Chapter V: The Fear of Life

_“There was once a King and a Queen, and they had twelve children,
all boys. One day the King said to his wife: ‘If our thirteenth child
is a girl, all her twelve brothers must die, so that she may be very
rich and the kingdom hers alone!’ ... When the brothers heard of this
they were very angry, and said: ‘Shall we suffer death for the sake
of a girl? Let us vow that wherever we shall meet one of her sex she
shall die at our hands.’”_

THE BROTHERS GRIMM--_“Hausmärchen”_
(_Trans. Anonymous_)

1

Manhattan narrow like a street, street of the world, sooner or later one meets everybody.

Sir David Grove, Les’s old rival and colleague: neck and neck, honors even, each had magnified the other’s discoveries, respectful friends. Sir David Grove, K.C.B., F.R.S., honorary degrees from a dozen universities, alphabetical Sir David, titles in imposing inverted pyramids under his name, covering half the title-page of each of his books. Drawer full of decorations. They do these things better in England. Big Sir David, body of a squire, huge peasant beard, eyes like God’s friend, seeing everything. Voice big like himself. Bang! into each other in the midst of Fifth Avenue--no escape.

“Damme if it isn’t ------!” Sir David sounded a name that startled Les. My old name! Why hasn’t he forgotten it?

“Hello, Grove.”

“Come into the Union League here. Jove, what luck!” Les followed, half-stupefied. Sir David whispered something to an attendant. “Sit down, sit down, my dear fellow. That’s an easy chair.” Les sank into the chair. “Where have you been? Your monograph on the Pleurotomidæ is out, I suppose you’ve seen. Read the proof myself, damn you! Your university wrote that you were dead! New genus named for you. Good plates. Eisenwein of Vienna had a fit, started to revise his whole life work on your new theories, ha, ha, ha!” Les drank dreamily from a glass of something that had appeared on the little table between them. Sir David boomed along. “Glad to see you, suppose you’ve been on a little expedition of your own, what did you get? But seriously, my dear chap, you must get down and finish up some things with me. Poor old Latour at the Jardin des Plantes has got the Rhabdocœla all balled up. I can’t go into it, you know, I’ve got the Pterobranchia and several other groups to do, and I’m fifty-six. Grabowitz in Moscow is coming on very well with the Siphonostomata, or would be if that little pissant Denny at Cromwell Road weren’t eternally publishing half-baked guesses that get into the literature, he doesn’t know an Entomostracan from an Ascidian. Of course, as you know, some new material _must_ be found to clear up lacunæ and so forth, and here’s the plan.” Sir David bent forward in his chair. “A new expedition, adequate scale, Seychelles, Celebes, the Andamans, and whole zöo- and phyto-area necessary, every detail planned, in fact only eight weeks off, I’m over here for last touches in apparatus. Come along as co-director with me.” Sir David leaned back, paused for breath, and dragged a big brier pipe from his coat pocket.

Les’s cheeks tingled with a little color but he did not look up. Em.... Is life beginning again? Helplessly conscious of grandiloquence. Her eyes on him. I can’t leave Em now. The courage of a greater fear. What is love? Souls.... I’ll never leave her. He thought of himself as making an epic sacrifice.

“I suppose you know there’s been a scandal.”

Sir David laughed till the room rang.

“Rubbish! You remember my--well, with little Polly? Now the Dowager Lady Seccombe, bless ’er? All forgotten. I guessed so. Fact Twichell said something about the newspapers--I never read ’em. But what of it? What does the scientific world care about--I tell you they can’t spare us, my dear boy!”

Les raised his eyes.

“I’m afraid I can’t come, awfully fine of you of course.”

Sir David pulled his riotous beard thoughtfully.

“Too bad, of course Twichell will jump at it, he’s the next best one; but curse him, he hasn’t a dynamic conception of a species. There’s a dozen with their mouths all fixed up for it. Hum, I suppose you know best.”

