Part 13

That's an ambitious attempt to compress the evolutionary processes into a page, she reflected. On the shelf devoted to her beloved Frenchmen she took down A Rebours and read what Huysmans wrote of the poem in prose of Mallarmé's in particular ... "the adjective placed in such an ingenious and definite way that it ... would open up such perspectives that the reader would dream whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet ... a spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons scattered through the universe...." "I confess I'm not one of the ten," said Mona aloud, for she often wedded her interior dialogue to the exterior. "I should die of mental starvation on such a condensed literary diet; it may be poetic, but it is too peptonic, and my soul can't be fed with prose pemmican. Yet Frustrate is a strange panorama of sex and evolution. 'Every monad has its day.' True, I wonder if this orchestra of cells that I call 'Moi' will ever have its day? The time of my fruition is afar. Who is the Siegfried that will release this Brunnhilde from her bed of fire? That's a question which every girl puts to herself in a thousand different forms. I should like to be married. I love children. There is no other adequate method to lure them into this chilly life but the mating of men and women. Really, Mona, does the man matter much? Eugenics, a fine word for an impossible thing! I like Ulick. He wouldn't make me happy, I know. But what's the difference if I can hold his baby and mine to my breast? Nothing else counts. I'm in a nice depressed mood tonight. I musn't forget to take a pill. It's usually the liver, and calomel is the last resource of the virtuously bilious. Oh! dear, I wonder what he is doing now? With that horrid woman? Not that I care. Why should I? Ulick is nothing to me. Young men must observe the laws of hygiene or else be ill, so he says. I believe him. What about women? Are they so differently constructed? Saints? I don't believe it. If we were frank, we should tell the whole truth--women are much more amorous than men, although the emotion with us is more massive, yet more diffused. There! I've told my mirror the truth. Polichinelle's secret. Because of our excessive temperament we have been put behind bars for ages. Heavens! Every household is a harem with one lawful wife; the concubines live elsewhere. Some day women will go on a sex-strike. Then the men will crawl. If it's right for the men to go philandering, why isn't it right for the women? I wonder what Milt would say if he could peep into my brain at this moment? Horrified he would surely be. That Dora! Alfred Stone says she is very pretty. Pooh! I know what his 'pretty' means. A lascivious kitten. But she serves the purpose. I don't mind the physical facts; men have strong stomachs, but how can a superior young man like Ulick stand the vulgarity, the stupidity of such a girl! Maybe she isn't stupid or vulgar. That singer, Esther Brandès is a law unto herself; no doubt has a regular flock of lovers ... artistic women are privileged ... I wish I was an artistic woman. I've never had a real affair. If these monads of mine are to have their day it's high time they began. Only to think of it, I was once spoony over Alfred. I can't endure his presence now. They say we always return to our first loves. What nonsense. We usually turn down a side street when we see an old beau approaching. I know I do. I wonder whether Ulick really was in earnest about our dream-children? Our monads must have been mighty lively when we held hands at the Casino and at Martin's. What were their names, those children? Shamus, Tenth Earl, or is it Marquis of Thingamajig somewhere in Ireland? Shamus and----? Wasn't there a horse or a mare in the dream? Yes, yes, I have it, Brunnhilde's white horse, or was it one of the white horses of 'Rosmersholm'? No, it wasn't Ibsen at all, it was Wagner. Grane! Aha! That's it. Grane and Shamus. What darlings they must be, and their mother who conceived and bore them never saw them except in her dreams. But they are more real than flesh and blood children. Our dream children. I'm beginning to think I love Ulick.... Oh! he is a dear. I'd better go to bed or I'll end a lunatic. When a woman ceases to be mistress of herself she is likely to become the mistress of a man. Dreams. Heigho! Now for my bed of tormenting fire not on Brunnhilde's fire-begirt rock, but between my sheets. But the fire is there just the same ... the fire ... the lovely, teasing fire that brings dreams ... and Ulick ... and our dream-children, Shamus and Grane ... Shamus...."

