 Part II. CHAPTER II. His going to the State University had been settled upon unexpectedly that he would go to college was taken for granted by himself, by his parents, and by the town. He was a smart boy. Knob, who had worked a year in the factory with his father after graduation from high school, was going to a small Methodist college upstate. The Grays thought it would be nice for Kurt to go with him, and so it was decided. Then, in July, an old friend of Elmers, a successful lawyer in Chicago, driving through Barton to his fishing camp in the north, had stopped off for the night. He liked Kurt's quietness and deference, and because this man was friendly, and didn't slap him on the back or pinch his arms to test his muscle or thump him on the chest, Kurt liked him. The whole evening Elmer and Mr. Hansen talked of their law school days, and of half-forgotten friends and dimly-remembered episodes, which acquired new glamour from their long emurement in memory. Kurt saw his father that night in a new way, saw him for the first and only time as a man who had once been young. Hansen had slight use for the small college and its piddling professors and some enthusiasm for his alma mater, and so, before bedtime, it was decided that Kurt would go to the university. Going away was not easy. The idea of entering the university appealed to him, the independence of it was a gesture of sorts. But he had never been away from home to speak of before, and the hundred-mile journey seemed a great adventure. And it was harder for his parents than for him. They feared for his loneliness overtly, but in their hearts, most of all, for their own. He was very close to crying when he left, very close to crying all the way to his destination, and very close to crying when he emerged from the train into the dingy station, noisy with shouting students and welcoming friends, meeting rushes, and making a great stir about it all. The room the taxi took him to was one his mother had arranged for with its proprietress, who had been years back the wife of a minister in Barton. That was, of course, sufficient recommendation. But it did not prevent Kurt when he was safely in with the door shut tightly behind him from crying, and then he felt better. Mrs. Meacham was an austere woman, although her rotundity belied it. She kept his room clean, but took a prying interest in his affairs which annoyed him. They were innocent enough to be sure. He passed through the bugbear of enrolment, acclimated himself a bit to campus ways, attended freshman mass meetings, joined the Methodist church, went to a social there to welcome new students, and found its friendliness a little bumpious and embarrassing, its jollity a little alarming. Studied conscientiously and, oftener than a young man should, went to sleep on a pillow wet with tears. The graylings were his salvation. Chloe Grayling sat next to him in French class. The instructor arranged the seating alphabetically, and Mr. Gray, Miss Grayling, soon became to Kurt and Oasis amidst the Claipers and Horthes and Jizouskis. It seemed a formula for agreeable comradeship. She spoke to him the first day. If he came early to class, she was always sitting in a window in the corridor's end, waiting for the preceding class to be dismissed, and they would talk of lessons of classmates and after a few weeks of themselves. Kurt had never had a girl. The gang had been the gang. There were matches and spooners, to be sure, but Mrs. Gray thought it all extremely silly. He had never learned to dance, for dancing, at the age most young people learn it, had been taboo among the Barton Methodists, and anyway he had never wanted to especially. Nor had he wanted to go with a girl, like so many of the other fellows he knew. Kurt walked home with Chloe Grayling one noon. She seemed such a good sort, not boy crazy. Mrs. Gray's epithet for the girl type she most applauded. He met Mrs. Grayling, a tall angular woman, with gray eyes and heavy iron gray hair, that seemed always too loosely fastened. He was invited to lunch. Dairy came in from high school, and all three set in the small living room, a little abashed and uncertain, until the piano gave Kurt an unwanted bravado, and the ice was broken. Mrs. Meacham's piano, where he roomed, shone with newness, but she kept it rigorously locked. And when he was aching to play it, she was asleep, or busy, or not to be disturbed, or grudgingly reluctant. And finally, she said, she had mislaid the key. So it had all come about quite simply. With the second semester he had left Mrs. Meacham, not without difficulty, and established himself with the Graylings as Dairy's roommate. He was not certain he would like the arrangement, much as he liked Dairy, but anything was preferable to staying on with Mrs. Meacham. His parents had approved the change after much eloquent reasoning on Kurt's part, so that worry was removed. He had never lived so intimately with any one, however, and at first it was hard to accustom himself to a more social way of life. He had been maidenly in his modesty, using the clothes closet as dressing room. He had debated with himself at length over the spiritual necessity of kneeling at one's bedside at night to make one's prayer efficacious. And, deciding that it must be done, had knelt with fear in his heart of Dairy's probable jesting. But Dairy, unpredictable Dairy, had been impressed and had said nothing. He too seemed a little afraid of Kurt at times, conscious of a seriousness in him that was beyond his own comprehension. On the whole the two got along unusually well, and by the end of his freshman year, Kurt had been taken on as an accepted adjunct in the goings and comings of the Graylings. His presence at Sunday dinner, at the occasional party that Chloe or Dairy would give, at family outings and picnics, was taken as much for granted as Dairy's own. He liked it. In the evenings both Dairy and his sister studied, and Mrs. Grayling read, or crocheted, interminable yards of edging for pillow slips and towels. Her long-faced dark, almost sullenly intent, in the glare of the overhead light she always insisted upon using. The friends he made on the campus were accepted by the Graylings as well, and their friends by him. So the change from Barton to Ann Arbor had been, after all, less revolutionary than it had promised to be. The whole environment of his extra domestic life, to be sure, had changed. But otherwise he had simply substituted a new family for an old one. There was still a home in which he was free to do as he chose, a piano to play, when he liked, all the quiet certitude of family that he had always known. Mrs. Grayling had been difficult at times. Beneath her somewhat masculine exterior, her stoicism, he gradually discovered an emotional intensity that surprised him. She was passionately jealous of the affection of her children, worried over them incessantly, was often quarrelous and fault-finding and difficult to please, and could, on occasion, lose herself in storms of anger or hurt self-pity which all of them dreaded. Yet normally she was agreeable enough, and to Kurt she took an immediate fancy. In him she confided, embarrassingly sometimes, because in him she felt, young as he was, a balance and a sanity which was her unconscious lack. The spring in this first new year away from home had brought to Kurt a third frightening experience, yet one mixed with a new and unholy joy. Mrs. Grayling had been unwantedly peevish, and Derry, as usual at such times, had gone into a sulk. He had come into the room where Kurt was reading, thrown himself across the bed with a sigh that seemed to say, Be sorry for me if you dare. Sullenly refusing to answer Kurt's questioned, what's the matter, Derry, and had gone promptly to sleep. Mrs. Grayling, weeping volubly, had shut herself in her room, and Chloe, exasperated by her mother's behavior, and her brothers had gone to the library. Such scenes were disturbing, but Kurt was growing more accustomed to them, and somewhat reconciled, for he knew that another day would see everything set to rights again. Derry wakened late in the afternoon, and at Kurt's suggestion had gone to supper with him at the cafeteria, and then to an early evening movie. They had come out into a night full of warm moonlight, and walked without talking much, after Derry's initial, what do you say we walk a ways, out of town beyond the last almost defeated gleam of street light, and sat down on a hillside. They had been quiet at first. Then something in the white silence of the May moon had melted down the reticence their eighteen years of living had built up. Talk, slowly undertaken, had drifted little by little to forbidden things, to exchanges of confidences, and at last to the thing Kurt had fought so stoutly for the last four years, complicated now because shared with another, after it had happened the joy of it turned to fear, not to bodily fear this time, he knew better now, but to religious fear, a fear for his soul's damnation. It was enormous his guilt, and its enormity grew upon him through the walk home, and through the endless sleepless hours of the night. Unprecedented this act, and unmentionable. No one, he was sure, had ever been guilty of so heinous a sin. He seemed, as he thought confusedly about it, to stand alone, beyond possibility of forgiveness, blackened eternally, and he envied and marveled at Derry, for the matter of fact way in which he took it. He should hate Derry, he knew. Yet he knew, too, that he did not. When a few nights later it happened again between them, he knew, although he stubbornly refused to accept the fact of his knowledge, that he was caught in a new snare, inextricably, a snare which he did not understand, and for the explanation of which he had no slightest intimation of where to go, he went home in June. His pleasure in being there, in seeing in the Barton Observer the item, Kurt Gray, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Gray, valedictorian of his class in the local high school last year, returned Tuesday from Ann Arbor, where he is at present Barton's only representative at the university, was shadowed by his consciousness of guilt, of his hypocrisy, and by his longing for Derry. At home it was so, and at church, where he was welcomed as a valuable addition to its somewhat anemic life. He played the organ, he talked at the Epworth League about the status of religion among university students, with all the time the consciousness of his unfitness upon him, and the realization that all seemed much less important to him than it had a year past. Upon him, too, was the consciousness that his religious faith was much less sure than when he left. Freshman biology had taught him things about the origins of life against which he at first rebelled, but which in the end he was too clear-headed not to accept as true, or at least as more credible than anything he had hitherto learned. He wanted desperately, as he told Chloe so much later, to believe in something, always to believe in something. His attempt to adjust his knowledge to his faith, his mind to his heart, his thought to what he wanted to think, was in him a real and bitter struggle, and one from which he emerged slowly, clinging stubbornly, tenaciously, to the last tatters and