by Rebecca West
‘Oh, Danny, my Danny!’ she moaned. ‘What shall I do?’
Desperately, not really expecting anyone to answer, she drummed with her knuckles on the open door. And the breath left her when from behind the panel that hung away there stepped a woman in a Chinese coat. That, indeed, meant little, for though she was white she was not the woman whom Theo had seen before, for she was old and rough-headed, and the coat was grubby. But still she might know.
‘Where is he? Where is he?’
The woman opened a wide mouth and spoke in a tongue Theo was used to hearing from dressers: the voice, rich as beef-dripping, of the American-Irish.
‘Where’s who? Are ye one of Li Po’s dubs?’
‘I want the magician. Where is he? He isn’t dead?’
‘Sure he’s not dead. It takes a lot to kill these Chinks. But – och, the fool!’
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘’Tis a long story!’ She leant against the wall and settled down for a gossip. ‘He had a white wife, my own cousin’s daughter she was, and him the finest traffic-cop in New York but dying before he had time to beat her up the way he should. So she came after me, which no girl should’ve done, and she had the good luck to catch the eye of Li Po before harm came to her. He went crazy about her and married her all proper, and loved her too much to smoke the pipe. That’s how the Chinks keep us white girls if we’re too pretty.’ She gave a tired old bridle. ‘That an’ bein’ good husbands. And Li Po was the best of the lot. Many’s the time I’ve said to the little fool, “Lily Murphy, you’ve had the grandest luck.”’
That mysterious figure with the richly swaddled baby – one had not thought of her as Lily Murphy …
‘Well?’
‘Well, the little fool’s run off with a young fellow, used to be a steward on a liner, and they’ve gone off to Hollywood to try and get in the pictures!’
‘But what’s happened to Li Po?’
‘Now that’s the grand, tarnation foolishness of it! Here he is throwin’ up a fine business and goin’ off to San Francisco wid the kid to live wid his father’s people, though he’d ivry sucker in New York waitin’ on his doorstep, beggin’ your pardon, you bein’ one of ’em. But indade it does no harm me tellin’ you, for the poor lad’s that down and discouraged he wouldn’t have the spirit to deceive you, if you put your money in his hands.’
Theo stared at her. ‘Then –’
‘Away in and see him yourself. He’s sittin’ around where he always did. You have a kind face on you, I’m thinkin’. If you maybe wouldn’t mind lettin’ him make a fool of you it might make the poor lad feel more like himself.’
She stepped back and waved Theo in, hospitably, as one woman asking another to participate in the social pleasures of a family catastrophe, as it might have been to a wake; and said sadly: ‘He’s a good enough guy. I’m wishin’ he would stay right here. He’s sendin’ me money, for he likes the way I play wid the baby. But they’ll be gettin’ the money off me, the way I am. And I’ll miss the baby. ’Tis a roarin’ president of a boy. But away in and see Li Po.’
‘But –’
‘Go in wid you, you kind woman,’ said the rough-headed ruin, and with a shaking hand held back the panel she had passed before.
The room was flooded with daylight now. Three windows gave a view of many roofs. It was a cleanly kept room with a felt flooring and plaster walls. On the dais at the far end was a yellow papier-mâché Buddha, turned away so that one could see the lining of newspapers that had been pasted inside its hollow back. In front of it, in ordinary American clothes, sat a little Chinaman, a sad little Chinaman, who looked so like a sick monkey that she found herself foolishly wishing that Danny was there, because he was so good with sick animals. He was sitting on the black lacquer box he had used for his spells.
He did not look up till she had come right to the steps of the dais. Then he said wearily but politely: ‘I am velly solly I cannot do any magic for you today. I have gone out of business. A family beleavement. But there is a good magician, a velly leliable magician, in the next block –’
She choked with tears.
‘Oh, your wife’s left you! That lovely, lovely girl!’
