The important factor was Elizabeth. Small part of an ocean lay between them now, a matter of days, of hours. As she crossed the sea to come to him, he made loyal journeys through a clearing fog to her; and found her where she always must have been, in the very center of his life. Happy nostalgia swam over him because he knew they would rebuild together all that they had deliberately thrown away, the last movement of the symphony would commence with their first sight of one another. He bent determinedly over the Manifesto. He felt his old friends (however they split on small points, however impelled each of them still was to listen chiefly to his individual self) nevertheless on the main points solid behind him: that there was to be the Magazine, the culmination of all they had thought through and lived through since their ardent college days.
7. BEFORE THE FAST EXPRESS
ELIZABETH knew that she was waking and she swam laboriously out of sleep: she knew that she would not know when she opened her eyes in what bed or what stage of life she would wake to. Not in Paris with Dennis Kirby; for a moment she felt him on her breast, his impression lay lightly like a shadow, and then was gone; not in Paris with Denny. Not in a studio smelling of turpentine; not in the little coffin-shaped room at college, with the library chimes ringing out clear and false across the campus. She knew she would not wake to the nursery at Longview with the sun coming up out of Lake Michigan, with Fräulein drawing back the curtains—she closed her eyes more tightly as though sleep might take her back; held them shut and prayed that when she fully waked some miracle would have taken place, and there she would be, back in that white iron bed, that light-flooded room; a child with pigtails scattered on the pillow—the rest, the other rooms, the subsequent beds, a fevered night-mare. Behind her own closed lids she lay safe and could feel in that deliberate dark the dimensions of the familiar nursery; she could feel the white-painted bureau on her right, the snapshot of Bruno in his sailor-suit, riding his first two-wheeler; the collection of eleven dolls with which she would not play because Bruno called it sissy; the heart-shaped locket which she wore even to bathe and sleep in, that Bruno’s father gave her for her seventh birthday: the walls, the windows, Fräulein guarding them, pushing out the outside. Emptiness crept from her chest to run with a vague ache through her body, as though all her limbs were hollow. It was nostalgia; the strongest, most painful, the only real nostalgia: nostalgia for childhood, for oneself as one started to be.
Whatever bed I wake in I shall not belong there! I shall not be there! the ache compellingly taking over her body informed her. I want to go back, to go back, to before the fast express, go back twenty years and more to that era of timeless peace, to the days without end, the wide sunny days, each issued like a coin to be squandered recklessly; to be saved forever; each one a lifetime in itself, encompassing a thousand births, a thousand deaths, with a fine wide stream of warm brown family, a thin strong thread of happy Bruno, running through. Bruno explaining to a pair of pigtails the mysterious nature of time and eternity; where God lived; how babies came. Time rolling always out of a gigantic spool which unwound itself ponderously like syrup round and round before the window so many child’s paces from a child’s bed; jumping each morning like the hands of the school clock, giving out another day. Terror of being alone through the long, long nights: would daylight ever come again; had that afternoon of shooting marbles with Bruno in the back-yard been their last (the world ending every night when one was only seven)—then leaping with joy to find Fräulein at the windows; the time-spool jump: another day, a day, a day-long day, in which to live with Bruno.
But time narrowed, time conformed; the wide days were pressed into service, became so many units in a week; a week was recognized; one day it would be summer and the next day fall and seeing the bare branches emerge even a child knew that special fall would never come again. The day came wide and beautiful; but as its hours progressed they narrowed, then flew; and were lost down a dwindling funnel. There was a quick week of packing, of holding one’s breath; the heart beat faster like the clock, the time-spool spinning negligently; and Bruno was gone, to prep-school.
