Charles came home a little earlier than usual the next day because of Wilhelm’s dinner. He wished to bathe and freshen himself for what he knew would be an exhausting evening.
He found Jimmy and Geraldine, his niece, in the garden, contentedly eating early golden apples under the shade of a great walnut tree. They were doing nothing, and doing it with joy. Jimmy lay sprawled on the cool green grass; Geraldine sat near him, her thin young arms wrapped about her knees. Charles could hear only the lightest murmur of desultory conversation. Sun filtered down through the branches of the tree and lay in bright streaks on Geraldine’s straight black hair, which fell in heavy lengths upon her shoulders. Her thin, clear profile was sharply defined. Charles thought again, with surprise, how much she resembled Wilhelm. A dear girl, he thought, a lovely girl.
He called to the children, and waved his hand. “No,” he said, “don’t get up. I’m going to rest and dress, Jimmy, then I’m going to dinner at your Uncle Willie’s. How are you, Gerry?”
The girl turned her face towards him, and smiled. “I’m wonderful, Uncle Charlie. Jimmy and I are just talking. I’m staying for dinner. Mother said I could.” He saw the shine of her great, dark eyes, the glimmer of her pretty teeth.
Charles nodded, and retreated. But he stood in the doorway and watched the children, who had resumed their consumption of apples, and their talk which was as drowsy and murmurous as the sound of bees. Surely nothing, nothing, could threaten them, in their grave innocence, their certainty that all was well in their world, their trust. Their trust in whom? In me? thought Charles, as he went into the house. But what can I do? Nothing. What can any of us do in the face of “traditional markets” and Emperors who celebrate their “peaceful reigns,” and Chancellors who talk of Germanentum and Slaventum, and a world of people who instinctively want to kill?
Charles called Phyllis. “Charles?” she said. “Oh, Charles, you aren’t calling to say you can’t come?” Her voice was humorous, but underneath it he thought he detected dismay.
“Of course I’m coming,” he said. He had never before realized how much he liked her voice. He could see her so clearly, and something strengthened in him. “Not that I’m going to add anything inspirational to the conversation, you know.”
She laughed. “Poor Charles,” she said, softly. She laughed again.
“I suppose there’ll be something to drink before dinner?”
“Drink? Why, of course. If you want it.” She sounded a little puzzled.
“Yes. I want whiskey. Quietly, and behind a door, if necessary. But whiskey. Perhaps even a lot of it.”
He waited for her laughter, but it did not come. Instead, there was only a humming on the line. After a few moments, he said, tentatively: “Phyllis?”
“Yes, Charles.” Her voice was a little faint. Then she said more clearly: “Is it as bad as that?”
He said, bitterly: “Yes.”
“Perhaps you can tell me, tonight.”
“If we have a chance. Phyllis,” he said more normally, “who the hell is, or was, Monet? I thought you might give me some information before I arrived.”
He could see her smiling again. “He still ‘is,’ Charles. He’s a French Impressionist painter. He paints things in different ‘lights.’ For instance, he painted the Cathedral of Rouen in them.”
“The same Cathedral?”
“The very same. Also, he exhibited some pictures called ‘Le Bassin aux Nympheas,’ in 1900. That is what they’re going to talk about, tonight. But don’t worry about it. Just talk about the different lights on the Cathedral. Casually. Don’t let them draw you out. Just toss it into the conversation, then retreat. Poor Charles,” she added, and laughed ever so gently. “Come at quarter to seven, instead of seven, and I’ll see you get the whiskey before the others arrive.”
“It sounds as if I’m going to need the whiskey,” said Charles, with gloom.
“Frankly, Charles, I don’t think any of them, except Wilhelm and Mr. Bartholemew, know very much about Monet, and even Mr. Bartholemew doesn’t know too much. He is to give the talk, after all, and he’ll say a lot of things which you needn’t try to follow.” She dropped her voice, and again it was humorous. “You know, Charles, I’ve been waiting a long time for you to tell me that you detest sherry. I always knew you did. But you are so polite, or something.”
Now he could laugh, and with his involuntary laughter much of his anxiety lessened. “So, you’ve been teasing right along, have you, with that damned sherry?”
They laughed together. Charles felt almost gay. He could see Phyllis’ blue eyes, sparkling.
“I’m sorry about the dinner, though,” said Phyllis, very frankly. “It’s the kind you don’t like. Wilhelm ordered it, especially, the poor darling, and has been fussing at the chef all afternoon. You wouldn’t like a ham sandwich with the whisky, would you?”
“I might, I really might. But not with lettuce.”
