“There, there,” he said, more tenderly than ever. “Look, darling, I’ll send for Peter, right away, tonight. Tomorrow he’ll be here with you. There now, hush, my dear.”
The next day Christopher received a short note from Henri:
“As we intended, the meeting we scheduled next week shall go ahead. What happened last night has had no effect on my plans. I am writing this to reassure you. Our business together is outside our private affairs, and I haven’t changed my mind about anything.”
CHAPTER LVI
When Edith came into the breakfast room at the usual time, Henri was not there. She tired to eat. The food made her sick. Finally, she got up and went upstairs to Henri’s rooms. He was sitting by a window, when she entered without knocking. He was wearing his dressing-gown, and had not touched the breakfast on the tray before him. He was smoking. Edith, with one swift glance, saw that the ashtray was full of cigarette ends, an occurrence unusual in itself, for her brother was a light smoker. With another glance, she learned that he had not slept. The bed was still smooth and untouched. Henri’s chin was dark with stubble, his eyelids red-rimmed. He said nothing when his sister entered, merely regarding her fixedly with his light implacable eyes. His expression was inscrutable.
She sat down near him, still without speaking. She looked at the cold breakfast, the congealed eggs. She looked at the cold expressionless face. It seemed to her that her heart was being torn apart.
“You hate me, don’t you, Henri?” she asked gravely.
He merely smoked in silence. She saw that his large strong fingers had a slight tremor. Her mouth contracted with pain. She could hardly keep from bursting into tears, but her voice was quiet when she said: “Henri, I know you can’t understand why I did it, even though I told you before that that ignorant child wasn’t your kind. I know you think I was vicious and presumptuous. I know you think that I had some mean, jealous, and malicious reason, underneath what you would call my ‘rationalization.’ But that doesn’t matter. I’m glad I did it. I would do it over again.”
He spoke for the first time, indifferently: “I’m going to sell Robin’s Nest. You can go where you want to. I’m leaving this afternoon.”
She clenched her hands tightly together, but her eyes were sad and calm. “Henri, I can’t bear to see you this way. I— I’ve loved you so much. You were the only thing I had in the world. You remember how Mother hated me, and was jealous of me if you even so much as gave me a civil word? You remember how she was constantly saying to me: ‘You are just like your father!’ She couldn’t bear to see us friends. She made so much trouble between us—” Her lips trembled, and it was a moment before she could continue: “I was glad when she died. I knew that you loved her, in spite of her malice, and her simpering, hard-hearted sentimentality, and her hypocrisy and tempers. I knew that she poisoned you against me, lied to you about me, found the dirtiest of motives under whatever I said or did. And so, because I loved you and was so terribly lonely, I was glad, terribly glad, when she died. You see, she couldn’t bear in the least to see me happy. She alienated me from all my friends, made me ridiculous. Even you, who knew what a dreadful woman she was, finally felt sorry for me. For, underneath, you loved me, too.”
She paused again. Henri’s eyes seemed to bore into hers like cold steel. But they were a shade less implacable. After a moment, he looked away, gloomily. She leaned towards him, and her body vibrated with painful passion: “Henri, do you think I would have hurt you last night, deliberately? Do you think I did it out of Mother’s own jealous viciousness and hate? Henri, believe me, I would have died rather than hurt you. But I had to do it. Believe me, I had to do it.”
She gazed at him, pleadingly, her face stark and drawn. Then, when he did not look at her, or move, she put her hands suddenly over her face and sobbed aloud. His expression grew more and more gloomy. The cigarette burned down in his fingers. He listened to those harsh tearing sobs, and his brows drew together.
His mother’s carping, jeering, silver-flute of a voice filled his mind. He saw her dark-blue eyes, glittering and dancing with malice. He saw her finger pointing at Edith. “She’s up to something, the sly fox! She can’t plot nice things, with that dark, ugly, sallow face of hers! She has to be clever, because she’s so hideous! But I know all her tricks! Just a nasty old maid, who’s trying to avenge herself on the world because she can’t get a man, even with all her money!”
