Part 5

Kahn had disappeared, but Straussmann had taken a turn or two about the place and was standing in the shadow of the stoop when she came out.

“Come,” he said. “What is it that you want?”

“I think it’s religion,” she answered abruptly. “But it’s probably love.”

“Let us take a walk,” he suggested.

They turned in toward the shadows of the great still mountains and the denser, more arrogant shadows of the out-houses and barns. She looked away into the silence, and the night, and a warm sensation as of pleasure or of something expected but intangible came over her, and she wanted to laugh, to cry, and thinking of it she knew that it was neither.

She was almost unconscious of him for a little, thinking of her son. She raised her long silk skirts about her ankles and tramped off into the dampness. A whippoorwill was whistling off to the right. It sounded as if he were on the fence, and Emma stopped and tried to make it out. She took Ulric’s arm presently, and feeling his muscles swell began to think of the Bible. “Those who take by the sword shall die by the sword. And those who live by the flesh shall die by the flesh.”

She wished that she had someone she could believe in. She saw a door before her mental eye, and herself opening it and saying, “Now tell me this, and what it means,—only today I was thinking ‘those who live by the flesh’”—and as suddenly the door was slammed in her face. She started back.

“You are nervous,” he said in a pleased whisper.

Heavy stagnant shadows sprawled in the path. “So many million leaves and twigs to make one dark shadow,” she said, and was sorry because it sounded childishly romantic, quite different from what she had intended, what she had meant.

They turned the corner of the carriage-house. Something moved, a toad, grey and ugly, bounced across her feet and into the darkness of the hedges. Coming to the entrance of the barn they paused. They could distinguish sleeping hens, the white films moving on their eyes—and through a window at the back, steam rising from the dung heap.

“There don’t seem to be any real farmers left,” she said aloud, thinking of some book she had read about the troubles of the peasants and landholders.

“You’re thinking of my country,” he said smiling.

“No, I wasn’t,” she said. “I was wondering what it is about the country that makes it seem so terrible?”

“It’s your being a Puritan—a tight-laced delightful little Puritan.”

She winced at the words, and decided to remain silent.

It was true, Straussmann was in a fever of excitement—he was always this way with women, especially with Emma. He tried to conceal it for the time being, thinking, rightly, that a display of it would not please her just at the moment—“but it would be only a matter of minutes when she would welcome it,” he promised himself, and waited.

He reflected that she would laugh at him. “But she would enjoy it just the same. The way with all women who have had anything to do with more than one man and are not yet forty,” he reflected. “They like what they get, but they laugh at you, and know you are lying——”

“Oh, my God!” Emma said suddenly, drawing her arm away and wiping her face with her handkerchief.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, it’s the heat.”

“It is warm,” he said dismally.

“I despise everything, I really despise everything, but you won’t believe—— I mean everything when I say everything—you’ll think I mean some one thing—won’t you?” she went on hurriedly. She felt that she was becoming hysterical.

“It doesn’t matter,” he rejoined, walking on beside her, his heart beating violently. “Down, you dog,” he said aloud.

“What is that?” She raised her eyes and he looked into them, and they both smiled.

“That’s better. I wish I were God.”

“A desire for a vocation.”

“Not true, and horrid, as usual,” she answered, and she was hot and angry all at once.

He pulled at his moustache and sniffed. “I can smell the hedges—ah, the country is a gay deceiver—it smells pleasant enough, but it’s treacherous. The country, my dear Emma, has done more to corrupt man, to drag him down, to turn him loose upon his lower instincts, than morphine, alcohol and women. That’s why I like it, that’s why it’s the perfect place for women. They are devils and should be driven out, and as there’s more room in the country and consequently less likelihood of driving them out in too much of a hurry, there is more time for amusement.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he said these things to note if they were ill advised. They seemed to leave her cold, but tense.

A little later they passed the barns again.

“What was that?” Emma asked suddenly.

“I heard nothing.”

But she had heard something, and her heart beat fearfully. She recognized Oscar’s voice. She reached up signing Straussmann to be quiet. She did not want him to hear; she wished that the ground would yawn, would swallow him up.

