Part 18

When he was gone, she wandered from room to room, from window to window, peering out at the black sky, at the drenched cypresses, the bedraggled arbor. The little cat asked to be let in. “I must find a home for you,” Lilah said. Because, like Lilah, the little cat loved soft and beautiful things, she was forever crying at closed doors, begging to be let in to warmth and light. But no one cared, because it is not enough to love soft things, beauty--

The house-agent, rattling his keys, interrupted her. He had an air of relishing the situation and there was, at the same time, something sly and insinuating in his manner. He stared, immediately, at everything as if he expected to find that some of the furniture had been removed. He asked whether Lilah intended to remain at the “Villino Sans-Souci,” which had been leased by the “poor gentleman” for a year.

Lilah realized, with a shock of positive terror, that she must leave the house at once.

“An English gentleman is most anxious to take the house. Perhaps, next week--to be precise, Wednesday--the _signora_ will surrender the property?”

Afraid of his eyes, Lilah said: “I cannot move before the first of the month. The rent is paid until then.”

This was a mistake. The agent repeated that his English client must take possession at once--or find another, suitable house. It was not a simple matter to find tenants for houses in the country, the _forestieri_ preferred, as a rule, the life and gayety of the city. “As for me, _signora_, I would die of the melancholy in this place.”

“Wednesday, then,” Lilah said. She shut him out with a weary gesture.

Where on earth should she go? Now, of course, she could not ask Robert, or Junius, for money. She had burned her bridges.

She packed Flagg’s things, vaguely intending to give them to some one who might need them--the farmer next door or that tall idiot boy who lived over the hill, the one who could imitate the birds and sat all day calling them, delighted by his own cleverness. Lilah could not kiss Flagg’s things, or caress them. Some women might have, but they would not have been the kind of women who love deeply. Lilah shook his clothes out, folded them, with a sort of frozen indifference, as if they had belonged to some one else. She had had her hour of bravery, alone with him. She had sat with death. No one, not even David Brenner, could call her a coward now.... But at the end, Flagg’s eyes shut her out. He had gone away without her, still cherishing his secrets.... Selfish.... The word rang in her ears.

She got up, went quickly downstairs and to his desk where that little heap of manuscript lay untouched. She began to read eagerly, hearing his voice in every word.... How long would it be before she would forget his voice? How long must she suffer like this?

She could not understand what he had written.... No wonder that he had never confided in her. He had either gone infinitely further along the paths she feared and shrank from, or else he had been deluded, blinded by glimpses of the infinite. His phrases had no meaning for her. How far must she go, she wondered, before she could judge, appraise him? She would know, some day, whether he had been selfish, or beyond the proscribed, essential personality of the unenlightened being--Robert, Junius, herself.

She had deceived him, in the beginning; he had thought that he saw in her what, eventually, he found she did not have. He had little by little uncovered her artifice, her ignorance, her evasions, her frivolity, her fear, until in the end, he clasped, perhaps with shame, a naked little body.... That was why, in the end, he smiled at her and shut her out....

* * * * *

Hearing a carriage, she thrust the papers under a blotter, out of sight, as if they had been a proclamation of her failure. The servant came in, announcing the _contessa_.

“_Cara mia_, I have just heard.”

She offered both her hands to Lilah. She was dressed in the extreme of fashion, and Lilah thought: “She must have made a match.”

The _contessa’s_ sharp, initiated eyes studied Lilah’s face through a lorgnon. She wore, always, too many ornaments, chains, bracelets, medallions and pins; her flat breast was hung with brilliants. “My poor child. I hear that you were in Paris. What a terrible thing. What will you do? Go back to your husband?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you will remarry.”

“My dear _contessa_,” Lilah said impatiently, “I am not yet divorced. And I loved the man who is dead.”

