The Trespassers

by Laura Z. Hobson

  She calmed down in time. He knew that she would. He suggested walking to the inn, but she made tea for them both instead, and they sat in the small kitchen, drinking it together. At last she was ready for bed, and he lay talking in a low vice about other things so that she would not return to the subject which held so much fear and unhappiness for her.

  But when she fell asleep, he went on thinking about what was happening to this woman of his. The long waiting had thinned out whatever determination she had had when they left Austria. Thinned it and weakened it to the breaking point. If they only knew, in all the consulates, in all the unwilling countries outside, what it did to the ordinary person to feel so unwanted.

  Her words rang on in his mind. “I can’t. I feel in my bones I can t.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  VEE’S CONTINUING SILENCE astonished and baffled him. At last Jasper Crown had to face the fact that he had gambled and lost.

  She had not telephoned. She had not written. The time had gone by, and there had been no word or sign from her.

  He had really believed that as the weeks went by and she came to realize the full meaning of her headlong determination to “go on alone,” she would at last accept his judgment, his deepest conviction.

  Now it was too late, forever too late. Now, on the first of March, there was no gamble any longer. There would be actual danger in stopping it now.

  The last three weeks had been a hell of nerves for him. The constant argument within himself about whether he should call her and try once more or wait until she called him—he had worked himself into such a lather of tension that he could no longer get a decent night’s rest.

  At the office, people had noticed the state he was in. Giles, in his hearty way, had twitted him about it.

  “Jas, you’re killing yourself with this overwork. You’re shot to bits.”

  “It’s not overwork; I don’t know what overwork means.” His voice was short; he couldn’t help snapping at everybody. Giles’ face darkened for an instant; then he shrugged.

  “Well, if it’s not the work,” he said and his voice was jovial again, “then it’s a guilty conscience or something eating you. Take it easy, guy, will you?”

  Jas had smiled, as well as he could. But fury had leaped alive at the words. God damn Giles’ platitudes.

  And more days had gone, and more nights, and here it was March, and she had not telephoned.

  He was at home. The broadcast over, he had gone right back to his apartment. He had stopped in at the hotel bar downstairs for a drink.

  He was alone. He was always alone. He dined with people from the office, the stockholders, other business acquaintances; there were certain invitations from important people that he had to accept for the later part of the evening; there were his business trips and his night work at the office. Apart from that, he was always alone. There was no intimate content in his life at all.

  That was better than being chained in the incessant bondage of marriage. But there were other choices for a man. Otherwise there arose all the pressures that made him restless and dissatisfied with everything. Face it; intimacy he wanted, love-making, sex. Not marriage. Maybe that had been true all along.

  His mind kept going to Vee. He missed her and needed her, as Vee, as the girl she had been before—before—

  He did not name it. But when he thought of her, when he missed her, it was the other Vee he missed. Not the one of that last miserable afternoon, but the earlier one, vivid, responsive, passionate.

  He began to pace the room. On his desk was the clock with the dials. It was almost midnight. She would be awake still—he had often telephoned her even later than this.

  But there was no use. It was too late now. It was a full week too late.

  He picked up the receiver.

  An odd excitement filled him. As he gave the switchboard operator her number, he felt a tremor of anticipation, as if he were a lad calling his first girl.

  He didn’t know what he would say when he saw her. But he needed to see her. Right now. Tonight.

  The telephone’s ringing went on for a long time. She must be out. Sudden disappointment swept through him, and with it the familiar dragging feeling, the incessant companion.

  “Yes, Mrs. Stamford’s apartment.”

  It was Dora’s voice. He recognized it. He did not announce himself.

  “Is Mrs. Stamford there, please?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Will she—do you expect her in soon?”

  “No, Mr. Crown. She’s at the hospital.”

  “The—did you say hospital?”

  “Yes. She went a week ago.”

  “What hospital? Is she very—is it serious—do you know what—?”

  “I don’t know anything. It’s the New York Hospital. She can’t see anybody. Nor talk on the phone.”

  There was nothing more she could tell him. He tried to find out more, but she only repeated that she knew nothing. He hung up.

  He telephoned the hospital. The usual laconic nothings were all he could elicit. Not what had happened, not any real news.

  A frantic need to know swept through him. He could not wait until morning. He thought of telephoning Ann Willis. He immediately dismissed it.

  He could call Dr. Platt. He would surely know. God, he simply could not call Dr. Platt. Or her family doctor, that Burton man. No, he could not. If they did not know his name when he called, they would tell him no more than Dora had. If they recognized his name, it meant they knew—

  No, he would have to wait. He could find out in the morning. He would go to bed now.

  Sleep would not come. “If it’s not work, then it’s a guilty conscience eating you—” Damn Giles Craven, damn him to hell. That was old Biblical talk, it was old schoolmarm talk, it was insufferable impudence. Damn everything and everybody. It was only not knowing that made him feel this way.

  Did that crushing, dragging load have anything to do with platitudes like “guilt”? He laughed acidly. Cliché, shibboleth—all the trappings of little minds in little people.

