The Unpossessed (36 page)

And Bruno rose, ponderous and very brave; the girl in lettuce-green rose with him. He lifted his hand to compel silence; and hers went up like its shadow. “Oh my God,” said Emmett, next to her. “Don't be nervous, son,” Al Middleton whispered gently.

The buzz was disconcerting; despite his lifted hand it did not die, it seemed, indeed, in some subterranean way, to grow. Bruno waited confidently (he looks Jewish, the efficiency expert's wife said loudly; the efficiency expert blushed with pain)—for here were the old triumvirate pulling together again; he felt the presence of Jeffrey solid behind him (whatever inanities there were in Jeffrey's speech he thought his own would iron out); he caught Miles' eyes, lifted to his own in steady faith. “FRIENDS,” he said into the oblivious buzz. “FRIENDS,” he said louder; and observed that face after face was turning from him, like an epidemic. A low murmur spread through the crowd.

“Well, I
admire
her,” said Mrs. Stanhope boldly; “she's got my
admiration
.” “I'm hanged,” murmured Crawford to Bud Chapman; “pretty jolly
this
will be, I wonder if the Ballisters . . .” “Go on, bring her here,” Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Draper urged their husbands forward; “the courage of the poor thing, wearing Jimmie's pearls!”

“Look,” said Miss Hobson, drawing herself up; “that woman
did
come, after all: Emily Fancher—if you please!”

“Emily Fancher,” buzzed the ballroom as March stood solid behind her like a portent.

“Emily Fancher!” said Miss Titcomb and Miss Henley-Star, Miss Cracken and Miss Milliken. And
Doesn't she look stunning
, breathed Miss Milliken.

“FRIENDS, THE PURPOSE OF OUR MAGAZINE,” said Bruno, plunging desperately into the middle of his speech—when Al came rushing to his rescue. Over the Black Sheep's heads he spoke: “Better wait, Leonard, better give them their heads for a minute. Lady entering in pearls is our first prison-widow. Husband embezzled. Got five years. Damn shame. Best card player I ever knew.” He retreated, winking sympathetically, and took up his former station at the bar.

Emily Fancher, as cool as her pearls, was too wise to show gratitude for her reception and passed among her friends a happy cynosure. “Why Jim's just fine, having a fine rest,” she nodded to one group. “Oh certainly everything's all right,” she waved her hand at another, “certainly: half the property had been transferred to my name.” “Now that,” breathed the efficiency expert's wife to her husband reverentially, “that's savoir faire—that's
born
in a person, the real thing,” she wistfully concluded.

The Black Sheep grew furious. They were signalling to catch his eye, Bruno knew, urging him to stand and shout his speech if necessary. He looked out like a man of stone above their heads. He saw Elizabeth, standing in futile replica of himself. He saw young Emmett, pale and frightened; he tried to smile, but Emmett wouldn't meet his eye.

Like a little ghost of something human the Middleton boy sat beside her. “Why doesn't he start, what's he afraid of,” he stammered in what Elizabeth conceived his strongest effort to be cruel. Elizabeth's eyes had somehow lost their focus; for the room had grown very large, incredibly large and terribly bright; and all the people in it were very small except Bruno, a large and helpless mountain of a man, crucified and hung before the world for ridicule. Jeffrey she perceived beside him as a Judas; and the Black Sheep waving in their anger at his feet were torn scraps of some flag struggling to rise and mend itself. “He's s-scared, that's all,” sneered the Middleton boy. She did not strike him because seen through her anger he had too many faces; instead she held herself tall as she could in her lettuce-colored dress for Bruno.

“My dear, what
else
could he have done?” Mrs. Fancher asked her friends. “Just barely settled in . . . the walls of the living-room imported . . . Tudor house in England . . . imagine the cost of that alone . . . and the bedroom absolutely lifted” “absolutely lifted” echoed Miss Titcomb and Miss Henley-Star “from a Louis Sixteenth boudoir” “a Louis Sixteenth boudoir” echoed Miss Cracken and Miss Milliken (“Don't speak to
me
of bravery among your lower classes,” Mrs. Draper said; “I know nothing to compare with Emily Fancher's courage in coming here tonight” “a question of standards,” said Mrs. Whitman proudly, “when one's standards are at stake, culture, art—”) “an onyx bathtub,” Emily Fancher continued bravely, “gold faucets, oh gold fixtures everywhere, and the floor inlaid in marble, you know Jim, he had, he
has
, absolutely perfect taste” “absolutely perfect taste” breathed the efficiency expert's wife as though she were in church “and he always, thank God, wanted the best of everything for me” “the best was none too good for her” “and then the marvellous Gobelins to cover up the Tudor walls” “Gobelins” “and then the crash came . . . well! what
could
he do?” “what
could
he do?”

