The Restless Sex

She looked about her, searching among the paraphernalia of the tea tray. "Oh, the deuce! I remember, now, that we're out of lemons! You have some, haven't you?"

"Yes, I'll run up and – "

"I know where they are in your ice box. I'll find them – "

"What nonsense! Wait! – "

She had started already; but swiftly as her light feet sped he overtook her on the stairs; gathered her into his arms, all pink and breathing rapidly:

"Steve – my darling! – "

"I thought you might do this… I wanted to see – "

"What?"

"Whether it could happen to me again – what I experienced with you – "

There was a silence: her young lips melted against his; lingered; her arms tightened around his neck. And the next instant she had freed herself, hot-cheeked, disconcerted.

"Oh, it, was – quite true – " she stammered, resting against the banisters with one hand pressed tightly over her heart. "My curiosity is satisfied… Please!– Jim, dear – we ought to behave rationally – oughtn't we?"

But she did not resist when he framed her face between his hands; and she suffered his lips again, and again her slight response and the grey eyes vaguely regarding him shook his self-control.

"Will you try to love me, Steve?"

"I seem to be doing it."

"Is it really love, Steve? Do you truly care for me?"

"Oh, dear, yes!" she said, with a quick-drawn breath which ended in a quiet sigh, scarcely audible. Then a faintly humorous smile dawned in her eyes: "You're changing, Jim. You always were very wonderful to me, but you also were mortal. Now, you're changing; you are putting on a glorious, iridescent immortality before my eyes. I'm quite bewildered – quite dazzled – and my mind isn't very clear – especially when you kiss me – "

"Are you making fun of me?"

"No, I'm not. That's the way with the gods when they start a love affair with a mortal girl. Sometimes she runs, but they always catch her or turn her into a tree or a waterfall or something they can acquire and fence in, and visit like a plot in a cemetery. And if she doesn't run away, then she just falls into a silly trance with her Olympian lover, and somebody comes along and raises the dickens with them both… And now I'd like to know what's going to happen to me?"

"You're going to try to fall in love with me first."

"Oh. And then?"

"Marry me."

"Oh. And what will old lady Civilization say? I told you somebody would raise the dickens!"

"Who cares?"

"I suppose I wouldn't care if I loved you enough."

"Will you try?"

"Oh, dear." … She freed herself gracefully, stepped back a stair lower, and leaned on the rail, considering.

"Oh, dear," she repeated under her breath. "What a tangle! … I don't know why I've let myself – care for you – in your way. I ought to stop it. Could you stand it?" she added naïvely. And the reply in his eyes scared her.

"Oh, this is serious!" she murmured. "We've gotten on much further than I realized… I remember, when you began to make love to me, I thought it very sweet and boyish of you – to fall in love with your own sister. But I've begun to make love to you, now… And I ought not to."

"Because you are married?" he asked under his breath.

"Oh, yes. It won't do for me to make advances to you."

"When have you made any advances?"

"I came out here. I wanted you to – kiss me. Oh, this isn't going to do at all. I can see that, now! – " She framed her face in her hands and shook her head. "Jim – dearest, dearest of men – it won't do. I didn't realize that I was caring for you in this way. Why," she added, her grey eyes widening, "it is almost dangerous!"

"The thing to do," he said, reddening, "is to tell Oswald."

"I can't tell him!"

"You've got to, if you fall in love with me."

"Oh, Jim, it would be too heartless! You don't know – "

"No, I don't!" he exclaimed impatiently, "and I think it's time I did! You can't be in love with two men at the same time."

She blushed furiously:

"I – he never even touched my fingers with his lips! And you – you take me into your arms with no more hesitation than if I were a child… I believe I've behaved like one with you. I'm old enough to be ashamed, and I'm beginning to be."

"Is it because you're married?"

"Yes, it is! I can't let myself go. I can't let myself care for – for what you do – to me. I came out here to give you the chance – ready to learn something – desiring to. I mustn't take any more lessons – from you."

He said:

"I am going to tell Oswald that I care for you, Steve."

To his astonishment, tears flashed in the grey eyes:

"If you do," she said, "it will be like killing something that makes no resistance. It – it's too cruel – like murder. I – I couldn't bring myself – "

"Why? Did you marry him out of pity?"

