XII
A COLUMN ENTITLED “OBSERVATIONS AND MEDITATIONS” BY ALVAH Scarret appeared daily on the front page of the New York Banner. It was a trusted guide, a source of inspiration and a molder of public philosophy in small towns throughout the country. In this column there had appeared, years ago, the famous statement: “We’d all be a heap sight better off if we’d forget the highfalutin notions of our fancy civilization and mind more what the savages knew long before us: to honor our mother.” Alvah Scarret was a bachelor, had made two million dollars, played golf expertly and was editor-in-chief of the Wynand papers.
It was Alvah Scarret who conceived the idea of the campaign against living conditions in the slums and “Landlord Sharks,” which ran in the Banner for three weeks. This was material such as Alvah Scarret relished. It had human appeal and social implications. It lent itself to Sunday-supplement illustrations of girls leaping into rivers, their skirts flaring well above their knees. It boosted circulation. It embarrassed the sharks who owned a stretch of blocks by the East River, selected as the dire example of the campaign. The sharks had refused to sell these blocks to an obscure real-estate company; at the end of the campaign they surrendered and sold. No one could prove that the real-estate company was owned by a company owned by Gail Wynand.
The Wynand papers could not be left without a campaign for long. They had just concluded one on the subject of modern aviation. They had run scientific accounts of the history of aviation in the Sunday Family Magazine supplement, with pictures ranging from Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of flying machines to the latest bomber; with the added attraction of Icarus writhing in scarlet flames, his nude body blue-green, his wax wings yellow and the smoke purple; also of a leprous hag with flaming eyes and a crystal ball, who had predicted in the XIth century that man would fly; also of bats, vampires and werewolves.
They had run a model plane construction contest; it was open to all boys under the age of ten who wished to send in three new subscriptions to the Banner. Gail Wynand, who was a licensed pilot, had made a solo flight from Los Angeles to New York, establishing a transcontinental speed record, in a small, specially built craft costing one hundred thousand dollars. He had made a slight miscalculation on reaching New York and had been forced to land in a rocky pasture; it had been a hair-raising landing, faultlessly executed; it had just so happened that a battery of photographers from the Banner were present in the neighborhood. Gail Wynand had stepped out of the plane. An ace pilot would have been shaken by the experience. Gail Wynand had stood before the cameras, an immaculate gardenia in the lapel of his flying jacket, his hand raised with a cigarette held between two fingers that did not tremble. When questioned about his first wish on returning to earth, he had expressed the desire to kiss the most attractive woman present, had chosen the dowdiest old hag from the crowd and bent to kiss her gravely on the forehead, explaining that she reminded him of his mother.
Later, at the start of the slum campaign, Gail Wynand had said to Alvah Scarret: “Go ahead. Squeeze all you can out of the thing,” and had departed on his yacht for a world cruise, accompanied by an enchanting aviatrix of twenty-four to whom he had made a present of his transcontinental plane.
Alvah Scarret went ahead. Among many other steps of his campaign he assigned Dominique Francon to investigate the condition of homes in the slums and to gather human material. Dominique Francon had just returned from a summer in Biarritz; she always took a whole summer’s vacation and Alvah Scarret granted it, because she was one of his favorite employees, because he was baffled by her and because he knew that she could quit her job whenever she pleased.
Dominique Francon went to live for two weeks in the hall bedroom of an East-Side tenement. The room had a skylight, but no windows; there were five flights of stairs to climb and no running water. She cooked her own meals in the kitchen of a numerous family on the floor below; she visited neighbors, she sat on the landings of fire escapes in the evenings and went to dime movies with the girls of the neighborhood.
She wore frayed skirts and blouses. The abnormal fragility of her normal appearance made her look exhausted with privation in these surroundings; the neighbors felt certain that she had T.B. But she moved as she had moved in the drawing room of Kiki Holcombe—with the same cold poise and confidence. She scrubbed the floor of her room, she peeled potatoes, she bathed in a tin pan of cold water. She had never done these things before; she did them expertly. She had a capacity for action, a competence that clashed incongruously with her appearance. She did not mind this new background; she was indifferent to the slums as she had been indifferent to the drawing rooms.
At the end of two weeks she returned to her penthouse apartment on the roof of a hotel over Central Park, and her articles on life in the slums appeared in the Banner. They were a merciless, brilliant account.
She heard baffled questions at a dinner party. “My dear, you didn’t actually write those things?” “Dominique, you didn’t really live in that place?” “Oh, yes,” she answered. “The house you own on East Twelfth Street, Mrs. Palmer,” she said, her hand circling lazily from under the cuff of an emerald bracelet too broad and heavy for her thin wrist, “has a sewer that gets clogged every other day and runs over, all through the courtyard. It looks blue and purple in the sun, like a rainbow.” “The block you control for the Claridge estate, Mr. Brooks, has the most attractive stalactites growing on all the ceilings,” she said, her golden head leaning to her corsage of white gardenias with drops of water sparkling on the lusterless petals.
