Part 13

He felt sorry for her. When he had married Henrietta she had been the only one who had understood. He could always remember what she had said at the wedding. It was the only thing he could recall of the event--what Doris had said to him....

"You'll never be a great man if you let yourself get trapped like this too often."

Surprising that she should know enough to say that. Because anyone who could say that to him must know him thoroughly and understand him thoroughly. It was what he had been saying to himself for months before the wedding.

He felt sorry for his sister. They were good friends in a way. A curious way because he felt she detested him somehow. Yet she understood him and could help him. And she liked him to come to see her. He wondered why. She had no love for him but there was something about him that appealed to her and interested her. He had noticed how she acted toward others. Their talk left her dead. Even when Levine talked she often remained unaware he was around. Her eyes never opened to people. Even her mother. And Fanny had said, "Doris is getting more and more of a pill. I think she's going crazy. She doesn't even look at a person anymore."

He watched her and thought, "Poor girl. Something wrong. I wish I could help her."

He kept remembering how beautiful and alive she had been and his heart felt an odd laceration as if something he loved were dying. Was he so fond of Doris, then? He said, "no." Yet he could never remember having felt such sympathy as this toward anyone. It was because she was an intimate. He felt toward her as he felt toward himself--forgiving, appreciative, and a sense of pity. Why had he thought that? Pity. Did he pity himself, he, George Basine, who was just beginning to ascend? Henrietta and the kids--that was it. A man had to accumulate troubles if he was to amount to anything.

The feeling of sympathy slipped from his thought. Doris had turned her eyes to him. Basine was aware of her coming to life. The symmetrical mask of her face became features and expressions.

"Will you stay for tea?" she asked.

He would. Doris stood up and regarded him with a malicious smile.

"The crusade seems to be running away from you," she said.

He nodded. The public-spirited leader in him did not relish the ironic tilt of her words. But he was able to assume a dual attitude toward her cynical intellectualism. He could frown on it with a sense of outrage. And he could listen to it with an appreciative shrewdness. He could despise her iconoclasm and still utilize its intelligence to aid him in his climb.

He had always understood that to his sister his aspirations were contemptible. And yet despite her sneering she seemed anxious to help him realize them. He understood, too, that in his sister's mind there was something queer about people. When she talked about people her eyes lighted. There was about her talk of people a clarity of idea that contrasted strangely with the passion one could feel behind her words.

Basine usually tried to dismiss the impression she made on him by thinking, "Oh, she's a fanatic on the subject, that's all." But a mystery worried him. Why should she be interested in his career? And why should she try to help him if she despised him and his type of ambition? And, moreover, despised people and politics in general?

It was a paradox and it made him uncomfortable. But he sought her out all the more for this. Because there was something practical about her fanaticism. Yes, and because she understood about him.

He had already told her secrets about himself, particularly about himself in relation to Henrietta. That formed a bond between them. He sometimes grew frightened at the thought of the things Doris knew about him--things she might tell to anyone and ruin him; wreck his home and his career. But always after worrying about such fears he would hurry to his sister and unburden himself still further. As if by feeding her further secrets he could make certain of her loyalty and reticence.

He watched her less openly as she poured tea. A bitterness filled him. If Henrietta were only a woman like this instead of a stick. If only he could sit home and talk things over with her, marriage would have some sense to it. He frowned. He did not like to think this way.

Doris began to talk smoothly, her dark eyes growing more alive. He listened nervously, wincing under the contempt of her phrases and fascinated by the startling interpretations they offered him of his own thoughts.

"If I were you," she said as she arranged the teacups, "I would let myself be squeezed out of the crusade. It's served its purpose for you. You've frightened about a million feeble-minded creatures into a fury against private banks. You've done quite well. That's the secret, you know. And you must always remember it. Create bogeymen to frighten people with. The more unreal the bogeymen, the more terrified the public. If you don't believe this figure out for yourself--of what are people the most afraid? God, of course. The greatest of the bogeymen. And remember too, George that people like to be terrified. There's a reason for that. People like to be preoccupied by false terrors in order not to have to face real frightening facts--facts such as death and age and their own souls."

She sat down and looked at Basine with a pitying smile.

"What a fool you are, George. You don't believe a word I say, do you?"

"What you say and how you say it are two different things," he answered. The thought was in his mind that Fanny was right. Doris was going crazy. Her talk had an edge to it as if her voice were being carefully repressed. He almost preferred her when she was silent, when her eyes slept. Because now there was a hidden wildness to her. She was suffering! The thought startled him. But that was it. The hate that filled her voice came from a suffering inside. He wanted to reach over and take her hand and whisper to her to be calm, but he continued to listen without moving. There were things in what she said that always held him. It was like learning secrets. She was still talking.

