Part 8

Somewhere quiet till this passes off, Fanshaw was thinking. He made his way back through the house and out into the garden. Why, I'm staggering down the path. Mucky underfoot from the thaw. Bench to sit on. Dry bench. He leaned back and stared up at the streaming greypurple clouds that brightened to yellow in spots where a little sun broke through. Oughtn't to have drunk so much champagne. After all, if no one noticed... Jolly thing an oldfashioned jolly wedding. My wedding. The Macdougan wedding. If it could be Nan. But Wenny... No, no. Someone I've not met yet. Perhaps she'd have red hair, auburn hair, a Titian blonde. Aretino had to flee Venice when he was accused of sodomy. He had eight beautiful mistresses in a great palace on the Grand Canal. And I've never had a woman. Wedding parties, fellows phoning easy girls, through all that lonely as a cloud. Horrible coward, I guess. That night walking with Wenny along the road to Blue Hill couples of girls wanting to be picked up, their eyes under the arclight clicking into ours. Hullo, kiddo. Hello, cutie. But Wenny, that sort of thing just isn't done. Danger of exposure too, scandal, disease. And the street through Somerville dark under the May-rustling trees, pink blobs of arclights and the shuddering green fringes of foliage about them and the hips, the wabbly hips of stumpy girls. When walking, when welldressed people walked, thinking of the Renaissance, of distant splendid things, all this surged about them out of the long streets of night. Festering web of desire, grimy probing hands, groping eyes, toughs and hard girls circling like dogs before a fight. Wrestling sweaty bodies, hands palping, feeling, feeling up.... O, I don't want to think of all that. Oldfashioned jolly wedding. Pull yourself together.

Fanshaw sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows on his knees, staring at the gravel between his feet. After a while he got up, cold and stiff. The dazzle of the champagne had passed off. The orchestra in the house was playing a foxtrot. Probably caught a cold sitting out here like an idiot. He walked meditatively towards the conservatory, scraped his feet off on the mat and stepped in. The warm sugary air was soothing after the rawness of outdoors. He stood a long while looking at the little sprouts that had formed at the tips of the fronds of a big Australian fern. The door at the end of the conservatory opened letting in a burst of ragtime from the drawing room, voices, sliding of feet on a hardwood floor. All of a sudden he wanted to go away to be walking by himself down the road to the station. He went out into the garden again for fear someone should see him and speak to him. He'd slip away without saying goodby. Such a crowd no one could possibly notice. Groping in his pocket for his coatcheck he went round the house towards the front door. In an embrasure beside a fieldstone chimney was a trellised bench, on the bench a hat of orange tulle, beside the hat a fluffy peachcolored dress, a flushed face thrown back, a long lock of undone hair curling spikily over a shoulder, and stooped about her, half holding her up, a young man in a black suit. Her eyes were closed, his face crushed into hers. One hand gripped the young man hard like a claw by the elbow. Fanshaw stood a moment breathless staring at them. Then he walked off fast with the blood throbbing in his ears.

On the way to the station he kept thinking: And the years slip by like telegraph poles past you in the train and people marry and spoon on benches and I'm always, alone, moral, refined, restrained. If I were only made like Wenny, I'd enjoy life. Disgusting, though, out in the open like that where anybody could see, worse than factory hands at Norumbega.

One must try to be beautiful about life.

VI

Drops fell shining from the trees about him into the trodden yellow slush of the path at his feet. In the air shuddering with the foretaste of spring of the thaw were constant rainbow glints of water. Wenny's knees and shoulders ached. His feet were swollen from frostbite. The bristles on his chin rasped against the upturned collar of his coat. Well, it would be spring soon, he was saying to himself, and this spring... Fanshaw's grey raincoat and long meditative stride and his rubbers flashed past among the Saturday afternoon crowd. Without thinking Wenny ran after him.

"Hello, Fanshaw."

"O, Wenny," Fanshaw thrust out both hands; "I've been almost worried sick about you. Where have you been? My dear boy, you look a wreck."

"I don't see why?"

"Here it is, three days you've vanished from the face of the earth."

"I haven't been anywhere else that I know of."

"Nan's been fearfully uneasy."

"That's funny."

