VI
One of my treasures is a worn road map of Northwestern France. Starting from Paris, a line traces our intended course, down the Seine to Rouen, across country to Calais. It is a clear line. I had a ruler to work with, and the map was laid out on the marble top of a table in the little Café de la Rotonde. Also starting from Paris is another line, which shows the path we did follow. It is less dearly drawn, traced for the most part on a book balanced on my knee. Stars mark the places where we stopped, at night. From St. Germain-en-Laye, we doubled back to St. Denis, then a tangent off to Amiens, a new angle to Rheims. It stops abruptly at Moret-sur-Loing.
I can command no literary form to do justice to that Odyssey – it led me unto those high mountains from which one can see the wondrous land of love.
What did we do? I remember hours on end when we trudged along with scarcely a word. I remember running a race with her through the forest of Saint Germain. I remember a noontime under the great elm in the Jardin of a village café. There was delectable omelette and Madame la patronne chattered amiably about her children and chickens and the iniquitous new tax on cider. I remember the wonder of those century old windows at Rheims and Suzanne's talk of the Pucelle. I remember trying to teach her to throw stones and her vexation when I laughingly told her she could never learn to do it like a man. And here and there along our route, I remember little corners of the Elysian Fields where we rested awhile and talked. Suzanne had found me unappreciative of Browning. Often by the wayside she would take a little volume of his verse out of her rucksac and make me listen. The first poem to charm me was "Cleon." It led us far afield into a discussion of the meaning of life and Suzanne – to make more clear Browning's preference for the man who lives over the man who writes about life – read "The Last Ride Together." Her voice faltered once – she realized I think how near it came to the forbidden subject – but she thought better to read on. After that I belonged to Browning.
Those verses seemed written to express our outing. Whether she looked beyond our walk or not I do not know. I did not. What would happen when our pilgrimage was over I did not ask. The present was too dizzyingly joyful to question the future.
At last we came to Moret on the border of the great forest of Fontainebleau. It had been our intention to push on and sleep at Barbizon, but we had loitered by the way, and at the little Hotel de la Palette, they told us the road was too long for an afternoon's comfort. So there we stopped, to stroll away some hours in the forest and get an early start in the morning.
They gave us two garret rooms, for the hotel was crowded with art students and the better part was filled. I recall how the bare walls were covered with sketches and caricatures. There was a particularly bizarre sunset painted on the door between our rooms.
Lunch finished, we started for the forest. We came presently to a hill-top, with an outlook over the ocean of tree-tops, the gray donjon keep of Moret to the north. Suzanne as was her custom, threw herself face down in the long grass. I seem to hold no sharper memory of her than in this pose. I sat beside her, admiring. Suddenly she looked up.
"Tomorrow night Barbizon," she said, "the next day Paris and our jaunt is over."
She looked off down a long vista between the trees. I do not know what she saw there. But no matter which way I looked, I saw a cloud of tiny bits of paper, fluttering into a waste-paper basket.
"And then," I said, "a certain iniquitous treaty of peace will be torn into shreds."
My pipe had burned out before she spoke again. Her words when they did come were utterly foreign to my dreaming.
"Why did you write that kind of a book?"
There was earnest condemnation in her voice. To gain time, I asked.
"You don't like it?"
"Of course not. It's insincere."
I filled my pipe before I took up the challenge.
"You'll have to make your bill of indictment more detailed. What's insincere about it?"
"You know as well as I do."
Never in any of our talks did she give me so vivid an impression of earnestness. With a sudden twist she sat up and faced me.
"It's cynical. There are two parts to the book – exposition and conclusions. The conclusions are pitiable. You suggest a program of reforms in the judicial and penal system. And they are petty – if they were all accepted, it wouldn't solve the problem of crime. You imply one of two things, either that these reforms would solve the problem, which they wouldn't, or that the problem is insoluble, which it isn't."
"Count one," I said. "Pleading deferred."
"And then – this is worse – you know there is no more chance of these reforms being granted under our present system, than of arithmetic being reformed to make two and two five."
"Count two. Not guilty."
