Chapter XVI: Book SIX: Wilson Avenue (12)

On the settle, and strewn over chairs, and on the floor, lay half of Rose-Ann’s wardrobe; and Rose-Ann herself, with her face hidden in her arms, was seated ridiculously in an open suitcase on the floor, from which the ends of stockings strayed out—seated there, with her arms on her knees, rocking back and forth, and crying, with a low, choked sobbing—rocking back and forth, back and forth, in the suitcase, like a child in a cradle, crying....

She had been packing up. To go. And she was crying. He stared at her, and the vision he had had outside of their splendid happiness was obliterated by the wash of a vast wave of bitterness.

She looked up, her face distorted, made ugly with a choked sob, stained with tears. She tried to speak. He stared at her. He was beginning to pity her.... But he must not pity her. If he did, he would despise her. He did not dare see her, so soon after this mad nonsense under the moon, as little, weak, lonely, afraid. He tried not to see her at all—and she seemed to recede from him, to grow dim and faint and remote.

“Go away!” she cried, and turned her face from him, still stooped in that ridiculous, infantile, pitiful posture.

He did not pity her now. He stood dazed as from a blow, dazed with the terrific shock of the impact of reality upon his dream. He tried to rouse himself, to see, to feel. But everything was misty and unreal to him. He spoke to her, as though across a vast space, dully.

“So you didn’t mean it?”

She sprang up.

“Why are you here? Didn’t you go? Aren’t you going? Are you trying to torture me?”

She advanced upon him with eyes that blazed, hair wild, and hands that had transformed themselves into claws ready to scratch and tear him. He saw all this as if it were a picture—a picture irrelevant to the text. He made a little gesture as if to turn the leaf.

“So you didn’t mean it,” he said again.

She stopped, close to him; looked at him searchingly. “Where have you been?” she asked uncertainly.

He laughed mirthlessly. “Outside the door—looking at the moon.”

“I thought—” she said.

“No,” he said, quietly, sadly. All this ought to matter greatly. But somehow it didn’t matter at all.

“But—” she said.

They looked at each other.

“So you didn’t mean it,” he said once more, like a refrain.

Her demeanour changed suddenly. She looked at the clothes on the chairs and on the floor, and went over and stood beside the open suitcase.

“I don’t know what I meant,” she said wearily. “I couldn’t stand it. I was going home.” She gave the suitcase a little kick, and came back to Felix. “But I don’t understand you!” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” he said indifferently.

“Felix!” she said desperately. “What has happened? Where are we? Do we love each other? I don’t understand anything any more. Tell me! Help me!”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.

“Oh!” she said savagely. “You don’t know! Why do you stand there and look at me like that? Are you dead, or am I?”

“I don’t know.”

She took hold of his shoulders fiercely, to shake him, and then dropped her hands. “Are you angry at me?” she asked. “Why?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not angry. I just—don’t seem to care.”

“I know I’m a fool!” she said. “And—Felix, I did mean it. I thought I did. But—it was too terrible.... After all, I’m human, Felix.”

“Yes—I see you are.”

“And you’re not. No—you’re not human. You’re a monster.... I—hate you! Not because of Phyllis—no; you don’t love her, either. You don’t love anybody. You stand there—can’t you understand, can’t you say something, can’t you pity me a little? Felix!”

He saw, he heard, across an infinite gulf. He would have liked to stir, to speak. But he was encased in an icy armour. Nothing of this touched him.

She sat down on a chair, spilling its burden of clothing to the floor. “How long,” she asked between clenched teeth, “is this going to go on?”

He did not answer.

“Because,” she said, “I can’t bear it. It’s—it’s worse than the other. I could have borne that, I think—now. I was really sorry for you, Felix. But you aren’t sorry for me. I know—I pretended to be a superwoman; and I’m not. But can’t you forgive me? Can’t you allow me my—my feelings?... No—you haven’t got any feelings.... Well—I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it. I—”

His mind came back reluctantly to the scene. He sat down.

“I’m very tired,” he said. “Can’t we stop talking about it?”

She brushed her hand bewilderedly across her forehead. “Why is it?” she said. “I’m being made to feel like a criminal? Have I done anything?”

He spoke with an effort. “No,” he said. “Everything is all right—I think. I’m sorry I’m behaving this way. Forgive me if you can. I can’t help it.”

“Forgive you? For what?”

“For—for thinking you meant it. I should have known.”

She sprang up. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “I must go somewhere to think things out. I can’t stay here and have you say that to me, over and over.... Felix, I’m going away somewhere for a while. I’ll come back, I suppose. But—you see I must go, don’t you?”

“No. But it’s all right.”

He watched her pack her suitcase, still in the strange half-trance which made him unable to stir. It was as if he were drunk or hypnotized. He could see that she was going; he knew that he ought to stop her. But it did not seem to matter.... Only when she was dressed for the journey, and standing before him to say good-bye, did the numbness begin to vanish. He was ashamed of himself—ashamed and frightened. He felt that he had been under the influence of a kind of insanity—for surely that was the very essence of insanity, to be utterly indifferent to all the events of the outside world! She did not know, even though she had seen, how remote from her he had been—how dead to her, how dead to all reality....