He made no inquiry as to how she had heard. Only his eyes rolled for a second, as if to marvel at the way that these Occidentals ran up and down the world, even breaking into the quiet landscape of Oriental emotions. Gently he said, as if to soothe her by a matter-of-fact statement of his tragedy, not out of any personal feeling but merely to increase the amount of serenity in the universe: ‘She thought she was like Maly Pickford. He thought he was like Ludolph Valentino. The lest seemed to follow.’ Then he turned his head away from her and looked out on the roofs.
It was a movement of dismissal, but only from the conversation. She knew he would not mind if she stayed there for a little, so she went and sat down on the corner of the dais, and looked round the room. This was the place of which she had thought with such terror for so many months, this the man. Of course it was all a put-up job. The joss-house. Strangers invited. She’d say they were! The little tout. No doubt it had not even been real cocaine. And here, in this room, the hocus-pocus had come to a climax. What a parcel of tricks it had been! Of course they had taken her bag away from her while she was nodding under the hypnosis of the throbbing gong, and then cunningly asked two dollars short of all she had. And the spell had been the cap of all, when the East had put back its head and laughed silently at the West for its inability to hold its emotional liquor like a gentleman, and filled its pockets at the expense of the lurching Occidental.
That was all it had been. All. There was no magic. Of course there was no magic. Yet a real power of evil had radiated from that room. She should have known it was bogus, she, with her experience! Yet it had endangered her marriage with Danny. It had made her days poisonous with fear lest her darling should die and should detect her as the contriver of his death. Nothing that had ever happened to her before had such power to affect her life. Wasn’t that magic?
And wasn’t it magic the way Danny knew things? How did he know a horse or a dog was sick when he could not see it? How could he tell when you blindfolded him and spun him round, where the north was? How did he know when she felt fear, though he was stupid and she had an actress’s art to help her conceal it? There was a magic of a sort, surely.
But now she saw what it was. There was the magic of strong feeling. When he was in the city Danny could not do any of those queer things – save those that concerned her. He could only do them in the country, because he loved it. He gave himself up to the country as one abandons oneself to a lover. He soaked himself in its manifestations. His mind never slipped from it to his personal concerns. Therefore his nerves were sensitive to magnetic waves that others, thinking of what they would eat or read or wear when they got home, did not feel; and he could find the north; therefore, too, he could notice a faint, unwonted quality of melancholy in a whinny or bark when to the groom a beast seemed well enough, and Danny would be able to reckon, in the unconscious processes of his primitive mind, when the beast’s ailment would declare itself.
And he was wise about her for the same reason, since he loved her as he loved the countryside.
And she had interfered with his magic. She had hated, and hate has its magic too. Lord – how she had hated! It was the venom she had felt in this room that had been magic. Yet honestly she had to admit that in this Danny had not been guiltless. He had left her when he knew that he had made her love him. Yet she perceived suddenly that though Danny was to blame for what she had done in the room, she herself was to blame for the power it had acquired to follow her outside the room.
She had never had any faith in the relationship between men and women. Dolorously she had believed that love was an illusion. She had conceived of love wistfully as an occasion of tenderness and generosity such as she had never dared to indulge in in the world of wolves where she had fought for success. She had expected it to t
urn out badly. There had been a certain satisfaction mixed with her anguish when it had turned out badly and Danny had left her. That was why she had abandoned herself to it so utterly.
Then, when that satisfaction had been withdrawn by Danny’s return, she had searched round for something that would support her convictions by ending this love, and she had found it in this hocus-pocus. Wasn’t there a trace of meanness and hardness in the way that she had found what she wanted in something for which she could always lay the ultimate blame on Danny? Wasn’t the root of the whole thing a meanness and hardness and vanity in herself? Why had she been so reluctant to believe in love if it wasn’t that she had been anxious that the standards of the world of wolves should prevail, since it was there she had succeeded, there she was a star? She had always prided herself that she had kept herself aloof from that world, but it had got her, all right. She was to blame for everything. For now she saw that Danny had been right in leaving her. His divination had told him how utterly she had been spoiled by her life, how incapable she would be of enjoying happiness, how indefatigably she would twist and warp their common existence by her acquired habits of harsh and ugly thinking.
