The Lone Pilgrim

by Laurie Colwin

  Somewhere Delia and my other friends were safe—setting the table, doing homework, watching the news, having a piano lesson—while I stood on the promenade, kissing Delia’s father. Finally he let me go and looked at me without speaking. With his hand on my shoulder, he ushered me up the stairs to the street with the solicitousness you extend to people who have sprained an ankle or had minor surgery.

  The streetlights were on. It was almost dark. The light was against us. My legs felt empty. If Delia’s father had not been standing next to me, so close that our arms were pressed together, I thought I might have fallen in a heap. A few children were coming home from playing, and in that creepy darkness they looked jaunty and furtive, like animals who come out at night. The light changed. Delia’s father took my arm. Those jaunty children skipped past us, and I crossed to my side of the street forever.

  A Mythological Subject

  It is often to the wary that the events in life are unexpected. Looser types—people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing—are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse.

  Those who believe in will, in meaning, in intentionality, who brood, reflect, and contemplate, who believe there are no accidents, who are born with clear vision or an introspective temperament or a relentless consciousness are quite another matter.

  I am of the former category, a cheerful woman. The first man who asked me to marry him turned out to be the perfect mate. It may be that I happily settled for what came my way, but in fact my early marriage endured and prospered. As a couple we are even-tempered, easy to please, curious, fond of food and gossip. My husband Edward runs his family’s import business. We have three children, all away at school. We are great socializers, and it is our chief entertainment to bring our interesting friends together.

  Of our set, the dearest was my cousin Nellie Felix. I had known her as a child and was delighted when she came to New York to live and study. After all, few things are more pleasing than an attractive family member. She was full of high spirits and emotional idealism. What would become of her was one of our favorite topics of conversation.

  In her twenties she had two dramatic love affairs. These love affairs surprised her: she did not think of herself as a romantic, but as someone seeking honor and communion in love. Her idealism in these matters was sweet and rather innocent. That a love affair could lead to nothing stumped her. When she was not seriously attached she was something of a loner, although she had a nice set of friends.

  At the age of thirty Nellie fell in love with a lawyer named Joseph Porter. He was lovable, intelligent, and temperamental enough to make life interesting. With him Nellie found what she had been looking for, and they were married. Nellie believed in order, in tranquility, in her household as a safe haven, and she worked harder than even she knew to make sure she had these things. She taught three days a week at a women’s college an hour outside New York. Her students adored her. She and Joseph expanded their circle, and eventually they had a child, an enchanting daughter named Jane. They lived in a town house and their life was attractive, well organized, comfortable, and looked rather effortless.

  But Nellie did not feel that it was effortless. She had so ardently wanted the life she had, but she felt that she had come close to not having it; that her twenties had not been a quest for love but a romantic shambles; that there was some part of her that was not for order and organization but for chaos. She believed that the neat and tidy surfaces of things warded off misery and despair, that she had to constantly be vigilant with everything, especially herself. She once described to me a fountain she had seen on her honeymoon in the close of the Barcelona Cathedral. It was an ornamental fountain that shot up a constant jet of water. On top of this jet bobbled an egg. This seemed to Nellie a perfect metaphor to express the way she felt about her life. Without constant vigilance, self-scrutiny, accurate self-assessment, and a strong will, whatever kept the egg of her life aloft would disappear and the egg would shatter. She knew the unexamined life was not worth living. She never wanted to do things for the wrong reason, or for no reason or for reasons she did not understand. She wanted to be clear and unsentimental, to believe things that were true and not things that it consoled her to believe. When her colleague Dan Hamilton said to her: “You’re very rough on me,” she said: “I’m rougher on myself, I promise you.”

