Of Time and the River (125 page)

And he did not know why he felt this way, the reason for these senseless feelings of guilt and shame and profanation. He had been with so many prostitutes and casual loose promiscuous women that he would have thought it easy to make love to this big, clumsy, sullen-looking girl, but now all he could do was to hug her to him in an awkward grip, to mutter foolishly at her, and to kiss her warm sullen face again and again.

He tried to put his clumsy hand upon her breast, but the feeling of shame and profanation swept over him and he could not keep it there. He put his hand upon her knee, and thrust it under the skirt: the warm flesh of her leg stung him like an electric shock and he jerked his hand away. And all the time the girl did nothing, made no attempt to resist or push him away, just yielded with a dumb sullen passiveness to his embraces, her face smouldering with a slow sullen passion that he could not fathom or define. He did not know why she had wakened him, why she had called his name, what meaning, what emotion lay behind her brooding look, her dumb and sullen passiveness, whether she yielded herself willingly to him or not.

He did not know why he should have this sense of shame and guilt and profanation when he touched her. It may have come from an intrinsic nobility and grandeur in her person and in her character that made physical familiarity almost unthinkable; it may even have come in part from a feeling of social and class inferiority—a feeling which may be base and shameful, but to which young men are fiercely sensitive—the feeling which all Americans know and have felt cruelly, even those who scornfully deny that it exists and yet have themselves done most to foster it. Certainly he had at times been bitterly conscious of the girl’s “exclusiveness”—the fact that she was a member of “an old Boston family”—a wealthy, guarded, and powerfully entrenched group; he knew that a beautiful and desirable woman like Ann would have had many opportunities to pick and choose among wealthy men of her own class, and that he himself was just the son of a working-man.

But, most of all, he knew that, more than anything else, the thing that checked him now, that overpowered him with its loveliness, that filled his heart with longing and impossible desire, and at the same moment kept him from possession—was the passionate and bitter enigma of that strange and lovely thing which had shaped itself into his life and could never be lost, could never be forgotten, and was never to be known: the thing he knew by these two words—“New England.”

And as the knowledge came to him he felt the greatest love and hatred for this thing that he had ever known. A kind of wild cursing anger, a choking expletive of frustration and despair possessed him. He took her by the arms and jerked her to her feet, and cursed her bitterly. And she came dumbly, passively, sullenly as before, neither yielding nor resisting, as he shook her, hugged her, cursed her incoherently in that frenzy of desire and frustrate shame.

“Look here,” he panted thickly, shaking her. “Say something! . . . Do something! . . . Don’t stand there like a God-damned wooden Indian! . . . Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? . . . Why are you any better than anyone else? . . . Ann! Ann! Look at me! . . . Speak! What is it? . . . Oh, God-damn you!” he said with a savagely unconscious humour that neither of them noticed, “—but I love you! . . . Oh, you big, dumb, beautiful Boston bitch,” he panted amorously, “—just turn your face to me—and look at me— and by God! I will! I will!” he muttered savagely, and for the first time, and with a kind of desperation, kissed her on the mouth, and glared around him like a madman and, without knowing what he was doing, began to haul and drag her along toward the bed, muttering—“By God, I’ll do it!—Oh, you sweet, dumb, lovely trollop of a Back Bay—Ann!” he cried exultantly. “Oh, by God, I’ll thaw you out, I’ll melt your ice, my girl—by God, I’ll open you!—Is it her arm, now?” he began gloatingly, and lifted her long arm with a kind of slow, rending ecstasy and bit into her shoulder haunch, “or her neck, or her warm face and sullen mouth, or the good smell of her, or that lovely belly, darling—that white, lovely, fruitful Boston belly,” he gloated, “good for about a dozen babies, isn’t it?—or the big hips and swelling thighs, the long haunch from waist to knee—oh, you fertile, dumb, unploughed plantation of a woman—but I’LL plant you!” he yelled exultantly— “and the big, dumb eyes of her, and her long hands and slender fingers—how did you ever get such slender, graceful hands, you delicate, big—here! give me the hands now—and all the fine, long lady-fingers”—he said with gentle, murderous desire, and suddenly felt the girl’s long fingers trembling on his arm, took them in his hands and felt them there, and all her big, slow body trembling in his grasp, and was suddenly pierced with a wild and nameless feeling of pity and regret.

