Letty Fox (59 page)

It was not terror, and never once did I think of Washington, the gardener, or the too easy access to the servants' quarters, or the lunatic asylum, not far away. Nothing moved in the woods, but the scuttling animals round the house. All night, in the corpse-pale moonlight they moved, thought, hung about the foundations, and then footed it undangerously away. I did not sleep. When I got up in the morning, I found my skin luminous, my eyes languidly bright, and my hair finer than it had ever been; of itself it fell into delicious tendrils. At breakfast I made a joke of my extraordinary life here, and said, “But perhaps it is possible to live forever here without sleeping. There is a fluid at night which comes into you and lifts you out of yourself.”

She gave me a kind and rather twisted look. The grimaces which had troubled me on the previous day were tumbling now about her face and body, so that she moved out of ordinary perspective. I said, “Do you know, Lucy, I should like to go home. I feel there is something here which does not suit me, although I look well enough. May I go home?”

“You may do anything in the world that you like,” she said, “but would you like me to send for Jacky instead?”

I hesitated then, “No, I must go to work, I suppose. This is heaven, but I am not yet dead, unfortunately, and I must work.”

She laughed. “Well, this morning we will work on the portrait. I will see you this week in town, and when you like, you will come out again and let me finish it. I have a feeling about it. It is going to turn out all right. You know, that's something you're never sure of, till at a certain moment, the conviction comes—and if it comes, then it is so.”

This morning was passed in the outdoor studio. I packed and she drove me to the station. She bought me my ticket and some magazines to read on the train, though it was a short ride. All this still made me quite uneasy. I said to her, out of my embarrassment, “Lucy, I don't know if there's something wrong with me, for I know there are plenty of girls who take everything thoughtlessly, but I am not used to such generosity. I suppose it is because of the wreck of my family life, and the fact that I've always had to knock about, in a sense.”

She kissed me, said, “You'll come out and I'll spoil you again,” and sent me down to the train.

I
t was hot in town. My whimsicality dropped on the way in. I found my sister Jacky at the station to meet me and take me home. I was out of sorts, sharp with her. She innocently plied me with questions about my fabulous week end. I said curtly, “Mrs. Headlong hopes you can go next week end; but I shall not. Let her start a picture of you!”

Jacky was breathless with her questions. When I got home, I threw down my bag and lay upon my bed. When Mother came home and questioned me, I got up and answered her curtly, glaring at her, walking up and down, and holding my waist with one hand.

“The heat's unbearable,” I cried, and went into my room; but did not lie down again.

I first walked up and down and stood against the whitewashed wall trying to cool my face and body against the plaster. I threw myself upon the bed. I had visitations, dreams. I saw myself walking in a cool park and embracing the cool, slippery stem of a large tree; I saw myself swimming under a river and holding on fiercely to a jutting rock, covered with mosses. I held in my arms the mossy stele of a forgotten terminus in a Roman field; some goatish head looked down paternally upon me. Moods of blackness and suffering passed through me, of fierce, fierce intercourse such as no flesh could bear. I got up, and the fever that raged through my body was intolerable. Yes, this is the love that nymphs knew on afternoons when Pan chased them, I thought, this is the meaning of all those stories. I thought I was passionate; now, I know what growing up is. I thought, if it is going to be like this, this suffering and madness, I will kill myself now, for in the difficulty of getting married nowadays, and of getting a child, that cooling cold stone of a child, which stands in the hot belly and makes a woman heavy and tired, forgetting all her cruel fervors, that thing that drags her to the doors of the death house and away from the intolerable ardors of the sun, in this slow world, for women, I cannot live; I will kill myself. I believed that what I was suffering was then the first attack of adult passion, but I could not think of anyone else, not of my father, of Mathilde, nor Grandmother, nor Persia, not of anyone but myself, and my tortured body. I went back to the plastered wall and kept knocking my head against it; block, block, block, went my blockhead.

“What are you doing?” my mother called out.

“Oh, what I am suffering—” I cried, pulling my clothes straight and, with a knitted cap in my hand, rushing toward the door, “Don't ask me any questions. Living is too much for me.”

