Conrad Aiken: Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

Comic, yes — and an act of divination as well — for just as he was amusing himself with his own sudden vision of life, as symbolized in an endless vista of w.c.’s, which receded parabolically into the infinite, Enid went quickly across the hall, into the bathroom, and shut the door. At the same instant, too, a light switched on in an upper room of the Purington house, and he turned around just in time to see Gladys Purington, black-haired and handsome, reaching up to pull down the window shade. Intimacy — yes, how was one to compromise with intimacy? Now with this print, Famous Place to See Moon , it was just as obvious that a prolonged familiarity was in some degree deadening as with a person. He had forgotten how lovely it was, forgotten its precise virtue of naïve magic, its tenderness, its — yes, above all— love , and could not now, perhaps, so much love it again himself had he not forgotten it — it was all very odd!

He struck a chord, and another, and a third — tried, angrily, to remember Schoenberg’s “mystic” chord, and what Paul had said about it — began to play Debussy’s Arabesque and stopped; and was beginning a fragment of a Bach toccata when Enid came and stood in the doorway. Her arms were folded across the green smock, she was lightly biting her lower lip. She looked angry, but unhappy as well. There was a curious awkwardness, half of aggression and half of retreat, in the way she leaned slightly against the doorjamb. Her head, tipped a little to one side, was just perceptibly swaying, and the steady green eyes — beautiful — looked for a long moment into his own before she spoke.

“Don’t you think we ought to discuss this?” she said.

He smiled cynically up at her, tapped a note, tapped it again, felt with his fingers for a little chord, and then suddenly hardened his gaze and looked beyond her, into the dark garden where the dead plum tree stood in the rain.

“Why?” he said.

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid I’m becoming a little indifferent.”

“Indifferent? To what?”

“To you. I don’t think you can blame me if I feel a little bruised!”

“I see. You become indifferent to me when I dare to stand up for my rights!”

“Work it out for yourself — however you like! I don’t really much care, that’s all!”

“Oh. And you just propose to let things go on like this?”

“Why not? You started it, didn’t you? Can’t you finish it? I don’t mind, if you don’t. And as long as you intend to treat me in this fashion I’m quite happy without your society. A woman who can behave as you did just now to Jim Connor doesn’t interest me. Or only pathologically!”

“There was nothing else for me to do.”

“Nothing else for you to do! You could have been human. But that’s not your long suit, is it?”

“Human—! What is there to make me human, in this life—!”

“Oh, have you got to be made human? And I’m supposed to do it, I suppose—?”

“You’re very clever, you can twist my words—”

“I damned well need to be. If I’m clever, you’re hard ! My god, the things you’ve been doing — how could you do that to Jim Connor, when he was actually bringing presents for Buzzer! Not to mention lying to him, and telling him you didn’t know where I was!”

“I didn’t know — I thought you might have gone out.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Very well — I can’t make you believe me. I was abrupt with Jim partly because I was embarrassed — naturally I was surprised to see him when I thought the whole thing was finished—”

“Embarrassed — I should think so! You ought to have been sick with shame. And I’d think a lot better of you if you had been. It’s not enough, is it, that you drive my friends away, cut me off from them, from the few people I find interesting and stimulating — you have to insult them on my very doorstep—”

“I didn’t insult him—”

“Not in so many words, no! But did I hear any thanks for what was really an extraordinarily nice thing of him to do? Did you even offer to take the things from him? Oh, no — you just stood there and let him put them on the floor. Where I suppose they still are! And this on top of everything else — driving him out of town, dictating that we aren’t to see each other — my god, and then you have the gall to turn around and try to pretend that it’s all in self-defense!”

“Which is exactly what it is.”

“Oh, yes, let’s hear all about that again — it’s bad for our precious names and social positions, and Buzzer’s future will be ruined, and all the rest of that snobbish silly nonsense—”

“Do you ever think of anybody but yourself? For one moment?”

“Never.”

“I thought not. You never think, for instance, of the difference between a woman’s social position and a man’s—”

“Oh? Let’s hear about it.”

“It’s true. It’s the woman who stays at home, who has to face it, not the man — the man doesn’t know about it, and doesn’t care — he’s got his own separate life — but what about the woman? It’s all very well for you, with half your life spent in town, or on trips to New York—”

“Trips to New York—!”

“Yes, trips to New York. And about half the week at home, and most of that shut up in the studio — but what about me, the rest of the time? Does it ever occur to you that people talk ?”

“How wonderful.”

“It’s not wonderful at all. It’s very natural.”

“Well? And what do they talk about?”

“They begin by pitying me. Just like George and Mabel. Oh, if you’d known the times Mabel has asked me if I didn’t get lonely—”

“Yes — I know — one of those sweet little services that women love to do for each other!”

“And then, because they’re afraid of showing their pity, if they’re nice, and embarrassed by it, they begin to stay away. Do you realize that nowadays, when you’re in town, George and Mabel practically never come to see me? Or anybody else, for that matter? Oh, I’m kept in cold storage, all right. They come to see me when you’re here, but apparently it’s beginning to be thought not quite respectable to call on me when I’m alone. Or as if it wasn’t respectable for me to be left alone.”

“Aren’t you being just a little imaginative?”

“Oh, no. You ask your friend George — ask your friend Paul, too. If you can get an honest answer out of them, which I doubt! The truth is, they’re ashamed for you. And the neighbors, too — they shun me as if I were the plague. Even Mrs. Murphy is always hinting, saying it’s such a pity, isn’t it, that my husband has to be away so much, as if it implied either that there was something wrong with you, or something terribly wrong with me !”

“Yes. And what else?”

“Well — naturally, it all leads to gossip.”

“Oh. I see. How nice.”

“It isn’t at all nice.”

“Well, let’s hear it!”

“They think—”

“ Who thinks?”

“They all do.”

“Oh. And they all told you?”

“No. It’s not necessary to go into that!”

“All right, let’s have the gossip.”

“They think, when you go to town, or to New York—”

“New York! I haven’t been there for six months!”

“No matter. When you go to town — when you go away — they think you wouldn’t go so much, or stay so long, if there weren’t some other reason. Some reason other than your work. They think you’re having an affair. They can’t imagine that you wouldn’t have arranged things better — so as to spare me so much work and so much loneliness — if there weren’t some other reason.”