Experiment in Springtime

Chapter 11

The next day the doctor went out to see Charles. He asked very few questions. He let Charles talk for nearly two hours, about his childhood, his mother, Martha, any little incident that occurred to him. It was only when Charles appeared too tired to continue talking that MacNeil inquired about his physical symptoms.

“Migraine still bothering you, Pearson?”

“No, it’s gone.”

“Good. Forbes looking after you all right?”

“Yes.”

“He tells me you’re eating well.”

“I am.”

“You’re feeling generally pretty good then?”

“I’m fine,” Charles said without conviction.

He hadn’t any pain, but a numbness had settled in his limbs. He lay for hours in a deck chair on the porch, muffled in sweaters and blankets, watching the lake. The constant motion of the water seemed to paralyze him, he hardly breathed. In his shroud of blankets, with his staring eyes, he looked so much like a dead man that Forbes would come out now and then to reassure himself.

“Mr. Pearson, you want your cap?”

A fretful stir under the blankets. “What?”

“Do you want your cap?”

“Cap? No. Nothing.”

A little ashamed of his apprehensions, Forbes would go back into the cottage and resume reading his book on herb cookery. Reading about food relaxed him. He was no longer young and he felt the strain of being with a sick man all the time — not the physical strain, for Charles didn’t require much care, but the mental strain of never quite knowing what to expect. Though he liked Charles, he didn’t have the sentimental fondness for him that Brown had and he had pretty well made up his mind that when the time came for Charles to return home, he wasn’t going along. He hadn’t told Charles, but Charles seemed to have guessed it as he guessed a great many things. Forbes didn’t know whether it was intuition or whether Charles simply was more observant than ordinary people.

While Dr. MacNeil was there, Forbes stayed inside the cottage, trying not to eavesdrop. But as soon as the doctor left, Forbes went out to the porch again. Charles was sitting with an unopened letter lying in his lap.

“Anything you want, Mr. Pearson?”

“No, thanks. Just leave me alone for a little while.”

“All right.”

Charles looked at the letter with resentment because it had intruded on his privacy. She had followed him even here — she had no decency, no sense...

“Dear Charles.” How strangely incongruous her writing was, he thought. Timid, fearful little letters bunched together as if for protection. The capitals were hardly larger than the other letters. He wondered why he’d never noticed this before and whether it meant anything.

When he finished reading the letter, he looked out over the lake again. “I am afraid, I want you to come home.” The sincerity of the words was obvious. Even her writing had changed at this point; it was larger and so erratic that it seemed each letter must have been made by a different person.

Afraid? Naturally she was. She was afraid of gossip, of her reputation. It was not her fear that was extraordinary, it was her confession of it, and, above all, her appeal to him. She never appealed to him for anything. She might make a request, but if he refused, she took his refusal as final, she didn’t coax or become coy or tearful. It was one of the traits he admired in her, yet it was also the one that hurt him most — she didn’t consider it worthwhile to manage him or jolly him along or even to quarrel with him. The face she presented to him was invulnerable: You can’t help or hurt me, Charles. There seemed to be no way of getting at her, or penetrating the layers of coldness which protected her from any emotional involvement with other people, even her own husband. This was her stock-in-trade, a complete lack of reaction which made people feel inadequate and ineffectual.

She is invulnerable, Charles thought, because I can get no reaction from her but a cold acceptance of cold facts. And the invulnerability is not so much a particular quality in her, but the particular quality in other people which makes human reactions necessary to them. Few of us can realize we are alive unless we read it in the faces of others. A smile, a frown, a lifted eyebrow, a kiss, an exclamation — these are the signs, and not our own heartbeats, that we are alive. So what people like Martha do is to strike at our instinct for self-preservation and make us afraid. We are both afraid, Martha.

