When he had to go she said, “It was a nice evening, John,” and Mrs. Thompson, standing behind her, said: “Come and see me some time, John.”
Chapter Eight
By the end of the week John was sure he had been silly and had let thoughts of Isabelle obsess him. It had been just a picture of her in his mind suddenly exciting him, making him restive and nervously alert, and now, knowing the feeling, he could find it silly and was happier, as if it would never be necessary to have such thoughts again. Downtown, in a cafeteria, at the end of the week, he saw Ed Henley sitting across from him, a heavy man, whose shoulders looked too wide when his head was bent down over the table. His head was flat at the top. The hair, a little thin at the crown, suggested an early baldness. Sitting at the table he was simply a dull, heavy-set man who seemed unable to have any thoughts at the moment beyond his food. John, staring at Henley’s heavy knuckles and his sloppy lips, was working himself up, almost ready to stand up and shout that Henley was a great pig who liked everything in the world he detested, and was really the idiot who had taken hold first of Isabelle, and indirectly of him. Henley was Isabelle’s lover and her good friend. It was over now between them, but he was there, ready to start again. “You fool,” John muttered, “you damned idiot.” Then he knew Henley had seen him and was trying to speak to him. Without looking up he knew Henley was coming over to sit beside him. “Have you seen Isabelle the last few days?” Henley said, putting his plate of breaded veal cutlets and potatoes au gratin and side dishes of beets and peas on John’s table.
“No, I haven’t.”
“She’s gone out of the city.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I don’t know where to, either.”
“I didn’t know she had.”
“Well, just between us, Mr. Hughes, I don’t think she gave me a very good break.” He went on talking about her, his admiration increasing as though she were a famous woman, and it was almost too much to expect that she would go on loving him. “You’re a good fellow,” John said suddenly, thinking him so simple and honest about his feelings it was almost necessary for them to become confidential. They were both interested in Isabelle, and he knew if he stayed there talking he would be explaining all his own feeling, so he got up hurriedly, still sorry for Henley. “How is it you can eat so much?” he said to him.
“Because I get hungry,” Henley said. John kept this answer in his head, on the way along the street, laughing a little; sure that Henley was a simple-minded man.
Even Lillian could not tell him where Isabelle had gone. They were ignorant of her whereabouts till the end of the month, when Paul Ross came back to the city. Paul and John were having a cup of coffee in Childs’. Ross said: “I guess you knew about Isabelle, didn’t you?”
“I’ve been wondering about her. Where is she?”
“She was out of town with me.”
“With you?”
“Yes, and listen, John, she’s a regular one. Oh, she’s a lovely thing. I never knew anything quite like her. There’s more excitement in her than in all the women in town.”
“I know she’s excitable, sometimes a little hysterical.”
“It makes no difference. You’ve never had a woman like her. It left me a bit up in the air.”
“What do you mean?”
“I felt I wasn’t very important, hardly essential to her excitement. It might just as well have been someone else with her going through the motions. I don’t usually feel that way, do I, John? And I ought to be ashamed to admit it now. But not at all. She just burns you up, you or anybody else, a frenzy, a flood and a fire, so I don’t feel bad about it.”
“Go on.”
“Sure. Usually I take them as they come. But there’s something ecstatically religious about the release and satisfaction it has for her. I was left outside of it.”
“Why do you talk so slowly and smile so stupidly?”
“I just can’t help thinking about it, John, that’s all. But she can’t last long, going like that. It’s too bad, because she’s so much more than a lovely lady when she’s ready, and then there’s a curious childish peace for her in her own exhaustion.”
“All right, Paul, that’s enough. Let it go at that.”
“I’m trying to explain the way I felt about an astounding experience. If you’re too much of a prig to get the point, I’m sorry for you. Who are you staring at?”
“No one; don’t be ridiculous.”
“If you want me to shut up I will.”
John, looking at him steadily, tried to conceal a quick feeling of anger, and let Paul go on talking about Isabelle till he could hardly understand the words he was using. All the words went into his head but they meant nothing at all to him in combination. “Listen to me,” he said suddenly. “That was a hell of a trick.”
“But you practically fixed it up for me.”
“I didn’t; do you hear?”
“You told me she wanted to see me.”
“She was a friend of mine and you were a friend of mine, but tell me, what do you think I am? Don’t sit there gaping like an idiot, tell me what I am.” He leaned forward tensely, waiting for Paul to explain something to him. “You’re a fool, that’s what you are,” Paul said angrily.
“I’m a fool. Yes.” He got up at once without finishing his coffee and rushed out the door, leaving Paul, sitting alone, looking after him and thinking he had gone crazy suddenly.
John, calling a taxi, told the driver to take him to Lillian’s apartment. On the way up, leaning back in the cab, he got ready all the sentences he intended to use, explaining the matter to Lillian.
In the apartment house he ran up the stairs, opening the door without knocking, rushing into one room and through to another where he heard someone playing the piano. Lillian, standing behind a young girl, one of her few pupils, was watching her touch the keys timidly. The young girl, her mouth open, stared at John and Lillian came to him quickly, pulling him out of the room. “What on earth is the matter with you?” she said. “You look ready to burst a blood vessel.”
