Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

III

“I’m going out,” he said into the darkened room, through the half-opened door. “I’m going over to Jim Connor’s. To deliver your tender message.”

She made no answer. She was lying on her bed again, this time with her elbows raised, her hands above her head on the pillow, and her eyes (though in the obscure light he couldn’t be sure) turned up towards the sloping ceiling. Was there a handkerchief in one of her hands? Had she been crying?

“Did you hear me?” he said.

“Yes, I heard you.”

Her voice was averted, flat, stifled. She hadn’t moved.

“All right. And I don’t know when I’ll be back. If they should ask me to stay for supper, I think perhaps I will—just this once!”

He waited a moment for an answer, leaning against the doorjamb, but, as he got none, he went slowly down the stairs, through the studio, and into the tiny entry hall, where he took his oilskin hat and slicker from the wooden peg.

Ratio Binney’s chuckle of thunder — it was a murmur, rather — for a second time ran softly from the southwest round the sky, a continuous but stumbling sound; and when he stepped out into the street he found that it had already begun to rain a little — a drizzle so gentle, however, that its sound, even on the heaped leaves, was barely audible. The afternoon was no brighter, for if the fog had at last really lifted, the clouds had taken its place. The omens were all for a soft, settled rain, an all-nighter — in some ways the best of Cape weather. It would be good for the lilacs, bed the roots down, wash off the sand. They would settle, take their permanent place in the garden, their permanent place in the earth, and get themselves ready for the spring.

The spring! But would there be such a thing as spring?

He shut his teeth bitterly on the unspoken phrase, as if indeed he were biting the words, biting them to shreds, and walked slowly, unseeing, or only automatically seeing, past the white house, the red house, the house with the cupola; the house with the little cement-lined garden pool; the cottage with the catalpa tree (now naked) and the painted swing. Deserted, autumnal, resigned — the deserted village. The Scudders’ windmill yawed and moaned, a sad minor note, on top of its red wooden tower; he looked up at it and away, kicking the sodden leaves on the path — in no time at all it would be winter, there would be snow. Catching the early train, too, on pitch-dark mornings, Mr. Murphy coming over with a lantern to ring the doorbell, shout up at the window — standing there with his lantern in the snow, the collar of his sheepskin coat turned up, wearing a cap with earmuffs. And then, at the forlorn little station in the woods, the brightly lighted train coming slowly round the bend, its voice crying mournfully over the frozen trees, the bell clanging and steam hissing as it stopped by the frost-rimed unlighted boards of the platform: the dirty little train with its early morning card-players, heavy-eyed businessmen, high-school children on their way to school, and the Boston papers. Crawling through the winter morning twilight to Boston, to the gray slush-filled streets of Boston, the subway, the smelly crowds, and the everlasting school, the Frazer School of Fine and Applied Arts. Another winter of it, another year of it, the time for his own work always becoming shorter, perhaps at last vanishing entirely. Good god, what a vision.

“If you can’t do it with your eye, use a plumb line.”

“Miss Shea, why will you try to fill up every corner with extraneous objects?”

“Fine feeling for form and rhythm in that one, yes, but look — the color is so heavy it kills it.”

“My dear girl, exaggerate only for emphasis. Won’t you try to remember that?”

“All right now. Jump your eye down from the shoulder blade to the patella. You can see then how much your figure is out of balance. If you can’t draw, Miss Casani, how in god’s name do you expect to paint? Draw with the brush, draw with the brush.”

“Retouching varnish might help some of those dead spots, but remember you can’t paint a picture with nothing but varnish!”

“Empathy, empathy, empathy—”

“Miss Bloom, that brush of yours needs a shave. Can’t you see what it’s doing? Try a razor blade on it, cut those crooked hairs off.”

“And for goodness’ sake, hold your brush as if it were something more than the stub of a pencil!”

The dreadful roundelay of trite phrases, over and over again, day after day — plastic form, linear perspective, volume, weight, mass, tone — solidity, color-rhythm, luminosity, the Chinese vertical perspective — kinetic, static, calligrapher — balance, proportion — in Christ’s name, when you got right down to it, what the devil did they all mean? A pitiful pettifogging dishevelment of a process which must be a process, and an instinctive and automatic one, a fluid and unanalyzed action, or nothing. Paint, on a square of canvas — or a vision, which had somehow extended itself through the hand. And in between, the muddied sty of the teacher.

But where, exactly, did a picture come from?

BAKER STREET: TOWN LANDING.

He turned down the wet lane, his slicker rustling, the oilskin hat in his hand. The tall house, with its weathered shingles and heavy stone porch, stood gray and forbidding against the leaden river, the porch was deserted, save for a single rocking chair, bright red, tilted against the wall — not a soul, not a sound. He stood listening at the foot of the steps for a minute, heard inside the house a rising murmur of voices, then walked softly down to the water’s edge and Paul’s canoe. The ribbed floor of it, usually spick and span in its bright varnish, was extraordinarily muddy — something very peculiar must have happened to it — certainly not Paul’s doing. A sodden cushion, too, which they had neglected to take in. How disgustingly typical. It reminded him, for no reason, of old Pop Amos and his newly painted boat, beside which he had sat all summer on the shore, in a kitchen chair, reluctant to put fresh work to use — horrified at the thought of that exquisite sheen exposed to the ravages of salt water and mud. Not like this! He pushed the canoe before him down into the rain-pricked water, took the wet paddle from beneath the rear thwart, stepped in and shoved off. The tide was coming in, nearly full, he could drift up to the bridge, and then paddle back. Time to think.

Yes, I heard you, she had said, yes, I heard you. And with what a voice, too — that stifled and averted voice, pity-demanding. Yes, by god, now that she was going to have her way, she wanted to be pitied, too — was that it? Well, let her look for it. Let her go and look for it!

But where did a picture come from?

