Chapter V: Part 5

She picked up one of the books, a novel by Waldo Frank, of which she conned the title with some dismay. She had bought it under the impression that it was called Darkey Mothers. She was not interested in the true title. Nevertheless, she opened the book and read a sentence or two. Then, with some impatience, she tossed the volume aside. Why, she wondered, did authors write in this uncivilized and unsophisticated manner? How was it possible to read an author who never laughed? For it was only behind laughter that true tragedy could lie concealed, only the ironic author who could awaken the deeper emotions. The tragedies of life, she reflected, were either ridiculous or sordid. The only way to get the sense of this absurd, contradictory, and perverse existence into a book was to withdraw entirely from the reality. The artist who feels the most poignantly the bitterness of life wears a persistent and sardonic smile. She remembered the salubrious remark of a character in André Salmon’s La Négresse du Sacré Cœur: There is only one truth, steadfast, healing, salutary, and that is the absurd. This book was mush, as sentimental, she felt, as a book by Gene Stratton-Porter--she chose a name at random, realizing that she did not know much about Gene Stratton-Porter except what she had read in the newspapers. This extremely heavy attempt on the part of Waldo Frank to take life seriously was just as sentimental as the attempt of Gene Stratton-Porter to take life, well as _she_ found it. She recalled Georg Kaiser’s sardonic play, From Morn to Midnight. How much higher it loomed in her consciousness, how much more lingering the sting, than plays which, on the surface, appeared to be more bitter, plays such as Dreiser’s The Hand of the Potter, for Kaiser had laughed at his puppets. On n’apprend qu’en s’amusant, according to Sylvestre Bonnard, and she remembered Nietzsche’s defence of the music of Carmen: It approaches lightly, nimbly, and with courtesy. It is amiable. It does not produce sweat. What is good is easy; everything divine runs with light feet: the first proposition of my Æsthetics.... How delightful the scene in Kaiser’s play in which the German grandmother dies because her son leaves the house before eating his dinner! It had never happened before. What a comment on German character! And ten times as powerful as if the scene had been presented as something to cry over. One could shed tears to be sure, but not in behalf of the grandmother. One wept for her nation. She mentally decided that Hilaire Belloc’s The Mercy of Allah gave a much better picture of a modern millionaire, because the book was good-humoured, satirical, and allegorical, than the more solemn performances of W. L. George in Caliban and Theodore Dreiser in The Financier. It was this same lack of humour, this sentimental adherence to a rigid point of view which in her eyes spoiled Three Soldiers. There was something to be said for such a book, undoubtedly, but you could not say that it was written for a sophisticated audience. No, in a different sense, it was written for the stupid, unsophisticated crowd, just as Rupert Hughes’s books were written for that crowd. Only Hughes wrote to please the crowd and Dos Passos to annoy it. And such sophisticated souls as were delighted with Three Soldiers were delighted merely because the crowd was annoyed. An artist, she said to herself, would leave this crowd indifferent.

She closed her eyes again ... and lighted a fresh cigarette. As she exhaled the first ring of smoke a fable related by Babbalanja in Herman Melville’s marvellous Mardi came into her mind: Midni was of opinion that daylight was vulgar; good enough for taro-planting and travelling, but wholly unadapted to the sublime ends of study. He toiled by night; from sunset to sunrise poring over the works of the old logicians. Like most philosophers, Midni was an amiable man; but one thing invariably put him out. He read in the woods by glow-worm light; insect in hand, tracing over his pages, line by line. But glow-worms burn not long: and in the midst of some calm intricate thought, at some imminent comma, the insect often expired, and Midni groped for a meaning. Upon such an occasion, Ho, Ho, he cried; but for one instant of sunlight to see my way to a period! But sunlight there was none; so Midni sprang to his feet, and parchment under arm, raced about among the sloughs and bogs for another glow-worm. Often, making a rapid descent with his turban, he thought he had caged a prize; but nay. Again he tried; yet with no better success. Nevertheless, at last he secured one, but hardly had he read three lines by its light, when out it went. Again and again this occurred. And thus he for ever went halting and stumbling through his studies and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.

A book, Campaspe considered, should have the swiftness of melodrama, the lightness of farce, to be a real contribution to thought. Every time, had said the Rabbi Moses Maimonides, you find in our books a tale, the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant both to reason and common sense, then be sure that tale contains a profound allegory, veiling a deeply mysterious truth; and the greater the absurdity of the letter the deeper the wisdom of the spirit. How could anything serious be hidden more successfully than in a book which pretended to be light and gay? Plot was certainly unimportant in the novel; character drawing a silly device. Anybody could do it. It was like character acting: give a man a beard and a few trick phrases and gestures and you have created a masterpiece. How easy it would be, for example, to put the Duke in a book: his stuttering, his neglected finger nails, and the man would rise before the reader’s eyes. Justification? Preparation? In life we never know anything about the families and early lives of the people we meet; why should we have to learn all about them in books? Growth of character in a novel was nonsense. People never change. Psychology: the supreme imbecility. The long and complicated analyses that serious writers give us merely define the mental limitations of these writers. The Bible, The Thousand and One Nights, and Don Quixote certainly were not psychological novels.... As for Ulysses ... Works like Ulysses are always out of date. At first too modern, they soon grow old-fashioned. The very group that is most enthusiastic about Ulysses today will be the first to spurn it tomorrow.

