Part 3

He liked these two women. They were outside his sphere. He “played about” with the women who lived near Peabody’s Point, women he had watched grow up from spoiled little girls into a casual maturity; he had flirted with all of them, had seen them married and had settled into the bantering familiarity of the cherished bachelor in a “young married” community.

Whatever he felt, inwardly, he was outwardly an inflexible optimist. Lilah wondered whether he saw Grace Fuller’s eyes, whether, if he saw, he could appreciate the extent, the danger, of that dedication. And she remembered, with an unexpected excitement, how he had kissed her arm.

She went on sewing, bending her head so that the light from the lamp would fall on her hair. Her soft abstraction, her air of modesty and domestic content, drew him away from Grace Fuller. He leaned forward to finger the stuff she was making into a useless and ornamental bag, and she explained that the brocade came from a shop in Florence where the copying of ancient materials was a specialty. This was the robe of Boticelli’s Primavera, a delicate scattering of small flowers on a background of cream silk.

Grace Fuller rose suddenly and went into her bedroom.

“Don’t flirt with me,” Lilah said. “Miss Fuller won’t like it.”

He flushed. “You’re quite mistaken.”

“You told me you were ‘sweet’ on her.”

“I am. But I can flirt with you all the same.”

Already, they had the manner of conspirators. Robert lowered his voice and said: “Will you dine with me? To-morrow? Say ‘yes.’ I’m going back to the Point on Friday. We’ll take a hansom to the Park and eat there. What do you say?”

Lilah whispered: “Yes. I’ll be ready at five. Not later.”

The door opened and Grace Fuller came in again. She caught the quick lifting of Robert’s head, his smile, at once embarrassed and triumphant. She knew him so well that her heart ached for this duplicity; she could even pity him for having had to hurt her. But she said nothing.

When he had gone, she spoke from the doorway to Lilah, who was winding rough, colored threads about cardboard spools.

“I wonder if you know what love is? Oh, you can imagine it! You think about it a lot! But do you know? The pain.... Exhausting.... Of trying to pour yourself into a man’s consciousness.... And then being stupid. Hurting him--pushing him off.... Pretending.... Because you’re ashamed of wanting.... Killing what you want. Not wanting what you want until you’ve lost it....”

“That’s a bit excessive,” Lilah said. “You’re morbid, aren’t you? I could make any man happy by learning to understand him. If he liked mystery, I’d be mysterious. If he wanted a pal, I’d pal. To the limit.”

“Could you be domestic?”

“Certainly.”

Miss Fuller laughed that short, dry and brittle laugh. “What we all say! Pretend to be clay for the molding. Other women nag. We wouldn’t! Other women suffer jealousy. We wouldn’t! Other women fail in the little illusions and go about in curl-papers and a mask of cold cream, without their mental corsets. We wouldn’t! But married.... Well, it’s positively thrilling to observe the similitude of women.... Marriage is a sort of antiphlogistine--it brings out all the lurking devils.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve observed ... remember, I am a nurse. The shades up and the light of day on the domestic drama....”

Lilah said suddenly: “I may take your Robert away from you.”

Miss Fuller seemed to consider. “I see what you mean. I’m jealous!” She shook her head. “Robert isn’t the man for you. He isn’t a snob. And you are. I mean, you care a great deal about things Robert never notices. At the Point he goes about like a hired man in a pair of corduroy trousers and an old green sweater. He’s lazy. And sometimes he says stupid things....”

“What?” Lilah asked sharply.

She felt a sharp pang of irritability slip into her consciousness, edged. Her eyes were lowered; her fingers flew around the cardboard spools.

“Oh, he’s full of platitudes. He collects stamps. He reads the wrong books, and he wants children.”

“Does he?” Lilah’s voice was cool. The inflection was iced.

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps Grace Fuller had lived with Robert. This was at once a revelation and a weapon. She glanced up. With a look both appraising and sympathetic, she studied that worn, disillusioned face, in which the charm of a blonde freshness had given way to a shadow, a premonition of old age. Vaguely distinguished, aloof, sharp and bitter, she had a tender mental surface. Lilah knew that she herself could control Grace Fuller’s opinions; she was not afraid of her tongue; the woman was quivering under the skin.

