The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

THE PROFESSOR’S ESCAPE

When Professor—his colleagues called him Tubby—Milliken emerged from the waiting room of the North Station, after seeing his wife and little daughter off on the evening train for Portland, he found that the rain was beginning, gradually, to change to snow. A few large flakes were falling, soft and white and—yes!—heavy-bellied; they clung to his furry sleeve without melting; and he felt that this change, and the sight of hats and coats already beginning to be spangled with snow, after a dark day of rain, accorded subtly with his mood. He sighed, and set off to climb the hill to his rooms, thinking how pleasant it would be, for once, to have an evening all to himself. It was all of six years since such a thing had happened. Not since the time when Molly had gone to Hartford for the funeral! And that had been only for two nights. And now—a whole week of unrestricted freedom. It was too good to be true. He would be able to read—if he liked—all evening. Or (surreptitious delight!) solve chess problems uninterrupted; or even (the thought of this was not so unmixedly delicious) make some notes for his lecture on guild socialism.… But no—there would be time enough for that. Wouldn’t something a little more festive be in order? He might, for example, accept Mrs. Trask’s (his landlady’s) many times repeated invitation to join the usual poker-party. Molly had always vetoed this idea—and of course she was perfectly right. It wouldn’t do to become embroiled with those queer and somewhat vulgar people—that fat Doctor Something-or-other and the publicity man who wore the loud checked suit. And besides, Mrs. Trask was such a terrible gossip and liar.… Nevertheless—the notion was not unattractive. Mrs. Trask was a rather fine old tragedy queen—and not so very old, either. Not over forty-five—or perhaps fifty. Fond of port wine, and with a florid countenance to match. And such fine bold black eyes! And such an air as of a duchess—temporarily reduced to the low business of keeping a boarding-house!… And her parties—as he passed her door on the stairs—always sounded so gay.

He sighed again, and inserted his key in the lock. It stuck, as it always did, but after a moment’s struggle he managed to open the door. And there before him, sitting by the marble-topped table, was Fred, hat in hand, his galoshes unfastened, his little blue eyes (in which wit and innocence was so felicitously fused) beaming through thick spectacles.

“You’re coming to dinner with me,” he said. “Mrs. Trask tells me you’re a bachelor.”

“You bet I will!… I was wondering what the devil to do with myself. I ought to be making some notes for a lecture—”

“Lecture be damned. Do you know what night this is?”

“No. What night is it?”

“Saturday night. And Bill Caffrey is meeting us at Jacot’s. Come on! We’ll discuss Freud and drink Chêteau Yquem.”

“Yum yum,” said the Professor. “Only, if you don’t mind, I think it will be a nice fat bottle of Beaune.”

“The nearer the Beaune, the sweeter the meat,” said Fred, rising lazily. “Let’s go.”

“Fie!”

The two men went out, linking arms, and descended the steep street to the Common. The paths and grass were already sprinkled with white—the snow, a stage snow, was falling perfectly straight through the windless air. Looking up at a tall elm, beside which hung a purple arc-light like a snowdrop, the Professor saw that the fork of the tree was white, and that the bare twigs were beginning to be feathered. He suddenly felt happy. Life was like this—a dark day of rain, the gloom and nostalgia of a departure, the sensation of release and escape, and then a soft curtain of snow. And Fred—the unexpected and delightful arrival of Fred, and the void evening suddenly filled with light and joy. Fred flopping along beside him with open galoshes, and his toes turned in, and his shrewd face downcast in amused meditation.

“Yes,” he murmured, “I’m a bachelor—and it feels kind of nice to be a bachelor again.”

“Ah, you married men!… It must be nice to break out of the cage now and then. And sow—as somebody said—your wild oats in a windowbox.… What do you say—shall we have a Hop Toad?”

“A Hop Toad?… What on earth are you talking about!”

“My dear Tubby! You are married!”

Fred turned his delicious sly smile toward the Professor, and then without explanation led the way into the Touraine Hotel and down the worn marble stairs into the smaller grill-room—the men’s grill-room. Holding up one finger, he ordered two Hop Toads.

“You must wait,” he said. “You’ll wonder how you managed to live without a Hop Toad.”

He smiled mysteriously into the far corner of the room, which was almost empty.

“I take it a Hop Toad is a kind of intoxicating drink,” said the Professor. “Not too intoxicating, I hope.”

“It’s very, very subtle—not to say insidious.”

“Two Hop Toads,” said the waiter.

“Here’s looking at you,” said Fred, raising the wide glass and then lowering it to his smile, which was that of an Etruscan Dionysus. The Professor lifted his glass by the clear stem, beamed happily at the frothed pink liquid, and sipped. Then he sipped again, and rapidly smacked appreciative lips, throwing back his head.