  My husband and I introduced Nellie to Dan Hamilton. We had been planning to get the Porters and the Hamiltons together for some time, but the Hamiltons were hard to pin down. Miranda Hamilton was a designer whose work frequently took her abroad. Dan was an historian. Once every three or four years he would produce a popular and successful book on some figure in colonial history. Over the years these books had made him rich, and he had become a sort of traveling scholar. Now that their three sons were grown-up and married they had more or less settled down in New York. Dan had taken a sabbatical from writing and was the star appointment at Nellie’s college—all the more reason to bring the two couples together.

  They got along famously. My husband and I looked down from our opposite ends of the table flushed with the vision of a successful dinner party. How attractive they all looked in the candlelight! Joseph, who was large, ruddy, and beautifully dressed, sat next to Miranda. They were talking about Paris. Miranda wore her reddish hair in a stylish knot. She was wiry and chic and smoked cigarettes in a little black holder. Nellie sat next to Dan. Her clothes, as always, were sober and she looked wonderful. She had straight ashy hair that she pulled back off her face and hazel eyes full of motion and expression. Dan, who sat next to her, was her opposite. As Nellie was immaculate and precise, Dan looked antic and boyish. He had a mop of curly brown, copper, and grey hair, and he always looked a little awry. His tie was never quite properly tied, and the pockets of his jackets sagged from carrying pipes and books and change in them. He and Nellie and my husband were being silly about some subject or other at their end of the table, and Nellie was laughing.

  Over coffee it was discovered that Nellie and Dan shared the same schedule. Dan said: “In that case I ought to drive you up to school. I hate to drive alone and the trains are probably horrible.” At this Miranda gave Dan a look which Nellie registered against her will. She imagined that Dan was famous for loving to drive alone and that he was teasing Miranda by flirting.

  But the idea of being driven to school was quite heavenly. The trains were awful. The first week of Dan and Nellie’s mobile colleagueship was a great success. They talked shop, compared notes on faculty and classes and family. Dan knew some of the people who had taught Nellie at college. The time, on these trips, flew by.

  After two weeks Nellie became uneasy about the cost of gas and tolls and insisted on either paying for them or splitting them. Dan would not hear of this so Nellie suggested that she give him breakfast on school days to even up the score. Dan thought this was a fine idea. Nellie was a good plain cook. She gave Dan scones, toasted cheese, sour cream muffins, and coffee with hot milk. On Thursdays when they did not have to be at school until the afternoon they got into the habit of having lunch at Nellie’s. They sat in the kitchen dining off the remains of last night’s dinner party.

  A million things slipped by them. Neither admitted how much they looked forward to their rides to school, or their breakfasts or their unnecessary Thursday lunches. Nellie told herself that this arrangement was primarily a convenience, albeit a friendly one.

  One stormy autumn night, full of purple clouds and shaking branches, Nellie and Dan sat for longer than usual in front of Nellie’s house. They were both restless, and Nellie’s reluctance to get out of the car and go home disturbed her. Every time she got set to leave, Dan would say something to pull her back. Finally she knew she had to go, and on an unchecked impulse she reached for Dan’s hand. On a similarly unchecked impulse, Dan took her hand and kissed it.

  Wh
at happened was quite simple. Nellie came down with the flu—no wonder she had felt so restless. She canceled her classes and called Dan to tell him. He sounded rather cross, and it was clear he did not like to have his routines interrupted.

  On Thursday she was all recovered, but Dan turned up in a terrible mood. He bolted his breakfast and was anxious to get on the road. Once they hit the highway he calmed down. They discovered that both Miranda and Joseph were away on business and that Jane was on an overnight school trip. They decided to stop for dinner at the inn they always passed to see if it was any good.

  That day Nellie felt light and clear and full of frantic energy. She taught two of the best classes she had ever taught, but she was addled. She who never lost anything left her handbag in her office and her class notes in the dining commons. Although she and Dan usually met in the parking lot, they had arranged to meet in front of the science building, but both kept forgetting what the plan was, necessitating several rounds of telephone calls.

  Finally they drove through the twilight to the inn. The windows were made of bull’s-eye glass, and there were flowers on the sideboard. Nellie and Dan sat by the fireplace. Neither had much in the way of appetite. They talked a blue streak and split a bottle of wine.

