He could say that, of course; and the idea pleasing him, he took up his pen and drew a sheet of typewriter paper toward him and wrote on it “My darling.” But the impulse ran out, died—or, more precisely, withered in the presence of his anger. It was no good. He would have to take refuge in a merely formal letter, a glazed official style, something inhuman and abstract. Polite, uncircumstantial, with perhaps just a suggestion of bitterness and more than a suggestion of affection, affection curbed. And just the same, it was ridiculous that at such a crisis of one’s life one couldn’t, simply couldn’t, say what one really meant, and say it richly. If only Barbara had understood all this! If only she had seen—underneath his helplessness and his indifference to the conventional—his desperate loyalty and essential gentleness!… How absurd. This was tantamount to asking destiny, implacable destiny, to be one’s mother; it was like trying to pillow one’s head on a meteor.
He was still struggling with the problem, still remembering this and that and the other—their visit to Jackson Falls, the time when Betty had fallen into the river, the winter when Paul had taken to calling on Barbara every afternoon, Paul’s habit of kissing her hand, her curious indifference to cleanliness in the house, the odd trace of exhibitionism which always showed in her in Paul’s presence—when the door opened and Ulrich came in. He remembered, then, with a start, that the whistle had already blown; he had half noticed it at the time. He jumped up, crumpling the sheet of paper.
“Five o’clock, eh?” he said.
“My wife’s waiting in the car,” said Ulrich, tapping the edge of the desk with a rolled-up newspaper. He always carried a rolled-up newspaper. “And she says Miss Houston will meet us over there in Wellington.”
II.
It was to be a fish supper, in a little secret restaurant which Ulrich had discovered: a place where they gave you very good fish, and also very good beer, smuggled across the lake from Canada. Ulrich prided himself on possessing little secrets of this sort. It was as if he felt some queer kind of inferiority, and sought to make up for it by knowing all sorts of out-of-the-way odds and ends. He always knew, for example, just which of the standard brands of cigarette contained, at the moment, the purest and best tobacco, and which of them were capitalizing their success by recourse to cheaper materials. He knew a buyer of tweeds in Buffalo, and could get his suits for a third of what it cost anyone else. And it went without saying that if there was a new place at which you could get something to drink he would know about it. Faulkner really disliked the man; he felt sure that Ulrich wanted to get something out of him. Was it merely a sort of social thing? a desire to be on friendly, not to say intimate, terms with the manager, whom he perhaps also suspected of being “superior”? His manner was always uneasily ingratiating; he smiled too much.
And his wife bore out this impression, as Faulkner immediately discovered when they joined her in the car. All the way to Wellington, while Ulrich drove, Mrs. Ulrich, a plump fair-haired little woman, who shut up her blue eyes when she laughed, did her best to captivate him and impress him. She was playing the “great lady,” evidently under the impression that Faulkner moved in some social sphere of impossible grandeur—the world of marble halls and terraces with urns, which, in America, at any rate, exists only in the movies. She had cultivated a broad “a,” and used it with devastating effect; except when, now and then, she used it where she shouldn’t.
Faulkner was patient with her, replied to her lofty inanities, gave her a cigarette, and prayed that this Miss Houston (whoever she was) would be more interesting, more honest, and less on the make.
“Who is this Miss Houston?” he asked.
Mrs. Ulrich arched her eyebrows, and then immediately afterwards, for no discoverable reason, narrowed her eyes at him enigmatically.
“Ah,” she said, “she’s a woman of mystery.”
Faulkner felt that he was expected to smile in reply to this challenge, and obediently did so, but without much conviction; at the same time, suddenly, feeling extraordinarily angry with this fool of a female. He saw the whole thing—all the months of scheming that had gone to this party, in order that she might let it be known in local society that she was an intimate friend of the manager, Mr. Luke Faulkner. Revolting. All the more revolting, and also pathetic, not to say tragic, when one knew—as he did—how silly and unfounded was this legend of his social splendor.
The conversation lagged. Mrs. Ulrich could think of nothing further to say, at the moment, and sat back, ladylike, holding her cigarette between two stiff fingers; and Faulkner watched the flight of wet trees past the car, and the fence-rails from which raindrops still hung, bright with the evening light. A sense of unreality came over him; he realized how little he knew these two people, and how little he liked them; he hated the back of Ulrich’s head, and the little dark point of hair which hung over his collar; he disliked the silver vase beside the window, with its artificial bachelor’s-buttons; he loathed Ulrich’s habit of humming popular airs. And to be riding in a closed car, an expensive car, a car more expensive than he himself had ever had or wanted to have—to be riding in this, with two such commonplace people, and at a time when he particularly wanted to be alone … the thing was so incredible as to seem ludicrous. It was, in fact, so fantastic that the thought crossed his mind that the adventure might be amusing. Why not simply throw oneself into it, sink to this queer level, bathe in this strangeness? Might it not be in a way refreshing, invigorating? Suppose, for example, he were to make love to this pudgy and overscented female absurdity who sat beside him, bumping against him when the car bumped; what would happen? It might, at any rate, end this little campaign for social conquest.
III.
The “secret” restaurant turned out to be a kind of little yacht club, or boathouse, mounted on stilts over the lake. It looked like the sort of place that would sell you bait and rent you a dirty fishy-smelling boat. The dining room, however, was rather charming: a long, low-ceilinged room, windowed on three sides, with an uneven floor. They found a table at the far end, overlooking the lake, and sat down; and Faulkner remarked to Miss Houston that it was very like being on a ship. He could feel the whole thing moving.
“Wait till you’ve had two or three of their dry Martinis,” said Ulrich, “and you’ll think it’s moving, all right!”
Miss Houston was a disapointment, as far as mystery was concerned; she was a nice enough girl of twenty-four or -five, dark, with level gray eyes, somewhat awkward and mannerless. Faulkner gathered that she had only recently been “taken up” by Mrs. Ulrich, and that they didn’t know each other particularly well. It came out that she was a teacher of singing in Albany. It was evident that Mrs. Ulrich had romanticized her. Still, she was a pleasant enough creature, and knew Bach from Beethoven; and within a few minutes of the introduction she and Faulkner had formed a sort of alliance against the Ulrichs. Faulkner felt that if they should want to they could make the Ulrichs very uncomfortable.
“You studied music in Paris?” he said.
“No, in London. I was there for two years.”
“Lucky woman! I had two months there, in a college vacation once, and I think it was the most exciting two months of my life. I had a room in Gray’s Inn.”
“In Gray’s Inn! How simply delicious!… I lived in Lamb’s Conduit Street—don’t you love the names they give their streets?—and I often used to walk through the Inn.”
Mrs. Ulrich, smiling a little constrainedly, turned to see if the cocktails were coming. The waiter was just arriving, with a double round, as ordered. Faulkner felt that she was glad of the interruption.