“But you’ll have to do something with your life. You can’t live here, alone, in this treasure-house of sweet memories! You’ll have to do something! You’re young. I don’t believe in women sitting desolate among the ruins, willfully mourning the irrevocable. Life is so terribly short and cruel, so--so avaricious. I have always believed in snapping my fingers in the face of destiny. You couldn’t imagine the number of times I’ve been knocked down. I always get up again. I’m clever. A woman alone has to be. You’ve got to understand men. If I were beautiful, with my knowledge of men, I could achieve anything.... As it is--sixty, and a bag of bones--I manage--” Her voice trailed off. A look of weariness and fright crossed her eyes. “I manage. Now, if I were you--”

“I haven’t a cent,” Lilah cried suddenly. “I don’t know what to do. Can you lend me a few hundred dollars?”

The _contessa_ closed her lorgnon with a snap. Her expression became sly, sweet, and guarded. She stared down at her large, awkward hands, at the glitter of small, inexpensive but ostentatious rings which ornamented her fingers. She shook her head. “Impossible. Just at the moment, I am what we Americans call flush. But you never can tell.... You never can tell! It’s a precarious world. And the Italians aren’t gifted with a sense of gratitude. I did wonderful things for a _borghese_, a store-keeper, who wanted to enlarge his establishment....”

She broke off. “You might live with me for a while. I would enjoy your companionship. Your presence would brighten my _salon_. I am quite in earnest. I would not expect compensation. Gayety. Vivacity. Elegance. And in return the advantage of my large acquaintance....”

“Thank you,” Lilah said. “No.”

She shivered. “No. You are very kind. But I am going back to America.”

She stood, and the _contessa_, her chains and bangles clinking together, took her leave. “You are very foolish,” she said at the door. “Perhaps you will reconsider. You are intelligent enough to know that I am respectable. If you are afraid of facts....” She got into her carriage, crossed one leg over the other, displaying an elaborate slipper, and waved. “_Au ’voir!_”

* * * * *

Lilah thought: “Who knows? Some day.”

She sat before the fire, smoking and stroking the cat, that kept up a remote humming, a sort of tea-kettle purring. She thought of the simple existence of a cat. Either you were hungry and hunted, or you weren’t, and purred, with no thought of the next day or the next. If she were to leave the little black cat to the mercy of the agent, the birds in the cypress groves would have to watch out--a lean, famished little cat with lashing tail would creep through the under-brush, stalking.... “I’ll give you to the doctor,” Lilah said aloud. The little cat blinked and fell asleep.

Life wasn’t so simple for a woman whose only talent was knowing how to dress well. To live. Just to live, and not be hungry! Suppose she were to accept the _contessa’s_ invitation. She knew quite well what it meant--a married woman, in Italy--even a divorcee would find it almost impossible to remarry. She would become the mistress of one of the _contessa’s_ friends, for a compensation. He would, of necessity, be a wealthy _borghese_, since men of title were seeking dowries, not adventures. She let the projected image of herself pass across her imagination, an image of Lilah accentuated, for the moment more brilliant, her mystery understored, her charm deepened by necessity to a certain vulgarity--an actress pretending to be a lady.... She would seek satisfaction in the possession of concrete adornments, tributes to her first, untarnished success. She might, even, take her situation seriously....

She threw her cigarette into the fire with a gesture that was both violent and contemptuous. First her father, now Flagg, had left her to shift for herself. Her mouth drooped. Her eyes, angry, dull with pain, brooded. “I can’t bear this. What, in God’s name, am I going to do?”

It was not yet dark. Twilight was gathering, and the ugly, incongruous objects in the room retreated into shadow. She thought of the Thirty-eighth Street house, Shawhan’s flamboyant ladies, the dull gold of shaded lights, the discreet, remote murmur of traffic in that brazen, that fearless, that challenging city.... She went to the window. The valley, Florence, was dark beneath a dark sky; there were no lights; it might have been a city forgotten and deserted, a place given over to the ghosts of a reckless, fearless, challenging yesterday.

“I must go back,” she thought.

She straightened herself, as if she were facing an antagonist. Across the valley, beneath that dark sky, Flagg was alone with the secret he had withheld from her. It seemed to Lilah that she must, somehow, get to him, hear his voice, listen again to the beating of his heart, caress his hair. But there was something she must do first. She must bring him the Lilah he wanted.

