Siesta, p.18
Siesta, page 18
“What does your husband do?” he said, dancing with her.
“He’s with The Georgetown Chemical Company.”
“Chemist?”
“No. It’s his uncle’s fertilizer business. He’ll probably be the head of it some day.”
“You like him pretty well, don’t you?”
“I married him of my own free will.”
“And you’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.… He’s really just about the nicest fellow I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“You mustn’t think because of—of what I did that I don’t love him.”
He laughed outright. “I don’t, my dear, I don’t. Not for a minute.”
“I wanted you to understand that.”
“I’d like to come to see you sometime.”
“Oh, you must. Branch goes out in the country on business for a day or two now and then, but if you call up first—”
“I meant you,” he said, smiling at her. “Not you-all.”
She looked away from him at the crowd, but as if not seeing them, her eyes blank, with that expression of not being quite in possession of herself, of being disturbed at the real tumult he caused in her.
“Oh,” she said, her shoulders stiffening a little. “I’m afraid you’ll have to make it you-all.”
“I don’t mean to be a nuisance to you, you know, but—hell! here’s your beloved husband.…”
Mr. Applewhite was getting a little tired. He tried to remember why he had come out to this awful place but he couldn’t; he couldn’t think of one reason. Maybelle had asked him to drive out with her and Branch, but he could have refused. He was interested in Maybelle, but that was no reason. It was something new to him; perhaps, but after five minutes he had the idea. And there his quiet room was, and his quiet electric fan, and the journal that he was so far behind in. He had better take care to keep that little book under lock and key; he had said in it once, “I hope everything is going to be all right with B and M; something, I don’t know what, is standing between them.” But to use initials wasn’t enough. He might use numbers instead; he had to write about them somehow, from time to time as the thing unfolded; he was interested in them. Maybe he could help them out in some way, later. Youth’s young problems! The hardest problems of all. Confused emotional problems. Hoping to live happily. Later it became merely hoping to live, which was a good deal simpler. At any rate when that hope failed you, you didn’t have to remember it for so long.… Here he was ten miles out in the country with no way to get to his bed; Branch and Maybelle would stay to the bitter end. Still if he hadn’t come he wouldn’t have seen her with Owens. Was Owens going to be the one to finally separate them? But she had a practical quality of knowing what she was doing; it wouldn’t creep up on her unawares. If she encouraged Owens, he thought it would only be after she had weighed the pros and cons and decided that was what she wanted to do.… There was Pavinovsky. Absurd he hadn’t seen any more of him. He wondered how Pavinovsky was coming out with the shoemaker’s boy. Was it his imagination, or had Pavinovsky really lost some of that—that insouciance? Had he really become a little bit the shoemaker’s boy? No. Still, people’s opinions of you did—
“Good evening,” said Pavinovsky, bowing with his heels together.
“Hello, Pavinovsky.” He held out his hand.
“I don’t suppose by any chance you want a ride back to town.”
“Oh, my Lord!” laughed Mr. Applewhite. “I want a ride back to town more than anything in the world.”
“Good! I’ve got my sister’s Ford. Are you ready to go now?”
“Perfectly. Are you alone?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I thought maybe one of these beautiful girls—Hello, Toombs. You know each other, I suppose. Mr. Toombs, Mr. Pavinovsky.”
Austin bowed and in a minute accepted Pavinovsky’s outstretched hand.
“Would you—would you like to meet a very attractive girl? Have you met Mrs. Owens?”
“We were just going home.”
“Oh, were you?”
“I’d be charmed except for that.”
“Come along. She wants to meet you.”
“Those are orders,” said Mr. Applewhite.
“Well,—would you mind waiting for me five minutes?”
“Of course not.…”
In response to his bow Gwendolyn gave him a firm right hand. “You weren’t thinking of leaving, were you?”
“I borrowed my sister’s car and I was afraid—”
“If you’re afraid of something you need a drink.”
He smiled. “Would you like to dance?”
“I don’t mind.”
She walked out on the floor and turned and faced him.
After they had danced a minute in silence she looked at him. “Are you sleepy?”
His cheeks flushed a little. “No. I think you dance beautifully.”
She said nothing, letting her eyes wander up from a pair of tan shoes, past a table with a half-empty glass, into Mr. Lee Hill’s face. She beckoned to him with her first finger and Mr. Hill tossed his cigarette over the banisters, finished the rest of his drink, and when they had circled conveniently in front of his table, stood up and touched Pavinovsky on the arm.
She waved at him as he moved away; “Faites de bons rêves, M’sieu,” she laughed.
He returned to Mr. Applewhite and they climbed the hill through the pines to the parking space on top, Miss Tannahill looking after them until they disappeared.…
“I hear you’ve got an aeroplane,” said Mr. Lee Hill with ill-disguised animosity.
“Yes. Elly gave it to me for a wedding present.”
Mr. Hill sniffed. “Tough.”
“It really is tough.”
