VIII
TERESA, in a spirit of contradiction, and the heat of argument, had chosen often to exaggerate the completeness with which she and Basil carried out that idea of frankness. She was aware of Basil's silences; and she herself was not as absolutely frank and unreserved as she sometimes assumed to be; but this arose not from her wish, but from the impossibility of translating everything into terms of speech. It would have been impossible, for example, to repeat all of her talks with Fairfax, and as these became more frequent in the course of the winter, the impossibility of telling all led her to tell little or nothing. It was not, however, because she had anything definite to conceal; but that her interest in him—and he did interest her, as a type not very familiar to her—was to a certain extent counter to her interest in Basil. The extent was slight, and did not touch her real feeling; but it absorbed a good deal of her attention. Basil was working hard that winter; they went out a good deal; and they spent less time together than ever before. Teresa was less jealous of his time. She was a little more worldly. Insensibly some sort of a veil had come between them—impalpable, not yet recognised by either of them, but the natural result of interests superficially divided. They lunched and dined frequently apart. Teresa ceased to question Basil, and though, of his own accord, he generally gave an account of himself, he made one important reservation. He was seeing Mrs. Perry often, and saying nothing to Teresa about that lady. Harold Perry, who played so small a part in his wife's drama, was away all that winter, looking up Aztec remains. Isabel, therefore, was free to investigate religion. But that interest was temporarily in the background. Basil had taken its place.
••••••
One day he went to lunch with her, as he was expected to do several times a week. He had broken a dinner engagement with her two days before, at the last moment, in order to dine alone with Teresa; and the excuse which he gave did not satisfy Isabel. She was in the mood, increasingly frequent with her, of dissatisfaction.
"Well, you know," he said frankly, at last, "your friends bore me, Isabel. I'm older than I used to be, and I prefer my own sort of people. And you must remember that I'm working pretty hard, and that I'm often tired. When I'm tired I don't want to talk inanities."
"Inanities? Do you call Father Damon's talk inanity—or Madame Blaise's—or"
"No, but those people don't come to dinner with you. I've enjoyed them, of course, but your crowd on Tuesday was quite a different thing—wasn't it now? You only wanted me to fill up a gap, to amuse one of the young women."
"I always want you," said Isabel. "But you aren't willing to come just to please me."
"I can't really please you by boring myself. You must remember that the time I can spend with you is limited. Why should we waste it in things we can't really enjoy, or in discussions like this? If you could be content to let me come just when I'm in the best mood, it would be better for both of us."
"I'm afraid I should see you very little then," said Isabel, with subdued bitterness.
"It must be little, comparatively, in any case. But there's no reason why that little shouldn't be pleasant. Really I can amuse you much better if you let me choose my own times and seasons."
"Amuse! I don't want to be amused!"
"Oh, yes, you do, Isabel," said Basil, laughing. "That's exactly what you want."
She was silent, and a look of deep melancholy shadowed her face. Basil saw it with discomfort, which he did not allow to appear. He began to talk about her plans for the winter, about a book which he was encouraging her to write. She had in mind publishing anonymously a "Journal of a Woman of Thirty," and had showed him some loose pages of it which had rather surprised him by a certain gift of hectic expression. She had also gone seriously into charity work, had joined several societies, had set aside a tenth of her income for such contributions, and was looking about for some special work to do for the poor children of the city.
In all these efforts to fill the essential void of her life, Basil lent what aid he could. Her real suffering touched him, though her passionate expression of it often irritated and repelled him. There was no deep sympathy in him for people, like Isabel, ill-adjusted to life, with inordinate claims, with demands that seemed to him essentially unreasonable. The quality in himself which had attracted Isabel, his ability to be essentially content, what she called his happiness, was exactly what limited his sympathy, and his real liking for her. She was beginning to see that limitation in him, to feel that there was no place for her in his life. Passionately, all of a sudden, breaking in upon his talk about her work, she accused him of lack of spirituality, of essential materialism.
"You aren't interested in these things, in trying to make the world a little more tolerable!" she cried. "You don't believe in anything I'm trying to do. You take it only as another way of amusing me! I cannot imagine, Basil, why I ever liked you!"
"Neither can I," he said readily. "Perhaps you don't."
