Evelyn Scott

“ To Dudley, Julia's body represented all the darkness of self-distrust and the coldness of his own worldly mind. He wished that her personality were more bizarre so that he might regard his past acts as mad rather than commonplace. He did not know why he had brought her to the studio and was ashamed to look at her. There was nothing for it but to admit the duality of his nature, and that half of it was weak. He longed to hasten the time of sailing when he would begin completely his life alone in which nothing but the artist in him would be permitted to survive. ”

“ Catherine had no name for his saccharine melancholy, but she detested it. "I haven't been such a hell of a husband, have I, Kate?" Ridiculous, she thought. She saw his mouth twitch. She was afraid. He touched her hair and she bore it. "Things might have been worse for you, Kate."
She sensed in his pity for her a phase of the pity for himself which supplied the excuse for all his shortcomings. "You'll muss my hair, Charles. I think life has treated me very well indeed—both of us, I should say."
"We men are a rough lot, but we mean well. Time for me to get down to the dirty world of commerce." ”

“ I'm afraid I'm a disillusioned person. I'm tired watching people try to live through others. It can't be done."
"I think I could live in you—through you—if you'd let me, Julia."
"You don't know me."
"How can I if you won't let me, Julia?" He drew the car nearly to a standstill. He grasped her fingers with his free hand. "I'm going to kiss you, dear." It was lonely here. She felt his mouth over her face and was ashamed of her distaste for him. "You're unhappy, Julia. Why are you unhappy?"
She withdrew herself. "I am—horribly."
Charles, hardening, felt relieved, and imagined himself stronger. ”

“ When Laurence was apart from Julia and remembered her look of humility that asked for something she dared not state, he experienced an almost sickening pity for her. There was something in her suffering which he identified with his own. Yet he did not feel nearer to her in attributing their unhappiness in common to the futile and inevitable circumstances of human life. The pain of each of them, he told himself, was in realizing the isolation in which every human ultimately finds himself when he recognizes that his inner life cannot be shared. ”

“ Whenever Dudley mentioned Julia's name Laurence wanted to repudiate the significance which it held in common for Dudley and himself. Rather than be included here, he preferred to think of Dudley and Julia together and himself as separate.
Dudley was wrapt in the conviction of a dark, almost fleshly, knowledge of Laurence, and his determination to love was as ruthless as any hatred. He never had the intimate experience of a personality without wanting, in a sense, to defile it by drawing it utterly to himself. He smiled apologetically. "We should never refuse any experience." ”

“ Aunt Julia's fingers moved stiffly through May's hair. Why should I dislike this child! Oh, I'm dying of loneliness! Julia felt that she could love no one and that she deserved endless commiseration for her lovelessness. "Don't cry, darling!" Aunt Julia's voice was harsh. "I should never have let you go there. I know how depressing it is. Your Aunt Alice is such a pathetic person, isn't she? I know. I know. She isn't precisely mad, but so dreadfully unhappy. Such a morbid, isolated life." ”

“ Finding herself futile and inadequate, it seemed to Julia that her pity for herself must include all the things that surrounded her, and that she must embrace them in the mingled agony of self-contempt and pride. It was because she did not love him that it liberated her so completely to give herself to him. She tried to abase herself utterly so that she might experience the joy of rising above her own needs. ”

“ When he lay down again he covered his eyes with his stubby fingers. The revealed lower portion of his florid face was harsh and drawn. He could count the pulse jumping in his temples where his hands pressed. His weak lips, unconscious of themselves, looked shriveled with unhappiness. As the tears came under his lids and slipped down his cheeks, his chin shook, and he made a grimace like a contorted smile. All his gestures were cumbersome and pathetic. He wanted the love that would not despise his indecisions. At this moment he feared that even Julia might not be equal to it. ”

