Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“ Isn’t he?” she whispered. She leaned forward, intently, with her small pointed chin resting upon her clasped hands; and then added: “No one else— no one—has made such beauty, and such intricate beauty, out of the iridescence of moral decay!”…

I don’t remember what I said in reply to this—I am not sure that I said anything; but I do remember that I felt, at this moment, as if an accolade had been bestowed upon me. It was as if, abruptly, Reine and I were alone together—as if her husband, “Wilson,” and my friend young Estlin, had somehow evaporated. I think I blushed; for I was conscious that suddenly she was looking at me in an extraordinary penetrating way—appraisingly, but also with unmistakable delight. We had discovered a bond—or she had discovered one—and we were going to be friends. Obviously. A subtle something-or-other at once took place between us, and it was as much “settled” as if we had said it in so many words. And when we got up to separate, after the lunch, it was almost as a matter of course that she invited me to come to tea with her on the following Sunday. She was, in fact, deliciously firm about it—as if she were determined to stand no nonsense. It was to me she turned and not to Estlin (Estlin was much amused), and it was to me she first put out her hand.

“You will come to tea, won’t you? Next Sunday? And bring Mr. Estlin with you?…”

I murmured that I would be delighted—we smiled—and then, taking Wilson’s arm for support (my heart ached when I saw this), she turned and went slowly out through the glass doors to Wardour Street.

Estlin was smiling to himself, and shaking his head.

“You’re a terrible fellow,” he said—“a terrible fellow!”

“Me?” I said. “Why?”

I knew perfectly well why, of course—but it pleased me to have Estlin say that I had made an unusual impression on Reine Wilson.

“And you may not know it,” he added, “but she’s damned hard to please. Damned hard to please. In fact, a good deal of an intellectual snob, and excessively cruel to those she dislikes. You just wait!… If she catches you admiring the wrong thing—!”

I laughed, a little discomfited—for I had already foreseen for myself that possibility. How could I, an amateur, keep it up? It was all very well to make one lucky shot about Henry James—but sooner or later I was bound to give myself away as, simply, not of her kin.… Or was I?… For I admit I was vain enough to hope that I might really be enough of a person, fine and rich and subtle enough, to attract her. How much was I presuming in hoping this? She had liked me—she had been excited by that remark—we had certainly met each other in a rather extraordinary way, of which she had shown herself to be thrillingly conscious. And I was myself, I must confess, very much excited by all this. She was, in every respect, the most remarkable woman I had ever met. I do not know how to explain this—for it was not that she had said , at lunch, anything especially remarkable; it was, rather, what she was , and how she said things. Her burning intensity of spirit, the sheer naked honesty with which she felt things, and the wonderful and terrible way in which she could appear so vividly and joyfully, and yet so precariously, alive—all this, together with her charming small oddity of appearance, the doll-like seriousness of face and doll-like eyes, combined to make a picture which was not merely enchanting. It was, for me, terribly disturbing. I was going to fall in love with her—and I was going to fall hard and deep.

Going to. I use the phrase advisedly. For there is always, in these affairs, a point at which one can say that one is going to fall in love, but has not yet done so; a point at which one feels the powerful and seductive fascination of this other personality, feels drawn to it almost irresistibly, and knows that unless one resists one is going to be enslaved. Nevertheless, it is , at this point, still possible to resist. One can turn one’s back on the Siren, turn one’s ship away from Circe’s Isle, sail away—if one only has a little courage and good sense. Good sense? No. That phrase, I am afraid, has crept down to me from the Victorians. What I would prefer to call it now, in my own case, is cowardice. Or, if you like, caution. Or again, respect for the conventions. For I am sure that is what it was.… During the five days which intervened between the luncheon party and my engagement for tea, I did a lot of thinking about this. I knew perfectly well that if I were to let myself go, I could fall in love. But did I want to fall in love? And suppose I did. Quite apart from my own domestic complications—and the situation with my wife was already quite sufficiently unpleasant—what good would it do me? For I was desperately, horribly, miserably sure of one thing and one thing only: that Reine Wilson would not fall in love with me. Or if she did, that she would fall out again in double-quick time. And there, hung up for the crows to peck at, I would be.…

I thought about this—and thought and thought. But I didn’t—as the hours crept toward Sunday—find any solution. Of course, I would go to tea—there was no question about that. So much rope I would grant myself, and no more. No harm could come of that—or at any rate, no greater harm than was done already. One is ingenious, when one is falling in love, at finding good excuses for meeting with one’s beloved. Yes, I would go to tea—and then I would make up my mind as to the future. A good deal would depend on what happened at tea. If I should disgrace myself—if she were to find me out—or, as was only too likely, if she simply found me uninteresting, a nice young fellow, no doubt, with an idea or two, but not at all on The Banner level—well, that would be the end of it. But if, on the other hand, our mutual attraction should deepen—if, somehow, by hook or by crook, I should manage to keep up the deception—or even, actually, to prove a sufficient match for her—what then?… What would happen to us?… What about my wife?… What about that detestable “Wilson”?… And, above all, what about her bad heart?…

III.

The new number of The Banner came out on Saturday, and it contained of course another installment of “Scherzo.” I read this—and it seemed to me even more delightful and more obviously a work of first-rate genius, than the chapters which had gone before. It was in this installment that the description of the picnic occurred. This entranced me. Never, it seemed to me, had an al fresco party been so beautifully done in prose. The gaiety, the coltish rompings of the young girls, that marvelously described wood, and the cries of the children in it, playing hide-and-seek—the solemn conversation of the two little boys who had discovered a dead vole, and were wondering how most magnificently to dispose of it—the arrival of Grandma Celia with the basket—and, above all, Underhill’s dream. It seemed to me a stroke of the finest genius to have poor Underhill, at that crisis of his life, dragged into such a party—frisked about, romped over, made to tell stories and to light fires; and then, when he sneaked away and found a clearing in the gorse and slept, having that marvelous dream—! The dream was so vivid and so terrifying that I felt as if I had dreamt it myself. It was I who had been in that cottage during the thunderstorm—it was I who tried vainly to shut the rattling windows and doors against the torrents of rain and hail, hoping to protect those mysterious “other people”—and it was I who finally, disheartened, despairing, had set out to climb the black mountain valley toward the storm. And the description of that Alpine valley, with its swishing pines and firs, and the terrible white cloud which hung at the upper end of it! My blood froze as I moved toward that cloud and saw the death-lightning which shot from it unceasingly. It hung there portentously; like death itself. And I, who had at first moved toward it as if voluntarily, now felt myself being drawn off the ground and into the air—I floated at first a foot or two off the path and then a little higher—I was on a level with the tops of the trees, and every second drawing nearer to the dense white cloud—I could see, at last, that it was a magnificent cold arch of greenish ice, impenetrable and hostile—its cold vapor blew upon me—and then came a final flash and I knew that I was already dead.… It was superb, it was annihilating. And only the most daring of genius would have presumed to expand a mere dream, in the midst of a realistic narrative, to such proportions, and to concentrate in it all the agony and tragedy of a torn soul.