Chapter VI: Part 6

He searched her face with some alarm.

Nothing serious. She grasped his arm and rubbed her cheek affectionately against his cheek. He has done it for your good, dear. Your father has been deceiving you.

My father! He sprang away from her in amazement and stood, helplessly, a little apart, trying to find some kind of meaning in her words.

It was a sort of plot or plan, she went on in a somewhat pedantic manner, as though she had been rehearsing this speech for a long time. You see your father had the feeling that, as you had been brought up by women, you were innocent and ignorant of life. He was afraid if he took you right into his business that you might break away, be misled--Oh! I don’t know what exactly. Anyway, you said you didn’t want to go in with him, and he hoped you would eventually decide for yourself that you did want to. So--she tried to approach him again but his manner warned her that this would be dangerous, or at least difficult--, he thought that if he threw you into the _wrong_ kind of life in the beginning you would _hate_ it, and come round to him of your own accord. That is why he made life unpleasant for you, as disagreeable for you as possible, hoping that a year of it would tire you. You were tired in a month. He was so pleased. He wants you with him, Harold--she was pleading now--; he is expecting you. Only, you must _ask_ him. He won’t ask _you_. Don’t you understand?

Harold was standing with his back to the fire, his face, in the shadow, almost green in its pallor. His head seemed to be reeling around and around. Suddenly he realized that he was excessively angry.

I’d see him in hell first! he cried.

Harold!

I mean it. Who’s to blame for the way I was brought up? He didn’t do much to prevent it, did he? the boy asked scornfully.

Harold!

And so, he went on, the whole thing was a trick!

Now, completely the prey of alarm, a suspicion of tears crept into Alice’s voice. It was for your good, Harold, to make a man of you. She was whining, whimpering.

And who kept me from being a man? Who? I should like to know.

His voice had grown so incisive and cold that it scarcely seemed to be he that was talking.

Alice was really crying now. I shouldn’t have told you, she sobbed. Only, it seemed to be the right time ... and ... and I thought you loved me, Harold ... I couldn’t help telling you, Harold, because I love you.

He ignored this. How did you find all this out? was his next question.

She was trembling. Your father, she began.

Our meeting ... the stalled car ... arranged? He was sneering.

No, Harold, no! That was an accident. Only....

Only what?

Only, you see, after we met.... Well, your father, of course, knows my father.... It seemed best to keep us apart.

You knew all this?

Why yes, Harold. It seemed all right. I loved you, Harold, and they told me....

Did Campaspe know?

She stopped crying at once and her tone became petulant.

Campaspe? Why do you bring in Campaspe? Campaspe! Campaspe! Campaspe! Why are you questioning me? Why do you look at me like that?

Did Campaspe know? His tone was colder, more acid.

No.

Harold, who until now had stood as stiffly as a birch-tree, began to move about the room. Presently, he laughed.

So, he said, she’s clean. They’re all clean: Paul, and Bunny, and Ronald, compared with my own wife, my own father.

Harold!

You’ve tricked me: Your father, my father, you. At last I understand what Aunt Sadi meant in her letter. It doesn’t matter. Only this--he grasped her shoulders firmly and held her at arm’s length--only this, you can tell my father that I’m going straight back where he sent me!

Harold!

Straight back. They’re clean. They didn’t know what it was all about, but they were natural and real while all you rotters have been playing parts.

Harold, you can’t mean what you’re saying!

I haven’t even begun to say what I mean! He threw her roughly back against the settle, relinquishing his hold on her shoulders. I’m through.

He crossed the room in great strides and rushed out through the door. Her screams rang in his ears as he staggered off across the dunes, black in the night, stumbling, falling even, in the deep sand. There was a distant rumble of thunder, faint flashes of lightning. A storm was arising over the sea.

_Chapter X_

On an afternoon in September, Campaspe woke up feeling a little ill, and decided not to go out. She did not, however, send for a physician. Campaspe cherished a peculiar superstition in regard to ill-health. She considered it as a visitation in the nature of a warning, a warning to take a rest. Any interference with the course of the complaint she held to be artificial and even vicious. The miraculously prolonged youthful appearance of her mother, who had never permitted a doctor to visit her since the days when she bore her children, confirmed Campaspe in this esoteric belief.

If I had a broken leg, she assured herself, I would call in a surgeon to set it, but a headache or a hæmorrhage is natural. Decayed cells are breaking down and need to be replaced, or I am being punished by nature for some misdemeanour. When it is over, and the cells have renewed themselves, I shall be stronger than ever.