In the sudden uprush of consciousness, as the spell broke, he took her in his arms, and kissed her and clung to her. “Don’t go!” he cried. “Don’t go!” He vaguely remembered having told himself that they were different from other people—different, in that they could do without each other. What folly! He had thought himself strong, self-sufficient. He was the weakest, loneliest, most helpless person in the world. “Don’t go, Rose-Ann!”

But she was hard now, though his pleading moved her. She kissed him wildly. “I will come back,” she said. “I think I shall. But I must be by myself. I must.” And she tore herself from his arms, and left the studio.

He flung himself on the floor and cried, like a broken-hearted child.

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LII. Sleepless Nights

1

IT was preposterous that one should go to an office the next day after a night like that—to an office, and write a foolish editorial, and smile, and talk to people, as if nothing had happened. But it was better that way; one actually forgot for minutes at a time what had happened, till it came back with a bewildering influx of memory. There was also a play which one could go to, even though it seemed strange to be by oneself, sitting beside an empty seat. One could pay attention to the play, could even think of things to say about it, could write those things coherently on paper, could go out and mail them in the box on the corner, just as usual.

There was only one flaw in the usualness of all this. It was not usual for Felix Fay to write so solemnly about a new play. It was his habit to treat serious plays lightly, and light plays seriously; but it was a departure from his manner to be actually grave about anything. This play happened to be about a man who, after a lifetime of self-deluded egotism, had suddenly found out by accident what sort of person he actually was. Here was material for Felix’s customary light irony; why should he write upon the theme so solemnly—“that day when one walks upon a reeling earth under an insane sky”—as if it were Judgment Day he was talking about, and he himself had been there!

He had explained—or not explained—Rose-Ann’s absence in a phrase. “She’s gone off somewhere—I don’t know just where.”

It was the calm, indifferent tone of this remark that carried the impression of everything being quite all right. It carried, indeed, the conviction, redoubled and renewed, of this being a remarkable, a wonderful, an exemplary marriage. These people really lived up to their modernist theories! Rose-Ann had wanted to go off somewhere, and she had not bothered to tell Felix where she was going, nor he to inquire! That, truly, was freedom!

2

To Phyllis, indeed, the notion occurred—only to be devoutly disbelieved, repudiated and forgotten—that Rose-Ann’s absence was a consequence of her own talk with Felix the other night. But Felix’s imperturbable demeanour, when she met him and Clive at lunch, his air of being somewhat preoccupied with a literary problem, the complete absence of any anxiety in his face, reassured her. She had been happy in telling Felix the truth—or what seemed to emerge from her tangled emotions as the truth. She had wished to believe that this was possible; and she had dared herself to prove it possible. She had told him, in defiance of all convention, that she loved him! There was a splendour in it for which her doubting mind ached, as a parched throat for an appeasing drink. That he should tell her that he loved her in return was bewildering and troubling; and if it was news that she secretly desired to hear, had secretly hoped to elicit, she would not let herself realize it. For a moment _her_ universe had been shaken; but for a moment only. Things had righted themselves, after an intoxicating earthquake-tremour, in which all sorts of possibilities, vast and terrible and sweet, had presented themselves. For a moment she had felt for Felix a new emotion, one of pity mixed with tenderness; almost, her ideal of him had crumbled, when he said that he loved her in return. For it was as Rose-Ann’s husband that she loved him—as the partner of an ideal marriage. For a dismayed second she had thought he was going to tell her that he no longer loved Rose-Ann; but it wasn’t so. Things were as they should be.... Except that he shouldn’t have wanted to kiss her. She disdained him for that weakness. She had been meaning to ask for that kiss herself! As a gift, a concession from his strength to her weakness—yes; but not as something he wanted....

But, as she remembered the event, she forgave him even that, for it seemed to her that he had been sorry for her. That was why he had wanted to kiss her; and if she had realized that, she would have let him.... As she re-enacted the scene in memory, it seemed to her that he had been magnificently untouched by it all. She saw herself, discontented, unhappy, making her confession of love; and he, listening quietly, as one who had the right to be loved.... So it should be—so she had thought of him. And he had said that he loved her too: he had not been afraid that she would misunderstand him. She flushed at the thought that she almost had misunderstood.... But, no—everything had gone beautifully.

And Rose-Ann—he had of course told Rose-Ann—what did she think of it? Rose-Ann would not begrudge her this confession, this moment of beauty. Rose-Ann had gone away. Why? Perhaps her plans had jibed with the generous desire to let these two, Felix and Phyllis, be more together. Perhaps it was her way of showing that it was all right....

Underneath all these rationalizations there was, deep in Phyllis’s mind, a panic fear which she would not recognize—a fear which was also a desire. If she could have thought of Felix as her lover without despising him, she would have yielded to that thought. But it was only as some one already too happy to need her love, that she could love him. If she could have thought that she was capable of harming his happiness, he would have ceased to be admirable in her eyes. If it were possible to have him for a lover, he would be like anybody else.... No, she must believe in the miraculous perfection of Felix’s marriage in order to go on being in love with him....