“You know where Isabelle was all the time?”
“No.”
“On the road with Paul Ross.”
“Well?”
“And I acted as the pimp for her, do you see? I fixed it all up. I told him she was ready for him, and then they went out on the road together.”
“You might have guessed it. After all, it’s better she should be with Paul than with the lout Henley.”
“No, it isn’t. Henley is a simple fellow, but it meant something big to him. It doesn’t mean a damn thing to Paul. But that isn’t the point. I got him for her and she knew I would feel this way. I’m crazy, am I? Oh, no. I see that part of it, more than you do, more than she does.” They were speaking as quietly as possible. Looking between the curtains again at the little girl at the piano, he turned and went out.
Chapter Nine
When snow fell lightly early in December it quickly turned to rain, a slow steady rain. At first it was snow, a few heavy flakes on a very dark day, the flakes melting quickly almost before reaching the sidewalk, and then the rain came heavily, then thinly and steadily, not a good, clean, swift rain. But in the morning when the sun came out and there was a hard frost, the sidewalks were glassy, and little kids on the way to school made slides all along the street to the corner. All the twigs and branches on the trees were coated with thin ice and icicles hung from eavestroughs and the corners of verandas; but then the sun got stronger and the slides were only wet blotches on sidewalks and steam came from the veranda roofs and the ice on the thin branches and twigs began to crack with small snapping sounds and water dripped steadily from the dwindling icicle points, and by midday, when the sun was very strong, there was hardly any frost in the air. The frost had even gone out of the surface earth on the lawns. In the evenings it was cold and hard again and the wind was gusty. It was the wind in the evenings that was cold, and when it was not freezing it was even colder, damp,
and heavy, blowing up from the lake.
The wind blew against the window in John’s room, rattling it. There were three windows looking out on the street, but the casement of one was loose and he had tightened it with a piece of heavy paper thrust between the sash and the frame. It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening. He had come home early and was reading, glad of the several hours ahead before bedtime, because he liked Marlowe and had reached the second part of Tamburlaine, getting excited inside a little when there was a rush and flow of words. The excitement in the characters and in the author was in John because of the swing and rush of the words. Sometimes the characters in the book hardly seemed important as long as he caught some of the author’s feeling of exultation in the splendor of his own images. It was better for John, alone in the house, for there were no noises in other rooms. Mrs. Errington and her husband had gone out a little late in the evening.
He was lying on the bed reading and dusting ashes from his cigarette, which had fallen on the page. He heard someone knocking on the door downstairs. Whenever he was alone in the house and someone knocked on the door, he answered, so now he went downstairs and opened the front door. Isabelle, her hand out to him, stepped into the hall.
“I wanted to see you, John.”
“You can’t see me here.”
“Yes I can, the people went out about half an hour ago.”
“I don’t want to see you at all.”
“Lillian told me that.”
“Where were you now?”
“On the other side of the street watching the light in your room.” She was still shivering, for she had on only a light fawn coat and the red felt hat. It was a pret y coat, but now she had the thin col ar turned up and her nose was red. Outside it was frosty and she looked very thin and cold in the light coat.
“Why on earth didn’t you wear a heavy coat?” he said irritably.
“This one looks better. My heavy coat’s worn and funds are getting low.”
Standing in the hall, under the light, smiling a little, she felt warmer and began to turn down the collar of her coat, all the time looking at him steadily, aware that he intended asking her to sit down in Mrs. Errington’s front room. It became so clear to him that she was sure of his thoughts, he expressed his sudden exasperation by saying: “Come on upstairs and sit down in my room a few minutes. You’ll have to be out soon or the Erringtons will be home.”
Upstairs she took off her coat at once and resentfully he watched her looking around the room carefully. His fingers were fumbling with the neckband of his shirt as though he ought to have a collar and tie on. She sat down on the one chair in the room. He sat down on the bed.
“Well,” he said.
“It was getting quite cold out.”
“You’ll have pneumonia.”
“Probably. It’ll soon be Christmas.”
“Is that what you came to tell me, Isabelle?”
“No. That’s just a fatalistic observation, John, dear. I know how you feel about me and it makes me feel broken up and I simply had to see you. I had to see you alone and you had told Lillian to keep me away from you.”
She was talking so patiently and smiling so wistfully, he couldn’t help feeling that in some way he had misbehaved, and she was there to make it all a matter for explanation, so he gave her a cigarette, his face absolutely expressionless to indicate a sudden impartial feeling. He said he was glad she had come to see him.
“Why did you resent me going off with Paul Ross?”
“I didn’t. It hurt me to have to procure him for you.”