“Living—?” said my mother, with extreme disdain.

“Living without love.”

I banged the door after me. The streets at first seemed cooler than the house, but this passion, new to me, this fox was tearing at my vitals. I felt as if any moment I would throw myself down in the dust and let the stones tear out my flesh; let pedestrians tread over me, for my passion could only be cooled if my flesh were in a thousand pieces.

I dragged myself along, with an appearance of haste, and did not dare look at anyone, for if the passer-by were a woman, I hated her so much, for her being nothing of a man, that I would have liked to rip her cheeks with my nails; and if it were a man, I wanted to throw myself upon his welcoming breast.

Here were trees, unlike the trees of my visitation, but things I longed to embrace, and children in their baskets I longed to tear out of their swaddling clothes and run off with, holding them fiercely to me, pressing them like grapes into my hot chest; and here were horses with great, broad chests that I could hold to mine and here the grass of a front lawn, a church—only to throw myself on it and feel the coolness of the earth!

Thus I walked for hours, madly, with my cheeks flaming and my hair flying. My heart thumped; I was dead tired, but my cruel passion was not exhausted. I, at last, came home. It seemed to me that once there, I could take off all my clothes, bathe my skin, and even lacerate it, tear it so that the boiling blood would rush out. Nothing could satisfy me, of that then I was quite sure, and I wondered what I would do when I was married to some man in a solitary home and these dreadful loves, the love of those who die of love, overcame me.

I reached home in the same state, behaved furiously to my sisters and mother, spent a long time in a cold bath, and came out raging. This went on for three days. But by this time I had so outraged everyone in the house that I could only go to my father's place for company. He never took things hard, and that cool individual, Persia, always laughed at me. On the way up in a bus, the air from parks and the river blew upon me; I felt that I was getting better. I asked myself, “What was this visitation?”

But I did not know. I wanted for the first time to catch Persia alone and ask, was love so, in adult life; well, not ask it, but guess.

Persia was glad to see me. I could answer the telephone while she was out marketing; and scarcely had she gone when Luke Adams, the cartoonist, rang at the doorbell and walked in, shaking himself like a shaggy dog and embracing me casually and genially, as all women. He was a shabby, dark, thin-faced man whose personal beauty poured out of him intermittently. He made men and women love him and behaved with the nonchalance of the coquette. He made moves to catch his prey; but once caught, he left them to themselves, knowing they would be tamed. He had a pack on his back which he was taking to the devil; once he caught your soul, he was done with you, though he had a certain possessive feeling— would not let others steal you—my merchandise, he thought. “They,” he thought, “will cry at my funeral.” He had, nevertheless, a manly heart; brave, free, beyond a certain point no one could possess him, though everyone seemed to be allowed to love him to this point. He possessed himself. Dangerous possession. He had the art thus of pleasing women without troubling himself at all, and perhaps thus came the strange legend he had about his women: “I do nothing really; women attack me.”

He troubled men and women. He was the possessed. He had that possession they all longed for. He had liquid, squinting, wise smiles and the unreassuring predatory absences of the cat. Hardly anyone in the country called him Mr. Adams, but Luke.

He kissed me as a matter of course, and in kissing him, I put my arm round the small of his back. He drew away and looked at me with a yellow gleam, but seeing how it was, an accident, he smiled and went into the dining room where he took off his pinched and stained hat and threw it on the floor. He tumbled his books, satchel, and newspapers on a chair.

“Well, little Letty, how's school?”

“I've left school. I'm looking for a job.”

“Oh? That's smart! Something intellectual, eh? Or a typist, eh? You've changed since I saw you! Seen a bit of life?”

He smiled and spread his newspaper, his eyes chasing down the columns.

“Not intellectual! Advertising copy, perhaps. My grandmother knows people in Lord and Taylor, Bonwit's—that sort of thing!”

He lifted one eye, laughed, “Good! You ought to see what kind of a fist you can make of it—hullo!” and he returned to his reading. He looked up to say apologetically, “They're—uh—expecting— where's Persia?”

