Chapter III: The Ocean

_“The waters are flashing,
The white hail is dashing,
The lightnings are glancing,
The hoar-spray is dancing--
Away!”_

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY--_“The Fugitives”_

1

The rain dripped softly and the paved streets were filled with dim reflections. Window-panes were streaked with tiny rivulets. People bent under umbrellas. Early-lit street-lamps glowed nebulously. Long ribbons of light glistened on the sidewalks. As usual Les walked quickly. His shapely feet were sure. He was thinking of the country. Next best thing to wilderness. Rain falling steadily in starless darkness ... flooded roads ... dim fields ... woods of bare trees ... branches strewn with unseen pearls....

Flotsam in New York, knowing so few. Les was statistician for the Empire State Trust Company. Big granite pile, mahogany desks and well-groomed bank officers. He compiled figures. Still biometrical! His epoch-making statistical work in zoölogy had fitted him for his tasteless job. Figures, millions, billions, columns on long sheets, funded debts, bonds, gold certificates, sinking funds, hell!

He had free-lanced until a year ago.

His novel. No time. Articles on Gauguin, _unanimistes_, _neuroromantik_, book reviews. Waiting in outer rooms, casual office girls, polite and bored editors, attic, poor food.

He and Em had been through this together. Good artists seldom make good money. Em’s earnings were not enough for herself. Empire State Trust Company, comfortable studio in Jane Street now, novel still half-finished.

When Les reached Jane Street he found a note.

_“Gone to have tea at Howard’s rooms. Back at seven. Em.”_

Les lay on the bed in the twilight, listening to the rain. His long hair that had been brushed back from his brow was tumbled. Nameless dread lay with him. Why had sex tricked him through his art? The agony of creation that had gone astray in imaginative laboratory experiments! They are classical now.... Associates astounded and resentful. Les smiled in his fear. Science is as staggered as religion by personality.

Obscure ... forgotten.... Earning bread in the Empire State Trust Company! His old colleagues were probably busy damning young enthusiasts who had the temerity to doubt data that his forgotten researches tentatively suggested--data he had once regarded as hints of perhaps significant things beyond. The more he had become dissatisfied with discovery the more he had inspired others. Before he left it all he had actually hugged a perverse pride in presenting plodding minds with flashes, outlines, prophecies--that worked out to their credit alone. Jean Jacques again, no doubt. It was fitting that he should end up as a Greenwich Village dabbler!

His novel. The sweat stood on his forehead. He had thought of love as a light. Star-gazer. Les was really thinking of the stars. Angels sow stars ... wreaths of stars ... orbits hung round the neck of night ... stars in the hair of night ... starlit windows of the house of God....

“Your vanity refuses to let you face what love is,” he said aloud.

2

Em was in Howard’s flat. Hyper-restrained color-scheme, Matisse, two priceless Japanese prints. Howard was pouring tea this time.

Talk at first esthetic. Cubists and futurists. Picasso. Marinetti. München and Düsseldorf. Kandinsky--musical color. _Expressionismus_--Marc and Chagall, Kokoscha and Meidner, Max Pechstein’s child paintings. Music--Arnold Schönberg, Satie. Dada--Gertrude Stein, Tristan Tsara, free association. Blah!

“Drane is an anachronism--a real man,” spurted Howard suddenly, his thin face rather cruel. “What sort of stuff does he write?”

“Oh, bitter.” Em’s voice was at once antagonistic.

“Confessions, I suppose.”

“It’s damned good realism, _I_ think.” She frowned and fumbled for a cigarette.

Howard pointed to a small dark-red tabourette.

“Smokes at your elbow,” he said. When she had lighted the cigarette he continued in the same tone, “I suppose that Ryder is really our only great--”

“Don’t be silly,” she snapped.

Howard smiled.

Em was long-waisted, so that her clothes hung well. Her manner of sitting revealed emphasis and grace without restraint. Her cheeks showed slight color when she was excited. She had slender ankles and feet. Now she tucked her fine legs under her in the wide, soft chair. When she was comfortable Howard spoke again.

“He hates psychical cruelty as I do physical. We’re different kinds of cowards.”

Em rested her chin in her hand.

“Les isn’t a coward,” she said.

“He should have someone like himself. You’ve no gentleness in you. You have abandon, but there’s no friendliness in your love. He’s unhappy.” Howard’s artistic vanity often made him say things he grudged.

Em winced.

“It’s my fault.”

“You’re a spiritual dadaist. One thing’s as valuable as another. That’s why you resent sacrifice.”

“But he’s so--so--” Her eyes hardened and misted faintly with tears.

“Pooh! His repugnance to over-emotion is dictated by his sense of personal harmony. He’s preëminently moral--you’re not. You’re the wrong one for him, that’s all. Why not be sensible?”