V

Mentally refreshed after her monologue and physically buoyant because of a dreamless night Mona ate a hearty breakfast. No lilies and languour for her in the golden morning hours. She read a newspaper. Her appetite for the realities we call "life" was fresh; in the evening she couldn't bear the sight of printed news. The post brought her two letters. One told her that her subscription to a musical publication had expired; a glance at the superscription of the other sent her scurrying upstairs to her Ebony Tower, as she fantastically named her study. It was from him, the father of her dream-children, the one man in the world for her. As if dazzled by an unexpected flash of lightning she saw the truth; she loved Ulick Invern. She must make him her husband,--or?... She read his letter. It began thus:

"Grane and Shamus stood near the big tree in the cool park listening to the song of the leaves. This tree had been nice to them, no branches had harshly croaked: 'Go away. I hate little boys and girls.' This tree they heard saying nice things about them to the cross, crooked crab-apple tree next to it.... They loved the singing trees. They loved to be under the 'few large stars', their faces buffeted by sudden little winds from the lazy white clouds in the sky. They were not keeping faith with their mamma. They had promised to be home before dusk and yet they lingered in the twilight park as if they were birds that perched and slept in the hollow night. Their mother longed for them and sent Nursie to fetch them home. But the voices of the leaves held them captive; they overheard the strange secrets and sorrows of the trees. 'O, if only we could run about like those queer human children! Moving plants. If only our branches, which are our arms, could become free and fly through the air instead of cowardly waving to the prompting of every vagrant breeze. Alas! we are rooted in the soil. What crime did our arboreal ancestors commit that we must so suffer and atone for it? In what faraway forest is buried the sinister evidence of the trees fall from grace?' Shamus nudged Grane. 'Do you hear what the trees are telling us?' 'Of course I do, Shamus,' pertly answered Grane, 'but I don't understand them any more than you do.' 'Grane, I'm afraid, let's go back to the house.' 'Cry-baby' retorted his sister, 'I'm not a bit afraid.' They lingered on. The trees still babbled. Then the clear voice of Nursie reached their ears. 'Grane! Shamus! Your mamma wants you to come in right away. Papa is asking for you.' Hand in hand they traversed the field; it didn't seem so big now. They saw a sickle of silver fire floating over the tree tops. It was the new moon. Elated, they both wished that their mamma would reveal the secret of the trees. She gently smiled at their insistent questioning. 'The trees,' she explained, 'were naughty once upon a time in the long-ago. They disobeyed their parents and left their cabin in the woods. Soon they were lost and begged to be shown the way back in the black darkness. Alarmed by their lamentings, the moon appeared and pointed the path of light to their house. They promised never to leave their roots any more.' She looked at Grane and Shamus, and at their papa. He bowed his head. He, too, had wandered in the dark forest and had been lost like the little trees. Then the mama took her darlings to her bosom and over their tiny golden heads she smiled--a smile of tender pity and forgiveness."

Her eyes swimming with unshed tears Mona threw herself on the bed her burning cheeks buried in a pillow. This whimsical letter profoundly moved her. Every fibre of longing, of sweet desires, of craving motherhood tugged at her heart, knocked at the door of her soul and unbidden entered and took possession.... Milt would have told her that seven evil ones possessed her; but she knew better. She was, at last, a woman, with a woman's complex passion, and also a woman's stern purpose. Every monad has its day, she sobbed, but remained dry-eyed. I mean to have mine. Now or never.... It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Mona passed her mother in the doorway. "Where in the world are you off to so late, Mona? It's surely going to rain and you haven't your unbrella. Dear, dear, what a forgetful girl you are." "I'm only going across the park, mamma, and if it threatens, I'll run home," she explained; but her mother shook her head. "You will get wet, and then it will be too late to return." Mona went her way but said naught of her secret errand.

