THE conversational permutations and combinations of this new fourfold intimacy inevitably threw new light for each upon the character of the others, and led to endless discussions.
“But why,” Felix exclaimed to Rose-Ann, after an evening spent in the company of the two others, “doesn’t Phyllis make up her mind about Clive, one way or the other. Why should she keep on tormenting him this way?”
“Why doesn’t Clive make up his own mind?” Rose-Ann retorted. “It’s he that’s torturing her. I understand Phyllis’s attitude perfectly.”
“We both seem to have rather changed our views about them,” he observed. “You used to blame Phyllis.”
“I don’t any more,” said Rose-Ann. “I blame Clive.”
“For what, precisely?”
“For not knowing what he wants!”
“He wants Phyllis. That’s simple enough.”
“No, he doesn’t. It would be simple enough if he did. He could have her in a moment. She’s crazy about him. She wants nothing else than to be really his sweetheart.”
“Then why isn’t she?”
“Because he won’t let her!”
“What nonsense, Rose-Ann!”
“It’s perfectly true. I was going to tell you; while you and Clive were over in the corner tonight talking about that novel of his, she was explaining to me what she was angry at him about. She had proposed to him that they rent an apartment together in Chicago this fall.”
“And he refused?” Felix asked incredulously.
298“Yes ... unless she would marry him first. And she wouldn’t.”
“But why not?” he asked.
“Don’t you understand, Felix?... Before, when they first knew each other, she would gladly have married him—but he wouldn’t ask her. He wanted her to be a ‘free-woman.’ And now that she’s ready to be, he insists on ‘protecting’ her with a marriage. Can’t you see? he wants her to admit that she’s not in earnest, that she’s afraid.... And she won’t. I quite agree with her!”
“But what a fuss over nothing,” said Felix.
“Over nothing? Aren’t ideas anything? Isn’t pride anything?”
“Not in comparison with happiness. They’ve been making each other miserable for two years with their ideas, and their silly pride. The important thing is to get them—yes, damn it!—into the same bed together!”
Rose-Ann laughed. “They’ve tried even that, Felix! and it did no good.”
“What!”
“No—they spent the night arguing about whether they really loved each other!”
Felix groaned. “I never heard of such a crazy pair in my life!”
“Yes, it was utterly ridiculous,” Rose-Ann agreed. “Phyllis told Clive she was perfectly willing, for the sake of companionship, to become his mistress—but he wouldn’t have her on those terms. He wanted her to say she loved him.”
“I can’t exactly blame him for asking that,” said Felix. “Why shouldn’t she say it?—it was true!”
“She just wasn’t sure; I can understand that, Felix. She wanted to find out whether she did or not. And if he couldn’t be sure for both of them— You see, it was his cowardice, not hers.”
“Madness!” said Felix. “Is this what modern love has come to!”
299
2
Again, Clive and Felix were at the “Tavern,” across the street from the Chronicle, sitting in front of their afternoon ale.
“Phyllis,” said Clive, “talks about nothing but you, nowadays—you and Rose-Ann. I gather that you are the most wonderful two people in the world, with the possible exception of Bernard Shaw and Ellen Key.”
“I hear much more extravagant reports than that about myself,” said Felix. “Bernard Shaw isn’t in it. I gather that I am almost as wonderful a person as Clive Bangs!”
Clive shook his head. “I am a deserted altar,” he declared, with mock mournfulness. “You are the new divinity. How does it feel?”
“It’s—slightly embarrassing sometimes,” said Felix.
Clive grinned. “You just hate it, don’t you? It makes you bored to be adored!”
“Not exactly,” said Felix. “But Phyllis does have a disturbing way, when we are alone together, of seeming to be a—well, a child, a very young child with a ... a beloved parent!”
“Or why not say, a worshipper in the presence of a god!” Clive laughed. “You find it embarrassing, do you?”
“And also agreeable in a curious way!” Felix confessed. “I’ve never been regarded as a supernaturally wise being, before. I find I rather like it!”
“I know,” said Clive. “The truth is, it’s tremendously gratifying to one’s egotism. It’s nice to be a god. But I fell off my pedestal early in the game. And what I’d like to know is, how do you manage to stay on yours so serenely?”
“It comes naturally to me, to be a god, I expect,” said Felix modestly. “I was probably born that way. I’ve often been told I’m not human. But I imagine the trouble with you was that you made love to her. That was a mistake. You should let her make love to you.”
300“It sounds all right, Felix—not to make love to her: but do you really find it so terribly easy?”
“Oh,” said Felix, “I just keep in mind that I am supposed to be calm, benignant, Olympian intelligence! And really, you know, there’s nothing in the world less conducive to romance. A gesture betraying anything more than a condescending paternal affection would shatter the picture. An importunate lover is merely human, you know, Clive!”
