Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

And Mabel, poor soul, being a romantic herself, and having into the bargain a novelist’s imagination (of a sort), was at once deeply stirred and wrote Coralyn a long sympathetic letter. It was this that brought about Coralyn’s final visit to New Haven. An answer came from her, as usual from a new address in New York (whereupon I wondered ‘Who is it now?’), and a few weeks later Coralyn herself appeared.

But not alone. Just as she had threatened, she brought along with her a young hopeful; apologized for him gayly and breathlessly, saying that she had been simply unable—did we mind?—to get rid of him; and that if we wanted to we could just send him back to Bank Street, where he belonged. The young man, whose name was Pope, effeminate, long-haired, pallidly sensuous and dissipated-looking, stood by with offensive assurance while she said all this, and obviously had no intention of going anywhere; just as obviously too, had been instructed by Coralyn to stick it out. He stuck it out, we had to ask him to stay, and stay he did. He was by way of being a budding novelist, whose bud has since, thank God, been nipped; and immediately he was all professional attention to Mabel, with an air of patronage which infuriated me. Mabel didn’t see through it at all.

As for Coralyn, she had begun to lose her looks. She was thinner, her face was older, she was quite shamelessly made up, she was expensively and a little too brilliantly dressed, but as amusing as ever. Just the same, I was annoyed by the whole proceeding, and didn’t attempt to conceal it from her. During the afternoon and dinner I said hardly a word to her, contriving (exactly as I used to do in the very first stages of our acquaintance) to keep out of her way on one or another thin pretext, and, of course, with a quite conscious and deliberate intention of hurting her. I succeeded. I even made a point, at dinner, of addressing all my remarks, much as I disliked doing so, to the young worm opposite me; and I did so, moreover, with an undisguised undercurrent of sarcasm.

The result of this was very painful, and I’m now ashamed of the whole episode, extremely so. For—a little after dinner—while Mabel and the worm were discussing the form of the novel in the garden, with the highest of high seriousness, their uplifted voices floating in through the open window mixed with the scent of sun-warmed phlox, Coralyn came quietly into my study. Her face was somber, soft, hurt—I had seen that expression before, and it always moved me. All the same, I was stubborn, and made no move to speak, merely looking at her with a hard detachment—as if, perhaps, she were merely a servant girl who had come to make an apology. She stood at a little distance from me, with her hands rather pathetically at her sides.

“Why are you so mean to me, Philip?” she said.

“You know perfectly well why.”

“Because I brought Hugh down?”

“Of course. You ought to have asked us.”

“There wasn’t time. And I thought you wouldn’t mind. If it was too casual, I’m sorry.”

“Of course, it was too casual. You can’t ignore people for two years and then do this sort of thing.… You know that as well as I do.”

There was a pause, she didn’t move, and then she said—

“It’s really because you don’t like him.”

“My dear Coralyn—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t say ‘my dear Coralyn’ like that—my darling Philip!”

She tried to smile at me; but I was still hard.

“I don’t think it was very good manners, Coralyn.”

“I know it wasn’t. I’ve said I’m sorry. And I know in general, too, Philip, that you think I’m a disgrace and a scalawag—as I am. But for the love of Pete”—and her voice broke—“is life all manners? I thought we liked each other.”

I went to the window and closed it. Mabel and the worm were at the far end of the garden.

“I know that.”

“Well, then, for God’s sake be human!”

“I’m all too human. I think it was outrageous, and I think your young—I think he’s revolting.”

She turned, at that, suddenly away from me, and I knew she was crying—crying, as she always did, with just the fall of a tear or two, and no sound. She removed the tears with a quick fingertip, and then turned back again to face me as calmly as before.

“Why don’t you like him?” she said.

“I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“You wouldn’t be jealous, and kid me, would you?”

“Good God, what do you think I am?… Haven’t you got any eyes or any taste? Why he’s a sap, Coralyn, a perfect sap! A backbone of boiled vermicelli, the soul of a lascivious fish! The woods are full of such things. Greenwich Village woods especially. He’s weak, he’s conceited, he’ll use you as a convenience and discard you when he’s tired of you—but what’s the use of saying all that? You know it as well as I do.”

It seemed to me that she shivered a little, as she stood with her back to the empty fireplace.

“I know his appearance is against him—but he’s really nice, when you know him.”

“Perhaps he is”—I shrugged my shoulders—“but I assure you I don’t want to know him.”

“I think you’re mean, Philip.”

“What’s mean about it?”

“It’s the way you say it that’s mean.… You know how much I wanted your opinion of him—and how much I wanted it to be favorable. I wouldn’t have done such a thing with anyone else in the world, and you know that too. And really, really , Philip, I thought you’d like him.”

She let fall another pair of tears, silently—I lighted a cigarette—the clock struck the half-hour—a planetary world of dustmotes danced in the blurred shaft of sunlight that came between the curtains at the window.

“You see,” she said, “I’m in love with him.”

“Dear Coralyn—I know you are.”

“Do you think I ought to marry him?”

“Certainly not.”

“He’s younger than I am—but he’s older than he looks.”

“And no doubt very sophisticated! In fact, it sticks out all over him. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he has a lobster in his pocket or a couple of perverted kinkajous.”

She sat down slowly in a chair by the hearth, and then said—

“ That wasn’t necessary.”

“No—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.… But you see—”

What had crossed my mind, suddenly, was all that background which poor honest Michael had sketched for me. Should I dive into that?

“You see,” I said, “I know much more about you than you think I do. Michael has been here.”

Her face hardened.

“Oh, has he!”

“Yes.… And to be perfectly frank, I wonder whether the time hasn’t come for you to drop all this sort of nonsense entirely, once and for all. It’s no good. As Michael said, and it won’t hurt you to hear it, you’re simply going to the devil.… Good God, Coralyn, can’t you see it when you look into your mirror in the morning? I even know what you were doing in Paris.” (This was a lie.)

She flushed, her lips parted, she looked as if she were again going to cry, but didn’t, and after a pause during which she looked at me steadily and with an extraordinary sadness, she said—

“I know it, Philip—I know it, I know it—oh, my God, don’t I know it!… What else for God’s sake do I think about from morning to night? That’s why I want to marry Hugh. Even suppose it turns out badly, it’s at least a temporary anchorage—I can rest—”

“No, you couldn’t. The only rest for you would be to clear out of New York, and this sort of life, for good and all. Marry Michael—that’s the thing for you, if you want my honest opinion!”

She laughed at me quite frankly, for this, and with a sudden real gayety.