UY ME A PINK BEDJACKET,” Marian had implored. “Could you get someone to curl my hair—only how can I lift my head when it’s so tired and heavy? Effie, isn’t there something to be done about this room—but never mind, there’s no money, is there, and anyway Andy won’t let me stay here long as soon as he comes. Oh, I do hope it stops hurting when he comes. When it hurts there’s really nothing else, nothing but pain, pain.… A pink bedjacket, Effie, not woolly but that lacy kind.”
But the boxes now scattered about the Chelsea apartment did not contain bedjackets, even Mr. Hickey, the janitor, could guess that much, piling them up one after the other outside the door. Effie could not explain it even to herself. Reason had fled before this sudden urgency, years of discretion and economy were wiped out in hours of mad shopping. Pride could get in no word, or fear of Dennis’s cutting analysis. Effie shook out her purchases in her room, laid the dresses out over the couch, piled the dainty lingerie, price tags still modestly fluttered from shoulder ribbons, on the window seat. In a daze she wandered through Fifth Avenue shops, ordering this and that, never asking the price, though certainly these long-dormant charge accounts, once gracefully sponsored by Belle Glaenzer, could not bear such demand without investigation sooner or later. This new wardrobe was one she had treasured in the back of her mind, something she had planned half-asleep through the long lonely nights. It had nothing to do with her present needs or tastes, it was definitely a wardrobe for the Effie of long ago, a recostuming of the glamorous scenes of her honeymoon. Let other women of her years prepare for age, here was one who was building for her youth. Useless to bring common sense to bear when she saw the blue-flowered hat in Saks, useless for the saleswoman to hint that it was a little too on the bridesmaid side, for this was the hat Effie should have worn to Caroline Meigs’s garden party so that Andy could have looked at no one else. Remembering the plain dark blue taffeta she had worn running away to Connecticut with Andy on her wedding night, she corrected herself now by buying a rose-colored print, and here too on the black couch were the elaborately strapped French slippers Andy had wanted for her but which she would not have. Here were the ridiculously fragile underthings Andy was always suggesting for her, the chiffon stockings, all the feminine extravagances she had laughed at him for admiring. Ordering two insanely expensive chemises from a Madison Avenue shop Effie was brought to a pause by the suspicious interrogation in the salesgirl’s eyes. You can’t pay for these, said the look, and for whom do you buy these bridal treasures, surely not for your old poor person, modest finances betrayed by ready-made coat, counter hat, bargain gloves, pawnshop antique silver necklace, basement pocketbook. Effie drew up her shoulders haughtily at this inquisition, flung out Mrs. Anthony Glaenzer’s name as the charge’s name, and then she thought, Why it’s true, she’s right, I can’t pay for these things, I will have to explain to Belle soon, and for that matter when and where will I wear them and for whom? She examined her mind curiously as if it were something inanimate, detached from her, studied it to see what strange secret hopes might be betrayed there lurking, yet when she caught a faint shadow of an answer she withdrew, terrified, from the word, the articulate wish. She called in the janitor to help hang her new curtains and as he stood on the maple highboy, heavy shoes planted on a Sunday paper, he uttered his own private astonishment.
“These ain’t like you, missus—excuse it, Miss Thorne. Kinda loud-like for you, they don’t seem just right somehow.”
Effie straightened the folds at the side of the window, ivory glazed chintz splashed with bright scarlet flowers. She saw herself walking through Lord and Taylor’s with Andy behind her, heard his occasional exclamations—“Here it is, Effie. Look! Isn’t that great? How many yards do we want, say about fifty?” She would turn from the blue denim counter to her husband so hopefully planted at the gayer counter two aisles back, beaming over a pile of red and yellow flamboyant cretonnes, so outrageously wrong for their little place that she would shake with laughter.
“Darling! Please not that! And eight yards is all we need whatever it is.”
Andy stood beside her, hands gloomily thrust into his pockets, complaining all the while the plain blue was being wrapped.
“What’s the good of buying curtains if they aren’t any fun? Who wants to live in a dark blue house? I’m damned if I’ll go shopping with you again, Effie. I’ll bet you five dollars you’re going upstairs now and buy a dark blue dress.”
Effie thrust the packages into his unwilling arms.
“I am, but, Andy, we can’t get wild colors because we’d get sick of them, and when you’re as poor as we are we have to get something that will wear. Dark blue wears! There, is that clear?”
“I hate things that wear,” shouted Andy wrathfully. “I’ve always hated them ever since I was a kid and got three woolen union suits for Christmas instead of roller skates. I’d always rather have roller skates.”
“Even in winter?” asked Effie, smiling because he was always the child, always the little boy.
