"Listen, girl. If I wanted you, all I would have to do is tell you to shut up and slap your face. And you would. Your 'how dare you?' don't go with me. I've known too many girls like you. But I don't want you. Not after this. If it'll do you any good I'll tell you now that I won't forget you for a long time. Whenever I want a good laugh I'll think of you. There's a name for your kind...."
And he had used a phrase that nauseated her. The incident had occurred on a Sunday evening in the hallway. He had reached up, taken his hat from the rack and without further comment walked out.
Fanny had spent the night weeping with shame. The memory of the young man's words made spooning impossible for a month. She was essentially an honest person and unable to do a thing she knew was wrong. Her only hope of pleasing herself and indulging her growing sensuality lay in remaining sincerely oblivious to what she was doing. As long as the man's words stuck in her memory it was impossible to remain oblivious.
They had awakened no line of reasoning or self-accusation in her mind.
Her mind was still conveniently blank. The youth's denunciation lay like a foreign substance in it, a substance which fortunately time was able to dissolve.
After a month of embittered virtue Fanny returned warily to her former tactics. She was cautious enough to begin with men as young as herself.
One night in April she gave her lips again. They had been making candy in the kitchen. She turned the light out as they were leaving. The young man stood in front of her in the dark. His arms went shyly around her.
With a satisfied thrill, she shut her eyes and allowed the boy to kiss her. A languor overcame her. She ran her fingers through his hair and gently pressed closer to him.
The warning sounded sooner than usual, and in a surprising way. It came from within this time. The boy had not grown bold. He was enjoying her lips shyly and his embrace was almost that of a dancing partner.
Nevertheless the burglar alarm clang-clanged. Her body had grown hot.
The impulse to crush herself against the boy, to open her mouth, to embrace him fiercely, throbbed in her, and bewildering sensations were bursting unsatisfactory warmths in her blood.
She hesitated. She might secretly yield to these demands. He would remain unaware of it and there would be no danger. But the alarm finally penetrated the fog of her senses. She was unable this time to shut off the current of her passion by the burst of sudden virtuous anger. The mechanism of her retreat had always been simple--a trick of turning her sensual excitement into indignation, of energizing the virtuous platitudes rigged up in her mind by the passion the caresses had stirred. The greater this passion, the more violently her pulse beat, the more violently the platitudes would clang and the more outraged her "how dare you?" would sound.
But it was impossible to say anything this time. Her hands pushed suddenly at the politely amorous youth. His embrace skipped from her as if it had been waiting for such a remonstrance. She stood with her head whirling. She felt limp and ill at ease.
"Don't you love me?" the young man whispered. The lameness of his voice would ordinarily have made her smile. But now the words seemed to draw her. She wanted to answer them, to say, "yes." For the moment it seemed as if she must confess she loved this impossible young man. She walked quickly out of the dark hallway. In the lighted room she was ashamed of herself. Her body tingled with unaccountable pains. She managed to survive the evening without revealing herself. She was grateful for the youth's stupidity.
When she lay in bed she closed her eyes firmly and tried to sleep. But her body disturbed her. Sensations that lured and frightened played furtively throughout it. She lay stretching and sighing. Later, overcome with a nervous weariness, she fell asleep.
On awaking she remembered her triumph and felt proud. In retrospect the sensations she had felt and the temptations that had urged her seemed distasteful.
Years before she had rationalized her behavior toward young men by inventing a code. The code was based on the fact that hugging and kissing and the pleasure these inspired were in no way connected with "the other." When she thought of more intimate relations it was always in some such phrase. She was completely ignorant of the physiological mechanics of marriage. But her ignorance inspired no curiosity. She did not think of it as a logical culmination of the feeling embraces gave her. She had a definite attitude toward "the other." It was a thing separated from her numerous experiences by a gulf. There was only one bridge across--marriage.
Keegan interested her. Since the incident of the embarrassed young man with whom she had made candy in the kitchen, she had been secretly on the lookout for someone like him. She wanted someone with whom she could repeat the startling experience of that other evening without letting herself into danger. Someone who would remain oblivious to the passion his caresses aroused and so allow her to enjoy slyly the sensations whose memory had never left her.
She looked around the room. Doris had gone upstairs and George was not to be seen. Her mother was reading behind a large table.
