Part 4

He put his hands to his head. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always thought that a woman, because she can have children, ought to know the truth—the very fact that she can do something so really preposterous ought to make her equally capable of the other preposterous thing—well——”

She coughed, her handkerchief before her face—she laughed with brightness. “One learns to be careful about death—but never, never about——” She didn’t finish but stared before her.

“Why did you bring the child here—why did you return at all then—after so long a time—it seems all so mixed up?”

“I don’t know—— Perhaps because there is a right and a wrong, and a good and an evil. I had to find out—and if there’s such a thing as everlasting mercy—I want to find out about that also—there’s a flavour of unfamiliar intimacy about it all, though, this Christian treatment——” She had a way of lifting up the side of her face, closing her eyes. “I thought—Paytor may know.”

“Know what?”

“Will know—well, will be able to divide me against myself—— Personally I don’t feel divided—I seem to be a sane and balanced whole—a hopelessly mixed, but perfect design. So I said Paytor will be able to see where this divides and departs. Though all the time I never for a moment felt that there was a system working on a this for that basis, but that there was only this _and_ that—in other words—I wanted to be set wrong.... You understand?”

“And you yourself,” he inquired, in the same loud voice, “cannot feel the war? Well, then, what about me?—you must realize what you have done—turned everything upside down—oh, I won’t even say betrayed me—it’s much less than that, what most of us do, we betray circumstances—well, I can’t do anything for you,” he said sharply. “I can’t do anything at all—I’m sorry, I’m very sorry—but there it is”—he began to grimace and twitch his shoulders.

“The child has it too,” Julie Anspacher said, looking up at him. “I shall die soon.—It’s ridiculous,” she added, with the tears streaming down her face. “You are strong, always were—and so were all your family before you—not one of them in their graves under ninety—it’s all wrong—it’s quite ridiculous.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not ridiculous. One must be very careful not to come, too hastily, to a conclusion.” He began searching for his pipe. “Only you know yourself, Julie, how I torment myself, if it’s a big enough thing, for days, weeks, years; and the reason is, the real reason is, that I come to my conclusions instantly, and then fight to destroy them.” He seemed to Julie a little pompous now. “It’s because first I’m human, and second, logical. Well, I don’t know—perhaps I’ll be able to tell you something later—give you a beginning at least—later——” He twitched his shoulders and went out, closing the door after him. She heard him climbing the familiar creaking stairs, the yellow painted stairs that led up into the roof—she heard him strike a match—then silence.

The dark had begun, closing in about bushes and barn, and filling the air with moist joyousness, the joyousness of autumn that trusts itself to the darkness, and Julie leaned on her hand by the shelf and listened.

She could hear, far away and faint, the sound of dogs on heavy chains. She tried to stop, listening to the outside, but her thoughts rotted away like clouds in a wind.

The sense of tears came to her, but it was only a sentimental memory of her early childhood, and it brought a smile to her long face. She had cried once when they made her kiss a dead priest—“Qui habitare facit sterilem—matrem filiorum laetantem”—then “Gloria Patri—” and she had wept then, or thought she had, because he was not only beyond glory and all mercy, but beyond the dubious comfort of the feeling.

She heard Paytor walking above, and the smoke of his pipe crept down between loose boards and uneven plaster and laths.

She went—quite mechanically—over to a chest in one corner, and opened the lid. A shirt waist, of striped taffeta, one she had worn years before, some old Spanish lace—her mother’s—the child——

Paytor did not seem to like the child—“How ridiculous!” she thought. “She is good, quiet, gentle—but that’s not enough now.” She removed her hat. Living with Paytor and the child—Paytor so strong,—always was, and so was his family—and she sickly, coughing. Perhaps she had made a mistake in coming back. She went toward the steps to tell this to Paytor but thought better of it. That wasn’t what she wanted to say.

The hours drew out and Julie Anspacher, sitting now at the window overlooking the garden—nodded without sleep—long dreams—grotesque and abominable—stupid irrelevances dull and interminable. Somewhere little Ann coughed in her sleep. Julie Anspacher coughed also, and in between, the sound of Paytor walking up and down, and the smell of tobacco growing stronger.

