A Charmed Life (34 page)

“That’s a danger,” admitted Martha, gravely. “But if you’re brave enough to paint all alone and wait for posterity, you ought to be brave enough to risk being influenced by the public’s response. Every artist faces that problem. Some master it.” Warren shook his head. “I might not be one of those,” he said simply. “But you have to take that risk,” argued Martha. “You’re creating a set of very artificial conditions here.” She waved her hand about the studio, with its derelict machines. “You might as well be painting in a time-capsule. That can’t be right for your work. An artist has to have some reality-check. If you don’t get it from nature, you have to turn to an audience.” But Warren insisted that he was only interested in his own inner development; what happened outside, he had concluded, was just static.

The thought occurred to Martha that Warren was afraid of being judged by an audience. He had been neglected so long that he now clung to that condition, like a prisoner fighting off attempts to free him. But she liked Warren too well to want to believe this. She preferred to think that he was a martyr to his own literalness and simplicity. It was another case of his taking in a strict sense everything he heard and read; the dangers of fame, the need for dedication had been made too vivid to him. In one way, he had no imagination; in another, he had far too much. He
visualized
too readily; every text sprang into illustrations before his boyish eyes. But of course he was a painter.

Martha gritted her teeth. She had to speak some time. “Warren,” she said abruptly. “Have you any money of your own? Any that you could lend me? I’m in terrible trouble. That’s why I came to see you today. I don’t want Jane to know.” Warren hitched himself forward and looked around the room quickly, as if to make sure they were alone. “What is it, Martha?” he whispered. She raised her eyes and met his searching gaze. “I’m going to have a baby.” She drew a deep breath. “I don’t know whose it is.” Warren lowered his eyes; he laced and unlaced his fingers as he sat slumped on the couch. She could hear that he was breathing heavily, like a dog. His face was averted, but she saw, in profile, the white flare of his nostril and the grim set of his lips. She was done for, she presumed. She had foreseen this possibility. Middle-class morality was very strong in Warren. He saw red, as he put it, when a friend exceeded the speed limit. And he was prissy about casual sex. Love, for him, was the only sanction. Yet she had asked him rather than Jane just because he was moralistic. No matter what he thought, he was too high-minded to betray her confidence. Jane would not be shocked, but she would tell the whole village. “Was that supposed to be a
secret?”
Martha could hear her artlessly cry. Watching him now, Martha remembered how fond he was of John and how idealistic he had always been about their marriage. She supposed, without caring much, that she had broken his heart.

Warren unclenched his jaws. “Miles?” he inquired, in a toneless voice. Martha bent her head. “How did you know?” Her head hung heavy; she had never thought that Miles would tell anyone. “I saw it,” said Warren.
“Saw
it?” cried Martha, turning scarlet. “At the play-reading,” confessed Warren, with a shy, kind look at Martha. “I couldn’t help noticing that there was something between the two of you. Miles’s nose got purplish; it always does when he’s amorous. A painter notices those things. And you were a little high.” “High?” exclaimed Martha bitterly. “I was more than high.” “Not really,” said Warren, reassuring. “You hadn’t reached the glassy stage. But I was afraid for you.” “Oh,” said Martha. “Did Jane notice all this too?” Warren nodded apologetically. “Good God!” said Martha. “I wish I were dead.”

Her voice rang out in the big studio. “Me too,” said Warren. “I ought to be shot.” “You?” Warren’s head bobbed. “It was my fault, when you come down to it I should’ve let you go home when you wanted to. I was getting such a kick out of listening to you and Miles. I’ll never forgive myself, Martha.” He suddenly picked up an ashtray and hurled it against the wall. “That’s what I’d like to do to myself,” he said, in explanation. “Poor Warren,” said Martha sadly. “Don’t take it so hard. I didn’t have to stay. The real mistake was mine. I never should have come to dinner. John and I should never have come here in the first place. I knew that.” “You always said so,” agreed Warren. “But I never could see why.” “Now you see,” said Martha, with a mournful stare.