"No, I don't, I don't like you! It is only another instance of my making a mess of everything. Everything I touch turns wrong. There are some people who are meant to be unhappy in the world, and I am one of them. I've never seen anything clearly in my life except that. It is not meant that I should try to live in the world."
"Perhaps it is not," said Basil slowly.
She lifted her eyes, full of a mystic questioning.
"You think so, too, now, don't you, Basil? You know you have always argued against that feeling of mine, and it was for that, I believe, that I loved you. I was seeking for something to strengthen me against that feeling, and I seemed to find it in you. I believe that's how it was. But you have only shown me how wrong I was in fighting against it. …"
She was silent, and Basil, too. This was the first definite reappearance of her old mood for some months, and Basil felt no energy within himself to combat it. His interest in Isabel had at all times been only a pale reflection of her feeling for him, apart from the impersonal interest which she discouraged, and his relation with her had brought him more discomfort than anything else.
••••••
Basil was not happy during that winter. lie regretted the emotional complication he had been drawn into, and found the inevitable process of getting out of it difficult and unpleasant. The only cheerful thing about the situation was that Teresa apparently did not suspect it. And even this had a tinge of bitterness, for he thought that if she had not been absorbed herself, she would have suspected.
Teresa was absorbed—but not in any one person—only in amusing herself. She had never before been so gay. She saw many people, and gaiety made her more popular; she basked in the sense of being liked. She perceived that Basil was unusually moody, but now she did not always try to get to the bottom of his moods. He said that work and money were bothering him, and was no less affectionate to her, but rather more so.
Isabel Perry's demands ended by wearying him profoundly, and he came to Teresa for peace and comfort. But he had a grievance against Teresa, too, and this was that she now made so few demands on him. By way of attaining peace with her, he accused her of being more interested in someone else. The jealousy of Fairfax, which he had resolutely stifled all winter long, appeared clearly. Teresa, with a shock, realised his unhappiness, and not knowing all the reasons, put it down solely to her own account. The complete story of her friendship with Fairfax made it clear to Basil that he was only an element in Teresa's enjoyment. Teresa tenderly admitted that her winter had been frivolous, and that she had neglected Basil; Basil protested that she had been quite right to have as good a time as she could. Then came peace between them, and a return of their old gaiety together. Teresa once more became accustomed to hearing how much more charming, how much more beautiful she was than other women. She took the other women as nameless abstractions, and smiled at the praise.
In the spring she knew that she was to have another child, and this one she welcomed. She wanted a companion for Ronald, and she now loved Ronald's baby graces so intimately that all possible babies appeared beautiful to her. Once more, and all at once, the world of frivolity fell away from her. For the time it absolutely ceased to interest her. Once more the special atmosphere, cloistral quiet of spirit, seriousness, and peace of mind, closed round her. She showed a quiet, dreamy happiness, for which Basil adored her.
They took for the summer a cottage in a quiet place by the sea, not far from New York, for Basil was to do some work in the city. He was now doing real pot-boilers—illustrations for two books, and some magazine-stories. Teresa assured him that if they could only tide over thus the baby's birth—for they were in debt—next year they might live more simply, keep within their income, and then he needn't do that sort of work, which he detested.
They began the summer very happily together, Basil going up to town two or three days a week, for his drawings had to be realistic pictures of some aspects of the city. They thought they might keep the little cottage till near time for the baby's arrival in December. June passed sweetly and calmly. But at the beginning of July Teresa had a great shock. Gerald Dallas shot himself; and she read the news, a brief, bald report, in her morning paper.
She had not seen him for months, their lives had been completely separated; but her affection for him still lived, and revived suddenly under the sting of pity and self-reproach. Basil that morning had gone to town very early. Trembling and faint, Teresa dressed, took the next train, and went to the studio. She did not find Basil. A telegram from Isabel that morning had summoned him to meet her. She was in town for the day. Accordingly he was lunching at a restaurant with her, and being called to account for his various deficiencies, when Teresa came to the studio. She hesitated a few moments, then scribbled a note and dropped it through the letter-slit, went down and found a cab, and gave the address of Gerald's lodging, taken" from the newspaper account. The place was a cheap boarding-house, near one of the small squares in the lower part of the city. It was a broiling day, and the odours of poverty assailed Teresa's senses as she got out at the door and after some argument was admitted. In one of Gerald's two rooms she found a chattering group of women. One of them, red eyed and flushed, a tall, robust girl, who had answered her knock, seemed to be the mistress of the place. To her, Teresa, half dazed, said she was Gerald's friend, gave her name, and was ushered into the room, where the other women, silent now, stared at her curiously. The tall girl began to pour out a flood of self-pitying explanations, mixed with tears.
