Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

II

Blue, blue-bright, gray-bright, gray — the fog-bright sun, the sun-bright fog — there had been a change overnight, a sea change, the sea had come rankly inland and upriver, the small screened window was pale with it, the fine wire screen hung softly luminous with sea dew. Sounds of dripping, too; the heavy patter, irregular and slow, of fog-drops from the poplar trees on the low roof overhead; and the thud of a fallen twig; or the sliding scrape of a dead leaf. But the change was not only this change, the change of weather — it was also something else, there was another change as well — older and stranger shapes hung in the softened light, melted into it, came out of it, were a part of it — and as he looked, or half looked, listened, or half listened, the dream and the actuality seemed but indivisible aspects of the same thing. The indiscreet dream about Nora—! Sharply and deliciously the slow bright turmoil of obscure shape swam upward out of the shadow, as if one glimpsed, through dark water, the turning and involved rondures of a sculptured group, a hand, a face, lifted, lifted as if alive, and then gone. Gone, but the emanations, the meanings, the thrust of the hand, the dark look of the face before it turned downward and under, hung, sang, vibrated, shone, in all shape and sound, ticked with the watch under the pillow, dripped with the sea fog, gave form to the window, extended themselves in and out of the fog-soft, fog-bright room, seemed even co-dimensional — like an aura — with himself. An aura? But which was aura and which was reality? This body — which jumped from bed, hurried down the stairs, shaved its blond face in a small dull square of mirror and plunged itself into the deep green-cold bath — which listened, as it pulled on its socks, to Buzzer singing in her room, or, as it pulled on the khaki trousers, to the church clock striking — was this, after all, only an aura for the dream? Was the whole world only an aura, a sort of Saturn’s ring, for the strange and delicious dream, and the dream itself the only reality—? Was that sculptural dream the real core of the world, its only true meaning?

“Tirra-loo — tirra-lee — shadows rising on you and me—”

The lilacs, in the morning fog, were a hundred years old already, they stood orderly and precise and hard in the sun-bright fog, sharply outlined where they stood on the terrace wall against the gray river, like sticks in snow. Sand was scattered on the grass, too, which would have to be raked gingerly, or brushed back into the borders, and the deep crescent hoof marks of Terence’s horse, which would have to be filled in and patted down. Shadows rising on you and me — very true, as one looked down from an autumn window; but where did they rise from, what was their source? From the dream? Like fog from the unconscious? Lilacs in sea fog, lilacs standing knee-deep in a dream?

The indiscreet dream about Nora went down the stairs with him like a suppressed radiance, like a dulled singing; the cat shot past him on the stairs—Skippity-skap! — he said, flicking at the striped tail with his hand, and in the dining room, over the little round white table, Buzzer’s round face opened a round mouth for the tilted spoon of porridge.

“I’m eating porridge,” she said.

“Porridge! No.”

“Yes, porridge.”

“And why, may I ask, didn’t you come to wake me this morning?”

“Mummy wouldn’t let me. She said you were sleeping.”

“Foo! How could you wake me if I wasn’t sleeping? Answer me that!”

“And Chattahoochee was out all night, the naughty cat, and came in hungry as a bear and all skedaddlish—”

“Skedaddlish — who ever heard such a word—”

“And he drank his milk like anything, slup — slup — slup — slup.”

“Quite true. He always drinks his milk four tonguefuls at a time — just the way you ought to eat your porridge.”

“I shouldn’t either! Ho ho, how silly! As if I was a little cat!”

“A red-haired cat.”

“It isn’t red — it’s gold!”

“Red.”

“Gold! And I saw the lilacs, too—”

He kissed the golden, corn-silk golden, curls, pushed the freckled nose solemnly with one finger, went quickly down the gray steps to the kitchen, but Enid, standing at the blue-flame stove in the far corner, didn’t turn, merely said, thus checking his impulse to go to her and kiss her:

“Your breakfast’s ready. I’m not having any.”

“Not having any! Why not, Ee?”

“Thank you, I don’t feel very much like it. You can take the toast and coffee. I’ll bring in your egg in a minute.”

“Didn’t you sleep, darling? Coffee might do you good.”

“I slept quite well, and I won’t want any coffee! Will you take it, please?”

Ah — so it was going to be like that. The preoccupied little hum again, the curved lips compressed a little, the dark curled head turning curtly and quickly — the shadow of the quarrel again, the closed bedroom door. They hadn’t slept together, she hadn’t allowed him to come and sleep with her! He took the coffee percolator from the table, hesitated.

“I think I’ll just take a look at the lilacs first.”

“Couldn’t they wait till after breakfast? I’ve got a hard morning ahead of me, and we’re late as it is.”

“Very well, Ee. Have you looked at them yourself?”

“I’m afraid I’ve been much too busy!”

The quick oblique smile, intolerant, the oblique green flash of the eyes — lovely! — she was wearing the pale green smock, with the gold threads, the one that was his favorite — but was it a concession or a challenge? It went well with the soft-sheened silver-gray of the corduroy skirt, gave an added brilliance and liquidity to the eyes — as, of course, she well knew. Ah, these cunning, vain, merciless wenches!

“They look marvelous,” he said over his shoulder, “but Terence says no blossom till spring after next.”

Spring after next. The dream came like a fog between himself and the shining table, the poured coffee, the silver cream pitcher; it filled the morning-bright, fog-bright room, seemed to set everything at a distance. If Enid had allowed him to kiss her — that would perhaps have broken through the strange dull weight of it, the richly haunting burden — perhaps she too would then have shared in it! Or did she anyway? And did all things, even Buzzer? Perhaps. As it was, it was also as if she had somehow divined his infidelity, and as if her hostility were by a miraculous instinct directed precisely to that. And a hard morning ahead of her, and Binney coming, and himself probably delegated to look after Buzzer — instead of working on his picture—

“Can I go waving this morning, daddy?”

“Not waving, wading!”

“No, waving!”

“Well, you’ll have to ask your mummy about that. Maybe it’s too cold.”

“Well then, we can go and look at the fiddler crabs.”

“We’ll see. Perhaps it’s too cold for the fiddler crabs, too. How could they dance if their feet were cold? And come to think of it, young woman, what do you mean by walking round in your sleep the way you did last night? What about that?”

“I didn’t either!”

“Didn’t you, though! I heard a bang on the floor, a thump like an elephant jumping, or an elephantelope, or a rhinocerostrich, or a camelephant—”

“How silly! There aren’t any such animals!”

“—and when I went up to see what it was, there were you, standing in the middle of the floor, fast asleep, with your eyes tight shut.”

“Mummy, isn’t daddy silly, he says I was standing up in my sleep! Was I really?”

“Cross my heart and hope I die! And all you would say was mmm. I asked you what you were doing there, and you said mmm; and I asked you if you were asleep, and you said mmm; and I asked you if you wanted to go back to bed, and you said mmm. That’s all you could say, mmm. You must have thought you were a humming bird.”

“Ho ho! I was a humming bird! But did I really, mummy?”

“Yes, I guess you really did. Now have you finished, my pet? I’ll untie your bib. And you’d better run along to the bathroom. And when you’re ready, you can call me.”

“No, I don’t want you to come — I can wipe myself.”

“All right, darling. Aren’t you clever! But call me if you need me.”

“Yes.”

The bib untied, she ran quickly, on tiptoe, from the room, flapping her hands like fins against her thighs. A humming bird. Or a goldfish. Enid, her arms folded across her breast, one foot swinging, had perched herself on a corner of the piano bench, watching him eat his egg — the attitude was temporary and provocative.

“I suppose,” she said, “you haven’t thought any more about the bills. But hadn’t we better discuss them?”

“What is there to discuss, Ee? I thought we had decided—”

“We’re very much behind with them. We owe Mr. Paradise for two months.”

“Ah! The whistling butcher!”

“And he’ll be coming this morning. We ought to pay him.”

“Damn the butcher. All right. Why don’t you make him out a check? How much is it?”

“Twenty-nine dollars.”

“Holy mackerel. That won’t leave much.”

“No, it won’t. And there’s the milk bill, and we still owe Homer for the last ton of coal we had in the spring, and we’ll be needing some more in a week or two—”

“My god. All right, pay Homer, too. Or I will.”

“I’m afraid something will have to be done. I shall need some winter clothes, and so will Buzzer, and now there’s this new cesspool — just how are you planning to manage, may I ask? We can’t go on like this, always getting more and more behind. It’s really getting to be too much of a strain. It really is!”

“Damnit, as if I didn’t know it! Well, I’ll see. I’ll ask old stick-in-the-mud for some extra work. Or maybe I could get an afternoon’s work at the new women’s school in St. Botolph Street—”

“I see! An extra day in town every week. I knew there’d be a catch in it somewhere! As if it wasn’t bad enough already.”

“Good heaven, Ee, you can’t have it both ways! You might at least try to be reasonable! If you want more money, I’ll have to do more work — money doesn’t grow out of the ground, you know.”

“No, and it doesn’t grow out of part-time teaching at second-rate art schools either! The whole arrangement is bad. I should have thought—”

“Second-rate! Perhaps you should have thought before you married me!”

“Indeed, yes! Perhaps I should!”

“Now, Endor, darling, listen—”

“I should have thought, if you don’t mind my saying so for the hundredth time—”

“Make it the thousandth, why not—?”

“Will you please listen to me? — that a whole-time job in town was the only possible solution.”

“Oh, my god. Must we go into that again? You seem to be forgetting that I’ve got my own work to do. Or to try to do!”

“Your own work. Of course! I suppose you still think that must come first. It doesn’t matter if we have to go without proper clothing, does it, or have all the shopkeepers dunning us month after month—”

“You needn’t exaggerate — and there’s no point in being melodramatic about it either.”

