Suddenly it occurred to him, as quite a new discovery, that it was queer that instead of being reduced to hopeless misery by his wife’s departure he could occupy himself like this in cold-blooded abstract analysis!
Was it that, at the back of his mind, he felt confident that he had only to return to England, to receive Nelly’s forgiveness and settle down happily with her as before? Or was it really that nothing, beyond extreme immediate physical pain, could break up the crust of his indurated egoism? Was he actually wanting in some normal human attribute; and did everything that occurred to him approach his consciousness through some vaporous veil like a thick sea mist? He began naïvely to wonder what the great artists of the world were like in these complicated human relations. It occurred to him that they must have the power of transfiguring the results of analysis and forcing the issue by the use of some sort of creative energy which the gods had completely denied to him.
Where was his place in the world then, he who was neither a normal human being nor a creative genius? Was he doomed for ever to live this wretched half-life, neither deeply happy nor deeply unhappy, cheated in some mysterious way of the prerogative of being born a man? He looked at the long tenuous figure of the young girl in the chair; and he felt, for one swift moment, as some fabulous merman or neckan might feel, as it craved for the human soul that had been denied it by destiny.
When Catharine was at last safely in bed in Nelly’s room and he had kissed her goodnight and turned out her light, he felt amused to note how the mere fact of sleeping in the sitting room gave him a curious pleasure.
He lay for a long time before he went to sleep, smoking one cigarette after another, enjoying in spite of his conscience a certain primitive and heathen satisfaction at being alive at all in this mad complicated world; at being able to say still, with the royal villain in the famous drama — ‘Richard is Richard — that is I am I.’
His mind called up the image of Roger Lamb as he had last seen him. And with the thought of the dead boy he found himself recalling an interview which he himself had had with a great Paris specialist, when his heart troubled him in earlier days. ‘Any extreme physical strain may finish you off,’ the great man had warned him. He had thought of that verdict during his fit of exhaustion at the stage-door of Elise’s theatre; he thought of it again now as he began to grow drowsy. ‘That would be a better way than morphia,’ he said to himself.
Chapter 21
Richard slept long and heavily that night. Once he woke with a start, in complete bewilderment as to where he was and with a feeling that someone had called him by name. He sat up and listened; but if it had been a cry from Catharine she did not repeat it. He heard no sound from her room.
After that he fell into complete unconsciousness till Catharine herself aroused him with the news that breakfast would be ready in ten minutes.
The girl looked lamentably hollow-eyed as they sat down opposite each other. He surmised from her appearance that she had hardly slept at all; and this, in his morning mood of malicious irritation, made him almost angry with her. What right had she to punish him with a miserable face like that, when he had turned out of his room to make her comfortable?
Just as he was leaving for the office she suddenly said, ‘Would you like me to get your supper for you or shall I go away when I’ve washed up?’
The idea of coming back to a lonely room struck his mind at that moment as the one thing he couldn’t endure. ‘Will you do that?’ he rejoined eagerly. ‘Here’s a couple of dollars.’ And he placed the two notes on the table. ‘Then we can manage again as we did last night,’ he added. ‘I don’t suppose either of us cares for Greenwich Village gossip.’
So it was brought about that these two took up their queerly assorted and entirely chaste domicile together.
Catharine reverted to her former method of earning a little money by embroidering Russian smocks which she sold at one of the numerous little art shops which abounded in that vicinity. Richard sent off many passionate and penitent letters addressed to Furze Lodge and by every weekly mail received a brief acknowledgement from Nelly of the small sums he punctually dispatched to her.
He worked more assiduously at the office of The Mitre than he had ever done before, receiving sometimes a bonus from the editor for work done beyond his original contract.
But he was all the while anxiously looking out for some means of rehabilitating his literary fortunes. He had constantly in his mind the idea of sailing for England; but it was obviously impossible to do so until he had obtained some permanent income. He could not see himself arriving in Sussex without a cent. To present himself before his wife, not to speak of Mrs Shotover, penniless as well as disgraced, was more than he could contemplate.
The weeks and months dragged on and the innumerable circles of people in that cosmopolitan city began in their various ways to prepare to celebrate the far-off event which for a minority meant the birthday of a God, while for the majority it signified parties and presents and desperate attempts to defy Prohibition.
The afternoon of Christmas Eve found Catharine occupied in a pathetic effort to adorn their bachelor apartment with some sprigs of holly and mistletoe, purchased in Jefferson Market.
The girl had seen nothing of Karmakoff since that day at Atlantic City, and as far as she knew Richard had seen nothing of Elise. Her receptive nature, passively docile to the will of fate, had slipped insensibly into a sort of trance-like domesticity, the seclusion and regularity of which had a healing effect upon her wounded spirit. It was the first time in her life that she had felt herself to be necessary to another human being. The naïve way in which the incompetent Richard clung to her ministrations was a profound solace to her self-respect. Nothing but the feverish activity of that whirlpool of human effort which seethed and eddied around them could have enabled their association to pass uncriticized.
They invited no one to the flat and they went to see no one together. The few separate encounters they did have with former acquaintances led to no sort of inconvenience to either of them; and if one Greenwich Village habitué remarked to another that Cathy Gordon had ‘moved downtown’, the worst commentary that resulted was some such remark as, ‘They say she’s having an affair with that fellow in Charlton Street whose wife ran away.’
Richard did not mention to Nelly in any of his passionate love letters that he and her friend were living under the same roof. The instinct that prevented him doing this at first was an entirely unconscious one. It was Catharine herself who converted it into a deliberate and conscious repression.
‘I’d rather you didn’t say anything to Nelly about my being with you. She wouldn’t understand it. And why should we agitate her unnecessarily when we know that if she did understand it she would be quite satisfied?’
Richard, amused at this innocent piece of sophistry, had not worried further about the matter. Since his conscience was clear, let the affair go! He had grown accustomed to Catharine’s companionship. He had got fond of the girl; and his renewed loyalty to Nelly did not seem in any way impinged upon by this relationship. If any sort of scruple did flicker for a moment across his mind it was constantly being quelled by Nelly’s reiterated requests that he should look after Catharine. Well! Catharine was looking after him. So all was as it should be!