"Well, today they're shrieking and vomiting invective and you'd like nothing better than to be the heroic leader of this pack of filthy cowards. Would you? Well, it's not worth while this time. The whole thing'll blow over. In a few weeks people will have forgotten about private banks. And by the time you get the bill into the state legislature the papers will be ignoring the whole business. Do you see? There's nothing so tragic as the spectacle of a mob leader stranded high and dry with a yesterday's crusade. And his mob off in another direction. Remember, George, you're not dealing with people, with reasoning men and women. You always forget this and you'll never get ahead if you keep forgetting it. You're dealing with a single creature--the crowd. A huge bellowing savage."

"I know, I know," Basine muttered. She was crazy. Something queer in her head about people. "All people aren't like that, of course. But I understand."

"You don't," she interrupted angrily. "All people are like that. Alone people are one thing. They're alive and they reason a little. But when they come together to overthrow governments or defend governments or make laws or worship Gods, they vanish. A single creature takes their place. And this single creature is a mysterious savage who howls and spits and vomits and tears its hair and has orgasms of terror and befouls itself."

Her eyes glared at Basine. With an effort she controlled her voice. She continued in a passionate whisper.

"Don't you understand that yet? After all I've shown you. If you want to get ahead, I can make you anything. Do you hear that? Anything.... I can make you a leader ... a king. All you must learn is the way of turning people into swine...."

"Please Doris, you get too excited. Please...."

"Into swine and swine crusades. We'll find ways of bringing them together and the more swinish you can make people become, yes, the more you can make them spew and shriek, the holier will become the cause of this spewing and shrieking. These are elementals and you must trust me. Do you hear?"

Her fingers were cold. They had closed on his hand. He shuddered. Crazy ... poor Doris. Gone queer with something. Yet he found himself listening, her chill fingers startling his flesh. Out of her ravings there might issue at any minute the thing he was always looking for ... a way to get ahead.

"Little crusades like this," she went on, "are all right. But private banks are only a detail. And besides the idea is too concrete to terrify people and bring out the full hysteria of their cowardice. What we need is something vague--that has no facts to handicap it. Something you can lie about wildly and frighten them with so that their bowels weaken. Please, drop the thing now. You must...."

"Doris, you get too excited. Let's talk sense instead of getting excited like this."

He patted her hand and returned her stare uncomfortably. He wanted to ask her why she was interested in his getting ahead, in making him a leader. She had paused. Basine felt himself nauseated by the intensity of her words that continued to ring in his ears. Her anger and the viciousness of her phrases brought her too close to him. He could almost see something behind the glare of her dark eyes.

"Oh, you're not interested in progress and civilization," she resumed mockingly. Her words seemed more controlled. He noticed that she jerked her hand away. "Because if you were you would see that progress and civilization are the results of the terror of the mob. It's when they get frightened of something and throw themselves at it with their eyes shut and their hair on end, that institutions are born ... that new platitudes are set up in heaven. And the secret is this--the worse swine you can turn them into, the holier will be the things they do. Listen, I'll tell you.... You must do as I say.... You must believe me...."

She had risen. Her hand was on his shoulder and her eyes burned over him. He felt a bit fearful and impatient. To a point, her talk was interesting. But after that it became like raving.

"You've told me that before," he murmured. "Please calm down." An ecstatic light slowly left her.

"Oh yes. Sense," she whispered. "Well, the sense of it is for you to become a symbol of their holiness. Be a leader. Isn't that it. But the private bank crusade has fizzled. I've read the papers closely and outside of the two attacks on the private bankers last week, there've been no great gestures of righteousness. If they'd hamstrung a few hundred private bankers, cut off their heads and burned down their houses, I'd advise you to stick. That's sense isn't it?"

Basine, listening to the uncomfortable distortions of his sister, made up his mind. He translated her vicious suggestions into the less inconveniencing idea.... "The biggest part of the work in the fight against the banks has been done already, Doris. And the rest anybody can do."

"Yes," she smiled, "if you're going to be of service to the public you must be careful to devote yourself to worthwhile reforms. You always had a clearer way of putting things, George."

She despised him. He could feel it now. He looked at her and wondered again. She was beautiful. A complete change had come over her since he'd come in. She seemed warm with emotion, alive, human. But she smiled in an offensive way. He preferred her viciousness. That was impersonal--something queer in her head. This other was a condescension that angered him. He sat thinking; she was playing with him. It would be better if he never saw her.

"How is Henrietta?" she asked.

The question had long ago became an invitation to confession. He avoided her eyes.

"Fanny and Aubrey were over," he answered.

She interrupted. "Please don't talk about them."

"Oh, nothing in particular," he hastened. "Henrietta is the same as ever."

Doris laughed.

"An ideal wife for a future public hero," she exclaimed. Basine frowned.

"I'd rather you didn't make a joke about such things, Doris."

