“It’s really because you don’t like him.”
“My dear Coralyn—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t say ‘my dear Coralyn’ like that—my darling Philip!”
She tried to smile at me; but I was still hard.
“I don’t think it was very good manners, Coralyn.”
“I know it wasn’t. I’ve said I’m sorry. And I know in general, too, Philip, that you think I’m a disgrace and a scalawag—as I am. But for the love of Pete”—and her voice broke—“is life all manners? I thought we liked each other.”
I went to the window and closed it. Mabel and the worm were at the far end of the garden.
“I know that.”
“Well, then, for God’s sake be human!”
“I’m all too human. I think it was outrageous, and I think your young—I think he’s revolting.”
She turned, at that, suddenly away from me, and I knew she was crying—crying, as she always did, with just the fall of a tear or two, and no sound. She removed the tears with a quick fingertip, and then turned back again to face me as calmly as before.
“Why don’t you like him?” she said.
“I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous, and kid me, would you?”
“Good God, what do you think I am?… Haven’t you got any eyes or any taste? Why he’s a sap, Coralyn, a perfect sap! A backbone of boiled vermicelli, the soul of a lascivious fish! The woods are full of such things. Greenwich Village woods especially. He’s weak, he’s conceited, he’ll use you as a convenience and discard you when he’s tired of you—but what’s the use of saying all that? You know it as well as I do.”
It seemed to me that she shivered a little, as she stood with her back to the empty fireplace.
“I know his appearance is against him—but he’s really nice, when you know him.”
“Perhaps he is”—I shrugged my shoulders—“but I assure you I don’t want to know him.”
“I think you’re mean, Philip.”
“What’s mean about it?”
“It’s the way you say it that’s mean.… You know how much I wanted your opinion of him—and how much I wanted it to be favorable. I wouldn’t have done such a thing with anyone else in the world, and you know that too. And really, really, Philip, I thought you’d like him.”
She let fall another pair of tears, silently—I lighted a cigarette—the clock struck the half-hour—a planetary world of dustmotes danced in the blurred shaft of sunlight that came between the curtains at the window.
“You see,” she said, “I’m in love with him.”
“Dear Coralyn—I know you are.”
“Do you think I ought to marry him?”
“Certainly not.”
“He’s younger than I am—but he’s older than he looks.”
“And no doubt very sophisticated! In fact, it sticks out all over him. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he has a lobster in his pocket or a couple of perverted kinkajous.”
She sat down slowly in a chair by the hearth, and then said—
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“No—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.… But you see—”
What had crossed my mind, suddenly, was all that background which poor honest Michael had sketched for me. Should I dive into that?
“You see,” I said, “I know much more about you than you think I do. Michael has been here.”
Her face hardened.
“Oh, has he!”
“Yes.… And to be perfectly frank, I wonder whether the time hasn’t come for you to drop all this sort of nonsense entirely, once and for all. It’s no good. As Michael said, and it won’t hurt you to hear it, you’re simply going to the devil.… Good God, Coralyn, can’t you see it when you look into your mirror in the morning? I even know what you were doing in Paris.” (This was a lie.)
She flushed, her lips parted, she looked as if she were again going to cry, but didn’t, and after a pause during which she looked at me steadily and with an extraordinary sadness, she said—
“I know it, Philip—I know it, I know it—oh, my God, don’t I know it!… What else for God’s sake do I think about from morning to night? That’s why I want to marry Hugh. Even suppose it turns out badly, it’s at least a temporary anchorage—I can rest—”
“No, you couldn’t. The only rest for you would be to clear out of New York, and this sort of life, for good and all. Marry Michael—that’s the thing for you, if you want my honest opinion!”
She laughed at me quite frankly, for this, and with a sudden real gayety.
“Oh, Michael!” she said. “Poor old Michael.… Why, he wouldn’t last a week. Why, he’s too good. He’s a lamb—much too much of a lamb. Good God, no.”
“Well, then, dear Coralyn, I shrug my shoulders, as the saying is. I have no further suggestions to offer, except that you should reform—”
“—while there’s still time, you mean.”
“Yes!”
“Thanks. Keep the change.”
“You’re entirely welcome.”
The conversation dropped; and before it could be resumed, Mabel and the worm came in from the garden, and we sat down to the inevitable game of bridge. I had no further private talk with Coralyn—she and her abominable little vermiform appendage went back to New York early the following morning. If I had only known it, it was the last time I ever had a decent talk with her. And how miserable it makes me now to realize that; to realize how little I did for her, how unkind I was, and how unsympathetic. If I had only tried a little harder—but what use is there in being sentimental about it? And as for the final episode in my relations with poor Coralyn—I can hardly bear to speak of it. It’s quite the most revolting thing I ever did in my life.
V.
Before that was to happen, however, a great deal of water was to flow under bridges. To begin with, it became evident that Coralyn had practically dropped us—or to be more exact, had dropped me. It was clear enough too that I had hurt her feelings—had spoken too much of the truth—had seen into her a little too deeply. Anyway, we ceased to see her at all. We had a hasty note or two from her (as usual from new addresses) a postcard or two from holiday resorts—Atlantic City, Louisville, Hot Springs—and that was all. A year passed, and with it brought our own beginnings of tragedy. Mabel fell ill with consumption—at first it was not thought to be serious, and it was merely suggested, not urged, that she ought to go to the mountains. It was with the idea of making a virtue of necessity that we decided to spend a year in Europe, mostly in Switzerland—the first holiday we had had in a long time; and one from which poor Mabel was not destined to return. It was on the eve of our departure that we had really staggering news from Coralyn—the announcement of her marriage to Michael. A characteristically breathless and frivolous note from Coralyn, to which was added in a postscript, “You see, funny old Philip, I’ve taken your advice!” (A postscript, I may mention, which made Mabel look at me with some surprise—and perhaps with something of a surmise as well.) There was also for me, at my office, a letter from Michael. It was a typical seafaring man’s letter—curt, inarticulate, honest; it conveyed the impression that Michael had practically forced Coralyn to marry him, and as a sort of last desperate measure for saving her. Something in it, between the lines—I don’t now recall just what it was—made me think that things must have been pretty bad. It made one think of the animal rescue league, or something like that. Had she actually, finally, gone completely to the dogs? And would she now be successfully reclaimed? Or would she pull poor good Michael—that lamb—down to whatever it was that she herself had fallen to? What about that?…