remnants of a faith he knew was inadequate, because, as yet, he had found nothing to replace it. He had gone back to the university in the fall, back to the Graylings and to Derry, fearing that Derry might have forgotten that Derry would not remember, for their relations had been unmentioned during their correspondence of the summer. They were both shy when they met, but both knew instinctively that the new relationship was to continue. It was implicit in their eyes, in the clasp of their hands. So the years that followed had been years of joy unprecedented, and of shame, and remorse, and promised reformations, of miserable doubts surpassing all those that had made up so large a part of his previous life. With Derry it was different. He was, to use Chloe's favorite and apt description, unpredictable. The moral question bothered him not at all. Two, there was in him an adventurousness that Kurt lacked. He accepted the strange liaison, as novel to him as to Kurt, as a thing physically delightful, nothing more. His feeling for Kurt changed little. He regarded him sometimes with envy, as one whose lessons were learned with little effort, and who had some sort of natural distinction that set him apart. Before the most part, he was simply an easily persuaded partner in whatever Kurt wanted to do. His was a strangely objective mind, willful, capable in the ordering of objects and the manipulation of things, but utterly incapable of abstract thought. Kurt would try sometimes to read to him a poem he had especially liked, or to discuss with him some idea from his philosophy classes. But Derry would not understand, and seemed indeed to take a willful delight in not understanding. Swinburne had come to Kurt at nineteen as a revelation, the sonorous lines of Atalanta that to him were of a beauty unguessed, shimmering, wonderful, were to Derry only tiresome and incomprehensible. In Kurt there was growing a feeling for Derry that he did not for a long time try to analyze or understand. He only knew that this mercurial person could cause him more delight and more misery than anyone he had ever known. Derry's state of feeling became almost an index of his own. Derry's unaccountable spells, when he would retire into himself behind walls as high and impregnable as those of a medieval town, and be sullen and silent, meant untold dismay for Kurt. Days when his timid advances were met with scornful silence or indifference tortured him. Rebuffed he felt all the shame a woman feels when her lover is unyielding. Yet the idea that he was in love with Derry never occurred to him. It was so utterly beyond the range of all his experience, real or vicarious. A fellow fell in love with a girl that was love and all of love. His situation was, he never doubted, absolutely unique. Shame covered him, like the invisible cloak of his old fairy tales. So the years of college passed. Because of Derry and the Graylings, Kurt always remained, as a collegian, something of an outsider. He became known on the campus as a shy and talented young man. His interest in music had become stronger and stronger, until it became the dominating one of his life. His college patriotism found expression in composing a few college songs, which won him some attention and respect, even from the athletic set. Because he was so quiet, his reputation as a scholar exceeded his actual accomplishments. As he grew older, he still retained in multiplied measure the undefined quality of superiority. In his manner, unassuming as it was, people with whom he came in contact, felt the aristocrat. It was his mother in him. He had become conscious of it gradually and fostered it, half consciously, as a protective device. Into the small group of intellectuals the university could boast among its student body, those who wrote for the daily or the college magazines, he never fitted, but was always respected. His music reviews for the daily were written clearly and showed a sharp appreciation for the right things, but he never mingled much with the crowd that stayed around the editorial offices, so many of whom had less right to than he. He was an interesting fellow, it was agreed in the office, but not very social. To strangers they would sometimes say, that's Kurt Gray. As he went by the window, his slim body held stiffly as though for an expected shock. His hair, brown, and soft as his mother's, always a little too long, not from choice or for effect, but simply because he dreaded barbershops so much. And now it was over. There would be only commencement, a summer at home, which his parents demanded, and then eased for a new plunge into music, another experience desired and dreaded. The last days would, he was sure, never be forgotten, so pleasant were they. Examinations were finished. A part of life was finished. There was nothing to do but steep oneself in the June weather. Its mellowness seemed almost symbolic of the attachments he had made, of the peace he was now feeling, a peace pregnant with unguessed possibilities. It was an unsure peace, and in it he reveled while he might. Why was it that he, so happy in his life with the Graylings, must tear himself out of their lives like an uprooted tree? At times he was ready to throw everything over for it. His career, whose new call he knew in his heart, could not be denied. He was almost willing to surrender. His last night in Ann Arbor brought him a surprise. Late in the evening he and Chloe were sitting together in the swing on the porch. It was a stifling summer night. Mrs. Grayling was dozing inside. Dairy had gone off somewhere, in the car. They had said little. It seemed all to have been said the other afternoon on the hilltop. And with that conversation in both their minds both were reluctant to begin again. I've something I must tell you before I go, Kurt, said Chloe at last. Yes? You'll be surprised, I think. Or maybe not. Maybe you'll have guessed it. You know what a good guesser I am, Chloe. She laughed, thinking of the game they had been playing not long before. I'm going to be married soon, in August, I think. Kurt was too surprised to answer for a moment. It would be Roy Karsten, of course. He had wondered if it mightn't end that way. His principal feeling, for the moment, was one of peak. He had never thought of Chloe, or of any girl, as other than a comrade. But this unexpected news was a shock to his indifference. It brought home to him the brief statement of hers, and the minutes of silence that followed it, her peculiar value as a friend. She supplied in some measure what Dairy failed to supply. But that was foolish. She would marry, of course. And Roy wasn't a bad sort. You are surprised. Her voice cut into his confusion. Yes, I am, Chloe. I didn't know. Should have, I suppose. I'd like to tell you about it, if you don't mind. Her inflection asked his permission. Do. It's strange. She spoke slowly. It's strange. I'm not sure I love Roy, but he loves me, I think. And, Kurt, I'd do anything to get away. Roy's got a job in Detroit, advertising, and it will get me away from mother. You're shocked at that. I think I know, Chloe. In swift parade, marched pictures of the last few months. Chloe obviously interested in Roy Karsten, Mrs. Grayling opposing her, quarellously disliking Roy, saying cutting things about him on all occasions. Chloe rebellious at her mother's domination, Mrs. Grayling making melodrama of her rebellion. It was a case between the two women of temperaments too similar in some respects, too different in others, ever to understand. Chloe's calm insistence on her right to love and marry, whom she chose, exasperated Mrs. Grayling. And she revenged herself by being consistently unpleasant when Roy, or his affairs came up for discussion. Am I wrong, Kurt, to do it? Gee, Chloe, I don't know. Your mother has been unreasonable about Roy, and he's a good chap. You oughtn't you— He was embarrassed and stopped awkwardly. Then he plunged ahead. Oughtn't you to be sure you love him, or am I just old-fashioned? She laughed a bit, softly. Funny boy, you're right, of course, and I suppose I do. But, oh, more than anything else it's a chance to get away, and I must get away, must. I hope you'll be awfully happy, Chloe. You know that, I guess. Then he added, because he couldn't help doing so, and I hope being married and all won't keep you from writing to me once in a while. I guess I've been counting on that. You've been so sympathetic, always, with me, the real me, inside, that does the things you think may mean something some day. Dairy likes me, too, but he—well, you know Dairy and his letters. She took his hand again, pressed it, took it suddenly to her lips, and then was gone into the house. He hardly understood that. He was glad that she was going to get away. She was too young, too full of promising things to be so submerged and defeated. Roy didn't seem her type, though, and he was afraid they might be unhappy. It was a little sadly that he sat in the swing, waiting for Dairy's return. CHAPTER III The graylings had driven him home, spent the night, and started back for Ann Arbor the next morning. The night with Dairy, he had planned to say so many things, but he said nothing. Dairy, tired from driving, and apparently unmoved by the impending separation, slept soundly. Kurt, his arms rigid at his sides, stared at the ceiling with its familiar patternings of lavender shadows, and wished them gone, wished them swallowed up in the blackness he had feared so much as a child. His whole, lonely life seemed somehow implicit in those shadows. More than anything else he wanted Dairy's kiss and Dairy's promise to remember. But Dairy never awakened, until Mrs. Gray called them for breakfast. So their parting was simply a clasp of hands and a few conventional words of farewell in the presence of his parents, of Mrs. Grayling and of Chloe. When the car turned the corner and was out of sight, his mind seemed seized with numbness. He turned and went listlessly in at the kitchen door, lingered uncertainly near the books on the table, and the music scattered about the floor near the piano. All day long the numbness held him. He read by snatches, sprawled on the Davenport. He wrote two highly unsatisfactory letters. He rummaged through the music cabinet, and coming upon an album of Chopin nocturnes, played them over from cover to cover in a slip-shod way, passively approving their lulling eroticism. The meals with his father and mother were silent and uneventful. And the short evening, with a cribbage game between his father and himself, passed in some unaccountable fashion. Bedtime, his father went first, yawning and switching off the overhead lights, and then his mother, with her expected and therefore doubly irritating, better come to bed now. He made no answer, but sat still until her footsteps reached the upper hall. He put his magazine down. The house was intimate and pleasant, with only the one lamp at his elbow lighted. He sat still, dumbly thinking that there must be other days like this, days almost without number it seemed now, until he could leave in August. He got up from the chair slowly and went to the kitchen. The back door had been left open as the night was warm, and the oblong a soft darkness seemed to call him forth. He unhooked the screen door, and