Part 8

Tom paused. A sudden discomfort came upon his face. He pushed back to his tale as to haven: “...at once the man awoke. He found himself in his bed. He remembered the angel’s visitation. He believed it. He ran to the sleeping chamber of his friend, expecting to behold a miracle. It was his friend, his unchanged friend who slept there. The man cursed and smote his breast. Then a great light came to him. He understood. He returned, both loyal and happy.”

David sat there.

This Cornelia understood. Tom was on one of his moody jaunts and away. She had sat there watching as a girl on a fence might watch a horseman gallop past in dust and hoof-thud. She recoiled as he swung in too near.

Tom laughed. “Come! You need some more coffee,” to David. “You are half asleep. I can’t get along without coffee. Can you? The world is so much a dream, one’s sense of fitness makes one go to sleep beholding it. I find I can do endless work, with endless cups of coffee. I wonder who invented coffee. A shame, isn’t it, that the true benefactors of the human race are nameless. The Gods tied Prometheus to a rock and set a vulture on him, for giving us fire. The other saviors of life they have made nameless.”

He skipped nimbly from parable to fun: from apostrophe to laughter. David found himself loving the mere exercise of following his new friend. It was like a cross-country run with an agile pathman. Over brook and rock he tried to leap with him. No time to look and to consider. The way was nothing, the leaping everything.

The story was forgotten. It was shivered away in the pelt of Tom’s succeeding words.

Cornelia was silent. She was pensive. She had stopped listening to Tom. When he went galloping like this, he was running away from something deep in himself. She knew. He would take this thing within him he needed to escape and toss it far and rush after it. Let him rush.

There was David laughing. Tom no longer needed to smoke cigarettes. David was glowing near his finger-tips.

Coffee was gone. Night had come up from the street like incense of incantation. It curled its way into the room, it subdued the flame of the room to a warm ash.

Tom lighted a lamp. No one spoke. A golden ray filtered about the table. It left them in shadows. David got up to leave.

“I was so happy to be here,” he said.

Cornelia clasped his hand deeply in her own. It was warm. She found it hard to speak. “Boy!” her heart sang to him. She managed to say: “You must come soon again.” ... “And again and again.” Her heart had the last word.

Tom took David down through the dark halls where gas-jets shivered like emprisoned birds. He was not happy with this last silence of Cornelia. It was as if she had said: “Why do you bring a guest here and then insult him and not let him even know that this is what you have done?”

His eyes were hot, the hand that took David’s was cold.

“Good-by,” he said, “I hope we are going to be--friends?”

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed David....

David walked under swaying houses. They were aburst with broken flame. He walked among scattered men and women driven with unbelieving will and eyes unseeing toward these fires--toward fires that meant love to them and warmth. It was the evening before work: the breach in the dull circle of toil. Hearts were released. Blood surged in vain encouragement through the habit-hardened lives of the workers. Men and women were floods of longing torrenting the streets.... David walked under the spread wings of his own sweet mood. Life was full. Full of the play of voices and of bodies: full of adventure. Life was the mystery of finding....

* * * * *

No one else was at home, that evening. Anne brought early tea to Lois and to David.

“It is _our_ house to-night,” Lois was playful.

A strange exhilaration still sang and worked in him. He looked at the girl who had shared those sweltering nights: he looked at Lois flattering his new ease. It all seemed right to David. It was right that Anne had been there to take. He smiled on her masterfully. The girl was fearful lest the young Miss understand. But we can bring to our minds through intuition only such thoughts our minds have words for. The remote amour was an unthought-of, an impossible thing to Lois. Anne’s own senses, feeling this as they groped forward, again came to rest.

She waited on them with a sweet dignity. It was so plain she was a woman. A woman was a creature whose life was nourished by herself. A creature free of the world. David felt this, as they sat munching at table. It was the quiet serving girl who made him think of woman. With her blood she nurtured. In her womb, at her breast, with her hands, forever her own mute spirit giving men food. Woman was the true master of life: the sourceless god.

David looked at Lois. A faint chill went through him. It seemed to him that Lois was not quite woman. She was less herself, than this waiting servant. He felt her need of sustenance, her lack in this of godhood.

Anne helped her to cake. There she was cutting the cake, simply--sublimely? Lois was above the table like a flower. He thought of the strength of Anne’s abandon: of the wise strength of her withdrawal. Wisdom and strength--for him! Cornelia came also. She, too, was more woman. Already there was lodged the seed of dissolution in his heart for Lois, before the climax of his caring.

