The Unpossessed (21 page)

So over his head she studied minutely the stern and beautiful face of this thing that ruled their lives. She weighed and measured, her body and senses became the most microscopic thermometer of Miles' emotional strength. She was superstitious, as though some god of love must be placated. The moment came (did she feel Miles infinitesimally withdraw? or did she merely anticipate and did the anticipation immediately become the fact?).

She lifted his head and looked with cool tranquillity into his pleading eyes. “I shall catch cold,” she said lightly. His face looked hurt. Don't you want me, he seemed to say. “You must go to meetings and things,” she said. (She couldn't stop the bells from ringing in her voice.) Wouldn't you rather I stayed home with you and let the meeting go to hell, he as much as said while he stared at her with his eyes filled and glowing. “Immediately, at once,” she murmured; and held him close against the lightness of her heart. “So that you will be back sooner,” she said, and firmly withdrew her arms, reaching bravely for the towel.

He nodded as though he understood. The world came back as he looked at his watch. “My God, I've got to run! Jesus, how
could
I have hung around so long—” He caught her eye and smiled; handed her the towel as though he must do one last thing for her—and ran.

“My love to Bruno,” she called as if to establish some contact between herself and the place he was going; “don't let Jeffrey run away with the meeting darling, hold out for what you believe . . .” But he was gone; and she put his gift of the towel about her shoulder and it warmed her like a blessing.
Middle of December, she thought; the old hat will surely do; work till June for Mr. Worthington; be careful till the end of January; January, February, March, April, May, June, July, and August on the wedding-finger
.

“MRS. MIDDLETON,” said the butler with gravity and fi nesse, “sends down word she is binding the canary's leg—the little fellow broke it; Doctor Vambery is with her.”

“Now what is your honest opinion, March,” said Al Mid dleton, button-holing him, “do you think Dickie's leg is broken or that it's just a compound complex, needing psycho analysis. . . . Well, tell her,” he said, sighing, “that the whole left wing is waiting for the outcome. Personally I'm betting on Vambery. Tell her her husband is fighting off a counter revolutionary stroke himself, and that if she isn't down soon the radicals in the parlor will be so many grease-spots on the rug. Now: what are you going to tell her, March?”

“That you hope she will be down shortly, sir,” said March and wheeled his abdomen about to carry it before him like the banner of his admirable profession.

“A man is never a prophet in his own pantry,” said Al; swallowed his drink and made inquisitively for the library which Merle had “opened” for the reception of the plotters. He stood for a moment listening outside the door; the buzz came out pleasantly like the growing roar of the Stock Exchange when something was brewing. But no sound like the one he wanted most to hear: his own son's voice raised and bold like the voice of someone who belonged somewhere. The buzz went on; but Emmett played no part.

He opened the door stealthily. “tactics” “I say tactics be damned, Jeffrey” “but boring from within”—“Pardon me!” said Al loudly—and noted with malicious amusement how the steady mumble of voices died down at his entrance; saw with a touch of irritated sympathy how his own son looked up in fear; “pardon me for just stepping right in as though I lived here. My wife is upstairs having a love affair with a sick canary and I got to feeling a little lonely. Ah there, Leonard, glad to see you. So this,” he said with a quick look round, “is the Revolution. Glad to meet you, boys.”

“Please Al, we're having a d-d-discussion,” said Emmett miserably.

But Bruno Leonard was crossing the room with the swift tact of a woman and took his arm. “Since you're buying a stake in revolution,” he said genially, “you ought at least to meet the dark horses, Mr. Middleton. Miles Flinders—between the fireplace and sofa, he's marking it off for firing—Norah and Jeffrey Blake, Arnold Firman and Cornelia Carson, classmates of your son's—and your own son I think you know.”

“My own son I think I don't know,” said Al advancing briskly. “Pleased to meet you all.” He swung the hand of each in turn. He was amused at the silence, both hostile and embarrassed, which greeted his appearance. “Well. Have you come to blow me up,” he said pleasantly. Still no one quite reacted. He felt the show was his. “And what a lovely female decoy,” he said, bending to the one called Norah Blake who sat on a hassock knitting peacefully; “Madame Defarge, eh?” he said, patting her—for she seemed deliberately planned to rest the eyes. The other girl, the Cornelia one sitting close to the angry young Jew, affected him like so much sand-paper, an insult to his generous welcome to the female sex. Male and female created He her, thought Al, vastly pleased with his wit.