She must go back to him at once and start again.
But on the threshold she thought of the little yellow man, and turned about to see what had happened to him. It seemed possible to her that everybody in the whole universe had in the last moment known the relief of a flashing conviction of sin and seen the path to happiness. But he had not. He was hiding his face in his hands.
How it must hurt! She knew, she knew. There came to her a picture of the golden girl in the Chinese coat. Lovely she had been, but she must have been bad. For since she had run away with the other man so soon after, it could not have been joy in her husband and child that made her so insolent, but simply pride in her material possessions. There must have been disloyalty too. It was a mean little betrayal, in the way she had broken through the network of mystifications that it was her husband’s business to weave round his clients, just to have a look at a woman’s clothes.
‘She’ll never get on,’ she reflected. ‘I’ve seen her sort before. She’ll think of her salary before her work, and she’ll try to get on by double-crossing the woman above, and grouse if she’s put through it. She’ll never go in Hollywood.’
She was like Danny, she knew things! She saw the girl white with new horse-sense, having learned just how much her stock in trade was worth, having learned the value of the little yellow man’s kindness, coming back to the green door, coming up the stairs …
She crossed the room and stood in front of the man.
‘Your wife will come back!’ she cried. ‘She’ll come back to you.’ He did not seem to hear, so she drummed on his bowed shoulders. ‘She’ll come back – down and out! But she’ll come back!’
He raised a face that suddenly became happy. He knew she knew. The practitioner of false magic knew the practitioner of real magic. Passion flamed up into his eyes, a merciful passion that overwhelmed all the vengeful conventions of a race, and he said, as if disclosing a plot against the law, ‘I will take her to a place where the dishonour of my house is not known.’
Their hands met. She ran from the room, out of the door, down the stairs, into the streets. When she found a taxi, she pulled out her vanity case and rouged and powdered, in case Danny was in when she got back. The lights of the city seemed like a celebration. But he didn’t like the place, so she must take him away. Wasn’t there tarpon fishing in Florida? Only she would have to tell him about the magician. He would forgive her of course, of course, but it was horrible. Also – he might not forgive her.
When she got in he was there – sitting in an armchair by the window. The lights were not turned on, and she left it so, standing in the twilight behind his chair, nervously pulling off her gloves.
She said: ‘Danny, New York isn’t what I want. Let’s go South. There’s tarpon fishing in Florida.’
She saw the great bulk of him shake with silent laughter. ‘What is a tarpon?’ he asked teasingly. He was always amused by her ignorance of sport.
‘Well, something that you’d like!’ If she were not ashamed of the confession she had to make, she would have liked to go and sit on the arm of his chair.
He looked out of the window at the sky-scrapers and their hard jewels of light. ‘Yes, I’d like the tarpons all right. I don’t like this place’ – he hesitated – ‘the less for what I did to you here.’
‘Oh, Danny, never think of that! I want to tell you –’
‘But I do think of it. You must have gone through a deuce of a time. You feel things so.’ He paused and slowly refilled his pipe. ‘You must have prayed that I would die.’
She stiffened. ‘Danny! What makes you say that?’
‘Well, you must have. You were right too. You’re cleverer than I am. You knew what a good thing I was chucking away. And you’re a wildcat by nature. Of course you said, “O God, kill Danny for me!”’
It was a pity that she was shivering so. ‘But, Danny, that’s just what I did. I went this afternoon to see somebody I gave money to for casting a spell. I – I –’
He said, ‘I figured out that was what you were doing.’
Though she was still shivering, she went round and sat on the arm of his chair. Indolently he muttered: ‘You’d better rest, my dear. Tonight’s the night. We’re going to Sherry’s. And then to that place I saw you first. The Rigoli.’