* * * * *

Doctor Bacci lived across the river in an old house, narrow, tall, toppling, in the Via dei Bardi. There was a garden at the rear, where, he assured her, the little black cat and her kitten would be free to caper or to bask in the sun. He opened the hat-box Lilah had brought from the Ponte a Mensola, from which emerged a continuous scratching and mewing. Damp and disheveled, the two cats jumped out and began at once to investigate, under tables, behind doors, into cupboards, everywhere.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?”

The doctor smiled. “I am, on the contrary, flattered.”

He touched a bell and a man servant came in. The doctor said in Italian: “These are my two children. The little, black female is called Simonetta. The other, Moro. Will you ask Tata to feed them?”

“_Si, signore._”

He turned to find Lilah in tears. “Now, there is nothing,” she said.

“You have forgotten the future.”

With a flash of scorn, she answered: “What cold comfort!”

“I have nothing better to offer.” The doctor looked away from her, through the French door to the patch of garden. Lilah wondered whether pity embarrassed him. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

She told him, at once, her situation. “There is no one else I can go to. I’m alone. I don’t want my husband or his grandfather to know anything about me. I am afraid that if I should see them I might weaken. I might go back. I have told you enough about myself to make it plain to you that if I should go back it would be--”

“Unthinkable,” the doctor interrupted.

He rose politely. “There are a few patients--When I have seen them, I will join you in the garden.”

He opened the door and Lilah passed him, conscious of his glance, both curious and eager. Before the door closed again, he watched her cross the garden and seat herself on a stone bench beneath the polished foliage of a camelia tree. There, in that square pool of green, at the bottom of a well formed by the walls of houses, beneath another square of cloudless sky, Lilah felt a pervading loneliness. An emotional courage had carried her so far. Could she go farther? Everything, literally everything, depended on this man. If he should open the door and come toward her with a certain expression, she would know that she was to be forever the victim of her negative philosophy; her vision could not outlast the attack of a calculated and intelligent cynicism. Her balance was too precarious. If he came toward her with another expression--and she could tell, when he had no more than opened the door--she would be forever under obligation to her new self. There could be no backsliding.

She relaxed suddenly. The sunlight, after so many weeks of rain, had about it an almost personal warmth; it lay across her hands, her cheek, her shoulders. The walls dripped moisture and a shallow fountain kept up a thin tinkle as a jet rose and fell. A door opened, some one said “_Via!_” and the two cats scampered out, their tails very stiff. They sat down in a patch of sunlight and began to lick themselves, first their haunches, then their stomachs, and at last their heads, over and over with their paws. Finished, one of them fell asleep, his paws tucked under so that he was heart-shaped. The other, Simonetta, explored the garden, daintily, stepping over everything lightly, her tail twitching....

“She has forgotten him already,” Lilah thought. And she remembered Flagg’s fingers caressing the black fur.... Her own hair.... A wild sweetness possessed her. She closed her eyes, abandoned to it. It flowed over her like light, this remembering. It was bitter and wonderful and exquisite. If she could remember like this, she would never be altogether alone; she could summon the recollection of his touch....

The sensation passed. She was cold. She opened her eyes to the bright immobility of the garden.

The French doors of the doctor’s office opened. He came toward her quickly, but she did not look at his face.

He said without preface: “I will see that you get back to New York and that you are provided for until you can find something to do. Florence isn’t the place for you. Here you would never reach the final step--purification. It is too old, too settled a beauty. You need the struggle America offers--competition, enthusiasm. I could show you an Italy you don’t dream of, but it is mine, not yours! You would never understand it and, in the end, it would destroy you, since you are weakened by perfection. You will have to cut your way out of ugliness.” He paused. Then in a different, casual voice he said: “Simonetta has come to stay. She is asleep on the kitchen step.” And he called: “_Vieni! Gattinino!_”

Lilah returned to New York. It was Spring of the year. She mingled in the restless stream flowing up one side of the Avenue, down the other, broken by cross-currents, flowing on again, resistlessly, to no purpose.

