Читать книгу Out of the Air - Inez Haynes Gillmore - Страница 3

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“... so I’ll answer your questions in the order you ask them. No, I don’t want ever to fly again. My last pay-hop was two Saturdays ago and I got my discharge papers yesterday. God willing, I’ll never again ride anything more dangerous than a velocipede. I’m now a respectable American citizen, and for the future I’m going to confine my locomotion to the well-known earth. Get that, Spink Sparrel! The earth! In fact....”

David Lindsay suddenly looked up from his typewriting. Under his window, Washington Square simmered in the premature heat of an early June day. But he did not even glance in that direction. Instead, his eyes sought the doorway leading from the front room to the back of the apartment. Apparently he was not seeking inspiration; it was as though he had been suddenly jerked out of himself. After an absent second, his eye sank to the page and the brisk clatter of his machine began again.

“... after the woman you recommended, Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is, shoveled off a few tons of dust. It’s great! It’s the key house of New York, isn’t it? And when you look right through the Arch straight up Fifth Avenue, you feel as though you owned the whole town. And what an air all this chaste antique New England stuff gives it! Who’d ever thought you’d turn out—you big rough-neck you—to be a collector of antiques? Not that I haven’t fallen myself for the sailor’s chest and the butterfly table and the glass lamps. I actually salaam to that sampler. And these furnishings seem especially appropriate when I remember that Jeffrey Lewis lived here once. You don’t know how much that adds to the connotation of this place.”

Again—but absently—Lindsay looked up. And again, ignoring Washington Square, which offered an effect as of a formal garden to the long pink-red palace on its north side—plumy treetops, geometrical grass areas, weaving paths; elegant little summer-houses—his gaze went with a seeking look to the doorway.

“Question No. 2. I haven’t any plans of my own at present and I am quite eligible to the thing you suggest. You say that no one wants to read anything about the war. I don’t blame them. I wish I could fall asleep for a month and wake up with no recollection of it. I suppose it’s that state of mind which prevents people from writing their recollections immediately. Of course we’ll all do that ultimately, I suppose—even people who, like myself, aren’t professional writers. Don’t imagine that I’m going on with the writing game. I haven’t the divine afflatus. I’m just letting myself drift along with these two jobs until I get that guerre out of my system; can look around to find what I really want to do. I’m willing to write my experiences within a reasonable interval; but not at once. Everything is as vivid in my mind of course as it’s possible to be; but I don’t want to have to think of it. That’s why your suggestion in regard to Lutetia Murray strikes me so favorably. I should really like to do that biography. I’m in the mood for something gentle and pastoral. And then of course I have a sense of proprietorship in regard to Lutetia, not alone because she was my literary find or that it was my thesis on her which got me my A in English 12. But, in addition, I developed a sort of platonic, long-distance, with-the-eye-of-the-mind-only crush on her. And yet, I don’t know....”

Again Lindsay’s eyes came up from his paper. For the third time he ignored Washington Square swarming with lumbering green busses and dusky-haired Italian babies; puppies, perambulators, and pedestrians. Again his glance went mechanically to the door leading to the back of the apartment.

“You certainly have left an atmosphere in this joint, Spink. Somehow I feel always as if you were in the room. How it would be possible for such a pop-eyed, freckle-faced Piute as you to pack an astral body is more than I can understand. It’s here though—that sense of your presence. The other day I caught myself saying, ‘Oh, Spink!’ to the empty air. But to return to Lutetia, I can’t tell you how the prospect tempts. Once on a permission in the spring of ’16, I finds myself in Lyons. There are to be gentle acrobatic doings in the best Gallic manner in the Park on Sunday. I gallops out to see the sports. One place, I comes across several scores of poilus—on their permissions similar—squatting on the ground and doing—what do you suppose? Picking violets. Yep—picking violets. I says to myself then, I says, ‘These frogs sure are queer guys.’ But now, Spink, I understand. I don’t want to do anything more strenuous myself than picking violets, unless it’s selling baby blankets, or holding yarn for old ladies. Perhaps by an enormous effort I might summon the energy to run a tea-room.”

