Of late Ruth had noticed that it was necessary for her to whip up an interest in Guy. The desire to see him was purely mechanical, if not forthright simulation. She did not realize that subconsciously thoughts of the lad were painful. Memories of Guy were mingled with bitter recollections: a brutal husband, the shrill voice of a strange woman in her home, vulgar oaths, an unsympathetic mother, a bed covering torn to shreds by spurs … Instinctively (because the mind wards off pain just as the body does) she repulsed all thoughts which were associated with her dead past. This fear of pain had driven her into seclusion, impelled her flight to New York, prevented her from visiting England. But she did not analyze her actions or impulses, she merely sought escape in rationalizations and confused thought. Now that she had decided to visit England she experienced an emotional catharsis and as she approached her piano that morning she was in a happy mood. She felt that all her problems had been solved and all pain was swept away by the stream of her thought. She ran through a few Chopin études, making her fingers more pliant and agile, and soon found calm and serenity in the joy of musical interpretation. It was past noon before she began to tire and by that time her lunch was ready.
LX
After lunch Ruth returned to the piano and played until half-past four. Then there was the welcome break during which Marie served tea and cookies with a seriousness worthy of a more solemn rite. It was bleak outside and a noisy blaze burned in the fireplace before which the tea things were set. When Marie returned to the room twenty minutes later to clear away she said: “There is someone to see you, madame.”
“To see me? Who is it?”
She felt that surely she must have gone pale and the only outward evidence of the nervousness she felt was the quick manner in which she flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette—but this almost indiscernible gesture did not escape the observant eye of her maid.
“A gentleman. His name is Mr. Sprague; he said, please will you see him.” Marie looked at her mistress anxiously as she waited for instructions. “What shall I say to him, madame?”
“Please—please show him in, of course.” As Marie turned to leave, she added: “Serve another cup and brew some more tea.”
In a few moments Walter entered the room with boyish eagerness. “I say, this is awfully nice of you,” he said, bowing as he approached her. “You must think I’m frightfully impertinent, don’t you?” There was something decidedly open about the young man. “I couldn’t help hearing you play. I’m very fond of music. Of course, you’re a concertist, you have the manner.”
“No, I simply play for my own amusement. I’m afraid I’m not quite good enough to play in public.”
“I think you’re quite splendid. Of course so far I’ve only heard you through the walls—and it does sound a bit muffled.”
Ruth poured him a cup of tea. “Cream?” she asked.
“I’ll take lemon if you have any,” and he laughed. “The first time I spoke to you it was about lemons, wasn’t it? You were rather angry, weren’t you? A poor neighbor, I thought.”
“Did you really think so?”
“Well—not really. You’re not a New Yorker, are you?”
“No.”
“Boston?”
“No, what makes you think so?”
“Your r’s are a little blurred.”
“I’m Canadian—Montreal.”
“French?”
“No, English. And you? Are you a native?”
“There are no native New Yorkers, it seems. At least I’ve never discovered any. No, I’m from Chicago.”
There was a pause as though all possible subjects had been exhausted. Then Sprague continued:
“Do you think it was boorish for me to barge in on you like this?”
Ruth laughed. “No, not at all. I’m very happy to have you although at home we didn’t do things like this.”
“Nor did we.”
“But since the war—it seems all right.”
“Yes. Before the war—well, I was a kid then—if a man wanted to meet a woman it took time and there were all sorts of maneuvers. I think it’s better this way, don’t you think?”
Without waiting for an answer, as if assuming she agreed, he rose and walked to the piano and leaned up against its curved side. “I’m very eager to hear you play,” he said. Ruth moved to the bench and opened the keyboard.
“What would you like to hear?”
“Anything you’d like to play.”
She poised her hands over the keys for a moment, thinking. Then as she brought her hands to the keyboard a series of chords filled the room, shattering the mood of the conversation. The music held in it a mounting note of premonition, a warning of overwhelming tragedy. Strange, Walter thought, how music can do that; a few notes, a succession of chords and the composer has you in his hands. As he listened, the chords ceased and gave way to a slow contrapuntal passage as though the danger which seemed to threaten in the opening bars was now definitely past. The music trilled lightly now, note against note. And then, without warning, there was a flashing storm of mounting chords, broader and more majestic than before. Ruth hovered over the keys, left hand insistently rumbling in the bass, right hand sharply striking the high treble notes. The movement was coming to a close—three mounting chords, vast and sustained, and the prelude was over. There was a pause during which the silence was actually painful and then the delicate, simple theme of the fugue was established. The clear, treble note etched a pattern against the mood of the now silent (but remembered) prelude. Then almost imperceptibly the other voices of the fugue came in, first one and then the others, gaining in volume and force and soon the quiet pastoral simplicity of the theme, too, was lost in the thunder of the bass. Loud and loud, one theme playing against another. The premonition of danger was here again. The simple, subdued notes during the establishment of the theme had been a delusion and held in them, unsuspected at first, all the pent-up fury of this cataract of sound. It seemed that the crescendi could go no further, and yet another and still another. This was tragedy, but not the tragedy of crawling mortals; this was sound, but surpassing in beauty the sounds of Nature herself. The bass rumbled, threateningly. Then almost without warning there was a major chord ending the composition, it seemed, on a note of hope; earthly hope, which brought Walter back to the lingering taste of tea in his mouth, the room, its hangings, and the inspired woman at the Baldwin who now sat limp and smiled at him. The silence was a living thing and filled the room as surely as the music which had preceded it.