When he went upstairs his burden did not feel so heavy. He could still hear Phyllis’ voice. Then he remembered that he was thinking a great deal of Phyllis these days. Phyllis, whom he had once wanted to marry.
He looked at himself in his mirror as he removed his collar and tie. He said to himself: I ought to have married Phyllis, after all. The thought shook him. He stood there, stupidly, with the tie in his hand, and a sickening desolation made his heart thump. No, no, he cried to himself. I had Mary, and I loved Mary. What is the matter with me these days?
But he could not shake off his devastating distress. He could stop thinking of Phyllis, but he could not stop the nebulous misery which hung in his mind. Once, he had the impulse to call his brother’s home and plead sudden illness. Then he was revolted by the cowardly idea, and humiliated that he should think of it. Excuses were craven things, if they were used to avoid facing a necessary issue. This issue must be faced. He had once loved Phyllis; in a way, it was very possible that he had never recovered from this love. He remembered his delight in her presence, the deep sympathy and understanding between them. This was not a recent development; it had always been with him.
So, he had once loved her. And then he had loved Mary, and had married her. Never once, during the years of his marriage, had he ever believed that he had not loved her. He loved her still, as a dear memory. He looked at the photograph of her on his dresser, in its gilt frame, and he saw the lively young face, and he said to it, in his inner silence: I loved you, Mary, my dear. But now I see I never loved you as I loved Phyllis. As I am terribly afraid I love her, still, and have always loved her.
It was out now, and he could face it with his own kind of dogged resolution. He could not control what was “brewing” in an evil world, but he could control, sternly, any outward indication that he loved Phyllis. There was no use in deceiving himself that he could, by any effort of his will, “forget” Phyllis, for there was no way of avoiding her. He would simply have to acknowledge that he loved her.
One accepted such things, and made no one else miserable because of them. So he bathed and dressed as deliberately as always, and his face, in the mirror, might be a trifle set but it was calm.
The children were coming in to dinner as he came downstairs. Jimmy said, sympathetically: “We have pepper-pot, tonight, Dad. And dump cake.”
“Well, we don’t need to eat all of it,” said Gerry smiling at her uncle affectionately. “We can leave some of it for Uncle Charlie.”
Yes, a lovely girl, with something that was much more than beauty in her fine features and large eyes. Plain, her mother called her. Plain! Isabel was a fool. Jochen, however, had not been a fool when he had spoken of his daughter’s intelligence, but he had been stupid when he had confessed that she had no charm.
Charles put his arm about the girl, and she put her arm about him.
“Yes, save me some of the pepper-pot, and the cake,” he said to his son, but he looked down at Gerry, and smiled. One of these days she might be his daughter. He hoped so, fervently.
His old carriage was waiting. He settled himself down in it. Then, as he often did when things became somewhat unmanageable for him, he consciously emptied his mind. The misery might remain, but he allowed no tangible object to arise in his mind to which the misery might attach itself definitely.
The brass sunset over the green mountains was there for him to see, and he forced himself to see it. As the carriage climbed the mountain roads the air became fresher and purer. Then he had a wide view of the river below, brazen, also, curving around the city. He made himself see it objectively. If something threatened it, it was strong enough to resist. “Yes,” he said, aloud, and strongly.
Like his city, he, too, could resist his own released torment. Storms blew up in men as they did in cities; if the foundations were well laid, the storm did little damage. He knew his strength, and even if he could find no comfort in himself, he could find resistance.
He found Phyllis alone, waiting for him. She greeted him with a conspirator’s laugh. “I have a ham sandwich for you, and whiskey,” she said. “Wilhelm’s still dressing. He won’t be down for ten minutes. But do hurry, Charles.” There was the sandwich and the whiskey on the delicate, round marble table. Charles looked at them, and felt revulsion. He said: “Awfully kind of you, Phyllis,” and sat down, and took up the sandwich and the whiskey. She sat near him, smiling, and shaking her head.
“Jellied soup, and lobster à la Newburg,” she confessed. “And asparagus vinaigrette, and a wine mousse, and demitasse.”
Charles took a deep drink of the whiskey. Then he took another, and the tall glass of liquor and soda was empty. Phyllis watched. She said, gently: “Would you like another, Charles?”
“Yes, please.”
She prepared another drink for him. Charles was in trouble, in grave trouble. She could not ask him, she knew that. If he wished her to know he would tell her. However, Charles rarely told anyone his troubles. She saw that he had replaced the sandwich, untouched, on the plate. She made no comment.
He held the glass, and tried to make his voice light: “The heat’s been too much for me. I can’t eat very much of anything these days.”