Em loved edge. She was thankful for being hurt. I shouldn’t have to eat _myself_ at any rate, she thought. People were afraid to flatter Em crudely: she was too great in their eyes. So she felt that none desired her as other women are desired. She was looking for anybody. Howard dared to aspire. He rose and bent over her.

“I suppose you don’t kiss,” he said.

She closed her eyes. Les would have thought it ugly. When Howard released her she got up and took her hat and gloves. She felt vaguely unhappy, but pleased with her unhappiness. Howard didn’t idolize her.

As they parted at the door he said:

“I’m going to have another party--here--Thursday night. Hope you’ll both come.”

3

Accident. Howard was at the Piedmont galleries. Em came in. There were few people in the long room. He smiled and came toward her.

“Hello! Came to look at your blue-green thing.”

“So did I,” laughed Em.

They both squinted at her picture. The glow from the skylight over them made Em’s face under her small soft hat look haggard and a little pathetic in its animation.

“My dry-points are at the Contemporary Society’s barn.” Howard never omitted to mention his etchings.

“Let’s go and see them, too,” she proposed, still laughing.

“Let’s.”

They left together. The air was like wine, the sunlight old gold, sumptuous limousines passing them, down the broad, clean avenue.

“Why don’t I ever see any of your etchings at your place?”

“Keep ’em out of sight. Public’s bad enough, let alone one’s friends. Nice to see you so soon again.”

There was blankness in her relief. Her delicate oval face flushed. Sensitive gestures, voice softly musical. Em conveyed a wistful gallant boy-girl quality. She spoke quickly.

“I’m glad.”

“Want to see you all the time.” She did not answer. His intensifying determination pleased her and frightened her. It forced her to admit clearly something which made her fidelity to Les a lie. “Going to, too.” Howard’s nostrils widened cruelly. Unadmittedly he wanted her because he envied her work. Em relaxed in the feeling that she was acting inevitably from her inner nature. She breathed deeply. Howard’s voice reached her. “I’ve got to have what I want.” Doubts contended in her. Les could keep me if he tried. I’m not to blame for my qualities. He doesn’t want my honesty. He has his ideal. She was glowing with the power of a new enterprise. “Do you know that, Em?” Howard’s tone was mercilessly insistent.

“Don’t be too sure.”

“You talk like an ingenue. Look at me. Do you love me?”

“Yes,” said Em. She startled herself with her unanticipated response. I don’t conceal things from myself!

4

New York Bohemia. The grave of achievement. The place artists leave as soon as they can. Tobacco smoke, sex talk, post-prohibition alcoholic messes, communism. New conventions more implacable than the old. “Yes, we’re married, but--” Envy, mysticism, scandal, art, homo-sexuality, hope. Coteries: painters, writers, sculptors, poets, batikers, critics, back-room theaters, “just artists in living,” _suum cuique_, fools, children, people. A few human beings not yet tired of the lure. Greenwich Village needs food. A very few working pitiably. Once in a year a moment of beauty that catches one’s throat. A little corner of life after the great war. The place that had been cruel to Les and Em.

The night of the party. Les’s pride made him go. Most of the guests were assembled by the time he and Em arrived. Howard met them at the door. His tall, stooped form seemed somber.

“I’m not going to introduce you.” He bent down to them and spoke distinctly amid the burst of sound that flowed into the hall. “You’ll know everybody before the evening is over, even if you don’t now.” He already felt a proprietary vanity in Em, but it did not keep him from resenting her. He hated to owe an intellectual pleasure to a woman.

Several fellow-painters recognized Em and drew her into their circle. Les seated himself in a corner by a girl he knew. Her eyes seemed honest in the crowd. Near him Frank Stieg, the clever Village bore, was clearing his throat preparatory to further speech. Stieg was scarcely five feet tall and weighed perhaps ninety pounds. His skin, hair, mustache and goatee were all of the same yellow hue. His smoke-stained teeth and his eyes were brown. A tomthumb-uncle-sam physique. His voice startled one, however--it was enormous. A small group of girls hung on his words.

“He always discourses in triplets,” Lester’s acquaintance whispered maliciously.

“Everything comes to me in triads,” Stieg boomed suddenly. “I’m at a book now--on Aristophanes, Villon and Rabelais. Humorists if you please--that is _male_ wits. The humorist is hopeless and therefore tolerant.”

“But contemporary--” A fair auditor hesitated and was drowned.

“Today? None! They’ve winked out in Anatole France, Schnitzler and Hermann Bahr.”

As the crash of Stieg’s voice died away Les caught the thin sound of a woman’s tones near him. He glanced at its almost emaciated hungry-eyed owner, who was talking earnestly to a stout young Jew. This was the Great Critic, and he had coldly focused blue eyes.