“Oh, Ann, don’t,” he said, and seized her hand and held it prayerfully. “Don’t look like that—don’t be afraid—oh, look here!” he said desperately again, and put his arms round her trembling shoulders and began to pat her soothingly. “—Please don’t act like that—don’t tremble so—don’t be afraid of me!—Oh, Ann, please don’t look at me that way—I didn’t mean it—I’m so God-damned sorry, Ann—Ah-h! it’s going to be all right! It’s going to be all right! I swear it’s going to be all right!” he stammered foolishly, and took her hand and pleaded with her, not knowing what he was saying, and sick with guilt and shame and horror at the profanation of his act.

Her breath was fluttering, coming uncertainly, panting short and quick and breathless like a frightened child; this and her slender hands, her long trembling fingers, the sight of her hands so strangely, beautifully delicate for such a big woman, filled him with an unspeakable anguish of remorse. She began to speak, a breathless, panting, desperate kind of speech, and he found himself desperately agreeing with everything she said, even though he did not hear or understand half of it!

“. . . Mustn’t stay here,” she panted. “Let’s get out of here . . . go somewhere . . . anywhere . . . I’ve got to talk to you. . . . Something I’ve got to tell you!” she panted desperately. “. . . You don’t understand . . . awful, horrible mistake!” she muttered. “. . . Got to tell you, now! . . . Come on! Let’s go.”

“Oh, yes—sure—anywhere, Ann. Wherever you say,” he agreed eagerly to everything she said: they put on their hats and coats with trembling haste, and were preparing to leave just as Starwick and Elinor returned.

Starwick asked them where they were going: they said they were going for a walk. He said, “Oh!” non-committally. Both he and Elinor observed their flushed, excited manner, and trembling haste, with a curious and rather perturbed look, but said nothing more, and they departed.

The pension was silent: everyone had already gone to bed, and when they got out into the street it was the same. It was a night of still, cold frost, and everywhere around them there were the strange, living presences of silence and of sleep. The houses had the closed, shuttered and attentive secrecy that houses in a small French town have at night, no one else seemed to be abroad: they strode rapidly along in the direction of the railway station, saying nothing for a time, their feet sounding sharply on the frozen ground as they walked.

At length, beneath one of the sparse, infrequent street lamps, Ann paused, turned to him, and in a rapid, excited tone which was so different from her usual sullen curtness, began to speak:

“Look here!” she said, “we’ve got to forget about all that tonight— about everything that happened! . . . It was my fault,” she muttered, with a kind of dumb, spinsterly agony of conscience which, in its evocation of the straight innocence and integrity of her kind and person, was somehow pitiably moving—“I didn’t mean to lead you on,” she said naďvely. “I shouldn’t have let you get started.”

“Oh, Ann,” he said, “you didn’t do anything! It wasn’t your fault! You couldn’t help it—I was the one who started it.”

“No, no,” she muttered, with a kind of sullen, miserable doggedness. “It was all my fault. . . . Could have stopped it.” She turned abruptly, miserably, and began to stride on again.

“But, Ann,” he began, with a kind of desperate persuasiveness, as he caught up with her, “don’t take it this way. . . . Don’t worry about it like this! . . . We didn’t do anything bad, honestly we didn’t!”

“Oh,” she muttered without turning her head, “it was an awful thing—an awful thing to do to you! . . . I’m SO ashamed,” she muttered. “It was a rotten thing to do!”

“But you did nothing!” he protested. “I’m the one!”

“No, no,” she muttered again—“I started it . . . I don’t know why. . . . But I had no right . . . there’s something you don’t understand.”

“But what? What is it, Ann?” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry over this dumb, spinsterly integrity of New England conscience which, it seemed to him, was taking the episode so bitterly to heart.

She paused in her long stride below another street lamp, and turning, spoke sternly, desperately, to him.

“Listen!” she said. “You’ve got to forget everything that happened tonight. . . . I never knew you felt that way about me. . . . You’ve got to forget about me. . . . You must never think of me that way again!”

“Why?” he said.

“Because,” she muttered, “it’s wrong . . . wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?”