She glanced over her mail. A letter from Laura, which she did not open.... A postcard from the Duke, with a lithograph in colours of a cottage smothered in rambler roses, and a Nantucket post-mark. Inside quotation marks the Duke had written the following on the reverse side of the card: “Tu te prives de viandes, de vin, d’étuves, d’esclaves et d’honneurs; mais comme tu laisses ton imagination t’offrir des banquets, des parfums, des femmes nues et des foules applaudissantes! Ta chasteté n’est qu’une corruption plus subtile, et ce mépris du monde l’impuissance de ta haine contre lui!” Ronald was amusing.... And so he had gone away again. She sighed, as she tore open an orange envelope with a Danish stamp. The contents were printed, but in such delightfully large type, in reds and greens and blacks and blues, that she was moved to examine the sheet more particularly. It was a prospectus, the preliminary announcement, of the Danish Colonial Lottery. A whole ticket, five drawings, was available at $37.50. One might win 100,000 francs on each of the first four drawings and as much as 1,000,000 francs on the fifth drawing. The lucky number suggested by the agents was 38653. Mentally, Campaspe rapidly added these digits to see if the result conformed with certain figures on a chart that an adept in Kabbalism had recently made out for her. She was a trifle disappointed to find that it did not.... Pushing aside the remainder of her correspondence, a mass of invitations and bills, her mind wandered to an article she had read in some magazine, picked up in a dentist’s waiting-room, an article concerning the extermination of rats. The plan proposed was to catch the rats alive, kill all the females, and set the males free again. In time, as a consequence, the males would outnumber the females by such a high percentage that their persecution of the latter would eventually end in sterility and death for the whole race. In the same magazine there was a paper on hierba maté, the South American beverage, bitter and unpalatable until a taste for it is acquired, draughted from the leaves of the Ilex Paraguayensis. Genaro Romero, the Paraguayan, had rhapsodized regarding it: When we taste maté our energies are renewed, our nerves are comforted by the effect of the green sap, the juice of hope of the Paraguayan flora; and we experience strange impressions, we are nourished by an infusion of energy, and gilded dreams, possibly of good fortune, caress us. Campaspe wondered, at this juncture, if Esperanto had any irregular verbs.... She made an attempt to define her impression of the work of Gertrude Stein. She uses words, thought Campaspe, for their detonations and their connotations.... In the New York Times she discovered an account of a man who had devoted years to the engraving of the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin. Once this task was accomplished, he went first blind and then insane.... Out of the back of her mind she picked another detail: girls working in cordite factories use the explosive for chewing-gum. It acts as a heart stimulant.

Campaspe began to feel restless and energetic. She was not, she now believed, ill enough to keep to her room; nor did she deny herself to callers, although she was expecting no one in particular. Her mood was capricious, volatile, vibratory. She welcomed, therefore, the announcement of the arrival of the expressman with two large crates from Paris, and she ordered them deposited in the drawing-room, sending Frederika for the butler and hammer and screw-driver. The crates were not entirely a surprise. Fannie had written that she was shipping some pictures.

They proved to be unusually interesting pictures by Henri Rousseau and Marc Chagall, artists whose work Campaspe admired vastly. The Chagall was a portrait of a girl with bangs across her forehead, long hair down her back, melancholy eyes (eyes which were uncertain, Campaspe noted), a sensual mouth, and an intellectual nose. She wore a tight-fitting yellow bodice with a frill, clasped by a brooch, around the throat, and deep indigo gloves. The background, too, was a rich blue. Campaspe considered the picture: fantasy, fable, colour. She would think about it a good deal more in the future, she was certain. She realized that Laura’s first question would be, What does it mean? That was, perhaps, its chief charm, that it did not mean anything; it was as meaningless as Mozart’s E flat major symphony or life itself. The Rousseau was a splendid and definite jungle, with curiously exotic trees with long green fronds, plants with startling scarlet blossoms, monkeys, and a royal tiger. She recalled that Rousseau had been a working-man, painting on Sunday, his only free day, how he had never left Paris, creating his jungles after visits to the Jardin d’Acclimatation and the Jardin des Plantes. What a genius! This was not imitation but creation. And yet there were those who asserted that he painted in this sure way through naïveté. Looking at the picture, Campaspe realized that the artist had been entirely aware of what he was doing, that he must have been certain even on his darkest days that eventual recognition would come to him. Work such as this--Campaspe was irresistibly reminded of Lucas Cranach--was assuredly no accident. She pondered over this idea. She was sitting on the floor in the centre of the drawing-room, still regarding the pictures, set up against the wall, when Bunny was announced.

Hello, Bunny, she called out, without rising, when he was shown in.

Hello, ’paspe. His manner was solemn. What have you got here?

Oh! some pictures Fannie sent me. Aren’t they divine? I could eat that tiger of Rousseau’s.

They _are_ good. There’s something about that jungle which suggests to me what I have been trying to do in my rotten music.

Your music is as good as the picture, she retorted.

I can’t compose any longer, ’paspe.

He had been standing, but now she rose to her feet and led him to the divan.

Poor Bunny.

I wish I’d never seen her!

Bunny! Don’t forget the music she made you write!

I don’t give a damn about that! I can’t do it any more. I’m no good at all now. It’s all gone ... with her. If I only had her back!

Campaspe changed the subject abruptly: What’s Paul doing? He hasn’t been near me.

Harold’s father sent him another cheque; so he’s happy. All he needs, for happiness, Bunny added bitterly, is money. Drains received a cheque, too, and he’s gone off with the Duke.

Back to Ronald.

Everybody goes back to Ronald, Bunny remarked with some resentment. He bought a bulldog before he left town, he continued inconsequentially.

Whatever will he do with it?

Campaspe’s mind reverted to the dog-fight in the garden. There was a moment’s silence, during which she gazed intently at the Rousseau. Bunny’s expression was most lugubrious.

A perfectly divine tiger! she repeated at last, as if speaking to herself.

’paspe, I don’t believe you’ve been listening!

... heard every word.

Do you know what Zimbule is doing?

She rose slowly, still scrutinizing the painting which held her fancy.

No. What? Her manner was preoccupied.

Moving pictures. Angel. Apartment. Riverside Drive.

My dear Bunny, I believe you are a detective. Do you know who he is?

