Stella Benson

“ Nothing seemed left to Edward but San Francisco itself. Nothing was left that he could grasp; his personal hold on the happy city had disappeared. [116] He felt as if he held a cold hard diamond in his hand. A diamond on the palm of the hand has no value, no value until another hand touches it or eyes desire it, or until it is set in a crown.
All his days Edward sat alone with an aching head either in his room or in the lobby of the hotel. In the lobby he sat in the midst of overdressed painted women waiting for their beaux. They were all hostile to him and to one another. ”

“ There was a brick slope which climbed to the top of the wall. Iron gates barred both the foot and the head of the slope, but the gates were easily climbed.
Edward was on the broad weedy path that ran on the top of the wall. The seeds of flowers and tall grasses had accepted the wall as part of the soil of China. Edward went into the high beamed hall of the guard-house. The moonlight made strange and glorious broad spaces of its dusty floor; its dazzled windows looked out on naked moonlight. It was so full of silence that its old walls cracked.
That corner of Peking was a watching corner. ”

“ Japan had been nothing. A country packed with color and little hills but empty of importance, being empty of Emily. All in vain the veil of Fujiyama floated over Yokohama; all in vain little pearl-like clouds were strung round the shoulders of Fujiyama in the indefinite sun. Edward only thought it was very like its pictures.
When he rode in a little light ricksha through the centreless streets of Yokohama, he thought, “This is Edward Williams doing the things that Sunday school children at home see on lantern slides. But Our Hero remains detached, as in a dream.” ”

“ A dull but hot sun laid shadeless light on the exact pyramid hills that stand about Ichang and the mouth of the Yangtze Gorges.
Edward and Stone carried their silver and Stone’s ukelele and golf-clubs on to a new boat. The new boat, battling against the terrible protest of the river, thrust herself into the yellow shadows of the mountains. One could feel the muscles of the strong ship wrestling with the river. The ship swung; it advanced, it bowed sideways, it reared, it faced the fearful cliffs, it seemed to save itself narrowly from disaster every minute. ”

“ Edward thought, “Emily is somewhere, drowning, asleep in that lake of sunlight. I can find her now. I have begun finding instead of losing now....”
Where does hope set its roots? Out of what [191] blessed and silly seed does hope rise like a flower, fed by nothing more reasonable than a piercing of sunlight through air full of birds’ songs? It is curious how joyfully we pluck and wear at our hearts that fatal hope that has sprung from the seed of a dream or of the little wind that passes across the morning. ”

“ The Ford seemed to Edward to be a sun round which the golden planets of the hills revolved. Except for a lapse into greenness after the rains, California hills are always golden; sometimes rose-gold, sometimes lemon-gold. Now the rains were [67] almost forgotten as the travellers drove inland, but there was a faint dream of green on some of the slopes, a glaze or transparency of green laid lightly on the glowing golden hills. And, besides this dream of color, always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. ”

“ Tam McTab said, “By Jove, Emily, you ought to be shot. You are terrifying. You are too conscious, you frighten one.”
“Tam, do I frighten you? Tam, say quickly, do I frighten you?”
“Not so much as you might,” he said. “Because we are all somehow metallically unsimple in these days. I am too. We can’t even be naked without noticing it. We can’t even think without thinking about thinking. But you are too unsimple to be allowed to live, really. It is simple and human to pose a bit and not to know you are posing. When you try to know yourself so well you devastate yourself. ”

“ Even Edward could hear that sound. A strange voiceless whispering of many bare feet. Men and children ran by, all in one crowd, arms bent, mouths open, distorted, breathless faces. They made no sound except with their running whispering feet. The assistant lifted the porcelain figure as one lifts a baby and crouched behind the counter with it. The shopman stood with his eye to a crack in the shutter. Edward and Tam sat on two blackwood stools at the foot, as it were, of a ghost, a blue and green and gold mandarin coat crucified on a screen. ”

“ She pulled Emily’s arm as they went to the verandah, as though to make it clear that this was a forcible ejection. Well, there was nothing for it. I fetched the chair-coolies. There was nothing to be done. Emily seemed to be beyond help—she was beyond her own control; she was crying so violently, crying with a sort of grin, a downward grin, in the violent way a child cries....”
And now Edward was crying. He had his head upon his arms on the railing. He was crying without pretence. There was a whirlpool of helpless fury in his heart. ”

