Chapter VI: Webs

_“Pleasure drives out Pain: and because Pain is felt in excess men
pursue Pleasure in excess._

_“The attempted answer of Speusippus ‘that Pleasure may be opposed and
yet not contrary to Pain...’ will not hold: for he cannot say that
Pleasure is identical with evil of any kind.”_

_“The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”_
(_Trans. D. P. Chase_)

1

All the negativeness of Howard’s personal egotism was becoming positive on the artistic side.

He rather enjoyed self-contempt, dismissing himself on the plane of human relations. His frank lack of moral pride relieved his vanity from ethical obligation. It allowed him not only to do what he liked, but also eased him from the inner necessity to make it up to himself. Nevertheless he was really unhappy. This unhappiness, while chiefly with himself, was not merely a vague disappointment and dissatisfaction. He needed for Em to worship him more, not as an individual, for he had a genuine pleasure in confessing his faults, but as an artist. He longed for it. Her own artistic achievement was unanswerable, and therefore some reversal of her attitude became requisite. She did not condemn but ignored his art. So, still thirsting for her recognition, he unconsciously shifted his hope to the more equal field of the personal emulations that he despised.

Howard’s increasing absences at night bothered Em. It was not a conventional grievance. Freedom was her god. Her philosophy of conduct did not permit her to object to any philandering he might see fit to practice. One of her hostilities toward Les had grown from the feeling that he forced himself to ignore all other relations except his relation to her. Sacrifice oppressed her. But Howard had come gradually to neglect her unbearably. Since her rush of confession to her friends and his, she saw almost no one. Something in her needed contact. There was panic in the world.

Darkness. It was nearly midnight. The bell rang. Em had sat for hours almost motionless in a big chair. She sprang up with unconcealed eagerness and opened the door. Her thin face hectic. It was Mitra. He entered silently. He looked first at her and then around the apartment. She was alone. He exclaimed with cheerless delight.

“Elephants!” Em smiled. It was good that someone had come. “I came to walk.” Needless words always seemed to hurt him.

“With me?”

Mitra nodded. To Em after her evening alone it was a challenge. My trouble is that I’m daunted. She put on her hat and coat and they went down to the street.

“Good!” His voice was secret and remote.

They walked slowly. Em conversed uneasily to her mute companion. It was only when they were passing Algeria’s studio that she realized why. After a few turns in the Square they came back by Algeria’s studio. Howard and Celia were at the door. He was fitting his key in the lock: but Celia saw Mitra and Em.

“It’s after one,” Em said quietly, glancing at her watch. She was holding herself. Mitra’s being with her helped her. “I think I shall go to bed.”

Mitra tried to see her face. He paced silently at her side until they reached the apartment.

“May I come up?”

“No,” said Em kindly.

His dark eyes were lustrous.

“I love you, little white tiger.” He stood motionless before her.

“Don’t, please.” She was still gentle.

“He has--for a long time.”

“That makes no difference.” She held out her hand with an affectionate gesture. Mitra’s silent dramatic complacency was disconcerting to her Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness. She smiled. “Let’s be friends.”

Almost before she spoke he was gone.

2

Em decided against seclusion. She went to lunch at Esther’s the next day. She wore one of her most becoming costumes, a brown hand-woven wool skirt and smock, hat covered with the same material. Her slightly hollowed cheeks were carefully rouged, her eyes alight and unswerving. Howard, Celia and Gouvain were seated at a table that was directly before her as she entered.

Gouvain sprang to his feet and pulled back the vacant chair.

“Zis wass reserve for you!” he exclaimed with his warming smile. His seeking eyes rested happily on hers.

Em returned his smile with decision.

“Hello,” she said in a natural tone to Howard and Celia.