Yes, I do. His tone was hard and there was a challenge to interrogation in it. Nevertheless, Campaspe did not ask the question Bunny expected to hear.

Where is she living? she queried, lightly.

The Lombardy.

Campaspe smiled. I think I’ll send her a picture.

She won’t like it. She wouldn’t understand _these_. He swept his arm around in a vague gesture. It was characteristic of Bunny’s movements that they were never definite and forceful.

Oh! I wouldn’t send her one of these. I like them too well myself. I’ll send her the pictures I take down when I hang these.

I’m sure she has plenty of pictures. The boy was actually malicious.

No doubt, but one can always use a few more. Possibly she cares for change as much as I do.

* * * * *

Campaspe did not carry out her threat. Instead, she made a resolution to call on Zimbule in a day or so. She had heard the story of Harold’s disappearance, or as much of it as she needed to hear, from Alice. Her father, too, had been voluble. Where was Harold? She must know; of that these two obtuse members of her family were firmly convinced. As a matter of fact she did not, and she was making no effort to find out. When he was ready he would come to her, and, subsequently, she determined, her family should hear nothing whatever about the visit. Her father and Alice had almost put her through three degrees in their effort to drag the information out of her which they were certain that she possessed. It required very little of this kind of thing to satisfy Campaspe. Her manner assumed a crisp frigidity which her family had encountered on occasion in the past. They knew the meaning of it, and, for the moment, they withdrew their brisk importunities.

She had considered the possibility of taking Paul with her when she called on Zimbule. After a little reflection, she decided to go alone. She dressed very carefully for the adventure, wearing a smart, grey tailored costume which had just arrived from Redfern, and a black hat adorned with white wings. From her wrist dangled a cluster of crystal grapes, an inspiration of Marie El Khoury.

As her motor bore her into the unfamiliar neighbourhood, already she began to smile. She was in her best humour as she stood before the telephone operator in the elaborate hallway, which reminded her, somehow, of a scene in a Theodore Dreiser novel. She had, she was convinced, never before seen so much onyx all at once, such highly polished onyx, too. The electroliers of burnished gold, the tall gothic seats, with their rich, red velvet cushions, the purple uniforms and brass buttons of the black attendants, all played their parts in creating an effect in which she could perceive no single flaw. She recalled a happy Spanish proverb, If you want to go to the devil, at least go in a carriage!

Once she had been admitted to Zimbule’s apartment, she resumed her inquisitive appraisement, with some stupefaction at first, until she remembered that there was a trade called interior decorating. The room was Viennese (or München) in style--an amazingly acute originality for New York in 1922, Campaspe thought. The walls were brown, the furniture heavy but extremely picturesque, in the fascinatingly tortured shapes affected by modern Austrian or Bavarian cabinet-makers. Campaspe cried out with delight when she descried a porcelain stove in one corner. Over a particularly ornately constructed sofa hung a horizontal row of framed samplers, all the Scandinavian goddesses, Freya, Iduna, and the rest, done in red yarn. There were other pictures, bright amazing dancers by Schnackenberg, portraits of Maria Hagen, Peter Pathé, Anne Ehmans, and Lo Hesse, more remote conceits in black and white by Alastair, a poster for a baroque ballet by Mela Koehler, and nude, graceful pretties with cats by Raphael Kirchner. A great green and red and blue box of Baumgarten bonbons stood on a table covered with a square scarf which resembled an Italian futurist painting. Over the mantelpiece, on which two heavy vases of garnet and gold Bohemian glass seemed very much at home, hung a large picture in pure design by Jean Metzinger.

I wonder, Campaspe was thinking, if Zimbule lives up to this incongruous environment.

Zimbule, at last, came in. Her blond hair, turning at the roots, back to its natural colour, still framed her face in a nervous shock. She was wearing a négligé of coral sequins over Turkish trousers fashioned of gold cloth, and she plied a fan of ostrich plumes, unnaturally joined to prolong their length, of the colour of green jade. She was, Campaspe observed at once, as much at her ease as ever.

Campaspe! I’m so glad to see you.

You never come to me; so I had to come to you. You haven’t been near me since....

Out! The girl flung her fan across the room. I’m trying to forget him. Love! Nothing in it.

But.... Campaspe looked around.

Yes, Zimbule remarked blandly, crossing her legs as she seated herself on a great stuffed ottoman, I’ve capitalized my talents. Why not? They all do. Probably you did it yourself when you married--Campaspe did not even trouble to shake her head in denial of this. There was a sudden and complete metamorphosis. Do you know where Harold is?

No, Zimbule, I wish I did.

I hear she’s left him! Zimbule was eager.

You hear ... Campaspe permitted an expression of light surprise to play over her features, an expression not unnoted by Zimbule.

Yes. I met Cupid in the Park. He told me.

It is true. They are separated, but _he_ left _her_.

Zimbule ignored this echo of an event she had every desire to forget, and begged: Where is he, Campaspe? Help me find him.

I wish I could.... But tell me about yourself. You’re doing pictures?

Zimbule was frankly bored. She pulled great tufts of down out of a quilt of colibri feathers which she had drawn over her knee. Yes, she assented, I’m in the movies.

What company?

Zimbule O’Grady Incorporated. Capital $200,000. Zimbule yawned.

When do you start work?

Commenced a week ago. I’m not in the scenes today.

What is the picture called?

A Long Island Phryne.... Campaspe, please help me to find Harold.

I haven’t an idea where to look. She paused. That’s an interesting picture you have. She pointed to the Metzinger.