Phyllis nodded. Little ringlets, the color of bronze, curled on her forehead, and on her nape, moist and bright. The heat had brought a flush to her cheeks. But her blue eyes, though smiling and crinkling, seemed tired. Her mauve silk dress clung to her slender and pretty figure and outlined her arms. Her throat was bare, but there was a froth of airy lace over her breast Wilhelm had evidently chosen this gown, too; it blended so well with the delicate yellows of the room, the creamy panelled walls, the deeper mauve rug. Even the flowers had been carefully selected; golden roses in crystal vases stood on the mantelpiece, with every green leaf precisely flaring. The French doors stood open to the sweet evening air, cooling and freshening after the day’s glare of sun. Charles could see the gardens beyond, the dark vivid grass, the great silent trees, the beautiful flower beds burning with late summer flowers. He liked this room he sat in almost as much as he liked the “music room.” He liked the view of the mountain beyond, almost purple, now, as the sun sank.
Once or twice Phyllis had used the word “étude.” He did not know what it meant, but it had a curious connotation for him. Cool evening light, soft and dim; silence; lofty graciousness and elusive nobility. He had always been afraid that “étude” did not mean these, so he had never investigated. He put down his glass. He could not look at Phyllis. He said, with deliberation. “What is an étude, Phyllis?”
She answered: “A finished composition, Charles. A study, in a way, a technical exercise in music.”
There. One had only to approach romanticism or fear or pain, definitely, and they all lost their mystery, and in losing their mystery they lost much of their power to exalt or destroy. He saw, now, that he had never wanted before to know what an étude was because he had sentimentally wanted to keep its mystery, the mystery which surrounded his repressed love for Phyllis.
“A finished composition,” he repeated.
“One complete in itself,” she added.
He discovered that he was looking at her in the bright dusk of the room. Complete in itself. The étude had not lost its mystery, after all, and all his pain returned to him. Why did she sit like that, regarding him so directly, so sadly? She sat gracefully on the small gilt chair, her white hands clasped in her mauve lap, and her sadness was like the evening shadow outside.
She said in a very low voice, as if thinking of something else: “I was glad to hear you had your way about the river property, Charles.”
She was helping him! He said: “Yes.” He told himself she was helping him because she recognized that he was tired. He repeated: “Yes.” He stared at his emptied glass. The whiskey was affecting him. Usually, it gave him a sense of exhilaration; now he could feel nothing but desolation and loss.
He said: “When I’m tired, this way, all sorts of things come back to me. I was thinking of Mary, tonight.”
Phyllis smiled. “Dear Mary,” she murmured.
“I suppose a man never really gets over something like—that,” he said, and he knew his voice was louder than it should be, and had a note of desperation in it.
Phyllis nodded. “That’s quite understandable. No one ever forgets anyone he has loved. Never. It always comes back, when one least expects it. And very often when one doesn’t want it to come back. Sometimes; too, it returns so very—”
But Wilhelm was entering the room now. There was a swish of mauve skirts as Phyllis stood up. The untouched ham sandwich disappeared magically out of sight, as did the glass. Phyllis then almost ran to her husband, and twined her arm in his. “Charles came a little earlier,” she said to Wilhelm, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
Wilhelm, elegant in his black, brushed his lips against his wife’s hair. Then he said to Charles: “Yes, you are the first, Charles. I hope you won’t be bored.”
Charles stood beside his chair, and looked at Wilhelm and Phyllis, standing so close together. “I don’t expect to be,” he said. Should he throw in that business now about the cathedral and all its “lights”? “I’m really interested in Monet.” He went on, hurriedly: “I believe I saw one of his paintings of the Cathedral of Rouen.”
“Which one?” asked Wilhelm, surprised, and very pleased. “And where?”
Phyllis interrupted with light deftness: “Oh, Wilhelm! Sometimes you don’t listen. Charles told you about it at least three years ago. He saw it in New York. It was Monet’s third study.” She glanced at Charles. “Is that right, Charles?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
Wilhelm frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t remember. You see, Charles, I always thought you weren’t interested in Impressionist painting, or in any painting, in fact.” He bent his head, thinking. “The third study. Was that the one of the evening light, or the early morning, or at an angle?”
Dismayed, Charles saw that he had used his meagre information too soon. But Phyllis said, laughing: “Why, Wilhelm, don’t you know? Of course you do!”
Wilhelm bridled. “Certainly. I ought to have remembered. Stupid of me to forget.”
They heard the door-bell ringing, and the steps of the maid. “Our guests are coming,” said Phyllis, gayly. “I do hope your headache is quite gone, darling.”