“See that yellow flower down there,” she said, pointing toward the end of the path they had just come. “I want it, I must have it, please.” He did as he was bid, amiably enough.

She listened—she heard the voice of Oscar’s little sweetheart:

“It seems as if we were one already.”... It was high, resolute, unflagging, without emotion, a childish parroting of some novel. Oscar’s voice came back, half smothered:

“Do you really care—more than you like Berkeley?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered in the same false treble, “lots more.”

“Come here,” he said softly—the hay rustled.

“I don’t want to—the rye gets into my hair and spoils it.”

“Dolly, do you like the country?”

“Yes, I do,”—without conviction.

“We will go to the city,” he answered.

“Oh, Oscar, you’re so strong,” she giggled, and it sent a cold shudder through Emma’s being.

Then presently, “What’s the matter, Oscar—why, you’re crying.”

“I’m not—well, then yes, I am—what of it?—you’ll understand, too, some day.”

She was evidently frightened, because she said in a somewhat loosened key, “No one would ever believe that we were as much in love as we are, would they, Oscar?”

“No, why do you ask that?”

“It’s a great pity,” she said again with the false sound, and sighed.

“Do you care? Why do you care?”

Straussmann was coming back with the yellow flower between thumb and forefinger. Emma ran a little way to meet him.

“Come, let us go home the other way.”

“Rather, let us not go home,” he said, boldly, and took her wrist, hurting her.

“Ah,” she said. “Vous m’avez blessée d’amour”—ironically.

“Yes, speak French, it helps women like you at such moments,” he said, brutally, and kissed her.

But kissing him back, she thought, “The fool, why does Oscar take her so seriously when they are both children, and she is torturing him.”

“My love, my sweet, my little love,” he was babbling.

She tried to quench this, trembling a little. “But tell me, my friend—no, not so hasty—what do you think of immortality?” He had pushed her so far back that there was no regaining her composure. “My God, in other words, what of the will to retribution!”

But she could not go on. “I’ve tried to,” she thought.

Later, when the dawn was almost upon them, he said: “How sad to be drunk, only to die. For the end of all man is Fate, in other words, the end of all man is vulgar.”

She felt the need of something that had not been.

“I’m not God, you see, after all.”

“So I see, madam,” he said. “But you’re a damned clever little woman.”

When she came in, she found Kahn lying flat on his back, his eyes wide open.

“Couldn’t you sleep?”

“No, I could not sleep.”

She was angry. “I’m sorry—you suffer.”

“Yes, a little.”

“Kahn,” she cried in anguish, flinging herself on her knees beside him. “What should I have done, what shall I do?”

He put his hand on her cheek. “My dear, my dear,” he said, and sighed. “I perhaps was wrong.”

She listened.

“Very wrong, I see it all now; I am an evil man, an old and an evil being.”

“No, no!”

“Yes, yes,” he said gently, softly, contradicting her. “Yes, evil, and pitiful, and weak”; he seemed to be trying to remember something. “What is it that I have overlooked?” He asked the question in such a confused voice that she was startled.

“Is it hate?” she asked.

“I guess so, yes, I guess that’s it.”

“Kahn, try to think—there must be something else.”

“Madness.”

She began to shiver.

“Are you cold?”

“No, it’s not cold.”

“No, it’s not cold,” he repeated after her. “You are not cold, Emma, you are a child.”

Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“Yes,” he continued sadly. “You too will hear: remorse is the medium through which the evil spirit takes possession.”

And again he cried out in anguish. “But I’m _not_ superficial—I may have been wanton, but I’ve not been superficial. I wanted to give up everything, to abandon myself to whatever IT demanded, to do whatever IT directed and willed. But the terrible thing is I don’t know what abandon is. I don’t know when it’s abandon and when it’s just a case of minor calculation.

“The real abandon is not to know whether one throws oneself off a cliff or not, and not to care. But I can’t do it, because I must know, because I’m afraid if I did cast myself off, I should find that I had thrown myself off the lesser thing after all, and that,” he said in a horrified voice, “I could never outlive, I could never have faith again. And so it is that I shall never know, Emma; only children and the naïve know, and I am too sophisticated to accomplish the divine descent.”