"That's quite all right. She told me all about it. I told her it was just nerves, that morning. She thought it was, too. You must take better care of yourself. But Wenny, where have you been?"

"Looking for a job."

"You poor child! Look, I've got to go to the Touraine. We can wash up and go up to Nan's. She said she'd be in at teatime."

"No, I'd rather not."

"You must come, Wenny. O, when will you grow up? Let's walk along, we're obstructing traffic."

"First, you must lend me fifty cents," said Wenny with a dry little laugh. "I'm most split with hunger."

"Can't you wait till we get out to Nan's? She'll have tea for us."

"No, I can't, Fanshaw, you old fool. I haven't eaten since yesterday morning, or maybe it was the day before that."

"Good God! There's Dupont's opposite. Let's go up there, a horrid place, but you won't mind eating something there, will you? But Wenny, why didn't you tell me you were all out of money?"

As they climbed the stair a smell of food and baking powder filled Wenny's nostrils. He inhaled it eagerly. In the restaurant it was very stuffy, a couple of waitresses in starched aprons were sitting at tables. A grimy man in his shirtsleeves carried in a tray of freshwashed glasses in through a green baize door. As Wenny pulled off his overcoat he thought he was going to faint. Letting the coat drop to the floor he grabbed the table and lowered himself into a chair. The expression of consternation on Fanshaw's face as he picked up the coat made him laugh so that his eyes filled with tears.

"Well, what will you have? Don't eat too much, it might make you sick."

"O, Fanshaw, you're such an old woman."

The waitress, a rawboned woman with dead cod's eyes, hung over the table threateningly.

"Bring me some boiled eggs and tea and toast right away, please." Something in Wenny exulted strangely under the hostile glare of the waitress as she looked at his muddy shoes and unshaven chin.

"Three minutes?"

"Yes, and quickly please."

The waitress rustled starchily away.

"How funny Fanshaw, I'd been thinking of boiled eggs for hours and I never thought about their being three minutes."

"But, where have you been, you poor child?... I've been to Cham Mason's wedding."

"Heaps of wonderful places.... I've been finding my place in society."

"Where?"

"On the benches."

"But, why didn't you go to the Alumni Employment Bureau? They'd have found you a job."

"I didn't want that kind of a job."

The smell of the bread the waitress set before him was overpoweringly sweet. His fingers trembled so he spilt half the egg on the side of the glass breaking it. He ate hurriedly without tasting anything.

"Bring me two more eggs, please.... Lord, but tea is wonderful stuff." The warm savor of tea filled his head. All of a sudden he felt very talkative. "I tried to ship as a seaman. You stand in a large room full of pipesmoke and a man chalks up the names of ships on a blackboard.... The finest names of ships: there's been the Arethusa and the Adolphus Q. Bangs and the Heart's Desire and the Muskokacola or something like that.... But, I always seemed to get down to the office too late or I didn't have five dollars to give the mate or something. Didn't have much luck with bussboy either. It's amazing, Fanshaw, how many people are just crazy to wash dishes."

Wenny laughed and choked over a gulp of tea.

"Don't eat so fast," said Fanshaw in a strange hoarse voice.

"Why not?"

"You'll choke, that's why."

"God, I wish I would... Have you ever ... felt so's you didn't care if you choked or not? D'you know I met a fine kid named Whitey. He could go without eating three days an' never notice it. I could never do that. I don't guess there's much of any thing I could do."

Fanshaw was looking at his watch.

"Really, we should be going.... I've got to go out to dinner, Wenny, I wish there were something I could do to help."

"You can pay for my eggs, you old put you."

Fanshaw paid the cheque; then he said rather solemnly:

"Look, you must let me lend you some money."

"All right, give me five bucks."

At the door, Wenny waited a moment for Fanshaw to come from the washroom. His head was singing dizzily. It's all up now, he was saying to himself. He thought of his room and his bed; delicious it will be to stretch out between the clean smooth sheets and sleep.

Going up on the car he felt a haze of contentment stealing over him. All about people nodded to the joggle, hatchetfaced women and flabby jowled men. Fanshaw's talk and his own answers droned beyond a great drowsy curtain in which the phrase Par delicatesse j'ai perdu la vie, wove in and out endlessly. Outside autos slushed through streets running with the thaw. Fanshaw was saying something about the deceitful warmth of the day, spring-like.

