“I see. It’s all going to be fathered on me, is it? No, Enid, that won’t work. I’m not going to swallow that, not by a damned sight. You get this into your head and keep it in your head, that the real trouble has been your constant and increasing interference with everything connected with my work and career. From the moment Buzzer was born, you’ve ceased to co-operate with me — from that very moment. That was the signal for the beginning of the pressure, and you’ve never relaxed it for a second. Oh, no! You evidently made up your mind that a possible artist was all very well, but that a breadwinner was much more important — so you went to work in every conceivable way, trying to wean me from my friends, or to give me new and ‘better’ ones, and to change subtly the whole mode of our life in a direction you thought more suitable. And with mother’s help, too—that was clear enough, that heavy and priggish hand from New Bedford! We had to live in the right street, and know the right people, and do the right things — and so, of course, more money was needed — and so the vicious circle had rounded on itself. And then it began to be suggested that perhaps my work had better be changed — or perhaps I could do something else, like society portraits. Pretty damned cunning! And the whole of my original idea, my ambition, my career — good god, it just makes me rage to think of it — was to be scrapped, and for what? For financial security and social ambition. And that being so, what it comes down to is this: that you married me under false pretences. You were keen enough on my being a painter beforehand, weren’t you? And you swore you would help me in every possible way. Well—now look at it. If it’s blown up, it’s your own silly fault. And I’ll tell you this right now — that I’m not going to be driven a single step farther. My surrender today about Jim is the last I’m going to make. From now on I’m going to stick to my own notion of how to run my career, and I don’t want any interference from any one — you or your mother either!”
“I see — and you complain about lack of co-operation! You intend simply to dictate, is that it?”
“In matters vital to me, I certainly do. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“And what about me? What about the things that are vital to me?”
“Well — what, for instance?”
“Well — love, for instance.”
“Love! What do you know about love!”
“And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“It was a flat enough question, wasn’t it? What do you know about love? Can you love? Have you ever really loved me for a minute? I very much doubt it. If you had, how could you possibly have done all these things to me!”
“So you think I don’t love you.”
“Well — do you?”
“I think I’ll leave that to you. You seem to know everything, don’t you? So perhaps you’ll tell me.”
“Well, I think I will. I think perhaps for once I will.”
“Do.”
“And it goes for all of you — the whole New Bedford and Boston lot of you — the whole cold-smoked egotistical lot of you. There’s really something wrong with you, you New England women — something esthetically wrong with you, something wrong with the pulse, you’re not quite human. And it was summed up, I think, quite well, by a Greenwich Village poet who evidently knew what he was talking about. He said: ‘I have eaten apple pie for breakfast in the New England of your sensuality.’”
“Oh!”
“Yes. Very pretty, isn’t it?”
“That’s the cruelest thing—”
“Cruel—!”
She spun suddenly on her heels, turning her back, flashing a hand towards her face, but not before he had seen the quick tears starting, the lovely mouth quivering and arched with pain. Her shoulders were trembling, she was biting the back of her hand and trembling, but she hadn’t made a sound — and then (as suddenly as she had turned away) she turned back again, went quickly, blindly, past him into the hall, and across it and into the bathroom. He heard the door close, heard the sound of running water — she had turned the taps on, to drown out the sound of her crying. She was standing there crying — and as he waited irresolute, half wanting to listen and half not — for he had never heard Ee really crying before — it seemed to him that something very queer and profound had happened to him in that instant when she had turned away, with the tears starting on to the back of her hand, on to her rings, and her mouth taking that extraordinary shape of unhappiness. For one thing, her mouth, in that moment, had seemed to him more beautiful than it had ever seemed before — as if, suddenly, it had taken on a new and deeper meaning. All of her, in fact, had changed startlingly in that instant. She had become tragically different, a separate and unknown, an unhappy and perhaps somehow doomed, person — and a person, moreover, who might already have resumed her liberty of action! What would happen to her — what wouldn’t happen to her — what would become of her? Shapes of disaster, misery, death — the feeling of catastrophe again — but now immediate and dreadfuclass="underline" and himself perhaps powerless and exiled. The distance between them had become immense; and yet at the same time it seemed to him that he had never before seen her so clearly. He remembered thinking of her as a ship’s figurehead, borne backward away from him by her own will — but that had been nothing, that had been a mere pretense — this was real. It was as if she had gone.
But had she resumed her liberty of action?
Was that what it meant?
Had he at last hurt her too much? Hurt her so much that now there would be no going back — no bridging of the gulf that had fallen between them?
He stood still and listened. He stepped softly into the hall and listened. He could hear nothing — nothing but the sound of the running water in the basin. That and the rain — and then a car rumbling over the loose boards of the bridge, coming nearer, its Klaxon skirling angrily as it shot up the road into the village. And then the silence again, for the gentle persistent sound of the rain, the sound of running water.
He went back into the studio, walked twice round it, circling the wicker chair, avoiding the tripod legs of the easel — paused to press back the front log in the fire with his shoe — then pulled one of the window curtains aside and looked out at the street. Nobody — nothing — it was deserted: nothing but the sad autumnal rain, the rain which would probably last all night and all day. The Rileys’ house was dark — but, of course, Mr. Riley had turned in early, tomorrow was a fishing day, he would be down at the Town Landing, with his bait boxes, at four in the morning. Going down the river in the rain, the dirty blue boat stuttering loudly past the sleeping houses, past the moored yachts at the lower village; and then down the channel, past the breakwater and the bell buoy, to the Sound, the open sea, a mile of lobster pots along the sandy shore. How simple, how good, how solid — how reassuring, if life were always as well arranged as that! Yet he had been a friend, hadn’t he, of Miss Twitchell — Miss Twitchell had often called there with her basket of flowers, standing there on the porch, Mrs. Riley’s white, sharp, New England face peering around the half-opened door, the door which she always held tightly clutched in her hands — he and his wife had been her friends, but what good had that done her? She had lain for two days in Indian Pond without their even knowing it.…