 CHAPTER III. NEXT DAY THEY MOVED. And the simple action of transferring their belongings to a new place seemed to mark the opening of a new chapter for them both. Severn, for Kurt, had been fallow. He had done no work. The rain, with its depressing monotony, the new surroundings, the natural laxity after a summer of hard work at Fontainebleau, and the sudden complication brought about by Chloe's letter and Tony's arrival, everything had worked against the mental peace that composition demanded. In St. Paul, things were different from the outset. There was none of the ravening loneliness that had made the early days of rain at Severn a torment. Tony was good company when company was wanted. Furthermore, Tony's vivacity, his scoffing intolerance of the sentimental, made introspective probings and questionings and self-pityings seem purile and strangely, for Kurt, out of place. Their life together, without any haggling, fell at once into pleasant and congenial grooves. Tony made the keynote speech on their first evening in the new quarters. The fire crackled and spat, and the lamp, Kurt, had extinguished. "'See here,' Tony began. "'You want to work here, don't you? Well so do I. I've got a jolly idea for a play. I don't want my play spoiled, and you don't want your concerto or whatever it is spoiled. They both will be if we start this thing off wrong. We've misbehaved once, at my suggestion. That was part of your cure. Well, you know how I feel about that. I enjoyed it, and I hope you did. For me, that's enough. And you're not so sure about me, is that it? No, I'm not. Your experience with this thing has been—I don't suppose I can admit that it's been right, considering my philosophisings to you. But it's been pretty clean and fortunate. I expect the other night was the first time you ever slept with a person you didn't love, or fancy you loved. I'm afraid—' "'You're afraid,' Kurt interrupted, that being a simple country lass, I'll fall in love with you.' He was smiling in the flickering half-light. "'Well, yes, that's what I'm afraid of. Why are you afraid of it? Because I like you too well. That doesn't sound quite logical to me, but we'll have to let it go with that. You're Arbiter in this matter. It's up to you. All right, then, I am Arbiter, and it's all settled. We'll be—' Here his voice became mock-dramatic. We'll be, Lord Fortescue, as though nothing had ever passed between us. And on that basis the month proceeded, day after perfect day. Kurt reveled in the house, the rugged picturesque town, the ordered simplicity of life. And Tony, too, was less restless than at Severn. Elise, a stodgy girl the owner had recommended to them, came each morning, prepared their breakfast of strong tea, crusty bread and preserves, did the necessary housework, got ready a simple lunch, and departed. After a forenoon of work, Kurt in the garden or in his room, Tony on the balcony of his, they would meet to eat what she had left for them. They would walk then until tea-time, along the twisting climbing road to Vance, or, more often, some inviting path through fields and wooded hills, and descending to the valley play like two-ten-year-olds in the shallow water of the Vare, making toy boats and ports to harbour them in, with bridges and docks and fortresses and lighthouses. Or they would take sometimes the jerking trolley to Villeneuve, and thence towards grass, dismounting wherever they chose, and walking the pleasant miles back to St. Paul, with Stephen lagging at their heels, for dinner at the inn and a quiet evening by their own fire. Never it seemed to Kurt had he known such utter content. The past, by a willful forgetfulness, had faded to a dream—a background for the present, but for the moment impinging on it scarcely at all. Tony was in part, at least, right. To worry, to question, to submerge oneself in a sticky swamp of conjectures about things one couldn't hope to change, was stupid, undeniably. He thought of his mother, worrying always about him, worrying this very day he knew about his health and his safety, and he knew whence his own propensities came. David, Derry, Chloe, the strange triangle would intrude itself again in his life inevitably. But the moment was good, and the triangle should not be allowed to throw its wedging shadow across it. His work was going well. After the weeks of morbid idleness, ideas were fertile, and they matured with surprising desilty. Out of an old tune his mother had sunk to him as a boy, the old New England ballad on Greenfield Mountain. He was evolving a score that pleased him hugely. To himself as he worked he fancied the music patterned itself loosely, after the quaintly sentimental tale of the young farmer, who, as retribution for mowing on the Sabbath, was struck down by a black snake, and died at the side of his own true love, a perpetual warning to the ungodly. The melody, with its slow dragging opening measures, lent itself surprisingly well to adaptation, and he found himself working at it with an ease and a willingness that surprised him. They had been a fortnight in St. Paul, when one evening Kurt played parts of his suite to an enthusiastic audience of two, Tony and Stephen. The latter's enthusiasm centered principally on the piano pedals, and manifested itself in clumsy attacks on Kurt's feet. Tony's, however, was genuine and sweeping. His temperament made him particularly susceptible to music that was gay and vivacious and a bit satirical in intent. Kurt, basking in this unaccustomed adulation, was in high spirits. It's your turn now, Tony. I haven't heard your second act yet, and I'm all agogged to know what Miss Beasley said to the Duchess. Little persuasion was needed. The table was shoved aside, and the room became an impromptu stage, where Tony, playing all the roles with equal verve, enacted his still unfinished play. It was, it seemed to Kurt, a brilliant thing in its way, brittle, sophisticated, a comedy of manners bordering perilously on burlesque, yet skirting the edge with such agility that this feat alone added delight to the performance. I'd like to try my hand at music to a libretto, like that some time, he said. When Tony had concluded the Duchess's last crisp retort, and with a regal gesture of an imaginary lornette, collapsed on the divan. Tony was silent a moment. Then he leaned forward into the glow of the fire, eager with the idea. Well, why don't you? Do you mean it? queried Kurt. Why not? Why didn't I think of it before? It's a corking idea, Kurt. The spirit of the thing's right, isn't it? Make it an operetta. Not just a musical comedy. Go Gilbert and Sullivan. Will be McGarran and Gray. Will you? You could do it in swell shape. When'll we start? I know enough producers in New York to give us a hearing, and who knows? The novelty of a musical show with a plot and music might make a hit with them. If the shock wasn't too severe, just at first. Tony's enthusiasm was contagious, and they both went to their beds that night, much later than usual, full of a new idea. It prospered amazingly during the remaining weeks of their tenancy. Kurt, when he set himself to it, worked rapidly. His head buzzed with tunes, and his fingers were hardly able to keep pace with the pen. The libretto was finished in three days, and both Kurt and Tony set themselves to writing lyrics with a joyous zest that was the best possible background for the emerging operetta. An unexpected, mordant sense of humor in Kurt, whose existence he had hardly suspected, with a certain gift for pertinent rhyming, made him an able contributor, and between them the duchess decides, took form with a speed that surprised them both. The tunes, Tony insisted, were corking, gay, light, lilting, and the lyrics, thought Kurt, were quite above the average. The air of the old house was frivolous with music, harmonizing voices that made up in ardor with a lacked in skill. Tapping toes, shouted suggestions that echoed through the old walls, with, often, startling incongruity. The blue warm air outside, however, the gold globed orange trees, the teeming scarlet geraniums, were an understanding company. The staid dark citizens, seeing those mad young men, one dark, one fair, marching down the cobbled street arm in arm to the tune of some outrageously shouted and quite unfamiliar song, were surprised but tolerant. Blue day fled blue day, and gold day after gold. They had been a month in St. Paul, a month Kurt was to look back upon often, and regretfully, as a sort of golden interlude, a perfection of living never again to be captured. His work on the duchess decides was done, and he was restless. For Kurt there loomed the not too pleasant task of preparing acceptable piano scores to the various numbers he had so glibly concocted. The sheer physical and mental strain of writing down so many black dots and flags and signatures, and bars and rests he dreaded. But he set himself to the task, and got along well enough so long as Tony left him alone, but Tony was restless. The manuscript of the play was like a gift of money begging to be spent, a bottle of champagne begging to be drunk, an adventure begging to be lived, and he was impatient at the methodical scoring and the slowness with which it seemed to move. Kurt was too busy to regret the passing of that perfect sympathy he had so much enjoyed, but he sensed the tension of Tony's uneasiness, and worked the harder to set it at rest. On a day that seemed the climax of all these perfect days, a day like the old Tokay, Kurt and Tony met as usual at breakfast over their steaming bowls of tea, and for the first time it seemed necessary to talk of plans. Previously it had been tacitly understood by each that the forenoon was to be for work. Any