To take her own life, that was right, if only she had not the habit of fighting death—“but death is past knowing, and to know is better than to make right——” She shook her head. “That’s another detour on the wrong side,” she told herself. “If only I had the power to feel pain as unbearable, a gust of passion, of impatience, and all would be over—but I’ve stood so much so long, there is no too long.” She thought what she would not give for any kind of feeling, anything that was vital and sudden and determining. “If Paytor will have patience I will get around to it.”

Then it seemed that something must happen, must inevitably happen.

“If I could only think of the right word before it happens,” she said to herself, over and over, and over. “It’s because I’m cold and I can’t think, I’ll think soon——” She would take her jacket off, put on her coat——

She got up, running her hand along the wall. Or had she left it on the chair? “I can’t think of the word,” she said to keep her mind on something.

She turned around. All his family—long lives. “And me too, me too,” she murmured. She became dizzy. “It is because I must get on my knees—but it isn’t low enough.” She contradicted herself. “Yet if I put my head down—way down—down——”

Then she heard the shot. “He has quick warm blood” went through her mind—and her blood was cold.

Her forehead had not quite touched the boards, now she touched them, but she got up immediately, stumbling over her dress.

PASTORAL

A frog leaps out across the lawn, And crouches there—all heavy and alone, And like a blossom, pale and over-blown, Once more the moon turns dim against the dawn.

Crawling across the straggling panoply Of little roses, only half in bloom, It strides within that beamed and lofty room Where an ebon stallion looms upon the hay.

The stillness moves, and seems to grow immense, A shuddering dog starts, dragging at its chain, Thin, dusty rats slink down within the grain, And in the vale the first far bells commence.

Here in the dawn, with mournful doomèd eyes A cow uprises, moving out to bear A soft-lipped calf with swarthy birth-swirled hair, And wide wet mouth, and droll uncertainties.

The grey fowls fight for places in the sun, The mushrooms flare, and pass like painted fans: All the world is patient in its plans— The seasons move forever, one on one.

Small birds lie sprawling vaguely in the heat, And wanly pluck at shadows on their breasts, And where the heavy grape-vine leans and rests, White butterflies lift up their furry feet.

The wheat grows querulous with unseen cats; A fox strides out in anger through the corn, Bidding each acre wake and rise to mourn Beneath its sharps and through its throaty flats.

And so it is, and will be year on year, Time in and out of date, and still on time A billion grapes plunge bleeding into wine And bursting, fall like music on the ear.

The snail that marks the girth of night with slime, The lonely adder hissing in the fern, The lizard with its ochre eyes aburn— Each is before, and each behind its time.

OSCAR

Before the house rose two stately pine trees, and all about small firs and hemlocks. The garden path struggled up to the porch between wild flowers and weeds, and looming against its ancient bulk the shadows of out-houses and barns.

It stood among the hills, and just below around a curve in the road, lay the placid grey reservoir.

Sometimes parties would cross the fields, walking slowly toward the mountains. And sometimes children could be heard murmuring in the underbrush of things they scarcely knew.

Strange things had happened in this country town. Murder, theft, and little girls found weeping, and silent morose boys scowling along in the ragweed, with half-shut sunburned eyelids.

The place was wild, deserted and impossible in Winter. In Summer it was over-run with artists and town folk with wives and babies. Every Saturday there were fairs on the green, where second-hand articles were sold for a song, and flirting was formidable and passing. There were picnics, mountain climbings, speeches in the townhall, on the mark of the beast, on sin, and democracy, and once in a while a lecture on something that “everyone should know,” attended by mothers, their offspring left with servants who knew what everyone shouldn’t.

Then there were movies, bare legs, deacons, misses in cascades of curls and on Sunday one could listen to Mr. Widdie, the clergyman, who suffered from consumption, speak on love of one’s neighbour.