“ For a long time May had not dared to walk in the park. When she did go, at last, she told herself that she was sure Paul would not come. She felt herself inwardly lost in still bright emptiness. Cold far-off heat. She was a tiny frozen speck, hardly conscious of itself on the burnt grass, walking toward the tall buildings that receded before her. Tall roofs were like iron clouds in the low sky. She wanted to be lost, going farther and farther into emptiness. Now when she said Paul it was no longer Paul she meant. ”

“ There was a slightly bitter humility about her confessions of ignorance that made him feel her potentially appreciative in a genuine sense.
Strangely enough the frankness of her self-depreciation disarmed him. He felt that he must search for a hidden pretension that would show her weak and allow him an approach. Wherever she displayed symptoms of confidence he confronted her with her dependence on illusion. He told himself that all that one individual owed another was the means to truth. Believing in the dignity of self-responsibility, he could not assume the burden of Julia's discouragement. ”

“ I want to talk to Laurence. I would have done this of my own free will. I loathe the lie I've been living!" She spoke coldly and vehemently. Tears came into her eyes and she averted her face.
Dudley was silent a moment. He twisted his mustache and one of his small bright eyes squinted nervously. He could not bear the pride of her mouth. At the moment all pride seemed ugly to him. It was impossible to call further attention to his pain in the contemplation of renouncing her while she continued to maintain, almost vindictively, it appeared, her readiness to abandon herself to him. ”

“ Whenever he became sentimental about a woman he imagined that he would some day put his head in her lap. He had been, in his own mind, so thoroughly convicted of weakness that the development of strength no longer appealed to him as a means of self-fulfilment. He abandoned himself to an incurable dependence for which he had not as yet found a permanent object. It eased him when he could evoke the maternal in a mistress. "Aren't we all—somewhat on the defensive toward each other?" he said after a minute.
Julia was reminded again of what she thought to be her own tragedy. ”

“ He could not accept the burden of Julia's deficiencies. If he made a friend of Laurence Farley it would frustrate her in her undeveloped impulses. Dudley tried to admire himself for being strong enough to resist her for the sake of something she did not comprehend and might never appreciate.
He placed his hand on her arm. "Julia, how do you feel—now—about him—about you and me?" When she met his eyes, she noted in them the old expression of impersonal intimacy which ignored all of her but what he wanted for himself. He could endure everything but her reserve. ”

“ May felt herself lost in pale endless beauty of which Aunt Julia was a part. Love in the darkness. Love in her own room at night when she was alone and hugged her pillow to her wet face. Through the window she saw the trees in the street leaning together and mingling their odd shadows. An arc light was a blurred circle through the branches and the stiff leaves shaking and dropping occasionally to earth. ”

“ The grass in the back yard was a bright dead green. It had grown tall. Flurries of moist acrid wind swept across it, and it bent all at once with a long, undulant motion that was like voluptuous despair. The table cloth rose heavily and fell in a spent gesture against the legs under it. Julia's black muslin dress beat gently about her ankles.
Then the wind passed. The grass blades were fixed and still. In the silent room the ticking of a small clock on a secrétaire sounded labored and blatant. The odor of the cake that Nellie was baking filled the warm air. ”

“ I can't talk about my work, Julia. Something goes out of me that ought to go into the work when I talk about it too much. That's my struggle—my fight. It's terrifying at times. I know all the hounds are baying at my heels. When I go abroad this time I am going to avoid Paris. I know dozens of cities. Paris is the only one which is a work of art. That's why I am going to keep away. I am through with the finality of that kind of art. I am going abroad to feel how much of an American I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in me—a part of me. ”

“ Dudley's bright secretive eyes seemed close to her, between her and her husband, giving out a harsh warmth that suffocated her. She identified herself so with her imaginings that it was as if she had become invisible to Laurence.
"Yes. I've had an interesting day at the laboratory. Even the commercial side of science has its diversions."
On the hearth the delicate drifting ash took a lilac tinge from some fallen bits of stick in which a crimson glow trembled like a diffused respiration. The room was strange with firelight. Bronze flames burst suddenly from the logs in torrents of rushing silk. ”