discussion that might occur came at lunchtime, but this morning Tony was ill at ease. What's your program this morning, Kurt? He asked, testing with a tentative and careful fingertip the heat of the bowl. That second act chorus, the hussars, it's tricky, and if it doesn't get a good harmonic background it'll be a total loss. Oh damn the harmonic background, said Tony petulantly. It's a grand day. Why not forget it for once and go for a walk with me and Stephen? Yes? You know you'd be blaming me in your mind every step of the way for not being at work on your on our opus. What's the trouble, anyway? Oh you know well enough, I'm bored, and I'm raring to get our duchess to the producers. There isn't another thing I can do on it, it's all up to you, and I can't sit around here and listen to you thumping out those damn chords on the piano all day. They seem so senseless all by themselves like that. Don't seem to be getting anywhere. Come on along, it'll do you good, but Kurt was not to be persuaded. He left Tony morosely crumbling a crust of bread on the check tablecloth for a lease, grumblingly to pick up, and went to his own room. He stood for a few minutes at the long window swallowing deep lung-folds of the almost liquid sweetness of the morning. From the top of the low hill opposite, and beneath him, a barelegged girl tugged at the tether of a laden burrow, as loathed, apparently, to be at its rightful task this glamorous morning as he was himself. He turned to his chorus of the hussars with a reluctant but determined mind. Overhead he could hear Tony's slippers thrown down, and Stephen's silly scramblings across the tiled floor, and then the heavier steps in the slamming door that told him they were out of the house, and he must work and earnest. He sighed as he fumbled with his pages. There was no swift and illuminating stroke of inspiration in this. It was drudgery, no more. The writing down of what was singing in the mind so clearly, so self-evident, this was simply a matter of knowing how, and it always made him impatient. He could fancy himself so much more entertainingly, and, with some conceit he thought valuably, occupied. So he was not polite when Elise, perpetually puzzled by the vagaries of her two strange employers, fumbled at the door and made it apparent that she was anxious to make the bed, and a few minutes later he threw down his pen in exasperation when the latch again rattled and the door was partly shoved open. This time, however, it was not Elise, but Tony. Kurt sat back in surprise. "'You back so soon?' he said. Tony kicked at his walking-stick and looked out the window. Then he turned. "'It's awfully foolish of me to stay on here, Kurt, without a thing to do,' he spoke hurriedly. "'I haven't too much money, and I can't get a part of New York this season if I'm not back soon. Then too I'd like to see what can be done with the Duchess.' He looked at Kurt for the first time since he had come into the room, straight in the eyes. "'Would you mind awfully?' he asked. "'You could stay on here as long as you liked, and—' "'Stay on here alone? I guess not. "'Or do you think I might have an affair with Elise just to complete your cure?' He grinned derisively. Then he rose and put his hands on Tony's shoulders. "'See here, kid. If you feel you've got to go, that's all there is to it. You mustn't consider me. I wouldn't stay on here without you on a bet. It wouldn't be right at all. But I can go on down into Italy as I planned at first, and finish the score in about two weeks of steady work. Then I'll have to be about this scholarship business again.' "'How long does that keep you here?' "'Until June. That gives me plenty of time for Rome and Munich and maybe my last month in Paris.' "'Yes, well. Now that I've decided, I'm not going to put it off. See here, knock off work, get on some respectable clothes, and come to Nice with me. We can find out about a boat for me in the trains, and I'll treat you to a farewell dinner, what say.' It seemed an occasion for some special celebration, and in an hour they were off by way of the jerking trolley to Sovereign, and the careening motor-bus to Nice. Here their errands done, and an aperteef sipped at one of the cafes fronting the square. Our Tony took in a special delight in pointing out three distinct young men at three distinct tables who were distinctly on the lookout for male companionship, and whom Kurt, in his innocence, would not have looked at a second time, or a first. They strolled along the shore to Reynos. The dusk was just descending, a lavender veil, bringing with it up and down the shallow curve of the bay erratic rosy lights, a cool breeze from the Mediterranean decided them to sit inside. They chose a table against the far wall of the cafe, and turned their attention to the menu. "'Who's your girlfriend?' Tony asked suddenly. Kurt, looking up, discovered a plump lady across the room, smiling at him, and waving a glove. Kurt waved back. "'You remember her at the Pinceon in Sovereign. Kathleen Horan. She's Irish, and she paints. That's what. Watercolors,' said Tony. Right. She's really a good sport, has enough money, apparently, to do as she likes, and she likes to live the genteel Bohemian life wherever the fancy strikes her. She was at Sovereign before I went there, and left soon after you came. I think she's in Villa Franch now. Tony ordered champagne, and the dinner was proceeding pleasantly when Kurt felt Tony's hand clutch his knee under the table. "'Look what's arriving!' he whispered. With considerable gaiety a party of four had come in and taken a long table against the wall next to that of Miss Horan, who was viewing their somewhat alcoholic joviality with a beaming tolerance. Leo Rubin, red of face, talking loudly through his flat nose, was host. Mrs. Rubin, in a tweed suit, looking ready as Tony whispered to Kurt to psychoanalyze the universe, chattering voluably to the other couple. "'Frank Harris!' Kurt overheard. Might be down to spend the next weekend with them. Kurt listened intently. "'Harris interests you a good deal, doesn't he?' Tony said, amused at Kurt's attentiveness. "'Of course, doesn't he you?' Tony shrugged his shoulders, encountered with the question. "'You've read his life of wild. Yes. Like it?' "'Well, I thought it was a biography of Harris as much as wild. I liked parts of it. Parts of it annoyed me. How?' "'His attitude. It's the typical attitude of the he-man, making a great show of his tolerance for wilds' perversion, and wanting all his readers to know exactly his own position. "'Well, why not?' asked Tony, with a light laugh. It wouldn't do him any good to be classed as one of Oscar's boyfriends.' "'Oh, don't. Of course he's excusable. But how can he be expected to write a really sympathetic biography when he has no understanding of the thing that underlay all wilds' troubles?' "'But,' Tony interrupted. Kurt paid no heed. He spoke with an animation that Tony found new and amusing. "'Before you came, Mrs. Rubin gave me his autobiography, my life and loves. Have you seen it?' Tony shook his head. "'It's appalling. It shocked you?' asked Tony, smiling quizzically. "'I've heard it was pretty raw. Yes, it shocked me, but not the way you think. It wasn't the moral thing in the puritanical sense that shocked me. It was the bad taste, such an obvious pandering to dirty minds. He tells in nauseating detail about his affairs with women. And here, this is what I'm getting at. He describes his love-making with great gusto. Lust, there's no better word, strange caresses, tongue, teeth, hair. Think surely as perverse as what he deplores in wild. But because it's a man and a woman, it's all right. The real object of this thing called love, normal love, is creation, isn't it? Babies, new humans. Really then, any part of love-making that hasn't that immediate object is perverse.' Tony started once more to interrupt. No, wait. I'm not saying that I approve of that idea. And you certainly don't. It destroys your game of love. What I objected to all through the book was Harris's opacity, his inability to see how little difference there really is between that sort of dallying and ours. Almost at the end of the book, he seems to see the light. But he doesn't see it graciously. And I hated that. Hated it. Kurt's face was flushed. The champagne had taken effect. And Tony's was surprised at his vehemence. But Kurt had not finished. You remember the night you gave me the lecture? You said that love was all alike. You were right about that, so was lust. Each kind of passion, man and woman passion, man and man passion, has all degrees of love, from love that is pure and high and fine, down the scale to lust that is ugly and despicable and beastly. Each kind has its prostitutes, its procures and pimps and houses. And each kind has its ideal lovers, its Pala and Francesca, and Dante and Beatrice on the one hand, and its David and Jonathan, and its Shakespeare and Willie on the other. The only difference is, the only damn difference is that for us, there's no way of getting social sanction. So we go around the world like a lot of sorry ghosts, being forever ashamed of a thing we've no reason to be ashamed of. He put his chin heavily into his cupped hands, and the glass is tinkled with the impact. Oh, see here, Tony admonished. Forget it, for now at least, the Rubens have discovered us. It was apparently true. Ruben himself was grimacing at them maliciously, and the whole party was eyeing them with some amusement. It was obvious that they were being discussed. He shouldn't do that, Kurt whispered, and then abruptly. Where's the bill? Let's get out of here. Let's get out. His hands shook as he rose. Tony, with a quick