VI

Ulick was reading Le Jardin de Bérénice in his music-room. He had not enjoyed his luncheon, and fearing sleep, for he detested afternoon naps, he took refuge in the pages of the subtle Barrès. It was beginning to darken, though it couldn't have been more than four o'clock, but rain had set in and he was about to turn on the lights when he heard taps on his glass door; this tapping was immediately followed by the entrance of Mona, veiled, and mysterious. He couldn't refrain from frowning, and then he hoped she hadn't noticed his dissatisfaction. She went to him and kissed him. Ulick, surprised, kept his head. "You darling Mona, and I had never expected to see you again." And with that he grasped her and the lovers embraced. Mona made no pretence of coyness. She hugged Ulick as if for the last time. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He was greatly touched, also alarmed by her fervour. But he asked no explanation of her conduct in running away from him; she vouchsafed none. They were happy to be together. What the use of words! He finally begged of her, seeing that she was pale from emotion, to remove her hat and wraps, and he made her sit on the couch close to him. After a pause, she said:

"Ulick, our children, our dream-children, they are born at last, and they are loved by their parents, are they not?" He smiled, though he felt uncomfortable at this putting of the horses behind the cart; in fact, his conscience was beginning to toll warning bells. He had solemnly promised Milt, had he not, and in this very room, that he would respect his sister! And here she was, that adorable sister, in his arms, only a few days after the interview with her brother. Ulick resolved on stern conduct. He gently drew away from Mona and looked at her as steadily as his beating arteries would permit him. She sat up and asked: "Ulick, you have something on your mind. What is it, dearie?" He winced. The same depressing word that Dora always used. He loathed it. It was so commonplace; worse, it had such a "professional" ring. Hearing it now gave him a mental excuse for reaction. He rose, pressed a button, and the apartment became cruelly illuminated. Mona blinked, shaded her eyes with her veil. She didn't like such a glare, she told him, She was irritated. Her current had been turned off that electric current of the sexes. Ulick sat down before his study table. He was already bored; she recognized the symptoms. He drummed with his fingers, his glance went over her head. Evidently he wished her away. She regretted the generous élan that had propelled her into his arms. But she didn't stir from the couch. Another pause, long, distressing to both. Ulick yawned. This was the culminating insult. Her pride pricked, she sat rigid as a candle and regarded the man she loved, the man who fathered her dream-children. Then, "Ulick," she whispered, "Ulick, my love, come to me. Don't let silly reasons keep us apart any longer. Ulick, I say, come at once to your mamma, your little mamma. Oh! Ulick don't forget Grane and Shamus." She stamped her foot. She was growing excited, and Ulick wished himself a thousand miles away. He knew where this would lead. He didn't trust his nerves, which always played him false with women. He knew that his promises to Milt were as naught if this enchanting girl opened her arms. And now she was opening those seductive arms. He felt lost. He didn't think of the future, of marriage; the vivid moment overwhelmed him, swept him down to disaster, a disaster that would be shared--Oh! how bitterly shared--by this imprudent girl. Imprudent? Better say, crazy girl.

He paced the floor. He made up his mind to vanish altogether rather than fall into the burning pit. Milt's phrases came to his memory. Suddenly he resolved on a plan of action. He turned to her. "Mona," he said, "it's getting late. It's raining. Hadn't we better be going?" She didn't budge. He felt ashamed at the crudity of his speech. He had ardently longed for this meeting, and now he was acting like a cowardly eunuch. Mona grasped his hand as he irresolutely stood before her. "Ulick, don't let us waste our happiness. Jewel, love, I'm here. I came to you. I am the suitor. Take me, Jewel, take me. Tomorrow it may be too late." The rising storm was ominously hysterical. She was become uncontrollable. She tried to drag him down to her. He resisted her tumultuous onset blushing like a virgin. Obstinately she tugged at his arm, sitting all the while. For an instant "nymphomaniac" flashed across his consciousness. He dragged his arm from her grasp.

"The open door, the open door to freedom, Jewel," she gasped, and arising she seized him with such passion that he was panic-stricken. He ran into his bedroom bolting the door. Mona, now quite beside herself reached the switchboard and the room was darkened. She went to the closed door and began beating upon its panels with her fists.

"The open door, Ulick, the open door!" she cried and her voice had the accents of a delirious woman. "Oh, please, for God's sake open the door, Jewel----" "It's surely maternal nymphomania," he muttered on the other side of the door. "What shall I do? If she keeps on shrieking she will alarm the house--perhaps the police--horrible!--an ambulance--the police-station--the scandal--her parents--Milt--my God! what shall I do?----" The pounding redoubled. She moaned.