She lit another cigarette, reflecting on the words of Clive Bell, who had said that in the best work of Nicolas Poussin the human figure is treated as a shape cut out of coloured paper to be pinned on as the composition directs. That was the right way to treat the human figure; the mistake lay in making these shapes retain the characteristic gestures of classical rhetoric. She glanced towards the pile of books again. There were, she noted with a new regret, if no surprise, no books by Ouida in the pile, and she suddenly became aware of the fact that only a book by Ouida would satisfy her present mood. Ouida, who had not written for posterity, realizing, no doubt, that the public of fifty years hence would be no keener intellectually than her coeval public. Ouida was entertaining. Her approach was satisfactorily unpretentious. She wrote about high life, the very rich--and who wanted to read about any other kind of life? Certainly not the rich, or the middle classes, or the poor.... Neither the rich nor the poor were interested in reading about the poor except in the form of the Cinderella legend and that had been done too often.... Ouida’s characters had amusing adventures; they were cut out of coloured paper to be pinned on as the composition directed. I think, Campaspe began to reason, that Waldo Frank should read Ouida. I wonder if he ever has. But she apprehended that Waldo Frank would not understand or appreciate the work of Louise de la Ramé, and so a reading would have no effect on his own future writing. It was characteristic of Campaspe that she began to feel a little sorry for Waldo Frank.

Two white doves floated down from the blue and settled on the fountain, one on the curly head of Eros, the other on a stiff narcissus stem. She listened to their soft cooing and watched their graceful movements. She recalled the case of the prisoner in the death-house at Sing Sing, who had undergone an operation for appendicitis two days before the hour set for his execution. Skilled surgeons had been rushed from New York to save his life so that he would not die and “cheat the chair,” as the New York Times put it. There also lingered in her hospitable memory the story of the derelict who had been fed by the Y. M. C. A. The secretary of a branch of that organization had offered the fellow regular meals and employment if ... IF he would put himself completely in the hands of the Y. M. C. A. and profess a belief in God. The man had refused, she recalled with delight. Nothing remained to him but his free will, and he proposed to keep that. But the Y. M. C. A. secretary, instead of regarding this stand as an indication of character, wept over this wolf lost to God. These anecdotes, typical press-cuttings from the news of the day, were, in their essence, comic arraignments of our civilization, or so Campaspe considered them. An attempt to trump up tears for the victims would always fail with a sophisticated audience, but when ridicule was aimed at the real offender, modern democracy or the church, a sense of tragic irony ensued. Something might even happen, although she was extremely dubious about this. It could hardly be expected that the best surgeons would be rushed to Sullivan Street to save the life of a poor Italian baby who had no intention of cheating the chair. Campaspe had a savage hatred of cruelty. She watched animal acts at the circus with the constant, but still ungratified, hope that the beasts would kill their trainers.

She lighted another cigarette. The doves had long since flown away. Aglaë, the tortoise, was reposing, the weight of his years weighing down his shell. Soft purple shadows in lacework fell athwart the flagstones.... Considering the heroines of modern fiction, reviewing their qualifications, Campaspe decided that Savina Grove and Mrs. Hurstpierpoint were the only two she would invite to call on her. They had lived their lives, not very amusing lives, perhaps, but at least their own. She remembered Idalia with pleasure. Idalia, though of another age, might come too. She must send to Brentano’s for the book and reread it. Did Brentano’s still keep the works of Ouida in stock? she wondered. Beyond question the serious books of Ouida were the best antidote she could think of for the serious books of this generation. At least, they were written in the grand manner.... Campaspe was enjoying her revery and her face changed expression for the worse as she saw Frederika emerging from the house. Her approach portended callers.

Mr. Moody is in the salon.

Oh! Paul. Campaspe was relieved. Bring tea, Frederika, and send him out.

Iced tea?

No, hot today.... And wait! Take these books in.

She pushed the rejected pile towards Frederika, who gathered them into her arms and retreated. Leaning back in her chair, almost recumbent, gazing at the azure sky through the rent canopy of leaves, Campaspe blew smoke rings lazily upwards. Glancing down, as Paul came through the door, she was aware at once that something had happened. His face wore a harassed expression and there were deep circles underneath his eyes. These, however, might be after-effects due to the Duke’s opera.

’paspe, have you seen Harold? Paul was breathless.

Harold? No. What’s happened to Harold? She was interested to discover that she felt a vague alarm.

Gone. Disappeared.

What do you mean?

I called him up this afternoon. Drains told me. The hall-boy reports that he came in last night, but went out again immediately. I questioned Drains further. He knew the reason for Harold’s departure. When he got home he found Zimbule occupying his bed.

Campaspe smiled. The girl is not without guile, but I hadn’t thought she would do that.... Yet, she said she would.

She did. Drains gave her the key. His father....

That horrible father! Campaspe exclaimed in a tone of disgust. What is he trying to do to the boy?

I am beginning to wonder myself. Even Drains feels a little contrite. You see, he likes Harold.

You can’t help liking him.... Have you been to Ronald’s?

Yes. One of the Ceylonese sent me up to the bathroom. Ronald was immured there, lustily singing Old black Joe.... I interviewed him through the door. He knew nothing about Harold.

What has Drains done?

Nothing. He has strict orders not to appeal to Mr. Prewett for help in emergencies. Besides, it is obvious that the boy has merely run away to escape Zimbule.... I thought he might be here.

He’d sooner go to you, she mused, still blowing rings of grey smoke.