She bit her lip and stood staring into vacancy, one hand tightening on the stair-rail, the other worrying her lips.

"I tell you," she said slowly, her gaze still remote, "the only thing to do is to do nothing… Because I'm afraid… I couldn't bear it. I'd have to think of it all my life and I – I simply couldn't endure it… You mustn't ask me any more."

"Very well," he said coldly. "And I think we'd better go back to the studio – "

As he passed her he paused, waiting for her to precede him. She turned; her hand fell from the banisters and hung beside her; but the slender fingers groped for his, slipped among them, tightened, drawing him partly toward her; and her left foot moved forward a trifle, blocking his way and bringing them closely confronted.

"I – love you," she faltered. "And I don't know what to do about it."

Crushed into his embrace she did not seem to know any the more what she was going to do about it. Her flushed cheek lay hot against his; her hands moved restlessly on his shoulders; she tried to think – strove to consider, to see what it was that lay before her – what she had to do about this matter of falling in love. But her fast beating heart told her nothing; a listless happiness invaded her; mind and body yielded to the lethargy; thought was an effort, and the burden lay with this wonderful being who held her in his arms – who, once mortal – had assumed the magic of immortality – this youthful god who was once a man – her lover.

"It's got to come right somehow, my darling," he whispered.

"Yes – somehow."

"You'll explain it some day – so that I shall understand how to make it come right."

She did not answer, but her cheek pressed closer against his.

When they entered the studio Helen, seated by the tea table, rose with a gesture of warning:

"That child is in my room and Harry is with her. They were standing together over there by the piano when I came out of my room. I saw at once that she was on the verge of something – she tried to look at me – tried to speak; and Harry didn't even make the effort. So I said, quite casually, 'It is frightfully close in the studio, Marie. But you'll find it cool in my room. Better lie down in there for a moment.' … They're in there. I don't know what I hope, exactly. She is such a dear… Where on earth have you two been?"

"On the stairs," said Stephanie. "We started to get something – what was it, Jim? Oh, yes; there's no lemon here – "

"Did you get any?"

"No; we just conversed." She picked up a cake, nibbled it, selected a strawberry and nibbled that, too.

The tea wasn't fresh, but she sipped it, sitting there very silent and preoccupied with now and then a slow side-glance at her lover, who was attempting to make the conversation general.

Helen responded lightly, gaily, maintaining her part in a new and ominous situation which had now become perfectly recognizable to her.

For these two people on either side of her had perfectly betrayed themselves – this silent, flushed girl, still deep under the spell of the master magic of the world – this too talkative, too plausible, too absent-minded young man who ate whatever was handed to him, evidently unaware that he was eating anything, and whose eyes continually reverted to the girl.

The smile on Helen's lips was a little fixed, perhaps, but it was generous and sweet and untroubled. A man sat at her elbow whom she could care for, if she let herself go. A girl sat on the other side who was another man's wife, and who was already in love with this man. But the deep anxiety in Helen's heart was not visible in her smile.

"What about that very tragic pair in my room?" she asked at last. "Shall we clear out and give them the whole place to settle it in? It's getting worse than a problem play – "

She looked up; Oswald Grismer stood on the threshold of the open door.

"Come in!" she said gaily. "I'll give you tea in a few minutes."

Grismer came forward, saluted her with easy grace, greeted Stephanie with that amiable ceremony which discloses closer intimacy, turned to Cleland with that wistful cordiality which never seemed entirely confident.

"Oswald," said Helen, "there's a problem play being staged in my bed-room."

"Marie Cliff and Harry Belter," explained Stephanie in a low voice.

Grismer was visibly astonished.

"That's amusing," he said pleasantly.

"Isn't it?" said Helen. "I don't know whether I'm pleased. She's such a little brick! And Harry has lived as he pleased… Oh, Lord! Men are queer. People sneer at a problem play, but everybody ever born is cast for some typical problem-play part. And sooner or later, well or badly, they play it."

