VII
"Haven't I been rather discursive?" he had asked of her. "I don't think so," she had curtly contradicted. Forsooth, she didn't think that he had been discursive. She was rather disappointed. The brilliant verbal fireworks she had been taught by her brother to expect from Ulick had fizzled—she thought. It was only that night, after she had put Dolly to sleep, that she assembled her memories of the afternoon and then she realized the conversation might be truthfully described as discursive; fragmentary would be a better word. He is nice, she ruminated. Now you dear naughty dolly don't you pretend to be asleep when I see one of your eyes watching me ... little sneak, I believe you are jealous.... Oh! he is so nice Dolly.... She buried her face in the cool bed linen—There! I'll whip you for your mean jealousy—I'm fond of Ulick—my great Jewel of a man.... Dolly's head was lost under a pillow. Mona fell into a dreamless slumber.... She said nothing next morning to her mother about the impromptu luncheon and casually remarked that she would go for a walk in the afternoon, not far, she added. She didn't think it necessary to tell that she was going to the Metropolitan Museum, a few blocks away, there to meet Ulick Invern, who had promised to show her Manet's "Boy with a Sword" and to describe the personality of the painter, with whom he had been acquainted in Paris. It was to be a glorious afternoon devoted entirely to art. Ulick was so artistic and she so ignorant....
VIII
The modulation into an easy-going friendship was not difficult for these young people. An autumn without parallel, in its days of mellowness mingled with invigourating frosts, passed on rapid pinions. They did not bid Old Time to pause in his flight; the rhythms of their ardent blood were too insistent. They ceased to reason. Their affective life ruled. In the case of Ulick there was a throw-back to his Anglo-Saxon origins. His Parisian training and aptitudes melted in the gentle heat of new experiences. I am an American, after all, he often told himself, therefore sentimental, and sentimentality and sensuality are never far asunder. She, on the contrary, is a cerebrale, neither tepid nor tempestuous. Yet those moments when she seems on the verge of hysteria—I mean, when she goes off on those gales of laughter. She is oversexed, no doubt about that. She would rather discuss sex-problems than eat. A curious combination. So is her brother. He, too, likes to talk on forbidden subjects. People who have no outlet for their emotions are bound to brood over them and to unbosom themselves without realizing it. Steady, Ulick, steady! I'm not in love or I shouldn't be analyzing my feelings. Is she a trifle smitten? That way lies self-conceit. But she does like to be in my company, and I prefer hers to any woman's—yes, even to Easter's who never gave anyone a chance to breathe, so busy was she with herself. What egotists these mortals be! Puck should have said. I wonder what Easter is doing now? That wonderment had become a leading motive with him of late. He bitterly reflected that since the dramatic, the fatal, day in New Hampshire, she had not permitted him the slightest familiarity. She had kissed him on the steamer the day of her departure, but then she had kissed Tom, Dick and Harry with equal readiness, though she hadn't whispered to them: "You dear old Jewel." The memory of her voice, low, mysterious, tender, still fired his blood. I'm afraid I'm a sensual man. Be virtuous and you'll be bilious! He pondered the wise adage. Is physical love only a matter of hygiene? he asked himself. Tumescence; detumescence, as Havelock Ellis says. It's high time I went out on the trail after a few scalps. I'm getting a bit stale.
IX
That winter they met nearly every day. But she didn't invite him to call at her home. He couldn't ask a reason for this strange omission. My intentions are perfectly honourable. I've told her I wouldn't marry the best woman even though she were the last of her sex on the globe. I've also told her that a man should never live under the same roof with his mistress; in that case what would be the difference between marriage and concubinage; one would be as stupid as the other. Poor Emma Bovary found out from experience that men and women bound by any bond live in the land of platitudes. I told her—heaven forgive my candor!—that I changed mistresses every three months, that the instant I found myself falling in love with one I got a new one. Boasts by a boaster. What is it that interests nice girls in irregular lives? I wonder. The inside of a brothel is not so interesting as an abatoir, where as Huysmans used to say—love is slain at a stroke, and the stroke usually costs the man a twenty-franc piece. But these girls don't realize the crudeness of such lives. Mystery. That's the attraction. The unknown. Silly, miserable women who go to bed the same night with a half dozen men—is that romantic! Demi-vierges, Marcel Prévost called the American girls, for some reason best known to himself. Yet I've met respectable married women who went to Paris crazy to see the sights, that is, certain sights. The puberty of adultery? Maxim's soon bored them. From the organized obscenities of Montmartre they went to the "peep-holes" only to see another show staged for imbeciles with a filthy curiosity. What is it? Mona, dear decent child, agrees with me that promiscuous married life is the most deadly blow of all to romance. She simply won't recognize evil as evil, only as vulgarity—worse, as stupidity. I absolutely agree with her in that matter.
But it was not such plain sailing for Mona through this unfamiliar and uncharted land of emotion. She had a hard time with that temperament of hers. I'm glad they give it such a name as temperament, she said. Robert Louis Stevenson calls love a mixture of pruriency and curiosity, which suggests a horrid itch. Young men have an easier time than girls, who must sit and sizzle while down in some sub-cellar of their being they hear the faint growlings of the untamed animal. Once unleashed it jumps all barriers, and then—well, then, the fat's in the fire. Mona shivered, a pleasing shiver of anticipation. Why not bravely go to her parents and confess that she loved Ulick? He was a presentable young man, of social standing, with abundant means—evidently; for outside of his critical work he seems to do little except to spend money, not a negligible quantity, with her—and, finally, he was liked, and liked very much by Milt. Some perverse devil lurking in the depths of her being bade her stay silent. Was it romance, sloppy, slimy sentimentality, after all? She couldn't say. She only knew that she wanted to keep her secret, that she didn't wish to marry, that she loved to be near the big, good-hearted young chap with the blue eyes; yes, why not tell the truth—she was wild to be loved by him. Everything. A young woman brought up in the practice of all the proprieties—save church going—by a mother who idolized her! Nevertheless, she was ready to throw her bonnet over the windmill like the veriest street slut. Where her maidenly reserve! She had none when self-confessing. Ulick had said to her, I think you were brought up on the wrong kind of reading. Do you force me to stick to Hannah More or Self-Help? she had impertinently demanded. You might do worse. Bernard Shaw is poor nourishment for a girl with too much imagination, he retorted. Wrong again, she said, I've absolutely no imagination. I'm only enthusiastic. And you have said that without enthusiasms life would be unsupportable.