Iris waited, shuffling and sighing. She felt tired and uncomfortable. Her last dive. She wanted tea and a hot-water bottle. It was chilly and there were too many shapes, too many movements – she couldn’t keep hold of it all at once, things moved then vanished, things shifted out of sight. She was sick and tired of half glimpsing things. It had all been a waste of time. She cursed Annie for making her think there was a chance, that it wasn’t all over and done with. She would give the dress away and after a while she would see somebody else walking round in it. Her glasses dug into her nose.
She felt for the cord, ready to pull it and get Demelza to haul her back up. She had never felt so old. She stretched the skin on the backs of her hands and watched it go white, and then wrinkle up into soft pouches. Her eyes were dry and itchy. She saw a flicker of something bright over to one side of the wreck. It was red, or maybe gold; she had just seen a flash. Then a large shape moved into the collapsed hollow of the ship, followed by two more shapes. There were a group of them, all hair and muscled tails and movement. They were covered in shells and kelp and their long hair was tangled and matted into dark, wet ropes. They eddied and swirled like pieces of bright, solidified water.
Then he was there. He broke away from the group and drifted through the wreck like a pale shaft of light. Iris blinked and adjusted her glasses. The twists and turns of his body – she knew it was him straight away, although there was something different, something more muscular, more streamlined and at home in the water about his body than she had ever seen. She leaned forwards and grabbed for the cord bur then her throat tightened.
No one had told her he would be young. At no point had she thought he would be like this, unchanged since they’d gone to sleep that night all those years before. His skin! It was so thin, almost translucent, fragile and lovely with veins branching through him like blown ink. She had expected to see herself mirrored in him. She touched her own skin. His body moved effortlessly through the water. He was lithe, just as skinny, but more moulded, polished like a piece of sea glass.
He swam closer and she leaned back on the bench and held her breath, suddenly not wanting him to see her. She kept as still as possible, willing his eyes to slide past; they were huge and bright and more heavily lidded than she remembered. She leaned back further. He didn’t look at the bell. Bubbles streamed out of his colourless mouth. He was so beautiful, so strange. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.
There were spots on her glasses and she couldn’t see him as well as she wanted to. She breathed on the lenses and wiped them quickly. Her hands shook and she fumbled with them, dropping them into the open water under the bench. They floated on the surface and she bent down to scoop them out but couldn’t reach. Her hips creaked and locked; she couldn’t reach down that far. One lens dipped into the water and then they sank completely. Iris blinked. Everything mixed together into a soft, light blur. She peered out, desperately trying to see him. He was still there. He was keeping close to the seabed, winging his way around the wreck, but everything about him had seeped into a smudgy paleness, like a running watercolour or an old photograph exposed to light. He was weaving in and out of the train carriages, in through a door and out through a window, threading his body through the silence and the rust. Iris tried to keep him in focus, tried to concentrate on him so that she wouldn’t lose him. But she couldn’t tell if he had reappeared from one of the carriages. Where was he, exactly? It was as if he were melting slowly into the sea, the water infusing his skin; his skin becoming that bit of light, that bit of movement. Iris watched and waited until she didn’t know if he was there or not there, near or far away, staying or leaving.
Consequences
Willa Cather
Willa Cather (1873–1947) was an American author who wrote highly praised novels depicting frontier life on the Great Plains. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel One of Ours. Cather received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944, an award given once a decade for an author’s complete body of work.
Henry Eastman, a lawyer, aged forty, was standing beside the Flatiron Building in a driving November rainstorm, signaling frantically for a taxi. It was six-thirty, and everything on wheels was engaged. The streets were in confusion about him, the sky was in turmoil above him, and the Flatiron Building, which seemed about to blow down, threw water like a mill-shoot. Suddenly, out of the brutal struggle of men and cars and machines and people tilting at each other with umbrellas, a quiet, well-mannered limousine paused before him, at the curb, and an agreeable, ruddy countenance confronted him through the open window of the car.
“Don’t you want me to pick you up, Mr. Eastman? I’m running directly home now.”
Eastman recognized Kier Cavenaugh, a young man of pleasure, who lived in the house on Central Park South, where he himself had an apartment.
