He moved towards her awkwardly and mechanically.
“No, no, it was my . . .”
Some bond existed between them for a moment. She moved nearer to him, he took a deep breath and forgot Withers standing by. She laughed, however, and said:
“Well, I have to fly, I’m awfully late. See you some other time? Good-bye!” She touched him on the arm and was off.
Excitement shook him from head to foot. He took a step into the entrance. She ran laughing aloud up the staircase, grimaced at him through the banisters at the top and disappeared. An absolutely overmastering passion had him in hand. He stumbled up the short staircase covered with matting, twelve or thirteen stairs, but when he reached the top she had already gone into the room behind the dim studio, where a ghostly row of easels stood in a half-moon, spectral in the subdued light coming through the dark linen drapings of the wall of the farther studio. A shaded light in the ante-chamber into which the staircase had led him dazzled him for a moment, and then directed his glance to a large oil-painting which hung on the wall on his right side. A half-naked woman risen from bed looked searchingly out of the picture at the darkness; it was the only thing visible. Underneath was the title: “Awakened.” He peered at the pictures on the other walls, but there were nothing but landscapes—women undressed with men dressed frolicking, tiny affairs, waterscapes and river banks, fit for drawing-rooms. He came back and looked at the “Awakened,” and his essential superstition which had shown him the flagstaff burst out again.
He thought: “What sort of a barmy lad am I? She’s Jameson’s girl, and very friendly with all the chaps there.” He thought: “A living woman was the model for this,” and began to inspect it fearfully and expectantly to see the form there. He looked at the woman’s drooping breasts, with their large roses in the centre, and the vermicular pain which had been in his head and bowels for so many months and even years past became a pang. He struck his head with his open hand, and uttered a groaning, crying sound. Fearing to be found there he went downstairs, tripping and sliding over the old matting. When he got to the bottom, he looked up, but saw no one looking after him. He looked upward into the unlighted dome which hovered above in the roof of the building at a considerable height, saw the dark open doorway into the studio and the still expectant light lying on wall, banister, and stair; nothing moved. He said:
“Awakened! I am that. O God, help me: I have been thinking of her for months.”
At this moment Withers came in a little curiously, a little diffident. He was by no means irreligious in the presence of the passions he speculated in.
“Michael, did you make a date?”
Michael did not answer. Withers, smiling to himself over his teeth, gradually becoming stained, put his arm into Michael’s and drew him out into the great hall. He went into the library and presently came out, still smiling to himself, and said softly, gently:
“Here are two books you’d like.”
One was Stendahl’s essay On Love; the other was the Aphrodite of Pierre Louys.
“Just the thing you need to give you a bit of polish,” continued Withers.
“I’m not completely dotty on the subject like you,” said Michael crossly, looking at the books.
“These are masterpieces,” cried Withers indignantly, and cited long extracts from both which gave Michael a pleasurable foretaste. When Michael felt calmer, after they had walked a little while in Sussex Street and York Street, Withers said:
“Want to have a good time? I’m going to take a young chap over from Melbourne to a funny house, where I know the madam.”
“Not on your life.”
“Go on; you’ve attended too many Y.M.C.A. lectures. I’m not going upstairs myself. I’m only going to drink some beer with the girls: I know quite a lot of them, they’re good sports. This young chap is sweet on a girl here, a nice little bit of fluff, with her mamma and papa: but she’s got some money and he’s got to marry her to get her and he’s sick of hanging around. She’s only seventeen, he’s seventeen too: and they can’t get married till they’re twenty-one. Rotten, isn’t it?”
“Silly idea.”
“And,” continued Withers, on a lower tone, hurriedly, giggling, “I’m going to get them both to go out with me. The mamma and papa think I’m a steadying influence for Willy. I’m going to take them to the house of a chap I know—you know. Banks, the artist, out at Gladesville. We’ll give the girl a few glasses of champagne and see if she’ll give in: they do, you know, the girls: they can’t stand champagne. Funny, isn’t it, the effect it has on the female temperament? No woman can stand it: there are other things they can’t stand, too: for instance . . .”