From a dream perhaps: from the bloodstream perhaps: from memory perhaps: an observed trifle which touched down quickly and magically into the unconscious, like the rain-ringed water, the rain-seethed water, round the drifting canoe — its varnished yellow stem, like the stem of a gondola, nodding and notching against the deserted hulks of the fishing boats on the opposite shore, against the sand bar, against the granite pier of the two-spanned bridge. That curved stem, brightly swaying in the gray light, and beyond it the red iron girders of the bridge — to what did they not invite, to what did they not lead? To the bright open hand of childhood, the rain-filled eye of childhood — or tear-filled? A nucleus smaller and brighter than a tear; and how astonishingly more fecund and powerful — the infinitesimal droplet of wild rain, wild water, growing, whirling, expanding, until it should become an all-containing sphere of creative and whirling light, a microcosm of living shape! Yes, a feeling, first — more tenuous than shadow, tenderer and more elusive than light — less substanital far than tentacle or palpacle — softer than an ache, vaguer than a longing — the seed of a design that should be, or become, oneself, as if one’s heart were to begin all over again, from the very beginning of the world, and seek for itself a better and stranger, but at the same time more intimate shape, a shape deeply truer to oneself — was it something like that? And one’s love too, was that not there also? Must it not be there? As of the first leaf that one ever loved, the first sunbeam one ever saw on a wall, or on the coarse bark of a tree, the first rain that one ever walked out into alone. And the terrifying maternal dark, which filled so much of the world — that echoless or almost echoless dark, fathomless, tunneling everywhere, even through sunlight, tunneling between hour and hour, between one minute and the next, so that at last nothing at all seemed to remain solid, not even oneself: yes, it came out of this, or went into it, or both — the first leaf was seen against that dark, separate from it, and it was to the brilliant and beloved, and so isolated first leaf, that one attempted to return. It was a celebration, at one and the same time, of love and terror.

The piled granite blocks of the central pier were right before him, rough, whitely barnacled, the swift and silent current had borne him close, he could see through the deep clear water, green-wavering, the red fronds of sponge that grew at their base, combed by the tide. He remembered Buzzer’s extraordinary discovery, by the sea wall at the foot of the garden, that the barnacles were feeding, combing the tide with quick minute thread-like filaments, licking in their tiny morsels of sea food — he must turn back. He dipped the wet paddle, the flat blade cleaving the water with a powerful swirling chuckle, a slow skirling eddy of vortical sound, swung the canoe round and shorewards, careening, out of the main current and into the shallows. The Indian stroke, the hands turning inward and downward, so that the bow was driven straight — good lord, how long ago he had learned that, on the Assabet River! Now he could look up from the river to his own sea wall, and beyond this the terrace wall, the new lilacs, the white woodshed, the dormered windows of the cottage itself. The little wet garden was deserted. Not even Chattachoochee. Buzzer was still lying down, singing to herself over her shells. And, of course, Enid—

A car rattled quickly over the bridge behind him, going down the Cape; in the silence that followed he could hear again the faint whisper, the delicately needled seethe, of the fine drizzle on the water. Thunder, for the third time — Ratio Binney’s chuckle of thunder — ran somewhere behind the sullen clouds in the southwest, to which he lifted his eyes, but there was no lightning. It might rain all night, but there would be no “tempest.” The bare boughs of the silver-leaf poplars, above the low roofs of the village, were yellow, yellow-green, lizard-green — something might be done with them. They suggested something, reminded him of something — something urgent and lightninglike, but slow and cancerous, too. Was this the first leaf again? The first hand seen in the dark? The first grasp, first clutch, in the maternal nothing? Hands against the sky, claws against the sky.…

Karl Roth was standing on the fringe of beach, waiting there by the stone arches under the verandah, a dirty raincoat flung capelike over his round shoulders, the white face already sneering, the queer yellow head bare to the drizzle. He stood silent, disapproving, as the canoe rustled up past him on the sand, driven by the last powerful stroke, then said:

“Well, if it isn’t our Mr. Kane. And just when we thought he’d ratted on us.”

“Meaning what?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing, gat-all, Mr. Kane! I just like to sneer.”

“Yeah? Well, you’d better save up your sneers, Karl, till you’ve got something to sneer at. You’ll have plenty. Is Jim inside?”

“Yes, sir, just when we thought he’d weaseled on us! Sure Jim’s inside. Where else would he be? It’s old home week, didn’t you know? And we’re having a housewarming.”

“I hope that means those gals of yours have got you a meal.”

“A meal! Don’t make me laugh. If you want to see something funny take a gander at our kitchen. Just take a peek when nobody’s looking. I’m not squeamish, but—! No, the girls have gone on strike. We’re having a stinko of a row. You’re just in time to give us a hand. Come on in, the water’s fine.”

Kitty’s voice, wailing, had just risen to a shrill “No!” as they opened the door. She faced them with open red mouth from the dinner table in the middle of the big room, where she was sitting — her black hair was disordered, the small dark eyes swollen as with weeping, she looked pale and distraught, harrowed. The sound of a piano came briskly through the open door from the room beyond, the verandah room — Lorna, no doubt, ploughing through a Chopin Etude — and Jim, obviously very tired, sat in a rocking chair by the littered fireplace. The cap was pulled morosely down over the brown eyes, he was smoking a cigar. He waved the cigar, without getting up, and said wearily:

“Hello, kid. I’m glad you came.”

“Sure, you are. Ain’t we all? Mr. Kane’s come slumming, he wants to see how the other half lives. He wants to see our kitchen.”

Kitty turned fiercely to Karl, shaking her hair, and said:

“Shut up, will you? Until you’ve got something to say.”

“Shut up yourself! It’s about time you cut the yammer. And telling me won’t make me, either.”

“Would you like a drink, Tip? There’s plenty of gin, and plenty of glasses there — all dirty. Take your pick.”