"Critics talk rot; why expect more of the public?" inquired Grismer. "And isn't it funny what a row they make about sex? After all, that's what the world is composed of, two sexes, with a landscape or marine background. What else is there to write about, Cleland?"

The latter laughed:

"It merely remains a matter of good taste. You sculptors have more latitude than painters; painters more than we writers. Pathology should be used sparingly in fiction – all sciences, in fact. Like a clove of garlic applied to a salad bowl, a touch of science is sufficient to flavour art; more than that makes it reek. Better cut out the art altogether if the science fascinates you, and be the author of 'works' instead of mere books."

Stephanie, watching Cleland while he was speaking, nodded:

"Yes," she said, "one could write fiction about a hospital nurse, but not about nursing. It wouldn't have any value."

Grismer said:

"We're really very limited in the world. We have land and water, sun and moon and stars, two sexes, love and hate to deal with. Everything else is merely a modification of these elemental fixtures… It becomes tiresome, sometimes."

"Oswald! Don't talk like a silly pessimist," said Stephanie sharply.

He laughed in his easy, attractive way and sat gently swinging one long leg, which was crossed over the other.

He said:

"There is in every living and articulated thing a nerve which, if destroyed, destroys for its possessor a certain area of interest in life. People become pessimists to that extent.

"But, where all the nerves converge to form the vital ganglion, a stroke there means extermination."

"Apropos of what is this dissertation wished upon us?" asked Stephanie with an uneasy smile.

"Did you ever see a paralyzed spider, Stephanie? – alive, breathing, destined to live for weeks, perhaps, and anyway until the wasp's egg under it hatches and becomes a larva to devour it?

"Well, the old wasp required fresh meat for its young, so, with her sting, she annihilated the nerve controlling motion, laid her egg, certain that her progeny would find perfectly fresh food when born. But if she had thrust that sting of hers a little higher – at the juncture of skull and thorax – death would have taken that spider like a stroke of lightning."

He laughed:

"So I say it's better to get the stroke of Fate in the neck than to get it in any particular area and live for a while a paralyzed victim for some creature ultimately to eat alive."

There was a silence. Helen broke it with pleasant decision:

"This is not an appetizing conversation. If anybody wishes any the tea is ready."

There was enough daylight left in the studio so the lamps remained unlighted.

"Do you suppose we ought to go out somewhere?" asked Stephanie, "and leave the place to those two poor things in there? You know they may be too unhappy or too embarrassed to come out and run the gauntlet."

But Stephanie was wrong; for, as she ended, Belter appeared at the end of the studio in the fading light. His young wife came slowly forward beside him. The strain, the tension, the effort, all were visible, but the girl held herself erect and the man fairly so.

There was tea for them – no easier way to mitigate their ordeal. Conversation became carelessly general; strawberries and little cakes were tasted; a cigarette or two lighted.

Then, after a while there chanced to fall a silence; and the young wife knew that the moment belonged to her.

"I think," she said in a distinct but still little voice, "that we ought to go home. If you are ready, Harry – "

CHAPTER XXVIII

By the end of the first week in June Cleland was in a highly excited state of mind in regard to his infant novel, in which all the principals were now on the edge of catastrophe.

"I don't know how they got there," he said nervously to Badger Spink, who had dropped in to suggest himself as illustrator in case any magazine took the story for serial publication.

Spink's clever, saturnine features remained noncommittal. If Cleland turned out to be a coming man, he wished to participate and benefit; if he proved a failure he desired to remain pleasantly aloof.

For the only thing in the world that interested Badger Spink was his own success in life; and he had a horror of contaminating it by any professional association with mediocrity or failure.

"What's your story about?" he inquired with that bluntness that usually passed for the disinterested frankness of good comradeship.

"Oh, it's about a writer of stories," said Cleland, vaguely.

"He's the hero?"

"If you'd call him that. What is a hero, Spink? I never saw one in real life."

Spink squinted. It was his way of grinning.

"Well, a literary hero," he said, "is one who puts it over big on his first novel. The country goes crazy about his book, the girls go crazy over him, publishers go panting after him waving wads; editors flag him with fluttering cheques. That's one sort of hero, Cleland. But he's a myth. The real thing is a Charlie Chaplin. All the same, you'd better let your hero make a hit with his novel. If you don't, good night!"

