Evelyn Scott

“ Life was a muddle. When one ceased to desire there was quiet, bitter and beautiful quiet. Laurence, Winnie, Mamma and Papa, far away from her—pathetic with distance. Horace Ridge far away from her. Her loving him cool. Nothing. She wanted nothing. Heart in the breast coolly melted like water in a still cup. In the bed in the darkness her still heart reflected the shadows of hot summer pavements, brick houses with fronts beaten flat and dull by sun, the moment before nightfall when lights burst from the theater fronts and the streets were gay with people in pale colored clothes. ”

“ Mrs. Price smoothed her child's brow. "Oh, I am so glad you are quieter, Winnie."
Out of the silence from which the sun had passed the moon suddenly unrolled, huge and white and dry as a dead flower. A dragon-fly darting across the window and the dry white face of the moon, so gorgeously lifeless, was a gold thorn sinking into the quiet flesh of shadow.
Voices sounded from the road. The lowest branches of the trees yet trembled with light. Then the world died away in the chirping of insects and the bleat of frogs.
"I will light a lamp, darling." Mrs. Price went over to a table. ”

“ Winnie said suddenly.
"Of course, Winnie."
"Oh, Mamma Farley, I want to be happy. I couldn't bear it if Laurence——" She buried her face in Mamma Farley's dress. Mrs. Farley stroked her hair.
"We're all foolish when we're young, but God is good to us. When we grow old we can have a little peace. But you're young enough—even for the kind of thing you want." Her pale mouth had a shriveled look of bitterness. "Love between men and women—the love you are thinking about—is not much in life, Winnie." ”

“ Mrs. Price, tears of anxiety in her eyes, gripped Winnie's wrists and held them tight. They were still together. The wooden clock ticked on the low mantel. Then Mrs. Price said, "Winnie, if you cannot manage to tell me what is the matter I shall telegraph your father."
Crushed against Mrs. Price's finality, Winnie struggled to free herself. "I want to die! Oh, I want to die!" she said, and every time she said "die," something in her shouted against the dumbness of her throat, life, life! The shriek was against Laurence and against the living child that had come to consume her. ”

“ Winnie pressed her head against the cold pane. Laurence, herself, old age. She would never be happy. A peaceful vanity took the place of her unrest. She realized an ethereal quality in herself which coincided with the whiteness of her little hands. She was aware of her hands, delicate and precious against her breast. Her breathing tightened. She did not want to remember the ugliness of the long illness she had had and to think of the operation which threatened her threw her into a panic. When people talked too much to her of death she only saw something ugly which she did not understand. ”

“ Farley wept helplessly in silence.
"I won't have you insult her, Alice."
"I'm not insulting her. I'm not the one who takes it for granted that she is willing to go on forever and ever in this equivocal fashion. I've done her the honor of thinking she might be glad to separate from you and leave you free to live decently."
"I'll go away, Alice! I'll go away! My children don't love me!" Mrs. Farley squinted her lids together and, throwing back her head, wrung her hands abandonedly.
"Mother!" Mr. Farley laid a soothing hand on her mouse-gray hair, dry and silky like fur. ”

“ If Mamma Farley calls me to dinner, she said to herself, I shall be sick.
In the dark street a boy whistled. She heard girls laugh. Through the window a new-leafed tree over the opposite roof moved its black foliage against the bloom of the sky, milk-purple clouds streaked with rose. A hard moon, thin like a shell, lay up there glowing inside itself with a cold secret light.
Alice felt her body harsh like the moon.
He did not love me.
They make me ugly, because unmeaning.
Beauty, straight, white, tall like a temple.
You cannot be beautiful alone.... ”

“ She was not afraid of understanding it. She rested in relief, in intimacy with herself. Nothing separated her from herself.
Alice threw a gray woolen bathrobe about her over her nightgown, and went downstairs to get the morning paper.
Sunlight came over the transom of the street door and blue motes floated down a spreading ladder of light. The light and the whirling motes sank into the soft dingy nap of the carpet as into a vortex. There was a deep spot of radiance, putty colored, like a pool of dust, still in the gloom. ”