  Outside it was brilliantly clear. The sky was full of stars, and the frosty, crisp air smelled of apples and woodsmoke. Dan started the car. Then he turned it off. With his hands on the steering wheel he said: “I think I’ve fallen in love with you and if I’m not mistaken, you’ve fallen in love with me.”

  It is true that there is something—there is everything—undeniable about the truth. Even the worst true thing fills the consciousness with the light of its correctness. What Dan said was just plain true, and it filled Nellie with a wild surge of joy.

  It explained everything: their giddiness, their unwillingness to part, those unnecessary lunches and elaborate breakfasts.

  “My God,” she said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” She knew in an instant how much care she had been taking all along—to fill her conversation with references to Joseph and Jane, to say “us” and not “me,” not to say any flirtatious or provocative thing. How could she have not seen this coming? Falling in love is very often not flirtatious. It is often rather grave, and if the people falling in love are married the mention of a family is not so much a banner as it is a bullet-proof vest.

  They sat in the cold darkness. Someone looking in the window might have thought they were discussing a terminal illness. Nellie stared at the floor. Dan was fixated on the dashboard. Neither said a word. They were terrified to look at one another—frightened of what might be visible on the other’s face. But these things are irresistible, and they were drawn into each other’s arms.

  They drove home the long way through little towns and villages. Nellie sat close to Dan, who kept his arm around her and drove with one hand, like a teenage boy. At every stop sign and red light they kissed each other. Both of them were giddy and high. They talked and talked—like all lovers worth their salt they compared notes. They had dreamed and daydreamed about each other. They recited the history of their affections: how Dan had once come close to driving the car off the road because he was staring at Nellie one afternoon; how the sight of Dan with his shirttail out had brought Nellie near to tears she did not understand, and so on.

  With their families away they had the freedom to do anything they liked but all they did was to stand in Nellie’s kitchen and talk. They never sat down. When they were not talking they were in each other’s arms, kissing in that way that is like drinking out of terrible thirst. Twice Nellie burst into tears—of confusion, desire, and the terrible excess of happiness that love and the knowledge that one is loved in return often brings. Nellie knew what she was feeling. That she was feeling it as a married woman upset her terribly, but the feeling was undeniable and she did not have the will to suppress it. They stood on opposite sides of the kitchen—this was Nellie’s stage direction—and discussed whether or not they should go to bed. They were both quite sick with desire but what they were feeling was so powerful and seemed so dangerous that the idea of physical expression scared them to death.

  Very late at night Nellie sent Dan home. In two separate beds in two separate places, in Nellie’s house and Dan’s apartment, separated by a number of streets and avenues, these two lovers tossed and ached and attempted to sleep away what little of the night remained to them.

  The next morning Nellie woke up exhausted and keen in her empty house. When she splashed water on her face to wake herself up she found that she was laughing and crying at the same time. She felt flooded by emotions, one of which was gratitude. She felt that her life was being handed back to her, but by whom? And from where?

  Alone in her kitchen she boiled water for tea and thought about Dan. For a moment he would evaporate and she could not remember what had passed between them. She drank her tea and watched a late autumn fly buzz around the kitchen. When it landed on the table, she observed it. The miraculous nature of this tiny beast, the fact that it could actually fly, the complexities and originality of things, the richness of the world, the amazing beauty of being alive struck Nellie full force. She was filled up, high as a kite. Love, even if it was doomed, gave you a renewed sense of things: it did hand life back to you.

  But after a certain age, no joy is unmitigated. She knew that if she did not succeed in denying her feelings for Dan her happiness in his presence would always mix with sadness. She had never been in love with anyone unavailable, and she had never been unavailable herself.

  Her heart, she felt, was not beating properly. She did not think that she would take a normal breath until she heard from Dan. When the telephone rang, she knew it was him.

  “May I come and have breakfast with you?” he said. “Or do you think it’s all wrong.”