perception of how difficult it would be to cross the café directly into these contemptuous, politely sneering faces, and passed them to the door, went first, and achieved the exit grandly, as an actor might be expected to. He turned for a reassuring word to Kurt, and Kurt was not behind him. Damn! He had forgotten Miss Horan. As Kurt passed her table, his chin high, his face flushed and defiant. Without a glance at the Rubens' table, she caught at his sleeve and simpered, Oh, Mr. Gray! Kurt's willfully assumed nonchalance was totally upset by this unexpected salutation. He swayed a moment, his hands moving helplessly at his sides. You seem to be in a great hurry, you two. You're not going back to St. Paul so early in the evening, are you? Yes. Yes we are, Kurt stammered, his face burning, conscious only of the peering faces just at his elbow. Stephen floppy-eared Stephen, illogically flashed into his brain. Stephen, he said nervously, Stephen our child, we have to see that he's all right. There was a snort from Ruben and a hoarsely whispered, My God, they've got a child, and a shh from Georgia, an amaddening assortment of snickers from the rest of the party. Kurt turned and ran to the door, his eyes blinded with hot tears of mortification. He started up the street at such a mad pace that Tony had to skip and half run to keep up with him. Oh, what a fool, what a goddamn fool thing to say, how could they laugh like that? He was half laughing and half sobbing, and Tony, with difficulty, threw him down on a bench by the waterfront and quieted him. His own worldliness, his arduously acquired indifference and superiority, were strangely shaken by the whole episode, and particularly by the storm of passion this quiet young man had summoned up. It was partly the champagne, without doubt, but there was a depth of feeling, a flaming intensity hidden away here that he had not suspected, a quiet soul-consuming bitterness he could have comprehended, the sort of thing he had encountered in Kurt when he first came to Sovereign. But this made him look curiously at his docile companion of the past few weeks, and wonder how wise his glib prescribings had been. Oh, come on, Kurt, he said tenderly. What does it matter? What do they amount to, the whole lot of them? Come on, forget it. To Kurt this low-voiced sympathy might have been his mothers, and he a little boy again, white with hatred of the school bullies. Tony's arm across his shoulders was somehow his mother's arm, and crying silently, he dropped his head into this consoling lap. End of Part 3, Chapter 3. Part 3, Chapter 4, of Better Angel, by Richard Meeker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker, Part 3, Chapter 4. Richard surrendered his package, picked up his change, and sauntered out of the post office, with a feeling that was partly relief and partly regret. The last pages of the piano score of The Duchess were off to Tony in New York. He had worked so steadily at it since coming back to Paris that it seemed strange not to have it hanging over him. He wondered vaguely whether he would hear from Tony at all anymore, now that the manuscript was completed. His letters had been so brief and so impatient for the rest of the score. He realized, too, with a quick tightening of his throat and the old familiar heaviness in his chest, that the loneliness that had been hovering over him, kept away only by the steady routine of copying, the pedestrian setting down of notes and bars and signs, the armor of drudgery, was now descending with the pervasiveness of fog, and was to be dissipated about as easily. He might have gone to his room. He had secured a small one on the third floor in the Rue d'eternan, near Foyats and the Luxembourg Gardens. But while it had seemed acceptable enough for a copy room, he now had for it a distinct aversion. February was barely over, and there was already in the air an intangible sense of spring. Albert turned his back resolutely on the Rue d'eternan and walked quickly into the gardens. There were grayish-green buds on the chestnut trees, and in their lacy shadowings spring seemed more than ever a new certainty. A number of old men played at bowls, the balls clicking together sharply. The benches were dotted with students alone, reading, in angular, unconscious poses, or in twos, conversing earnestly, and with nursemaids ribboned and starched, while children, screaming shrilly, rolled hoops as tall as themselves, along the sun-flecked paths, with ever-returning spring. The half-line, from where he could not say, ran a persistent refrain through his head. Spring, spring, recurrent and recurrent, and always the same. Spring and Barton, with maple leaves, like green small hands, with marbles in the schoolyard, with rubbish burning in backyards, with heavy-footed horses turning and turning in small garden plots as the plows turned up the moist earth, furrowing it patiently for seeds again, for growth again. Spring and Ann Arbor, with students strolling through the early evenings in couples or alone, Dairy and Kurt, together on a spring night, on a moon-witened hillside, Spring, spring, loneliness tugging at the heart, tears in the night, joy in the morning. He swallowed. What the hell? He turned up the boulevard Raspel, looking now and then in the windows of the scattered, strangely assorted shops, the dome, the rontonde, each crowded and noisy with chatter. He found a vacant table at the dome and ordered a café au lait. It was pleasant here, in this babble of English and American voices, with only occasionally a phrase of French, like a struggling cross-current, young men in knickers and gray ties, some with beards, some with too long hair, girls in smocks or smart gowns from the boulevards, sipping green pernose. It might almost be, Kurt thought with a chuckle. Some art school in New York. There was even a battered forward at the curb. He was startled by a bustling, feminine voice, just at his elbow. Why, Mr. Gray, it was Miss Horan. He jumped to his feet, embarrassed. Won't you, won't you sit down? Thanks, thanks. I've been hunting a studio, and I'm dead. She dropped into the chair, which, to Kurt's surprise, barely shivered. The waiter was beside them. What'll you have, Miss Horan? Oh, she exhaled, relievedly, taking off her velvet tam. I'm glad to see you. Last time I saw you, you were in a great hurry. Kurt blushed and stammered. Yes, I—well, I made a very stupid remark, and your neighbors took it the worst possible way. I was quite embarrassed. You were? Oh, well, it's nice to be able to be embarrassed, you know. I can't any more. The beer arrived, and Kurt found himself curiously glad to be chatting with this large, frowsy woman. It was a weapon, this casual meeting, against the encroaching loneliness, and for the moment he was happy. They talked at random, until Miss Horan declared she must positively be off. Kurt walked her to her room, which was just off the boulevard in a narrow court. Bade her goodbye, and made for the nearest metro. He was soon at the opera, and making for the American Express. There were several letters, and he thrust them all into his pocket jealously. He threaded through the afternoon crowds off the boulevard to the Madeleine, and thence to the Champs-Elysees. The great parkway in this late afternoon was kaleidoscopic, with moving figures against the pale green background of spring. Kurt passed one of the theaters. The bare-legged children were all gone, and the low benches empty until another day. A man was fumbling at the tiny-stage door, his arms full of gangling puppets, in a strenuous attempt to fasten it. His wife stood by, chattering at him like an angry squirrel. Kurt, smiling, thought, poor puppeteer, she thinks he's a puppet too. He found a deserted bench at last, and took out his letters. There was always, so far from home, an unaccountable reluctance to open letters, a wanton struggling against the very real impatience to know their contents. He sat holding them for several minutes, sorting them over, studying their casings, and arranging them in the order in which they should be opened. The two business letters from the conservatory, the letter from Tony, the one from home, and last of all David's, for it was David, in this sudden softness of spring, David's eyes, David's promises, that recurred over and over again. Tony's was the briefest note. He had secured a part and was in rehearsal. He was anxious for the complete score. He'll soon have it and be satisfied, Kurt muttered. From his mother, the church supper was well attended, the snow is nearly gone, we've had to have the dining-room repapered, your father is reading the seed catalogs, love mother, and, scrawled at the bottom, the same goes for dad. David's envelope bulged. There were pages written in the flourishing, exciting hand he knew, perhaps, better than he knew the person who had set it down. Yet here was a love letter, a spring letter, bursting with promises and assurances, and begging for promises and assurances in return. This was the letter for such a day, ecstatic and willful and turbulent and ridiculous and wise. Surely, surely, David's high ideal was his forever, not Tony's, not Chloe's, not the world's, but David's. A thin, soft voice insinuated itself into his tumbling dream. You buy nice rug? Good rug, cheap! A small Arab, a pile of rugs over his shoulder, held the edges of them out appealingly. No, no, said Kurt, no rugs. Good rugs, cheap! the vendor insisted. Kurt shook his head emphatically. The Arab drew closer, and shoved under his nose, from some recess of his loose garment, a card. In the glance he gave it, Kurt saw a tangle of white limbs, an obscene octopus of human flesh, pictures, nice