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Gargoyles

<h2>7</h2> Fanny Basine smiled timidly at Aubrey. He was paying little attention to her. He was listening to Judge Smith airing his views on the annexation of the Philippines. The judge was forcibly declaring that the thing was essential and that no gentleman with his country's future at heart could possibly believe otherwise. Aubrey, to the judge's secret discomfiture, somehow managed to convey an assent to these views, but an assent based upon superior motives. What these motives were Judge Smith was unable to fathom. Aubrey, when it came his turn to expound, further irritated the judge by revealing them. He, Aubrey, was for the annexation of the Philippines but only because he was convinced such an annexation would be of supreme benefit to the natives of the islands. Mrs. Gilchrist nodded sternly in agreement with her son. The rest of the company listening with vacuous attentiveness waited for the debaters to continue talking for them. Basine who had been silent came to the judge's rescue. He explained that the judge and Aubrey meant practically the same thing but that they had chosen different ways to express themselves. "Judge Smith," Basine smiled, "sees in the annexation something which will benefit his country. He knows as well as any of us that it will not benefit it financially. It will be a source of expenditure and strife. Then how will it benefit us? Because it will give us an opportunity to aid a pack of uncivilized and benighted heathen and despite them to bring peace and prosperity to their own country—not ours. Which is exactly what you mean, Aubrey." The judge beamed approval and Aubrey contented himself with a stare of dignity. He did not relish psychological interpretations of his words. As an author, he felt annoyed. But Basine continued to talk undeterred by his stare. He disliked Aubrey. Not so much as Doris. And in a somewhat different way. Further, the presence of Henrietta was a curious inspiration. The girl's wide-eyed tenderness had irritated and frightened him after the incident in the kitchen when they had gone searching for the thingumabob. Now he had no interest in the Philippine controversy. But he had entered the discussion in order to rid himself of the uncomfortable memory the episode with Henrietta had left him. As he talked the memory played hide and seek in his words.... "She thinks I'm going to marry her ... but she's engaged to him ... she's crazy ... what the Hell did I do it for?... Damn it ... damn it...." Instinctively he took the judge's part, as if he must establish himself firmly in the father's good graces in order to make premature amends for the jilting of his daughter. The position he had taken pleased him because it also involved an opposition to Aubrey. Fanny continued to smile at the novelist. Keegan bored her. They had been walking together and she had lost interest in the sensual game she had been playing with him. Alone, she might have tried to repeat the experience of the morning with Keegan. But her physical curiosity partially gratified for the moment by the surreptitious excitement she had derived from him, her interest transferred itself to Aubrey. The man amused and impressed her. Her thought separated him into two people. She resented his persistent dignity. Her perceptions, sharpened by the practical sensuality of her nature, saw through the little ruses by which Aubrey converted his slight deformities into a dignified whole. As she listened to him she said to herself, "... he thinks it's smart to wear a ribbon on his glasses ... he sticks his chest out ... he's got skinny arms ... he looks funny...." After a half hour she lost her resentment and the thing that had inspired it came to amuse her. She could see through his funny manner so it didn't anger her. But although now she smiled with amusement at the man's impressiveness, a feeling of awe penetrated her. Aubrey was a great man. People spoke his name everywhere. He was known. A delicious tremble passed through her. She was careful not to translate it into words. Had she inspected the tremble and its causes, it would have outraged her. She was content always to accept her emotions blindly for fear of having to forego them if she knew their causes. She kept herself intact in her own mind as a good girl not by belligerently repressing her impulses but by enjoying them secretly outside her mind. She had thought of Aubrey as a great man and with it had come the inner impulse to be embraced passionately by him. Not because he was Aubrey, but because he was the famous Aubrey Gilchrist, whose name was known. To be embraced by a famous man would be like being embraced somehow by all the people who knew his name. She would be able to think while satisfying her desire, "Everybody knows him. They know all about him. It's almost as if they knew he was doing this ... I was doing this." Then, too, there would be a feeling of intense secrecy about it, a sort of blasphemous secrecy. When an ordinary man kissed her, that was of course, a secret. But if a famous man should kiss her, a man like Aubrey, that would be a super-secret. A violation of something remarkable. It would be a thing concealed not merely from her family and from the vague circle of friends who might be interested, but from millions of