Chapter XIV: Book SIX: Wilson Avenue (10)

He listened; some one was coming up the second stairway. Was it she? And if so, what in the world was she doing here? It was too late to be calling on any one; besides, she had not rung the bell; she had entered, as if she belonged here. If it were Phyllis, she must be living in this house. And that was impossible.

Felix, listening at the door, heard the person, whoever it was, cross the hall—and it seemed to him that she had stopped at his door. But no—there was a jingling of keys, and he realized that the room next to his own was being unlocked. He opened his door quietly—uncertain now if he would be able to recognize Phyllis, and anxious not to make any foolish mistake. She was standing at the door, with her back to him, turning the key in the lock.

Of course it was Phyllis!

But if he were so certain, why didn’t he speak to her? He was so close that he could have touched her. Why did he let her go without a word?... She went in, and he stood staring foolishly at the closed door.

It was Phyllis, without the slightest doubt.... And yet—it would be awkward to knock at a young woman’s door at midnight and, if she turned out to be the wrong person, stammer out a lame and unconvincing apology. Why, she was probably some one whom he had seen, in his unseeing way, on the stairs a dozen times, some one who had seen him so often that his explanation of mistaken identity would sound very hollow indeed....

2

The next evening, coming to his room, he heard the girl moving about in hers.

He had decided, with that part of his mind which dealt with questions of practical fact, that she was not really Phyllis. He had not mentioned his queer notion about her to Rose-Ann. But if it pleased him to think his neighbour was Phyllis, why shouldn’t he?

It did please him; and in some odd way helped him in his work. She seemed to bring with her into his place of dreams some breath of sane and kindly reality. Her unseen presence there in the next room took some of the fever out of his strange dramatic fantasies, made them more human. He wrote more easily, with greater zest; and in the intervals of his writing it was comforting to hear her movements, her mere steps across the floor, the sound of paper rustling in her hands, and sometimes the bubbling of coffee over an alcohol lamp.

When she made the coffee the pungent fumes of it found their way through the locked door which separated his room from hers.... He smiled, thinking how startled she would be if he should knock on that door, and demand a cup of coffee.... At this point he had to remind himself that it was not really Phyllis there on the other side of that door.

3

But it really was Phyllis!—that was the strange thing about the whole affair.... Clive had at last confided to him that Phyllis was in town, but told him nothing more; it was Rose-Ann who told him that Phyllis had come to Chicago, unknown to Clive, and got herself a job, before letting him know anything of her plans.

“He’s finding her quite too much for him,” said Rose-Ann.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean—she’s been his pupil, as it were, all along. Now she’s demonstrating her independence.”

“Where is she living?” he asked, and when Rose-Ann said she didn’t know, he told her of the girl he had seen who looked like Phyllis.

“Why didn’t you speak to her and find out?” she asked impatiently.

“Why, I thought it must be a mistake,” he said awkwardly.

“You really don’t care anything about people at all, do you, Felix?” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. You’re interested only in ideas. A girl who was at your wedding comes and lives in the same house with you, and you never even speak to her! You are a strange creature, Felix. For heaven’s sake, knock at her door, and bring her around to see us. Just because she wants to be queer and not see anybody is no reason why we shouldn’t be friendly.”

4

Yes, it was Phyllis; he saw her again, late that night, from the window, plainly revealed by the glare of an arclight, walking with Clive along the street toward the house; he had an impulse to shout to them, but he refrained, and only looked on while they came slowly over, and stood talking in front of the door. It was Phyllis, but she had changed; or was it only some constraint in her manner? No wonder he had not been certain of her identity. She had a different air; all the quietness was gone from her—she seemed the embodiment of a defiant restlessness. There was a reckless impudence in the whole pose of her body, the tilt of her head as she stood talking to Clive, in the very gesture of her arm as she held out her hand to Clive in good-bye.... Clive went abruptly; she was entering.

Felix could hear her running up the stairs. He ought to go out and speak to her. But he did not want to. He had a sense of her having changed, being a new and different person that he did not like. He wanted to keep the companionship of the Phyllis whom he had known these past weeks in imagination—he did not want for a neighbour this restless girl whom she had become in actuality. He heard her unlock her door, and enter; and he said to himself that his refuge was spoiled—he would have to find another place to work in....

It was true, what Rose-Ann had said; he cared nothing for people—only for ideas ... and dreams. He cared for his dream of Phyllis. He was sorry to lose that.

Well—he would have to see her.

He heard her walking restlessly up and down her room; her light firm step sounded clearly through the door which separated their two rooms. She paused, walked the length of the room, and paused again. She was standing just on the other side of that door....

He went over to that door and knocked.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XLIII. Nocturne

1

THE next moment he called himself a fool for going about it in this way; but he might as well go through with it now. He knocked again, more loudly, and called out her name, cheerfully. “Phyllis?”

“Who is it?” she asked, in a startled, questioning voice.

He called his own name. “I’ve just discovered we are fellow-lodgers!” he added. “Can I see you?”

She fumbled with the lock, and opened the door. She had just taken off her hat and coat, and she was wearing a black dress that made her seem pale. She looked older; her face was not so untroubledly serene as he had remembered it. But the sight of her gave him just such a momentary unreasonable panic as on that winter night when Clive had brought her into the room at Woods Point. She seemed again the impossible person of his secret dreams.... And then the illusion vanished. She was only—Clive’s girl-problem.

“What are you doing here?”

