Carl Van Vechten

“ My God, why was everything so damned neat? Nothing dislocated, nothing tortured, just everlasting neatness! As symmetrical, his world, he surmised, as the two halves of a circle before Einstein.
I forgot to ask yoy, Jennie—he addressed the figure kneeling in front of the fireplace—what's the matter with the furnace?
She turned her pretty, smiling face in his direction—even she, he noted, was like a rubber-stamp, like a maid in a French farce or a girl on the cover of a magazine—as she replied. The furnace is out of order, sir. I thought you knew. ”

“ There is, Vera, I assure you, there is something. Bending over her chair he lightly brushed the back of her head with his lips. When he had departed, the tears coursed slowly down the lonely woman's chubby cheeks. Mr. Whittaker, stern, unyielding in the matter of his prejudices, with a firmly fixed idea that a wife's place was in her home, had ruled her with his strong will, and now Paul Moody was able, she had discovered, to rule her by his very nonchalance. Well, she reflected, to salve the pain of the knowledge, men must work and women must weep. ”

“ Gunnar groaned. It was impossible. I felt drawn back involuntarily. I cannot get along without you and yet my reason tells me that I am miserable every instant I am with you. What am I to do?
I suppose, Campaspe replied, as if she were reflecting, that the flaw in your system—and every system of philosophy must have at least a single flaw—is that you have overlooked the importance of preparing for the reactions of the sex impulse.
It must be stamped out, he cried.
That is exactly what you cannot do. You are finding out that no life is possible which excludes sex. I know. ”

“ Life was amusing, after all. Work was amusing. Even Vera contributed her share to the savour of his happiness. She made so little trouble and she possessed such a delightfully unconscious vein of humour. As Paul stepped into a doorway to light a cigarette, he began to chuckle over a new idea which had occurred to him. How ironic, how ludicrously perverse, it would be to support Vera, supposing war or failure or some other great human or natural force should suddenly sweep away the Whittaker millions! ”

“ In other respects she was a pathetic, old woman, as restless as the Wandering Jew, always searching and never finding. The undiscovered secret of perpetual motion might, after all, be lust. Why had no inventor ever contrived to enslave this terrifying force, to turn it to practical account? There was not, to be sure, more than a hint of this vehement, unsatisfied desire in the actual words used by the Countess in speaking, but it was easy for Campaspe to look through the nervous, the almost shrill, commonplaces of what was said into the harassed soul of senile agony and longing. ”

“ I said to myself, isn't it enough that one man has done it? Isn't one martyr enough for one cause? Why has my beloved Paul got to go down and suffer and sweat and take off his coat and die when Mr. Whittaker has already done it and left us enough to feed an army with? I thought it would be just dreadful to have you away too, Paul, until the other day I remembered that you're away so much anyway, with your friends, that it is an actual relief to know approximately where you are, and you've done so splendidly now, and it gives me so much to talk about when I go out. ”

“ With her drawing-room crowded with what she called her time-fillers, men and women of Laura's set whom she permitted to visit her occasionally, Vera Moody was announced. The appearance in the doorway of stout Vera, her curved figure expensively upholstered in black velvet and bundled in furs, her bosom festooned with pearls, her eyes circled by a betraying red, was a signal for Campaspe to invent a suitable excuse to rid herself of her other callers, not a particularly difficult feat for a woman with her superior cunning. ”

“ Every one, I suppose, has his own peculiar ambitions, he averred; some desire happiness, others hanker after gold, some seek God, others, knowledge. There are those, even, who only want to forget. It seems to have occurred to no one, not even Jesus Christ or Napoleon, to aspire towards everything.
Campaspe regarded the youth with a new interest, and again she was struck by the illusion that an amber glow illumined his features. ”

“ After a little, he pressed forward, instinctively walking softly on his toes, until, as the ranks of columns fell behind him, in the circular clearing in the centre of which rose the furnace, he was confronted with an amazing spectacle. On the stone-flagged pavement a youth reclined on his belly, his chin sustained by his palms, his forearms supported by his elbows. The young man, who might have been twenty-two years old, was absorbed in the pages of a book spread flat before him.
Paul, utterly unbeheld as yet, rested immobile for a moment while he studied the picture. ”

“ You were, indeed, Campaspe echoed sympathetically.
Love, I found, is not happiness. It is a kind of consuming selfishness which ends in slavery. You belong to some one else. You no longer live with yourself. You lose your freedom and become the servant of glowering moods and the powers of darkness. You suggest a shadow rather than an object. ”

“ Nimbly, like a monkey, to exhibit her prowess, she made her way from limb to limb. Pink petals in showers fluttered to the verdant sward. The governess wrung her hands and wept. What shall I do? she moaned. What shall I do? What a child!
At this moment Consuelo caught sight of Paul. ”

“ Don't you find it rather absurd to write books about the futility of life? Campaspe demanded.
Gareth grinned. Not at all, he replied. I write my books to prove how futile life is in a vain effort to forget how futile it is!
Campaspe studied the novelist's face with more interest. You do not appear to have many illusions, she volunteered.
Illusions! It would be pleasant if nobody had any. Only the thoroughly disillusioned expect nothing from others. They make life slightly more human. But all of us have illusions, or sentimental moods, which amount to the same thing. ”