people who knew Aubrey and who would be tremendously interested in everything he did. She would be giving herself to a public figure and yet the thing she was doing would be marvelously concealed from the public. And so she would be able to enjoy the thrill of demonstromania—of being taken by someone who was not an individual like Keegan but a man who was part of other people's minds—and at the same time she would be able to enjoy the thrill of defiant intimacy; the knowledge that the people in whose minds the name Aubrey Gilchrist was alive would be ignorant of what she was doing to the man they admired. All this would be a sharpening of pleasure by the consciousness of wholesale deceit, wholesale intimacy. These intuitions whose articulation would have been entirely unintelligable to Fanny sent the delicious tremble through her body. Immediately the two separate Aubreys of her mind focussed into one and she lost both her amusement and her awe of him. She sat regarding him with a timid smile designed to arouse his curiosity. As yet he had ignored her, his eyes seeking out Henrietta when the annexation debate waned. Basine had diverted the talk into literary channels by inquiring, apropos of nothing, whether anyone had read a book by a man named Meredith. He had found it in Doris' room one evening and glanced through it. Seeking now for further material with which to discomfit Aubrey he had remembered the volume. He took it for granted that since his sister Doris had been reading it, the book was a very worthwhile book—the kind he cared nothing about reading himself. This did not interfere with his utilizing an exposition of its merits as a weapon against Aubrey. "I was quite surprised," he explained. Doris listened with a frown. She was certain her brother had not read the book and the knowledge he was lying aggravated her. She knew he lied continually but was indifferent. But to have him lie about something she admired, even in its defense, made her uncomfortable as if he were trying to establish false claims upon her regard. "The book is altogether unlike most books," he went on, generalizing carefully. His mind, totally ignorant of the subject he was discussing, was shrewdly inventing a book diametrically opposite in style and content to the books Aubrey wrote. By praising such a book he would manage without reference to his antagonist to disparage his entire literary output. He was not clear in his mind why Aubrey had become an antagonist. The memory reiterating itself behind his words "... she thinks I'm going to marry her ... damn it...." was mysteriously finding outlet in an indignation neither against himself nor Henrietta, but against the unsuspecting Aubrey. Fanny listened to the new conversation, but Meredith was soon dropped. The sight of Mrs. Gilchrist grimly poised opposite her mother, became a part of the lure Aubrey exercised over her. He was the son of this hard-faced, domineering woman. To do something with him that was intimate would be a deliciously concealed violation of the mother's propriety. Fanny had always been intimidated by Mrs. Gilchrist's propriety. Embracing her son would be a sort of revenge. Without wasting time looking for reasons, Fanny felt Aubrey as an attraction. Her attitude toward him grew more intimate. She did not try to enter the talk but adjusted herself in the chair, placing her body so that the curve of her hip and leg were effectively visible to Aubrey. And while the others talked she assured herself of the plausibility of her ambitions. Aubrey was a great man and very famous and distinguished. But he was after all entirely human. He had written books and Fanny fell to thinking about them, about the descriptions of love-making which crowded the pages of his books. Aubrey was famous and therefore aloof. But the things that had made him famous—the love passages in his books, were not intimidating. She remembered them with gratitude. They were love descriptions and Aubrey had written them. Love passages were in fact all that Fanny usually remembered of her reading. Plots and characters escaped her. After she had closed a book there remained in her mind merely the scenes in which men had placed their arms around women and whispered after a succession of exciting adjectives, "I love you." This was due to the manner in which Fanny read. As a girl she had ploughed laboriously through a set of Shakespeare in quest of obscene passages. Her girl's eyes would skip with irritation the speeches that seemed to her extraneous until, caught by some "nasty" word, she would become eagerly interested and carefully digest the sentences preceding and following it. At fourteen she had discovered that the dictionary, stuck away in a dusty corner of the book case, was filled with many such words. Whenever occasion permitted she opened the big volume and poured intently over its contents, digesting with excitement the definitions of what she called to herself, the nasty words. The result of this curious reading technique had gradually shown itself as she matured. Literature became to her a secretly immoral and indecent thing. She would blush when people mentioned Shakespeare or any of the books in which she had eagerly browsed. Observing that her blushes gave people an impression of her sensitive chastity, she developed a habit of seeming offended