She whispered, her voice having left her, ‘I shall wear my rubies.’
Sideways
This story was written for the Saturday Evening Post, October 1928, and has never been published in the UK before.
Ruth Waterhouse was born in Syracuse, and when she got into her teens she stayed out late nights. In relating her life story, in her high, faint voice that is nearly a breath, that threatens to die away altogether if she is not believed, she attributes this to the interesting and undeniable fact that the railroad line from Buffalo to New York runs slick through the main street of Syracuse, and that the expresses shook the frame house, where she lived with her old Jewish grandfather, from floor to ceiling. According to her, when she frequented whatever the Great White Way of that town may be, she was but pacing the floor. She longed for her pillow. But alas, because of the heavy trains, that could not be. Her old grandfather was, however, not such a light sleeper, and showed an entire lack of sympathy with her insomnia. In fact he said he would ‘learn her’ and did. This is the only part of the story I can wholeheartedly believe.
But what Ruth learnt was not what he had expected. Instead she learnt – what seems to be a most difficult piece of knowledge to acquire – how to insert herself into the chorus of a touring musical show. And later on she learnt – what I understand is even more difficult – how to transfer herself from a touring musical show to a musical show in Broadway. And later on she somehow achieved an introduction to Joseph, who is the greatest teacher of dancing that has ever been, and he took her on as his partner. This was extraordinary, for though she had great beauty – her hair was red-gold and her eyes red-brown and mournful like a fallow deer’s, and her skin seemed blanched by moonbeams and a special delicate kind of blood within, and her little triangular mouth trembled as if in perpetual control of tears – her feet and legs were the worst things about her. I once asked Joseph why he had done it. And the queer thing was that he couldn’t quite say. Finally, thinking it over, he became a little indignant.
‘I guess that girl put it over on me!’ he said. But it didn’t matter. For by that time Ruth had learnt to dance like running water, like wind in standing wheat; and she was covered with fame and legend and love – and jewels.
But all the same, it was interestingly characteristic of Ruth. I had adored her ever since I met her in New York, because I had been lucky enough to uncover her most amusing characteristic the very first time I went to her apartment. Sitting at her dressing-table, she murmured to me over her shoulder, ‘Is my hand-g
lass over there?’ She knew perfectly well that it was lying on the divan beside me, but she preferred to put her question like that; for one thing, because if she had asked me outright to pass it to her, she would have had to feel grateful to me for the granted favour, and she didn’t want to give anything – even gratitude – away; and for another, because she hated outrightness as a thing in itself. It sounds unlovable, but it was not. For one felt that if any really important issue had been turned up, she would have behaved well; and in the meantime she had the charm of being perfectly true to type.
Not once in all our later acquaintance did I know her to employ direct methods, not once did I know her anything but triumphantly acquisitive. Being with her gave one a feeling that life was a game played on a chequerboard, and that one was only allowed to move diagonally, but that one was winning gloriously. I cannot tell you how pervasive of every department of life her indirectness was. If she really wanted to see you, she arranged to be some place where she knew you were going to be. If she asked you to her house, you could be sure that you had been asked for some purpose relating to a third person – to make the young man she had finished with understand that no longer did she desire to be alone with him, to make the young man who was still rather shy and had to be brought on realize that he need not be alarmed; she did not even want to be alone with him. It gave her dancing its fascination. For as this glowing creature floated in the arms of her partner, who was now the exquisite Diego Caldes, so much more like a polished fingernail than a man ought to be, but nevertheless attractive to the mob, it became apparent that she burned only with fairy flames, that she was cold as any ice maiden; he was not really holding her; at any moment she might slip away from him, from the crowd, from the world. That smile she gave the audience had the quality of a farewell – of a farewell before a long journey – from which she would send no news of safe arrival. She was going away – right away.