Part 17

Basine left them. His heart was heavy, uncomfortable. He sat on the bench frowning at the scene. Eager lawyers whispering; a woman in a green hat holding a handkerchief to her eyes; a bald-headed man on the other side of the long mahogany table; faces for a background. A divorce case. The woman weeping was a wife. The bald-headed one with the air of a board of directors' meeting about him ogled his accusers with dignity. He was a husband. The jury sat dolorously inattentive in the box. A witness was testifying.

Other people's troubles. An interminable jawing back and forth--lawyers, defendants, witnesses and more lawyers. Basine frowned. Other people's troubles--and he had his own. This thing before him was an intrusion. At best he had no sympathy for the interminable jawing that went on under his eyes. He had grown passionately interested in what he called the people. But when he thought of the people he thought of them as a force, a group, an army standing with faces raised repeating certain slogans--a vision that Doris had bequeathed him. The interminable jawing, weeping, accusation and denial before him from day to day had nothing to do with the people. About these individuals he was cynical. And more, he was not interested.

The witness was testifying. The intimidating air of the judge seemed to confuse her. Her confusion irritated Basine. He turned indignantly and faced her with a bullying frown.

"What is it you're trying to say, madam? Did you see this man beat her?"

"Yes, your honor.... I.... I ... that is...."

Basine controlled his temper and grimaced humorously at the jurors whose faces at once lighted with an appreciative smile. A fearless man, Judge Basine, who couldn't tolerate the mumble mumble of legal technicalities and who struck at the roots of things when he took charge of a witness.

... They were in the room behind him. Alone. An intolerable thought. But, impossible to keep his thought away. His imagination like a merciless flagellate, belabored him with fancies. Paul would teach her. Lean over and kiss her. And she would kiss in return and whisper, "Paul...." He was unmarried and good looking. Perhaps she was heartbroken, too. He, Basine, had never spoken despite the light he had recognized of late in her eyes. She was in love with him and filled with despair because her love was useless. So now she would turn to Schroder in desperation. She would try to forget him, Basine. It was logical. Women forgot hurts in that way--by giving themselves to someone else.

The heaviness grew unbearable. Another man was touching Ruth. This was unbearable. He couldn't stand it. But why? What difference? He couldn't.... She was so beautiful. Another man's hands were desecration.

A weakness came to him. His heart darkened. What if she did, with Schroder? They were probably kissing now. It had been hard to imagine himself kissing her. To him she somehow seemed aloof, beyond possession. But it was easy to imagine Schroder. Men and women put their arms around each other and that was an end to aloofness.

He made an effort to pull himself together. Voices were droning around him--other people's troubles. Faces thrust themselves tactlessly at his eyes. He grew nauseated. He had never felt like this before. As if he must do something despite his will. His will said, "Sit there. Don't move. It's none of your business." But this other thing was pulling him out of his seat and moving his body for him.

He clenched his teeth and muttered to himself, "She's no good. Wasting my time on her!"

"That will be all for today," Basine muttered. He placed his hand wearily over his forehead. This would make them think he was ill. His clerk came forward.

"Anything wrong, Judge?" he asked with concern.

Basine shook his head with Spartan indifference to the mythical disease consuming him.

"No," he said, belying his answer in its tone, "court is adjourned until ten o'clock tomorrow."

He nodded briefly at the faces. The solicitous regard in the eyes of attorneys and jurors reassured him. He was ill, very ill--that was it. Of course, that was it. The eyes of the attorneys and jurors said, "You are working too hard. You must be careful of a nervous breakdown. In your prime too. Be careful."

He walked off the bench, his step unsteady. He was acting. But the fact that his step was not authenticly unsteady was an accident--and illogical. He felt it logical to walk unsteadily since everyone thought him ill and on the verge of a breakdown.

"You'd better go home, Judge."

Basine nodded gratefully to his clerk. He opened the door to his chambers. The sight of Schroder bewildered him. Schroder was still there. He had his hat in his hand, though. Basine stared at his friend. His heart contracted and his breath fluttered in his throat.