But why the sudden confession? Had she simply wakened up one morning and realized that she was getting nothing from life and that her youth and beauty were slipping slowly into the past? She had never before given any sign of such a realization. She spent her days as if she had already lived her life and was merely marking time until the end. She worked in the garden, she dusted books and emptied ashtrays, she went to an occasional movie with Laura or out to dinner with him. She didn’t enjoy going out to dinner, she was always ill-at-ease and ate scarcely anything. This had puzzled him, for at home she had a good appetite. It took him some time to discover that she was shy about eating in public. No, it was more than shyness, it was a kind of shame, as if she hated to let other people know that she, too, was subject to the demands of the body.

Or perhaps it was merely that she wasn’t accustomed to eating in restaurants. “You must realize, Charles, how hard I tried to accustom myself to a new way of life and how humiliating it was sometimes.”

That much was true. She had worked hard and persistently but she had worked to make herself into the kind of wife she thought he should have, not the kind he wanted. Once, at the beginning of their marriage, he had intimated that he liked her the way she was and didn’t want her to change.

She had looked at him in bewilderment and disbelief. “But I’ve got so much to learn. I don’t want to disgrace you.”

He laughed. “Where on earth do you get your ideas, Martha? From Henry James?”

She knew who Henry James was, but she hadn’t read him. The scene, which had begun with a declaration of love, had ended up with her reading aloud from The Ambassadors.

Lord, he thought, I should have grabbed her. I should have smacked her over the head with the damn book and made love to her.

Instead, he had gone to sleep. When he woke up, she was still reading, and though she must have known he’d been asleep she didn’t say anything about it. She ignored it in the way you ignored the social lapses of a guest — a belch, a yawn, a dropped dish. Yet he had the feeling that her behavior wasn’t prompted by good manners but was intended, instead, as a denial of intimacy.

She treated him, most of the time, with a formality that made him too conscious of the difference in their ages. The difference was only nine years, and shouldn’t have mattered. But it rankled with Charles. His sterility made him oversensitive and overcritical of himself, and he worried constantly over the fact that he had married a healthy woman so much younger than himself and couldn’t even give her any children.

His attitude toward her became more and more apologetic. When he went to her room at night he always knocked at the door and waited for her permission to come in. If she intimated that she was tired or had a headache, he left immediately without kissing her good night, feeling that he had blundered in some way and that she despised him for being sterile.

On the occasions when he did stay, however, she was helpful and cooperative, so cooperative that it was months before he understood that she was modest to the point of morbidity, that it was agony for her to undress in front of him. He couldn’t understand why anyone with so beautiful a body should be ashamed of it.

“You’re lovely,” he told her. “You’re perfectly lovely.”

“No, no, I’m not.”

“You’re the most beautiful woman...”

“No.” She closed her eyes and turned away from him.

“Stay like that a minute,” he said. “You remind me of a painting I’ve seen. It’s a Venus by Velasquez, in the National Gallery in London.”

“Don’t be silly, Charles,” she said sharply.

The next day he bought a reproduction of Velasquez’s Venus and took it home to her. She liked the picture, but told him flatly that it was absurd of him to think she looked like that.

The picture helped, however. Martha seemed a little less embarrassed in front of him, and not so brusque when he paid her compliments. She still didn’t believe them, but he got the impression she was more ready to be convinced.

He should have kept on trying, of course, not to get her over her self-consciousness but to make her more conscious of herself as she really was. It struck him as ridiculous that what vanity she had was hung on qualities she hadn’t. She was perfectly willing to admit that she had a good brain and a strong character.

“I don’t believe in physical beauty,” she told him. “It’s ephemeral.”

He began to laugh, he couldn’t help himself.

She was instantly suspicious. “What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know. Everything, I suppose.”

“That was the right word, wasn’t it? Ephemeral?”

“Yes. Oh, Lord, yes.”

“Well?”

He couldn’t explain why he was laughing.

She was at least consistent in her attitude. Her clothes were sober and functional, and when Laura entered college and began wearing the regulation baggy sweaters and saddle shoes, Martha approved. She said she thought the younger generation dressed more sensibly than her own.

Though she wasn’t overtly affectionate toward Laura, she was very proud of her. Laura had brains; Laura was going to have all the opportunity that she, Martha, had never had; Laura was going to make a name for herself in the world (whether she wanted to or not, her tone implied).