“But don’t you see how I felt?. The way my brother had been killed made me feel I could never be any good and for all other people I would be pretty low. It wasn’t my fault, and I resented it because there was something fine about Fred. Wasn’t there something fine about him, John? And the way he died had nothing to do with my feeling for him, only I knew I would have to go on with that feeling of personal degradation. As far as everybody else is concerned I’m degraded. I went on thinking of myself in that way till I was almost eager for more of it, wanting to hurt myself. See, I know just the way it was with me. So it was easy just letting myself go with Ed Henley because he loved me for a kind of ill-fame attached to me, and in his slow way he had it figured out I ought to be easy. I am, only I want to take everything along with me.” She had got more excited holding on to the arms of the chair, staring at him while he shook his head, eager to tell her how sorry he was for her. “Wasn’t it better to go from Henley to Paul?”
“No, he won’t bother about you at all.”
“You don’t know him. He’s really down and out now, but can you imagine it, he wanted to be an architect, then the war got him. Did you know that? The war got him and someday he’ll start thinking more intensely and it will be bad for somebody. I felt that about him and it was almost good for us to be together. I mentioned him to you because you and Lillian are the only friends I’ve got.”
Then she said it was probably wrong for her to mention it at all, for he was, in a way, apart from it, since he was becoming fairly successful with his music. Lillian and he could look forward to so much happiness, they were really altogether beyond her.
“That thought’s a mania with you,” he said angrily.
“But it’s true just the same.”
“It isn’t, I tell you. I love Lillian and she loves me, but we both want to be good friends with you.”
“But sometimes you seem so much of a prig.”
“You’re not fair to me.”
“You didn’t used to have that quality, but I’ve watched it growing in you.”
“Don’t be nasty, Isabelle. Be nice. Have a smoke.”
“What were you reading?” she said, picking up the book. “Do you really like the Elizabethans?”
“Mainly Marlowe.”
“I used to like them, too, but it’s too gaudy a performance for me now. Too much upholstering, I suppose. It hasn’t anything to do with my life. But I thought you were interested only in . . . .”
“In music, you were going to say.”
“Yes.”
“I know I’m always apologizing for liking anything else. It seems to be almost an indecent offence against the standards.”
“No. I didn’t mean that. I used to like reading, but now it all passes beyond me. I can only see the words on the page; it never really touches me at all now. How quiet it is in the room here and from the window, looking out, the streets seem so silent, though they are cold, and the streetlight so steady. It’s too late in the year now, but a month or so ago I used to watch the streetlight not far away from my upstairs window and for a long time I could faintly see the insects crawling on the white glass shade. I used to have to keep looking hard. It was like that, late at night, when I had most of my thoughts about you, and wanted to see you . . . . Well, I used to like reading, that’s what we were talking about, but every time I sit down now with a book it all becomes a very silly, trifling exercise of the imagination with me sitting there ready to toss away the book, always feeling my own thoughts so much stronger and alive and restless . . . .”
“Talk quietly. Even now your face glows and your eyes are wild and your voice rises.”
For a time she sat without moving, hardly aware he was in the room. The long silence was awkward and he hoped for some slight noise in the house or on the street that might hold his attention. The street was quiet, then he heard someone starting an automobile farther down, but after a few seconds could hardly follow the sound of wheels and the engine, and the street was quiet again.
“Lillian would probably have married Fred if he had lived,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“She was more in love with him than she imagined, and they would have got married when he was ready.”
“Dear Isabelle,” he said considerately, “why do you say that?”
“I say simply the shock of his arrest and his death mixed up her feeling for him, but later
on she will see the way it was.”
“I tell you, you’re raving mad.”
“No, I still have some feeling for you.”
“I wish you hadn’t, then.”
“John, kiss me once and I’ll go.”
A stupid smile was on his face and he shook his head awkwardly as if not hearing her. Getting up quickly she put her hands on his head before he could move and kissed him tightly, and when he was still looking at her, only getting up slowly, backing away, she leaped at him, kissing him fiercely on the neck, hanging on to him tightly. Hanging on to him, her body was tense and he felt her heart beating against him and all the muscles of her arms and legs quivering and straining. She was very slim and hardly soft at all, but when tense, her slimness made her more nervous, and he felt it all in her. He put his arms around her, kissing her, hardly breathing because it seemed all his feelings for Isabelle that had been mixed up where concentrated into a sudden intensity of emotion, finding a release only in holding on to her. Some of the nervous tenseness in her passed to him and he trembled all over. He felt his heel pattering on the floor, and desperately pressed down on it to hold his legs steady. “I’ve got to love you,” he said. The one expression on her face remained there all the time, only her eyes seemed to get brighter.
When they lay down, first of all, she hardly said anything. She didn’t smile at him and they didn’t pet each other at all, just sought the one swift feeling, then she closed her eyes, lying on the bed.
It was over for both of them quickly and standing up he said: “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sorry I came?”
“Yes.”
She was not offended and even smiled a little, sitting down, putting on her hat. A mirror was over the dresser in the corner of the room and she moved her head from side to side following it in the glass. Still watching, John was anxious to say something that would sound decently appropriate, but could only go on looking at her. Suddenly he said: “You were all wrong about Lillian and Fred.”
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