Bewildering days, a foretaste of life without Bruno, dry and cold, no longer precious to wake to; time rolling faster, less important, from the great spool grown smaller, spinning quicker. Good that night came now; good the first snow, because spring would be that much sooner; and after spring summer and the thought of next year’s fall more endurable by far than this one. Give away my dolls, I’m not a child any more, she told Fräulein, told her mother. How they laughed and cried over her. Eight years old and not a child, they cried, why you’re our baby, Betsey—jealous and frightened that they could not live forever in their child’s slow rhythm. I’m not a child, she firmly said. Our melodramatic baby, they laughed and cried. Bruno’s coming home, coming home for CHRISTMAS, they said; but aren’t you glad, Elizabeth? Why, what a child! your only cousin coming home and—I believe the child’s forgotten BRUNO. They laughed and cried; they cried and laughed; the mothers, the fathers, the uncles and aunts. She closed her mouth and closed her face; she broke her bank to buy Bruno a present.
He’s downstairs, Elizabeth you funny child! your grown-up cousin’s come to see you! come and see Bruno in his first long pants. She hid in her room; she hid his present; she brushed her hair standing consciously before the mirror for the first time in her life; she undid her pigtails, braided them all over again. She rushed down the first flight; she stopped dead on the landing, the window framed a picture she would never forget, her eyes large and trembling to receive it; she crept down the last stairs as though she had been summoned for punishment. Doesn’t he look handsome, Elizabeth? they all cried and laughed, and stood like vultures in at the death. Strange Bruno stood there firmly planted on the carpet, his legs going down in their fine long pants, his face a yard above them, disconnected; beside him another boy, a stranger-boy, no stranger than Bruno, standing and laughing in triumph because Bruno had brought him home. And look, he’s brought you a friend, the Davidson boy, a beau. She stood stock still on the bottom stair, a mile away; she thought of the safety of the landing, twenty steps above; her patent-leather feet refused to move. Why you funny children! cried the mothers, the fathers, the uncles and aunts, you funny, funny children! don’t you know your cousin any more, Elizabeth? don’t you know your cousin, Bruno? How quickly children forget, they all sighed, and smiled, and touched their eyes. The room stretched a mile between them, lined with strangers, poking fun and laughing. The strange boy continued to stand, obstinately, beside Bruno; his triumphant smile a ghastly challenge. Ah, ah, she can’t look at Bruno because he’s brought home a friend, ah, fickle Elizabeth, your cousin’s fickle, Bruno. At last Bruno revolving slowly through the space, a prep-school man, a long-pants man; the boy beside him moving like a shadow smiling his strange triumphant smile. Hello kid, meet my kid cousin Arthur, doesn’t she look like a baby-lamb? Shocked grown-up silence, amusement filtering through like pepper in her nostrils. Show him you’re a lady, Betsey, set him an example, tell Bruno how nice he looks in his new long pants, shake hands nicely with the David-son boy, tell him you’re glad to meet him. The stranger-boy with the stranger name held out his stranger prep-school hand. Bruno’s long, long pants were stilts, sending his head a mile above her own so their eyes could never meet again; he stared like the stranger out over her head. Bruno looks silly, I think, she said. They stood there flanked against each other, pitted against each other, like hostile, stranger children; she ignored strange Arthur’s hand. And they used to be so devoted, inseparable, almost too much, we used to think, moaned the mothers and fathers, the uncles and aunts; children are so cruel, they smiled and touched their eyes; she’s flirting with you, Arthur, don’t mind if she doesn’t shake hands, they laughed and cried. But Bruno was climbing through the window with the stranger Arthur after him toward two bicycles which stood against the porch. Christmas died before it came; Bruno was gone before he had come home. The spool spun fast and brittle.