No, in some way he connects me with this plot. Of course, I don’t know the first thing about it, but _he_ doesn’t know that.... He trusts _you_.

I’m fond of him, Campaspe remarked simply.

Frederika came back into the garden with the tea-tray which she deposited on the table, and Campaspe filled two cups, offering one to Paul, with a napoléon.

You don’t suppose ... he burst out suddenly, and then hesitated, appalled by the thought.

No, I don’t, Paulet, she replied. He will turn up. I am not really disturbed when I consider his reason for leaving. Zimbule terrified him; that’s all. He’s probably gone to a hotel. He has plenty of money?

Heaps.

They talked a little longer. Paul, much too nervous to remain seated, walked up and down the narrow enclosure, finally taking his departure with the suddenness of his arrival.

The sun was sinking; the shadows on the flagstones had turned to deep indigo. Campaspe drank in the warm-cool air with delight. The scene was about to be played, the scene for which she had waited. The rebellion had broken out. Instinctively, she had felt the truth when she wrote Laura. Frederika came back into the garden.

Mr. Prewett came some time ago, madame. He has been waiting in the salon until Mr. Moody went away.

Harold! Send him out, Frederika, and bring another cup.

If harassed described Paul’s appearance, Harold looked absolutely haggard. His hair was awry; his cheeks were ashen; his eyes bloodshot. He still wore his evening clothes and it was apparent that he had not been to bed.

I hope you’ll excuse my appearance, he began. I shouldn’t have come, but I had to.... He was almost fierce ... I had to.

I’m glad, Harold, she said.

I asked Frederika if you were alone; I’ve been waiting.... You are the only person I can talk to, Mrs. Lorillard. I haven’t any friends.

Campaspe, _please_.

Campaspe, he repeated after her. I’m through, he began again with renewed, withal somewhat shrill, determination. My father can go to hell. I don’t give a damn about his money. I’ll live the way I want to from now on. I’ll.... Do you know what’s happened?

I can guess.

Some one has...?

Zimbule told Bunny that she was spending the night with me, but she wouldn’t let me drive her home.

What _are_ they trying to do to me, Campaspe: Drains and my father? They have some plan.... I am to do whatever I please, but constantly they are _suggesting_....

But, Harold, as you have your father’s word that you can do what you like, why don’t you take advantage of it?

What I like is impossible. Campaspe, I must tell you! I must tell some one! Then, incoherently, he poured out the story of his meeting with Alice, and what had happened subsequently, but he refrained from mentioning her name.

Campaspe listened, enraptured, masking her too eager interest behind the smoke of her cigarette. It seemed too impossibly romantic to be real. It had happened, however. Of that the boy’s manner left no loophole for doubt. When he had concluded his narrative, she paused for a moment before she said:

Obviously, the thing to do is to find some one who knows the girl, and who will introduce you properly.

But who? he asked desperately. Who? Whom do I know that would know people like that, conventional, respectable people? He flushed. I beg your pardon. I....

Enjoying his discomfiture, she was at the same time amused by his point of view.

_I_ understand, she said, but perhaps _you_ don’t. It is barely possible, she began and then broke off. Presently, looking at him intently and sympathetically, she suggested, Suppose you tell me the girl’s name.

There was another pause, during which Campaspe had time to perceive how altogether miserable the boy was. He appeared to be almost ready to cry. Was he trying to make up his mind whether he could trust her? Would she, she knew he was asking himself, prove to be another illusion? At last he spoke, almost in a whisper and in a tone which bestowed an accolade upon the name.

Alice Blake.

Campaspe, sitting bolt upright, pouring tea, dropped the pot crashing into the delicate Sèvres cup beneath. The scalding water flooded the table, unnoticed by her. Falling back against the cushions, she began to laugh, a loud, pealing mirth-less laugh, a more than terrifying laugh. Harold bent over her.

What is it, Campaspe? What is the matter?

She stopped laughing as suddenly as she had begun.

I think, Harold, she said very quietly, that I am acquainted with the lady. The name, however, may not be uncommon. Do you know where she lives?

56 East Thirty-seventh Street.

She is my sister, Campaspe announced.

Not altogether without sympathy, she watched the blood mount to the boy’s face, but her sympathy was mingled with another emotion. She could understand how horrible the idea seemed to him. This news apparently struck him as the direst blow that had yet fallen. Some moments elapsed before he was able to speak, and she made no effort to hurry him. Rather, by her manner, by her poise, by her ease, she indicated an opportunity for the pause.

Your _sister_! With varying emphasis, he repeated her words again almost in a whisper: _Your_ sister!

How can that be? you are asking yourself. How can her father be mine? It is very simple. My father has no control whatever over me. When I came of age I inherited money left in trust for me by my grandmother, but even before that I was free, because I married when I was sixteen. I see very little of Alice now, but I can see her when I wish to. As a matter of fact, my sons are visiting their grandfather at Southampton, and Alice is with him too. I can send for her....

Send for her! Would he never be able again to think out a sentence of his own?

Yes, if you want her sent for. Certainly. Her voice was dead in quality.

Would you?... His manner was eager, yet almost tearful.

How tragic, she thought again, is youth. How much youth suffers unnecessarily.

Whenever you like. She spoke calmly, evenly.

He rose to this: Now!

Now? She appeared to ponder. Today? I could telephone, she mused, but, on the whole, I think it’s better to write. You must give me three days. In three days I’ll bring you and Alice together in this garden.