at the mention of any volume she suspected of containing such words and passages as she was continually searching for in secret. She would say, "Oh, I don't like that kind of a book. I don't think people should write like that—about such things. There are so many nice things to write about I don't see why people must write about the others." Delivering herself of these sentiments on all occasions, she continued her furtive hunt for books about "such things." One red-letter evening she stumbled upon a pamphlet in her brother's room describing the horrors of venereal diseases and outlining with verbal and pictorial illustrations the ravages wrought by the disease germs. She had devoured the information greedily, her sensuality editing the well-intentioned brochure into a mass of erotic revelations. Aubrey's books, although a bit too innocuous to exhilarate her as the pamphlet had done or even the dictionary, properly read, was able to do, contained innumerable passages she remembered. She treated his writing as she did all writing, skimming hastily over irrelevant matters such as dialogues between men, discussions of abstract problems, mother and child scenes and coming to a pause only at the portions which began with some such sentence as "He looked at her with burning eyes," or, "She felt nervous because at last she was alone with him," or, "He tried to draw her to him but she resisted, her virtue outraged by the light in his eyes." She recalled these passages now as the literary discussion grew warmer. The knowledge that Aubrey had written them served to humanize him and remove his aloofness in her eyes. He was a famous man. On the other hand he was famous because he wrote such things as, "She yielded with a happy sigh to the manly embrace." Aubrey felt irritated with Basine. He stood up and seemingly without intention walked to a vacant chair next to Fanny. The conversation had been taken up by Mrs. Gilchrist who was explaining the real purpose of her visit. "We are giving a fête on Mrs. Channing's lawn," she was saying, "and I would very much like you to be one of the members of the committee on printing." Mrs. Basine felt an elation at the words. She had read about the Channing lawn fête. An affair of social magnificence designed to raise funds for the Associated Charities. Great social names were involved. Mrs. Basine's heart trembled gratefully. "Oh, thank you," she said, her voice taking on a formal, artificial tone. Mrs. Gilchrist nodded. The tone pleased her. She could count on the Basine woman among the select who showed their gratitude openly at the largesse of her favor. She would, in fact, deign to stay for supper as a reward. Mrs. Basine, urging her to remain for the light Sunday evening meal, felt indignant with herself. She would have preferred to refuse the committee on printing. Even as she accepted and experienced the elation her thought bristled with revolt. "The old fool ... the old fool," repeated itself with annoying clarity in her mind. She detested Mrs. Gilchrist. Since her husband's death Mrs. Basine had outgrown the snobbery which had inspired her during her life to pour over the society columns. But a habit had been established, the habit of a desire to become a member of the closely knit organization known as Society. And now she was apparently powerless to overcome this desire which no longer animated her but yet intruded out of the past. She looked down upon herself for the elation over becoming a member of a printing committee for a social charity fête. "I hate it ... I just hate it," she would murmur for days at a time. But the elation would persist, a thing beyond the control of her improved outlook upon life. She was aware also of the simple process by which she transferred her self-indictment into a detestation of Mrs. Gilchrist. Mrs. Gilchrist was the one who appealed to what Mrs. Basine had grown to regard as her "smaller nature." And her anger toward the imperturbable dowager was the anger of a virtuous woman toward one whose temptations she was unable to resist. "You've been rather silent." Aubrey smiled patronizingly at Fanny. She nodded. "Oh, I've been so interested in what you've been saying," she answered. She noticed with a feeling of sisterly gratitude that Basine had occupied himself with Henrietta. Aubrey caught the direction of her glance and frowned. He had developed a definite dislike of Basine during the afternoon. Keegan, listening uncomfortably to the judge who was ignoring him in his talk but whose audience Keegan felt it a social necessity to remain, tried vainly to capture Fanny's eyes. She had apparently forgotten his existence. But now as Aubrey seated himself at her side, she smiled intimately in the direction of the confused Keegan. "Oh, Hugh," she said loud enough for him to hear. The sound of his name from the girl gave Keegan an inexplicable sensation. He felt himself break into happy smiles and the anxiety that had been growing in his heart seemed abruptly to have vanished under her voice. He came to her side and stood looking timidly at her. The conviction came over Fanny that Keegan was in love. She felt pleased and her heart warmed toward him. But her interests remained exclusively preoccupied with the novelist. "I was just going out to the kitchen and wondered if you wanted to help cut sandwiches," she