“I see what you’re thinking,” Grace Fuller said. “It isn’t true. I’ve loved, but not Robert--that way. You won’t believe me. He’s decent, as men have forgotten how to be decent.... Lilah, let me have him!”

She crossed the room suddenly and stood before Lilah with her hands clenched at her sides, her face strained. “I love him!” she cried.

Lilah tossed the silks upon the table. “Nonsense,” she said crisply. “I don’t want your Robert! He’s a fearful bore. He’s flat. He moves about on the face of the earth like a wet beetle. Grace, you’re biased. You’re lop-sided. You’re hypnotized by his morality--or his money! You’re making yourself ridiculous and Robert is flattered. He doesn’t intend to marry you. It’s too comfortable to know that he can make you suffer. Why not make him suffer? Men don’t appreciate martyrdom. You look like an old woman, at thirty. Am I unkind? I don’t mean to be. I’m awfully fond of you.... I tell you, I don’t want your Robert.... But I can’t help it if he should happen to fall in love with me.... Men do those things. They love the wrong woman.... If you didn’t care.... If you could....”

She broke off.

“Let’s go to bed. I’m tired. He tires me. I tell you he bores me. Let’s not talk about him.”

Without a word, Grace Fuller went into her room and shut the door.

In a few minutes she came out again. She had brushed her hair back from her forehead, and had a startled, innocent look. She kept rubbing cold cream into her face and neck with little upward, crawling motions of her finger-tips. She wore a corduroy wrapper and felt slippers. Lilah noticed that her feet were narrow and bony, like a priest’s. Her elbows were sharp. Her shoulders were too narrow.... Lilah felt round and cozy and soft. She felt warm; her flesh delighted her. She thought how delicious she must look, sitting there with her feet in high-heeled slippers tucked under her. She was sorry, in a comfortable sort of way, for Grace Fuller. She wanted, at that moment, to help her, to give her some of her own warmth and brilliance, to bring her into the circle of her inevitable success.... She saw herself making it very delightful for Grace Fuller at Peabody’s Point. “My dear Grace, Robert loves to have you.... He is so fond of you. You must stay as long as you can!” Perhaps giving her some decent clothes.... She would be quite smart in simple things, with eccentric hats and bizarre ornaments....

Grace Fuller rubbed the cream into her finger-nails with the absorption she put into doing all unimportant things, as if performing a rite. As Lilah had never seen her out of the formality of curled hair and rouge, she felt a vague embarrassment.

“I wanted to say,” Grace Fuller remarked presently, “that we mustn’t have a misunderstanding. You’re more important to me than Robert.”

“I tell you, I don’t want him,” Lilah repeated.

* * * * *

She dressed carefully for her meeting with Robert. The Chinese hat had lost some of its novelty, but she had added a French veil.... She was almost, literally, penniless.

At five o’clock Robert Peabody arrived. He was eager, flushed.

A shiny hansom-cab, deliciously out of balance, precarious, waited at the curb. A group of curious small boys gaped at this contrivance, and, as Lilah and Robert crossed the sidewalk, a window was thrown up and a burst of laughter floated down to them. Lilah was acutely conscious; Robert unaware. He had the fine indifference of the wealthy to other people’s little humiliations. She had a momentary feeling of defeat. He was infinitely removed. He intended, probably, to treat her as he had treated Grace Fuller....

Then, abruptly, her mood changed.

The cab turned uptown; the rhythmic clop of hoofs, the remote and cushioned cabin, like a sedan on wheels, her own youth.... Suddenly everything was desirable, delightful. This was what she wanted, deserved....

She began to sparkle. She was so intimate, so gay, that Robert Peabody’s rather stolid expression changed to one of amazed delight in her. He turned around; their eyes met. She noticed that his eyes were not blue, but hazel, very clear and wide open. She pressed her shoulder against him, and he became aware of a delicate odor of sandalwood. They laughed a good deal. Because she thought that he would not be interested in her European experiences, she talked about the rare summers she had spent in American resorts. She spoke of her “good tennis arm” and how an Indian had taught her to handle a paddle. As a matter of fact, she was an indifferent sport. But she could imagine herself doing all these things. She believed she had done them.