3

It seemed incredible to Felix that one mad moment could have done all this. For one moment only he had surrendered to an insane illusion; and the results had been profound and incalculable. All this time, for two years, ever since the day in Port Royal when he had burnt his crazy novel, he had been struggling unceasingly with his own folly. No one had understood that struggle, no one had helped him. Rose-Ann had not understood. She had sought in every way to encourage him in what was, in the end, sheer madness. Only by keeping his feet upon the earth, only by continually distrusting himself, by trying to find what was most difficult to do, and doing that—subjecting himself to the discipline of reality—only so could he save himself. Step by step he had deserted that firm ground, and gone into the world of dreams—where, he knew now, he could not live except alone. He did not want to be alone. He wanted the world of dear, familiar realities—he wanted Rose-Ann. He wanted Rose-Ann.

4

And, meanwhile, where was she? At her father’s home, probably. Should he write to her there? No—a stubborn pride surged up in him, forbidding him to write. She must come back.

Was it true, then, that he did not love her? Surely, if he loved her, he would ask her to return!

But he could not.

She must be there, at home. There was nothing to worry about.... And yet, by day and night, disturbing fantasies arose in his mind, of all the accidents that might have happened to her—gruesome fantasies, that unwound themselves in his mind. He would awake from one of these imaginings with a sense of guilt, as though he had actually been gloating over the picture. He tried to think her safe. But his imagination would present—yes, her very death before his eyes. It was horrible, like a recurring nightmare.

A week passed, and she did not return. He worried about her, night and day; and yet he could not force himself to write the few lines that might bring her back to his side. Perhaps she only wanted to be reassured. Perhaps she was waiting for that summons.... Well, she must come back without it.

As a practical matter, it became more and more difficult to carry on the pose that everything was all right. His secret burden became almost intolerable. He wanted to tell some one. But who could understand? Not Clive, not Phyllis....

He stayed in the studio every moment when he was not in the office, for fear she would return and not find him there. He must be there when she came back.

It never occurred to him that she might not come back.

The issue in his own mind was clear—he had gone over it a thousand times; at night he rehearsed it to himself sleeplessly, hour after hour. _He had made a fool of himself. But it had been her fault._

Yes, her fault. That was why he could not write. He would have to write humbly, if he wrote at all; and he was in no humble mood. His loneliness, his need of her, only exasperated his sense of the injury she had done him.... She had urged him on to folly—that was hard enough to forgive—and then she had turned and fled from a situation which she herself had created.... All this could be discussed and understood between them; but first she must come back. That surrender was essential.

It was hard to stick it out this way, in lonely, sleepless waiting. But she knew—it was her own fault; her return would be an admission of that. _Then_ he could say how ashamed he was of himself. But first....

He must wait—till she came back.

Who had talked of “freedom”? Who had refused to face the facts of marriage? Who had engineered, planned, touched the match to this explosion? She knew well enough! He need not say these things to her, ever. She would confess them by her return. That would be enough.

She was stubborn—but he was still more stubborn. He could wait.

She would come back—and then....

They would start all over again—sensibly.

5

Rose-Ann, meanwhile, as her husband supposed, was at her father’s home in Springfield. If her presence there excited any curiosity, she was scarcely aware of it. She was not concerned with anything but the problem of herself and Felix....

She was not, however, as he sometimes imagined, waiting for a letter from him to make easy her return home. She was, as she had told him, trying to “think things out.”

She had gone away with that sentence of his ringing in her mind: “_So you didn’t mean it after all!_”

She had not slept that night, on the train; nor very much since that time. She was too busy trying to think things out; and the chief thing to think out was: _had_ she meant it when she offered Felix his freedom?

No, obviously enough! And yet her pride revolted from that fact. Had she been a liar, a hypocrite, all this while? Had she only pretended? It was too shameful....

She really had meant it. She had been in earnest. She had understood what she was saying. She _had_ thought she could do it....

Was she too weak, then? Oh, no! It was a mere momentary weakness, a spiritual infirmity that she had not expected, but that she could have conquered. If only Felix had not come in just then! What a fool she must have seemed! What a liar!

But why couldn’t he have understood? She was a woman, after all.

No! he had been quite right to disdain her. After all she had said to him, to sit there on the floor, blubbering.... She blushed with infinite shame.

That was the trouble.... She had not had time to adjust herself to the situation. It had been a moment of madness when she suddenly commenced packing to go home. She had not known what she was doing.... An hour later, she would have been calm again, herself, assured, smiling. He need never have known....

But—if she really meant it—then she must prove it.

Well?

In among these reasoned arguments that pursued each other in an endless weary circle in her mind, floated irrelevant memories—the pressure of Felix’s arm about her shoulders that afternoon on the train going out to Woods Point to be married—a fragment of that wild letter he had written her from Canal Street, about the girl in Iowa—the look in his eyes as he had seen her among the children at the Community Theatre.... and still more irrelevant memories—the complaining tones of her mother, saying cruel and unjust things about her father, things not meant for a child’s ears, years ago—and her father’s face, with its wise, mocking, incredulous, ironic smile, cutting her to the heart....

Well?

If she went back, if she proved that she meant what she had said—things would have to be different. They had been too close. They had been like other married people. That was his fault. Yes, it was his fault, after all, that she had not been able to carry out her promises. He had made it too hard for her.... They never should have lived together under the same roof. They never should have become legally married in the first place....

