Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

The girl extinguished her cigarette on the window-sill and composed herself comfortably, keeping her arm locked into his and her hand on his wrist. For a moment she gazed, broodingly, straight ahead through the front windows, into the rain. Her lower lip drooped slightly, relaxed and sullen. Jesus! she thought. Jesus!… snow on the taxi roof like a wedding cake!… After a moment she too was asleep.

Humming, he tied his striped black-and-green tie, pulling it from left to right between the flanges of soft white collar. Alack! his favorite tie, and it was beginning—unmistakably—to look worn and creased. He smoothed the firm knot with his thumb and finger, and stepped back from the dusty mirror to survey the effect from a greater distance, in a light not quite so trying. Hm, so-so. A little discolored, too. But then, if he wore his gray scarf rather closely about his throat—perhaps it might yet for a little while escape attention.… He stepped back to the dressing table and took up his brushes. Thank goodness—his hair was just in the right state, as always the day after a shampoo: not too fluffy, and on the other hand not too dull in color. Gwendolyn had commented on it. What lovely lights there are in it, she had cried, passing her small hand over it—my dear Tithonus, what lovely lights! Like copper and gold! Like copper and gold.… Tra-la-la-la—la-la—la-la. The sun was coming out, with a soft watery gleam on the rain-dark house-fronts opposite. It was going to be a nice day, for Gwendolyn’s departure, after all; a gentle spring day in November. The sort of day when crocuses pop out of the ground singing like larks and larks glisten in the heavens like crocuses. The wet earth cracks and steams and the sudden army of grass brandishes its host of green spears. Tra-la-la-la—la-la. And the grackles creak like mad.

But now there was this deep, deep problem of the present for Gwendolyn: a problem (especially in view of his poverty, which Gwendolyn’s unexpected visit had disastrously accelerated) almost insoluble. A book? No. Inadequate. Not sufficiently decorative. Not sumptuous enough. Nor quite the romantic and sentimental thing. But what, then? He descended the boarding-house stairs, humming and self-satisfied: these stairs down which he and Gwendolyn had crept stealthily not six hours ago. No mail this morning—damn. What’s a morning without mail! It takes the bloom off the day—absolutely takes the bloom off it. High time, too, that he heard from the New York Music Company about the “Nocturne in Black and Ivory.” Ah, that arpeggio passage, which Gwendolyn had likened to a fine rain seen through a late beam of golden sunlight! How nice she had been about that! Almost nice enough to make up for her—for her—well, for her general indifference to his music. Strange, that she hadn’t liked his music better. And all these years of separation, too—one might have supposed that that alone would have made her a little more enthusiastic. The effect of nostalgia. Oughtn’t her mere gladness at seeing him, and at being made love to by him, have made her like it a little better? Oughtn’t it?… But then, she was such a self-centered little minx, so absorbed, so terribly absorbed, in her own funny dull little life, her husband, her country club out there in Akron, her funny dull little bridge-playing, horseback-riding friends, and her serious group of little Thinkers.… What else could one expect of a girl like that and a life like that?

“Let’s see: four dollars. And a check in the wallet for ten more. He could afford a grapefruit this morning; with a withered maraschino cherry. And coffee and oatmeal.… Ot- meeel! bellowed the counter-man—that’s two to come.… Good Lord—just to think that those two weekends with Gwendolyn had cost fifty dollars. Fifty! It was really staggering. And she hadn’t made a single suggestion that she might help him out—not a hint; despite the fact that she was rolling, simply rolling, in money. There it was again—yes, there it was again. Funny. Maybe she just had that old-fashioned idea that the man always pays. Maybe she had been afraid—knowing that he was hard up—that an offer to help him might be embarrassing. Embarrassing! Hollow laughter. It was a kind of embarrassment that one could well afford. And there was he, with less than a hundred dollars to his name, trying to entertain her in the manner to which she had been accustomed!… Hell’s delight.