pictures, the man wind. Naked ladies, two, three, four, all together, naked, no. Kurt sprang to his feet in a rage, and was away before the astonished vendor could collect himself and follow. His heels bit angrily into the gravel path. Why must such vile things thrust themselves in over and over? The lascivious picture, fight against it as he would, called up Tony's tale of the Philadelphia Party, the amorous heaps of young men on saffron cushions, and David there, smiling and superior. What should he believe? It was spring, spring, love was in the restlessness of his soul. David's eyes said, wait, wait, wait. Tony's curling lips said, you're in Paris, boy, find a coquette and see what love is really like. Chloe's smooth dark hair whispered, forget, forget, and come to me, to the Chloe you've never known, my lips, my breasts, my body. He turned back into the boulevards, uncertain where to go. He realized that he was hungry, and, stopping at a small cafe near the opera, ordered dinner. He sat long over his wine and cigarettes, questioning himself futilely. Was he a fool? He was young, he had never known a woman. It was spring, this was Paris. Would it hurt? Dared he? Could he? David, David's eyes, wanting only David, how could he? He paid his bill and walked on in the dusk. The lights, lavender, yellow, were springing out of the half-dark, like stiff, exotic, strangely phosphorescent fruits. He hesitated before crossing the plos to opera. A cringing figure was at his side. Got plans for tonight, buddy? He moved away, impatiently, but the figure, little more than a voice in the gathering darkness, followed. I'll show you the sights, swell house, nice clean girls, seventeen, eighteen years old, hot stuff kid, you won't go wrong, I know Paris, boy. Oh, so do I, leave me alone. He dashed in front of a careening taxi, and his escape was signaled by the screech of brakes, an explosion of gallic oaths from the driver, and a bedlam of protesting horns. He dove again into the metro, boarded a train, and got off at the plos Pigalle. He came out again into the garish night. The streets and cafes swarmed with noisy amusement-seekers. Again seemingly predominating. It was a seething contrast of light and shadow. Faces upturned, catching the shifting multicolored lights of the signs, or curious unhealthy flowers moving through a wall-purchase night, lustful and secretive, vulgar and perverse. He swung into the crowd. The moulin rouge, the rat mort, each drawing its quota of satiated but ever-hungering humans. Oh, why not, he thought. And avoiding a half-dozen scalpers, he secured himself a cheap seat for a review. It was a nauseating performance, too obviously exhibitionistic to be remotely funny. The women were pasty and too fat, and moved through their art poses, like dilapidated automatons. The men at either side of Kurt watched eagerly, nudging their neighbors' win as the climax of each number, one girl, slightly less fat than her sisters, undressed in some perfect masterpiece of bad taste, and took her seductive pose in the white pencil of the spotlight for the curtain. Kurt looked about him at these men, young, old, fat, jowled, thin, staring with amorous and bovine satisfaction at these successive tableaux, and shuddered. The secret small triangle beneath this bit of sequin that each man lusted for. This it was to be normal. The Arab rug-vendor, the pimp at the opera. A stud stable, lacking the dignity that nobler and less self-conscious animals might give it. He fumbled his way out. The whole vile world seemed bent to thwart love, natural or unnatural. That was pure and worthy of the name. This knowledge, Tony was so anxious for him to achieve, this mystery that hides between a woman's thighs, might conceivably have been a mystery, delfic, lovely, approached with fear and reverence. But now, in this fevered night, it was a dirty secret behind a bit of sequin that any man with a few francs in his pocket might buy. No, it was not for him. From dark doorways as he passed, whispers came sifting into his consciousness. A rouged hand with cheap rings on it, caught at his sleeve, a warm body pressed against him. And he shook her off roughly. He walked rapidly, through light streets and dark, across the boulevards, through the tuleries, in the sane across it, and along it again, calmer now, but abysmally unhappy. Ahead of him, loitering, was a thin girl. Kurt stopped abruptly. Did he want this knowledge, which the man-world thought so vital? Was all the raging of the last few hours nothing more than a noisy mechanism to defend him from his own fear? Was he afraid? Christ in heaven, was he, under all this fine philosophizing, a beast like all the rest? The girl had stopped under a street lamp and was looking back at him curiously, her face mask-like in its lilac flickering. No, whatever it was in him, hungering, aching, unsatisfied, it was not for this, he knew. Not for something to be bought, whatever it was. He felt in his pocket, hastened his step, thrust into the hand of the astonished girl, a 20-frank note, and hurried off. There were still people in the cafes. He rounded the corner by the odion. The evening's crowd was just coming out. The night was warm and soft. He turned into his own street, stumbled up the dark stairs to his room, and lay face down across his bed in the darkness. Spring was like running fire in his bones. He could now, he thought, almost, no. No eternally. He rose and switched off the light. The mirror across the room reflected the garish wallpaper. He crossed to it and stared at his face reflected there. Intently, abstractedly, as a stranger might. You, he said at last, you, you should have bought the Arab's pictures, the whole dirty lot of them, and taken them to bed with you. He retired then, but did not sleep for a long time. CHAPTER I It was only going away, reversed. The film turned backward. The emotions, too, like some topsy-turvy, cinematic sunset, rising now from dim to bright. As a year ago, they had faded from bright to deadly dim. As the great boat swung clumsily about in the river, the same crowd, apparently, stood like a swarm of puppets on the same pier, with the same mazy motion of the mass. Through the seething thicket of arms floated a red scarf, Chloe, he sighed, like one surprised that his expectation had been so perfectly realized. And under this serpentine of red, were, he knew, yes, he could see them now, Derry and David, Derry and David and Chloe, nothing had changed. The boat had swung into the river, he had fallen asleep, and now the boat was swinging back. Time was a ghost. It was all some little plotted trickery of fate. They were, before long, shuttling away from the pier, crowded and laughing in a taxi, and deposited at a village restaurant for lunch. One of David's haunts, Derry explained. Kurt sat, his elbows on the table, staring avidly at first one and then another, and expostulating needlessly at intervals, in the barrage of questioning. Gee, it's good to see you all again. It was cool and dim, and there were few other customers. David's hand gripped his knee under the table, and David's eyes, David's eyes. I dug this out especially for you, Kurt, remembering last June Chloe indicated the red scarf. It never seemed like you, that color, he replied, but I'm glad you had it. I don't wear it any more, I leave the flamboyant colors to the kid brother. I suppose you've noticed the necktie. Very da-da, Kurt approved. Derry's getting worldly, I only see him when our mutual friends arrive from Europe. David sat frowning darkly at this bad news, but said nothing. There were silences during the luncheon, when each of the four felt the imposition of the presence of the others. Luncheon over, Chloe twisted her cigarette in the brass tray and rose. Back to the box factory for me, I'll see you again soon. There was the wistful wishful look in her face, as she turned to him, that Kurt knew and dreaded. Why, sure, of course, Derry at least knows where to find you, doesn't he? Oh, I suppose he still got my number somewhere among his addresses. So long, all, and she went out. How's she making out, really? Kurt asked Derry. She never said a word about it in her letters. Pretty well now, I guess, Derry answered. The job at Columbia didn't last long. She's so darned-independent, and she's very upish, doesn't approve of us, I guess. David was obviously unwilling to talk now. Derry continued. She got this job doing decorating of some kind—toys, boxes, trays, candlesticks, and things like that. It pays fairly well, and keeps her mind occupied, which is a good thing. Very put in, David. Derry laughed. Chloe and David don't hit it off so well. Oh, shut up, Derry. You're always putting your foot in it. And don't forget that you're a working man, too, old bean. This whole forenoon, he explained, turning to Kurt, has been a sort of phage chanpetre in your honour, you see. Lord, yes. Derry looked at his wristwatch, rose and sauntered off with a theatrical nonchalance, waving a see you later as he went through the door. Kurt watched all this unfamiliar posturing with an amazed smile. What the devil's got into Derry, he asked. Oh, it's a long story, Kurt. Here, let's go. It's only a couple of blocks to our rooms. I'll help you with the bags, and we'll walk it. The room to which Kurt was led was on a third floor in McDougal Street. It was almost a replica of David's room in Ann Arbor. Kurt sank back into the black divan, smiling. Come here, he said, holding out his arms. Later, quietness having enveloped them in the dark room like a soft cocoon, holding the two of them there together in the calm, complete happiness that comes so seldom and becomes so cherished and so rare a