“So I’ve found!” said Clive.
“But it’s your own damned fault. I mean this seriously, Clive. You taught her this preposterous evasiveness. She’s only learned your characteristic attitude—or your favourite trick, whichever it is.”
“I must say she’s learned it well.... So you think it’s all a mask. And what do you imagine is underneath?” Clive asked carelessly.
“I don’t imagine—I know,” Felix said earnestly, thinking of the real person he had evoked from under her intellectual disguises that first night of talk in her room. “Something so simple, Clive, that you’d never believe it.”
Clive yawned. “I might not believe it, but I can guess what you’re about to say, Felix: a Woman, God bless her, with a capital W!... Come on, Felix, you’ve reached the maudlin stage; let’s go back to the office.”
3
“Phyllis,” said Clive to Rose-Ann one afternoon at Field’s where they had met by chance at the stationery counter, and had gone together to the tea-room for tea and talk, “complains to me that Felix hasn’t been to his work-room all this week; she seems to think he is idling away his time in the society of his wife, when he ought to be writing plays and letting her make coffee for him.”
Rose-Ann laughed. “Whether it’s Phyllis’s coffee or not, he does seem to be getting some good work done. I really like that new play.”
“‘The Dryad’? A lovely little thing. Why don’t you make him send it to Gregory Storm?”
301Gregory Storm was an enthusiast who was organizing a company of amateurs to give plays by Schnitzler and Wedekind and other moderns, and Felix had vainly been urged by Clive to submit some of his one-act plays to them.
“I’m not going to ‘make’ Felix do anything,” Rose-Ann said impatiently. “Make him yourself, if you want him to! I won’t manage his career for him.”
“Afraid he’ll blame you if it fails?” Clive asked maliciously.
“No—afraid he’ll blame me if it succeeds!” she laughed.
“You’re right,” said Clive. “I never saw any one so afraid of success.”
“Oh, it’s not success he’s afraid of. It’s rather, I think, that he’s afraid of enjoying himself! You know, Clive, he really is a Puritan!”
“Harsh words, Mrs. Fay! On what grounds do you accuse Felix of the horrid crime of Puritanism?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean, Clive! You were saying that Felix hadn’t been to his work-room this week. And you know why. It’s because he’s afraid of Phyllis. Isn’t it absurd!”
“Absurd? Not at all! I’m very much afraid of her, myself!”
“Well, I’m not! Felix ought to know that I’m just as fond of Phyllis as he is, and that I can perfectly well understand how nice it is to have her around. I like to have her make coffee for me, and sit at my feet. And suppose he did kiss her—she’s very kissable; I wish he would, and get over being afraid of her.”
“No use, Rose-Ann; he never will. And what’s worse, she never will, either. She’s just as much afraid of him as he is of her. I’m afraid theirs is a hopeless passion!”
They both commenced to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
4
Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled again, and Phyllis felt in need of encouragement in her Clive-less way of life. She 302leaned on Rose-Ann for philosophic guidance, and the two girls spent many evenings together in the studio; while Felix, without the sustenance of Phyllis’s coffee, worked at revising “The Dryad,” which he had decided to submit to Gregory Storm. But one evening Phyllis came in disconsolately, and said to Felix:
“I’ve been to the studio and Rose-Ann isn’t there!”
“She’s at the printer’s,” said Felix, “reading page-proof.” He pushed back his manuscript. “Do you want to make me some—”
“Coffee? No,” said Phyllis, “but you can take me out and buy me a cocktail or something; and—and give me some spiritual guidance. I need it!”
They went to a quiet restaurant in the Loop which Clive had discovered, a foreign-looking place where people sat for hours over one drink: a place to talk. It was almost empty at this hour. A table across the room was occupied by an elderly Swede or Dane, who sat moodily sipping a liqueur.
“What,” Phyllis demanded, fingering the stem of her glass, “shall I do—I mean, with my life. Tell me, Felix!”
“If I tell you, will you do it?” he demanded.
She hesitated for a moment. “Yes—I will!”
“Marry!”
“Oh—I might have known you would say that.” She sipped her cocktail disappointedly. “I could have got that advice from St. Paul!”
“I suppose you prefer to take Walter Pater’s advice,” he said laughingly.
“What is that?”
“Burn always with a hard, gem-like flame! But, no—St. Paul is right: it is better to marry!”
“Don’t tease me, Felix. I’m in earnest.”
“So am I. I’ve told you what to do.”
“Marry—yes. But why?”
“You’ll find out why, my dear. ‘Open your mouth and shut your eyes—’”
“You’re making fun of me.”
303“Not a bit.”
“Marry, you say?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m not to ask why?”
“No.”
“Then—whom?”
“A man.”
“Any man?”
“Any man you happen to like.”
“But I don’t happen to like many men.”