stepped quietly out into the night. The sky was full of stars, and the air was pervaded with a softness that came to him as a new experience. Stars were usually so distant, so glitteringly, so frighteningly precise and jewel-like. But tonight it was as if a dark veil had been flung across them. They were almost friendly. Now maybe he could think, think. He needed to do that. There were so many things he did not understand, things that had never seemed so important as now. And they all centered, tangled, about himself, and these two who had driven away this morning, Derry and Chloe. Derry and Chloe. And he must understand. It was a duty which he dreaded, but paradoxically, craved to perform. It was his individually. Neither of the other two could understand. Or, no, that was not fair. Chloe could understand, he trusted, if she knew. But these were things she did not know, must not know. Things that was unthinkable that she should know. And he had not forgotten her kiss on his hand. How strange and twisted it all was. There was Chloe with her cool gray eyes, her smooth black hair, and her mind which he felt he knew so well. Her mind tempered and adjusted to a spiritual sympathy that was constantly amazing him. Chloe, never wholly happy, always questioning, always seeking, reacting to every thought and suggestion, like himself, never quite certain. Chloe with this mental equipment that he had come to know so well and to prize so highly during the past years. And Chloe with her woman's body that he knew not at all. Then there was her brother, with his gray eyes too, but scornful, his dark hair tangled, his mind alert, objective, as incapable of fine sympathies as of deceit. Dairy, with this mental equipment that was as clear and free of subtleties as a lump of polished glass, yet that constantly puzzled and repulsed him by its very concreteness. Dairy, with the man body he knew so well, the cool white skin, the firm chest, the lean belly and strong back, the thick thighs and calves, the wide blunt-fingered hands. There was a loneliness in Kurt, an emptiness, that throbbed and pulsated in the night. It made him think again of the darkness in which he used to cower. The past few months he had seen growing in him a beginning of understanding. He had read for the first time the new psychology, Drill, Young, Freud, Ellis, Carpenter. From them he learned that his sin and Dairy's was not the unique sport he had believed it to be. There were others, it seemed, at least in Europe there were, of his sort. Plato he re-read with a new interest. The high idealism of the Phaedrus in the Symposium had captured him and engulfed him as a flood. Now that there was a whole summer of inaction ahead, he could begin to formulate into ideas, maybe, the feeling that had been growing in him. He was in love with Dairy. He belonged to that strange class of humanity, the singularity of whose position appealed to the Romantic in him at the same time that it overwhelmed him with its pathos. I am the love that dare not speak its name, he read. He divided his time between his music and a stumbling search for knowledge. There was in him a yearning for the vicarious companionship of others like himself. Of an actual companionship other than Dairy's he never dreamed. It was as if he had been initiated into some secret fraternity, and at every discovery of some new communicatent, in ages past he felt a thrill of pleasure. There was Plato, beyond a doubt. There was Salini and Michelangelo and Shakespeare, and there was he felt most certain Shelley. Night after night, while his mother lay awake waiting nervously for his return, he fought with himself alone on the quiet streets, under the stars or the hiss of summer rain, a walker by night. The struggle went on wearyingly, everlastingly, with small promise of victory on either side. The secrecy of his position maddened him, and yet it was also a sweet madness. I am the love that dare not speak its name. Shame, name, shame. The words were an insinuating counterpoint to his feet. The exultation of his love sent him running. Sometimes, along the grass grown roads at the edge of the village, his arms raised to the sky, his face thirsting for the stars. Nothing so rich, so filling, so troubling, so goading could be evil. The world might say what it chose. He is my lover. He is my lover. He longed to shout it from the rooftops. Behold, world, my lover. He wept in the grass by the roadside for the blindness, the unfeeling stupidity, the unfairness of the world. He hated them all, the scoffers, the leaden eyed. He throbbed with the music of rebellion and youth. He clutched his fingers in the cool, dark sod, and exhausted himself with weeping. And then, always, his feet took him back through other dark streets to his own house, his own familiar room. What could he do? I, a stranger, and afraid, in a world I never made. Someday he swore to himself he would be brave. Now he could not. He would go wearily to bed, angry at the cough his mother gave to inform him that she was not yet asleep, that he had kept her awake with worry. What he knew, what she knew, the chasm appalled him. Could it ever be bridged, he wondered. His philosophy developed slowly, too slowly, and he was only too conscious of the great gaps in his new creed. It came to be, as days and weeks went by, a new religion. The old, by now, was an outgrown shell. Here was a love which the world, had it known, would have denounced a shame, a love whose altrufires must always burn in secret, whose priesthood walked alone, discovering only now and again, and then by chance, some other follower of the faith. He knew that he felt it to be beautiful and worthy of praise, but he knew, too, that he must endure always the moderdome of silence. No boasting of his love, his first love, no word of it dared he breathe. Always, always it seemed to him, life demanded secrecy and silence. He had longed for Derry to know, as he knew. Derry must know. And yet he felt certain that Derry could never be made to understand. They hardly spoke the same language, he now realized. There was no way of making him see so high and perfect and ideal. Derry's letters through the summer had been brief things, full of laughing episodes of their summer life in Ann Arbor, of Chloe's approaching marriage, of a new friend, David Perrier, with a casual wish you were here, which Kurt fastened on avidly, cherishing and remembering. The new friend caused him some uneasiness. He was afraid he detected in the letters some hint that David was taking his place. He knew David as a clever student in architecture, whose hair, fellow said, was marcelled, and whose nails were always too gleamingly manicured, and whose eyes he had always found disturbing. He was not the sort you would ever call Dave. He was David. That Derry should allow this outsider a place was unthinkable. And yet he feared it might be so. He tried as best he could to fit David into this new scheme of things. He too, perhaps, was of the fellowship. Something in him rebelled at the idea. The ideal was too fine, too high. David, he felt, was too satisfied, too shallow to deserve this new and awesome calling. There was no niche for him. The thought that Derry, incomprehensible Derry, had taken him in, was sickening. He wrote a letter to Derry, and never mailed it. What he secretly feared was that this newcomer, this interloper, would say, I love you, before he, Kurt, had said it, in the way he felt he could now say it. Love to him was so indubitably the love of one for another. There could be only two. For him, he knew there could be only Derry. That for Derry there might be David or others seemed incredible, frightful, yet he was increasingly certain that it was so. He did send a letter, at last. It was a halting thing, he felt. But his fear that Derry would not understand made the formulation of his faith nervous and worried. He waited anxiously for a reply. It did not come. A week passed. His mind ran in circles, in a lonely place, always coming back to the point from which it started. At last, only a week before Chloe's wedding, he wrote again, Dear Derry, the you I am writing to I am afraid, doesn't exist. I may be wrong in thinking so, and in that hope I write. There has been no reply to my letter of a week ago. You would accuse me of being fantastic, possibly even sentimental, when I say that the silence of these days has hurt me deeply. You are busy, I know, but there are always minutes when a few words can be written, even during the busiest days. Neither have I heard from Chloe, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I like you better, for one reason, and still more, because I am less sure of your feeling for me, and it is that constant uncertainty that makes me so unhappy. You are a strangely objective person, intolerant of emotion, yet full of it, and incapable, I have sometimes thought, of real sympathetic feeling. In addition, you are more masculine than I. I am, in many ways, your exact opposite. My richest life always comes from the realm of thought and feeling, rather than from the things outside, color, sound, motion, the theatrical in life. There is a great deal of the feminine in me. If you will consider our friendship in its full course, from the time I first met you, you will realize that it has been I always who have been the submissive one, you, the aggressive one. I have not once, that I can remember, failed to submit to your will and desire, and I can recall a great many times when you have received my rather timid overtures coldly. As the years have gone on, the tie between us, so far as I am concerned, has grown stronger and stronger. I have come to hope, and almost believe sometimes, that there was between us a friendship based, not solely on physical attraction, but on the spiritual thing men call love. I love you, then. That is to put it most simply. It is the fact that this simple statement, meaning so much to me, would make you uncomfortable, that troubles me. Are you so conventionally minded? Can your objective mind not see the beauty of such a relationship? I keep hoping that you feel as I do, and I am continually disappointed. And then, since the night of your brief visit here in June, there was on your part a withdrawal into yourself that was almost sullen. It was the last time we would be together for months. If you would put your hand in mine, or your head against my shoulder, I should have been content and happy. But you did not sense my need, you failed. It has been so, so many times. To you, what does our relation mean? I have tried to understand. What do you really feel towards me? You admire me, you think me good looking and clever, perhaps? You like me a great deal. But if I should cease to exist, would it matter so much to you? Would there not be others? For me, there could be none. I am waiting now, waiting for our meeting next week. Do not fail me, then. It would be harder than you can imagine for me to go away, so far away this time, if you should. My love, Kurt. He read his letter over. It seemed a little dramatic, a little oratorical, yet it must be sent. He dropped it into the slot at the post office, and returned home to busy himself with sorting books and music, and a dozen going away details. Marking time, he