Amused and a little awed by her determination, Charles had talked it over with Laura.

“Well, that’s all right,” Laura said. “I intend to, anyway. Be somebody, I mean.” She added casually, “I may as well, since I’m never going to get married.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, marriage makes people old. Look at you and Martha. I mean, what do you get out of it?”

He intended to pass it off with a smile, but he found himself saying soberly, “I don’t quite know.”

“I mean, you and Martha are certainly a Horrible Example. Of what happens when people get married.”

“Are we? Go on.”

“No, I won’t. You’re getting mad.”

“I am not. I swear on my honor I am not mad!”

She refused to talk about it anymore. She merely said, in her most bored voice, “You’re kind of a good egg, Charley.”

He felt overwhelmingly flattered. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Do you think, when I get older I mean, that I’ll be as pretty as Martha?”

“I think it’s very likely.”

“I don’t. I keep getting these ghastly ickies. One after another. It makes me sick to my very core.”

“I presume my advanced age has affected my eyesight, but I can’t see any ickies.”

“You would, if I washed my face. Naturally I don’t go around advertising them.”

Charles smiled. “In spite of these grave obstacles in the path of beauty, I think you’ll do all right.”

“Now you’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. And I hope... well, I hope that some day you’ll be very happy as well as pretty.”

She gaped up at him. “What a funny thing to say. As if you were on the verge of crying or something.”

“I hope not,” he said.

It was only a month or so after that, early in April, that he came home with an agonizing headache and went straight to bed.

Martha came up to see him. “Brown told me you have one of your bad heads.”

“Pretty bad.”

“Why don’t you take the stuff the doctor gave you?”

“It wouldn’t do any good.”

He turned away and closed his eyes to indicate that he didn’t want to talk.

She went on, anyway. “How can you tell, if you never try anything? Mother had some headache tablets but I know you wouldn’t take them. It’s just as if you enjoyed having a headache.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Don’t swear. It’s so childish.”

“All right, all right. You win.”

She brought him a glass of water and two tablets, which he swallowed. She still didn’t go away, so he pretended he was asleep. She pulled the covers up to his shoulders and kissed him on the forehead.

Then quite suddenly she jabbed him viciously in the stomach with her fist. He screamed and she threw sand in his mouth. He doubled up with pain and she thrust a knife between his shoulder blades. And all the time her face never changed expression. It was exquisitely gentle and remote, her voice was a love-whisper: “Oh, Charles, does it hurt? Oh, I’m sorry if it hurts, Charles. We’ll try this instead,” she said and slit his eyelids expertly with her thumbnail.

“Wake up, Mr. Pearson,” Forbes said. “It’s time for lunch.”

“I’ve been dreaming,” Charles said, but he wasn’t sure where the dream had begun.

“You shouldn’t go to sleep in the sun without something over your eyes, sir. It’s hard on them.”

“I don’t think I’ve been asleep. I don’t think so.”

The letter had fallen on the floor. He leaned over and picked it up with an odd feeling of pity and revulsion and love. My wife, he thought. Martha...

Forbes moved the chair out of the sun and brought out Charles’s lunch on a tray. While he ate, Charles thought about Martha. The letter made her seem closer, and more real to him now than she had seemed all the time he was seeing her every minute of the day. Absurd as it was, he couldn’t help thinking that at any moment she might come out to the porch. She would walk right over to him and kiss him on the mouth. Her hair would be down her back, windblown and smelling of the sun. He would be indifferent, even brutal:

“Beat it. Can’t you see I’m trying to eat?”

“Oh, Charles, please! I’m afraid. I’ve been so lonely for you.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait until I finish my lunch.”

Pipe dream, he thought, a nonsensical little pipe dream. But he was breathing faster, and when Forbes came out again, Charles was surprised to find he’d eaten everything on the tray without knowing it.