He wanted to speak but feared to utter the pitiful squeaking sound of words which seem so empty and inadequate after the tonal sublimity of music. Soon the faint sound of traffic from the street below became audible, gradually breaking the mood. They smiled at each other without speaking. It was Ruth who spoke first.
“Do you like it?”
“Beautiful—beautiful. It’s Bach, I know. What’s it called? I can’t remember the label titles of musical compositions.”
“One of his preludes and fugues. Shall I play more?”
“Please, no. Not for the moment at least. Let the mood of what you just played stay with me. Where did you learn to play?”
“At convent. Are you surprised?”
“No, why should I be? You’re Catholic, of course?”
“After a fashion, but I’ve been in doubt lately.”
“If I’m not being too inquisitive, may I ask why?”
“The war—a husband, but mostly the war. If there were a God—” she interrupted herself. This was not what she wanted to say at this moment.
“Go ahead.”
“What I wanted to say was that God couldn’t have allowed all that sort of thing to go on without lifting His finger.”
“God, I’m afraid, had nothing to do with it. He must have taken one look at it and turned His head away in disgust. Nothing He could do.”
“Do yo
u believe in God?”
“Heavens, no—but it’s a convenient figure of speech. It fills gaps in the conversation. And you?”
“I’m not sure,” Ruth replied.
Sprague laughed, throwing his head back. The sound seemed to be coming all the way up from somewhere deep within him. It was an open, natural thing as though laughing gave him visceral pleasure. She felt strangely uneasy as he did so.
“Tell me all about yourself.”
She laughed and parried: “All! This afternoon?”
“Well, briefly, at least. I like to know about people as soon as I meet them.”
“Very well, then,” her tone reproved him gently, “once there was a little girl whose hair was much redder than it is now—”
“It isn’t red at all, now. It’s chestnut with bright copper streaks in it.”
“ … and she first remembers a father with a soft face, she doesn’t remember much about the face except that the eyes were brown and deep—a sort of face that only had eyes and he wore loose Windsor ties.”
“And then what happened?”
“Let me see. There was a convent with a garden and sisters walking up and down in pairs after dinner in the evening. There was a sun-dial in the convent garden that had a very gloomy motto—and she was very happy. Everything was simple. Then the first little doubt stole over the convent wall. She forgets now just what it was, perhaps it was about the things she did not quite understand at the time. Then there was communion, a white dress and lilies of the valley, and a proud mother and a step-father who was a major and who had fierce mustaches and was very stupid in spite of them, even the silly little goose of a girl could see that. Then there were many years in which nothing happened and after that there was music and a man who later turned out to be her husband. Then a great war broke out and the girl who was now a wife was dreadfully frightened. Then the soldier husband came back from the war, but he wasn’t a hero at all, he was a very horrid monster and the little girl who had been brought up on prayers and beautiful sounds that came from a great, deep booming organ ran away to New York where she swore that she would never speak to a man again—.”
“Until,” Walter broke in, “until another monster came begging for lemons and the princess relented and played bewitching music that changed the dragon—or was it a monster?—back into a fairy prince.”
“And they lived happily,” Ruth concluded, “forever and a day and had two hundred and seventeen black little children, all of whom loved pancakes made of buckwheat.”
They laughed and Ruth noted with surprise that it was quite dark now. Over on Columbus Circle the electric lights were flashing their messages about tires and newspapers. The northward stream of motor traffic was heavy.
She looked at the clock and Walter came forward eagerly:
“If you haven’t a dinner engagement—and nuns who live remote from the world seldom have—I’d like very much to have you dine with me.”
Ruth hesitated for a moment before accepting and Sprague continued:
“You may have your choice. A Hindu restaurant where we can get curried beef and spiced drinks, a Syrian place where they will serve us lamb roasted on the spit followed by black Turkish coffee, a German rathskeller where they will ply us with heavy food and beer until we are unable to move or, best of all, a French establishment where the food is as artistic and logical as the French themselves are reputed to be.”
Ruth laughed and said: “Very well—but give me at least an hour to bathe and dress. By that time I will have decided which nation to honor with our presence.”
“And when you’re ready,” Walter said as he made for the door, “ring my bell and we’ll have cocktails before we go.”