memory, words, explanations, seemed inconsequential and petty. Kurt thought, and he whispered his thought to David. What if life for both of us should end now with this moment? Would you care much? I shouldn't care at all, David answered softly. I shouldn't care at all. Oh, Kurt, all this time you've been gone, I've wondered so if it could really be, if I could really care for anyone as lastingly, as awfully, as I seem to be caring for you, wanting you. I couldn't credit it quite, knowing myself so well, but now, now that you're here, I'm sure, sure, sure, it's you and me now, Kurt, it's got to be. David went to the delicatessen for food for supper, which, since Derry would be out, they decided to have in the room Kurt, languid, happy, unpacked his bag. It's you and me now, it's got to be. Tony's exhortations, Chloe's fears and desires, melted dimly into the past. The moment was too anesthetic for them to prick through into his consciousness. Yet he knew they would have to be answered. It's you and me now, it's got to be. Supper was pleasant, and the evening that followed it, as they lay in the dimly-lighted room, talking carefully, slowly, with long intervals of silence, David trying so painstakingly to come to the complete sympathy and understanding that both desired. How very unlike, thought Kurt, those evenings with Tony and St. Paul it was, those evenings full of absurd, endless discussions, of absurd, endless topics. Tony arguing heatedly for some far-fetched theory, not for the sake of the theory, but solely to bask in his own skill, his mind, hard, brilliant, veering off like a polished ball from the slightest hint of sentiment. Here all was soft and yielding and persuasive and lethargic. David told of the winter with Derry, hesitantly, stumblingly. There was in him now none of the glib superiority Kurt had shrunk from when they first met. All David has to offer you is a spineless idealism. The phrase of Chloe's letter came back to him. "'Something happened to me, Kurt,' David was saying, when you left. None of the old diversions seemed to matter. But how hard it is to get away from those diversions, Kurt. They fly up when you least are looking for them or wanting them. Derry and I took this place. Derry, I thought, would be good for me. I liked him very much. Oh!" he hastened. "'Not as I like you, Kurt. Please believe me. But, well, you know Derry. I didn't very well, I guess. He's so damn sure of things, so solid, so little introspective, so little caring for the theories and reasons of things, as long as he has the things. I thought he'd be good for me, but I'm afraid I've only been bad for him. You see, I've—I've—' He took Kurt's hand and held it closely. I've never felt so afraid before of telling things. "'You needn't,' said Kurt reassuringly. Maybe I know more about it than you think.' David, not noticing, went on. I started this sort of thing when I was such a kid, Kurt. And I'm so sorry for so many things since then. I ran away from school because I was bullied. A man picked me up in a restaurant and was very kind to me. He seemed to offer the things I was wanting—a sort of v. Bohemian—with money and clothes and an idle and beautiful, sinful life. The physical thing was so new and so glamorous in Ozzie's establishment. There were always some of the boys about. You don't know them much, do you, Kurt? Not much. They're a sad, strange lot, finding a feverish and hysterical kind of happiness in new associates—always new boys, new men. You're carried away with it when it's new, and sometimes even when you're older. There's a circle that's always getting wider. You get known and sought after or avoided, but you get known. It's like some great and terribly secret society, with its own life, its own passwords and signs. And once you're in it, it's the very devil to break out. You get older and you try to look younger. Your taste gets more and more jaded, and you demand more and more perverse diversions. And what happens to you at last, God knows. But the terrible part is, you're known and marked wherever you go. There's a circle here in New York, there's one in Philadelphia and Boston and Detroit and Chicago and Hollywood, and anywhere at all you go, there's always someone who knows you. Well, he shrugged his shoulders slightly. That's how it was here. I still don't know how it happened. I thought, anchoring myself to you and to Derry, I was safe. But one by one, they'd find me out and come. I was out of it, truly I was. That's what you did for me, Kurt. I saw in you, you see, someone outside the circle. Someone strong enough to stay outside and to hold me there. A way of escape. But they came, and Derry was swept off his feet. It was all new to him. He's in it now, and he shouldn't be. For he's not the type, you know he's not. He's only in it for the thrill. Not because he can't help himself, or because there's nothing else. He's so damned normal, really, and it's worried me like the devil. And there's nothing I can say, he knows too much about me, Kurt, and he can't see how different we are underneath. For a long time they were silent. David, supporting his body on his elbows, played absently with Kurt's fingers. How do you manage, you two? It's been a problem. Derry has had work most of the time. I've done some drafting for one of Ozzie's friends. He made a rye face. And Kurt, believe it or not, I've sold three stories. No, I didn't know you. I didn't know it myself. I've always wanted to, I guess. And when you came along, promising such fine accomplishments, it made me hate myself. The stories were pretty bad, I'm afraid. But I did them to sell, and they sold. I want to write a book. And you've already written some of it, Kurt hasard did. Yes, bits, but it's hard. And I've got to do it well, and I hate work. What's the book about, David? It's about us, Kurt, and this. David's eyes were darkly serious. So you see, it has to be done carefully. For it's got to be, oh, it sounds high hat. But it's got to be a sort of vindication of our kind of loving, you see. A vindication to the world. Nobody's ever done it, really. Shakespeare's sonnets are gloriously, but nobody seems to dare admit it. The professors, the fools, get all tangled up in explaining what's as obvious as two plus two. Shakespeare loved the boy actor, and he celebrated his love in the finest, cleanest, highest poetry of his whole career, and did it without shame. And now they manufacture all sorts of shifts and silly dodges to avoid calling Shakespeare an invert. Oh, hell! All I want is to show people we're not monsters any more than Shakespeare was. That's all. Oh, I know the Continentals have a hand in it, Proust and Wittekind. But it's America I want in my book, New York and Philadelphia and Hollywood and St. Louis and New Haven and all the rest. I don't know if I can ever do it. You can do it, David. I know you can, and you'll have to. Yes, he said slowly. Yes, I guess I'll have to. It keeps me awake nights. Again they were silent, until David asked, what about Tony McGarran? Tony? Nothing about him at all, David. More than I told you in the letters. He's a good friend, and that's all. He pulled me out of a frightful case of funk, and he was a good company. We worked together on the show I told you about, and that's all. You're sure that's all. All. Absolutely. All. All right, Kurt. I'm jealous as hell, and you may as well know it now as later. I think I'd knife anybody that wanted you. You're so damned wantable, Kurt, though you don't know it. I'll worry every time you step out, for fear you'll find someone you like better than me. I'll probably be bothering the life out of you, if you so much as look at anyone. And if your show does go through, God help me. Why? Why, Kurt, you innocent. Don't you know that there'll be musicians and dancing masters and singers and chorus men and rehearsals galore? I'll be chewing my nails off here at home. Kurt laughed. There's no immediate danger, I guess. At least I dare not count on it. I'll have to see Tony tomorrow and find out what's doing. David considered the prospect glumly, while Kurt watched him, amused. They went to bed early, and Kurt lay awake for a long time in the unfamiliar room, trying to adjust himself to this new order. At the pier that morning, all had seemed unchanged. Now he knew that nothing was quite the same. He had left with a regard for Derry that seemed unshakable, and now, a year later, he lay here with David, regarding Derry's clumsy amours with a detachment that was hard to understand. He had left with an affection for David, so meshed about with David's symbolism and David's ideal, that all his feeling was nebulous and uncertain, a spiritual ecstasy rather than a physical love. And now David's head lay close against his throat. And he knew that he loved David, as he never could have loved Derry. Loved him more deeply because his love was required and understood. And Chloe, what of Chloe? The relationship there was certainly unchanged, but no. In her that morning he felt a growing hardness, something unyielding and shell-like that the year had built up around her, and a cretion of bitterness that was a new barrier between them. Was he wrong? Would he? Could he be happier with Chloe than he was now with David? As if sensing Kurt's wakeful questioning, David stirred in his sleep and laid his arm across Kurt's breast. No, no, no. What was there more than this? In finding David's lips he kissed him again into wakefulness. Next morning he left the apartment before either David or Derry, who had come in late, were up. There were three things to be done, and then he knew he must go home, home for the summer with his father and mother and Barton. Save for leaving David