Three days! He was crestfallen again.

After all, dear boy, you’ve already waited weeks. What are three days more?

You know best, my dear, dear friend.

She regarded him curiously, weighing him.

Are you.... She began, and then shifting her phrase, went on, Do you want to marry her?

If she will ... at once!

Oh! she will.

You think....

I am certain of it.

How can I thank you?

Don’t thank me, Harold.

Another problem had arisen in his mind.

Where shall I wait the three days?

Go home, of course. It’s absurd for you to wander about in those clothes. Now that you know what you are going to do you can handle Drains. Besides, after last night, I have an idea Drains won’t bother you any more.

Campaspe had awakened to some show of enthusiasm again. She was making plans. Get some money together, she went on. You will need it. Alice is accustomed to spending all she wants to spend. You must go somewhere and we--you and I--must decide where. Alice has no initiative. I have it--Campaspe’s eyes glowed with a ruddy fire--; I own a tiny cottage at Provincetown on Cape Cod. I’ve never been there myself. I bought it as an investment for an adventure. This, I fancy, is the adventure. Take it. After you are through with it, I’ll sell it.

To us?

If _you_ want it, I’ll give it to you. I can’t use it twice. The bloom will be off.

I love her! Harold cried. If you knew how much I love her, Campaspe!

I’m sure you do, my boy, and in three days you shall see her. Come back to this garden and you will find her here.

He rose, kissed her hand quite spontaneously, although it was the first time in his life he had ever done such a thing, and took his departure. Seized with a new nervousness, Campaspe got up and walked about. Her whole body was glowing and vibrating with joy, and her smile rippled into laughter. The situation was too perfect. Only one more scene was required to end the act and bring down the curtain. That scene, she was now aware, was about to be played, and, consequently, she was in no way astonished when Frederika presently informed her that Zimbule was waiting in the salon. Nor was she unprepared for the black garb, the wholly woebegone appearance of the snake-child, as she slowly emerged from the house and descended the flagstones to meet Campaspe, who was standing near the fountain.

Campaspe clasped her hand. I know, dear Zimbule, she said. Harold has just been here.

The girl threw her arms about Campaspe’s neck, her yellow head drooping, and gave way to a passionate fit of sobbing.

I’m too late! she cried.

Rather, too early, corrected Campaspe. He will want you later when you don’t want him.

He told you....

He told me nothing. Paul was here before him, and Paul had seen Drains.

Where’s Harold now?

He went home.

Zimbule made a movement towards the door. I’ll follow him!

Campaspe gently caught the girl’s arm.

No, dear Zimbule, you won’t do that. It would do no good. The boy is in love.

Zimbule stared hard at Campaspe.

With you?

No, with my sister.

Zimbule, looking straight into Campaspe’s eyes, could not doubt that she told the truth.

Did you know this last night? she demanded.

I learned it for the first time five minutes ago.

Are you going to help them?

Yes.

Against me?

It’s no good, Zimbule. You know what happened last night. Harold means it.

The girl sank into a chair and began to sob again, making a good deal of superfluous noise, Campaspe thought, and yet she was sorry for the child, and considered Harold a fool for not perceiving how infinitely superior was this lithe, little animal to her silly sister. He had made a stupid choice, but it was not her habit to interfere with other people’s choices. Under the circumstances, however, she decided at once that she must keep the girl by her. Such tempestuous natures were capable of suicide. Campaspe was so entirely contented with life in general and her own participation in it in particular that it also occurred to her that she might go so far as to do something for Cupid. She infrequently dined at a public restaurant, more seldom still did she attend the theatre. It pleased Cupid to do these things, which to her were merely dull. Her imagination supplied her with so much better material than such casual experiences could give her. More and more she was finding it futile to leave her garden. In time, she began to believe, all the external life she needed would come to her. But tonight she might make an exception. Rapidly, she planned a dinner at the Claremont, and an evening at some musical show. She rang for Frederika.

Is Mr. Lorillard in the house?

He came in half an hour ago, madame. He is in his room dressing.

Ask him to come out here, Frederika. She turned to the snake-child again. Zimbule, do stop crying. You don’t want to go back to Bunny?

The child vigorously shook her head.

Then stay to dinner with us, and spend the night here.

She put her hand tenderly on the girl’s head, and she knew that Zimbule would stay.

Presently Cupid appeared, a little alarmed, obviously wondering what was up. He looked rather pompous in his fat, small way. Campaspe noted that he was losing his hair.

Hello, ’paspe, do you want to see me?

Yes, Cupid, I do. This is Miss O’Grady. Zimbule bowed her head but did not offer her hand. She’s dining with us, and going to the theatre.

To the theatre! Cupid was very much astonished.

Certainly. Why not?

But you usually.... I have an engagement, but I’ll break it. Whenever you want me, you know I’m here.

Why was every one so pathetic today? She remembered that Paul had once asked her why she had married, and she had answered that everybody should marry at least once, and he had insisted, But why Cupid? and she had replied, He’s the very man I should have married. How true! she thought now with a smile.

The dinner, on the verandah of the Claremont, was rather solemn. Zimbule ate little and did not talk at all. Cupid made a determined effort to entertain his wife. He had, she could see, caught a false strand of hope, and had woven dreams for himself out of it; she did not disillusion him. She was kind and gracious and even amusing. She did not try to draw Zimbule into the conversation. The girl, she was sure, would be happier quiet. Occasionally, even while she chattered, she gazed across to the lights on the black river and thought her own thoughts.

