Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

The mail was already sorted when I got there, and there were no letters in Box 36, only the little slip of paper that said the box was ours for three months. I saw Smiley come out of the drugstore with a golden-brown cake of chewing tobacco in his hand, a little red tin label on it. He was cutting a piece off the corner with his knife. At the bridge I stopped to watch the tide go in through the opened sluice gates, carrying nests of green and brown eelgrass, powerful and slow and deep, eddying and clucking. Why was the letter important. What did it say—. At the Library I chose The White Company because it looked longer. I looked at St. Nicholas’ to see who had won the prizes for drawings and then started home. It had stopped raining, a pale beam of sunlight flashed on the wet golden rooster at the top of the flagpole, the railings of white wood along the lagoon were beginning to sparkle. The letter was in my raincoat pocket, I kept my hand on it, and my finger went under the flap of the envelope. Before I knew it, it was open. I blushed and took it out to look at it. It would be easy enough to stick it down again. Suppose Father should pass me on the road, going to the station. I turned to the right, along King Caesar’s Road, and walked faster. I passed the cottage with the rhododendrons, and Powder Point Hall, and when I got to the pine woods I went in to the left of the road and crawled into my pine-log cabin. It was gray inside and I sat on the pine needles. I must ask Gay if she would come down again. We might do it this afternoon, especially if it was raining. Perhaps she would come by herself, without Warren, which would be more exciting. Or with Susan. If I couldn’t persuade her, Susan might.

I unfolded the letter and began to read it, and then blushed and folded it and put it back, and then took it out again. It was wrong to read it. But I wanted to know what was going on. What was going on. Why all this secrecy. If anything was hidden from us, like this, and a chance came, like this, why not take it. Why not. “Pussy dear.” I had heard him call her that, and it had seemed silly. But typewritten, in a typewritten letter—

Drops of rain fell on the roof, dripped from the trees, each one a sound of threatened guilt. Who would come, no one could come, I was alone. I took out the letter again, listened, and began to read.

Pussy dear, am I mistaken in detecting a lurking trace of sympathy in thy note of apology when dealing with that evident leaning of D’s towards what thee calls the racy side of life? Does thee, as thee says he does, partake in that wistful eager-yearning to snatch, before it is too late, something that perhaps solely because it is forbidden, possesses the fascination of a last untasted morsel, wanting to insure completeness in the rounding of our little life?… Remember, dear heart —

I got up so quickly that I bumped my head on the low roof of the cabin, then ducked and ran along the road until I was out of the belt of pine woods, and went into the field. The letter was in my pocket. It was not that I had heard any one coming. I broke a switch of wild cherry off a small tree in a broken-down stone wall, and with this began whisking the nests of tent caterpillars out of the trees along the lane, and whipping the leaves of bayberry bushes. Take that. And that. And that. And take that, you bastard. And don’t come again until you are asked. I walked slowly up the deep lane, whipping left and right, and wondered what the letter meant, and what the rest of it was. But I already knew. It was Uncle David. Did the racy side of life mean his drinking, his getting drunk, all those empty bottles, and his trying to get Mother drunk in the motorboat. Was that it. Or was it more than that. Should I read the rest of it. Would I have time. I could stop in the playhouse and read it, or I could read it here, but here I might meet somebody, and besides I was walking. And kept on walking. It was more — of course it was — than his trying to get her drunk, and I knew what it was.

I passed the playhouse, walking fast up the slope of humped grass, kicking at the grasshoppers which skirred away from me on heavy-rattling wings, passed the grass-mat targets, which had been set up for archery practice, and let myself into the house through the screen door. It was silent, empty, and when I hallooed there was no answer. Had they all gone bathing. I went back to the porch and saw that the rowlocks had gone, and the oars, and the life preserver. And when I went in again, and looked at the stairs, my bathing-suit and towel had been put on the banisters. I took them up in my hand and felt the dry sand in them. But all the while I was thinking—

In my bedroom I began to undress, slowly, pulled my shirt over my head, drew the necktie out and hung it over the mirror, looked at the ugly, dishonest shape of my mouth in the mirror, pulled it down with two fingers and stuck out my tongue and said “yaa!” at myself, then began flexing and unflexing my right arm to watch the muscle. But this was a pretense. The letter was in my pocket on the chair. To avoid it further, I took the flytrap to the window, opened the screen, broke the trap by pressing the sides together, and let the flies go. They went slowly, as if they were dying. Would I have time to copy out the letter. Would I. Before they got back from bathing. I could say that the mail had been late. Mother, I was just coming, I had only just had time to change into my bathing suit. And here is a note for you.

… Remember dear heart, all the wisdom of the generations coined into the many world-old legends and allegories hung about this very glitter and seductive charm — trite little maxims and proverbs sure enough, but not wearing the outward marks of the pain and wretchedness, shame and filth, with which their lessons were learned, over and over again by the forgotten ones who in their own day thrilled with the excitement of adventuring and daring, of proving for themselves and filling out their own little lives! Surely, plenty have already put out forever the steady flame of their purity to follow the scintillating sparkle of gilded sin. And if thee ever fails to realize those broader, common, human warnings — if they fail to appeal to thee as too remote and cold to be real, or to touch thy heart with their warning of terror, then thee must remember that this other half of thy very self has been sent already and at thine own bidding through all the sin needed by thee and me! Treasure thy portion of the blessed purity at all cost, dear! It has to light my way as well as thine — and thee can never know how priceless it is in my sight! Will thee not believe me, dear, when I tell thee this is not mere jealousy or selfish temper or proprietorship on my part, but a loving yearning to protect thy soul as thee would guard one of thy babies from some dreadful disease like diphtheria? What brings this to my mind is something in my talk with Tom last night, that suggested the possibility of thy winter’s loneliness, whether we decide that it should be without me, or without thy children, breeding a restlessness that might in some moment of reckless desperation cause thee to grasp at that treacherous glitter as a possible object of momentary interest and self-forgetfulness. Forgive me for entertaining for a moment such an idea, Pussy — but I must recognize it just long enough to tell thee that deep as my concern is for the needful reorganization of our home life and home relations, for the salvation of the children, I must, nevertheless, tell thee that rather than that thee should be exposed to even the remotest possibility of such a risk, I will gladly give up every consideration of them — throw up the whole plan — and act only for thy moral security. For in my heart and life, thee comes before everything else: and that one thing thy crown of purity, is to me so precious that even the moral loss of the three children would be a small sacrifice! So that if thee needed the protection of motherly contact to keep wholesome thine own life, I would gladly turn the little ones all over to thee and give up my struggles in their behalf. Will thee promise me as thee loves thy babies to call on me to make good this statement before thee finds thy need of them too great to be safely borne?… This matter has had to do with depressing me, lying in my heart all day, so that tired as I am I cannot go to bed tonight until I have written it for thy reading. Again I ask thy forgiveness for assuming such a possibility, but that flaw in D’s otherwise charming character, and thy persistent championing and apologizing for him, together with my rule of safety — to deem all things possible — forces it upon me. Could thee not send D away? Ask him to go? Need I ask thee to ask? It is because I so reverence thine own purity and so shrink into a veritable soul’s death at thought of any least soil upon it that I must speak. Does thee understand, dear heart ?