In front of them, four seats ahead in a blue hat with cherries on it, was Ellen. Wenny clenched his teeth, why would his damn pulse speed up so? She turned and stared at him with a comical little expression about her mouth. He drew his eyes away quickly, felt himself hideously flushing.--You skunk afraid to recognize her because she's a whore, are you? Don't want Fanshaw to know, do you? snarled an angry voice in his head. Her lips were pale today. He remembered the sweetish fatty smell of the rouge on her lips that night. And only four nights ago; how long. He didn't dare look at her again.

The car stopped.

"Come on, Wenny," came Fanshaw's voice briskly.

They were splashing along towards the purple lacework of twigs of the Fenway trees. Fanshaw was talking unconcernedly about a Caravaggio the museum had bought that had turned out to be spurious. And there were the worn gold letters The Swansea sliding down the glass door and the oil smell of the elevator. O I must go away from here. Then Nan's oval face, her voice strangely caressing. Brainstorm, the comfortable word. Teacups clinking and the steam of the teapot and dusk very misty over the Fenway.

Why hadn't he gone away with Ellen, spoken to her, kissed her in front of Fanshaw. If she'd fallen in love with him it would have been up to the ears, the whole hog; those women were like that.

"You just missed Fitzie," Nan was saying. She had just poured herself out a cup of tea into which she shook meditatively a few drops of cream from the empty pitcher. "O she's such a scream... I don't know what I'd do without her. Now I know all the gossip and about the Summer Street murder case and everything... And do you remember the girl in the Fadettes we thought was the violinist at the Venice? Well, that wasn't the girl at all. Fitzie told me all about her... It seems she came back to try to get her job again and Mrs. Thing who runs it said of course it would be impossible. I don't see what her morals have to do with her playing, do you? And the poor girl's going to have a baby... Fitzie was so funny about it, said she thought it was terrible things like that should happen so soon... O what would I do without Fitzie?"

"But the fellow she went off with must be a scoundrel," said Fanshaw. "A man like that ought to be shot."

"She ought to have thought twice before she did it, that's all. It's not his fault particularly."

"And dry-rotted scraping out Light Cavalry for the Fadettes...." Wenny caught himself. No, he wasn't going to talk. Nan looked him full in the face for an instant. Her eyes were dark, dilated; he thought she was going to burst into tears.

"Such droll things have been going on at the Conservatoire." Nan, her face flushing, threw herself into a stream of talk. "Poor Isolda Jones is madly in love with Salinski and had hysterics during her violin lesson and there's a dreadful scandal about the last Symphony concert. It seems that..." She stopped talking. No one spoke. Fanshaw moved his spoon uneasily about in his saucer. "Wenny, have some more to eat," she said sharply and got to her feet and went to the window.

Wenny sat without moving, staring at her back dark and slender against the dusk.

"You must be dreadfully exhausted, Wenny," said Fanshaw in a low voice.

"The evening star's red tonight," said Nan from the window. "Is it on account of the mist, or is it Mars, I wonder?"

"We could look it up in the almanac," said Fanshaw vaguely.

Wenny stood for a moment in the window beside Nan. His blood throbbed with other remembered stars, blooming green in the amethyst sky above the Fenway, gulped suddenly by the stupid cubes of the further apartment houses. The green of them somehow shone in the lamps down brick streets where he and Nan had gone arm in arm in a forgotten dream of walking with her through a port town and seeing at the end of the street masts and tackle and bellying sails and white steam puffs from the sirens of steamers, and going off together alone some sunset. She's in love with me. If I had the courage....

"Well, I must be off to the Hargroves' for dinner," said Fanshaw cheerfully. "O it is a relief to know you are all right, Wenny. We were worried sick about you."

"I'm tired. I must go home," said Wenny firmly and turned away from Nan.

He went away without looking at her again.

* * * *

My dear son:

It has pleased me more than I can say to hear of your sensible and manly course in taking a job. I am sure that earning your own living you will find inspiring and helpful, and that you will come to regret your past callousness and restlessness. Indeed, this great trial may be a disguised blessing. We all have to learn by experience. I myself went through moments in my youth inexpressibly painful for me to recall, bitter moments of profligacy and despair, and that I came through them with my soul alive was only by the merciful Help of the Allknowing and Allforgiving Creator in Whom I have never lost faith, nay not for one instant.