Lindsay stopped his typewriting again. This time he stared fixedly at Washington Square. His eyes followed a pink-smocked, bob-haired maiden hurrying across the Park; but apparently she did not register. He turned abruptly with a—“Hello, old top, what do you want?”

The doorway, being empty, made no answer.

Having apparently forgotten his remark the instant it was dropped, Lindsay went on writing.

“I admit I’m thinking over that proposition. Among my things in storage here, I have all Lutetia’s works, including those unsuccessful and very rare pomes of hers; even that blooming thesis I wrote. The thesis would, of course, read rotten now, but it might provide data that would save research. When do you propose to bring out this new edition, and how do you account for that recent demand for her? Of course it establishes me as some swell prophet. I always said she’d bob up again, you know. Then it looked as though she was as dead as the dodo. It isn’t the work alone that appeals to me; it’s doing it in Lutetia’s own town, which is apparently the exact kind of dead little burg I’m looking for—Quinanog, isn’t it? Come to think of it, Spink, my favorite occupation at this moment would be making daisy-chains or oak-wreaths. I’ll think it...”

He jumped spasmodically; jerked his head about; glanced over his shoulder at the doorway—

“What I’d really like to do, is the biography of Lutetia for about one month; then—for about three months—my experiences at the war which, I understand, are to be put away in the manuscript safe of the publishing firm of Dunbar, Cabot and Elsingham to be published when the demand for war stuff begins again. That, I reckon, is what I should do if I’m going to do it at all. Write it while it’s fresh—as I’m not a professional. But I can’t at this moment say yes, and I can’t say no. I’d like to stay a little longer in New York. I’d like to renew acquaintance with the old burg. I can afford to thrash round a bit, you know, if I like. There’s ten thousand dollars that my uncle left me, in the bank waiting me. When that’s spent, of course I’ll have to go to work.

“You ask me for my impressions of America—as a returned sky-warrior. Of course I’ve only been here a week and I haven’t talked with so very many people yet. But everybody is remarkably omniscient. I can’t tell them anything about the late war. Sometimes they ask me a question, but they never listen to my answer. No, I listen to them. And they’re very informing, believe me. Most of them think that the cavalry won the war and that we went over the top to the sound of fife and drum. For myself...”

Again he jumped; turned his head; stared into the doorway. After an instant of apparent expectancy, he sighed. He arose and, with an elaborate saunter, moved over to the mirror hanging above the mantel; looked at his reflection with the air of one longing to see something human. The mirror was old; narrow and dim; gold framed. A gay little picture of a ship, bellying to full sail, filled the space above the looking-glass. The face, which contemplated him with the same unseeing carelessness with which he contemplated it, was the face of twenty-five—handsome; dark. It was long and lean. The continuous flying of two years had dyed it a deep wine-red; had bronzed and burnished it. And apparently the experiences that went with that flying had cooled and hardened it. It was now but a smoothly handsome mask which blanked all expression of his emotions.

Even as his eye fixed itself on his own reflected eye, his head jerked sideways again; he stared expectantly at the open doorway. After an interval in which nothing appeared, he sauntered through that door; and—with almost an effect of premeditated carelessness—through the two little rooms, which so uselessly fill the central space of many New York houses, to the big sunny bedroom at the back.

The windows looked out on a paintable series of backyards: on a sketchable huddle of old, stained, leaning wooden houses. At the opposite window, a purple-haired, violet-eyed foreign girl in a faded yellow blouse was making artificial nasturtiums; flame-colored velvet petals, like a drift of burning snow, heaped the table in front of her. A black cat sunned itself on the window ledge. On a distant roof, a boy with a long pole was herding a flock of pigeons. They made glittering swirls of motion and quick V-wheelings, that flashed the gray of their wings like blades and the white of their breasts like glass. Their sudden turns filled the air with mirrors. Lindsay watched their flight with the critical air of a rival. Suddenly he turned as though someone had called him; glanced inquiringly back at the doorway....