In this house and in this town had lived, for some fifteen years or so, Emma Gonsberg.

She was a little creature, lively, smiling, extremely good-natured. She had been married twice, divorced once, and was now a widow still in her thirties.

Of her two husbands she seldom said anything. Once she made the remark: “Only fancy, they never did catch on to me at all.”

She tried to be fashionable, did her hair in the Venetian style, wore gowns after the manner of Lady de Bath entering her carriage; and tried to cultivate only those who could tell her “where she stood.”

Her son Oscar was fourteen or thereabouts. He wore distinctly over-decorative English clothes, and remembered two words of some obscure Indian dialect that seemed to mean “fleas,” for whenever he flung these words defiantly at visitors they would go off into peals of laughter, headed by his mother. At such times he would lower his eyes and show a row of too heavy teeth.

Emma Gonsberg loved flowers, but could not grow them. She admired cats because there was “nothing servile about them,” but they would not stay with her; and though she loved horses and longed to be one of those daring women who could handle them “without being crushed in the stalls,” they nevertheless ignored her with calm indifference. Of her loves, passions and efforts, she had managed to raise a few ill-smelling pheasants, and had to let it go at that.

In the Winter she led a lonely and discriminating life. In the Summer her house filled with mixed characters, as one might say. A hot melancholy Jew, an officer who was always upon the point of depreciating his medals in a conceited voice, and one other who swore inoffensively.

Finally she had given this sort of thing up, partly because she had managed, soon after, to get herself entangled with a man called Ulric Straussmann. A tall rough fellow, who said he came from the Tyrol; a fellow without sensibilities but with a certain bitter sensuality. A good-natured creature as far as he went, with vivid streaks of German lust, which had at once something sentimental and something careless about it; the type who can turn the country, with a single gesture, into a brothel, and makes of children strong enemies. He showed no little audacity in putting things into people’s minds that he would not do himself.

He smelled very strongly of horses, and was proud of it. He pretended a fondness for all that goes under hide or hair, but a collie bitch, known for her gentleness, snapped at him and bit him. He invariably carried a leather thong, braided at the base for a handle, and would stand for hours talking, with his legs apart, whirling this contrived whip, and, looking out of the corner of his eyes would pull his moustache, waiting to see which of the ladies would draw her feet in.

He talked in a rather even, slightly nasal tone, wetting his lips with a long outthrust of tongue, like an animal. His teeth were splendid and his tongue unusually red, and he prided himself on these and on the calves of his legs. They were large, muscular and rather handsome.

He liked to boast that there was nothing that he could not do and be forgiven, because, as he expressed it, “I have always left people satisfied.” If it were hate or if it were love, he seemed to have come off with unusual success. “Most people are puny,” he would add, “while I am large, strong, healthy. Solid flesh through and through,” whereat he would pound his chest and smile.

He was new to the town and sufficiently insolent to attract attention. There was also something childishly naïve in him, as there is in all tall and robust men who talk about themselves. This probably saved him, because when he was drinking he often became gross and insulting, but he soon put the women of the party in a good humour by giving one of them a hearty and good-natured slap on the rear that she was not likely to forget.

Besides this man Emma had a few old friends of the less interesting, though better-read, type. Among them, however, was an exception, Oliver Kahn, a married man with several children one heard of and never saw. A strange, quiet man who was always talking. He had splendid eyes and a poor mouth—very full lips. In the beginning one surmised that he had been quite an adventurer. He had an odour about him of the rather recent cult of the “terribly good.” He seemed to have been unkind to his family in some way, and was spending the rest of his life in a passion of regret and remorse. He had become one of those guests who are only missed when absent. He finally stayed for good, sleeping in an ante-room with his boots on,—his one royal habit.

In the beginning Emma had liked him tremendously. He was at once gentle and furious, but of late, just prior to the Straussmann affair, he had begun to irritate her. She thought to herself, “He is going mad, that’s all.” She was angry at herself for saying “that’s all,” as if she had expected something different, more momentous.

