“Did you get a divorce from Jay? That was quick.”
“Oh, I never told Derek anything about Jay. We weren’t married, were we?”
“You mean you married Derek bigamously?”
She looked puzzled, “That was years ago.”
“And what now, Honor?”
“I must find someone and get some money for the trip back. Derek loves me. He will meet me and convince his family. Will you take me to Pennsylvania Station? I must get a train to the country, to a woman who will be kind to me.”
“Honor, what woman?”
“Come with me,” she said; and he went; anxiously and unwillingly.
When they reached the environs of Pennsylvania Station she said, “Won’t you come and see me in my present home, it’s a room near by. We can have coffee there.”
It was a small dark room with upholstered chairs and a blue-covered divan, of good appearance. She sat there in the half-dark on the divan quietly telling him her story; how she had gone to Europe with Jay, each of them travelling steerage in a six-berth cabin, men and women separated; how they landed in London, where she expected to find Debrett; they had only a few dollars and they had gone to a shelter suggested by the American Embassy. There in a miserable room without even a washbasin, and with an iron cot, there had been a horrifying scene. She and then Jay had run out into the streets. From then on they had lived in the streets, under bridges, in parks, even in a cemetery for a night or two. “I never used the money you gave me, I gave it to Jay to go away. He followed me about. And then I found Derek and I never saw Jay again. Besides, I know you will always be not far from me.”
Debrett looked at her uneasily. She went on calmly, “I am ill, I can never be intimate with a man. Derek made me ill. They said it was I who did it. You must go now. I had to see you to tell you the whole story, but you must go now. I cannot have men in my room; it’s not allowed. Of course, if Derek doesn’t send me money, I will be put out of here. Where will I go? Give me your address.” But Debrett, though he was very much upset, did not give the address. He said he was leaving town.
It was a few months later that he walked into a coffee shop near Central Park Plaza. There sat a woman who looked fifty, in clothes dirty and unbuttoned, grey-haired, face creased and yet with a self-possession and simpering, and the tender smile of former beauty. She came over to Debrett and said her name, “I have been waiting for you here. I knew you would come.”
He drew back. “I had no intention of coming here; you couldn’t have known.” He looked at her with dislike.
“I know, Augustus Debrett; I have ways of knowing.”
“You just wait, don’t you, and then say things like that?”
“That’s not it. It’s you. I know where you will be.”
She was about thirty-one, not older; but she smiled like an aged prostitute, cunningly and coarsely using the remains of once potent charm to get some last hesitant customer. She handed him a piece of paper. “Read it.” On it was written, “I feel that Mr. Augustus Debrett will be at 57th Street this afternoon.”
“I suppose you saw me come in and wrote it,” he said, handing back the paper.
“No! Don’t you know I always know where you are?”
“I don’t believe in things like that, Honor. I suppose you know a lot of people and you wait till you see them.”
“I went back to Capetown, but the immigration authorities kept me out. Someone had sent a letter against me, saying I had married an African, a black African.”
“Had you?”
“It was Derek’s family said that, because he would never do anything like that to me. And they won’t let him answer me; and now I have no money.”
“Here’s some money,” he said, getting up hastily and putting the money into her dirty hand. She opened a handbag and put it in. “I found this handbag on the street,” she said; “I was not waiting for money. I wanted to tell someone my story.”
He hurried into the street. A few days elapsed. He was at an art show, a Walter Lawrence exhibition in a midtown gallery, with Mari, when he stopped her in front of a drawing and said, “Look there! Do you recognize that? You’ve seen her: that’s Honor Lawrence; that pencil sketch.” “Is that Honor Lawrence? Well, it’s not like the women you’ve pointed out several times.” “Yes, yes, you’ve forgotten. I know who it is. No one who knew her could ever forget her.”