When, a few minutes later, he sauntered into the Rochambeau, immaculate in the old gray suit he had put off when he donned the French uniform four years before, he was the pink of summer coolness and the quintessence of military calm. The little, low-ceilinged series of rooms, just below the level of the street, were crowded; filled with smoke, talk, and laughter. Lindsay at length found a table, looked about him, discovered himself to be among strangers. He ordered a cocktail, swearing at the price to the sympathetic French waiter, who made an excited response in French and assisted him to order an elaborate dinner. Lindsay propped his paper against his water-glass; concentrated on it as one prepared for lonely eating. With the little-necks, however, came diversion. From behind the waiter’s crooked arm appeared the satiny dark head of a girl. Lindsay leaped to his feet, held out his hand.

“Good Lord, Gratia! Where in the world did you come from!”

The girl put both her pretty hands out. “I can shake hands with you, David, now that you’re in civies. I don’t like that green and yellow ribbon in your buttonhole though. I’m a pacifist, you know, and I’ve got to tell you where I stand before we can talk.”

“All right,” Lindsay accepted cheerfully. “You’re a darn pretty pacifist, Gratia. Of course you don’t know what you’re talking about. But as long as you talk about anything, I’ll listen.”

Gratia had cut her hair short, but she had introduced a style of hair-dressing new even to Greenwich Village. She combed its sleek abundance straight back to her neck and left it. There, following its own devices, it turned up in the most delightful curls. Her large dark eyes were set in a skin of pale amber and in the midst of a piquant assortment of features. She had a way, just before speaking, of lifting her sleek head high on the top of her slim neck. And then she was like a beautiful young seal emerging from the water.

“Oh, I’m perfectly serious!” the pretty pacifist asserted. “You know I never have believed in war. Dora says you’ve come back loving the French. How you can admire a people who—” After a while she paused to take breath and then, with the characteristic lift of her head, “Belgians—the Congo—Algeciras—Morocco— And as for England—Ireland—India—Egypt—” The glib, conventional patter dripped readily from her soft lips.

Lindsay listened, apparently entranced. “Gratia, you’re too pretty for any use!” he asserted indulgently after the next pause in which she dove under the water and reappeared sleek-haired as ever. “I’m not going to argue with you. I’m going to tell you one thing that will be a shock to you, though. The French don’t like war either. And the reason is—now prepare yourself—they know more about the horrors of war in one minute than you will in a thousand years. What are you doing with yourself, these days, Gratia?”

“Oh, running a shop; making smocks, working on batiks, painting, writing vers libre,” Gratia admitted.

“I mean, what do you do with your leisure?” Lindsay demanded, after prolonged meditation.

Gratia ignored this persiflage. “I’m thinking of taking up psycho-analysis,” she confided. “It interests me enormously. I think I ought to do rather well with it.”

“I offer myself as your first victim. Why, you’ll make millions! Every man in New York will want to be psyched. What’s the news, Gratia? I’m dying for gossip.”

Gratia did her best to feed this appetite. Declining dinner, she sipped the tall cool green drink which Lindsay ordered for her. She poured out a flood of talk; but all the time her eyes were flitting from table to table. And often she interrupted her comments on the absent with remarks about the present.

“Yes, Aussie was killed in Italy, flying. Will Arden was wounded in the Argonne. George Jennings died of the flu in Paris—see that big blonde over there, Dave? She’s the Village dressmaker now—Dark Dale is in Russia—can’t get out. Putty Doane was taken prisoner by the Germans at—Oh, see that gang of up-towners—aren’t they snippy and patronizing and silly? But Molly Fearing is our best war sensation. You know what a tiny frightened mouse of a thing she was. She went into the ‘Y.’ She was in the trenches the day of the Armistice—talked with Germans; not prisoners, you understand—but the retreating Germans. Her letters are wonderful. She’s crazy about it over there. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never came back— Oh, Dave, don’t look now; but as soon as you can, get that tall red-headed girl in the corner, Marie Maroo. She does the most marvelous drawings you ever saw. She belongs to that new Vortex School. And then Joel— Oh, there’s Ernestine Phillips and her father. You want to meet her father. He’s a riot. Octogenarian, too! He’s just come from some remote hamlet in Vermont. Ernestine’s showing him a properly expurgated edition of the Village. Hi, Ernestine! He’s a Civil War veteran. Ernest’s crazy to see you, Dave!”

