Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“I don’t doubt it,” I said bitterly. “You ought to be ashamed. Why don’t you snap to?”

“Oh, ideels —” she said, snapping her fingers in the air—“I ain’t got none no mo’.… Every woman for herself, from now on. And the devil take the blindest!”

I left, shortly after this—she saw me to the door.

“Come again”—was all she said—“when I’m single.”

VI.

And it was, as a matter of fact, after she was again “single” that I did next talk to her—and for the last time—a year later—but it was also after the terrible episode which I have mentioned: my betrayal of Coralyn, the betrayal for which I am afraid she never forgave me—or should I say will never forgive me? I don’t know. Nor do I really know altogether how it was that I came to do such a thing. It was simply one of those quick blind chemical reactions (or perhaps I should say psychological?) to which all of us yield, from time to time in our lives, without clearly realizing what we are doing. There is no doubt that I was angry with Coralyn—disappointed in her—perhaps even jealous. That last scene, in the boarding house, had distressed and poisoned me. I found it hard to forgive. Did I perhaps, actually, for a while, hate Coralyn? I think I did. I wanted to revenge myself. Just why, or for what—after all, she had done little enough to me—I find it difficult to say. I felt, certainly, that she had let me down. I felt too that she had behaved atrociously to poor Michael—she seemed to be absolutely without any moral sense in her treatment of him—it was clear enough that she had ruined his life. I had no doubt that in some way it was she who had lost him his job, and reduced him, poor fellow, to the wretched state in which I had seen him. And if, underneath all this, I was aware of a deep sympathy for Coralyn, it was certainly not uppermost when, during my talk with Tom Thaxter, my fiendish idea occurred to me.

Tom—whom I met, for the first time in several years, at a class reunion—had been one of my best friends at college. He was a notorious Don Juan. The list of his conquests would have made Casanova turn in his grave. He was bold, witty, ruthless—not exactly handsome, but certainly impressive—with a fantastic imagination; and one of the most entertaining talkers I have ever known. When one talked with him, one talked about women. It was a foregone conclusion. In fact, it became a sort of class joke. One simply slapped him on the back, when one met him, and said, “Well, who’s the latest?” And Tom would narrate the conquest of the latest, with something very like genius. He was famous for his bawdy after-dinner speeches. And especially famous for one particular occasion, when, at a dinner in mixed company (the wives being present), he rose, and began to tell us a story which he had previously told to the men alone. The story was a frightful one—instantly there was a panic. Whispered adjurations to “sit down, Tom” and “shut up, Tom” were addressed to him in vain. In vain were his coattails plucked. He grinned and went on, while the rest of us cowered in our chairs. And when the climax to the story arrived, he gave it an ending of entire innocence, quite as funny as the other. Though, funny as it was, I think the ladies never clearly understood why it was so extravagantly applauded.

And it was while Tom was telling me his latest, over a Tom Collins, that my fiendish idea occurred to me. I would tell him about Coralyn—describe her in the most glowing terms—make her out to be the most skillful and witty and wary of adventuresses—and then bet him that he couldn’t add her to his list. It would serve her right. It was just exactly as she ought to be treated. Do her good. And what was more, I would get an enormous satisfaction out of hearing from Tom, later, all the details of the battle. It would have the effect for me of finally, once and for all, putting Coralyn in her place.…

Tom, needless to say, was delighted; his eyes glowed. We made a bet of ten dollars on it, I gave him her address, he promised to let me know what happened, and off he went, smiling with anticipation. As for myself, I then screwed the affair to its highest possible pitch by writing to Coralyn. I told her that I was sending my friend Tom Thaxter to see her, and warned her, facetiously, that he was “dangerous.” I added that I thought him the most attractive man I knew, rich, unmarried, and merciless. Fastidious, a difficult man to please, an even more difficult one to outwit.… She wrote no answer to my letter.

And what happened I heard from Tom two weeks later, when he spent a night with me in New Haven especially to tell me. They had had three or four terrific parties, one after another, at dances, speakeasies, in her apartment; as he put it, a stand-up knock-down fight. Hammer and tongs. The cagiest girl he had ever met. Amusing as the devil. The second night, when she had taken a few too many drinks, she weakened a little, in the taxi going back to her apartment at two in the morning, and there had been a pretty violent love scene. He had thought he was on the verge of victory. But no such luck; she slipped away from him at the door and locked him out, laughing.

“The little devil!” he murmured, reminiscently. “The little she-fiend!”

He shook his head, and continued. After that, it appeared, she had been warier. She made fun of him. When he tried to kiss her, she tickled him. She even suggested that he had been put up to the exploit by his nice friend Philip. (I winced.) But when he suggested that she should join him in Philadelphia for three days, she astonished him, all of a sudden, by saying that she would . And what is more, she did! She wired him at his hotel and arrived. But again she surprised him. She arrived with another girl—a girl whose name I’ve forgotten, and whom I’d never heard of—and they got three days of extremely expensive entertainment out of him—to be exact, she cost him two hundred dollars in parties—and all for nothing.

“Nothing?” I said.

“Not a thing. Not even a kiss.”

“Well, I’m damned. A mere gold-digger.”

“Gold-digger!… Wait till you hear the rest of it.”

The rest was brief and to the point. On the last night, when he again tried to make love to her (and he said she was really looking quite beautiful) and when he proposed that she should come away with him somewhere, she again staggered him by saying that she would: on one condition. When he asked what the condition was, she said, “A thousand dollars.”

The thing had floored him; he couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t at all (and he looked at me a little oddly) what I had led him to expect! He asked her if she meant it, and she replied that of course she did.

“‘Do you mean to say’—I said to her—‘you just want money ?’”

“‘That’s what I said, kid—one grand!’”

And he had, of course, left it at that. That had made it—in every way—did I see?—out of the question. Impossible. It had simply ruined the whole thing.…

I acquiesced, there was a pause, and then he said—

“You know, I think she’s in some sort of trouble. I may be wrong, but I think so. I even hinted as much to her, but she only laughed at me. Just the same—have you any idea what it might be?”

I assured him that I hadn’t—cursing myself for a damned liar and cad—and after discussing the strange affair a little further, casually, we went to bed. But I lay awake a long while, wondering whether Tom wasn’t right.… Why had she needed that thousand dollars?… Why?

VII.

I never saw Coralyn again. A few weeks later I spoke with her on the telephone, and tried in vain to make an appointment to see her—she laughed, she was vague, she said she was busy, she called me an old fool, and finally, in the middle of a long speech I was making, she hung up the receiver with an ironic “goodbye, old dear.” I was so angry that I swore I’d never attempt to look her up again.