“You do that like a hen,” said Fred.

“It tastes like a sunset!”

“No—no—that’s where you’re all wrong. It’s an Aurora Borealis.”

“Not at all—it’s the grenadine I refer to—the grenadine gives it a kind of glow—if you know what I mean—I’ll compromise with you by calling it an Alpenglow.”

“That’s better. That’s not so bad. Because it’s cold, you know—but it has a fire in it like the light in a moonstone.

“Yes. I feel it. By gosh, it’s good. There’s an enormous cabbage rose opening in my belly—with deep, crimson petals.”

“Yes, it certainly gets you forrader,” sighed Fred. “Bill will be furious when he hears we’ve been having Hop Toads. It was his discovery. By the same token, we ought to move. Bill will be waiting.”

They rose, they climbed the stairs, they pushed through the glass revolving doors, they crossed the white street, and descended the match-strewn stairs into Jacot’s. It was another such room as they had just left, with a bar in one corner. Most of the tables were marble-topped and bare; but one or two were covered with tablecloths, and at one of these Bill Caffrey was sitting, with his chin sunk in his hands. He watched their approach without change of expression.

“Hail,” he said.

“Hail,” said Fred.

“Hail.”

“We’ve been having Hop Toads,” said Fred.

“Confound it! Why didn’t I think of that?… My imagination couldn’t get any farther than a Lone Tree.”

“Tubby’s a bachelor.”

“Ah, indeed.”

“His wife’s gone away—left him flat.”

“Do tell.”

“And so he’s breaking out; going to get riotously drunk, like the time when he slept in the ash barrel.”

“Nothing of the sort. Just because I suggested a modest bottle of Burgundy—”

He beamed, he felt himself beaming, as he left the sentence hanging in air; Fred and Bill grinned sympathetically; and all three gave themselves to the business of ordering. Freshwater-fattened oysters from Poppennessett. Mock turtle soup. Filet mignon with mushrooms and fried egg-plant. Ice-cream—pistachio—and coffee. And two bottles of Beaune. Yes, sir, and again, yes, sir, said the waiter; making solemn notes, as if for a ritual; and in the pauses could be heard the bartender, who was cracking ice with the handle of a chisel. The bloated Poppennessett. The watery bivalve. And the imprisoned sunlight of the Beaune. Musing of these delights, already in his thought so vivid and intense, the Professor again felt suddenly and inexplicably happy. Life was like this—the gloominess of a huge sooty railway station on a winter’s night, the forlorn clanging of locomotive bells, the scurrying of sodden commuters, and then this marvelous translation to another world. A world of soiled mosaic floors, bottles of scarlet-capped Burgundy, brass spittoons (florid survival of a barbarous age), and the magnificent bar, with its baroque richness of gilt and mirrors, and its shelves of many-colored bottles, upheld by brown dryads of carved wood. What luxury! What comfort! What freedom! And the joy of sitting with cynical Fred and the impassive, morosely subtle Bill.

“You know,” said Bill, “I really like English oysters better than American ones.”

“Oh, come,” said Fred.

“Yes. And the Dutch, too. They have a more frankly marine taste—seaweedy and salt, like those slippery blistered kelpy things that you pop with your fingernails. These great things—good Lord, you might as well be biting bags full of water.”

“Anglomania,” said the Professor.

“Yes. And have you noticed his tweed suit?” murmured Fred. “Oh! And that reminds me.”

The waiter put down the soup and poured the Burgundy. They lifted the thin goblets, all three, sniffed appreciatively, and simultaneously drank.

“That reminds you of what,” said Bill, somberly.

“Tubby! We must get him to tell his story.”

“What story?”

“The one on the ship. Coming back last winter.”

“By George, yes!” said the Professor. “Let’s have it, Bill.”

Bill permitted himself the tiniest of guarded smiles, then again tasted his Burgundy. He frowned at his soup. Perplexed and pleased, and a little embarrassed also.

“No,” he said. “I really couldn’t. Not at the point of the gun, like this. Maybe some other time.”

Fred smiled—slowly and charmingly.

“Isn’t he skillful? This is his way of beating up our interest.”

“Not at all. I’d just as lief tell it—but the trouble is, you’re both of you in the wrong state of mind for it.”

“How come?” said the Professor.

“Because you’re both expecting something—well, scandalous. This isn’t that sort of thing at all.”

“No?”

“No.… There are plenty of episodes of this kind, as you know, that delight one just because they are scandalous and strange. Like that tale Frisky Speare told us, of his exploit on the train to New York. All amusing enough, too. But this isn’t like that—and I’m not like that either.”

“Ho ho,” said Fred, dryly.”

“Ho ho,” said Bill. “I’m not. I’m neither polygamous nor promiscuous, and I’m not the sort that women throw themselves at. That’s one thing that made this thing surprising. The other thing that made something—to my mind—extraordinarily lovely of it, was its spiritual intensity.”