"No jury would acquit you on it. But there's a third count – perhaps the worst of all. The book is horribly superficial. Hidden away in your preface you mention the fact that the worst crimes against society are not mentioned in the code. You gently hint that some Wall Street transactions are larcenous, even if they are not illegal. All hidden in your preface!"
"That's entirely unfair," I protested. "You are quarreling with me over a definition. My book deals with the phenomena of the criminal courts. I have no business with what you or the newspapers call crime. If I wanted my work to be scientific I had to get a sharp definition. And I said that crime consists of acts forbidden by the legislature. I pointed out that it is an arbitrary conception, which is always changing. Some things – like kissing your wife on the Sabbath day – are no longer criminal and some things – like these Wall Street transactions – probably will be crimes tomorrow. Your third count is not against me but against the 'Scientific Method.'"
"Tommyrot!" she retorted. "You try to evade a big human truth by a scientific pretext. You know that ninety per cent of the criminal law, just as ninety-nine per cent of the civil law, is an effort to make people recognize property relations which are basically unjust. If our economic relations were right it would eliminate ninety per cent of crime. And justice – socialism – would do more, it would result in healthier, nobler personalities and wipe out the other ten per cent. There's the crux of the problem of crime and you dodge it.
"You have a chapter on prostitution. It's splendid, the best I've seen – where you describe present conditions. But the conclusions are – well – sickening. Do you really think that taking the poor women's finger prints will help? Of course you don't! It's all wrapped up in the great injustice which underlies all life. You come right up to the point – you say that most prostitution comes because the daughters of the poor have no other alternative but the sweatshop – and then you shut your mouth like a fool or a coward.
"Your book might have been wonderful – a big contribution. Oh, why didn't you? It's only half-hearted – insincere!"
I cannot recall my defense. I tried to make her see how we came at the problem from the opposite poles, how her point of departure was an ideal social organization, while I started from the world as it is, how she spoke in terms of the absolute, and I thought only of relative values, how she saw an abiding truth back of life and I believed in an all-pervading change. We fought it out bitterly – with ungloved words – all the afternoon. Neither convinced the other, but I think I persuaded her of my sincerity, almost persuaded her that "narrow" was not the best word to express my outlook – that "different" was juster. The sun was down in the tree-tops when at last she brought the argument to a close.
"We'll never agree. Our points of view are miles apart."
"But that," I said, "need make no difference, so long as we are honest to each other – and to ourselves."
"I'm not sure about that," she said. "I must think it out."
She stretched out on the grass again and began to poke a straw into an ant-hole. I sat back and smoked and blessed the gods who had moulded so perfect a back. Then she looked at her watch and jumped up.
"Do you realize, Suzanne, that you have violated the treaty? You've talked sociology and socialism. Now – I'm free…"
"Oh! Please don't!" she interrupted. "Not now. We must hurry to dinner."
I got up laughing and we walked in silence, between the great trees, in the falling dusk, back to the Hotel de la Palette. The joviality of that troupe of young artists forced us to talk of trivial things. After supper we stood for a moment in the doorway. Behind us was noisy gayety, before us the full moon illumined the gray walls of the citadel, shone enticingly on a quiet reach of the river.
"Come," I said. "Let's go down to the bridge – the water will be gorgeous in this light."
For a moment she hung back reluctantly; then suddenly consented. But in the village, she wasted much time looking for the house where Napoleon had slept in hiding on his return from Elba. When we came at last to the bridge she clambered up on the parapet. I leaned against it beside her. The light on the river was gorgeous. Although there was no wind for us to feel, the great clouds overhead were driven about like rudderless ships in a tempest. For a moment the moon would be hidden, leaving us in utter darkness, the next it would break out, its glory bringing to life all the details of the picturesque old houses by the riverside. Suzanne made one or two barren attempts at conversation. At last I plunged into the real business of the moment.
"Of course," I began, "if you really wish it, I will postpone this till we get to Paris."
There was a perceptible tightening of her muscles – a bracing. But she did not speak.