“Don’t I?” he exclaimed, bolting into the car. “I’ll risk getting your cushions wet without compunction. I came up in a taxi, but I didn’t hold it. Bad economy. I thought I saw your car down on Fourteenth Street about half an hour ago.”
The owner of the car smiled. He had a pleasant, round face and round eyes, and a fringe of smooth, yellow hair showed under the brim of his soft felt hat. “With a lot of little broilers fluttering into it? You did. I know some girls who work in the cheap shops down there. I happened to be downtown and I stopped and took a load of them home. I do sometimes. Saves their poor little clothes, you know. Their shoes are never any good.”
Eastman looked at his rescuer. “Aren’t they notoriously afraid of cars and smooth young men?” he inquired.
Cavenaugh shook his head. “They know which cars are safe and which are chancy. They put each other wise. You have to take a bunch at a time, of course. The Italian girls can never come along; their men shoot. The girls understand, all right; but their fathers don’t. One gets to see queer places, sometimes, taking them home.”
Eastman laughed drily. “Every time I touch the circle of your acquaintance, Cavenaugh, it’s a little wider. You must know New York pretty well by this time.”
“Yes, but I’m on my good behavior below Twenty-third Street,” the young man replied with simplicity. “My little friends down there would give me a good character. They’re wise little girls. They have grand ways with each other, a romantic code of loyalty. You can find a good many of the lost virtues among them.”
The car was standing still in a traffic block at Fortieth Street, when Cavenaugh suddenly drew his face away from the window and touched Eastman’s arm. “Look, please. You see that hansom with the bony gray horse – driver has a broken hat and red flannel around his throat. Can you see who is inside?”
Eastman peered out. The hansom was just cutting across the line, and the driver was making a great fuss about it, bobbing his head and waving his whip. He jerked his dripping old horse into Fortieth Street and clattered off past the Public Library grounds toward Sixth Avenue. “No, I couldn’t see the passenger. Someone you know?”
“Could you see whether there was a passenger?” Cavenaugh asked.
“Why, yes. A man, I think. I saw his elbow on the apron. No driver ever behaves like that unless he has a passenger.”
“Yes, I may have been mistaken,” Cavenaugh murmured absent-mindedly.
Ten minutes or so later, after Cavenaugh’s car had turned off Fifth Avenue into Fifty-eighth Street, Eastman exclaimed, “There’s your same cabby, and his cart’s empty. He’s headed for a drink now, I suppose.” The driver in the broken hat and the red flannel neck cloth was still brandishing the whip over his old gray. He was coming from the west now, and turned down Sixth Avenue, under the elevated.
Cavenaugh’s car stopped at the bachelor apartment house between Sixth and Seventh Avenues where he and Eastman lived, and they went up in the elevator together. They were still talking when the lift stopped at Cavenaugh’s floor, and Eastman stepped out with him and walked down the hall, finishing his sentence while
Cavenaugh found his latch-key. When he opened the door, a wave of fresh cigarette smoke greeted them. Cavenaugh stopped short and stared into his hallway. “Now how in the devil—!” he exclaimed angrily.
“Someone waiting for you? Oh, no, thanks. I wasn’t coming in. I have to work tonight. Thank you, but I couldn’t.” Eastman nodded and went up the two flights to his own rooms.
Though Eastman did not customarily keep a servant he had this winter a man who had been lent to him by a friend who was abroad. Rollins met him at the door and took his coat and hat.
“Put out my dinner clothes, Rollins, and then get out of here until ten o’clock. I’ve promised to go to a supper tonight. I shan’t be dining. I’ve had a late tea and I’m going to work until ten. You may put out some kumiss and biscuit for me.”
Rollins took himself off, and Eastman settled down at the big table in his sitting-room. He had to read a lot of letters submitted as evidence in a breach of contract case, and before he got very far he found that long paragraphs in some of the letters were written in German. He had a German dictionary at his office, but none here. Rollins had gone, and anyhow, the bookstores would be closed. He remembered having seen a row of dictionaries on the lower shelf of one of Cavenaugh’s bookcases. Cavenaugh had a lot of books, though he never read anything but new stuff. Eastman prudently turned down his student’s lamp very low – the thing had an evil habit of smoking – and went down two flights to Cavenaugh’s door.