Constraint was reduced to a minimum. The new manners do not yet admit breaches of good form in public. However, Gouvain’s glowing eyes perplexed Em slightly. His eyes no longer considered Howard. She felt surprisingly uncertain. When sex is no longer connected with a beloved person there is no stopping-place. Celia, Mitra and Gouvain seemed a welter of sex. But she was glad Howard was free. I’m enduring for him what Les endured for me. Em was almost happy to be made to feel something about it.

Gouvain talked to her with an air of intimacy. Howard and Celia flippantly discussed art. Celia’s silken indolent voice came to Em.

“A woman with a body like mine doesn’t need to be an artist.”

Em was astonished at the close of the meal when Howard turned to Gouvain.

“Will you take Celia home, Pierre? I’m going to walk along with Em.”

Celia never showed wonder. Gouvain glanced docilely at Em.

“I am enchant.”

On the way to the apartment neither Em nor Howard spoke.

3

Howard and Em could still talk things out, still fight to release, so she clung to him.

From the beginning of their relation he had always been faithful to the secrets of all the women with whom he had had affairs, including a schoolgirl sweetheart of his college days. Thus he possessed a psychic harem from which Em felt he was excluding her. Now they sat down to debate the present situation. Howard had invited this by coming home with Em. He could not convince himself that he was ready to risk losing her, but also he could not desist in his attempt to punish her through Celia. Em’s calmness mystified him. She seemed stronger. Her delicate form seemed more definite and steady. She began the discussion.

“Don’t you feel that we should be frank about things, Howard?”

“By which I suppose you mean for me to be frank.”

“I mean both of us,” she said patiently.

“You’re very frank about Gouvain,” he responded coldly.

“I’m perfectly willing to tell you everything about him and me.”

“And about Mitra,” he added with more heat.

Em crimsoned.

“I can tell you every word I’ve ever said to Mitra.”

“What about the things he’s said to you?” Em was silent. “Hasn’t he made love to you?”

“Yes,” she answered honestly.

“Well, if you let men make love to you without my knowledge, why should I report to you everything I do?” Under the pretext of sharing I’m allowed only the aspects of sex she enjoys!

“I didn’t let him!” exclaimed Em indignantly.

Howard was intoxicated in the thought of her retreat before him. His green eyes shone, his curling lip quivered.

“I presume Drane reported on all the time he spent out of your sight.”

“I never asked--” she began in a choking voice. Her body swayed and she clenched her hands.

“How much has he told you about this girl with the ‘candied’ eyes you fancied so?” Howard was instinctively sowing doubt.

“I know he never--I don’t believe--” Em burst into tears. This suggestion inflicted far more pain than her jealousy of Howard aroused.

Howard was pitiless. He wanted to hold her and yet not relinquish his goad. I’ll use her bombastic idea of duty!

“What you and I need is a little good taste in our relations, Em,” he said with cynical tolerance. “Now Algeria and I, she’s like me in such matters, we never--” He hesitated involuntarily before the sudden anger in Em’s eyes.

He realized that he had made a false step. Em seemed most desirable when she was aroused, but he felt unable to end what he had begun. Before he could continue she burst into a storm of irate words.

“Don’t talk to me! I hate you--you and your Algeria--and that little baby-faced whore--all of you--go away--leave me--” Em stopped for breath. She was frightened at herself, but relieved by her own violence. Her lips still quivered but her gaze disowned him.

Howard’s tone altered.

“Listen, Em--”

“Get away from me!” she cried hoarsely, her eyes dark with bitter abhorrence.

“I shall,” he snarled, striding from the room and slamming the door after him.

As he passed down the stairs he felt ill with depression. He had no regret for Em, but he felt lost. There seemed nothing for him to look forward to. Some great artist to acknowledge his personality! He did not admit greatness in Em, but at least something real--without her, nothing. He recalled bitterly and without gratitude the men and women who admired him: he despised them, with hatred, for the insult of their too easy tribute.

Left alone. Em sank into a chair by the table and buried her face in her arms. Rough sobs grated in her throat, her shoulders heaved jerkily, the muscles of her neck twitched. The gathering darkness at last hid her shivering form.