“ Darkness. Behind her thoughts, two sharp strokes from the scissors let out the clotted honey of pain, too sweet for the veins.
"Mamma doesn't really love you any more than you love her, Papa."
Mr. Farley glanced nervously toward the kitchen door. His features suddenly relaxed in the flaccidness of self-pity. His eyes shone dimly. "I don't think you realize the true satisfaction there is in duty well done, Alice," he said shakily. "Things may be——This is no place to—to discuss details—but I would not knowingly hurt your mother for anything on earth." ”

“ Alice said shortly.
It was a hot day. The clouded sky was a colorless glare. A thick wind stirred the ragged awnings upstairs before the bedroom windows. For a moment the sun came out as though an eye had opened. The house fronts were a pale bright pink. Dust made little eddies in the empty Sunday street. The awnings lifted, then hung inert like broken wings. When a wagon passed you could hear, above the rattle of the wheels, the muffled thud of the horse's feet striking the soft asphalt.
May was on the front steps. ”

“ When she passed the long mirror in the little-used parlor, and saw herself hideous and inflated, she burst into tears.
Her mother was often at the house, and there was nothing so sickening to Winnie as the sweet platitudes which Mrs. Price was constantly uttering.
"The dear little baby!" Mrs. Price would say. "What a wonderful thing it is to be a mother!" Her flat face was alight with the sickish reflection of a memory that was growing dim.
Mrs. Farley, with no more animation, was less refined, and Winnie could say things to the mother-in-law which the mother would not have listened to. ”

“ Winnie wiped her eyes. "Come here," she said at last. May went forward, smiling, trembling, half released. "You love me, May?"
May could not speak. She choked with affirmation. Her face was in Winnie's warm neck. May lost herself in the warm throat and the soft hair. If she did not have to see her mother's eyes it was well. May had a terror of eyes. They made her know things about herself which she could not bear. Sharp looks splintered her consciousness.
Winnie, overcoming a shudder, admitted the caress. "You'll always love Mother, won't you?" ”

“ Indoors, Winnie felt her heart swell with a pain of pride. These were her parents. All these years she had been robbed of this!
"Oh, Mamma Farley! They've come! They've come! I thought I should never see them again!" Winnie's smooth fingers clutched Mrs. Farley's stiff nerveless palm. "What shall I do? It hasn't been my fault, has it, Mamma Farley?" Winnie's soft relentless gaze clung to her mother-in-law's face.
Mrs. Farley nervously desired to evade. Winnie made her feel guilty of the situation with which she had nothing to do.
"Now, dear! Now, dear! We won't talk about who's to blame. ”

“ He felt the child stir in her against him, and the child seemed so terrible and real that he longed for some terrible realness in them with which to understand the child.
Winnie felt the child stirring between them, and was ashamed. It kept her from remembering sweetly the slightness of her body and the smallness of her pretty outstretched arms. She was ugly and inert at the mercy of the child.
"Love me, Laurie!" she moaned. "I can't help being like this!" She was unfair to him, but the agony in her voice was sweet to her self-contempt. ”

“ Winnie lay face downward and sobbed. There was no triumph in her now. She felt herself as if already large with child, heavy and helpless. Through the darkness of her closed lids she could see, as if before her, Laurence's coarse and handsome head, his eyes turned toward her with their strained gaze, and the odd set of his neck that kept his face always a little to one side. ”

“ As she spoke she glanced beyond her mother-in-law's head to the heavily beveled mirror in the old bureau, and her rapt, tragic face became even more voluptuously tragic as it contemplated itself.
"Now, Winnie, I have talked to Laurence and he realizes perfectly well that he can't say what he thinks to your father. He will let bygones be bygones just like the rest of us."
"O Mamma Farley, you don't know Laurie! And he hates Papa and Mamma so and he has no mercy on me. Sometimes I think he hates me, too!" ”