Warren knitted his brows. “Not altogether,” he admitted. “Show me the logical connection. Just because this happened this once. … ” “It didn’t
have
to happen. Is that what you mean?” Warren nodded. He was waiting, modestly, for Martha to assemble her thoughts. He wanted a “proof.” “No,” she said. “It wasn’t necessary, in the philosophical sense. It was contingent. Everything in human behavior is contingent.” “Then how do you know—?” began Warren. “I don’t ‘know,’” exclaimed Martha, suddenly out of patience with Warren, who even at this moment had to feed questions to her as if she were an IBM machine. “But I do know, in the plain ordinary sense.
Something
bad was bound to happen, if I had any feelings, if Miles had any feelings. Any fool could see that. That’s what’s wrong with you, Warren. That’s what’s wrong with this horrible place. Nobody will admit to knowing anything, until it’s been proved. Sandy Gray can pass for a decent man here because the contrary hasn’t been proved yet, to the community’s satisfaction. He’s ‘only’ had four wives run away from him. That isn’t a fair sample, statistically, you can remind me.” “Only three,” emended Warren. “The first one died, you know.”

Martha groaned. “Only three,” she said. “You act as if the human race had learned nothing, as if everything were possible, as if we could all start on a new phase every day. Or a new wife. It’s all the same. You take up a doubting posture. But you don’t really doubt. You just ask questions, like a machine.” Her voice rose, in slight hysteria. Warren looked at her in consternation. “Forgive me,” she put in. “But it’s true. And the whole world is getting like you, like New Leeds. Everybody has to be shown. ‘How do you know that?’ every moron asks the philosopher when he’s told that this is an apple and that is a pear. He pretends to doubt, to be curious. But nobody is really curious because nobody cares what the truth is. As soon as we think something, it occurs to us that the opposite or the contrary might just as well be true. And no one cares.”

“Don’t you think that’s the effect of advertising?” ventured Warren. “I mean, the companies make all these claims, and nobody believes them, so that when you come right down to it, the ordinary person gets pretty darn skeptical. He wants to question every big assumption that’s offered him.” He smiled brightly. “I suppose that could be a bad thing if you wanted to look at it that way. I never thought of that side of it. But how would you fit in Socrates?” Martha groaned again. “Socrates,” she said, “assumed that the ordinary person
knew
something. The problem was to get the ordinary person to remember what he already knew. Socrates showed that by demonstration when he got the slave boy to work out, for himself, a problem of mathematics.” She broke off. “What are we talking about?” she said crossly. “Warren, I have to have an abortion.”

Warren nodded. “You see that?” she cried, wonderingly. “Why, yes,” said Warren. “It goes with what you’ve just been saying, doesn’t it? You care about the truth. You don’t want to have a baby when you don’t know whose it is.” “Exactly!” sighed Martha, with joy. “I began to think nobody would understand it.” “I’m not very bright up here,” said Warren, tapping his head, “but I know you, Martha. You couldn’t stand a situation like that. From your point of view, that would be hell on earth. A person like Jane”—he twinkled—“wouldn’t be bothered at all. When the baby was born, she’d have blood tests to find out who the father was.” Martha looked at him in surprise; she had not thought him so perceptive. She laughed. “It would be almost worth it,” she said, “to make Miles submit to giving a blood sample. He has an awful fear of the needle.” Warren’s eyes lit up with boyish glee; sadly, then, he renounced the picture. Despite the gravity of the occasion, he and Martha were on the edge of giggles, like children conspiring, as they started to map out a campaign. The need to be ingenious and secret, in the face of danger, made them lightheaded; it was only when they came to speak of John that they were altogether serious, for they did not look on him as an enemy. To Martha’s relief, Warren took it for granted that John should not be told. He applauded Martha’s decision as in the interests of the public safety. Twenty years ago, he told her, when he was John’s age, he would probably have killed Miles if he had got Jane in this fix.

Warren, unfortunately, had very little money of his own on hand; it was Jane who held the purse strings. His tiny inheritance was managed by her mother’s man of business. And Jane, he agreed, had better not know. Miles, Warren said, logically, was the person who ought to pay. Contrary to Warren’s principles, he was boldly taking sides. Inside himself, he confessed, he was hopping mad at Miles. Martha was glad to see this, despite her better nature, but she was also mystified, for she had not told Warren a word about the circumstances of her fall. He assumed Miles was in the wrong, and the reason, it turned out, was simple: Miles, said Warren, darkening, had evidently neglected to take precautions.

Martha laughed, but actually she had to admit that her own view was not so different from Warren’s except that it was herself she blamed, not Miles. It was an explanation but not an excuse to say that, trying to have a baby, she had got out of the habit. She ought to have thought. This failure to
think
was what she could not forgive herself. And it was what John would not forgive her if he were ever to find out. Warren did not agree. That was the man’s duty, he said sternly; the woman was at his mercy. “Amn’t I right?” He folded his arms.

