Selected Stories Read online

  “Yes!” said Moest.

  “He called this morning to ask about the telegram.—But poor devil, isn’t it a shame, what they’ve done to him!”

  “What who have done to him?” her husband asked, coldly, jealous.

  “Those literary creatures.—They take a young fellow like that, and stick him up among the literary gods, like a mantel-piece ornament, and there he has to sit, being a minor ornament, while all his youth is gone.—It is criminal.”

  “He should get off the mantel-piece then,” said Moest.

  But inside him his heart was black with rage against her. What had she, after all, to do with this young man, when he himself was being smashed up by her. He loathed her pity and her kindliness, which was like a charitable institution. There was no core to the woman. She was full of generosity and bigness and kindness, but there was no heart in her, no security, no place for one single man. He began to understand now syrens and sphinxes and the other Greek fabulous, female things. They had not been created by fancy, but out of bitter necessity of the man’s human heart to express itself.

  “Ha!” she laughed, half contemptuous. “Did you get off your miserable starved isolation by yourself?—you didn’t. You had to be fetched down, and I had to do it.”

  “Out of your usual charity,” he said.

  “But you can sneer at another man’s difficulties,” she said.

  “Your name ought to be Panacea, not Paula,” he replied.

  He felt furious and dead against her. He could even look at her without the tenderness coming. And he was glad. He hated her. She seemed unaware. Very well, let her be so.

  “Oh, but he makes me so miserable, to see him!” she cried. “Self-conscious, can’t get into contact with anybody, living a false literary life like a man who takes poetry as a drug.—One ought to help him.”

  She was really earnest and distressed.

  “Out of the frying-pan into the fire,” he said.

  “I’d rather be in the fire any day, than in a frying-pan,” she said, abstractedly, with a little shudder. She never troubled to see the meaning of her husband’s sarcasms.

  They remained silent. The maid came in for the tray, and to ask him if he would be in to dinner. He waited for his wife to answer. She sat with her chin in her hands, brooding over the young German, and did not hear. The rage flashed up in his heart. He would have liked to smash her out of this false absorption.

  “No,” he said to the maid. “I think not. Are you at home for dinner, Paula?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  And he knew by her tone, easy and abstracted, that she intended him to stay too. But she did not trouble to say anything.

  At last, after some time, she asked:

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing—went to bed early,” he replied.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes thank you.”

  And he recognised the ludicrous civilities of married people, and he wanted to go. She was silent for a time. Then she asked, and her voice had gone still and grave:

  “Why don’t you ask me what I did?”

  “Because I don’t care—you just went to somebody’s for dinner.”

  “Why don’t you care what I do? Isn’t it your place to care?”

  “About the things you do to spite me?—no!”

  “Ha!” she mocked. “I did nothing to spite you. I was in deadly earnest.”

  “Even with your Richard.”

  “Yes,” she cried. “There might have been a Richard. What did you care?”

  “In that case you’d have been a liar and worse, so why should I care about you then?”

  “You don’t care about me,” she said, sullenly.

  “You say what you please,” he answered.

  She was silent for some time.

  “And did you do absolutely nothing last night?” she asked.

  “I had a bath and went to bed.”

  Then she pondered.

  “No,” she said, “you don’t care for me—”

  He did not trouble to answer. Softly, a little china clock sang six.

  “I shall go to Italy in the morning,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And,” he said, slowly, forcing the words out, “I shall stay at the Aquila Nera at Milan—you know my address.”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “I shall be away about a month. Meanwhile you can rest.”

  “Yes,” she said, in her throat, with a little contempt of him and his stiffness.

  He, in spite of himself, was breathing heavily. He knew that this parting was the real separation of their souls, marked the point beyond which they could go no further, but accepted the marriage as a comparative failure. And he had built all his life on his marriage. She accused him of not loving her. He gripped the arms of his chair. Was there something in it? Did he only want the attributes which went along with her, the peace of heart which a man has in living to one woman, even if the love between them be not complete; the singleness and unity in his life that made it easy; the fixed establishment of himself as a married man with a home; the feeling that he belonged to somewhere, that one woman existed—not was paid, but existed,—really to take care of him; was it these things he wanted, and not her? But he wanted her for these purposes—her, and nobody else. But was that not enough for her. Perhaps he wronged her—it was possible. What she said against him was in earnest. And what she said in earnest he had to believe, in the long run, since it was the utterance of her being. He felt miserable and tired.

  When he looked at her, across the gathering twilight of the room, she was staring into the fire and biting her finger nail, restlessly, restlessly, without knowing. And all his limbs went suddenly weak, as he realised that she suffered too, that something was gnawing at her. Something in the look of her, the crouching, dogged, wondering look, made him faint with tenderness for her.

  “Don’t bite your finger nails,” he said quietly, and obediently, she took her hand from her mouth. His heart was beating quickly. He could feel the atmosphere of the room changing. It had stood aloof, the room, like something placed round him, like a great box. Now everything got softer, as if it partook of the atmosphere, of which he partook himself, and they were all one.