If I was eloquent that night, persuasive, it was because I did not plead for myself, but for love. It is sometimes said that love is egoistic, subjective, to me it seems the most objective thing in the world. It is – at its grandest – I think, a complete surrender to the ultimate bigness of life. Without love we have nothing to fight for except our little personalities, no better occupation than to magnify our individuality. Love shows us bigger things. At least it was this I tried to tell Suzanne. She had looked on love as a disturbing element in life. I tried to show it to her as the goal, the apotheosis of life.
It seems to me, as I look back on it now, that I was hardly thinking of Suzanne – not at all of my desire for her. I was talking to something further away than she, perhaps to the moon. I was trying desperately to formulate a faith – to give voice to a belief.
And then she laid her hand on mine – and I forgot the moon. I saw only the glory of her face, different from what I had ever seen it. It was paler than usual and dreamy. It seemed surprisingly near to me. When I kissed her, she did not turn away.
Suddenly it rained.
Much of my life has hinged on just such stupid, ludicrous chances. It poured – soaking and cold. It was a serious matter for us. We were traveling light, with nothing but our rucksacs nearer than Paris, no outer clothes except those we wore. Although we ran all the way we were drenched to the skin before we reached the hotel. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had commenced. We were too breathless to talk as we clambered up the stairs to our garret rooms.
After a hard rub, dry underclothes and pajamas, I wrapped myself in a blanket and lit my pipe. Through the thin partition I could hear Suzanne giving directions to the bonne to dry her clothes by the kitchen fire. Then her bed creaked. From the café downstairs came sounds of riotous mirth. Our talk had been so inconclusive.
"Suzanne," I said, knocking on the door between our rooms. "May I come in? Please. It's awfully important."
There was no answer and I opened the door. The moon, having escaped from the clouds, shone in through the mansard window, full on her bed, painting her hair a richer red than usual. I must have been a weird sight, with that blanket wrapped about my shoulders. But she did not smile. I can find no word to name her expression, unless wonder will do. There was a suggestion of the amazed face of a sleepwalker. Instinctively I knew that she would not repulse me. That moment she was mine for the taking. But I did not desire what a man can "take" from a woman. I wanted her to give.
I sat on the foot of the bed and tried to talk her into the mood I hungered for. It was not self-restraint on my part. I was not conscious of passion. What I wanted seemed finer and grander. If she had reached out her hand to me, all my pent up desires would have exploded. If she had tried to send me away, it might have inflamed me. If she had spoken – I do not remember a word. She lay there as one in a dream. There was a strange, dazed look in her eyes, perhaps it was awed expectancy. I did not read it so.
Hoping to wake her, I kissed her hands and her forehead. The great coil of her hair moved in my hands like a thing alive. Its fragrance dizzied me. Fearful of intoxication, I went apart for a moment by the window, looked out at the sinking moon, until my head was clear again. I came back and knelt by her bed.
"Suzanne. What I want is not a thing for the night, not a thing of moonlight and shadows. What I want must be done by day in the great open air – at high noon – for all time and whatever comes after. To-morrow in the blaze of the sun…"
I could not say what was in my heart. The last rays of the moon touched the profile of her face so glowingly that suddenly I wanted to pray.
"Oh, Suzanne, I wish that we believed in a God – we two. So I could pray his blessing on you – on us."
Then I kissed her on the lips and went away.
The hours I spent in my window that night were I suppose the nearest I ever got to Heaven. It seemed that at last my torturing doubts were over, that I had read in the Divine Revelation, that the way, the truth and the light had been made plain to me. For the second time in my life I had the assurance of salvation.
Just as the rim of the sun came up over the eastern hills, I heard her get out of bed, heard the sound of her bare feet coming towards the door. I jumped down from my seat in the window. My dream was fulfilled – she was coming to me in the dawn.
The door opened barely an inch. Her voice seemed like that of a stranger.
"Arnold. Please go down in the kitchen and get my clothes."
I was ready to open my veins for her and she asked me to walk downstairs and bring her a skirt and blouse and shoes.
"Don't stand there like an idiot," the strange voice said. "I want my clothes."
Well – somehow I found the clothes and brought them back. She took them in hastily through the door, closed it in my face – locked it. I think the grating of the bolt in the lock was the thing I first realized clearly. She was afraid I would force myself on her. We were utter strangers, she did not know me at all.