She did not answer for a moment, and then, turning, looked him straight in the eye:

“Because,” she said, with quiet bluntness, “nothing can come of it. . . . I don’t feel that way about you.”

He could not answer for a moment, and it seemed to him that a thin film of ice had suddenly hardened round his heart.

“Oh,” he said presently; and, after a moment, added, “and don’t you think you ever could?”

She did not answer, but began to walk rapidly ahead. He caught up with her again, took her by the arm and pulled her round to face him. He said sharply:

“Answer me! Don’t you think you ever could?”

Her face was full of dumb, sullen misery; she muttered:

“There’s something you don’t understand—something you don’t know about.”

“That’s not what I asked you. Answer me.”

“No,” she muttered sullenly. “I can’t feel that way about you. . . . I never will.” She turned with a miserable look in her face and began to walk again. The ring of ice kept hardening round his heart all the time; he caught up with her again, and again stopped her.

“Listen, Ann. You’ve got to tell me why. I’ve got to know.”—She shook her head miserably and turned away, but he caught her, and pulled her back, saying in a sharper, more peremptory tone:

“No, now—I’ve got to know. Is it because—you just never could feel that way about a fellow like me—because you could never think about me in that way—?”

She didn’t answer for a moment; she just stood looking at him dumbly and miserably; and finally she shook her head in a movement of denial:

“No,” she said. “It’s not that.”

The ring of ice kept getting thicker all the time, it seemed he would not be able to speak the words, but in a moment he said:

“Well, then, is it—is it someone else?”

She made a sudden tormented movement of anguish and despair, and turning, tried to walk away. He seized her, and jerked her back to him, and said:

“Answer me, God-damn it! Is that the reason why?”

He waited a long moment before the answer came, and then she muttered it out so low he could scarcely hear it.

“Yes,” she said, and wrenched her arm free. “Let me go.”

He caught her again, and pulled her back. The ring of ice seemed to have frozen solid, and in that cold block he could feel his heart throbbing like a trip-hammer.

“Who is it?” he said.

She did not answer, and he shook her roughly. “You answer me. . . . Is it someone you knew back home—?”

“Let me go,” she muttered. “I won’t tell you.”

“By God, you will,” he said thickly, and held her. “Who is it? Is it someone you met back home, or not?”

“No!” she shouted, and wrenched free with a kind of stifled sob, and started ahead, almost running: “Leave me alone now! I won’t tell you!”

A sudden flash of intuition, an instant flash of recognition and horror went through him like a knife. His heart seemed to have frozen solid, his breath to have stopped: he jumped for her like a cat, and whisking her round towards him, said:

“Ann! Look at me a moment!” He put his fingers underneath her chin and jerked her face up roughly: “Are you in love with Starwick?”

A long wailing note of dumb anguish and despair was torn from her; she tried to break from his grasp, and as she wrenched to get free, cried pitiably, in a terror-stricken voice:

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

“Answer, God-damn you!” he snarled. “Is it Starwick or not?”

With a last frenzied effort, she wrenched free, and screamed like a wounded animal:

“YES! YES! . . . I’ve told you now! Are you satisfied? Will you leave me alone?” And with a sobbing breath, she began to run blindly.

He ran after her again, and caught up with her and took her in his arms, but not to embrace her, but just to hold her, stop her, somehow quiet, if he could, the wild, dumb, pitiable anguish of that big creature, which tore through the ventricles of his heart like a knife. He himself was sick with horror, and a kind of utter, paralyzing terror he had never felt before; he scarcely knew what he was doing, what he was saying, but the sight of that great, dumb creature’s anguish, that locked and inarticulate agony of grief, was more than he could bear. And cold with terror, he began to mumble with a thickened tongue: “Oh, but Ann, Ann!—Starwick, Starwick!—it’s no use! It’s no use!—Christ, what a shame! What a shame!” For suddenly he knew what Starwick was, what he had never allowed himself to admit that Starwick had become, and he kept mumbling thickly, “Christ! Christ! What a pity! What a shame!” not knowing what he was saying, conscious only, with a kind of sickening horror, of the evil mischance which had with such a cruel and deliberate perversity set their lives awry, and of the horrible waste and loss which had warped for ever this grand and fertile creature’s life and which now would bring all her strength, her love, the noble integrity of her spirit, to barren sterile nothing.