  His mind reverted to her accusations, and his heart beat like a caged thing against what he could not understand. She said he did not love her. But he knew that, in his way he did. In his way—but was his way wrong? His way was himself, he thought, struggling. Was there something wrong, something missing in his nature, that he could not love? He struggled madly, as if he were in a mesh, and could not get out. He did not want to believe that he was deficient in his nature. Wherein was he deficient? It was nothing physical. She said he could not come out of himself, that he was no good to her, because he could not get outside himself. What did she mean? Get outside himself! It seemed like some acrobatic feat, some slippery contortionist trick. No, he could not understand. His heart flashed hot with resentment. She did nothing but find fault with him. What did she care about him, really, when she could taunt him with not being able to take a light woman when he was in Paris.—Though his heart, forced to do her justice, knew that for this she loved him, really.

  But it was too complicated and difficult, and already, as they sat thinking, it had gone wrong between them, and things felt twisted, horribly twisted, so that he could not breathe. He must go. He could dine at the hôtel and go to the theatre.

  “Well,” he said, casually, “I must go. I think I shall go and see The Black Sheep’.”

  She did not answer. Then she turned and looked at him with a queer, half bewildered, half perverse smile that seemed conscious of pain. Her eyes, shining rather dilated and triumphant, and yet with something heavily yearning behind them, looked into his. He could not understand, and, between her appeal and her defiant triumph, he felt as if his chest were crushed so he could not breathe.

  “My love,” she said, in a little si
nging, abstract fashion, her lips somehow sipping towards him, her eyes shining dilated: and yet he felt as if he were not in it, himself.

  His heart was a flame that prevented his breathing. He gripped the chair like a man who is going to be put under torture.

  “What?” he said, staring back at her.

  “Oh my love!” she said softly with a little, intense laugh on her face, that made him pant. And she slipped from her sofa and came across to him, quickly, and put her hand hesitating on his hair. The blood struck like flame across his consciousness, and the hurt was keen like joy, like the releasing of something that hurts as the pressure is relaxed and the movement comes, before the peace. Afraid, his fingers touched her hand, and she sank swiftly between his knees, and put her face on his breast. He held her head hard against his chest, and again and again the flame went down his blood, as he felt her round, small, nut of a head between his hands pressing into his chest where the hurt had been bruised in so deep. His wrists quivered as he pressed her head to him, as he felt the deadness going out of him; the real life, released, flowing into his body again. How hard he had shut it off, against her, when she hated him. He was breathing heavily with relief, blindly pressing her head against him. He believed in her again.

  She looked up, laughing, childish, inviting him with her lips. He bent to kiss her, and as his eyes closed, he saw hers were shut. The feeling of restoration was almost unbearable.

  “Do you love me?” she whispered, in a little ecstasy.

  He did not answer, except with the quick tightening of his arms, clutching her a little closer against him. And he loved the silkiness of her hair, and its natural scent. And it hurt him that the daisies she had threaded in should begin to wither. He resented their hurting her by their dying.

  He had not understood. But the trouble had gone off. He was quiet, and he watched her from out of his sensitive stillness, a little bit dimly, unable to recover. She was loving to him, protective, and bright, laughing like a glad child too.

  “We must tell Maud I shall be in to dinner,” he said.

  That was like him—always aware of the practical side of the case, and the appearances. She laughed a little little bit ironically—why should she have to take her arms from round him, just to tell Maud he would be in to dinner?

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  He drew the curtains and turned on the light in the big lamp that stood in a corner. The room was dim, and palely warm. He loved it dearly.

  His wife, when she came back, as soon as she had closed the door, lifted her arms to him in a little ecstasy, coming to him. They clasped each other close, body to body. And the intensity of his feeling was so fierce, he felt himself going dim, fusing into something soft and plastic between her hands. And this connection with her was bigger than life or death. And at the bottom of his heart was a sob.

  She was gay and winsome, at the dinner. Like lovers, they were just deliciously waiting for the night to come up. But there remained in him always the slightly broken feeling which the night before had left.

  “And you won’t go to Italy,” she said, as if it were an understood thing.

  She gave him the best things to eat, and was solicitous for his welfare—which was not usual with her. It gave him deep, shy pleasure. He remembered a verse she was often quoting as one she loved. He did not know it for himself:

  “On my breasts I warm thy foot-soles

  Wine I pour, and dress thy meats;

  Humbly, when my lord disposes

  Lie with him on perfumed sheets—”

  She said it to him sometimes, looking up at him from the pillow. But it never seemed real to him. She might, in her sudden passion, put his feet between her breasts. But he never felt like a lord, never more pained and insignificant than at those times. As a little girl, she must have subjected herself before her dolls. And he was something like her lordliest plaything. He liked that too. If only——.

  Then, seeing some frightened little way of looking at him, which she had, the pure pain came back. He loved her, and it would never be peace between them, she would never belong to him, as a wife. She would take him and reject him, like a mistress. And perhaps for that reason he would love her all the more: it might be so.

