“Wait!” he commanded. He went to her. “Don’t put your things on just yet!” he whispered.
“But there’s the room to do,” she said unwillingly.
“Ah, no, there’s no haste about it.”
“I like to get my work done in the morning,” she said.
“Your work!” he said with fond teasing. He had taken her lovely bare body in his arms. This beautiful flesh which in the sunshine had been light and substance for painting was now only material for love. But she would not yield and it was not in him to force her.
“What is it, sweetheart?” he inquired. “What’s wrong?”
She hung her head until her long brown hair covered her face. “I don’t like to—in the daytime,” she said. “It seems—wrong.”
“Wrong!” he repeated. “But darling, how can anything between us be wrong?”
It could be, he discovered. He listened to her little argument and felt the magic steal from her flesh, a perfume dispelled.
“Nice people don’t—” she said, “in the daytime.”
“How do you know?” he asked. “Anyway, what is nice?”
“I don’t—feel right—when we do,” she said.
“Ah, that!” he said. “That’s different, that’s important.” He had held her only a moment longer. Then she had put on her clothes and he had taken his brush and worked a long time in silence upon the dark background behind the silvery figure. All the time he worked he was aware of her as she busied herself about sweeping and dusting and preparing the lunch. But the room which could be at times the vessel of all his dreams was only an ordinary room. He spoke to her once or twice cheerfully.
“Shall we dine out tonight, Ruth?”
“Whatever you say,” she replied.
“No, Ruth, what do you want to do?”
“I want whatever you want,” she replied, and when he did not answer, she paused to say anxiously, “Honest, William—I mean it.”
She did mean it. He knew she did. She gave him all within her power. And was she to be blamed for anything? Her pretty face begged him for tenderness.
“Then we’ll go,” he said gently.
They came back from an evening of loitering over a sidewalk table within hearing of a park band. And in the night, when decent darkness covered her, she atoned. Was it a conscious atonement? He could never discover. But he thought it was not, because he believed she was never conscious of anything she did. She moved, she spoke, she kept silent, out of the moment’s instinct. This, he often thought, was her endless charm for him, that whatever she did it was what she deeply felt.
Thus he perceived with exquisite acuteness the softness about her lips when they came back that night. She undressed slowly, almost languorously, stretching her pretty arms and flinging back her long hair. He watched her every movement, each naïve in its meaning, until she slipped off her last garment and was about to put on her long nightgown, her hair falling from one shoulder.
“Wait,” he commanded her.
She looked up, lovely and shy and bold together.
“Come here,” he said.
He watched her as she came, the lover in him heightened to ecstasy by the painter who saw the perfection of her. He held out his arms and she came into them, and he perceived, as he did each time, the freshness of her being. She was eternally new to him because she came to him newly out of each moment which was never quite like any other. Had she been reasoning, had she been less instinctive, she could not have been herself. How rich she was, how generous, how deeply abandoned to him! He forgot everything in her abandonment. Great as his need was, so great was she.
She could conceal nothing, and when she sickened of the city he knew it, too, though she said not a word, because her instincts sickened and it was through her instincts that she spoke to him. So as spring became early summer, she repulsed him when he came near her. This repulsion was not in what she said but in her silences. She withdrew from him. She sat for him hour upon hour, passively, as though she did not know where she was, and he felt, as he painted, that he was copying another painting, not as though he were working from a living model.
He cried at her one day, “Ruth, come back!”
She did not move from her pose, her hands crossed upon her lap, but into her vacant blue eyes something returned.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
She did not answer, and he threw down his brushes and went over to her and took her in his arms.
“You aren’t happy,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “At least I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else if you weren’t there.”
“Where would you be happiest with me?” he asked gently.
“Oh, at home!” she cried.
And then he found out that she hated the city and these rooms and all her life here. She hated all the people he brought to her and the people she saw on the streets. Now he understood her remoteness when anyone else entered these rooms. He had thought her only shy, and at first he had pleaded with her.
“They’re my friends, Ruth, and so they are yours.”
“No, not mine,” she had said, her eyes wide.
“You’re afraid,” he had accused her another time.
“They are strangers,” she had said.
Now he knew that she hated them, simply and instinctively, because they were part of the city. All the time she had been living through the days and nights she had lived out of increasing hatred.
“I can’t hardly draw my breath here,” she whispered. “There’s no air.”
“Plenty of people do breathe here,” he said.
“That’s why,” she said, and lifted her head restlessly. “All the air’s been breathed over and over. I’m used to the air comin’ clean over hills. Besides, it’s the people I hate.”
“But Ruth, nobody has hated you!”
It was one of the things he found lovable about New York, that for all its size and self-preoccupation, one could find friendly talk in any cab, at any counter, with common folk.
“I hate ’em all,” she said stubbornly.
“Why?” he demanded of her.
“They’re not my kind,” she said.
He was wholly helpless in this large, soft stubbornness. It was instinct, unlit by reason, and against it he was like a man lost in the dark, silent night without a light to guide him anywhere.