“I guess so,” said Martha, weakly, not wanting to lose her champion over a quibble. But she would rather die, she declared, than have Miles know what had happened. If Warren told him, she would kill herself. It was a question of her honor, as John’s wife, that Miles should never know what straits he had reduced her to. Her tears suddenly gushed out; she cried from self-hatred and an abrupt conviction of the hopelessness of her efforts to salvage a little honor—for that was all it amounted to—from the abominable mess she was in. Warren drew out a handkerchief. “I’m not going to tell him,” he repeated, soothingly, as he wiped her face. He had a better idea, he confided, when he finally could get her to listen.

Miles had not paid for the portrait yet. Tomorrow, without telling Jane, Warren would go to Digby and collect the purchase price from him. This would more than pay for the abortion. Warren would bank the rest under his own name; later on, if Martha could not pay him back, he could tell Jane some fib to account for the difference. Miles would never suspect and it was not Jane’s business, Warren announced heroically, how he spent his own money.

But it was Helen who had bought the portrait, objected Martha, looking up. Warren might find it very awkward to ask her under the circumstances. She was not the guilty party. Warren shook his head. Helen, he said, had the money, but Miles was the real arbiter. If Helen did not pay for it, Warren would take the picture back. Miles would not want that because it might frustrate his scheme of discovering him. Warren’s enthusiasm gradually persuaded Martha. She sat up and rearranged her hair while Warren ran into the house to fetch her a cigarette. The possibilities of collecting a large sum of money from Miles seemed unreal to her, on the face of it, but everything seemed unreal: her condition, her visit to the doctor, this cabal in the cobwebby studio. And it was true, as Warren said, that Helen Murphy had money and that they did owe for the portrait. Why should it seem unnatural that Warren would expect to be paid? If there was a lingering strangeness in the situation, it was the strangeness of New Leeds, which submitted everything that passed here to its own angle of distortion. She could not help feeling, moreover, that there was a kind of convincing poetic justice in what Warren proposed. Warren’s very goodness and simple, open heart made her trust in him, like some visionary little friar. It was right that Miles, who had been treating himself like a Renaissance condottiere, pillaging the countryside from his stronghold, should finally have to pay up. Warren was one of those people, God’s disinterested innocents, who had a right to appear humbly at the doors of the mighty demanding reparation.

In Digby, the next morning, Warren was directed to Miles’s study, up above the gymnasium. Downstairs, where the portrait hung, the baby was standing in a play-pen, in charge of a native girl. Helen was busy, taking dictation from Miles. In his role of creditor, Warren felt a little uncomfortable, claiming to be a friend to see Mrs. Murphy. When Miles heard his voice, he yelled at him to come up. In trepidation, breathing quickly, Warren appeared at the head of the spiral staircase. But Miles was in high good humor, freshly shaved and scrubbed and smelling of lotion. He was wearing rimless spectacles and a big white wool dressing gown, with a green cord; his feet were in brown suede booties with a fleece lining. He sat at a huge table, which was covered with books with markers in them. Helen, in a plain dress, was in a low chair beside him, holding a pad in her lap. The tower room was lined with bookcases and filing cases. There was a dictionary-stand and a pair of library steps, as well as a bird-cage, containing a strange black bird, like a raven, Warren thought. The room was rather cold, and a revolving electric heater stood by Miles’s side, warming his bare calves. Little dishes of water were placed all around the room: Miles had a phobia about the air being dehydrated. Glass jars full of something that looked to Warren like mold stood on a shelf; lately, Miles had been interesting himself in natural history, which doubtless explained the bird. Miles was probably observing its habits.

Warren could not help feeling excited by the scholarly apparatus of Miles’s sanctum. “I don’t usually see people in the morning,” Miles explained, with a kindly look over his glasses. He supposed, naturally enough, that Warren had come about the article. “See Sandy about it,” he advised. “Get him to go over your pictures with you. Tell him what to write, if you want. Don’t let him patronize you. When it’s finished, I’ll look it over and fix up the spelling and punctuation.” Warren tried to indicate that this was not his purpose in coming, but Miles did not seem to hear him. “Don’t worry,” he genially roared. “It’s going to be a great thing for you. But you don’t want to let it distract you from your work. You ought to be home, at your easel, at this hour, instead of gadding around. What are you painting now? I’ll be down to see you one of these days. Give my love to Jane.” Having fired these remarks at Warren, he settled his glasses on his long nose and picked up a book from the table. His lips moved slightly as he read. It was plain that Warren was supposed to be off now. So as not to disturb him, Warren began to talk to Helen in whispers.