They sat looking at each other, an excited smile in Basine's eyes. His body was tingling. A new sense had come. It lived in his fingers. He was holding her hand. His fingers were charged with an amazing energy. They seemed to have become part of a different person. He was able to enjoy the ecstasy that confused his fingers as if it were an external emotion. The rest of him was clear, almost tranquil.
"Well," he said. It was still hard to talk. He was aware of incongruities. He was not Basine talking, not the new Basine, not the one whose fingers danced and throbbed. His voice belonged to other Basines--other characterizations whose awkward ghosts fluttered nervously in his thought. He would discuss this phenomenon. It was easy, after all. Be honest. She was one with whom he could be astonishingly honest. They were isolated. The world was a futility. There was an end to make-believe now. It was all honest, tranquil, joyous. He began again:
"Well, isn't it strange. I can hardly talk to you. I'm not used to us yet. This way. I've loved you since I first saw you. But I've told so many lies about that to both of us...." He paused to smile at her as if asking her not to believe him a liar, or if she must--a liar in a high cause--"that the things I want to say now seem like ... like the contradictions of something. Of old lies ... in a way."
She nodded.
"Oh, I know," she whispered. A preposterous admiration of her intelligence overcame him. Of course she understood! It was unnecessary to talk to her. She had kissed and embraced him. She had felt the same things he had. And now, their thoughts were alike. They were like one person, having shared something that filled them. It was unnecessary to talk. Because if he remained silent she knew he was thinking of her. A charming sense of comradeship came to him.
"I feel," he said, "as if we were too intimate for words."
She nodded again and smiled.
"We'll make a holiday," he added. "Come, we'll go for a drive."
They embraced. This time he thought of Henrietta. Ruth was different from his wife. Her shoulder blades felt different under his fingers. It was impossible to think they were both women. His arms around Henrietta meant nothing. His arms around Ruth now--he closed his eyes in order to closet himself with indefinable sensations.
They emerged from the traffic of the loop. Basine at the wheel of his newly purchased roadster dropped a hand on hers.
"I feel better like this," he said.
"Isn't it wonderful," she whispered.
He would have liked to tell her they were floating over buildings. But he kept silent. Words were still self-conscious interlopers. The houses moved away. A spring wind was in their faces. They were silent. The pavements ended. Basine brought the car to a stop.
"I don't know what to do," he said. "I'm so happy."
He placed his arms around her. The touch of her body through his clothes was a reminder of something. He gave it no words. They sat embraced, their faces together and an unspoken laugh in their hearts. The sun was high overhead. Basine tried to remember himself ... Henrietta, his home, his position. Ah, banalities. He was proud. He was above remorse, regret; above himself. There was nothing in the world as beautiful as the moment he commanded.
Ruth leaned avidly against him as if seeking refuge in his arms. He sat thinking. "It is right. Everything right. I've done nothing. No compromise. Nothing. I'm happy. There's nothing to frighten me."
He felt released.
17
Summer lay like a Mandarin coat over the city. It was June. Warm, sun-awninged streets glistened with ornamental colors. Women in gaudy fabrics, men in violent hat bands, straws, panamas, striped shirts, sun parasols like huge discs of confetti, freshly painted red and green street cars, pastel tinted automobiles--all these tumbled like a swarm of sprightly incoherent adjectives along the foot of the buildings.
The store windows like deaf and dumb hawkers grimaced at the crowds. Ice creams, silks, swimming suits, and sport paraphernalia; jaunty frocks, white trousers, candies, festive haberdashery, drugs, leather goods, wicker furniture and assortments of lingerie like the symbols of fastidious sins--all these grimaced behind plate glass.
The city was in bloom. People, perspiring and lightly dressed, sauntered by the plate glass orchards. Summer filled the city with reminiscent smells. Sky, water, grass scampered like merry ghosts through the carnival of the shopping center. Warm, sun-awninged streets; ornamental men and women--summer spread itself through the crowds, warmed the bargain hunters, loiterers, clerks, stenographers, business men and housewives into a half sleep.
They peered lazily at each other. Their mysterious preoccupations seemed to have subsided. The sun made holiday in the streets and the high, fluttering windows showered endless tiny suns on the air. The morning held the unreal soul of some forgotten picnic.
Ten o'clock. Fanny Gilchrist turned with an inward sigh and walked out of the crowded business street. This was LaSalle street and, concealed in the buildings around her, were people who knew her and might see her.
Accidentally bump into her.
The crowds grew thinner and less familiar types of faces drifted by.
This was better. She wasn't exactly afraid. But what if someone did bump into her accidentally? Then she would have to say where she was going and, if she lied, perhaps they would insist upon coming along and discover it. But that was foolishness. One never met people in streets like that.