“Have you a headache today?” asked Charles, quickly, breathing easier. “I’ve had one, too. It’s the heat, I suppose. I’ve been having them very often, lately, however. I suppose I should go to Dr. Mower. But I’m afraid he’ll recommend bifocals.”
“At your age?” said Wilhelm, annoyed, remembering that Charles was his senior by only fourteen months.
“It’s not a matter of age, always,” said Phyllis. “My aunt never wore bifocals, even at seventy.”
The guests came in, in a body, five couples. Charles knew them only slightly. They were the elegantes of Andersburg, the dilettantes, like Wilhelm. But they were all reassuringly wealthy, retired coal “barons” or other business men. Their average age was fifty, or even a little more. Then Charles was intrigued. He had never wondered before why most of Wilhelm’s friends were so much older than himself. Now, he saw. Wilhelm was afraid of growing old. In contrast with these other men he was young, quick, and vivid. Poor old Willie, thought Charles, almost fondly. In fourteen months he’ll be looking forty in the face, too. It’s going to be a wrench for him.
In some obscure fashion the sudden perception of this weakness of Wilhelm’s increased Charles’ affection for his brother, and as his affection became stronger his own pain unaccountably abated in some measure.
The room was aflutter with blue, rose, white, and yellow dresses, rustling like a soft wind among the solid black of the men. If the other male guests were surprised to see Charles there they did not show it. They greeted him with restrained courtesy, commented on the weather. Then they were helpless. They could talk to Charles about nothing. They were retired. They were trying their best to forget their former businesses. They were patrons of the arts. What could they say to this man who so very solidly recalled the days of bitter struggle, strategy, and competition? They thought of the offices they had abandoned, of hours of sudden gross exhilaration or victory. They thought of all this, and they eyed Charles resentfully. They sipped at their small glasses of sherry, and saw he drank none. A whiskey man, they thought. Possibly even beer. Nostalgia gnawed at them. They held their sherry glasses to the newly lit light of the chandelier, and squinted like connoisseurs.
Their ladies, in their late forties or early fifties, did not feel in the least resentful of Charles. They liked him. One or two chided him for sending regrets to some of their dinner parties. A short stout matron, who was not intensely interested in Monet, or in any artist, in fact, said to him, roundly: “Why aren’t you ever seen about, Charles? Do you try to avoid us?”
“No, Mrs. Holt. No, indeed. But it seems I’m always so busy these days.”
Busy. The men brooded on this. Of course, he would be “busy,” they thought with some vindictiveness. Everyone knew that he was really “the whole thing” at the Wittmann Machine Tool Company. Not a thought in his head but profits and competitors and machines and business. Probably took account books home with him at nights. Noisy office; noisy factory behind him. All that coming and going, and letter-writing and reading and activity. The guests were more resentful than ever.
Mr. Bartholemew, a large booming man, was saying, near Charles: “I’ve a very fine paper here, if I must admit it myself, Wilhelm. Monet, when you think of him—” He was again surprised to find Charles here. “Oh,” he said. “Charles, do you know anything about Monet? I mean, do you really know anything about him, or are you going to be intolerably bored?”
Phyllis could not help saying, mischievously: “Oh, Charles is simply fascinated with Monet. All about the different studies of the Cathedral at Rouen.” Then seeing Charles’ dismay, she added: “But, then, Henry, you are going into all that, yourself, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my dear Phyllis, certainly.” But Mr. Bartholemew was staring disbelievingly at Charles.
Dinner was fortunately then announced. Charles was so enormously relieved to find himself not seated next to Phyllis that he even attacked the jellied soup. But after a spoonful or two he abandoned it. Then came the lobster a la Newburg. Lobster was one dish of which he held a very low opinion. Wilhelm was telling someone how the lobsters had been shipped to him in ice, and how his chef had insisted upon too much sherry. He had almost discharged the ignoramus. The guests nodded. The two or three who were resentful of Charles became resentful of the lobster, too. A spareribs man. One could tell that, easily. His complexion was too red.
Deserting the lobster, Charles tried the sauce. He deserted this, too, very quickly. There was really nothing he could eat but bread, and there had been only a single roll on his plate, and there was not a damned piece of butter in sight. In the interests of the company he had certainly let himself in for an infernal evening. The exquisite, fragile dining-room was becoming too hot; the cool evening did not penetrate here. Charles drank a glass of water, dejectedly. But he was very polite to the ladies on each side of him. He was glad that Mrs. Holt sat at his right. The lady at his left did not talk about Monet, either.