The combination living room and dining room was cold, and incredibly disordered — a fire of miscellaneous fragments burned sadly in the fireplace. a heap of wood from a broken box lay on the green-tiled hearth at Jim’s feet — newspapers and cigarette ends littered the floor, dead matches, a hairpin — and the dinner table, with the oil lamp standing in the middle, was covered, simply covered, with dirty dishes, stacked or single, except for a small space before Kitty, which she had apparently cleared. There, between her arms, she had placed — for no apparent reason — a sheet of paper and a pencil. She stared down at these, her sallow cheeks on her fists, her eyes almost closed. The piano in the next room stopped; for a moment they were all silent.

“Where’s your new friend?”

“Who? Louis?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, he’s gone for a walk. He said he wanted to see the sea!”

“He’s welcome to it! If I never see the sea again—”

“He’s probably hungry by this time.”

“Was that a crack?”

“Sure, it was a crack. Christ, if two females between them can’t start a fire without burning the house down, or think of anything to eat but canned corned beef — you’re a couple of dumb clucks.”

“Shut up! It was your idea, wasn’t it? You’re the one that wants to stay here, aren’t you?”

Karl, the raincoat still wrapped round his shoulders, stretched himself out on the wicker sofa at the other side of the fireplace, opposite Jim, and crossed his knees. The pale unshaven face, the lashless eyes, chicken-lidded, were turned long sufferingly toward the ceiling. He looked sick.

“Yes, kid, you certainly came at the psychological moment.”

“In the nicotine, as they say!”

“You’d think, Tip, with a nice house like this, and all these comforts, and the river, and this nice peaceful countryside, and even a canoe—”

“Yeah, tell him about the canoe!”

“—that four people could be happy, wouldn’t you? The nicest house in the town, with nice furniture, a real home—”

“How does it feel, Mister Kane, to be in a real home? Tell him about the canoe, Jim.”

Karl with his head back on a pillow, cackled obscenely.

“But I never expected anything like this. No, sir, I never expected anything like this. Look at it. Look at us. We no sooner get here than we start fighting. We come for a nice holiday and rest—”

“Who’s supposed to get the rest? Who, Jim Connor, I’d like to know? If it’s a fire in the fireplace you want, that’s all right, you can start that, but if it’s a fire in the kitchen stove—”

“That isn’t the point. We’re supposed to co-operate.”

“Co-operate! Co-operate! Oh, my gard—”

She laughed shrilly and briefly, reached for the half-filled gin bottle, poured gin rashly into a tumbler, added a little water to it, and took a drink. She set down the tumbler rather hard, and a little at random, and at the same moment the piano began again in the next room. This time it was a succession of scales, too fast, imprecise — the effect somehow viscous and slimy. A concert pianist! She certainly had a long way to go. Like Bucholtz, she probably regarded herself as an artist, not as a pianist — nothing so simple and straightforward as that. Did she and Jim occupy the same room? Perhaps that was the explanation. Poor Jim.

“Co-operation. Where do you get that stuff, Jim? You may have noticed, Mister Kane, that our friend Mister Connor is sometimes just a little naïve.”

“I mean it. Co-operation.”

“Yeah. And did you ever know women to co-operate? Since when. Women have only one idea. And that is—”

“What do you know about women, I’d like to know!”

“Plenty. I haven’t lived with you four years for nothing.”

“Lived with me! You mean on me. If I hadn’t worked my eyes out as a stenographer to support you—”

“You knew what to expect, didn’t you? You haven’t got any kick coming. You can quit any time, as far as I’m concerned. I got along all right without you, didn’t I? You give me a pain.”

“Women, women, women! You mean slaves, you and your theories about women. Somebody to work for you and go to bed with, that’s all you mean.”

“You get a position out of it, don’t you?”

“A position. Would you listen to that. Yes, the position of admiring your genius, I suppose. That’s all the position I get.”

“You thought that was good enough when you married me. You knew what the chances were. Why don’t you stick to your bargain? The trouble with you women is that you’re nothing but receptacles.”

“Receptacles! Oh, my gard—”

“Did you ever notice that, Jim? Nothing but receptacles. Yeah. You give, but you don’t get. You put things in, but you don’t get nothing back. No matter how you dig your toes in, you can’t satisfy those babies! No, sir, by god, you can’t. What’s their idea? Just security, just safety. And to get themselves all dressed up like a plush horse. Jesus Christ, they give me the pip.”

“Oh, cut it, Karl. Kitty means all right. I know how she feels about this—”

“If you do, why don’t you do something about it!”

“You see, Tip, old kid, I’m afraid the girls are a little upset by your friend’s warning. That’s what the trouble is.”

“It isn’t that at all.”

“Yes, and I’m damned sorry, Jim.”

“How is your conscience, Mister Kane? How does it feel to be carrying such a burden of responsibility. I hear that exquisite wife of yours has been blabbing where the blabbing does the most good.”

“Shut up! And you leave Enid out of this. Don’t pay any attention to him, Tip, Enid was perfectly right, he’s only looking for an excuse to start a quarrel. Maybe he’ll start something he can’t finish. Like the time the Hudson Dusters beat him up. Oh, my gard, will I ever forget it. The way they dragged him out of that bar by the feet, looking like a sick rabbit — a lot of fight you showed then, didn’t you? Like hell you did. It’s all right bullying women—”

“Take it easy, Kitty—”

“And, oh, boy, what a pair of black eyes! It did me good — and carrying on like a baby about it, afraid to go outdoors for a week. Oh, my gard, I wish I could get out of here, I’m so sick of this place. What is there to do here? I’m so tired of listening to these damned sea gulls and blackbirds—”

“Them ain’t blackbirds, you mental giant. Them’s crows.”

