She opened the letter and read: “My dear Child: This Christmas will be the eighth since we have seen each other and only seven days by boat separates us. I have been to Germany lately taking the cure at Badenbaden and my health is now much improved, for which I thank God every day. I wrote to you from Berlin but you didn’t reply. Why do you not write more often? Are you ill or are you having financial difficulties? I wrote to Sir Robert asking about your finances and he replied saying that most of your securities had weathered the storm. He said he saw you in New York three years ago, that he had lunch with you at a hotel and that you were looking splendid at the time. And now I have a surprise for you. Guy came down from college the other day, happy and cheerful as a soldier on leave because he had won an exchange scholarship. It seems that he will go to America shortly after the first of the year and I have been thinking that it would be a good idea if I were to come along with him. You will be surprised when you see Guy, he is tall, smart and very clever at his studies—a proper Englishman. I’m sure you’ll be very proud of him. His scholarship gives him two years at Harvard and he will be able to run down from Cambridge very often to see us both. I was thinking it would be a good idea if we were both to take a suite at one of the better hotels, preferably the Plaza. It is now the first week in December and I think we will sail about the 19th, which ought to bring us into New York on Christmas Day … ”
For some minutes after Ruth had finished, she stared at the untidy scrawl of her mother’s letter.
—What am I to do now? Walter will be angry. He will think that this is a scheme to bind him, that I wrote asking them to come. God, oh, God, what shall I do? This is the last straw.
LXXVIII
Sleepless nights—eternities of wakeful tossing in bed, staring long into the doubt-inhabited blackness of her room. Then, after endless waiting, there came the dismal, ghostly patch of light on the wall facing the east.
—How melancholy is the dawn when life has lost its meaning.
Ruth rose in desperation one night and dressed; sleep was out of the question. She went to Bruce’s room and stood over his bed watching as he breathed softly. The room was overheated and tiny beads of perspiration stood out on his broad, arched forehead. She went to a window and opened it.
Lighting a cigarette she went out into the silent, deserted street and walked toward the garage where a drowsy attendant got the roadster for her. She turned north and went through the Park to Seventy-second street, over to Riverside Drive and then north. The roaring motor carried her past sleeping apartment houses, past empty park benches and north toward Van Courtlandt Park. The river was on her left, gray and forbidding in the gray light.
—Dripping wet like a drowned scraggy alley cat. Never!
Up past Inwood, Marble Hill, Fieldston, Riverdale and finally she brought the car to a halt. Before her lay the sweeping panorama of the Hudson and the Jersey shore beyond. The first gray smudge had touched the east; across the river the Palisades stood lonely, stark in the bleak light.
—Only mountains, rivers, plains, things without life, can achieve dignity.
She smoked a cigarette leisurely as she watched the cliffs of rock opposite and smiled cynically.
—A high lonely castle perched on an inaccessible mountain.
The black clefts on the face of the Palisades began to broaden and deepen in the growing light. Soon the river was dark blue, then ultramarine. When it was quite light and the sun had fully risen she turned about and drove home.
LXXIX
Shortly after midnight when Walter came home there was a shaded light burning in Ruth’s room but he passed it by without entering and went to his room. He bathed with a slight feeling of repugnance and went to bed. At four o’clock he awoke, lighted a cigarette and lay smoking in the dark. As he thought of how he had spent the evening, he grimaced. He had been bored all evening, the woman was an idiot and kept chattering of the millionaires she had known, the trips she had taken on luxurious yachts.
—Her horrible voice and her enameled Broadway face which looked as if it would crack if she attempted anything but that careful artificial smile.
He recalled with a rising feeling of shame the woman’s drunken quarrel in the speakeasy, the apologies to the manager, the embarrassed exit, the smirk on the face of the taxi driver and finally the business of getting the woman home. He smoked and stared into the dark, thinking.
