Carl Van Vechten

“ Lucky Paul! And lucky Bunny! Would he ever write fine music? she asked herself. Could a woman help him do this? Could this woman? A fine animal. The finest animal she had ever seen. Delicate and exquisite, and yet like an animal. She considered: not like a doe, more like a tiger; graceful and exquisite . . . and hungry! Campaspe smiled.
She recalled a phrase from A. E., which she had run across a day or so earlier: I could not desire what was not my own, and what is our own we cannot lose. . . . Desire is hidden identity. ”

“ Charmed by the sun and the contradictory coolness of the day—nature, she had noted, could be as contradictory and perverse as life itself—, Campaspe, propped up against cushions, lay back in a comfortable chaise-longue. Frederika had followed her with a pile of books, which she placed on a table by the side of her mistress, but, for the moment, Campaspe did not disturb these. She closed her eyes and half-dreamed in the bliss of her security. She hoped that no one would call. She had too much to think about. Campaspe enjoyed being alone. ”

“ One of these was the demeanour of the Duke who, from time to time, frankly yawned, making no effort to conceal his dehiscent jaw. Bunny had disappeared shortly after his tragic curtain call. Zimbule accepted her encomiums as if she found them exceedingly tiresome. She seemed exalted, disembodied. Campaspe, conscious of impending drama, hovered in her wake.
With a fiercer intensity Harold felt that a fatality assembled the elements which made up his life. He had begun to think of himself as an automaton, set up and wound to give pleasure . . . to whom? Not to himself. ”

“ Harold noted her thin legs, her long, narrow feet. . . . No use crying! shouted Zimbule from the bathroom, and then, No! I've got what it takes, but it breaks my heart to give it away!
All right, Miss Jimbool! Desdemona was arranging the disk in the Viennese room. The strains soon filtered in through the open doorway. Zimbule, nude, reappeared in the bedroom, and moved to the rhythm across the rose-carpeted floor. Perching on the bed, she kissed Harold's eyes and ears and throat, while he lay perfectly still, entranced with delight.
When are we going back to work? he asked. ”

“ A book, Campaspe considered, should have the swiftness of melodrama, the lightness of farce, to be a real contribution to thought. Every time, had said the Rabbi Moses Maimonides, you find in our books a tale, the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant both to reason and common sense, then be sure that tale contains a profound allegory, veiling a deeply mysterious truth; and the greater the absurdity of the letter the deeper the wisdom of the spirit. How could anything serious be hidden more successfully than in a book which pretended to be light and gay? ”

“ Then Alice Blake, who reminded him of Persia Blaine and Aunt Sadi, and who was young and beautiful besides, had passed his way, had been swept from his vision, and nothing remained but this new life, this incomprehensible and silly life, compounded of cocktails and chatter and music, which in its dissonances sounded almost obscene to him. In spite of Campaspe, he felt that he would never be able to cope with it. ”

“ Laura in most respects was obviously Alice's model.
At night, it was usually cold enough for a fire and, with the ruddy logs glowing in the great boulder fireplace, the pair sat on a wooden settle banked with cotton print covered cushions, facing the fire, holding hands. It was Alice who did most of the talking. She had so much to say. Harold was comparatively inarticulate; very few thoughts in his mind urgently demanded expression, and he had to search to find words in which to express even these. Half-comprehending, half-dreading life, he seldom asserted himself. ”

“ Campaspe considered the picture: fantasy, fable, colour. She would think about it a good deal more in the future, she was certain. She realized that Laura's first question would be, What does it mean? That was, perhaps, its chief charm, that it did not mean anything; it was as meaningless as Mozart's E flat major symphony or life itself. The Rousseau was a splendid and definite jungle, with curiously exotic trees with long green fronds, plants with startling scarlet blossoms, monkeys, and a royal tiger. ”

“ Thank you, and the slight flutter of a gloved hand, she descended and disappeared in a brown-stone house, before the difident Harold had time to give utterance to even one of the hundred different remarks that were surging inarticulately in his brain. He gazed at the closed door. Something seemed to have come into his life and to have gone out of it again. As the taxi drove away he leaned back against the cushions and wiped his temples for the second time that warm June afternoon. He was, indeed, so bewildered by the events of the day that his head began to ache violently. ”

“ Why not? Don't be silly any longer, Harold. You are permitting your youthful pride and prejudice to govern you too much. You must take things just a little more as they come. . . .
But . . .
Try to realize, Harold, that some day you will get over some of your notions; you will even compromise with a few that you don't get over. Even Nana—Campaspe began to laugh—, even Nana, disgusted with . . . well, with something new to her, reasoned that one should never dispute about tastes and colours because one never could be sure what one would like in the future. ”