Les got up.

“Nice to have seen you again.”

As he disappeared Sir David reared his great length and walked twice up and down the empty room, studiously contemplating his own huge heavily shod feet. At last, blowing out a dense cloud of smoke, he knocked the ashes from his pipe and tapped his forehead solemnly with his forefinger. Then he went in to his luncheon.

2

With Em gone to Les, Howard and Algeria did not quite know what to do with their own new relation. Algeria seemed childish to Howard. Her airy defense had been excellent in youth, but it gradually intensified with time, like a grisly coquetry in a fast-aging woman. The whole reason for enduring seemed gone with Em, but he would not give up. She admires me, he insisted stubbornly to himself. He allowed himself to be pushed into the background, however. He, with Carmen’s help, had really been ruling Algeria’s circle in her absence. Now he tried to believe his vanity amused that the group preferred her. She was more their intellectual size. A good ideal! He tried to enlarge himself with the magnitude of his contempt, to make it include everyone. Howard was not given to drink. But he wished he could be drunk--physically--with anything. To forget.

To keep him diverted Algeria plunged into an orgy of parties. Algeria’s parties were amazing events. She continually invited people--people who could not possibly mix--because they had “done” something. Then she attempted to make them perform. Usually, like babies or pets, they refused to show off until Algeria became elfishly panicky and drank more and more wine, at last mazily persuading herself that all was going delightfully.

Algeria was a genius in capturing and focusing the attention of a group on herself. But her talent was special and personal. She could not direct a gathering. One evening she had assembled a collection of diminutive celebrities. A threatened fiasco had driven her to such a state of alcoholic defenselessness that jealous poetic rivals had even succeeded in preventing her from reading her own almost endless poem, “The Elf Lover.” The Passionate Poetess (the hapless Stieg silent in leash), with the mastery of a situation that never failed, had wrested the reins from the wittily despairing Algeria and was in full sway.

Howard arrived late. As he opened the door his glance took in Algeria, composed of blue and mauve stringers this time, unsteadily holding court in a corner of the big room--Carmen, Celia, Gouvain, _and_ the satellites surrounding her--the rebellious P. P. in charge of the program of entertainment.

“We’re in the midst of a reading,” the P. P. whispered impressively to Howard as he made his way through the crowd to Algeria and her entourage. He had hardly seated himself when the P. P. clapped her plump hands for attention. “Mr. Klobber will now recite an unpublished poem to an original accompaniment on his mandoguitar.”

There was a rustle of expectation as an anemic young man with misty spectacled eyes and trembling nostrils shambled forth holding a ukelele-like instrument and seated himself nervously on a geometrical chair near the center of the room. To a running tinkle of pleasant shallow sound he intoned with intense pathos.

_“Here--
There--
Everywhere.
Kittens--
Yellow butterflies.
One in one
Being two
Is two.
Little two,
Will you be my one?
Me, too!”_

As the light applause died away after the final rickety flourish of the strings, a mountain of a woman in a soiled lace gown exploded with cavernous voice:

“Subtle!”

“He has a tricksy art,” piped a perky-faced little spinster near her.

Hand-claps again from the P. P.

“Juaquin Pilcher will now read an unpublished poem.”

A mad-eyed young man with a whorl of wiry rebellious hair rose suddenly from his chair and read monotonously.

_“Rather,
Mon cher,
Notice that the moon
Is a pustule:
That women have legs--
Not limbs,
But legs;
What’s more
Bellies,
Garbage underneath.
But this is of no moment.
Garbage hidden under the snow.
Garbage
Is my apology.”_

“Subtle!” coughed the lace mountain.

“Strong, very strong!” piped the echo.

Howard stared at Pilcher. Eyes, hair--he’s like me, thought Howard panically. There but for the grace of God--There came over him a positive terror of Greenwich Village and its absurdities. Algeria had been holding his hand. He drew it away. I ought to think this ridiculous. Am I ridiculous? Art versus life! Ha! Slush--

Hand-claps.