They both asked the question of each other at once, and then both laughed. “You first,” said Phyllis.

“I’m using this as a work-room occasionally,” he explained.

“Really!” She looked past him into his room. “Right next to mine. How odd!... You and Rose-Ann haven’t separated or anything, have you?”

“Why, no!” he laughed. “Why should you think—?”

“It’s absurd, isn’t it? But that was what came into my head. I’m glad it isn’t so.... You work there? I see!”

“And you?” he demanded.

“Me? I’ve run away at last!”

“I heard something about it....”

“Yes, run away—from school—from home—from everything! And come to Chicago to make my living. Even Clive didn’t know. I’ve been here three weeks, and I’ve a real job. Not much of a one; just working on a trade-journal. It pays for this room, and my meals—and I’m glad I’ve taken the plunge.... Isn’t it curious, our being neighbours like this!... But come in!”

They were still standing there, one on each side of the doorsill. He entered, and looked about her room. It was almost as bare as his own, but larger. A cot, with her coat and hat tossed upon it, a bureau, a writing table, an old trunk, and two chairs, both of them much repaired and one of them still rickety, were its furnishings.

“Not much to look at, is it?” she said. “But wait! Some day I shall have a grand studio like yours!” She sat down on the cot, and motioned him to draw up the less rickety chair. “The first day I was in town I slunk past your studio and peeped in. Some one was going out the door, and I got a glimpse of the inside.”

“Why in the world didn’t you come in and see us?”

“I don’t know.... I thought perhaps you wouldn’t remember me. And besides, I wanted to get established before I let any of my friends know—even Clive. I wanted to prove that I could do something by myself.” A curious smile lit her face as she added: “It annoys Clive that I should have got a job without his help!”

“But why?” he wondered. He remembered what Clive had once said about the “battle” between himself and Phyllis. It had seemed absurd at the time....

She did not reply, and so he asked: “Why shouldn’t you be willing to be helped by your friends?”

“Well—one sometimes isn’t,” she said defensively.

All at once he felt the pathetic helplessness behind her masquerade of independence. And, moved by an odd impulse, he wanted to make her admit the truth to him.

“Is it just because it’s Clive?” he asked.

For a moment she looked at him coldly as if about to rebuke his presumption, and then looked down and said: “I suppose so....”

“I thought you were in love with him,” he said bluntly.

She laughed.

“But aren’t you?” he insisted.

“What a question!” she retorted. “Are I or aren’t I? You talk like my mother!... How do I know?”

“And you talk like Clive!” he said.

“Probably I learned it from him.... I’ve learned ’most everything I know from him.”

“You’re an odd girl,” he told her.

“So Clive says.... You’re very like Clive yourself, do you know?”

“I wish I were more like him, in some ways; but in other respects—”

“Yes—you’re very much like him. Only—more so!”

“What do you mean? You rather alarm me.”

“Oh, you needn’t be alarmed. My meaning is very flattering. I think a lot of Clive!”

“Then why do you run away from him?” Felix demanded.

“Is coming to Chicago running away from him?”

“He wanted you to come to Chicago three years ago—didn’t he?”

“Yes, but—Oh, it’s very involved. Are you really interested? I’m not sure that I understand it myself.”

He was quite sure that she wanted to tell him the whole story. And he wanted to hear it.

“I’m very much interested,” he said. “And perhaps,” he hazarded, “—perhaps I could help you to understand.”

“I wish you could.... I don’t know where to begin.”

Yes—she did want to tell him. And it would be interesting to know the truth about Clive and Phyllis—at last!

“Begin with yourself—before Clive came along,” he commanded.

“Oh—you think he changed me?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Well—perhaps. Oh, of course I was a romantic little goose before he came along. And yet—that isn’t so, either.... I was hard-headed, in a way. It was I who made my father go into the taxi business and save the family from complete poverty. I did know some things—better than my father.”

“I’ve wondered about your folks,” he said. “Tell me about your father.”

“He wanted to be a farmer. He wanted to go out west and take up government land, but he didn’t have the nerve. And his own farm was no good. He slaved himself on it year after year and was always in debt. Then he quit and took a job on the railroad. But he doesn’t like machinery; curious, he’d rather dig in the ground than anything else in the world. But what was the use? We actually didn’t have enough money to buy shoes. I quit school and clarked in Wilson’s store, so I could have decent clothes. And I sewed for my sisters, so as not to be ashamed of the way they looked. I used to hate my father—and my mother, too, for never complaining, for always putting up with things. ‘Your father is a good man, Phyllis,’ she would say. ‘He doesn’t drink, or play cards, and he’s never used an unkind word to me or you children. And he’s terribly patient.’ That’s it—he was so _terribly_ patient! If he’d been a drunkard, there might have been some excuse.... Tell me—does all this bore you?”

“No, it doesn’t bore me. Go on.”

“I wanted to be a teacher.... Clive thinks I went off to become a teacher just to spite him. But it was an old ambition of mine. I wanted to put the family on its feet—and I wanted to do something that had to do with books. It’s silly, isn’t it? But teaching was all I could think of. Only, how was I to do it? I kept up with the school studies at home, nights, besides helping mother with the house and making clothes for Bess and Emmy. I got one of the teachers to bring me a copy of the final examination questions, and I wrote out my answers at home. I did it fairly, too—and he marked them for me.”

“Who was ‘he’?”

“The teacher, Mr. Andrews—the science teacher. He was all right. He lent me books, and talked to me.”