“And this sea gets on my nerves. I’m going to get out, I tell you — I’m going to get out, I’ve got to get out of here or I’ll go crazy. I can’t stand it!”

She pushed her chair back suddenly, jumped to her feet, the tears starting from her eyes, dashed a tear from one cheek with the back of her hand, then went quickly, hysterically, across the long room, and ran up the stairs in the far corner. A moment later a door slammed. The piano, undisturbed, continued its remorseless inaccurate scales, slurred, uneven, repetitive. There was a sort of vicious eagerness in the ascending notes, an ugly greed, as of an unappeasable appetite for sheer noise. The fire snapped and flung out a spark, all three were silent, listening, and then Jim Connor said:

“That’s the way it’s been, Tip. That’s the way it’s been all day.”

“I think you were a little hard on her, Karl.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. I was a little hard on her. But it’s the only way to treat her when she goes hysterical. And don’t I know it. She’ll get over it; she always does. You just have to spank her, and then she has a good cry and gets over it. She’ll come back as sweet as pie.”

“Maybe. But I think this is a little different. Maybe you’d better go up and talk to her.”

“No. Let her have her cry first.”

“By god, I’m so hungry! I wonder if there are any of those sardines left?”

“There was one in the kitchen, by the sink — I saw it with my own eyes. But Lorna may have got it, I wouldn’t be surprised. One little sardine. First come, first served in this house. What we need is the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I wish to god there was a delicatessen in this dump. What couldn’t I do to a wiener schnitzel! Boy. Or a nice big plate of spaghetti.”

“That’s what it’s been like all day, Tip — first Lorna, and then Kitty. They want to go back to New York. And I’ve got this place for six months, I’ve paid the rent for six months. And now your friend Paul’s sore about his canoe—”

“Tell him about the canoe.”

“Well, what about the canoe. I noticed there was a lot of mud in it.”

“Mud! You call that mud, Mister Kane? You can’t ever have seen any mud. You amaze me. Tell him about it, Jim.”

“I don’t really think it was our fault, kid, I don’t really think it was, but Paul seems almost to think we did it on purpose.”

“Yeah, and is Paul burned up! Is he frying! Go on, tell him the whole story.”

“What happened?”

“Well, kid, we were supposed to go up there yesterday in the canoe. Paul asked us to come up, and told us how to get there. And it seems there was a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding! Am I laughing?”

“We don’t know anything about boats — so he gave us directions. He said when we got up to the place opposite the golf links — you know, where the lagoon begins — there would be a little narrow place in the river, and then it would broaden out again. He said it would be too shallow on the left, or too much eelgrass — is that it, eelgrass? — or something, and so he told us to keep the canoe as close as we could to the right-hand shore. And then follow that shore till we got to his boathouse. See? Well, we did exactly as he told us—”

“I’m afraid Mister Kane will be a little contemptuous? I’m afraid he’ll think we’re just a pair of landlubbers — eh, Mister Kane?”

“We did exactly as he told us. But when we tried to keep as close to the shore as all that, well, there wasn’t enough water even for a canoe — so we had to get out.”

“You had to get out!”

“Yeah, we had to get out. We ran aground on the mud. So we had to get out and push it.”

“Push it! Good lord.”

“Yeah, push it. Karl took the front and I took the back. But we didn’t realize there was so much mud, that it would be as soft as that — gosh, we sunk in up to our knees. We had to pull off our shoes and stockings, then, and put them in the canoe — it took us over an hour. I should think it must have been damned near two miles.”

“Yeah. Two miles as the mud flies!”

“At the end, we finally got to some deep water again, and got back in, but by that time the damage was done. And your friend Paul was pretty sore. It seems we had misunderstood him—”

“And how. Oh, boy, this is killing me!”

“—and that he didn’t mean us to stick as close as all that to the bank, but just to follow it, for guidance, you see? But how could we know that? He said the other side was too shallow or something — by god, kid, but it certainly was a mess! And then we stuck our feet in the kitchen oven to dry—”

“And did Paul like that? Did your exquisite friend Paul like that? He did not. You’d have thought we were desecrating the place. I fear your friend Paul is just a shade dainty, if you know what I mean?”

“Dainty! I never knew it.”

“Yes, and it seemed to me too that he was just a little too curious, and asked just a few too many questions. He was exceedingly inquisitive. Did you notice that, Jim?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You mean to say you didn’t notice that?”

“What sort of questions?”

“Oh, he was very cagey, your friend Paul was. He wanted to know all sorts of things. I’m afraid Jim is a little naïve, he fell for it. Questions about his profession, questions about his technique.”

“His technique?”

“Sure, his technique. What you and I do with a camel’s hair brush, and Jim does with legerdemain. Do you get me? The technique of redistribution. Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy — do I amuse myself to death! Am I burned alive! And you sure had him fascinated, Jim — Yeah, he was all hopped up with the idea that at last he was seeing life in the raw. You’d have thought he was entertaining a couple of Apaches. I think, Mister Kane, he was even a little frightened. And that reminds me — don’t you sometimes feel a little out of your element with us, a little out of your depth? You Bostonians are so godawful refined—”

“Don’t be a damned fool, Karl. Why in hell should I feel out of my element? I always take my own element with me!”

“Ah, very neat, very neat. But a little unconvincing?”

“Not at all.”

“Yes, I’ve occasionally felt that you were just a shade self-conscious with us, just a shade uncomfortable. I’ve noticed it when you were in New York. How is it you Bostonians keep so exquisitely innocent. Or is it a refined kind of hypocrisy, Mister Kane, and are you keeping things up your sleeve? Maybe that’s it. Maybe we’d be surprised if we really knew you.”

“Maybe you would. Maybe you will.”

“But don’t let’s be unpleasant.”

“Were you being unpleasant?”

“Ah, perhaps I wasn’t. Sometimes I don’t know my own subtlety.”