the prospect was not unpleasant. They wanted him there, and it was only fair that he should go, but first he must see Tony and have lunch with Chloe and visit Korlov at the conservatory to discuss prospects for the fall. He dared not count too much on the duchess. He breakfasted in Times Square, more raw and blatant than he had remembered it, and walked on to the fifties. Tony wasn't up, but he finally came to the door looking tousled and theatrical in orchid crete pajamas. Good God, Kurt, don't you know we professional people are never at our best at this hour? Come in and park yourself on the bed, how are you, and how are your sexual problems? Kurt grinned and tossed a blanket at him. I'm interested in the duchess, he said, and not in me, oh well. And sighed dramatically. Our damned duchess is still withbraining. He won't say yes and he won't say no, but he hangs on to the script as if it was the last button on his braces. But in the meantime what is the most vital juvenile of the American stage doing? He is living on charity, you'll take me to lunch, of course. I will not, said Kurt, I'm dining with a lady. And I can't go along? No you can't. You remember your instructions, don't you? You don't want to queer my cure, do you? No, oh no, of course not. In which case I'm going back to bed. Let me know where you're going to be, and I'll wire you the fate of the duchess. I'm glad we didn't leave her in Siente in the last act, she'd have had a family by now. And he crawled back into bed. Kurt, laughing, started to leave when Tony called after him. Oh Kurt, see here, is there anything really a potential in this luncheon date of yours? Come with me if there isn't, I'd like to have you meet my Joda, she'd do you good. We still have your Joda, do you? Oh my yes, he was exaggeratedly emphatic. We still have our Joda, all of us. We call her the little mother of Yale. She'd be very friendly, Kurt, I don't think she's had a composer. We'll let Joda go till later, he laughed over his shoulder, and went out, looking at his watch. There was still plenty of time to visit the conservatory before lunch. He held a taxi, and found Korlov engaged with the student. He sat in the corridor with the familiar, insanely mingling and dissonant sounds beating and snarling about him. At last Korlov's door opened, and the departing student came out, looking very warm and tired, and Kurt saw the broad back of Korlov, arranging sheets of music on the piano top. He knocked and went in, Korlov turned, and, recognizing him, greeted him enthusiastically. Kurt Gray, he exclaimed, and put his hands on Kurt's shoulders. How glad I am to see you! Just back from Paris, eh? I trust you have not been bitten by the bug. Ah, that poser! Arek Kassala! Madmen, that's what they are! Madmen! Kurt smiled as Korlov fumed. You were laughing at old Korlov, eh? Ah well! He shrugged his heavy shoulders with mock resignation. He fingered the music on the piano, while Kurt told him of Paris and Fontainebleau, and concerts and Philippe. And what did Montsur Philippe say about your playing? Just what you said, sir, that I'd never be a great performer, too impatient of routine. And you were sad, then? Kurt smiled at the old man's quaint phrasing. No, I was not sad. Good! said Korlov, you should not be. You can be a good composer, and God knows we have enough piano players already. What are you going to do? I'm going home for a while to Michigan, have to find something in the fall. How would you like to teach? What, and where? asked Kurt. We have a request, said Korlov, confidentially, as if there might be spies at every window. We have a request for a teacher at Brookway School. You know that school. Yes, I've heard of it. New, isn't it? Un-Connecticut, and disgustingly wealthy. Yeah, oh, so wealthy. He lifted up his eyes, and his hands expressed his incredulity at such lavishness. A Mr. Brook gave how many millions I do not know two years ago. The buildings have been all finished now, and they will be open in September with about fifty students. Boys? Yeah, boys, up to college age. You would have their charge of all the music teach harmony and do, so they tell me anyway about what you like, no discipline, one of these modern schools, not like my old gymnasium. It doesn't sound so bad, said Kurt. No, for you it sounds good, to me good. You would be free much of the time, and quiet for your writing, eh? It's not a highly academic sort of place, I take it. No. Korlov stroked his jowl thoughtfully with the backs of his fingers. When do you go home, he asked. I was going to-morrow, but should I do anything definite about this place, now? Stay over one day, and to-morrow after lunch I take my car and we drive to this Brookway school, and you can see then yourself. Kurt agreed and departed, hurrying to the nearest subway station to take a train downtown. He arrived at the shop just at noon. As he climbed the dark flight of stairs, two girls descending, eyed him curiously. He found Chloe scrubbing a recalcitrant spot of paint from her finger. Take a look in the shop while I get organized, Kurt, she said. He went through the door to which her dripping hand pointed. It was a large high-ceilinged room, light in spite of the grime that crusted the windows. At the far end was a small but well-equipped carpenter shop. The rest of the room was filled with tables, piled with wooden novelties, some ready to be assembled, some complete and ready for paint, others drying, some piled on shelves, ready to be wrapped and boxed. The whole place smelled of shaving and paint and oil and turpentine. Why don't you wash your windows, Kurt called. We did try it. Chloe's voice came to him punctuated, with gurglings of the drain, washings and blowings. But it was so ugly outside we were glad when they got dirty again. Come on, I'm ready. She took Kurt's arm and they were on their way. If you don't mind, let's go to a Chinese place near here. It's not much to look at, but the food's good and it's cheap, and I darent take more than an hour. Getting off to see you arrive yesterday for noon was just about all I dared attempt for a while. And about all I'm worth, too. Chloe laughed and squeezed his arm. Even had he walked like this with a girl, not since, a year ago, the two of them, in so strange a tangle of moods, had plotted the paths of Central Park, in a darkness more than physical. But this was not the same girl, he told her so. Of course I'm changed, she said. You think I'm harder, well, perhaps I am. One has to be, living here. The year has been happy, it's been hell. She turned into the restaurant and ordered lunch. One can't be happy when the thing she wants most she knows she can't have, can she? Kurt embarrassed, avoided her eyes. Still the same then, underneath, still wanting his love. He was irritated and flattered at the same time. The situation, to the average fellow, would have seemed so simple. Yet to him it was complex and impossible of solution. She wanted him. There would be no scruples, no evasions. Yet the thought of physical union with her, with any woman, was a devastating fear. You don't like David much, do you? He asked, not knowing why he asked. Sorry, as soon as the question was out. I despise David, he's ineffectual and weak. The very words of her letter, Kurt remembered. But it's not that alone, it's something deeper, a thing I can't explain. I dislike him as I dislike worms and spiders, oh Kurt. She leaned across the table toward him. I've been so frightened at all this, so frightened. Darius made such a fool of himself. Don't you? Don't let yourself. It's all wrong this thing you're caught in, you three, and you can't see it. You're not different, you just think you are, and you mix everything all up and make the normal thing so difficult. Kurt was flushed and silent. How could he argue this thing with a girl like Chloe? Didn't she suppose he had gone over it all a hundred bitter times? Couldn't she see the difference between perversion as opposed, a languid espousment of perfumed decadence, and perversion how he loathed the word, that was deep in the core of you, flooding your veins and arteries, making normality unnatural and the natural abnormal? Kurt, I'm sorry. I don't know whether you're right or whether you're wrong, but I know this, if you ever want. Oh, what's the use? She hid her head in the crook of her arm, her hand clenching her shoulder, and Kurt feared for a moment she was crying. Then she raised it and smiled, wonly. The tea's good, don't you think? He was sorry for her. Pity swept him, and sent his hand impulsively across the table to lie for an instant on her own. She here, Chloe, don't let it all upset you. I don't know, maybe, but just believe I'm trying to find out. It's also uncertain, so it odds with the every day. Kurt, Kurt dear, her voice was soft but insistent. Let's say no more about it, I'll help if I can, and that's all the ride I have to mix in at all. Let's have some rice cakes, with fortunes, and then I'll have to get back to the paint pots. CHAPTER III From the time their car entered the gothic arch, and rounded the curve of elms that let through a glimpse of its truncated gothic tower, Kurt liked the Brookway School, who was an amazing place to find set down here in the rolling hills of Connecticut. Less than a year old, the buildings had been so carefully designed and so skillfully aged that they seemed, like buildings he had seen in England, to have grown from the soil, with the elms and the oaks and the maples. The headmaster, Dr. Leffington, was an oxonian, who had been chosen because his ideas were sympathetic with those of the founder of the school. The idea of the donor you see, gentlemen, he explained, was to