Of Time and the River (124 page)
When they left the café, full dark had come: they got in the car and drove to the pension at the other end of town, where Elinor had already engaged rooms for all of them. It now turned out that Elinor had taken rooms for Starwick at this pension three months before, upon his arrival in Paris, but after the first two weeks he had not lived in them, although most of his clothing, books, and other belongings were still there. It was one more of his costly, wrong, and tragically futile efforts to find a place—some impossibly fortunate and favourable place that never would be found—where he could “settle down and get his writing done.”
When the four friends got to the pension, dinner had already begun. A table had been reserved for them, and as they entered the dining- room everyone stopped eating—two dozen pairs of old dead eyes were turned mistrustfully upon the young people, and in a moment, all over the room, at every table, the old heads bent together eagerly in conspiratorial secrecy, a low greedy whispering went up.
Starwick and Elinor were apparently already well and unfavourably known to the old pensionnaires. The moment they entered, in the vast and sibilant whispering that went round the room, envenomed fragments of conversation could be heard:
“Ah, c’est lui! . . . Et la dame aussi! . . . Ils sont revenus ensemble. . . . Mais oui, oui!” At the next table to them an old hag with piled masses of dyed reddish hair, dressed in an old- fashioned dress bedecked with a thousand little gauds, peered at them for a moment with an expression of venomous and greedy curiosity, and then, leaning half across the table towards an old man with a swollen apoplectic face and thick white moustaches, and a little wizened old hag with the beady eyes of a reptile—possibly his wife—she hissed:
“Mais oui! . . . Oui! . . . C’est lui, le jeune Américain! . . . Personne ici ne l’a pas vu depuis trois mois.” The old man here muttered something in a choked and phlegmy sort of voice, and the old parrot-visaged hag straightened, struck her bony hand sharply on the table, and cried out in a comical booming note:
“Mais justement! . . . Justement! . . . C’est comme vous voyez!” . . . Here she lowered her voice again, and peering round craftily at Elinor and Frank, who were shaking with laughter, she muttered hoarsely:
“Il n’est pas son mari! . . . Il est beaucoup plus jeune. . . . Mais non, mais non, mais non, mais non, mais non!” she cried with a rapid and violent impatience as the old man muttered out a question to her greedy ear.—“Elle est déjŕ mariée! . . . Oui! Oui!” This last was boomed out positively, with an indignant glance at Elinor. “Mais justement! Justement! . . . C’est comme vous voyez!”
That night Elinor was instant, swift, and happy as a flash of light. There was nothing that she did not seem to apprehend immediately, to interpret instantly, to understand before a word could be spoken, and to translate at once into a mercurial hilarity which swept everyone along with it, and made all share instantly in its wild swift gaiety, even when it would have been impossible to say why one was gay. The soup was served: it was a brown disquieting liquid in which were floating slices of some troubling and unknown tissue—a whitish substance of an obscenely porous texture. It was probably tripe: Eugene stared at it with a sullen and suspicious face, and as he looked up, Elinor rocked back in her chair with a gust of wild hilarity, placed her fingers across her mouth and laughed a rich and sudden laugh. Then, before he could speak, she placed light fingers swiftly on his arm, and said swiftly, gravely, in a tone of commiserating consent:
“Yes, I know, darling! I quite agree with you!—”
“What is it?” he said dumbly, in a bewildered tone. “It looks like—”
“Exactly! Exactly!” Elinor cried at once, before he could finish, and was swept by that wild light gale of merriment again—“That’s exactly what it looks like—and don’t say another word! We all agree with you!” She looked drolly at the uneasy liquid in the soup-plate, and then said, firmly and positively: “No, I think not! . . . If you don’t mind, I’d rather not!”—and then, seeing his face again, was rocked with rude and sudden laughter. “God!” she cried. “Isn’t it marvellous! Will you look at the poor kid’s face!”—And put light fingers gravely, swiftly, tenderly upon his arm again.