“Especially in winter,” he said firmly. “Another thing, Effie, I hate houses in good taste. My aunt’s house was in good taste and so I never dared ask the bunch in to play. I like red.”
So, holding the chiffonier steady for Mr. Hickey to climb down, boot on the white window seat first and then secure on the light oak floor, Effie said to him, “I know it doesn’t seem like me, Mr. Hickey, but tastes do change, you know.”
“That’s right,” conceded Mr. Hickey amiably, shoving the chest over to the next window and once more adjusting the protective Tribune. “I never used to eat rice no matter how it was fixed. Now you can give me rice any time o’ day, any time at all.”
He was a square, broad little man and looked alarmingly apelike with his hat off, for his round bullet head was blue-shaven, and his wide flat nose spread out loose and moist and pinkish above the blue-stippled grayish skin. His eyes were red-rimmed and suspicious, his chin large, out-thrust, antagonistic, but this manner melted before the least kind word, the least sign of friendship, the least mention of his crippled son. The eyes became weakly docile and doglike, the pugnacious chin hollow and defenseless. Nor was this his own chin, literally. It had been made for him only a year before by our good government after the mustard gas left in his system by the war had eaten away the old chin. He talked about this good fortune proudly as he hammered the little gold prongs into the window frame, his flat down-East apologetic voice punctuated with surprising violence by the staccato hammering, while Effie sat below on the window seat, the gaudy material engulfing her as she hurriedly basted hems.
“No, sir, I got no kick against the government,” said Mr. Hickey, whack, whack, whack at the curtain nails. “They certainly treated me all right, givin’ me this new chin without leavin’ a scar as you can see for yerself, takin’ care o’ me free o’ charge every year in the hospital the last eighteen years. See that mustard gas done somethin’ to my lungs way back in ‘eighteen so somethin’ has to be done every year about that, then my stummick where the bullet went through, it gets bad, and every time I get those attacks, say, the government looks after me, no expense at all, months on end, you know yourself, ma’am, how I’m allers goin’ back to the hospital. I been lucky at that, though. See, I was a naval gunner, we were on this ship outta Saint-Quentin and there was this mistake in the command the way I figure it we loaded the guns twice with powder and no shell at all, ’cause eighteen of us was blown straight to pieces. I was the only lucky one and acourse I was outa my head, even so, and lost my speech and all for two years, but the government hospital worked on me and I concentrated the way you have to do, and in a few years I was just fine, exceptin’ for the way the mustard gas keeps eatin’ away and nachally my wife and Tom lame that way has to shift along while I’m gone but with the Relief and people chippin’ in here and there like you and the folks downstairs and the church, I certainly got no complaint, we certainly been pretty lucky, savin’ Tom when he got the paralysis, and then I got some good care, some care, I’ll say, and I got this new chin out of it. My wife says it’s better than the old one, got more character, she says, she likes it better for my type o’ face.”
The hammer ceased, the boot came gingerly down again on the newspaper, the other boot followed on to the floor. Mr. Hickey stepped back to look at his handiwork and again a faint bewilderment came into his eye, staring at the flaming curtains, then at the slender faded woman beside them. The curtains swayed gently, poinsettias swelling out to full pattern, then withdrawing into their white shiny folds; they were alive, blood-red flowers leaping out of a gleaming shroud, and in between their flowing lengths the body of the woman, oddly graying into the shadows beyond the window, fading into the smoky clouds far in the distance, far over the river and the Jersey shores; and the room belonged to the curtains, they swelled and bellied in the river breeze, bleeding blossoms moved barely perceptibly, they blew over Effie Thorne, concealed her. Whee, they said, blowing out and in, wheee, and Effie’s face returning, brilliant blue eyes wide, seemed strangely pale and frightened so that Hickey suddenly shouted out, “They don’t suit you, missus, I’m tellin’ you, they don’t suit you, they ain’t right for you. The old ones, the blue ones, were better.”
Effie’s hand fluttered up, startled.
“Really?” she said, staring at him as if he had never been there; then she collected herself and smiled wearily. “But I’ve had blue so long, Mr. Hickey, in every apartment I ever lived.”
Mr. Hickey mopped his forehead, read in her protest an excuse to resume the chip-on-the-shoulder expression. He looked curiously at the bright dresses spread out on the studio couch, was frankly amazed at the silver and crystal perfume atomizer set out amid its wrappings on the table.
“You going away, Mrs. Callingham?” For the room cried out, something’s happened, something’s happened, and he was an unconquerably curious fellow. “Or is somebody movin’ in? If it was anybody else I’d think they was gettin’ married.”
