The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

A CONVERSATION

The English lecturer, when he visited New Haven, Connecticut, was put up for the night at a certain club, the name of which need not be mentioned. After his lecture he managed to escape from several putative hosts, excusing himself on the ground of fatigue, and crept back to the club. He was tired of lecturing and tired of travel and tired of seeing new people and of trying to be polite to fools. He looked forward with an almost insane joy to the prospect of a night of rest. He had never been so sleepy in his life. Those American sleeping-cars!… Good Lord.

Unfortunately, his room communicated with the adjoining room by a door—locked, of course, and with a small table pushed against it—and no sooner had he crawled into bed than he discovered that sounds, through this door, were distressingly audible. There was first a shuffling of feet in the corridor outside, and then the voices began. There were two of them.

“Well now—if you’ll look on the shelf in that closet, I think you’ll find another glass.”

“So there is.”

“This is the best whisky I ever drank, but it might be worse. Old Royal. Ever hear of it on the other side?”

“Never.”

“It’s evidently been in the water. Soaked. They say they drop them off, you know, with buoys to mark them. The label looks all right. But what makes me suspicious is the cork. Just look at that! No self-respecting cork ought to come out like that. Perfectly good cork—stamped with the name—”

“Oh, I guess they tamper with them all right. Probably carry along an extra supply of corks, and put them in again after they mix it with water.”

“Very likely. Here’s looking at you.”

“How.”

A pause, and the Englishman tried to bury both his ears in the pillow.

“Damned good, all the same. Has the real smoky flavor. Usquebaugh. The real peat-bog flavor.”

“It might be worse—it might be worse.”

“And no smell of wood-alcohol, either.”

“You know, I find the bottles are a great problem. Of course, everybody drinks—but I don’t quite like to leave the empty bottles round for the servants to carry off.”

“Like the problem of razor blades. What do you do with your used blades? My friend Edgett, in London, saves his up for a year, and then makes a neat package of them, takes them down to the middle of Waterloo Bridge, and drops them into the Thames.”

“Ha, ha. I do better than that. I save mine and drop them off an Atlantic liner. But unfortunately, lately, I don’t go abroad often enough.”

“You might make a special trip, periodically.”

“A little bit expensive.”

“Phew! It’s damned hot in here—must be eighty.”

A pause, while a window was opened. The bells of a church, or the college, were heard striking the quarter-hour: ding dong dang doom. And a self-starter began its rhythmic skirling, like a dinosaur trying to be sick. Ngu-ngu-ngu-ngu-ngu—

“You know, to go back to that business—if the college gets wind of it, it might lose you your job.”

“Good Lord. Do you think so?”

“Of course I do. They’re pretty shy about that sort of thing. You ought to be more careful about being seen with her. Anyway, till the divorce is granted.”

“Well, you do astonish me. What’s wrong with her? She looks perfectly respectable.”

“Oh, she may look perfectly respectable.”

“Damn it, she is perfectly respectable.”

“Hm, I’m not so sure, I’m not so sure.”

“Why, of course she is! What’s eating you?”

“Well, from what T. J. said to me over the telephone the other day, I’m not so sure. He didn’t seem to think so.”

“T. J. can eat my shirt. He makes me sick. That’s all he knows about it. You know, he was pretty keenly interested in her himself, last year.”

“That may be. But he found out quite a lot about her. And from what he said over the telephone, that’s why he dropped her.”

“She dropped him. That what’s happened. And he’s sore.”

“Well—”

A pause, and the Englishman tried covering his head with the sheet, was stifled, and uncovered himself again.

“He’s jealous. And he needn’t try to pretend that he’s just trying to protect me from a viper. Damn him and his hypocrisy and his paltry little Fine Arts anyway.”

“He admitted to me that he’s been engaged to her.”

“Oh, he did!”

“Yes, he did. They were engaged for three months. Did she tell you that?”

“Well, she said they were pretty intimate.”

“Oh … And he said that as he knew we were cousins, and didn’t exactly like to approach you about it, he felt that he ought to talk to me about it. You know, he put detectives on her.”

“The devil he did!”

“Yes. And right off, he discovered that while she was playing with him, and ostensibly in love with him, she was also playing with three or four other men. It might have been harmlessly—but just the same she was pretty intimate with them. Going off on long rides with them to joy-houses in the country, going to dances, expensive parties, and so forth. And she never told him a word about them. Pretended she was doing some important work for Morrison. He met her twice with that chap—what’s his name?—the newspaper man Read. He asked her point-blank about that, and she said: ‘Oh, he was just an old friend.’ She insisted there was nothing in it, but just the same he was treating her to thirty-dollar dinners and that sort of thing. She admitted that, and also going off, two years ago, on a tour in his Packard, with him and some other people. She said that there was a female cousin of his along. Also she said that he wasn’t at all interested in women—not that way. That may sound all right to you, but it sounds fishy to me.”

“T. J. is a jealous fool, and that’s one of the reasons she dropped him. If he couldn’t trust her any better than that, he got what was coming to him.… Good God, getting detectives! The dirty spy!”

“Not at all. He said he hadn’t been engaged to her a week before he caught her in a lie.”

“All women lie.”

“No—they don’t. And here you are. Did she tell you she’d been engaged to T. J.? I don’t believe she’s trustworthy. There can’t be so much smoke without fire. And as for Read, you know as well as I do that no man hangs around a woman for years and spends a lot of money on her if he isn’t interested in that way, as she so tactfully put it. There ain’t no such animals.”

“Well, I’ll admit that sort of thing does disquiet me a little about her.”

“By gosh, it ought to!”

“All the same, I prefer to put another interpretation on it. She just likes a good time, that’s all.—Good Lord, there’s no harm in that.”

“None at all, if that was the whole story.”