“I’m afraid it’s the facts that are melodramatic, since you choose the word, and not me. Oh, no! But this is where discussion always ends with you, isn’t it? In an accusation. I’m in the wrong, as usual! But I think we’ve reached the limit, and I think you’d better consider what you’ll do.”

“Ee darling, you know I’ll do anything I can, but you can’t expect me just to give up my own work, offhand, like that! You can’t!”

“If you’d wanted to do portraits—”

“I don’t want to do no portraits, no, ma’am!”

“The upshot seems to be that I do a great deal of your work for you.”

“That’s a new view of it!”

“It’s true. You’d better think it over. And if you don’t mind too much, will you take Buzzer out this morning? I’ve got all the ironing to do.”

“I thought Mrs. Kimpton was coming to do it.”

“We can’t afford it. And besides, as I’ve told you before, she’s not clean.”

“Not clean! How can that possibly affect ironing!”

“I won’t have her in the house with that dreadful feather boa round her neck.”

“Very well. When I’ve laid the studio fire, and carpet-swept this room, and made my little bed, my little solitary bed, and carried in the wood—”

She was just rising, just saying her ironic “thanks!”, her eyes widening and brightening as if to let him see better the intensity of her unspoken anger, when the sound of bird-note whistling came cheerfully from the garden, the bird-fluting of Mr. Paradise, the butcher — Paradise, absurd name for a butcher! — and the white-coated figure went quickly past the dining room windows to knock at the kitchen door.

“All right, Endor. And there goes our twenty-nine dollars. And if Ratio Binney comes about the cesspool while I’m out, you’ll have to deal with it yourself. That’s all I can say!”

Dispersed, interrupted for a moment, disturbed, whirled aside like the morning fog on a current of air, in idly glistening and lazy convolutions, the indiscreet dream about Nora was turned away only to return again, all-surrounding, all-entering, all-coloring: its hands were his own hands on the rumbling carpet sweeper — the sweeper carpet, Buzzer called it, trotting behind him, pretending she was a horse — it maneuvered with him under the dinner table, bumped the gate-legs, rattled out from the faded Chinese carpet onto the bare black floor boards at the sides (for Buzzer these were oceans, very dark and cold and deep) and followed sinuously every familiar curve and slope of the ancient uneven floor. It licked up the breakfast crumbs — it was the breakfast crumbs. It was the Chinese embroidery of motionless birds and dragons, the silent but alert piano — ready at any moment to burst out in the C-sharp minor Prelude, or the Cathédrale Englouti, or the little Brahms waltz — it was the all-too-eloquent thump of Enid’s iron on the ironing board in the kitchen — it was the whole house, himself, everything. Strange — very strange — he must be hallucinated. Why should a dream be so damned persistent? It was everything, but also, subtly and dangerously, it changed everything. The near at hand, certainly — but the remote no less, too. The fireplace in the studio, with the wood ash neatly brushed back from the brick hearth, to make a soft ashen wave under the andirons; the red scaly pine logs, brought in from the woodshed in the fragment woven-wood basket; the crisp pine cones tucked under the crossed logs for kindling, the bright brass jug of the Cape Cod fire lighter standing as if expectantly in its corner — it was in all these as he touched them, watched eagerly by Buzzer, her hands flapping excitedly, but it was also just as importantly discoverable and discernible in the far-off or merely imagined. The river, moon-tide brimmed, hurrying down to the Sound, past the sand dune and the derelict breakwater (ah, what a wonderful nocturnal fire that had been), and then, beyond the iron-framed lighthouse, joining the sea in the quarrelsome tiderip — it was there, too, tossing Paul’s canoe, spanking the under bow of George’s catboat. It was the sea gulls screaming over Mr. Riley’s nets and bobbing lobster buoys, offshore; or, inland, at the head of the river, the harsh har-har-har — har-har-har-har of the crows, the high bright circling of the eagles. Somehow, through that luminous and all-permeating dream, Nora, who had never been to the Cape, never even seen this little village, had taken complete and magical possession of it. Possession — of course, the very word for it — it was possessed, he was possessed — it was a kind of witchcraft, a sort of effluence from the unconscious, a psychic wave which had washed over the world and given it a new and astonishing brilliance. Everything, in that current, looked suddenly more alive, glowed importantly in its own light and right, seemed to have taken on an added and peculiar significance: the grains of wood, the texture of the linen sheet as he smoothed and folded it, the pillow as he patted and plumped it, the fluttering and sucking of the muslin curtains against the fog-bright screens. And the lilac trees, as he looked down at them from the bedroom window, resting his hands on the low sill, the lilac trees in the fog, which Chattahoochee was now investigating with tolerant curiosity, were already as good as in blossom. It was June of another year — another summer, another love.

Another summer, another love. The slow pang, melancholy, delicious, recapitulative, filled his breast, extended down his forearms, even to his fingertips — it was a physical thing, as actual as pain or fear. In the Purington house next door someone had put on that everlasting record, the worn-out record, and the blurred magnified words added themselves satirically to the odd and exciting theme, the threat of a crumbling world.

In the morning,

In the evening;

Ain’t we got fun?

Not much money, but, O honey,

Ain’t we got fun?

The world was made, dear,

For people like us—

The words followed him, fading, as he went down the stairs, became a meaningless gabble, then reappeared stridently as he entered the studio again and turned the easel for a look at the half-finished painting.

The rich get richer and the poor get children.

In the meantime,

In between-time—

No, it was not a success; and now more than ever, in the light of the dream about Nora, it lacked the intensity, the intense simplification, at which he had aimed. The effulgence of this sun-blasted, blue-burning, ragged Cape Cod landscape, invisibly but passionately ablaze between the cruel reflectors of sun and sea, as if set on fire by a vast magnifying glass, was not really there, was only hinted at — and yet, if he could feel it so vividly, live into it so hard, and with all his senses, so love it, in all its roots and ruin, how was it that it could still continue to escape him? Where, exactly, was the failure? He looked, and looked again, stared through it, while the gramaphone squawked and ran down, and Enid’s iron, in the kitchen, clashed on its metal rest, and he found himself suddenly seeing the whole Cape Cod landscape as one immense and beautiful thing, from Buzzard’s Bay to Provincetown, from shoulder to sea tip, every detail clear, still, translucent, as in a God’s-eye view. The salt marshes rotting in powerful sunlight; the red cranberry bogs; the sand-rutted roads through forests of scrub pine and scrub oak, and the secret ponds that existed on no map; thickets of wild grape and bull-briar; fields of blueberry and hot goldenrod; grass-grown wind-carved dunes, inlets and lagoons, mudflats bedded with eelgrass, bare at low tide, haunt of the eel, the bluecrab, the horseshoe crab, the fiddlers; and the blown moors, too, with high headlands and dwarfed cedars and junipers, the dry moss and the poverty grass crumbling underfoot, the wild-cherry trees glistening with the white tents of the tent caterpillar under the dome of August blue: he saw it all at a glance, sun-washed and sea-washed, alive, tangled, and everywhere haunted by the somehow so sunlit ghost of the vanished Indian. The Indian names — and the English names — these, too, were a vital part of it — Cataumet, Manomet, Poppennessett, Cotuit, Monomoy — Truro, Brewster, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Shoot-Flying Hill, the King’s Highway — they ran through it like a river, ran gleaming into the past, ran too into the future. And the houses; the cottages of the sea captains — a mile of them in Dennis, the sea captains who had known St. Petersburg and Canton as well as Boston — or the porticoed and pagodaed mansions of the China traders; and the ruined farmhouses and barns, silver-gray ghosts, the sad shingles and clapboards smokelessly consuming, among wild apples and wild lilacs (like Weir Village) back into the burning earth from which they had risen — yes, it was all of a piece, all in one vision, it was in his blood, his eyes, his bones, he shook and lived and died with it. Christ, yes! But why, then, could his mystical and ecstatic vision of it be put to no better use? Ecstasy — someone had defined ecstasy as “farsight,” with the overcoming of the sensual perceptions of space and time.” As in El Greco — as in Van Gogh. But it wasn’t wholly true, for the sensual perceptions of space and time must be there, too — rarefied and essentialized, perhaps, but there. He could see that, he knew it deeply, it trembled in his hand just short of the canvas, and someday, god helping, he would get it. Someday — but, in the meantime, if there were only someone he could discuss it with, shamelessly! If it didn’t have to be so damned secret! Enid — impossible. Roth — too cynical, too urban, too superficial. Paul — too analytic, too much from the outside looking in. Jim Connor — well, perhaps!

In the meantime,

In between-time—

He turned the easel back to the wall, and suddenly, for no reason at all, felt light-hearted, felt gay. The whole thing was too ridiculous, it was all a vast joke, a gigantic hoax of some sort, and if only one saw through it and refused to be hoodwinked, everything even now would come out all right — just as it always had before. Keep a stiff upper lip — that was it — and sing like the very devil. Whistle among the tombstones!

The world was made, dear — for people like us!

He half sang, half shouted, the absurd words, hoping they would reach Enid, added a “ho ho” of his own to them, sotto voce, and then walked quickly through the dining room to the top of the kitchen steps. It was time for the morning mail, time for the newspaper, time for the walk with Buzzer — time for escape into the blue. Enid’s cheeks were flushed with the ironing — it had the effect of making the cheekbones look higher, the eyes narrower and deeper. She put up one hand to brush back a moist curl from the moist and lovely forehead.

“And another thing,” she said.

“Yes, darling?”

She paused, frowning, to wriggle the bright point of the iron along the white hem of a shirt, flattening it as she went, then round a pearl button — how fascinating, how skillful!