She was asked to speak at a meeting of social workers. It was an important meeting, with a militant, radical mood, led by some of the most prominent women in the field. Alvah Scarret was pleased and gave her his blessing. “Go to it, kid,” he said, “lay it on thick. We want the social workers.” She stood in the speaker’s pulpit of an unaired hall and looked at a flat sheet of faces, faces lecherously eager with the sense of their own virtue. She spoke evenly, without inflection. She said, among many other things: “The family on the first floor rear do not bother to pay their rent, and the children cannot go to school for lack of clothes. The father has a charge account at a corner speak-easy. He is in good health and has a good job.... The couple on the second floor have just purchased a radio for sixty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents cash. In the fourth-floor front, the father of the family has not done a whole day’s work in his life, and does not intend to. There are nine children, supported by the local parish. There is a tenth one on its way....” When she finished there were a few claps of angry applause. She raised her hand and said: “You don’t have to applaud. I don’t expect it.” She asked politely: “Are there any questions?” There were no questions.
When she returned home she found Alvah Scarret waiting for her. He looked incongruous in the drawing room of her penthouse, his huge bulk perched on the edge of a delicate chair, a hunched gargoyle against the glowing spread of the city beyond a solid wall of glass. The city was like a mural designed to illuminate and complete the room: the fragile lines of spires on a black sky continued the fragile lines of the furniture; the lights glittering in distant windows threw reflections on the bare, lustrous floor; the cold precision of the angular structures outside answered the cold, inflexible grace of every object within. Alvah Scarret broke the harmony. He looked like a kindly country doctor and like a cardsharp. His heavy face bore the benevolent, paternal smile that had always been his passkey and his trademark. He had the knack of making the kindliness of his smile add to, not detract from his solemn appearance of dignity ; his long, thin, hooked nose did detract from the kindliness, but it added to the dignity; his stomach, cantilevered over his legs, did detract from the dignity, but it added to the kindliness.
He rose, beamed and held Dominique’s hand.
“Thought I’d drop in on my way home,” he said. “I’ve got something to tell you. How did it go, kid?”
“As I expected it.”
She tore her hat off and threw it down on the first chair in sight. Her hair slanted in a flat curve across her forehead and fell in a straight line to her shoulders; it looked smooth and tight, like a bathing cap of pale, polished metal. She walked to the window and stood looking out over the city. She asked without turning: “What did you want to tell me?”
Alvah Scarret watched her pleasurably. He had long since given up any attempts beyond holding her hand when not necessary or patting her shoulder; he had stopped thinking of the subject, but he had a dim, half-conscious feeling which he summed up to himself in the words: You never can tell.
“I’ve got good news for you, child,” he said. “I’ve been working out a little scheme, just a bit of reorganization, and I’ve figured where I’ll consolidate a few things together into a Women’s Welfare Department. You know, the schools, the home economics, the care of babies, the juvenile delinquents and all the rest of it—all to be under one head. And I see no better woman for the job than my little girl.”
“Do you mean me?” she asked, without turning.
“No one else but. Just as soon as Gail comes back, I’ll get his okay.”
She turned and looked at him, her arms crossed, her hands holding her elbows. She said:
“Thank you, Alvah. But I don’t want it.”
“What do you mean, you don’t want it?”
“I mean that I don’t want it.”
“For heaven’s sake, do you realize what an advance that would be?”
“Toward what?”
“Your career.”
“I never said I was planning a career.”
“But you don’t want to be running a dinky back-page column forever!”
“Not forever. Until I get bored with it.”
“But think of what you could do in the real game! Think of what Gail could do for you once you come to his attention!”
“I have no desire to come to his attention.”
“But, Dominique, we need you. The women will be for you solid after tonight.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why, I’ve ordered two columns held for a yarn on the meeting and your speech.”
She reached for the telephone and handed the receiver to him. She said:
“You’d better tell them to kill it.”
“Why?”
She searched through a litter of papers on a desk, found some typewritten sheets and handed them to him. “Here’s the speech I made tonight,” she said.
He glanced through it. He said nothing, but clasped his forehead once. Then he seized the telephone and gave orders to run as brief an account of the meeting as possible, and not to mention the speaker by name.
“All right,” said Dominique, when he dropped the receiver. “Am I fired?”
He shook his head dolefully. “Do you want to be?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I’ll squash the business,” he muttered. “I’ll keep it from Gail.”
“If you wish. I really don’t care one way or the other.”
“Listen, Dominque—oh I know, I’m not to ask any questions—only why on earth are you always doing things like that?”
“For no reason on earth.”
“Look, you know, I’ve heard about that swank dinner where you made certain remarks on this same subject. And then you go and say things like these at a radical meeting.”
“They’re true, though, both sides of it, aren’t they?”
“Oh, sure, but couldn’t you have reversed the occasions when you chose to express them?”
“There wouldn’t have been any point in that.”
“Was there any in what you’ve done?”
“No. None at all. But it amused me.”
“I can’t figure you out, Dominique. You’ve done it before. You go along so beautifully, you do brilliant work and just when you’re about to make a real step forward—you spoil it by pulling something like this. Why?”
“Perhaps that is precisely why.”
“Will you tell me—as a friend, because I like you and I’m interested in you—what are you really after?”
“I should think that’s obvious. I’m after nothing at all.”
He spread his hands open, shrugging helplessly.
She smiled gaily.
“What is there to look so mournful about? I like you, too, Alvah, and I’m interested in you. I even like to talk to you, which is better. Now sit still and relax and I’ll get you a drink. You need a drink, Alvah.”
She brought him a frosted glass with ice cubes ringing in the silence. “You’re just a nice child, Dominique,” he said.
“Of course. That’s what I am.”
She sat down on the edge of a table, her hands flat behind her, leaning back on two straight arms, swinging her legs slowly. She said:
“You know, Alvah, it would be terrible if I had a job I really wanted.”