Yes, I got it because it has significant form. He’s sure to come to see you.

Campaspe adopted a more sympathetic tone. When he turns up, she said, I’ll let you know.

Promise? Zimbule, with an instinctive gesture, thrust her hands forwards, and on one of her fingers Campaspe caught a glimpse of a familiar ring, a sapphire intaglio, set most curiously, and engraved with a banyan-tree, an ape, a cobra, and the motto, Fronti nulla fides.

I promise. As soon as he comes to me I shall let you know.

She kissed the child.

Campaspe went out smiling, through the polished onyx hallway, past the black attendants, to her car, standing in the warm autumn sun. She consulted her watch. She would have time to get Han Ryner’s Les Paraboles cyniques, Jean de Tinan’s Penses-tu réussir, and P. J. Toulet’s La Jeune fille verte.

Go to Dorbon’s, she commanded her chauffeur, 561 Madison Avenue.

She settled herself comfortably back against the puce-colour cloth cushions as the car drove away from Riverside Drive.

_Chapter XI_

If Campaspe had conceived the idea of making a search for Harold, she would have been hard put to think of a way to go about it. He seemed, indeed, completely cut off both from his family and from the group which had been charged, for a few weeks, with his education. She pictured him, like a kitten in a bath-tub half-full of water, struggling in an alien element. As it happened, however, one of Campaspe’s most steadfast convictions was that nothing in life should be sought. People who were always seeking never found. Even if they discovered what they had been looking for, they discovered simultaneously that they really wanted something else. She held the theory that if Diogenes had stayed at home and attended to business, instead of prowling around Athens with a smelly lantern, he would have been visited by any number of honest men. Everything comes to him who waits might be a trite proverb, but experience had taught her that it was a true one. Therefore, she followed her invariable custom in such instances, dropping the matter from her mind, arranging her days as pleasantly as possible, and waiting with as much composure as she could assume, taking into consideration the fact that Harold was probably the one person alive that she cared very much about seeing.

October came to New York warm and golden. The early days of the month, indeed, resembled the sultry daughters of midsummer. Nevertheless, in spite of the unusual heat, Campaspe’s friends began to return from the country and from Europe. Every train, every boat, brought more of them back, and Campaspe’s mail grew heavier with invitations to lunch and dinner. Houses on Park and Madison Avenues opened their boarded eyelids and one encountered familiar and friendly motors in the Park. The Ritz, Voisin’s, Pierre’s, and the Crillon at one o’clock were again crowded with gay, brilliant groups. Mrs. Pollanger had even begun to plan a charity entertainment for the last days of the month. A bit of scandal enlivened, for Campaspe, the monotony of this accustomed renaissance. Amy, having lost her Paul, had, according to report, found her Paula. Laura, of course, always correct, had come back with the others, and had opened her house in East Sixty-eighth Street for a few weeks, long enough, at least, to afford her the opportunity of packing her boys off to school and arranging a few dinners before she went away again. The winter exodus was already a subject under discussion. Recurrence was a word that held few terrors for the members of Laura’s conventional world, but fourteen consecutive winters at Palm Beach seemed almost sufficient even to this group and there was some talk of a more novel hegira, a motor trip along the Italian Riviera or an excursion to Shepheard’s Hotel. Laura had begged Campaspe to join this comparatively radical party but, although Campaspe was still planning to go abroad a little later, she had no intention of travelling with any one else. Nor did the names of Spezia, Mentone, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, and Genoa intrigue her. In the back of her mind were the happier alternatives of Trebizond, Chypre, Stamboul, Saïgon, and Ronda. She did not explain this directly to Laura, however. She did not definitely, indeed, refuse to become a factor in Laura’s plan. It was part of her power and charm that she seldom said yes or no. At least, whenever she did say one or the other, nobody could be entirely certain that she meant it.

One day she went for a long course in her car, making several calls, stopping at Bergdorf and Goodman’s to order a gown, looking in at an exhibition at the Bourgeois Gallery, and dropping off at the little shop of T. Azeez, where she purchased a pair of ear-rings, clusters of sardonyx grapes to match the crystal pendants dangling from her wrist. On her return Frederika met her at the door with the news that Harold was in the garden. Throwing her sable scarf over a chair, she hastened out to join him.

Dear Harold, I _am_ glad to see you. Why haven’t you been here before?

She was shocked by the boy’s appearance. Deep grey circles had formed under his eyes. His cheek-bones seemed unnaturally prominent. He was thinner. And, Campaspe noted at once, he suggested, as usual, the dominant note of pathos. It was the one quality she had never been quite able to dissociate from him, or from any other very young person, for that matter. One never begins to be happy until one is thirty, she reflected, and then, sometimes, one only begins.

He did not seem able to muster sufficient poise to respond immediately to her greeting, and so she asked Frederika to bring out tea, and she moved freely about the garden, hoping to put him at his ease by the apparent carelessness of her manner. Her beloved Eros still aimed his bow at random and the nymph still lay prostrate on the marble sward, but the fountain had ceased to function and the basin was choked with yellow and red leaves, discarded by a neighbour’s maple-tree. The pavement, too, was strewn with leaves, and the aged tortoise had burrowed under a heap of them in one corner. It was a setting replete with melancholy.

I wasn’t sure you would want me, Harold replied hesitantly, at last.

He _was_ pathetic.

Not want you! Of course, I wanted you. How, conceivably, could you get that idea?