“Please, Al.” He heard Emmett's agony; slapped his own hand on withdrawing it (though God knows there had been nothing but friendliness in his gesture, and the fair one's smiling nod reciprocated nothing else), and put it firmly in his pocket. “We were talking, dad, I don't know if you'd be interested . . .”

Take that, Middleton, you plain tough guy—from your own son! that'll show you—marrying an orchid and producing a pansy. (It hurt him nevertheless.) “Nonsense, my boy,” he said with cheerful cruelty, “I'm only doing what the medicine man told me—taking an interest in my son's activities. Can I help it if my boy likes revolutions? Papa'll get right down on the floor and play along.” Vambery called him a sadist, explaining it in terms of four-syllable words from the Latin; but Al slipped into bullying his son because it was the only way he could talk to him, because time after time he hoped he would kick the lad into being some kind of a man. “Go right ahead, boys,” he said genially, drawing a chair beside the knitting one, and crossed his legs to listen.

There was silence, the young Jew and the female-impersonator whispering impatiently. “They're taking your number as an upper-classman, Mr. Middleton,” said Leonard pleasantly (a nice guy for a professor, Al had thought from his few visits); “the younger faction, the Black Sheep, or Red Lambs as history will probably call them, I suspect are reverting to Alice-in-Wonderland: the off-with-his-head chorus. How about it, Cornelia? are you playing the Red Queen over there?” Trying to bridge the gap, thought Al, between the high-brows and the low-brow—good-natured devil.

“We've merely been betting,” said the sand-paper acid voice, “on the chances of this meeting getting anywhere.” “We figure if we just came here to spend the evening” “why it's a nice warm place to sit” “but we had rather thought”

“They won't talk,” Emmett again, in his wretched, sissy voice, “as long as you are p-p-present, Al.”

“Why not?” Al said coldly. “I'm the step-sugar-poppa. If your revolution's borrowing money from Middleton's Mid-Town Essentials, I don't see why I can't buy my way in; I want a ringside seat when the fight comes off.” “
If
it comes off,” said the tight-faced Yankee lad (Cinders? Flinders) who continued moodily to mark time on the carpet. Al looked them over coolly. From the young Jew perching defiantly with his shoes (and what shoes!) resting on Henry the Eighth in
petit point
at he had forgotten how many francs the square inch; to the handsome Jeffrey incredibly clad in a costume replete with wind-breaker; the nice plump knitting decoy duck; to Emmett, poor kid, stretched on the rack by his uncouth father. “How about it, boys? can I tune in on the inside dope? I want to deal in futures. When's the opening? But please,” he said amiably, “don't pull it off on a Saturday; it's my only day for golf.” A pretty solemn bunch, he thought; all but Bruno Leonard.

“We've been discussing a paper, Mr. Middleton,” said Norah kindly; “some kind of a paper Bruno wrote; to go in the front of the Magazine.” Thank you my dear, he said; and patted her warm hand; and is that a sweater you're doing? Yes, for Jeffrey, she whispered back; I'm turning the sleeve.

“My girl,” said the blond Jeffrey (and hadn't he caught sight of him, clicking glasses with Merle last week; yes, he remembered the wind-breaker lying over March's puzzled butler's arm), “my girl has trouble with the English language. What we're discussing is a Manifesto, a statement of policy, drawn up by Bruno, naming the issues.”

“Evading the issues,” said the young Jew quickly “not a positive statement in it” said the dry male-and-female “cowardly” said the meager Jewish captain “hypocritical” said his sidekick immediately “wishy-washy liberalism” “pacifistic bellywash” “pink” “soft” “emasculated” “mugwumpery”

“How many of them are there!” said Al, bewildered; “my God.”

“Of course what you youngsters don't understand,” said the wind-breaker conciliatingly (jumping his hands on his lap like a baby) “in your eagerness to go the whole hog, is that the intellectual has a definite function
as
an intellectual, a place of his own . . .”

“On the sidelines, according to you,” said the minister's son Flinders, pausing sternly in his walk; “a box seat, a loge, where he can reach for a drink if the revolution bores him. This thing is beyond a game, Jeffrey—even the Sheep know that.”