“ Edward thought that he would write a poem for his party that would make everyone in the room pity him. He would make fun of death. Everyone would think, “Ah, poor soul, he has so much to bear, he must have infinite courage.” And they would think, “He has death in his eyes. Perhaps we have not been fine enough to understand him.” Edward thought that they would all feel a little inferior because their health was so good. He would sit beside Emily looking pale and brave. ”

“ The great lobby of the hotel was like purgatory. Surely it would have held all the saints and sinners of the world. The saints and sinners sat in large absorbing chairs and at little tables, waiting till the time came when they might do something else. There was dance music in the distance, a beat like a hammer behind one’s head. The beat fought with the beat of Edward’s heart; it was intolerable. He could hear and feel the beat of his heart louder and louder as he drank cocktail after cocktail. Cocktails here at any rate were better than they would have been had he found the real Peking. ”

“ About the table there were those whose presence in the position of friends Edward had not deserved or earned. [54] No-one could think of San Francisco as it was in Edward’s time without remembering certain faces.... Those faces were part of the essential blessing of San Francisco.
The face of an old man in a radiance of long white hair and long white beard, the face of a connoisseur of gentleness, a face that never smiled without good cause, but in which no cause was good enough to kindle irritation.
The square keen face of the only woman in the world who can be witty even when she cries. ”

“ Tam is the only person I know who can talk successfully about himself, but then he is always perfectly happy about himself and talks of what happened when a vital button came off at his wedding, or how pleased somebody was to see him when he called, or why an Armenian mistook him for [98] a Turk. And everybody listens with a poised smile on their lips, and when he has finished there is always a loud noise of success. Sure and happy people never fall flat. Edward, if you weren’t so sad-hearted, people would love you much more. ”

“ The faces of the opposite mountains—El Capitan, Half Dome—were made gracious with Gothic curves. There were far mountains—red mountains, patterned with snow—to the east of the Half Dome. They were like still flames in the low red sunlight. Yosemite Valley was filling with blue shadow as the sun went down. The line of shadow climbed up the sheer cliffs like rising water and overflowed the tall shallow arches of the cliffs.
Edward thought, “I can’t bear to be alone with this. One can’t be anything but alone in such an indecently enormous world. ”

“ Edward listened but he could not hear. A panic seized him because he could not hear. “Probably the forest is full of great sound. They talk of birds and whistling. The world can’t be nearly as still as my world is. My hearing reaches no further than the light of the fire. I have no impersonal hearing at all. Perhaps they can all hear that waterfall across the valley and perhaps owls and the tread of deer. I should be ashamed to tell Emily how little I can hear, although I can always hear her voice. I am defective. Our hero in a tragic mood of self-realisation. Our hero indeed! ”

“ I am not interested, I may say, in people from their own point of view, especially women. I don’t see pathos in myself, why should pathos be expected to appeal to me?”
“We ought to go,” said Edward. He had seen a picture of Emily crying, Emily with red staring eyes full of tears, crying, behind a wet handkerchief, to find words that might effectively array her grief before a man who was “not interested in pathos.”
“Let’s go,” said Tam. “I wonder where Stone is. Excellent person, Stone, what? Always falls on his feet.” ”

“ Edward reflected that there were many things in the world that he did not understand. Why should a female undergraduate with whom he was only very slightly acquainted wave and wink so earnestly at him across a room? Was she feeling ill? Edward blamed himself for not understanding. “Our hero lives as if in a dream,” he thought. “Probably other men are quite used to this sort of thing. Perhaps she is making advances to me in a way entirely recognized in certain circles.” With his brooding eyes fixed upon the young woman, who was now pencilling a note, Edward listened to the poem. ”

“ A few had energy enough to impress the citizens of the town into their service. The sight of arms seemed to enchant the civilians. A long line of coolies, collected by soldiers, stood roped together in a slanting row up the steps, like cattle. Upon their sullen yet unprotesting shoulders would be placed the burdens which the soldiers themselves were too weak to carry.
Edward watched one soldier blindly seeking a human animal on which to place his pack. A child could have knocked that soldier down. He was thin and immature; he could pretend to be a man no longer ”