You are her sister....

Bosh! I didn’t arrange that.

She seated him in a chair beside her, adjacent to the table, on which Frederika was laying out pots and bowls and cups, slices of lemon and slim sandwiches.

Frederika, Campaspe said, will you please run around the corner to the grocery and order some gin. We’re all out.... She turned to Harold: Lemon or cream?

Lemon, please.

His hand shook, she observed, as he took the cup, but he was beginning to look more comfortable, appeared to be surer of his ground.

You’ve seen her? he questioned Campaspe eagerly. She’s told you?

I’ve scarcely seen anybody else, it seems to me, looking back. She has been here nearly every day. She is sure that I know where you live.

You won’t tell her, he pleaded.

I don’t know.

But you will....

Naturally, I won’t tell her.

It was awful, Campaspe! he groaned.

A melodrama. It sounded incredible. But don’t blame Alice. _She_ didn’t do it.... She isn’t clever enough to think of it, she added.

But she knew all about it. I blame her for that.

She loves you. Campaspe’s manner was as simple as it was possible for her to make it.

Even after....

Yes. She put her hand on his wrist. I don’t want you to go back to her, Harold, that is I want you to do what you really _feel_ like doing, but it is the truth. She loves you. Of that I am certain.

Campaspe sipped her tea and nibbled a slender sandwich. Harold looked at her intently, searching her eyes.

Campaspe.... I don’t believe I’ve ever loved ... Alice. It was the first time that he had spoken the name and the effort was apparent. I’ve been a fool. Sometimes, up in Provincetown, sitting on the beach, I have wondered if it didn’t all come about--the marriage, I mean--because she was _your_ sister.

But, Harold, you met her first.

It’s very difficult to explain. I don’t believe I can explain. What I want you to try to understand is that when I married Alice I had some kind of subconscious feeling that I was marrying _you_.

Harold, you delightful boy! Her expression was quizzical.

I don’t know myself! I don’t know myself! he moaned. That’s the whole trouble.

You’re young, boy.

So is Bunny. So is Paul. So is Ronald. So is--he hesitated again--Zimbule, but they do.

She remained silent.

Will I ever learn to understand myself?

I think so.

It’s very hard. I’ve been trying to get on, to do something. I’m not used to it, but it seemed the only decent thing to do. He broke off suddenly and asked, Do you know how I was brought up? Do you know about my Aunt Sadi?

Alice has told me something. I think I understand.

The best woman in the world ... after you. It’s not her fault. It’s just my misfortune.

Campaspe brought him back. What have you been trying to do, Harold?

I don’t want to talk about that ... ever. It hasn’t been a success. I’ve got to begin all over.

What do you _want_ to do?

It isn’t so much that. The question is what can I do?

Can’t you go back to your Aunt? Campaspe hoped for a negative reply.

Yes. She wants me. She wrote me a letter asking me to come back. But what would be the good of that? That would mean going back to what I began with and staying there. Probably I could never get away again.... He stared at her with some embarrassment for a moment before he said: I’d thought of the stage.

Her reaction to this was direct: But you’re such a bad actor!

He groaned again.

I don’t know that that makes any great difference, Campaspe reminded herself aloud. Then suddenly, she exclaimed: I have it! The very thing! The movies. You have a good appearance, and if you were a good actor you couldn’t get into the pictures. Into the pictures you shall go!

Do you mean...?

She cut him off: No, I don’t own a company, but I know some one who does. She tossed the name lightly out: Zimbule.

He rose to his feet. I couldn’t do that, he said.

Why not? she asked, her voice as even as usual. Why not? Don’t be silly any longer, Harold. You are permitting your youthful pride and prejudice to govern you too much. You must take things just a little more as they come....

But....

Try to realize, Harold, that some day you will get over some of your notions; you will even compromise with a few that you don’t get over. Even Nana--Campaspe began to laugh--, even Nana, disgusted with ... well, with something new to her, reasoned that one should never dispute about tastes and colours because one never could be sure what one would like in the future.... And there is the story of the ship captain, related by Cunninghame-Graham. You see this water, he said. All my life I have loved water, ... good air, good water and good bells, the proverb says, and yet, when I have been in an old sailing-ship out in the eastern seas, and when the water had run short been put upon two pints a day for drinking and cooking, I have stand round the barrel, and though it smelled just like the drainings of a tanyard, counted the drops when it was poured into my pannikin as if they had been gold.... Si, señor, ... that is I mean, ... how do you put it, eh?--it is not good to say fountain--out of your basin I shall never drink ... eh, no señor.

Harold wavered. But will she want me?

That we must find out, was Campaspe’s reply.

After he had departed, a half-hour later, Campaspe strolled back into the house and on to the drawing-room. A day or so earlier she had sent for some music by Bach, in order to satisfy a certain intellectual curiosity. Bach! Bach! Bach! She met the name, enshrined in extravagant encomiums, in all the writings about music that she read, but where was Bach played? Who played Bach? She was beginning to believe that Bach was one of the veiled gods, and she wanted to settle the question for herself. Among the Etruscans certain of the most powerful deities were never seen by the people. The priests referred to these hidden idols as Dii Involuti, veiled gods. Their words were frequently quoted, but the gods themselves remained invisible. Certain savants have derived from this fact the explanation that the Etruscans may have held transcendental views in regard to the invisibility of the true god, but at least one commentator, whose work had come under Campaspe’s eternally roving eye, had held that there might be a simpler interpretation of the phenomenon. The gods, he hinted, were concealed because they were no longer fit to look at. Rude tribes had carved them. Supplanted by more sightly idols, the only possible manner in which reverence might be preserved for them was to keep them behind screens, so that no comparisons could be made. And, as they were never shown, it was quite simple for the priests to aver that their splendour was so divine that ordinary senses would be overpowered by it.