The middle-aged, rather rough-featured woman standing in the doorway turned at Gratia’s call. Her movement revealed the head and shoulders of a tall, gaunt, very old man, a little rough-featured like his daughter; white-haired and white-mustached. She hurried at once to Lindsay’s table.

“Oh, Dave!” She took both Lindsay’s hands. “I am glad to see you! How I have worried about you! My father, Dave. Father, this is David Lindsay, the young aviator I was telling you about, who had such extraordinary experiences in France. You remember the one I mean, father. He served for two years with the French Army before we declared war.”

Mr. Phillips extended a long arm which dangled a long hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir! You’re the first flier I’ve had a chance to talk with. I expect folks make life a perfect misery to you—but if you don’t mind answering questions—”

“Shoot!” Lindsay permitted serenely. “I’m nearly bursting with suppressed information. How are you, Ernestine?”

“Pretty frazzled like the rest of us,” Ernestine answered. Ernestine had one fine feature; a pair of large dark serene eyes. Now they flamed with a troubled fire. “The war did all kinds of things to my psychology, of course. I suppose I am the most despised woman in the Village at this moment because I don’t seem to be either a militarist or a pacifist. I don’t believe in war, but I don’t see how we could have kept out of it; or how France could have prevented it.”

“Ernestine!” Lindsay said warmly. “I just love you. Contrary to the generally accepted opinion of the pacifists, France did not deliberately bring this war on herself. Nor did she keep it up four years for her private amusement. She hasn’t enjoyed one minute of it. I don’t expect Gratia to believe me, but perhaps you will. These four years of death, destruction, and devastation haven’t entertained France a particle.”

“Well, of course—” Ernestine was beginning, “but what’s the use?” Her eyes met Lindsay’s in a perplexed, comprehending stare. Lindsay shook his handsome head gayly. “No use whatever,” he said. “I’m rapidly growing taciturn.”

“What I would like to ask you,” Mr. Phillips broke in, “does war seem such a pretty thing to you, young man, after you’ve seen a little of it? I remember in ’65 most of us came back thinking that Sherman hadn’t used strong enough language.”

“Mr. Phillips,” Lindsay answered, “if there’s ever another war, it will take fifteen thousand dollars to send me a postcard telling me about it.”

The talk drifted away from the war: turned to prohibition; came back to it again. Lindsay answered Mr. Phillips’s questions with enthusiastic thoroughness. They pertained mainly to his training at Pau and Avord, but Lindsay volunteered a detailed comparison of the American military method with the French. “I’ll always be glad though,” he concluded, “that I had that experience with the French Army. And of course when our troops got over, I was all ready to fly.”

“Then the French uniform is so charming,” Gratia put in, consciously sarcastic.

Lindsay slapped her slim wrist indulgently and continued to answer Mr. Phillips’s questions. Ernestine listened, the look of trouble growing in her serene eyes. Gratia listened, diving under water after her shocked exclamations and reappearing glistening.

“Oh, there’s Matty Packington!” Gratia broke in. “You haven’t met Matty yet, Dave. Hi, Matty! You must know Matty. She’s a sketch. She’s one of those people who say the things other people only dare think. You won’t believe her.” She rattled one of her staccato explanations; “society girl—first a slumming tour through the Village—perfectly crazy about it—studio in McDougal Alley—yeowoman—becoming uniform—Rolls-Royce—salutes—”

Matty Packington approached the table with a composed flutter. The two men arose. Gratia met her halfway; performed the introductions. In a minute the conversation was out of everybody’s hands and in Miss Packington’s. As Gratia prophesied, Lindsay found it difficult to believe her. She started at an extraordinary speed and she maintained it without break.