They would have to live apart, in separate studios. They must not pretend to be man and wife. She would be—yes, that was the word which made their relationship clear—his mistress. It was a good word, making no pretences. His mistress—yes, she could be that. If she loved him enough....

What? Did she love him enough only to be his wife? Not enough to give him his freedom?

Her father’s face, with its mocking, incredulous, ironic smile, came into her mind, blurring her thoughts, rousing her to a queer anger against herself.

No. Or yes?...

Well, then?

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LIII. Two Letters

1

ON the tenth day of Felix’s stubborn waiting, a letter came from Rose-Ann. It was at the studio when he returned there early in the afternoon, lying on the floor where the postman had stuck it under the door.

He picked it up, and sat down at his desk. At the very sight of it, of her large undisciplined handwriting on the square envelope, her presence seemed suddenly to fill the room, like a perfume of flowers—seemed to touch and envelope and caress him. He breathed deeply, and the constraint that had held him tense, that had held him rigid all these days and nights, flowed from him. It was as if she had returned herself—and all at once all that had passed was like a nightmare, terrible and queer, but already vanishing into oblivion with the daylight.

He could feel her presence, hear her voice, sweet and familiar; she was as if beside him in the room. All that their marriage had been flooded his mind, memories of peace and happiness and lovely companionship.

Nothing—nothing could break that bond. She knew it as well as he. As if a mere moment could hurt that lifetime of theirs together!

He tore open the letter.

_Dear Felix Fay_—

That was the way it began....

_Dear Felix Fay—What has happened of course makes it necessary
for us to make a decision—a decision which I cannot make alone.
We have many things in common—tastes, ideas, a love of
beauty—and it seems that it would be a pity if we were to lose
the opportunity for companionship altogether. We cannot, of
course, go on as before—I mean living together so intimately. I
can find another studio, perhaps near yours.—But I do not know
if I am making myself clear. It may sound as if I were proposing
to break off our relationship altogether. I have considered
that, too; but that is, after all, in your hands. What I am
suggesting is that each of us retain our freedom, and live in
such a way that we can use that freedom without hurting each
other’s feelings—but not pretending to be married any more. Only
the situation must be quite clear to both of us. Please tell me
whether you agree definitely to these terms. If so, I think
everything can be arranged in detail so that we both will be
happy._

_Rose-Ann._

2

Felix’s first feeling, oddly enough, when he read this letter, was a sense of Rose-Ann’s disloyalty to their studio—the studio which they had made together.... His imagination, stunned and shocked, clung bitterly to this one point, as if that were the crux of the matter.... That she should not want to live in this studio, this studio whose walls she had kalsomined, whose very floor she had painted! Why, every part of it spelled her! As if he could take her studio, and let her go and live in another! If there was any moving to be done, he would do it. He would get another place. She could live here—she must live here.... He would take a few books—no, he would take nothing. It was all hers....

Some obliquity of the imagination helped him, like a drug, anaesthetizing his emotions, during the first few minutes after reading that letter. His mind was actually busy with the practical details of taking up a new residence, as if that were all that mattered.

And then his mind began to feel the pain of what had happened, slowly, increasingly, terrifically.... She had repudiated their marriage.

He felt knocked down, trampled, stamped upon, hurt all over.

So _this_ was what she had been thinking of! Not of coming home to him—but of living apart from him.

He read the letter again, with a rising anger that mingled with his pain. What was it she said? “_We have many things in common—tastes, ideas, a love of beauty._”—“_Pity if we were to lose the opportunity for companionship altogether_”—“_Not pretending to be married any more._” So it meant nothing to her, then, this marriage? She could end it so easily? And companionship, mere companionship—that did mean something to her? That was what she wanted to keep! “_Everything can be arranged in detail so that we both will be happy._”

What could he reply to a letter like that? What could he say to a girl who told him that her happiness lay in their not being married any more? “_Everything could be arranged in detail._” What detail? Where she was going to live? What did that matter to him? Why should she think that she had to live near him? She need not be so kind. If their marriage meant nothing to her, he could give her up altogether. “_Companionship._” The dead body of their love for consolation? No, she need not have offered him that.... She might have spared that touch.

“_Whether you agree definitely to these terms._” How could she think he would want anything like that? Had she only written that to torture him? She did not insist on breaking off the relationship “altogether.” He stared at the words. Was that what she thought of him? That he would be happy—that was her word—happy ... if—

Verses from a poem, bitter verses, came into his mind:

“_A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
Of a great flood that whirls us to the sea.
But as you will! we’ll sit contentedly
And eat our pot of honey on the grave._”

He laid his head on his arms, bent over the table, shivering with a fit of cold anger and disgust. Then he roused himself, and wrote quickly an answer to Rose-Ann’s letter.

It was only a few lines. He read them over, sealed the envelope, and went out to mail it in the box on the corner ... where he had gone so often to mail his criticism, so that he could return and talk the night through at Rose-Ann’s side.

3

Rose-Ann had composed her letter with difficulty. At the last moment, interfering with a perfectly clear statement of the case to him, had come a distaste for proposing herself as any man’s mistress—even her husband’s.... She must put it in such a way that he would understand her willingness. He would understand, too, why she had failed before. It was her apologia.... And if they lived apart, and—didn’t want to have other love-affairs, then they would both be sure that it wasn’t her fault. Doubtless she had been rather silly about it. He hadn’t really been in love with Phyllis....