“When the dream becomes unbearable your psychic censor--” The hungry woman was absurdly wealthy. The Critic listened.

“Another book on Tacitus, Cervantes and Swift,” shouted Stieg. “Yes, satirists--_female_ wits. The satirist has faith, poor thing--wants to make things better.”

Across the room Pierre Gouvain, the sculptor, his long black hair rumpled, his charming eyes glowing, was gesticulating and almost screaming.

“My weemen may be fat, but zat iss not ze question. Ze question iss, are zey not beautéfool?” He glared at his _vis-à-vis_ indignantly.

The hungry-eyed woman’s voice again intervened.

“--incest-wish is the well-spring of all romance.”

“_Modern_ satirists!” Stieg was bawling contemptuously. “Mark Twain, Shaw and Rose Macauley!”

“In prison again?” Two feminine Radicals had paused near Les. The elder, a poet, was speaking. “Poor dear! Yes, she’s an eagle, too.”

Howard, a tray in his hands, approached them.

“Won’t you have a glass of wine?”

“Ugh!” shivered the younger of the two women: it was Eve, Genevieve’s friend, just back from Moscow with an entirely new shade of hair. “I couldn’t. It reminds me of--the blood of Russia.”

“Rousseau, Byron and Romain Rolland--” Stieg’s larynx was like a trumpet.

“All Schopenhauer meant was the libido,” sang the hungry soul’s high soprano. “The phallic symbol of--”

“Humph!” snorted Stieg. “Jean Jacques’ grandchildren--Wassermann, Van Eeden and our younger English novelists.”

Les looked around the room for Em. His glance passed Lou Kohn, leading _amateuse_ of the Teacup Theater (who was draped against a door _à la_ Sarah Bernhardt), and rested on Em and Howard--alone in a window-seat. He rose and walked toward them. His girl acquaintance turned to a neighbor.

“Mr. Drane’s not a poet because he says he isn’t,” she remarked carefully.

A last hungry piping followed Les.

“--such as Gridley’s novel on the Elektra complex. It’s not only narcistic fixation--”

A final stentorian challenge from Stieg.

“St. Paul, Spinoza and Nietzsche--all _Gottbetrunkene Menschen_.”

Les reached Em’s side. Her cheeks were crimson. She looked up quickly.

“Shall we go, Em?”

“Sorry you must run away,” said Howard kindly.

Les and Em knew many in the throng: Eitero Tanaka, smiling in silence all evening, Jasper Jobson the successful novelist, looking successful, Dhas Mitra (and his turban) whose single exclamation for all occasions was “Elephant!” and Carmen Stubbs--always like a character-actress playing the part of a prostitute--“One thousand bucks for a single story, my dear!” Little Celia St. John, ever the center of a group of men, smiled up into the face of a giant young painter as Em and Les passed. Celia recalled a wax lily.

“Well, tired little boy, if it’s too far to your place, you might spend the night with me, only one flight down in this same building,” she was saying. No one laughed.

All this ... understand ... belong ... Howard ... Dante ... limbo ... he and Em ... Les felt sick.

“Thoreau, Whitman and myself--all _revoltés_,” yelled Stieg as the door was closing after them.

5

Les was alone in Jane Street. His face was a little more lined, his eyes deeper. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, at last picked up a book of short stories by a young writer he admired. He opened the volume idly.

_“Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does.”_

Les put down the book. Em ... the party last night ... how can she ... once she was like me ... God, how he hated Greenwich Village! Letters. He knew Howard’s handwriting. One lay open on the table from which he had taken the book. He tried not to look at it.

_“My darling_,

_“When can you come again? The only mystery is flesh--ideals are
manageable--they are for fools--”_

The words blurred.

She has always put me between her and life. Living in a well of emotion, remote from consequences. Jealous of what she doesn’t give. I can’t fight it. Breasts whiter than snow ... wings like curved flames ... funeral pyre of stars....

His tears were real, anyway.

He was alone. I must think. His eyes that sometimes glowed blue with kindness were pale and vague. Howard was the type he abhorred. How can such a thing be? I have--I have--I _can’t_ think. She has--she would stop at nothing to _see_ me feel. Reduce the beloved object, expects from me what she’s killed, not kind even to those at her mercy....

Les sobbed once, wiped his eyes. He tried to overcome his grandiosity--to condemn Em. It’s about good enough for her. No. She’s mine ... little Em.... The heavy muscles hardened under his coat.

“God _damn_ that jumping jack!”

No. This is 1923. It’s not done.

He went out to walk.

6

Why does one talk.... Les never had realized that Em’s medium was not words. Even when he saw her trembling and weeping at a canvas he realized it only intellectually. He was continually aghast before her incomplete revelations.

I am worse. I say more but I talk like a stockbroker. We _must_ understand things together. His heart shook. He remembered her coming to him. Eyes giving ... breasts pointing ... body calling ... something not in words....