A slight dark man of about thirty-five, with thinning hair, wearing glasses and poorly dressed, turned around and said, “Who are you? You’re Debrett, aren’t you? Do you know who I am? I’m Jay Hewett, Honor’s husband. Can I speak to you alone for a minute? I know that she went to South Africa, but I consider myself her husband. I know that you had an appointment with her a few days ago, in a coffee shop.” Debrett described what happened. “I know businessmen. I know she worked for you. I know you influenced her and she idealized you. I know she followed you to Europe.” “What are you saying? Let’s sit down; and then you talk like a rational man.” Mari had moved on around the exhibition. “Who is that?” “That’s Mari, my wife.” “You met Honor in Europe and you introduced her to that South American who made such a mess of her life.” “Hold on there; you’ve got a lot of stories tangled. I didn’t introduce her and it wasn’t a South American.” “I know what Honor told me and she never lies.”
Debrett stared at Jay Hewett with a soft open mouth. Jay continued, “I know what she told me and Honor never lies: she’s incapable of it. She doesn’t know why one should.”
“You are quite wrong, I assure you, about following me to Europe. Why, you were married here, weren’t you, and went to England together?” “I just want to say something to you. I can sense that you don’t care for Honor any more. I’ve got to explain things to you. I’ve got to tell you the whole story. I knew Honor when she was thirteen, when she was telling people she was fifteen or eighteen; to protect her own childhood, she did it. I was seventeen and I loved her. I hardly had a decent night’s sleep then. She was so young and innocent, untouchable innocence, such an austere fragility, such a child. She behaved like a coquette and tease, but I knew she was really a naive child. You see, I knew all about her, I have always known. I’ve hardly had a whole night’s sleep in my life, or at least since I knew her. I wake up at four or five and begin to wonder about her. She’s my joy, I rejoice in her; and I’ve learned you don’t need much sleep. But I’ve had night jobs, too. I have discipline. I don’t coddle myself. I’ve learned to like work; so I wake up and think of my work. I’ve done all kinds of things. I went out west. I got a job in a pool parlour. Anything real, you see, to meet people. I went on the stage in a road company, painted scenery, did all kinds of jobs. I enjoyed overcoming the difficulties. I made myself meet all kinds of women; no fretting and mooning, you see. But all the time I knew I was going to marry Honor; she must have known too, although for years she treated me like dirt—why use such an expression? She didn’t know what she was doing. You don’t say a bird or a cat treats you like dirt. It was just a sort of innocent and ignorant wildness. She used to go about with other boys, and men, but she never even kissed them. I know that. They talked about it. But only I understood why. She’d leave a boy suddenly, while they were walking down the street. She could not bear to be touched. I knew this; I never touched her, so she got to trust me. She always knew where I was. And one day she called on me: just knocked at the door and walked in and said to me, Jay, today I think we’d better get married; I want to go to England and I think we’d better go. You see, she knew a lot about me; she knew my whole life. I had nothing to hide ever. I had always lived for her; so I felt it was a natural development. I knew she couldn’t marry till she was ready; and I thought she was ready. Anything that happened was my fault, because I was the only one who understood her; and I didn’t question her; I allowed my feelings to take over. She knew I had been writing to painters in Paris and London and was quite friendly with them; I had very good letters from them, not the usual brush-of
f letters. She knew all about this. So I was glad, and thought she was thinking of me. I was living for it; and it happened. How wonderful it was! That day paid for all. She understood me and others in an extraordinary way. She was inspired; she is inspired. You would not credit what shrewd, keen and inspired observations she makes about people. There are people with great gifts who want to create, but are not self-centred enough. The glory of creation is in them. They end by creating themselves; and they are miraculous creatures. People fall in love with them, because they’ve made something new. I don’t blame you, Debrett—” he broke off, “not really.”
“I sympathize with all you say; but let me set your mind at rest. I was never in love with Honor.”
“Yes, you couldn’t understand Honor as I could. Because she was a work of art I was born to understand: for others, the misunderstood masterpiece. I nearly called on you several times. I just wanted to clarify your relations to Honor. At first, in London, I blamed you for what happened.”