You, my dear boy, I trust and pray will follow the same course. I cannot but think that had I not let my poor sister Elizabeth take you from us, from your real Christian home, your battle might have been less hard.

Your mother joins me in love and in the earnest hope that you will come back to us.

Your loving father,

JONAS E. WENDELL.

Wenny folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. This was the third time he had read it. He gulped the rest of his coffee and left the lunchroom full of hurried breakfasters. Outside the east wind stung his face, made his eyes water.

Then it was March. Now it's April. Last time I told myself I'd kill myself if I stuck it another month. In September that was and in February and now it's April. The music of the spheres makes the months revolve... Think you fool, think. Bitter moments of profligacy and despair. That's me all right, except he got the profligacy and I get the despair. Go whoring and repent and yours is the kingdom of God. A fine system all right but he repented so damn hard he spoiled my chances. Like being a eunuch, funny that, a generation of eunuchs. Your sensible and manly course in taking a job wasting breath coaching Mr. Lelan's dubs, accounted quite a genius at it too. Inspiring and helpful. God! Poor Auntie's education. That's what it's done to me; and next winter teaching, helping to inoculate other poor devils with the same dry rot.

He was walking out along Massachusetts Avenue broad and dusty through the little jigsawed houses of Somerville. In was a bitter slategrey day of razorcold wind. In the irritation of his mood he took joy in the dust smarting in his eyes and the ache of the cold in his forehead. Gradually his thoughts faded under the regular beat of his steps. It was Sunday and church bells had begun to ring. Gee, I must go home or I'll be getting blue again, he said to himself; the biddy 'll have done the room. He walked back towards Cambridge without thinking of anything, shivering, his hands deep in his pockets. When he had slammed the door behind him he threw himself on the bed, his cheeks throbbing from the wind, and lay a long while staring blankly at the ceiling.

He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. Now he's waiting while they sing the first hymn, fiddling with his prayerbook, wondering if he's forgotten any of the main headings of the sermon. And I'm just like him. Less energy that's all. A chip of the old block. Listen to them settling back flabbily into their pews in the mustard yellow, mudpurple, niggerpink light from the imitation stained glass windows. Now they're on their feet again, better than trained seals. His voice so suave so booming--my voice will be like that--Let us pray.

Wenny sat up on the edge of the bed. God damn my father; I will live him down if it kills me.

He started turning over the pages of the books on his table, seeking escape in their familiar chattering type, in the accustomedness of their smell from the eating acid of his thoughts.

* * * *

Outside of Herb Roscoe's door, Wenny was struck by the usual faint smell of oiled leather and pipesmoke. A tall man in a grey flannel shirt with face and neck and forearms lean and very tanned, opened the door slowly to his knock.

"How's the armory?" said Wenny.

"Pretty good. How's yourself?" said Roscoe in a deep drawling voice. "Sit down." As he spoke he swept a pile of books off the arms of the morrischair. Then he stood in the fireplace, where a pair of high leather moccasins were to soak in a pan of oil, polishing a rifle while he talked. "Gee, you should have seen the scores we made at rifle practice yesterday. Not a soul could hit a barn door. I think we'll have the rottenest damn team... God, I hate this place."

"So do I," said Wenny, lying back in the chair with his eyes half closed.

"Why don't you get out of it. I'm goin' the very minute I get my degree like a flash o' lightnin'."

"Haven't got the energy."

"Hell, man, it don't take much energy to buy a railroad ticket."

"Doesn't it?"

"How's your soft job?"

"I'm going to chuck it soon. I think I'll go to Mexico with you Herb."

"All right, come along. Better learn to shoot though."

"I've had another letter from my father."

"How's he now?"

"Tickled to death."

"Well, that's damn good. I'm damn glad to hear it. You know you oughtn't to be so highbrow about your father. I imagine he's a damn good scout." Roscoe put the rifle up on the rack over the mantel and began to fill a pipe slowly and methodically. "D'you know, I think all this father and son agitation is foolishness, Wendell. You are like your father, we all are, so why fuss about it? Nobody's forcin' you to live with him. But I wouldn't stay on round here. It isn't healthy for you, seeing how you feel about it. I wouldn't stay myself, except for the library."