It was late when they had finished dinner, too late, she decided, to use their seats for the Follies, and she suggested that they drop into a Negro revue at the Forty-eighth Street Theatre for a half-hour or so. An amazing mulatto woman, Edith Wilson, who sang a song entitled, He may be your man but he comes to see me sometimes, held her attention for a few moments. Presently, she became aware that Cupid was finally awake to Zimbule’s beauty. He was the last to observe just what was most obvious to others, she reflected. They drove home.

Escorted by Frederika, Zimbule slipped off at once to her room. Cupid, rather awkwardly, attempted to seize Campaspe’s hand.

No, Cupid, don’t misunderstand....

The poor little man was ridiculous in his dejection.

I like you, you know, she added.... Good-night.

At the first landing, she peeped over the banisters for a glimpse of the pitiful figure standing alone below, and then she continued on her way upstairs. Before her desk she wrote a short note to her father, and sent Frederika with it to the nearest post-box on Irving Place. Then she went to Zimbule’s room and tapped gently on the door.

Come in!

The child was lying nude on the bed, lovely in her despair as she had been the night before in her joy.

Are you feeling better, dear Zimbule?

Worse.

Do you want anything?

You know damn well what I want.

The girl began to cry again and Campaspe, sitting on the edge of the bed, bending over her, found it difficult to quiet her. She began to stroke the girl’s head. Silently, her hand glided back and forth. Quite suddenly, a strange thing happened. Zimbule, Campaspe observed, had fallen into a deep sleep. She stole back on tiptoe to her own chamber. Frederika was waiting for her and, with her maid’s assistance, she prepared for bed.

I shall not read tonight, Frederika. Put out the lights ... and good-night.

Good-night, madame.

That night Campaspe dreamed a curious dream. She found herself walking in her bare feet on a bed of oyster-shells, but the sharp edges made no impression on her tender soles. Presently, and inexplicably, she seemed to be lying in a nest of silken cushions, which stung her soft flesh like a thicket of nettles. Now a butterfly flew past her, and appeared to be beckoning her to follow. Rising, she ran after the butterfly through a great open doorway into a wide Moorish court, in the centre of which a blindfold, curly-headed Eros, carved in marble, appeared about to discharge an arrow aimed at no target. Her senses swerved in a curious state of transition: she touched Burgundy; she smelled purple; she heard vervain; she tasted space; she saw the chord of B flat minor.

A thick cloud settled down over the court, but through its veils she caught glimpses of shadows, approaching and receding. When she followed them, they glided back, and when they followed her, she ran away from them. The shadows were nude and wore masks. One of them, a woman, lifted her mask and Campaspe recognized Zimbule, Zimbule with a great green letter flaming on her breast. Campaspe raised her hand, her palm towards the vision, and it disappeared.

_Chapter IX_

Greyness was the characteristic tone of Provincetown. The houses were grey; the sky and the sand and the sea often seemed grey. Even the trees, the leaves powdered with dust, assumed a greyish sage-green tinge. One long curving street, fringed with tiny wooden cottages, ran along the shore. These little houses, many of which were surrounded by hedges of untrimmed privet, sprinkled untidily with white blossoms, indifferently faced the road or the ocean. Tods of ivy and clematis, blue and white, draped the painted boards, and in the gardens dahlias, cosmos, zinnias, petunias, verbenas, portulaca, asters, and golden-glow grew in great irregular clumps. The street culminated in two landmarks, a church-spire, that might or might not have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and a tall Italian tower of brick, the Pilgrim Monument. In the harbour a warship rode at anchor, and there were fleets of rude fishing-smacks, among which the smug white sails of pleasure sloops looked as uncomfortable and awkward as a Londoner with morning coat and top hat would look in the midst of Shore-ditch. The shore was lined with quaint, dilapidated boat-houses, rotting piers, and great nets, their edges bound with bobbins of cork, hung out to dry. As in all fishing-villages, there was a prevailing odour of dead fish. In this grey, gloomy town, the only colour, save that of the flowers, was supplied by the tawny, smiling faces of the Portuguese settlers, who mingled, somewhat aloof, to be sure, somewhat derisively, with the visiting artists from Greenwich Village.

Campaspe’s cottage was not on the main street. It was situated about a mile and a half northwest across the cape, facing the open sea, near the life-saving station. For a time, the rough road leading thither wended its uncertain way through a scattering of scrub-oaks, scrub-pines, and maples, with patches of tiger-lilies, golden rod, purple asters, old maid’s pinks, and Queen Anne’s lace, on either side, then straggled on across a mile of sand-dunes, rolling down and up, like great stationary waves, some as high as twenty feet, on which the only vegetation was beach-grass, beach-plums, and bayberry shrubs. The beach was low and here the sand was packed hard and smooth. Higher up, back a little from the beach near the life-saving station, solitary but for its gaunt, uncordial companion in the midst of the grey dunes, stood the little white cottage with its slanting roof of unpainted shingles, and its great chimney, fashioned of huge boulders by some local builder. From afar, of course, as she had never visited Provincetown, it had amused Campaspe to plan this house somewhat in the spirit (certainly not the style!) of the farms of the Trianon. It had been her intention to arrange an opportunity for a rustic, aquatic villeggiatura, where she might conceivably disguise herself as a sailor’s bride and entertain thought of adventures with sea-faring men. Having arranged for this house, actually ordering it built and furnished, indeed, the necessity for further action did not seem to present itself. To all intents and purposes, Campaspe had lived in it, enjoyed the imagined experience, and forgotten the episode.