"What's wrong, George?"

"Nothing. Headache. Knocked off for the day."

Words were hard to speak. His eyes turned to Ruth. She was watching him. Frightenedly, he thought. Had she done something? Kissed? They looked guilty. He tried to find answers to the questions by staring at her. Was she the same as she had been? Or had she given her lips? A vital question. They were going out tonight together. Basine controlled himself. He sat down at his desk and ran his hand wearily over his head.

"Well, so long," Schroder spoke. "Hope you feel better, George." A pause. "See you later, Ruth."

See her later! They had no sympathy for his illness. They would go out and laugh, hold hands, make love--despite his trouble. He sat brooding over the cruelty of women. "Cruel. No finer feelings," he mumbled to himself.

They were alone. Was he ill? What was it that had lifted him off the bench? Nothing definite. A dark disorder in his mind, a heaviness in his heart that had seemed part of the room. He wanted to moan. Yes, he was sick.

"Can I do anything, Judge?"

He hated her. Her voice with its hypocritical concern. As if she cared for him. After what had happened between her and Schroder ... see you later ... and he called her Ruth.

"No, Miss Davis."

This was unbearable. He would insult her. There was relief in insulting her, making her suffer for something, too. But she might go away if he did. He couldn't go on with his work any more. Work was impossible. A disease was active in him sending out dark clouds that choked his thought and swelled his heart with pain. She might leave for good. Then what could he do? Nothing. But why all this make-believe? He would tell her he loved her. Simple. That would drain him of his pain. He stood up and paced. She was at her desk, he noticed, eyes large and excited.

But he could do nothing, say nothing. He was impotent. Good God! he must. How? No way he could think of. The thing was smothering him. Before--days and weeks before--he had kept it down. But now it had slid from underneath and was in his head. There was no outlet. He dared not talk.

No thoughts were in his mind. Henrietta, his children, home, morality, marriage, none of these was in his mind. But there was a restriction, a wall he could not pass. There were things holding him with merciless hands. They gripped at his body and thrust themselves like gags into his mouth.

She had risen and was standing near the window. If he kept to his pacing he must come near her. It was her fault. He was just pacing. She was in his path. If he walked straight to the end of the room she would be in his path. Why should he turn out for her?

He paused beside her. He must say nothing. It was talk that was impossible. He stood looking at her until his eyes grew bewildered. There was a moment in which he seemed to vanish from himself, as if he had stepped bodily out of himself. His thought paralyzed with a curious terror, he saw nothing. The moment of unconsciousness passed and he was still alive and still on his feet. His voice lay under control in his throat and the memory of his name sat like a perpetual visitor in his thought.

But there was a change. A miraculous thing had happened. He was no longer Basine. He was a stranger in a strange world. He was holding her in his arms. An impossible sensation was in him. This was something he couldn't believe. He wanted to look at himself. He had his arms around her. But there was no woman in the circle of his arms. He was holding something that let his delirium escape. Torments were emptying themselves in the embrace. The miseries that had accumulated under the surface of his months of resistance, were leaving him, flying from him. His heart was growing unbearably light.

"Oh!" he murmured. Her arms had tightened and he saw her eyes approach him. They were rapturous.

She was warm, intimate, close to him. Her lips, still piquantly strange, were offering themselves. She was unlike everything he knew. A startling vigor, as if he had been changed into a rampaging giant, swept him as they kissed. He was great, strong. He could walk over the heads of the world. He had no need for further embrace. He stepped away, his face radiant.

Ruth looked at him in confusion. This was a new Basine. He frightened. The mask was gone, the frown of preoccupation. She grew dizzy in the light of his eyes. He was a stranger. What should she call him? But he was talking to her in a voice that he seemed to have kept secret.... "I love you, Ruth. I love you."

He laughed. She smiled uncertainly and felt that her face looked awkward. She could see the lines of her cheeks bulging as she lowered her eyes. This confused her and made her feel stiff. There had been something of this sort a few minutes ago in Paul Schroder when he had tried to take her hand. But now the thing she had noted calmly in Schroder seemed a puny imitation. Here it was real. He was laughing, softly, joyously. He was like a boy. Her heart filled with panic. She put her arms quickly around his neck and pressed herself close to him. The panic went out of her deliciously.