“Since we’re on the subject of money—”

“Oh, yes?”

“There’s the little matter of Buzzer’s education. We can’t send her to the public schools here. They’re very bad, as you know — the children aren’t at all nice. It would be impossible.”

“But, Ee dear, aren’t you being a little premature?”

“Not at all. We can’t keep her out of school indefinitely — even with the help of doctor’s certificates — which would be dishonest, anyway — she’d be made to go, sooner or later. You can’t just put off thinking about it! And there are no good private schools within miles.”

“Public schools were good enough for me!”

“Yes. Timothy — yes, perhaps they were! But it’s another matter with girls, as you’d have known if you’d had any sisters.”

“An oversight. Of course, I’d probably have been a lot more refined in my tastes if I’d been sent to the Friends’ Academy in New Bedford, or Miss Nonesuch’s Nunnery for Beacon Street’s Best.”

“I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. And you’d be a good deal more intelligent about this, too. It’s just what’s wrong with you, with your whole outlook! It’s simply not fair to Buzzer, that’s the whole truth, and you’ve got to think about it, whether you like it or not. And plan for it. At your present rate of earning—”

“There you go again!”

“Will you allow me to finish?”

“Endor darling, you know I’m entirely in agreement with you, except for my hatred of these damned little snob-schools, where they turn out scatter-brained little one-design nincompoops, with social registers for brains and cash registers for hearts—”

“Nonsense!”

“—but I fail to see the hurry.”

“I see. You want to put it off — just as you always want to put off holidays for me and Buzzer, or getting a maid, or any of the other things that might make life a little more agreeable for me here — while you have everything you want! Is that it?”

“If that’s the way you want to see it, certainly! But perhaps if you’ve got some brighter plan you’d be so kind as to tell me.”

“George and Mabel—”

“Oh, it’s George and Mabel again, is it? How nice!”

“They’re very good friends of yours. Better than you know, and I think you might at least be grateful when they go out of their way to be kind!”

“Go out of their way! Don’t make me laugh. I suppose George was going out of his way last night, when he came butting in here about Jim Connor.”

“To be kind, exactly. And this was kind too. They suggested that we ought to take out education insurance. Which seems to me a very good idea.”

“I see. So that’s where the money comes in.”

“Exactly. How clever of you!”

She smiled at him, a smile that wasn’t a smile at all, added the neatly folded shirt, with a sort of unnecessary emphasis, to the little pile of freshly laundered linen on the corner of the kitchen table, then turned, before he could speak, and presented the pile to him, one hand on top (the wedding ring, and the pearl), the other at the bottom — it was of course the mute but eloquent evidence of her slavery. Her eyes looked up at him with cold amusement — but, no, not amusement, they were too hostile, too beautifully feline for that — it was almost hate. Good old Enid!

“And would you mind,” she said, “taking these up and putting them on my bed? And I think there’s someone at the door. It’s probably Mr. Peterson with the vegetables, and we don’t need any.”

“All right. I’m going for the mail.”

“In that case, perhaps you could take Buzzer along with you for a walk, if it isn’t too much trouble. I think it’s too cold for her to go in wading.”

“Oh, no trouble at all!”

“Thanks.”

He looked steadily into the level eyes for any sign of a relenting, but none came; the exchange between them was hard, unflinching, motionless, almost unbreathing; and in the pause before he turned away he felt that even as he looked at her, with his love for her still intact and vivid, she was being borne backward and away from him by her own will — exactly, he thought, as if she were the figurehead of a ship, swept dizzily away from him, and with just that look of sea-cold inscrutability. Or the stone eyelessness of a statue.

Damned handsome, he thought — dropping the laundry on the bed, and giving it a pat — damned handsome, even when she was angry — but jumping Judas, was there to be no end to it? No end to it whatever? Better an explosion than this everlasting smoldering, better a pitched battle than this guerrilla warfare, this merciless sharpshooting and sniping — and, good god, what a sharpshooter she was! She did him credit, she certainly had blood in her eye, she was the very devil!

“No vegetables today, Mr. Peterson. No, nothing today! Is it going to rain?”

“Well, kind of hard to say. Seems’s if it might burn off, but you never know, with the wind in the east!”

“No, looks kind of dark.”

The green truck with its piled boxes of cauliflowers, crates of pumpkins, crates of cranberries, was gone around the far corner at the turn of the street, under the bare dripping poplars; fog spat on the stone doorstep at his feet, fog dripped on the heaped leaves; and into the garden, as he went around the front of the house to enter it in search of Buzzer, the indiscreet dream about Nora once more slyly accompanied him.

The indiscreet dream — the fleshly, the sensual, the whirling, the Rubenslike — But a strange figure was standing at the foot of the garden, by the river wall, had just come up the steps there from the Town Landing, a little man with a shovel over his shoulder — a tramp, a gnome, a furry-faced gnome, who hobbled forward in trousers much too big for him. The trousers were held up by a string tied round the waist, the short shapeless coat had apparently been made out of a dirty piece of gunnysack, even the little eyes, above the dirty whiskers, looked dirty — obviously the creature had come straight out of the ground, out of the earth, with the caked earth still on him. In the middle of the lawn he stood still, appeared to be mute, darting furtive glances, weasel-like, to right and left, then jerked a quick thumb toward the pump house.

“I clean ’em out,” he said.

“What?”

“Name’s Pepoon, they all know me. I come to clean ’em out. Want yours cleaned? I live over the river, go ’round to all the houses regular, Bill Pepoon.”

He jerked his hand again toward the pump house, an animal-like gesture, blinked the gray eyes under rusty eyebrows.

“Want me to clean it? I got bags to take it away.”

“Oh, I see. But I haven’t got one.”

“Y’ain’t got one? What’s that?”

Letting the shovel fall easily from his shoulder, he pointed with it once more toward the pump house, incredulous.

“It’s a pump.”

“A pump?”

“Yes, a pump. Come and see it.”

He opened the door, showed the little motor on the oil-stained floor, gleaming, motionless, an oilcan beside it, the red wooden pump shaft upright in its groove. The gnome stared at it, unconvinced.

“Oh. Y’ain’t got one.”

“No, it’s a pump.”

“Well, if y’ever want me, name’s Pepoon, over the river, let me know. Know anybody else wants one cleaned?”

“Thanks — no, I don’t.”

“Cracky, a pump. And it looks just like—! All right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No trouble at all. Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

He hesitated for a moment, casting an appraising eye at the Purington house, as if estimating his chances there too, but now a little skeptical, then shouldered his shovel again, and was gone almost at a trot around the corner of the woodshed and down into the lane that led to the Town Landing, where presumably he had his “bags.” His “bags”! Good god, what a conception. He was all of a piece, an earth-god, and an earth-god of the very lowest — and best! — order. A miracle, no less, and probably inspired by the lilacs. Willed by the lilacs! A terrestrial empathy.

“Who was that funny man?”

Buzzer, squatted by the woodshed door, had arranged her collection of white quartz pebbles in a neat circle, like a crown, on the grass.

“Well, you know, Buzzer, I sort of think it was a god, I think it must have been an earth-god, just popped up out of the earth, like a jack-in-the-box!”

“He wasn’t a god! How could he be a god! He was too dirty.… Did you see my pebbles? This is kingy, and this is queeny, and I’ve got the king and queen of the toenail shells.”

“So you have. And what about a walk, my pet, to get the mail.”

“The mail?”

She raised the blue eyes, questioning, abstracted, looked beyond him, to the ends of the earth, as if considering the ultimate of all ultimate problems, then scrambled quickly to her feet, flapping the small hands, fin like.

“All right, but don’t you touch them, now!”

“No, I won’t touch them.”

“And can we walk to the golf-links road and go to the secret place?”

“Yes, perhaps, if there’s time, we can go to the secret place.”

“And eat a checkerberry leaf?”

“And eat a checkerberry leaf.”

“And look for Indian Pipes?”

“And look for Indian Pipes.”

“You mustn’t just say everything I say!”

“‘Blueberry, bayberry, checkerberry, cherry — goldenrod, silverrod, jackin-the-pulpit-berry—’”

“‘Mayflower, columbine, lady’s-slipper, aster — which is the flower for your mistress, master?’ Ho ho — and milkweed pods full of silk—”

“You can make a silk bed for kingy and queeny.”

“If they aren’t all gone. Do you think they’ll be all gone?”

“I don’t know, my pet. It’s pretty late, you know, and all those seeds have to get busy, and find homes for themselves before spring comes — ha, and this is something you didn’t know — I read it in a book.”

“What, daddy?”

“That seeds have hearts. Did you know that?”

“Hearts that beat?”

“Well, I’m not so sure about their beating, but they’re hearts, just the same. A little teeny tiny heart, and it’s called a corculum—”

“A corculum! Ho ho! What a funny word!”

“Yes, it means ‘little heart,’ see? So I guess you’ve got a corculum.”

“Don’t be silly, I’m not a seed!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. I might try planting you, you know!”