“ Edward thought, “I certainly have no delusions about her. I can see that she monopolises talk too much. And she talks entirely about herself. Having no delusions about her I can see the more clearly how adorable she is.”
“When I read my notebook now it is like a fog [87] translated into words. Yet I swear this is all I thought about George Moore, and I am not abnormally stupid.”
“No indeed,” said Banner Hope helpfully.
“This is what I find in my notebook:
‘Why not die if you are Victorian? Terrible is the day when each sees his own soul naked. ”

“ I want Emily to come to my party and see me at the top of my hour. And yet how shall I make it my hour? Rhoda, Rhoda, can’t you save me? What kind of an hour can I have?”
“Why, Edward,” exclaimed Rhoda. “Believe me, folks are just the simplest animals in the world. Nobody despises anyone without he despises himself, and nobody despises a host who pays for good unpretentious eats and drinks at any amusing dive. Why don’t you think out some cute little notion to surprise us all. You’ve no idea how easy us folks are to amuse.” ”

“ Whatever the party’s like, Emily must be made to come to it. The half of me that thinks of seeing her is happy. The half that thinks of her seeing me is miserable. People are probably looking at me and saying, ‘There goes a man in love.’”
All the women’s stores on Geary Street were showing clothes that would have looked exquisite on Emily.
Edward left the tame urban street-car and mounted one of the wild open pulley-cars that soar up precipices to the crags where artists and Italian delicatessen merchants build their nests. ”

“ Soon he would be away from these people who only witnessed his moments of indignity. The boys would never triumph over him again now. He would be alone, travelling in search of Emily. People who did not know him would think, “Who is that thin eager young man with the far-off look in his eyes?”
The Matron packed his clothes for him. She did not speak. She touched his possessions as though they were dirty. The headmaster called a ricksha for him and, without speaking, put Edward’s suitcase into it. Nobody said good-bye. The stars were like dew on Edward’s eyes. ”

“ The climbing suburb of Berkeley stood clear, flushed with gardens. A glaze of golden poppies lay on the slopes behind Berkeley. The scrub-oaks grew, close as shadows, in the little canyons. There was the rare gold-green of willows against cloud-colored masses of eucalyptus.
[35]
Californians have brought suburb-making almost to an art. Their cities and their country-side are equally suburban. No-one has a country house in California; no-one has a city house. ”

“ The guard-houses are like jewels having many facets. The elaborate horizon of the roofs is like a thread on which are strung fantastic jewels—red and gold and green and turquoise blue. Dragons and strange fishes and curling waves and plumes are strung upon the fringe of the pale sky. The central gate is the great pendant on the breast of the sky; the dark door of the city is set in a square mass of red plastered wall and over the archway the lines of the gold tiles are dramatically sober. ”

“ Edward thought of Emily’s voice, “Oh, what a party....”
“She will enjoy dead men,” he thought.
But there was, it seemed, peace in Chungking, at least for a few hours after the ship arrived. The junkmen were taking advantage of the peace; they were leaning out of their junks armed with poles and arresting the procession of the dead in order to take the coats and sandals that were no longer needed. The retreat of the dead was easy now and, though they had a long journey before them, they needed no supplies. The cold could not reach them now, their pitiful feet might be bare. ”

“ Milton for Our Boys seemed to be a drug in the forest market. Talk of uplift withered in the smell of the sea that came up the Russian River.
Edward slept one night simply and uncomfortably beside the prostrate bicycle under a twisted madrone tree, on soil thick with intimate small weeds—soil that for the first two hours was soft and seemed a [147] vantage point from which to sing to the stars, but for the rest of the night was hard and infested with ants. Stars are stark comfort at three in the morning. ”

“ Miss Romero, in a kimono perhaps expressive of her soul, was preparing breakfast at an electric stove in the studio. Mr. Bird, in another kimono which showed a battle of sparrows on his spine, was washing last night’s glasses at the sink. Their cat lay on its side pressing its shoulder blades against the sleeping Victrola. It was a parasite of a cat; it prided itself on being a member of an ancient civilisation. It never moved except to move away. It had never seen a mouse fired in anger. ”