The Professor crunched a small slippery mushroom, wiped his lips, and drank a full rich mouthful of Burgundy. Spiritual intensity. Just the kind of thing Bill would be going in for. Just the kind of guard—defense—he would erect about his indiscretions. Honest? Dishonest? Honest! One had only to look at his compressed lips, downturned with melancholy, and the level serious gray eyes, to recognize in Bill the contemplative stillness of spirit which would, precisely, make a distinction of this kind. One could imagine him, in the very midst of the most sordid of adventures, sitting perfectly quiet, thus, in the act of extracting its spiritual beauty. And then rising, hat in hand, and departing, with this beauty among his permanent possessions.

“It sounds all the better,” said the Professor.

“It was all the better.… I should preface the story by saying that on the ship with me, when we sailed from Cherbourg, were a New York newspaper man whom I knew slightly, a friend of his, and a young graduate student who worked with me three years ago. I ran into them after the adventure had started, and their presence—they were always sitting in the smoking room—gave a queer and delightful contrapuntal quality to the adventure itself. If I’d run into them before the adventure started, the adventure would probably never have happened at all. For in that case I’d have arranged to sit at their table the first night, and I wouldn’t have met Lovely.”

“Lovely?” Fred’s voice was just faintly ironical.

“Lovely. That’s what I called her. I never called her anything else; in fact, for several days I didn’t know her name.”

He paused, stared down at the tablecloth, shifted a spoon beside his plate, and raised his half-filled glass.

“She and her mother sat at my table on the first night, you see, before the regular places had been assigned. I was there first—and then she came, a little bit flustered, and sat down opposite. I’d seen her half an hour before on the deck—just a glimpse—but enough to see that she was one of the loveliest beings my eyes had ever fallen upon. An astonishingly beautiful girl, about twenty-five.”

“Of course,” murmured Fred.

“Don’t be snooty. She was. And the minute—the minute—she looked at me, across the table, I could see that something extraordinary was going to happen. Her eyes had that astonished brilliance that only happens when one recognizes—as one does only once or twice in a lifetime—what the newspapers used to call a soul-mate. I was electrified. I’m not used to being looked at in that fashion. I’m a sober God-fearing old citizen, as you both know, not at all given to flirtation—but the minute she looked at me like that I began to feel subtly transfigured myself. I felt my own eyes opening wider, and a light in my face to which I’m not in the least accustomed.”

“The light that never was,” said the Professor.

“And lies and lies,” said Fred.

“Certainly.… Not that I fell in love. I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t. There was no question of that. I was destined, in a sense, to play an entirely passive part, and I knew that from the beginning. It was she who supplied the energy for the scene—it was she who started the thing going and kept it going—for the good and sufficient reason that she had fallen in love with me. Could I refuse to play that passive part which was indicated? Could I do anything but acquiesce?”

Fred gave a little groan.

“Don’t be a boob,” he said.

“I was and am a boob. I was never so completely helpless, powerless, in all my life. Not that I wanted very much to be anything else. I was fascinated. Like the sparrow by the anaconda. I just sat and chattered, and shivered my paralyzed wings. I had no desire to run—she was far too beautiful for that—but I confess I was damned scared. For one thing, there was her nice old mother, with smooth white hair and kind eyes and knitting and everything. She hadn’t noticed a thing—but wouldn’t she be sure to? For another thing, Lovely was wearing a wedding-ring.”

“Married!”

“Married.… That gave me pause. It suggested a good many rather disquieting things.”

He broke off and meditated, with a tiny retrospective smile.

“Well, get on with the story,” said the Professor. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“She asked me if I played bridge. I said I did. So after dinner we had a three-handed game, in the library, till about nine o’clock. All very polite and a little formal. She’d been over to Paris, visiting her sister, who had married a Frenchman, and was on her way back to her husband in Trenton. Her husband was a manufacturer, and wealthy, I gathered. Then at nine o’clock, she said she thought she’d like some fresh air—so I suggested a turn around the deck. Mother said good night and went down to turn in, and Lovely and I went out and walked for an hour. Somehow or other, I couldn’t say a thing. I suppose because I was too uncomfortably aware of the extent to which I agitated her. But anyway, it wasn’t necessary; she talked a blue streak. All about Paris—the trip over—her sister—her mother—her husband—her shopping. Everything. A complete nonstop outpouring: as if she were trying to talk against time. Or rather, as if she were afraid of what might happen if she stopped talking. And meanwhile, she kept a fast hold of my arm with her hand, occasionally tightening her grip with an almost spasmodic intensity, and leaning her shoulder against me with obvious delight as we rounded the corners. As for me, I just shivered—for it was a coldish evening—and said yes or no or is that so or wellwell or anything at all that was sufficiently monosyllabic—for it was clear enough that she wanted to do all the talking. In fact, I had the feeling that the poor child had never, before that night with me, in all her life, had a chance to talk. For some reason, the mere sight of me had released her.… Pour and pass, Fred.