"George, I love you. I'm so happy."

They sat looking at each other, an excited smile in Basine's eyes. His body was tingling. A new sense had come. It lived in his fingers. He was holding her hand. His fingers were charged with an amazing energy. They seemed to have become part of a different person. He was able to enjoy the ecstasy that confused his fingers as if it were an external emotion. The rest of him was clear, almost tranquil.

"Well," he said. It was still hard to talk. He was aware of incongruities. He was not Basine talking, not the new Basine, not the one whose fingers danced and throbbed. His voice belonged to other Basines--other characterizations whose awkward ghosts fluttered nervously in his thought. He would discuss this phenomenon. It was easy, after all. Be honest. She was one with whom he could be astonishingly honest. They were isolated. The world was a futility. There was an end to make-believe now. It was all honest, tranquil, joyous. He began again:

"Well, isn't it strange. I can hardly talk to you. I'm not used to us yet. This way. I've loved you since I first saw you. But I've told so many lies about that to both of us...." He paused to smile at her as if asking her not to believe him a liar, or if she must--a liar in a high cause--"that the things I want to say now seem like ... like the contradictions of something. Of old lies ... in a way."

She nodded.

"Oh, I know," she whispered. A preposterous admiration of her intelligence overcame him. Of course she understood! It was unnecessary to talk to her. She had kissed and embraced him. She had felt the same things he had. And now, their thoughts were alike. They were like one person, having shared something that filled them. It was unnecessary to talk. Because if he remained silent she knew he was thinking of her. A charming sense of comradeship came to him.

"I feel," he said, "as if we were too intimate for words."

She nodded again and smiled.

"We'll make a holiday," he added. "Come, we'll go for a drive."

They embraced. This time he thought of Henrietta. Ruth was different from his wife. Her shoulder blades felt different under his fingers. It was impossible to think they were both women. His arms around Henrietta meant nothing. His arms around Ruth now--he closed his eyes in order to closet himself with indefinable sensations.

They emerged from the traffic of the loop. Basine at the wheel of his newly purchased roadster dropped a hand on hers.

"I feel better like this," he said.

"Isn't it wonderful," she whispered.

He would have liked to tell her they were floating over buildings. But he kept silent. Words were still self-conscious interlopers. The houses moved away. A spring wind was in their faces. They were silent. The pavements ended. Basine brought the car to a stop.

"I don't know what to do," he said. "I'm so happy."

He placed his arms around her. The touch of her body through his clothes was a reminder of something. He gave it no words. They sat embraced, their faces together and an unspoken laugh in their hearts. The sun was high overhead. Basine tried to remember himself ... Henrietta, his home, his position. Ah, banalities. He was proud. He was above remorse, regret; above himself. There was nothing in the world as beautiful as the moment he commanded.

Ruth leaned avidly against him as if seeking refuge in his arms. He sat thinking. "It is right. Everything right. I've done nothing. No compromise. Nothing. I'm happy. There's nothing to frighten me."

He felt released.

17

Summer lay like a Mandarin coat over the city. It was June. Warm, sun-awninged streets glistened with ornamental colors. Women in gaudy fabrics, men in violent hat bands, straws, panamas, striped shirts, sun parasols like huge discs of confetti, freshly painted red and green street cars, pastel tinted automobiles--all these tumbled like a swarm of sprightly incoherent adjectives along the foot of the buildings.

The store windows like deaf and dumb hawkers grimaced at the crowds. Ice creams, silks, swimming suits, and sport paraphernalia; jaunty frocks, white trousers, candies, festive haberdashery, drugs, leather goods, wicker furniture and assortments of lingerie like the symbols of fastidious sins--all these grimaced behind plate glass.