“Miss Rosemarie Bean will now read an unpublished poem,” announced the P. P.

A Pre-Raphaelite maiden with pale red hair half rose and then reseated herself in confusion. “The title is part of the poem,” she prefaced guiltily.

_“IT WAS SAID BY MORE_

_Than one ‘the impene-
trable introvert to
Be integral with-
out the facti-
tious device of
A conning tower’ to
Filch security from ob-
vious outwardness must sp-_

_in the unobserved in-
to a construct of a-
lien vision. Wheth-
er the ‘pale rho-
dodendrons of
Fancy’ are erected as
Two facts or one
Is immaterial.”_

“Subtle!” from the bass-voiced mountain.

“Intellectually intense,” from the echo.

Claps.

“Miss Sybil Spinther, an unpublished poem.” Miss Spinther shakes her head and whispers in terror to the P. P. “Well,” announces the P. P. in a relieved tone, “by request I will now read one of my own unpublished poems.” Clearing her throat and adjusting her spectacles she began to read in a high shrill voice.

_“Not yet the irrefutable implacable
Singing its wild song in Avenue A
Amidst hot tides of flesh,
Turgid loins seeking--”_

Howard rose. The P. P. was good for half an hour at least. Algeria seized him alluringly.

“We can’t bear to see Pan dishonored, can we?” she whispered sympathetically.

“Let me get out of here,” he replied in a petulant undertone.

Algeria pouted.

“I thought it would _amuse_ you, dearestie,” she reproached.

“It has,” said Howard viciously. He tiptoed from the room, the P. P.’s voice blaring after him into the hall and down the stairs.

Ugh! he breathed as he reached the street. Fake artists. Puny scribblers. Tin-pot Nietzscheans. Tramps. Idiots. Em was--I’m done with Greenwich Village. The place for those who have nothing. Why should the damned spot devastate one so! Good God! First Drane and then Em and now I’m finally disgusted with it. Algeria never would be. It had made her. Howard told himself over and over that he was sick of the belated romanticism of Bohemia.

3

Howard was now living at Algeria’s studio. They had never before publicly been lovers. Algeria would never acknowledge that she had had lovers. Now she advertised it broadcast. His only protest was a stinging manner with her friends. She was physically repugnant to him. Her body had a soft look, not shapeless but blurred. Getting heavy under the throat. Too thick through the waist, the shoulders too wide, her breasts sag. He feared to see her in the daytime, she looked worse then. He wanted to drink with her, to make it easier to take her. He recalled her lewd visioning of sex. No wonder she sees it like that! His artistic vanity was included.

Howard missed Em, he would not from pride admit how much. Algeria guessed it, and as he neglected her more and more her jealousy of Em grew more virulent. Once Howard mentioned having seen Em.

“Howard’s _pagan_--his _wood-woman_,” explained Algeria in a sugary tone to the Hungry Soul who, with others, had come to worship.

“The sublimation to an ideal of the erotic--” began the Hungry Soul.

“Sublimation to tommyrot!” interrupted Howard violently. “Miss Tyler is--”

“Of _course_ she is,” Algeria’s silvery voice glided in. “When you see that _nice_ girl again, Howard, give her my _love_. Tell her she is a _ripper_, simply a _ripper_. Oh, no, don’t say _exactly_ that, you know. Tell her I can _never_ forget her. She is a person one _really_ cares for.” A pause and Algeria added with a winning smile, “Or, no, you _can_ tell her she is a ripper, after all. She’ll probably like that more than _you_ or _I_ would!”

“_Damn_ your malice,” growled Howard with suppressed rage. The Hungry Soul was by this time obliviously discussing psychic sexual introversion with the other visitors.

“Sh-h-h!” whispered Algeria cautiously, with an innocent look. “You and I understand, peetie. I was only trying to take in the other stupids.”