  The night fretted itself out. At seven-thirty, he telephoned the hospital and asked to be connected to her room. He heard a voice asking, “May 1500 take calls yet?” and a moment later he was told that no calls were being put through.

  Once again he thought of telephoning Ann, the doctors, even Vee’s secretary at the store. Each idea was impossible. No one would tell him anything.

  He would have to wait. And waiting now seemed insupportable.

  Early sunshine flooded in through the big casement windows in Vee’s room on the fifteenth floor of the hospital. She lay with her head turned toward the sky beyond the panes of glass. There was no more pain, only the absolute depletion.

  She could scarcely reconstruct the seven days that had gone by since that night it happened. Bits and snatches came to her, but there were the long, vacant gaps when anesthetic or drugs wiped away the world.

  The radio, and the sliding and falling and pain—she could remember that, and even running steps and Dora’s voice calling to her. Then Ann bending over her—yes, that must have been the ambulance. And then the smell of ether and Dr. Platt’s face and a long time later waking up in the high bed and looking up to see Ann and Dr. Burton and her own broken voice telling them, “It’s gone, my baby’s gone. I lost my baby,” and Ann’s eyes wet…

  Then the next days which were only sleeping and the helpless crying when she woke up and remembered the baby, and sleeping again. Ann was there often, not saying much, just sitting there. Yesterday afternoon was the first time they had talked in any connected way. But Ann kept steering her away from what had happened, and told her instead that she would come up to see her every afternoon and later, when it was permitted, every evening. Ann had gone to the store, and seen Mr. Ralsey herself. She had made up a fine story about the hospital, with Dr. Burton’s assistance, and Mr. Ralsey had been splendid in his affection and concern. Vee wasn’t to worry about anything, or hurry abo
ut the leave of absence.

  “When you’re all fine again, Vee darling, why don’t you come along with us to the Coast? Fred’s got to go out there again next month, and we could all three have a wonderful trip. You think about it.”

  Now she was thinking about it. There was no hurry, for they had told her she would be in the hospital for another ten days, possibly longer. To get strong again, and rested.

  Rested for going back to the store and working and having a “career.” She didn’t want it, she hadn’t for a long time wanted it. She wanted love and a husband and a child and a home that was shared with them. She had believed that at last it was all happening to her, the fairy tale that was coming to life…So now, she was to get strong and rested and go back to the store and her own apartment.

  When old Dr. Burton came in, he instantly saw the reddened eyes, the hair on the pillow wet where the tears had run down her cheeks, past her ear lobes.

  “Try to spare yourself from any thinking,” he said kindly.

  “I try, I do try. But it’s always there. If I hadn’t lifted the radio—”

  “It would have happened, anyway,” he said firmly. “I’m sure you simply were in no shape to go on. Your red-corpuscle count was way down, your weight, your general shocked condition—you’d been through too much sleeplessness and psychic trauma. Neither Dr. Platt nor I was surprised. We warned you—”

  “At the danger point.” She nodded. Yes, she remembered. “I did try to eat, and sleep—oh, Dr. Burton, what do you do when you just can’t?”

  He shook his head.

  “It wasn’t your fault. Shock and insomnia and too many hours on your feet at the store—yet in my judgment it was better to let you go on with your job as long as you could. Platt agreed, under the circumstances. I knew what you were going through.”

  She turned her head away from him.

  “You were very brave,” he said, and took her hand in his. “To plan to go ahead, that was brave. Someday you’ll find a normal man and—”

  “I’ll never trust anybody again. Never, I—”

  “Yes, you will. There are lots of fine people around, too.”

  Something in his voice sent a shaft of hope through her. Maybe there was, ahead of her, somewhere…

  Long after he was gone, she tried to hold to that hope. It was the only life line to cling to, the future. The past was only her lost love, her lost baby.

  When she woke from her afternoon sleep, she knew she was a little stronger. She could not document it, but she sensed it. She began to watch the time until Ann should arrive. Time drifted by her in a vague, clouded formlessness. The afternoon was passing.

  The door opened. She turned her head toward it. A chaos thudded in her breast.

  He stood just inside the door.

  “Vee—I just heard—I had to see you—”

  Her mouth opened, but no words came from her parted lips. She tried to sit up and could not.

  “Are you all right? I—God, I’ve been through hell—”

  She smiled with stiffened lips.

  “Jas. You came here—”

  He was at the bed, he was half kneeling, he took her hand. Her hand felt the touch of his flesh, but the sense of contact stopped there. It was as if there were no communication between her hand and her being.

  “Do you hate me too much, Vee? Can I talk to you? I knew your room number. I just came in. They would have stopped me. I had to see you. What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Short, jagged, the sentences jerked out from his lips. She lay looking at his face.

  “I lost the baby, that’s what happened,” she said slowly. “I said I’d go ahead, but then I miscarried.”

  He felt a wild spring of release. In that first moment, he knew only that it was over, the hideous thing that had happened was over. In the next moment he thought of her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll be all right.” He saw her shiver as she said the words. He took her hand again, but she withdrew it.

  “I don’t want you to stay here, Jas,” she said. “I don’t want ever to see you.”