LXI
They had dinner in a secluded little French restaurant east of Fifth Avenue in the Sixties, not far from the Park. It was after eight when they arrived and the room was almost deserted as they seated themselves at a table near a curtained window overlooking the street. After they had ordered food and wine, they lit cigarettes and Ruth took up the conversation where they had left off in her apartment.
“And now you must tell me something about yourself.”
“There seems nothing much to tell. Came out of college a few years ago. Traveled until this Spring and now I’m at my wits’ end to keep from going mad.”
“Mad? Why?”
“I need something to do. Something to keep me occupied all the time.”
“What do you want to do?”
“That’s the trouble, I don’t know. I’ve tried writing, but it was no go. I haven’t the irrepressible egoism which every writer must have. At the moment when I think of something which ought to be written, it all seems terribly important. But after it’s written, it seems all wrong. It reads flat and uninteresting.”
“And besides writing—or trying to write—what else do you do?”
“Sleep late, go to concerts once in a while. Ever since I came back from Europe I’ve been a radical of sorts. I help to support a radical monthly magazine, take part in its editorial squabbles—a privilege which my money buys for me—rather costly, but a privilege nevertheless. That takes up a few days a month.”
He spoke quietly and tapped the ashes from his cigarette with a thoughtful, abstracted expression on his face. Ruth regarded him carefully: his faultless dinner jacket, immaculate shirt-front, well-groomed appearance.
—Some woman will come along while he is in this mood and give him something to keep him occupied. Why should a boy like him be at his wits’ end in New York—of all places. He seems to be in comfortable circumstances. A spoiled son, very likely.
Walter looked up suddenly as he became aware of her scrutiny. He smiled and gestured with his hand as though asking her not to take his complaints too seriously.
“But, really, it’s not as bad as it sounds. You were beginning to pity me, weren’t you?”
“No, I was thinking that you didn’t look as pitiful as you sounded.”
He poised a mouthful of food on his fork as he replied.
“I have one saving grace—saving, that is, for myself. I’d be a hopeless introvert if it weren’t for my love of things into which I can get my teeth. Solid things. Food, books, music, life. Do you think, for example, that music is a solid, real thing?”
“Oh, yes. It’s very real to me.”
“I mean that it can take the place of things which most people cannot live without.”
“By all means yes.”
“Sometimes when the material realities appear about to dissolve—and these are times when it seems most probable—falling back on books and music and things like that help to get me through a bad, restless night.”
“I know precisely what you mean.”
—And who but I should know. The weeks and months spent alone, holding firmly to my music; otherwise I should have gone mad …
“At college,” Walter said, “they were always puzzled by me. One day I was terribly interested in Bergsonian philosophy and the next I was preparing to take part in a wrestling match.”
“I’d be puzzled too.”
“And here in New York the professional radicals distrust me intensely because I love both Karl Marx and baseball. My games as well as my ideas must have intestines.”
He reached across the table and filled her glass with wine, carefully tilting the bottle so as not to raise the sediment. They drank and for some time neither spoke. Then Ruth said:
“I was thinking how unconventional our meeting was. You knocked at the door—or did you ring the bell?—and that’s all there was to it. I do wish it had been more formal—there is such a fine, romantic flavor to form.”
“Yes, it would have been fine to have met you at a ball, properly introduced, chaperoned—but things like that don’t seem to happen any more.”
“More’s the pity, so that now I don’t know who you are or … ”
> “Chicago—son of James Sprague—Chicago National Bank. You may have heard, perhaps. A generous and crusty old father who wants me to become a banker too.”
“How dreadful!” She laughed, mocking him gently. “And, of course, you don’t want to.”
“Not very much.”
“So you ran off and became a radical.”
“Well, hardly. I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“If I’m not too inquisitive, I should like to know how it happened.”
“I don’t suppose it just happened. Many things helped: books, seeing workers on strike, hearing their complaints, the callous way in which things were managed. There must have been dozens of contributing reasons—the mess in Europe, Russia—some of them conscious, most of them, I suppose, unconscious.”
“But there must have been one thing that started you off. Something like a vocation, perhaps.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I hate religious comparisons. About three years ago in Poland, shortly after I left college. A classmate was living in Warsaw, special correspondent for the Times. One day I dropped into his office. He was on his way out to visit General Headquarters to get a pass to go up the line where the Poles were making a desperate effort to check the advance of Trotsky’s Red Army. The streets were full of soldiers, awkward in their new French uniforms, the city was in a state of panic. He asked me to come with him and as I had nothing special to do I went along. We spent the next few days trailing the Polish Army as they pressed the Russians back. One day we came on a section of the countryside where a bitter battle had been fought a few weeks before. The place was literally covered with dead, thousands of them … ”
Walter interrupted himself, lit a cigarette and said: “Perhaps I shouldn’t go any further with the story. Hardly the sort of thing to talk about at dinner, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t mind,” Ruth said. “Ever since the war, it’s all right. For years, it seems, that’s all people have been talking about—the dead, wounded, men killed in battle. Go ahead, please.”
There Are Victories Page 16