thought. The fact that Chloe too must be left behind was almost forgotten in the fear that he would lose his place in Derry's life. Kurt came back to Ann Arbor the day before the wedding. Derry met him at the station, pinched his arm, said, Hello, kid. I guess you were worried some, and laughed, slyly. Kurt laughed too. In the light of Derry's smile all his trionics seemed silly and unimportant. The car took them up the hill and around the campus. Home, thought Kurt. It was really another home, a place it meant something to return to. The day was too full for thinking. There were flowers together and a range, and the caterer to see, Mrs. Grayling to console and pacify, and wish at heart a thousand miles away, and a dozen details no one seemed to have thought of. Derry was perfect, all he could desire. Talk and explanation seemed superfluous. The letter thought Kurt exultantly had had its effect. But before they slept, Derry said casually, David wanted to come over to-night, but I thought he'd better not. You can see him to-morrow. You'll like him, I think. I know he'll like you. He does already. He's seen you on the campus, and he's begged your picture from me. He's crazy to meet you. Kurt's satisfaction thawed and disappeared. He did not want to meet David. He knew he felt what he would be like, and he tried vainly to pierce Derry's mind, to understand certainly just what place David might hold in it. He had slight success. Not that Derry was subtle or secretive. He took, as a matter of fact, a torturing delight in talking to Kurt of David, and hinting at a relationship he would not freely admit. Kurt, choking down his questionings, said nothing. Was this jealousy, this weak, sick feeling that was upon him? Derry had failed to understand. Was there nobody, nobody in this whole world of patterned people who could understand? His misanthropy grew with his growing loneliness, alone, even lying here beside the one he loved, alone. The wedding came and was over. No one, Kurt was positive, was so nervous as he, not Chloe, not Roy, not even Mrs. Grayling, who at the last moment, through one of those sudden changes that made her, like Derry, an enigma to every one, had become tractable and even pleasant. He laughed at himself as soon as the ceremony was over. He'd have thought I was the groom, he said to Roy, and then to several others, not knowing what to say. One reason for his nervousness was the presence at the wedding of David Perrier. He had arrived only a few minutes before the ceremony. He had come with Derry into the bedroom where Kurt was finishing dressing. His eyes were troubling. There was in them Kurt still felt, an intent to convey something without saying it. I'm very glad for this chance, he said, smiling. He clasped Kurt's hands longer than strangers usually do. I've heard so much about you, from Derry, and on all sides. Kurt smiled, and inwardly wished to the devil all such cliches as those who uttered them. That was all. After the wedding Chloe changed to a straight black dress which she had never worn before, and which subtly set her apart, he felt. Something's changed in her, he thought, and tried to read her eyes as she shook hands. He did not offer to kiss her, and when she said good-bye at the station and offered her lips, he blushed and hesitated. She kissed him swiftly on the cheek, and was lost in a crowd of relatives. Fool! Fool! Why couldn't he have kissed her? He felt David's eyes cruelly curious upon him. No, no one was laughing. The train pulled away from the platform. With the rest he waved and turned. David was beside him, and together they rode back to the house, saying little. There all was confusion. Folding chairs were strewn about, and voluble relatives were everywhere, chattering, munching the remnants of the cakes and the sandwiches. O Lord! Breathe, Kurt, as he came up the walk with David. Yes, isn't it a mess? Wouldn't you like to come over to my place for a bit, until things clear up here? Kurt looked at him curiously. What's become of Derry? he asked. He was answered by Derry himself, clattering down the stairs with a flower-basket. I've asked Kurt to come over to my rooms a while, Derry, until you get rid of some of this turmoil. Grand idea, go along, Kurt. I'll have to stick around a while, I suppose, to keep the mob in check, and Lord knows how long they'll stay. Don't hurry back, and be good children. He blessed them paternally, and gave them a shove down the steps. They walked slowly, talking of the school, of Chloe and Roy, of David's drawing, of Kurt's music. I want to be alone, alone, alone, ran, like an insistent petal-point, through Kurt's mind. Here we are, said David. They were turning in at an old house on a narrow street. I like it here because there's no one else in the house, except the deaf landlady. She lets me do pretty much as I please, though I'm afraid she doesn't always approve. The room he took Kurt into was surprising. Kurt had read of such places, he had never seen one. Never supposed they existed so close at hand. It was, in its perverse way, perfect. Yet there was something in it, as in some of the beardly drawings, that revolted him. The walls were hung entirely in black cloth. There was a fireplace of vivid blue and orange tiles. An opposite, a low couch, piled with cushions of a dozen shades. There was a coffee table. There was a Buddha. There were brass bowls and lacquered boxes. There was a lovely white statuette, of a Greek Antonias, that by the intensity of its whiteness, and its cleanness of line, made the rest of the room seem more artificial. It's—it's charming, said Kurt. Look around a bit. Help yourself to cigarettes. I'm going to make myself more comfortable. Back in no time. He disappeared through a curtain door. There were no chairs, only cushions, and low stools. The couch seemed most inviting, so he propped himself with pillows and lay still. Too weary with the day to care very much about the room or about David or about anything. He smoked idly and closed his eyes. There was a step in the room. It was David. He had opened his collar and put on a Chinese coat of black silk with a scarlet lining. Comfortable, he asked, smiling. Very, said Kurt. He waved his hand about him as David set beside him on the edge of the couch. You're not very collegiate, are you? God forbid. Don't tell me you mind. Of course not. I'll admit, though, this rather takes my breath away. I hadn't supposed there was anything quite so—so exotic in this he-man's university. No. David fingered the sleeve of his dressing gown. Was he amused, Kurt wondered. He must talk, he supposed. One couldn't just lie there and blow smoke rings. No. He went on. And you know it quite well. I don't run around much, but when I do I'm always confronted by pennants and golf sticks and traffic signs and covers from college humor and photo-play. I know. Stupid, isn't it? I wonder. We all of us have a way of being so sure of our rightness. I suppose those pennants are much more right for them than all this would be, say. I can't quite picture an all-American half-back rhapsodizing over this. They both laughed. You're apparently a very tolerant soul, Kurt. There was a silence. What was he to say to this fellow, whose eyes were always upon him so disturbingly, carrying on as it were, even while he talked, a second conversation with his eyes. A conversation in a language Kurt did not understand. You've a Victrola, I see. Can't we have some music? What would he choose? He seemed to have a great many records. Kurt closed his eyes and waited. Good. Good, he murmured. I bought it after your review in the daily last winter, said David, and lapsed into silence. Kurt opened his eyes only once, but closed them quickly, when he felt those of David always upon him. He was almost afraid he understood their meaning. There was a raucous noise outside of a Ford stopping, the scrape of the horn dying, and the motor in a buzzing wail. It's Derry, said Kurt. Feet pounded up the stair, and Derry came in. David, he said, can Kurt stay here with you tonight? Some of the ants have decided to stay over. I can sleep on the Davenport, but that leaves you out, Kurt. I'm sorry it's happened like this, but you'll have a good time here. Of course you may stay, Kurt. You will, won't you? His voice was eager. More politeness, more formulas. He was afraid to stay, and furious at Derry, for not arranging in some way that this, his last night before going east, they might have spent time together. He might have managed somehow, if he had wanted too badly enough. Derry seldom wanted the right thing at the right time. He felt a wounded self-pity. I give everything to Derry, he thought, and he casually turns me over to someone else. I wanted him tonight. He should have known that. He should have known. You'll stay, Kurt? Asked David's voice again. Do, do, pleaded his eyes. It's decent of you to take me in, was all Kurt said. I brought your bag over, and now I'll have to go back, Derry said. Come over in the morning, Kurt. I'll not be so rushed to-morrow. Derry left, banging the door behind him. It was hurt which Kurt felt most. People shouldn't be able to hurt other people so. Derry was, sometimes, like a Frankenstein, incapable of understanding. He must not let David see how he was feeling. David had, in the meantime, put another record on the Victrola, and to the music of it he seemed terribly and starkly alone, hungry with his love, and sick with disappointment. What he craved was understanding, and what he despaired of ever finding was understanding. The nostalgic sweetness of being young, of having a secret from an antagonistic world, swept over him with the music, and had he been alone he would have cried out and paced the floor. The irony of the impulse curled his lip. Why not cry out? He was alone, really alone, always alone. These eyes that promised so disturbingly could not intrude on his aloneness. He would be as much alone in a crowded street as in the woods on an autumnal noon, always, everywhere, alone. David's voice was piercing through. Shall we have some more music? Music was too disturbing. Could we walk a bit, he suggested. Good idea. It's nearly dinnertime, anyway. As they walked it was an effort to make conversation. Kurt wanted only to be alone, in mind and body. He yearned for it, and played with a sad sort of satisfaction. With the idea that had formulated itself in his mind with the flow of the music in David's room, it made him seem a romantic figure, romantic because of his difference, because of this invisible yet impenetrable wall which was building, building, building, between him and the world. How big did one have to be, he wondered, to live so always, feeding always on oneself, and spider-like, spinning such beauty as one might out of one's own being. The thought of the years ahead, old age, sent his mind huddling and shivering back to a present, when loneliness could have, being young, a sad and acrid beauty. They dined in a tea-room Kurt had seldom been able to afford. The dinner was good. They talked again of books, of music, of things both enjoyed. Kurt felt in David, perhaps because of his exterior, his monogrammed cigarettes, his nails that were too perfectly polished, his clothes that were just too correctly fitted, that