This continuous presence of mind of Algeria’s annoyed him unbearably. Whenever she essayed to insult someone and the tables were turned she deftly took the intended victim into her confidence. Nothing could possibly dent her conceit. When Howard was most restive and irritable she never dreamed of looking within herself for the reason. She saw all his superficial defects but took no responsibility for analyzing their origin.

“I was never so bored in my life,” he complained.

“Sweetesty, it’s because other _women_ bother you. They think _they_ will get you away. _I_ see that you are only _nice_ to them. I know that you _adore_ me, and it’s _hard_ for you. We ought to be together _alone_ more. But I can’t _escape_ people. There are so _many_ who really _exist_ because of me.”

Howard looked at her round face drawn into a mimicry of solemnity. Algeria smiling and heavily triumphant in a crowd--even Algeria dextrously malignant in a group--was bearable. But Algeria alone and serious--unhumorous and wifely. It was too much!

She was often bored with him.

“Howard’s developing a _soul_,” she told Gouvain, “and after I’ve _wasted_ myself admiring his tiresome etchings for him!”

Algeria was a true superwoman--she could not fail!

“I’m sick of things,” Howard grumbled peevishly.

“Of _course_ you are, dearestie,” she replied, patting his cheek. “You and I will go back to _Paris_ next winter.”

He could not insult her. Her confidence invited awe. Her superiority to pride was too gorgeous.

Since Howard had come to her Algeria now also persuaded herself that Mitra had long been secretly in love with her. Magnanimously she keyed her manner to a delicate sympathy that stirred his silent immobile amusement. She began to hate Celia for having Mitra, told herself that it was only because Celia was young and delectable physically. Algeria implied by her sympathetic attitude toward Mitra that she knew he too would some day come back to her.

When she stroked his hand he would exclaim pensively:

“Elephants!”

She wondered if he were sometimes laconically malicious, but as her emotions were not involved she resolved to content herself with his offering.

4

The brief affair of Howard and Algeria was breaking up. He showed too plainly that he was ashamed of her. Algeria was beginning to consider him no longer worth the indignities to which his attitude exposed her.

“Algeria’s all right, but as an artist she’s a joke.” Cheap Greenwich Village faker, he thought, how could I ever have--He thought of Em. Clean cut--

He never lingered near Algeria. She was cruelly active in discovering his faults to others, but when her group was gathered at her studio in the evening she tried to make Howard drunk to be rid of the annoyance of deceiving him. Their drunken carousals disgusted him. She spoke of them wittily.

“Howard and Pierre and Carmen and that Titian-haired Jewish girl had so _much_ magic last night that finally they all fell in a _Bacchic heap_, didn’t they?” she said guilelessly at lunch.

“Who was on top?” inquired Celia impudently. “I was too drunk to see.”

Howard flirted outrageously. When they were alone, Howard sober, Algeria’s irritation grew crass.

“You leave that little pink-headed Jewess _alone_, do you _hear_ me?”

Her eyes, too far apart, were like an angry cow’s. Algeria’s subtleties were all professional.

“Look here, Algeria,” said Howard wrathfully. “I’m going.” They were both secretly relieved at his decision.

“To _leave_ me?” she asked incredulously. Her blank handsome face was almost pathetic.

Howard recalled their many years of varied relation, of her solace when, hungry for praise, he first began to etch. Unconsciously he thought of the future. Algeria’s self-responsibility still impressed him in spite of his disgust. He saw through her, but had to respect her volitional integrity and independence of action. Algeria had power in his world.

“I’ve got to be alone,” he said sullenly. “I must do something.”

At the very moment of parting she was convinced that he was not really bored. She was eased at his going. She imagined that she could control him better at a distance.