He had enormous appetites, he ate like a Porthos and drank like a Pantagruel, and talked hour after hour about the same thing, “Love of one’s neighbour,” and spent his spare time in standing with his hands behind him, in front of the pheasants’ cage. He had been a snipe hunter in his time, and once went on a big game hunt, but now he said he saw something more significant here.

He had, like all good sportsmen, even shot himself through the hand, but of late he pretended that he did not remember what the scar came from.

He seemed to suffer a good deal. Evil went deep and good went deep and he suffered the tortures of the damned. He wept and laughed and ate and drank and slept, and year by year his eyes grew sweeter, tenderer, and his mouth fuller, more gross.

The child Oscar did not like Kahn, yet sometimes he would become extraordinarily excited, talk very fast, almost banteringly, a little malignly, and once when Kahn had taken his hand he drew it away angrily. “Don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because it is dirty,” he retorted maliciously.

“As if you really knew of what I was thinking,” Kahn said, and put his own hands behind him.

Emma liked Kahn, was attached to him. He mentioned her faults without regret or reproval, and this in itself was a divine sort of love.

He would remark: “We cannot be just because we are bewildered; we ought to be proud enough to welcome our enemies as judges, but we hate, and to hate is the act of the incurious. I love with an everlasting but a changing love, because I know I am the wrong sort of man to be good—and because I revere the shadow on the threshold.”

“What shadow, Kahn?”

“In one man we called it Christ—it is energy; for most of us it is dead, a phantom. If you have it you _are_ Christ, and if you have only a little of it you are but the promise of the Messiah.”

These seemed great words, and she looked at him with a little admiring smile.

“You make me uneasy for fear that I have not said ‘I love you with an everlasting love,’ often enough to make it an act of fanaticism.”

As for Oscar, he did what he liked, which gave him character, but made him difficult to live with.

He was not one of those “weedy” youths, long of leg, and stringy like “jerked beef, thank God!” as his mother said to visitors. He was rather too full-grown, thick of calf and hip and rather heavy of feature. His hands and feet were not out of proportion as is usually the case with children of his age, but they were too old looking.

He did not smoke surreptitiously. On the contrary he had taken out a pipe one day in front of his mother, and filling it, smoked in silence, not even with a frightened air, and for that matter not even with a particularly bold air;—he did it quite simply, as something he had finally decided to do, and Emma Gonsberg had gone off to Kahn with it, in a rather helpless manner.

Most children swing in circles about a room, clumsily. Oscar on the contrary walked into the four corners placidly and officially, looked at the backs of the books here and a picture there, and even grunted approvingly at one or two in quite a mature manner.

He had a sweetheart, and about her and his treatment of her there were only a few of the usual signs—he was shy, and passionately immersed in her, there was little of the casual smartness of first calf love about it, though he did in truth wave her off with a grin if he was questioned.

He took himself with seriousness amounting to a lack of humour—and though he himself knew that he was a youth, and had the earmarks of adolescence about him—and know it he certainly did—once he said, “Well, what of it—is that any reason why I should not be serious about everything?” This remark had so astonished his mother that she had immediately sent for Kahn to know if he thought the child was precocious—and Kahn had answered, “If he were, I should be better pleased.”

“But what is one to expect?”

“Children,” he answered, “are never what they are supposed to be, and they never have been. He may be old for his age, but what child hasn’t been?”

In the meantime, she tried to bring Straussmann and Kahn together—“My house is all at odds,” she thought, but these two never hit it off. Straussmann always appeared dreadfully superficial and cynical, and Kahn dull and good about nothing.

“They have both got abnormal appetites,” she thought wearily. She listened to them trying to talk together of an evening on the piazza steps. Kahn was saying:

“You must, however, warn yourself, in fact I might say arm yourself, against any sensation of pleasure in doing good; this is very difficult, I know, but it can be attained. You can give and forgive and tolerate gently and, as one might say, casually, until it’s a second nature.”

“There you have it, tolerate—who wants tolerance, or a second nature? Well, let us drop it. I feel like a child—it’s difficult not to feel like a child.”

