The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories (3 page)

“Yes, great,” he agreed. “Lots of strangers here, too; most of them distinguished people from town.”

“Who’s the tall browned man with Myra, who looks like—well,
like an Indian chief?” She laughed a little at her own pleasantry, just to show Jim that there was nothing troubling her.

“Doesn’t he, though? Sort of self-sufficient and superior and a bit indifferent, as if he owned us all and despised the whole tribe of us. I guess you can’t blame him much. He probably thinks we’re a soft, lazy, self-pampering lot. He’s Ralph Tyler, an explorer, just back from some godforsaken place on the edge of nowhere. Been head of some expedition lost somewhere in Asia for years, given up for dead. Discovered a buried city or something; great contribution to civilization and all that, you know. They say he brought back some emeralds worth a king’s ransom.”

“Do you know him, Jim?”

“Yes; knew him years ago in college. Didn’t think he’d remember me after such a long time and all those thrilling adventures, but he did. Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather when he came over to me and put out his hand and said, ‘Hello there, Jim Romley.’ Nice, wasn’t it?” Jim’s handsome face glowed. He was undoubtedly flattered by the great man’s remembrance. He went on enthusiastically: “I’m going to have him out to the house, Julie; that is, if I can get him. Small, handpicked dinner party. What say?”

She shivered again.

“Cold?”

“No, not cold. Just someone walking over my grave.” She laughed, amused at the double duty of the superstition in one evening, and glad too that Jim had not noticed that his question had passed unanswered.

Dance followed dance. She wasn’t being a success tonight. She knew it, but somehow she couldn’t make small talk. Her thoughts kept wandering to that tall browned man who had just come back from the world’s end. One or two of her partners, after trying in vain to draw her out, looked at her quizzically, wondering if the impossible had happened. Had Julia and old Jim quarreled?

At last she escaped to a small deserted room on an upper floor, where she could be alone to think. She groped about in her mind for some way to avoid that dinner party. It spelled disaster. She must
find some way to keep Ralph Tyler from finding out that she was the wife of his old schoolmate. But if he were going to be here for any length of time, and Jim seemed to think that he would, she would have to meet him. Perhaps she could go away? … No, she dared not; anything might happen. Better to be on hand to ward off the blow when it fell. She sighed, suddenly weary and beaten. It was hopeless. And she had been so happy! Just a faint shadow of uneasiness, at first, which had gradually faded as the years slipped away.

She sat for a long time in deep thought. Her face settled into determined lines; she made up her mind. She would ask, plead if necessary, for his silence. It was the only way. It would be hard, humiliating even, but it must be done if she were to continue to be happy in Jim’s love. She couldn’t bear to look ahead to years without him.

She crossed the room and wrote a note to Ralph Tyler, asking him to meet her in the summerhouse in one of the gardens. She hesitated a moment over the signature, finally writing
Julia Hammond
, in order to prepare him a little for the meeting.

After she had given the note into the hand of a servant for delivery “to Mr. Tyler, the man with Mrs. Redmon,” she experienced a slight feeling of relief. “At least I can try,” she thought as she made her way to the summerhouse to wait. “Surely, if I tell him about myself and Jim, he’ll be merciful.”

The man looked curiously at the woman sitting so motionless in the summerhouse in the rock garden. Even in the darkness she felt his gaze upon her, though she lacked the courage to raise her eyes to look at him. She waited expectantly for him to speak.

After what seemed hours but was, she knew, only seconds, she understood that he was waiting for her to break the silence. So she began to speak in a low hesitating voice:

“I suppose you think it strange, this request of mine to meet me here alone; but I had to see you, to talk to you. I wanted to tell you about my marriage to Jim Romley. You know him?”

“Yes, I know him.”

“Well,” she went on, eagerly now, “you see, we’re so happy! Jim’s so splendid, and I’ve tried to be such a good wife. And I thought—I thought—you see, I thought—” The eager voice trailed off on a note of entreaty.

“Yes, you thought?” prompted the man in a noncommittal tone.

“Well, you see, I thought that if you knew how happy we were, and how much I love him, and that since you know Jim, that you—you—”

She stopped. She couldn’t go on, she simply couldn’t. But she must. There he stood like a long, menacing shadow between her and the future. She began again, this time with insinuating flattery:

“You have so much yourself now—honor, fame, and money—and you’ve done such splendid things! You’ve suffered too. How you must have suffered! Oh, I’m glad of your success; you deserve it. You’re a hero, a great man. A little thing like that can’t matter to you now and it means everything to me, everything. Please spare me my little happiness. Please be kind!”

“But I don’t understand.” The man’s voice was puzzled. “How ‘kind’? What is it you’re asking?”

Reading masked denial in the question, Julia began to sob softly.

“Don’t tell Jim! Please, don’t tell Jim! I’ll do anything to keep him from knowing, anything.”

“But aren’t you making a mistake? I—”

“Mistake?” She laughed bitterly. “I see; you think I should have told him. You think that even now I should tell him that I was your mistress once. You don’t know Jim. He’d never forgive that. He wouldn’t understand that, when a girl has been sick and starving on the streets, anything can happen to her; that she’s grateful for food and shelter at any price. You won’t tell him, will you?”