  Nellie said: “It’s certainly all wrong but come anyway.”

  This was their first furtive meeting. Friday was not a school day: they were meeting out of pure volition. If Joseph asked her what she had been up to she could not say casually: “Dan Hamilton stopped by.” It might sound as innocent as milk, but they were no longer innocent.

  The sunlight through the kitchen windows suddenly looked threatening. The safe, tidy surfaces suddenly looked precarious and unstable. Her life, the life of a secure and faithful wife, had been done away in an instant, and even if she never saw Dan Hamilton again it was clear that something unalterable had happened to her. She could never again say that she had not been tempted. She felt alone in the middle of the universe, without husband or child, with only herself. Surely at the sight of Dan everything would fall into place and everything would be as it had been a day ago. She would see that Dan was her colleague and her friend, and that a declaration of love would not necessarily have to change everything.

  But as soon as she saw him from the window she realized that a declaration does in fact change everything and that Dan was no longer just her colleague and friend. They could not keep out of each other’s arms.

  “I haven’t felt this way since I was a teenager,” said Dan. Nellie didn’t say anything. She had felt this way since she was a teenager.

  “It feels sort of heavenly,” Dan said.

  “It will get a little hellish,” Nellie said.

  “Really?” said Dan. “It’s hard to believe.”

  “I’ve felt this way a couple of times,” said Nellie. “Back in the world of childhood when everyone was single and nothing got in the way of a love affair. You could spend your every minute with the one you loved. You could have the luxury of getting tired of the one you loved. You had endless time. This is the grown-up world of the furtive, adulterous love match. No time, no luxury. I’ve never met anyone on the sly.”

  “We don’t have to meet on the sly,” said Dan. “We’re commuters.”

  “I don’t think you realize how quickly these things get out of hand,” Nellie said.

  “I’d certainly like to find out
,” said Dan, smiling. “Can’t we just enjoy our feelings for a few minutes before all this furtive misery comes crashing down on us?”

  “I give it an hour,” said Nellie.

  “Well, all right then. Let’s go read the paper. Let’s go into the living room and cozy up on the couch like single people. I can’t believe you actually went out this morning and got the paper. You must have it delivered.”

  “We do,” said Nellie.

  “We do, too,” said Dan.

  Miranda was due back the next day, and Joseph in the early evening. Dan and Nellie stretched out on the couch in the sunlight and attempted to browse through the paper. Physical nearness caused their hearts to race. Adulterous lovers, without the errands and goals and plans that make marriage so easy, are left horribly to themselves. They have nothing to do but be—poor things.

  “Here we are,” said Nellie. “Representatives of two households, both of which get the Times delivered, curled up on a couch like a pair of teenagers.”

  They did not kiss each other. They did not even hold hands. The couch was big enough for both of them, with a tiny space between. They kept that space between them. Everything seemed very clear and serious. This was their last chance to deny that they were anything more than friends. Two gestures could be made: they would become lovers or they would not. It seemed to Nellie a very grave moment in her life. She was no longer a girl with strong opinions and ideals, but a mortal woman caught in the complexities of life itself. Both Nellie and Dan were silent. Once they were in each other’s arms it was all over, they knew, but since falling in love outside of marriage is the ultimate and every other gesture is its shadow, when they could bear it no longer they went upstairs to Nellie’s guest room and there became lovers in the real sense of the word.

  Of all the terrible things in life, living with a divided heart is the most terrible for an honorable person. There were times when Nellie could scarcely believe that she was the person she knew. Her love for Dan seemed pure to her, but its context certainly did not. There was not one moment when she felt right or justified: she simply had her feelings and she learned that some true feelings make one wretched; that they interfere with life; that they cause great emotional and moral pain; and that there was nothing much she could do about them. Her love for Dan opened the world up in a terrible and serious way and caused her, with perfect and appropriate justification, to question everything: her marriage, her ethics, her sense of the world, herself.