smiled at Keegan. "Sure," he answered. "I'm an excellent cook myself," Aubrey unbent gravely. Fanny stood up and started toward the hall. The two men hesitated and then followed her. Basine, frowning slightly toward the door, listened to her voice chattering to cover the embarrassed silence of the two men she had bagged. "Don't you want to go out there and help," he turned to Henrietta. She shook her head. Keegan felt himself being slowly transported. His penitence had faded into less satisfactory emotions toward the middle of the day. A gloom had come over him and his heart had felt weighted. He had at first identified this state of mind as a ghastly premonition of disease as a result of last night's debauch and thought that the depression he felt was his nervous system or something warning him of this fact. The depression lifted. He sat around the Basine home listening to the chatter of the arriving guests and feeling out of place. He felt that he was wishing for something but couldn't make out what it was. His heart hurt, his head felt heavy. There were aches in him and a feeling of listlessness. More, he couldn't sit still. The room seemed a suffocating place. He was unhappy. Several hours later it dawned on him with a shock that he was in love with Fanny. The sudden explanation frightened him. He attempted to deny it to himself. The struggle endured a half hour. He surrendered. When he looked at Fanny again she had undergone a complete change. There was a startling intimacy in her features. Her contours were stamped with an appeal he had never observed before in a woman. The rest of the company sat behind a thin film of politeness and formality. But Fanny sat with him outside this film. The others in the room were blurred as if half hidden. Fanny was distinct. A light seemed to beat upon her. He looked in amazement. A few hours ago he had noticed nothing. Now he noticed everything ... her dress, her hands, her hair, her eyes, her ankles. He was frightened because it seemed as if someone had invaded the secret world in which he alone lived. He remembered frightenedly that he had lain with his head in her lap, that he had embraced her. There had been something curious about the embrace but he was unable to identify it. "She felt sorry for me, that's all," he thought and at once all hope ebbed out of him. Yet he continued to look at her and watch her grow more familiar, so familiar that her image seemed to have come into his heart where he could feel it choking him. A few minutes after entering the kitchen he grew hopeful. He found himself in the position of an intimate—at least by comparison. She was paying no attention to Aubrey. She laughed at his, Keegan's, clumsiness, chided him good-naturedly. She held his hand and, his heart beating wildly, directed him in slicing the bread. When he was drawing the water from the sink faucet she leaned over resting her chin on his shoulder and effected a humorous concern. He felt her body press warmly against him and almost dropped the cut-glass pitcher he was holding. He was being transported. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the novelist. A sorry fellow with gawky feet and a clumsy-looking face. Keegan vaguely pitied him as he stood around doing his best to horn in on the intimacy between Fanny and himself. He knew how the novelist felt. It seemed to Keegan even that it was he, Keegan, feeling that way, and that the carefully concealed embarassment, the futile chagrin and lameness were his own emotions and not Aubrey Gilchrist's. In an effort to put the defeated rival at his ease, so Keegan regarded him, he tried magnanimously to include him in the little byplay between himself and Fanny. "Here, you try your hand at this," he offered, handing Aubrey the knife. Fanny pouted. "Hm! Just as I was teaching you the art of bread cutting you run away from school," she complained. Keegan resumed his operations on the bread, a satisfied warmth in his heart. For her hand had returned to its position and she was again going through the idiotic pretense of teaching him how to move a knife. He was being transported. His vacuous face had taken on a vivacity. He was fearful of presuming, of doing something wrong, and he made no effort to caress her. No effort was necessary for, somehow, despite his carefully edited behavior, their fingers were always touching, their bodies coming together. Still he was afraid to think that Fanny had fallen in love with him. He was even afraid that Aubrey would go away and leave them alone in the kitchen. If they were alone he would have to try to kiss her or something and she would laugh and then say indignantly, "You idiot, I was just playing. I see now that you think all women are like those you told me about." He would rather that Aubrey remained and that everything continued as it was. The sandwiches were piling up on the large platters. "Here," Fanny cried, holding one of them up for him to bite. He looked apologetically at Aubrey as if asking to be forgiven for this proof of her superior regard and with a blush ate from her fingers. Fanny suddenly let go the sandwich and as it dropped to the floor, patted him tenderly on his cheek and laughed. "Um ... big man hungry," she whispered. He turned to place the fallen pieces of bread in the sink. His hand brushed hers and he felt