It would be possible to go back to him, now. By that letter she had exorcised that ghastly cry that had kept ringing in her ears, night and day—“_You didn’t mean it after all!_” She could sleep, now.

She slept.... But why didn’t his answer come? The mails were uncertain. His letter might be in the post-office now. It would be delivered tomorrow morning.

She packed for her return journey, and slept again, peacefully.

His letter came, and her father presented it to her with his wise smile. She took it to her room and tore it open.

_Rose-Ann, I think it had better be all over for good. I want
you to have the studio. I will go somewhere else._

_Felix._

4

Incredulous, with that letter burning her flesh, tearing and rasping at her heart where she had thrust it into the bosom of her dress, she made the journey to Chicago.

“_All over ... all over ... all over...._” She could not understand it.

Felix was not in the studio. She called him up at the office. He was not there.

Was he with Phyllis?

She waited. Three days.

“Well,” she said aloud to the empty studio. “It’s true. It is all over.”

She went back to the Motion Picture World, gave some explanation of her absence, and started in making up the magazine.

“You know,” said Bodger, the editor, “we’re considering moving out to California in the course of the next few months. Los Angeles. Might as well be on the spot.... I don’t suppose you’d consider coming along with us?”

“Oh, I might!” said Rose-Ann.

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LIV. The God and the Pedestal

1

FOR some hours after sending his reply to Rose-Ann, Felix kept his mind steeled against any realization of its consequences. He was in a peculiar state of righteousness—like one who has struck a fatal blow and keeps insisting that he has been struck first. To him, his letter to Rose-Ann appeared but the reflex of her own—and she, as it were, the author of both letters. Yes, the crime was hers!

But just what this crime was, he still managed to keep from realizing—even when, after mailing his letter and sitting for an hour in a kind of stupour at his desk, he rose, took a book from the shelf, and went away to find a room. The book was “The Bab Ballads.”

He took the Illinois Central in, and a north side elevated train out again, as though seeking to be as far as possible from the studio. He got off, at a venture, at Wilson Avenue, and within an hour found a small apartment of two rooms and bath, furnished “for light-housekeeping,” situated over a coffee-and-tea store, three flights up. It had a fairly large sitting room at the front. He noticed a small book case filled with sets of “The Ivanhoe Novels” and “The Complete Works of Bulwer-Lytton.” Felix told the fat middle-aged woman from the store who showed it to him that he would want the bookcase for books of his own, but not immediately; he remarked that he would probably buy some of her coffee in the morning to make his breakfast on; and assured her that he would not set the hot cup on the bare table-top, which she said was real mahogany and had been left her by a deceased roomer whom she had looked after when he was sick. When she had gone, leaving him the keys, Felix put the Bab Ballads in between the Waverly Novels and the Complete Works of Bulwer-Lytton, and sat down in an old plush-upholstered chair, to make himself at home.

In a few minutes there was a knock—it was the fat woman from the store, who had brought him up a pound of her best coffee.

“Not that I want to bother you,” she said. “You needn’t be afraid I’ll be knocking at your door and keeping watch of your comings and goings—live and let live, is what I say. But I knew from the way you spoke of coffee that you really liked it, and I just thought I’d bring you some for your breakfast. A man that makes his own coffee knows what coffee is—isn’t that so!”

He thanked her, and sat down to look out of the window. The interest of the room itself had been exhausted; it was empty equally of memories and of hopes; it was just so many dismal square feet of space. He had uprooted himself from the place in which he had lived for months that were like years, and years that were like lifetimes; he had lived in that studio—really lived in it; he was living there now, in his thoughts; it would take longer to uproot his mind from that place than it had his body. And yet—he could foresee the time, incredible though it was, when that studio life with Rose-Ann would be only a memory, a part of his past ... like his life with his Iowa sweetheart during their brief idyl, years ago. Yes, the time would come when all this, that was now so warm and near, would be dim and remote; a time when it would no longer hurt him to think about it all....

As he sat there facing the window, looking out unseeingly at the lighted facade of the building opposite, the strains of dance music reached him, and he saw couples float past the windows of the hall on the floor opposite his own. He watched and listened with a kind of dull fascination, for a long time.... He was very tired. He thought of going to bed. But that music from across the street would never stop—it would keep on with its silly gaiety hour after hour.

He rose at last and went out. He was going to his work-room. He could spend several hours cleaning up there—destroying manuscripts he didn’t want to keep, reducing the amount of things to be moved to a minimum.

Phyllis might be in her room.... He thought of her there, and the thought comforted him. He saw her again, in his thoughts, as he had seen her first—serene and kind and strong. It was good to think of her.

Still his mind did not quite encompass the situation. It was as though something had happened to him—something stupendous, terrible, and almost unbearable, like the death of a beloved friend—something not wholly to be realized. And it had the resistlessness of some such event; he did not conceive it as something within his power to alter or prevent—nor in any sense as something which he had done himself. If he had thought of himself as having done this thing, he might have thought of undoing it. But it was a thing which had happened, like an earthquake....