Upstairs, he went far toward it. Lois’ arm was about him, the air of her body stabbed his blood: he forgot his comparisons. He was quite sure he loved Lois. They sat so close together, and often she placed her cheek against his lips. He saw the fine tautness of her body hiding beneath the flimsy frock it wore. He desired her body. He desired to break its tautness.

“Is it wrong, Lois dear, to love one’s cousin? Because I love you very much.”

“It is extremely proper.”

A fire had been fanned in him that afternoon: fanned by Cornelia. It burned for Lois.

He viced her shoulders in his hands and looked at her, as one stiffens before a leap. His hands slipped upward to her head. The thrill of her skin and her flesh flowed through his hands like blood. He held her face. He wanted to tell her how he loved her. His own face came nearer, it was like a death and a birth: a frenzy of change.

She thrust her head downward, his mouth sank in the mesh of her hair behind her ear.

He was panting. “Why don’t you let me kiss you--as I _must_?”

Lois withdrew her body. Her mood was not changed.

“Don’t be silly, David. I can’t let you kiss me, that way.”

He was silent. He did not gainsay her. He wanted to hide his face. Something started up in his breast and beat against his breathing, hurt him.

Not the denial of the kiss. It was the sudden pierce of her insensitiveness. She had not cared to understand how he cared for her. And when he had longed for her mouth, her mood had not changed!

If only it had! If only she had been moved--though it was in denial.

He had at times believed he saw her little body stir with passion when he was near her. But so faintly, so containedly. Never a doubt of her control. Something she tasted in exquisite moderation and enjoyed. In her denial she was cool. It was as if her hunger for a closer kiss were a question answered in her catechism: one she knew all about: one she had learned the answer of by rote.

There she was smiling, chatting. She had already forgotten. He looked away and heard the mutterings of his pain that she could be smiling, chatting.

* * * * *

With dull head David went to his work.

He loved Lois and rebelled against his love. She gave him no ground on which to hate her. Always his love was watching, watching for a pause in which to whisper: “See? You do her injustice. She is not hard and flippant. She is young and unknowing. She does not feel a deeper love. How much sun can a bud hold in its tight petals?”

She was not different. She sought him out. She allowed him no escape. One day, she said:

“Why don’t you kiss me any more?”

David took her hand and kissed that, tenderly, hopelessly. Lois laughed. She thought he was teasing her. She fell in with his little game.

Work was already a tune David knew by heart. Fortunately, since his head was dull. The year approached its scintillant climax. And David’s head was dull and his heart was heavy.

One bitter cold day he stepped out for his lunch.

When he could he lunched alone. It was a problem of avoiding Duer Tibbetts whom he emphatically did not like, but who went on blandly liking David. It surprised David how little his own attitude and his inner mood affected his relations with that blossoming gentleman of affairs. It was almost as if, in the reality of their business and family connections, so slight a thing as personal taste must fade away, did not count. He had often lunched with other boys in the office--the sort who Duer said were not “their sort.” He liked them, until he began in this very approach to have discomfort in their friendship. Since the bursting of his wound with Lois he sought to be alone. He was equally surprised by the sensitive response of these others. They felt his aloofness in the office: they honored it. They were different indeed from Duer.

He walked toward the cluttered food-pen where the waitresses sweated visibly at the arm-pits. Here lunch cost him only twenty cents. The place was at least clean, and the food good. The eggs for instance, and the butter--details that meant much for David. He sat huddled at a long porcelain board. From whirling waitresses in white the dishes fell with clamorous approximation near his place. In the rear was an endless catatonic beat of crockery and voices. The whole place roared like the shatter of a mighty loom that wove the calls of women into the brittle shower of china, the glint of knives into the shuffle of feet. David sat and took his food and held his big arms tight to his body. The fresh air as he left gave him the cumulated picture.

This day he heard a clear voice at his side speak his name in the cold street.

He turned: there was Miss Lord.

Caroline Lord held a higher place in Deane and Company than any other woman. These were days before the spread of advertising agents. Miss Lord was in charge of the correspondence department. She had a little office of her own, and a male assistant and a stenographer. She was known as a remarkable woman.

“How do you do, Mr. Markand?” She had evidently overtaken David and now they were walking together.

He saw her casually in and out of the long packed room where David fumbled figures and papers. She was a remote business detail of this still strange world. One day, Tibbetts dragged him into her little office and introduced him. He remembered the way she sat on her desk and chatted cannily and bit at a pencil. The smile of her white teeth was beyond the reach of David’s comfort. He was glad to get away.

Here she was being affable again.

“I presume you were going to lunch, Mr. Markand?”