The great wave of this infectious gaiety swept them along: it was a wonderful meal. Starwick’s burble of gleeful, rich humorous and suggestive laughter was heard again; Ann laughed her short and sudden laugh, but her face was radiant, happy, lovelier than it had ever been, everything seemed wonderfully good and pleasant to them. Elinor called the waitress and quietly sent the troubling soup away, but the rest of the meal was excellent, and they made a banquet of it with two bottles of the best Sauterne the pension afforded. Their hilarity was touched somewhat by the scornful patronage of bright young people among their dowdy elders, and yet they did not intend to be unkind: the whole place seemed to them a museum of grotesque relics put there for their amusement, they were determined to make a wonderful occasion of it, the suspicious eyes, greedy whisperings and conferring heads of the old people set them off in gales of laughter, and Elinor, after a glance round and a sudden peal of full rich laughter, would stifle her merriment with her fingers, and say:
“Isn’t it marvellous! . . . God! Isn’t it wonderful! . . . Could anyone have imagined it! . . . Frank. . . . Frank!” she said quietly in a small stifled tone, “will you LOOK! . . . Will you KINDLY take one look at the old girl with the dyed hair and all the thingumajigs, at the next table. . . . And the major! . . . And oh! If looks could KILL! The things they are saying about US! . . . I’m sure they think we’re ALL living in sin together. . . . Such GOINGS on!” she cried with a gay pretence of horror. “Such open barefaced goings on, my friends, right in the face of decent people! . . . Now, is that terrible or not, Monsieur Duval, I ask you! . . . Darling,” she said, turning to Starwick, and speaking in a tone of droll reproach, “don’t you feel a sense of guilt? . . . Do you intend to do the right thing by a girl or not? . . . Are you going to make an honest woman of me, or aren’t you? . . . Come on, now, darling,” she said coaxingly, bending a little towards him, “set my tortured heart at rest! Just tell me that you intend to do the right thing by me! Won’t you?” she coaxed.
“Quite!” said Starwick, his ruddy face reddening with laughter as he spoke. “But what—” the burble of gleeful and malicious laughter began to play in his throat as he spoke—“just what is the right thing? . . . Do you mean?—” he trembled a little with soundless laughter, and then went on in a gravely earnest but uncertain tone—“do you mean that you want to live?”—he arched his eyebrows meaningly, and then said in a tone of droll impossibly vulgar insinuation—“you know what I mean—REALLY live, you know?”
“Frank!” she shrieked, and rocked back in her chair, covering her mouth with her fingers—“But not at ALL, darling,” she went on with her former ironic seriousness, “—you’re talking to an innocent maid from Boston, Mass., who doesn’t know what you MEAN—you BEAST!” she cried. “Don’t you know we Boston girls cannot begin to really live until you make an honest woman of us first?”
“In that case,” Starwick said quietly, his face reddening again with laughter, “I should think we could begin to live at once. It seems to me that another man has already taken care of making you an honest woman!”
“God!” shrieked Elinor, falling back in her chair with another burst of rich and sudden laughter. “Poor Harold! . . . I had forgotten him! . . . That’s all this place needs to make it perfect—Harold walking in right now to glare at us over the tops of his horn-rimmed spectacles—”
“Yes,” said Starwick, “and your father and mother bringing up the rear and regarding me,” he choked, “—with very BITTER looks—you know,” he said, turning to Eugene, “they feel QUITE bitterly towards me—they really do, you know. It’s obvious,” he said, “that they regard me as an unprincipled seducer who has defiled,” his voice trembled uncertainly again, “—who has defiled the virtue of their only DARTER!” he brought this word out with a droll and luscious nasality that made them howl with laughter.
“But really,” he went on seriously, turning to Elinor as he wiped his laughter-reddened face with a handkerchief, “I’m sure that’s how they feel about it. When your mother and father came to the studio the other day and found me there,”—Elinor’s parents were at that time in Paris—“your father GLARED at me in much the same way that Cotton Mather would look at Casanova. But QUITE! He really did, you know. I’m sure he thought you had become my concubine.”
“But, darling,” Elinor replied, in her playful coaxing tone, “can’t I be your concubine? . . . Oh, how MEAN you are!” she said reproachfully. “I do SO want to be somebody’s concubine.” She turned to Eugene protestingly. “Now is that mean or not? I ask you. Here I am, a perfectly good well-meaning female thirty years old, brought up in Boston all my life, and with the best advantages. I’ve been a good girl all my life and tried to do the best I could for everyone, but try as I will,” she sighed, “no one will help me out in my lifelong ambition to be somebody’s concubine. Now is that fair or not?—I ask you!”
“But not at all!” said Starwick reprovingly. “Before you can realize your ambition you’ve got to go out first and get yourself a reputation! . . . And,” he added, with a swift exuberant glance at the crafty whispering old heads and faces all around them, “—I think you’re getting one very fast.”