Felix smiled to himself. So Clive Bangs had not been the only one who had lent books and talked to Phyllis! He had only been the latest one to minister to an insatiable hunger for new knowledge. He had not, as he so egotistically thought, changed the current of her life; or perhaps he had: Phyllis’ story would show. But already it was a different personality from any suggested by Clive’s remarks or Felix’s own dreaming, that began to appear.

“Only—how was I ever to get to school? There were no boys in the family—I often felt as though I were the man of the family—I had to raise some money myself.... At last I thought of the taxi idea. I talked father into it.... It was the hardest battle I ever had.”

“How old were you then?”

“Sixteen.... You mustn’t think my father was a—a bad father. I really loved him very much. He wanted to take care of his family, but he just didn’t know how. I had to take things into my own hands. I persuaded him to borrow the money for our first car. That year we paid for it, and I made him borrow the money to buy another, and let me run it. Well—we made lots of money, and now we’ve five cars—so that’s all right.... I don’t know why I got off the track and told you all this stuff. You wanted to know about me and Clive.”

“Yes, then Clive came along?”

“He had been there all the time—only he never saw me. Why should he? I don’t think he ever would have seen me, if one night when I was driving him home I hadn’t noticed that he was carrying an interesting-looking book with a white label. I glanced at it rather obviously. He held it up, and asked me if I had ever read any of Bernard Shaw’s plays. I was scared to death—I had wanted to talk to him for two years, and here was my chance. I had to make good. Of course, I’d never read anything of Shaw’s, but what did that matter? It was my chance to prove to him that I was worth talking to. So I swallowed hard, and said, yes, I’d read everything I could find of Shaw’s. I knew if he asked me any questions, I could say, no, I hadn’t been able to get hold of that yet.... Well, it worked. And that night—the library was closed, but I knew the librarian and I made him go there with me and open it up long enough for me to get the only two volumes of Shaw the library had. I read one of them that night and the other the next day. I liked them, too, though they did seem a little queer to me at the very first....”

“What were they?” Felix asked.

“The ‘Three Plays for Puritans,’ and ‘Man and Superman.’ I read them all, prefaces, appendixes and everything. I said, if these are the things he likes, I can like them too, and I will! I got a liberal education out of those two books. I was a different person when I saw him three days later and he lent me ‘Cashel Byron’s Profession.’ ... And yet I wasn’t, either. I told you that I was a romantic little goose.... If there’s one thing I have learned, it’s—not to be ashamed to tell anything. So I don’t mind telling you what a little fool I was. Think! I had just stocked my brain full of Bernard Shaw, and yet—it _is_ hard to tell—I was carrying on a romantic fairy-tale at the same time, with Clive as the hero-prince! I thought—in spite of everything, you see, I was only a silly girl—that he wanted to marry me. I even commenced secretly to sew things, to get my clothes ready for the wedding.... And at the same time—It’s queer—but I think I should have despised him if he _had_ wanted to marry me!... My mother warned me against him. Poor dear father, he didn’t even know what was going on. But mother was very much worried. Well! she needn’t have been. She was just as much mistaken about Clive’s intentions as I was! All he wanted was to modernize me. Heavens! the trouble we took, the stealthy meetings, the secret rendezvous—to discuss the Life Force! It’s really funny!”

“I don’t think it’s so funny,” Felix said soberly.

“No,” said Phyllis, “the worst of it is, he did modernize me. I don’t know why I should complain—but somehow I resent his power over me. He’s always told me what to do; and in the end I’ve always done it. But I’ve hated to. He told me to go to Chicago three years ago. He told me that what I needed was work, and adventure, and love. And yet, for three years I tried to work out some silly plan of my own. I didn’t want to admit that he was right.”

“Are you sure that he _is_ right?” Felix asked.

“Of course? Aren’t you? Work—adventure—love? Why not? This is the twentieth century—and I’m twenty-two years old. Why shouldn’t I have all those things?”

“No reason—if you really want them. But—”

“Yes?”

“Well—”

“You aren’t going to tell me that woman’s place is in the home, and that I ought to get married? That would sound strange, coming from you!”

“Why? I am married.”

“Yes.... You’re lucky,” she said looking at him, sombrely.

“I know I am. But what do you mean?”

“Your marriage. You’re _living_ your theories.”

Felix smiled. “What theories do you mean? You didn’t take seriously everything Clive said at our wedding, did you?”

She looked at him earnestly. “Clive wrote me you _were_ living up to your theories—you and Rose-Ann. Isn’t it true?”

“Oh—that.”

He knew that she meant the Dorothy episode. Rose-Ann had told Clive about it, and Clive had used the anecdote more than once to point a modernistic moral. Phyllis was not the only young person who had heard strange tales of this wonderful “free” marriage.

Phyllis’s eyes questioned him fiercely, anxiously.

“I see you’ve heard the story,” he said. “Well, something of that sort did happen. But—”

“So it’s true!” She said it triumphantly. “I’m so tired of all this talk that never gets anywhere. You don’t know how much you and Rose-Ann have meant to me—your marriage. It convinced me that there was something to modernism after all.”

“So you doubted it—in spite of all Clive’s talk?”

“Yes—I did. Because it was _just_ talk.... Look at me! Do you doubt that I wanted everything Clive told me about? work—adventure—love.... I’ve wanted them all along. If Clive had only said, ‘Come with me to Chicago—’!”