—You idiot! And all this time Ruth was here waiting for you. God, what is it that drives men—some men—from the arms of a cultured, decent woman into the arms of chippies? Must be the lust for dirt which lies hidden in all of us. Of course, she looks haggard. It’s enough to take the heart out of any woman, let alone a sensitive girl like Ruth. Poor kid, first that swine Edgar and now me! For heaven’s sake, man, what do you expect from whores and wantons? Spin ‘em on their heads and they’re all sisters. Away night after night—and since the time we had the argument she hasn’t said a word. Just looked at me with those soft gray eyes of hers. It’s months since I’ve heard her play. The trouble with her is that she’s too sensitive and fine for—for this. These are not days for fineness or sensitivity. One must be hard and merciless. Too honest to condone shoddiness—if she makes a mistake she suffers for it in silence. What a pity that she hasn’t a tougher streak in her. Like some of the young women you meet these days; clean, hard kids. They walk upright by the sides of their men as equals. Well, it’s too bad, but that’s the way she is—and very good she is, too, in her own way. She must be in there awake, sick with worry. In the morning I’ll stay late for breakfast, we’ll talk until noon as we used to do. I’ll tell her that I’m sorry, that I’ve been a fool. We’ll go to Reno and make arrangements for her divorce—she must think I’m an awful cad, first hounding her to consent to a divorce and then dropping the whole business because a skirt crosses my path. We’ll get the divorce and then take Bruce and go to England. We’ll walk into her mother’s home and I’ll say: “Listen, Mrs. Throop, we are married to each other. Ruth got a divorce and this is your new little grandson. Isn’t he a swell little fellow?” Never mind what Ruth says, that would be the best way out. And surely she couldn’t turn her heart from him, she couldn’t possibly disown him because her God said, “suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And Guy must be quite a young man. Wonder how it would feel to have a great fellow in long trousers calling me dad. Funny, I bet. Then we’ll all come back to New York and Guy could go to Harvard or Yale and he could run down during the holidays and see his mother. God, I’ll bet she’ll be happy. The first thing in the morning—I’ll go in and kiss her and tell her what I’ve decided …
He crushed the fire out of his cigarette and, smiling to himself, rolled over and fell into a peaceful, happy sleep.
LXXX
It was long past midnight. Ruth had heard Walter come in about one o’clock and she now lay reading in her room which was unillumined save for the thin shaft of light which beat down on her book from the bed reading lamp. For some time past she had been in that waking state of somnolence during which one stares unseeing at the printed word. Somewhere well into the book she started and passed her hand over her eyes. A paragraph had caught her attention and her eyes lost their fixedness.
The author had been discussing his heroine and Ruth reread the paragraph: “She was unhappy not because she was destined for unhappiness, but because she failed to understand that all life is based upon struggle, that discord and strife, not harmony and peace, are the common characteristics of life. She had failed to realize that the rule is not life and life, but always life against life.”
She put the book down and for some time was lost in thought. Then, as the full force of the thought came upon her she smiled.
—How true. Of course, not life and life, but always life against life.
Outside, the street noises had subsided except for the occasional sustained rending sound of rubber on as
phalt as a lonely car sped through the Park. On her dressing table her clock, with lively metallic rhythm, ticked off the cadenced minutes; otherwise the room was quiet. The familiar sounds of the house had long since ceased; she had heard Marie attend to her last duties, then the front door opened very quietly and she heard Walter come in, go to the bathroom and finally to bed. In the silence of her room she lay thinking:
—I am tired. I have never been so utterly tired before. Thirty-seven years of living, sleeping, loving, waiting, and now I am so tired, so weary that I cannot sleep.
She returned to the thought of the author.
—If it is true, then it is stupid to go on living. To live a few years longer? Why? To suffer more pain and humiliation?
Now, no longer did the thought frighten her as it did once. For the first time after all these unhappy months she was resolute.
—I am free. My life is my own, and I can do what I like with it.