“I said tough.”
“But it really is. We can’t afford it. We haven’t got money enough to keep it in gas.”
“Really?”
“I said really.”
“I’m mighty glad to hear that.”
“Well!—you are!”
“I was afraid you had lots of money.… You’re not kidding me, are you?”
“Listen, I had to go to the dentist and I didn’t have money enough to pay him. We haven’t anything until Elly’s check comes. It’s terrible to be up against it like that.”
“Let’s you and I go smoke and drink.”
“All right.”
“I hate to be a snob, but I can’t help being a little impressed with poverty.… Garçon! Look round downstairs and bring up a couple of bottles of the cheapest ginger ale you can find.”
“Yes, sir. Big Boy Dry, sir?”
“Indeed he is,” said Mr. Hill, “indeed he is.”
He acknowledged Gwendolyn’s laugh with an appreciative twist at the side of his mouth. He pulled out a chair for her at an empty pine-topped table.
“I am Lee Hill, madam, in case you’ve forgotten,—but as the signs along our great highways say, ‘God, what does he mean to you?’”
He sat down disconsolately.
“It may be the liquor,” she said, “but I think you’re pretty funny.”
“If what you tell me of your poverty is true, ma’am, I think you are in beauty like the young roe gamboling over the mountain tops.”
She smiled at him.
“Tell me,” he said. “What do you think of our country? When I opened my eyes at the age of eighteen and a half I wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.…”
Austin tried not to see them. But even looking in another direction he was conscious of them. He couldn’t believe that she was really amused with Lee Hill; he thought she must be doing it to torture him. He wondered if there were any way to retaliate. He caught sight of the lithe figure of Miss Idis Jesup and followed its sinuously-rhythmic passage round the floor. He finished his drink and walked after her.
“Hello, Idis,” he said.
“Hello, Austin.”
She put a light hand on his shoulder and they danced without further conversation until strong fingers pulled her unceremoniously away from him and left him standing in the floor alone. He glanced round at the tables and saw that Gwendolyn was watching him.
“Do you want to dance?” he said to her as indifferently as he could.
She nodded with a certain gratifying intimacy and stood up.
When they neared the entrance she said abruptly, “Where’s the ‘Ladies’?”
“I’ll show you,” said Austin. He thought she was charming.
“Just tell me.” She caught his eye and laughed.
He led her out and down the hill to the beach and the dressing-rooms under the pavilion, and smoked a cigarette on the edge of the pool until she returned.
She put her arm through his and stood close beside him looking down into the water. He pressed her arm against his side. Then he stared for a minute at her dim profile and drew her back into the shadow. In silence she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. Then she relaxed and laughed a little; “Poor me!”
“Let’s walk up to the spring,” said Austin.
She shook her head.
“Why did you say, ‘Poor me’?”
“Oh, I don’t know.… You don’t like me, Austin.”
“Don’t like you!”
“No.”
“My God! I can hardly sleep—”
“You don’t really like me. You don’t think I’m intelligent.”
“I think you’re much more.”
“I knew you didn’t!”
“Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t think I was intelligent.”
“You’ve got something that no amount of intelligence—”
“I want to be intelligent.”
“My God, you’ve got the moon! Do you want sixpence too?”
“I’m not really so unintelligent.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I’ve read a good deal. Just this morning I was glancing through your ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’”
“But why in Heaven’s name do you bother—”
“You make me pretty mad, Austin.”
“But why in the name of God do you want to spoil everything by asking to be intelligent!”
“I’ve got a good mind to slap you.”
“Kiss me.”
“To hell with you!”
She left him standing in the shadow of the building.
From the storm-cloud of music overhead a cigarette twirled, twinkling, meteor-like, through the dark.
7. Wilderness Song
Monday, July 20
They drove along the pink road through the brilliant heat.
“The funny thing,” said Nora, “is that I really rather like it all.”
Mr. Applewhite looked out of the car at a ragged wall of scrub oaks twisting up through the white sand. “You didn’t seem to feel quite that way last spring.”
“I know. I remember. But it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
“You don’t think it may be just that you’re getting used to it?”
“No. I exaggerated it,—exaggerated it so much I could hardly bear the idea of coming back. I thought I just couldn’t do it.”
“What was it you exaggerated so much?”
“Oh, I don’t remember exactly. It was the same sort of feeling I have always had coming back. Only it was stronger, because you see that was my last year. I felt coming back this year was definite.”
“And you didn’t like the idea of its being definite? I mean, after all, you were coming home.”
“I know. But there was somehow a feeling of turning my back on things. I remember that. It was always that way. I remember at Smith everybody talking about what they were going to do that summer, swimming, riding, sailing, getting together again up on the North Shore, on the Cape. I don’t know; things were just beginning for them; the weather was just getting to be fun. I used to think it was sort of like walking out in the middle of the show.”
“That’s about what it was.”
“I used to think of all kinds of similes.” She laughed. “I used to think, getting on the train, it must feel a little like that to be marrying somebody you didn’t love.”