The doctor’s generosity had been limited by his resources; he was not, in the American sense, well-to-do. When Lilah counted her pennies and considered her debt, she realized that he had spoken the truth; she must cut her way out of ugliness. Poverty in a cottage might be, at least, picturesque, immaterial; in New York it was ponderable, a sordid weight of petty obstacles; so much for so much and never quite enough.

Lilah established herself in a room not far from Astor Place.

New York was a desert. She was alone in a crowded wilderness. She was shabby, in debt and desperate. But if Robert had reappeared and had asked her to return to the Thirty-eighth Street house, to the sumptuous, familiar extravagances of her life there, she would have lacked the courage to accept.

She had a new thirst for power, a new eagerness to escape. She wanted the power that comes with personal success. She wanted to escape from the curse of materialism. She had lived in a sham world; the shabby, dark room, the dingy window-panes, the worn carpet were reality.

Lilah’s daily search for work took her through streets where there was not even a remote chance of being recognized by old friends; she threaded the crowded mazes of commerce, anonymous and frightened.

It did not occur to her to go back to the fashionable couturier in the ’Fifties who had “built” her trousseau. She remembered his first curt dismissal, the card tossed to her across his desk. “Learn to put hats together; then, perhaps, you can design them.”

She avoided those up-town streets given over to fashionable shops and hotels, establishments haunted by women of her acquaintance whose whims carried them from one dressmaker to another, from one antiquarian to another. She wanted to lose herself, to be immersed in an unfamiliar atmosphere, to be alone with this strange, new Lilah. Now that Flagg was dead, he was more than ever real. He had never been so insistently near her, more insistently a part of her. But their life together had lost all reality. It seemed, now, to have happened in a half-forgotten dream. She had dreamed and had wakened to the commonplace business of living. The actual became confused with the vision; she experienced a new, strong sense of distaste, almost fear, at the proximity of people who might break the comforting nostalgia.

She saw no one but David Brenner. The young Jew fitted her mood. He was not, now, in love with her but with some scheme of his own. He called her his “little sardine” but he did not accuse her of being a humbug.

She lunched with him at the identical restaurant of their last meeting, and Lilah traced with her finger recent signatures scratched in the pine table by unknowns craving an easy notoriety.

David Brenner’s talk was of people, things, she knew nothing about. A dozen personalities had flashed across the American intellectual firmament trailing sparks and shedding inhibitions--rockets, most of them, that shot up with a tremendous dazzle and were destined soon to snuff out, to zig-zag to earth. David Brenner spoke of them with immense seriousness. He was like most Americans, she decided, in his facile enthusiasms, his sudden, scornful shifts of opinion.

“I’m broke, David,” she said.

He did not take her seriously. He knew nothing about her. And behind his bantering admiration there was always distrust. When she told him that she could not find work, he shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll never get the sort of job you’re looking for, Lilah. Try Fifth Avenue and your own particular brand of bluff.”

There it was again. Her own particular brand of bluff.

It was lonely, living by herself. She left David Brenner and went back to the room just off Astor Place. Day after day at five o’clock she went there because there was nowhere else to go. She had lost her sense of the pageantry of the streets and of her part in it. No one turned to look at her, because she no longer had the assurance, the air of victory, which attracts attention.

She took David Brenner’s advice. After all, what did it matter if Robert’s friends should happen to see her? She had been stupid. She was not the type of woman they wanted in East Side shirtwaist factories. Over and over again she had failed because she had had no “experience,” that vague attribute of anemic, gum-chewing, bobbed girls who always “got the job” Lilah failed to get. Her manner, her charm counted for nothing. She discovered that she was too old to serve the necessary apprenticeship. Girls of fifteen were doing, efficiently, what she could not do. Others, thousands of them, were trained, ready to take the succeeding steps toward the few high-salaried positions available to women in business. At eight o’clock, at five o’clock, the streets were choked with women, all of them initiated--

Lilah sat before her mirror and took stock of herself.