He settled back in the chair once more. He thought, why couldn’t it happen? Why can’t I make it happen? I know her better now. I understand her. If I can keep hold of my nerves, if I can stop myself imagining things about her...

He saw himself arriving home, very fit and strong again, secure in the knowledge that at last he understood her difficulties and her weaknesses and that his understanding meant he could control her. Her sense of guilt, of insecurity, her self-consciousness, he would help her overcome them all. He would be harsh, if necessary, and tender; he would continue to love her but he would remain independent and detached.

He realized now that Martha was a more simple person than he was, and that he had made an error in imagining into her nature the complexities of his own.

When MacNeil came out again three days later he was amazed to see how well Charles was looking and how vigorously he moved around the cottage.

He told him so, and Charles smiled and said, “It must be the fresh air.”

“It must be,” MacNeil agreed. He was pleased but a little uneasy at the sudden change.

Before he left, he spoke to Forbes alone. “Anything special happen around here?”

“No,” Forbes said. “He’s just been sort of mooning around like this.”

“Mooning?”

“You know — as if he had a lot of nice things to think about and thought about them.”

“Odd,” MacNeil said. It was more than odd, it was downright suspicious that Pearson, who was an incurable worrier, should suddenly forego his worries in favor of a lot of nice things to think about.

“He said something about going home pretty soon,” Forbes said.

“He’s only been here a week.”

“And this morning he phoned his office and had a talk with his secretary. Business details.”

MacNeil thought of Mrs. Pearson’s letter. He would have given his right hand to read it, but he reminded himself sternly that it was none of his business. Besides, Pearson might tell him about it eventually.

When he had gone, Charles went down to the beach and lay on the sand. Martha went with him. She wore two dabs of cloth for a bathing suit and when she lay down beside him, she put her head on his shoulder. They stayed like that without moving or talking until he said, “Come on upstairs.”

“But what will people...?”

“To hell with people. Come on upstairs.”

So they went upstairs.

How simple it was. How simple they were. Children of nature.

I must not kid myself, he thought, becoming suddenly aware of the sand gritting against his shin and the cool wind blowing off the lake. I must not drug myself with fantasies.

But the warning didn’t seem to mean much. The words were such cold, cruel words to use on such charming children of nature.

During the night he awoke, wet with sweat and exhausted. Forbes heard him moving around and came to the door of his bedroom.

“Anything the matter, Mr. Pearson?”

“No,” Charles said. “I’d like a drink of water.”

“Sure.” Forbes went and got the water. He was still dressed. Though it was after two, he hadn’t been to bed yet. He thought it was odd that Charles didn’t notice this and comment on it.

But Charles didn’t appear to be noticing anything. His eyes were bright and empty-looking, and his face had an exalted gentleness about it that reminded Forbes of an uncle of his who had got religion. The uncle had seen the light and was always gazing at it, blind to anything that lay between it and himself.

“Anything else, Mr. Pearson?”

“What?” Charles blinked and his eyes came suddenly into focus again. “Good Lord, you haven’t been to bed. What time is it?”

“Ten after two.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Not in the country. There’s too much noise.” Forbes hesitated. “No — human noise, I mean, that you can stop or reason with. In the city when you hear a streetcar, that’s all right. You know somebody’s running the streetcar, somebody human. But when I listen to that damn water...”

Charles looked up in surprise. Forbes talked about himself so seldom that it was difficult to consider him as an ordinary human being, with doubts and weaknesses. He seemed always the same — a sturdy, brown-skinned little man, impervious alike to change, weather and emotion. Built like the best watches, Charles thought, shockproof, water-resistant and anti-magnetic.

“...when I listen to that damn water,” Forbes repeated, “it makes me think that I should be believing in something — God or hell or the pixies.” He smiled but there was malice behind his eyes. “Do you, Mr. Pearson?”

“I don’t quite know.”

“It just struck me you did.” He edged toward the door. “Do you want your light out now?”

“All right.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night.”

Charles stayed awake in the dark. He tried to think of Martha but her image wouldn’t come so easily this time, and the noise of the lake began to bother him.

I should be believing in something.