He noticed that she kept step with him. She was a big and capable woman.

“Y--yes,” he admitted.

“Do you like your work? Perhaps you are tired at night. Am I right? Oh, never worry about that. When you get used--more used to it, it will take less out of you.”

They had passed his eating place. What should he do? He began cursing himself. It was so wide in him that he did not want to invite her to lunch. In her, that this was precisely what she expected. He was a reed before her silent pressure. There she was talking, as if they had an hour to be together.

“We were up on the Palisades last Sunday. You must really have some of your friends take you----” David fumbled in his pocket. His fare downtown that morning had broken his last dollar. He had a way of not keeping much of his money with him. It seemed a risky thing to do in a wild City. His pocket held ninety-five cents! Lunch for two at a decent restaurant was a catastrophe that simply could not be! She was trudging along: subtly pushing him toward Broadway. The lunch-places of the rich were near.

“Doubtless you have a lunch engagement ...?”

“No. But....” He stopped, she stopped. He blushed and she smiled.

“No? Well then, we might have a bite together.”

Why could he never lie? How he despised himself!

“I--I can’t, Miss Lord. I have only ninety-five cents.”

He felt naked before her. A lady should blush and go away when one stood naked before her. There was Miss Lord laughing: swinging her weight back joyously on one heel the better to observe him.

“Oh, isn’t it always a joke when we find ourselves short? I understand so well. Won’t you be _my_ guest, Mr. Markand?”

She tilted her head back. David noticed how small her bonnet was above the mass of her hair. “You know,” she went on, “it was really my invitation after all.”

“Oh--I--no--I.” Her light mood was an added weight.

She was quick to understand and to redispose her forces. “Then you must permit me to lend you five dollars. There now. I’ll be offended if you don’t.” She dug in her bag and held out a bill. “Why should you discriminate against a fellow?”

David paused long enough to try to see with what he thought her generous eyes the foolish panic he was in. He gathered himself. They both laughed. He took the bill.

“It is good of you,” he said.

“And of you,” she answered.

She was silent and meek while the waiter took the order. He was gone. She began.

She talked methodically. She chose her specific subject and cribbed him in it. It was plain that Caroline Lord detested vagueness and abhorred disorder. No wide fields to roam and to be lost in. Miss Lord was managing this lunch. Before long she bored him.

In the emptiness of this, he could retreat a bit and see her.

She was a handsome woman. Her age was beyond David’s knowing. He would have called her new, rather than young. She was well-kept.

“I saw a play last night I am sure would have interested you. _The Blue Daisy_. Have you seen it?”

He said, No.

“Do you go to the theater much?”

He said, No, again.

Miss Lord followed her plan. She had a catalogue of non-essential subjects: art, politics, life:--the sort to be served at amicable luncheons. She had already done books.

“Why--it’s the story of two brothers. Let me see, what is their name? _Daysplaings--Gass-tong_ and _Rah-ool Daysplaings_. There’s the eldest who has a beautiful estate in Normandy. The young one is sort of a poet, a dreamer, you know--wanders about, mostly with his brother’s wife while----”

David knew he was going to hear the entire story. She was a handsome woman.

There were no curves in her face. Her chin was square and her mouth was straight. The poise of her forehead was straight and the look of her eyes was square.

“Well, you can imagine what happened then. But it didn’t. The idea was there. That is bad enough. The husband was quite right, I think....”

Miss Lord was a pattern of symmetry: a study in balance and rule.

Her body was not angular. She sat very straight in her chair. “Then, the curtain falls.” She was tall, and sitting she topped David. “The way it was acted had a good deal to do....” She came forward a little. Her hands were half shut and flanked her head. Her arms were two columns propping some splendid official building.

“Of course,” she was saying, “that sort of thing seems to be common in France. They’re a decadent race, you know. Clever, though!”

Yes: her body was indeed not angular like her face. Her arms were ample. David could see the suggestion of flesh bursting the plain white sleeves. Her bosom was voluptuously full. Were these not feminine curves, these suave rounded masses? He felt the solidity of Miss Lord more somehow than her sex. Sex is an aura, not a form. Women understand this best. But a certain lack puzzled David. It was strange for him to sit so close to this lovely woman and not feel her lovely: to see her flawless and be unwarmed.

“‘Oh,’ the Irishman pointed, ‘she’s an Irish bull.’”

He should have laughed at this joke. He was full of the pain of Lois. Suddenly, he was thinking of Lois.

“And what do you say,” it was the first question she had asked him in many minutes, “to Tammany’s victory! After three years of splendid reconstruction?”