The young man himself answered Eastman’s ring. He was freshly dressed for the evening, except for a brown smoking jacket, and his yellow hair had been brushed until it shone. He hesitated as he confronted his caller, still holding the door knob, and his round eyes and smooth forehead made their best imitation of a frown. When Eastman began to apologize, Cavenaugh’s manner suddenly changed. He caught his arm and jerked him into the narrow hall. “Come in, come in. Right along!” he said excitedly. “Right along,” he repeated as he pushed Eastman before him into his sitting-room. “Well I’ll—” He stopped short at the door and looked about his own room with an air of complete mystification. The back window was wide open and a strong wind was blowing in. Cavenaugh walked over to the window and stuck out his head, looking up and down the fire escape. When he pulled his head in, he drew down the sash.
“I had a visitor I wanted you to see,” he explained with a nervous smile. “At least I thought I had. He must have gone out that way,” nodding toward the window.
“Call him back. I only came to borrow a German dictionary, if you have one. Can’t stay. Call him back.”
Cavenaugh shook his head despondently. “No use. He’s beat it. Nowhere in sight.”
“He must be active. Has he left something?” Eastman pointed to a very dirty white glove that lay on the floor under the window.
“Yes, that’s his.”
Cavenaugh reached for his tongs, picked up the glove, and tossed it into the grate, where it quickly shriveled on the coals. Eastman felt that he had happened in upon something disagreeable, possibly something shady, and he wanted to get away at once. Cavenaugh stood staring at the fire and seemed stupid and dazed; so he repeated his request rather sternly, “I think I’ve seen a German dictionary down there among your books. May I have it?”
Cavenaugh blinked at him. “A German dictionary? Oh, possibly! Those were my father’s. I scarcely know what there is.” He put down the tongs and began to wipe his hands nervously with his handkerchief.
Eastman went over to the bookcase behind the Chesterfield, opened the door, swooped upon the book he wanted and stuck it under his arm. He felt perfectly certain now that something shady had been going on in Cavenaugh’s rooms, and he saw no reason why he should come in for any hang-over. “Thanks. I’ll send it back tomorrow,” he said curtly as he made for the door.
Cavenaugh followed him. “Wait a moment. I wanted you to see him. You did see his glove,” glancing at the grate.
Eastman laughed disagreeably. “I saw a glove. That’s not evidence. Do your friends often use that means of exit? Somewhat inconvenient.”
Cavenaugh gave him a startled glance. “Wouldn’t you think so? For an old man, a very rickety old party? The ladders are steep, you know, and rusty.” He approached the window again and put it up softly. In a moment he drew his head back with a jerk. He caught Eastman’s arm and shoved him toward the window. “Hurry, please. Look! Down there.” He pointed to the little patch of paved court four flights down.
The square of pavement was so small and the walls about it were so high, that it was a good deal like looking down a well. Four tall buildings backed upon the same court and made a kind of shaft, with flagstones at the bottom, and at the top a square of dark blue with some stars in it. At the bottom of the shaft Eastman saw a black figure, a man in a caped coat and a tall hat stealing cautiously around, not across the square of pavement, keeping close to the dark wall and avoiding the streak of light that fell on the flagstones from a window in the opposite house. Seen from that height he was of course fore-shortened and probably looked more shambling and decrepit than he was. He picked his way along with exaggerated care and looked like a silly old cat crossing a wet street. When he reached the gate that led into an alley way between two buildings, he felt about for the latch, opened the door a mere crack, and then shot out under the feeble lamp that burned in the brick arch over the gateway. The door closed after him.
“He’ll get run in,” Eastman remarked curtly, turning away from the window. “That door shouldn’t be left unlocked. Any crook could come in. I’ll speak to the janitor about it, if you don’t mind,” he added sarcastically.
“Wish you would.” Cavenaugh stood brushing down the front of his jacket, first with his right hand and then with his left. “You saw him, didn’t you?”
“Enough of him. Seems eccentric. I have to see a lot of buggy people. They don’t take me in any more. But I’m keeping you and I’m in a hurry myself. Good night.”