“What _did_ he say?”

“He left it to me to decide.... That was fair enough. If I didn’t have sense enough to decide by myself—. Only, I think he should have dropped me, let me alone. He’s been too patient. I’ve lost my respect for him.”

“What do you want him to do—_make_ you marry him?”

“Not now. Three years ago I was foolish enough to believe in marriage. I couldn’t marry anybody now—least of all Clive: the man who taught me not to believe in marriage!”

“But you believe in—Rose-Ann’s and my marriage, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” There was a wealth of devoutness in her utterance, and her eyes opened wide as if in astonishment at her belief being questioned. “Of course. But that’s different.... You two,” she said, a little sadly, “are the only people in the world that I do believe in,—you and Rose-Ann. If _you_ went back on me, and I felt that I was making a mistake in becoming a modern woman, why—” She laughed, and added, “No doubt my modernism seems ridiculous to you. I admit that it’s only talk, so far! I—why, I don’t even smoke cigarettes. Clive has been to immense pains to educate my mind; but my habits are still those of—of my middle-western childhood. It’s going to be strange.... I _am_ a queer person. Restless, discontented, fed up on radical theories for three years.... Do I seem ridiculous to you?”

“No,” Felix said gravely. “Not ridiculous.” He hesitated.... There were things he wanted to say to her; but _he_ would be ridiculous, saying those things. And yet he did want to say them.... Her hand lay near him on the couch. He covered it with his own. The touch gave him the encouragement he needed; but when he spoke it was in unpremeditated words.

“I’m awfully sorry, Phyllis,” he said.

2

For a moment her flippant hardness disappeared. She became for a moment, in response to his tone, the girl he had first known—the real person, simple and genuine, that still underlay all her pretences.... She let her hand rest in his for a moment, and then withdrew it. “Why sorry?” she asked quietly. “I’m sorry for myself; but why should you be sorry for me, Felix?”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “But—I like you, and I want you to be happy. And Clive’s modernism doesn’t seem to me to be what you want.”

She frowned at him. “What _do_ I want?” she asked.

“Not a hectic, experimental kind of existence,” he said.

“I don’t?”

“No. Not for yourself. You may want to be that sort of person to please Clive. But _you_ don’t want it. You want—I’ll tell you what you want.” He spoke confidently. “It’s very simple. You want a husband, and children, and a home, and you want to stay there—you want to be _made_ to stay there.”

She stirred restlessly, and seemed about to speak, but he motioned her abruptly to keep still, and went on authoritatively. “Oh, don’t deny it. You want somebody to take you in charge—some one in whom you really believe, that you can really depend upon, somebody who can boss the job. Don’t you!” he finished rather imperiously.

She smiled at him quizzically, and then said, “Yes. Maybe I do. How did you guess?”

“I knew,” he said.

“Well, don’t tell anybody that I’m such a ridiculous person!” she said. And suddenly she slipped down from the bed to the floor, and put her arm across his knees, and laid her head against it, without speaking. After a while she looked up, and asked timidly, “Do you mind? I wanted to.”

3

Felix caressed her shoulder with his hand, lightly—feeling in some queer way that she was a child and that he was some infinitely older and wiser person.

They sat there a long time, she with her head resting against his knee, and he with his hand touching her shoulder. At last she took his other hand and held it against her face, with an apparently unconscious and instinctive gesture, as if she were in truth a child. He had a deep conviction that this was not love-making in any ordinary sense. There was some blessed healing in these contacts for them both—that was all.

Yes—for him, too. For as he bent over her, with his hand nourished against her cheek, he seemed to be finding rest, finding some quiet peace which his spirit needed. This touch was enough. It was balm for a weariness of which he had not been aware. It was rest, it was peace, it was his dream of her come true.

She lifted her head at last, like some one who has waked from a refreshing sleep. “You are very good to me,” she said, and rose up.

He stood up, suddenly conscious of how long they had been together, and wondered what time it was.

She glanced at her clock on the mantel, and his look followed hers. It was three o’clock.

“Gracious!” she whispered.

He started to walk across the floor, and a board creaked; he finished the journey to his door on tiptoe, half ashamed and angry at taking such a precaution. It gave an air of the illicit to the occasion. At the door he turned.

She had remained standing beside his chair. He could not shake hands with her without going back. But why was he hurrying away in such a frightened manner, as if he had done something wrong? He recrossed the room and held out his hand.

“Good night, Phyllis.”

“Good night, Felix Fay.”

He walked boldly back to his own room, and closed the door with a defiant bang.

4

It had been very beautiful.... And why, now, must it be so awkward, the task of finding a place for this beauty in his ordinary life?

Explanations!...

Rose-Ann would understand, of course. But, even so, the telling of it was difficult. He could think of no words to convey the simplicity and naturalness of the incident.

It was all very well to talk of telling the truth to one’s beloved; but the truth was not such an easy thing to tell!...

So Felix was reflecting, as he put on his coat and hat to go home, when there was a knock on the door he had banged shut, and Phyllis entered.

“I want a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I’ll walk over to your place with you if you don’t mind.”

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XLIV. Aubade

1

“THERE’S a light burning in your studio,” she said as they turned the corner. They had been silent all the way, Phyllis happy to be out in the moonlight, and Felix rather moodily uneasy at this prolongation of an incident that had already had its due ending.

“Yes, Rose-Ann is still up,” he said.