provide a school where boys might develop their originality, their individuality, I am an etonian myself, and I recognize the evils possible in that sort of school. Our aim here, then, will be to get men of the highest possible caliber, scholars rather than pedagogues, and give them the greatest possible freedom with their charges. The method, that is to say, is inspirational. The place alone is inspiring, said Kurt. Quite a success, don't you think? The classrooms were large, heavily beamed rooms, with individual table desks, rugs, prints, and, in each, a great mouthed fireplace, with benches built on either side for discussions, Dr. Leffington explained, smiling. The commons, the dormitories, and all their furnishings were surprisingly beautiful and comfortable. In his own study, Dr. Leffington turned to Kurt. Mr. Korlov tells me you're the sort of man we want on our staff here. Now, I must tell you that I know very little about music. I have the average man's distrust of the usual temperamental performer, with no background and an enormous conceit. On the other hand, I want to avoid the merely pedestrian music teacher. Ya, ya, put in Korlov, these artists, they are sometimes, my God, how angry they make me! But they can play usually. This boy. And he laid his hand affectionately on Kurt's shoulder, is not like that, no. Both Leffington and Kurt laughed at the Maestro's clumsy compliment. Your job here, as I see it, would be to teach harmony to those who are inclined, and to encourage all amateur creative talent, whether for composition or performing. The usual horrors, glee clubs and such things, will have to leave to the will of the boys, and to you. My idea, too, would be to inaugurate an informal course in music history and appreciation, which would be interesting enough to draw in most of the school. I'm going to be successful, I think, in getting $5,000 this year for a concert fund, in which case you would act as impresario. Your salary would be $2,000 plus your living. The Masters will eat in commons with the boys, but you would have your own digs, study and shower, and I'll see that there's a piano in yours if you come. What do you say? I say yes, emphatically, it sounds interesting, more than interesting, he hastened to add. I'm sure I shall be happy here. Good, said the doctor, will go to the Secretary's office and settle it. Kurt left Korloff at Washington Square. He turned into MacDougall Street and ran up the stairs to David, eager to tell him of the new job. He tapped on the door a tattoo, rapid and broken, as a Gershwin rhythm, the words of his story, rising in his throat, ready to burst forth as soon as David appeared. The door opened and David stood in the dim light. David, he began excitedly, I've got a— Kurt, David interrupted him, I've done a dreadful thing. He shut the door and leaned against it. Kurt saw then the whiteness of his face, and noted the strained nervousness in his voice. He was in evening clothes, and his face was white as his shirt front. Kurt's own excitement was forgotten in his concern for David. What is it? Come here. His voice was high-pitched, hysterical. He drew Kurt to the bed and seated him, and then, lying down, put his head in Kurt's lap, his arm flung across his eyes. I've broken with Ozzy. You've—David, why? That's nothing to worry about. It's the best news I've had since I've landed. I'm so awfully glad, kid. I hoped you'd do it of your own accord and soon. Oh, but I didn't do it bravely, Kurt. There was a scene, and I acted like a fool. I only just got back in the house, and I'm—I'm not quite myself yet. What happened? Do you want to tell me? Yes. Yes, let me. He sent me a wire this afternoon, saying he was in town for the night and asking me to meet him for dinner. I didn't know what to do. I'd been worrying about it, anyway, more since you came. His hand sought Kurt's and held it fiercely. I love you so. I knew there would have to be an end with Ozzy, but you didn't know. But didn't know how—how to do it. Oh, this must sound strange to you, Kurt, but I'm an awful coward. Ozzy's been good to me in his way. He's given me clothes and money. He's kept me. He's fond of me, I guess. At least he's never stuck to any of the others like this. I didn't know what to say to him. You were always in the background watching, and I was self-conscious and strange, I suppose, when I met him. He's so damn suave and can be so superior and so sneering. David turned his body so he could look more squarely into Kurt's face, leaning above him. It kept up all through dinner. Suppose you've got a new lover, he said. Suppose he's innocent and fine and all the rest of it. I suppose you're going to go platonic again. And then he began reminding me of all the thousand things I've tried so hard to forget, Kurt, he said solemnly. I've got the worst temper a person ever had. Kurt laughed incredulously. You don't believe it, but it's so. Don't ever, ever get me into such a state. I'm like a lunatic, Kurt, really I am. Something floods up in me like a red-hot mist, and if I were stronger, I suppose I'd be dangerous. Once when I was just a little kid, traveling with my mother, the train stopped somewhere. Luca, I think it was. I got angry at something and lay on the track, and screamed and tore my clothes. They had to pry me loose before the train could go on. I've always had them, he said. Well, what happened? Ozzie should have known better, but he teased me until I was blind with anger. Oh, I don't know what I said. I told him I was through. Told him I did have another lover. I tipped the table over and ran out and took a taxi here. He hit his face in Kurt's lap, and Kurt could feel his whole body taut and trembling, like a violin string stretched to the point of breaking. Why couldn't I have done it decently? I always feel so, so strong, so swept along when I have a tantrum like that. And then when it's all over, I see that I've been so weak and childish that I hate myself. Don't do that, urged Kurt. Maybe it wasn't done just as you'd like, but it's done, and I'm glad. And he held David's tense body close to him. The minutes passed slowly. A thin streak of light from somewhere outside penetrated the curtain and fell obliquely across the small statuette, touching it to a weird lightness in the room. Don't leave me this summer, Kurt, whispered David. I don't know what to do without you. Must you go? And then—what? What if you shouldn't come back? Kurt held him closer and told him of the afternoon's interview. A boy school, you say? Yes, a prep school. I don't know whether I like that or not. Kurt laughed. Don't worry. I'm not interested in seducing adolescents. Or adept. I'm interested in you. Remember what you said? It's you and me now. It's got to be. And it has got to be, David. That's all there is to say. All that needs saying. You've no need to worry. I'm older than you, by two years. And my slate's pretty clean, isn't it? Yes, Kurt. I wish mine were as clean. It's pretty well chalked up, he said, roofily. It doesn't matter. One break in the armor is a sure sign it's not spearproof as twenty. I thought until you came along that I was, how shall we say it, a strict monogamist. You caused me a great deal of grief, David, then, when I felt dairy slipping away from me, to you. I never thought then that this could happen to me. But it has. So I've had to find a new justification for myself. What justification is there but love? None, dear, none. Only the old one that so long as love is required, the lover must ask nothing more. When it's not, he may go seeking. So it's up to us both. Again they were quiet. David again spoke first. I don't know what I shall do this summer. I'll have to get a job of some sort. Kurt knew he was thinking of Ozzie's checks. You won't go back to Ozzie. Kurt, no, he'll hate me after this. I, I want him to. It must have been a pretty scene. He laughed bitterly. You care? No, only I'm ashamed it couldn't have been done more decently. I'm glad, so long as I have you. Well, that's that then. Summer's not long. In the fall, something will turn up. I'll have money. Maybe you can live near Brookway and work at your book. Something's got to happen, dear. Don't worry. No, please don't. I'll have to leave tomorrow. Let's not think of anything unpleasant tonight. It's you and me now," he whispered. It's got to be. End of Part Four, Chapter Three. Part Four, Chapter Four of Better Angel by Richard Meeker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker. Part Four, Chapter Four. At home in Barton the summer days passed quietly, a little monotonously, as he had known they would, yet pleasantly too. Things were not much changed. His mother was older, and his father, he thought, much older. Their obvious delight in having him back and their pride in his accomplishments, negative as they were, were at least partial payment for the things he missed. And the things he missed synthesized themselves into David. David's devotion, David's desirability, only seemed to make the gulf that yawned between him and his parents deeper and more difficult to bridge. It could never be bridged, he knew, and he wondered often if they felt as strongly as he. He thought not. It made no outward difference. He had always lived inside himself, hugging to himself with miserly ardor, his most real treasures of mind and spirit. He found one day in a trunk in the attic a box of old photographs, among them a daguerre type of his mother at seventeen. Here was a prim, sweet-faced girl in a costume stiffly quaint, gazing at him with barely familiar eyes from the darkened tin, a pleasant picture but not his mother. She had been young. She had had young men who loved her. She had had a