Men looked at her with casual interest, with insignificant enthusiasm, as she walked by them. A bright-haired, shining-eyed young woman with a body undulating softly under a grey and green trimmed dress; she seemed to light up the dingy pavements. Other women passed lighting them up also. Each new female illuminant was welcomed with thankful, greedy eyes.
Her red sailor jauntily tilted and the silken gleam of her face were like part of a luscious mask. She was a woman hurrying somewhere and men, bored with other women, looked at her enthusiastically. She was one of the many enigmatic ones, one of the many gaudy colored masks behind which sex paraded its mystery through the sun-awninged streets. Eyes ennuied with the memory of sex lighted eagerly in the presence of its masks. The flash of ankles and the swell of thighs under pretty fabrics were diversions even for moralists.
Schroder waiting patiently on a street corner watched the warm crowd.
She wouldn't come. Yes, she would. Well, another five minutes would tell.
He saw her and his excitement changed. A leisurely smile came to his face. His body relaxed. He was a connoisseur in rendezvous and his enjoyment of the moment which witnessed her approach was deliberate.
Women in themselves did not interest him so much. Their bodies--pleasant, yes. But after all--a finale. And one does not applaud finales.
But now, watching her lithe figure hurrying toward him was a diversion to be sipped at, contemplated in all its emotional detail, and enjoyed.
Later it would be this moment he remembered, if he remembered anything--which was uncertain. For his memories which had in his younger days glistened in his thought like a mosaic of eroticism, had of late blurred to a monotone. He could remember women, liaisons, passion phrases and great enthusiasms but, curiously, they seemed all identical.
To recall how one woman had sighed in his arms was to recall the whole pack of them. As if the souls of his paramours and the manner of their surrenders were contained completely in the recollection of any one detail.
But despite his ennui, this moment of approach still delighted him. The woman hurrying to his side was not yet a woman. She was still a mystery whose inevitable and never varying sensualism was masked for a final instant behind unfamiliar fabrics. There was a piquant unreality, a diverting strangeness, as she smiled at him. She was somebody he did not know. He was authentically bored with women. But for the moment it was not a woman approaching--rather a new color of cloth, a new combination of dress, a new species of social poise and gesture were presenting themselves for ravishment. In these unfamiliar surfaces lay a tenuous mystery as if it were these externals he was about to embrace. And in the contemplation of this mystery, his interest revived itself. He sighed. It was a mystery which would vanish shortly.
"Hello, dearest."
He greeted her softly, with regret. A quixotic impulse to turn and walk away before she spoke had died in him.
Fanny was staring expectantly. He was familiar with the expression. Not in her, but in others. This took away its charms. Married women were nearly all alike. Full of distressing short cuts, with an irritating and incongruous professionalism behind their bewilderment. What dolts husbands must be to blunt women like that.
As he took her hand and felt her fingers clutch excitedly around his palm he remembered in an instant the predecessors of her type. Full of distressing short cuts. When they gave their hands they withheld nothing. They denuded themselves with a look, with a handclasp. And the subtlety of skirmishing seemed entirely foreign to them. When they embraced it was with an appalling directness. Yes, in intrigue they were all alike--all like precocious children; vague, bewildered children mimicking the precisions of their elders and exclaiming with distressful incongruity:
"Tut, tut. Let's come to the point. Let's get down to brass tacks and stop beating around the bush."
Well, here she was and the scene was on.
"Am I late?"
"No, dearest. I was just a little early so as to enjoy the impatience of waiting for you."
The nuance was lost upon her. Amorous women were a cold audience for technique.
"I'm so upset. Do you mind?"
"Not at all, Fanny. Of course you're upset. But it only adds to your charm."
He had long ago abandoned love-making tactics, sensing that women who came to him were not particularly interested in tender pretenses. They desired flattery, but direct and practical variants. This one was like the others, flushed, eager, frightened and gay. He felt an exhilaration as they walked toward the entrance of the unpretentious hotel around the corner. A sense of conquest. It was nothing to be enjoyed in itself. But if people knew, which they never could, alas, they would be awed by the ease with which he accomplished such things. One, two, three meetings and--here they were again. Paul Schroder entering a hotel with a woman at his side.
"This isn't a bad place," he whispered. "I've already registered. Mr.
and Mrs. Paul Johnson. It's better if you know your name, of course."
Fanny stood tremblingly in front of the elevator cage as he walked to the desk. She noticed his carelessness, the unselfconscious way in which he smiled at the clerk and paused to buy some cigars. The fear that had grown in her since she left her home appeared to be reaching a climax.
Her knees shivered under her dress and a catch in her throat made breathing difficult.