Robert Peabody discovered a new eloquence. He had an admirable passion for the out-of-doors. It kept him, he said, from drinkin’. In New York, he gave way in that point. Prohibition was a good thing--he’d be the last person to interfere with such a colossal experiment. But any one who could afford to drink, drank. He did. He supposed he wasn’t a good American. He never had been, in a literal sense. Politics didn’t exactly get under his skin; the country muddled through without him. He had his property, his dogs, his friendships, his conviction of an inalienable right to these possessions. If there should be social changes, upheavals, revolutions, he would accept whatever came. He believed in going with the times, never bucking the trend, whatever it was.

The war hadn’t interfered with this facile philosophy; he had accepted the fact that the world was fighting mad, stark crazy, gibbering. A phase. It had happened before; it would happen again. He couldn’t stop it by stating a preference for open fields and dogs. So, he had gone to the first officers’ camp, and had agreed cheerfully to whatever “authority” said. A knack for details, hitherto undiscovered, had landed him in the ordnance and he had worn silver chevrons in cheerful glory at Rochester, New York. Captain Peabody!

“Now it’s over, I am back where I want to be. The world hasn’t changed much. I don’t understand all this talk about a new consciousness. Men won’t change, either. We had our chance when Wilson went to Paris. But the recoil didn’t surprise me. We aren’t ready for practical idealism. You and I--people who see what might be--aren’t a drop in the bucket of public feeling. We’re swamped by millions of frightened ignoramuses. They’ll swing back to the doddering conservatives, bleating for normalcy. They’ll get it! We’re in for another Dark Age.”

“Don’t you care?”

“No. I never believed in the pet illusions we fought for, anyway. Civilization has always tickled my sense of humor. There are certain unchangeable, satisfactory things--well, dogs! And days when you can smell the sea, sweet, like flowers, blowing in over the fields. September days! I’d stack ’em up against every bloody war for supremacy, the confounded conceit of man--I’m talking like a poet. I’m not a poet. I’m lazy. I like peace, and plenty to eat.”

He laughed. “And you. I like you. You’re cute as the devil.”

Lilah turned to him again and let him see the curve of her lips. She had never been more vivacious. The city flowed by the cab windows with a dignity impossible in a motor, taking place, not as kaleidoscopic flashes in a cubistic ensemble, but as buildings, towers, parks and people. In the wide brilliance of Madison Square there was time to value the great campanile soaring out of the feathery green of the park into a bland sky.... Then, more slowly, up the long incline to the Library, where the lions seemed to gaze down their noses over invisible spectacles; they had, Lilah remarked, a sort of haughty senility--Grand Army of the Republic lions about to recite the “Battle of Gettysburg.” One of them had worn a rakish snow hat during a February blizzard, the other a white blanket about his middle, like a pet poodle in a wooly-wooly....

Lilah found the city astonishingly beautiful--but something held her from telling Robert Peabody so. He would not have shared her delight in the unfinished masterpiece. New York, to him, was simply New York; like so many New Yorkers, he suffered from a familiarity with marvels. Lilah found it both monstrous and audacious. She had always tasted cities as a connoisseur tastes wine. Now, in this slate-blue twilight, she shivered with pleasure. The lava-stream of motors filled the air with a sort of luxurious purring; it seemed to Lilah that the hidden springs of vitality within herself had begun to vibrate, to hum, like harp strings; she was vibrant. If some one would write a grand opera, not in the manner of “Louise,” not lyric, amorous, but metallic, about New York! The leit-motif, a theme of feverish, restless striving. The minor melodies, machines, riveters, steam jets, whistles, sirens, bells, six million human voices--unceasing, beating against the human heart like the tom-tom of African drums. The sets ... from a window, streets like Sienese back-alleys enormously exaggerated. Vast, tilting walls. A few lights on the face of the cañon. Weight of stone and steel and swaying towers. Or, a bloodless avenue of square monoliths, imposing, imponderable, significant....

The cab turned into the Plaza, so long an upheaval of derricks, mud, French Gothic and erratic statuary, now settled into a beauty of its own, and Robert Peabody said: “Shall we stop here? Or do you prefer the Park?”