“Oh, Mr. Lindsay, aren’t you heartbroken now that it is all over? You must tell me all about your experiences sometime. It must have been too thrilling for words. But don’t you think—don’t you think—they stopped the war too soon? If I were Foch I wouldn’t have been satisfied until I’d occupied all Germany, devastated just as much territory as those beasts devastated in France, and executed all those monsters who cut off the Belgian babies’ hands. Don’t you think so?”

Lindsay contemplated the lady who put this interesting question to him. She was fair and fairy-like; a little, light-shot golden blonde; all slim lines and opalescent colors. Her hair fluttered like whirled light from under her piquantly cocked military cap. The stress of her emotion added for the instant to the bigness and blueness of her eyes.

“Well, for myself,” he remarked finally, “I can do with a little peace for a while. And then to carry out your wishes, Miss Packington, Foch would have had to sacrifice a quarter of a million more Allied soldiers. But I sometimes think the men at the front were a bit thoughtless of the entertainment of the civilians. Somehow we did get it into our heads that we ought to close this war up as soon as possible. Another time perhaps we’d know better.”

Miss Packington received this characteristically; that is to say, she did not receive it at all. For by the time Lindsay had begun his last sentence, she had embarked on a monologue directed this time to Gratia. The talk flew back and forth, grew general; grew concrete; grew abstract; grew personal. It bubbled up into monologues from Gratia and Matty. It thinned down to questions from Ernestine and Mr. Phillips. Drinks came; were followed by other drinks. All about them, tables emptied and filled, uniforms predominating; and all to the accompaniment of chatter; gay mirth; drifting smoke-films and refilled glasses. Latecomers stopped to shake hands with Lindsay, to join the party for a drink; to smoke a cigarette; floated away to other parties. But the nucleus of their party remained the same.

David answered with patience all questions, stopped patiently halfway through his own answer to reply to other questions. At about midnight he rose abruptly. He had just brought to the end a careful and succinct statement in which he declared that he had seen no Belgian children with their hands cut off; no crucified Canadians.

“Folks,” he addressed the company genially, “I’m going to admit to you I’m tired.” Inwardly he added, “I won’t indicate which ones of you make me the most tired; but almost all of you give me an awful pain.” He added aloud, “It’s the hay for me this instant. Good-night!”

Back once more in his rooms, he did not light up. Instead he sat at the window and gazed out. Straight ahead, two lines of golden beads curving up the Avenue seemed to connect the Arch with the distant horizon. The deep azure of the sky was faintly powdered with stars. But for its occasional lights, of a purplish silver, the Square would have been a mere mystery of trees. But those lights seemed to anchor what was half vision to earth. And they threw interlaced leaf shadows on the ceiling above Lindsay’s head. It was as though he sat in some ghostly bower. Looking fixedly through the Arch, his face grew somber. Suddenly he jerked about and stared through the doorway which led into the back rooms.

Nothing appeared—

After a while he lighted one gas jet—after an instant’s hesitation another—

In the middle of the night, Lindsay suddenly found himself sitting upright. His mouth was wide open, parched; his eyes were wide open, staring.... A chilly prickling tingled along his scalp.... But the strangest phenomenon was his heart, which, though swelled to an incredible bulk, nimbly leaped, heavily pounded....

Lindsay recognized the motion which inundated him to be fear; overpowering, shameless, abject fear. But of what? In the instant in which he gave way to self-analysis, memory supplied him with a vague impression. Something had come to his bed and, leaning over, had stared into his face—

That something was not human.

Lindsay fought for control. By an initial feat of courage, his fumbling fingers lighted a candle which stood on the tiny Sheraton table at his bedside. On a second impulse, but only after an interval in which consciously but desperately he grasped at his vanishing manhood, he leaped out of bed; lighted the gas. Then carrying the lighted candle, he went from one to another of the four rooms of the apartment. In each room he lighted every gas jet until the place blazed. He searched it thoroughly: dark corners and darker closets; jetty strata of shadow under couches.

He was alone.