“How could you?” said Debrett, with cross patience.
Hewett rested for a while. They walked along the lines of drawings and paintings. He had an unpleasant colour, earthy, and an unpleasant attitude, aggressive with a grating voice; so that, though his words carried conviction, Debrett felt no sympathy. Debrett’s eyes stared at him, wide open, his mouth too was slightly open; his breathing could be heard. His hands were cold.
Hewett said, “Life’s very short, isn’t it? We don’t understand many people in a lifetime. We don’t love many people in a lifetime. It’s a dreadful thought. Life rushing past, populations of people and we’re indifferent, blind; we might be asleep or dead. We are dead when we don’t love. I am sure there are people who don’t understand one human being in a lifetime. A lifetime! What a word! What it means! Think of the people, towns, plains, forests—it fills me with love to think of it. But for some, just habits and quirks. I suppose she borrowed money from you, too, the other day?”
“Eh?” said Debrett.
“It doesn’t matter. If she owes you anything I’ll pay it back. I assure you, you never meant anything to her; only one man ever did.” He smiled. “Don’t look so sympathetic; it wasn’t me.”
“I never actually spoke to Honor in Europe.”
“She got money from you and gave it all to me. That was like her. She never thought of herself. If she goes about like a beggar and a tramp, with her stockings around her ankles, it’s because she doesn’t understand the conventional life of a woman. She’s a spirit in a dress of rags. I understand poor wandering women now; I cry for them, not laugh at them. Do you know the Spanish never laugh at monsters, idiots and poor creatures? They call them creatures of God like everyone else, more so, they think. What wonderful people the Spanish are; that is love. I don’t believe in God, but their heart is great. Honor told me she went to Europe to pay you back some money she borrowed from you. Isn’t that incredible? And yet I believe it.”
“How did you think you would live in Europe? How could you take her into that unspeakable misery? What way out was there?”
“Yes, the man of accounts! You wouldn’t understand! I was too crazed with happiness to think. I thought the road was up, from there. I remember sitting in the subway and looking at some faces opposite, I’ve forgotten them now, and I was thinking, Well, that’s something accomplished, that’s done. One can’t say that, I know now; especially about another human being. One must leave them free. She had despised and insulted me for years—terribly insulted; been cruel to me, and then without being asked she came and said, We’ll marry. It was a reward for all those years. My fault. I thought of her as a reward.” After a slight pause, he said, “It was all misery; but that is the story of my happiness and joy. Some people haven’t had so much.”
“Do you know where she is now, then?”
“Yes, I have an appointment with her this afternoon. I was at this exhibition yesterday. I saw the head of her and I found out from the artist where she is.”
And it was from Walter Lawrence, who was beginning to fall in love with Mari, that they heard the rest.
In the afternoon, Jay met her in the Square.
“You said you wanted to see me,” she said, politely offering her hand. She looked tired and old.
He had a few words with her, about where she was living, about helping her. She said, “Could we go and have some milk? I wish there were milk bars here as there are in London. I used to walk along the street looking at the milk bars, beautiful places with white tiles and clean glass, so healthy and pure. I used to go into as many as I could. Milk is good for you, you know. You oughtn’t to drink beer and whisky, Jay.”
“I haven’t drunk beer or whisky for years. I have no money for such things. I have a job that enables me to pay the rent of a hall bedroom; and I could manage for us both if you were willing.”
“I had a baby,” she said quickly; “and I drank milk for the baby’s sake. His family sent my baby to an orphan asylum and I went everywhere asking for it, but they said I had no proof. I was its mother, but there were no papers. And he divorced me; he told me to leave. I can never go back and I don’t know if my child is alive or dead.”
“You look very sick to me, Honor. Let me look after you. Never mind the past.”
“No one wants me now. You don’t want me. I am very sick. I can’t do anything for you. I know what you want.”