Lilah preferred the Park.

They dined out-of-doors, their faces close together over a narrow table. She found him more attractive here. He had a genial yet vigorous manner of dealing with waiters and hat-boys, an almost aristocratic indifference to publicity and he did not, after calling her “cute as the devil,” come back to the attack. He let her see that he was aware of the privilege of her company. There were other women in the restaurant; a startlingly brunette girl in black satin which made her look, Lilah thought, like a wet cod-fish, sat almost at his elbow, yet he disposed of her, and her seduction, with a glance. He ordered planked shad and regretted that there was no white wine; at the Point, he had over a thousand bottles of Sauterne....

“I want to meet your grandfather,” Lilah interrupted.

“He would like you. He doesn’t like Grace Fuller.”

“Why?”

Robert’s face puckered. “I don’t know.”

Lilah said quickly, in a way she had of disposing of things: “She’s not quite sane. She will never be contented. She’s such a darling ... but she takes life too seriously. She depresses me. She’s like white grass growing in a dark place.... I don’t know.... Yes, I do know. She’s a celibate. I hope she’ll never marry. For her own sake. But more for the man’s. I’d pity a man who found that instead of a woman he had an obstinate, distorted idea in his arms. Not love at all, but a misconception of love. She wants experience but runs away from it--she curls her hair and rouges and then hides.”

“I like her,” Peabody said. “But I don’t pretend to understand her. Perhaps you are right.”

“I know I’m right.”

She dismissed Grace Fuller and set about captivating this rather ponderous intelligence. Again, she relied on her quickness, her intuition, her adroit penetration. He had been, evidently, upset by mention of Grace Fuller; either he had a sense of responsibility or he was annoyed by Lilah’s analysis. His was a basic honesty and loyalty. She changed the subject to herself. She could see that she excited him; he was, she had heard from Grace Fuller, accustomed to women who preferred sport clothes and who rode to hounds; he had been brought up in a society which imitated, on a smaller, more restricted scale, the life of the English counties. He had had no intellectual companionship. He could not juggle with the stock phrases of the _cognoscenti_; he was too simple, or too indifferent, to acquire a modern vocabulary of names and cults, movements and personalities. But she could stir his imagination with herself, her decisive manner, her melting eyes, the little upward turn of her mouth, as if, always, she wanted to be kissed. She felt him leaning toward her, absorbed. She knew how to make what she said audacious, and, by a subtle turn, to leave the implication in doubt. She suggested desire without feeling it. This was a part of what other people called her “technique.” She was not unaware of it, but she did not consider that it was something she ought to be ashamed of. Rather, it gave her an inestimable advantage.

After dinner they walked through the park, their arms and shoulders touching in the darkness. There was everywhere a subdued gurgle of water in shallow basins or lipping the banks of the lake. Couples passed, drifting, close together, with a murmur of voices. The blatant artificiality of the landscape was blurred, softened, gathered into somber walls of vegetation, threaded with globes of light. Groups of people passed in and out of the shadows, made mysterious, dignified by an unreality that had about it something of the theater. Faces glimpsed in passing were indefinite; the sound of feet on the asphalt paths, the murmur of voices were Venetian, melancholy....

Robert Peabody drew her arm through his. At Eighty-fifth Street, as they crossed the road, he raised his cane and signalled for a cab. Lilah sank back with a little sigh.

“This is comfortable! Let’s drive.”

Suddenly his arm went about her shoulders. She was surprised at the strength, the violence of his grasp.

“You’re adorable. Let me kiss you.”

She shook her head. “No.”

But he bent down, kissed her, once, twice, a dozen times. She was breathless, angry, frightened, but helpless in the circle of his arm. “Don’t! Don’t!” she said. “Please. Here....”

She heard him say: “I love you. I want you to marry me.”

Her heart contracted. How on earth had this happened? What would the driver think of such a scene? This was what, all along, she had wanted. He had everything ... everything.... Something in his eyes, his voice, husky, shaken, made her know that he loved her. It would be easy to manage him.... Love.... She couldn’t expect to kiss him like that at once. As always, she shrank from contact. But if she....

