ARIAN LOOKED GHASTLY. The nurse’s eyes met Effie’s gravely over the bed.ARIAN LOOKED GHASTLY. The nurse’s eyes met Effie’s gravely over the bed.
“I told her the rouge made her look worse,” said the nurse, following Effie’s bewildered glance, “and I thought she should have worn a plain gown—”
“They don’t understand about Andy,” Marian breathed patiently as if this were an explanation she had made again and again, “he likes things gay. He always liked me in red. Pretty, isn’t it?”
Her feverish fingers fluttered over the scarlet velvet evening cape wrapped about her shoulders, stroked the torn lace of the nightgown beneath.
“We’ve had no word yet from him,” the nurse whispered to Effie.
Marian caught the whisper.
“But they don’t know Andy, do they, Effie?” she protested. “Andy doesn’t cable, he just walks right in the door, right in the door, there he is now, what did I tell you, see? See him there? He’s hiding behind Effie. No one can see him but me. Right in the door … what time is it? It’s almost noon, isn’t it, what will he think finding me still in bed? Oh dear, someone’s put something heavy on my legs—please, mother, take the suitcase away, Andy’s coming—”
Effie tried to speak but her tongue would not move. She sank into the chair, felt the nurse’s reassuring fingers on her shoulder. Marian’s drugged eyes fluttered open again, the drowsy murmur went on.
“I’m not asleep, Andy, it’s the medicine … I’m not even sick, you know, just this—this pain … and don’t be frightened, dear, don’t run away. I know how you hate sickrooms, but this isn’t a hospital really, darling, it’s only the American Club. I just came in to write a letter and I saw we were posted, why didn’t you tell me? Darling, why didn’t you use the Cosmopolitan check to pay the dues instead of buying me this evening coat? … You’re too good to me, you are, you know.… Do you know, dearest, I think you’re good to me to make up to your conscience about Effie.… You feel it’s a little for her, too, don’t you … aren’t you funny … but I’m that way, too … I guess all lovers are that way when they hurt someone else to be together … I keep saying I mustn’t be too happy with you, because it isn’t fair to Effie … Effie.… She was here, wasn’t she? … Effie!”
Effie choked out an answer. Marian’s glazed rolling eyeballs fastened to her resolutely, clung to a moment of consciousness.
“Effie, when he comes, will you let me see him alone first? Will you make everyone go away? I want us just alone, so I can make him understand why I ran away from him … why I was so silly when of course there was never anyone but me.… I want him to walk in and see me looking perfectly well, because I do, don’t I, in my red jacket—because the poor boy mustn’t be worried about me, and he does get upset over sickness. He hates it. He’ll be so relieved when he sees I’m almost out of the woods … almost … ah, here he comes … mustn’t smoke that cigarette, darling, that’s your thirtieth today.…”
Her voice trailed into the pillow as she turned slightly to sink her teeth into the muslin as if this gave relief to the flicker of pain. The doctor slipped into the room, stood at the window beside the nurse silently looking over the chart. Effie got to her feet.
“All right, Marian, I’ll wait outside,” she said, “so you can talk everything over.”
“Don’t stay away long,” said the nurse.
Effie walked slowly down the hall, a dreadful fear shaping itself in her mind. Andy might not come at all. Women might die of love for him, yet he would not pity them or ease their doubts, for he despised weakness in others and in himself, he would not come for death itself; and here were both love and death beseeching him, not for their sake but that their ideal of him should not crash into dust, years lost on a worthless dream.… How heavy her slight high-heeled slippers felt, as heavy as riding boots, it was like walking underwater against strange powerful currents.… She heard herself answering the good-day of the nurse at the reception desk, heard her footsteps dawdling slower and slower over the marble floor of the entrance hall. Supposing he did not come.…
“You look very pretty today, Miss Thorne,” said the reception clerk. “Violets, too!”
Flowers and a rose-colored dress—for what? Rouge and red velvet on a dying woman—for whom?
“Have you seen the paper, Miss Thorne?” the girl asked and came over to her with the newspaper. She was a pretty girl, fair and petite, with unusually fine teeth. Effie found herself noting these details desperately, the pretty ankles, the coquettish sway of the crisp white skirts, here was something that would bring Andy quickly—if she could get word to him to come to the hospital quickly, not for duty’s sake or for pity’s sake or for love’s sake, but because there was a remarkably attractive nurse at the reception desk he would come, he would rush.… Why, she thought aghast, if that is what I know of him how could I care for him, and yet it’s true.… Her shaking hands turned the paper to the shipping news—yes, the Bremen was in … she looked for interviews with famous passengers but a prime minister took the honors, sharing them with a film couple. Andy’s name wasn’t there, unless it was A. Carrington … though she had seen it someplace else. A name leapt familiarly out of a neighboring column … Hunter’s Wife … The Hunter’s Wife.…
“… study of a genius and a woman who lived on a great lie, one of the romantic lies upon which women in bourgeois society are persistently nourished. Such a woman as this Edna Banning of Dennis Orphen’s creation could not possibly find root in Soviet Russia where sentimental love as the primary food for the feminine soul is not tolerated. The book is interesting as a picture of romance under capitalist Cupid, in a society where nostalgia is regarded as more beautiful than a wise destruction of a rotten foundation. This woman’s life hinged on a sentimental lie, on false individual expectations, so she was dead.…”
Effie dropped the sheet, saw it flutter to the floor, wondered a little bewildered at the reviewer’s signature, for it was that of a Russian woman, a dead poet’s wife, whose memoirs and biography of him as well as brave use of his famous name were her main appeal to the Party and reason for existence. “Her life hinged on a lie.” What did that mean? Fleetingly Effie thought of a new system of obituaries in which the lives recorded were criticized, mistaken steps pointed out, structure condemned, better paths suggested.… All of these reviews of Dennis’s book would be like that, critical obituaries for Effie Thorne who was dead, whose life was a lie, for its glory depended on believing in a man who was worthless, cruel. Effie was aware of a strange hollow agony in her body, an obscure insistent fear that cried out to be named and flouted, that if the dream failed her as the man had, life would be intolerable. A bleak glimpse of the next years came to her, years without hope and without the pride of memory, only shame for wasted tears, misspent adoration. Forty-five, fifty—sixty—no, she could not face a future so barren, a final curtain as Marian’s might be with only the bitter knowledge of his indifference, his unworthiness.
“He must come,” she cried aloud, not only for Marian’s sake but for hers. It could not be true he dared stay away, that nothing mattered but his present pleasure.
Luncheon trays were being wheeled out of distant rooms down the eastern corridor. Nurses chatted in the hall clearly, loudly, as librarians do, insolently proud to be above their own rules. Andy might at this very minute come running up the front steps—Effie folded up the newspaper and returned it to the desk. Footsteps running up the marble steps, don’t turn, don’t look … they passed on into the business office. Effie went out the swinging doors into the street. A taxi door opened and a man got out—not he. Someone was running behind her—caught up, ran on, a hatless young man, not he. A streetcar stopped, a man with a suitcase got off, not he. Suddenly she knew that she must find him, must beg him, force him, to come, must swallow all pride, all the desperate plans she had been making to seem aloof, independent of him and his actions, only politely interested in his attitude toward Marian—all this pattern for her conduct must go, she must surrender all defenses before the plea for Marian.
“How—how?” she whispered to herself. Dennis would know. If she could find Dennis he would help her. He would go to the Bremen offices, call the hotels, Dennis would help her. But he was at Caroline Meigs’s party.…
Hesitating a moment to see where she was, she turned back and began walking rapidly eastward toward the little pair of blue spruce trees that marked Caroline Meigs’s home.