“Oh, Honor, Honor—you know me—” He took her arm. “I’ll take care of you. I will. I am yours. I don’t want your love, or anything you could never give me. But I’d rather die than live without you; you are life. It’s quite simple; you’re so real. What’s there in me, if not you? Your terrible sorrows are real. It’s that, and the beauty of your mind and sorrows that I care for. They’re my hope, my fire, my salvation. I love you.”
She pushed him away roughly and spat. “Love! I spit, I spit it out,” she cried out. “It was all lies. It kills you. It’s to get you. There’s no love at all.”
She got up and he got up. “Don’t come near me again and don’t follow me.” She went down Washington Place, disappeared into a large apartment house. She probably went out again through a courtyard, for he could not find her. She knew the city like a beggar, like a small boy.
It was three years later that he heard of her death in winter, in a half-covered doorway, up three steps, of a loft building not far from Union Square. And he too disappeared. Perhaps he died. No one asked after him, for he had never made an impression. It was only when people mentioned Honor’s name, later, “Walter’s sister,” that it was sometimes said, “Did you know that she was actually married to a man named Hewett? But they said it was not a real marriage.”
Debrett thought he saw her from time to time, but as a young woman. “Is she eternally young?” he said to himself. Then he heard of her death. “But I don’t really believe it,” he said to Mari. “It’s too faits-divers. It’s not like her. I expect she’s turning up somewhere at this moment, asking for help. She’s a wraith, a wanderer. What is she?” “She’s the ragged, wayward heart of woman that doesn’t want to be caught and hasn’t been caught,” said Mari, in her beautiful metallic voice. “She never was in love.” He looked at her in doubt. “She never loved anyone,” said Mari. Debrett thought of this. He did not believe it, but walking up and down under the trees in someone’s garden, he bent his head a little, saw nothing, wiped his eyes with his hands.
The Dianas
CHAPTER 2
The balcony of Lydia’s room in the green and white boulevard hotel looked over the treetops. The hotel was at the top of a long rise from the Seine, in Montparnasse. The sun beat into the carpeted, curtained room so strongly in the mornings that the shutters were kept shut till after midday. Lydia got in late every night, slept restlessly. From two to four in the morning, heavy army units and market trucks went past, shaking the whole house. About four Lydia would notice the early summer morning on the ceiling.
She had breakfast in her room and
did not dress for a time. For aunts and cousins, friends, and her mother in New York, she had bought all at once, in an hour or two, four pairs of kid gloves, four bottles of perfume, a brooch, some Swiss handkerchiefs, some scarves and a handbag, all cheap and tasteless, and not at all what foreigners mean by French. She had gone into a large ordinary department store which she had laughed at in the days when she had been living in Paris in a small apartment with her mother. The articles now stood in their boxes and papers on the bed she had slept in and on the chairs. She had bought nothing for herself in Paris, but wore what she had worn in New York the summer before, a black chiffon dinner dress, bought on Fifth Avenue and imported from France, a green and white striped silk, some prints. She had brought with her for the summer in Paris, two steamer trunks and four valises. Most of her things she had never unpacked. They stood there locked for a while. Then it occurred to her that the maid might think she was afraid of theft, and she unlocked them. They stood there; and sometimes she lifted the lids, looked at what lay there, closed the lids again.
The little rosy-perfumed room with her things strewn about had an air of comfort, waste, expense, juvenile gaiety, as if she were always getting ready for a party: it was captivating. She had several bottles of perfume standing about, pots of cream and powder, open jewel boxes, all the needs of a coquette and a beauty.
She ran about barefoot, sighed, put on her pink satin mules, and telephoned her American friends staying in the hotel. She had telegraphed three hotels in Paris before coming, because she had friends in each; and then she had picked this one, where her friend Tamara lived, because her mother’s friends, Peggy and Anton, had just arrived here from Switzerland. And because of her, other Americans had come to the hotel. It was the usual thing in Paris in summer.
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