In the temple of Isis at Sais, the inscription read: I am that which has been, which is, and which shall be, and no one has yet lifted the veil which hides me. It is highly probable, thought this same sapient commentator, that the goddess was _black_, and as the fairer race mingled with the darker in Egypt this primitive Nubian countenance, if exhibited, would no longer inspire reverence, and so a curtain was hung before her altar. The Ark of Moses, probably concealing objects which had lost their attraction for the eye, two scrawled stones, the bones of Joseph, a pot of manna, and the serpent-staff which is said to have blossomed, carried this veil into the wilderness. To this very day, indeed, the Ark is hidden. Twice the veil of the Temple has been rent: allegorically at the crucifixion and actually by Titus, but no Ark was discovered. The Jews, then, must have been saying their prayers before a veil which concealed nothing. In later days, as scepticism grew, there were those who had no desire to share the deceit practised on the Jews. There is, for example, the case of the celebrated bambino of the Aracœli Church at Rome. Alleged to have been carved by a pilgrim out a piece of wood from a tree on the Mount of Olives and painted by St. Luke while the pilgrim was asleep, this effigy is now bestowed in an Ark, but, occasionally, visitors are permitted a view of a part of the face. Flat, blackened, and rouged, this is a thing of ugliness, but it is set in jewels and the walls are covered with pictures of the miracles it has performed, pictures which have attracted the faithful in such numbers that at one time it is said to have received more fees than all the doctors of Rome.... Campaspe seated herself before the piano, opened the pages of the Wohltemperirtes Clavier, and struck a chord....

_Chapter XII_

Harold had been working in the studio three days in the second week of November. It would be more accurate to say that he had reported for work, had made up and dressed for his part, but he had been kept waiting in his dressing-room, a tiny chamber, separated from the adjoining cubicles by thin walls of rough pine boards, which rose ten feet in the air and then suddenly terminated while yet some appreciable distance from the ceiling. A pine shelf served as a dressing-table, over which hung a mirror, framed in zinc, outlined with a blaze of electric lights. This was one in a long row of similar rooms on the second floor of a mammoth building which looked as if it had been put up over night and which probably could be destroyed by a brisk fire in considerably less time even than that.

A red and white sign vocatively adjured against smoking, and a poster of Zimbule in her costume as the Long Island Phryne, a veil of orange tulle and a rope of pearls, hung on the wall of this room, as it hung, Harold soon discovered, on all the other walls of this vast factory, for factory was what it seemed to him, but he had not yet caught a glimpse of Zimbule herself. Her dressing-room was located on the opposite side of the building and was approached by a separate staircase. He had taken it for granted that she would be working in the studio below and that was primarily the reason why he had refrained from wandering about downstairs, although he had been encouraged to do so by various actors, camera-men, and stage-hands, who had lounged into his room out of curiosity, ostensibly to light their cigarettes, or to ask the time. He had not taken advantage of their invitation to roam; instead, he sat alone in his room, waiting ... for what? he wondered.

Campaspe had oiled the wheels. He had found it incredibly simple to become a cabot of the silver sheets, an epithet for his new profession dropped by one of his visitors, an assistant director named Rex MacGregor, a lad about seventeen years old, whose thin white face was profusely sprinkled with pimples, and who wore ridiculously tight shepherd’s plaid trousers over his extremely thin legs, a waistcoat which exposed about as much of his shirt as the similar garment of a Spanish matador, and a coat in which the pockets were cut at angles which would have thrown a cubist painter into a delirium. Harold had called one morning, following instructions, on the casting director, and when he encountered that superb individual, with his shirt-sleeves rolled back to the shoulder, exposing the lumps of muscle which distorted the contour of his hairy arms, a huge black cigar between his teeth, sitting before a desk littered with papers and stills, he had not felt encouraged. This ruffian apparently had forgotten that Harold had been announced, and after leaving him standing for half an hour or so while he conversed, in a language of which Harold could only understand one word in ten, with a blonde lady, massive and buxom in the style of 1896, the figure tightly corseted and swelling with curves like a Bartlett pear, he turned suddenly and savagely on the boy and asked him his business. Who are you and what d’ye want? he growled. But when Harold had repeated his name, the man’s manner considerably altered. His face became wreathed in equivocal, nay blandiloquent, smiles and, without a single further question, he pushed a long sheet of printed paper over towards Harold, and asked him to sign it. The man never laughed, Harold observed, and even his smile he controlled in a curious and disgusting way with his tongue. There was something about this smile, indeed, that Harold did not quite like. Nevertheless, before he signed the document, which he took to be a contract, his natural honesty compelled him to explain that this was his first job in pictures, that he was wholly inexperienced, that he hoped, etc. But the casting director, alternately biting his cigar brutally and removing it to give vent to one of his enigmatical and unsatisfactory smiles, waved away this attempt at reason with a That’s all right. I know. I know, pronouncing these I knows with a downward inflection which gave them, perhaps, a richer meaning. Sign here. He indicated a dotted line and Harold signed.