Amused, intent on this entrancing world of bright images, images like pebbles to be arranged in rows or circles, to be strung like beads, the small blue homespun-clad figure, with doubled fists and lowered golden head, galloped ahead of him like a little horse. She ploughed through the drifts of fog-dampened poplar leaves, yellow and brown; kicked them, trampled on them; alternately raised and lowered her face, singing; half closed the blue eyes to feel the cool fog-drip on her cheeks, in her hair, the hands outspread — good lord, how wonderful, she was living in a world of her own, a burning and secret world of her own. The same world? a different world? A new world — that was it — the world of the poet, the first poet, the poet who saw simultaneously, for the first time, the sea and a flower. What! Dogs and horses in one and the same world—! It was a miracle.…

The letter, when he opened Box 67 with the thin steel key, the blue envelope, addressed with the clear delicate handwriting — the bold T and K, the open-eyed “o’s”—how very odd that her handwriting always made him think of her eyes, as if the blue eyes looked up at him frankly from the envelope itself — the letter, carried in his hand, became at once a part of the indiscreet dream — and not merely an extension of it, but perhaps its very center. The letter, on its way from Boston, pernoctating, keeping its open-eyed vigil, had itself brought the sea change, the soft inland-going sea fog, and had brought, too, the obscure and all-troubling delicious dream, the half-seen sculptural shape of involved struggle, the hand lifted and vanishing, the face darkening as it turned away. Pernoctate — yes, the letter had kept a vigil, its blue eyes open all night, and it was this that had projected the whole thing — its influence had preceded it, even to bringing into his very sleep the half-guessed presence, the half-happy and half-unhappy joining and sundering, the ecstatic but broken embrace. Broken!

The familiar sensation of breathlessness, the heart contracting on itself — and yet it was good, too — whatever the outcome, it was good. Joy either way, freedom either way. Enid had come nearer, she already stood nearer, this was the important, the essential, change; and this would be true even if Nora hadn’t herself yet made any decision. Or even if she had decided not to decide.

“And that’s our old friend the Quaker burying ground,” he said quickly, feeling a little breathless, “with all the little headstones exactly alike — see? — and exactly the same size.”

“Why, daddy?”

“Well, it’s really rather nice; it’s to remind people not to be too proud, to be humble — no matter what they’ve done, or who they are. Not to boast. You see, the Quakers thought to put up a huge great pompous marble tombstone was like a boast, was like saying, ‘Ho, look at me, how grand I am! Ho, look at me, but don’t pay any attention to that little Smith fellow down there, with that measly little stone of his, like a school slate. Why, you’ve only got to look at his stone to see how unimportant he is!’ See?”

“Yes, but suppose you were a king. Then couldn’t you be proud?”

“Foo! A king. I’m afraid not many Quakers were kings. Or, no, come to think of it, perhaps they all were! And perhaps they all were proud!”

“Well, if I was a king, I’d be proud, and I’m proud anyway!”

“You look out you don’t have a fall, like old doctor Humpty-Dumpty. And all the king’s horses—!”

“Ho ho, don’t be silly. Humpty-Dumpty was nothing but an egg! And now come on. And shall we go along the little path by the rope walk and into the woods? To the secret place?”

“Yes, all aboard for the secret place.”

The morning had perceptibly darkened, the sea fog lay close and smothering above the oak woods, the pine trees, the leaf-strewn wood path; above the fog there must be clouds; it looked like rain. A pungent smell of burning leaves rankled in the air, too, the smudge fires of autumn, smoke of the consuming world. On this path, in the snow, in winter — Buzzer on her little red sled, the leggined legs stuck out stiffly before her, going to the golf links — he must remember tomorrow to get the sled out of the cellar, and take a look, too, at the jugs of elderberry wine on the top of the cellar wall. And Paul’s dandelion wine. And the snow shovels.… The woods were silent, dripping; a chickadee chattered angrily, a catbird wailed; and at the secret place — the little hollow of pine needles and pine cones under a solitary great boulder of granite, green-lichened, surrounded by pines — while Buzzer built a house of pine twigs, and stood pine cones around them as trees, he opened the blue letter.

No salutation — no signature. A single sheet closely and neatly written, written calmly and unhurriedly, too, as one could see by the care with which the margins had been kept, the text precisely balanced on the page. The longest letter she had ever written to him — which could have, of course, only one meaning — perhaps it would be better not to read it at all—? The burden of it was already manifest in the sudden closing of his heart.

I think I know how it is with you, I think you will know how it is with me. Do you remember how we met, that first time in Washington Street, after we had come out of the vaudeville theater? I suddenly saw you again on the sidewalk, looking down at me, and I said, well, where did you come from, and you, without even so much as taking your hat off, said Oh, I fell from heaven. As casual as that, and of course if I hadn’t had too many cocktails for lunch at the Touraine there’d never have been any meeting at all. We’ve been very happy, haven’t we? Maybe because it was all just as casual and light as that. And I never felt that I was taking anything away from Enid, or any pangs of conscience, until I began to feel that you were beginning to have pangs of conscience. You have begun, haven’t you? And it’s funny, but I don’t really mind that at all, in fact I like it, for it makes me like you better — not that I didn’t like you anyway — and makes me like Enid better too. And Buzzer. But I expect we both knew it was bound to happen some day, and both kept a little something in reserve, so that when the time did come it wouldn’t hurt too much — isn’t that it?

So, I think you’d better not come to see me any more. And I think you will like to know that I’m going to be married, next month, to the man you talked to on the telephone once, by mistake — remember? — and whose little painting of the Concord River you liked. I hope you’ll be happy, all three of you — I’m sure I’m going to be happy myself — but it was fun, wasn’t it? I shall always be glad it happened, and grateful.

Grateful! Dear delightful Nora grateful! He began to read the letter again, but found he couldn’t. The words were too good, too true, too tender, the direct and rich honesty was more than he could bear, so much more than he could ever possibly have deserved; and abruptly he felt that if he didn’t shout, or do something violent, he would burst into tears. He sat quite still for a moment, looked up through the red boughs of a pine tree into the gray fog, then suddenly he put out a hand, seized Buzzer by one ankle, pulled her to him, and hugged her passionately.

“She’s grateful!” he shouted. “She says she’s grateful!”

“Daddy, you put me down this instant! Look what you’ve done to my house!”

“I can’t help it, my pet, she says she’s grateful!”

“Who’s grateful! Now put me down!”

“Mother Nature, that’s who. Did you ever have a pine tree tell you she was grateful? Did you? No, I’ll bet you didn’t.”

“Don’t be silly! And you’re scratching me, too. You didn’t shave!”

“I did too shave, you wretch — you and your houses!”

“You’ve spoiled it, see? All those trees knocked down, and the house. Now you’ll have to help me fix it up again!”

“You give me one kiss, and I’ll help you fix it up again.”

“There. Now put me down. You ought to know better!”

“All right. We’ll fix your palace up, my pet, and surround it with a grove of cedar of Lebanon and shittim wood, and put the Queen of Sheba in it, and King Solomon, too, and a lot of angels and archangels and cherubim and seraphim, and we’ll have a procession of kings for them, and music of dulcimers and cymbals and shawms and — sub-tone clarinets. And then, when we’ve done all that, what do you think — before the rain comes, which might be any minute now, we’ll go skulking like Indians by the secret trail down through the primeval forests to the river, and then we’ll prowl all the way home along the shore, keeping invisible, with our tomahawks in our hands.”

“Where are our tomahawks?”

“Here, this is a likely looking tomahawk, and here’s another.”

“And nobody will see us?”

“Shhhh, we mustn’t talk, you know. We must be stealthy!”

“Shhh! Are we ready?”

“Not a sound now — and be careful not to step on twigs! I’ll go first, to blaze the trail, and you follow. Come on!”

From the wet sand bluffs by the river, when they emerged into the wide peace of fog, they could just make out the pale yellow sand bluffs of the golf links, opposite, and a solitary figure stooping to pick up a ball on the ninth green, solemnly replacing the metal flag in the hole. They slid down the slope of sand, filling their shoes; sat for a moment on the matted eel-grass, sea-smelling — the curled stiff wave of eel grass which everywhere lined the shores of the river — to empty out the sand; then resumed their prowl over alternate stretches of beach and tangle. The tide was out, the water waveless, leaden, fog-stilled; through the fog, in the direction of Paul’s lagoon, came the chug-chug of an invisible motorboat, and the cawing of crows. Bayberry and beach plum, mussel shells, clam shells — carapaces of horseshoe crabs, the little ones golden, the larger ones almost black — their footsteps crunched and snapped and crackled amongst these. They were in the wilderness — tomahawk in hand they were revisiting the Indian wilderness, the wilderness unchanged since the beginning of time. Unchanged? Unchanged save by a dream, perhaps — the dream threading the thickets, the fog, the beds of bubbling eel grass, the hushed and overcast noon, exactly as his own world, all morning, had been threaded and changed by the indiscreet dream about Nora. But now, subtly, that had altered again — it was as if, now, through the fog, a single beam of soft light had plunged downward to that obscure shape of shifting and involved struggle, had quickly lighted and lightened the sinister intricacies of the unknown, lighted the lifted hand, brightened the dark face before it turned away — so that suddenly the delicious embrace, the air-borne embrace, had shed all its burden of sorrow and pathos, all pang and pain, and become wholly benign. The secret was suddenly sunlit, the Rubenslike sensuality was sunlit, and the face, which was half Nora’s and half Enid’s, no longer reproached him in desolation as it turned away, but instead — or so it seemed — looked up at him almost merrily before it vanished. Had the dream changed? But how could a dream change afterwards? He must simply have been mistaken about it, not at the time seen it quite clearly — just as he had not known after all that the ecstatic and anguished face was as much Enid’s as Nora’s. Had Nora’s letter done this? I think I know how it is with you, I think you will know how it is with me.

