How like a god, p.16
How Like a God, page 16
“I thought—I thought—” you stammered.
You stopped. You couldn’t say that.
“Who is it?”
“As if you didn’t know,” she smiled.
Good god, she was being kittenish about it.
“I don’t know,” you said. “Who is it?”
“Victor, of course. You really didn’t know? You must have. I’ve been as silly as a schoolgirl.”
She laughed again; why did she have to sit there and laugh like a simpleton? Then instantly she was serious; she looked at you gravely:
“I’m so happy, Bill, but don’t think I haven’t thought of you. I know this interferes with your plans for the summer, and I suppose it’s ungrateful, you’ve been so generous—”
She made quite a speech about your generosity.
You lost your head and almost made a scene there in the restaurant. Your feeling that you had been betrayed was surely not entirely unreasonable. This was the twentieth century and you claimed no patriarchal rights, but after all you were her brother, had been granted all the privileges and prerogatives and expectations of a brother, and certainly consultation on the choice of a husband was one of them. She might have asked your advice if only to ignore it. You pretended to no power of veto, but by heaven, if you had it you would certainly use it on Victor Knowlton—a half-baked writer and lecturer, coarse-grained, opinionated, most of his success due to his questionable methods of persuading presidents of women’s clubs that it was worth five hundred dollars to hear him spout for an hour about nothing. You had heard curious tales about him which had amused you at the time, but which, remembered now, convinced you that he was no man to marry your sister.
Jane, at first apparently amazed at your violence, assumed a patient and soothing forbearance which infuriated you. She offered no defense; if this petulant child has bruised himself, she seemed to say, I shall not aggravate the wound, I must humor him, poor kid. It was maddening.
“Very well,” you exclaimed, “if you will have it, yes, that’s what I mean. No man is expected to be a saint, but neither should he be a promiscuous pig, if he expects a decent woman to marry him.”
“I don’t think I need defend Victor against the charge of being a promiscuous pig,” said Jane slowly. “That’s a little strong isn’t it? Anyway it’s his own affair, just as my own checkered past is mine. And from your own standard you must admit it’s decent of him to want to marry me after having had me for nearly a year. Of course it’s true that I’ve argued against it, but now that we’ve decided to have children—”
You stared at her. This couldn’t possibly be your sister, your dear Jane. This was some mocking harlot.…
You wanted to yell at her, shout some insult at her, but you felt suddenly weak, done in, and frightened. You felt also that you were incapable of movement, which was just as well, for you felt a desire to lay your hands on her, choke her perhaps, or strike her in the face, not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to move her, to make her feel your outraged virility.… She deserved it. Had she not encouraged you to believe that she felt about the family as you did, that it was the closest and most important of all human relations; had she not permitted you to spend considerable sums of money on her and the girls which you could very well have used for other purposes; had she not treacherously pretended to a complete confidence and intimacy, all the while—nearly a year, she said—withholding from you her vulgar—
Discussing, probably, with him, her generous brother.…
Well, it s all over, that’s that, you told yourself, standing on the narrow Fulton Street sidewalk, after she had parted from you at the restaurant door and hurried off to the subway. Nothing tragic, of course, but deeply annoying and irritating—and revealing a hard selfishness, along with other weaknesses and impurities, where you would least expect to find them. An experience presumably shared by all brothers who have some regard for their natural obligations and try to do the right thing.
You wandered aimlessly up Broadway. You might as well telephone that agent that you wouldn’t go up there tomorrow; what the devil could you do with a house on top of a hill with four bedrooms? What was there to do anywhere, with anything?
Monday there was a letter from her, suggesting that you get the Packard, or send for it, saying that as it had really been meant for the four of you she couldn’t very well keep it any longer, especially in view of your dislike for Victor, which she ardently hoped would disappear when you knew him better; and anyway, he already had a little touring car and there was no sense in owning two. You replied briefly that the roadster was hers; she could do as she liked with it, give it to Margaret and Rose or sell it for junk, it was none of your business.
You had the idea that even if she had told the truth regarding the past year, marriage need not be inevitable, with its finality and permanency. She would tire of him, or he of her, and then a generous brother with a sense of responsibility and money enough to buy motor cars and rent summer homes would be again welcomed and appreciated. You would see her once more and put it up to her: she didn’t like the idea of marriage, she had argued against it, then don’t do it. There may be no children. It would be easy to persuade her that it would at least be more sensible to wait.…
You were still turning it over in your mind when a few days later, in the morning mail, that thing came saying that they were married. It was like them not to use a plain dignified engraved announcement. It was on some kind of art paper, purple or blue, and the lettering was so cockeyed you could hardly read it: something about Jane Sidney and Victor Knowlton, having sacrificed to the gods at the City Hall on May twenty-first, would be legally at home.…
Any man who expects to get anything from a woman is a fool, or if he does it’s just an accident. No matter who she is, she takes what she wants, and a fat lot she cares about you. Essentially they’re barbarians, animals, they’ll tear you to pieces in an instant and think nothing of it, like a jackal, and then lie down and stretch and lick themselves, and expect to be patted by the next one that comes along. It’s too bad they don’t do it literally, devour you, then it could happen only once. Erma would agree with you all right; she’s at least honest about it. Mrs. Davis didn’t hurt you any maybe; she used you; what did she give you? A son; a hell of a favor that was, he ate a dozen dinners at your expense and made an ass of you with that joke of a statue—though he may not have meant it—and he’s spent over seven thousand dollars of your money hanging around Paris and Rome probably cracking more jokes about rich boobs who don’t know anything about art.
