Conrad Aiken: The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“Well, what did she do, did she bite you, or give you a dirty look?”

He didn’t answer. He disengaged his arm, took out a cigarette and lit it; then flung the smoking match into a red privet bush. He was frowning. He thought how odd it was that Enn could take the whole situation so calmly. He was even tempted to believe that she was somehow lacking—but lacking in what, he found it difficult to say. Morals? But there could be no question of that—the moral issue had never arisen, there was no such thing. If it was anything, it was something like delicacy. Or was it merely that she was sensible—more sensible than any woman he had ever met.

“O God, Enn, there are so many things. That awful dingy apartment of yours. And the neighbors watching you.”

She took his arm again, and shook him, and laughed, her long gray eyes narrowing provocatively.

“Is that all? Is there something more?”

“Heaps. What about Bibs?”

“How do you mean, what about Bibs?”

“Well, she’s four. She notices things. She knows when I spend the night there. That would be all right, if only—”

“What?”

“She knew I was her father.”

She drew a deep sigh, looked away from him, said nothing. Then she pulled him closer, with her hand under his arm—so closely and so tenderly that to walk thus together, with their knees touching and disengaging, arm against arm and side against side, became difficult, and slow, and self-conscious, a delicious and awkward intimacy.

If I could only go on like this, if only it could always be like this. Their bodies seemed to be saying it, but their faces and minds were averted. He felt extraordinarily touched. It was tragic, it was beautiful.

“I sometimes wonder if you really feel it, Enn.”

“Don’t be a goose.”

“But really, I do.”

“You silly boy, we’ve been over it so often, haven’t we? You must reconcile yourself that Bibs is mine. Not yours, mine. You agreed to that. I wanted her, not you.”

“Oh, I know all that. It’s a good theory.”

They had come to the bench at the top of the hill. Below them the little river, with birches along the nearer margin, turned out of sight under the dilapidated wooden bridge. He remembered how they had come here before Bibs was born—he remembered the last time of all, when she had wanted to come up to see the sunset, and he had tried in vain to dissuade her, and they had climbed up so slowly, and she had turned so white. What was it she had said, something very funny. A quotation from somebody. Oh, yes—“O to be oviparous, now that spring is here.”

“Do you think Mrs. Doane is a good influence, Enn?”

She had sat down on the bench, her hands flat on the green wood, the fingers spread out fanwise.

“Of course. She’s as good as gold. She adores Bibs.”

“I know. But I don’t like the slang.”

“Oh, don’t worry about the slang. Good heavens, if that was all!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s when I go down to New York to see you; when I’m away—all those weeks. When I come back, Bibs likes Mrs. Doane better than she does me. She always says she wants to stay with Boo. You know she calls her Boo.”

He stood facing her, his head a little on one side, his cigarette lightly held between two fingers.

“And do you think that’s good? Do you think it’s so good?”

“Of course I don’t think it’s good. But what can we do? Somebody’s got to look after her when I go away.”

“But why not be sensible and give up your job, and let me swing it?”

Alternately, she slapped her hands on the bench, in a queer and mountingly mischievous rhythm, then clapped them together before her, wrung them at him, and laughed.

“The possessive male!”

“Possessive nonsense! It’s simply a question of what’s best for you and Bibs. This sort of thing is no good. It’s sure to hurt you both.”

She was still smiling, but as he watched her intently, her expression gradually became one of quizzical scrutiny. She looked up at him sidelong, as if making a careful appraisal.

“Are you sure you’re being quite straight about this? You love Bibs and want her. You love me and want me. You don’t want to be independent. Do you?”

He turned his back and took a few steps toward the edge of the grass slope. At the bottom of the hill he could see a man emptying a basket of dead leaves on the smudge fire: the bright flames shot up for a moment into the basket as if licking away the last few morsels of the year. What Enn said was, of course, perfectly true. Or partly true. But that didn’t really change it—not at all. He watched the man walk slowly along the path and drop the basket into a wheelbarrow. Yes, partly true—he did want to have them, to keep them. And why not? It seemed ridiculous that he shouldn’t. They were—they ought to be—a part of his life.

Enn’s voice floated toward him lightly—it gave him oddly, before he turned, the feeling that she was watching him very closely, very affectionately.

“Don’t be melancholy, darling! It will all come out all right!”

She was laughing at him, laughing at her use of his own words.

“Curse you, Enn—you never can be serious for five minutes on end.” He said this as he walked back to the bench: he sat down beside her and dropped his hat on the grass. “What’s going to happen to her when she goes to school—when she finds that other children have fathers, when they ask her who her father was? I suppose you’ll have to tell her some damned fairy story about it. And then what about me? As she gets older, and sees me around—what’s she going to think? She’s no fool—believe me, she’ll put two and two together and make it sex! And a hell of a lot of good that will do her. She’ll end by hating me.”

“Darling!”

He suddenly felt sorry for himself, he felt hurt and angry and stubborn, he wanted to be urged or comforted, and this feeling was only accentuated when she dropped her hand on his knee and lightly pinched him.

“No, Enn, it’s no use.”

“But darling! you forget there is such a thing as time . Lots can happen, lots will happen. All this is only a phase. When the time comes, I’ll go to New York and get a job there. I’ll adopt Bibs—she’ll take my name, and it will be easy enough later to explain to her that I took her from an orphanage, or that nobody knew who her parents were. You’ll see, it will be quite simple.”

She said this unhurriedly, almost as if with no attempt to persuade—the effect upon him was to make him feel that she was, as always, overwhelmingly reasonable.

“Well, what about me—when she’s older, she’s sure to suspect. What about that?”

“I know, my dear. But there are other things to consider. It might be that you wouldn’t any longer—be coming to see me. We might decide—for Bib’s sake—that it would be better if we separated. You might decide to give us up. Or fall in love with someone else. Or even, just decide to be a devoted father to your own children. After all, you have got them, and you do love them. It isn’t as if you had nothing else. Or as if you need to begrudge me Bibs. Is it?”

“O good Lord.”

“We might as well be practical about it.”

“Practical!”

He took out his leather cigarette case, tapped a fresh cigarette repeatedly on the back of it, and lit it from the stub. Then with his forefinger he touched her hand, which still lay on his knee. She was smiling at him, but her eyes were grave, and he gave her a quick smile in answer.

“You ought to have been a lawyer, Enn. You’re the most devilishly and unmitigatedly reasonable being I ever met. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had no heart.”