“Well, of all things! Well, of all fool things to say! What do you mean?”
“Just that. That it would be terrible to have a job I enjoyed and did not want to lose.”
“Why?”
“Because I would have to depend on you—you’re a wonderful person, Alvah, but not exactly inspiring and I don’t think it would be beautiful to cringe before a whip in your hand—oh, don’t protest, it would be such a polite little whip, and that’s what would make it uglier. I would have to depend on our boss Gail—he’s a great man, I’m sure, only I’d just as soon never set eyes on him.”
“Whatever gives you such a crazy attitude? When you know that Gail and I would do anything for you, and I personally ...”
“It’s not only that, Alvah. It’s not you alone. If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted—I’d have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We’re all so tied together. We’re all in a net, the net is waiting, and we’re pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it’s precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can’t know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you’re afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them—just so they’ll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.”
“If I’m correct in gathering that you’re criticizing mankind in general ...”
“You know, it’s such a peculiar thing—our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you’d feel big and solemn about? There’s nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalents. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they’re enjoying themselves? That’s when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they’ve slaved for—at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who’re rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment. Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That’s your mankind in general. I don’t want to touch it.”
“But hell! That’s not the way to look at it. That’s not the whole picture. There’s some good in the worst of us. There’s always a redeeming feature.”
“So much the worse. Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who’s painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?”
“What do you want? Perfection?”
“—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom.”
“You call that freedom?”
“To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”
“What if you found something you wanted?”
“I won’t find it. I won’t choose to see it. It would be part of that lovely world of yours. I’d have to share it with all the rest of you—and I wouldn’t. You know, I never open again any great book I’ve read and loved. It hurts me to think of the other eyes that have read it and of what they were. Things like that can’t be shared. Not with people like that.”
“Dominique, it’s abnormal to feel so strongly about anything.”
“That’s the only way I can feel. Or not at all.”
“Dominique, my dear,” he said, with earnest, sincere concern, “I wish I’d been your father. What kind of a tragedy did you have in your childhood?”
“Why, none at all. I had a wonderful childhood. Free and peaceful and not bothered too much by anybody. Well, yes, I did feel bored very often. But I’m used to that.”
“I suppose you’re just an unfortunate product of our times. That’s what I’ve always said. We’re too cynical, too decadent. If we went back in all humility to the simple virtues ...”
“Alvah, how can you start on that stuff? That’s only for your editorials and ...” She stopped, seeing his eyes; they looked puzzled and a little hurt. Then she laughed. “I’m wrong. You really do believe all that. If it’s actually believing, or whatever it is you do that takes its place. Oh, Alvah! That’s why I love you. That’s why I’m doing again right now what I did tonight at the meeting.”
“What?” he asked, bewildered.
“Talking as I am talking—to you as you are. It’s nice, talking to you about such things. Do you know, Alvah, that primitive people made statues of their gods in man’s likeness? Just think of what a statue of you would look like—of you nude, your stomach and all.”
“Now what’s that in relation to?”
“To nothing at all, darling. Forgive me.” She added: “You know, I love statues of naked men. Don’t look so silly. I said statues. I had one in particular. It was supposed to be Helios. I got it out of a museum in Europe. I had a terrible time getting it—it wasn’t for sale, of course. I think I was in love with it, Alvah. I brought it home with me.”
“Where is it? I’d like to see something you like, for a change.”
“It’s broken.”
“Broken? A museum piece? How did that happen?”
“I broke it.”
“How?”
“I threw it down the air shaft. There’s a concrete floor below.”
“Are you totally crazy? Why?”
“So that no one else would ever see it.”
“Dominique!”
She jerked her head, as if to shake off the subject; the straight mass of her hair stirred in a heavy ripple, like a wave through a half-liquid pool of mercury. She said:
“I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t want to shock you. I thought I could speak to you because you’re the one person who’s impervious to any sort of shock. I shouldn’t have. It’s no use, I guess.”
She jumped lightly off the table.
“Run on home, Alvah,” she said. “It’s getting late. I’m tired. See you tomorrow.”
Guy Francon read his daughter’s articles; he heard of the remarks she had made at the reception and at the meeting of social workers. He understood nothing of it, but he understood that it had been precisely the sequence of events to expect from his daughter. It preyed on his mind, with the bewildered feeling of apprehension which the thought of her always brought him. He asked himself whether he actually hated his daughter.
But one picture came back to his mind, irrelevantly, whenever he asked himself that question. It was a picture of her childhood, of a day from some forgotten summer on his country estate in Connecticut long ago. He had forgotten the rest of that day and what had led to the one moment he remembered. But he remembered how he stood on the terrace and saw her leaping over a high green hedge at the end of the lawn. The hedge seemed too high for her little body; he had time to think that she could not make it, in the very moment when he saw her flying triumphantly over the green barrier. He could not remember the beginning nor the end of that leap; but he still saw, clearly and sharply, as on a square of movie film cut out and held motionless forever, the one instant when her body hung in space, her long legs flung wide, her thin arms thrown up, hands braced against the air, her white dress and blond hair spread in two broad, flat mats on the wind, a single moment, the flash of a small body in the greatest burst of ecstatic freedom he had ever witnessed in his life.