She put her long, beautifully shaped hands under her head and lay looking up at the pool of reflected soft light half-hidden in the darkness of the ceiling. All doubt and indecision had left her.
—I am tired of the ceaseless struggle, the empty victories, the shallow defeats.
How long she lay thinking thus she did not know. Then she spoke aloud as though there were someone present to hear her thoughts. To the stillness of the room, to the thin chatter of her clock, to Bruce and Walter who lay in the rooms beyond—to the whole world, she said: “Only slaves continue to live on terms not of their own making. Life for its own sake is nothing.”
Her voice as she spoke had a sharp, commanding quality which startled her. It sounded as though another person were talking; it was as if a stranger had come unbidden to her bedside and had uttered this thought for her.
For a few moments she was frightened, her breath came rapidly and her heart beat a staccato flurry. Then, as she became more composed, she lighted a cigarette and watched the blue and gray spirals of smoke twist themselves up the nebulous shaft of light which fell from above. She inhaled the fumes deeply with slow satisfaction like one who has cast up his accounts and is at peace with the world. When she had finished smoking she twisted the live coal into extinction with a thoroughness which bespoke finality. Rising, she moved to the glass of her table and for a few minutes she sat brushing her hair with long, sweeping strokes of her brush. In the uncertain light the glass gave back a vague reflection. But she was not deceived by the dim figure in the mirror, she knew that her body had lost its white resilience, she knew that her breasts were no longer firm and youthful, she knew that the darkness hid the hair which was now graying.
—In the morning light I know the mirror will be as truthful as ever.
She walked out of her room and into the nursery and soon stood over Bruce’s bed. This, which she had feared most, now held no terror for her.
—Even partings are easy when the love of life is past. He will not suffer, he is too young, poor little fellow. And sooner or later they forget. It is nothing, Bruce dear, there will be a little storm of sadness and then you will grow up and you will not have a desperate, sad mother to make your days unhappy. It is nothing, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters any longer.
It was not as painful as she had imagined. Nothing is painful when one is in love with death and she turned and walked out of the room, and down the staircase to the floor below. Her feet were unshod and her hair hung loosely about her shoulders. In the living-room she poured a small glass of brandy and smiled as she slowly drank it.
—For the taste, surely not for what it can do for me now.
There were no cigarettes in the living-room and she returned to her room. On the way downstairs she passed Walter’s door and heard his heavy, even breathing.
—In love, as in all things, life against life.
≠
She stood at the kitchen window lost in thought, absently watching the silently falling snow. Then she turned and saw that it was three o’clock.
—Three o’clock! I remember the sun dial which stood in the convent garden. I did not understand its motto then. “It is later than you think.” Much later, I should think. Tomorrow the pavements and the roofs will be white, children will play, laughing and shouting, unmindful of the muck underneath. Then it will thaw and run little rivers of gray and brown slush. Once again the streets will be unclean with the filth of many feet.
She saw the glass bowl in which Bruce kept two tiny Japanese turtles, she lifted it and the crimson-striped reptiles awoke and blinked in the unaccustomed light. She carried the bowl upstairs to the boy’s room and placed it on the table near his bed.
—In the morning he will want them. And why should they die? They haven’t harmed a soul nor brought pain and confusion into the lives of others.
She had watched them of a summer’s afternoon lying motionless and unblinking with mouths agape until a luckless fly buzzed just a shade too close. Then the red-streaked little neck would shoot forward and the bony mouth snapped shut with a hard, dry sound.
—But you didn’t know better, did you, you foolish, greedy things? And besides, you haven’t any souls to tell you the difference between right and wrong. You were hungry and you killed. Perhaps the others, too, are no wiser. Life against life, eh?
Back in the kitchen she shut the window at the top and pulled the blind, made the door fast and drew one of the chairs into the center of the room. Then she lit a cigarette and smoked it leisurely.