"I'm not joking. But to be a great leader a man must have only one love--the love of being a great leader."

"That's wrong," Basine blurted out. "A woman can help a man forward if he loves her and she's clever and loves him."

"She can't," Doris said softly. "Because she doesn't want to. If she loves him, she doesn't want him to be great. She may inspire him but just as soon as she sees his inspiration takes him away from her, she turns around and tries to ruin him. So she can have him to herself."

Basine listened impatiently. This was a child prattling. Doris was laughing. He looked at her questioningly. Her laughter continued and grew harsh.

"You fool," she sighed, controlling herself. "Oh you fool."

Basine shook his head. He was serious. There were hidden facts in his mind. He knew something about what a woman might do to help a man forward. These facts seemed to him allies--secret allies, as he contradicted his sister.

"I insist you're wrong," he said. He was determined to prove her wrong. But she went on, ignoring his intensity.

"Your wife is ideal, George. Colorless, stupid. Dead. Without desires or egoism. An ideal wife for a man of ambition. The kind that will let you alone."

"Nonsense. You're utterly wrong," he cried. He must prove to her how utterly wrong she was. There was Ruth.

"Men owe most of their success to the impulse the right woman can give them. Henrietta's all right. But she's so damn dead. She's interested in nothing. Just a child with a child's mind and outlook. And she gets more so every year. Good God, if I had somebody with life in her. Keen and ... who loved me. So that I wanted to be great in her eyes. It would be easier. Somebody ... like you, Doris."

He paused, confused. "I mean," he added, "your type. The intellectual and female combined."

He had long ago told her of his courtship, of the curious way he had tricked himself into matrimony and she had always laughed at his unhappiness and said this--only a fool tricked himself as he had done. Nevertheless his marriage was ideal.

"Men instinctively pick out what they need," she would say. "And a man like you needs a nonentity like Henrietta. You wait and see. Your happiness isn't coming from emotion inside but from emotion outside--the noise of praise the public will someday give you."

But there were facts now hidden in his head to disprove this. He started as Doris announced casually,

"Ruth Davis may drop in this afternoon."

They finished their tea. A knock on the door frightened him. The girl! No. Doris called, "Come in," and Levine entered. Basine nodded to him.

"I'll have to be going," he said as Levine sat down. He disliked the man. Doris nodded. She appeared to have lost interest in him and, her tea finished, she was sitting back in her chair with her eyes half shut and her hands listless in her lap. Levine was talking quietly.... "You look tired, Doris. Like to go hear Lindstrum lecture tonight? No? Very well. I just dropped in to see if you would. Come on."

"No," she frowned at him.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"I think it would be better for you to...."

Her eyes shut him off. They were blazing.

"Please," she cried. Then with a sigh she turned toward the window.

Basine stood up. He pretended a leisureliness, opening a few books and staring with apparent interest at passages in them. Levine and his sister were a strange pair. Doris queer and moody and going into impossible tantrums. And this man with brown negro eyes and a loose-lipped mouth that reeked with sarcasms. There were secrets between them. Nothing wrong, but secrets. He remembered the girl was coming and grew frightened.

"Well, good-bye," he said aloud. "And calm down, Doris."

He waited uncomfortably for her to say something. But she was silent. He looked at his watch and exclaimed in a surprised, matter-of-fact voice, "Oh my! It's almost four. Good-bye. I must run."

He hurried away as if some logical necessity were spurring him on. The make-believe had been unnecessary for Doris had paid no attention to the manner of his departure.

Outside he paused and looked up and down the street. He felt relieved. He had left in time. Crossing from an opposite corner was Ruth Davis. He would pretend he hadn't seen her and walk on in an opposite direction. He knew she was watching him as she approached. He was frightened. A sense of suffocation. He desired to run away.

She was young. Her eyes had a way of remaining in his thought. When he talked to people, her eyes came before him and looked at him. They asked questions.

The last time he had sat with her in his sister's studio he had gone away with a feeling of panic. He was used to women. Invariably he disliked them. They seemed to him variants of his wife. They reminded him of Henrietta and he was able to say to himself, "They look attractive and mysterious. But underneath, they're all alike."

He meant they were all like Henrietta. In this way his distaste for his wife had kept him faithful to her because his imagination balked at the idea of embracing another Henrietta.

But Ruth Davis after he had met her a few times, always in his sister's presence, had impressed him differently. Perhaps it was because he had always seen her with his sister. In many ways she reminded him of Doris. She was dark like Doris and had many of her mannerisms.

He had not thought of her as a variant of Henrietta. Rather as a variant of Doris. He had never tested his immunity to her by imagining an embrace. When he talked to her he grew eager to impress her. He wanted her to understand him, not quite as Doris understood him. She was cynical but not in the way Doris was. Her mind was kindlier.