Once in a strike riot I saw a man hit between the eyes with a brick. It must have knocked him senseless at once, but he finished the sentence he was shouting, stooped down to pick up a stone, stopped as though he had thought of something, sat down on the curb in a daze – it must have been a full half minute before he groaned and slumped over inert.
After Suzanne drove the bolt of her door through the dream, I got dressed and sat down dumbly to wait. I heard her moving about her room, heard her putting on her shoes – I remember thinking that as they had been wet, they must be stiff this morning – then she unlocked and opened the door.
"Arnold," she said in that constrained voice I did not know. "I've got to go away – I want to be alone. There's a train for Paris in a few minutes."
I suppose I made some movement as if to follow her.
"No. Don't you come. I've got to think things out by myself. I've got to" – the strained tone in her voice was desperate, almost hysterical – "Let me go alone. I'll write to you – Cook's. I'm…"
She turned without a word of good-bye and I heard her footsteps on the stairs of the still quiet house. And presently, perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps half an hour, I heard the whistle of a train.
VII
After a while I "came to." I went into her room and looked about it. In her haste to be gone she had forgotten her rucksac, it lay there in plain sight on the tumbled bed. I went downstairs and drank some coffee and paid the bill. I remember a foolish desire to cry when I realized that I must pay for both of us. In all the trip she had scrupulously insisted in attending to her share. With only our two bags for company I went up to Paris. She had taken her baggage from the pension an hour before I arrived, she had left no address. I spent most of my time in the garden of the Tuileries, going every hour or so to Cook's in quest of the letter she had promised. There were times when I hoped she would come back, when it seemed impossible that I should not find her again, sometimes I despaired. But mostly it was just a dull, stunned pain, which was neither hope nor despair. After three days the letter came. It was postmarked Le Havre.
"Dear friend Arnold,
"It has taken me longer than I had thought to be sure of myself. I cannot marry you. It has never been hard for me to say this before. It is hard now. I know how much it will hurt you. And I care more than I ever did before. More, I think, than I ever will care again. For I can imagine no finer way of being loved than your way.
"If it were not for the pain it has cost you – I would be glad of the chance which threw us together in Paris. The days which followed were the most joyous I have ever known – almost the only ones. I have not found life a happy business. Surely you won't, I doubt if anyone does, realize how sad the world seems to me. But somehow, out of the overwhelming misery about us, you helped me to escape awhile, helped me to snatch some of 'the rarely coming spirit of delight.' They were perfect – those never-to-be-forgotten days on the open road.
"I can't – even after all this thinking, and I have thought of nothing else – understand clearly, what happened at Moret. When you began to talk love to me – well – it was the first time in my life, I did not want to run away. We all have our woman's dream hidden somewhere within us. I don't remember what you said to me there on the bridge but suddenly my dream came big. Love seemed something I had always been waiting for. I kept asking myself 'can this at last be love' – and because I did not want to run away I thought it was.
"When you came to my room I was drunk with the dream. That you did not take advantage of my bewilderment – well – that's what I meant when I said I could think of no finer love than what you have given me. I could not have reproached you if you had. God knows what it would have meant. It might have turned the balance, I might have loved you – in a way. But it would not have been you, and it would not have been what you wanted.
"When you went away, I began to recall your words – I had scarcely heard them – and then I realized what you wanted. It seemed very beautiful to me and – will you believe it – I wanted to give it to you, be it for you. But as the hours slipped by the fear grew that I could not, grew to certainty. And I was afraid that if I stayed, I would cheat you. And so, in fear, I ran away.
"I know I must have seemed very cruel to you that morning. And I am writing all this in the hope that you will understand that I was harsh because I was afraid, it was the cruelty of weakness. I wanted to put my arms about you and cry. You will see that it was better that I did not. For now – with a cool head – it is very clear to me, not only that I could not be to you what you wish, but that at bottom I do not want to. I do not love you.
"I would like to make this sound less brutal, but it is true. It's not only in regard to socialism that our view-points are miles apart, but also in this matter of love.