“Like Oscar—he has transports—even at his age,” Emma added hesitatingly. “Perhaps that’s not quite as it should be?”

“The memory of growing up is worse than the fear of death,” Kahn remarked, and Emma sighed.

“I don’t know; the country was made for children, they say—I could tell you a story about that,” Straussmann broke off, whistling to Oscar. “Shall I tell Oscar about the country—and what it is really like?” he asked Emma, turning his head.

“Let the boy alone.”

“Why, over there in that small village,” Straussmann went on, taking Oscar by the arm. “It is a pretty tale I could tell you—perhaps I will when you are older—but don’t let your mother persuade you that the country is a nice, healthful, clean place, because, my child, it’s corrupt.”

“Will you let the boy alone!” Emma cried, turning very red.

“Ah, eh—I’ll let him alone right enough—but it won’t make much difference—you’ll see,” he went on. “There is a great deal told to children that they should not hear, I’ll admit, but there wasn’t a thing I didn’t know when I was ten. It happened one day in a hotel in Southampton—a dark place, gloomy, smelling frightfully of mildew, the walls were damp and stained. A strange place, eh, to learn the delights of love, but then our parents seldom dwell on the delights,—they are too taken up with the sordid details, the mere sordid details. My father had a great beard, and I remember thinking that it would have been better if he hadn’t said such things. I wasn’t much good afterwards for five or six years, but my sister was different. She enjoyed it immensely and forgot all about it almost immediately, excepting when I reminded her.”

“Go to bed, Oscar,” Emma said abruptly.

He went, and on going up the steps he did not let his fingers trail along the spindles of the banisters with his usual “Eeny meeny miny mo,” etc.

Emma was a little troubled and watched him going up silently, hardly moving his arms.

“Children should be treated very carefully, they should know as much as possible, but in a less superficial form than they must know later.”

“I think a child is born corrupt and attains to decency,” Straussmann said grinning.

“If you please,” Emma cried gaily, “we will talk about things we understand.”

Kahn smiled. “It’s beautiful, really beautiful,” he said, meaning her gaiety. He always said complimentary things about her lightness of spirit, and always in an angry voice.

“Come, come, you are going mad. What’s the good of that?” she said, abruptly, thinking, “He is a man who discovered himself once too often.”

“You are wrong, Emma, I am not worthy of madness.”

“Don’t be on your guard, Kahn,” she retorted.

Oscar appeared before her suddenly, barefoot. She stared at him. “What is it?” she at last managed to ask in a faint almost suffocated voice.

“I want to kiss you,” he whispered.

She moved toward him slowly, when, half way, he hurried toward her, seized her hand, kissed it, and went back into the house.

“My God,” she cried out. “He is beginning to think for himself,” and ran in after him.

She remembered how she had talked to him the night before, only the night before. “You must love with an everlasting but a changing love,” and he became restless. “With an everlasting but a changing love.”

“What do you mean by ‘changing’?” His palms were moist, and his feet twitched.

“A love that takes in every detail, every element—that can understand without hating, without distinction, I think.”

“Why do you say, ‘I think’?”

“I mean, I know,” she answered, confused.

“Get that Kahn out, he’s a rascal,” he said, abruptly, grinning.

“What are you saying, Oscar?” she demanded, turning cold. “I’ll never come to your bed again, take your hands and say ‘Our Father.’”

“It will be all right if you send that man packing,” he said, stressing the word “packing.”

She was very angry, and half started toward the door. Then she turned back. “Why do you say that, Oscar?”

“Because he makes you nervous—well, then—because he crouches”; he saw by his mother’s face that she was annoyed, puzzled, and he turned red to his ears. “I don’t mean that, I mean he isn’t good; he’s just watching for something good to happen, to take place——” His voice trailed off, and he raised his eyes solemn and full of tears to her face. She leaned down and kissed him, tucking him in like a “little boy.”

“But I’m not a little boy,” he called out to her.

And tonight she did not come down until she thought Kahn and Straussmann had gone.