“Yeah. I prefer your subtlety when it’s on canvas! It isn’t quite so ignoble.”

“Ignoble! Ouch! I led with my chin, that time. Yeah — you should never lead with your chin — or with your heart. Never lead with the heart! Well, I guess I’ll go up and see if I can calm Kitty down — why don’t you tell Mister Kane about your technique, Jim. It might amuse him!”

He got up slowly, indifferently, the dirty raincoat still held shroudlike over his shoulders, blinked the lashless blue eyes, smiling, with an affectation of cynicism which couldn’t wholly conceal the essential beauty — though a wasted beauty — of the pallid ascetic face, and then went quietly, the raincoat rustling, across the room and up the unpainted pine stairs.

“Karl gets my goat when he talks like that.”

“I think this place and Kitty have got on his nerves. He’s been crabbing everybody and everything. Don’t pay any attention to him, kid. When he sees you don’t mind, he quits.”

“Yes, I know. If only he weren’t such a damned good painter—”

“You think he is, don’t you?”

“Brilliant, yes — a real poetic genius for it. Too soon to say what’ll he do, of course, and he certainly ought to work a lot harder—”

“Yes, Kitty spoils him, of course—”

The piano paused in the next room, they heard Lorna coughing, and Jim half turned his head — across the front windows of the house, the long room, a gust of fine rain flew with quick needle-sound from window to window, stinging and darkening them — the soft sound then lost in the sudden resumption of the music. This time it was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue — played languishingly, sentimentally, heavily, the rubatos hanging and dripping like sirup, like treacle. Jim’s eyes, hooded and solemn under the cap visor, looked toward the open door, he was listening intently, listening proudly.

“She sure can play, can’t she?” he said.

“Yes, she sure can. What was this about your technique, Jim?”

“Oh, that. I guess that wouldn’t interest you much, would it, kid? I always thought it wouldn’t interest you much.”

“Sure it would. I never asked you, because I thought maybe it was something you didn’t want to talk about.”

“Not at all. As you know, Tip, I’ve always tried to be the reverse of secretive about it, about every aspect of it. That was very important!”

“Yes, I know.”

“The same with this. It’s better to be frank about it, isn’t it? But it might interest you, at that. I think it’s pretty good.”

He smiled, and there was evident relish in the way he spoke of it — evident enjoyment. Was this the weak spot in his “case,” perhaps — in the case he made out for himself? Was it perhaps, after all, a kind of compulsion, and the anarchistic theory merely a delayed rationalization? Perhaps the stealing came first?

“I’d like very much to hear about it.”

“It’s really quite simple, but of course it took some working out. I made some mistakes. But now it’s pretty nearly foolproof. You know I always specialize in furs?”

“Yes, I knew that. Karl told me.”

“That was the first step, you see. I got to know everything I could about furs — quite a lot. Well, now, suppose I’m going to start out on an expedition. I’d pick out two or three big cities — only big cities, Chicago and St. Louis one time, Cleveland and Detroit the next — and go to just those two or three. All right, and suppose I go to Boston, say.”

“Did you ever actually try Boston?”

“As a matter of fact, kid, I did, and I could tell you the name of the store, but I won’t, because that might make you a kind of accessory, see? All right now, suppose I go to Boston. I spend the first two or three days just going round to the big department stores, and looking over the layout — finding out where the fur department is, and the other departments, all the arrangements, the stairs, the lavatories, everything like that — and what time they open in the morning and what time they close at night.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Okay. Well, I pick out what seems to be the best one, and get to know it pretty well. And then I go in some afternoon just a little before closing time. I’m wearing a cap — like this — and inside my coat, buttoned up, I’ve got a couple of big paper bags, folded small — just ordinary coarse paper bags. Well, I go to the men’s lavatory, in the basement, into a w.c., and stay there quietly till maybe half an hour after the store is closed. Then I come out — but first I take my cap off, see, and put it inside my coat, or in a pocket — you get the idea?”

“No?”

“That’s so I’ll look like some sort of employee. If I meet anybody I’ll look like an employee; and I can just say I’m a furniture polisher going up to the furniture department to do some polishing.”

“Sounds simple enough!”

“It is. There’s hardly ever any trouble about that. Well, then, I go upstairs, without trying to hide myself at all, and maybe in this store we’re talking about the fur department is on the way to the furniture department — which makes it easier. I go to the fur department, and by this time, with any luck, it’s deserted. If it’s not, I keep on going, of course, and come back later. But if it’s deserted, and no one around, then I pick out a couple of small but good furs — small, see, because they’re easier to handle. And that’s where the paper bags come in. I put them into the paper bags, and tie them up with heavy string, so as to make them sort of clumsy-looking parcels, the sort nobody would think was of any value — just ordinary bundles. But I don’t take them out with me. No. Oh, no.”

“What do you do?”

“This is where the real technique comes in, kid — I think it’s pretty good! What I do is this. I take the two bundles into the furniture department, and that’s deserted, too, if I’m lucky — and then I go to a chiffonier or chest of drawers, probably one I’ve picked out beforehand, because it’s a little out of the way, in a corner, or behind other stuff — you’ll see why in a minute. All right, I open one of the drawers, and put in the bundles — but I don’t quite shut the drawer again. I leave it about a half an inch open — just so that the edge of the drawer is sticking out a little — and then I take a broken match, a very small piece of broken match, and put it on the edge.”

“Good lord, Jim.”

“Yeah. And that’s all. Then I go downstairs again and go out. The watchman is at the door, of course, but that’s easy. I’ve got nothing on me, and if he asks any questions, well, I’m just a new furniture polisher; and so there’s usually no trouble, he lets me out.… Well, that’s the first stage. The second comes next day. This is a little more ticklish — and now is where the broken match comes in. What I do is wait till the rush hour is on — say, about twelve o’clock, see?”