“Are you sure!”
“Yes: come along, go on, and I’ll show you. Come along with us on Saturday when we take the kid out to Gladesville.”
“Not my ticket,” said Michael; “not my idea of fun. Sorry I’m such a slowpoke.”
“You are,” cried Withers without ill-will, as Michael went down the street.
Michael did not sleep much at nights.
He called for Mae one evening at her office. She looked him over coolly, then, as he was good-looking, she walked off with him, to make a sensation with the other girls.
“Miss your boat,” said Michael, “and have a lemonade with me.”
He took her to a tea-room on the quay, a close, ugly room with marble-topped tables. She ate hungrily, laughed to think that her parents would fuss all the evening over her loss of appetite, refused to go out with him on Saturday to the pictures, and looked at him sympathetically as she finished sucking up her lemonade.
“You like me, Michael?”
He flushed: the words “I love you” were just repressed on his lips.
“You know I do.”
“You know I’m going to marry Jameson in eighteen months: we’re secretly engaged already,” she said slowly, half regretfully.
“That big stick,” cried Michael.
“You’re simply jealous.”
“You don’t know men: you’re only a kid. Don’t marry him, Mae: there are plenty of other chaps better than him: there’s . . . plenty.”
“Who? I don’t see the queue anywhere!”
“Well, I make one.”
“How old are you, Michael?”
“Twenty.”
“Stan’s twenty-two. Where do you work?”
“In McKinley & Farley’s: advertising. It’s the liveliest business there is. When you work up you can go free-lance and make up to £500 on a job. Of course, only the best men get that, but the possibilities are infinite: and it’s a wonderful business. You see all sorts of people, business men, manufacturers; they show you through their factories, you get to know the processes. Then, socially, advertising is of the greatest service. It makes the best products known to everyone. Competition drives the manufacturers to make the best goods for the lowest prices and to advertise them as widely as possible. You see how useful that is to poor housewives, poor people in general. I tell you, humanity is much better off than ever it was, even the beggars of to-day have things that the prosperous citizen of other days didn’t have, and publicity is the great salesman, the great distributor of all these things. It is the benefactor of mankind.”
She laughed immoderately.
“You’ve advertised yourself to yourself pretty well! I suppose McKinley and Farley set up in business to improve mankind?”
“Of course not; but you have to have a social value to live and make money: otherwise you’re out. That’s the proof.”
“Well, I don’t care twopence for all that,” she said, yawning. “Let’s shake a leg: I don’t want to miss the next boat.”
He got up hastily.
“What about Saturday, Mae?”
“Ring me up: I’ll see what I’m doing.”
“What does Jameson do?”
“Stan’s an articled clerk,” she said. “His father’s the judge. His father’ll give him money to settle down next year
when he gets through his exams.”
“They’re lucky dogs, these only sons who can always put their hands in papa’s pocket. Why don’t you marry a real man that makes his own way? You girls are all the same: you don’t care whether a chap loves you, you only care to get a house and furniture.”
“You’re mean,” she said. “I don’t want to hear about it any more. I know what I want; it’s my life. I want a home and I don’t mind being a judge’s daughter-in-law.”
She laughed easily again and shifted her gaze along the sunlit quay, studying the crowds hurrying towards her ferry. Michael had to nag her.
“You’re marrying an insurance policy, aren’t you?”
“Why not? A woman’s got to look ahead. A man only thinks of himself, unless he’s a really nice boy like Stan.”
The more stupid and calculating she appeared, the more he desired her. She put on a pair of gloves with petalled wrists. She took out of her bag a diamond engagement ring and showed it to him with pride.
“My insurance policy; Stan paid fifty pounds for it,” she said.
“His father did.”
“All right, his father.”