In his room he gathered up fragments of manuscript—jottings of ideas, efforts, experiments, unfinished things—and tore them up after a casual glance. There would be little to take with him. That was good.... He had the feeling that a new life had begun for him, a life at which he still stared in vague bewilderment, like a creature painfully new-born into an uncomprehended world.

2

He could hear Phyllis moving about on the other side of the partition. He finished his work; the wastebasket was full of torn manuscript, and his Roget’s Thesaurus and his favourite penholder lay together on the table, ready to take to his new home. He no longer had need of a work-room, a special refuge from the distracting intimacies of marriage. He was free from all that. Yes—think of that—free!... He laughed out loud.

Presently Phyllis would come and knock on his door. She had heard him enter, she knew he was there. He wanted to see her, he wanted the comfort of her eyes, her hands. He wanted her serenity, her kindness, her strength. But he lacked even the energy to ask for it. He could only sit and wait until she came to him.

He felt as though the last strength he possessed were being used up in some terrific effort—an effort that would cease when she came. Then it would make no difference that he had no strength left—her courage and kindness would sustain him.

The impossible had happened—yes, the impossible. For it was unthinkable that Rose-Ann should have destroyed their marriage. But she had.... And now in this strange world there was only one certainty left—Phyllis’s eyes, her arms, her understanding love. Here was reality, here firm ground amidst a reeling chaos of fantastic madness.... Phyllis!

He could hear, as in a dream, the bubbling of coffee, could taste the fragrance of its odour stealing through the door.... Presently, very soon, she would come....

He heard her knock, and he thought he answered, but it seemed not, for she knocked again, and then opened the door. He sat there limply in his chair, glad she had come.

“Did I disturb you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“You’re tired!” she said, and came quickly to him and put her hand on his forehead. “I’ve made some coffee,” she said. “It will be good for you.”

“Yes,” he said, and rose.

She led the way into her room, and pointed to the couch. “Lie down and rest,” she said. “I’ll give you your coffee in a moment.”

She busied herself with cups and saucers, and he watched her from the couch. She came toward him, a cup of coffee in her hand, her arm bare to the elbow, and above it her eyes shining under a tangle of soft brown hair.

“Here!” she said.

When he made no effort to take the cup, she set it down on the stool beside the bed. He took her hand, and drew her toward him. She yielded to his gesture and sat down beside him on the couch, looking at him with a kind of startled amusement as he took her arm and pressed his cheek against it.

“You’re very tired, aren’t you?” she said sympathetically, and touched his shoulder with her other hand.

He clung to her arm. It was cool against his cheek. All the beauty, all the peace, all the rest in the world seemed to be in that cool white flesh. Was it because it was hers—or because it was a girl’s arm, promising rest and comfort? He did not know. He only clung to it.

“Is it your work—are you having difficulties?” she asked.

He laughed. His work!

That laugh seemed to reassure her in some way. She smiled down at him, bent over him, her hair blinded him, and then her lips brushed his.

“Dear!” she said.

He held her close to him, and their lips met—hungrily, thirstily. At first all her body relaxed into the embrace, and it seemed to him that the peace he needed flowed into him from her kiss, from her arms, her body—rest, the infinite sweetness of rest.... And then she seemed to grow frightened. She held herself away from him, she looked at him questioningly.

But, again reassured, she bent again, and surrendered herself to the embrace. But something in the exigence of his mood came to her even in this surrender, and once more, suddenly and coolly, she drew herself away.

“What _is_ the matter?” she demanded, looking at him with alien eyes. She bent, not tenderly, and took his shoulder, as if to shake his secret out of him.

“The matter is,” said Felix, “that my marriage has gone to hell.”

3

“What!” The exclamation came in a tone of utter incredulous astonishment from the girl at his side, who sat there, rigid, as though frozen by that news.

“Yes, I tell you!” he cried. “We’ve—busted up everything—for good and all.”

And feeling himself uncontrollably about to cry, he turned his face against the couch, and lay shaken with convulsive strangling sobs.

The girl sprang up, and looked down at him. She had never seen him cry. She had not known that he could cry. As a matter of fact, he had not cried very many times in his life, and he did not know how, and did it badly.

He looked up at last, brushing his eyes with his coatsleeve. He wanted her pity.

He saw her looking at him with haughty anger. Her whole gesture was one of outrage. When she saw him look up, she clenched her fists, and said,

“You never told me—”

“Never told you?” His anger burst out against her, anger mixed with self-pity. “What did you expect?”

She turned half away from him in disdain.

“Not this!” she said.

“No!” he said, sitting up. “No, you little idiot, I suppose you didn’t.... And I didn’t either. Well—you see.”

She looked back over her shoulder with repugnance, as if she were looking at something sick, wounded, or diseased.

“Yes,” she said doubtfully, “I see....”

She turned back to him, her hostility gone, and a mournful look in her eyes.

“I never supposed,” she said haltingly, “that you—”

She paused, and then went on,

“—You too—”

Under her glance he straightened up, ashamed of himself. He rose. He must, he supposed, have looked silly....

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry too—Felix,” she answered, and there was in her tone the quality of a farewell.