“Well. That was the first night. As we separated, she again looked at me with that same brilliantly astonished look, as if I might be some sort of divine revelation, and quite unnecessarily shook my hand. I did my best to play up, of course—not unwillingly. Good heavens! It isn’t every day in my life that a beautiful young woman pays me that sort of compliment. We looked hard and deep at each other, smiling protractedly and deliciously, and arranged for another game of bridge in the morning. And then I went into the smoking room and found Peters and Marks and the other chap and chewed the rag with them for half an hour, and so to bed.

“Next morning we had the game of bridge—all very polite and formal, just as before. Mother suspected nothing. She was just as nice and sweet and innocent as she could be. As for Lovely, I had the feeling that she hardly dared to look at me. After an hour or so of bridge, we went out for a walk, abandoning Mother; but we’d scarcely got outside when she said that she had suddenly remembered that she had something she wanted to show to me: an Egyptian thing. So she ducked below and came back in a few minutes with a curious terracotta bas-relief of an Egyptian head—a woman’s head—young, beautiful, and with the eyes closed in sleep. And yet not as if altogether asleep, either—there was a kind of drowsy and voluptuous consciousness in the face, and one felt, as it were, a tremor in the closed eyelids—as if, perhaps they were closed merely for the duration of a kiss. Anyway, that was what I felt when I looked at it—perhaps partly because I could see that it was something of this sort that she felt. She was so obviously thrilled by it! Thrilled and mystified. I took the thing in my hands and stared at it—and then, prompted by all the subtle intangibles of that extraordinary situation, I achieved what I haven’t the slightest doubt was a stroke of genius: I told her that this was the face of the Egyptian goddess of love—I made up on the spur of the moment a fantastic name for her—and then solemnly, holding the thing between my two palms, I raised the beautiful somnolent mouth to mine and kissed it.…”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” said Fred. “And you a married man with eight children.”

There was a pause. The waiter put down three ice-cream plates, each bearing a little green Fujiyama of pistachio ice. Detachedly, with a slight frown of preoccupation, Bill decapitated the apex of the smooth cone. The Professor watched him, smiling. It was a good story—it was going to be a good story—and the Burgundy was warming his heart. And to think that Bill Caffrey was a lecturer in economics!

“Yes, that was a stroke of genius. I could see it at once. Just exactly the right thing, the one and only thing, for me to do. She believed me—she believed in the utter sincerity of my gesture. That will give you an idea of the sort of creature she was—rapturously and incorrigibly romantic, starved for love, and utterly, utterly, utterly unsophisticated. Perhaps you can guess from that, too, how I felt about it. Half fascinated and half terrified. I was simply being taken off my feet by the force of her passion for me. My own feelings—almost nil. That’s a slight exaggeration, but you see what I mean. I knew then, as I handed Smet-Smet, or Rert-Rert, or whatever the thing’s name was, back to her—when I saw the really idolatrous expression that shone in her eyes—that she had abdicated entirely, and that heart, soul, and body she was mine. And I knew also that it was too late for me to try to run—vigorous as the impulse was.”

“Oh, come,” said Fred.

“Vigorous—but, I admit, ambiguous.… And it must be admitted, further, that I didn’t run. At least, not very much nor very fast nor very far. I escaped from her shortly afterward, and didn’t see her again till the evening. She came out of one of the main doors to the deck just as I was going in. And I was so delighted to see her, in that unexpected manner, and she looked so extraordinarily beautiful in a black satin dress, open at the throat, with a Spanish shawl over her shoulders, that I was surprised into addressing her as Lovely. Explain that how you will. I swear I had no wish, of my own, to make love to her. Yet I then and there, and from that minute on, found myself doing it. I did it like a sleepwalker—automatically. My conscience simply went to sleep. My family ceased to have any reality whatsoever. I didn’t give them so much as a thought. Her attraction to me was so profound and so powerful that I was completely polarized by it.”

“Polarized!… You do find nice apologies for things,” said the Professor. “Polarized!”

“That was precisely it. I was as incapable of independent action as a magnetized watch. From that time, I behaved to her, and to her alone; no matter where I was or what I was doing. When I played bridge with the boys in the smoking room, it was all I could do to tell a king from a two-spot.”

“Well, well, well,” said Fred. “But let’s have a little less theory and a little more narrative.”

“No—that’s where you’re wrong; for the exquisite beauty of this episode is entirely in the incidents and overtones.… However, if you’re getting impatient for the dénouement, I’ll cut it short for you.”