Lucy—Lucy wasn’t a woman, she was Lucy. It would have been the same with her—no. No! That was like a raindrop that never falls from the cloud—is whirled upward instead, to float above the atmosphere eternally, finding no home; or a flower bud, congealed still folded, preserved in a crystal, lifeless without having lived.
The most savage and insolent feast though was that of little Millicent, in that room with the afternoon sun blazing at the window, long ago, as she went silently back and forth collecting things from your closet and dresser and piling them on a chair, and finally turned and came towards you.…
Abandoned, bitter, with nothing anywhere in reach to hold onto, you were not surprised that the old familiar fantasy returned; you accepted it, and felt her hands again for the first time in many months, the night after Jane left you standing in front of the restaurant.
J
He turned and walked over the strip of dingy carpet to the foot of the second flight of stairs. Listlessly, almost automatically, he moved; it would seem that purely by chance did he turn this way and not that. His hand slid along the rail and did not leave it, though the hall’s light was ample to see the way.
Above was semi-darkness, drifting down, almost to the foot of the stairs like a threatening fog. He hesitated before it, dully, enveloped in silence. Nothing could be more ordinary or familiar to him, yet he hesitated, feeling a strange new quality in the dim dreariness.
That was the time to fight it, he told himself, so plainly that he thought it was muttered words, though his lips did not move.
Then you might have beaten it and come free.
X
It came and went, capriciously; sometimes overwhelming you with a sudden fierceness sweeping aside all thought of resistance, and again, though invited and welcomed by you, approaching timidly and cautiously, now advancing now receding, hiding in the corners of your fancy, mistrustful and shy of capture.
It would rarely come more than once in a day or night, though there were times—for instance, that evening after Erma came to New York. That was startlingly vivid, twice, though it’s hard to see how it could have had anything to do with Erma, unless it was that she reminded you of the old days in Cleveland when you experienced it so often that it was like lacing up your shoes or buttoning your trousers.
Erma would have loved being told that the first effect of her return was to sharpen your memory of little Millicent!
At that she wouldn’t care a hang. It would amuse her. Has there ever been anyone about whom she cared that way? Lord no. You never saw Pierre, but you’ve heard her talk about him. She would yawn and say something clever about a psychical intrusion, as she did the time she found that violinist wearing rose petals in a silk belt around his waist under his shirt, the damn fool. It was like her to tell you about that, with no apology except to say that it was too good to keep.
If you had known her as well as you do now, what would you have done that morning when she informed you the time had come? It is difficult to remember how much you did then know. Probably it wouldn’t have mattered, for you were ready to grab at anything; if she had happened to postpone her decision another week or two you might have followed Larry to France and got your head shot off.
Jane had been married nearly a year; you had decided to tolerate Victor, but you saw them infrequently, partly because you felt that Margaret and Rose were trying to use you for a good thing and you didn’t intend to stand for it. Especially Rose. Jane, trying to manage a baby and a job at the same time, was too busy to notice it.
You sat there that night in Erma’s elaborate bedroom, wondering what was up. It was her first big dinner and dance at the house on Riverside Drive, and had been marvelously successful; she could do that sort of thing so easily, almost without thought. You supposed that she would tire of it in a year, or at least as soon as the war was over; she would probably return to Europe. Why had she asked you to stay after the mob had left? If she wanted to see you alone why couldn’t she have made it last night or tomorrow? What did she want anyway?
The door from her dressing-room opened, and she entered, fresh and charming with no trace of the night’s fatigue, wearing a soft yellow negligee, just the color of her hair, and slippers the same, with her white ankles showing beneath the hem as she crossed to you. As if she had done it a thousand times before, she seated herself on your lap, looked directly at you, her eyes bright and soft and intense, and stroked your cheek with her hand.
“Poor Bill, you’re tired,” she said.
You were somewhat disconcerted. During the four months that had passed since her return she had been most friendly, but had given no indication of an ungovernable longing for your person. She had once or twice observed casually that she must some time have a long business talk with you, but her present costume and position seemed ill-adapted to that purpose. Through the stuff of your trousers you could feel plainly that the negligee was all.
“Not so very,” you said.
“Neither am I,” she replied, “put your arm around me.” You held her close, at first mechanically, like a conscientious proxy; then, approaching excitement, on your own account.