He unlocked the door, and Phyllis ran in eagerly. Rose-Ann sprang up from the table where she had been working over some magazine proofs.

“Phyllis!” she cried, and the two girls embraced like old friends long parted.

“I’ve been keeping Felix up, listening to the story of my life,” said Phyllis.

“Is it late? I’ve been fixing up the dummy of the Motion Picture World. I’m just finished. I have to get it down at the printer’s at eight in the morning.” She went over to the table, and swept the scattered proofs into a portfolio, laying the dummy upon them, and tying the strings. “How about some coffee? Or are you sleepy?” “Wide awake!” said Phyllis. “It’s so nice to find you up. I did want to see your studio.”

“Felix, will you make some coffee?”

Felix came back in a moment and sadly reported that the coffee was “all gone!”

“Oh, I forgot—I used the last of it this evening.... What a pity!”

Felix, returning into their presence from behind the screen, had a curious sense of being a third, an intruder into a friendly intimacy. He had had, in the very moment of their meeting, a startled impression of their being the oldest friends each other had, far more deeply acquainted with each other than he with either of them! And now, in the mere two minutes in which he had been out of their sight searching for coffee, they had begun to talk for all the world like two old schoolmates who had, after a long separation, much to tell each other. His entrance had, or so it seemed to him, the effect of an interruption.

“I’ll look again,” he said awkwardly. “There may be some left of that G. Washington coffee. I think there is.” And he went behind the screen again.

There was no “G. Washington coffee.” He found the empty can at once. But he sat down on the bed, grinning sheepishly at himself, instead of returning. He could hear them out there talking in the swift, breathless, low tones of confidential feminine narrative. Now Phyllis’s voice ceased on a note of inquiry, and Rose-Ann spoke without interruption to a hushed listener. Her voice became louder, and there was a ring of pride in it. Both girls suddenly laughed and then Rose-Ann went on talking....

What on earth could they be talking about? Felix found himself listening curiously, with decidedly the feeling of an eavesdropper, but he could distinguish only an unrevealing word or two now and then. “Clive’s house,” he heard, and after a while, “scissors,” followed by another laugh; but that was all.

If someone had assured him, beforehand, that Rose-Ann, in spite of what had seemed to him an ungenerous hostility to Phyllis, would have instantly taken her to her bosom like this, he would have been pleased; but now, with that fact before him, he was not so much pleased as astonished. He was even a little annoyed.

Why should he be annoyed? It was doubtless natural enough for these two girls to want to talk together. Phyllis’s having been at Rose-Ann’s wedding constituted a bond between them.... And Felix remembered that when they had first met they had seemed to like each other at once. He was behaving rather ridiculously in staying out here; they could talk just as well in his presence.

He returned to them and again reported failure. And once more, as he entered, he had the feeling of being an intruder. This time it was as if they had forgotten his existence, and were rather startled to find him there, and puzzled for a moment to know how to get rid of him!

“Oh!” said Rose-Ann to his news of the total absence of any coffee whatever.

“I’ve some coffee over at my place,” said Phyllis. “Won’t you come over there? I’d like to show you my room. And we can talk.”

Distinctly her glance at him told Felix that he was not wanted along.

Rose-Ann jumped up. “Let’s!” she said. And then to Felix, “you needn’t bother to come with us. Phyllis and I want to talk.”

“All right!” he said, smiling. But as he saw them depart together out of the door of the studio into the moonlight, he had an odd feeling of being a little boy left out of the conversation of his elders.... And perhaps, too, there was a strange feeling of jealous unease.

2

He took a book, went to bed, and tried to read himself to sleep. But at six o’clock he was still awake, and Rose-Ann had not returned. At seven he rose, and went—well, perhaps not exactly to look for her, but to his work-room.

Through the inner door he could hear their voices, in animated conversation. He went to the door, flung it open, and cried,

“My God, are you girls still talking!”

They looked up, startled, and then laughed. “What time is it?” asked Rose-Ann. “I’ve been telling Phyllis the history of our marriage....”

So that was what they were talking about! Half-appeased, at having been after all included in the conversation, he looked at his watch. “Seven-thirty,” he said.

“I have to have my dummy at the printer’s at eight,” said Rose-Ann. “I wonder if you will take it there for me, Felix, while I take a bath. And we’ll all meet at breakfast. Clive and Phyllis are going to have breakfast at Henrici’s, and we’ll join them. Will you?”

Felix went back to the studio for the dummy. As he went, he carried in his mind the picture he had seen when he opened the door of Phyllis’s room—Phyllis sitting on the floor at Rose-Ann’s feet precisely as a few hours earlier she had sat at his, with what must have been the same worshipful expression on her face as she listened to Rose-Ann’s words. Rose-Ann had also probably been deciding her young destinies for her.

Felix laughed. It was certainly odd enough!

Yes, but what ideas had Rose-Ann been putting into her head? What kind of story had Rose-Ann told her about their marriage? Had Rose-Ann talked about their mutual “freedom”? That theme would have accounted for Phyllis’s rapt and devout attention. It was what Phyllis wanted to hear, what she wanted to believe—that love could be like that!

Anyway, he was glad that Phyllis and Rose-Ann were friends.

3

The four of them breakfasted together at Henrici’s, and at noon Phyllis was inducted into the magic circle of their mid-day comradeship at the corner table in the little Hungarian restaurant; and that afternoon they took the train for Woods Point—whither Phyllis had to go as it were in disguise, or at least stealthily, for her family must not know that she was spending the night at Clive’s: an ironic precaution, for their relations were still as vexatiously and chastely intellectual as they had been in the earliest days of their clandestine meetings.