Henri’s mouth tightened, then relaxed. In spite of himself, he could not keep from regarding his sister with furtive pity. He saw the tears between her thin dark fingers. “Oh, do stop, Edith,” he said impatiently. He thought to himself, of his mother: She was really a damned bitch. He could not rid himself of the vision of young Edith, in London, in Paris, with her plain clever face and hurt proud eyes, and thin body; he could not stop hearing his mother’s whining, petulant, hating persecution of the girl. He remembered that part of his old annoyance with Edith had been because his mother had made it uncomfortable to be friends with his sister. He recalled the furious physical battles he had had with Edith, after his mother had deliberately aroused him against her, and for one vivid moment he saw Alice’s face, alight with sadistic glee, as he beat the girl. He said again, louder now, to shut out his mother’s taunting voice: “For God’s sake, stop crying! That’s not going to mend anything. You’ve done the damage. No use wailing over it.”
Edith wiped her eyes. She gazed at him imploringly. He could not meet her look, and again he turned away. “Forgive me, Henri,” she said humbly.
He moved restlessly. “That’s too much to ask. Yet, I suppose the best I can do is to try to believe that you had some altruistic motive behind your meddlsomeness. I’ve got to go away, for a long time. We’d better not write. We’ve got to leave it as it is.”
She cried out, wildly: “You call it only ‘meddlesomeness’! You don’t know! You don’t know that I gave up my whole life last night! My whole life! There’s nothing left for me, nothing ever again!”
He stared at her, astounded. Her face was tragic, her eyes wild and wet with despair. “What’s the matter with you? What do you mean?” he demanded roughly. He turned around to her, and faced her directly.
She struggled for self-control. Dry sobs pushed themselves through her lips; he saw the beating of her heart in her throat and temples. She said simply: “You see, it was all arranged, from the very beginning. He—Christopher—wanted you to marry—Celeste. For his own reasons. I didn’t care so much, then. I thought perhaps she might be—decent—to you, after a while, when she realized what you were. I shut my eyes deliberately, even though I was sure, after a little, that you would be miserable with her. You see,” she added, with the simplicity stark and touching in her voice and face and gesture, “I love Christopher. He promised that we would be married, after you and Celeste were married. Now he hates me. I’ll never see him again.”
He stared at her, more and more amazed and incredulous. His lip lifted in disbelief and distaste, and confusion. He rubbed his unshaved chin, and stared again. He muttered: “For Christ’s sake!” And then was stupefied.
There was a long silence in the room. At last Henri began to laugh, without mirth, and with a somber cynicism: “Well, perhaps it’s just as well. You save me, and I save you! From Christopher and Celeste. But you and Christopher! That Trappist snake! Why didn’t you fall in love with the devil himself? You might just as well, you know. And so he was after your money, was he?”
“No! No!” she cried, passionately. “He wasn’t! If he had been, he would have married me long ago. It wasn’t money he was after. It wasn’t money at all. It was what you could help him to do to Armand that he was thinking of—”
Henri pursed his lips with a curious smile. “Well, it may interest you to know that I’ve been playing a little trick or two of my own, and even if I had married Celeste it wouldn’t have made any difference—in what I was going to do, and in what I’m still going to do. I’d like to tell that to his face.
” He added: “But it’s funny about him not making a grab for you, when you offered. And you did offer, didn’t you?”
Her wet face flushed scarlet, but she said simply: “Yes, I did. But he said he could only think of one thing at a time—”
His large brutal face lightened with pity for her. “Well, I’m not sorry, perhaps, for everything that’s happened. You and Christopher. He would have made you dance! And so he won’t look at you now, eh?”
She was silent. He reached over and awkwardly patted her knee. “Come on, the world’s not ended yet, for either of us. Besides,” he added with a cryptic smile, “I don’t give up so easily. How about both of us going away, say in about a month? Together?”
She gazed at him humbly, her eyes slowly filling with smiles and tears. “Yes, Henri. Oh, yes, Henri!” And she knelt beside him, put her arms about his neck, and kissed him. His hand patted her shoulder mechanically. He frowned, thinking. Finally, his arm tightened about her, and he began to smile in a peculiar fashion. He rubbed his cheek against her hair, and his smile broadened as though he were enjoying some secret joke.