“Mr. Adams! Why do you ignore me! I'm not a child. I'm a woman. I was a Y.C.L.'er—I wrote plays—I'm a human being too.”

He looked at me over the top of the paper, smiling quizzically, “I noticed you'd changed; you've been knocking up against life a bit, is that it?”

I frowned. He grinned and went back to his paper. Presently, after considering me, he folded his paper, took a pint bottle of whisky out of his satchel, and put it on the table.

“Don't get mad, little Letty; I brought this along. Thought Perse might have a nip. She likes it. Do you know where the glasses are? Are you allowed to drink, though?”

“I'm a two-bottle man,” I cried, running for the kitchen.

“Two bottles of orange juice, pickled sunshine, eh?” he chuckled, and from the end of the passage I saw him casting his eyes sidelong at the newspaper. We had a couple of ponies each and Luke began to sit toward me, with his hair tousled and his eye merrily fixed upon me, “You're a pretty girl, Letty. How's that Clays? I read some of his stuff. Good stuff!”

“Clays is all right. But he's a long way away. I'd like to go over and join him.”

“Be a
vivandière
, eh? Be soldier's mate? That's all right.”

“Be a gun-moll. But I'm fighting here too, for Spain.”

“Ye-es,” he said, pouring some more whisky. “Where's Solander?”

“At work.”

“Well, he'll be home soon, I suppose.”

I looked him over. He was unshaved and one tooth was missing in front; he looked rascally and downtrodden, but he didn't seem to know it. He beamed upon me.

“Have you had lunch, Luke?”

“No-o. But I had late breakfast.”

“There's some cold chicken fricassee out there; do you want some?”

He said Persia would feed him when she came. She always did. “I'll heat it.”

“No, no, I—”

“Yes, do, Luke.”

He gave in, was ill at ease, and after a minute took up his paper and began to read it. Everyone knew how badly he ate and how sick he was with his chest. I heated the food in a rough sort of way, and set the table. I said, “I see there's some black bean soup, too. Would you like that first?”

He said genially, looking at his paper, making a concession, “All right.”

I had already heated it, set it in a plate, and now put it before him. I felt the service, which I had never done, suited me badly, but I did it, because he looked so poor. He was genially awkward, but sat and ate, waving his hand, however, and saying, “If Perse comes and—she'll wonder—she wants it for dinner, maybe—?”

Although irritated by waiting upon him, I went and got the chicken and sat down to look at him eating. He put away his paper, “Letty, you're a good cook!”

“A good canned cook.”

He put down his spoon, and felt in several of his pockets. At last he brought out a couple of packets.

“Look, some phlox seeds. Why don't you put them in your window boxes down at home. Girls like flowers.”

“Thanks, Luke, but I don't want 'em. I hate watering things and no one else would. Give them to Perse.”

When I brought in the chicken and the coffee, he looked at it, with hesitation, “We oughtn't to rob Perse this way.”

“You mean, she wouldn't feed you?”

“Oh, that's true, she always has something to eat. Sign of a good woman, Letty.”

He laughed reminiscently through his chicken. I told him I didn't care if I cleaned out the larder, for they wouldn't care. They didn't live that way. When he had finished his mouthful, he felt through his pockets again and brought out other little packets from several; “Do you do any cooking yourself, at home?”

“No. I hate the kitchen!”

“Well—” he said. “Well—anyhow,” pushing the packet at me, “anyhow give the packet to your mother. Saffron's good, rice dishes, paella, fish, Spanish dishes. Mm!” and he went on eating.

“Oh, look, my hand is bright yellow!”

Luke looked for a few seconds and the meaty palm I showed him stuck out boldly. He mumbled, “See you don't waste it.”

I laughed to provoke him. Luke said, “He's a Spaniard. He lives behind the shop. The man who gave it to me. His brother mends watches. He plays the guitar. He's saving up to see Mexico,
mi tierra
, he calls it.”

“Yes?”

Luke said, “They came in through Miami and tried to get a job, but they chased him away; they don't like them down there, or any other South Americans. They think they're a kind of—uh—Negro.”