The rest of the evening promised to be even more appalling. He had no pleasant cushions of thought and reflection on which to drowse while the talk went on about him or before him. He could not think of his son without that swell of unfamiliar panic; he could not think of the shops without thinking of that damnable aeroplane steering-control assembly and the Bouchards and Colonel Grayson and the things which Mr. Grimsley had shown him in the newspapers, which he—infernal fool!—had hardly noticed before. He could not occupy himself with a cigar and look at Phyllis and feel a warm pleasure and contentment. He could not look at Wilhelm and watch his mercurial movements, his grimaces, his quick gestures, and be amused at the watching. He had only two subjects to fall back upon: Friederich and Jochen, and when he thought of these two brothers, it was with a kind of malaise.
The balance wheel. That is what so many had called him, he remembered. Oh, it was easy enough to be a “balance wheel” in one’s own orbit. But when one was flung outside that orbit into the terrible confusion of vague but inimical disaster, where one had no control over anything, then one was no longer a balance wheel, not even among his own hopeless thoughts. “A man of resolution,” his grandfather had once told him, “is a man whom nothing can hurt.” But his grandfather had had somewhere to go, to get away from sinister men. There was no place in the world where one could go now. The circle was closed by the wolves.
What then? Courage? He felt that inwardly he was in a crouch, turning his head from side to side in utter darkness, his fists impotently clenched.
The party moved, laughing and gay, into the music room, with Charles somberly bringing up the rear. The air in this room was cooler. But all at once Charles was seized by claustrophobia. He couldn’t breathe. The sleek pale walls appeared to crowd in upon him. A small gilt chair was being pushed towards him; he sat down. Phyllis was beside him, and she was smiling at him, though she only smiled with her lips. He felt her concern. He said: “A very nice dinner.” He did not know how pale his face was under the glittering chandelier.
Phyllis said, very gently: “There is an old saying, that when evils cannot be cured they must be endured.”
Her voice was almost a whisper. Her hand brushed his arm briefly. And then before he could answer her, she had turned to her neighbor, Mr. Holt, and was saying in a bright tone: “So much cooler, don’t you think?”
Endured. But sometimes there was an end to endurance, a place where a man had no fortitude left, because fighting did no good.
He became aware that Mr. Bartholemew had been speaking for some time. Apparently he, Charles, was behaving properly. He was staring at Mr. Bartholemew with something which must pass for concentration. Mr. Bartholemew’s attitude was pompous; his mouth moved, but Charles could not hear a single thing he was saying. People were nodding approvingly about Charles; he nodded, too. Then he remembered what Phyllis had said. Yes, he thought, his lips pressed together, I suppose I can endure. I suppose I could go on living, no matter what happened. I suppose they’d call that courage.
He was very tired. His tiredness was a strong ache all over his body.
He had not liked school, and so had not continued at college. But he remembered something Ovid had written: “Neither can the wave which has passed be called back; nor can the hour which has gone by return.” He had not thought of Ovid for years, if he had ever consciously thought of him. Why, then, did that majestic and dolorous phrase return to him now?
Had “the hour” gone by? He knew, all at once, that it had gone, and that he could do nothing about it, could never have done anything about it, but that if millions of men like himself had known in time they could have prevented the birth of that hour, could have stood in the path of the wave and built a wall of stones against it. But it was too late, now.
People were clapping softly about him. He clapped, too. He saw their faces, politely enthusiastic. But Wilhelm was scowling. Wilhelm was preparing to give a short rebuttal to Mr. Bartholemew’s talk on Monet. Oh, God, thought Charles, watching his brother take Mr. Bartholemew’s place.
Wilhelm was talking in his swift, irritable voice, and with elegant gestures. Phyllis leaned towards Charles. He bent towards her. “Eh? I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“Oh, Charles,” she was whispering. “I don’t know what it is, but you are so strong, Charles.”
He looked at her slender face and he thought how beautiful it was, and a horrible despondency clutched him. He shook his head slightly. “No,” he said. “Not this time, Phyllis.”
Why was she so concerned about him? Why did she look so wretched? She was whispering again: “I know it’s another aphorism, but Cicero did say that a man of courage is also full of faith.”
He pondered on this. Then he said: “I have no faith. I see now that I never did. Except in myself. And it isn’t enough, Phyllis.”
“It never was,” she answered.
But in what could a man have faith? thought Charles, on the way home. God? God had retreated into opaque mists. He was no longer a super-business man, with an orderly mind, and everything under control. He was a Mystery. If He existed. Charles had never before questioned that; respectable people accepted God naturally, or appeared to do so. If God existed, did He care what happened to this little world of men, this dangerous world of men? Charles could not believe He did.
Faith, then, in one’s ability to survive? A barren faith. But that was all that was left. “An army of principles?” How many multitudes would have to die before that army became a reality?