  But then, he forgot. Whatever was or was not, now she loved him. And whatever came after, this evening he was the lord. What matter if he were deposed tomorrow, and she hated him!

  Her eyes, wide and candid, were staring at him a little bit wondering, a little bit forlorn. She knew he had not quite come back. He held her close to him.

  “My love,” she murmured consolingly. “My love.”

  And she put her fingers through his hair, arranging it in little, loose curves, playing with it and forgetting everything else. He loved that dearly, to feel the light lift and touch—touch—of her finger-tips making his hair, as she said, like an Apollo’s. She lifted his face to see how he looked, and, with a little laugh of love, kissed him. And he loved to be made much of by her. But he had the dim, hurting sense, that she would not love him tomorrow, that it was only her great need to love that exalted him tonight. He knew he was no king: he did not feel a king, even when she was crowning and kissing him.

  “Do you love me?” she asked, playfully whispering.

  He held her fast and kissed her; while the blood hurt in his heart-chambers.

  “You know,” he answered, with a struggle.

  Later, when he lay holding her with a passion intense like pain, the words blurted from him:

  “Flesh of my flesh—Paula!—Will you——?”

  “Yes my love,” she answered, consolingly.

  He bit his mouth with pain. For him it was almost an agony of appeal.

  “But Paula—I mean it—flesh of my flesh—a wife—?”

  She tightened her arms round him without answering. And he knew, and she knew that she put him off like that.

  4

  Two months later, she was writing to him in Italy: “Your idea of your woman is that she is an expansion, no, a rib of yourself, without any existence of her own. That I am a being by myself is more than you can grasp.—I wish I could absolutely submerge myself in a man—and so I do, I always loved you.————

  “You will say ‘I was patient.’ Do you call that patient, hanging on for your needs, as you have done? The innerest life you have always had of me, and you held yourself aloof because you were afraid.

  “The unpardonable thing was you told me you loved me.—Your feelings have hated me these three months, which did not prevent you from taking my love and every breath from me.—Underneath you undermined me, in some subtle, corrupt way that I did not see because I believed you, when you told me you loved me.——

  “The insult of the way you took me these last three months I shall never forgive you. I honestly did give myself, and always in vain and rebuffed. The strain of it all has driven me quite mad.

  “You say I am a tragédienne, but I don’t do any of your perverse undermining tricks. You are always luring one into the open like a clever enemy, but you keep safely under cover all the time.———

  “This practically means, for me, that life is over, my belief in life.—I hope it will recover, but it never could do so with you———”

  To which he answered: “If I kept under cover it is funny, for there isn’t any cover now.—And you can hope, pretty easily, for your own recovery apart from me. For my side, without you, I am done.—But you lie to yourself. You wouldn’t love me, and you won’t be able to love anybody else—except generally.”

  Vin Ordinaire

  I.

  A wind was blowing, so that occasionally the poplars whitened as if a flame ran up them. The sky was blue and broken among moving clouds. Patches of sunshine lay on the level fields, and shadow on the rye and the vineyards. In the distance, very blue, the cathedral bristled against the sky, and the houses of the city piled up to her.

  The barracks were a collection of about a dozen huts of corrugated i
ron, that sweltered like Dutch ovens on the hot summer plain, but were gay with nasturtiums climbing ambitiously up. The soldiers were always outside, either working in the patch of vegetable garden, or sitting in the shade, when not at drill in the yard enclosed by the wire fence.

  Now the huts were deserted, the beds pushed up, everything tidy. Bachmann went to his cupboard for the picture postcard which he usually sent to his mother on Wednesday afternoon. Then he returned, to sit on the bench under the lime tree, that was sweet with blossom. Green-bladed flowers, like tiny wrecked aeroplanes, lay scattered in a circle on the ground, and the bench under the tree, shaken down by the wind. Another soldier was writing: three more were talking, their conversation full of the dirty language they always used.

  Bachmann addressed his card, but could not think of anything to say to his mother. His brain was quite empty. The postcard lay on the bench before him, he held the pencil in his fingers suspended. He was a long-backed, limber youth of twenty-two, and his clumsy uniform could not quite conceal the grace of his figure. His face was tanned by the sun, and yet had a certain fair-skinned delicacy, showing the colouring of his cheeks. His moustache was reddish, and continually he stroked it with his left hand, as he sat and stared at the postcard.

  “Dear Mother”—that was all he had written. And in a few more minutes he would have to set off. He stared at the “Liebe Mutter.” Then suddenly he began to write: “I am just off to the drill, climbing the fortifications. The walls go clean up from the water.” He stopped. “I can tell you, it is exciting.” He stopped again. Then, a little pale, he continued: “The frost has got most of the cherries. Heidelberg cherries are 80 a pound. But they are all right here. Are ours all right?” The postcard was filled. He signed himself with love, got a stamp out of his purse, and stuck it on. Then, apprehensively, he looked round. He had handsome, rather prominent blue eyes, the colour of speedwell. His manner of lounging was somewhat voluptuous and sprawling, as if he were too full of life to do a thing meagrely.