He did not know why that moment remained with him, what significance, unheeded at the time, had preserved it for him when so much else of greater import had been lost. He did not know why he had to see that moment again whenever he felt bitterness for his daughter, nor why, seeing it, he felt that unbearable twinge of tenderness. He told himself merely that his paternal affection was asserting itself quite against his will. But in an awkward, unthinking way he wanted to help her, not knowing, not wanting to know what she had to be helped against.
So he began to look more frequently at Peter Keating. He began to accept the solution which he never quite admitted to himself. He found comfort in the person of Peter Keating, and he felt that Keating’s simple, stable wholesomeness was just the support needed by the unhealthy inconstancy of his daughter.
Keating would not admit that he had tried to see Dominique again, persistently and without results. He had obtained her telephone number from Francon long ago, and he had called her often. She had answered, and laughed gaily, and told him that of course she’d see him, she knew she wouldn’t be able to escape it, but she was so busy for weeks to come and would he give her a ring by the first of next month?
Francon guessed it. He told Keating he would ask Dominique to lunch and bring them together again. “That is,” he added, “I’ll try to ask her. She’ll refuse, of course.” Dominique surprised him again: she accepted, promptly and cheerfully.
She met them at a restaurant, and she smiled as if this were a reunion she welcomed. She talked gaily, and Keating felt enchanted, at ease, wondering why he had ever feared her. At the end of a half hour she looked at Francon and said:
“It was wonderful of you to take time off to see me, Father. Particularly when you’re so busy and have so many appointments.”
Francon’s face assumed a look of consternation.
“My God, Dominique, that reminds me!”
“You have an appointment you forgot?” she asked gently.
“Confound it, yes! It slipped my mind entirely. Old Andrew Colson phoned this morning and I forgot to make a note of it and he insisted on seeing me at two o’clock, you know how it is, I just simply can’t refuse to see Andrew Colson, confound it!—today of all ...” He added, suspiciously: “How did you know it?”
“Why, I didn’t know it at all. It’s perfectly all right, Father. Mr. Keating and I will excuse you, and we’ll have a lovely luncheon together, and I have no appointments at all for the day, so you don’t have to be afraid that I’ll escape from him.”
Francon wondered whether she knew that that had been the excuse he’d prepared in advance in order to leave her alone with Keating. He could not be sure. She was looking straight at him; her eyes seemed just a bit too candid. He was glad to escape.
Dominique turned to Keating with a glance so gentle that it could mean nothing but contempt.
“Now let’s relax,” she said. “We both know what Father is after, so it’s perfectly all right. Don’t let it embarrass you. It doesn’t embarrass me. It’s nice that you’ve got Father on a leash. But I know it’s not helpful to you to have him pulling ahead of the leash. So let’s forget it and eat our lunch.”
He wanted to rise and walk out; and knew, in furious helplessness, that he wouldn’t. She said:
“Don’t frown, Peter. You might as well call me Dominique, because we’ll come to that anyway, sooner or later. I’ll probably see a great deal of you, I see so many people, and if it will please Father to have you as one of them—why not?”
For the rest of the luncheon she spoke to him as to an old friend, gaily and openly; with a disquieting candor which seemed to show that there was nothing to conceal, but showed that it was best to attempt no probe. The exquisite kindliness of her manner suggested that their relationship was of no possible consequence, that she could not pay him the tribute of hostility. He knew that he disliked her violently. But he watched the shape of her mouth, the movements of her lips framing words; he watched the way she crossed her legs, a gesture smooth and exact, like an expensive instrument being folded; and he could not escape the feeling of incredulous admiration he had experienced when he had seen her for the first time.
When they were leaving, she said:
“Will you take me to the theater tonight, Peter? I don’t care what play, any one of them. Call for me after dinner. Tell Father about it. It will please him.”
“Though, of course, he should know better than to be pleased,” said Keating, “and so should I, but I’ll be delighted just the same, Dominique.”
“Why should you know better?”
“Because you have no desire to go to a theater or to see me tonight.”
“None whatever. I’m beginning to like you, Peter. Call for me at half past eight.”
When Keating returned to the office, Francon called him upstairs at once.
“Well?” Francon asked anxiously.
“What’s the matter, Guy?” said Keating, his voice innocent. “Why are you so concerned?”
“Well, I ... I’m just... frankly, I’m interested to see whether you two could get together at all. I think you’d be a good influence for her. What happened?”
“Nothing at all. We had a lovely time. You know your restaurants—the food was wonderful... Oh, yes, I’m taking your daughter to a show tonight.”
“No!”
“Why, yes.”
“How did you ever manage that?”
Keating shrugged. “I told you one mustn’t be afraid of Dominique.”
“I’m not afraid, but ... Oh, is it ‘Dominique’ already? My congratulations, Peter.... I’m not afraid, it’s only that I can’t figure her out. No one can approach her. She’s never had a single girl friend, not even in kindergarten. There’s always a mob around her, but never a friend. I don’t know what to think. There she is now, living all alone, always with a crowd of men around and ...”
“Now, Guy, you mustn’t think anything dishonorable about your own daughter.”
“I don’t! That’s just the trouble—that I don’t. I wish I could. But she’s twenty-four, Peter, and she’s a virgin—I know, I’m sure of it. Can’t you tell just by looking at a woman? I’m no moralist, Peter, and I think that’s abnormal. It’s unnatural at her age, with her looks, with the kind of utterly unrestricted existence that she leads. I wish to God she’d get married. I honestly do.... Well, now, don’t repeat that, of course, and don’t misinterpret it, I didn’t mean it as an invitation.”
“Of course not.”
