He suffered from loving her, and the suffering was ecstasy, but then she died, and he suffered still, but there was no ecstasy in it any longer. His anguish was secret and somehow shameful, so intense and shattering that it was like a brutal physical violation of his incipient manhood. In his room, he wept. In his heart, he despised himself because by his snobbishness he had deprived himself of a friend, or the more that she might have been. When she was buried, the Tyler family sent a magnificent arrangement of white carnations, and Mr. Tyler, William Walter’s father, attended the funeral as the representative of the family.
She died of tetanus. Trying to understand why it was necessary for her to die at all, William Walter saw it in its simplest terms as a mortal conflict between a beautiful girl and a microscopic bug. The bug had been the victor, that was certain, and since he had been taught that God took a personal interest in such matters, he could only assume that God had been on the bug’s side. This thought was not original with him. It was something he had heard or read, the effect of a similiar experience related by someone else. It was an intolerable assumption, however, one which he could not accept; neither could he subscribe to the hypocrisy that such things happened for the best in God’s design. The truth of it, so far as he could see, was that God was compassionless, remote and unconcerned, if not impotent, and beyond the reach of supplication. This was a belief he always held afterward, the only tenable one in his judgment. The Tylers had been Episcopalians for generations, and he remained an Episcopalian, attending and supporting the church but accepting little that was taught in it.
The second person to disturb him comparably, quite a long time later, was the young woman he married. He met her at a tea dance to which he had gone reluctantly. She was a cousin of his hostess, her house guest, and her name was Harriet Cochran. Her family was wealthy, though not nearly so wealthy as the Tylers; and when he looked at her, he thought of expensive crystal gleaming in candlelight. That was an understandable response to her particular kind of loveliness, for she gave a deceptive impression of cool and detached delicacy. Actually, she was physically strong, and psychically she was both strong and resourceful. William Walter fell in love with her immediately, which was disturbing but not unpleasant, for love is unpleasant only when it is frustrated or dying. She responded to him promptly, with restraint, and was obviously prepared from the beginning to marry him. Their courtship fell just short of formality, all things always in the best of taste; they were united eventually in a grand ceremony and went to Europe on their honeymoon. The union was approved by both families, and everyone considered it especially fortunate.
It wasn’t. When they returned from Europe, he had already accepted the truth that he was not married in any real sense at all. This was traumatic, and it reflected favorably on the resiliency of his personality that he was able to adjust to this readily and adequately. At first their failure caused him naturally to wonder and probe and diagnose, but slowly, or really relatively quickly, he became convinced that it was something much better left alone. More than that, it was something that could be vastly disruptive if disturbed. He felt in the beginning defiled and tainted, as well as cheated, but self-devaluation was not natural to him, and the feeling passed. In his public life he remained aggressive, adding to a fortune that was already large, but in his private emotional life he withdrew and became passive, thankful, as the years were used up, for the gradually diminishing demands of his body.
Now after such penury and long oppression, his flesh and spirit were at last awakened and causing him pain. It was strange, he thought, that this could happen so long after he had stopped thinking it possible, and all because of a clever young woman who wore the rather ridiculous kind of glasses that clever young women so often seemed to prefer. She was, moreover and quite obviously, exorbitantly ambitious. He did not criticize her, of course, for being clever or ambitious, for he had himself been both, and still was. What he criticized her for — or at least felt a strange mixture of excitement and resentment for — was her capacity to arouse within him emotions he did not want aroused, and he tried to understand why it was that she could do this.
I have known many women more beautiful, he thought, and the truth is, she is not beautiful at all. She is only quite clever and knows how to make the most of what she has, but this in itself is perhaps as important as beauty is. At any rate, she is more provocative than anyone I have known or can remember seeing, provocative in a deeper and broader sense than is generally meant when the word is used, and there is more in this effect by far than can be explained by the response of certain glands. I was aware of it in the shop when I went there with Harriet, and I remembered it and considered it, and I was more than ever aware of it this afternoon in this office, and I think it is largely explained, apart from her face and body and voice and the deliberate effect she achieves through skill, by her almost childlike dedication to what she must do and be. She is not, however, either cold or narrow, as dedicated people often are, and there is certainly in her a potential for splendid passion. How I should know this, knowing her so slightly, is something I do not understand, but there is something else that I understand quite well, which is that I had better now for the peace of my soul begin to forget her before it’s too late, or more to the point, because it already is.
His thoughts and the silence were suddenly oppressive, and he turned abruptly in his chair and pressed a switch on the intercom.
“Have the attendant bring my car around, please,” he said. Leaning back again, he waited a few minutes, giving the attendant time; then he got up and crossed to a closet and put on his hat and coat. Passing through the outer office, he spoke briefly to a woman with a pince-nez and then continued on his way through the bank to the street. His timing was precise, as it almost always was, for the car had just arrived before him. It was a small car, a Chevy, and he knew that it was considered an affectation in a man who could have afforded any kind of car, but it gave him a kind of satisfaction to drive the Chevy, affectation or not, and he got into it now and drove away. Weighing in his mind the alternatives of his town apartment and his house in the country, he decided upon the house in the country, especially since it was Friday and the weekend was ahead. The truth was, however, that neither was a place he fervently wanted to go to. He wondered how long it had been since he had gone any place with fervency. It had certainly been longer than he cared to remember. If he went now to the house in the country, however, he would have to stop first at the apartment to ask Harriet if she would care to go, even though he knew she would stay in town. Nevertheless, it was an obligation to ask, and so he continued in the direction of the apartment and was there in little over half an hour.
In the foyer, he gave his hat and coat to a maid and was told that Harriet was not in. He went through the living room and into the adjoining study. Alone in the room, he mixed a drink and drank it slowly, thinking again of Donna Buchanan and wondering what she was doing at the moment and what she would be doing in the coming three nights and two days. This seemed to be of immense importance — knowing the things she would do and the places she would go, knowing if they would be places and things she really wanted to go and do or if, as in his own case, they would be no more than time-fillers. Would she work? Would she go to a show or go dining or dancing? Did she have a lover, and would she sleep with him? He thought these things, and he realized that he was like a stricken schoolboy. It did him good to think so of himself, and he smiled about it and drank his drink. After a while he heard the voice of Harriet in the living room.