Five o’clock. Into the crowded street. He escaped from the Empire State Trust Company’s building as from a mountain. It’s not that long-legged crane. He’s only an irritant. I should have shown Em that I love her. Poor little child....

Les climbed the stairs slowly. Oh, how I hate talkytalk. In the half-light that filled the long comfortable room Em sat, bent over his desk, her face lying in her arms. Her frail shoulder-blades heaved.

“Sweetheart--” Les touched her shoulder. She raised her white tear-blotted face. “Em, I want us to see things clearly.” Em’s eyes cannot look like that! Where ... appeal to death ... how can she....

“This is a fine time to begin,” she cried savagely.

“We must look at things now as we shall in another year from now.”

“Thank you, Mr. Drane.” He removed his hand from her shoulder. She’s childish. He resented her indulgence in irresponsible emotions and tried to envy her, but his pride would not let him. “You ought to realize what I feel, no matter what I say,” she sobbed abruptly.

“I understand, Em.”

“Oh, but you don’t--”

“Em, my God--”

“You make me feel I’m a horrible creature.” She moaned carelessly. “If you cared for what I--you only _think_ about it, about what other people will think--” She wanted to condemn herself beyond argument. He was cruel, too. He wanted to subjugate her so he could be kind to her.

Les seated himself close to her. He did not touch her.

“I don’t care what people think, dear. It’s not you, but your suffering that hurts me. I don’t feel the same things, but I feel. Can’t you see that?” Another lecture. Where are the students? I’ll write tracts next. I’ve held her in my arms. Nights ... roses pale in sleep ... white ghosts of clouds....

“Yes, Les, I see that you suffer in your own way.” She straightened up, drew a long breath. Diagrammatic emotions--lost in his own generality. “Les--”

“Yes, Em.” Why did we give up so much for each other?

“If you’d only kissed me instead of getting hurt. So many times.” She spoke dully.

“I can’t get over things as quickly as you, Em.” His lips quivered. He controlled his voice well.

“I’m sorry,” said Em.

“Em, can’t you--” he began timidly.

“I’m unfitted for any human relationship, Les.” Her eyes suddenly swam with tears again. Suspend yourself from his strength--ugh!

“Oh, Em--” He reached swiftly toward her, but she evaded his gesture.

The bell rang. Les seized his hat and opened the door.

“Good evening,” said Howard. “Should you people like to go some place to dinner?”

“I’ll bring candles.” Em left the room.

“Sit down,” Les invited.

Em returned with lights. As she set them down the vague glow made her face look strange. Her hair was smoothed, her cheeks rouged.

“I have an engagement.” Les carefully creased the crown of his hat.

Howard hesitated, almost contemptuously.

“Don’t look at me like that, Howard.” Em laughed uneasily. “It’s just plain pip. Les and I both have it. I’ll go with you.”

7

Sunday morning. Les rose from the breakfast table and sought his hat and ulster. Em spoke timidly.

“I’ll come too, Les, if you’re going to walk.”

He halted, in his eyes a mixture of fear and desire.

“I’d love to have you.”

Something in his gaze made her ashamed for them both.

They found the park. They walked silently side by side. Each held an effort to overlook the other’s misunderstanding. They tacitly strolled away from the thronged roads. A pool. Bare tree beside it. Twigs grasping stiffly at emptiness. Em and Les stopped and stood together on the path.

“We ought to be frank, Les.” She glanced at his face with merciless interest. She was afraid of menacing unreality. He has the secret of permanence, she thought.

“I’ve tried to be frank,” he said.

“Inside yourself maybe, but not to me, Les.”

“You don’t want frankness, Em. You don’t want to know me.”

“Nor you me.”

Moment by moment their sense of virtue was deepening their resentment. Les’s fear conquered the surface of his hurt.

“Yes, I do, Em. I’ve tried--”

Em was blindly rebellious. She did not want her emotion to be crystallized. Self-righteous--nobody loves me, she cried within herself. Les was unable to go on. Nobody capable of tenderness. Love of a savage. He hated sex. If it must be like this I don’t--Human pity ... hurt....

“I must have intensity, Les--somebody to _let go_ with me. Oh, can’t you see? You make me feel as if there were nothing real.”

“I must have love that is kind. Love that recognizes me, that is not ugly. My reality isn’t cruel--turgid. I’d rather have nothing than that. I--”

“Rather than me, is what you mean!” Her face was drawn and in her widened eyes lay humiliation and triumph. “Well, I’ll have _something_--no matter what!” She left him.

Les felt alone, in the park. All these people.... Like Em--I’m not either kind. He was helpless but dumbly certain of his needs. If I have to lose her.... He could almost have hated her now. I can’t bear it....