“But I’m sure,” stammered the tall figure, fumbling for cigarettes, “I’m sure you’ve made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to—”

Julia cut him off. She couldn’t bear to hear him speak the refusing words, his voice seemed so grimly final. She knew it was useless, but she made a last desperate effort:

“I was so young, so foolish, and so hungry; but Jim wouldn’t understand.” She choked over the last words.

He shook his head—impatiently, it seemed to the agonized woman.

“Mrs. Romley, I’ve been trying to tell you that you’ve made a mistake. I’m sorry. However, I can assure you that your secret is safe with me. It will never be from my lips that Jim Romley hears you have been—er—what you say you have been.”

Only the woman’s sharply drawn quivering breath indicated that she had heard. A match blazed for a moment as he lighted his cigarette with shaking hands. Julia’s frightened eyes picked out his face in the flickering light. She uttered a faint dismayed cry.

She had told the wrong man.

He wondered, as he walked deftly through the impassioned traffic on the Avenue, how she would adjust her life if he were to withdraw from it…. How peaceful it would be to have no woman in one’s life! These months away took on the appearance of a liberation, a temporary recess from a hateful existence in which he lived in intimacy with someone he did not know and would not now have chosen…. He began, again, to speculate on the pattern her life would take without him. Abruptly, it flashed upon him that the vague irritation of many weeks was a feeling of smoldering resentment against her.

The displeasure that this realization caused him increased his
ill humor and distaste. He began to dissect her with an acrimomy that astonished himself. Her unanimated beauty seemed now only a thin disguise for an inert mind, and not for the serene beauty of soul which he had attributed to her. He suspected, too, a touch of depravity, perhaps only physical, but more likely mental as well. Reflection convinced him that her appeal for him was bounded by the senses, for witness his disgust and clarity of vision, now that they were separated. How could he have been so blinded? Why, for him she had been the universe; a universe personal and unheedful of outside persons or things. He had adored her in a slavish fashion. He groaned inwardly at his own mental caricature of himself, sitting dumb, staring at her in fatuous worship. What an ass he had been!

His work here was done, but what was there to prevent him from staying away for six months—a year—forever? … Never to see her again! … He stopped, irresolute. What would she do? He tried to construct a representation of her future without him. In his present new hatred, she became a creature irresistibly given to pleasure at no matter what cost. A sybarite! A parasite too!

He was prayerfully thankful that appreciation of his danger had come before she had sapped from him all physical and spiritual vitality. But her future troubled him even while he assured himself that he knew its road, and laughed ruefully at the picture of her flitting from mate to mate.

A feverish impatience gripped him. Somehow, he must contrive to get himself out of the slough into which his amorous folly had precipitated him…. Three years. Good God! At the moment, those three years seemed the most precious of his life. And he had foolishly thrown them away. He had drifted pleasantly, peacefully, without landmarks; would be drifting yet but for the death of a friend whose final affairs had brought him away….

He started. Death! Perhaps she would die. How that would simplify matters for him. But no; she would not die. He laughed without amusement. She would not die; she would outlast him, damn her! … An angry resentment, sharp and painful as a whiplash, struck him. Its passing left him calm and determined….

He braced himself and continued to walk. He had decided; he would stay. With this decision, he seemed to be reborn. He felt cool, refreshed, as if he had stepped out from a warm, scented place into a cold, brisk breeze. He was happy. The world had turned to silver and gold, and life again became a magical adventure. Even the placards in the shops shone with the light of paradise upon them. One caught and held his eye. Travel… Yes, he would travel; lose himself in India, China, the South Seas … Radiance from the most battered vehicle and the meanest pedestrian. Gladness flooded him. He was free.

A year, thick with various adventures, had slid by since that spring day on which he had wrenched himself free. He had lived, been happy, and with no woman in his life. The break had been simple: a telegram hinting at prolonged business and indefinite return. There had been no reply. This had annoyed him, but he told himself it was what he had expected. He would not admit that, perhaps, he had missed her letter in his wanderings. He had persuaded himself to believe what he wanted to believe—that she had not cared. Actually, there had been confusion in his mind, a complex of thoughts which made it difficult to know what he really had thought. He had imagined that he shuddered at the idea that she had accepted the most generous offer. He pitied her. There was, too, a touch of sadness, a sense of something lost, which he irritably explained on the score of her beauty. Beauty of any kind always stirred him…. Too bad a woman like that couldn’t be decent. He was well rid of her.

But what had she done? How had he taken it? His contemptuous mood visualized her at times, laughing merrily at some jest made by his successor, or again sitting silent, staring into the fire. He would be conscious of every detail of her appearance: her hair simply arranged, her soft dark eyes, her delicate chin propped on hands rivaling the perfection of La Gioconda’s. Sometimes there would be a reversion to the emotions which had ensnared him, when he ached with yearning, when he longed for her again. Such moments were rare.

•  •  •

Another year passed, during which his life had widened, risen, and then crashed….

Dead? How could she be dead? Dead in childbirth, they had told him, both his mistress and the child she had borne him. She had been dead on that spring day when, resentful and angry at her influence in his life, he had reached out toward freedom—to find only a mirage; for he saw quite plainly that now he would never be free. It was she who had escaped him. Each time he had cursed and wondered, it had been a dead woman whom he had cursed and about whom he had wondered…. He shivered; he seemed always to be cold now….