Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“Well,” she again repeated, “and have you seen May lately?” She gave him this time a slower smile, a smile just a little restrained; a smile, as it were, of friendly inquisition. As he hesitated, in the face of this abrupt attack (an attack which was familiar between them, and which she had expected and desired), she added, with obvious insincerity, an insincerity which was candidly conscious: “Not that I want to pry into your personal affairs!”

“Oh, not in the least.… I saw her last night.”

“Where? At her apartment?”

“How sly you are!… Yes, after dinner. We dined at the Raleigh, and had a dance or two. Good Lord, how I hate these fox-trots!… Then went back and played the phonograph. She had some new Beethoven.… Lovely stuff.”

“ Was it?”

She lowered her lids at him—it was her basilisk expression. As he met it, tentatively smiling, he experienced a glow of pleasure. What a relief it was to sink comfortably into this intimacy! to submit to this searching, and yet somehow so reassuring, invasion! He knew this was only the beginning, and that she would go on. She would spare nothing. She was determined to get at the bottom of things. She would drag out every detail. And this was precisely what he wanted her to do—it was precisely for this that he felt a delighted apprehension.

“And I suppose,” she continued, “she told you about our lunch together? For of course she tells you everything.”

“Not everything, no. But she did mention it.… As a matter of fact, she was rather guarded about it. You didn’t hurt her feelings in some way—did you?”

There was a pause. The fire gave a muffled sap-explosion, a soft explosion muffled in ashes; and they looked at each other for rather a long time with eyes fixedly and unwaveringly friendly. She smiled again, she smiled still, and began drawing the sheer bright scarf to and fro across her shoulders, slowly and luxuriatingly. She was devilish attractive; but decidedly less attractive than devilish. Or was this to do her an injustice? For she was honest—oh, yes, she was appallingly honest; always so brutally outspoken, and so keenly interested in his welfare.

“If I did, I didn’t mean to,” she murmured, letting her eyes drop. “Or did I mean to?… Perhaps I did, Harry.”

“I thought perhaps you did.… Why did you want to?”

“Why?… I don’t know. Women do these things, you know.”

“You don’t like her.”

Hesitating, she threw back her fair head against her clasped hands.

“I like her,” she said slowly, and with an air of deliberation, “but I find it so hard to make out who she is , Harry. I wish she weren’t so reserved with me. She never tells me anything . Not a blessed thing. Heaven knows I’ve tried hard enough to make a friend of her—haven’t I?—but I always feel that she’s keeping me at a distance, playing a sort of game with me. I never feel that she’s natural with me. Never.”

He took out a cigarette, smoothed it between his fingers, and lit it.

“I see,” he said. “And what was it you said that could have hurt her?”

“What was it?… Oh, I don’t know, I suppose it was what I said about her way of laughing . I said I thought it was too controlled —that if she weren’t just playing the part of a polite and innocent young lady she would let herself go. You know it’s not natural, Harry. And she seemed to think that was my insidious way of accusing her of hypocrisy.”

“Which it was.”

“Well—was it?… Perhaps it was.”

“Of course it was.… Confound it, Gertrude—what did you want to do that for? You know she’s horribly sensitive. And I don’t see how you think that kind of thing will make her like you!”

He felt himself frowning as he looked at her. She was swinging her crossed knee. She was looking back at him honestly—oh, so very honestly—her long green eyes so wide open with candor—and yet, as he always did, he couldn’t help feeling that she was very deep. She was kind to him, she was forever thinking of his interests, first and foremost; and yet, just the same—

“It was just a moment of exasperation, that was all.… Hang it, Harry! It infuriates me to think that she’s playing that sort of game with you . You’re too nice, and too guileless, to have that sort of thing done to you.”

Smiling—smiling—smiling. That serpentine Botticelli smile, which had something timid in it, and something wistful, but also something intensely cruel.

“Don’t you worry about me.”

“But I do worry about you! Why shouldn’t I worry about you?… Good Lord! If I didn’t, who would?… I’m perfectly sure May doesn’t.”

She emphasized this bitter remark by getting up; moving, with that funny long stride of hers (which was somehow so much too long for her length of leg), to the fireplace. She took a cigarette from the filigree silver box on the mantelpiece and lifted it to her mouth. But then she changed her mind and flung the cigarette violently into the fire.

“Hang it,” she said, “what do I want a cigarette for?… I don’t want a cigarette.”

She stood with one slipper on the fender, staring downward into the flames. It was odd, the effect she produced upon him: a tangle of obscure feelings in conflict. There were moments, he was sure, when he thoroughly detested her. She had the restlessness of a caged animal—feline, and voluptuous, and merciless. She wanted to protect him, did she, from that “designing” May? But she also, patently, wanted to devour him. Designing May! Good heavens! Think of considering poor May, poor ingenuous May, designing! Could anything be more utterly fantastic? He saw May as he had seen her the night before. She had been angelic—simply angelic. The way she had of looking up at him as if from the very bottom of her soul—while her exquisitely sensitive and gentle face wavered to one side and downward under the earnestness of his own gaze! No, he had never in his life met anyone who loved so simply and deeply and all-surrenderingly, or with so little arrière pensée . She was as transparent as a child, and as helpless. She gave one her heart as innocently as a child might give one a flower. Gertrude could, and would, torture her unrelentingly. Gertrude would riddle her—Gertrude would tear her to pieces—with that special gleaming cruelty which the sophisticated reserve for the unsophisticated. And none the less, as usual, he felt himself to be powerfully and richly attracted and stimulated by Gertrude—by her fierceness, her intensity, the stealthy, wolflike eagerness which animated her every movement. He watched her, and was fascinated. If he gave her the least chance, wouldn’t she simply gobble him up, physically and spiritually? Or was he, perhaps, mistaken—and was all this merely a surface appearance, a manner without meaning?

“No, I can’t make it out,” he said, sighing. He relaxed, with a warm feeling of comfort, and happiness, as if a kind of spell, luxurious and narcotic, were being exerted over him. “She isn’t at all what you think she is—if you really do think she is.… She’s as simple as a—primrose. And in spite of her self-centeredness, she is fundamentally unselfish in her love of me. I’m convinced of that.”

“My dear Harry!… You know nothing about women.”

“Don’t I?”

“A primrose!…”

She laughed gently, insinuatingly, lingeringly, derisively, as she looked downward at him from the mantelpiece. She was delighted, and her frank delight charmed him. How she ate up that unfortunate, that highly unfortunate, primrose! She was murderous; but he couldn’t help feeling that she had made something truly exquisite of murder—as instinctive and graceful as a lyric.