"Make me a woman, Jewel, make me a woman! Open the door, make me a woman!" Perspiration almost blinded him. Make her a woman!... She was the stronger ... as strong as death....

The door slowly opened. Mona fell into his arms, still sobbing: "Make me a woman, Jewel, make me a woman"....

Mona on reaching her home didn't go into the dining-room; instead she rang for her maid and bade her bring tea and toast to the studio; she had a headache, and please let her mother and father know that she wouldn't come down to dinner. Then she went to her mirror and carefully searched as if she were seeking something. Her features were not discomposed, her expression as usual; perhaps she was a trifle paler than her wont, otherwise--rien! Yes, her eyes seemed as if they had been well-washed, as if a beneficent rain had carried away all the signs of discontent, rebellion, unhappiness. Mona tried to imagine herself supremely happy. She wasn't. Then impatiently snapping her fingers she looked at her doll on the bed: "It's frightfully over-advertised, Dolly, that's what love is." Dolly only stared, sphinx-wise.

VII

One evening Ulick leaned over Dora's balcony. He had called unannounced, and found her in anything but an amiable mood. "It's you, is it?" was her reception. He had not been very attentive of late, and Dora, despite her kittenish airs, was strictly business in her methods. With her, one nail replaced another. The devil take the hindmost. If you haven't any money, you needn't come around. Time is money. What are you here for? When you're dead, you're dead a long time. She was fond of repeating this chaplet of pearly wisdom as she faced her favourite work of art, framed and hung on the alcove of her bedchamber: "Rock of Ages cleft for me" was the legend this lovely picture bore. Dora, who wasn't particularly imaginative, saw herself as the attudinizing female who so closely clung to the cross in a typhoon that would have sunk a fleet, but didn't disturb her chaste draperies. She impressed Dora. A vague notion nestled in the recesses of her conscience that she wasn't precisely leading a noble life, and that the necessary rock of ages for her was a comfortable bank account.

He was not disturbed by her cool phrase. It wasn't a novelty. He stared at the town and thought that when the softer and richer symphony of the night arrives, when the jarring of one's ego by the innumerable racking noises has ceased, when the city is preparing to forget the toilsome day, then the magic of New York begins to operate; its missing soul peeps forth in the nocturnal transfiguration. However, not on Broadway, with its thousand lights and lies, not in opera-houses, theatres, or cafés, but from some perch of vantage must the nocturnal scene with all its mysterious melancholy beauty be studied. He saw a cluster of blazing lights across at the West Side Circle, a ladder of fire the pivot. Further down theatre-land dazzled with its tongues of flame. Literally, a pit, white-hot. Across in the cool shadows of the east are level lines of twinkling points. The bridges. There is always the sense of waters not afar. The hotels are tier upon tier starry with illumination. The Avenues, long shafts of bluish-white electric globed fire. The monoliths burn as if to a fire-god their votive offerings. In the moonlight mansions on Fifth Avenue seemed snow-driven. The Synagogue opposite the park, half byzantine, half moresque, might have been mistaken for an Asiatic mosque as it lay sleeping in the moon-rays. The park, as if liquified, flowed in plastic rhythms, a lake of velvety foliage, a mezzotint dividing the east from the west. Sudden furnace bonfires leap up from the Brooklyn side; they are purely commercial; Ulick looked for Whistler's rockets. Battery Place and the Bay are operatic, the stage for a thrilling fairy spectacle. The dim, scattered plain of granite house-tops are like a petrified cemetery of immemorial Titans. At night, he mused, the city loses its New World aspect. It reveals the patina of Time. It is a city exotic, semi-barbaric, the fantasy of an oriental sorcerer who had been mad enough to evoke from unplumbed and forgotten seas the long lost Atlantis....