Because he felt frightened now at her approach and a desire to run away without speaking to her, he held himself to the spot. He would get the better of this thing, he told himself quickly, by facing whatever it was and fighting it down. He would overcome the curious effect she had on him by confronting her. In this way, a very high-minded way, he persuaded himself to wait for her and to talk to her. Which was what he wanted to do above everything else.

She was pleased. They shook hands. The confusion left him. He was quite master of himself. Her dark eyes were not dangerous like his sister's. She was a bright, pretty girl.

"I'm sorry I can't visit with you and Doris," he said. "But I have an engagement."

"Oh." She seemed disappointed. Her eyes betrayed almost a hurt. This made him even more master of himself. He had been foolishly worried about the girl. Just a bright, pretty girl and a friend of his sister.

"By the way," he said, "you were saying the other day that you'd like a job in the state attorney's office. My secretary's quit. Would you like that?"

"Oh, Mr. Basine. That's awfully kind of you. But I ... I don't know shorthand and I suppose that...."

"That makes no difference," he smiled tolerantly. "I need somebody able to look after things in general. If you want the job, why come down and see me tomorrow morning about ten and we'll start work."

"I'd be delighted," she answered. She was about to say more but he grew curt.

"You'll excuse me, won't you. I have to run," he said. "See you at ten tomorrow, eh?" He wanted to make the thing certain because otherwise he would have to hire someone else. "At ten then," he repeated.

"If you really want me."

"I think you'll get along all right. And I need somebody at once."

He walked away with a feeling of mastery. He had overcome the confusion the sight of her had started in him. He was sincerely glad of that. He disliked the idea of entanglements. Politics was a glass house and entanglements were dangerous. Then besides, there was Henrietta.

His fidelity to his wife was a habit that had become almost an obsession. His distaste and frequent revulsion toward her made him concentrate excitedly upon the idea of fidelity.

By assuring himself of the nobility of faithfulness and of its necessity as a matter of high decency, he vindicated in a measure the fact that he seemed too cowardly to philander. He had felt this cowardliness and was continually trying to distort it into more self-ennobling emotions. This was what made him so excited a champion of domestic felicity, marital fidelity and kindred ideas. He was able to convert himself into a man whose ideals prevented him from succumbing to his lower instincts. Thus instead of feeling ashamed of the cowardliness which kept him from doing what he desired, he felt on the contrary, proud of his capacity for living up to his high ideals, which meant--of doing what he didn't want to do.

This cowardliness was an involved emotion. It was inspired by a fear of detection, if he philandered, a fear of physical and social consequences. But more than that and too curious for his thought to unravel, it was inspired by a fear of hurting Henrietta. This fear was the predominant factor in his life.

He sought at times to understand it but its understanding eluded him. He had been tempted at times to talk to Doris about it. But as yet it was a confession withheld.

The greater his distaste for his wife became and the more the thought of her grew obnoxious, the deeper did this fear of hurting her take form in him. Often when driven to anger by her increasing stupidity he would lie awake at night by her side thinking of her in accidents which might kill her. He would lie awake picturing her brought home dying--and going over in his fancy the details of her death scene.

And then as if the thing were too sweet to relinquish, he would go over in his mind the details of the funeral, picturing himself beside the grave weeping, picturing her father and the numerous mourners; giving them words to say and assigning them little parts in the drama of the burial. The thing would become a completely worked out scene--like a careful description in a novel.

Then he would picture himself returning home with his children. He would close his eyes and play with the fancy impersonally, as if he were dictating it for writing. Back from the grave with his children.... The house empty of Henrietta. The chair in which she always sat and sewed, empty. And she would never sit there again. The chair would always be empty.

At this point his fancy would grow sad. At first the sadness would be as if it were part of the make-believe--as if this fiction figure of himself were mourning the death of his wife. But gradually the sadness would change and become real. It would become a sadness inspired by the thought of her dying ... sometime. Someday she would be dead and he would be alone. And this idea would grow unbearable. Just as it had been deliciously desirable a few minutes before.

The sadness that came to him then was no more than a remorse he felt for having in his fancy planned and executed her death. A remorse inspired by his feeling of guilt. But to Basine it seemed a sadness inspired by some inner love for his wife. It would surprise him, that there was an inner love, and he would lie and think, "Oh, I don't want her dead. I love her. Poor, dear Henrietta." And he would reach over and caress her tenderly, tears filling his eyes.

It was at such moments while doing penance for the imaginative murder of his wife, that a physical passion for her would come to him. His caresses would grow warmer and in the possession of her which followed, he would be able to blot out of his memory the unbearable self-accusation aroused by his desire for her death. Thus his fear of hurting her, even of contradicting her in any way which would make her unhappy, was a device which guarded him against contemplating the impulse concealed in him--to get rid of her even by murdering her.