Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

“I wish my one actress would take a long vacation—a year at least to rid herself of all kinds of trouble.”

“ALL kinds?”

“It ought to be possible, if you let yourself face the future realistically.”

“I’m glad we’ve stopped talking of me as HERSELF.” She began to laugh. “Like an Abbey play… And what kind of future do you think— realistically—I have to face?”

He said tensely: “That’s a straight question, but I can’t answer it without talking about Paul.”

“Oh, talk about him, I don’t mind. _I_ talk about him to you.”

“Carey… do you really love him?”

“I’ve told you I don’t MISS him—except his better judgment in saying no.”

“So you’re not really upset by the delay in his return?”

“I’m upset by the mess he seems to be getting himself into over there.”

“Yes, I know, but if a cable came now that he was arriving in New York tonight—how would you feel?”

“Oh, my goodness—HORRIBLE—because I’d hate him to see the play.”

“But apart from that?”

“It’s very hard for me to think of Paul apart from plays.”

“That’s been your life together—principally?”

“Yes—you could say so. Principally. Except for a short time —at first.”

“Then we’re back to what I said before. It isn’t enough. You’ve gone without a great deal.”

“Oh, I’m sure I have.”

“You ought to have had children of your own.”

“I don’t know whose fault that was—Paul’s or mine.”

It seemed to him an answer to a question he wouldn’t have presumed to ask. He went on, after a silence: “Carey, it all boils down to this… how long are you willing to endure a situation that can’t make you really happy —your nature being what it is?”

“Is there an alternative?”

“Of course.”

She said, almost flippantly: “Oh, you mean divorce him? Sure, I could do that—he’s probably been unfaithful with somebody or other… but what exactly would be the point?”

In a single sentence she had blunted the weapon he had furbished for some possible use at a clinching moment. He knew now it would be anti-climax to give her certain facts about Paul; worse than anti-climax, it would recoil ignominiously on himself. He was devoutly thankful he had made good taste the better part of wisdom.

He said simply: “The point, Carey, is that I’d want to marry you if you were free.”

She looked up with interest rather than surprise or enthusiasm, then exclaimed, still flippantly: “You WOULD, Austen? Why, you’ve never even made love to me!”

“That isn’t because I…”

“I know, I know, you’ve been so careful not to spoil things—I’m sure that’s how you’ve thought of it, and that’s why it’s so funny when you talk about my nature being what it is. You just don’t know my nature.”

“You think I don’t?”

“I’m sure you don’t. Or else you do, and you’ve been a bit afraid of it.”

“Carey…” He took her into his arms, yet amidst his joy, the overwhelming joy of finding himself not rebuffed, he was aware of her laughter limiting as well as inviting him.

“Oh, Austen… you’re very sweet not to have understood me for so long. That’s why I’m laughing, not because I’m not just as serious as you are.”

The play came off after four nights, and Austen was sheerly delighted. Now that he had entered on this new relationship with Carey, everything else was in order; he was happy again, after an interval of years which, in retrospect, seemed like a tunnel from which he had just emerged. He had had affairs during that period, not very many, but they had all been rigidly circumscribed, if not furtive, and never had any of them led him to the most abstract contemplation of marriage. But now, with Carey, the fulfilment of a desire reinforced the ambition he had had (he could now realize) from the beginning.

They went to the farm and found all the familiar things doubly enjoyable in a new emotional context—the walks and rides, the pottering about, the first fires of autumn, a long day’s drive to the Catskills to catch the trees in deepest crimson. One brief conversation, at a moment when both were in a mood for practicality, had settled the future as far ahead as could be; it was understood that she would ask Paul for a divorce. Austen did not verify if and when she had done so, and not till a month had passed did he bring up the matter at all. She said then that she had written, but that Paul had not replied. It was like him, of course, not to write for long periods —or perhaps, if he were on a trip somewhere, he might not yet have received her letter. She said she would write again, and Austen wondered, preoccupyingly but not urgently, why she had not thought to do that already.

Nor did they ever discuss whether she would retire permanently from the stage or merely take a long vacation. Austen sensed how unwise it would be to mix this question with the so much more important one of their lives together; if he could make her happy with him, he felt fairly sure she would have a strong impulse, not so much to surrender a career, as to cling to the kind of life which a career would prohibit. He was always ready to barter the shadow of intention for the substance of likelihood. Out of her very happiness he aimed to build a defence against whatever lure the stage could exert; he would make her life comfortable but not placid, exciting enough yet without strain. He not only loved her, but was a connoisseur of qualities he had found in her, and this gave his love an aspect of guardianship.

As for his feeling for Paul, it was hard for him to make up a cool mind, since he so much resented the harm he believed Paul to have done. Yet because Carey usually seemed amused when she talked about Paul, he knew he must never invite her to share his serious condemnation; he must pretend that he too thought Paul a forgivable genius, whom one could no more enchain by marriage than escape from by divorce. For she had said to him reflectively when they had first discussed the future: “I don’t quite know what Paul and I had in common—it certainly didn’t make a marriage.” He had heard that with joy, especially the past tense of it. But then she had continued, less happily for him: “So what it did make, if anything, perhaps a divorce can’t take away.” He had quelled his mind’s retort that he hoped Paul and all Paul meant to her would be taken away, eventually and finally, not only by legal instrument but by the passage of time and the growth of compensating joys.

She kept up her visits to Paul’s mother, and he did not suggest that she make any change in this. He asked her once if Paul and his mother still corresponded regularly and she said yes, just as usual, once a week, like clockwork and about as interestingly, if one judged from the excerpts that Mrs. Saffron read aloud when she visited her.

“It seems to prove, though, that he must have received both your recent letters, so that if he doesn’t reply to them it’s only because he doesn’t choose to.”

“Yes, probably.”

A few weeks later came Thanksgiving, the second since Paul had left America. The previous year she had visited Mrs. Saffron, but had found her in such large company, all eager to finish dinner and play pinochle, that she almost wondered if the old lady had invited her just to demonstrate how little need she had of filial duty. This year Carey saw no reason to repeat the experience, apart from her own desire to spend the day with Austen, but she thought it polite to announce the change in advance and as tactfully as possible. She came to Austen’s house direct from this encounter, and her face, flushed and a little agitated, told him at once that something had happened. He took her into the library and knew better than to start a cross-examination.