"The porter is calling the 'bus for my steamer. I must stop or miss the tender. It is just as well. If I have not shown you in these few pages what I feel, I could not in twice as many."
I was not man enough to take my medicine quietly. The letter jerked me out of my lethargy, threw me into a rage, the worst mood of my life. I cursed Suzanne, cursed love, cursed Europe. I engaged passage on the first boat home. I took along Suzanne's rucksac with the intention of having its contents laundered and returning it to her with a flippant, insulting note. I occupied most of the time till the boat sailed, on its composition. On board I drank hoggishly, gambled recklessly – and as such things often go – won heavily.
But the last night out, anchored off quarantine, the fury and the folly left me. After all I had been making an amazing tempest in a teapot. What did it matter whether my love affair went straight or crooked? I felt so much the spoiled child, that I was ashamed to look up at the eternal, patient stars. After the vague open spaces of the sea, the crowded harbor, the distant glow and hum of the great city, seemed real indeed. A flare of rockets shot up from Coney Island, dazzled a moment and went out. I laughed. The lower lights along the shore were not so brilliant – but abiding.
I leaned over the rail and strained my eyes towards the city. And it seemed as if life came to me through the night as a thing which one might hold in the hand and study.
The Tombs and all its people, corrupt judges and upright criminals. In a few days I would drop back into the rut among them. What had become of Sammy Swartz? A pick-pocket of parts, he had, when I left, been virtuously scrubbing floors in an office building – a deadly grind, compared to the dash and adventure of his old life. What held him to it? Was it only fear of prison or some vague reaching out for rectitude? Was he still "on the square" or had he gone back to the "graft?"
The Teepee, Norman, Nina and little Marie. What were they doing? Probably wondering when I would return – planning some fête. My questionings shot back to the old home in Tennessee. The Father and Margot – what were they doing, what had been done to them? And Ann? I would have to hurt her in the morning, with my news. Life had driven a wedge in between us.
And Suzanne? She was somewhere in the city. I pictured her in council with her comrades in some grimy committee room, some tenement parlor – the light of the glorious vision in their eyes – planning the great reconstruction, plotting the coronation of justice. She had turned her back on the love I offered that some greater love might be made manifest. It seemed to me wrong. But right or wrong, I loved her better that night than ever before. It was as though a comet had become a fixed star.
And I was sorry for her – while admiring. Like all the rest of us, she was caught in the vast spider web of life, beating her wings to pieces in the divine effort to reach the light. All the people I could think of seemed in the same plight – admirable and pitiable. Is not this immense, spawning, struggling family of ours as much alike in the uncertainty of life as in the certainty of death?
Once ashore, I called up Ann on the telephone. Her laboratory had been moved into the city, and so we could arrange to lunch together. I was glad of the public restaurant, I would have found it harder to tell her about Suzanne, if we had been alone. When once Ann understood, she made it as easy for me as possible.
"And so," she said at last as we reached the entrance to her laboratory, "you won't be coming out to Cromley?"
"I would be a decidedly glum guest, I'm afraid,"
She stood for a moment on the step, her brows puckered.
"Well," she said, "If you really want her – go after her. Hit her on the head and drag her to your cave. Oh, I know. I'm too matter of fact and all that. But it's the way to get her – beat her a little."
"I had my chance to do that," I said, "and couldn't. Perhaps you're right – but I love her a bit too much. I shan't go after her."
Ann sniffed.
"If I was a man, I'd go after what I wanted." Then her eyes softened. "But I'm only a woman. All I can do is to tell you – you're always welcome at Cromley."
She turned and ran up the steps to her laboratory.
In this conversation I realized the basic difference between Ann's point of view and mine, more clearly than before. Her philosophy taught her to be, if not satisfied, at least content, with half things. If she could not get just what she wanted, nor all of it, she tried to be happy with what was available. Doubtless she found life better worth living than I did. But such an attitude towards Suzanne would have seemed to me a desecration. Perhaps if I had sought her out, argued with her, tried to dominate her will – tried figuratively to "beat her a little" – I might have persuaded her to marry me. Perhaps. But what I might have won in this way, would not only have been less than what I wanted, but something quite different.