It was part of Miss Lord’s program to discuss politics. Miss Lord was no “crank on women’s rights,” as she put it. That was too serious a view of the thing. Above all, or under all, she wanted you to know that she was a woman: she wanted you to treat her as a woman. But a strong, wise woman. One who could, unblushing, talk of adultery in a French play or of the degradation of a Tammany campaign.

“Why,” David answered, “I don’t know. I can’t understand. If all these things were true about Tammany Hall.... There must be something else behind it all: some _reason_ why Van Wyck was elected.”

Miss Lord smiled. This was his opinion: a fledging’s she could take with indulgence. She wanted no more of it. Now she could deliver her own. She started.

David was thinking of Lois. Little lovely Lois. Why must his mind fill so compellingly with Lois, when he lunched with Miss Lord?

“The thing is, you see, the people do not think. Catchwords and Sunday picnics win them over. Really, popular government----”

This woman. That girl. Could two creatures be more different? Why then the idea of a comparison. Did they have something, did they lack something in common?

“... so far at least a failure.”

Their ideas _were_ one. Here was Miss Lord trying to conceal the impression that she earned her living: trying with might and main to be like Lois. An older, more settled, equally virginal Lois?

He half-closed his eyes. It did not matter. Such subtle things as eyes half-closed were beyond Miss Lord. Beyond Lois? He heard her voice. “The City had to pay ten cents a-piece for coat-hooks! A-piece! When you can buy them _anywhere_ retail for a nickel.” He heard her voice. It was so unlike her stalwart strapping body that he had not noticed it until now when his half-shut eyes saw less. Miss Lord’s voice was high, was girlish! It too had that ring which, though David knew no such rule, goes with an emotionally empty life. Wise, cool Miss Lord. Did she have really more of the wine of feeling than pampered Lois? Was she more alive, after all?

She was earning her living. While Lois lolled at teas, and waited for her début. Earning one’s bread--David knew what that meant, in the world. It meant the heights and the depths. It meant nobility. The man who earned his bread was a man: the man who did not was less than a woman.... Did it really mean these things?

He had earned his living since he was fifteen years old. For five years done this; for five years thought nothing about it, thought nothing about the world. That was strange. He had loafed three weeks near an idle lake and a world was born. Was earning one’s bread perhaps a trick of the hand, like placing the spokes in a wheel? What had the droning hours in the shop brought to him? Did he not go out into the breathing fields and watch his mind stir to expand? Until there had been three weeks of this and his mind had expanded. He liked work. Was it perhaps a trifle like a drug that one gets used to, that eases one off from the world? Here he was, juggling with steamship deliveries and tinkering accounts. Brainier work than welding handle-bars? Life could not be this. Perhaps this wise woman who earned her living did not know life after all.

At least, she did not know him. She had bored him: she was boring him now. David felt he knew her somewhat. He was not boring her....

“It has been such fun, Mr. Markand. After all, we can’t get along, can we, without fresh points of view? They mean success in business. Not plodding counts, you will find: always the fresh point of view....”

Her judgments were cleaner-cut than his. A rubber-stamp is dear. What lay, in truth, behind the patter of her phrases: “France is corrupt but clever.” “People vote according to picnics and catchwords.” “After all, there is something _clean_, something _big_ which America stands for, that no other country can rival”?

Lois also had her occupation. She received no salary for it: she was apprenticed to it still. She would get her place in the world, if she pursued it well. It too would mean money and ease and position. She too was going through a trick that was far from the free winds of living. Did not both these women belong to Deane and Company?

He loved Lois. He said to himself he loved her. This woman he did not love. So he saw her clearly. Let him swing this clear-seeing back into the dim place of his heart that hurt! It was impossible. He could not diminish Lois after all. The result of his effort was to dispose him more pleasantly toward Miss Lord. Here he was smiling at her with a new attention that a less wise woman might have been wise enough to mistrust....

He came away with a gnawing sense of doubt. He was heart-sick more deeply than ever. Miss Lord and his cousin were creatures of a single world. They performed different parts of a single service. Both of them were supposed to uphold the prestige of this system that made money and spent it: to submit to its standards of deed and thought, to further its dominions. For this, Miss Lord had her wages, Lois her keep.

_He too!_ He too had been taken in for service! For service rendered he too would receive the means of sustaining life. David had seen a coat-of-arms heralding a strange device on the façade of a great commercial building. It had puzzled him. He had forgotten it. Now he recalled it and understood it. He marveled at its telling word. It had said: “Spend me and defend me.”

A great fright was being born in David....

V