Cleland's features became troubled:

"I suppose his book ought to make a hit to make mybook popular," he said. "But as a matter of fact it doesn't. I'm afraid the character I've drawn is no hero. He's like us all, Spink; he writes a book; friends flatter; critics slam; the public buys a number of copies, and it's all over in a few weeks. A punk hero – what?"

"Very. He won't get over with the young person," said Spink. "In these days of the movie and the tango nobody becomes very much excited over novels anyway; and if you don't startle the country with your hero's first novel – make it the sort that publishers advertise as 'compelling' and 'a new force in literature' – well, you'll get the hook, I'm afraid. Listen to me: work in the 'urge'; make it plain that there's not a trace of 'sex' in your hero's book or in yours – or any 'problem' either. Cheeriness does it! That intellectual eunuch, the 'Plain Peepul,' is squatting astride of the winged broncho. His range reaches from the Western plains to the New England kitchen. The odours of the hired man and of domestic dishwater are his favourite perfume; his heroines smirk when Fate jumps upon them with hobnailed boots; his heroes are shaven as blue as any metropolitan waiter and they all are bursting out of their blue flannel shirts with muscular development and abdominal prosperity. That's the sort, Cleland, if you want to make money!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But of course if you don't, well, then, go on and transmute leaden truth with your imagination into the truer metal wrought by art. If there's a story in it, people will excuse the technical excellence; if there isn't, they won't read it. And there you are."

They remained silent for a while, and Spink regarded him shrewdly from moment to moment out of his bright, bold eyes. And he came pretty close to the conclusion that he was wasting time.

"Did you ever make any success with your stuff!" he inquired abruptly.

Cleland shook his head.

"Never heard anything from anything you've done?"

"Once," said Cleland, "a woman wrote me from a hospital that she had read a novel I published in England, when I was living in France… She said it had made her forget pain… It's pleasant to get a letter like that."

"Very," said Spink drily, "unless she meant your book was an anodyne." He laughed his abrupt, harsh laugh and took himself off.

Belter, who haunted the studio now toward noon, so that he could take his wife to luncheon, roared with laughter when Cleland mentioned Spink's visit.

"When there's any rumour of a new man and a new book, Spink's always certain to appear out of a cloudless sky, like a buzzard investigating smoke for possible pickings. If you make good, he'll stick to you like a burdock burr. If you don't, he's too busy to bother you. So he's been around, has he?"

"Yes."

"Watch him, Cleland. Spink is the harbinger of prosperity. He associates himself only with the famous and successful. He is clever, immensely industrious, many sided, diversely talented. He can write, rehearse and stage a play for the Ten Cent Club; he can draw acceptably in any medium; he can write sparkling stuff; his executive ability is enormous, his energy indefatigable. But – that's the man, Cleland. You'll have him at your elbow if you become famous; you'll see only the back of his bushy head if you fail."

Cleland smiled as he ran over the pile of pencilled pages on the desk before him, pausing here and there to cross out, interline, punctuate.

"When Oswald Grismer was rich and promised so well as a sculptor," said Belter, "Spink appeared as usual out of a clear sky, alighted, folded his wings, and hopped gravely beside Grismer until the poor devil came his cropper.

"Now, he's always going somewhere in a hurry when he encounters Grismer, but his 'How are you! Glad to see you!' en passant, is even more cordially effusive than before. For Badger Spink never wittingly makes an enemy, either."

"Poor Spink. He misses a lot," commented Cleland, renumbering some loose pages. "Tell me, Harry, how are things going with you?"

Belter said, naïvely:

"When a man's quite crazy about his wife, everything else goes well."

Cleland laughed:

"That sounds convincing. What a little brick she is! I suppose you're lunching with her."

"Rather!" He looked at his watch. "God knows," he added, "I don't want to bore her, but it would take a machine gun to drive me away… I tell you, Cleland, three years of what I went through leave scars that never entirely heal… I don't yet quite see how she could forgive me."

"Has she?"

"I'm trying to understand that she has. I know she has, because she says so. But it's hard to comprehend… She's a very, very wonderful woman, Cleland."