The city was in bloom. People, perspiring and lightly dressed, sauntered by the plate glass orchards. Summer filled the city with reminiscent smells. Sky, water, grass scampered like merry ghosts through the carnival of the shopping center. Warm, sun-awninged streets; ornamental men and women--summer spread itself through the crowds, warmed the bargain hunters, loiterers, clerks, stenographers, business men and housewives into a half sleep.

They peered lazily at each other. Their mysterious preoccupations seemed to have subsided. The sun made holiday in the streets and the high, fluttering windows showered endless tiny suns on the air. The morning held the unreal soul of some forgotten picnic.

Ten o'clock. Fanny Gilchrist turned with an inward sigh and walked out of the crowded business street. This was LaSalle street and, concealed in the buildings around her, were people who knew her and might see her. Accidentally bump into her.

The crowds grew thinner and less familiar types of faces drifted by. This was better. She wasn't exactly afraid. But what if someone did bump into her accidentally? Then she would have to say where she was going and, if she lied, perhaps they would insist upon coming along and discover it. But that was foolishness. One never met people in streets like that.

Men looked at her with casual interest, with insignificant enthusiasm, as she walked by them. A bright-haired, shining-eyed young woman with a body undulating softly under a grey and green trimmed dress; she seemed to light up the dingy pavements. Other women passed lighting them up also. Each new female illuminant was welcomed with thankful, greedy eyes.

Her red sailor jauntily tilted and the silken gleam of her face were like part of a luscious mask. She was a woman hurrying somewhere and men, bored with other women, looked at her enthusiastically. She was one of the many enigmatic ones, one of the many gaudy colored masks behind which sex paraded its mystery through the sun-awninged streets. Eyes ennuied with the memory of sex lighted eagerly in the presence of its masks. The flash of ankles and the swell of thighs under pretty fabrics were diversions even for moralists.

Schroder waiting patiently on a street corner watched the warm crowd. She wouldn't come. Yes, she would. Well, another five minutes would tell.

He saw her and his excitement changed. A leisurely smile came to his face. His body relaxed. He was a connoisseur in rendezvous and his enjoyment of the moment which witnessed her approach was deliberate. Women in themselves did not interest him so much. Their bodies--pleasant, yes. But after all--a finale. And one does not applaud finales.

But now, watching her lithe figure hurrying toward him was a diversion to be sipped at, contemplated in all its emotional detail, and enjoyed. Later it would be this moment he remembered, if he remembered anything--which was uncertain. For his memories which had in his younger days glistened in his thought like a mosaic of eroticism, had of late blurred to a monotone. He could remember women, liaisons, passion phrases and great enthusiasms but, curiously, they seemed all identical. To recall how one woman had sighed in his arms was to recall the whole pack of them. As if the souls of his paramours and the manner of their surrenders were contained completely in the recollection of any one detail.

But despite his ennui, this moment of approach still delighted him. The woman hurrying to his side was not yet a woman. She was still a mystery whose inevitable and never varying sensualism was masked for a final instant behind unfamiliar fabrics. There was a piquant unreality, a diverting strangeness, as she smiled at him. She was somebody he did not know. He was authentically bored with women. But for the moment it was not a woman approaching--rather a new color of cloth, a new combination of dress, a new species of social poise and gesture were presenting themselves for ravishment. In these unfamiliar surfaces lay a tenuous mystery as if it were these externals he was about to embrace. And in the contemplation of this mystery, his interest revived itself. He sighed. It was a mystery which would vanish shortly.

"Hello, dearest."

He greeted her softly, with regret. A quixotic impulse to turn and walk away before she spoke had died in him.

Fanny was staring expectantly. He was familiar with the expression. Not in her, but in others. This took away its charms. Married women were nearly all alike. Full of distressing short cuts, with an irritating and incongruous professionalism behind their bewilderment. What dolts husbands must be to blunt women like that.