—No, it would be silly to write a note. What can I say? I have no excuses to offer. When there is no life left then one must die. Life is impossible without richness, beauty, love and promise; and all these things are now beyond me. Once they were more than words to me, but that was before I knew that they lied. They said peace and there was no peace. They sent Edgar back to me shaken by the sight of much blood and with the lust for whores in his veins. They said God, but God was ashamed of His children as a proud mother is of a deformed idiot-child. They said love but what they meant was whores and dirty jokes and gin parties. Yes, the guns have smashed everything. Now they love like hot bitches in the streets under the glare of street lamps as men and women walk by and laugh, and no voice is lifted up. Everywhere frightened, defeated faces; lustful faces, murderous faces—life against life. There is no way to turn. Only to the grave, my mother.
When she had finished her cigarette she ground the ember into dry, safe ash.
—How dreadful if beyond this there were another life, cruel and stupid as this one is.
Then, holding out her arms, as though extending them to a lover, she reached forward and, one by one, with studied deliberation, opened the four gas jets. They hissed in eager response. She listened, fascinated, and breathed deeply, unmindful of the acrid odor which filled her nostrils. Soon her heart began to beat a little more rapidly and she experienced a pleasant feeling of exhilaration, a heady wininess …
The hissing sound filled her ears, became a sibilant song; her head felt light as if it had been touched by champagne. Tilting her head back she observed with mild amusement that the light overhead shimmered and seemed to be dancing to the whistling of the open vents. From somewhere afar she heard music coming closer and rising, as it came, to a treble crescendo. Soon the music filled the room with the sibilation of its melody.
She closed her eyes and saw herself as a girl. She is walking through a footpath leading from a dark pine forest. Her hair flies in the whistling wind. She is alone. This is strange! Where are the other girls? Where is Sister Constance? The narrow footpath widens and becomes a road, a wide lonely road on which she alone walks. It is nearly dark and at the end of the avenue there is a faint, bluish light. Suddenly in the distance a person approaches and as the figure comes closer (it came toward her with the swiftness of thought), she sees that it is a young man. As he walks he stares straight ahead of him and when he is abreast of her he turns abruptly and looks full into her frightened
face with sad, reproachful eyes. He is a stranger but his eyes are those of Guy. She speaks to him: “No, not even you. I will not stop. It is too late and it does not really matter. I am tired, do you understand?” He listens as she speaks and then walks on. She suddenly remembers that there is something of great importance that she must tell him. She turns and pursues his retreating form. “Guy, Guy darling,” she shouts. “Stop!” The young man halts and waits as she runs toward him, breathless and panting. “Guy darling, I want to tell you a story. Do not look at me so, I am your mother. A story—do you remember how it began? Once there was a country where everything was topsy-turvy and the old men had beards that reached to the bottoms of their vests.” She puts her hand to her head, trying desperately to remember something. Then her face brightens and she says: “Oh, yes, I have it now! I want you to know that I haven’t forgotten Bruce, he’s your little brother, you know. I saw him this very night and he was asleep and little beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. You are to help Walter look after him. There is plenty of money for you both but he is little and he will need you.” When she finished speaking she saw that the young man was gone and that she had been speaking to herself. The light at the end of the road grew brighter and more luminous and she began to run madly toward it …
The music swelled louder and louder, it filled the room and shook the brilliant light above her head. The drums increased in volume, drowning out the thin, piping notes of the reed instruments. The kettle drums sounded those two fearful notes in the Apotheosis from Goetterdammerung. The room was as white as though a million suns were shining on an ice-covered wasteland. There was a hurricane of tympani …
—Walter … Walter.
Gradually the thunder of the percussion subsided. Once again the sweet woodwinds were heard and a solitary flute held a long, sustained note. The woodwinds died away whistling like the wind in the trees on a Spring evening. Soon there were no sounds, no throbbing drums, no strident brass, no whistling wind—only silence.
There Are Victories Page 22