“But you must tell me,” she said, hurriedly. “What am I to do, what am I to think? My whole future depends on that, on your answer—on knowing whether I do an injustice not to hate, not to strike, not to kill—well, you must tell me—I swear it is my life—my entire life.”

“Don’t ask me, I can’t know, I can’t tell. I who could not lead one small sheep, what could I do with a soul, and what still more could I do with you? No,” he continued, “I’m so incapable. I am so mystified. Death would be a release, but it wouldn’t settle anything. It never settles anything, it simply wipes the slate, it’s merely a way of putting the sum out of mind, yet I wish I might die. How do I know now but that everything I have thought, and said, and done, has not been false, a little abyss from which I shall crawl laughing at the evil of my own limitation.”

“But the child—what have I been telling Oscar—to love with an everlasting love——”

“That’s true,” he said.

“Kahn, listen. What have I done to him, what have I done to myself? What are we all doing here—are we all mad—or are we merely excited—overwrought, hysterical? I must know, I must know.” She took his hand and he felt her tears upon it.

“Kahn, is it an everlasting but a changing love—what kind of love is that?”

“Perhaps that’s it,” he cried, jumping up, and with a gesture tore his shirt open at the throat. “Look, I want you to see, I run upon the world with a bared breast—but never find the blade—ah, the civility of our own damnation—that’s the horror. A few years ago, surely this could not have happened. Do you know,” he said, turning his eyes all hot and burning upon her, “the most terrible thing in the world is to bare the breast and never to feel the blade enter!” He buried his face in his hands.

“But, Kahn, you must think, you must give me an answer. All this indecision is all very well for us, for all of us who are too old to change, for all of us who can reach God through some plaything we have used as a symbol, but there’s my son, what is he to think, to feel, he has no jester’s stick to shake, nor stool to stand on. Am I responsible for him? Why,” she cried frantically, “must I be responsible for him? I tell you I won’t be, I can’t. I won’t take it upon myself. But I have, I have. Is there something that can make me immune to my own blood? Tell me—I must wipe the slate—the fingers are driving me mad—can’t he stand alone now? Oh, Kahn, Kahn!” she cried, kissing his hands. “See, I kiss your hands, I am doing so much. You must be the prophet—you can’t do less for the sign I give you—I must know, I must receive an answer, I _will_ receive it.”

He shook her off suddenly, a look of fear came into his eyes.

“Are you trying to frighten me?” he whispered. She went into the hall, into the dark, and did not know why, or understand anything. Her mind was on fire, and it was consuming things that were strange and merciful and precious.

Finally she went into her son’s room and stood before his bed. He lay with one feverish cheek against a dirty hand, his knees drawn up; his mouth had a peculiar look of surprise about it.

She bent down, called to him, not knowing what she was doing. “Wrong, wrong,” she whispered, and she shook him by the shoulders. “Listen, Oscar, get up. Listen to me!”

He awoke and cried out as one of her tears, forgotten, cold, struck against his cheek. An ague shook his limbs. She brought her face close to his.

“Son, hate too, that is inevitable—irrevocable——”

He put out his two hands and pushed them against her breast and in a subdued voice said, “Go away, go away,” and he looked as if he were about to cry, but he did not cry.

She turned and fled into the hall.

However, in the morning, at breakfast, there was nothing unusual about her, but a tired softness and yielding of spirit; and at dinner, which was always late, she felt only a weary indifference when she saw Straussmann coming up the walk. He had a red and white handkerchief about his throat, and she thought, “How comic he looks.”

“Good evening,” he said.

“Good evening,” she answered, and a touch of her old gaiety came into her voice. Kahn was already seated, and now she motioned Straussmann to follow. She began slicing the cold potted beef and asked them about sugar in their tea, adding, “Oscar will be here soon.” To Kahn she showed only a very little trace of coldness, of indecision.

“No,” Straussmann said, still standing, legs apart: “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like a word or two with Kahn.” They stepped off the porch together.