It had happened the day before. He had taken the time when she, Annette, was away at rehearsal. He had written her a letter, which the police had taken, telling her what he meant to do, giving directions about his funeral, and saying that she was to take whatever possessions he left. The letter had been brought to her by a messenger, and she had come back and found him dead. He had shot himself through the heart, lying on the bed. He had been ill for several weeks, and she had had a terrible time of it.
Teresa went into the other room, which was darkened and hot. Annette opened a blind, and drew down the sheet from Gerald's face. Teresa felt suddenly calm and glad. She lingered for some moments, feeling tremulously the happiness of his peace, his escape from pain; then she kissed him on the forehead and went away, saying to Annette that she would come next day to the funeral.
At the studio this time she found Basil, that moment returned, and frantic with anxiety because of her note. She stammered out a few words in his arms, and fainted.
The summer was darkened for her by this event and by the physical weakness caused by the shock. Basil's devotion to her was complete, yet her prevailingly sad mood came to irritate him, since he felt she might shake it off by a sufficient effort. His remonstrances had no effect. Her melancholy and ill-health continued up to the time of the baby's birth, and were beyond the reach of her will. She was further depressed by fears for the effect of her state on the coming child. She felt, as she contemplated what was before her, that her strength would not carry her through, and she thought she might die, and feared it on Ronald's account. She thought much about Gerald. She was sure that if he had known her condition he would not have dealt her this blow. But he must have known in any case that it would be a blow to her; and all life took a darker colour because of his inability to bear it.
In December Teresa was very ill. She went to a hospital, and there the baby was born, and lived but two days. It was a boy; and at her first sight of him Teresa thought she saw an epitome of all the sorrows of man. He was totally unlike her first child. His tiny face, with heavy, mournful eyelids, with strange, deep lines about the mouth, made him seem a creature as old as the world. To Teresa all the sad experience of humanity seemed foreshadowed or summed up in him.
He died; and Teresa's grief was passionate beyond the comprehension perhaps of any man. Basil, though sad himself, and full of sympathy for her suffering, could not understand its full extent. To him the child had never really lived; it was hardly more than an abstract expression of the terrible will to live of the unborn universe; an atom of the ever-pulsing energy which forced its way into the world, causing suffering and woe—all for a life of two days. But to Teresa the baby was a complete being, and she sorrowed for him as though she had wronged him herself of his life. And she sorrowed for herself, for the joy, comfort, recompense, she had lost. She passionately wanted the physical presence of the baby, wanted to forget everything in such a half-animal, half-spiritual peace as its small, clinging life would have brought to her. She revolted against the uselessness of her suffering. She desired to die, and for weeks thought she might.
For a time she was indifferent to Basil, and even to Ronald, now nearly two years old. But she was cared for in spite of herself, strength began to come back to her, and soon she could go to the apartment they had taken for the rest of the winter. In the spring they meant to go abroad, Teresa and the baby first, Basil following as soon as he could get through some necessary work. He had still another book to illustrate—a book made up of magazine articles on the foreign quarters of New York. Basil despised the sentimentality of the letter-press, and promised himself some recompense in making his drawings as biting and brutal as possible. Teresa's illness had been expensive, and Basil had recently had to pay a note for a thousand dollars, endorsed by Major Ransome for a friend. Need of money drove him finally to agree to a demand which he had fought off for some time. Isabel Perry wanted another portrait of herself. She wanted it, Basil knew, simply in order to secure his presence at definite times. At first he had refused flatly, and kept to his refusal for several months. But at last, in a moment partly of feeling for her, and partly of harassing consciousness of debt, he promised to do it—and when he had left her he cordially hated their whole embroglio.