love affair with his father, and he had been its fruit. Yet all this seemed more remote and unreal than it might have seemed in a well-written novel. He recalled the day he had had the little rendezvous with Roy in the railway station at Grand Rapids, and, when he had come back distraught and frightened, his mother's confession to relieve him of his bewilderment, of the love that had been offered her before he existed. For the various moments then, in his own chaos, the similar moment in his mother's life had pulsed with reality. She, the aging woman, with lined wrists, his mother was, for a moment, the startled girl confronting something unforeseen and appalling. But the moment, with its exquisitely attuned sympathy, had passed, and she was only his mother, the aging woman with lined wrists, sitting in a world outside his own trying to comfort him. The barrier, the barrier, it was what caused all the trouble, ironical that a few years should erect so impregnable a wall. There was no way to penetrate it, no door, no crevice, no ladder over, no tunnel under, no path around, save only its dissolution by some miracle, high and tender, and brief as breath. And such a moment might come but once in their whole lives. There it was, three decades and a world. He knew he could never tell them, never hurt them, never even explain to them this wall that shut them apart. He must go on with the evasions, the hypocrisy, the compromises that he despised. And so, through the last slow weeks, his life seemed to him a thing divided. Here was the instinctive life, the life of eating and sleeping and breathing, the life of drives after supper, of an occasional picnic at the lake, of torrid nights in the small familiar room over the porch roof. It seemed now so much smaller and shabbier than he had remembered it. And there was the nightly surprise of finding the heavy arms of the maple on the corner, whose leaves as a boy he could never have touched from his window, scraping the shingled roof and thrusting their darkness against the screen. To make more solid the curtain of wavering pale light the street lamp cast against his wall. And here too, secret and apart, the imagined life, so vital and precious, with David its core and its will and its passion, he read, finding new delights in the sonnets of Shakespeare, in Shelley and the patterned brilliance of Proust, and yet in all that flayed and slightly nauseous society, no figure he knew, comparable to David or himself or Derry, blundering through an unavoidable and uncharted fate. Somewhere there must be an honest picture of it all, Plato and Michelangelo and Shakespeare, as well as the rye and sorry streets of Sodom. David's frequent letters, as the days went by, became increasingly tormenting. Looking only to the day of their reunion, they were so crowded with his yearning that it was hard to forget their tumbling phrases. And in all quiet moments, during the day, at night before sleep, David was with him, but teasingly out of reach. David's eyes, his voice, his body, in this posture, or that, were with him, a profane and sacred pillar of cloud by day, and a fire by night. Sometimes his reticence breaking down before the vigor of his desire, he would send a poem, a fragment, a page of jottings, ecstatic or sad, but always pregnant with promise of future joy. Love tears my ribs apart, he wrote, and cracks my thighs. Love's irons are scorching out my two sharp eyes. Love gnaws a black jaguar at my red heart. Love snaps the pieces of my brain apart. Love is a dove, love is a petal-boy, love is a rural song, a pale calm joy. All you who say so lie, love is a beast, stretching his claws from west to bloody east. If you should hear him snarl and be afraid, hide like the mole, be circumspect and staid. He'll pass you by, and you will breathe as well, and you will have forgotten the joys of hell. You will grow old respectably and shriven, but you will have foresworn the pangs of heaven. Such exhortations were not conducive to work, and yet a new incentive was given him before he had been long in Barton. He had left with Korlov the piano score of his Greenfield Mountain suite. Knowing that Korlov, in spite of his voluble derision of the modern, would send him a valuable criticism of it, Korlov's letter was better than he had hoped. Kirk could see the heavy old man writing the letter, and as he had so often seen him in his studio, laboriously, with frequent consultations to the dictionary, your suite, he wrote, is good. It is really American, indigenous, and yet sophisticated in treatment. Its cleverness is its worst fault, I feel. But it is a skillful piece of work, and you are a young man. He then advised Kurt to score the work for a small orchestra. It is ideal chamber music. I think its charm will be best expressed by simple orchestration. You can rely on your much coveted modernity on the line of composition itself, and its general confirmation. Score it this summer, and I shall let the Chamber Music Society of the Little Symphony have it this winter. The work, prodded on by this assurance of Korlov's, progressed slowly, and the summer passed. Often after a letter from David, it gave him a singular satisfaction to walk alone at night, as he had done so often before. He trod the same dusty, straggling roads at the edge of town. Nothing here, either, seemed changed. Holmes stars, the soft insect Takadas of the night. Yet in his heart what a change! And there was at least some periphery of peace around his chaos. A happiness which promised, it seemed to him, more and more certainty as the years went by. It had been tested. The few days with David were, perhaps, a hardly secure basis for such optimism, but in the seething ocean of his uncertainty, this love, so perfectly requited, he fastened upon avidly. When a lonely person grows older, because he is lonely, for whatever reason, there grows up in him, perhaps unconsciously, an ideal towards which he bends, an ideal of perfect self-reliance. Consequently, when his loneliness is broken in upon by love, if that love is not recognized by its object, and requited, his whole nature rebels at his captivity. If he is introspective, as he probably is, the struggle is all the fiercer. He hates himself, his groveling will, and he cannot completely understand. For love in him, in anyone, has always in it an element that is beyond reason. And reason for the lonely man has become necessarily his arbiter. Why do I love you? Why do you love someone else? The eyes, the hair, the mind, the talents, the attitude, you say. But there is something beyond and behind, hidden and ineluctable. Others have finer eyes and hair and mind, others are finer artists, and have more admirable philosophies, and yet we do not love them, you and I. It had been thus with Derry, and now, that flame dead for lack of fuel, this other, in every respect so fostered and fed, seemed a miracle no less. The basic problem, that which made any love of his, furtive and secret, was unchanged. But that too, he found, one could gradually adapt oneself to, as small animals of the wilderness adapt themselves by while and stealth and subterfuge to an encroaching humanity. It raised barriers, tangles of barriers. But if only some open plot remained, where two who have loved could be free and happy, that freedom and that happiness could, he felt, overreach all bounds and fill all the empty crannies of his life, and David's, to such fullness that the barriers would matter not at all. And so, through the slow quiet summer, this duality of life went on. With the life in Barton, and the life that proceeded curious and aloof in his own mind with David, apart, and yet more real, more constantly mixed in his thought and emotion than the familiar ways of home. To see David again, to be with David, became an obsession, by night, by day. Yet his eagerness to be off, for his mother's sake and his fathers, he valiantly concealed. It went east, late in August, as a lover, to a fervently anticipated rendezvous, feverishly eager. David, grand central, must not kiss, must not. The taxi, the word saying nothing, filling the silence only. The stairs, the key in the door, while his heart seemed ready to choke him with its pounding. The dark, and David. Oh, it was sweet this, and certain. There was nothing to say, no need for words, in this complete acceptance of each other. This fusion, whose language was all in dearments, as old as love. The week between his arrival in New York, and his departure for Brookway, was David's. He was working afternoons in a drafting room. Kurt would meet him for dinner. From then until lunchtime, the next day, they were together. Mary's evenings were occupied, as they had been in the spring. Chloe he saw but once. The old question was on her lips, the old longing was in her eyes, and his new happiness with David only made her question, and her longing, the more poignant. Nothing to do now, did she sense it? He could not tell. Tony was playing in a summer stock company on Long Island, and was not yet back in town. It was, both Kurt and David knew, a test, and at its conclusion they both knew that, unless the test had been too short, it was successful, for their parting was as difficult as their meeting had been eager. For the moment nothing could change. Kurt had hoped, and told David of his hope, that there would be some way in which they could be together, work for David in Hartford, or New Haven, within driving distance of Brookway. But after much discussion, they gave up the idea as too uncertain for the present. Something's bound to happen, David. Kurt repeated again and again, I can see weekends, often, and something's bound to happen. End of Part 4, Chapter 4.