his mind too must be a thing of surface glitter, of right opinion, right by the sophisticated standards of the young wits and clever-minded scoffers. He kept conversation pretty much on that level, but once, twice, an enthusiasm flamed through the langer of this elegant young man. Kurt suddenly wondered how much this exterior, that both attracted and repelled him, concealed, how just his judgment had been. Was this too, perhaps, but another wall, but another means of protection? The thought intrigued him, and he forgot himself, playing with it through this casual talk of people and things at dinner, and later, back in David's room, he found himself consciously prying into this mind, consciously trying to fathom it. Was it possible that he or two was a soul sensitive and afraid, masking its fear and its solitude behind a cynical and sophisticated exterior? He forgot his own loneliness in conjecture. Walls, walls again. Why was it that people sat eternally repeating platitudes when they wanted to thrust through to the pulsing realities? And he, perhaps, too, this one I have disliked, is wanting to break the wall and dissolve the barrier. The fire died down at last. The room seemed to grow as the light flickered and faded. Its black walls dimmed and receded. The white statuette of the Greek boy stood alone, white with an almost phosphorescent lightness, in the gathering darkness, glowing against and through it. They had been for a long time silent. David rose then from the cushion where he had been sitting cross-legged by the fire. He stood for a moment before the hearth, his head thrown back. Kirk could not see his hands, but he knew from the rigidness of his position that they were clenched before him. It was a pose he recognized. He was almost sure now, if only he were brave enough. And then David turned. Kirk could not see his face, but his voice was one he did not know. Its languorous correctness was gone. It was half stifled as if by fright. He came to the couch where Kirk lay and was silhouetted against the uncertain flicker that filled the room. Then he dropped down beside him and his hand, touching Kurt's, closed over it. Something in Kurt went rigid with resistance. He would draw his hand away. All the malice he had felt rising towards David during the past few weeks surged up in him coldly. But strangely he did not stir. Kurt gray, Kurt gray. The voice came huskily. I'm afraid as hell. I must say this or I'll die. I've wanted to so long, thought it over and over and over, known just what I would say and how I'd say it. And now, now that you're really here as I've pictured you so often, it won't come. You see, Kurt, after I've said it, you may hate me always, but I must say it. I must, I must. I love you, Kurt. Oh, God, how I love you! Kurt's throat constricted. A coldness pressed like metal against the back of his neck. What was this? What was this? Oh, Kurt, please don't hate me. Please. I've waited so long, fearing you wouldn't understand, trying to find out the words to make you understand, trying to learn from Derry, if you would. And I couldn't be sure. I've had to take this chance at last. Kurt could feel his tenseness, like a leaping spark through the darkness. Will you tell me one thing, Kurt? Do you love Derry? His secret. His secret. Yet now he could not lie. I love him, he whispered. I thought so, Kurt. I thought so. Now I know at least you will understand what I'm feeling. Now I can say everything. There is always such fearful danger in this, this breaking down of walls, his own words. Breaking walls, yes. There was a chance, you see, such a great chance that you weren't like that, that you weren't queer. He laughed in derision at the word. And then, and then you see, you'd have left me and I'd have lost you. Now there may be a chance that I can make you like me. Kurt said nothing. His head swirled with uncertainty. This was a thing he had not foreseen. Was it possible to love two people at the same time? What was he to say? Derry's indifference. I'm going to kiss you, Kurt. The face, the eyes, drew to him out of the shadow, lips against his own, not Derry's lips. Why did he lie so still? Why was his tongue curled helplessly in his mouth? Why did he allow this? It was mad, mad. You understand now? He lay still without answering, his arm across his eyes. He had been false to his ideal. Or had he? Nothing was certain. What can I say? There were torturing minutes of silence. There's so much to understand, you've surprised me so. I know, I know, my dear. It—oh, I don't know how to say it to you. I'm not, I guess, a person who gives himself very easily in any way. Not many people know me. That's my reputation, isn't it? So it's a shock to be taken by storm. All things with me, things that have mattered really and deeply, seem to have grown so slowly, so very slowly and stumbled so. I can't make this seem— I felt that, Kurt. I can't expect, I know. But it's been slow with me, too. I've wanted to know you so long, so awfully long. I used to meet you on the diagonal sometimes. Dairy seemed the only way. And now you know, and—oh, what's the difference? It's such a damnable constraint that's put on fellows like us, Kurt. If you hadn't been one of us, you see, I'd have lost you. You would have despised me, even laughed at me. And there's nothing so bitter, so utterly cruel, on God's earth, as the intolerance people have of this sort of thing. Why, they are so damned smug. I hate them all. They think we are scum, some sort of decadent perverts. And I know, and you know, too, Kurt, that nothing so beautiful, so filling, deserves such hate. It's unreasoning. It's beastly and hellish. The walls had disintegrated and crumpled like a dream. Here was a wall down, a mask set aside, a something real and vibrant and amazing, a language he understood. Amazement was perhaps Kurt's chief reaction. Amazement at himself, and at David. Was it possible that this was the suave, superior young man, with whom he had dined so short a time ago? This eager, tense boy. The voice went on in the dark, about dreams, ideals, and he let it go, liking it, wondering at it, yet afraid, because it upset him so, because his throat pounded and his scalp tingled with it. I love you, Kurt. I've never loved anyone as I love you. You believe me, don't you? Dairy was just a wedge, a gate to you. Oh, Kurt, there's only one way I know to show you how fearfully much I love you. Dear, dear boy. Darkness, hands, not dairies. An arm beneath his shoulders, not dairies. A swift and burning joy. A dairy not sharing it. A night of restlessness and fitful dreaming. A morning of promises, and at last, because he knew David wanted it so much, his proffered kiss on David's eager lips. I guess I like you a good bit, David. You'll learn, I'll teach you, make you learn. The room by daylight seemed a gloomy place, almost oppressive. Your room is made for the night, David. David smiled at him from the tumbled couch as he went about the room, flinging back the heavy drapes and letting in the cold clarity of the day. I'd be utterly happy of time where all night provided you were here, and so secure and certain. The night you can make what you please, the day seems to run away from you to be such common property. The day light wouldn't be so ominous anywhere else. You should get yourself a day room, too. One that's all light, as this is all dark. No, I'm quite contented with this. I'll just keep the curtains closed. The breakfast is on toast and jam and strong coffee, drunk from Chinese bowls. You're really going to New York today. I'm supposed to see Korlov Monday morning. It's all wrong, Kurt, that I should have so little of you when I've been so long waiting for you. Kurt was silent. Maybe I'll be seeing you soon, though. No. You're coming to New York, too? I want to. Ozzy wants me to come to Philadelphia, but I want to go to New York. I always have, more or less, and now that you're to be there, I love it. He'll let me, I think. He's a pretty good sort. Kurt looked puzzled. You don't know Ozzy. He's a sort of guardian. He's been very good to me. He smiled a little ironically, but said nothing more. Kurt walked back to the Graylings alone. In him there was a singular mixture of emotions. There was elation and guilt. He had been untrue to dairy, and to all the theorizing he had so painfully built up during the summer months. Something had happened to his carefully constructed code, or to a part of it. But in the debacle he had found a lover and a greater understanding. It flattered something in him. Dairy had never given him that satisfaction. Dairy was an uncertain quantity, always, Kurt suspected. It went no deeper with him than the physical thing. Dairy had never said, I love you. He'd laughed a bit, and found a spinsterly summer school student staring at him curiously. It was funny now, almost, to think of Dairy in the role of lover. Yet he had always wanted that so much, still did. He had let David supply the lack in a moment of peak and indifference. Was it to go on? He needed time to think it all out again, and for the moment his mind rebelled. He tried to forget it all. The heavy luxuriousness of summer was soothing. The morning sun, mottling through the elms, was warm on his back, and made pleasant patterns on the walk. Patterns that would change and thin when fall came. From day to day the change would hardly be noticed, and then at last there would be only the skeleton shadow of bare branches. The potpourri, from the opera, Martha. His mind veered back to the ten-cent addition he had bought at the piano store in Barton, unknown to his teacher, and worked at much more sedulously than at his scales. A bit of this air, a bit of that, clumsily bound together with arpeggios and obvious modulations. Then, at thirteen, its disjointedness had seen beautiful. Now, the similar disjointedness of his thinking seemed, if not beautiful, narcotic, and inoffensive. He was reluctant to bring it to order. Let it go for now. Tonight, in the sleeper, enroute to New York, he would settle it all. But it would not settle itself. He left after supper. A pick-up affair with bits of this and that left from the wedding refreshments. He stood on the steps of the Pullman, watching until the darkness and a hiss of steam drowned them all. He went into the brightly lighted car, with the picture still in his mind. Mrs. Grayling waving gloomily. Dairy racing along the track, shouting unintelligible lunacies. David behind him, waving, not at all, alarmingly correct. But with eyes that bothered him more now, he thought, that David was not there, than the night before, when he had been so close. There were too many threads, and they were too tangled. What was to come? What was left behind? He lay awake for hours, it seemed, with thoughts as inchoate as the dulled thunder of the train, the occasional flashes of light as he was swept through little stations, the muffled crescendo and demuindo of crossing signals, like cleverly played glockenspiels. The Poporee again, with a new accompaniment. David. Dairy. David. Dairy. Love. Love. David. David. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker. Part 2, Chapter 5 Kurt found himself plunged so deeply into his work, that he had little time to formulate his reactions to the city. He had gone to a time-square hotel, which David had recommended as being reasonable and accessible. He had spent the evening, after his arrival, threading his way through the crowds on Broadway and Seventh Avenue. The cheapness and glitter of it sent his mind shrinking into itself. But the river of stars above his head, turned to a luminous orchid, with the reflected and softened glow of the street signs, was strange and thrilling. He walked until he was tired, until his head buzzed with the mingled clanger of voices, a feat shuffling on cement, the grating of taxis, the rumble and screech of street-cars, the sullen subterranean thunder of the subway. It was crushing. And somewhere, in this confusion, he must find himself a place of quietness and aloneness. The light from a tower nearby flashed intermittent bars of lilac and vermilion on the coverlet of his hotel bed, and it made him think, suddenly, of that other lilac through that other window of his old room at home. As the Moor Hinn builds her a nest in the watery side, behold, I will build me a nest in the greatness of God. A city can do strange things to people. To Curt it did little, spiritually. It broadened him as all new knowledge must. It taught him things about people, people in crowds. It taught him by observation many things he had known before only through his books. But it wedged itself its buzzing, kaleidoscopic, uproarious self, almost not at all into him. It was as if his aloofness, his aloneness, was a round and polished surface, on which the wedge could never find entry, but was deflected in scent tangential, touching, but never intruding, on its blind way. For he was still very much alone, and learning he sometimes feared, to cherish his aloneness with a miserly satisfaction, to gloat a bit over the smoothness of his life. He gave it small thought for the most part. He was too busy, but sometimes he felt, without being willing to admit that he felt, his own life's oppression, and yearned for the prick of the wedge. He worked at his music as he had never worked in college, without questioning the rightness of his endeavor. His study here was the part of music he liked least, the drudgery of mechanics in composition. But he knew its necessity, and labored at it with no feeling of martyrdom, and acoustical mathematics it was, as necessary to him as conventional mathematics to an architect. He could always reassure himself, and at the same time divert himself with a concert, or with the perfectly realized scores the public library afforded him. He found himself a room far uptown. David had suggested the village. But the village, as he walked through it the second morning after his arrival, seemed to him even more oppressive than the forties. The drab brick fronts, the littered streets, the garbage in the gutters, repelled him. The occasional blue door, or gay window, or fretted gateway, denoting an interior, utterly belying the squalor without, interested him. But he knew, could not make him content. If he were like David it might. David could live inside, but something in him demanded an outside too. So his third morning of searching took him up riverside drive, where the sweep of the river, with its fringing trees, was something he could look at, and maybe love a little. The room he got at last was small, but it was high in a gable, and it had a window looking out across the Hudson, and he knew it would do. Here he spent most of his time. Classes and practice over, he would hurry back to it. There was usually something waiting for him there. A letter from home, from Derry, from Chloe, from David. The old ties, save David, one new one. He laughed sometimes to think how little difference place seemed to make. His whole emotional life was still bound up with these same personalities. Not present now to laugh and talk with, but nonetheless, though rather unsatisfactorily, present. From his father and mother, and from Derry, letters were transparent enough. The doings of the passing day at home, facetious comments on people he and Derry had known in college, the letters from David, and from Chloe were more disturbing. David's were full of promises and protestations and threats to descend suddenly upon him, and carry him off to some distant and exotic rendezvous. They were eager and hungry and rebellious, Ozzy apparently objecting to the New York idea, at the fate that kept him for an additional year in Ann Arbor. Were they a bit too facile? At any rate, they were letters, such as a fictional heroine might thrill to receive, and they pleased something in him. He could, at this distance, detach himself almost completely, and regard the scene, David, and himself, as an interlude on the stage, two lovers in a world apart, a fictionalized world. It influenced his replies, for his letters to David, while much less exotic and unrestrained, were almost equally literary. He thought them sincere. They were sincere, but they were cast in the literary style. The rain is cold tonight. It runs like silver down my small window. The flame under the kettle is blue in the dusk. Why aren't you here for tea, David? Or I'm lonely. I shall walk along the river. The lights will waver in it, and on the benches, under the almost-naked trees, there will still be, here and there, two or one, two alone or one alone, and I will be lonely too. With Chloe it was much the same. Had he been wiser in the ways of women with men, and men with women, he would have been more circumspect. For Chloe's letters, as the year grew older, became more and more personal. Though she never said so openly in her letters, Kirk could overhear in them a growing dissatisfaction with her life. He had feared it would be so. Chloe was so much a creature of moods, so elfin at times, so jealous of the beauty of life, so different from Roy. She had been for a long time almost his only audience, and certainly his chief encouragement. His songs had been sung first or only to her. Her sympathy he could rely on. She had urged him to continue. Her marriage, she had assured him, should make no difference. So he had continued to write to her of his work, as he had previously told her of it, to scribble off the themes of his new compositions for her. They were having a hard time of it, Chloe and Roy. Roy was not well. He was listless and took little interest in his job. He was irritable, and Chloe had to work herself, first in the art department of a Detroit department store, later in the office of a private school. I'm just home from work, she wrote. A snowy cold day. There was no letter in the box from you, as I had hoped there might be. I want so much to talk to you again. I could almost jump afrait such afternoons as this, and come straight to New York. And Kurt would reply in the same vein. Night after night he would sit in the small, shadowy room, writing carefully phrased letters to the other inhabitants of his small world. I'm becoming a man of letters, he wrote to David. It's not right. Psychologically I'm being repressed, and God knows what, I suppose. I should go on a social spree occasionally, to be psychologically sound and normal, and safe from the analysts. But I don't, don't want to. I simply sit here and write to you, and to Derry and Chloe, because you're not here to talk to. Other people don't interest me much, should they? Am I the misanthrope in modern dress? It was to him a world removed from reality, yet perfectly real and vital to him. It was almost like the old days in Barton, playing theatre in Nob's barn. Only now he was assaying the more difficult, histrionic feat of playing all the roles himself. To Derry and to Derry's family and his own, he was most matter of fact. He should have liked to carry his small drama over into his letters with Derry, but Derry would not play up. To David he was the absent beloved, to Chloe, the romantic young artist, relying upon her for encouragement and understanding. He was, without being aware of it, dramatizing himself, and doing an admirable job of it. He went home for the holidays, and stopped off for a day and a night at the Graylings. Derry was there, bursting with delight to have him back, punning and playing the fool, as he always had done. David had been called to Philadelphia. Chloe had come home to, alone. She had little to say. But Kurt could feel her watching him, and he dreaded seeing her alone. Carrying over into actuality, the situation their letters had created. When Mrs. Grayling had gone to bed, however, he sent Derry away. I want to talk to Chloe for a bit, kid. Go to bed. But don't dare go to sleep, for after I'm through with her I shall want to talk to you the rest of the night. Derry, grumbling and complaining, and signalling behind his sister's back, did as he was told. You want to talk to me, Kurt? Isn't that what we've been promising ourselves all these weeks? The fire was burning dully in the grate. Kurt lay on the Davenport. Chloe took a cushion and sat beside him on the floor. Her eyes were fixed on the dying fire. Someone ought to paint you that way, Chloe. She started. How? What? In silhouette, against a wall, all flecked with fire-colors. Oh, no! She stretched her arms over her head, brought them down rigidly behind her, and lay back on their support. It's—oh, I can't tell you what it is to be here with you again, Kurt. She shouldn't. He was afraid of what she might tell him. You're happy, aren't you, with Roy? She only looked at him, and then immediately back into the fire, not answering. Kurt, why is life so strange, so wrong? Is it so wrong, Chloe? She was silent then for a long time. He fancied she was crying. Suddenly, her hand brushed her eyes, and, seeking gropingly for his own hand, fastened over it. I've missed you so, she whispered, so terribly. He drew his hand away quickly and sat up. Chloe, please, you mustn't. You mustn't. He got up brusquely and walked to the fire. He felt himself trembling. What was this? Did she love him? He didn't love her. He knew. He liked her. He had perhaps even tried to persuade himself when he was writing those beastly letters that he loved her. What had they said, those letters? He must be more careful. She should never have said that. He felt her standing behind him, and stiffened. I must, Kurt. Her voice was breathless, and the words seemed forced out of her lips against her will. I must, I must. Why pretend that I'm happy? I'm not. I'm hating at all. Roy's a bore. He laughs at what I say and read and think. I can't talk with him. We don't speak the same tongue. Oh, it's been such a rotten mistake. He did not turn, but he knew she was behind him, rigid and tense. Her mind crowded with resentments against Roy, which pushed her unresisting towards him. Please, Chloe, I'm sorry. There seemed nothing else to say. He faced her and put his hands on her shoulders. He felt her relax and sway towards him. He held her tautly away. Here, let's sit down now and talk about it. If it were solely that, it was unfortunate, but not utterly serious. People were finding all the time that they were mismated. He had been afraid of it. This thing did not touch him, save as a friend. If only she did not love him, or fancy so. Tell me about it, if you care to. It's just that I don't love him, Kurt. I wonder if I ever did. I've tried, honestly, I have. Oh, it's as much my fault as his, maybe. I wouldn't have married him, I guess, if Mother hadn't been so eager that I shouldn't. I did want to get away, still do. I can't stand home any better now than then, for long. But the marriage is wrong, Kurt. All wrong and twisted. We've nothing in common. Roy hates what he calls my high-brow manner. We're the kinecots all over again. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see that it's right or moral to go on living with him, feeling as we both do. What are you going to do about it, Chloe? I've done it already, Kurt. I saw a lawyer this afternoon. He said I could get a divorce pretty easily and without much fuss. I'll have to claim non-support. Non-support? Does that seem quite square to Roy? She looked at him questioningly before she replied. Does it seem unfair to you? He's not supported me, you know. And since this imagined illness of his, we've had a pretty wretched time of it. You mean he's not really ill? Of course he's not ill. He looks perfectly well and eats and sleeps well. You don't know his family. I don't either. They're all that way. Always fancying somethings to matter with them. The doctor calls it a nervous condition. Very peculiar. But he has to call it something, I suppose, to collect his fees. They are enough, God knows. You think you can't try it a bit longer to make sure? Sure, my God, Kurt. I am sure. If marriage just can't make two people happy, it's as wrong and as immoral as the things they put people in jail for. There is no other way out. If there were any other way at all of freeing myself, don't you suppose I'd do it? But there isn't, and I must be free. Oh, Kurt! She laid her head back, the curve of her throat, like marble in the half-light, and cried silently, her fingers clutching the chair arms. What could he say or do? He walked behind her, and with his hand stroked her forehead, and the sleek blackness of her hair. Don't cry. Don't cry. There's such a lot in the world for you, Chloe. And he went quietly upstairs. Derry was asleep, and he undressed in the dark and crept into bed without rousing him. The scene in the room below had upset him. He was not sleepy. He tried to reassure himself. I've had no part in this. It's not my doing. Not at all my doing. Yet, back in his mind, like a festering splinter, was the thought that perhaps, all innocently, he had. END OF PART II CHAPTER VI Christmas, it was not a white Christmas, and Kurt's parents bewailed the fact, it was cold, but the heavy clouds held no promise of snow. An unusual season, everyone agreed. Inside the Grey's house, everything possible had been done to make up for the unaccommodating weather. Mrs. Grey had hung wreaths of holly in the windows, and paper bells on the chandeliers. In the front bay window, just as when he was a little boy, was a Christmas tree, shining with tinsel and paper stars. On Christmas Eve, they all went to church for the big tree. Kurt saw the familiar barrenness of the place with an amused smile. He received the greetings of the people who knew him pleasantly. They were good people. Such badness as they were guilty of was unwitting. Stupidity was their greatest sin. And if you looked at the church simply as a club of some sort, stripping it of its spiritual pretenses, it was no more and no less baneful than the oddfellows or the eastern star. Spirituality, what was it? He was conscious of it in himself, without conceit, and conscious of a lack of it in most of these dull-eyed faces around him. Yet they were religious, and he was not. Who has art has also religion, and who has not art let him have religion, flashed through his mind, and made him smile at the hopelessness of ever making these people understand so simple and obvious a truth. It made him seem a conceited snob, but he knew it to be true. A group of toe-headed children, dressed in starchy white and proudly conscious of their new shoes and ties and ribbons, were singing a whining little song about sheep and a star and a baby. He thought of shants, shants of the shining glasses and the steamy voice, and of his own youth, and the stormy emotions of those days. He looked curiously about him, and in the choir, here and there, in the congregation, he could pick out boys and girls, as old now as he had been then. It's they. They are the ones. What are they thinking and feeling? If I were brave enough I would know them all. Their armor isn't riveted yet. They could be saved. Saved. The words of shants and the words of his own mind mingled strangely. Come to Jesus. Come to beauty and understanding. Let beauty come into your hearts. You boys, you girls, your young sweet souls, white bodies. Who will come? Who will come? All young, all beautiful. Come to Jesus. Come to beauty and be saved. No, there was not enough courage in him, but I will not lose this, he promised himself. I will not ever lose this. Christmas and his brief vacation passed quickly enough. There was much to talk about for a time, much he could tell his father and mother of New York, where they had never been. Then the time began to drag a bit, and he became eager to return to his work. He had a letter from David, full of regret, that they had been unable to meet during the holidays. From Chloe he heard nothing. Then three days after Christmas, and four before his departure for the East, a letter came from Detroit in a hand he did not recognize. He opened it, and the signature Roy confronted him. His heart skipped a beat, and he put the letter hurriedly into his pocket, and, at the first opportunity, went to his room. He read it, his fingers trembling. It told him briefly that Chloe had filed suit for divorce. But it told him further, that when pressed for a reason, she had said, because I love Kurt, Roy wanted a meeting the following day in Grand Rapids. What did it mean? Why should she admit to Roy what she would not avow to him He wished he knew Roy better. Would there be a scene? He felt singularly incompetent and weak. There was nothing for it, of course, but to meet him, as he suggested, and yet it would be difficult to manage. His mother would think it strange if he were to go away for even one day of his vacation when his stay at home was so brief. He foresaw lies and explanations and evasions, and just now he was too nervous to concoct a likely story. He hated the whole mess. He finally went downstairs. Oh mother, I've a letter here from a chap, a music publisher I met once in New York. He's in Grand Rapids and wants to see me. I think, if you don't mind too much, I'd better run up first thing in the morning. I can be back by noon, and it might mean something for me. She looked her disappointment, and he hated the necessity for his untruth, but she only said, of course, dear, I hate to have you away even for a minute. You're here for such a dinky little while anyway, but you know best, and maybe as you say, you ought to see him, and you can still have some of that pork pie I was planning for your dinner tomorrow. Next day the rain that had been threatening came down in cold sheets, lashing against the pains and freezing as it fell. His mother awakened him. It's a terrible day, Kurt. You'd better give up your trip to the city. I'm afraid you'll catch cold. He sat up, awake at once. No, I'll go. The weather won't hurt me. But it's so cold and nasty out, dear. You mustn't go back to New York with a cold or a sore throat. Still the worrying mother. He laughed off her remonstrances. You treat me like a little boy, mom. He said, feeling as he said it, very much like one. Putting on his slicker over his topcoat, he set out for the station. He arrived early in Grand Rapids and sat on a station bench waiting for Roy. He was overdue, but the trains were late due to the weather. Kurt was cold and miserable. He hated Roy. He hated Chloe. He hated himself for allowing this thing to even happen. The wedge, the wedge. Was this to be it at last? Was the calm progression of his life to be upset in this utterly common way? Tabloid headlines jumping out blackly from pink paper amid the tumult of Times Square flashed like shots from an erratic motion picture through his mind. Young musician in love triangle. Composer blamed for breach. Oh, it was sickening. Incredible that this should happen to him. A train came pounding to a stop under the streaming iron roof. Kurt got up and watched the cars anxiously. There, there he was, he swung off the last coach, which had come to a stop outside the shelter. He was without a hat and wore knickers. He arrived before Kurt breathless, shaking the rain from his coat and turning down his collar. Hello, gee, what a day. It was sunny in Detroit early this morning, not at all like Christmas, so I came as I was. Kurt managed to say the expected things. It was damn cold on the car. Can't we get a cup of coffee somewhere and talk as we eat? I'm froze. His teeth were chattering. He was more nervous than cold, Kurt knew, and that gave him some encouragement. They went to a station restaurant and drank in silence. You're looking well, Roy. Yeah? Say, where can we talk? There was nothing for it but the waiting room. It was a sorry place, an unsympathetic place, but the rain was coming down harder than ever, and the walks, the poles, the wires were glazed with ice. They took a bench in the far corner of the room, near a pounding radiator, facing the wall, yellow and gray above the streaked Wayne Scott. Neither spoke for a moment. Let him start, thought Kurt. He must start. What will it be? What will he have to say? Well, Roy was hesitant. His fingers played nervously with the buttons on his coat. Gosh, I'm still cold. Well, there's just one question I've got to ask, I guess. You know what's happened between me and about her wanting a divorce, I mean. If she were free, would you marry her? No. No, Roy. I've never thought of such a thing. Liar. Liar. He had. Of course he had. But never seriously. Only in the world of make-believe, this fictional world of his letters and Chloe's, in which they were paper men and paper women, manipulated at will, thinking in a fictionally right way, behaving always with the logic of the world of romance. But perhaps Chloe had been serious. If he could only explain all this to Roy, if he could only say, see here, can't you understand its Dairy I love, Dairy and David? I thought not. You see, I was just about floored when I got wind of all this. I knew we hadn't been hitting it off very well, of course, but I thought she loved me. And I love her, Curt. I really do. And if she goes through with this, it will finish me. I haven't got much of a reputation in my field yet, so it won't help what I have got if it gets around that I'm being sued for non-support. It's that that hurts me. I've—I've not been well. I'm not now. You can see how nervous I am, and she—oh, hell. Curt listened without comment. Let him say it all. Well, I went out to Ann Arbor to see her right away. Mrs. Grayling met me like a thundercloud and sailed out of the room. I'll bet she listened in too, damn her. I wasn't mean, but I guess I was a little excited. I asked her if she thought she was giving me a square deal. Asked her what I've done that she didn't like. She wouldn't say anything, and wouldn't sit down or ask me to. Just