There was something bracing at this moment in her scornful silence as she let him walk out of the room.... He went to the bathroom and washed his face; looked at himself in the mirror: was the face he saw there the one that had been twisted in grotesque sobbing a few minutes ago? No one would have guessed it.... He looked hard at that face, for some sign of weakness. But it seemed to him that the weakness had been burned out of it by the fire of a girl’s scorn. It was a face indifferent and aloof from sorrow, with amused eyes and jauntily smiling mouth. Yes, that was Felix Fay as he should be.

He went back to his room, tossed his Roget’s Thesaurus and his favourite penholder into the wastebasket with the torn manuscripts, put on his hat—and then noticed his stick in the corner.

He picked it up, hung it over his arm, turned out the gas, and went out whistling.

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

Book Six
Wilson Avenue

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LV. The Consolations of Philosophy

1

COMING out on the street, swinging his stick, Felix was vividly conscious of the outer world—it was as if the curtain had just risen upon a stage scene. The shapes of the trees in the distance had all the interest of a beautifully painted set—artificial, as scenery should be, not aping nature, but symbolizing it. The houses that stood beside the road were cardboard shapes that suggested great masses of brick and stone. And the way the night sky bent down at the street-end to touch the earth—that was marvelous.

The whole scene was refreshing. It had the beauty of something made to be looked at. It was as if the outer-world were no longer the unnoted background of a drama in which he was a baffled participant: he had stepped out of the play now, he was a spectator—he could look on and enjoy the spectacle.

There was a sense of vast release in his mind. The burden of emotion, of pain, of grief, of anger, the intolerable burden of human illusion, was lifted. His shoulders felt lighter, and he carried himself with a jaunty air.

A man passed him—no spectator like himself of this play, but a participant in it, a man to whom things really seemed to matter. With a tired droop of the head and shoulders, putting one foot mechanically before another, he was going home. Two girls passed, eagerly talking to each other. None of them saw him, or the world through which they moved—they were busy acting their parts, too busy thinking about yesterday and tomorrow.

How good it was no longer to have a part to play—to be able to look on, full of curiosity! He was like a disembodied spirit that wanders freely upon the earth without a care. The world was beautiful. All the time that he had been worrying about other things, it had been beautiful—and he had been too passionately entangled in the coil of personal emotions to notice.... The crooked branch of an elm, from which all but a few leaves had fallen, drooping black against the luminous sky—the world had been full of such things all along, and he had never paused to look before.

It was pleasant to have a mind able to notice little things—like the fantastic shadow that danced along the sidewalk, growing shorter and longer and dodging about in front and behind—a mind that could dwell upon light things, instead of revolving eternally in some cycle of hope and fear. A leisurely, disinterested, curious mind!

As he walked, his thoughts touched lightly upon Rose-Ann—he had a fleeting memory-picture, uncoloured by any painful emotion, of her standing on the balcony of that house in Woods Point, about to jump off into the snow-bank; he sensed her as a creature possessed by some wish which she did not understand, driven on by it to delightful and absurd actions.... And Clive, ironically officiating as host to a bridal pair in the house which he had built to shelter his own happiness.... And Phyllis, holding Clive perpetually at arm’s length, because he was not utterly a god.... And himself, strangest shape of all, taking the emotions of all these other characters seriously and trying to adjust his life to them! They were like people in a play, strange and foolish, beautiful and pitiful. He saw them all, he saw his own past self, with a delicate and appreciating exactitude.

But they did not matter—he could stop thinking of them, and look at the nimbus of light around the arc lamp on the corner. That was strange and beautiful, too.

To be a spectator of the spectacle of existence! At first that was enough. But presently he was aware of a vague desire for a fellow-spectator. The desire was faint, but faint as it was it moved his steps to the Illinois Central platform, and presently he emerged upon Michigan Avenue.

2

That evening in the Artists’ Theatre there was a rehearsal of several episodes from Schnitzler’s “Anatol,” which was to be the second bill of the season. At midnight Elva Macklin saw Felix Fay stroll in and listen to the jaded end of the rehearsal from the theatre’s one tiny and inconvenient box.

Felix saw her, too, and realized by what instinctive wish he had been led, without conscious thought, to the Artists’ Theatre. He wanted her for his fellow-spectator of the spectacle of existence.

He saw her as if for the first time. He had never talked with her much; and he had been drunk, on dreams if not on whiskey, the time he had danced with her at the ball. She had been a sort of dream-figure to him, an out-of-the-world creature. He saw her now clearly enough—an intense young egotist in her every word and gesture; no dryad, but soulless enough for all her human nature—a girl who still kept the hardness of a child about her. She would never make a good actress, he reflected; she was too much herself; she was acting abominably her part in this Schnitzler play, but with her own special charm, the charm that made her what she was. But she was not a person to pity. He liked her for that. He would talk to her.

A few moments later, as Elva Macklin was putting on her coat to go home, Felix Fay appeared at the door of the tiny women’s dressing room.

The others had gone, she was there alone.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “whoever you are ... and you may button my spats if you want to, Felix Fay. I’m too tired, and I was going off without them.”