The buzzing of the annunciator, a man's voice aroused Ulick from his reverie. He hopped into the room where he found Paul. The greeting of the pair was cordial; there wasn't the slightest feeling of jealousy between them, and this was something Dora detested. Competition is the life of cocottes, she declared early and often. In her feline fashion she had tried to arouse the jealousy of Paul and Ulick, but vainly. Ulick was touchy when Easter's name was in the mouth of Paul, and he knew that if Paul ever dared to speak of Mona disrespectfully, he would smash him. But jealousy over Dora? Pas pour trois sous!

Dora was a safe port in emotional storms. When all fruit fails welcome haws, runs the adage. Ulick had been on the jagged edge of ennui ever since the visit of Mona. He hadn't the courage to look into his soul, black with a viler sin. To distract himself, like the man who drinks to forget, he had gone up to Dora's overlooking the fact that it was, for all he knew, Paul's "evening at home." Still, no bones were broken and he shook Paul's hand and said bienvenu! Dora glowered. She talked to herself. She went into the kitchen and raised her voice to the new cook. She noisily rattled dishes, pushed the furniture and behaved like a woman misunderstood. She, too, had her grievances. These fellows of hers weren't behaving on the square. Now, what did Ulick Invern mean by coming up when he knew he would run into Paul! Did he do it on purpose, just to annoy her? She whimpered in the pantry as she took down the decanter of whisky and put the glasses on a tray; whatever else might be criticised in her conduct no one ever would accuse her of inhospitality. This consoling idea struck her and to drive it home more securely in her self-esteem she helped herself to a generous drink. It was not the first "hooker" she had drunk that day; in fact, she was admirably intoxicated when Ulick arrived, and she knew that he noticed it. It was her standing grievance against him that he couldn't be persuaded to drink or smoke. It seemed to put him on a pedestal above her and she hated pedestals. Now there was Paul--always half-stewed.... She fetched in the liquor.

They played cards, that is, Dora and Paul wrangled over some game, Ulick interesting himself in a newspaper; there wasn't a book in the apartment fit to open. Dora's dissatisfaction grew apace. Slapping the cards down she called to Ulick: "You're the nice one I don't think. You don't drink or smoke, you can't even play poker. What are you good for anyhow?" Bored, Ulick went into the hall after his hat and stick. The hints of Dora were not cryptic. He felt that three is company, two none, and he determined to leave them to their desperate ennui à deux. But he had counted without Paul.

"Where are you off to, old top?" Paul asked. "Wait a bit and I'm with you." Dora revolted. "You make me tired, both of you. First Ulick, then you, Paul, and you're going to see the girls, I swear to that." "No," politely contradicted Paul, "no girls when we can have your company Dodo." "That's why you slip away and leave me to spend the evening alone within four walls. Well, that's where you'll get left. I'm going to ring for a taxi and I'll go across to Edie's. She always has company." She was again on the verge of tears. Paul's next speech precipitated the explosion, though from an unexpected quarter. Turning to Ulick he had banteringly remarked:

"Jewel, I'm off to Europe Saturday. I'm going to Paris on the fastest boat I can get, the 'Deutschland'. I hope to see Easter in Paris. Shall I give her your love?" He meant it innocently, but his manner proved the red rag to the bull. Ulick became pale, surest sign that he was angered. He didn't answer at once, then, as he stood in the doorway, he said in his chilliest voice: "I never discuss ladies with such men as you and particularly in such surroundings." This rude speech sent Paul up into the air; he, too, had been drinking far more than was good for him. He went over to Ulick and said: "What's the matter with you? Can't I mention Easter's name without you rearing on your hind legs? Perhaps I should have asked for Mona's permission"--He got no further. Ulick's reach was long, his attack swift--he hadn't studied for naught boxing with his father's old fencing-master, an Irishman, in Paris. He landed his "left" full on Paul's chest and Paul reached the floor amid a huge clatter of displaced chairs, the table, its glasses and decanter. He lay there, not so much stunned, as reflective. Decidedly he was not in the same class with this heroic Franco-American. Dora came to the rescue with screams of rage. Aroused by the scrimmage a coloured girl stood staring from the kitchen, the whites of her eyes like cream, thunder-curdled. She proved the lightning-rod that drew off the accumulated electricity of Dora, who was fearful that the row had been overheard in the eminently respectable house. She flew at the unfortunate cook.