Chapter IX

That winter they met nearly every day. But she didn't invite him to call at her home. He couldn't ask a reason for this strange omission. My intentions are perfectly honourable. I've told her I wouldn't marry the best woman even though she were the last of her sex on the globe. I've also told her that a man should never live under the same roof with his mistress; in that case what would be the difference between marriage and concubinage; one would be as stupid as the other. Poor Emma Bovary found out from experience that men and women bound by any bond live in the land of platitudes. I told her--heaven forgive my candor!--that I changed mistresses every three months, that the instant I found myself falling in love with one I got a new one. Boasts by a boaster. What is it that interests nice girls in irregular lives? I wonder. The inside of a brothel is not so interesting as an abatoir, where as Huysmans used to say--love is slain at a stroke, and the stroke usually costs the man a twenty-franc piece. But these girls don't realize the crudeness of such lives. Mystery. That's the attraction. The unknown. Silly, miserable women who go to bed the same night with a half dozen men--is that romantic! Demi-vierges, Marcel Prévost called the American girls, for some reason best known to himself. Yet I've met respectable married women who went to Paris crazy to see the sights, that is, certain sights. The puberty of adultery? Maxim's soon bored them. From the organized obscenities of Montmartre they went to the "peep-holes" only to see another show staged for imbeciles with a filthy curiosity. What is it? Mona, dear decent child, agrees with me that promiscuous married life is the most deadly blow of all to romance. She simply won't recognize evil as evil, only as vulgarity--worse, as stupidity. I absolutely agree with her in that matter.

But it was not such plain sailing for Mona through this unfamiliar and uncharted land of emotion. She had a hard time with that temperament of hers. I'm glad they give it such a name as temperament, she said. Robert Louis Stevenson calls love a mixture of pruriency and curiosity, which suggests a horrid itch. Young men have an easier time than girls, who must sit and sizzle while down in some sub-cellar of their being they hear the faint growlings of the untamed animal. Once unleashed it jumps all barriers, and then--well, then, the fat's in the fire. Mona shivered, a pleasing shiver of anticipation. Why not bravely go to her parents and confess that she loved Ulick? He was a presentable young man, of social standing, with abundant means--evidently; for outside of his critical work he seems to do little except to spend money, not a negligible quantity, with her--and, finally, he was liked, and liked very much by Milt. Some perverse devil lurking in the depths of her being bade her stay silent. Was it romance, sloppy, slimy sentimentality, after all? She couldn't say. She only knew that she wanted to keep her secret, that she didn't wish to marry, that she loved to be near the big, good-hearted young chap with the blue eyes; yes, why not tell the truth--she was wild to be loved by him. Everything. A young woman brought up in the practice of all the proprieties--save church going--by a mother who idolized her! Nevertheless, she was ready to throw her bonnet over the windmill like the veriest street slut. Where her maidenly reserve! She had none when self-confessing. Ulick had said to her, I think you were brought up on the wrong kind of reading. Do you force me to stick to Hannah More or Self-Help? she had impertinently demanded. You might do worse. Bernard Shaw is poor nourishment for a girl with too much imagination, he retorted. Wrong again, she said, I've absolutely no imagination. I'm only enthusiastic. And you have said that without enthusiasms life would be unsupportable.

Thus far the outward expression of their mutual affection had been conventional. They went to picture exhibitions, the horse-show at the Garden saw them many times, and also opera and theatre matinées; but, strictly speaking, they were never alone. He always left her at her house door. There were no twilit corridors, darkened vestibules, no sudden corners in entries where they might embrace. He did smuggle her hand into his at the theatre when the lights were lowered; during entr'actes they were a well-bred couple. Opportunity, which is the thief of virtue--sometimes--hadn't appeared on the scene. Occasionally, when walking after a copious luncheon, she would complain of enervation and her eyes would swim with mystic languour. He, fearing that she might think him virtuous, boasted of laborious nights of vice. She seemed to believe him and secretly applauded his conduct. No wonder young men can bob up with such smug faces when they call on nice girls. Oh, yes, they are quite virtuous. No fear of their misbehaving themselves. Their other "lady" friends have made them safe--housebroken, she added with a smile over the phrase. I believe grim law causes more suffering than license. When she communicated this original idea to Ulick he frankly asked her:

"See here, Mona, do you ever expect to have a child?" "I'm crazy for one, for two"--and she related the story of Dolly. He was at once sympathetic, slightly to her surprise. "It reminds me," he said, "of two French friends of mine. Married, but no children, though they were much desired. For several years they played at parenthood, they pretended they had a boy and a girl, very young, very troublesome, but beloved by them. They played this strange little comedy for several years. They never went out in the daytime without the "children." They held long conversations with them. They reproved, praised, admired, caressed them. At night when they visited the theatre or had a dinner they left their precious imaginary offspring in the care of an equally shadowy nurse, burdening her with all manner of instructions. And now comes the funny part of my story. A real child was born, a few years later, a second followed, and for all I know they may have had half a dozen since then. But those children of flesh and blood were not treated with the same sort of love the dream-children had received"--"Dream-children?" she repeated her eyes insistently seeking his, "what a pretty expression. Did you make it up?" "Certainly not. Haven't you read Charles Lamb's description of his dream-children, the children he never fathered--only dreamed of?" She didn't thank him for his explanation, but mused. "I should like to have some dream-children." "How many, five or six?" "No, two would be enough, a boy and a girl. I have already a real child, didn't I tell you?" He pretended to be shocked. "A real baby you have?" "Yes, my Dolly. She's a troublesome charge. If I could only have two dream-children"--"Who is to be the father?" "You," she replied, and her naive gravity impressed Ulick. "Won't you be the father of our twins?" Her voice was low, pleading, almost intense. They were sitting in the park on an April afternoon. He caught one of her wrists. "By God," he exclaimed, "if I could only believe you meant it." "I do mean it, dear Ulick. We shall never marry yet we may have children --dream-children, symbols of our friendship." "And what in the world do you mean by saying that we shall never marry?" His accent was one of astonishment and no little pique. She gazed demurely at her well-shaped hands.

"Didn't you say that you had to change mistresses every three months? And what about the obscene promiscuity of married life!" He went into a bad humour at once and impatiently answered: "Yes, I did say it and you know enough of life to know it was all brag. I've no mistresses--" "What! no mistresses, not one?" she blankly inquired. He didn't turn a hair. "Not one. I love only one woman in the world now. It's Mona Milton. I needn't tell her that." "No," she replied without affectation. "We do care for each other. Yet, Jewel, why harp on marriage?" He endeavoured not to show his surprise. To atavism, and to the Bartlett side of his ancestry, must be set down the reason for this surprise, and a faint, though well-defined, feeling of dissent. Really, a young girl should not say such things to a young man no matter how modern, how advanced she is; no matter if she is fond of him; and the curious part of the thing is that Mona does not boast being advanced or modern, nor, indeed, anything but a real girl.

She noted his confusion and helped him over the stile of perplexity. "Ulick, let's have dream-twins."

"I'll assume all the responsibility, all the cares, only let's have them--now." He glanced superstitiously about him as if he feared her speech would be overheard. And her home not ten minutes away! She divined the cause of his embarrassment and grasping his hand in her soothing clasp she asked with the naiveté of a childish mother: "What shall we call them, our darlings?" "That's important," he declared, humouring her. "Let me see. The boy? I have it. Shamus. My full name in baptism is Ulick Shamus Fitzgibbon Desmond Invern. It's a mouthful. I am the namesake of my uncle, my father's elder brother, now the head of our house and present Marquis of Invern and Desmond. Yes, there's a Marquis in the family, a poverty-stricken one at that, poor but proud. But it will do me no good, for he has a quiverful of children. My cousin, St. Alban, his heir, is my age, a regular prig. So, dear, it will be Shamus, if you don't mind." She nodded. Shamus would do. Now for the girl. He again made the nomination. "She is called Grane." Mona rebelled. "Why such an unusual name?" "Don't you remember the white horse of Brunnhilde in 'Siegfried'?" "Certainly, and I also remember the white horses in Rosmersholm which foretold trouble." "I like Grane, and you will like her, too." He was so firm that she acceded. "All right, dear, and now what are you going to do with the pair since they are born?" He took out his watch and started up. "Past five, and I've a first-night on. Good-bye, darling Mona," and he kissed her upon the mouth for the first time in the twilight and with a moon like an effaced silver coin looking at them over the synagogue. It was a consecration, she whispered; my first kiss. Then aloud: "Good-bye--darling--I'll take Shamus and Grane home, the dears might take cold. Good-bye Ulick, my husband and father of our children." As he strode away, not daring to look back, he ruminated: That's a case of suppressed maternal instinct. Mona ought to be married or--or--steady boy! Else you are in it either way you jump.