Part 19

Through three days David went, repeating to himself that he loved Constance Bardale. Needful it was to his peace that he be persuaded of this. Good it would be for the new hunger of his life--to spread forth, make fresh dwellings for his spirit--if this was true. Yet all that had occurred was sudden and strange. All this woman was remote. This was why he had so fast retreated from Tom on that first night. Tom was very real: in his light, the new fire in himself did not appear. He was sure that he loved: a transfiguration had been made in him: the future of Constance Bardale must in some inscrutable way be one with his. Yet he could not talk of this joyous revelation to his best friend. Indeed, with his best friend all of it was dim. He did not solve the strangeness of this. He said to himself: “It is all too mysterious yet to be spoken of. Tom would not believe me. He would ask me what had happened to make me know.” Had David these three days seen Cornelia, he could have spoken. He did not know this since he had no plan to see Cornelia. He remained with his secret. Wondering, trying to wonder about it, his thoughts reeled in a dance with his upstarting senses. He could not even clearly wonder about it all.

The conviction was there, however: he was bound by a sacred tie to Constance Bardale. He made great what was between this woman and himself because he needed it great. Also he made it great because he needed thereby to justify it to himself. Was it not plain how great all this must be to Constance Bardale? He knew so little of her ways that he had no sense even of ignorance about her. She was a lady. She was one fortunate in every circumstance: handsome, intelligent, rich: not one to alloy or to misprize her value. This lovely lady had given herself to _him_. A madness must have moved her. That madness love. Or perhaps something still more sacred: belief in his love, the desire in her heart that it should be requited. She had miraculously cared for him. But even this explained little--explained not at all her sudden discard of those womanly reserves that must be her nature, the swiftness of her bestowal. This could be explained alone by his own love’s plea upon her. She had felt and answered his love, before he was aware of it. She had done as women always by some mystery: given blindly where she was needed, not asked, not judged,--responded in faith and a sweet helplessness to the cry of man.

And all his life--whatever she wanted of his life--he owed to repay her.

Feeling his mighty debt to Constance Bardale, David thought of his mother; and of his mother with his father that last dim year he had lived, and of his questionings on birth and death and love. What he had seen and been taught then, the facts of his life had not disturbed since they were simply heaped upon it. His mother had great pleasure of her son. When he was near to her, her face brightened. When he came running and asked: “Take me with you, Mummy, to the village,” she would drop her basket and fold him in her arms and say: “Put on your leggins, Boy, and you may come.” It made her happy. Unendingly to give to him was, in her heart, unendingly to receive. So David learned of women: that they are mothers and that they hunger after their children and have great joy of them. His mother loved his father, but she had no joy of him at all. She took care of him, gave to him, also, without stint. But she seemed to receive nothing of her bestowal. She never kissed him, as she did David. When he came into the room, though she was swift to respond to his desires, it was with heavy face and heavy feet. There was more: his father made hidden demands on other women, took something from them, took what the child had once heard called “liberties” with them. For this, his mother suffered and pitied the women. It was “the poor girl!” “How could you, how could you, Adolph!” “What is going to become of Emma!” So David learned of women: that they are the hunted of men and have no joy of them but only sorrow and humiliation. And David learned of men: that they can, in some miraculous way, make women sacrifice themselves, and love them, although this love is a burden and a blight.

There had been Anne. She did not disturb what he had learned of women. The self-bestowal of woman was a part, a great part, of the goodness of God. Woman had no need save for children: no joy save in the bitterness of serving. Anne was there like a sweet delirious dream in the fevered night. She had lain beside him and mothered his distress; she had given him of her strength to be strong in the morning. When she judged he had had enough of her, very calmly, very like a mother weaning her child, she had put him aside. All of it a sort of passionate nursing: the sort that the passionate nights with their drain of fire demanded. Anne had always been silent.

His heart’s way of woman remained. In a veiled moment, she came and offered up her sweetness to the yearning of man. A mystery--a mystery that now had come to him! In the flesh. In the lovely flesh of Constance!

She received him in the same small room.

David was momently chilled by her precise difference from the image of his three days’ thoughts. She came up to him and let her arms glide softly over his and warmed him. He looked down at her. He saw how the loose folds of her _cérise_ robe parted and fell from her uplifted elbows: how, underneath, her bosom was held tight in a white band of lace. He thought that he might take that lace away and truly see this bosom, crush it with his mouth. He could scarcely see at all.