They went upstairs immediately to the rooms that Elinor had engaged. Starwick had two comfortable big rooms in one wing of the pension; in his living-room a comfortable wood-fire had been laid and was crackling away lustily. Elinor had taken a small bedroom for Eugene and a larger room for herself and Ann. In Ann’s room a good wood-fire was also burning cheerfully. Elinor and Starwick obviously wanted to be alone to talk together—they conveyed this by a kind of mysterious more-to-this-than-meets-the-eye quietness that had been frequent with them during all these weeks. They announced that they were going for a walk.
LXXXVI
When they had gone, Eugene went to Ann’s door and knocked. She showed no surprise at seeing him, but stood aside sullenly until he had come in, and then closed the door behind him. Then she went back, sat down in a chair before the fire, and leaned forward upon her knees, and for some time stared dumbly and sullenly into the crackling flames.
“Where are the others?” she said presently. “Have they gone out?”
“Yes,” he said. “They went for a walk. They said they’d be gone about an hour.”
“Yes,” she said cynically, “and they thought it would be good for me if you and I were left alone for a while. I’m such a grand person that something just HAS to be done for me. God!” she concluded bitterly, “I’m getting tired of having people do me good! I’m fed up with it!”
He made no reply to this and she said nothing more. Her big body supported by her elbows, she continued to lean forward and stare sullenly into the flames.
He had taken a seat in another chair, and at length the silence, and his position in the chair, and the girl’s sullen expression became painfully awkward, unhappy and embarrassing. He got up abruptly, took a pillow from the bed, threw it upon the floor, and lay down flat beside her chair, stretched out comfortably with his head to the dancing flames. The feel of the fire, its snap and crackle, the soft flare and fall of burned wood ash, and the resinous piny smell, together with the broad old wooden planking of the floor, the silence of the house and the feel of numb silent night outside, something homelike in the look of the room—these things, together with Ann’s big New England body leaned forward towards the fire, the sullen speechless integrity of her grand and lovely face, and the smell of her, which was the smell of a big healthy woman warmed by fire—all of these things filled his senses with something immensely strong, pleasant, and familiar, something latent in man’s blood, which he had not felt in many years, and that now was quiet but powerfully reawakened. It filled his heart, his blood, his senses with peace and certitude, with drowsy sensual joy, and with the powerful awakening of an old perception, like the rediscovery of an ancient faith, that the sensuous integument of life was everywhere the same, that the lives of people in this little town in France were the same as the lives of people in the town he came from, the same as the lives of people everywhere on earth. And after all the dark and alien world of night, of Paris, and another continent, which he had known now for several months, this rediscovery of the buried life, the fundamental structure of the great family of earth to which all men belong, filled him with a quiet certitude and joy.
Ann did not move; bent forward, leaning on her knees, she continued to stare into the fire, and looking up at her warm, dark, sullen face, he fell asleep—into a sleep which, after all the frenzy and exhaustion of the last weeks, was as deep and soundless as if he were drugged.
How long he lay asleep there on the floor he did not know. But he was wakened by the sound of her voice—a sullen monotone that spoke his name—that spoke his name quietly with a toneless, brooding insistence and that at first he thought he must have dreamed. It was repeated, again and again, quietly, insistently, without change or variation until he knew there was no doubt of it, that he no longer was asleep. And with something slow and strange and numb beating through him like a mighty pulse, he opened his eyes and looked up into her face. She had bent forward still more and was looking down at him with a kind of slow, brooding intensity, her face smouldering and drowsy as a flower. And even as he looked at her, she returned his look with that drowsy, brooding stare, and again, without inflection, spoke his name.
He sat up like a flash and put his arms around her. He was beside her on his knees and he hugged her to him in a grip of speechless, impossible desire: he kissed her on the face and neck, again and again; her face was warm with the fire, her skin as soft and smooth as velvet; he kissed her again and again on the face, clumsily, thickly, with that wild, impossible desire, and with a horrible feeling of guilt and shame. He wanted to kiss her on the mouth, and he did not dare to do it: all the time that he kept kissing her and hugging her to him with a clumsy, crushing grip, he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman in his life, and at the same time he felt a horrible profanity in his touch, as if he were violating a Vestal virgin, trying to rape a nun.