“By the way, Peter, the hospital called while you were out. They said poor Lucius is much better. They think he’ll pull through.” Lucius N. Heyer had had a stroke, and Keating had exhibited a great deal of concern for his progress, but had not gone to visit him at the hospital.
“I’m so glad,” said Keating.
“But I don’t think he’ll ever be able to come back to work. He’s getting old, Peter.... Yes, he’s getting old.... One reaches an age when one can’t be burdened with business any longer.” He let a paper knife hang between two fingers and tapped it pensively against the edge of a desk calendar. “It happens to all of us, Peter, sooner or later.... One must look ahead....”
Keating sat on the floor by the imitation logs in the fireplace of his living room, his hands clasped about his knees, and listened to his mother’s questions on what did Dominique look like, what did she wear, what had she said to him and how much money did he suppose her mother had actually left her.
He was meeting Dominique frequently now. He had just returned from an evening spent with her on a round of night clubs. She always accepted his invitations. He wondered whether her attitude was deliberate proof that she could ignore him more completely by seeing him often than by refusing to see him. But each time he met her, he planned eagerly for the next meeting. He had not seen Catherine for a month. She was busy with research work which her uncle had entrusted to her, in preparation for a series of his lectures.
Mrs. Keating sat under a lamp, mending a slight tear in the lining of Peter’s dinner jacket, reproaching him, between questions, for sitting on the floor in his dress trousers and best formal shirt. He paid no attention to the reproaches or the questions. But under his bored annoyance he felt an odd sense of relief; as if the stubborn stream of her words were pushing him on and justifying him. He answered once in a while: “Yes.... No.... I don’t know.... Oh, yes, she’s lovely. She’s very lovely.... It’s awfully late, Mother. I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed....”
The doorbell rang.
“Well,” said Mrs. Keating. “What can that be, at this hour?”
Keating rose, shrugging, and ambled to the door.
It was Catherine. She stood, her two hands clasped on a large, old, shapeless pocketbook. She looked determined and hesitant at once. She drew back a little. She said: “Good evening, Peter. Can I come in? I’ve got to speak to you.”
“Katie! Of course! How nice of you! Come right in. Mother, it’s Katie.”
Mrs. Keating looked at the girl’s feet which stepped as if moving on the rolling deck of a ship; she looked at her son, and she knew that something had happened, to be handled with great caution.
“Good evening, Catherine,” she said softly.
Keating was conscious of nothing save the sudden stab of joy he had felt on seeing her; the joy told him that nothing had changed, that he was safe in certainty, that her presence resolved all doubts. He forgot to wonder about the lateness of the hour, about her first, uninvited appearance in his apartment.
“Good evening, Mrs. Keating,” she said, her voice bright and hollow. “I hope I’m not disturbing you, it’s late probably, is it?”
“Why, not at all, child,” said Mrs. Keating.
Catherine hurried to speak, senselessly, hanging on to the sound of words:
“I’ll just take my hat off.... Where can I put it, Mrs. Keating? Here on the table? Would that be all right? ... No, maybe I’d better put it on this bureau, though it’s a little damp from the street, the hat is, it might hurt the varnish, it’s a nice bureau, I hope it doesn’t hurt the varnish....”
“What’s the matter, Katie?” Keating asked, noticing at last.
She looked at him and he saw that her eyes were terrified. Her lips parted; she was trying to smile.
“Katie!” he gasped.
She said nothing.
“Take your coat off. Come here, get yourself warm by the fire.”
He pushed a low bench to the fireplace, he made her sit down. She was wearing a black sweater and an old black skirt, schoolgirlish house garments which she had not changed for her visit. She sat hunched, her knees drawn tight together. She said, her voice lower and more natural, with the first released sound of pain in it:
“You have such a nice place.... So warm and roomy.... Can you open the windows any time you want to?”
“Katie darling,” he said gently, “what happened?”
“Nothing. It’s not that anything really happened. Only I had to speak to you. Now. Tonight.”
He looked at Mrs. Keating. “If you’d rather ...”
“No. It’s perfectly all right. Mrs. Keating can hear it. Maybe it’s better if she hears it.” She turned to his mother and said very simply: “You see, Mrs. Keating, Peter and I are engaged.” She turned to him and added, her voice breaking: “Peter, I want to be married now, tomorrow, as soon as possible.”
Mrs. Keating’s hand descended slowly to her lap. She looked at Catherine, her eyes expressionless. She said quietly, with a dignity Keating had never expected of her:
“I didn’t know it. I am very happy, my dear.”
“You don’t mind? You really don’t mind at all?” Catherine asked desperately.
“Why, child, such things are to be decided only by you and my son.”
“Katie!” he gasped, regaining his voice. “What happened? Why as soon as possible?”
“Oh! oh, it did sound as if... as if I were in the kind of trouble girls are supposed to ...” She blushed furiously. “Oh, my God! No! It’s not that! You know it couldn’t be! Oh, you couldn’t think, Peter, that I ... that ...”
“No, of course not,” he laughed, sitting down on the floor by her side, slipping an arm around her. “But pull yourself together. What is it? You know I’d marry you tonight if you wanted me to. Only what happened?”
“Nothing. I’m all right now. I’ll tell you. You’ll think I’m crazy. I just suddenly had the feeling that I’d never marry you, that something dreadful was happening to me and I had to escape from it.”
“What was happening to you?”