“For heaven’s sake don’t” said the Professor.

The three men sat silent for a moment, all three of them faintly smiling, as if in a queer kind of communion of spirit. The waiter removed the ice-cream plates and deposited coffee-cups and a silver pot of coffee. Cigarettes. Afterward, perhaps, a little syrupy glass of green Chartreuse. Fred poured the coffee, and Bill struck a match. Might they not—thought the Professor—adjourn afterward to the Parthenon, for Turkish coffee? But no, it would be too late. Already after nine. And already as delightful an evening as it could be. This story—how it opened like a flower! Bill’s odd and secret life, opening like a flower. Life was like this—the emptiness and sharp nostalgia of a departure, and then an unexpected and beautiful story. From the North Station, on a winter’s eve, to Smet-Smet, whose eyes were closed for a kiss.… But wasn’t Smet-Smet the hippopotamus goddess?… The Professor felt himself frowning; but, thanks to the warm burden of Burgundy, frowning with an amiable remoteness. He blew the ash from his cigarette—phhhh.

“That night, after the bridge-game, the adventure took a swift step forward, I knew it would—I knew it couldn’t be long deferred. We went out and climbed up to the boat-deck—B Deck. It was dark there, there were no lights, and not a soul in sight. The night was surprisingly warm—I suppose we must have been getting into the Gulf Stream. We went to the forward end of the deck, where we could get a wide view over the bridge and bow to the black sea, and stood there for five minutes without a word. Her hand was under my arm. And then, just naturally, without any preliminaries of excitement, we kissed.”

“Ah!” said Fred. “I knew it.… I notice these spiritual adventures always end in a kiss.”

“You needn’t be so superior about it—I was quite conscious of that ironic fact, even in the act of kissing. I thought to myself—‘Now, Bill it’s all over with you; you’ve now definitely let yourself in for it.’ And in a way I was very unhappy about it. I foresaw all the wretched complications, the evasions, the concealments, the necessities for furtiveness and secrecy, and the inevitableness—or is it inevitability?—with which this furtive-ness must poison the relation between us. I also foresaw the awful physiological or biological or psychological determinism which, in such a situation, carries one forward a little farther with each meeting, until disaster is reached. There is something magnificent and horrible in that. Relentless Nature. She has no pity on us. Once you give in to her at all, in the smallest particular, you’re a gone goose. There can never be any backward step. You begin by merely gazing, then you touch hands—ah, that exquisite first touch!—and then you embrace and kiss, and then you kiss more passionately, and the next time more passionately still—there is no breaking that spell except by flight. And there we were on a ship, where no flight was possible.…

“Everything, of this sort, was implied in that first rather shy and fugitive kiss. And what was not implied she immediately went on to say. She said that she had fallen in love with me the minute she saw me: she had begun to tremble violently, and had wanted to come right up to me, there on the deck, and speak, but had not dared. She had then quite deliberately waited till I had taken my seat in the dining saloon, in order that she might seat herself at the same table. Astounding. And then she said, when we began to talk, my voice—just think of it, my voice!—put the finishing touch on it. She said her reason simply forsook her. And when, in the morning, I lifted Smet-Smet to my lips and kissed adoringly the beautiful terracotta mouth, it appears that I had put an enchantment on her that would never, never be broken. She knew then, once and for all, that the thing was fatal.

“Of course, I replied in kind. I said all sorts of absurd and frantic things. I told her—what was true enough—that I had never in my life seen anyone so beautiful, and that I, too, in the same way, had been completely swept off my feet. Isn’t it extraordinary, the madness that comes over one on these occasions? I held her in my arms and stared into her eyes and said ‘Lovely! Lovely! Lovely’ over and over again. And nevertheless, I was thinking to myself ‘I must get out of this,’ and wondering how soon I could decently make my escape. And the very fact that I was aware of this duplicity, of this horrible treason, made me redouble the ardor of my embrace and the ecstasy of my speech. I had allowed her to assume that I was as much in love with her as she was with me; and in the face of this, and of the really appalling intensity with which she loved me, I saw nothing for it but to surrender unconditionally, at the same time hoping that the good ship Imperator would break all records and reach New York at least three days before she was due.”

“Zeus and Atropos!” murmured the Professor. “Now if it had been Fred, he’d have been wishing that it was a World Cruise.”

“You bet,” said Fred. “Shall we proceed to whisky and soda?… Let’s have a whisky and soda.”

He signaled the waiter and gave the order. Bill unrolled a long oilskin tobacco-pouch and began filling his charred and battered pipe.