In spite of their need of sleep—and fortified by the thought that tomorrow was Sunday and they could sleep as long as they liked—they sat up until all hours, talking. It was like a reunion, and the memory of their first meeting here touched it with romantic suggestion. The promise of comradeship which had been implicit in that first meeting, obscured at the time by the anxieties and discomforts of a tribal ceremonial, had now, after so long an interval, come true. They felt that they had discovered each other, to a new extent, in this new grouping. It is not often that two couples can happily coalesce into that infinitely fluid and various arrangement, a group of four. But it had quite unmistakably and thrillingly happened!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XLV. Foursome

1

THE conversational permutations and combinations of this new fourfold intimacy inevitably threw new light for each upon the character of the others, and led to endless discussions.

“But why,” Felix exclaimed to Rose-Ann, after an evening spent in the company of the two others, “doesn’t Phyllis make up her mind about Clive, one way or the other. Why should she keep on tormenting him this way?”

“Why doesn’t Clive make up his own mind?” Rose-Ann retorted. “It’s he that’s torturing her. I understand Phyllis’s attitude perfectly.”

“We both seem to have rather changed our views about them,” he observed. “You used to blame Phyllis.”

“I don’t any more,” said Rose-Ann. “I blame Clive.”

“For what, precisely?”

“For not knowing what he wants!”

“He wants Phyllis. That’s simple enough.”

“No, he doesn’t. It would be simple enough if he did. He could have her in a moment. She’s crazy about him. She wants nothing else than to be really his sweetheart.”

“Then why isn’t she?”

“Because he won’t let her!”

“What nonsense, Rose-Ann!”

“It’s perfectly true. I was going to tell you; while you and Clive were over in the corner tonight talking about that novel of his, she was explaining to me what she was angry at him about. She had proposed to him that they rent an apartment together in Chicago this fall.”

“And he refused?” Felix asked incredulously.

“Yes ... unless she would marry him first. And she wouldn’t.”

“But why not?” he asked.

“Don’t you understand, Felix?... Before, when they first knew each other, she would gladly have married him—but he wouldn’t ask her. He wanted her to be a ‘free-woman.’ And now that she’s ready to be, he insists on ‘protecting’ her with a marriage. Can’t you see? he wants her to admit that she’s not in earnest, that she’s afraid.... And she won’t. I quite agree with her!”

“But what a fuss over nothing,” said Felix.

“Over nothing? Aren’t ideas anything? Isn’t pride anything?”

“Not in comparison with happiness. They’ve been making each other miserable for two years with their ideas, and their silly pride. The important thing is to get them—yes, damn it!—into the same bed together!”

Rose-Ann laughed. “They’ve tried even that, Felix! and it did no good.”

“What!”

“No—they spent the night arguing about whether they really loved each other!”

Felix groaned. “I never heard of such a crazy pair in my life!”

“Yes, it was utterly ridiculous,” Rose-Ann agreed. “Phyllis told Clive she was perfectly willing, for the sake of companionship, to become his mistress—but he wouldn’t have her on those terms. He wanted her to say she loved him.”

“I can’t exactly blame him for asking that,” said Felix. “Why shouldn’t she say it?—it was true!”

“She just wasn’t sure; I can understand that, Felix. She wanted to find out whether she did or not. And if he couldn’t be sure for both of them— You see, it was his cowardice, not hers.”

“Madness!” said Felix. “Is this what modern love has come to!”

2

Again, Clive and Felix were at the “Tavern,” across the street from the Chronicle, sitting in front of their afternoon ale.

“Phyllis,” said Clive, “talks about nothing but you, nowadays—you and Rose-Ann. I gather that you are the most wonderful two people in the world, with the possible exception of Bernard Shaw and Ellen Key.”

“I hear much more extravagant reports than that about myself,” said Felix. “Bernard Shaw isn’t in it. I gather that I am almost as wonderful a person as Clive Bangs!”

Clive shook his head. “I am a deserted altar,” he declared, with mock mournfulness. “You are the new divinity. How does it feel?”

“It’s—slightly embarrassing sometimes,” said Felix.

Clive grinned. “You just hate it, don’t you? It makes you bored to be adored!”

“Not exactly,” said Felix. “But Phyllis does have a disturbing way, when we are alone together, of seeming to be a—well, a child, a very young child with a ... a beloved parent!”

“Or why not say, a worshipper in the presence of a god!” Clive laughed. “You find it embarrassing, do you?”

“And also agreeable in a curious way!” Felix confessed. “I’ve never been regarded as a supernaturally wise being, before. I find I rather like it!”

“I know,” said Clive. “The truth is, it’s tremendously gratifying to one’s egotism. It’s nice to be a god. But I fell off my pedestal early in the game. And what I’d like to know is, how do you manage to stay on yours so serenely?”

“It comes naturally to me, to be a god, I expect,” said Felix modestly. “I was probably born that way. I’ve often been told I’m not human. But I imagine the trouble with you was that you made love to her. That was a mistake. You should let her make love to you.”

“It sounds all right, Felix—not to make love to her: but do you really find it so terribly easy?”

“Oh,” said Felix, “I just keep in mind that I am supposed to be calm, benignant, Olympian intelligence! And really, you know, there’s nothing in the world less conducive to romance. A gesture betraying anything more than a condescending paternal affection would shatter the picture. An importunate lover is merely human, you know, Clive!”