As he took her hand and felt her fingers clutch excitedly around his palm he remembered in an instant the predecessors of her type. Full of distressing short cuts. When they gave their hands they withheld nothing. They denuded themselves with a look, with a handclasp. And the subtlety of skirmishing seemed entirely foreign to them. When they embraced it was with an appalling directness. Yes, in intrigue they were all alike--all like precocious children; vague, bewildered children mimicking the precisions of their elders and exclaiming with distressful incongruity:

"Tut, tut. Let's come to the point. Let's get down to brass tacks and stop beating around the bush."

Well, here she was and the scene was on.

"Am I late?"

"No, dearest. I was just a little early so as to enjoy the impatience of waiting for you."

The nuance was lost upon her. Amorous women were a cold audience for technique.

"I'm so upset. Do you mind?"

"Not at all, Fanny. Of course you're upset. But it only adds to your charm."

He had long ago abandoned love-making tactics, sensing that women who came to him were not particularly interested in tender pretenses. They desired flattery, but direct and practical variants. This one was like the others, flushed, eager, frightened and gay. He felt an exhilaration as they walked toward the entrance of the unpretentious hotel around the corner. A sense of conquest. It was nothing to be enjoyed in itself. But if people knew, which they never could, alas, they would be awed by the ease with which he accomplished such things. One, two, three meetings and--here they were again. Paul Schroder entering a hotel with a woman at his side.

"This isn't a bad place," he whispered. "I've already registered. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Johnson. It's better if you know your name, of course."

Fanny stood tremblingly in front of the elevator cage as he walked to the desk. She noticed his carelessness, the unselfconscious way in which he smiled at the clerk and paused to buy some cigars. The fear that had grown in her since she left her home appeared to be reaching a climax. Her knees shivered under her dress and a catch in her throat made breathing difficult.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she repeated silently to herself, and tried to understand the cause of her trembling. Even if there were consequences--there was Aubrey. She smiled nervously. It was his fault. He was a fool.

They entered the elevator. A sleepy boy shut the cage door after them. Schroder gripped her arm and his fingers caressed the soft flesh. She turned to him and smiled. She was no longer afraid. A shameless, exultant light kindled in her eyes. She leaned against him with a shiver as the elevator lifted slowly.

* * * * *

... They had decided to check out in time for her to return home for dinner.

"I don't have to go up to the desk with you, do I?" she asked.

Schroder smiled tiredly.

"Oh no," he said, "you wait at the entrance with the property suit case. Then we'll both take a cab and drive a few blocks. I'll get out with the bag and you drive on home. It's simple."

Nevertheless the fear she had experienced in the morning returned as she watched him go to the desk. In another minute it would be all over and everything would be all right. But now--what if someone saw them? Bumped into her accidentally. The lassitude which had filled her when she locked the tumbled hotel room behind her, gave way to a curious panic. Her tired nerves became unhappily alive.

"Why--hello, Mrs. Gilchrist."

She was unable to see the man for an instant. Her mind had darkened. "I mustn't faint," she murmured to herself. She was looking at an unshaven, dissipated face that smiled. As she looked her world seemed to be falling down. Everything gone--ruined. Because a face was smiling. Tom Ramsey. The man's name popped into her thought.

"Hello," she muttered.

Schroder approached and frowned. He took her arm and led her away. She began to cry in the cab.

"He saw us. He knows. He'll tell everybody. Oh my God! Why did you come up when you saw him? If you'd only realized. Oh, why did I do it? Now everything's ruined. I'm lost."

She wept, knowing the futility of tears. An accident that seemed provokingly unreal and soothingly unimportant--Tom Ramsey. Yet the name was like a guillotine block on which her head lay stretched.

Schroder, annoyed, tried to console her.

"Who was it? Listen, pull yourself together. People always imagine themselves guiltier looking than they are. He probably thought nothing wrong."

"Tom Ramsey. Didn't you see how he looked at me? Oh, God, I'm sick."

"Who is he?"

"He used to be my mother's friend. But he went to the dogs. He's just a tramp now. He isn't a gentleman."

Schroder sighed.

"Oh well," he said, "there's no use worrying. Come, put it out of your head."

"I can't. Oh, I can't. Why did I do it. I'll kill myself if ... if anything happens. Aubrey will.... Oh Paul, I feel sick."