“However,” he resumed, “we weren’t so far sunk that we could ignore the practical social difficulties that lay ahead of us. And so the disagreeable element of secrecy was introduced at once. I explained that I had friends on the ship, and that I would therefore have to be very careful; she, on her part, added that of course there was her mother to be considered. We couldn’t simply surrender ourselves to this—passion—and blindly ignore all consequences. We would have to plan a kind of cold-blooded campaign of discretion and secrecy, not to say deception. So it was arranged that we should have three hours a day; one in the morning, one in the afternoon (when her mother always took a rest), and one in the evening after the bridge-game and before I joined my three friends in the smoking room. In this way, we thought, we could probably keep the thing as inconspicuous and normal as the usual sort of ship-acquaintance, and avoid anything in the nature of gossip. This was unpleasant, and gave me a bad moment of panic—if only because, in this illicit way, it took our affair for granted, and gave it a twisted kind of legality. I was now in the position of an accepted lover, but without in the least being in love. I, who had never in my life been unfaithful to my wife, and never desired to be, and I didn’t even now desire to be, was being railroaded into a clandestine liaison of really grandiose proportions.… Here’s how.”

“How,” said Fred.

“How,” said the Professor.

Ruminating, they sipped their whiskies. The bartender was shaking cocktails for two college boys who leaned with careful nonchalance, in wet raincoats, against the bar. The snow, one of them was saying, had turned to rain.

“That touches the spot,” said the Professor. He put down his glass and smiled. He felt extraordinarily good-natured. “Lovely! Lovely! Lovely!”… Bill’s phrase, in Bill’s suave and intense and—yes—gauzy voice, ran in his head hypnotically.

“To resume. I’ll cut the thing short—for of course you can imagine the next few stages well enough for yourselves. Nothing much happened in the morning and afternoon of the third day—but in the evening, when we climbed up to the boat-deck again, things began to happen pretty fast. She was in a frenzy—had an idea that I had been cold to her all day—accused me of avoiding her, not looking at her—and so forth. Naturally, I denied this, and took the easiest way of doing so—I embraced her ardently and kissed her, swearing that if I had appeared to avoid meeting her eyes it was only because I was so afraid of giving myself away in public. She hugged me, she kissed my hands, she ran her fingers up inside my coat sleeves, and then, beginning to cry, she told me about her husband.… It appears that he was a typical American businessman—successful, energetic, cold, hard-boiled, as the saying is. She had been married to him for five years—he was twelve years older than she—and for the first year or so she had been more or less happy. But then she began to discover their temperamental differences. She was passionately in love, and he was not. She was romantic, and he was not. She wanted adventure, color, excitement, parties, music, poetry, art—you know the sort of things: a kind of American Emma Bovary; and he, alas, became every minute more absorbed in his business life, a mere walking ledger. What relaxation he sought was in his club or on the golf-links, and always alone. In a nut-shell, he was indifferent to her because he was sexless. Nothing new in the situation, of course—we read about it every other day in the divorce cases. But it astounded me, as it still astounds me, that anyone could have married such a being as she was and remain indifferent. She said he had no tact, no understanding, whatever: gave her things, of the kind that money could buy, and gave generously, but never gave himself. A perfunctory kiss at breakfast, and another when he came home from the office. And there had been no children.…

“Quae cum ita sint, she was unconsciously ripe for such a misadventure as befell her with me. She thought me romantic-looking; and I had then only to kiss Smet-Smet, and murmur to her how nice it would be if we could fly away together to Tahiti or Karnak, and she was certain that in me she had found her great lover, her ideal. In fact, she said so. That I was myself married—I had fortunately mentioned this at the outset—didn’t affect her in the least. No matter what happened, she said, she would now and henceforth be happy all her life, by virtue of this memory. She now knew—so she said—what it was to love and be loved. Just think of it! She had extracted all this from a few clandestine embraces on B Deck and the paltry half-dozen romantic phrases which I had managed to recall from my reading of soupy love-stories in the cheaper magazines. If that isn’t an irony, what is? I was horribly ashamed of myself—I’ve never in all my days felt so miserably cheap and dishonest. A perfect cad. And yet, when I looked back over the affair I couldn’t, to save my neck, see any point at which I could decently, or mercifully—yes, mercifully—have behaved otherwise than as I did … Good God!”

He paused, removed his pipe from his mouth, stared at the ashes in it as if a little surprised, struck a match absent-mindedly, without using it blew it out, and then resumed.