The question, articulate, brought a flood of color to Effie’s face, a sudden dizziness to her head. No one had the right to make these direct challenges, she herself had never made them to the world, the world should not make them to her. Before her Hickey, ape-faced, muscled arms swinging low from great shoulders, Hickey the janitor, pitifully coughing in the basement winter nights with his mustard gas lungs, proudly carrying his crippled boy up stairs to the roof on summer mornings, beaten proud little man, changed to Enemy, slipped quietly over to the hostile ranks of Dennis Orphen, Glaenzers, World.
“Thank you for helping, Mr. Hickey,” she said coldly, and following his bold stare longed to fling acres, seas, fields of dark decent blue over the gay ruffles and silks scattered over her bed, over the leering curtains, over her own heart, dark limitless smothering blue to hide her shame before the Enemy’s knowledge of her secret folly.
If there were some way of legalizing friendship, of compelling confidences by law, of waving a contract at the sulking friend, saying, “Look here, you can’t leave me this way, it’s against the law. You can’t turn cold and hostile as simply as all that, ah no, indeed.” But there is no binding of friends, no redress when one vanishes into new circles or into quiet sulks, the deserted companion can wait in vain at the accustomed rendezvous, can burst with curiosity over the withheld secrets, there is no compelling the desired one’s presence or confidence, no guarantee of the ten-, twenty-, thirty-year-old bond being credited one more minute. It’s not fair, you scream, he cannot do this, we’ve been friends too long, quarreled, revealed ourselves in every horrid light to each other, there is no justice in his suddenly breaking off forever because I called him—what was it I called him—a “dumb reactionary,” perhaps, in last night’s argument? After all, haven’t I called him worse than that, haven’t I cheated him at cards, done him out of his best girl, borrowed and never returned his best shirt, haven’t I called him liar, coward, thief, haven’t I belittled his favorite work, cried down his ability, as he in turn has me? How can it be fair, then, that a modest epithet like “reactionary” should put him away from me for life? A law should be made forcing justice here as it does in marriage courts, a law should be made, thought Dennis desperately, requiring certain formalities to be observed in breaking up a friendship. Effie Thorne, for instance, should be required to telephone him and explain definitely if the return of her ex-husband meant the exit of friend Orphen. Certainly it would seem that way for she had not called him once since the news of Andy’s returning, and when he had managed to get her at her apartment her tone had been as politely remote as if he were her grocer instead of last week’s dearest companion.
“How’s Marian? Are you at the hospital every day?” he asked.
“She’s conscious most of the day, thank you. I’m there during the afternoons usually.”
“Don’t you need some cash, Effie? You must have to buy her things and probably Callingham hasn’t sent—I mean—”
Ominous pause here on Effie’s part as he floundered, pause saying, my dear young man, aren’t you being a little presumptuous in your generosity? Then—
“Thank you, we manage quite well.” Yes, we wives of Mr. Callingham are always well taken care of, my dear impudent young fellow!
“I only asked because you said something last week about running low—and I just got my check from MacTweed—it’s more than I expected, so you’re welcome to any or all of it—” Dennis stammered.
“How nice for you,” Effie smoothly evaded.
Dennis racked his brain for some word, some suggestion that would break down this wall of politeness, something that would fasten the oddly broken links again.
“Could I meet you at that garden place near the hospital today for a drink when you’re through? I want to talk to you. Or perhaps I could run in to see you tonight.”
Run in and see the new curtains, the fresh flowers, the gay new rugs, the proof of her insanity, and smile at her quizzically, say without words “ah so you really did expect him to come back to you, you poor creature?”
“No, no,” said Effie frantically. “I can’t say when I’ll be home. Perhaps later—oh please, Dennis, please!”
Please? An appeal to the ogre, the Enemy, a startling betrayal of her fear of him, her dearest friend. Dennis gave up, stunned. Consider we are enemies now, her frightened voice said, consider that in our battle you won, your book conquered me and now we may follow our different destinies, and please, oh please, have mercy on me now that you have won.… Deeply hurt, Dennis sat back in his desk chair and smoked, glared at the six free author’s copies of The Hunter’s Wife piled on the table, hated himself for writing it, hated himself at this very instant for the sly return of the author-mind, the sly little annotations being made concerning wounded friendship, the sly little speculation twinkling through the hurt feelings. Now he would not hear firsthand how Callingham behaved, he would not hear details of the hunter’s return for checking up on his own artistic intuition, he might never meet Callingham and be able to attack him for the way he handled the final chapter in his last book.
