Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“Oh, Michael!” she said. “Poor old Michael.… Why, he wouldn’t last a week. Why, he’s too good. He’s a lamb—much too much of a lamb. Good God, no.”

“Well, then, dear Coralyn, I shrug my shoulders, as the saying is. I have no further suggestions to offer, except that you should reform—”

“—while there’s still time, you mean.”

“Yes!”

“Thanks. Keep the change.”

“You’re entirely welcome.”

The conversation dropped; and before it could be resumed, Mabel and the worm came in from the garden, and we sat down to the inevitable game of bridge. I had no further private talk with Coralyn—she and her abominable little vermiform appendage went back to New York early the following morning. If I had only known it, it was the last time I ever had a decent talk with her. And how miserable it makes me now to realize that; to realize how little I did for her, how unkind I was, and how unsympathetic. If I had only tried a little harder—but what use is there in being sentimental about it? And as for the final episode in my relations with poor Coralyn—I can hardly bear to speak of it. It’s quite the most revolting thing I ever did in my life.

V.

Before that was to happen, however, a great deal of water was to flow under bridges. To begin with, it became evident that Coralyn had practically dropped us—or to be more exact, had dropped me . It was clear enough too that I had hurt her feelings—had spoken too much of the truth—had seen into her a little too deeply. Anyway, we ceased to see her at all. We had a hasty note or two from her (as usual from new addresses) a postcard or two from holiday resorts—Atlantic City, Louisville, Hot Springs—and that was all. A year passed, and with it brought our own beginnings of tragedy. Mabel fell ill with consumption—at first it was not thought to be serious, and it was merely suggested, not urged, that she ought to go to the mountains. It was with the idea of making a virtue of necessity that we decided to spend a year in Europe, mostly in Switzerland—the first holiday we had had in a long time; and one from which poor Mabel was not destined to return. It was on the eve of our departure that we had really staggering news from Coralyn—the announcement of her marriage to Michael. A characteristically breathless and frivolous note from Coralyn, to which was added in a postscript, “You see, funny old Philip, I’ve taken your advice!” (A postscript, I may mention, which made Mabel look at me with some surprise—and perhaps with something of a surmise as well.) There was also for me, at my office, a letter from Michael. It was a typical seafaring man’s letter—curt, inarticulate, honest; it conveyed the impression that Michael had practically forced Coralyn to marry him, and as a sort of last desperate measure for saving her. Something in it, between the lines—I don’t now recall just what it was—made me think that things must have been pretty bad. It made one think of the animal rescue league, or something like that. Had she actually, finally, gone completely to the dogs? And would she now be successfully reclaimed? Or would she pull poor good Michael—that lamb—down to whatever it was that she herself had fallen to? What about that?…

We sent them a wedding present, and went to Davos. Into this part of my life, with its tragic ending, I won’t digress—it has really nothing to do with the story of Coralyn. Let it be enough that at the end of just over a year I came back to America alone. And it was this time purely by chance that I encountered Coralyn—and again in the lobby of the Belmont, where I was staying.

She looked appalling—quite literally appalling. Her face was a ghastly white, except for its deliberate scarlets; she was shabbily overdressed; and there was a new furtive something in her bearing. She continually dropped her eyes, or turned them away, in the brief moment of talk we had, and punctuated her remarks with a short little laugh which sounded insincere and possibly hysterical. I asked her where Michael was—Oh, he had lost his job in the Navy, and they were living in a boarding house in Fourteenth Street, temporarily hard-up. On my asking whether I couldn’t see them before I went back to New Haven, she was at first markedly evasive; and then, with obvious reluctance, asked me to drop in after dinner. It was only as we parted that she showed a flash of the Coralyn I knew—otherwise I might to all intents have been talking with a stranger.

“That was the very best of your clumsy fox-paws, poor old Philip!” she said. “You transcended yourself, that time.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Marrying me to Michael, you goose!”

“ I marrying you—”

“Yes, you marrying me—but in the wrong sense!” and with that she turned quickly and walked away.

And that evening—but perhaps the less said of it the better. I understood quickly enough why Coralyn had not wanted me to come. The boarding house was forlorn beyond words—dark, smelly, dirty, with rails missing from the banisters; the kind of thing you see in movies of the slums. And the little room into which I was shown at the back of the house was as dreary. Coralyn opened the door—she looked better in the meager gaslight, and in an old dress (one that I remembered) somewhat worn, but becoming. She indicated the sofa, with a vague gesture and a smile, and there I saw Michael, asleep.

“Michael is hors de combat ,” she said. “Looking for a job all day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But sit down, do.”

We sat down, but somehow had little to say. I became uneasily conscious of the fact that Michael was not so much asleep as drunk. Presently he half opened his eyes and stared at me.

“Oh, hello!” he said. “Glad to see you. Talk to Corry. Don’t mind me—I’m a little tight!… Sleep it off. Glad to see you.…”

That was Michael’s only entrance into the conversation. He fell genuinely asleep, and snored, while Coralyn and I made a pretense (extremely uneasy, in the circumstances) of keeping things up. She said they had lived in Chicago for a while; she thought a little of going back there. They had lived also in Buffalo, in Boston, and in Perth Amboy. Why Perth Amboy? I never discovered. She had had lots of adventures—she laughed, looking at me out of the corners of her eyes, to make sure that I got the furtive implication—and she still managed, in spite of everything—(and here she glanced at Michael)—to have a good time. She smoked a cigarette with a long holder, and I saw that her stockings were rolled below the knee. Presently, when Michael’s snores had become louder, she said—

“I don’t suppose you want to go out anywhere?… There’s a nice little speakeasy just round the corner.…”

I declined this gambit; just why, I don’t know. Somehow it offended me. She knew that I was offended. She herself looked hurt for a moment—with that extraordinary childlike appearance of softness and innocence which she was always capable of—and changed the subject. I asked, eventually, how Michael had lost his job—she gave her odd little laugh and said we had better not go into that. And then added, quietly, lowering her eyes and voice, while she touched delicately her cigarette ash into an ashtray, that she and Michael were agreed to get a divorce.…

“I’ve made a hash of it,” she said.

“So I see. I’m sorry, Coralyn.”

“Oh, I shall get along—I’ll enjoy myself, don’t worry, for God’s sake. But it was a hell of a trick on poor Michael. Wasn’t it, Michael?”

Michael made no answer.

“And a bad move for little Coralyn. But I’m hard-boiled now. You don’t know the half of it! I could shock your heart out, Philip.”