“She’s modern, that’s all. You can’t expect a self-supporting woman, in this day and age, to cloister herself like a nun.”

“Certainly not. There’s no question of that. But T. J. says she’s been really promiscuous. And this pose of inexperience on her part is all a fake. When T. J. got engaged to her, he thought he was the first man she had ever kissed. But he discovered his mistake soon enough!”

“He’s more of a fool than I thought he was.…”

“May be, may be. He said he got a shock when he discovered, under all that screen of innocence, how damned proficient she was. It began leaking out in lots of little ways.”

“Such as? You mean to say he told you all this over the telephone?”

“No, not all of it.…”

“Such as?”

“Oh, you know the sort of thing. At first she pretended to be awfully shy and inexpert—but then, at moments, she would forget herself, and say or do things that made it sufficiently plain that she had been there before. Lots of things; and of the most tell-tale kind. I don’t need to describe them to you. She would be betrayed into doing them by her forgetfulness, and then she would break off, suddenly, and pretend to be terribly ashamed.”

“Oh.”

“And then she’d be histrionic about them, and ask herself and him what on earth could have made her do such a thing!… Have another drink?”

“Thanks—plenty.…”

… A pause. The bells were heard striking the half hour. Ding dong dang doom: doom dang ding dong. It was like the sound of a question-mark, left one suspended. The Englishman said “damn!” and turned on his right side.

“He said he wouldn’t have minded so much, or been so deeply hurt, if she had only been honest with him. But she tried to conceal all this. And consequently he began feeling that there must be a lot to conceal. You know how that sort of thing works.”

“Yes. But just the same I think he was wrong.”

“That may be.”

“He’s just naturally suspicious and jealous, that’s all.”

“Of course, that’s what she tells you. Naturally. But he investigated her and found out a good deal. Got hold of some friend of hers who was on the outs with her.”

“Oh, did he.”

“Yes. And he found out that her affairs had been innumerable. One man after another for ten years. Some of them for a short while, and some of them for longer. All sorts and kinds, too—she seems to have had no discrimination at all. Any sort of man, so long as he made love to her. There was a wealthy ice-manufacturer in New York, an Italian police-sergeant, an officer in the Coast Guard, a college boy from Arkansas—she had pretty heavy love-affairs with all of these.”

“You mean she was engaged to them?”

“Oh, no. Who bothers to be engaged nowadays? I thought you were so modern.”

“Well, I’m damned!”

“And a string of others, including Read, who still hangs on, I believe. T. J. had it out with her. There was a terrible scene: at the beginning she wept and said she was innocent, but at the end she was swearing and throwing things on the floor. All that delightful gentleness of hers, that you talk so much about, went to the winds. She admitted everything, and told him to go to hell.”

“The damned liar!”

“But why should he take the trouble to lie?”

“I don’t know, but he’s lying.”

“No, he isn’t. Here, have another drop?”

“No, thanks.”

There was a pause, the clink of a tumbler, and the sound as of a waste-paper basket kicked over.

“You might as well open your eyes. I daresay she’s a nice enough girl, but you’d better disabuse yourself of the notion that she’s a saint. Of course, that needn’t make any difference to you. Even supposing that she is, as T. J. says, terribly manhandled—”

“Damnation. It’s impossible!…”

“Even supposing she is, it may be that it’s only because she’s played in bad luck. She may, each time, have been sincerely in love, and sincerely in hope of marrying. That’s quite possible, though it doesn’t seem likely. But T. J. thinks she is really, by nature, promiscuous. She basks in the admiration of men, she must have men around her, and he thinks she will be like that all her life. I don’t know anything about her, of course—I’m merely telling you what T. J. said.”

“Very kind of you.”

“Look here, Paul—”

“I know—I beg your pardon. It really is kind of you. But you know I’m in love with her, and this sort of thing is painful.”

“Of course it is. I’m sorry.”

A pause. The Englishman listened. The pause lengthened itself.

“I admit, this shakes me a good deal. To tell the truth, I’ve been having the same experience with her myself, I mean—”

“Well?…”

“About her proficiency. It’s been coming out, little by little, in just the way you described. And it hurts me horribly—horribly. If you knew what it is to be in love with someone you can’t quite trust!… But I’m sure she’s all right—I’m sure of it.”

“Well, if you’re sure of that, then you’re all right.”

“Man-handled!… Good God!”

“Don’t be depressed by it. I daresay she’s all right. If you’re in love with her—”

“But I thought she was so completely innocent! That’s what’s so horrible. And I think she is, fundamentally. After all, what can it matter, if I’m in love with her?”

“But are you sure you’re in love with the right image? I mean the true one?”

“I prefer to think that the woman I’m in love with is the real woman. That’s what T. J. missed—that’s what he would miss. I mean, her central idealism, her essential holiness. Yes, that’s what it is. She has a kind of holiness about her that it’s impossible to describe. And by God, I’ll marry her. And to hell with T. J. and all his damned detectives.”

“Well, if you’re sure of that, you’re all right. Let’s change the subject …”

“We might as well—this doesn’t get us anywhere … Let’s talk about something else.”

“Have a night-cap. In vino sanitas.”

“Thanks—plenty.”

“Water?”

“No … My God, my God, if only I didn’t—”

“What?”

“It’s no use. In vino sanitas … Anything to be unconscious!”

A pause. The Englishman counted sheep. Two-four-six-eight-twenty-two at a time-two at a time-two at a time-wool in the hedge-gaps—wool on the hawthorn twigs—wool on the gorse—

“I hear Peter is back to try again. Poor devil! He certainly sticks at it.”

“Poor devil.”

“Poor devil.”

The bells were heard striking the third quarter: Ding dong dang doom: doom dang ding dong: ding dang dong doom: and again a question-mark was left in the air.