"Tell me, why are men bad?" she asked in a whisper. Her blue eyes were wide. An air of altruistic sorrow surrounded her. She grieved for men.
The question appealed to Keegan. His eyes grew moist. He was unable to understand this impulse to weep. But somehow it was pleasant.
"They're not bad," he answered softly. "It's only that they don't realize till too late. If all women were like you, there would be no bad men."
"Oh, then it's the woman's fault?"
Keegan nodded but said, "Not exactly. It's like figuring which came first into the world, the egg or the chicken that laid it. It's hard telling whether women are bad because men have made them so or whether men are bad because women give them chances to be. That is, that kind of women, you know."
He felt elated at his tolerance. A few minutes ago he had been denouncing bad women in his mind. But now it pleased him to be broader.
Fanny was looking at him with cheeks flushed. Her mother had risen.
"I think I'll go to church," Mrs. Basine said. "Do you want to come along."
"Not today, mother dear," Fanny answered. Keegan was on his feet.
"If you want to," he offered gallantly to the girl.
"I usually love to," Fanny sighed. "But I don't feel quite like it today. You go along, mother."
Mrs. Basine smiled and left the room. Fanny heard her brother talking in the hall.... "I think I'll go with you, mother." She listened to Keegan in silence, waiting for the outer door to close. Now they were alone except for Doris, upstairs.
"I know how you must feel about it," she said. "But I don't understand how a man like you or George can do such things. It must be awful." She paused, blushing and added in a whisper, "Horrible!"
Keegan nodded and felt overcome as he watched her shudder and draw her shoulders nervously together. He covered his face with his hands. This was, he felt, being almost too dramatic--to hide his face. But his virtue demanded dramatics. He wanted to talk facts now, confess facts.
By denouncing what he had done during the night he would increase his present emotion of chastity.
"Don't," he said, "lets talk of it."
His eyes grew wet again. He was tired. If only life were as clean as this girl he was talking to.... If only life were beautiful and chaste.
And there were no sex. No sin. Men and women just sweet friends. But life was different. It was full of unclean things. He couldn't help it, what he did. He didn't want to do it. But life surrounded him that way with things unclean. He wept.
Fanny hesitated. Her face had grown colored and her nerves were alive.
She must do something. Her fingers desired to caress Keegan's hair and she thought how nice it would be to be kissed by him. But she resolutely barred further thoughts from her mind. It was wrong to think about such things. Fanny's code would allow her to do nothing wrong--if she knew it. She leaned forward impulsively. He was sitting on a window seat.
Her hands touched his covered face.
"You mustn't," she said.
He was sorry for life, for its uncleanliness. He would like to go somewhere far away where clean clouds and a beautiful sea were just as God had made them. And there he would like to sit with this girl, their hearts beautifully sad.
She stroked his hair shyly with maternal fingers. He felt the caress and his heart melted. Its sin poured out leaving him exaltedly cleansed.
Yes, she understood him, the ache of repentance in his soul, the nostalgia for cleanliness that hurt him so. She understood and she was telling him so with her fingers.
"Poor boy," she whispered because he was weeping. "I'm so sorry. You won't, again? Ever? Will you?"
"No," Keegan mumbled tremulously.
It was easy and exalting to confess and promise in this way, without mentioning anything by name. Just by sound.
"I'm so glad," she whispered, as if they were in church, "if I have done that for you...."
"You have," he agreed. "I feel like a ... like a dog."
"Don't...."
Her fingers were playing over his cheek. She could be bold. A man in tears was harmless. She stood up with determination and sat down close beside him. She took his head in her hands and looking with clear understanding eyes into his, shook her head sadly.
"You need a rest," she whispered. "Here ... rest like this."
She placed his head as if he were a child on her shoulder. Keegan's heart contracted with remorse at the innocence of the gesture. Her purity was something poignant. He closed his eyes and drifted into an innocuous satisfaction. This was a realization of his hopes for purity.
He recalled with bitterness the filthy embraces of the night. How superior this was, how much cleaner.
"Wait a minute," Fanny murmured, a wholesome matter-of-fact maternalism in her voice, "you lie down and rest ... like this."
She assumed the proprietory gestures remembered from her childhood when she had "played house" with little boys and girls, and guided Keegan to stretch his legs on the window seat. He grinned apologetically. Fanny sat down and placed his head in her lap, her hands gently caressing his hair.