“Yeah.”

“And then I go in and go straight up to the furniture department. This time, of course, I’m just an ordinary shopper; just somebody looking at furniture; sort of sauntering round. Well, I don’t want to go too close, in case there’s been a slip-up, or the bundles have been discovered — that happened to me once — and maybe I pretend I’m looking at something else, walking slowly by, but I manage to take a look at that drawer, from a little way off, to see if that small piece of broken match is still there. It has to be pretty small, of course — about a quarter of an inch, so as not to be too conspicuous, and put kind of at one side, too — otherwise one of the salesmen might spot it, and look in. All right, I take a quick look, and see it’s there, or not there. If it’s not there, I don’t take any chances — I go while the going is good. It means that drawer has probably been opened. But if it’s there, and in exactly the same place, which I can easily tell, then the chances are fifty to one it’s okay — and of course, too, if the drawer, and the other drawers, are all just the way I left them. You can notice those things — there was once, in New York, when at first it looked all right to me, but there was just a little something that made me hesitate — it just didn’t seem quite right to me, god knows what it was — so I hung round a little way off and waited, pretending to be looking at things; and pretty soon along came a guy with my two bundles in his hands and put them back in that drawer—”

“Good lord, setting a trap!”

“Setting a trap. So, of course, I beat it. But suppose it’s all right — well, then, it’s pretty easy. All I do is wait till there’s nobody much round there, or everybody busy, and just quickly take out the two bundles — and that’s all there is to it. Once I’ve got them in my hands, I’m safe as a church. Everybody else in a store has bundles — so what’s the difference, see? I walk out with maybe a thousand dollars’ worth of furs, and that’s that — it’s as easy as rolling off a log.”

“Well, I’m damned.”

“Yes, kid. Now you know. I think it’s pretty good.”

“It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. My god, I should think it must be terrifying! Was it your own idea, Jim? How’d you ever think of it?”

“Yes, I just sort of worked it out. I started with the idea of the second day, you see, coming out with the bundles — and then just worked back. It was really very simple. You could have done it yourself, kid.”

“Not me, by god. I wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“Oh, it doesn’t take any nerve.”

“Oh, no! Of course not! I can see that!”

“No. It’s just sort of exciting.”

“Exciting! Good god, I should think it would be like a nightmare. I wouldn’t be able to move hand or foot.”

Exciting — yes. Again there was that evident relish in the way he spoke of the excitement, a distinct gleam, a distinct glee — it was as obvious, wasn’t it? — that he intensely enjoyed the whole thing as that he was extremely proud of its ingenuity. Yes, but was it fair to assume from this that the whole thing was nothing but a compulsion, as Paul maintained it was? After all, the use to which he put his profits, the idealistic use, even if sometimes misguided — as witness Bucholtz — was good; and granted that his premise was tenable, and that property should be at the free disposal of all, and not used for private gain, it was difficult to find any flaw in it. It all came down to the question of motive, of course, and of priority of motive. If the mere pleasure in stealing came first — but did even that make any difference? There could be no question, anyway — none at all — of his honesty: his sincerity was unmistakable. The circle of logic was complete.

Jim had stooped to fling a couple of broken boxboards on the fire, kicked some cigarette butts over the hearth towards the bed of ashes, then straightened up, smiling, with a kind of melancholy amusement.

“Of course, kid, your friend Paul—”

“Yeah. What about his friend Paul!”

Karl was coming down the stairs, walking slowly, the raincoat still over his shoulders — Kitty preceded him, almost at a run, as if in fact she were running from him. She rushed straight across the room, walking jerkily, and flung herself in her chair again. Her eyes were squeezed almost shut, one cheek had been powdered roughly, but not the other, one side only of her mouth had been lipsticked — evidently she had been interrupted in her attempt to repair the ravages of crying. She picked up the pencil and began rapidly drawing with it, or writing, on the sheet of paper. In the next room, Lorna paused to cough, then started the Rhapsody in Blue all over again.

“Won’t she ever stop? Has she got to sit in there in that damned dressing gown and play all day?”

“She’s practicing. Let her practice, Kitty, it’s what she came here for.”

“Yeah. And what about Mister Kane’s snotty friend Paul?”

“Nothing, Karl, nothing. I was just telling Tip about my technique.”

“Your technique! So we’ve got to hear all about that again!”

“You haven’t got to hear anything at all, Kitty. I was just telling Tip about it, that’s all.”

“Well, for gard’s sake, why don’t you tell the police about it, and be done with it! I’m sick of this suspense. I’m sick of it!”

“Hold your horses. I’ll tell the police when I’m ready to tell them, and not before.”

“Maybe Mister Kane’s dear friend George will save you the trouble, Jim. Maybe Enid will.”

“I think we ought to get out of here. I want to get out of here. And so does Lorna, you ask her! The whole thing’s crazy. Buying that expensive camping outfit, too, tents and everything, and all for one night in the woods, freezing to death and getting bitten by mosquitoes—”

“Oh, baby, was that funny!”

“I think we ought to accept Mrs. Murphy’s offer.”

“What offer was that? I never heard about any offer.”

“You did too! I told you. But of course you never listen to anything I say!”

“All right, spill it, bird-brain, spill it — what offer?”

“She said if we didn’t want it any more she’d take it for her kids, and give us vegetables for it—”

“Vegetables! Well, for crying out loud—”

“Yes, vegetables. And what’s funny in that. It’s no good to us, is it? The idea of you trying to camp out, trying to paint in a tent! You did look like a fool. We might as well take what we can get for it. If we’ve got any sense we’ll fill those suitcases with vegetables and go right back to New York.”

“Okay, okay. What’s stopping you? Go on, take your carrots and get out of here. It’ll be a lot better than listening to you shooting off your face—”

“Shut up!”