“Kiss me,” she whispered, “your arms are so good!” You could feel her hand at the back of your head, the spread fingers pressed hard against you, beneath the hair.
Where the deuce did she get those pajamas? Had they been Pierre’s? They were right there in her dressing-room, though she had moved to that house only a week before—and seemed new. A marvelous soft white thick silk. She declared she had bought them that very day, and it is quite possible. At any rate you almost felt tender toward her for that whiteness, having always detested colored pajamas.
A strange night that was. Like watching yourself from the top of a mountain, too far away to see clearly.…
In the morning it astonished you that she arose when you did and insisted that you have fruit and coffee with her; and there, at the breakfast table, she announced her opinion that it would be a good idea to get married. You were already so confused by the sudden shift in status, and so tired and sleepy, that at first you regarded this idea as an additional and unnecessary complication.
“Since we’ve known each other over twelve years,” you said, “that suggestion, at this precise moment, is open to a highly vulgar construction.”
“Not unflattering to you,” she replied. Her eyes and voice were clear; she looked thoroughly rested and refreshed.
“I can’t think why you propose it.” You drew yourself another cup of coffee from the enormous silver percolator. “Already I’m completely your slave and likely to be so forever. I don’t forget that a long time ago, before I knew you very well, I made the mistake of believing that you were in love with me.”
“How funny for you and me to be talking of love,” she observed.
“After the derision we’ve heaped on it. Yes.”
“That was just conversation. I mean it’s so unnecessary, it won’t get us anywhere. We already know everything that counts between us, we know a lot more than we’d be willing to admit. We understand each other.”
“I’m damned if I understand why you want to marry me.”
“Oh. Well. Ask the flower why it opens to the bee, or if you prefer, the lady-salmon why she swims a thousand miles to that particular creek. If she’s properly brought up she’ll tell you, but it won’t be true.”
“More conversation,” you said drily. “Ordinarily I’m ready to play, but you seem to be making all the rules. What do you want me around for? As your trusted adviser it looks to me as if you’re making a bad bargain.”
“Council of perfection.” She lit a cigarette and was lost in smoke. “Show me a better one. I’m tired of being Veuve Basset. I want to invest in a husband.”
“By god you’re frank about it.”
“You ask why, and you insist. Perhaps I’m still curious about you, which would be a triumph. I watched you once fastidiously refuse a prize that most men would have given an eye for. Or, maybe, I merely want a screen inside my bedroom door, in case the wind blows it open.…Heavens, there is no why. What if tonight at dinner the oyster on your fork suddenly twists itself upright to glare at you and demand, why am I selected for this honor?”
You lifted your coffee cup, whipped into silence by her smiling brutality; and doubtless you looked whipped, for she pushed back her chair and came around the table and kissed you on top of the head.
“Bill dear, I do want to be your wife,” she said.
All day long at the office, and the night and day following, you pretended to consider what you were going to do, knowing all the time that it was already decided.
You had supposed that she would want a starched and gaudy wedding, now that she had entered for the big show in the metropolis, and were relieved when she said it was too much bother, that was for peasants and titled sheep. On a fine October morning, less than a month after the breakfast betrothal, in a dark little parsonage parlor somewhere in South Jersey, with its funny curtained window overlooking a white church across a bit of green lawn, with Dick and Nina Endicott as witnesses, Erma made her marital investment. You and she went on with the car and chauffeur into Virginia, and later clear to the gulf, while Dick and Nina returned to New York by train.
Unquestionably there is something in you that has always kept Erma just this side of satiety; of satisfaction too, but that is something her restless appetite will find nowhere unless in the grave. A dozen times you have been convinced that at last she had cut loose, that finally she had done with poking around inside you and had abandoned you to fate and the weather, only to find her back and at it again, after a more or less prolonged interval, like a pertinacious terrier suspecting one more rat in that exasperating hole. Piqued, she enjoys her defeat and proclaims it to you, a trick which at first caused you some uneasiness, for she is clever enough to know that the words you do not pronounce are the ones to listen for. You too have pretended to listen for them, but that’s a little joke everyone plays on himself. Never fear, they’ll stay where they belong, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.
The first interval, at least the first you were aware of, came soon after the end of the war—the spring following the armistice, when New York was still full of returned captains and colonels being painfully and violently deflated. That fellow who worked for months sorting out reports and making summaries for you had commanded a regiment at Chateau-Thierry. He was a nice chap, but so dumb you had to send him back to Nicholson for replacement. Later he went out to Carrton, with Larry; only Larry came back before long and began to surprise all of you.
It was Larry who introduced Major Barth to you and Erma; brought him out one evening for bridge. There was nothing impressive about him, except his size—almost massive, well-proportioned, with a little blond moustache that looked like a pair of tiny pale commas pasted couchant, pointing outwards, against his youthful pink skin. You would not have noticed him at all, among the crowd, but for the subsequent comedy.