“Yes.… That’s how it was.… And you can imagine exactly how it affected me. I exerted myself, on the one hand, to make love to her more passionately; and on the other hand, I had my eye perpetually on my watch, or my ear on the ship’s bells, so as to reduce our meetings to a minimum. I worked my three acquaintances for all they were worth—told her that they were already a little suspicious, and that I would have to be a good deal more careful. Pretended also that I had some very important work to do—reading for lectures, et cetera. She took it like a lamb, believed me without question. And—heavens!—how astonishing it was, to go down from that dark upper deck, where we stood for an hour under the stars, absolutely immobile with passionate absorption in each other, in that blind state of panic when the whole universe seems to flow into one’s soul—to go down alone from this to the smoking room and hear Peters saying, in his lazy drawl, ‘Well, according to Einstein—’ or Marks telling the other chap the theoretical value in tricks of each card in a bridge-game. That, in addition to my own singular detachment—call it dishonest if you like—gave the thing an exotic unreality, a nostalgic remoteness, of an unmatchable loveliness. I experienced a profound feeling of gratitude that such an adventure should have befallen the least romantic of men: and I was terrified, with the genuine sacred terror, when I wondered what the future might hold in store for me.

“I remarked, earlier, on the inevitable step-by-step progression of such affairs, from the less to the more intense, and this was no exception. With each night, as we approached nearer to America and the American winter, the weather grew colder—but nothing could daunt us. On the last night, when we climbed up for our farewell meeting, it was actually snowing. We had our heavy coats on—and there we stood, being literally drifted under, while the ship plunged and corkscrewed in a gigantic sea. It was marvelous—as if the elements themselves were conspiring with us to give our Liebestod a touch of grandiosity. No—grandeur! For it was that. Certainly, with Lovely, it had become a grand passion. I admit that I’d never had any idea what terrific force a passion could have. It she could have torn me limb from limb, as the Bacchantes tore—who was it? I’ve forgotten his name—she’d have done so. As it was, she kissed me with a kiss that was more like flame, lambent flame, than I could have conceived it to be: restless, rapid, devouring. She even opened my waistcoat, and slid her hand in against my heart; and we stood there, motionless in the blizzard for all the world like a pair of stanchions or davits, and apparently as lifeless.

“What happened then is the thing that gives its whole point to the story—if it has a point at all—and it’s essential that you should see it in the right way. If you regard the thing as merely a tidbit of scandal, and hope for a climax of the approved smoking-room style, you’ll be disappointed, and you’ll miss what is to my mind the real beauty and pathos, or rather tragedy, of the actual event. I need hardly say that when we finally groped our way down below again, shaking the snow off our hats and coats, we were in no mood to separate. It was late—eleven-thirty—for one hour had stretched to two; and when we stood in the corridor to say good night we found ourselves alone, in a ship which to all intents and purposes had gone to sleep. We said good night: I had my hand on her wrist: and then, once more surrendering to an impulse that seemed to come from her rather than from myself, I asked her to come to my room. The question seemed to hang there for a long while, portentously reverberating, catastrophically reverberating, while we stared at each other: and then, shutting her eyes as if in an agony, she said ‘no.’ I didn’t urge her. I merely added that I would wait for her—that I would expect her in three minutes—told her how to find my stateroom—and that I would leave the door ajar. With this, I turned my back and departed. She stood there, unmoving.

“In three minutes, she came into my room. When I embraced her, and told her how happy she had made me, I felt that she was trembling—trembling violently. She was in a queer passive trancelike state; and while I kissed her, she kept her dark eyes wide open, as if she were desperately looking for something, something unresolved or unresolvable. And then, gently detaching herself from me, and leaning her back against the door, she said the most completely surprising and most completely terrifying thing that was ever said to me. ‘I am yours—’ she said—‘irrevocably and utterly yours. I must stay here with you, if you like. But I must tell you that if I do this, then I shall never, never, never, as long as I live, let you go. I’ll follow you everywhere—I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. Your wife won’t matter to me, nor my husband, nor social scandal, nor anything: I will sacrifice everything to be near you, and I’ll never give you up, so help me God. I’ve got to tell you that. And then you can decide whether you want me to stay.…’

“Well!… To say that I was frightened doesn’t begin to suggest to you what I felt. In a second—a second—my spurious (perhaps not wholly spurious) passion for her had vanished. I stared at her as if at a total stranger who had somehow blundered into my stateroom; and I felt incredibly foolish and false. What on earth could I do?… Nothing. Absolutely nothing! If I’d been of more heroic mold, or anything at all of a Don Juan (which Heaven knows I’m not), I suppose I’d have made the final grand gesture and taken, unflinching, the final risk. But being a mere timid married man, unquestionably loyal and decidedly less than moyen sensuel, I was, to be quite frank, in a horrible funk, and could find nothing to do but look silly. I must have looked damned silly. But I did manage, after a moment, to pull myself together—and I said, with as much gravity as I could muster, that so great a sacrifice, on her part, was out of the question, and that of course any such permanent relation between us could not for a minute be considered. She gave me a queer, long, hard look, at that, with her hand on the doorknob—rather uncomfortably, as if she had suddenly seen me for the first time—and then said a flurried little goodbye, gave me her hand, and was gone.… And I never spoke with her again.”