“Kahn,” he said, going directly to the point, “listen,” he took hold of Kahn’s coat by the lapel. “You have known Emma longer than I have, you’ve got to break it to her.” He flourished a large key under Kahn’s nose, as he spoke.

“I’ve got him locked up in the out-house safe enough for the present, but we must do something immediately.”

“What’s the matter?” A strange, pleasant but cold sweat broke out upon Kahn’s forehead.

“I found Oscar sitting beside the body of his sweetheart, what’s-her-name; he had cut her throat with a kitchen knife, yes, with a kitchen knife—he seemed calm, but he would say nothing. What shall we do?”

“They’ll say he was a degenerate from the start——”

“Those who live by the flesh—eh?”

“No,” Kahn said, in a confused voice, “that’s not it.”

They stood and stared at each other so long that presently Emma grew nervous and came down the garden path to hear what it was all about.

ANTIQUE

A lady in a cowl of lawn With straight bound tabs and muted eyes, And lips fair thin and deftly drawn And oddly wise.

A cameo, a ruff of lace, A neck cut square with corners laid; A thin Greek nose and near the face A polished braid.

Low, sideways looped, of amber stain The pale ears caught within its snare. A profile like a dagger lain Between the hair.

KATRINA SILVERSTAFF

“We have eaten a great deal, my friend, against the day of God.”

She was a fine woman, hard, magnificent, cold, Russian, married to a Jew, a doctor on the East Side.

You know that kind of woman, pale, large, with a heavy oval face.

A woman of ‘material’—a lasting personality, in other words, a ‘fashionable’ woman, a woman who, had she lived to the age of forty odd, would have sat for long fine hours by some window, overlooking some desolate park, thinking of a beautiful but lazy means to an end.

She always wore large and stylish hats, and beneath them her mouth took on a look of pain at once proud, aristocratic and lonely.

She had studied medicine—but medicine in the interest of animals; she was a good horse doctor—an excellent surgeon on the major injuries to birds and dogs.

In fact she and her husband had met in a medical college in Russia—she had been the only woman in the class, the only one of the lot of them who smiled in a strange, hurt and sarcastic way when dissecting.

The men treated her like one of them, that is, they had no cringing mannerliness about their approach, they lost no poise before her, and tried no tricks as one might say.

The Silverstaffs had come to America, they had settled on the East Side, among ‘their own people’ as he would say; she never said anything when he talked like this, she sat passive, her hands in her lap, but her nostrils quivered, and somewhere under the skin of her cheek something trembled.

Her husband was the typical Jewish intellectual, a man with stiff, short, greying hair, prominent intelligent and kindly eyes, rather short, rather round, always smelling of Greek salad and carbolic acid, and always intensely interested in new medical journals, theories, discoveries.

He was a little dusty, a little careless, a little timid, but always gentle.

They had been in America scarcely eight months before the first child was born, a girl, and then following on her heels a boy, and then no more children.

Katrina Silverstaff stopped having her children as abruptly as she had begun having them; something complicated had entered her mind, and where there are definite complications of the kind that she suffered, there are no more children.

“We have eaten a great deal, my friend, against the day of God,” she had said that.

She had said that one night, sitting in the dusk of their office. There was something inexpressibly funny in their sitting together in this office, with its globe of the world, its lung charts, its weighing machine, its surgical chair, and its bowl of ineffectual goldfish. Something inexpressibly funny and inexpressibly fecund, a fecundity suppressed by coldness, and a terrible determination—more terrible in that her husband Otto felt nothing of it.

He was very fond of her, and had he been a little more sensitive he would have been very glad to be proud of her. She never became confidential with him, and he never tried to overstep this, partly because he was unaware of it, and partly because he felt little need of a closer companionship.

She was a fine woman, he knew that; he never thought to question anything she did, because it was little, nor what she said, because it was less; there was an economy about her existence that simply forbade questioning. He felt in some dim way, that to criticize at all would be to stop everything.