CHAPTER LVII
Peter had returned to Etienne’s apartment in New York. Etienne was a vague fool, egotistic, unintelligent, pretentious, affected, tiresome and boring. But he was without malice. And so Peter came to him, feeling scratched and wrenched from all the malice and treachery in the world. It seemed to him that a friend without malice and treachery was the one thing he desired above anything else. Even Etienne’s exclamations and lies and grandiose voice were comforting; they were like the gestures and words of children, without harm or cruelty. They were the quilts on the bed of an exhausted man, warm and secure.
Etienne was extremely disappointed, and tragic. He exclaimed constantly. He reviled Celeste in heroic and echoing periods. “Women!” he cried, with the posturings, the facial contortions, the breast-striking, of a tenth-rate early-Victorian tragedian. He struck a Macbeth attitude. Then he sighed deeply. He bunched his fingers together, touched them sorrowfully to his lips, shook off the kiss with a gesture of bitter renunciation. “Our hope and our despair! Life is death without them. But death is life, with them. What are we to do?” he demanded of Peter in accents of mournful dejection. He gazed at the younger man with an expression of calamity, the expression of a man who has known many women and is full of wounds, his big liquid eyes swimming in the water of sensibility and heartbroken sympathy.
Peter could not help smiling. He could hardly keep from laughing. “We could go to a monastery,” he said.
Etienne sighed, shook his head with grief. He sat down. He folded his arms upon his bosom. He was Buddha, contemplating a world that had given him a distinct pain, especially the female portion of it. But he contemplated it more in sorrow than wrath. His large flabby features assumed an air of majesty and long-suffering. “A monastery,” he murmured. He lifted a hand, like one who calls attention to the distant shaking of temple bells. “Renunciation,” he mourned, in a musical voice. “The things of the world forsaken for the wisdom of sadness. The cloister, the darkness, the pale torches.” His eyes lighted with pleasure at his own words. His lips moved silently, as he repeated them to himself. He glowed. “A monastery. The idea appeals to me. I have often imagined the peace and mystery and sweet soul-satisfaction of the dim colonnades, and the monks at prayer.”
Peter was entertained, in spite of his own misery. “But it would be duller than hell,” he said. “No champagne, no first nights, no gardenias, no ladies. And what would you do without the women in New York, and what would they do without you, Etienne?”
The old actor’s majestic expression softened. He smiled. He relaxed. He lifted his coat lapel and sniffed the gardenia on it with the delicacy and appreciation of a man with a soul. He confessed: “Well, I must admit that I’ve been told many times that I am the spirit of New York. They’ve even said a first night would be flat without me. As for the ladies— Ah, I really don’t know!” He sighed, then resumed, becoming grave again: “I suppose one ought not to be selfish. It would be sweet to renounce the world, but one must consider whether that world would not suffer from this self-indulgence. One might even call it cowardice?”
“Yes,” said Peter, without a smile, “I’m sure it would be called cowardice.”
Etienne was relieved. He was as refreshed as though he had spent several years in a monastery and was just now returning to the world, bursting with excitement and eagerness. He glanced about him, proud and alight. “I’ll give a party,” he said. “The wit, the beauty, the grace, the genius, of New York. You’ll enjoy it, Peter. As for myself, I prefer quiet contemplation. But I must remember that you have just suffered a great grief, and need distraction.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t bother about me!” exclaimed Peter, dismayed. “Frankly, I’d rather contemplate with you. I want to finish my book.”
Etienne was cast down. He stroked his jewelled hand over his bald crown and flowing rear-locks. He was like a disappointed child who has just arisen from a sick-bed and has learned that promised delights are going to be withheld. He thought, after a man emerges from a monastery, even a spiritual monastery, he needs relaxation and brightness and gaiety about him. Peter saw his face, and said hastily: “Really, Etienne, I’d like a party, myself. But I didn’t want to be selfish. I didn’t want to impose upon you, and upset your quiet life.”