Furious at this opportunistic Second Self, this Bounder, or rather call it Artist-Self, Dennis savagely turned to his typewriter. Time he started work again on the new book, but each time he faced that Page 1 it seemed incredible he had ever got beyond it, he could not imagine ever having finished anything, ever having gone on to a Page 2. It was unbelievable that he had ever been able to shut off these incessant problems of his own life for the creation of imaginary problems. Now he would never be able to write again, he declared fiercely, he would be afraid of each written word now that words had destroyed Effie Thorne. This discouraging thought gave way to helpless indignation at Effie, the futile indignation of the male when the female collapses in tears right in the middle of the game. He was angry at Effie for having made herself so important to him, more important than any mistress he had ever had or any love or any family or any friend. He jeered at his blind foolish sense of safety in getting himself so deeply involved in another person’s life, entering it with all shields down, weaponless, joyously secure because here was no marriage threat or permanent entanglement in the air to be dodged, since Effie was so much older, so obviously not in the arena, getting into the safe strange affair deeper and deeper, with his cocky self-assurance—here at last the perfect relationship, the feminine friend with no hooks out.… For the first time he realized how completely Effie had grown to fill his life, how after meeting her he had somehow dropped away from all other friends except for casual diversion or matter with which to amuse her later. She was the first friend he’d ever had who was unfailingly, dependably satisfying, to be counted upon for whatever odd mood his day’s or night’s writing had left. Curious how he, in turn, had taken the place of the circle of “interesting people” who had once drifted about Effie’s life. He remembered how intensely they had talked, argued, agreed, laughed, with such undivided attention for each other that others in the room would slip away unnoticed, and presently they would be left alone like two absorbed lovers, not one person to each other but a complete circle. And now Callingham returning—or was it merely his book revealing him?—had ruined this relationship. Whatever was to blame for the breach, Dennis was aghast at his desolation without Effie, the one friend, the one firm peg on which his days had hung. Vengefully he wished he could have annihilated Callingham with his pen, but here again he would have ruined the thing he wished to preserve.… There was, of course, Corinne.… Here Artist-Self, or Bounder, suddenly suggested that Effie’s greatest importance had been as buffer against his need for the feminine wife-touch, the touch that once creeping into the ordinary armor spells danger, marriage, promises, the trap. From behind Effie’s skirts he had wooed his women, said his Artist-Self, the Bounder, the Cad, safe in loyal, tender understanding, all he needed from any other woman was a sweet little lust that need have no trailing ties.…
Impulsively Dennis rang up Corinne. Mrs. Barrow was out. Mrs. Barrow had gone for a little ride in Miss Baker’s new car. So there was no Effie now and no Corinne. Miss Baker’s new car indeed. The very innocence of Mrs. Barrow’s simple pleasure made it suspect. In a minute, thought Dennis, astonished, I’m going to cry because nobody will play with me. Yes, sir, now he was going to be hurt at every little thing people said or did, he was very likely going to be jealous again of Corinne as a release for his other frustrations, very likely indeed judging by the sudden passionate rage at her being out. His jealous spell came, as a general thing, once a year about the time he’d finished a book and was feeling restless, nothing else to do with his imagination. It lasted about a month as a rule like influenza or spring cleaning. It had nothing to do with causes but had as germ some casual phrase from which it grew enormously, vining in and out of his nights and days, feeding itself on its own roots, tainting every thought and word. There was no explaining the start or equally unreasonable end of these seasonal furies, for real cause might pop up any other time to be most nonchalantly brushed aside. But now, thanks to Effie’s desertion, thanks to Corinne’s willful absence from her home at this needed hour, thanks to being unable to begin Page 1, the disease was on. He was jealous of Callingham, of the Glaenzers, of that little doctor, of all the people Effie now leaned upon, as well as jealous a trifle more logically of his little Corinne. Very well, very well, he would go out and make a new circle of friends, he vowed, he would drive off the fever with an army of Tom Collinses. Wonderful new friends, welcome to Dennis Orphen, he cried, welcome, new bunch, welcome, let’s call each other up all the time. Why, thought Dennis angrily, there is absolutely nothing left for me to do but to call up Okie.
But Okie, too, was busy but say—how about joining them after the theater at the Alabam—a marvelous new place on Fiftieth—and wonderful girls in the party? At this moment, appropriately enough in the midst of his destructive thoughts, a large segment of ceiling fell down on the bed, followed by a shower of snowy plaster. Dennis was about to rush upstairs and find blessed relief in tearing down the whole house when the phone rang and it was Corinne. He was a little chagrined at his jealous suspicions having gone wrong. He would really have preferred being right, pride in his excellent intuitions outweighing vanity in commanding fidelity.