stood there, wide and so damn superior, while I kept on talking and asking her what was the big idea. Finally she sort of wilted, and went right down on the floor in a heap. If you must know, she said, it's because I love Curt. Gosh, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I guess I stammered a little. She went on then, sort of crying, said you were someone she could admire, someone who understood her, that I had never been, that she had always loved you, and you would marry her as soon as you could. Well, I just walked out after a while, couldn't do anything else. I was pretty sure she was wrong. He seemed anxious to keep Curt from embarrassment, and Curt was grateful. You've written her, I know. Yes, of course, we've been friends a long while. I know, but I know your sort and Chloe's better than she'll admit. You're what they call the artist type. Women fall for you. To my kind, you'll always seem just a little nutty. You'll excuse me for saying this right out. It always seemed to me a little phony, a little put on, all this high brow stuff. And I thought I could laugh Chloe out of it, and bring her down to earth. I couldn't. The more I kidded her, the worse she got. She thinks you're worth admiring, and I'm not. That's all. I sell advertising in Detroit, and you write music in New York. So you're an artist, and I'm a babbit. That's what she's cracked over. Curt started to interrupt. No, I know. You are, of course. Oh, maybe she's not been happy. Maybe I've not been pleasant all the time. But when she gets on that damn superior manner of hers, it makes me soar, and I suppose I rub it in. It seems to me like a lot of hooey. But I do love her, Gray. They could never hit it off, thought Curt. Roy continued. I don't know what to do. I've thought about it all the way over here this morning. If I'm right, and I'm pretty sure I am, you're the only one who can patch this thing up. You know I'll do anything I can, Roy. Well, I figure it this way. See if I'm not right. She's hipped on that idea of you being an artist with ideals and everything. All right. If we could jolter out of that, it might fix things. I mean, couldn't you write her and tell her what you're doing is just a lot of hokum? And you're just in it to fool the world into giving you a big graft. Oh, it's not true, of course. It's not true, he added hastily, sensing Curt's instinctive shrinking at the idea. But couldn't you do it? He thinks it is true. I can understand Chloe now, and Roy too. How dare he ask me that. Why doesn't he look somewhere else? Can't he see that this is as important to me as his happiness is to him? It would be sacrilege, an unspeakable betrayal. And yet he was sorry for Roy in a way. He knew in his heart that he should do this thing, yet he knew at the same time that it would never work out as Roy planned. He knew Chloe too well, and she him. It won't work, Roy. I think it will. She won't know I've seen you see. That's part of the scheme. Let her think all this comes on your own. You've been thinking it over, see, and decided. It seemed an impossible request. It was smashing such an important part of his world. Yet there was a chance that it might work. Any outsider would say so, he felt. Would it? Wasn't there something deeper? If there were, could he destroy it so cold bloodedly? Wasn't it possible that, with love or without it, Chloe's faith in him meant more to her than any relation she might have with Roy? It seemed a preposterously conceited thought, yet wasn't it possible? Still, he was sorry for them both. Should he do it? I don't think it will work, Roy. I can't explain, for you wouldn't understand, which probably sounds exactly like what you're used to hearing from Chloe, but it's true. If you want me to write the letter, though, I'll do it. I don't know how good an actor I am. And in his own mind he added, when it comes to abasing myself, Good boy, Kurt. I do think it will work. If it won't, it's all up with us. And you're a good scout to do it for me, whatever happens. Oh, forget it. I'm not going to help you much, I'm afraid. I am sorry for all this, Roy. He felt a traitor to his own cause. How could Roy calmly ask such a thing of him? It would be cruel and untrue. He was glad when the announcer shouted, Hastings, Charlotte, Lansing, Detroit. Bored! And Roy disappeared on the train. He paced the platform for a half hour, waiting for his own train, and wondering why he had been such a fool as to promise that absurd letter. He tried to phrase it, but it seemed, however he worded it, glaringly false and insincere, What will come of this? What will come of this? He was hazy about divorces and trials and the law, but he knew they sometimes involved scandal and ugliness. He would kill his mother. His head whirled with fear of what might happen, with remorse for all his innocent literary philandering, with regret at his promise, with what he should tell his father and mother of his trip to the city. Nothing was clear. He only knew that he was desperately sad and sick and ledden with unhappiness. Dinner, a little late to accommodate his train, was a torturing half hour. What he said about his interview with the non-existent publisher he never knew. It was an effort to eat, to talk, to look at his mother. What's wrong, son? You're not eating much. You ought to be hungry after a jaunt in weather like this. She said it in a half-dozen different ways. He praised the pork pie and tried to reassure her, knowing all the time that he was not succeeding. When his father had gone back to the store he went up to his room, shut the door, and opened his desk. Even the paper looked accusing. He chewed the end of his pen. At last he wrote, Dear Chloe, I've been thinking of what you told me the other night and wondering if we all weren't fooling ourselves. What is there to all our vaunted idealism? Sounds like a Fourth of July oration. Our art with a big A. I look at myself and wonder how genuine it is and how much of it is just a veneer. A lot, I guess. It's the money I'm after. Don't dare think what you are writing. The rest doesn't matter. The bluff's the thing. And so it turns out that I'm no better than the most bumpious Rotarian. Not so good, in fact, for at least he is no pretender. He crumpled it and flung it across the room. He tried again and again, each time with the same result. If she had a scrap of intuition she would see through any one of them as easily as through a clear window. It was no good. They didn't sound like him. They weren't him. Oh, what the hell? He took another piece of paper and wrote, Dear Roy, I can't do it. If my failure to write the letter I promise to write puts me utterly in the wrong from your point of view, I shall have to accept it. Chloe would never in the world believe the letters I've been trying to write. They were jokes and pretty poor ones at that. They would only cause her, and ultimately you, more unhappiness. I'm sorry, Kurt. He slammed the desk shut. As he did so he heard his mother's voice below. Kurt, Kurt, dear! He couldn't go. And yet he opened his door and went quietly down, the letter in his hand. She was on the Davenport, her lap full of mending. See here, boy, what's wrong? What happened in Grand Rapids this morning? Nothing. Nothing. Yes, Kurt, you've not been yourself at all since you got back. Come, sit down here. She pointed to the space beside her, moving her sewing basket. Oh, please, mother. Why not? It surged in him to be told. He felt, sitting beside her, like a little boy again, her little boy who had come home breathless and silent and afraid. I went to Grand Rapids really, mother, to see Roy. Mrs. Gray's hand fluttered to her throat. She was white. Roy? Roy, Chloe's husband. Yes, what's the matter, mother? She looked ill. My heart, just a moment. You startled me so. What? Tell me about it, dear, please. Chloe's going to get a divorce. You knew that. Roy says she thinks she's in love with me. His heart hammered, and suddenly his head went to her lap, and he sobbed, terribly. All the uncertainty and fear came flooding out, and he didn't care, and was not ashamed. Her arms covered him protectingly, and she crooned, consolingly, little boy words, until he was quieter. He told her all of it, then, lying with his head against the softness of her. When he had finished, she was silent for a long time, stroking his hair. It will all be all right, Kurt, she said at last. Chloe shouldn't have said that, under any consideration, even if it were true. I can't forgive that. But people do so—but people do uncalled-for things sometimes. Once, she hesitated. I've never told anyone this, Kurt, not even your father. But one time, about a year after we were married, someone knocked at the door. This very old house it was. I was sewing, as I am now, in this room. It was one of our best friends. He came in. Why shouldn't he? And before I knew what was happening, fell on his knees, asked me to run away with him. Said he couldn't live without me. I felt very much as you do now, Kurt. I got him away somehow, told him he was being very foolish, and never did think of such a thing again. It all seems silly now, but he's still a good friend of your father's, and getting bald and fat. But such things do happen. You're good-looking, Kurt. Women are bound to like you, maybe even to run after you, so it pays to be careful, always. How strange! His mother. He tried to accept it, but it was hard to see her, in this room, puzzled as he was now. And, he reflected, much more certain of the rightness of what she did. But she was in love, and was loved, and unquestioning of either. For him, the problem was distorted in ways she could never understand. Chloe loving him, if she really did, and he loving her brother, and Dairy loving only his mercuric self. A strange triangle, this. Was ever such a situation before? Someone will be brave enough to write such a thing some day, to be believed, and to escape unscathed. Not now. He kissed his mother, and went out to mail the letter. That night, he wrote, Dear Chloe, I've been thinking about you. You, and what you told me the other night. I'm sorry it is so, but the decision is yours irrevocably, isn't it? And I'm confident you'll do the right thing. Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I shall know that you're going ahead. If you do, I'd suggest that you do not write to me again until everything is settled. It may spare you some unpleasantness, for people talk so easily. It's too bad that it is so, but it is. Doesn't this seem wise? It may be hard to be wise or prudent at such a time, and possibly my letters might bring you some cheer during these trying days. But you can forego them, and I will forego yours. And then, someday, they can start all over. Love, Kurt. Nothing more came from Chloe. From Roy, the day before his return to New York, came a brief note. Dear Gray. I knew when you told me you hadn't written that I was all up. I don't blame you. I guess there was no help for it. I hate like hell to sit idle under a charge of non-support, but it seems to be the best way out now. I won't contest. Roy. When he got to his room in New York, there was a small pile of mail waiting for him, and on top a telegram. It was from Chloe and said only, You are right. No letters until March.