“ Forgive me, Campaspe!
And now Cupid made another unusual move. He invaded her sacred bathroom. More curious—had he, she wondered, succumbed to emotion?—than annoyed, Campaspe slowly crossed the room and peered through the crack left at the hinges by the door slightly ajar. Cupid stood before the mirror combing his hair. Life, she assured herself, grew more amusing all the time. She was certain that she would remain young as her mother had. Getting bored was what aged people, and she was never bored.
The boys arrived about five, quiet, well-behaved, handsome lads. ”

“ The beach was low and here the sand was packed hard and smooth. Higher up, back a little from the beach near the life-saving station, solitary but for its gaunt, uncordial companion in the midst of the grey dunes, stood the little white cottage with its slanting roof of unpainted shingles, and its great chimney, fashioned of huge boulders by some local builder. From afar, of course, as she had never visited Provincetown, it had amused Campaspe to plan this house somewhat in the spirit (certainly not the style!) ”

“ Listening behind the folds of the silver curtain, Campaspe realized that at last she was hearing the music of the future. Ornstein, Prokofieff, Schönberg would sound, in comparison, like a minuet by Luigi Boccherini. There was a rush, a push, an extravagant primitive quality in this music. If I listen to this music, I shall forget my rôle, she confessed to herself, and it occurred to her to wonder if Bunny was, after all, a genius. Anybody must be a genius who could stir her as this music was stirring her. ”

“ Her friends were few, and those few were all women. Consequently, after the success of the Ninon de Lenclos cloak, she had retired to one of those old Connecticut farmhouses, boarded with oiled but unpainted and now weather-beaten shingles. The rooms were all on different levels, and the ceilings were so low that, in the ascension and descension of the slight flights of stairs between the chambers, tall people, like Harold and Sadi, familiar though they were with the contours of the place, frequently bumped their heads. ”

“ But this is one of the reasons I have no wish to leave New York. I cannot afford to miss the scène à faire.
There are, I have discovered, and I insert the discovery parenthetically for what it may be worth, two kinds of people in this world, those who long to be understood, and those who long to be misunderstood. It is the irony of life that neither is gratified.
I am perfectly frank with you, dear Laura, always; there seems to be no other reason for writing long letters. You know that I seek my thrills in a curious, vicarious way. ”

“ How must she feel? What had her father done to her? Then he suddenly remembered that he had been on the verge of telling the whole story to Paul. If he had seen Paul last evening he certainly would have told him, and Paul would have laughed. Paul surely would laugh at this story; so would Drains. With a sort of furtive intuition he began to believe that no women were innocent in the eyes of Paul and Drains. Harold felt more than ever a martyr. His life, which, it seemed, began with a mistake on the day he was born, would, he was convinced, never shape itself. ”

“ Dear Harold, I am glad to see you. Why haven't you been here before?
She was shocked by the boy's appearance. Deep grey circles had formed under his eyes. His cheek-bones seemed unnaturally prominent. He was thinner. And, Campaspe noted at once, he suggested, as usual, the dominant note of pathos. It was the one quality she had never been quite able to dissociate from him, or from any other very young person, for that matter. One never begins to be happy until one is thirty, she reflected, and then, sometimes, one only begins. ”

“ As one is born one is . . . always. The only growth possible lay on the side of increasing comprehension of oneself. He did not understand himself, or Alice, or Campaspe, but Campaspe he accepted, as he accepted his aunt and Persia Blaine. These three, alone, in the world with which he had yet come into contact, did not arouse him to resistance. These three and one other. Paul, he could understand after a fashion, and Zimbule, a sheet of flame burning a path before her desire, he understood only too well. ”

“ I cannot, continued George Prewett, throw you out into the world to gain your own experience. You would be as helpless, in that case, as if you were asked at once to choose your future occupation. You have been unfitted for going out into the world. I have determined, therefore, to provide you with a tutor.
Am I to study longer, then?
Study is not the word. You are, as a matter of fact, to do exactly what you please. Your tutor will guide you, however, guide you carefully into the ways of life, and some of its byways. There may be hours for reflection and what you call study. ”

“ The cackling Desdemona catered to all the girl's whims. Meals were served at irregular hours and their composition was lacking in rhythm. Zimbule entertained fancies for old-fashioned scallop broil, for spumoni, for curry, for chicken à la Maryland, for apple pie smothered in Welsh rabbit. Sometimes, an entire meal would consist of one of these; sometimes, a strange group would be served in a strange rotation. Whatever Zimbule wanted was all the same to Desdemona and Harold thought this wanton self-indulgence part of the girl's fascination. ”