“Answer. Open your eyes.”

She made a struggle to throw into her expression something ardent, convincing. And lifting her face, she kissed him. She need not say, at once, the words he expected. She was not as dishonest as that.... A wave of feeling, relief, excitement, went over her. His head fell back, down again, on her shoulder. He was, suddenly, weak, surrendered to his emotion. She saw the back of his neck, his close, blonde hair. The intimacy of their attitude assailed her and she pushed him away.

“Not here. Later....”

“You’ll marry me?”

“Yes. Yes.”

She lifted her arms and straightened her hat. Then she felt her hand seized and his lips fastened on her fingers, hungry, insatiable....

III

Lilah was afraid to tell Grace Fuller that she had promised to marry Robert Peabody. Her conscience, an inconsistent element in her nature, disturbed her to the extent of making her irritable. She went to her room without saying good night.

She was trembling with excitement and could not sleep. Instead, wrapped in a kimono, she paced the floor, seeing her white face at intervals in the oval mirror of her dressing-table.

What would her life be with Robert Peabody? Not what she had dreamed, certainly. She would have the scope money affords. But not the pride of love; she would always be a little ashamed of Robert. She did not know why, exactly. To justify her acceptance of him, she assured herself that she could change him, pour him out of his mold into hers. Yet she shivered with apprehension. He might guess her lack of feeling and grow cold himself. Men wanted love, the gestures and jealousies, the unconsidered, delicious abandonments, passion. She could never give him this. And she would miss the wild sweetness, the danger, the pain of love that is mutual, acknowledged. But she wanted ease....

She paused to stare at herself. Perhaps she was wrong. There might not be love of that sort. Perhaps she was giving Robert all that he, or any man, expected--her prettiness, her charm, her youth. He must be forty. He had had experience--but, good heavens, she couldn’t be jealous! Only he mustn’t go on; if she married him, he must be loyal....

Pacing the room again, she pictured herself in possession, at last, of security. It was humiliating to battle with poverty when you had no wits with which to pull yourself out; if she had been one of those clever girls who stalk success, on the stage, in studios, newspaper offices, shops.... She hadn’t their courage or their audacity; she despised struggle.

Persistently, the idea returned, that she was cheating. She recalled, with a shudder, an instinctive recoil, his attitude as he bent over her hands--it had been both supplicating and possessive.

What she was doing was immoral, wrong. She had been brought up to believe that such a step leads to good, old-fashioned perdition, hell, damnation and brim-stone. Experience had taught her that in all probability she would suffer, but that if she were clever she could balance the advantage against the price; wealth against Robert, love against comfort; she threw her charm in, to square the account. She could be generous on that score. She would dress remarkably well; she would create an interesting atmosphere, and if Robert did not know the most entertaining personalities in New York, she would get them together; before long, she would be a famous hostess. In just that, her ability to attract people, lay her genius. She could, given the means, make living an art, create, out of places and people, something unique and memorable, as Lorenzo of the Medici had made his pages, his poets, his ladies and his gardens into an immortal legend. Why not? American literature had recently exploited the soda-water clerk and the corner groceryman, the farmer, the traveling salesman, the immigrant and the crook. No one was interested in the spiritual reactions of that almost extinct dodo, the gentleman. Nothing was art that did not deal with a profane ape groping for the stars and missing them! The more interesting and complex society was overlooked in this effort to capture the soul of what Lilah called the proletariat; it proved, this soul, as elusive as a flea. One was left with the conviction that the country was populated by illiterate sensualists--a vast, imponderable mediocrity. There was no one else. The fine flower had withered in the clutches of this overwhelming parasite. An inchoate fumbling at the foundations ... a wail of protest ... ignorance and braggadocio....

Or else, they advertised the flapper, the country-club habitué, the pathological spinster and the cad. Society was constantly being reminded that it was rotten. Novelists were what David Brenner had called himself, alley-cats pawing over garbage. Apparently, the brave and the witty, the poetic, the exquisite were, for artistic purposes, fresh sardines. The cry was for Truth, and the whole pack ignored any truth that was not putrefied, or, at least, stale....

Lilah thought: “I can do something to change this.”