“Was it the country? I mean all this sort of thing?” He waved through the window at a green cotton field with a group of earth-colored shacks in the middle.
“Partly, I suppose. It took me awhile to see the beauty of all that.”
“Now look here!—That hasn’t any beauty.”
“It has for me. It really has.”
“I’m afraid you’re beyond me. I can’t understand that.”
“I think there’s a beauty about these scrub oaks, these sandhills—”
“This red clay?”
“Yes.”
“But, Nora—”
“This country has character.”
“But, Nora, if this is beauty, what word do you use in thinking of Devon and Chartres Cathedral and the Hudson River and southern Pennsylvania and—”
“It’s a different kind of beauty.”
“No, Nora.” He laughed.
“But there can be different criterions of beauty.”
“There may be different criterions, I’m not sure. People who are very different, like Americans and Orientals, may have what look like different criterions, but you and I belong to the same race and our backgrounds have been, after all, much the same. You may object seriously to an old man’s saying he has had the same background as you, but it’s only some thirty-five years different and Pennsylvania and Devon and Chartres haven’t changed much in thirty-five years. I mean in a general broad way, you and I should have the same criterions of beauty. And I think we have. I don’t believe, at heart, that you feel now, any more than you did before, that all this is beautiful.”
“You think I’m kidding myself?”
“Well, you must admit that it sometimes happens to people.”
“I don’t think I am.… But suppose I am. Suppose it isn’t beautiful. It’s home.”
“Now, I maintain that’s nothing in its favor. That doesn’t make any difference. Nobody ought to live in a place if all it has to recommend it is that it’s home.”
“But—”
“That’s an old fallacy. To a person who wants to dig in and become part of a place, establish his family and his name, there is probably no place like home in which to do it. But to a person who is concerned with things of the mind and the emotions, things of beauty and poetry,—an artist, Nora,—the fact that a place happens to be home must be discarded. For what he wants out of life, his home may be the worst place in the world,—probably is.”
“There’s another old fallacy you have to guard against, you know. That thing about the other pasture always being greener.… It’s quite a job protecting yourself from all the old fallacies.”
“But it’s just as great a fallacy to say the other pasture is never greener.”
“Perhaps so, but—”
“You might as well say that one seat in the theater is as good as another. You’re back in the second balcony here.”
“Why not nigger heaven?”
They laughed together.
“Well, yes, nigger heaven.”
Then she went on, serious again, watching the road unwind ahead of them, “But where do you think the show is? New York?”
“Not exactly, but somewhere out there.”
“You see, I’ve come to think maybe the show is right here. You’re closer to real things here. This woman I get the eggs from. Her daughter teaches in one of the county schools. The farm is owned by a bank in Georgetown; they took it in on an old debt. They advance them a little money to run it; it hardly pays the taxes. Mrs. Dobey wants another room; there are only two rooms in the house. But the bank will scarcely keep it in repair, and as for adding another room, that’s just out of the question. The daughter has a ‘young man’; but she has seen a little better life and she’s ashamed to ask him to the house. There isn’t any place to receive him. So Mrs. Dobey is trying to make some money by selling eggs and chickens and things, hoping to get enough some day to add another room off the kitchen. But in the meantime the young man may get away.” She laughed. “I don’t know that much about any family in New York or Boston.”
“But they don’t contribute anything to you, Nora. You’re a musician. Do they make you want to sit down and play the piano?”
“They make me wonder if playing the piano isn’t pretty unimportant.”
“But don’t you see that’s exactly it! That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Music is of very small account to these people and that attitude is bound to infect you. If you stay here, in three years you will have quit playing.”
“That’s possible, but what of it—”
“With these people it is merely a matter of life and death; with you it’s a great deal more.”
“That’s called sophistry, isn’t it?”
“Sophistry the devil!… Listen to me. The only important things in the world arise out of a surplus of some kind—”
“Mere living doesn’t matter.”
“No! It’s what you manage to do with your mere living. It’s a means, not an end. These people won’t do anything with theirs. Can’t. They haven’t any surplus. But you have—”
“I think you’re just plain wrong, that’s all.”
“You didn’t think so last spring in New York.”
“Maybe I’ve learned something since then.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten something.… Look here, Nora! What’s really at the bottom of all this?”
She glanced at him. “All what?”
“All this championing of mediocrity. What’s keeping you in Georgetown, anyhow? What’s really keeping you? I wouldn’t talk like this, but I’m interested in you. I think you’ve got something, something that these people haven’t got, and I want you to make the most of it. I think you’ll be happier that way than if you look back some day and see you didn’t give it a chance. I want you to go away for two or three years and see what happens; if nothing happens, then come back home. But I think you ought to go. When I saw you in New York you wanted to go too.”
“I said then I didn’t feel like leaving mother and father.”
“But that’s not the real reason.… In other words, my dear,—are you in love?”