Cavenaugh put out his hand detainingly and started to say something; but Eastman rudely turned his back and went down the hall and out of the door. He had never felt anything shady about Cavenaugh before, and he was sorry he had gone down for the dictionary. In five minutes he was deep in his papers; but in the half hour when he was loafing before he dressed to go out, the young man’s curious behavior came into his mind again.
Eastman had merely a neighborly acquaintance with Cavenaugh. He had been to a supper at the young man’s rooms once, but he didn’t particularly like Cavenaugh’s friends; so the next time he was asked, he had another engagement. He liked Cavenaugh himself, if for nothing else than because he was so cheerful and trim and ruddy. A good complexion is always at a premium in New York, especially when it shines reassuringly on a man who does everything in the world to lose it. It encourages fellow mortals as to the inherent vigor of the human organism and the amount of bad treatment it will stand for. “Footprints that perhaps another,” etc.
Cavenaugh, he knew, had plenty of money. He was the son of a Pennsylvania preacher, who died soon after he discovered that his ancestral acres were full of petroleum, and Kier had come to New York to burn some of the oil. He was thirty-two and was still at it; spent his life, literally, among the breakers. His motor hit the Park every morning as if it were the first time ever. He took people out to supper every night. He went from restaurant to restaurant, sometimes to half-a-dozen in an evening. The head waiters were his hosts and their cordiality made him happy. They made a life-line for him up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue. Cavenaugh was still fresh and smooth, round and plump, with a lustre to his hair and white teeth and a clear look in his round eyes. He seemed absolutely unwearied and unimpaired; never bored and never carried away.
Eastman always smiled when he met Cavenaugh in the entrance hall, serenely going forth to or returning from gladiatorial combats with joy, or when he saw him rolling smoothly up to the door in his car in the morning after a restful night in one of the remarkable new roadhouses he was
always finding. Eastman had seen a good many young men disappear on Cavenaugh’s route, and he admired this young man’s endurance.
Tonight, for the first time, he had got a whiff of something unwholesome about the fellow – bad nerves, bad company, something on hand that he was ashamed of, a visitor old and vicious, who must have had a key to Cavenaugh’s apartment, for he was evidently there when Cavenaugh returned at seven o’clock. Probably it was the same man Cavenaugh had seen in the hansom. He must have been able to let himself in, for Cavenaugh kept no man but his chauffeur; or perhaps the janitor had been instructed to let him in. In either case, and whoever he was, it was clear enough that Cavenaugh was ashamed of him and was mixing up in questionable business of some kind.
Eastman sent Cavenaugh’s book back by Rollins, and for the next few weeks he had no word with him beyond a casual greeting when they happened to meet in the hall or the elevator. One Sunday morning Cavenaugh telephoned up to him to ask if he could motor out to a road-house in Connecticut that afternoon and have supper; but when Eastman found there were to be other guests he declined.
On New Year’s eve Eastman dined at the University Club at six o’clock and hurried home before the usual manifestations of insanity had begun in the streets. When Rollins brought his smoking coat, he asked him whether he wouldn’t like to get off early.
“Yes, sir. But won’t you be dressing, Mr. Eastman?” he inquired.
“Not tonight.” Eastman handed him a bill. “Bring some change in the morning. There’ll be fees.”
Rollins lost no time in putting everything to rights for the night, and Eastman couldn’t help wishing that he were in such a hurry to be off somewhere himself. When he heard the hall door close softly, he wondered if there were any place, after all, that he wanted to go. From his window he looked down at the long lines of motors and taxis waiting for a signal to cross Broadway. He thought of some of their probable destinations and decided that none of those places pulled him very hard. The night was warm and wet, the air was drizzly. Vapor hung in clouds about the Times Building, half hid the top of it, and made a luminous haze along Broadway. While he was looking down at the army of wet, black carriage-tops and their reflected headlights and tail-lights, Eastman heard a ring at his door. He deliberated. If it were a caller, the hall porter would have telephoned up. It must be the janitor. When he opened the door, there stood a rosy young man in a tuxedo, without a coat or hat.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 85