“I don’t know. Not a thing. I was working on my research notes all day, and nothing had happened at all. No calls or visitors. And then suddenly tonight, I had that feeling, it was like a nightmare, you know, the kind of horror that you can’t describe, that’s not like anything normal at all. Just the feeling that I was in mortal danger, that something was closing in on me, that I’d never escape it, because it wouldn’t let me and it was too late.”
“That you’d never escape what?”
“I don’t know exactly. Everything. My whole life. You know, like quicksand. Smooth and natural. With not a thing that you can notice about it or suspect. And you walk on it easily. When you’ve noticed, it’s too late.... And I felt that it would get me, that I’d never marry you, that I had to run, now, now or never. Haven’t you ever had a feeling like that, just fear that you couldn’t explain?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“No, Katie. Only what was it exactly that started it? Anything in particular?”
“Well ... it seems so silly now.” She giggled apologetically. “It was like this: I was sitting in my room and it was a little chilly, so I didn’t open the window. I had so many papers and books on the table, I hardly had room to write and every time I made a note my elbow’d push something off. There were piles of things on the floor all around me, all paper, and it rustled a little, because I had the door to the living room half open and there was a little draft, I guess. Uncle was working too, in the living room. I was getting along fine, I’d been at it for hours, didn’t even know what time it was. And then suddenly it got me. I don’t know why. Maybe the room was stuffy, or maybe it was the silence. I couldn’t hear a thing, not a sound in the living room, and there was that paper rustling, so softly, like somebody being choked to death. And then I looked around and... and I couldn’t see Uncle in the living room, but I saw his shadow on the wall, a huge shadow, all hunched, and it didn’t move, only it was so huge!”
She shuddered. The thing did not seem silly to her any longer. She whispered:
“That’s when it got me. It wouldn’t move, that shadow, but I thought all that paper was moving, I thought it was rising very slowly off the floor, and it was going to come to my throat and I was going to drown. That’s when I screamed. And, Peter, he didn’t hear. He didn’t hear it! Because the shadow didn’t move. Then I seized my hat and coat and I ran. When I was running through the living room, I think he said: ‘Why, Catherine, what time is it?—Where are you going?’ Something like that, I’m not sure. But I didn’t look back and I didn’t answer—I couldn’t. I was afraid of him. Afraid of Uncle Ellsworth who’s never said a harsh word to me in his life! ... That was all, Peter. I can’t understand it, but I’m afraid. Not so much any more, not here with you, but I’m afraid....”
Mrs. Keating spoke, her voice dry and crisp:
“Why, it’s plain what happened to you, my dear. You worked too hard and overdid it, and you just got a mite hysterical.”
“Yes ... probably ...”
“No,” said Keating dully, “no, it wasn’t that....” He was thinking of the loud-speaker in the lobby of the strike meeting. Then he added quickly: “Yes, Mother’s right. You’re killing yourself with work, Katie. That uncle of yours—I’ll wring his neck one of these days.”
“Oh, but it’s not his fault! He doesn’t want me to work. He often takes the books away from me and tells me to go to the movies. He’s said that himself, that I work too hard. But I like it. I think that every note I make, every little bit of information—it’s going to be taught to hundreds of young students, all over the country, and I think it’s me who’s helping to educate people, just my own little bit in such a big cause—and I feel proud and I don’t want to stop. You see? I’ve really got nothing to complain about. And then ... then, like tonight... I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“Look, Katie, we’ll get the license tomorrow morning and then we’ll be married at once, anywhere you wish.”
“Let’s, Peter,” she whispered. “You really don’t mind? I have no real reasons, but I want it. I want it so much. Then I’ll know that everything’s all right. We’ll manage. I can get a job if you... if you’re not quite ready or ...”
“Oh, nonsense. Don’t talk about that. We’ll manage. It doesn’t matter. Only let’s get married and everything else will take care of itself.”
“Darling, you understand? You do understand?”
“Yes, Katie.”
“Now that it’s all settled,” said Mrs. Keating, “I’ll fix you a cup of hot tea, Catherine. You’ll need it before you go home.”
She prepared the tea, and Catherine drank it gratefully and said, smiling:
“I ... I’ve often been afraid that you wouldn’t approve, Mrs. Keating.”
“Whatever gave you that idea,” Mrs. Keating drawled, her voice not in the tone of a question. “Now you run on home like a good girl and get a good night’s sleep.”
“Mother, couldn’t Katie stay here tonight? She could sleep with you.”
“Well, now, Peter, don’t get hysterical. What would her uncle think?”
“Oh, no, of course not. I’ll be perfectly all right, Peter. I’ll go home.”
“Not if you ...”
“I’m not afraid. Not now. I’m fine. You don’t think that I’m really scared of Uncle Ellsworth?”
“Well, all right. But don’t go yet.”
“Now, Peter,” said Mrs. Keating, “you don’t want her to be running around the streets later than she has to.”
“I’ll take her home.”
“No,” said Catherine. “I don’t want to be sillier than I am. No, I won’t let you.”
He kissed her at the door and he said: “I’ll come for you at ten o’clock tomorrow morning and we’ll go for the license.” “Yes, Peter,” she whispered.
He closed the door after her and he stood for a moment, not noticing that he was clenching his fists. Then he walked defiantly back to the living room, and he stopped, his hands in his pockets, facing his mother. He looked at her, his glance a silent demand. Mrs. Keating sat looking at him quietly, without pretending to ignore the glance and without answering it.