On the grey, rough plaster walls of the interior hung madonnas, photographs of celebrated paintings, madonnas as placid as though they had never suffered the pangs of childbirth. The furniture was of white maple, polished to a state in which tables might have been used as mirrors, had occasion for such a compromise arisen. The hexagonal dining-table, the ancient chairs and beds and highboys and bureaux, had been bought from nearby farmers, who were glad to dispose of this junk at a low figure so that they might make their homes more modern with show-pieces from the Grand Rapids emporiums and beds of shiny brass from Boston. Bayberry dips stood in the stately Colonial candlesticks. The coverlets on the beds were masterpieces of nineteenth century provincial ingenuity and the rugs on the waxed floors had been woven by tired and patient grandmothers, who had spent their dead living years at work on them. The service was composed of Brittany china, Spanish peasant porcelain, and a gay Hungarian pottery, painted with brilliant flowers. It had been Campaspe’s satisfied desire that no two cups or plates should be identical. On the wall a brass ship’s-clock ticked out the time, sounding bells in lieu of hours, and lanterns, burning sperm oil, which had formerly served to illuminate the cabins of old whaling vessels, hung from the ceilings. The doors, with their oval tops, together with the rest of the woodwork, like the shingles on the roof, were oiled but unpolished.

To Harold, satiated with what he regarded as an exotic and artificial atmosphere, this pseudo-communion with a more natural environment, which, in a sense, reminded him of his boyhood, his Aunt Sadi and Persia Blaine, seemed heavenly. He took long walks on the spar-strewn dunes and, clad in tarpaulins, went fishing for flounders in a decaying boat, rowed to a suitable depth by a weather-beaten tar, who told him venerable yarns of the old leviathan hunts, and more recent scandals of the New England village. Occasionally, with Alice, he went for a sail, the veteran mariner guiding the helm and calling out to Harold incomprehensible nautical directions (subsequently translated) for handling the canvas of the sloop, a sorry affair smelling of dead fish. The sickly aroma of dead fish, indeed, haunted the nostrils and never entirely passed away, just as the dampness penetrated even the heavy cedar clothes-presses, and covered the books, ranged on shelves behind glass doors, with a film of mildew.

Alice, who had come to this retreat straight from Southampton, found this setting for a honeymoon a little primitive, a little abnormally primitive. Her pale blond beauty was curious in this regard, that in the city she seemed decidedly a rural type, while in the country one could only think of her as belonging to the city. She found the old sailor vulgar, and once or twice nearly lost her temper with Emma, a taciturn and sardonic Portuguese woman, of middle-age, who had acted as care-taker of the place and now lingered on in an ancillary capacity. Campaspe’s taste in plates also annoyed Alice. Why were they all different? she asked herself. In this prospect only Harold pleased her. The two had had been here nearly a month now, idling together, and it may be reported that they had discovered some measure of happiness. Alice was bored rather than unhappy. She had no leanings towards domesticity, towards keeping house; she gave Emma few orders. It was characteristic of her to complain instead because her unuttered desires were not carried out. She was not interested in reading, resembling Harold in this respect. She sewed a little, finding occupation in the construction of a beaded bag, but time, on the whole, passed slowly for her. She liked best to sit on the dunes with Harold, holding his hand, making plans for the future. She talked quite easily of children, so easily, indeed, that occasionally Harold caught himself wondering if he really wanted children. Somewhat self-consciously, Alice was prone to regard this excursion, this singular honeymoon, in the light of a temporary lark, a lark from which she was not deriving any excruciating amount of pleasure. In the foreground of her mind rose a picture of a somewhat more solid life in New York, with a great house and servants, friends to dinner, dinners which would be returned in due course by these friends, a box at the opera, theatres and shops to visit, calls to pay, the conventional life of a respectable matron, and, in time, her daughters....

She gave voice to some of her ideals, and Harold loved to hear her talk about them. He, too, would be glad of a home, he felt, a place that was his own, in which he might sit with his pipe, slippers on feet, slackly, but respectably, comfortable. He even looked forward to the social life, of which she had given him glimpses, into which they would presumably fit. Very different, he imagined it would be, from that of Campaspe. He wondered often how the two could be sisters. He remembered how they had appeared as strangely separate entities that afternoon in the little garden on East Nineteenth Street: Alice softly acquiescent, Campaspe radiantly benedictory, hovering like a bishop over some secret glory. How simple it all had been. He had expected strife, opposition, obstruction. There had been nothing of the sort. Oliver, apprised of his plan, had come forward with a sufficient sum to pay for a trip to Buenos Ayres, more than enough to cover an indefinite sojourn in this cottage by the sea. His father had telegraphed his congratulations, and had mailed a further cheque of quite an amazing denomination. Campaspe had presented them with this house. Paul had appeared to be rather melancholy, and he had shaken Harold’s hand with an intensity which led the boy to believe that he must have misjudged his mentor. The Duke had sent the couple a set of Tennyson, bound in half-morocco. Harold was not acquainted with the works of Tennyson, but he had sensed a derisory intention in this gift. Mr. Blake, in a letter, had hinted of future delights in store for the happy pair when they returned to New York. Persia Blaine had sent a great pink and white cake. Only his aunt, incomprehensibly, had not been complaisant. She had written a letter which Harold had found it difficult to understand, and which now he was finding it difficult to forgive. Nearly a month had gone by and he had not yet answered it. Scarcely a day passed, however, in which he did not read it.

