Conrad Aiken - Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

Returning, he began to whistle, then stopped, touched one note on the piano as he passed — perhaps that would mollify her. But no. She had laid her knitting aside, was sitting forward with her elbows on her knees, her flushed cheeks on her fists.

“Two points too high,” he said.

She made no answer for a moment, then leaned slowly back in the wicker chair, clasped her hands behind her head, and raised her eyes, now full and searching, to his. Her lips were slightly parted, but she was not smiling, though almost — he felt that she was looking, as it were, from one to the other of his eyes, and he waited, smiling a little himself.

“Don’t you think,” she said at last very deliberately, “you ought to come to some decision about it?”

“Good gracious, Endor dear, what is this! A decision about what.”

“I assume George told you he would refuse to meet Jim Connor, or to have anything to do with him?”

“Yes, he did.”

“It seems to me you might find that worth considering?”

“George doesn’t know Jim, and I do. It doesn’t affect George one way or the other — which makes all the difference.”

“Does it?”

“Of course, it does.”

“I’m afraid I fail to see it.”

He leaned over her, leaned his face close to hers, took the point of her elbow in his hand, and wagged it affectionately.

“Please, Ee, let’s be sensible about this — Jim Connor is really a very nice fellow.”

She withdrew her elbow from his clasp, lowered her hands into her lap. It was a deliberate separation, a rebuke, and he straightened up.

“What you mean is, that you won’t consider me at all. And in that case—” she smiled very brightly up at him, her head tipped a little to one side, the whole attitude charmingly defiant—“I shall of course have to consider what I shall do myself. Not only about this, about everything. It’s bad enough having Buzzer bullied in the streets by these little village toughs, knocked down and hurt, and learning to speak in the awful way they speak here—”

“What are you talking about, Ee — come to your senses!”

“Oh, no. I mean every word I say. I’m afraid, Timothy, you’d better think it over.”

“I see. It’s a threat.”

“It isn’t a threat. I’m just suggesting that for a change you think of our interests a little.”

“I’ve never done anything else! But if you think I’m going to throw over Jim Connor just because of this silly business you’re very much mistaken.… That’s Terence at the door — I’ll have to go.”

“Very well. If that’s more important—”

She had spoken the word “important” with a curious and disturbing emphasis, a subtle but somehow pervasive air of finality, and in the silence that followed, broken only by the spurt of a resinous flame, a shrill jet from the imprisoned gas in a pine log, and farther off the sound of Terence’s hammering at the boxes in the garden, he suddenly found himself remembering — how absurd! — the random phrase he had used when putting Buzzer to bed, the bantering remark that the end of the world was at hand, and that he must be there to see it. Why the devil should he think of that? Or why, too, as if it were a no less sinister part of the same thing, did he think again of Enid’s watch, lying alone on her pillow, ticking and glowing in the dark solitude of her empty room? It had made him conscious, for some obscure reason, of death; just as the falling of the leaves, the sound and sight and chill smell of them, the feeling of hurry and departure, had produced suddenly, from his unconscious, his feeble little joke about the end of the world. “Ho ho—” Buzzer had said—“you can’t fool me ! It isn’t coming to an end!” But wasn’t it—? Or what then had been in his mind, when, from the top of the wall by the lane, looking at the forlorn little house in the moonlight, he had had again a precise vision of precisely that, the end of everything that was precious to him? All this was subjective, no doubt — but it was easy enough just to say that, it was the old fallacy of trying to dispose of things simply by naming them, giving them pretty names — it really got one nowhere, explained nothing. The garment without a seam — good lord, yes, one’s conscious life was like that, there were no joins anywhere, everything flowed into everything else, flowed out of everything else, and the end must be — there seemed to be no escape from it whatever — either in admiration or despair. But not despair — no, not despair, not that, not that! Admiration certainly — wonder — even idolatry; or something, for example, like Buzzer’s pure astonishment. There was plenty of room for death, in this — plenty. Yes indeed. But did it really make finalities any more acceptable? He felt a little breathless, the familiar feeling of confused helplessness with which he always began a new painting — always, always — the panic of impotence! The world was always thus getting away from him, going too fast, whizzing off before he had time to shape it, or even — damn the luck — time to see it. It was always as if he were trying desperately to get hold of it before it was too late.

“Endor, darling, listen—”

“You’d better run along, Terence will be waiting for you.”

“Will you listen? No lilacs in the world, not a hundred, not a hundred million, are as important, you know that. They can go to hell, the whole damned galaxy and parade of them, and all of them with frozen feet, from here to kingdom come. Don’t you know that?”

“You made it quite obvious—”

“Nothing of the sort, Ee. It’s simply that they’ve got to be done—”

“Very well, why not run along and do them.”

“They can wait.”

“So can I, Tip — I’m quite used to it.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little bit difficult about this?”

“You mean mulish, I suppose? Why not say it?”

“I didn’t mean that at all. It won’t help matters to put words into each other’s mouths—”

“I’ve told you what I think—”

“Why don’t you listen to what I think—”

“—and you’ve apparently refused to consider it. That seems to me final.”

“I didn’t mean it to be as final as all that. Damnation, Ee, you can’t split up the world into blacks and whites as easily as all that! Try to see it, please — I’m in a very difficult position, painful on all sides, and I really want to do what is best.”

“Yes, Tip, you find it very hard to give up anything, don’t you? Even for me, or Buzzer!”

“I don’t think that’s deserved.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then that’s all I’ve got to say. Except to repeat what I said before, that I shall of course have to consider what I shall do. I suppose I’ve got a right to do that!”

“Of course, darling.”

“Run along then and attend to your lilacs. I suppose you’ll be late — I shall probably be in bed. And would you mind trying not to disturb me—? I’m very tired.”

The green eyes flashed up at him, a cold and lovely dismissal, flashed up and away; for the barest perceptible instant their eyes met; but no, they hadn’t really met at all, it was rather as if her own glance had slid through his own, through and inward, striking it aside — he felt exposed, he felt plumbed! Beautiful, yes, but he was dismissed.

“Very well,” he said. “But I may not be as late as all that — sorry you’re tired!”

Damn — her bedroom door would be closed — that was what she probably meant — the pressure was to be maintained overnight, she was going to be implacable. Admirable, too, when she was like this — that was the unfairest part of it; for anger so extraordinarily suited her particular sort of beauty, the fierce, small, pseudo-witchlike thing which he so loved. Green flame, cold flame, flame-in-ice — the narrow hard intensity of the sibyl — but with something disarmingly childlike as well. What a demon of a little girl she must have been, and how beautiful! Like Buzzer. But with less sense of humor — she was always a prey to his sense of humor; and he couldn’t resist, as he passed through the dining room, touching the one note of the piano once more, for final comic comment: it would infuriate her. And he allowed the kitchen door to clack behind him with unnecessary violence.…