Fred took off his spectacles and stared.

“Well, I’ll be—sunk,” he said.

“Sunk isn’t the word,” murmured the Professor. “I never heard such an outrageous anticlimax in all my life. You mean to say—”

Words failed him. He felt himself to be visibly speechless. So far—so agonizingly far—in pursuit of an ignis fatuus! To Karnak and back for a grain of sand! He finished his whisky at a gulp.

“Well, Bill,” he added, rising, “I congratulate you on your firm moral stand. It was splendid. Worthy of the best traditions of the college. Anyway, it’s a blamed good story, and now I’ve got to go home.”

“It’s a hum-dinger,” said Fred. “Did it really happen like that?”

“Absolutely, word for word.”

“Well, it’s a hum-dinger.”

The waiter being summoned, they paid the bill, put on their coats and galoshes, and climbed the worn stairs. The Professor felt himself to be a little unsteady on his feet, but perfectly clear-headed—perfectly. And he visualized the final scene in the stateroom with astonishing distinctness. There were certain details, however, about which he wished Bill had been a little more specific. Had they, or had they not, actually—

He was interrupted in this sly speculation by Fred’s asking him if he would like to ride in a taxi as far as Charles Street.

“Yes,” he said, and stepped in beside Fred, waving a hand to Bill, who was remaining behind.

“Good night!”

“Good night!”

They were off, and in three minutes had stopped at the corner of Charles and Beacon streets. It was snowing again, as he plodded up the hill—large soft flakes. Well, well—well, well! To think of a thing like that! Now if such a thing would only happen to him—

He inserted his key in the lock, and it stuck again. It wouldn’t go in any farther, or come out, or turn. Damn. He wrestled with it—he tugged at it—it was no use. Backing away into the street, he surveyed the front of the house to see if there were any lights. None. The servants, of course, had gone to bed. No light in Mrs. Trask’s room, either. Damn again. A hundred purple damns. He rang the bell, and nothing happened. Not a sound of a footstep. He rang again, prolongedly, and heard the bell trilling remotely in the distance, with the lost and melodramatic sound of a stage-bell. And the—joy!—the light in the hallway brightened, and the door opened. It was Mrs. Trask herself, clutching an ample black silk dressing-gown about her throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said—“my key has gone and got stuck. I think it must be defective. I’m afraid it will have to stay there.”

He pointed to the guilty key, smiling. Mrs. Trask smiled, too—he had the idea that she was smiling suggestively. Thinking him drunk, perhaps—because of the key? Or was it merely that she liked him?…

“I know it looks suspicious!” He gave a little laugh.

“Very suspicious!”

“But I assure you it stuck earlier in the evening as well!”

“Oh, did it?”

“Yes, it did.”

Mrs. Trask smiled again, as if waiting for something—of course, she was waiting for him to precede her upstairs. What an idiot he was!

“I’m sorry,” he said again, in a heartfelt tone, and then added, “good night, Mrs. Trask.”

“Good night, Mr. Milliken.”

Irony?… No.…

And then, as he stood before his mirror, a brilliant thought occurred to him—a positive illumination. Of course! She was attracted to him! Any fool could see that! If he were to go downstairs again, and knock quietly at her door—very, very quietly—

No sooner said than done. He knotted the cord of his bathrobe about his middle, opened his door, and listened. Nobody stirring—the hall was dark. He crept out, descended the stairs softly—his heart beating with absurd violence—and on the landing beside Mrs. Trask’s door paused to listen again. Not a sound—Mrs. Trask must have gone back to bed. He lifted one knuckle, poised it fatally, and knocked—once, twice.

“Who’s that?”

Mrs. Trask’s voice sounded muffled, a little frightened. To his dismay, the Professor found that his own voice had unaccountably failed him. He stood and waited, in abject and appalling silence.

“Is that you, Mr. Milliken?”

Ridiculous! He must do something. He summoned up his waning courage.

“Yes, it’s I, Mrs. Trask.”

“Are you ill?… Did you want something?”

Another portentous silence—a positive abyss. The hallway reeled. But wasn’t this, thank heaven, an opportunity for escape?

“Yes, I am.… Have you any brandy, Mrs. Trask?”

“I’m sorry—” came the muffled voice—“I haven’t … I’d get up, but I’ve just had an attack of vertigo myself—”

“Oh, don’t bother, please … I just thought if you had any brandy—”

He turned in an agony of humiliation and shame, and confronted the stairs. Ruined! He had all but ruined himself. Good Lord, what would Molly say when she heard of this! They would have to move. At once.… He stood as if paralyzed, clutching the post of the stair-rail. And then, for no valid reason, he twice struck his forehead against the post, and went quietly back to his room.