From the indiscreet dream about Nora — strangely, obscurely, like the rayed light from a slowly opening door or window — or like a flood, too — or even, in another sense, like the blood pouring from a freshly reopened wound, releasing and thus ending the pent pain — the sense of the past came thickly and richly, the faces, the words, the mornings, the evenings. But not Nora, or Nora only briefly, for it was as if that first meeting in Washington Street — when he hadn’t even taken off his hat — had itself become the door, which, once opened, readmitted a world which had been obscured or lost. It was Enid, it was the first two years at the Frazer School of Fine and Applied Arts, the first two years in Boston, with Christmas holidays in New Bedford, the snow on the terraced lawns of County Street, the Chicken Hops, the sleigh rides to Buttonwood Park: and it was the motor-paced bicycle races — the first expeditions to the art galleries of New York, the steamer along the freezing Sound — the shabby unheated gas-smelling little hall bedroom of the West Eighth Street rooming house, where he had first met Karl Roth and Kitty, and plunged at once into the new and exciting world of Greenwich Village, with its cafés, its drinking parties, its freak poets and painters — male, female, and neuter — but above all its sense of adventure and freedom. Yes, that, and the sharp sense of reality which it had brought him for the first time, painting as a reality, with a real function in society, and life too as a reality, in a far richer and fiercer sense than anything in his childhood in New Bedford had prepared him for; but along with all these things, behind and beneath them, and lending a fresh vividness and iridescence even to the powerful ambition which they had suddenly quickened in him, was Enid. Iridescence — yes, exactly that; she had brought instantly an astonishing iridescence into everything that surrounded him. It had seemed far away, until Nora had somehow sprung it all back into focus again — but now his first meeting with Enid Severance, at Cousin Anna’s dinner party, and the drive to the dance in the snow, seemed actually more recent than his first meeting with Nora. Adolescent? No doubt. But there had never been such a first meeting before — there could never be such a first meeting again. White magic, all of it — the silver tissue of the shawl drawn by the lifted hands over the young shoulders, and the clear green eyes, young and candid, looking into his own, across the glittering table, between the candles, with a disturbed bewilderment of intensity and question, secret but unconsciously declared, which demanded to be probed even while it suffered and refused — the eyes that could listen, as it were, to nothing else, and turned away only to be turned back again, or after an interval to be found covertly watching — no, there could never be anything like that again, that lovely and naive surrender, which had, at one stroke, drawn him into a completely new world. And then the first “call,” at the absurd and ornate Victorian house, with the fretwork gables, the iron deer standing alert on the lawn in the snow, the wide piazza above the terrace (where later, in the summer, were to be tubs of blue and pink hydrangeas, and the enormous rubber plant) — the first stiff “call,” and meeting Enid’s silent and so obviously disapproving mother, watchful and nervous above her ceaseless knitting, glancing now at himself, now at the black marble clock, which ticked secretly, refinedly, on the mantel. And, after that, the uninterrupted chain of ever more frequent meetings, designed or fortuitous, their eyes everywhere seeking each other out, at every party, in every street, morning or evening, for the delicious renewal and deepening of contact, the exploration of the sense of touch, of which it had seemed so impossible that they could ever have enough. Physical? Metaphysical, rather. Their tangents had been universal, and everywhere — in the vibrations of texture and tone, in the aliveness of light — they had come together very slowly, without other bodily meeting than in the waltz, at a dance, or the gloved hand lightly held at the crowded skating rink, and in that sublimated intoxication, apple blossom and peach blossom, chestnut blossom and the tiger-throated nasturtium, the solemn bells of the Catholic church in the evening, or the far whistles of the tugs in the Bay, had seemed a sufficient bridge, a sufficiently corporeal language — it had been months before they had first kissed. Adolescent, yes — certainly. And perhaps this had been the initial mistake, if anything so profoundly beautiful could ever be a mistake: the poetry had been too pure a poetry, its further implications (of all that the body, and passion, could exact, or time and diurnal intimacy dishevel and destroy) had been too little understood; and when the prose followed, it had inevitably seemed only too ingrainedly prosaic. The realities had come too quickly and harshly, one after another — lack of money, doubts about his career, the interferences and disapproval of Enid’s mother, whose social “ambitions” for Enid had been so cruelly thwarted (good heavens, how she had been shocked at their going to live in a Boston boardinghouse!) — and then, later, the wholly unknown Enid who had cried out quickly with pain, in pneumonia, her eyes animal and unseeing — Enid pregnant — Enid in childbirth — yes, Paul was right, the shock of that “meaty and butcher-shop reality” had been too much for him, it had changed everything. Changed, or only seemed to change? Had the disenchantment been real, or only theoretical — a self-induced and half imagined thing? Had he been disenchanted (if indeed he had been) merely because he had expected to be, faced with these so many and so different realities, and was disenchantment itself therefore only a romantic fiction, or a fiction of the romantic? And how then had Nora so magically managed to give the whole thing back to him? Ah, perhaps because she had instinctively restored to him his belief in the illusion, his belief in the illusion as the only reality. Or, more simply, taught him that the real world was illusion enough!

Yes; for this all-releasing dream, this dream of the pure embrace, airborne and wind-blown, this whirling and halcyon love, in which the beloved face had become one with his own, the white shoulders and breasts and clinging thighs and knees as if his own body, the throbbing embrace hung ecstatically in sunset light — this ever-clearer dream, as it glowed creatively down from plane to plane of memory, through trapdoor after trapdoor, like a lantern casting down its light through successive floors of a dark house, touched now his childhood too, brought that back as near and clear as Enid, and with precisely the same fresh and vernal significance. Like those tiny Japanese folded flowers, made of desiccated wood and tissue, no bigger than seeds, which open out, when put in water, to become irises or almond blossoms, or dark leaves, these images now opened to join the others. The intense and radiant reality, above all, of a girl’s face, a hand, a hard green acorn on a branch, the sunlit iris of an eye, the hairs on a grasshopper’s leg, the swimming colors of a wet stone, the intricacy of ordinary grass, or the inexhaustible mystery of the simple dust that lay in a country road, this dust that was warm and friendly under one’s naked foot, and between one’s toes, this extraordinary stuff that was the earth’s substance, the very earth—suddenly he knew these things again as vividly as he had known them in his childhood in New Bedford, and as vividly as Buzzer — who followed him intently, silently, oak-branch in hand — knew them now. It was like coming alive again. He was alive again, and the whole blazing world alive with him, everything belonging to everything else, and everything with one and the same meaning.

He stopped, stood still, stared down at the beached dory which lay on the sand before him, its galvanized iron anchor, sea-gray, half-buried in the sand, then, drawing his feet together, jumped neatly over it, brandishing his tomahawk in the air.

“Tirra-lirra, tirra-lee! — ” he said.

“Daddy, you were supposed to be quiet! They’ll know we’re coming!”

“Let them know. That was my war cry, see? And now they know that every Indian, every man-jack of them, must bite the dust!”

“That wasn’t a war cry. You said that yesterday.”

“Did I? Well, perhaps I did. But it doesn’t matter. It’s as good as fee fie fo fum.”

“Ho ho! That was what the giant said, silly!”

“So it was. But it was a kind of a war cry, just the same, to let the Englishmen know he was coming. Shall we go for a sail in this dory? An imaginary one, you know, with imaginary oars and an imaginary sail, on an imaginary river. Hmm, I see it’s got a name, too, it’s called Catfish. Now why do you suppose it’s called Catfish? Doesn’t look like a cat, doesn’t look like a fish, doesn’t look like a catfish—”

“What does a catfish look like, daddy?”

“Well, you see, a catfish has whiskers, like a cat—”

“Ho ho, does it really? But it couldn’t miaow like a cat, because fishes haven’t got any voices.”

“Foo! Don’t you remember the fish that talked in the frying pan?”

“That was only in a story. It couldn’t really talk. Shall we go for a sail?”

“Well, I’m afraid not, my pet. It’s late, and I think maybe we’d better get a move on. Let’s see how quickly we can get there — you run, and I’ll walk with my seven-league boots, and we’ll be across the road and past the blacksmith shop in a jiffy, and then over Mr. Riley’s nets in a single leap — come on now, a little speed! And it’s going to rain, it’s going to pour pitchforks—”

He clapped his hands and she was gone at a gallop, scrambling up the sand path by the beach plums to the bridge road — the bridge loomed gray and ghostly in the thinning fog, a car came rattling over the loose boards, kicking and rumbling, and when he emerged on to the road, under the dripping poplars, the small blue figure was already halfway across Mr. Riley’s field. In another moment she had gone down out of sight into the lane that led to the Town Landing, reappeared bustling up the steps to the lilac hedge by the pump house, and then finally vanished around the corner of the kitchen. Extraordinary child — where the devil had she come from? Extraordinary to think that this was Enid and himself, Enid and himself conjoined! — That summer, before she was born, when day after day, waiting, they had played three-handed bridge, Enid and himself and Enid’s mother, fanning themselves in the stifling heat of the County Street house, drinking iced lemonade out of tinkling glasses, listening to the four-noted clink of the well chain in the garden through the opened windows — that summer, she had not existed. The ripening pears hung heavy among hot leaves in the garden, the box hedges smelled dustily of the sun, the cherries had long since been gathered and eaten, the green clusters of the grapes, under the broad laves, were beginning to redden, to purple. And New Bedford, with its old wharves and stone warehouses, the Point Road leading to the Fort, and the wide hot Bay, which one could see from the little hexagonal cupola at the top of the house, all the way to the blue islands, was complete and alive, as it had always been. But there was no Buzzer. And then the terrifying reality of the childbirth — Enid walking to and fro, her hand pressed to her back, the beautiful mouth curved and tense with pain and apprehension; Enid holding on to the banisters, desperate, her whole body arched and taut like a bow — and at last, late at night, the animal throe in lamplight, the quick and sickening divulgence of the bloodstained little animal, with its cry of misery, which was Buzzer, which was to become Buzzer! Astonishing, that out of such horror, and a chrysalis so ignoble and so violent, such beauty and brightness could have emerged — how the devil was one to explain it? And nevertheless, now, in the light of the all-exploring delicious dream of Enid and Nora, perhaps one could at last accept the bloody roots — the roots were no longer to be reprehended, they had their own dreadful and lightninglike beauty, they were oneself, one’s hand, one’s heart, one’s god.…

Yes, but there was Ee still, this ominous attitude of Ee’s—

The thought checked him, as he went up the wet wooden steps to the garden, the house was silent except for the irregular fog-drip from the trees on the kitchen roof—spat-spat-spat—and as he passed the kitchen window he looked quickly in, over the sink, but Ee was nowhere to be seen. The ironing must be finished, perhaps she had gone out. The pump-house door was open, and out of the pump house, bareheaded, the inevitable yellow foot rule in his hand, stepped Ratio Binney. The shrewd Yankee face, the quick gray eyes, the narrow smile, the corduroy trousers.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Kane! I was just taking a look. I couldn’t raise anybody from the house—”

“Morning, Ratio. You couldn’t? Guess Mrs. Kane must have gone out—”

“Yes, I rang and rang, and knocked on your kitchen door. Mrs. Kane said something on the telephone about the cesspool—?”