“ Chapter XI If Campaspe had conceived the idea of making a search for Harold, she would have been hard put to think of a way to go about it. He seemed, indeed, completely cut off both from his family and from the group which had been charged, for a few weeks, with his education. She pictured him, like a kitten in a bath-tub half-full of water, struggling in an alien element. As it happened, however, one of Campaspe's most steadfast convictions was that nothing in life should be sought. People who were always seeking never found. ”

“ The barker, standing on a low platform, was functioning, waving his hands and shouting to the curious crowd which had assembled.
Within, he declared, we have the greatest collection of abnormal human beings ever exhibited together under one roof. Where else can you see the little lady only two feet high, who is ninety years of age? Where else can you gaze upon a death-defying demon who eats sharp knives and thrives on fire? He swallows the burning flames as you and I swallow our bread and meat. His throat is the wonder of science. ”

“ Bunny watched her, glowering.
The great night arrived. There had been more discussion about the spectator-guests.
Ask your friends, Campaspe had suggested, mocking despair.
I have no f-f-f-friends, retorted the Duke, only people that amuse me, and people I sleep with.
Well . . . ask them.
The people that amuse me are all in the p-p-p-play. . . . The theatre isn't b-b-b-b-b-big enough to hold the others.
Still, from somewhere, he had gathered an audience, a splendid, showy throng. Campaspe, through the folds of the curtain, watched them file into the theatre. ”

“ Don't think me ungrateful . . . I simply can't. And you mustn't telephone me again. I was so afraid last night. Nobody heard . . . but if they had!
Harold's expression was rueful. I must see you, he urged. Don't you want to see me?
You have been very kind to me.
I have done nothing I didn't want to do. I . . .
Alice seemed to have an idea: Haven't you any friends?
Friends?
Somebody I know, for instance. . . . Can't we be introduced properly?
Harold shook his head. I don't know anybody except—I don't know anybody at all in New York.
Nobody! Alice's tone was slightly one of alarm. ”

“ Conform externally with the world's demands and you will get anything you desire in life. By a process of erosion you can dig a hole in two years through public opinion that it would take you two centuries to knock through. It is just as great a mistake to reject violently ideas that do not appeal to us. Rejection implies labour, interest, even fear. Indifference is the purer method. Indifference rids one of cause and effect simultaneously. . . . The world—she appeared to be in a kind of revery—is a very pleasant place for people who know how to live. We are the few. ”

“ She smiled again as a phrase of Paul's recurred to her: Campaspe does not know the vices, she invents them! Invents them! Imagination, that was the shadow of personality, assuredly the deepest enchantment! Savoir n'est rien, imaginer est tout. ”

“ There it had lain ever since, for Zimbule was superstitious regarding an incident that had happened immediately after the entrance of the new master, and she refused to have it removed. But they had scarcely gone into the Viennese room since.
Harold was very happy, happier, he realized, than he had ever been before. An aureole of happiness seemed to radiate about his head. They had talked very little together. They had eaten, they had slept, they had kissed. . . . With her lips upon his, his conscience died. He felt secure in this new happiness; never had he felt secure before. ”

“ She liked best to sit on the dunes with Harold, holding his hand, making plans for the future. She talked quite easily of children, so easily, indeed, that occasionally Harold caught himself wondering if he really wanted children. Somewhat self-consciously, Alice was prone to regard this excursion, this singular honeymoon, in the light of a temporary lark, a lark from which she was not deriving any excruciating amount of pleasure. ”

“ For a time, the rough road leading thither wended its uncertain way through a scattering of scrub-oaks, scrub-pines, and maples, with patches of tiger-lilies, golden rod, purple asters, old maid's pinks, and Queen Anne's lace, on either side, then straggled on across a mile of sand-dunes, rolling down and up, like great stationary waves, some as high as twenty feet, on which the only vegetation was beach-grass, beach-plums, and bayberry shrubs. ”

“ Campaspe was so entirely contented with life in general and her own participation in it in particular that it also occurred to her that she might go so far as to do something for Cupid. She infrequently dined at a public restaurant, more seldom still did she attend the theatre. It pleased Cupid to do these things, which to her were merely dull. Her imagination supplied her with so much better material than such casual experiences could give her. More and more she was finding it futile to leave her garden. In time, she began to believe, all the external life she needed would come to her. ”

“ I remain, with love,
your Aunt Sadi. Harold could explain this letter satisfactorily to himself on no other ground save the ground of jealousy. She is enraged because I am married, he thought, and she is blaming my father for something with which he had nothing whatever to do, to which certainly, in the beginning, he was opposed, for did he not send me to Paul and to a life which is the farthest removed from the life that I wish to live? Now that I have married Alice, he has accepted the situation with more grace than could have been expected from him. ”