“ The sky sent itself down in grayness to the dark streets where the lamp lights floated in the dust as in clouds of ash. The house fronts, flaked with light, disintegrated in the general vagueness.
Horace Ridge was ready to depart. On his last night before sailing he had sent for Alice to help him finish some work. She passed out of the twilight into the tiled corridor of the building in which he lived. The marble walls wavered in light. Lights, clustered above the wainscot, stabbed her eyes. A sleepy hallboy in a tan uniform vacantly watched her approach. ”

“ Farley said, "I don't know! I don't know! You know what you want, Laurence." He felt that no one but himself understood growing old. What his wife knew of old age he did not regard as knowledge. She was old without understanding it. He had stopped writing to Helen without ever having made any definite proposal to her. He felt obliged to send her checks for their boy, but if she did not acknowledge them, though it hurt him, he was glad. He tried not to think of her. His conviction of age was born of knowledge that was deep in his flesh, and so it was good. ”

“ These people forced her back into herself, into her own dumbness. She wanted to shatter her silence with their cries.
"Turn around here and look at Papa, Mamma," Alice said suddenly.
Mrs. Farley would not look. "Your father knows what I think," she said after a minute. She glanced at Alice.
Mrs. Farley wore her pince-nez and the irridescence of glass added remoteness to her hostile uneasy eyes. The gold clasp drawing the flesh together on her nose gave a twist of severity to her dry obscure face. Her hate seemed to flow uncertainly through the crystals and flash defiance in the gold center. ”

“ Pale. May's hair shining like a dead sun. Alice all at once hated May's hair because it was pale and bright. "It's too chilly to make mud pies. For Heaven's sake don't put your dirty hands on me, May!" With a violent push Alice put the little girl aside and walked briskly up the path.
A few surprised tears trickled from the resigned and shining misery of May's eyes. She watched her aunt move toward the house.
Conscious of May's pale hair floating after her in unsubstantial brightness, Alice rushed up the stairs to her room. She pulled down the shades, longing for the heaviness of dark. ”

“ The little gold clasp of the pince-nez was like the claw of impotence buried in its own flesh.
Alice tapped the floor with her foot. "Do you know what Mamma thinks, Papa? I'm sure I don't."
Mr. Farley stared under his fingers at the floor where the dim pattern of the carpet grew more dim. "I know what you have told me."
"I can't stand the atmosphere here. If you and she don't find some way to talk it out you'll drive Laurence and me insane."
Mr. Farley sighed deeply. "I'm ready and willing to discuss anything. ”

“ Still Winnie rocked herself. "Oh, I would rather be dead!" she said.
"Don't say that, Winnie! We mustn't think such thoughts. Aren't we doing everything on earth to make you live? Your father and I want to do everything on earth to make life better and surer and sweeter for you and your babies."
Winnie began to throw herself about in the bed again. "Oh, I'd rather be dead than to be sick and have another baby. I know I'm going to die."
"Have another baby." Mrs. Price did not receive the words. ”

“ Girls going to work came out of the houses like the words of women. Women going to market passed slowly before him with their baskets. Pregnant women walked before him in confidence. The uncolored atmosphere threw back the sky. It was the mirror of women. Laurence felt crowded between the bodies of women and houses. He walked quickly with his head bent.
On the concrete pavements, washed white as bones by the storm of the night before, were rust-colored puddles. Dark and still, they quivered now and again, like quiet minds touched by the horror of a recollection. ”

“ For an instant a cold gleam of possession lit Bobby's still eyes in his fat face. He grasped the top and moved a little away from her. His air was suspicious. When he was sure the top was his the cold light died from his face. He was smooth and shut into himself again. He was like a china baby. To get at his soul one needed to break him.
"You like it, eh?" Alice demanded. Her eyes were more violently hard than his. She seemed to like him against her will. She bent down. ”