“So I’ve found!” said Clive.

“But it’s your own damned fault. I mean this seriously, Clive. You taught her this preposterous evasiveness. She’s only learned your characteristic attitude—or your favourite trick, whichever it is.”

“I must say she’s learned it well.... So you think it’s all a mask. And what do you imagine is underneath?” Clive asked carelessly.

“I don’t imagine—I know,” Felix said earnestly, thinking of the real person he had evoked from under her intellectual disguises that first night of talk in her room. “Something so simple, Clive, that you’d never believe it.”

Clive yawned. “I might not believe it, but I can guess what you’re about to say, Felix: a Woman, God bless her, with a capital W!... Come on, Felix, you’ve reached the maudlin stage; let’s go back to the office.”

3

“Phyllis,” said Clive to Rose-Ann one afternoon at Field’s where they had met by chance at the stationery counter, and had gone together to the tea-room for tea and talk, “complains to me that Felix hasn’t been to his work-room all this week; she seems to think he is idling away his time in the society of his wife, when he ought to be writing plays and letting her make coffee for him.”

Rose-Ann laughed. “Whether it’s Phyllis’s coffee or not, he does seem to be getting some good work done. I really like that new play.”

“‘The Dryad’? A lovely little thing. Why don’t you make him send it to Gregory Storm?”

Gregory Storm was an enthusiast who was organizing a company of amateurs to give plays by Schnitzler and Wedekind and other moderns, and Felix had vainly been urged by Clive to submit some of his one-act plays to them.

“I’m not going to ‘make’ Felix do anything,” Rose-Ann said impatiently. “Make him yourself, if you want him to! I _won’t_ manage his career for him.”

“Afraid he’ll blame you if it fails?” Clive asked maliciously.

“No—afraid he’ll blame me if it succeeds!” she laughed.

“You’re right,” said Clive. “I never saw any one so afraid of success.”

“Oh, it’s not success he’s afraid of. It’s rather, I think, that he’s afraid of enjoying himself! You know, Clive, he really is a Puritan!”

“Harsh words, Mrs. Fay! On what grounds do you accuse Felix of the horrid crime of Puritanism?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean, Clive! You were saying that Felix hadn’t been to his work-room this week. And you know why. It’s because he’s afraid of Phyllis. Isn’t it absurd!”

“Absurd? Not at all! I’m very much afraid of her, myself!”

“Well, I’m not! Felix ought to know that I’m just as fond of Phyllis as he is, and that I can perfectly well understand how nice it is to have her around. I like to have her make coffee for me, and sit at _my_ feet. And suppose he did kiss her—she’s very kissable; I wish he would, and get over being afraid of her.”

“No use, Rose-Ann; he never will. And what’s worse, she never will, either. She’s just as much afraid of him as he is of her. I’m afraid theirs is a hopeless passion!”

They both commenced to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

4

Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled again, and Phyllis felt in need of encouragement in her Clive-less way of life. She leaned on Rose-Ann for philosophic guidance, and the two girls spent many evenings together in the studio; while Felix, without the sustenance of Phyllis’s coffee, worked at revising “The Dryad,” which he had decided to submit to Gregory Storm. But one evening Phyllis came in disconsolately, and said to Felix:

“I’ve been to the studio and Rose-Ann isn’t there!”

“She’s at the printer’s,” said Felix, “reading page-proof.” He pushed back his manuscript. “Do you want to make me some—”

“Coffee? No,” said Phyllis, “but you can take me out and buy me a cocktail or something; and—and give me some spiritual guidance. I need it!”

They went to a quiet restaurant in the Loop which Clive had discovered, a foreign-looking place where people sat for hours over one drink: a place to talk. It was almost empty at this hour. A table across the room was occupied by an elderly Swede or Dane, who sat moodily sipping a liqueur.

“What,” Phyllis demanded, fingering the stem of her glass, “_shall_ I do—I mean, with my life. Tell me, Felix!”

“If I tell you, will you do it?” he demanded.

She hesitated for a moment. “Yes—I will!”

“Marry!”

“Oh—I might have known you would say that.” She sipped her cocktail disappointedly. “I could have got that advice from St. Paul!”

“I suppose you prefer to take Walter Pater’s advice,” he said laughingly.

“What is that?”

“Burn always with a hard, gem-like flame! But, no—St. Paul is right: it is better to marry!”

“Don’t tease me, Felix. I’m in earnest.”

“So am I. I’ve told you what to do.”

“Marry—yes. But why?”

“You’ll find out why, my dear. ‘Open your mouth and shut your eyes—’”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Not a bit.”

“Marry, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m not to ask why?”

“No.”

“Then—whom?”

“A man.”

“Any man?”

“Any man you happen to like.”

“But I don’t happen to like many men.”

“Marry one of those fortunate few.”

“I suppose you mean Clive?”

“He’ll do.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t believe in marriage. And, Felix, one of the two people must believe in a marriage, for it to _be_ a marriage!”

“Then marry—Herbert Bond.”

Herbert Bond was a staid young business man with whom Phyllis had flirted outrageously during her last quarrel with Clive.

“You said—any man I happened to _like_,” she protested.

“What kind of man _do_ you happen to like, then?”

“Clive’s kind!”

“I suspected as much,” he said. “Well, then, marry one of Clive’s kind—but without Clive’s fatal weakness.”