  “Wait, don’t say that. I’ve been through damnation about this whole thing—I’ve never been free of it. I finally phoned your house because I couldn’t stand it without you. I went crazy when Dora told me you were here. I—I couldn’t help any of it—”

  “Stop—stop thinking about what you’ve been through, what you feel, what you could help or not help. It’s too late, oh, God, it’s too late forever.”

  Her voice rose, she struggled to sit up, her eyes burned and bore into his. In her thin face, two bright disks of red stood out; her hands clutched the edges of the blanket.

  “No, it’s not too late, darling—I’ll make it up to you, I’ll make you happy again. It took this whole thing to show me what you mean to me. I promise that I’ll—”

  “Promise. Your promise. Your word.” Her voice gritted; the words came harsh and dry. “You’ll always break a promise when the need comes—you’ll never even know you’re doing it—you’ll twist it around so that it seems reasonable to you.”

  “Vee, for God’s sake, I want—”

  “You don’t want anything except power and fame. You don’t want the baby—only the proof.”

  “You’re all upset now. I’ll wait until you’re well again. I’ll—oh, Christ, you’ve got to give me one more chance.”

  “The baby doesn’t get one more chance,” she cried. And suddenly she sobbed aloud, and all the old dreams and longing for a baby became a longing for this baby, this vanished baby who hadn’t had a chance.

  He stood, numb and silent.

  He saw her hand go out to the corner of the pillow. It came to a brown bulb at the end of an electric cord. Her thumb pushed a button.

  “Vee—I can’t believe you won’t ever—a man can change—”

  “I used to think you’d change. You’re always going to hurt people, Jas. It’s in you somewhere, deep, dark inside you. There are people that are hurters, and you’re one of them. I’d always know it, always wait for the next smash. I simply couldn’t trust you again—ever—so please go—”

  For one more moment he stood, looking at her. He heard footsteps approaching the door. Without another word he left.

  He passed the startled nurse outside. He strode along the long, wide corridor, his head down, and blackness sweeping through him. It was one of the rare moments when he hated himself; it was a moment when he knew he was a cursed man in the inner places where happiness or misery lay. He had never known happiness as other men knew it; now he knew that he always took misery with him wherever he went. He had to hit out and smash and rule and win out…Yes, he won, but the price was the loneliness he lived with, tense and bitter.

  In the next moment some old reliable mechanism asserted itself.

  “God damn everything,” he yelled inside his mind. “They want to cripple and maim anybody who’s big and creative, harness him up with their tidy, moralist checkreins. God damn them all. I’m bigger than all that crap—”

  An exclamation from somebody brought his head up. Ann Willis had come out of the elevator. She was directly in front of him. He nodded curtly and stepped aside.

  “No, you don’t,” she said. Automatically he stopped. Her eyes were on his face.

  “You and I have nothing to say to each other,” he said.

  “Only this,” she said quietly. “You are the most prodigious swine I have ever known, Jasper. You always talk about ‘your enemies.’ I want you to know that from now on I am one of them.”

  He nodded slowly. His eyes were blank; his face was washed of expression. He stood motionless and so did she. For long seconds, they faced each other so. Simultaneously then, they went in opposite directions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE SKY DOMED UP into blue infinity; the ocean sparkled and shone as though it were a summer sea. On the decks of the Normandie coatless passengers lazed and walked in the warm sunlight of t
he benign May morning.

  Lying back in her steamer chair, Vee was acquainting herself with peace again. It was good to be on this great sea, calm and well once more, headed toward the Paris and London she knew and loved; it was good to have survived all the darkness and hatred and pain and be looking forward once again. “I’m a survivor,” she thought, and smiled a little. “I guess I survive things.”

  This trip was a sudden decision, at least on the surface. When she had left the hospital in middle March, she had lived at Ann’s house for a week, and met new people and gone to the theater. When Ann and Fred pressed her to go to the Coast with them, some instinct told her that she must not accept. “I’m on my own again. If I go somewhere, I’ll go alone.”

  When the week was up, she had gone home, to begin the business of re-establishing her life again. It was hard at first, every room in her apartment, every table and chair, had associations with Jas; the tenacity of pain startled and dismayed her. She would still spring out of a dream about Jas or the baby, shaken and aching, she would still wake in the earliest dawn every few days and feel the stinging in her eyes. But she would grow calm again and know that she was climbing to a clearer place at last. That made the difference.

  It was over. Everything with Jas was done and over. The very phrase could still pierce and sear, the wasteful phrase, the bitter, lonely phrase. But the fact behind the phrase was clean and sane.

  She schemed purposefully to lessen the desolation of the slow days. She went to dinner with friends who meant little, she had engagements with men who seemed dull and mild. But she told herself this was an interim period, a mourning period, and the sorrow in it was eased by a hope that it would soon end.

  She devised occupations for the days. The luckiest idea she had was to set about the business of finding the new apartment she would have to move into in the fall when her lease was up. She found a delightful place, with a small terrace, and a month slipped by while she did the basic decorating.

  Once Mr. Ralsey came to call on her. They talked shop, and he wondered whether this coming summer wasn’t to be the last for many years for buying trips abroad. She smiled meaningfully at him, and he smiled back and shrugged elaborately.