After a while he went back to bed. But his courage was not equal to darkness again. Though ultimately he fell asleep, the gas blazed all night.

Lindsay awoke rather jaded the next morning. He wandered from room to room submitting to one slash of his razor at this mirror and to another at that.

At one period of this process, “Rum nightmare I had last night!” he remarked casually to the unresponsive air.

He cooked his own breakfast; piled up the dishes and settled himself to his correspondence again. “This letter is getting to be a book, Spink,” he began. “But I feel every moment as though I wanted to add more. I slept on your proposition last night, but I don’t feel any nearer a decision. Quinanog and Lutetia tempt me; but then so does New York. By the way, have you any pictures of Lutetia? I had one in my rooms at Holworthy. Must be kicking around among my things. I cut it out of the annual catalogue of your book-house. Photograph as I remember. She was some pip. I’d like—”

He started suddenly, turned his head toward the doorway leading to the back rooms. The doorway was empty. Lindsay arose from his chair, sauntered in a leisurely manner through the rooms. He investigated closets again. “Damn it all!” he muttered.

He resumed his letter. “You’re right about writing my experiences now. I had a long footless talk with some boobs last night, and it was curious how things came back under their questions. I had quite forgotten them temporarily, and of course I shall forget them for keeps if I don’t begin to put them down. I have a few scattered notes here and there. I meant, of course, to keep a diary, but believe me, a man engaged in a war is too busy for the pursuit of letters. But just as soon as I make up my mind—”

Another interval. Absently Lindsay addressed an envelope. Spinney K. Sparrel, Esq., Park Street, Boston; attacked the list of other long-neglected correspondents. Suddenly his head jerked upward; pivoted again. After an instant’s observation of the empty doorway, he pulled his face forward; resumed his work. Page after page slid onto the roller of his machine, submitted to the tattoo of its little lettered teeth, emerged neatly inscribed. Suddenly he leaped to his feet; swung about.

The doorway was empty.

“Who are you?” he interrogated the empty air, “and what do you want? If you can tell me, speak—and I’ll do anything in my power to help you. But if you can’t tell me, for God’s sake go away!”

That night—it happened again. There came the same sudden start, stricken, panting, perspiring, out of deep sleep; the same frantic search of the apartment with all the lights burning; the same late, broken drowse; the same jaded awakening.

As before, he set himself doggedly to work. And, as before, somewhere in the middle of the morning, he wheeled about swiftly in his chair to glare through the open doorway. “I wonder if I’m going nutty!” he exclaimed aloud.

Three days went by. Lindsay’s nights were so broken that he took long naps in the afternoon. His days had turned into periods of idle revery. The letter to Spink Sparrel was still unfinished. He worked spasmodically at his typewriter: but he completed nothing. The third night he started toward the Rochambeau with the intention of getting a room. But halfway across the Park, he stopped and retraced his steps. “I can’t let you beat me!” he muttered audibly, after he arrived in the empty apartment.

It did not beat him that night; for he stayed in the apartment until dawn broke. But from midnight on, he lay with every light in the place going. At sunrise, he dressed and went out for a walk. And the moment the sounds of everyday life began to humanize the neighborhood, he returned; sat down to his machine.

“Spink, old dear, my mind is made up. I accept! I’ll do Lutetia for you; and, by God, I’ll do her well! I’m starting for Boston tomorrow night on the midnight. I’ll call at the office about noon and we’ll go to luncheon together. I’ll dig out my thesis and books from storage, and if you’ll get all your dope and data together, I can go right to it. I’m going to Quinanog tomorrow afternoon. I need a change. Everybody here makes me tired. The pacifists make me wild and the militarists make me wilder. Civilians is nuts when it comes to a war. The only person I can talk about it with is somebody who’s been there. And anybody who’s been there has the good sense not to want to talk about it. I don’t ever want to hear of that war again. Personally, I, David Lindsay, meaning me, want to swing in a hammock on a pleasant, cool, vine-hung piazza; read Lutetia at intervals and write some little pieces subsequent. Yours, David.”