He pointed, with the yellow rule, towards the foot of the garden, the new lilac hedge.

“Yes, I know.”

“What seems to be the trouble.”

“Well, I guess we just use too much water. And the cesspool seems to be overflowing. The water stands there, down in the corner — seems to be a sort of little cave-in starting. Come and see it.”

The broad circle of sand, in the angle made by the new lilacs, still showed where the cesspool had been dug, the deep well of bricks sunk in the ground — in spite of repeated reseedings the grass above it was still sparse. Damn, and this would mean a further delay! At the edge nearest the terrace wall Ratio kicked with the toe of a scarred shoe at a small subsidence, where the sand was wet and smooth, as if just washed up from below.

“Hm. That’s what it is. Been spilling over on this side, see? Too much flow to be carried off at the bottom. You’ve got to remember you’re not much above sea level here! And that’s always liable to make trouble. I see you’ve been putting in some bushes. Looks very nice.”

“Lilacs, yes.”

“Yes, sir, that’s exactly the trouble, seem’s if! Too bad, too.”

“What do we do about it, Ratio?”

“Only one thing to do. That’s what I said to Mrs. Kane, if that was what it turned out to be. Put in another cesspool. An off-set. Won’t need to be so big, say a little more than half the size, and a drain into it from near the top of this one. Yes, I guess that’s about all we can do, but that’ll fix it. That was a big cesspool, too. You folks sure must use a lot of water!”

“I guess we do. How much is it going to set us back?”

“Can’t tell, Mr. Kane, not till I know how much brick we’ll want. Not much labor in it, though. We ought to do it in a day, easy. Guess it won’t cost you too much.”

“Okay. I suppose we’d better have it. Not too healthy, having this happen!”

“Oh, it won’t do any harm about that, but of course if it goes on falling in it won’t improve your garden much, and it might even take to backing up.”

“I see.”

“Yeup. Well, I’ll send the boys over in a day or two. Too near sea level, that’s what it is. There was only ten feet of water, remember? when we drove that well up there. No time at all.”

“Yes, I remember. And will you take a look at the shut-off, while you’re here. It shoves the pressure up a little too high — about thirty-four.”

“Oughtn’t to be more than thirty-two. I’ll just set the valve back a mite. Pity to dig it all up just when you’ve got it looking so pretty, but that’s what life is, just one durned thing after another. And as they say, one man’s sorrow is another man’s cash!”

“Okay, Ratio, and ain’t it the truth!.. What’s it going to do, rain?”

“Looks like being what these Cape Codders call a tempest. I suppose you’ve lived here long enough to know that almost anything here is called a tempest? But I don’t guess it’ll amount to much. A chuckle of thunder, maybe. But you never know with these sea fogs, it might burn off. Well, I’ll set that valve for you, and send over the Rollo boys.”

“Thanks, Ratio!”

“No trouble.”

The engine began its alternate wheezing and barking — three, five, three, two — as he opened the kitchen door, the kitchen pipes were ringing with the remote pump-strokes underground, the indicator danced over the kitchen sink, but the house was silent. The ironing board had been put away, there was no fire in the blue-flame stove, no indications of cooking, and in the dining room the table had not been set for lunch. He stood still by the piano, listening — in the gray stillness of the room he could hear the watch ticking busily in his trouser pocket — Chopin’s Preludes were open on the music rest — under Buzzer’s little table by the window lay the saucer of milk, apparently untouched, for Chattahoochee — it was all very odd. Like a deserted ship. No Enid. And what had become of Buzzer? She might be upstairs — or she might, of course, have gone over to Mrs. Murphy’s kitchen, looking for cookies. Mrs. Murphy’s special supply of cookies, with holes in the middle — very likely. But what about lunch? He struck a triad on the piano, softly, and another — thought of Paul’s remark about Puccini’s use of consecutive fifths — and then went through the little hall, past the stove — which would soon have to be started, damn it — and into the studio living room.

A newspaper lay in Enid’s chair. He saw with a start that it was today’s. Good lord, how extremely unfortunate, he had totally forgotten it. Ee must have gone shopping at Foster’s and been told that he hadn’t come for it! Damnation — Nora’s letter had put it clean out of his head. He glanced at the headlines without really seeing them, put the paper down again, decided to go upstairs. No use trying to work till after lunch. Always supposing there was going to be any lunch! It was all very peculiar.

Enid’s door was open at the top of the stairs, and in the little north-lighted room, she was lying motionless on her bed, her arms limp and straight at her sides. Her face was so turned that her eyes, without having to move, were already looking at him, obliquely, endlong, but with a disinterested detachment, a narrowed indifference, that was at once disturbing. He stood still in the doorway, and for some reason suddenly felt himself to be growing angry.

“Oh,” he said, “I was wondering where you were.”

She made no answer for a moment, no move, merely looked at him. Then she said:

“Is it so very surprising that I should want to lie down for a few minutes?”

“Of course not, Ee, but I was surprised at not finding you anywhere, or apparently any preparations for lunch!”

“You couldn’t trouble to remember that we always have a cold lunch on ironing days, I suppose!”

“Oh. Of course. I’d forgotten. Has Buzzer been up here?”

“She has not! I thought you were supposed to be looking after Buzzer?”

“I can’t be in two places at once, can I? I found Ratio Binney waiting in the garden, and had to discuss the cesspool with him. He said he’d been here for some time, ringing the bell and knocking on doors. I had the impression that you were supposed to be attending to that. I think you might have taken the trouble to answer the door, especially as we were expecting him, and as it was you who had taken it upon yourself to ask him to come!”

“I see. I’m to be reproached for that! It makes no difference that it was a simple necessity — just as it makes no difference that I felt really too tired to go down. Really, Tip, your egotism is sometimes a little staggering!”

“Egotism! I think you might at least have conferred with me about it!”

“Would you mind leaving me alone now please? I’ve got something I want to think out by myself.”

“Time out for thinking! All right. But you could have chosen a more convenient moment for it, it seems to me!”

“If you’re so desperate for your lunch you’ll find the cold tongue and potato salad in the icebox. And it would be a help to me if you could set the table and find Buzzer.”

“Very well. Come down when you feel like it.”

He turned angrily from the angry eyes, went slowly down the stairs, his heart beating, his hands clenched in his pockets. So it was going to be like that again, the pressure increasing — and how infuriating of her just to lie there like that, relaxed, pretending she was tired, listening indifferently to Binney ringing and knocking, punishing Binney merely because she wanted to punish himself! Just the sort of thing that always most enraged him about her, that damned female habit of venting her spleen on every Tom, Dick, and Harry, advertising it to the entire world — like an octopus. And egotism! Merely because he expected to be consulted about his own affairs! Well, she could go to blazes. And if she could keep it up, so could he. Two could play at that game. And if she wanted to sulk, and go into a silence, for her damned thinking, by god he’d show here what a real A-number-one brassbound steel-riveted silence could be. A silence with velvet knobs on it! Hmm — yes. But the trouble was — and he suddenly found himself grinning, despite everything — the trouble was, as he knew only too well from long experience, that she could outlast him. Pour rendre le silence en musique, il me faudrait trois orchestres militaires. But maybe this time—

The twirled doorbell rang harshly—zring, zring—at the front of the house. Just as he was entering the dining room, it rang savagely again. Blast it, what next? Couldn’t be Binney — the engine had stopped, and he must have gone. Retracing his steps through the hall and into the studio, he opened the front door into the gray, dripping street, and then stood staring. It was a taxi. A real honest-to-god yellow taxicab, complete with its little metal flag — standing there in front of the house, under the fog-drip from the poplars, in this defunct village, where no taxicab had ever been seen before. The driver was in the very act of clinking down the flag, and turning to the very odd-looking young man, pale and unshaven — or was it a little blond beard? — who was grinning and counting out a huge roll of bills. The black velours hat and the dirty blue flannel shirt were all too eloquent of his occupation. A cardboard suitcase stood on the gravel sidewalk.

“Twenty-eight, thirty. You said thirty, didn’t you, buddy? You know, I wouldn’t want to cheat you, after a miraculous expedition like that.”

“Thirty bucks is right. Say, where’s the nearest hotel from here, where I can get some grub?”

“Maybe this gentleman can tell you. I’m a stranger here. Is this Mr. Timothy Kane?”

“Yes. About a mile down the shore road, toward the Point — the Naushon. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay, thanks. And come again some time when you got nothing to do.”

“I’ll be seeing you!”