“You wouldn’t look at any man but one who could give you a posh sparkler like that, would you?”
“Oh, why do you torment me?” she cried, exasperated. “I didn’t ask you to call for me. You hang round me. You are so mean, you buzz all the time like a mosquito. No one would ever marry you, you’re a stinger.”
She went down to the wharf, forgot her pet, exhibiting her high-blooded prancing before the young boys on the boat. Her lover was upstairs, looking from the cabin window.
Michael called for her again the next day at 5.15, and took her to the art-school the nights that she went straight from the office. He came back for her once after the class when he knew Jameson would not be there and took her home on the boat, in the light of the late-rising lack-lustre moon, at ten o’clock. She let him hold her hand. Trembling, at the gate, he held her hand still. She looked at him attentively for a moment and then kissed him on the cheek. He shrank back, and began to laugh in an overwrought tone.
“Mae, do you love me?”
“No.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“You are very nice to me; I owe you something.”
“You shouldn’t have done it: I can’t bear it! Don’t you see I’m madly in love with you?”
“Yes, I do. You’d better not come to see me any more. It’s not good for you or me.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
Withers took him one night to a girl’s flat. She had two rooms with a small gas-range. In the living-room an alcove was curtained off. Another girl came in, who had the lip of a motherless foal, a headstrong voice, dark eyes, straight hair and a sallow complexion. She always carried a handbag in her hand, wore a Russian blouse flat over her flattish bosom, and spouted poetry. She retired to the alcove with Withers, when they had had tea, and drew the curtains. Michael sat still and awkward, listened to their regular breathing, thought them both asleep, and started as if he had seen a ghost when they both came out again in a short time. The other girl gave him lemonade. Presently three more boys arrived, young accountants who dabbled in Bohemian streams. The other girl had short platinum hair, a long nose, with round high little cheekbones, and beaming eyes nestling a little too close to the root of the nose. A fine curling red mouth and high golden forehead made up a perfect, sunny, bounteous, indolent and stupid face. She distributed smiles among them. They all left about eleven, with the exception of Purcefoy, a young accountant, who stayed with the beauty.
“She’s a whore,” explained Withers, “but doesn’t know it in her crystalline stupidity; she’s the queen of stoopids. Go and see her: she likes boys.”
“I am a nitwit,” exclaimed Michael, “to be chasing a humdrum little middle-class miss thinking of her pans and perambulators. Look at the queens that walk the street practically, and put her in the shade for looks and manners.”
“What a carriage, a Phryne!” approved Withers. “You must go and see her: a sweet girl, every inch a woman. None of your bread-and-butter smell. An orchid!”
Michael went to see her two or three times. She was always surrounded by three or four panting youths trying to forget their boredom by laughing at her sallies. Her smile stood her instead of wits, but someone had told her that she looked like a goddess when sedate, and she often fell into a statuesque pose, while she vainly racked her brains for something to amuse. During these interims the boys looked round the room in search of a subject, or examined each other. Michael dropped off.
“Why?” exclaimed Withers, this time irritated.
“Every time I go there it’s like a meeting of preference shareholders. Not for me.”
“You’re too mighty particular,” grumbled Withers, “for a cadet whoremaster. You ought to go through the drill book without jibbing; look at the way I sweat over you, to bring you up.”
Withers went to see Mae and drew her a touching picture of Michael’s state: how he was fretting himself into a fever for her, how he had thrown other girls in Michael’s path and Michael had turned them all down.
“Write him a note,” urged Withers; “it would only be a kindness. You know, boys like that can easily get brain fever, or tuberculosis, fretting like that.”
“Really?”
“It’s well known. You girls should be careful and distribute yourself around a bit. Have a bit of amusement yourself; you’ll be married long enough.”
“That’s true. I’ll go out with Michael one day next week.”
Michael, tired of wandering, was almost glad to plunge back into his stagnant passion. He argued with himself when he first received Mae’s letter:
“I need a passion, even if illusory, to keep me going. I can’t fall into the rut the way fellows do.”