But now this problem of the present. It had to be done; of that there was no question. It had to be done. And it had to be something really nice, something rather æsthetic; if possible, a symbol. But a symbol of what?… Ah! That was the question. Two weeks ago, or even five days ago, the answer might have been different— would have been different. For then—yes, as recently as that—he had thought he was in love with her. Fool! Jackass! Romantic jackanapes! Would he never get over this mad habit of running after will-of-the-wisps?… Yes, five days ago he had thought that a very nice Japanese print might be in order—a really very nice one—one of the sort, for example, with which he himself fell in love. Like the Hiroshige “Fox Fires” or “Monkey Bridge.” Not too expensive—as the “Fox Fires” would be—but on the other hand not cheap. Anyway, a good print, chosen for love.…

But now?… He rose, extracted a paper drinking-cup from the tall glass tube of drinking-cups, filled it, and drank the cold waxy-tasting water. He replenished it and drank again. Something nice, and sanitary, about waxy-tasting water.… Now?… It was true—it might as well be admitted—that his feelings were obscure. Decidedly obscure. He buffeted through the swinging doors and out into the morning sunlight, his eyes a little dazzled by the brightness of the loud street. Tra-la-la-la—la-la . A heavenly day; he would walk across the Common, and perhaps for fifteen minutes sit on a bench and watch the people and the pigeons and the sparrows and the gray squirrels. Well, it was still sufficiently true that she charmed him; true enough to make the present genuine. It was still—wasn’t it—a perfectly spontaneous impulse. He still wanted to give her something beautiful, and to give it to her tenderly. “I’ve brought a present for you”—he would say, with a slight smile, a smile quizzically tender, handing it to her—“I hope you’ll like it.” Silence: they would look at each other with a long and delicious look, half humorous and half loverlike; and she would then perhaps bite her lip and look away—in that charming way she had—as if she wanted him to see her profile. Her lovely profile.… That was what he had planned; but now, all of a sudden—

He sank down upon the bench, which was slightly damp, and beneath which (how filthy America is!) was a litter of peanut shells. Nine o’clock: he had a full hour in which to get the present and meet her at the station for the farewell. Plenty of time. And the print shop was on the way to the station, too. A diller a dollar a ten o’clock scholar.… If only the thing had—if only it hadn’t—if only—! He found a loose cigarette in his side pocket, limp, with half its tobacco gone, and lighted it. The cloud of gray smoke—delicious—undulated away from him in a swooping belt on the sunshine, darted in swirls toward the gravel path, and was lost. At the outset it had been perfectly heavenly. That charming letter, in which she had accepted his invitation to elope on a swan-boat on the pond in the Public Gardens! “Dear Lohengrin”—she had said—“have your swans ready … at six in the evening.…” And she had signed herself “Elsa.” How awfully nice of her, and how exactly in the right, the only, key! And then, when she had surprised him on the little bridge, and had moaned at the discovery that there were no longer any swan-boats, resting her two small hands in comic despair on the bridge railing—how exquisite that had been, and how young, how young she had looked, despite those six enormous years. He had felt his old heart—his heart precociously old—positively blossoming inside him, positively breaking open like a flame-colored tulip. Gwendolyn again! The very same Gwendolyn, unaltered, no older, as buoyant as ever, still carrying her proud little head as gracefully as a flower.… Life could offer few such moments as that. It had seemed the consummation of everything: the final and true crystallization of all that had gone before; the six years of separation, and her marriage, had simply vanished; and they had, as it were, resumed their walk across the Common, taking up the conversation precisely where it had been dropped. Ah—ah—ah—ah—he shook his head in a funny kind of misery, which was not exactly misery and nevertheless was not exactly anything else. Why could it not all have been like that? Why? She was as beautiful as ever, and she had strolled again into his heart as casually as she had strolled out of it, taking possession of it more completely than ever before; their delight with each other had been so instant and so frank; her wood-brown eyes had looked at him so warmly and kindly while she made comically disparaging remarks about her husband—“poor Mont”; and yet, and yet—