“Marry one of those fortunate few.”
“I suppose you mean Clive?”
“He’ll do.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t believe in marriage. And, Felix, one of the two people must believe in a marriage, for it to be a marriage!”
“Then marry—Herbert Bond.”
Herbert Bond was a staid young business man with whom Phyllis had flirted outrageously during her last quarrel with Clive.
“You said—any man I happened to like,” she protested.
“What kind of man do you happen to like, then?”
“Clive’s kind!”
“I suspected as much,” he said. “Well, then, marry one of Clive’s kind—but without Clive’s fatal weakness.”
“Not believing in marriage—is that his fatal weakness?”
“Not being able to believe in anything!—in marriage—in love—”
“Or in me,” said Phyllis sadly.
Felix was silent.
“Can any one—any one of Clive’s kind—believe in me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
“Are you sure?” she demanded, leaning across the table.
“Quite sure,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze.
304She looked down. “There’s only one other man—of Clive’s kind—that I can think of,” she said. “And he’s—out of my reach.”
“Then you must look around for some others,” Felix said, smiling.
“Are there others?” she asked incredulously.
“Of course. It’s only youth and ignorance that makes you imagine they are scarce. You don’t find them by the dozens in little country towns, of course; but you are in Chicago, now. They are a type familiar in all great cities. How long have you been here? A few months! And because you’ve only found two, so far—”
She sighed. “You think there may be a third?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you think I’ll find him?”
“If you look.”
“And will he like me, do you think?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if he did, rather!”
“Thank you!” she said mockingly. “It is awfully kind of you to say so!”
At this moment they noticed the man who was sitting across the room, the elderly Scandinavian, rising and bowing in their direction. They looked at him in surprise, and he came over to their table, and bowed again. He was drunk, but none the less a gentleman.
“Pardon me,” he said, speaking quietly, in a voice which had only the trace of an alien accent, “for the liberty I take in addressing you. But I have been sitting there, seeing you—seeing your happiness—and it gave me such pleasure that I wanted to tell you—to thank you. Yes, to thank you!” He put his hand on his breast.
“I felt sure,” he said, smiling affectionately at them, “—I said to myself, these two happy lovers will forgive a lonely old man for telling them how much it has meant only to look on for a moment at their happiness—their young happiness!”
He bowed again. “Pardon me,” he said, smiling, and again bowed, and went out the door.
305Felix and Phyllis stared after him, and then looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
5
But, interesting as such incidental discussions might be, the heart of their fourfold relationship was in the mid-day discussions at the little Hungarian restaurant. They named it the Rendezvous. There they talked of everything in the world that interested them.... Two people talking together tell secrets; three people talking are a conspiracy; but four talkers are a world. They told the truth; they were hard in their sincerity; and nobody flinched. They were proud of their robustness. The theme of a tête-à-tête confession might at any moment be flung into the stark publicity of that arena. They no longer had secrets; or, if they had, it was because these were secrets of which they had not become aware.
One day Clive said laughingly, “If anything ever happens to us, of the sort that ‘can’t’ be discussed, we’ll come here, and discuss it in the teeth of God and Nature!”
6
They had planned a vacation together, but Phyllis and Clive had quarrelled once more, and Felix and Rose-Ann set out disappointedly by themselves on the appointed day, through Gary and beyond to “the Dunes.” But, after a little having pitched their tent and wandered out over the great wastes of sand by the Lake, they were conscious, both of them, of a sense of release. In this wilderness of sandhills, they seemed to be a million miles distant from all the world they had lived in.
“It’s good to be away from people,” said Rose-Ann.
“Even from Clive and Phyllis,” said Felix.
Rose-Ann’s lips pouted mutinously. “Especially from Clive and Phyllis!” she said.
“Yes....” Felix said hesitatingly. “But—why?”
“They’re family all over again,” said Rose-Ann. “I 306thought I had escaped from families.... But one never does.”
They cooked and ate and slept and kissed and bathed in the lake, and lay idly on the sand. They did not discuss anything all week long. And when the end came, and it was time to begin the miles-long walk back to the nearest street-car line, they stood looking back lingeringly at the peace they were leaving behind.
“It would be nice to have a house here,” said Rose-Ann.
“Yes,...” said Felix.
“Only—the lake and the sand are sort of wasted, without children to enjoy them.”
A burning flash of memory lighted Felix’s mind, and he saw himself and Rose-Ann, the summer before, walking in a park under great trees that lifted their shivering glooms to the sky.... “Everything is all right now,” she had said—now that they were to have no child....
He felt, again, forces that he did not understand hurling themselves on his heart, crushing and stunning it.... He looked at her, questioning her with his eyes.
“I hope,” she was saying, “that Clive and Phyllis make up again—soon. We are rather dull without them, aren’t we?”