My dear Harold [the letter began in a manner which he recognized as
not unduly formal for his decidedly formal aunt],

I do not feel much inclined to write to you, but I suppose it is my
duty, and duty is something that I never shirk. This letter, however,
will be no bearer of congratulations.

To be blunt, I feel that you are making a mistake. You should
never have gone to your father. Had it been in my power, I should
have prevented it. He is wrecking your life with his ego and his
selfishness. He broke your mother’s will, and he will break yours.
If I had stayed with him in business, he would have broken mine. I
have wept hot tears since I received your telegram, as I understand
only too well what all this means. Poor ignorant boy, you have walked
straight into the trap set for you. When you are through with this
marriage, come back to me. Your father will be enraged that he has
lost you, but I will be glad that I have found you.

Miss Perkins is here and sends her love to you. Persia has not been
very well. You will remember that she always suffers from hay fever
at this time of year. I cut my thumb a few days ago, paring peaches
to preserve, and it still bothers me considerably.

I remain, with love,
your +AUNT SADI+.

Harold could explain this letter satisfactorily to himself on no other ground save the ground of jealousy. She is enraged because I am married, he thought, and she is blaming my father for something with which he had nothing whatever to do, to which certainly, in the beginning, he was opposed, for did he not send me to Paul and to a life which is the farthest removed from the life that I wish to live? Now that I have married Alice, he has accepted the situation with more grace than could have been expected from him. He said, Do anything you please, and apparently he meant it. How much broader and bigger in spirit he is than Aunt Sadi.

He had not yet showed the letter to Alice, but one day, when he had been talking about his childhood, he felt moved to do so. Drawing it from the pocket where he always carried it, he handed it to his wife, with a few words of explanation.

Do not let it hurt you, he said. She is an old woman, and what she says cannot matter after all. I have meant a good deal to her, probably, in her loneliness, and she thinks she is losing me. But she is wrong about my father. He has been very good to me.

He was not surprised to observe that she flushed as she read the letter. Handing it back to him, she stared at him in a peculiarly searching manner. There was an expression around her eyes that he had never noticed there before.

The letter does not hurt me, she said at last, only....

Only what?

Regarding him more intently still, she paused for a moment. Then, turning her head so that their eyes no longer met, she replied: Your father may have had some purpose in view, Harold, but he meant it for your good, I feel sure.

And now that I have done what he didn’t want me to do he has forgiven me?

Ye-es, she replied, rather hesitantly, although he was not conscious of her lack of enthusiasm. Quite suddenly, she bent towards him and kissed his eyes. Let us go back to the house, Harold, she said.

They had been sitting on the dunes in the dying sunlight, for the day had been bright with a brightness, however, which merely served to accentuate the cold greyness of the place. A dragon-fly, shining purple and green, steered his course round and round Alice’s head, like a miniature airplane. A flock of gulls swooped down over the sea, crying mournfully, and some of them disappeared under the grey waves, capped with white. A cool breeze was blowing in over the water and, as Alice rose, she drew the blue knitted scarf she was wearing more closely about her shoulders.

In the cottage, when they arrived, Emma, silent and stern, was laying the table with the gay variety of design which Alice instinctively hated. She especially detested the opaque white glass chickens of the Civil War period, consecrated to hold eggs, but the Spanish, Hungarian, and Brittany china offended her taste almost equally. She liked white plates with gold borders for the roasts, and engraved glass plates with gold borders for the salad and dessert. The cotton print curtains at the windows annoyed her, and her mind reverted to the consideration of some striped stiff taffetas she had examined at Johnson and Faulkner’s. Their magnificence, distributed at the windows and in the wall-panels, would almost serve to furnish the drawing-room. There would also be a great divan, upholstered in royal blue velvet, and a royal blue velours carpet on the floor. This maple! Mahogany was Alice’s favourite wood. Some of these opinions she had uttered aloud at one time or another, safely enough, she thought, because this cottage represented her sister’s taste. If Harold had been responsible...!

Harold was both pleased and alarmed by these discourses on the subject of interior decoration. Alice seemed so practical and matter of fact. He had not sensed these qualities in her before marriage. He was coming to believe, indeed--he was thinking in terms of fact and not of deprecation--, that he had known nothing whatever about his wife before marriage. He had hardly even conversed with her. But, fundamentally, he felt, she was his kind, and this interest in house furnishing, this passion for children, however incautiously and belatedly divulged, were part of what he wanted. They were fractions of a great normal entity to which he aspired. Yet, sometimes, with the cold breeze from the sea, a parallel psychic frigid wind had blown across his soul, an unknown terror had assailed him. His reason could not tell him what it meant but, instinctively, he understood, dimly enough at first, perhaps, that it portended disillusion. He was also amazed, sometimes, to find himself thinking--so little was he analytical--that a great part of Alice’s charm for him, in this newly and none too securely established intimacy, consisted in the essential fact that she was Campaspe’s sister, for, from that brief excursion into an alien world, he had borne away a perplexing but permanent affection for Mrs. Lorillard. She had seemed to him the only real person he had met in that world, and he never ceased to wonder why it interested her, what she got from it, for it was apparent, even to him, that it _did_ interest her. Gradually, however, from Alice he had learned how closely Campaspe was bound to other more conventional circles in New York society, how in the fall she attended the Horse Show, and during the winter was seen in the boxes of people whose names frequently appeared in the newspapers, how she gave dinners and dances for these people, and went to theirs. Very often there was mention of Laura, who, he gathered, with an adumbration of perception, would not have been altogether comfortable in the presence of the Duke of Middlebottom.