“ Paris is so dull. What is every one doing here? No, I don't play Mah Jong. . . . I know so few people in New York intimately—I've spent so much of my life with foreigners. Perhaps, it has been all wrong. Do you think it is too late? O, Campaspe, you must help me to undo the effect on my spirits caused by this rain! Does it rain all the time here? It's even worse than Paris.
You'll see the sun occasionally, Campaspe replied. On days like this I usually keep my curtains drawn. I never know that the weather is bad unless I go out.
I'm tired of the theatre, the Countess went on. ”

“ The duty of a philosopher (and the modern philosopher knows his duty) is to keep the sheep; that is to say, to drive the wolves of thought away from the people, and hang the wolves up—in hard and long words, in the philosophers' complex minds that are fitted out with little hooks to hang each wolf up by. . . I believe that the more dead anything is the more it lasts; and the more ignoble a thing is the longer it lasts. The most base thing in me longs the most to live for ever. . . . Campaspe closed the book and stared a long time into the fire. ”

“ Paul particularly enjoyed the interminably prolonged luncheons at the Moloch Club, quartered in luxuriously furnished rooms directly under the roof of one of the tallest sky-scrapers where, after devouring a female lobster, one might sit about for an idle hour, with Vanity Fair in one's lap, bending a careless ear to the fellow sitting next to you on the deep, comfortable couch, upholstered in brown leather, and discovering, quite casually, all the details surrounding the latest spouse-breach. ”

“ Campaspe again was not listening. Her nerves were playing her odd tricks. She had the impression of a presence in the room, a presence that was affecting her emotions in some disturbing way. Like a lone hunter, in the depths of the jungle, suddenly instinctively conscious that somewhere nearby, behind the screen of green that obstructs his vision, a man-eating tiger lies crouched for a spring, she awaited, not without trepidation, the moment when the unknown force should choose to become visible. ”

“ There was the possibility that I might fall into step with the automatic puppets, become one of the squirrels in the treadmill, or one of the restless panthers behind the bars. In whichever direction I turned life seemed to be hopelessly dominated by these conditions: stupid, ovine existence, complicated, and often rendered ridiculous, by the arduous rigours of sex. The married were not free from it, less free from it, indeed, than the unmarried. With married couples I noted a constant suggestion of straining on the leash, a desire to break away into forbidden fields. ”

“ Campaspe rose, stooped over Gunnar, and grasped his shoulders. Why, she queried, do you think I brought you here?
Why? he echoed, stupefied. Why?
Here I am. Here youare. There is the bed. I am strong enough now to give you what you want and still walk away free. I am willing to do so. . . . She was speaking with great gentleness. . . . If you want to be free also you must reject me of your own accord, with your own will. Are you strong enough?
As she removed her hands from his shoulders, Gunnar bowed his head into his palms and wept.
Gunnar, Gunnar, I am so sorry, so very sorry. ”

“ Gunnar grasped the word, as though startled by a new idea. How can one go about becoming a prophet?
Campaspe turned her eyes casually towards his face as she responded, It is the easiest and the most difficult state of being in the world to achieve. All it requires is an unceasing reliance on one's own instincts. If you become strong enough to create this magic current, in time it becomes quite possible to understand other people even when they don't understand themselves. ”

“ Lou must always instinctively have resented the living Ella. Sympathetically, as well as geographically, they must have dwelt thousands of leagues apart. It was only in death, as a matter of fact, that Lou possessed Ella once more as a sister. Now, probably, she would create for herself a legend of a great love. The real scene, what had actually occurred, on the other hand, belonged to Campaspe alone, and was inextricably complicated and confused in her mind with the thought of her own great desire. ”

“ To Campaspe, who seldom travelled in any direction, the weather was not a matter of any great moment. Her harassed state of mind was due to another cause. It seemed incredible to her that a man could destroy her habitual tranquillity, even temporarily, by leaping from a window, and yet it was patent that he had done so. There was, it would seem, sufficient diversion in the human scene to occupy her attention this spring, more, apparently, than usual, but every effort she made to direct her thoughts into more objective thoroughfares in some way or other led back to Gunnar. ”

“ My life is too empty.
Reflect, Paulet, reflect ere you make this decision. Campaspe's face was wreathed in a series of ironic smiles, subtly blending one with the other.
Paul remained silent, even grave.
What do you intend to do? Campaspe attempted to demand with more seriousness.
I thought, perhaps . . . there were strangely uncharacteristic breaks between the words . . . Cupid might take me in. He must have loads of jobs in his brokering place. ”

“ There's nothing to stumble over. Five flights had been ascended in this crazy fashion, O'Grady alternately flying ahead and then waiting until his more meticulous companion had made up the intervening distance, when Paul's eyes were solaced by a line of light glimmering under a door on the landing in front of him. O'Grady was already assaulting this portal with lusty blows. It was soon opened wide and Paul stood facing a man with superb physical development, his bare, muscular arms protruding from the openings in his gymnasium shirt, his legs encased in white flannel trousers. ”

“ In business, apparently, one met all the people one knew without the disadvantages inherent in the home. Between commercial transactions, vividly exciting in themselves, one listened to all the gossip of the town. Most of these boys were well provided with Orkney, Booth's, and Bacardi. Late in the afternoon, the cocktail shaker tinkled as incessantly as it did in any uptown drawing-room. Cigars were plentiful and a profusion of varieties of expensive cigarettes inhabited boxes on every desk. ”