He checked himself. This was unworthy of him: unfair to her. He began to talk. But she smiled and came close to him again: she stopped his words with her body. Her eyes fixed on his with a plea that he need not talk. He tried to tell of his love, of his devotion, of his thanks, and she was stiff, impregnable to words. He kissed her, had her body in his hands, and there she was pliant, singing with response. So, soon she lay there under his eyes and he had forgotten to say the things his duty ordered....

At last he made a mighty effort.

He sat beside her on the couch. She was cool and straight beside him. She was like a beach that the tide had left and that the sun had hardened. Golden-smooth. Her breasts lay firm, her thighs rounded and fell like lovely scoopings of summer waves. She was there like a strand of the earth, waiting for the tide to return upon her.

David managed to speak.

“Constance dear,” he began. She laid her hand on his and he clasped it. She seemed suddenly afraid. “Constance, I feel that I have so much that I want to tell you.... Constance, it is only this that I love you with all my heart and soul: that always----” He stopped. There she was stopping him again. She had withdrawn her hand.

“Don’t, David! Don’t!” Her hand on his mouth.

He felt ashamed, ashamed of their nakedness together.

“You mustn’t use that word _Love_ so lightly, David.”

He was all pale inside. He felt that his breast had suddenly caved in and that his heart beat hurtfully against its broken walls.

“I do love you, Constance.”

“No you don’t. Don’t be silly, David.”

“Why? Don’t you love me?”

It was strange how little he protested. He felt this. Already he believed her. But if he did, what was all this between them? What infamy?

She seemed to read his consternation. She lifted herself and kissed his eyes and his hot dry lips.

“You don’t love me. And I don’t love you. But we are very fond of each other.”

He was deeply ashamed. He wanted to move away: to cover himself. He did not know how. He did not dare in any way to move. He sat there, fixed in contemplation of the havoc these few words had made of all the structure of his thoughts: regarding the wreckage with dim eyes, but amazed most that the wreckage did not move him more, leave him more empty: that life--and this--should still be possible.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

“Constance!” It was a cry of help for his dreams.

“You are a darling. I shan’t risk losing you by not having you know me and yourself as we really are.... Why, David dear? Aren’t you even fond of me?” She had her arm about him. “Kiss me, then. There.” She was half laughing. She was a bewilderment of delight upon him. She was half laughing at him.

Like a mirage, split by a stroke of the sun, his picture of their love faded away. He had not defended it. It was no more. Yet he was not empty. He was less serious, less loaded than before. It had been a mirage of paradise in a desert. It was gone. But the desert through which to trudge to reach it was gone also. Here was green earth.

He held her differently already. She seemed no less happy. He was more aware of herself, more intent on giving her pleasure. He thought less of his own heart and its desires. He found his own joy, now, in bringing joy to her. It was all marvelous strange, he knew vaguely in the back of his head. He had abdicated loving her, she had declared that she did not love him. Yet he was content, he was happy. He had been wrapt in the solemnity of his emotions like a priest at prayer. Now, he was all out of himself like a boy lost in his play. And yet he seemed stronger, more contained, fuller of life. He knew sometime he should have to think all this out....

She took his hand and led him to a glass in which he saw their faces together. Hers was laughing quietly. His was neither serious nor mirthful: full of a sweet surprise.

“Look at yourself,” she said.

He remembered once when he had been a boy at School and he had wrestled long and hopelessly over a problem in mathematics. His teacher, of whom he was very fond, came and leaned over him so that her waist touched his shoulder. She made a quick calculation on his paper. The problem was solved.

“There now. Wasn’t that easy? All that fret and trouble----”

He had felt a relieved gayety go through him: half the help, half the nearness of the teacher. He was reminded now.

“Look at yourself,” she said. He looked. He saw his face like that of a rather unknowing boy upon whom a good-hearted friend had played a delicious joke. He was aware of the face of Constance: it was just beneath and beside his own. And it was laughing under the passion of her hair. He saw that he was laughing also....

He was glad this time to find Tom at home.

“My! My!” Tom bantered from his wonted corner. “You are getting gayer all the time. What larks are you up to, anyway?”

“I have been to see--Miss Bardale.”

A steely glance went through David.

“Oh--she.” Tom spoke. And David knew that never, never could he speak of such things to his nearest friend. But he could speak of some things.

David came up to him. “Listen, Tom. Am I ever going to grow up?”