The buzz had risen in Elizabeth's ears until it was terrific din, of drums and music expressing finality like the Day of Judgment, parade music, music louder than the world, and through it all some quiet bell, some quiet voice, trying to tell her something. She turned and struggled, tried to hear, tried properly to fix her aching eyes; but her camera trembled, the world and Bruno shaking on its retina. “S-scared, that's what,” said the Middleton boy in a shaking voice. “Oh be quiet!” said Elizabeth.

“Mr. Tevander, you are being deliberately obtuse,” Mrs. Stanhope rallied bitterly; “Jim Fancher
had
to do what he did . . .what he did took
courage
. . . .” “I know,” said Mr. Tevander restlessly, “all I say is, it oughtn't to be necessary, I mean the system, I mean, men shouldn't
have
to do such things as Fancher did. . . .” “Oho,” said Mrs. Stanhope cunningly, “so you are a
Socialist
, Mr. Tevander; but have you ever stopped to think what would become of art, of culture?”

The Black Sheep were roaring out their anger.

This is hell, this is purgatory, Miles said to Margaret; and he wiped his brow on which angry sweat was bursting out. Bruno stood before him as large, potentially as noble as once his Uncle Daniel striding down a side of hill; but Bruno's hand was stayed, his strength was bottled—and Miles' faith was trembling. It's like a ghastly parable, he said. And she said nothing back to soothe him; she sat there beside him in the center of the maddening din and couldn't find a word. It's like a kind of sarcastic revelation from God, he said. I know, I know, she said, helpless.

“and not one square inch of tapestry will you return, Emily, he said to me; not one gold gadget, not one splinter of the Tudor walls . . .” “not one gold splinter” said Miss Ermine-tails, her kerchief at her eyes (“She
is
brave, you were right,” whispered Miss Hobson, giving in to Mr. Terrill) “and his last words . . . before the reporters . . . goodbye, see you in jail, darling. . . .” This
did
affect Emily Fancher, brave as she was, in retrospect; she touched her eyes with a bit of lace and her audience solicitously looked the other way. “When you tell
me
,” concluded Mrs. Draper savagely, “about the sufferings of the poor—I'd
rather
starve than some things . . .” “I always say,” said Mrs. Whitman tearfully, “remember—” and she nodded a sage, coiffured, experienced head, “the rich have their troubles too.”

Bruno stood crucified before the Hunger Marchers that Elizabeth had painted. He thought with pity of the envelope shaking in his hands, containing little words by all of them, his old triumvirate, or little designs that each had absently made while engaged in the endless conferences to prepare the speech within. He could hear the Black Sheep, could sense their impatience; he knew without listening to their words that they were shouting at him, pleading with him to go on, to drown the whole flimsy circus to which they turned their lean strong backs, to restore their faith in him, in themselves, and even—because they were so pitifully young, because they were children and he their teacher—in life. And he looked away, out over their heads, until one person emerged, as crucified as he was; he saw Elizabeth still standing like himself and his head grew rigid, his blood changed, he was paralyzed with a sense of shame. He looked from her to Emmett, wavering now in a strange excitement, entering Bruno's vision of Elizabeth as though deliberately diluting it. He saw a look in Emmett's eyes that he utterly failed to read, ironic, bitter, challenging—and because he despised Emmett now as much as he pitied him, his look was more unendurable than even the Black Sheep's. He stared back, advanced to the extreme edge of the improvised platform and shouted into the swimming mass: “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.”

“S-speech, speech!” cried Emmett in a high falsetto. Glances shot his way. He was the son of the house. “Speech, speech!” he cried again in his high wavering shrill voice. The Black Sheep took it up, stamped furiously and roared for silence. Al Middleton put down his punch; never had he seen such violence in his puny son—he seized his turkey-leg and beat upon the punch-bowl: “Shut up, shut up, everybody! Doctor Leonard's going to speak!” “S-speech!” Emmett's voice broke into hysteria. The buzz died slowly.