Laura and her children were the subject of a good deal of Alice’s idle chatter. They were the most divine children, Alice asserted; she only hoped hers would be as good. She drew a showy picture of the nursery: Laura’s Rollo-like offspring eating at a little table with their Belgian governess, while Laura in a Bendel gown received in the drawing-room below. Laura in most respects was obviously Alice’s model.

At night, it was usually cold enough for a fire and, with the ruddy logs glowing in the great boulder fireplace, the pair sat on a wooden settle banked with cotton print covered cushions, facing the fire, holding hands. It was Alice who did most of the talking. She had so much to say. Harold was comparatively inarticulate; very few thoughts in his mind urgently demanded expression, and he had to search to find words in which to express even these. Half-comprehending, half-dreading life, he seldom asserted himself. He basked in the pleasant warmth of Alice’s conversation, as she basked in the heat of the burning logs, enjoying Alice, talk, and fire, objectively. He, indeed, would have been glad to remain indefinitely at Provincetown, or near it, although they knew nobody and it seemed they never would, for Alice objected that she could not meet people from Greenwich Village, and, of course, she added, one can’t know the natives. The Portuguese themselves, had she but been aware of it, would have taken the first step, had it been necessary, towards preventing any narrowing of this always ample breach. However that may be, although Harold and Alice crossed the dunes nearly every day to go to the post office or the market, they made no acquaintances of any kind.

Their intimacy was so complete and exclusive, indeed, that to the Provincetowners--both natives and visitors--they appeared to be a couple of youngsters revelling in their first illicit love. The married state, certainly, was never ascribed to them. Gossip was endemic among the Portuguese, and, as the rumour grew, biographies were invented to fit the happy pair. Letters passed back and forth as the gossip bubbled, gossip to which Emma added her unwholesome quota. Heartily disliking Alice, Emma permitted herself uncontrolled flights of the imagination once she met her friends in the village.

* * * * *

Emma brought in the soup. They sat down to eat at two adjoining sides of the hexagonal table. Later, there was fish. Almost invariably, indeed, there was fish.

Alice’s glance was directed towards the prongs of her fork.

Harold, she asked, shall we live here much longer?

The boy showed his astonishment. Are you unhappy, dear? he questioned her in return.

Not unhappy, no, but restless. You know it isn’t my kind of place.

But New York in the summer....

We can’t go back just yet, of course ... but in a little while. I suppose, too, that you will want to be getting to work. She observed his expression of amazement, but she hurried on: You are going to work, aren’t you?

Of course.

He felt confused and embarrassed. Here was an aspect of the situation which had never occurred to him. Now that he was a family man he would be expected to make a living for his bride.

You can’t, she went on rather sententiously, always live on your father, Harold dear. My daughters.... Well, dearest, they couldn’t respect you.

What would he do? Harold helplessly interrogated himself. No more was said about the matter that night, but he tossed about restlessly in bed, his heart beating violently, revolving the idea over and over. It seemed that he could never accustom himself to the problems of life. As fast as the old ones were solved, fresh ones rose on every hand. Nothing seemed simple. How, for example, could he expect to get on sufficiently well to enable him to support his wife without his father’s assistance? He could think of no possible opening in the business line except to go in with his father, and his father had expressly said that he did not wish him to do that. What could he do?

Alice, on her part, did not refer to the matter again for several days. She exposed the pleasantest side of her nature, wore her prettiest dresses. She even refrained from complaining about the plates. They took long idyllic walks together on the dunes. They bathed in the sea. The actual clouds drifted out of the sky and the tone of the atmosphere grew more mellow, less grey. Their evenings they passed on the settle. The morose Emma, having washed the dishes and arranged the neat punnets of berries in the ice-chest, left them alone, after fortifying herself for three hours of creative gossip with a nip of perry, a beverage she was skilful in brewing. In spite of the apparent calm, Alice’s words ate deeper and deeper into Harold’s consciousness. He felt that she was right and, finally, one night, he summoned up enough courage to broach the subject again.

Alice dear, I’ve been worrying about what you said....

She frowned, questioningly. What I said? she repeated, with an interrogative inflection.

About my going to work.

Dearest boy, I didn’t mean to worry you.... Only--she was nervously switching her suède shoes with a willow-bough she had cut during her afternoon walk--, only, it has seemed to me at times that perhaps you are taking things too easily, too much as a matter of course; that was all. We can’t stay here for ever, you know.

I understand. His tone was low and serious. I have been thinking about it and I know that you are right.

She brightened, and threw the switch into the fire.

I’m glad you agree with me, Harold. Now, what are you going to do?

That’s just it, he groaned. I haven’t the least idea!

Don’t you think it’s best for you to go in with your father? He would help you so much, and you would get on so fast, and we should all be so proud of you!

But my father doesn’t want me to go into his business. I’ve explained all that to you.

Alice gazed at him intently for a little while, as if weighing him and the consequences of what she was about to divulge. As she began to speak, her glance dropped to the fire.

I think it’s only fair that you should know something, Harold, she said at last.