“ You must learn to be self-reliant." Without glancing behind her, Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs and disappeared into her room. The door shut.
To May it was as if Aunt Julia knew everything already and put her aside because of what she had done. She was dead and corroded with shame. Lonely, she wandered out into the back yard. The sky, in the late sunshine, was covered with a pale haze like faint blue dust. A shining wind blew May's hair about her face and swirled the long stems of uncut grass. ”

“ Julia was conscious that he was turning toward her. "Crass outlook, eh?" He laughed apologetically.
"She probably did," Julia said. They laughed together.
Mr. Hurst felt all at once unreasoningly depressed. He wanted to touch her as a child wants to touch the person who pleases it. But the sophisticated element in his nature intervened. He despised his own simplicity. "Do you find yourself getting anywhere in the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful? Honestly now, Mrs. Farley. I've had the whole program shoved at me—not that Catherine isn't the best of women, bless her little soul. ”

“ She wondered if he had been strong like this to his other wife, or if he gave more of his suffering to the dead than to the living. Suffering filled Julia with tenderness, so she could not think herself cruel. "Dear!" She kissed him gently, maternally, and climbed to her feet.
He saw her reproachful eyes. Youth, so free with itself. Rapacious for emotion. He felt bitterly his necessity more final than hers. "Where's my last Journal of American Science?" He dismissed her intensity. Lifting his thick brows, he took out spectacles and put them on. ”

“ Mrs. Hurst sat with Julia at tea in Julia's upstairs room. The late sun stretched tired rays across the soft blue carpet. The yellow curtains glowed before the open windows, and, fluttering apart, showed the thick foliage of the trees that screened the houses opposite. The atmosphere intensified the very immobility of the furniture. There was a voluptuous finality in the liquid repose of light on the polished floor and the glint of a glass vase, where needle rays of brightness were transfixed among the stems of flowers. ”

“ After Julia herself had spoken, nothing further seemed to her of consequence. The other women were hopelessly verbose, or, if they argued against her, ridiculously unseeing. Their past applause rang irritatingly in her mind. She recalled Dudley Allen's contempt for this feeble utilitarian consideration of eternal things. She was proud of comprehending the unmorality—the moral cynicism—of art. She felt that her broad capacity for understanding men like Dudley Allen liberated her from the narrow ethical confines of the lives that surrounded her, which took their color from social usage. ”

“ Paul had constantly to fight against an ingrained class vanity. Petty bourgeois! Not even snobbishness of the first order! When he had to face it in himself he wanted to die. No use! Hell of a world! Any disillusionment with himself strengthened his bitterness toward those of his own kind.
When Paul left Carrie he walked into the dark park and seated himself on a bench. The city seemed miles away, sunk in light. There was an iron stillness in the black trunks of the trees that rose about him. Over him the thick foliage hung oppressively in dark arrested clouds. ”

“ She loved Aunt Julia. She wanted Paul to love her.
May wondered if Paul despised her because she never resented it when he kissed her. But the suspicion of his contempt, while it confused her, did no more than emphasize her conviction of helplessness.
Suddenly Paul ceased humming. He leaned toward her and took her hand. She pretended not to notice, but she was happy. Her fingers in his grew cold and covered with sweat. "I think you're unkind to them, Paul." Her voice shook. There was a waiting feeling in her when he touched her. ”

“ She felt as if she were dying of love, dying of happiness. Happy over a world which was beautiful because she loved it. She loved Paul, but he was only a part of the secret city—a part of everything. She did not want to think of him too much. Jesus, everything, she said. I'm Jesus. She shivered at her blasphemy, and was glad. I'm Jesus! I'm Jesus! The leaves rattled against the window pane and fell into the dark street. It was too bright. She drew herself up in a knot and hid her face.
It was a hot night. Bobby was excited and cross. ”