He pressed her hard besides, telling her they would be married secretly later on, whenever she liked.
“I have funny dreams,” she began to tell him. “I never dreamed in my life before, that I remember. I keep on dreaming that my mother sends me for milk; I have to go through green paddocks and on a hillside there are always horses with glaring eyes and long tails which try to bite me. Once,” she said, “I dreamed we were swimming together at Nielsen Park.”
“You love me without knowing it.”
Before his mind’s eye flashed a great Banksia in full dark leaf, the sun shining, the green waters of a still bay with steeply sloping shore, glistening rocks and sand the colour of Mae’s flesh. Sliding through the water he saw the pale body of a slender woman and a dark head pursuing her.
“Let’s do it, Mae: some moonlight night.”
“You’re the limit; you always take me so seriously; You know I’m only coming out with you for the good of your health.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“Withers said you would get brain-fever if I didn’t.”
“He’s always got his finger in my pie. So you came for that reason. Then you care whether I’m ill or not.”
“Not a bit, but . . .”
“You do; you’re playing with me. You’re a teaser; it’s rotten. Come here.”
He embraced her violently. She stayed for a moment quite motionless, as if to feel what an embrace was like: he felt her heart beating. She pushed him away without a word. He breathed and sat rigid.
“This is the last time I ever see you; you take advantage.”
“You like it, you . . . you’re dying to be my wife. Why don’t you: it will be sooner or later.”
“Never; go away, you pig.”
He left her without another word, walking off with his hat on his head. He felt as if he would burst. Then began a miserable period when he strove to see her. Her appearance was changing. Her eyes were darker and more sunken. She often sat moodily unsmiling, unconscious of her companions, in the park at lunch-time, or on the boat. She wrote him one short note to tell him that her parents thought
she was fretting for Jameson and that they had advanced the marriage. He tried to catch sight of her at intervals, to meet her at friends’ houses, to speak to her casually, to hear of her even from Withers, or to brush her shoulders, clad in some light blouse, as they hurried away from the office. She refused to go with him, but once started to weep as he stood talking to her, and now often smiled at him timidly, in the distance. It was a time of delusions for both, and for him of the wild hopes of despair. He wrote her, “I will marry you to-morrow, if you’ll run away with me.” He fell out of love with her at times and then returned under the impression that she alone was his only hope of normal living. He was out of touch with his world. He got up at six in the morning and walked in the bush, or came to town by the earliest boat and went into the Botanic Gardens when they opened. He avoided Withers. The days and nights whirled past in fragments; he could not shut his eye, and he did not know when the day shut his. He climbed with heavy haversack the innumerable mountains of despair, while the blinding working-day ground and crashed in his ears, or dragged bitterly forward in its white dry light, without juice or blood. He worked feverishly but disconnectedly, his entrails burned him all day so that he hardly heard when anyone spoke to him. He spent hour after hour of his leisure tossing the same thoughts in his brain, the same schemes, an eleventh-hour Lochinvar rape, a waylaying as she came from her art-school. He rushed out of his home in the evening, if they questioned, particularly if Catherine was there, as out of a furnace, his brain prickling. He marvelled at the freshness of the air and wind. He read the books he read as never before, marvelled at the flamboyant genius of their writers, at their passion and penetration. His stomach was always on the turn, his heart beat heavily day and night, he trembled and was in a perpetual fever. She became unreal, he wanted to seize her and make sure of her flesh and blood, to be sure she was no wraith-haired vampire, but an ordinary girl, and yet he avoided her to keep company with the hundred likenesses of her and doubles that walked across his path in the city, and the dreams that he had at night. He read a wealth of obscene literature to increase his torments. He looked at solid, red-faced, small or lank, pudgy or cadaverous men in the trains and ferries and thought:
Seven Poor Men of Sydney Page 7