"I can see that."

"And whatever she wishes, I wish. Whatever she desires to do is absolutely all right because she desires it. But, do you know, Cleland, she's sweet enough to ask my opinion? Think of it! – think of her asking my opinion! – willing to consider my wishes after what I've done to her! I tell you no man can study faithfully enough, minutely enough, the character of the girl he loves. I've had my lesson – a terrible one. I told you once that it was killing me – would end me some day. It would have if she had not held out her hand to me… It was the finest, noblest thing any woman has ever done."

All fat men are prone to nervous emotion; Belter got up briskly, but his features were working, and he merely waved his hand in adieu and galloped off down stairs to be in time to join his wife when she emerged from her seance with the white circus horse in Helen's outer workshop.

Cleland, still lingering with fluttering solicitude over his manuscript, heard a step on the stair and Stephanie's fresh young voice in gay derision:

"You're like a fussy old hen, Jim! Let that chick alone and take me somewhere to lunch! I've had a strenuous lesson and I'm starved – "

She dodged his demonstration, eluding him with swift grace, and put the desk between them.

"No! No! I chanced, just now, to witness the meeting of the Belters, and that glimpse of conjugal respectability has stiffened my moral backbone… Besides, I'm deeply worried about you, Jim."

"About me?"

"Certainly. It fills me with anxiety that you should so far degrade yourself as to attempt to kiss a respectable married woman – "

She dodged again, just in time, but he vaulted over the desk and she found herself imprisoned in his arms.

"I'll submit if you don't rumple me," she said. "I've such a darling gown on – be very circumspect, Jim – "

She lifted her face and met his lips, retained them with a little sigh, placing her gloved hands behind his head. They became very still, very serious; her grey eyes grew vague under his deep gaze which caressed them; her arms drew his head closer to her face. Then, very slowly, their lips parted, and she laid her hand on his shoulder and drew his arm around her waist.

In silence they paced the studio for a while, slowly, and in leisurely step with each other deeply preoccupied.

"Steve," he said, "it's the first week in June. The city will be intolerable in a fortnight. Don't you think that we ought to open Runner's Rest?"

"You are going up there with Oswald, aren't you?" she asked, raising her eyes.

"Yes, in a day or two. Don't you think we'd better try to get some servants and open the house for the summer?"

She considered the matter:

"You know I've never been there since you went abroad, Jim. I believe we would find it delightful. Don't you?"

"I do, indeed."

"But – is it going to be all right – just you and I alone there? … You know even when we considered each other as brother and sister there was a serious question about our living together unless an older woman were installed" – she laughed – "to keep us in order. It was silly, then, but – I don't know whether it's superfluous now."

"Would Helen come?"

"Like a shot! Of course that's the solution. We can have parties, too… I wonder what is going to happen to us."

"What!"

"To you and me, Jim… It's becoming such a custom – your arm around me this way; and that secret and deliciously uneasy thrill I feel when I come to you alone – and all my increasing load of guilt – "

"There's only one end to it, Steve."

"Jim, I can't tell him. I'm afraid! … Something happened once… I was scarcely eighteen – " She suddenly clung to him, pressing her face convulsively against his shoulder. He could feel the shiver passing over her.

"Tell me," he said.

"Not now… There doesn't seem to be any way of letting you understand… I was not yet eighteen. I never dreamed of – of love – between you and me… And Oswald fascinated me. He does now. He always will. There is something about him that draws me, influences me, stirs me deeply – deeply – "

She turned, looked at him, flung one arm around his neck:

"Will you let me tell you this and still understand? It's a – a different kind of affection… But it's deep, powerful – there are bonds that hold me – that I can't break – dare not… Always he was attractive to me – a strange, sensitive, unhappy boy… And then – something happened."

"Will you tell me what?"

"Oh, Jim, it involves a question of honour… I can't betray confidence… Let me tell you something. Did you know that Oswald, ever since you and he were boys together, cared more for your good opinion than for anything else in the world?"

"That's strange."

"He is strange. He has told me that, as a boy, one of the things that most deeply hurt him was that he was never invited to your house. And I can see that the fact that dad never took any notice of his father mortified him bitterly."