> He called Tommy Spencer a fat-head when she asked Tommy to take her to the high-school dance; he said Jerry Marks (when she hung over the balcony of the gym to watch Jerry shoot baskets) was a matinee idol; he said Dick Hyams whose fraternity pin she wore for six months was a sissy, a jack-ass, a small-town sheik—and when Easter vacation came she gave Dick back his pin. Well, why don’t you take me to the dance Bruno, she said; he laughed his superior laugh. You’ve got no sex-appeal for me, Betsey, he said; he was running around with the town’s wild girls, hitting the high spots all around Chicago; and then he was writing letters from New York, all wise-cracks and adages, no news about himself; and briefly home again, sitting restlessly next door, unbearably dipped back in slow family life. Get out, get out of it, Elizabeth, as soon as you can get out. Off down the block on his bicycle, off down the block in his roadster. She couldn’t stay home and get his letters; couldn’t stay home and watch him tearing down the street, around the corner, out of her life. She could ride as fast as he. She could run like him banging the door behind her, she could leave the family sitting growing old with the safe mahogany chairs they sat on. She could step forever on the accelerator, she could sit a restless prisoner on the fast express, by his advice, with Bruno’s sanction; she could go twenty times faster in her direction than Bruno in the other, she could fly, she could spin, she was casual, gay, she dropped him letters from way stations, he wrote back that men-artists were generally fools, that Wheelwright sounded like a ninny, she wrote that it wasn’t Wheelwright any more, she had moved her toothbrush to the next one, he wrote back saying he hadn’t raised his girl to be a travelling salesman, she stepped on the accelerator and met him for a mute three days in New York, then sprang on the train again, rolled on again, sped away again, faster and faster, careening on the downhill special, left him on the station platform with all they had to say and could not say standing like a spectre beside him, waving like a spectre after her, don’t forget to write, she cried rapping on the windowpane, and life goes on but you’re ahead of it, he roared above the roar of the train gathering motion, the train gathering noise and stood there looking after her with her own expression in his eyes while she bounced on the dusty straw seat and hurtled down the singing tracks.
Through the pounding and the pulsing in her ears there floated up some feeling, faint, some straw to cling to, wake for; something to flag the fast express; some memory she could not place. The high speed slackened; this day was not like other days; the bed rocked, swayed: she was on some boat, no fast train this, this slow and gentle motion. She lay there trying to waken, trying to remember; like trying to capture some name which, lost in memory, becomes the keynote, the important cabala. Perhaps when she found it, it would be some name like White; or it might recall associations in no way satisfying the urgent need. Yet it would remain a fact; and though one could not conjure with it, it must be endured, accepted, forever after faced. She tossed on the bed as the train moved slower. The memory came up clean and shining; Bruno, she was going home to Bruno; the brakes ground noiselessly; she was awake with a new wide day before her. Something of the joy of waking in the Longview nursery shone in the wavering stateroom. Bruno next door; Bruno waiting at the pier; in twenty-four short hours.
8. MARGARET AND HER HUSBAND
“NO, YOU GO, go without me, darling,” Margaret said absently; “you can represent us both, I’m tired.”
December already, she thought, the middle of December; leaving only January, February, March . . . the months stopped on her fourth finger, the ring finger; August on the finger that wore the little marriage band. The doctor had laughed; he couldn’t be sure, he said, as long as the months counted so many ahead, up to his own ring finger; ah you eager young women, he said, and wagged the June index finger playfully. But Margaret and Mrs. Salvemini were perfectly certain. It didn’t take a doctor, Mrs. Salvemini said, to tell her; she knew it; had the feeling; a heaviness in the eyes, a lightness in the heart—it was she who told the doctor. And I always ask God, said Mrs. Salvemini, I always ask God. Go ahead, said Margaret, her eyes shining with her heresy; go ahead and ask your God; for me, Missis Salvemini, she said. God, snorted Mrs. Salvemini; I’ll ask the Mother of God, Missis Flinders.
A heaviness in the eyes, a lightness in the heart—let Miles wait for scientific confirmation from the doctor; Margaret Flinders had it from Mrs. Salvemini and Mrs. Salvemini had it straight from the Mother of God. And be sure and take it easy, Missis Flinders, Mrs. Salvemini said; it’s the first two months you have to look out for; one I lost, she said, I lost because I didn’t wait for Mr. Salvemini to come home and beat the rugs; you take it easy, Missis Flinders, she said, scolding in advance.
“You’re such a funny girl,” Miles said, bewildered, and followed her from room to room; “staying home from politics—to take a bath.” But being in love with her again, she reflected, he was in love with her eccentricities too. She glowed complacently; dropped the last shred of her clothing and stood before the mirror screwing back her hair. “Don’t you want to keep up,” he said; “the Magazine, don’t you want . . .”
