no burden from it, for he told himself it was a part of her awakening to detached and perfect understanding. He was grateful to himself that he had an ideal notion of what she might be that held him cruelly and steadily against all that she was. He felt voluptuously intimate with her emotions. He could not hurt her enough. He tried to shut out the recollection of her beautiful gaunt body in its almost tragic nakedness. "I don't expect you to understand me completely yet, Julia. One's vision is so warped and tortured by one's desire. All our terminology of good and bad we use in such a limited personal sense. We have to get away from that before we can even begin to function spiritually—to be spiritually at rest. I feel that there are clouds between us, Julia, but behind them is the great sun of your understanding. I believe in that. Say something to me!"

Julia withdrew her hand. "What can I say to you? I am in the habit of viewing problems very concretely. Let me go. I must go." She stood up, smiling at him desperately.

He wanted to destroy the smile behind which she was trying to hide, and to explain to her that the torture he caused her was the price of his very nearness. It had been almost a pleasure for him to feel her hand twitch with repugnance. It was sad that she comprehended so little of his nature. Yet he was sensible of the helplessness of hatred. Knowing that she hated him, for the first time he ceased to fear her and could give himself to uncalculated reactions toward her. He thought that if she were to remain his mistress in a conventional relation he could not love her like this. The artist was, after all, he told himself, like the priest, the mediator between the life of mankind and its mystical source.

But Julia moved away without looking at him. He watched her pass along the edge of the lake, where threads of light as fine as hairs were drawn hot and trembling across the colorless water.

Dudley continued to feel embarrassment in his own soul, for he could not clearly explain to himself the impulses which were governing his acts. He decided that only through his art would he be able to justify all that he was when, at the moment of giving Julia back to herself, he was conscious of possessing her most intensely. He was at his ease only in the midst of powerful abstractions. There was something elephantine about his nature that prevented him from being simple or casual in his moods. If he ever indulged in expressions that were light or commonplace he was suspicious of his own appearance. He was startled sometimes when he had to admit the maliciousness of his reactions toward the smaller souls around him. If he laughed in a gay group his laughter sounded awkward and strained. Perhaps it was because of his small effeminate stature that he felt it necessary to hurt people before he could command their respect.

At this moment the conviction of his power filled him with an intoxication of gentleness. He felt that he enveloped Laurence and Julia as if in the same embrace. That he was beginning to have a peculiar affection for Laurence proved to him the significance of his own unique spirit. Realizing completely that neither Julia nor her husband could approach his understanding, he loved them for their inferiority. As he walked along the path toward the blank glare where the sun was setting among black branches, he noticed a terrier puppy rolling in the polished grass, and had for it something of the same emotion. He loved everything in relation to which he found himself in a position of advantage. Approaching thus he believed he could preserve a philosophic detachment while perceiving what Spinoza called "the objective essence of things."