Two Serious Ladies (15 page)

When it was all over and Mrs. Copperfield saw that the salesman was wrapping the package, she went over and paid the bill. The salesman wished her good luck and they left the store.

There was a letter for her at home. Mrs. Quill gave it to her.

"Mr. Copperfield left this for you," she said. "I tried to urge him to stay and have a cup of tea or some beer, but he was in a hurry. He's one handsome fellow."

Mrs. Copperfield took the letter and started towards the bar.

"Hello, sweet," said Peggy Gladys softly.

Mrs. Copperfield could see that Peggy was very drunk. Her hair was hanging over her face and her eyes were dead.

"Maybe you're not ready yet . . . but I can wait a long time. I love to wait. I don't mind being by myself."

"You'll excuse me a minute if I read a letter which I just received from my husband," said Mrs. Copperfield.

She sat down and tore open the envelope.

Dear Frieda
[she read],

I do not mean to be cruel but I shall write to you exactly what I consider to be your faults and I hope sincerely that what I have written will influence you. Like most people, you are not able to face more than one fear during your lifetime. You also spend your life fleeing from your first fear towards your first hope. Be careful that you do not, through your own wiliness, end up always in the same position in which you began. I do not advise you to spend your life surrounding yourself with those things which you term necessary to your existence, regardless of whether or not they are objectively interesting in themselves or even to your own particular intellect. I believe sincerely that only those men who reach the stage where it is possible for them to combat a second tragedy within themselves, and not the first over again, are worthy of being called mature. When you think someone is going ahead, make sure that he is not really standing still. In order to go ahead, you must leave things behind which most people are unwilling to do. Your first pain, you carry it with you like a lodestone in your breast because all tenderness will come from there. You must carry it with you through your whole life but you must not circle around it. You must give up the search for those symbols which only serve to hide its face from you. You will have the illusion that they are disparate and manifold but they are always the same. If you are only interested in a bearable life, perhaps this letter does not concern you. For God's sake, a ship leaving port is still a wonderful thing to see.

J.C.

Mrs. Copperfield's heart was beating very quickly. She crushed the letter in her hand and shook her head two or three times.

"I'll never bother you unless you ask me to bother you," Peggy Gladys was saying. She did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular. Her eyes wandered from the ceiling to the walls. She was smiling to herself.

"She is reading a letter from her husband," she said, letting her arm fall down heavily on the bar. "I myself don't want a husband—never—never—never. . , ."

Mrs. Copperfield rose to her feet.

"
Pacifica,
"
she shouted, "
Pacifica!
"

"Who is Pacifica?" asked Peggy Gladys. "I want to meet her. Is she as beautiful as you are? Tell her to come here, . . ."

"Beautiful?" the bartender laughed. "Beautiful? Neither of them is beautiful. They're both old hens. You're beautiful even if you are blind drunk."

"Bring her in here, darling," said Peggy Gladys, letting her head fall down on the bar.

"Listen, your pal's been out of the room two whole minutes already. She's gone to look for Pacifica."

3

It was several months later, and Miss Goering, Miss Gamelon, and Arnold had been living for nearly four weeks in the house which Miss Goering had chosen.

This was gloomier even than Miss Gamelon had expected it would be, since she hadn't much imagination, and reality was often more frightening to her than her wildest dreams. She was now more incensed against Miss Goering than she had been before they had changed houses, and her disposition was so bad that scarcely an hour went by that she did not complain bitterly about her life, or threaten to leave altogether. Behind the house was a dirt bank and some bushes, and if one walked over the bank and followed a narrow path through some more bushes, one soon came to the woods. To the right of the house was a field that was filled with daisies in the summertime. This field might have been quite pleasant to look at had there not been lying right in the middle of it the rusted engine of an old car. There was very little place to sit out of doors, since the front porch had rotted away, so they had, all three of them, got into the habit of sitting close by the kitchen door, where the house protected them from the wind. Miss Gamelon had been suffering from the cold ever since she had arrived. In fact, there was no central heating in the house: only a few little oil stoves, and although it was still only early fall, on certain days it was already quite chilly.