Then she asked:
“Do you want to go to bed, Peter?”
He had expected anything but that. He felt a violent impulse to seize the chance, to turn, leave the room and escape. But he had to learn what she thought; he had to justify himself.
“Now, Mother, I’m not going to listen to any objections.”
“I’ve made no objections,” said Mrs. Keating.
“Mother, I want you to understand that I love Katie, that nothing can stop me now, and that’s that.”
“Very well, Peter.”
“I don’t see what it is that you dislike about her.”
“What I like or dislike is of no importance to you any more.”
“Oh yes, Mother, of course it is! You know it is. How can you say that?”
“Peter, I have no likes or dislikes as far as I’m concerned. I have no thought for myself at all, because nothing in the world matters to me, except you. It might be old-fashioned, but that’s the way I am. I know I shouldn’t be, because children don’t appreciate it nowadays, but I can’t help it.”
“Oh, Mother, you know that I appreciate it! You know that I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me, Peter, except by hurting yourself. And that ... that’s hard to bear.”
“How am I hurting myself?”
“Well, if you won’t refuse to listen to me ...”
“I’ve never refused to listen to you!”
“If you do want to hear my opinion, I’ll say that this is the funeral of twenty-nine years of my life, of all the hopes I’ve had for you.”
“But why? Why?”
“It’s not that I dislike Catherine, Peter. I like her very much. She’s a nice girl—if she doesn’t let herself go to pieces often and pick things out of thin air like that. But she’s a respectable girl and I’d say she’d make a good wife for anybody. For any nice, plodding, respectable boy. But to think of it for you, Peter! For you!”
“But...”
“You’re modest, Peter. You’re too modest. That’s always been your trouble. You don’t appreciate yourself. You think you’re just like anybody else.”
“I certainly don’t! And I won’t have anyone think that!”
“Then use your head! Don’t you know what’s ahead of you? Don’t you see how far you’ve come already and how far you’re going? You have a chance to become—well, not the very best, but pretty near the top in the architectural profession, and ...”
“Pretty near the top? Is that what you think? If I can’t be the very best, if I can’t be the one architect of this country in my day—I don’t want any damn part of it!”
“Ah, but one doesn’t get to that, Peter, by falling down on the job. One doesn’t get to be first in anything without the strength to make some sacrifices.”
“But ...”
“Your life doesn’t belong to you, Peter, if you’re really aiming high. You can’t allow yourself to indulge every whim, as ordinary people can, because with them it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not you or me or what we feel, Peter. It’s your career. It takes strength to deny yourself in order to win other people’s respect.”
“You just dislike Katie and you let your own prejudice ...”
“Whatever would I dislike about her? Well, of course, I can’t say that I approve of a girl who has so little consideration for her man that she’ll run to him and upset him over nothing at all, and ask him to chuck his future out the window just because she gets some crazy notion. That shows what help you can expect from a wife like that. But as far as I’m concerned, if you think that I’m worried about myself—well, you’re just blind, Peter. Don’t you see that for me personally it would be a perfect match? Because I’d have no trouble with Catherine, I could get along with her beautifully, she’d be respectful and obedient to her mother-in-law. While, on the other hand, Miss Francon ...”
He winced. He had known that this would come. It was the one subject he had been afraid to hear mentioned.
“Oh yes, Peter,” said Mrs. Keating quietly, firmly, “we’ve got to speak of that. Now, I’m sure I could never manage Miss Francon, and an elegant society girl like that wouldn’t even stand for a dowdy, uneducated mother like me. She’d probably edge me out of the house. Oh, yes, Peter. But you see, it’s not me that I’m thinking of.”
“Mother,” he said harshly, “that part of it is pure drivel—about my having a chance with Dominique. That hell-cat—I’m not sure she’d ever look at me.”
“You’re slipping, Peter. There was a time when you wouldn’t have admitted that there was anything you couldn’t get.”
“But I don’t want her, Mother.”
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? Well, there you are. Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? Look at yourself! There you’ve got Francon, the best architect in town, just where you want him! He’s practically begging you to take a partnership—at your age, over how many other, older men’s heads? He’s not permitting, he’s asking you to marry his daughter! And you’ll walk in tomorrow and you’ll present to him the little nobody you’ve gone and married! Just stop thinking of yourself for a moment and think of others a bit! How do you suppose he’ll like that? How will he like it when you show him the little guttersnipe that you’ve preferred to his daughter?”
“He won’t like it,” Keating whispered.
“You bet your life he won’t! You bet your life he’ll kick you right out on the street! He’ll find plenty who’ll jump at the chance to take your place. How about that Bennett fellow?”
“Oh, no!” Keating gasped so furiously that she knew she had struck right. “Not Bennett!”
“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Bennett! That’s what it’ll be—Francon & Bennett, while you’ll be pounding the pavements looking for a job! But you’ll have a wife! Oh, yes, you’ll have a wife!”
“Mother, please ...” he whispered, so desperately that she could allow herself to go on without restraint.
“This is the kind of wife you’ll have. A clumsy little girl who won’t know where to put her hands or feet. A sheepish little thing who’ll run and hide from any important person that you’ll want to bring to the house. So you think you’re so good? Don’t kid yourself, Peter Keating! No great man ever got there alone. Don’t you shrug it off, how much the right woman’s helped the best of them. Your Francon didn’t marry a chambermaid, you bet your life he didn’t! Just try to see things through other people’s eyes for a bit. What will they think of your wife? What will they think of you? You don’t make your living building chicken coops for soda jerkers, don’t you forget that! You’ve got to play the game as the big men of this world see it. You’ve got to live up to them. What will they think of a man who’s married to a common little piece of baggage like that? Will they admire you? Will they trust you? Will they respect you?”