Their life was typical of the East Side doctor’s life. Patients all day for him, and the children for her, with an occasional call from someone who had a sick bird. In the evening they would sit around a table with just sufficient food, with just sufficient silver and linen, and one luxury: Katrina’s glass of white wine.

Or sometimes they would go out to dine, to some kosher place, where everyone was too friendly and too ugly and too warm, and here he would talk of the day’s diseases while she listened to the music and tried not to hear what her daughter was crying for.

He had always been a ‘liberal,’ from the first turn of the cradle. In the freedom of the people, in the betterment of conditions, he took the interest a doctor takes in seeing a wound heal.

As for Katrina Silverstaff, she never said anything about it, he never knew what she really thought, if she thought at all; it did not seem necessary for her to do or say anything, she was fine as she was, where she was. On the other hand it never occurred to him that she would not hear, with calmness at least, his long dissertations on capital.

At the opening of this story, Katrina’s daughter was a little girl of ten, who was devoted to dancing, and who lay awake at nights worrying about the shape of her legs, which had already begun to swell with a dancer’s muscles.

The boy was nine, thin, and wore spectacles.

And of course what happened was quite unaccountable.

A man, calling himself Castillion Rodkin, passed through one Summer, selling Carlyle’s “French Revolution.” Among the houses where he had left a copy was the house of Otto Silverstaff.

Katrina had opened the door, the maid was down with the measles, and the doctor was busy with a patient, a Jew much revered for his poetry.

She never bought anything of peddlers, and she seldom said more than “No, thank you.” In this case she neither said “Thank you,” nor closed the door—instead she held it open, standing a little aside for him to pass, and, utterly astonished, he did pass, waiting behind her in the hall for orders.

“We will go into the study,” she said, “my husband is busy.”

“I was selling Bibles last year,” he remarked, “but they do not go down in this section.”

“Yes,” she answered, “I see,” and she moved before him into the heavy damp parlour which was never unshuttered and which was never used. She reached up and turned on one solitary electric light.

Castillion Rodkin might have been of any nationality in the world; this was partly from having travelled in all countries, and also from a fluid temperament—little was fixed or firm in him, a necessary quality in a salesman.

Castillion Rodkin was below medium height, thin and bearded with a pale, almost white growth of hair. He was peculiarly colourless, his eyes were only a shade darker than his temples, and very restless.

She said simply, “We must talk about religion.”

And with an awkwardness unusual to him he asked “Why?”

“Because,” she said in a strained voice, making a hurt gesture, “it is so far from me.”

He did not know what to say, of course, and lifting one thin leg in its white trousers he placed it carefully over the other.

She was sitting opposite him, her head turned a little to one side, not looking at anything. “You see,” she said presently, “I want religion to become out of the reach of the few.”

“Become’s a queer word,” he said.

“It is the only word,” she answered, and there was a slight irritation in her voice, “because it is so irrevocably for the many.”

“Yes,” he said mechanically, and reached up to his beard, leaving his hand there under a few strands of hair.

“You see,” she went on simply, “I can come to the point. For me, everything is a lie—I am not telling this to you because I need your help, I shall never need help,” she said, turning her eyes on his, “understand that from the beginning——”

“Beginning,” he said in a loud voice suddenly.

“From the beginning,” she repeated calmly, “right from the very start, not help but hindrance, I need enough hindrance, a total obstacle, otherwise I cannot accomplish it.”

“Accomplish what, madame?” he asked and took his hand from under his beard.

“That is my affair, mine alone, that you must not question, it has nothing to do with you, you are only a means to an end.”

He said, “What can I do for you?”

She smiled, a sudden smile, and under her cheek something flickered. “You can do nothing,” she said and stood up. “I must always do it all—yes, I shall be your mistress—wait,” she said raising her hand, and there was anger and pride in her. “Do not intrude now by word or sign, but tomorrow you will come to me—that is enough—that is all you can do,” and in this word “all” he felt a limit on himself that he had never known before, and he was frightened and disquieted and unhappy.

He came the next day, cringing a little, fawning, uneasy, and she would not see him—she sent word “I do not need you yet,” and he called again the next day and learned that she was out of town, then one Sunday she was in to him.