Arnold returned to his own home less and less frequently, and more and more often he took the little train and the ferry boat into the city from Miss Goering's house and then returned again after his work was done to have his dinner and sleep on the island.

Miss Goering never questioned his presence. He became more careless about his clothing, and three times in the last week he had neglected to go in to his office at all. Miss Gamelon had made a terrible fuss over this.

One day Arnold was resting upstairs in one of the little bedrooms directly under the roof and she and Miss Goering were seated in front of the kitchen door warming themselves in the afternoon sun.

"That slob upstairs," said Miss Gamelon, "is eventually going to give up going to the office at all. He's going to move in here completely and do nothing but eat and sleep. In another year he's going to be as big as an elephant and you won't be able to rid yourself of him. Thank the Lord I don't expect to be here then."

"Do you really think that he will be so very, very fat in one year?" said Miss Goering.

"I know it!" said Miss Gamelon. There was a sudden blast of wind which blew the kitchen door open. "Oh, I hate this," said Miss Gamelon vehemently, getting up from her seat to fix the door.

"Besides," she continued, "who ever heard of a man living together with two ladies in a house which does not even contain one extra bedroom, so that he is obliged to sleep fully clothed on the couch! It is enough to take one's appetite away, just to walk through the parlor and see him there at all hours of the day, eyes open or shut, with not a care in the world. Only a man who is a slob could be willing to live in such a way. He is even too lazy to court either of us, which is a most unnatural thing you must admit—if you have any conception at all of the male physical make-up. Of course he is not a man. He is an elephant."

"I don't think," said Miss Goering, "that he is as big as all that."

''Well, I told him to rest in my room because I couldn't stand seeing him on the couch any more. And as for you," she said to Miss Goering, "I think you are the most insensitive person that I have ever met in my life."

At the same time Miss Gamelon was really worried—although she scarcely admitted this to herself—that Miss Goering was losing her mind. Miss Goering seemed thinner and more nervous and she insisted on doing most of the housework all by herself. She was constantly cleaning the house and polishing the doorknobs and the silver; she tried in many small ways to make the house livable without buying any of the things which were needed to make it so; she had in these last few weeks suddenly developed an extreme avarice and drew only enough money from the bank to enable them to live in the simplest manner possible. At the same time she seemed to think nothing of paying for Arnold's food, as he scarcely ever offered to contribute anything to the upkeep of the house. It was true that he went on paying his own share in his family's apartment, which perhaps left him very little to pay for anything else. This made Miss Gamelon furious, because although she did not understand why it was necessary for Miss Goering to live on less than one tenth of her income, she had nevertheless adjusted herself to this tiny scale of living and was trying desperately to make the money stretch as far as possible.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Miss Gamelon was thinking seriously about all these things when suddenly a bottle broke against her head, inundating her with perfume and making quite a deep cut just above her forehead. She started to bleed profusely and sat for a moment with her hands over her eyes.

"I didn't actually mean to draw blood," said Arnold leaning out of the window. "I just meant to give her a start."

Miss Goering, although she was beginning to regard Miss Gamelon more and more as the embodiment of evil, made a swift and compassionate gesture towards her friend.

"Oh, my dear, let me get you something to disinfect the cut with." She went into the house and passed Arnold in the hall. He was standing with his hand on the front door, unable to decide whether to stay in or go out. When Miss Goering came down again with the medicine, Arnold had disappeared.

It was near evening, and Miss Gamelon, with a bandaged head, was standing in front of the house. She could see the road between the trees, from where she was standing. Her face was very white and her eyes were swollen because she had been weeping bitterly. She was weeping because it was the first time in her life that anyone had ever struck her physically. The more she thought about it, the more serious it became in her mind, and while she stood in front of the house she was suddenly frightened for the first time in her life. How far she had traveled from her home! Twice she had begun to pack her bags and twice she had decided not to do so, only because she could not bring herself to leave Miss Goering, since in her own way, though she scarcely knew it herself, she was deeply attached to her. It was dark before Miss Gamelon went into the house.

