Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

More and more, as we bantered in this fashion, I had a feeling of entire helplessness. What on earth could I do? My time was growing short—I knew I must leave her at twelve, not to see her again for months—and this only added to my misery. What was going to happen to her now? She liked me, she liked to think that I respected, or even loved her; and now I had unmistakably given her the impression that I no longer did either. I walked up and down her shabby little sitting room, looking now and then angrily at Rivière’s pipes and coats and things (what sort of chap was he, anyway?) and tried vainly to formulate some sort of plan. The only thing I could think of was to urge her to marry. But why, she countered, if it was her nature, as it seemed to be, to be frivolous, should she marry? For in that case she would make not one, but two, people unhappy. She hadn’t yet encountered a man with whom she would want to live for more than a week. She thought men as a race were detestable, conceited, boring creatures, interesting only because they were so naively and disingenuously unscrupulous.

What answer was there to this? None. I looked at my watch, and glared at Coralyn, and packed my things, frowning, and all she did was to offer me from time to time a marshmallow or an apple or a little present for Mabel. A present for Mabel! A singular moment for that, as Coralyn, confound her, damned well knew. And nevertheless, here was this extraordinary thing between us, this deep understanding which not even petulant badinage could effectually conceal. We were both of us unhappy, and we parted unhappy, and the only assurance I extracted from Coralyn was that she would really, and quite soon, come down to New Haven for a week-end.… Even to this, however, she added that she would probably bring a young man, a prospective bridegroom, for my “august inspection and approval.”… And, laughing once more, she shut the door between us.

IV.

As it turned out, it wasn’t merely months before I saw Coralyn again—it was a year and a half. I wrote to her twice and got no answer. (I suggested that she reply to me at my office.) About seven months after the New York episode, a postcard came from Paris, addressed in her handwriting, with nothing on it but the word “So!”, a cryptic utterance which I confess I never fathomed. What on earth did she mean by it? Mabel and I turned it over and over (it was a picture of the Eiffel Tower!) but came to no conclusion. Perhaps her business had taken her abroad? I thought of her French partner, and said nothing. Perhaps she was married? A holiday merely? In which case she was, of course, prosperous.…

All of which was to be solved for me when she did, eventually, turn up, but only after (and only very shortly after) another odd little episode had befallen me.

It began with a telephone call. A male voice asked me if I could dine with him—he was an old friend of Coralyn. He didn’t want to see me in the office, in office hours—it was rather a private and delicate business—did I mind? My curiosity was aroused and I made an appointment for dinner with him.

It was Michael, of course. A nice chap, simple, straightforward, fair-haired and blue-eyed—and by this time a full-fledged lieutenant. I liked him immediately, and I think he liked me. I told him I had heard a good deal about him from Coralyn; he blushed. He then apologized, somewhat hesitantly, for intruding on me in this fashion, but, as he said, he got the impression from Coralyn that I cared a good deal for her, and as he did himself, always had and always would, he had thought he would like to talk to me.

What ensued was extraordinary. We both put our cards on the table, quite without jealousy, and in an entire unanimity of devotion to Coralyn. He had guessed that Coralyn had had an affair with me—though, as he added, he knew Coralyn well enough to know there was nothing so remarkable in that. (An observation which a little disconcerted me.) He spoke very gently and slowly—in a quiet low-pitched voice, looking at me shyly and steadily—and I couldn’t help feeling all the while that he was the man that Coralyn should have stuck to. Why hadn’t she? Not enough imagination in him? A little too Western? too young?… I couldn’t imagine, and meanwhile he was telling me that in the last analysis it was because he felt sure I loved Coralyn (as who couldn’t) that he had come to me. I assured him that I did indeed love her—that she was a very charming and very talented girl. And then, after a pause, he suddenly asked me if I knew that she was going to the devil.

After that, the deluge. He had known a great deal more about it than I did—not because she had seen him, or permitted him to come to her, but simply because, in a sort of dog-like spirit of devotion, he had made it his business to keep watch on her. I don’t know yet how he did it, but he did. Detectives, perhaps? I don’t suppose he could have afforded it; nor do I believe he would have stooped to it. At all events, he knew. He had the names at his fingers’ ends: all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys. All the addresses at which she had lived—and they were many. The jobs she had had—ditto. One after another. The literary agency had been a fiasco from the first, not a red cent in it, only a bluff, and Rivière all the time supporting her. (With a pang I recognized that at the time I had almost divined this.) The lampshade shop—did I know about the lampshade shop? Well, the lampshade shop (Christ! he said) had been endowed, pro tem , by some blankety-blank fairy of a newspaper art-critic. He had met him once at a party in Washington Square, and had with difficulty refrained from beating him up. He carried a gold-headed cane and had a purple handkerchief sticking out of his pocket. Did I know what he meant? I knew what he meant. Then there was the publisher, and the Socialist Messiah.…

We groaned together, we had several drinks together, we played pool; but what, I asked him, could we do about it? And he had no solution to offer, nor had I. He went on to tell me about her past. About this it turned out that she had, to put it mildly, prevaricated. She was not a graduate of a Western university—she had had one year at a small commercial college in St. Louis. Nor did she come of an old Virginia family—far from it. In fact, her people were perilously close (so he said) to what is called in the South “poor white trash.” Moreover, her mother was still alive, very much and very dreadfully alive; she was, Michael said, chalking his cue, a terrible woman: vulgar, whining, aggressive, spiteful, and altogether a thorn in poor Coralyn’s side. Coralyn had been good to her—had sent her money faithfully (she lived in South Carolina) on condition that she left Coralyn alone to make her own career without interference. No wonder Coralyn had pretended her relatives were dead; there was nothing, said Michael, which she so much dreaded as that some day her mother would turn up in the North and try to attach herself. She had continually threatened to do so. And if I had ever seen the object!… Christ, what a woman.

In the light of which, when Mabel and I discussed it later that night, we decided that we liked Coralyn more than ever. A typical case of a gallant creature trying to pull herself out of the mud by the roots, and on the whole succeeding. Who wouldn’t, in the circumstances, have lied a little? Who wouldn’t have tried to build a romance, given such a background, or, what was gallanter still, tried to live up to it? And the quite extraordinary refinement and subtlety and wit which Coralyn, with no upbringing to speak of, had achieved! As for her sense of values, moral values—naturally I didn’t go into that with Mabel, and Mabel knew nothing about it. I said not a word to her about Michael’s report that she was “going to the devil”; I merely put it that he was worried because she seemed to have dropped him.…