“No game,” said the blond Jeffrey eagerly, “of course not; but it must be played like one at first. It's a matter of tactics, I've just come from a conference with Comrade Fisher—”

“So that's where you were,” said Norah chuckling; and skillfully drew out an amber needle to start another row; “and there I was with all that lovely pot-roast.”

“I bet you're a swell little cook,” said Al turning to her with pleasure. She smiled complacently.

“The revolution,” said Bruno Leonard lightly, “has taken a slight turn for the worse, ever since I learned that Comrade Fisher was a woman.”

“And I,” said the caustic Firman, “have begun to suspect that it isn't a revolution at all, since I learned she didn't belong to the party.” “Her record,” said Cornelia, “would take some looking into.”

“I told you smart kids,” said Jeffrey patiently, “that she's even been in jail. . . .”

“Now would you question her, you hard-boiled cynics?” said Bruno with delight.

“Ruthie's a nice girl,” said Norah simply.

“I really think,” said Emmett, distressed, “that if mother doesn't come soon, I mean we're wasting so much time . . .”

“My son,” said Al dryly, “counts on his mother's arrival to drive me out. My dear boy, would you have her neglect a canary for a revolution?” My God! tears stood in the youngster's eyes. Father to a sissy—I'd rather have a gangster in the family! “Do you really want me to go, Emmett,” he said gently.

But Bruno laid his hand on Emmett's shoulder. “Suppose you play umpire for a little, Emmett,” he was saying; “I'll indulge in a little reactionary banter with our right wing.” Emmett calmed as he might beneath a mother's hand—and never had, reflected Al. “Well! what do you think of my circus, Mr. Middleton?” He came jovially and sat between Al and Norah. “How would you like to place an ad in my Magazine? guaranteed to reach nobody with the cash to buy your product?”

“I figure,” said Al, “you're up against the same thing I am with that Magazine of yours. You've got something to market nobody wants: Revolution. As a business venture it interests me. I deal in luxuries and call 'em Essentials. You deal in destruction and have to put it across as construction.” His eyes wandered to the little group, where the buzz was flaring up again. “Say, one thing I advise you; if you're going to peddle your dope in the sticks, get some appropriate salesmen—these four-syllable boys can't touch the American market.”

They had turned it on full force again, the young Jew and his echo leading; he wished that Emmett would join in. They were pretty crazy, Al thought; but no crazier, possibly, than a view of the Exchange to an outsider looking in; their own language; their own gestures; their own particular mode of high-brow yelling—he was sorry for his boy, and ashamed, watching him sit with that nervous look upon his face.

“I don't get it,” Al said patiently. “It's a funny line to handle, revolution. When I was a kid . . .”

“But times have changed,” said the professor smiling. “Get used to it, Mr. Middleton, I'm afraid you're going to see plenty more. In your day it was each man for himself. But nowadays . . . well, get an eyeful of those kids; they were born to band together. They know it's no use bucking it alone. . . . But hell,” said Doctor Leonard boyishly, “I'm not trying to sell the revolution to you. The revolution needs the income from the nonessential Middleton Essentials . . .”

The tight-faced Flinders paced the floor; the wind-breaker talked like a deaf-mute with his fingers on his knee; the kids came forth like a trained Greek chorus. But where on earth did Emmett fit?

“Worried about my kid,” he said telegraphically. “Poor Goddamn forlorn little bastard; what's the matter with him anyway. Can't be all his daddy's fault. Sometimes I think the poor kid's dotty like his mother.” Funny thing about Jews: you met them downtown and wanted to cut their throats; you met them at home in the evening and found yourself telling them your troubles. “Too many private schools,” Al said succinctly; “too many lectures on sex with the shades pulled down; too much Vambery—altogether too much of something that the poor kid got from his mother and not enough of plain red blood from low-brow papa. . . . Say Leonard, you're a high-brow,” he said: “do you think the Vambery's right? he says Emmett pulls that stuttering stunt half on purpose, making tracks for a kind Freudian home-plate. . . . Jesus Christ!” he said disgustedly, “a stutterer in the family! Is that why he can't get in under the wire any place, make friends?”