A little later, when alone, it occurred to him to read the document and he discovered, to his amazement, that his salary was to be $400 a week and that he was engaged to play leads. He was employed, apparently, by the Zimbule O’Grady Film Company, Incorporated, to appear in a picture entitled The Passionate Flapper. He endeavoured to satisfy his conscience by assuring himself that he owed this turn in his fortunes to Campaspe, but his uneasy conscience retorted that Campaspe had arranged his easy ingress only through the influence of Zimbule. How could he, he asked himself, accept the position under these humiliating circumstances? The fact remained, however, that he had signed the contract, and a certain clause provided definitely that in case the contract should be broken by either party, a large sum of money was to be forfeited. It was too late, then, to listen to his conscience. Besides he was not sure. Perhaps Campaspe had friends among the directors of the company. It was possible, indeed, that she, herself, in spite of her denial, had put money into the project. It was like her to wish to help Zimbule and, if she had bought stock with this intention, it would be unlike her to seek any recognition for her good deed. As the days passed, he grew more uncertain still. Zimbule had made no effort to approach him. If my contract had been arranged through her she would have come to gloat, he argued, or she would send for me. As a final mode of relieving his tortured mind, he determined to make good. If I do satisfactory work in this picture, he reasoned, if I do what I have to do well, it doesn’t matter who got me the job. In any case, then, I will be earning my salary. With casuistry of this nature he held daily communication with himself.

Passionately, he wanted to make good for his own sake, for Campaspe’s sake, even for Alice’s sake. He would show Alice that he could get along on his own. He had to confess to himself, however, that as yet he was not on his own, that in taking this position he had been obliged to make as great a sacrifice of his principles as if he had accepted his father’s shameful offer. Principles! He was beginning to wonder if he had any left! And then alleviation came again in the thought that what he was now doing he was doing independently, of his own free will. He had not been tricked and driven into this corner. He had listened to Campaspe’s arguments and, with his eyes open, he had walked voluntarily into it. If he succeeded, Alice might never know, perhaps, how the chance had come to him. She might even credit him with initiative in the matter.

As for Campaspe, she was more in his thoughts than any one else. Without professing to understand her or her motives, he thought of her as a consistently kind and sympathetic person. She was more than she appeared to be in the somewhat ribald crowd with which she so strangely associated, of that he was sure. His sympathy for her, as the weeks had gone by, had deepened into a kind of affection, in which, even he, with his naïve reasoning powers, recognized a filial element. In some respects, he realized, he regarded her somewhat as he might have regarded his mother, but this, for him, who had never known his mother, was a dangerous affection, the most dangerous of all. Again, the inexplicable tangle confused his thinking: how, inconceivably, he had married Alice with the idea of Campaspe paramount. And there was much more that he did not understand at all.

He wondered if Zimbule would show resentment, turn spiteful. Towards her, from her point of view, he had, indubitably, behaved in the shabbiest possible manner. She had gravitated towards him naturally. She did everything naturally. Campaspe was right: Zimbule was a little animal. Why had he rejected her attentions so forcibly, so rudely? He could not tell. He knew only that he was subject to extravagant reactions, insane impulses. Everybody around him seemed to take life as a matter of course. He, alone, seemed to regard it with suspicion, a suspicion, he was horrified to discover, which seemed to aggrandize with every new opportunity. He was afraid of life; that was it, afraid of life! Nothing seemed to be easy for him. Another, perhaps, even more thin-skinned than himself, but less obstinate, less timid, would have put up with his father’s stupid joke, have fallen in with his father’s wishes. Paul would have done so, he reflected. To Paul, with his sense of irony, one course would have seemed as bad or as good as another. There was, apparently, a great gulf fixed between any two generations, the way people have lived and the way they live now. Youth must bridge this gulf. Others did; why couldn’t he? Why to all intents and purposes did he still belong to his Aunt Sadi’s generation rather than to Paul’s? Paul seemed to have nothing in his nature which resisted, which _revolted_, while he seemed to have nothing else but resistance and revolt in his nature. He could accept nothing unaccustomed without an internal struggle. What was it: pride or stupidity which held him in its vice, so that he felt unable to turn in any direction without a sense that he was shaming some older and more honourable intention? He did not know. All he knew was that he was that way, and he had begun to realize that, at bottom, no one changes. As one is born one is ... always. The only growth possible lay on the side of increasing comprehension of oneself. He did not understand himself, or Alice, or Campaspe, but Campaspe he accepted, as he accepted his aunt and Persia Blaine. These three, alone, in the world with which he had yet come into contact, did not arouse him to resistance. These three and one other. Paul, he could understand after a fashion, and Zimbule, a sheet of flame burning a path before her desire, he understood only too well. In the past he had avoided this flame, only, it would appear, to walk voluntarily into it in the present. And the question he asked himself, so much had his experience already taught him, was whether it was worth while to struggle against this flame any longer, whether it would not be better to.... But did Zimbule still cherish her old desire? That doubt assailed him fifty times a day and it had lodged in his mind afresh when he heard a voice down the corridor calling, Mr. Proowit! Mr. Proowit! He started guiltily as he bade the boy come in, and he was in a perspiration of dread and fear when Rex entered to tell him that he was wanted at once in the studio below.