“But Ruth, you told me nothing of this before,” he reproached her.
“Because you—you like it here,” she faltered. Her head was against his breast again, and he looked down on her drenched black lashes and he saw that she was helpless, too, against her instincts.
“I don’t like any place where you aren’t happy,” he said.
“You do—you keep talkin’ about how beautiful New York is,” she said, and began to sob, “but I think it’s terrible. It’s—it’s like livin’ all crowded together at the bottom of a well. There’s only a little strip of sky above. I’m used to the whole sky.”
In silence he sat holding her against his shoulder. It was true that he had in these months come to an increasing perception of the beauty of this city, and because of it he had battled against her hatred of it. He was continually pointing out to her the beauty he saw, the upspringing lines of buildings, the river, the smooth, sleekly flowing traffic along the streets, the sidewalk markets and the polyglot peoples. He felt in himself every day now a trembling surge of creative energy. He was coming out of himself at last and out of the narrowness even of love.
But it was she who had first led him forth. Until he had found Ruth that day, he had been locked in himself. She had freed him, she had forced him to leave his father’s house and to begin life for her and for himself. And having made that escape, he was now strong enough to escape again even from her. Not that he would ever leave her, or cease to love her. That he could not. But he knew that one of these days he would stop painting only her and he would go out and find his material in one after the other of those mill
ions about him. People were what he now wanted to paint, not landscape. It became certainty in him at this moment while he held her in his arms and listened to her sobbing.
“Hush,” he said, “hush—”
They spoke no more that night. They made ready for bed and she curled herself into his arms and gave herself up to him as she had not in months, until he was dazed with the sweetness and the wildness of her passion. He responded to it, wondering and full of delight. There was no coldness in her anywhere. She was all warm and soft and eager for him. Then he knew that whatever else he must give up, he could not give up this woman.
But as the summer came on, day by day he was appalled by what he discovered, and silenced by her helplessness before her own hatred. For she was the sort of creature, he was beginning to perceive, who is part of the soil which gave it birth. Her being shriveled and withered when she was away from that soil, and no work seemed really worth doing to her and yet work was essential to her health, body and soul. He saw to his alarm that she was actually less beautiful than she had been before she came, and he began to look about him and to consider whether or not he could leave New York. Why should he have to live here? His genius was strong enough to work anywhere—or ought to be, if it was worth anything.
One day in June, when he was thus reasoning, he entered the gallery of a dealer who had taken six of his paintings for sale. He had not heard from the man in some weeks and it was time, he thought, to inquire. The dealer was not in, the girl at the desk in the hall said, but he could go in and see his pictures. One, she said, had been sold to an old gentleman who had come in about an hour ago, and might still be there. At least, she had not seen him go away, although she had been out to luncheon in the meantime.
“Let me see his name,” William said.
She flipped over the pages of a ledger and ran her finger down a column.
“There,” she said.
He bent to look, and saw his father’s name, Harold James Barton. He did not speak, being too moved to reveal to this common, gum-chewing office girl what the name meant to him. He looked at the title of the picture. It was, he thought, one of his lesser ones, not a picture of Ruth, but a quick thing he had done, one spring morning, of a wagonload of flowers that an Italian gardener had driven to the city to sell. For a dollar the man had been willing to draw his horse to the curb and sit slouching with crossed knees and slack reins while William worked. Afterward he had bought a pot of primulas for Ruth. The canvas was small, but he had caught sunshine in it, and the old Italian face, shrewd and gay.
“You say he may be in the gallery still?” he asked, looking down at his father’s name.
“He usually stays quite some time when he comes in,” the girl said and put back the ledger.
He hesitated. Did he want to see his father? He had not seen either of his parents since his marriage, nor heard from them nor from Louise. Some day, he knew, the silence must end. It was absurd for a son to be parted from his parents because of a creature as beautiful as Ruth. He had only to arrange a meeting and everything would be well again. He had been so sure of this that he had put it off, month by month. Now, he decided, was the time. If he could bring about a meeting between Ruth and his father now, his father could carry home the good report to his mother.
On this impulse he walked quickly into the gallery. There were a dozen or so people there and he had to search for his father. But he found him easily enough. He was sitting upon a small upright chair which he had drawn to a proper distance from the wall where William’s paintings were hung, and there he sat, his back to the door, his gloved hands crossed upon the silver knob of his walking stick and his white head lifted.
William approached him softly. “Hello, sir—good morning!”
His father started and half rose, then sat down again before answering.
“Oh, there you are,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” William said gently. His father looked tired, he thought. Then he remembered that this was the time of year when he usually looked tired, just before they went to Bar Harbor. “Are you all right, sir?”
“I?” His father looked surprised. “Certainly.”
“And Mother?”
“We’re both about as usual,” his father said mildly. He looked at his son carefully. “You seem in good health,” he remarked.
William smiled. “I am—excellent.”