So Etienne joyously gave a party. He told each guest, confidentially, that Peter had “a grief, a great grief,” and must be diverted. As a result, Peter became uncomfortably aware of inquisitive and avid eyes, without knowing the reasons. He was completely wretched, anyway. He had an abhorrence for intellectuals, and Etienne seemed to know every outlandish, peculiar and moth-gnawed intellectual in Manhattan and its environs. He particularly seemed to know those of queer, habits and large appetites and dirty collars and insulting mannerisms. Each one quarreled about his interpretation of “life,” as though life belonged exclusively to him and the others were being extremely stuffy and presumptuous in claiming even the corners of it. There were mediocre writers there, who wrote novels full of obscene words and perverted situations, and carried clippings about them in which some reviewer spoke of their “robust and earthy style, and fresh strength,” and “new, virile interpretations” of dirtiness as old as life and sin. “They go to the outhouses for their adjectives,” thought Peter, disgusted.
There were “composers,” who reviled the “decadence of modern music,” and went into raptures about the fugues, scherzos, concertos and sonatas which they had written themselves. They were lofty about Bach and Brahms, conceding them “a certain harmony and nobility,” which, however, were without “life.” They wore their own poverty like banners, quoting that of Mozart and Beethoven with melancholy pride. One of the “composers” went to Etienne’s carved grand piano and set it thundering in a frenzy. His longish locks flew; his fingers, with their dirty artistic rims, scampered up and down the jumping keys. Peter tried to find a solitary coherent theme in this frantic clamor of sharp and flat, this shattering, galloping discord, this marriage of the contorted musician with the tormented piano. Apparently, he thought he was very stupid, for the others applauded vehemently, with cries of admiration.
There were poets there, too, and these Peter found the most intolerable of them all. Fixed upon their faces was a glazed look of ecstasy; their eyes were turned inward, as though contemplating subjective glories. But Peter noticed that, glories or no, visions or no, the poets had the appetites of trenchermen. They demolished trays upon trays of hors d’ oeuvres with amazing speed, drank cocktail after cocktail, and looked about them for more with sullen famished eyes. Their lyrical descriptions of some inanity that had lately impressed them were a little incoherent at times, as they kept glancing ravenously about for fresh trays of nourishment There were actors, too, actors like Etienne, old men with sonorous voices and postures, and third-rate moving-picture “artists” with appetites and grudges and accounts of re
cent refusals to appear in productions that “violated the finest in them.” There were singers in the Metropolitan chorus, who insisted upon rendering “Celeste Aida,” and “Vesti la giubba” and “The Evening Star” in voices that might have lacked beauty but certainly did not lack strength. These artists also ate as though they had been on forty-day fasts.
He had met many real artists in Europe, and he knew that there were real artists in America. Unfortunately, poor Etienne knew none of them. He was blissfully convinced that the rabble that swarmed into his apartment and devoured his food and insulted him were the “soul” of the arts. He walked about with the sheepish prideful smile of an enraptured child. He accepted insults and ribaldry with gay indulgent laughter, and kept trying to catch Peter’s admiring eye.
When Peter, who had never encountered specimens like these before, courteously asked writers and musicians if their last “works” were successes, he was greeted with stares of outrage and fury. He was informed, with elaborate sarcasm and contempt, that true artists were never successes. He was informed that only the “prostitutes” of the arts ever made any money. The degree of perfection, he learned, was the degree of emptiness of the artist’s belly. The world never appreciated the truly great until they died.
Etienne had told them mysteriously that Peter was writing “a book.” Some of the more courteous asked him about it. He was suddenly ashamed and angered. He felt degraded and humiliated, as though he had been discovered doing something meanly indecent. So he replied curtly, and walked away. The others let him go, for they were interested in no one but themselves. They stink, thought Peter with disgust. Later, he felt pity for them, these poor poseurs, these unclean worshippers, lingering in the outer colonnades of the temples, knowing in their hearts they would never be permitted to enter, and seeing only the distant glimmer of the altar fires.
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