“Twenty-nine,” she said aloud.

In the fashionable world she had left, twenty-nine was at the beginning of experience. At thirty, a woman tried her wings; if she were clever and ambitious, it was the age of marital re-adjustment, of social expansion, of thrilling experiment, leadership. But to be a lonely little nobody at thirty! To climb endless iron stairs to innumerable glazed doors marked: _Private_. To answer advertisements a day too late. To be told to leave her name and address, to come again, to telephone, to write. To thread the crowded streets, pretending eagerness. To try and fail....

It would be easier to write Robert something evasive, something pathetic ... she could always touch his heart ... and, to-morrow, she would be at the Point, laughing with Junius, everything forgotten....

She actually went to the table and took up a pen, dipping it several times in the ink. She wrote: _March 30_. But she could not write: _Dear Robert_. Could not. The letters would not go down.

She put her head on the paper and cried. She cried until she fell asleep. She was very tired and she was beginning to be hungry. The doctor’s loan would not carry her another week and she could not ask him for more. It was enough that he was caring for Simonetta and Moro.... It was enough that he had seen Flagg die....

In the morning she went up town. Someone, very optimistic, had set out English daisies in window boxes. It was warm on the sunny side of the street. And what shops! What clothes! Lilah, drunk, paused to stare at a chinchilla wrap, a Leghorn hat, a pair of brocaded sandals, a fan made of pheasants’ feathers set in onyx sticks.... She felt the old hunger for possession. She shook her head and straightened her shoulders. She groped for her dim, new faith, what it was that drove her on, why it was that she must win this obscure, personal game....

She went into the employee’s entrance of a department store. A doorman, who was sitting on a stool, directed her to the office of “Miss Craig--she sees everybody.” Miss Craig was young, and a lady. From behind spectacles with tortoise-shell rims her eyes investigated Lilah’s unmistakable elegance. Maurice’s black gown was a miracle of simplicity; it had outlasted two seasons. Miss Craig wrote something on a pad. Her expression was purposefully enigmatic, but the corners of her mouth twitched. “There isn’t much chance just at present.... I could try you in the cotton good’s department. It’s quite hard. You’d have to learn the stock. The material isn’t heavy, but the bolts are--it means lifting all day and standing on your feet. Our employees are expected to go to school in the beginning. We have to be sure that they are reasonably good mathematicians--honest--intelligent--” She paused, flushing.

“Anything,” Lilah said. “I’ll do anything. I’m at the end.”

After a moment, Miss Craig said: “I’m terribly sorry. I guessed as much. Would twenty-five dollars a week help any? I can’t offer you more. For a novice, you know--”

“Yes. Yes. Anything.”

Lilah went to school. Fractions terrified her. Graduated, she pasted labels, and, for a week, wrote undecipherable, meaningless numbers and letters on pasteboard tickets. She did not see Miss Craig again. She learned of the men “higher up”; the floor-walkers, department managers, buyers and sales managers who dominated this world of workers. She encountered the “politics” of a big store. She heard gossip, the bitter, querulous backbiting of tired women.

The day came when, with a sense of dread and excitement, she was put “on the floor.” All day she lifted heavy rolls of gingham, muslin, cotton, crêpe, twisted them, measured them, rolled them up again. Pink. Yellow. Hideous checks and nauseating plaids. Pretty, crisp organdies, like the starched skirts of little girls at a picnic....

All day she was questioned, bullied, scolded. She passed close to the other clerks, brushed them with her own body and yet never saw them. This was not Lilah. This was a common, clever, indifferent girl who was rolling and unrolling cotton goods. “How many yards, madam?” That was not Lilah’s voice; it was too high and sharp; the accent too clipped.... Once she thrust her pencil through her hair, and something apart from Lilah laughed. Junius had said that she was an actress.... “Two sixty-four. At one thirty-two a yard. Anything else?”

A young girl with a broad face and gray eyes said: “Say, you can’t wear that dress. Mr. Mansfield will get after you. It has to be plain black, and no frills.”

* * * * *