“Seen Louise?”
“No, sir.”
His father nodded at a picture. “That your wife?”
“Yes, sir.” He moved to his father’s side and stood there, and the two of them gazed at Ruth’s fresh and pretty face. He had caught her in one of her shy moments. That was because though it was only a head, she had been sitting in the nude for him in the morning light.
“She looks very young,” his father said.
“She is just twenty, sir.” And then because he imagined a softening about his father’s pale lips, he went on, “I wish you’d come home with me, sir.”
“Home?” His father’s look was vague.
“I mean, to our home.”
“Oh!” His father understood. “Yes, well, I haven’t much time.”
“Please, Father! It’s not far. It will mean a lot.”
It ended by their getting into a cab and going back to the apartment. It was about noon, and Ruth was cooking their meal over the small gas range. She came out quickly at the sound of the door, then stood motionless like a child before a stranger.
“Ruth, this is my father.”
He marveled at the change in her. Light went out of her face. She put out her hand awkwardly.
“Pleased to meet you,” she muttered, her hand heavy in his father’s delicate old one.
He hurried to make amends. “Come in and sit down—lunch with us, sir? I’m sure Ruth has something good. She’s a fine cook.”
He carried them along with him, ignoring Ruth’s stricken look at the mention of lunch. His father saw it, too, and made haste to reply.
“I can’t stay, William. Your mother and Louise are expecting me at Sherry’s at one. I believe Monty is bringing somebody up from Wall Street about investments. Railroads aren’t quite what they were, William.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” William said.
“It’s these automobiles,” his father said. Then he sat down, looking very precious and fragile, and spoke pleasantly to Ruth.
“William must bring you to see us sometime, my dear, when we get back to town in the autumn.”
Ruth could not answer. She turned her beseeching eyes on William.
“You’d like to, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?” he said to encourage her, and she nodded.
His father stayed only a few minutes. It had not meant much, after all. He was not sure what it had meant. His father had revealed nothing in his polished pleasantness, and Ruth had said nothing beyond her faint “Good-by.”
“Why didn’t you talk?” he demanded of her when the door was shut.
“Oh, William, I couldn’t!” Life had come rushing back into her blue eyes and vivid cheeks.
“But why, goose?”
“I hadn’t never seen anybody like him!”
“He’s my father, Ruth. You might have tried.”
She felt his irritation, and clear tears welled into her eyes.
“I couldn’t think of anything, William. I tried to—I did!”
“Well, there, don’t cry. What have we to eat?”
“Lamb stew.”
“Let’s have it.”
They had eaten almost in silence, and it had taken a few days before he could put the incident into its place again. Then he did so because he saw her drooping in the sudden heat of a June Sunday. She sat beside the open window, not looking out, and his heart pitied her white face.
“Darling, we need some fun. I’m going to take you to Coney Island.”
“Where’s that?”
“Where the sea is. We’ll get a breeze there, at least.”
He hated to g
o because he was working exceptionally well that morning. But he threw down his brushes and they went, though it did not do her much good. She shrank from the people.
“Isn’t there any place we can go to be by ourselves?” she asked him.
“Not on a public beach,” he said shortly.
They sat the afternoon through, feeling the breeze cool indeed, but never for a moment did she relax her tense awareness of the people around them. And he was cast into alternating love and hate of what she only hated. Thereafter sometimes he saw the city as she saw it, a place of noise and quarreling confusion. Then every face he saw was hideous. “These people look at me out of a nightmare,” he thought as he passed them on the streets or sat staring at them in the long row of a trolley car. But there were other days when the same faces spoke to him and then they were not ugly. But to her, ugly or not, they were the faces of eternal strangers.
They returned to the farmhouse without suddenness and without intention of permanence. Her mother was taken ill and her father wrote to know if she could come home for a little while until things were better. It was July and the city was hotter than ever.
“No reason why we shouldn’t both go to the farm,” he said cheerfully. “I can paint there, too,” he added.
“Oh, William, can you?” she cried, and for the first time in many days she flung herself into his arms. She had not complained but it had not been necessary. Every nerve of his being was acute to her and he knew that she had been enduring her life, moment by moment.
They had left everything in their rooms exactly as it was. Neither of them spoke of return or of no return. They merely went away. And she, as the train drew out of the city, was like one reviving from an illness. He watched her and he could tell by the light in her eyes again, by the old vigorous movement of her head, when the city was left behind and when they were back in the rolling hills and the fields. She began to talk, she who in New York had found nothing worthy of talk or notice.
“Look, William, look at that stand of corn! I don’t know as ever I see such a stand as that. They must of planted it good and early. I always tell Pop he plants too late every year. Oh, William, see the ducks! I hope they’ve got little ducks at home this year, though if Mom’s sick I guess they haven’t. It’s too late to start maybe now. Look, William, at that barn—green! Now who’d paint a barn green instead of red? Must be city folks, sure!”
Portrait of a Marriage Page 7