The silence sounded. It was as though the congestion in Elizabeth's ears were pierced at last so that the voice which had been saying something to her for twenty-six years quietly, spoke quietly now and could be heard. It was final but not surprising. As a child she had waited two hours for a parade to pass a certain window;
it was coming! it was not coming!
(but all the time she knew it was); till there it came, rounding a corner and burning itself forever into her eyes. So now in her eyes this figure of Bruno (after twenty-six years of waiting), Bruno standing mountainous and mountainously weak; so now in her ears this cessation of sound, this cessation of doubt, this quiet voice, you love him, you love Bruno, you never loved anybody else, you never can love anybody else. Lucidly she saw that there could never be any exchange on this level with Bruno; not unless one of them lay on his death-bed. And now looking at him she could see again that look of guilt, as he would look at some woman he had wronged, to whom he could make no retribution. As though he had had a light case of some malady himself, and instead of hiding himself from her had drawn closer and infected her, recklessly, half-knowing, half-unwitting, with a severe case which would—which had—marked her for life. Never then could he see her without seeing those marks upon her face, which marked her sicker with his own disease, which must mark her ugly and yet a part of him, which marked her forever his victim and his possession, a possession which he wanted and which he loathed. I love you, she said quietly into the silence; and leaned against a pillar for support. But Bruno was raising the envelope which held his speech and her fingers moved with his. She could feel with the tips of her fingers the touch of the cord as rapidly he unwound it.
Oh my God!
said Emmett—and started forward weakly,
oh stop him, s-s-stop him, Elizabeth! don't let him
. . .With a strength that was scarcely her own she put the Middleton boy back in his place as Bruno with his peculiar delicacy of gesture ran his finger under the envelope's flap.
Oh my God
, said Emmett, trembling under Elizabeth's restraining hand, I wish I were
d-dead
.

“THE TIME HAS COME,” said Bruno; and at least a thousand scraps of paper, torn and torn again, fluttered like confetti in his hands, inside his coat, hung on the edge of his pockets, clung like powder to his cuffs; and scattered at his feet and over them and lay, some with the white sides up and frightened, some with little dots of print. He stood in horror and continued to shake the envelope till it gave up its thousandth scrap. Then he stared gravely in for more, turned it in bewilderment, this way and that, and fell to shaking it again, without much hope.
Oh my God
, moaned Emmett,
I c-couldn't help it, I couldn't s-stop myself
. . .

The ballroom trembled with embarrassment, the people sat, shocked corpses, on their chairs. Bruno's hand continued to move monotonously; he shook the envelope up; he shook it down; he seemed to eye it with some morbid hope; and then the thousand-and-first scrap fluttered in bewilderment. Then someone laughed out nervously: Miss Ermine-tails—her mouth
would
open in spite of her, just as it did at accidents, just as it had when her father was brought home dead from a fall off his horse, and emitted its short yelp. She clapped her hands over her mouth immediately as though she had sneezed. But the germ got out; Miss Hobson caught it. Mr. Terrill, bored, was an easy victim. Then someone else; and then a fifth; Miss Ermine-tails, in terror at what she had done, squeezed the little tails, looked down, tried to look demure, and failed: was re-infected—the mouth opened again and repeated the theme-yelp. Oh very good, ve-ry good, said old Miss Ballister who could see as well as she could not hear. Oh jolly jolly jolly, Mr. Crawford yawned, a vodaville. The laugh ran round the room. It grew. Arturo and his orchestra awoke and craned their necks over their sleeping instruments to see the joke, were in time to spot the envelope shaking like a palsy in the speaker's hand, and added their cooperative employees' laugh. Mrs. Stanhope's crowd were softly whinnying. Miss Titcomb murmured through streaming eyes that she had thought all along he did it on purpose but was afraid to laugh alone; and passed her laugh to her friends: Miss Henley-Star, Miss Cracken and Miss Milliken. The thing went so far that at last Mrs. Emily Fancher gracefully cast her vote, handed over the laurels and started a round of applause. Mr. Terrill took another look at Bruno covered with confetti, gasped and slapped Miss Hobson on the shoulder. Miss Hob-son grew hysterical and abandoning more respectable desire became short-sighted and rolled in Mr. Terrill's arms: so fun-nay, so fun-nay, she cat-called. The laughter was enormous. Laugh collided with laugh; echoed; doubled; crashed; shrilled; shrieked; held its breath and burst again; and held its breath once more and waited, tittering, to be renewed. Al Middleton, shrewdly observing his son, was alternately shocked and pleased: such malice he had not suspected in the boy; but when he speculated on the
motive
. . . he grew ruminative and drank mechanically, reluctant to go nearer for an explanation.