It had taken no "persuading" to make me love Suzanne. I had seen numberless women, had met, I suppose, several thousands. Many I had known longer than Suzanne. But she stood out from the rest, not as "another" woman, not as a more beautiful, or cleverer or more earnest woman – although she was all these – but as something quite different – my woman. If she did not recognize me, in the same sudden, unarguable way as her man, there was nothing I could do about it. She did not.
The wise man of Israel said that the way of a man with a maid is past all finding out. It would be truer to say that the ways of men with maidens are too varied and numerous for any classifying. My way was perhaps insane. Very likely I was asking of life more than is granted to mortals. But that is small comfort.
Perhaps Suzanne did love me and had, in running away, obeyed some age-old, ineradicable instinct of her sex. It is possible that she mourned because I did not play the venerable game of pursuit. Perhaps if I had taken advantage of the hour when she was wholly mine, it might have "turned the balance." I might have entered into the glory. I do not understand the forces of life which rule our mating. But one thing I know – I was not in love with any Suzanne who could have been "persuaded."
I sat for some time on a bench in Union Square, thinking this out, after I left Ann. I had a strange reluctance to plunge back into the old life. I remember watching with envy two tramps who sat in contemplative silence on a bench opposite me. I was tempted to wander away, out of the world of responsibilities, out into that strange land where nothing matters. There are two sorts of wanderlust; the one which pushes the feet and the one which pushes the spirit. But at last I shook this cowardly lassitude from me and walked downtown to the Teepee.
Nina threw her arms about my neck. Norman pounded me on the back, the little lassie Marie kissed me shyly, and Guiseppe hobbled in from the kitchen to complete the welcome. While they were still storming me with questions, Norman went back to his work. He had a large sheet of drawing paper thumbtacked to the table and was sketching an advertisement for a new brand of pickles. When the rest of them disappeared to kill the fatted calf, he put a hand on my shoulder and looked me over carefully.
"Been on the rocks?" he said.
I had not realized that it showed. I nodded assent.
He laid on a dash of crimson alongside some glaring green.
"Isn't it fierce?" he said. "They wouldn't hang this sort of thing in the Louvre but it's what makes the public buy." He squinted at it ruefully – "This love business is beyond me. Who would think that I could stumble on Nina where I did? You know that song of Euripides.
'This Cyprian
Is a thousand, thousand things
She brings more joy than any God,
She brings
More woe. Oh may it be
An hour of mercy when
She looks at me.'
I'd given the whole matter up in disgust – and it was solved for me. – Say. I need to work in a little raw blue here. Green pickles, red pepper, blue – oh yes – a blue label on the bottle. Sweet! isn't it?
"You know sometimes I think we are all wrong trying to join brains. You wouldn't call Nina exactly my intellectual equal, but I don't know any chap married to a college graduate who's got anything on me. I'll put up Marie against any highbrow offspring."
He pulled out the tacks and set his sketch up on the mantel-piece and walked across the room to get the effect. He jerked his head, gestured with his hand and his lips moved as though he were arguing with it. He pinned it down again and began putting in the lettering.
"Of course," he took up the thread of his thoughts, "there are people who say that it isn't marriage at all, that I've just legalized my mistress. But I've seen a lot of people striving, breaking their necks, for something they'd call finer, more spiritual – and getting nothing at all. I know I'm happier than most. I'm satisfied with my luck. That's the point. I can't call it anything but luck – By the way. There's a pile of letters for you."
And so I dipped back in the rut. In the Tombs I sought out new duties, tried to lose myself – forget the mess I had made of things – in work. Nina and Norman stood beside me in those days with fine sweet loyalty. They asked no questions, but seemed to know what was wrong. Always I felt myself in the midst of a conspiracy of cheer. It was during these dreary months that I first began to like children. Marie's prattle, after the gloom and weariness of the Tombs, was bright indeed.
I know nothing more beautiful than the sight of a little child's soul gradually taking shape. The memory of my own lonely, loveless childhood has given me, I suppose, a special insight into the problems of the youngsters. The fact that I succeeded in gaining this little girl's love and confidence has compensated me for many things which I have missed.