“I hope not, Davie--altogether.”

David sat down beside him. Tom went on: “I rushed home after a business date for dinner. Hoping to find you. I wanted to see you to-night.”

“Why?”

“For no literal reason, David.... Does one have to have a literal reason for seeing one’s friends? Eh? Does one?”

Suddenly, David was uncomfortable. He had felt strong entering the room. He had asked Tom if ever he was going to grow up because just then, perhaps more than at any other time, he felt mature. Now this fine mood faded. It was very strange. He could not adjust to Tom the discoveries of life he made without him. Three evenings before he had come home dancing with romance and Tom had cut his clouds. Now here he was, realistic like a god taking his mortal holiday: and Tom spoke of having missed him and of the love of friends. What was wrong here? Why could he not get rid of the ridiculous idea that Tom was always spoiling his pleasures?

“You don’t care for me very much,” there he was saying, “You don’t even come home anxious to see me.”

“I did to-night, Tom.”

“Yes: after an evening with our fair Constance. I am restful, eh?”

David blushed. How unpleasant Tom could be! But he was sorry he had blushed. For Tom looked sharp at him: his face seemed to be coming forward as he looked. Then, he dropped back into his chair and took up his book. With his eyes on it, he spoke casually:

“Since you are so friendly with Constance, perhaps you can tell me: has she gotten rid of Stegending? Or is he still agonizing?”

David turned pale. “How should I know?” he muttered.

Tom smiled at once, knowing he had hurt him.

“It is always a mere matter of time till they want to marry her. Then,” he chuckled, “it is--as the doctors say--a mere matter of hours.”

David felt the need of striking, as if it had been striking back. Although he had no accurate sense that Tom had attacked him.

“You are funny, Tom. You say I never come back anxious to see you: and you seem to find fault that I’ve been out amusing myself for a change. As if you weren’t out ten times more than I.”

“I go out for business. If I had my way I’d stay home every blessed night. And tell the hostesses to go to blazes.”

“Well, I like to go out for pleasure.”

“By all means, Davie. But don’t have too much. You may get tired of it. Then what will you do?” He laughed. “Perhaps then you’d have more time for your middle-aged friend.”

His mood was changed. The will to hurt was gone. It was as if in its fulfillment he had been assuaged. Tom looked at David now with a warm candor. And David, looking at Tom, realized that this was a great joy--this talking with his friend: it was clear and deep and right: and what had come before was already dim, had already lost its taste. Even as he looked back for it, that seemed less real than this.

Something of the essence of these thoughts Tom found and was glad.

“Come, old man,” he said. “Light your pipe: let’s have a chat.”

* * * * *

In a way so gradual and smooth he had no heed, life was going well with David. He was relaxed before all its elements that met him. His mind, instead of sallying out to measure and contest each meeting with reality and to reduce it in vassalage of his own subjective world, receded now within itself and what it found disguised, remolded into consonance with the world meeting him.

His easy acquiescence in Constance Bardale’s sense of their relation brought him reward which his new mood could value. The delusion of love was rent away. Remained the reality of passion to be accepted or denied. He was in no mood for denial. Tacitly he let slip all he had dreamed of woman, all he had dreamed of love. He had no thought of a next-coming step with Constance. He was not open to surprise or worry. He was calm, contained. He was the very lover she desired.

And proud of his success. Proud of his conquest of one whom a naif part of him still found miraculous and remote. At her parties now he fell back into a silence and reserve of a different meaning. He knew himself the secret master. The homage of her guests to Constance was homage to him. Men feeling for her with tense nerves, warm eyes; women seeking her secret in her words and gestures, envying her power, glad to share in its largess and pick up the aroused senses of the men that she sent retreating from her--was incense to David. He could afford to recline away from the conversation: he could dare outstay the last of the guests and hold her one moment in his arms, drink in one draught the wine of the evening’s excitement upon her lips before he left her also.

He did not see her too often. She saw to that. She had a tact and a control that were artistry. And a consciousness of this that made her jealous of her standards, steeled her against lowering them, filled her with a firm discipline of pleasure. She designed the mingling of their lives with restraint and omission, with emphasis and grace of color. David breathed the well-being that must rise from any poise of forces. He had the comfort of the part in an harmonious whole.

Now this well-being wreathed forth into the other, the deeper phases of his world.

He moved toward a different attitude in his work downtown. Here the violent yet canny preachments of Tom helped also.