Roscoe walked back and forth in front of the fireplace as he talked with the soft, lithe steps of a man trying to walk noiselessly through woods.

"Say, Herb, will you lend me that little .22 revolver of yours for a day or two?"

"What do you want with it? You aren't going to shoot up the dean of the Graduate School with it, are you?"

"No, no," said Wenny laughing a little shrilly. "It's curious ... I'd like to carry a gun for a day or two ... In the first place I've never done it, and the thought of death in my back pocket makes me a little nervous, and I'd like to try my nerve out, and then I just might need it ... I'll tell you why ... I'm going in for low life a little. Heavy slumming ... I'll tell you about it in a day or two, honestly I will, when things get under way a little. There's a woman in the case and everything, and a bum and a Chinaman."

"Gee, I wish you'll let me in on it. I'm just pining away for excitement in this dull hole."

"Honestly I'll tell you all about it in a day or two, but I'm such a damn coward I want to test my nerve out alone first. Don't be uneasy if I don't turn up for a day or two. I'll be all right."

Roscoe handed him a little blue steel revolver and a handful of cartridges.

"Don't get pinched for concealed weapons."

"Never fear," said Wenny jumping tensely to his feet.

"Do be careful, Wendell; it's always the man scared of a gun who shoots himself or the innocent bystanders instead of bagging his game. Get me?"

"O, I'll be careful. Anyway, there won't be any shooting. Just a precaution like rubbers. But I must be off. I have an engagement. Thanks a lot."

Wenny, going out the door, caught a contracted look of anxiety on Roscoe's tanned face as, puffing at his pipe, he strode back and forth in front of the fireplace. Wenny went down the dark brick corridor towards his own room, the gun in his back pocket pressing hard and cold on his thigh.

* * * *

Wenny walked among the muddy paths of the Fenway. Patches of snow among the shrubberies were crumbling fast in the tingle of spring that flushed the misty afternoon. The twigs of forsythias showed intensest yellow against the sopping grey of turf. In the gravel paths there was a tiny lisping sound of water as the frost came out of the ground. The rustle of it in the ruddy light was maddening like the rustle of silk. This womanish hysteria, he was saying to himself; to escape it tense and collected the way the earth slithers out from between the tight fists of winter. A man and a woman frowsy and middle-aged, a hat with mauve pansies beside a dust-grained derby; as Wenny passed the woman was tapping restlessly on the gravel with a narrow pointed toe. The thought came to him: Perhaps Nan and I will be like that, afraid to look in each other's eyes because we didn't dare when we were young and talk about if we'd done this and if we'd done that... What a rotten thing to think about the first day of spring.

In his back pocket a hard shape pressed against the fleshy part of his thigh; from its focus his whole being was stiffening to hardness.

He turned and with a sudden spring in his step crossed the street from the park, passed the livid tomblike oblong of the Dental Clinic, and pulled open the glass door of the Swansea. A grindorgan was playing at the curb. The glass door slammed behind him, cutting off the Marseillaise on an upward note. He ran up the stairs and stood still a moment in front of the reddish-stained door.

Through a bitter film of constraint he saw Nan in a pearlgrey dress pulling open the door for him.

"I never saw that one before."

"This dress? Do you like it?"

Down the hall came the aviary sound of people at tea.

"They'll be gone in a minute; don't look so worried." Nan looked in his face with a little mocking smile that faded out tremulously as she spoke. "Do wait, Wenny, I want to talk to you."

He followed the swish of her dress down the corridor. Richly the curve of her neck caught a glow of creamy rose from the pearlcolored silk.

"Have a cup of tea," she said in her hostess voice after introducing him to a large woman with beaded tragedy eyes and a lean whiny-voiced man who stood beside the teatable. Balancing a cup, Wenny settled himself against the wall beside the mantel, tried to think of nothing.

"... Dreadful, isn't it, how Boston is being transformed?"

"No, really, you wouldn't know it any more."

"We'd got used to the Irish, but now walking across the Common you don't see a soul who's not a Jew or an Italian."

"But don't you think they bring us anything?" Nan's voice, indifferent, from the teatable.