“I _understand_, dearestie. You’re _very_ sensitive and _must_ have time to work.” My God, she’s turning sedate again, thought Howard, thank heaven I’m getting out! “I’ll be _freer_ this summer and we can run away to the country where not a _soul_ can find us.” Her smile was inviolably radiant. “Peetie, you and I are the _only_ ones who know how to follow the _Dame_” (so Algeria on Beauty), “but now I feel we must seek her--_apart_.” Algeria’s gaze was rapt--as when she repeated her poems--she seemed to behold a vision of herself and Howard, still spiritually joined in the pursuit of the artist’s Ideal as it soared before their romantically united souls.

Algeria was of the truly great. Howard was obliged to accept her interpretation. He moved back to his apartment. Not dictation but prolonged conferences with Algeria had driven him away. She plunged back into the whirl of leadership.

“Howard is _so_ disloyal,” she complained to each of her followers. “He actually told me I looked _tired_ the other night, and _once_ he asked me what I was like when I was Celia’s age.” All the retainers, with the exception of Gouvain, feigned to believe that Howard was to blame.

Before going to Europe Algeria had led Gouvain publicly at the wheels of her chariot, after her return she had seized him again. On Howard’s defection her rule over Gouvain became iron. He became her _courier_, errand-boy, servant. He was too gentle to resist. Purchases, theater tickets, telephone messages, chores in general.

“Let _Pierre_ do it,” she would laugh gayly whenever any manner of bothersome task was to be done.

“Poor Pierre!” wheezed good-hearted Carmen.

“Maybe he finds it easier than sleeping with her,” suggested Celia lazily.

But Gouvain occasionally contrived to see Em. Unconsciously he told Em all that was important. She had believed that Algeria was absorbing Howard’s personality. Em felt that in leaving Algeria he had come through something. He had demonstrated that he was real. Even the news that he was engrossed in one cheap love affair after another was more satisfying than having him with Algeria.

5

Once alone, Howard began to meet Em more simply and kindly on the occasions when they were accidentally thrown together. He had no feeling of nobility but, away from Algeria, he was weary of tension. Several times Em was with Les, and Howard included him in a natural salutation. Les replied correctly. Kim was relieved. She set up her easel in the Jane Street studio and tried to work again.

Les and Em sought their friends again. Genevieve was radiant. She wagged her long earrings like pendulums.

“Well! I’m beginning to believe that my poor little dinner wasn’t such a complete failure after all.” She felt a romantic necessity to believe in the relation of her two friends. It gave her a sense of escape from superficial contacts.

Genevieve was depressed by the futility of the atmosphere that surrounded her. She could not successfully intellectualize her hopelessness. This was the world of art wherein she had failed. Greenwich Village! The triumph of superficialities--and she saw nothing else! She remembered with despair the bourgeois home from which she had escaped.

Em hugged her with savage fervor. Les smiled.

“I’m going to make coffee,” Stuart announced violently.

Michael, with misty eyes, plunged precipitately into an incoherent description of a play none of the others had cared to see.

Nights and days. Em sang occasionally at her painting. One picture was showing promise, but she was not satisfied. Les worked hard at hated reviews and miscellaneous hack-work. Howard they saw occasionally. He did not even have the comfort of knowing that he was inarticulate. He was producing a stream of etchings.

Howard’s apartment held the ghost of Em. He could not live in it. He was pale and wan. I’ve got to move, he said to himself restlessly. Picking up a morning paper, he began to glance over the advertisements. “I’m going to get drunk!” he exclaimed aloud, a faint color coming into his cheeks. His eyes rested on a notice in prominent type.

“ALGERIA WESTOVER’S STUDIO

TO LET FURNISHED ON LONG LEASE TO REFINED INDIVIDUAL LOVING BEAUTIFUL
THINGS.

_May be seen by appointment only._

Address P. Gouvain, 120 Kenilworth Place.”

Howard drew a long breath and lighted a cigarette. A privilege for ordinary mortals to occupy the dwelling she had sanctified by her presence! So exit Algeria, bless her little heart, from the stage where she had done no harm--_sic transit_--!