“I won’t shut up.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Kitty and Karl—”

“For god’s sake, yes, for god’s sake — and you’re supposed to be the god!”

“Pipe down, Kitty.”

“Yes, the little tin god.”

“Now is that a nice way to speak to Jim? After all he’s done for us? I ask you. You poor dumb dope, you don’t know what’s good for you!”

“Oh, don’t I?”

“No, you don’t.”

“Cut it, you two, will you? Quarreling isn’t going to do you any good. Tip didn’t come over here just to listen to you two fighting.”

“Yeah? Well, what did Tip come over for. Spying, I suppose, Mister Kane?”

“I don’t think that’s very nice of you, Karl. I thought we were better friends than that. But just the same I’m glad you asked the question, for as a matter of fact I came over for a damned unpleasant reason.”

Kitty turned sharply in her chair. She was suddenly rigid, rigid with apprehension — her mouth was a little open, she had sucked in her breath quickly, the terrified eyes looked at him as if begging him to deny their terror. She sat quite still, continuing to stare, while Karl, with a labored assumption of sardonic indifference, once more stretched himself out on the wicker couch.

“There’s rats in them words,” he said. “I smell rats in them words. What did I tell you?”

“What is it, kid? What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve never hated doing anything so much in my life, Jim—”

“We’ll pass that up, Mister Kane!”

“—but I’m afraid it can’t be helped. It’s Enid. To put it briefly, she’s threatened to leave me, if I don’t stop seeing you while you’re here. She means it too. She said she’d go tomorrow if I didn’t come over and tell you. We’ve been having a row about it ever since yesterday, and I’ve argued the whole thing backwards and forwards, but it’s no use, she’s got me in a hole, and she knows it. I’m sorry.”

“I see. I’m sorry too, kid.”

“They’re both sorry. That makes two.”

“I wish to god it hadn’t happened. You know I haven’t got any feelings about it, one way or the other—”

“Of course not, kid. But don’t you worry, it’ll be all right. Enid’s got a right to her own opinion, hasn’t she?”

“Sure, anybody can be a Judas, can’t they?”

“Oh, gard, oh, gard, oh, gard, what’s going to happen now — I knew something like this would happen.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Exquisite Blueblood Kane. A knife in the back from Mrs. Exquisite Blueblood Kane. Just as I expected. That’s what you get for mixing with the upper classes, a knife in the back.”

“Sorry, Karl. I assure you I don’t like it any more than you do. Of course, this’ll only be temporary, I hope. We can meet in New York later on, and I hope without hard feelings—”

“Oh, sure. We’ll forget all about it, won’t we, Jim? Don’t give it a thought. What’s a knife in the back between friends?”

“It won’t make any difference to me, kid.”

“So you’re going to take it lying down!”

“There’s one thing I thought I’d suggest, though.”

“Listen to this, this is probably going to be good.”

“Shut up, Karl, will you? Let Tip say what he wants to say.”

“It’s simply this, Jim. If you’d agree to suspend your operations while you’re here, and not use this as a center for operations, I think maybe I could persuade Enid to reconsider.”

“Well, for the—! Isn’t that just too sweet of Mister Kane? Go on, Jim, tell him! Seems to me I smell the cloven hoof.”

“Well, that’s very nice of you, kid. And of course it goes without saying that I’ll miss not seeing you, and all our good philosophical talks. That’s one of the main reasons I came here, as you know, and it won’t be the same thing without you — yes, I’m sorry about that. And I see how you’re fixed — you can’t do anything if Enid feels like that about it. I wouldn’t expect you to, and I don’t want to be the cause of trouble between you — I like you both much too much for that, you know that, Tip. And the same way, I can honor Enid’s principles about all this, even if I can’t agree with them. I like Enid, she’s honest, and she isn’t afraid of sticking to her guns. She’s a damned fine girl. But no, I’m afraid, kid, I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t promise to do that.”

“Yeah. Maybe Mister Upright Kane will try to realize that it isn’t only the upright Bostonians and upright snobs that have upright principles—”

“Well, yes, that’s it. It’s a matter of principle with me. It’s what I believe, see, kid? And you wouldn’t really expect me to give that up, any more than I would expect Enid to, would you?”

“Why can’t you — oh, gard, oh, gard — why don’t you have some sense for once, and let us have a little peace here, instead of just sitting round waiting for the police to come. And it won’t be only you they’ll come for, either, it’ll be you too, Karl. It’ll be all of us — they’ll arrest us all. Oh, gard, what’s the use—”

“Will you shut your damned fool wailing, weakwit? You wouldn’t know a principle if it hit you in the face.”

“As if you had any principles! As if you were doing anything but sponge! As if you were doing anything—”

“Shut up!”

“Yes, by god, Karl, I’m damned if I don’t think Kitty’s right! I don’t believe you give a hoot in hell for Jim’s principles, or care a damn what happens to him — so long as you get your share of the money. That’s what makes me feel really sick about all this business, Jim. I don’t think Karl or this Bucholtz, for instance, really believe in you for a minute — oh, I know, they think it’s all very amusing and original, it makes a good story, doesn’t it? It’s nice and spectacular, and they can share in the glory — from a safe distance! But they’ll use you for their own selfish ends, and then sacrifice you when the time comes. Look at that cheapskate riding all the way up here in a taxi at your expense — he’ll be the first to run out on you when the trouble starts—”

“Yeah? And would he be the first to take a run-out powder round here? You make me sick.”

“No, kid, I don’t believe that.”

“Oh, of course not, you’re too holy to believe anything like that, aren’t you, you and your Messiah idea—”

“Who said anything about a Messiah idea, Kitty?”

