The Thinking Reed (46 page)

“No, that is not so,” said Isabelle. “Indeed I want him more now than before, to bless us, and to make me feel that I have people behind me as you have. And he is so sweet, he has such lovely clean white hair; he is always clean like a little white dog that has just been washed. And he is so kind, and so delicate. When my father and mother died, he did not stop me crying, but he conveyed to me that I ought not to cry too much, that it was an offence against peace and order if I did not cry less and less every day. I have always been able to rely on him to tell me what behaviour would hurt everyone least. That is partly why I wanted to see him now, he is so wise; there were a great many things I wanted to ask him. Tell me, does he not even suggest that we should go and see him?”

“No, but you must not be surprised at that, he is preoccupied with other things,” Marc told her. “His letter is almost entirely about business.”

“But is it not the case that business is going superbly?” asked Isabelle.

“Well, that is just the point,” said Marc. “Your uncle has suddenly become afraid that it is going a little too superbly. An Englishman, who is greatly respected in the London world of affairs, has been visiting New York, and has frightened your uncle by prophesying a collapse. He says that American finance has become insane, and if prices rise any higher the whole structure will come tumbling down; and of course there have been some signs lately that the market is cracking. He has been going round among his banker friends and it seems that they too are feeling alarmed. So he thinks it will be wiser if he stays at home, and keeps an eye on your affairs and his own. He is acting out of affection for you all the time, really.”

“Do you think he has any reason to feel frightened?” asked Isabelle.

“Well, I do not know,” said Marc. “I am an industrialist, not a financier. But one has heard rumours. The stock market in America is really grotesque, you know. The increase in the capital value of your fortune during the last few years is so enormous that it must be pure fantasy, it can have no correspondence with reality.”

“But what are you afraid will happen?”

“The people who are buying stock will suddenly realize that they are being asked too much for it and will calculate a proper price for it, and will pay no more than that. Then the people who hold it will hurry to get rid of it in the fear that the value will sink still lower, and they will throw masses of it on the market at the same time, and its price will fall and fall. Your fortune, which has been doubled for no reason, will be halved for as little reason. Then, since everybody has lost a lot of capital, they refuse to buy things. There is a slump. Then nobody buys my automobiles. Oh, you and I could get much poorer in no time, once that started.”

“I hope we will,” said Isabelle. He smiled at her indulgently, and she assured him, “I really mean that.”

“I do not think you would like it so much if it really happened,” he said.

“Of course I would flinch,” she said. “I do not think that I have much courage. But I know that it ought to happen.” She regarded him with curiosity. “Is it possible that you do not feel that the mould in which our lives have been cast is horrible, and ought to be broken?”

He shook his head, still smiling. “It is not so bad.”

Yet she remembered quite well that she had seen him at certain moments when his vision burned dark, hating their circumstances as much as she did. But on his face, as on the faces of all the men she knew who had power over the immediate world, there lay an expression of acquiescence in what was going on around him, which was dissociated from the findings of the critical brain behind, yet was not exactly insincere. It was as if vigorous personalities found they could get their own way better by pretending that they had none other than the common will. So animals, who must go about the jungle unnoticed if they are to survive, assume protective colouring, and stand among the dappled leaves, dappled leaves themselves. “There is no compromise men cannot make,” thought Isabelle; “they have no sense of objective reality. They feel that they can make it anew every five minutes if it suits them. The fact is that they do not belong to the same race as women.”

The door opened and disclosed the butler handing over the dinner tray to Marcel. Marcel came in, set down the tray on the table by the bed, straightened himself, and handed Isabelle Luba’s envelope.

“Ivan says that the lady who wrote that says she is going to have a baby, but she is not sure exactly when,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Isabelle.

“Ivan says, too, that in Russia women are very, very fond of babies,” continued Marcel.

“Indeed,” said Isabelle. “Thank you, Marcel.” She dipped her spoon into her soup, and when he had left the room, she said, “Well, that is news which one might have preferred to hear more privately. Still, I am more glad than I can say, to hear that everything is settled and Luba is happy. But really Marcel is very impudent. He should not have let us see so clearly that he thinks Ivan a fool. One’s servants are terrifying. By the way, how is it that that snob of a cook has given us this glorious onion soup?”

“It is my doing,” said Marc. “She was going to give us something with a lot of that pond-weed parsley floating about in it, but Marcel let out to me that they were having this downstairs, so I told them to keep the other for themselves and to send this up to us. By God, I am hungry.”

They were silent for a time, bringing up the spoonfuls of good brown gravy to their mouths. Isabelle thought, “It is not because Uncle Honoré is heartless that he does not want to see me, it is because he is growing old. When one gets old, the hands get thin, the voice gets thin, the affections get thin. And indeed he could not have helped me if he had come, if he feels the most important thing in the world is to keep our money, for if I have learned anything, it is that the most important thing in the world is to lose it. Yet he was wise in his day. What a frightening world this is, if the wisdom of one day is the folly of the next! It makes being wise seem not worth while, yet I am sure that there is nothing else worth doing.” She said aloud, “Why are you laughing at me again?”

“Because you are so sweet,” said Marc. “You think everything ought to be unsettled, and then when you hear that a woman is going to have a baby, you say that now everything is settled.”

“And what is funny about that?” she asked.

“It is just a little bit of a contradiction, that is all,” he said.

“Well, there are many things in life that seem to be contradictions, and we will be able to reconcile them only when we know more,” said Isabelle pedantically. She put out her left hand and he caught it in his, and at the same time he looked past her, with a concerned expression of his mouth, a triumphant lifting of the brows. She had not the least idea what he was thinking. It struck her that the difference between men and women is the rock on which civilization will split before it can reach any goal that could justify its expenditure of effort. She knew also that her life would not be tolerable if he were not always there to crush gently her smooth hands with his strong short fingers.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1936 by Rebecca West

cover design by Karen Horton

ISBN: 978-1-4532-0682-9

This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
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