He quickly rubbed a little more flesh paint into his cheeks--the first day, following the advice of some ancient thespian, he had used yellow powder, but a lad in the next room who visited Harold to borrow towels, rabbits’ feet, matches, soap, and eyebrow pencils, had informed him categorically that the employment of yellow powder was obsolete. This ain’t a Pearl White serial, he explained. Them days is over.... Harold drew on his dinner coat, examining himself once more in the mirror, catching therein a glimpse of the impertinent and grinning Rex gazing over his shoulder, and then started out.

As he entered the enormous studio, crowded with actors, stage-hands, carpenters building sets in various corners, producing a deafening racket with their hammers, he felt as though everybody were staring at him. As a consequence he could scarcely walk steadily. Rex guided him to the proper set and once he was there he found that no one was aware of his presence at all. The director, the camera-man, and the art director were in the midst of a heated argument. It can’t be done, the camera-man was yelling. I ain’t never done it before and anything I ain’t never done nobody can do. I tell you it can, declared the art director, with the finality of a person who knew. Well, it won’t be. See! put in the director, setting his square jaw high. Not if I have my way. And I’m going to have it. It’s my job to arrange the sets. What do you think I’m getting paid more’n anybody else around here for? To argue with a bunch of fish? By God, I’ll see you all in hell if you don’t do what I want!

At this seemingly crucial moment--to Harold the men seemed on the verge of murder--, round a corner of the scenery, set to represent a moving picture art director’s idea of a somewhat flashy Parisian apartment, Harold saw Zimbule approaching, leading a leopard by a silver chain. She was wearing a costume fashioned entirely of strands of rhine-stones. On her head waved a forest of yellow feathers, secured in a crown of brilliants. Her bare arms were encased nearly to the elbow in a succession of circles of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. On her bare right ankle--her feet were casketed in sandals--, she wore three more of these circles. There was a heavy impression of muguet in the air.

Are you all cuckoo? the girl demanded of the belligerent group. This ain’t a bull-fight or a base-ball game! What d’ye think y’are, she inquired shrilly of the art director, Babe Ruth?

Zimbule passed the silver chain, with the leopard attached, to her Negro maid, who followed her. The men were apologetic.

I was jest tellin’ ’em it couldn’t be done, explained the camera-man.

That’s right, Zimbule sneered. You tell ’em, Sweeney, you’re the biggest. Suddenly she saw Harold. Hello, she said, in a friendly enough tone. So you’re here.

As she walked towards him he advanced to meet her, thinking at the same time that never before had she appeared so beautiful. He hesitated for a second as to whether or not he should offer his hand and she, observing his confusion, held out her own. Curiously, she too seemed a little ill at ease.

I hope, he stammered, that you’ll find me all right. You know--he patted his face with his handkerchief; even in November the studio was a hot-house and he was perspiring freely--, you know how little experience I’ve had.

She regarded him quizzically, but when she spoke her tone was careless. I hope so, she echoed, her mind apparently elsewhere. Then, more seriously, Of course you will. Even the wops can do it. Never look at the camera. Look at me. I’ll _make_ you act.

Scene, Miss O’Grady, please, cried the director.

Zimbule took Harold’s arm and propelled him into the flashy Parisian apartment. Now the lights, full on his face, were blinding, suffocating. The strands of gems which hung from Zimbule’s shoulders and waist flashed blue and white messages to his eyes. He seemed to have lost his vision. His head began to ache and, in the intensity of the heat, he could scarcely breathe. Behind the camera he vaguely caught a glimpse of a knot of bystanders, men and women in evening dress, waiting, probably, to appear in some ball or fête scene. Zimbule did not seem to be conscious of their presence.

I haven’t the least idea what I am to do, Harold whispered in desperation. I haven’t seen the scenario.

I haven’t either, she laughed. It doesn’t make any difference. That’s what that stiff is paid for. He’ll tell us what to do.

Now we’ll take the temptation scene, the director shouted, in a tone suggesting that he was advising a crowd of ten thousand people in Madison Square Garden to vote for Debs. Hey! Cut that! This to the carpenters who had now begun to pound at double the rate they had hitherto employed. Rex dashed off to the further end of the room to repeat the injunction. Soon there was comparative silence, only about as much noise as in the Stock Exchange on a fairly busy day. The director continued: Harold--Harold was a trifle startled by this familiar approach from a man he had never seen before--, you are alone with Dolly, the passionate flapper. She is determined to seduce you, and you are almost ready to yield when you see that picture of the madonna on the wall. The picture reminds you of your good wife, calls you back to your senses, and you cast the vamp off. Now, try it.

Harold sat down, as directed, and Zimbule approached him.

Register the beginning of passion! You are fascinated by the sigh-reen, screamed the director, through a megaphone.

Harold had the air of a man who has just been told that he will die within the month. On the arm of his chair, Zimbule smoothed his hair with her right hand. He felt her warm breath on his cheek. His heart was beating violently in an irregular rhythm that Stravinsky would have given his right ear to have invented.

Nothing like it! NO-THING LIKE IT! drawled the director in a hoarse wail of dissatisfaction. Passion! PASSION!!! You aren’t saved yet. You haven’t seen the picture YET! Snuggle! SNUGGLE!

Harold tried desperately hard to snuggle. He put one arm tentatively and awkwardly around Zimbule’s waist. With valiant cozenage she fell limply into his lap. Now the gods had not given Harold any talent for acting, but he was not entirely bereft of natural feeling. Quite unexpectedly he began to sense the spirit of the scene.

More like it! shouted the director. Now, look at the madonna and think of your poor little wife at home. Harold obeyed. The blood rushed to his face.

Push her away!