“Oh, no, you never posed as a Messiah, did you? — you never thought you were another Christ, did you? — why, he’s crazy, that’s what he is, and anybody can see it — he’s crazy as a bedbug, he ought to be in a hospital, even Lorna admits that, she feels the same way I do about it—”

Suddenly she began wailing again — grotesquely, tragically, as if in an absurd kind of accompaniment to the badly played jazz from the next room, that glucose rhapsody — but as abruptly she stopped again, pressed a stained handkerchief hard against her mouth, and began feverishly writing once more on the sheet of paper which lay before her on the disordered table. Tears were running down her cheeks, she was audibly sniffling, she was obviously on the verge of hysterics — and it was as if this sudden manifestation of the depth of her misery had brought them all up short, they were all silent, they all watched her and were silent. A needled flight of rain, swift and light, a gust of blown drizzle, pattered across the windows of the long room, stinging and darkening them; the fire smoked; Lorna interrupted her playing to cough once more, and then resumed stolidly, stubbornly, almost as if angrily; the putt — putt — putt of a motorboat stuttered from the river, a detached and ironic reminder of the sea, of the outer world — but they were all silent, as if somehow bewitched by Kitty’s unhappiness, and as if it had mysteriously emptied them of all power to act or speak. What more was there to do? What more was there to say? It was time alone that remained, and as they listened to the hectic scribbling of the pencil, moving rapidly on the paper, by a tacit agreement they avoided each other’s eyes. Was it shame? Embarrassment? Despair? Jim, moving very carefully, very slowly, leaned over to strike a match on the tiles at his feet, drew it crackling and spurting towards him, to relight the blackened stump of his cigar. Karl lay sideways on the wicker couch, the blue eyes looking at nothing, the thin mouth fixed in a defensive half-smile, the soiled raincoat drawn over his knees. And in that stillness the disorderly room, with its unswept floor, the piled dishes, the tumblers, the gin bottle, the dead matches and lipsticked cigarettes, looked inconceivably forlorn. How could they ever be happy here? How could anybody possibly be happy here? Newspapers — a rocking chair, with one rocker broken, shoved out of the way against the corner wall under the stairs — the one sardine, too, in the kitchen — and Lorna, in “that damned dressing gown,” playing the piano tirelessly, badly, as if nothing else in the world existed — no, they could never be happy here. But would they, in fact, be here much longer? For the little Utopia was already broken, and even now above it hovered the invisible wings of departure. The mistake was coming to an end.

“Well, I guess there’s not much else to say, Jim.”

“No, I guess there’s not much else to say.”

“Except to say that I’m sorry, again.”

“Yes, Mister Kane, you said that before. I suppose you plan to leave the rest to your friend Mister George Pierce?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about Mister George Pierce.”

“Yeah? I thought he was threatening to notify the police?”

“You don’t know the police here, Karl. The police consists of Uncle Cy William, who boasts that he never made an arrest in his life. It’s a fact. Once they heard him yelling late at night to some thieves he’d been set on, ‘Run, boys, run, or Uncle Cy William will get you!’ No, his only vice is cutting off the heads of dogs.”

“What, kid?”

“Yes, one of his jobs is to see that all dogs are licensed. Dog licenses cost two bucks, and the money goes to the town library for books — it’s the library’s only support. They say, if he finds an unlicensed dog, he takes it out to the woods and chops its head off with an axe. But I don’t know. Besides, I feel pretty sure George Pierce was only bluffing. You don’t need to worry.”

“Thanks for them few kind words. And here’s your hat, what’s your hurry? But don’t try to reach for that one, it’s over your head.”

“Very clever of you, Karl. Your magnanimity overwhelms me.”

“Keep the change.”

“And if I might be allowed one personal observation—”

“Oh, sure. And why not?”

“It seems to me, in a matter that’s after all none of your business, that you’re behaving damned badly.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve got nothing but respect for Jim. I’ve got none at all, I’m afraid, for you.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. Coming from you—”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, kid. Just let him sulk. He’ll get over it.”

“Okay. Well, I guess I’ll be going.”

He got up and went to the table to shake hands with Kitty, but she sat with lowered head, as if blind, desperately absorbed in her writing, and he merely patted her shoulder instead. Even as he touched the stooped shoulder she continued to write — and looking down he saw at last what it was. The torn piece of paper was almost entirely covered with the words Jesus Christ. And while he watched, fascinated, the hurrying hysterical pencil added yet others—Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ … It was her final comment on the Utopia.

“Good-by, Kitty,” he said.

“Good-by, Tip. I think you’ve been swell.”

“No. I’m damned sorry. Good-by, Jim.”

“Don’t say good-by, kid. We’ll be seeing you in New York.”

“Not if I see him first, he won’t!”

“Okay, Karl, if that’s the way you feel about it—”

“That’s the way I feel about it.”

“All right. That suits me.”

“Forget it, kid. He’s just got a grouch on. And give my best to Enid. And shall I tell Lorna about it? For you, I mean, as she wasn’t here?”

“Sure. And give her my best, too.”

“All right. Good-by for the present.”

“Good-by for the present.”

Jim was standing by the fireplace, smiling — Karl lay unmoving on the couch, with his eyes now closed, as if he were endeavoring to imitate the death mask of a saint, but nevertheless looking more than ever like a dead hen — Kitty continued to scribble her Jesus Christs. The ceaseless piano, the intolerable piano, was the only sound as he let himself out, closed the door behind him, went down the steps into the light rain, and started up Baker Street. The Rhapsody in Blue—

Under the silver-gray signpost, in the rain, he hesitated for a moment, and then turned to the left, towards the sea. Impossible to go home — impossible — the mere thought was unbearable. Let her wait. It would do her good to wait! He would walk to the sea by the mile-long shore road, perhaps take the little footpath through the wet pine woods, where always, under the soft needles, the first Mayflowers were to be found, the first pipsissewa, the whitest Indian Pipes. And then the stone jetty, the skeletal iron light house, and the sea. The unpotable sea, the all-smiling sea, which was driving Kitty mad.