Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

He flung the cigarette bitterly to the ground, and scraped it flat under the sole of his shoe. There were too many yets and buts in life; far too many. He had been prepared to fall in love—of course; but hadn’t she, too? Was it fair to blame it all on Gwendolyn? And anyway, wasn’t it better, after all, considering all the circumstances, that they hadn’t?… Much better; much better. It was only one’s disappointment that after a prelude so divinely seductive, so ethereal, celestially perfect, there should have been such a lamentable—well, drop. The first evening had been all that heart could have desired. It had been really beautiful. Sitting there, so far apart, so polite and even distant with each other, and nevertheless in so delicious a state of tension—just talking, talking, circumspectly maneuvering the conversation toward the forbidden topic; smoking innumerable cigarettes; and at last beginning, somewhat shyly and agitatedly, to enter upon the forbidden ground.… Ah—ah—ah—ah—he shook his head sadly again as he thought of that—it had been so very nice, so very nice. And then, when she had said that she must go, and he had summoned all his courage and kissed her—heavens, how marvelous that had been! She had been surprised—and yet not surprised, either; had drawn back for just the fraction of a minute; had drooped her small head for a second, as if a little saddened and at the same time startled into a sense of delighted wonder; and had then said, turning her face away from him, and shutting her eyes, simply, “To think that it should be you !”.…

What, exactly, had she meant by that?… That she had long been hoping for a lover, a real lover, and was now astonished at the unhoped-for goodness of Providence in offering her him? She had always, of course, somewhat assumed him to be a sort of superior being—she was a good deal of an artist-worshiper. It must have been that. That poor child—starved for love all these six years with that absurd well-meaning little husband of hers; starved for love and life. Partly her own fault, to be sure, for she had deliberately married for money. But could one ask so much of any human being? She had been touchingly loyal to her poor Mont—but could one expect that sort of loyalty to go on forever? No—no—no—Impossible. All the poetry in her nature had been stifled—sooner or later it would have had to break out; she would inevitably have escaped from Akron as the butterfly from the cocoon; and it was therefore only natural that she should have thought, when circumstances brought her to Boston, of looking up him .… But why had she thought it necessary to be so disingenuous about that? Why had she then—after the kiss—pretended so elaborately that this turn of affairs had come to her as a total surprise, even as a shock?… Damn. It was precisely then—it was just precisely at that point—just when she evaded his hopeful questioning about that—it was precisely then that he had begun to feel a—well, a something-or-other wrong. Couldn’t she, after all, be trusted? Was she not being honest with him? Had there been—perhaps—others before him?… Curse it—as if, after all, that could particularly matter! Nevertheless, it did matter. Something indefinable, some ethereal and most volatile fragrance, had then and there been irrevocably lost. Not to be able to trust her! And in that sort of affair of subtle emotional adjustment, unfortunately, there was no room for anything but the finest and completest honesty. She ought to have admitted, at once, with wide-open eyes, “Yes, I did think—I did hope—when I wrote to you—that our meeting might take some such heavenly turn as this.…”

But she hadn’t. And at once a subtle barrier was—to him, at least—perceptible between them. She wasn’t, to begin with, quite as—well, quite all that he had always thought she was. Evasive. Baffling. Possibly playing a sort of game with him. Certainly not anxious—as he was—to fall completely and honestly and wholeheartedly in love. No; she kept certain reserves, she turned her profile. And then, when she tried to keep up so long her pretense of loyalty to poor Mont—in the face of her so obviously having laid all her plans for this holiday—it had been impossible for him not to be irritated. He had lost his temper a little—had pointed out to her, somewhat tartly, her hypocrisy in this. Confound it—what a pity! And the whole fairy structure, all its elfin gossamer, had been wrecked; it had begun to appear that all she wanted was to commit an infidelity, to join the cynically laughing ranks of the unfaithful. Her friends had betrayed their husbands—they had told her all about it—why shouldn’t she betray hers? And if she could manage to capture, as her partner, a promising young composer, wasn’t that all the better?… It would make a nice story on the veranda of the country club, between dinner and a game of bridge.…

He rose to his feet, almost unconscious of rising, and stared down at the dust of the path, in which pigeons had left a delicate design of footprints. It was time to be moving. Time to be moving. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, and began to walk slowly.… Yes—that had reduced the whole thing to a mere—to a mere— passade . From the sublime to the obvious. He had resented it bitterly. Not, of course, that a passade wasn’t enjoyable—especially with anyone so lovely as Gwendolyn. But to find, after all, after all these years, that just that was what Gwendolyn was like! To find that she didn’t really love him at all, wasn’t interested in love, wasn’t even, very much, interested in him! … There it was again—that queer brooding indrawn selfishness of hers. Her unwillingness, or perhaps it was inability, to meet him halfway, psychologically. An air of indifference had hung over her; an air of passivity; of remoteness and detachment. She had remained self-absorbed, her gaze averted during his caresses, as if his particular identity had not mattered to her in the slightest. A mere man; a mere convenience. What he needed, what he desired, were of no importance to her. And when some exclamation of his had given her at last a hint of this, and of the queer schism which had suddenly opened between them, she had been deeply surprised. It had been when they were standing before the snow-screen in the Museum. An appalling gulf had then appeared between them; and they had both felt miserable, helpless, and as if they had better separate. “If that’s the way you feel”—she had said—“don’t you think we had better not meet in the daytime at all—since we only somehow frustrate each other—and just meet at night instead?…” With what an agony they had then looked at each other! With what a bitter searching of eyes, and what passionate desire to cling with hands! Ah—ah—it had seemed almost unbearable. It had been their Gethsemane. And thereafter they had, as she suggested, met only at night.

Well! It had been too bad—and in consequence the whole thing had already begun to seem utterly unreal. It was already difficult to believe that they had actually been to Portland together—it was more as if he had gone there alone. What was there to remember about it? Nothing, except her amusing remarks about the frescoes in the dining room—then, for a moment, the scene had become real and exquisite. For the rest, it might never have been; the whole experience had gone over his soul as tracelessly as water. She had come and gone—she was already, to all intents, gone forever. Gone—gone—gone—gone. And in this sense, in view of this, it really seemed a shade anachronistic to be thinking of buying her a present. What for? Wouldn’t it be, in the circumstances, almost ironic? Mightn’t she be—even—offended? What nonsense! Of course not. No woman is ever offended by being given a sentimental present. She would perhaps cling to that trace of sentiment all the more happily because of her sense of the failure in the affair. For of course she did, she did , share with him that sad sense of having dismally failed.