“The weak man,” Tom said, “stays in business and yet despises it. So that the one End of business--success--escapes him. Of course I am not now talking of the mediocre fool who respects business--as he is told to--and ekes out his pittance blacking the other fellow’s boots. You are beyond that, Davie. But there is another sort of fool--a more intelligent sort: the man who ‘sees through’ business, despises it and therefore muffs it. He is unreasonable also. If he can’t stand business, let him clear out! If he decides to stay in he is a fool not to win. One must of course despise business. One must know that it is the scramble of rather lowly-evolved and very greedy persons. One should be conscious of the gullibility and venality of bankers, of the wastefulness of manufacturers, of the opaqueness of middlemen. It should be clear to you that the elements that lift up the Rockefellers and the Morgans and the Hills are chiefly the singlemindedness of the stupid, the unimaginative and the dishonest. But what sort of a fool is it, David, who being aware of these inferior forces permits himself to be worsted by them? That seems to me an altogether illogical conclusion. It seems to me that just this knowledge should make the knower come out on top. In other words, the man who has brains enough to despise business should be the successful business man: not himself but the mediocrities should become the victims of his disgust. Therefore, David, through the very clarity of your vision into the nature of affairs, you must master them. God, man! would you be anywhere save _on top_ of such a muck-heap?”

Tom had not failed to help make David’s vision clear. As he said:

“Law is pandar to all of business’s ugly lusts. I ought to know the system’s filthiness if any one.”

David took these tirades with a grain of salt. He was convinced of the Quixotic extravagance in Tom’s idealism. Yet, the essence of his teaching must be right. David believed he knew this, now. Business was indeed a scramble in life’s gutters for food: the unfortunate way men had of getting their bread. But what was one to do? There was the bread in the muddy gutter. Plenty of it, plenty to go round. Tom had assured him that the economists who said “No” were slaves of the scramblers. Let him just read Kropotkin. Production was in a state of wasteful anarchy. But men had somehow preferred to ship their fair food from the fields where it grew, and drop it in the filth of a million scurrying feet, in the gutters that were rutted and befouled by years of greedy commotion. Here they preferred to fight for it like pigs nosing to a trough: to expend their energies and debase their spirits for its hoarding and for the depriving of others. It must all have been in some way deeply needful, else why should this idiotic condition have arisen, why should the simpler way not have been found, by which all men might have what they needed to eat--expend the rest of their forces in higher works? This was the rule. David must scramble along.

“The one danger,” said Tom, “is not to understand. The one degradation is to exalt this pother, to make a noble thing out of the job of earning one’s living. The cult of Business. You see it everywhere. Men must worship: it is easier to worship low than high.”

All this was sound enough, thought David.

On his way down Wall Street, to and from his office, he saw a spectacle strangely near the gutter metaphor of Tom. David remembered how this sight had at first aroused him: how quickly it had become an unnoticed feature of that downtown world so that, if he had missed it, in rain or in snow, he should have known that a great dislocation had come upon the Temple.

It was the sight of the curb-brokers. There they stood crowding the broad street with their bodies, clamoring the air with their cries and their scurried gestures. David went close to watch them: for they were a thick knot on the street, they were like a swarm of bugs overrunning a lump of refuse in a road. To distinguish more than the blotch of their thronging and the low drone of their noise from which sharp voices pierced, one had to bring near one’s face. David saw, now, that they were mostly young men, rather shabbily dressed since they must be prepared for every weather and for any scrimmage, with sharp faces--very red or very pale--in constant motion. Their eyes darted, their mouths worked, they dashed notes in little books, thrust forth hands above the gesticulating mass and spun away to other knots of the buffet with hats over ears and upturned collars. They looked up at the high windows. There, perched half outwards in rows were other men, behind ranks of telephones that they perpetually shrilled in, and thrust from them. They leaned out, with contorted fingers signaled to their colleagues below. Hands jutted from the crowd, fingers twirled answering signals. They used the language of the deaf and dumb. If David had not heard the incessant burr of their voices above the shuffle of their feet, he might have taken them for deaf-mutes. A same something strained and unquickened about the muscles of their throats and jaws which he had noticed in deaf-mutes. He understood that only by signs and battle-calls could they in the street and the men perched in the windows carry on their communications. He admired their adroitness. The disturbance rose and fell: had its hours of thick frenzy and its streaks of deliquescence. But it was unending.