“Not believing in marriage—is that his fatal weakness?”

“Not being able to believe in anything!—in marriage—in love—”

“Or in me,” said Phyllis sadly.

Felix was silent.

“Can any one—any one of Clive’s kind—believe in me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

“Are you sure?” she demanded, leaning across the table.

“Quite sure,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze.

She looked down. “There’s only one other man—of Clive’s kind—that I can think of,” she said. “And he’s—out of my reach.”

“Then you must look around for some others,” Felix said, smiling.

“Are there others?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course. It’s only youth and ignorance that makes you imagine they are scarce. You don’t find them by the dozens in little country towns, of course; but you are in Chicago, now. They are a type familiar in all great cities. How long have you been here? A few months! And because you’ve only found two, so far—”

She sighed. “You think there may be a third?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you think I’ll find him?”

“If you look.”

“And will he like _me_, do you think?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he did, rather!”

“Thank you!” she said mockingly. “It is awfully kind of you to say so!”

At this moment they noticed the man who was sitting across the room, the elderly Scandinavian, rising and bowing in their direction. They looked at him in surprise, and he came over to their table, and bowed again. He was drunk, but none the less a gentleman.

“Pardon me,” he said, speaking quietly, in a voice which had only the trace of an alien accent, “for the liberty I take in addressing you. But I have been sitting there, seeing you—seeing your happiness—and it gave me such pleasure that I wanted to tell you—to thank you. Yes, to thank you!” He put his hand on his breast.

“I felt sure,” he said, smiling affectionately at them, “—I said to myself, these two happy lovers will forgive a lonely old man for telling them how much it has meant only to look on for a moment at their happiness—their young happiness!”

He bowed again. “Pardon me,” he said, smiling, and again bowed, and went out the door.

Felix and Phyllis stared after him, and then looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

5

But, interesting as such incidental discussions might be, the heart of their fourfold relationship was in the mid-day discussions at the little Hungarian restaurant. They named it the Rendezvous. There they talked of everything in the world that interested them.... Two people talking together tell secrets; three people talking are a conspiracy; but four talkers are a world. They told the truth; they were hard in their sincerity; and nobody flinched. They were proud of their robustness. The theme of a tête-à-tête confession might at any moment be flung into the stark publicity of that arena. They no longer had secrets; or, if they had, it was because these were secrets of which they had not become aware.

One day Clive said laughingly, “If anything ever happens to us, of the sort that ‘can’t’ be discussed, we’ll come here, and discuss it in the teeth of God and Nature!”

6

They had planned a vacation together, but Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled once more, and Felix and Rose-Ann set out disappointedly by themselves on the appointed day, through Gary and beyond to “the Dunes.” But, after a little having pitched their tent and wandered out over the great wastes of sand by the Lake, they were conscious, both of them, of a sense of release. In this wilderness of sandhills, they seemed to be a million miles distant from all the world they had lived in.

“It’s good to be away from people,” said Rose-Ann.

“Even from Clive and Phyllis,” said Felix.

Rose-Ann’s lips pouted mutinously. “_Especially_ from Clive and Phyllis!” she said.

“Yes....” Felix said hesitatingly. “But—why?”

“They’re family all over again,” said Rose-Ann. “I thought I had escaped from families.... But one never does.”

They cooked and ate and slept and kissed and bathed in the lake, and lay idly on the sand. They did not discuss anything all week long. And when the end came, and it was time to begin the miles-long walk back to the nearest street-car line, they stood looking back lingeringly at the peace they were leaving behind.

“It would be nice to have a house here,” said Rose-Ann.

“Yes,...” said Felix.

“Only—the lake and the sand are sort of wasted, without children to enjoy them.”

A burning flash of memory lighted Felix’s mind, and he saw himself and Rose-Ann, the summer before, walking in a park under great trees that lifted their shivering glooms to the sky.... “Everything is all right now,” she had said—now that they were to have no child....

He felt, again, forces that he did not understand hurling themselves on his heart, crushing and stunning it.... He looked at her, questioning her with his eyes.

“I hope,” she was saying, “that Clive and Phyllis make up again—soon. We _are_ rather dull without them, aren’t we?”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XLVI. The Rehearsal

1

COMING back to town, Felix forced himself to ask for another raise in salary. It was less because he needed the money than because he wanted to assure himself that he really was what he was supposed to be—a person of some importance. He got his raise—one which made his pay now commensurate with his position as dramatic critic of a great newspaper.

And the same week he received word that the Artists’ Theatre had accepted his play, “The Dryad.” It was to be presented on the opening bill, along with Schnitzler and Wedekind!

The acceptance of this play, taken in conjunction with such a realistic fact as his raise in salary, seemed to mean something; he wanted to believe that it did—but he was rather afraid to believe it. Instead, he began to tell himself that in sober truth it meant nothing at all.

He went to see Gregory Storm, the director, and was urged to attend the rehearsals. “At all events,” he said to himself, “I can look on and learn something practical about the mechanics of the theatre.”

2

Rose-Ann refused to accompany him to the rehearsal. “You are getting into a terrible habit of having me on your mind whenever I’m around,” she said. “I’ve noticed it when you write; I bother you. I’d rather stay away. Besides, if I went, I should want to be in it myself!”

He went alone, reflecting that what Rose-Ann had said was true. If she were in the room he was more selfconscious, by reason of being so conscious of her. He must get over it....