The young man, grinning and showing his bad teeth, dismissed the departing taxi with an effeminately wagged finger, looked after it with a sort of lascivious pride until it had turned the corner and gone out of sight, obviously pleased with his exploit — whatever it was — and then said: “All the way from Fall River, what do you think of that! Thirty iron-men worth of taxi! I suppose you never had a taxi here before? Did you?”

“No, I doubt it. It’s a little out of the beaten track.”

“The beaten track, eh? Ha ha. I guess you’re right. So this is Mr. Timothy Kane! Jim gave me your address here. My name’s Louis Bucholtz.”

“Glad to meet you. And what can I do for you?”

“Well, you see, I overslept on the boat. We had a party last night to see me off, so I missed the train at Fall River. Too bad! And no other connections for the Cape practically all day. I couldn’t wait all day in Fall River, could I? Fall River! My god. Have you ever seen Fall River? Have you ever seen the dump? Nothing doing. So, as I was Jim’s guest, so to speak, on a liberal allowance — the only thing I could do was take a taxi. Thirty bucks—boy, what a taxi ride. That driver was a nice feller, too. He enjoyed it. He said he’d never been out in the country before in his life. I guess he made a good thing out of it! Where’s Jim?”

“He lives up the road a little. I’ll show you.”

“You’ll forgive this spectacular intrusion, Mr. Kane? Jim told me the easiest way to find him would be to come to your house, as you were known here.”

“Sure. It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk. Come along.”

“Okay. So this is Jim’s little hideout — with trees and bushes and everything. Is that the sea? You know, I couldn’t believe it when he wrote me that he was going to live in the country. How do the girls like it?”

“Kitty and Lorna?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a hell of a lot. I get the impression they don’t take much to cooking.”

“Now, Mr. Kane, you wouldn’t kid me! Neither of them ever saw a stove before in her life, except maybe on the stage — or in a shop window — what do you expect! If you ask me, I think it’s a scream.”

“Yes, but you may not think it’s so damned funny when you don’t get any meals. I think Jim’s a little depressed.”

“Depressed! You’re killing me.”

“Are you a painter?”

“Me? No. I’m an artist. There’s a distinction. I write, and I paint, and I’ve done a little stage designing, and a little art criticism, but I haven’t decided yet what I’ll do. What’s the rush? I’ve got my ideas, but what can you do without a patron?”

“So that’s where Jim comes in. He’s a wonderful fellow.”

“That’s your opinion?”

“Isn’t it yours?”

“Are you being a little sly, Mr. Kane? A little oblique?”

“Not at all.”

“I get you. Yes, Jim’s all right.”

“There’s the house, down there — at the foot of the road. By the river.”

“House! My god! It’s a palace.”

“I’ve got to go back, but will you tell Jim for me that I’ll try to get over this afternoon?”

“Sure. Why not? Anything else?”

“That’s all.”

“Sure. And thanks for the good guidance!”

The ironic effeminate voice turned away, the shabby and spindling figure, with its shiny blue suit and cracked patent-leather shoes, sauntered down the road, looking as conspicuous as a crow at a garden party, and somehow sinister, though lacking the strength to be sinister. Good god, how could Jim be so completely blind? The creature might be amusing, but that he was a fake, a first-class typical Greenwich Village fake and poseur, there couldn’t be the smallest doubt in the world. And obviously sponging on Jim — as, of course, others had done before him — without even the redeeming virtue of believing in him. An artist! Nothing so simple and honest as a painter. Naturally. One of those artists who would scorn to learn such humble essentials as the rudiments of drawing and perspective, and dismiss them as old-fashioned. The short-cut, every time!

And that houseful of Jim’s, with this addition, and Kitty and Lorna not getting on with each other, and no food!

And now this little twirp riding all morning in a taxi, thirty dollars’ worth, at Jim’s expense, and then just smirking about it, as if it were all nothing but a joke — which in a way, of course, it was! — and already thinking of nothing but his little boast about it, the exploit which could be reported to his epicene friends in New York, on a postcard, or more likely by telegram! Regarding the country, too, as a mere subject for the obscene pleasantries of the cosmopolitan lounge lizards and lounge Lizzies of his dirty little cafés, his dives and ramshackle studios — good god, how sickening it was, if it wasn’t all somehow so dreadfully inevitable! Exactly what would, and must, happen to Jim — the just fate of the generous and misguidedly good. Damn!

He went in by the kitchen door, from the garden, not greeting Chattahoochee, who blinked up at him amber-eyed from under the dead plum tree. Enid went past him, ignoring him, carrying two plates up the steps to the dining room. The table, he saw, had already been set, and Buzzer, at her own table, was busy eating her lunch.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was interrupted.”

He sat down opposite her, and as she made no answer, merely frowned down at the potato salad which she was serving, he added, smiling: “By a visitor.”

She sat back in her chair, looked at him quickly and fully, dropping her hands in her lap.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m afraid I saw your visitor!”

“Oh. I suppose you looked out of the window. And what exactly do you mean by ‘afraid’?”

“I happened to be looking. I didn’t look.”

“And I suppose of course you listened?”

“I couldn’t very well help it, could I?”

“Well, just what do you mean by ‘afraid’?”

“Need you be so hypocritical?”

“Hypocritical!”

“You know quite well what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“I mean that this is the last straw. Absolutely the last straw. When it’s got to the point where our house is to be used as a convenience, and a sort of accommodation address for loathesome objects like that, and criminals, I draw the line. I’ve waited all morning for you to come to some decision of your own about this, Timothy. I’ve waited very patiently, but as you apparently prefer simply to evade your responsibilities I’ve had to come to a decision myself.”

“Mummy—”

“Yes, Buzzer, what is it?”

“Daddy and I went to the secret place! And then we were Indians, with tomahawks—”

“Wasn’t that fun.”

“And I built a house, too—”

“That was lovely. Now eat your lunch like a good girl.”

“I am eating it!”

“Ee, dear, I’m as sorry about that as you are, and I didn’t like the young man at all, and I regret as much as you do that Jim’s taste in friends is so peculiar; but even so, is there anything so very terrible in it?”

“Nothing terrible in it! To have our house and name known in criminal circles in New York—”

“Criminal circles! Good heavens, Ee—”

“Criminal circles. Are you so afraid to face the fact?”

“Of course I’m not afraid to face the fact. I simply see it in a different light. You’re wildly exaggerating the importance of the whole thing. Merely because a harmless little character drives up to our door in a taxi — what’s so awful about that? I think it was rather funny!”

“Oh, you do.”

“Yes, I do. Damned funny.”

“Then I take it you’re not going to do anything about it.”

“Do anything about it? Why should I?”

“I see. It doesn’t matter to you that the neighbors should see these criminals coming to our door, or know that we’re associating with thieves, and those appalling women—”

“Ee, darling, I regret some aspects of it as much as you do, but can’t we be a little more flexible and humane about it than that? Surely, we haven’t got to take our opinions from our neighbors!”

“So that’s how you see it?”

“It seems to me that view is not without its importance. We can’t model our lives according to what the Puringtons or Rileys think. Or is that what you propose to do?”

“I simply propose to safeguard our good name and position, mine and Buzzer’s, that’s all—”

“Of course. Even if you have to sacrifice my integrity to do it. Or my friendships.”

“Integrity!”

“Mummy—?”

“Buzzer, darling, you mustn’t interrupt when Mummy’s talking—”

“But I’ve finished. I’ve eaten all my potato, see?”

“Have you, darling? All right then, come here and I’ll take your bib off, and then you can go upstairs and have your nap.”

“And can I take kingy and queeny?”

“Yes, you can take kingy and queeny if you like, but remember to be nice and quiet, won’t you?”

“I’ll be as quiet as a mouse!”

“That’s right. Run along, now.”

She tiptoed quickly from the room, the shells tightly clasped in her hands. They listened with averted eyes to the footsteps slowly climbing the hall stairs, hurrying over the floor above, then Enid rose from the table. The preoccupied little hum again, the eyes hurt and angry. She took up her plate and went halfway to the kitchen with it, stopped stiffly, a little awkwardly, but with a kind of angry grace, too, turning her head curtly toward him, the green eyes flashing at him over the held plate, the plate held like a challenge.

“I’ve come to my decision,” she said, “if you’d like to hear it?”

“Well?”

“If you don’t give these people up, while they’re here, I shall go back to New Bedford, and take Buzzer with me.”

“Oh, an ultimatum.”

“If you want to call it that?”

She smiled brilliantly, triumphantly.

“You’re going to force me to give them up.”

“As long as they’re living here. I have no choice.”

“And after that? Am I to be permitted to see them in New York? On neutral ground, so to speak?”

“I think we can consider that later.”

“Oh, we can, can we! That’s very kind of you.”

“And I think you’d better come to your decision today. Otherwise I shall plan to go to New Bedford in the morning. I think it would be as well if you would come to your decision now. It seems to me you’ve had quite time enough!”

“You think—you think—you think—!”

The bitter words, bitterer than somehow he had expected them to be, were addressed to the vanishing green back, the slight green shoulders, the self-consciously upright head, as she went down the steps to the kitchen. He was sitting rigid in his chair, the knife and fork held hard in his hands, and for a moment, staring towards the doorway through which she had just gone, it was as if he had suffered an eclipse, he saw nothing. So she had beaten him, had she — she was going to beat him, was she — she thought she was going to beat him! With that triumphant exit, too, that self-righteous all-conquering know-it-all air, that air of bristling virtue, in every line and feature of her! He felt ashamed, stifled, it was as if something in his breast had suddenly curdled, but as if, too, he must quickly find something to do, something for his hands to do, something violent. The shadow of defeat — it would be impossible to accept it like that, it would be unendurable, the whole shape of his life would be forever wrong and unbearable. Somehow, even now, today, some dark twist must be given to the shaping of the event, some neat knifelike turn, which would at least salvage for him a scrap of pride, a vestige of dignity and power. She must be hurt — she must be injured. And if he was going to be defeated in this, he must see to it — was that it? — that in other respects he was vindicated, justified. He would make her pay for it, by god, he would make her see that he wasn’t the only offending party. He would give her something to think about for the rest of her smug little life! Beautiful, yes, but there were limits!