She continued, as he knelt at her feet and twisted the reluctant buttons one by one into place, “I’ve done the circus girl for hours, over and over again. Gregory doesn’t like the way I do it—and I don’t like the way Jimmy Taylor does Anatol. Neither does Gregory, for that matter. Everything’s gone wrong tonight.... Gregory gets more and more Napoleonic. He says, ‘Stop! we’ll do that scene all over again!’ Nothing about what’s the matter, or how it should be done—we just know that it doesn’t suit him, and so we do it differently. And usually worse. Then he frowns; he bites his lip; he even stamps his foot: but even that doesn’t do much good!”

She put out her other foot. “Jimmie’s really impossible as Anatol. He looks all right—but he hasn’t any spirit. You just can’t imagine Jimmie’s having six mistresses. He treats me as though I were his aunt.... Gregory wants me to do the circus girl ‘simply’—whatever that means. I wish he would condescend to explain, instead of just looking haughty.... I’m awfully tired.... Thanks. I don’t feel quite clothed without my spats.”

Felix stood up. “Let’s go somewhere and get something to eat,” he said.

“I’d like to,” she said. “I don’t want to go home. I’m too tired to sleep.” She buttoned her coat about her.

It was a boyish coat, and she wore it with a boyish air. There was something Puck-like in her face, something impish, mischievous.

“Have you a nickname?” he asked curiously.

“Yes,” she said, startled. “Why?”

“What is it?”

“Bobby. Again, why?”

He laughed.

“Because I was going to give you one if you hadn’t. I was going to name you Till Eulenspiegel. But Bobby will do very well. I shall call you that, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. But you may regret it.—Who was Till Eulenspiegel?” she asked.

“A celebrated scamp.—Why should I regret it?”

“We’ll have to number our questions and answers—we’re getting all mixed up. Bobby is a celebrated scamp, too. You haven’t heard of her? When I’m Elva I’m on my very best behaviour.”

“Then come as Bobby, by all means!” he said.

“It’s only fair to warn you that you may not like her at all. Some people don’t.”

“I’m sure _I_ shall. Come along!” he laughed.

“Wait a moment. How much money have you got? When I’m Bobby, I insist on paying my own way. But I’ve only carfare home tonight. So you’ll have to lend me some.”

He took out a roll of bills from his pocket, all that was left of the two weeks’ salary after paying for his apartment, and solemnly divided it.

She accepted the money, and then handed it back. “No, I feel like being recklessly dependent tonight. I’ll let you buy my dinner.... One moment—I have to turn the lights out. Go ahead, I can find my way out in the dark.”

She joined him in the hall a moment later. “The elevator’s stopped running,” she said, “we’ll have to walk down.”

Half way down she stopped. “Let’s rest and smoke a cigarette.”

She lighted her cigarette at his match, and then asked, “What brings you here tonight?”

“Idle curiosity,” he said.

She puffed on her cigarette and scrutinized his face by the glow it made in the dark.

“Something’s happened to you,” she said.

“Right,” he answered cheerfully.

“Want to tell me your troubles?” she asked indifferently.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t any troubles. I’ve ceased to have them. That’s what’s happened to me.”

She laughed lightly. “So that’s it. Well, I’m glad you don’t want sympathy. I was afraid you might.”

“You misjudged me,” he said. “Besides, if I had wanted sympathy, would I have come to you?”

“No, I guess you do know me better than that.... Well, what _do_ you want of me?”

“Nothing in particular of you,” he said. “I just want somebody to bum around with tonight.”

She puffed on her cigarette again. “You don’t look at all broken-hearted,” she said.

“Why should I look broken-hearted?”

“I hear all the theatre-gossip. I suppose it’s true?”

“Well, I don’t hear the theatre-gossip, so I don’t know whether it’s true or not. Why should you care?”

“I don’t care. I’m just curious. You know, you’ve been looking worried and unhappy ever since I first saw you—until now. At first I thought you were worried about the play; but when it was a success you looked more unhappy than ever. And now—well, the transformation is astonishing!”

“I can explain that.... You probably have in your rooms—”

“My room,” she corrected him. “A quite singular room, in every sense.”

“In your room, then, you probably have five or six copies of the Rubaiyat, presented you by different youths....”

“Yes, all with a pencil mark beside the ‘Book of Verses’ verse. Go on.”

“Well, in that poem Omar boasts of ‘striking from the Calendar Unborn Tomorrow and Dead Yesterday.’ I’ve just performed that same astronomical feat.”

“I know just what you mean,” she said. “It’s—it’s like getting over a headache, isn’t it?... I’m glad.... Well, let’s go on.”

She jumped up.

Out in the street he asked her, “How do you come to know so much about it? When did you perform Omar’s astronomical feat?”

She laughed.

“I? Oh, fully twenty years ago—at the age of five!... You see, up to that time I had been the only child—the reigning princess, in fact. And then a little brother came along. People laugh about these things—but I don’t think anything in later life can hurt worse than a childish tragedy like that. To be considered the most wonderful being in all the world, and then—pushed out of the way.... Well, I saw that my reign was ended, that human beings were fickle, and that my heart would be broken if I kept on caring. So I stopped—and I’ve never cared since. Not for a single other living thing in all the world.”

“I see you are a person of great experience in—not caring. Twenty years of it! Tell me, how does it work out?”

She stopped suddenly, pulling at his sleeve. “Look!” she said with apparent irrelevance.