“Shut up!” he cried.
But she went on. She spoke for a long time, while he sat, cracking his knuckles savagely, moaning once in a while; “But I love her.... I can’t, Mother! I can’t.... I love her....”
She released him when the streets outside were gray with the light of morning. She let him stumble off to his room, to the accompaniment of the last, gentle, weary sounds of her voice:
“At least, Peter, you can do that much. Just a few months. Ask her to wait just a few months. Heyer might die any moment and then, once you’re a partner, you can marry her and you might get away with it. She won’t mind waiting just that little bit longer, if she loves you.... Think it over, Peter.... And while you’re thinking it over, think just a bit that if you do this now, you’ll be breaking your mother’s heart. It’s not important, but take just a tiny notice of that. Think of yourself for an hour, but give one minute to the thought of others....”
He did not try to sleep. He did not undress, but sat on his bed for hours, and the thing clearest in his mind was the wish to find himself transported a year ahead when everything would have been settled, he did not care how.
He had decided nothing when he rang the door bell of Catherine’s apartment at ten o’clock. He felt dimly that she would take his hand, that she would lead him, that she would insist—and thus the decision would be made.
Catherine opened the door and smiled, happily and confidently, as if nothing had happened. She led him to her room, where broad shafts of sunlight flooded the columns of books and papers stacked neatly on her desk. The room was clean, orderly, the pile of the rug still striped in bands left by a carpet sweeper. Catherine wore a crisp organdy blouse, with sleeves standing stiffly, cheerfully about her shoulders; little fluffy needles glittered through her hair in the sunlight. He felt a brief wrench of disappointment that no menace met him in her house; a wrench of relief also, and of disappointment.
“I’m ready, Peter,” she said. “Get me my coat.”
“Did you tell your uncle?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I told him last night. He was still working when I got back.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just laughed and asked me what I wanted for a wedding present. But he laughed so much!”
“Where is he? Didn’t he want to meet me at least?”
“He had to go to his newspaper office. He said he’d have plenty of time to see more than enough of you. But he said it so nicely!”
“Listen, Katie, I ... there’s one thing I wanted to tell you.” He hesitated, not looking at her. His voice was flat. “You see, it’s like this: Lucius Heyer, Francon’s partner, is very ill and they don’t expect him to live. Francon’s been hinting quite openly that I’m to take Heyer’s place. But Francon has the crazy idea that he wants me to marry his daughter. Now don’t misunderstand me, you know there’s not a chance, but I can’t tell him so. And I thought ... I thought that if we waited... for just a few weeks... I’d be set with the firm and then Francon could do nothing to me when I come and tell him that I’m married.... But, of course it’s up to you.” He looked at her and his voice was eager. “If you want to do it now, we’ll go at once.”
“But, Peter,” she said calmly, serene and astonished. “But of course. We’ll wait.”
He smiled in approval and relief. But he closed his eyes.
“Of course, we’ll wait,” she said firmly. “I didn’t know this and it’s very important. There’s really no reason to hurry at all.”
“You’re not afraid that Francon’s daughter might get me?”
She laughed. “Oh, Peter! I know you too well.”
“But if you’d rather ...”
“No, it’s much better. You see, to tell you the truth, I thought this morning that it would be better if we waited, but I didn’t want to say anything if you had made up your mind. Since you’d rather wait, I’d much rather too, because, you see, we got word this morning that Uncle’s invited to repeat this same course of lectures at a terribly important university on the West Coast this summer. I felt horrible about leaving him flat, with the work unfinished. And then I thought also that perhaps we were being foolish, we’re both so young. And Uncle Ellsworth laughed so much. You see, it’s really wiser to wait a little.”
“Yes. Well, that’s fine. But, Katie, if you feel as you did last night...”
“But I don’t! I’m so ashamed of myself. I can’t imagine what ever happened to me last night. I try to remember it and I can’t understand. You know how it is, you feel so silly afterward. Everything’s so clear and simple the next day. Did I say a lot of awful nonsense last night?”
“Well, forget it. You’re a sensible little girl. We’re both sensible. And we’ll wait just a while, it won’t be long.”
“Yes, Peter.”
He said suddenly, fiercely:
“Insist on it now, Katie.”
And then he laughed stupidly, as if he had not been quite serious.
She smiled gaily in answer. “You see?” she said, spreading her hands out.
“Well ...” he muttered. “Well, all right, Katie. We’ll wait. It’s better, of course. I ... I’ll run along then. I’ll be late at the office.” He felt he had to escape her room for the moment, for that day. “I’ll give you a ring. Let’s have dinner together tomorrow.”
“Yes, Peter. That will be nice.”
He went away, relieved and desolate, cursing himself for the dull, persistent feeling that told him he had missed a chance which would never return; that something was closing in on them both and they had surrendered. He cursed, because he could not say what it was that they should have fought. He hurried on to his office where he was being late for an appointment with Mrs. Moorehead.
Catherine stood in the middle of the room, after he had left, and wondered why she suddenly felt empty and cold; why she hadn’t known until this moment that she had hoped he would force her to follow him. Then she shrugged, and smiled reproachfully at herself, and went back to the work on her desk.