He sat still, staring now across the gray room and through the little window towards the Puringtons’, past the little dead plum tree, heard Enid pouring the hot water from the kettle into the dishpan, refilling the kettle under the tap, replacing the kettle on the oil stove with a clash. It was her clear suggestion to him that she was waiting, that he was late and delaying her, that he was sulking in defeat, or doing it deliberately to annoy her. Well, let her wait. He finished his potato salad meticulously, angrily, precisely, taking unnecessarily small bites. Yes, let her wait. But the oppressive ring closed in on him, he must do something, say something, or go somewhere — to sit here any longer would put him subtly at a disadvantage. He got up, carried the salt and pepper to the china cupboard in the corner — the silver-gilt salt cellar, the sworled silver pepper shaker — replaced the unused silver in the top drawer of the mahogany lowboy, and the two soiled napkins, looked slowly around the dining room to see if there was anything else he might do, then picked up his plate and tumbler and went down into the kitchen lean-to. The low-ceilinged whitewashed room was dark in the overcast light that came from the one window over the sink, and Enid, already washing the few dishes, looked up at him as if almost amusedly from the steaming dishpan, but he avoided her eyes, merely put down the plate and tumbler on the drainboard.

“You’re in rather a rush, all of a sudden, aren’t you?” he said.

“I wasn’t aware of it. It seems to me that it was you who were in a rush, until of course it suited you for reasons of your own to change your mind!”

“Need that have prevented your staying at the table until I had finished?”

“Why should I? Are you by any chance aware that I’ve had to eat my last three meals practically alone? You’re hardly the one to complain.”

“Was that any fault of mine?”

“Of course not, you’re never at fault, are you? You certainly didn’t need to go out with George last night—”

“Oh, no, one never must be polite—”

“To one’s wife, no! You can leave her alone as much as you like.”

“Of course. That goes without saying.”

“And are you going to help me with the dishes?”

“I don’t think I will, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I don’t feel very much like it, in the circumstances.”

“Oh! So you’re going to be ungenerous, too, into the bargain!”

“Ungenerous! Do you know I haven’t had five minutes today for my own work? Not that you care about it. And tomorrow and next day in town — don’t make me laugh.”

He smiled bitterly, opening the garden door, holding the screen door open with his foot. She turned towards him, her wet hands held up before her, her eyes wide, handsome, fiercely satirical.

“And may I ask,” she said, “where you are going, then? I suppose you’re going to work in the garden?”

“I’m just going out. It doesn’t seem to me to matter much! And if I want to work in the garden, or anywhere else that suits me, I certainly will!”

She stood still, her hands still held oddly up before her, as he turned away and went out, letting the screen door clack sharply shut behind him, he was aware as if through his back that she had not moved, still stood glaring contemptuously after him, her whole attitude one of helpless rage — and it gave him a kind of base satisfaction, as of a blow struck and not replied to, to turn towards the pump house and simply leave her there, entranced by her own fury. Let her stare, let her glare, let her rage. He had met her halfway long enough, it was her turn to worry now, the shoe would be on the other foot! If she thought he was as easy as all that, at the mercy of her beauty, or his love for her, to be whistled to and fro like a servant, a shadow, she would have another think coming. He opened the pump house door, looked down at the neat little engine, unseeing. But, of course, Binney had run it, no water was needed. Still, he could pretend to be examining the shut-off valve, for she would now be watching him from the window, watching for any sign of weakness — and after a moment he could saunter down to the foot of the garden, look at the lilacs, the site of the new cesspool, the river, the weather.

Buzzer’s little garland of pebbles still lay on the wet grass by the woodshed door, and on the floor of the wood-shed, just inside the open door, the box of toenail shells, the box of pink boat shells; and beyond these, by the empty, or all but empty, coalbin, the rainbow-hued sawhorse, on which Karl Roth had squeezed out his remnants of tubes. Long ago, far away, a year ago — and if Karl hadn’t come then, and hadn’t, half as a joke, asked Jim to run down for the night, none of this would have happened. Jim would never have fallen in love with this village, these marshes, would never have come here again on his so peculiar mission, everything would still be at peace. Or would it? There was a perverse fate in these things, perhaps it all would have happened anyway, and the whole business of Jim was only an accessory — had it all really started with Nora? I think I know how it is with you, I think you will know how it is with me.…

He stood still; for a moment it was as if he had stopped breathing. He had a sudden sharp vision of Nora, so sharp as to make him feel empty-armed, empty-handed — blue-eyed shameless Nora, lying on the couch in the half-darkened room, and laughing as she lifted one leg in the air to pull on a stocking — looking at him out of the corners of her eyes, and laughing, the garter clasp bright silver against the whiteness of her skin. But suppose Enid really left him — suppose it came to the worst — would he really want to marry Nora? No. There was no question of that, there had never been any question of that. It was a different thing, as they had both known from the outset, and wholly without illusions. A different thing. He had always loved Enid — as who could better testify than Nora herself, who had always accepted the fact? By god, what a wonderful irony that was, if only Enid could be told! The supreme immorality — or was it a supreme morality? No, no morals in the bloodstream, no morals in hand or claw or mouth — it was a shambles. Fidelity — there was no such thing, or only relative.…

He lifted down the shovel from its nail on the woodshed wall, scooped a little earth from the lilac border, sprinkled it tenderly in the crescent-shaped hoofmarks on the lawn, where Terence’s horse had stood pawing, filled them in and patted them down. There — the lawn would be all right even if nothing else was. The house might collapse and everything else with it, his world be blown to smithereens, but the hoofmarks of Terence’s horse on the lawn would be obliterated. What the hell did the grass care? The uncut hair of graves.

He was hanging the shovel up again, when he heard her steps behind him, the heavy soft swish of the corduroy skirt. She stood on the grass before the open door, facing him, dark against the darkening afternoon, her arms jauntily akimbo. He made to go past her, merely allowing his eyes to slide unperceptively over hers, but she moved as he moved, turning, pivoting, and said:

“And another thing. I think it would be only decent—”

He went past her without any answer, walked slowly to the top of the terrace wall, stooped there to examine the subsidence of wet fresh sand where the new cesspool was to be. He felt of it with his hand, as if idly, appraisingly, and saw, out of the corner of his eye, that, after a moment’s dismay, and an awkward balance of hesitation, she had decided to follow him, was coming very slowly towards him, her hands still on her hips. The steps gingerly, self-conscious, on the wet grass, like a slow kind of dancing. Graceful, but infuriating. And standing above him, looking down at him, she repeated:

“I said there was another thing.”

“Well, I heard you!”

“I think it would be only decent, when you inform Jim Connor, if you will be loyal enough not to try to put the blame on me. I think it ought to be put to him as your decision.”

“Oh, you do.”

“Yes, I do.”

He stood up, smiling grimly.

“I’ll do absolutely nothing of the sort! And aren’t you taking quite a lot for granted? I haven’t said yet, have I, that I would inform Jim Connor of anything. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

She was silent, the flecked green eyes faintly narrowed, the lips barely parted. For the first time she appeared to be a little taken aback and a little shaken; she was trying to fathom him. She had folded her arms across her breast, stood slightly swaying.

“And now,” he added, “if you don’t too much mind I’ll try to get in the daily ten minutes’ work that is allowed to me. Or five. If you can spare me that much!”

He went past her again, smiling. Her lips were now pressed tight, the mouth beautiful and hard, and for the merest fraction of a second, as he passed, their eyes, engaging, locked in the purest and cruelest hate — it was an exchange of ice. There! Let her laugh that off. Let her work that out, in her bedtime thinking! And write to mamma about it. And go around crying on the public bosom. And put it in the papers. And tell Mabel and George and Paul. Let her stand there, like a statue of protest, under the dark sky, waiting for rain — it was not for nothing that she had a sense of the dramatic, and knew how damned handsome she was — but for once, by god, what a good thing it would be if she got her belly full of it! Let it pour.

In the studio, he turned the easel to the light, laid out the palette and the neat row of brushes — but what was the use. Impossible to concentrate now, to steady one’s nerves in this turmoil, to peel one’s eyes of anger and hate — it was like a red film over everything.

“Van Gogh,” he said aloud, “my hat!”

The church clock was striking — Terence’s blue wagon rattled past along the street, Terence standing upright in it, the reins easily held, like a charioteer — old Mr. Fosdick, the town librarian, trudged by on his way to the library, an apple in his hand — thinking no doubt of his lost career in Rio de Janeiro, the twenty years sacrificed for nothing, looking after a shiftless bedridden brother — the phonograph in the Puringtons’ squawked its “In between-time, in the meantime” for the thousandth time, and then was silent, for the resumed dripping of the fog from the trees — it was all hopeless.

When at last the hall door opened, with its two-toned squeak, and Enid, still calm and implacable, asked him, in the blandest of voices, “Well, have you made up your mind?” he could stand it no longer. He merely said, over his shoulder, putting as much venom into it as he could possibly concentrate:

“Will you please get out?”

It was like a new voice between them. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before. And in the second before she turned, he saw in her eyes, her mouth, her whole face, even in the queer gesture of her hand on the glass doorknob, a something new and unknown, something hurt, which he had never yet seen there. It was as if a gulf had opened between them, and as if she had become a stranger.