Miss Goering was terribly upset because Arnold had not yet returned, although she did not care for him very much more than she had in the beginning. She, too, stood outside in the dark for nearly an hour because her anxiety was so great that she was unable to remain in the house.

While she was still outside, Miss Gamelon, seated in the parlor before an empty fireplace, felt that all of God's wrath had descended upon her own head. The world and the people in it had suddenly slipped beyond her comprehension and she felt in great danger of losing the whole world once and for all—a feeling that is difficult to explain.

Each time that she looked over her shoulder into the kitchen and saw Miss Goering's dark shape still standing in front of the door, her heart failed her a little more. Finally Miss Goering came in.

"Lucy!" she called. Her voice was very clear and a little higher than usual. "Lucy, let's go and find Arnold." She sat opposite Miss Gamelon, and her face looked extraordinarily bright.

Miss Gamelon said: "Certainly not."

"Well, after all," said Miss Goering, "he lives in my house."

"Yes, that he does," said Miss Gamelon.

"And it is only right," said Miss Goering, "that people in the same house should look after each other. They always do, I think, don't they?"

"They're more careful about who gets under the same roof with them," said Miss Gamelon, coming to life again.

"I don't think so, really," said Miss Goering. Miss Gamelon breathed a deep sigh and got up. "Never mind," she said, "soon I'll be in the midst of real human beings again."

They started through the woods along a path which was a short cut to the nearest town, about twenty minutes from their house on foot. Miss Goering screeched at every strange noise and clutched at Miss Gamelon's sweater all the way. Miss Gamelon was sullen and suggested that they take the long way around on their way back.

At last they came out of the woods and walked a short stretch along the highway. On either side of the road were restaurants which catered mainly to automobilists. In one of these Miss Goering saw Arnold seated at a table near the window, eating a sandwich.

"There's Arnold," said Miss Goering. "Come along!" She took hold of Miss Gamelon's hand and almost skipped in the direction of the restaurant.

"It is really almost too good to be true," said Miss Gamelon; "he is eating again."

It was terribly hot inside. They removed their sweaters and went to sit with Arnold at his table.

"Good evening," said Arnold. "I didn't expect to see you here." This he said to Miss Goering. He avoided looking in the direction of Miss Gamelon.

"Well," said Miss Gamelon, "are you going to explain yourself?"

Arnold had just taken quite a large bite of his sandwich so that he was unable to answer her. But he did roll his eyes in her direction. It was impossible to tell with his cheeks so full whether or not he looked angry. Miss Gamelon was terribly annoyed at this, but Miss Goering sat smiling at them because she was glad to have them both with her again.

Finally Arnold swallowed his food.

"I don't have to explain myself," he said to Miss Gamelon, looking very grouchy indeed now that he had swallowed his food. "You owe a profound apology to me for hating me and telling Miss Goering about it."

"I have a perfect right to hate whom I please," said Miss Gamelon, "and also, since we live in a free country, I can talk about it on the street corner if I want to."

"You don't know me well enough to hate me. You've misjudged me anyway, which is enough to make any man furious, and I
am
furious."

"Well then, get out of the house. Nobody wants you there anyway."

"That's incorrect; Miss Goering, I am sure, wants me there, don't you?"

"Yes, Arnold, of course," said Miss Goering.

"There is no justice," said Miss Gamelon; "you are both outrageous." She sat up very straight, and both Arnold and Miss Goering stared at her bandage.

"Well," said Arnold, wiping his mouth and pushing his plate away, "I am sure there is some way whereby we can arrange it so we can both live in the house together."

"Why are you so attached to the house?" screamed Miss Gamelon. "All you ever do when you're in it is to stretch out in the parlor and go to sleep."