her fingers close firmly around his palm with a squeeze. He half shut his eyes at the shock that filled his heart. Fanny's eyes, however, ignored him. She was engaged in watching Aubrey for whose benefit the entire scene was being staged. Her instinct had supplied her with a mode of attack. She would arouse desire in the novelist by showing herself desired—although by another man. A desired woman was an irritant. It aroused illogical jealousy. The icebox was in the back hallway. "The cream and things are in here," Fanny exclaimed. Keegan followed her out of the kitchen into the rear vestibule. She had squeezed his hand before starting and thrown him a glance as she passed through the doorway. He felt embarrassed for Aubrey and was on the point of inviting him to share the intimacy of the small vestibule. But Fanny interrupted him. "Oh Hugh," she called softly, "will you chop some ice, please, for the water." She handed him the ice pick and laughed nervously. The door was half open and Keegan caught a glimpse of the novelist pretending a vast interest in the arrangement of the sandwiches on the plates. "What's the matter, Hugh? You seem so ... so funny," Fanny whispered close to him. His heart contracted. He was afraid. If he dared he would put his arms around her. But after all the things he had confessed to her in their walk.... A longing to weep almost brought tears out of his eyes. He stood with his mouth open and stared as in a dream at a blurred vision. "Fanny," he muttered, "I'm sorry...." "About last night," she whispered. He nodded. "But Hughie, you said you wouldn't ever again...." He felt despair. "If I only hadn't ... I would...." He stopped. "Would what, Hughie?" Fear halted him definitely. He could go no further. A misery clouded his thought. He felt her hand touching his arm. "You mustn't feel sorry, Hugh. Please promise me you won't feel sorry...." The sweetness of her voice overpowered him and his eyes grew wet. He tried to talk but was ashamed of the quiver he felt in his throat. Fanny pressed lightly against him. He stood with his head reeling and his heart dancing crazily as her arms circled his neck. Her face was raised to his. "Just one ... Hughie. Please ... don't forget. Please hurry...." He heard her words but they conveyed no meaning. He loved her ... he loved her. He had never been happy like this. He couldn't tell her now ... the icebox, something, was in the way. But sometime he would tell her. His arms and body felt alive. "Oh," he thought, "Fanny, Fanny...." Then he heard himself repeating the thought aloud. He was saying in a voice he hardly recognized, "Oh, Fanny, Fanny." He kissed her lips. For a moment Fanny returned his kiss passionately. Her arms clutched him tightly. She felt a curious lift in her heart, a thing she had never experienced before. It made her almost close her eyes. But she kept them open, watching furtively over Keegan's shoulder the figure of Aubrey. Aubrey had remained bent over the plates of sandwiches. Despite the lift in her heart this annoyed her. She wanted Aubrey's attention. "Oh," she sighed aloud. Aubrey heard. He straightened and for a moment stared at the tableau of the lovers. Fanny watching him behind Keegan's kiss saw his face grow red. Then she lowered her eyes and abandoned herself to the sensation of Keegan's arms. But the sensations faded. An interest seemed to have gone out of the situation. She pushed Keegan gently away and looked into the kitchen. Aubrey was gone. "Oh," she whispered. Keegan looked at her dizzily. "He saw...." "Who?" "Aubrey Gilchrist saw you." Her face flushed. "Did he?" Keegan leaned against the icebox. He felt weak. "I'm sure he did," Fanny insisted, an elated note in her voice, "I'm just positive." "He couldn't have seen much if he did, from where he was standing," Keegan murmured. "I don't care anyway," Fanny smiled. Keegan felt a thrill at the words. She loved him and didn't care who knew! "Neither do I," he agreed. He felt glad they had been seen. It made him blush inside but he was glad. "Oh, what do we care?" Fanny cried, "if the old stick-in-the-mud did see." Keegan reached his hands to her but she eluded him and darted into the kitchen. "Hurry, chop the ice," she called. She was confused. For a moment she had been surprised by an emotion—a curious, unsensual desire for the awkward Keegan. She had felt her heart yield to his embrace as she usually felt her body do. But the whole thing had been for Aubrey's benefit. It had started with an intention of making Aubrey jealous by flirting with Keegan. And when Aubrey had refused to show any signs of jealousy she had carried the flirtation further until it had seemed logical to kiss and embrace Keegan as a part of her original ambition to stir Aubrey. But she had been stirred herself by the man's kiss. Yet now that Aubrey was gone she had lost all interest in Hugh. She wanted to hurry back where the novelist was. She glanced apprehensively toward the door. Doris was standing looking at her. "What's the matter, Dorie?" "Mr. Ramsey has come. Mother said to set another place." "Good heavens! What a houseful." Doris nodded. Keegan was standing in the center of the room smiling inanely at the sink. "I'll help you," said Doris. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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