“But I’m definitely not the au courant type,” said Margaret placidly. She enjoyed Miles’ faint discomfiture on beholding her with sails full-set, naked at an unexpected hour in the day. “I’m a political moron, dear, we know that. Besides, I don’t want to be courant—with anything but you.” She turned with one hand guiding her long hair to a ridiculous knot on her head and blew him a kiss with the free one.
“It’s too soon after dinner,” he said, disconcerted, “it’s too soon after dinner, to take a bath.” She knew what he was telling her: it was too soon after dinner to catch him unawares, surprise him with love. He hovered like a shadow while she pulled her hair into a ridiculous plume on the top of her head. A heaviness in the eyes, a lightness in the heart—she moved with the special consciousness of a woman grown suddenly beautiful, a woman loved; she felt proud and secretive, gathering towels and flying to the bathroom to watch the quickly spouting water, Miles slowly coming after. He took his puzzled dignity and sat with his hesitant grace on the laundry hamper beside the tub.
“And you can tell me,” Margaret said, “everything that happens; all about Jeff and Mrs. Middleton, and Bruno and his pet lamb Emmett—and of course the machinations . . .” She swished her hands with pleasure through the soapy water; gravely handed him the brush.
“You know I won’t see any of those undercurrents you specialize in,” he said with his sheepish reluctant grin that told her he knew more, in his inarticulate way, than she would ever know, about himself. “I’ll hear the wrangling, I’ll come away wondering if Jeffrey can be trusted, I’ll have my philosophic doubts, my conscience will prick—but none of it will look like melodrama, as you see things.” He floated the brush absently over her shimmering knees. “But you, Meg, aren’t you interested, don’t you care—don’t you care for anything, but being happy?”
Some day she would cure him, Margaret thought, of saying the word in quotations, as though he borrowed it from some foreign language, speaking it faintly with an accent. “Of course, if you prefer la type courante—” she raised her soapy face; eyed him with mock archness through sleepy lowered lids (if life held anything sweeter, she swiftly thought, than the luxury of flirting with one’s husband—then Margaret didn’t want it).
“No, I prefer you,” Miles admitted awkwardly. “Even with your face all soaped—even with that crazy top-knot dancing on your bean—” he tried to pull his shots, inject his caustic New England—but it failed; his voice fell into tenderness; “I suppose you looked like that when you were Mrs. Banner’s little girl, Maggie?” He examined the back of the brush minutely; focussed his eyes on a spot on the laundry hamper; cleared his throat with embarrassment.
The heart could grow so light, she discovered, that it nearly flew out of one’s chest. But Margaret Flinders had grown canny; gently she tempered her love and her joy till they were something he could take; his New England tr
act was small. “Getting late,” she said calmly; “Bruno will be there by now.” She had a sense of deliberately dimming her lights.
“I ought to go,” he said reluctantly. “I really ought to go. I can’t announce at the Middletons’ that I was late because I stopped to watch my wife take a bath. My wife,” he repeated, surprised. “Wife,” he said again. And paused as though the word, the fact, were something new; “wife—” he examined the effect on himself and faintly smiled. She saw the tremulous moisture gather in his eyes. Be strong! she told herself; not all at once; it mustn’t come too soon and frighten him. “I’m getting positively balmy myself,” he murmured, smoothing the bristles of the brush. “You’re seducing me, you soapy wench! with your balmy wiles, your top-knot guiles . . .”
Darling beloved, she swiftly thought, let’s die now, quickly, in this bathroom. The world holds nothing greater.
“Old softy,” she said; “if your New England aunts could see you now!” For a little grit must always be thrown in his joy; a little sand preserved in her own voice when she spoke to him. O Margaret was taking no chances now! “Get along, darling, to the meeting of the world-revisers. One of us must be courant.” For he must not stay, for both their sakes. Margaret must be alone with the lightness of her heart, alone so she could shamelessly enjoy it. And Miles must run away from too much joy, so it would not drown him, choke him. But more than that. The Magazine and Margaret—they made a cycle for him; maintained the balance in his conscience; each made the other possible. The Magazine restored his faith, his long-lost God, gave life a forgotten validity; and so he earned his personal joy, a joy made valid by religious satisfaction.
The Unpossessed Page 15